Pico de Orizaba

Pico de Orizaba
Taken from Huatusco, Veracruz, the closest town to Margarita's family's ranch.

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Facebook "Friends" thoughts and un"friend"ing

How many Facebook "friends" should we have? And why do we have them? to see our photographs? To hear our complaints? To share our childrens' first day leaving for school on a schoolbus? For sharing information, videos, artwork...? I guess it's for maintaining an illusion of popularity or the hope for returning in time or for re-connecting with someone left behind (or lost and recovered) or for "showing off" who you've become and how popular you are... It's a perputual class reunion... It's a last ditched attempt at fighting mid-life crises, since, afterall, the mid-life crisis is about sensing the loss of youth and all of those paast opportunities, liberties, facilities, vitalities... Maybe Facebook is a returning to the unreturnable... I think it's a wonderful opportunity for fending off loneliness with the illusion of connectedness. Who knows? Maybe you'll meet new unknown friends through friends... Maybe you'll reconnect with someone on the internet and realize that they don't physically live so far away and you'll revive those friendships that died with high school or college up to 25 years ago... My "friends" live thousands of miles away. The probability of us seeing each other in person in the next 10 years is so slight. And, if there was the possibility of our visiting one another; it would be a 5 day vacation visit once every 10 years and that doesn't make for an enjoyable friendship. Here in Mexico (now Guadalajara) "life has been treating us well"... Our economy is good. We are about to have a "permanent" residence for the first time in 5 years and are planning on opening up the café "of my dreams". In one month I will finally have my painting studio I've always wanted and in our house (although not ours). Margarita and I are truly enjoying ourselves together and, I think, it could be alright if she were to become pregnant. Meaning that I think it's alright if I became a father, although, as you know, that is an incredible long-shot due to my ultimate surgery... But it could happen. We thought she was pregnant last week. I finally found where I can exercise as I've always wanted, here in Guadalajara. Outdoors, in the woods with incredible views. And I believe this is why I'm thinking about this and removing so many people who aren't friends and never could be, since it truly is just a class reunion for people to know how we've aged, for people curious about what we are up to and what we have done. Life is dangerous here. But, maybe we can manage it. Maybe it's all just a socio-political smoke screen.. Maybe it will pass with the political tide...

Monday, October 17, 2011

Dream of Female Circumcision

Last night I dreamed I was having a female circumcision... It was a very short but sufficiently lucid dream to wonder about it when I awakened... Now why would I have dreamed that dream? I'm not thinking about these things these days; the furthest from my mind. There was no pain; there was no fear... much like a routine appointment with the doctor... I saw the knife removing skin around an opening surrounded by dark hair and someone was explaining something to me...

Saturday, October 15, 2011

Some Thoughts about Suffering and the Spirit I

"Positive" and "Negative" experience of the body and mind in this lifetime is not carried with the spirit and soul into other realms of existence afterwards.  Likewise, physical states such as gender, sexuality, obesity, physical healthfulness and mental health/mental illness, material wealth or lack there of aren't conditions connected with your spirit or soul.  The body dies, the mind dies, the beauty dies, the economic status dies.  But your essence continues.  The measure of true success in this lifetime is how much you have evolved, grown, learned, overcome, shared, accepted and contributed towards the evolution/growth of others.  True success isn't measured by how much you leave behind when you die, but how much you take with yourself and how much others take with themselves directly or indirectly connected with you.  If suffering was something "God" truly considered bad, suffering wouldn't exist.  

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Double Mastectomy

My cousin's wife is about to have a double Mastectomy. Mastectomy has signified for women a double stigma; the first is the personal struggle she experiences at having a part of her body removed that simbolized female sexuality in many societies. The second is how she feels men would respond to her knowing that she had her breasts removed. Breasts have nothing to do with sexuality. They have only one true function and that is to nourish a recently born baby. There are societies within which the breasts are not considered a sexual "tool" for alluring or for playing... I imagine that within those societies, the woman who suffers breast cancer suffers breast cancer and nothing else. Yes, having a part of your body removed is a traumatic experience regardless of social standards of beauty. We all have an inherent concept of who we are and that has much to do with what we've always seen in the mirror... But, what if we all were born without sex organs and breasts and we didn't have to reproduce sexually... I truly believe we'd be much more tranquil; accepting of ourselves.

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Men are Pigs/Women are...?; Conversations with a Past Life, October 4, 2011



Her husband is a lawyer, he is a body-builder.  He is a father of 3 children. He is a womanizing pig.  He sleeps with his secretaries.  He slept with her best friend.  It’s been more than a humiliating slap in the face.  It’s also a bruising of her ego.  She just separated from him.  I believe she’s asking for a divorce.  But, she can’t stop talking about her suffering within the situation.  And she has her friends entwined within her existential conflict.  After all, how can you be a true friend if you don’t say supportive things showing that you understand, that you care, that you are on her side?  But the problem is that the conversation reverts to “Men are… this”…  that he is a …  One of her friends wrote, “He had everything a man could want…” But, no one truly wants to help the situation.   This is my response (I could lose Facebook “friends”.  But, as we all know; if they were friendships created on Facebook, they aren’t more than illusions bound with photographs and words):

It's not a rational thing; having everything a man could want. Virility (which doesn't have only to do with sex) is about accumulation, be it a collection of cars, a big house, a nice vacation house, and an apartment in the city, friends at increasingly higher socio-political levels, sex-partners... Virility is about the illusion of power and self-worth. If he always saw himself as worthless and if he has a big bruised ego, he will strive for proving to himself and others that he has value. It doesn't matter how and who is his wife. It doesn't matter that he has 3 beautiful children. The problem is profoundly psychological and spiritual. Mix that with socio-political models of how men should be if they want to be accepted as truly valuable men... But the problem isn't only about men. It's about women too and what women expect from men and how women believe they should appear to men. Remember, the man should be your prince in shining armor. But, in order to be a prince, he must have money and status. So, he must be a laywer, doctor, successful business man. And what must you as a woman have to become his princess? You must be a material object of his desire, which also makes you a material object of the desires of other men. You play the game. Within the game is a ton of built in risk. Now, why would a man become an obsessed body-builder and why would the woman be attracted to this man? When men and women fall into this game of "Men are jerks" and "women are..." they are like dogs chasing their tales. And why run around in the same circles? Because neither person wants to admit the truth within the situation. They want the game; but they don't want to accept the consequences. And the truth is, Do they really want change and to avoid these situations? Amiga, let yourself be a normal 42 year old mother and not obsess over your appearance waiting for everyone to tell you you are gorgeous or sexy. How about just being a normal, attractive 42-year-old woman about to enter into Menopause... How does that idea make you feel? I'm sure it feels horrible. And the question is WHY? It's a very personal question. But if you can address it and accept the true response and deal with the reality of that response, then maybe you can deal with your relationship or relationships and stop running around in circles desperately and maybe you can start truly enjoying yourself, your children and your life... But perpetually accusing THE OTHER doesn't resolve the problems. And, my question is, "if women hear these comments about men being idiots and so many other things since adolescence (the conversations become incredibly prevalent after college), then why not dedicate a life to abstenance? But the truth lays at a deep subconscious level; because the women know that they are equally fucked up and equally to blame for the inter-personal relationship problems as are the men. Don't you understand? But, maybe you don't want to understand. You just want to spend your time miserable blaming the other for your decision to be with them in the first place and to seek their style of MAN.