Pico de Orizaba

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

Sunday, November 24, 2013

Thoughts on Breasts, Mastectomies, Islamic head covering and my painting...

Covered is her head and face... a small window for her eyes to peep through... dark cobalt blue silk to her feet... Groups of people immersed in energetic or relaxed conversations, smiling faces, smiling eyes, serious expressions concentrating upon what is being said by the other, expressions of intrigue or sympathy or disappointment as the conversation goes, suddenly converting to surprise or disdain or fear quickly looking away or maintaining their burning glares or reproach as she floats between the conversations, the crowd parts as Moses parted the Red Sea... However, as if Moses' staff suddenly loses its powers she finds herself surrounded by a group of young men jeering and tugging at the dark blue silk protecting her skin from public view... She responds silently without resisting the violent grasping hands and the tearing of her covering... An uproar of cheers exploads over her intense silence as the silk covering her chest falls away exposing one of her breasts... Someone yells, "Wow! What a breast! Who would have known! expose the rest of her!" and the crowd follows with "Expose her! Expose her!" Suddenly, there's a deathly silence and much skuffling of feet as the rest of the silk covering falls from her shoulders... The young men shoot glances over their shoulders as they quickly walk away. She stands with her arms spread upwards and outwards from her sides, in the form of a cross, palms forward, as if she's asking them to return and look at her with her chest bared and her head and face covered. She looks forward, silent and intensely tranquil. One beautiful breast freed from captivity as the press may have publicized the past 50 years... and where once may have been the other breast, a series of scars from where the other cancer took its toll...

Painting my internal response to (over--on top of) my unfinished surrealist painting of the two breasts that become a highway in a desert at night (painted two years ago) that recently had me thinking of an Islamic woman exposing herself and then converted into that same Islamic woman with a mastectomy... And this is what appeared in my mind at the same time... For the moment the painting is working (for me and hopefully for you tomorrow). If I weren't a Gemini, constantly changing focusses, I would follow the fantasy of painting many women with mastectomies and without niqabs or hijabs, without religiously and politically conflicting messages, since the greatest issue always is not so much religious or political but socially-psychological and deeply personal... since each person relates uniquely to their body and the bodies of others... granted, we learn greatly from how we and others are portrayed by mass media... There was a time when the breasts were not sexual objects or symbols of youth and beauty or measurements of female material value or lack there of. They weren't symbols for anything... but the initial means for nurturing male and female babies (all of us)... So, what happens when a breast is removed? Hopefully the woman is given more time for enjoying and learning from life and sharing with those important to her and vice versa... I'm sorry we find ourselves immersed within this situation. I'm sorry anyone would have to have preventative surgery removing parts of their body. As some of you know, I live with it too... But, my personal experience of preventative surgeries hasn't made me any more concerned with the issues of breast cancer or mastectomies... Don't get me wrong... The painting is painted by a man not thinking of his surgeries, but in how he relates (the evolution of his thinking) with the various and differing issues related towards women as objects in the eyes of everyone, even women... I remember when I would have looked away... Yes, we don't like looking at scars or deformations... But, somehow we've gotta change the way we view... and respond or expect... Imagine the man who goes from girlfriend to girlfriend or wife to wife until he encounters the woman with the perfect breasts... And when he encounters the perfect breasts... he realizes that there are other reasons for leaving her... and or he realizes that breasts weren't all they were made up to be... and this isn't about the man's gaze... it's also about the woman's perspective of her own self-worth and sexuality... what she believes is beauty and if she qualifies... However...

Monday, November 11, 2013

To continue with the memoirs of "Eleven Years in Mexico"... In 2009, A Swine Flu epidemic outbreak began in the region of Perote, Veracruz Mexico. The region of Perote is where the largest pig "processing" company of the world has some of its most important processing plants, since Veracruzanos are huge consumers of pork... and because the land is desertlike, cheap and a few hours trucking from Mexico City (20 percent of the Mexican Population or around 20 million inhabitants). The problem with the proliferation of information of the Flu being caused by pigs was that it threatened a drastic decline in the consumption of pork... So, the Smithfield Foods pressured the Mexican Government (department of Health) and probably the WHO to stop calling it the Swine Flu and call it H1N1... So, suddenly everyone was speaking in codes... Maybe they liked the ring... Maybe they thought they were being scientifically correct, since the newspapers declared that the influenza was not caused by pigs but by the H1N1 virus... BUT, if you look up H1N1 on the internet, you will find that it is a virus caused and spread by pigs... In anycase, I am probably the only person standing on Mexican soil you will hear mention, Influenza Porcina... or Swine Flu... And everyone is incredibly content and satisfied eating their pork... If you drive down the highway from Aguascalientes towards Mexico City any given day, you will pass at least 4 or five two-level trucks packed with pigs suffering under the weight of all the rest of the pigs, with their faces pressed against the grates... If you aren't driving, I imagine you have the opportunity of seeing their suffering and their bleeding... And, if you have ever lived with pigs, you would know that they are more intelligent than dogs (as if intelligence quotient should justify the suffering of or the protection of non-human animals). But, what I wish to say about their intelligence is that their concern and fear and pain or suffering is very clear in the facial expressions... Plus, the more capacity one has for thinking, the more risk of prolonged suffering per minute one has... And, no one seeing a giant truck with dogs packed to the brim, crushed against grates or fences or walls would allow that to go unreported... The problem is our value system or rating system... You would think someone was telling "you" that if we didn't eat meat, we would immediately encounter ourselves at the brink of starvation... I say that, because what else causes us to intentionally blind ourselves to what is obvious and horribly cruel? And, I'm not a vegetarian... Go figure. I guess you would call me a hypocrite. I wouldn't. But, we can start that discussion any time you like.

11 Years in Mexico and Counting...

What's on my mind?  Many things:  Like the idea of writing my memoirs (Ha! Ha! Ha!):  "Eleven Years in Mexico"...  Sounds good?  Ok.  But, I've gotta first return to the U.S. in order to write them...  Return to the U.S.?  You must be kidding!  For 11 years I have always thought about that possibility.  However, each year that goes by, that possibility decreases into an increasing improbability... for now.  So, the memoirs becomes post-poned and maybe the title changes to 12 years in Mexico or 15 years in Mexico...  For a moment I pondered upon the idea of visiting Chile for a month, the month of December.  Alone.  Of all of the Latin American countries, Chile is the only one I've desired to visit if not spend more than a visit... For years, I've had that desire, years before I floated on Facebook...  And then I read recent histories of Chile that haulted that desire, like a Jew who planned on visiting Munich or Warsaw or Kiev or...  But we aren't Jews and we aren't socially minded leftists and we aren't Croatians and we aren't... We are just humans floating in a semi-contaminated sea, that contamination floating randomly on changing currents just as driftwood... and hopefully we can float in opposite directions of that contamination... sometimes we too are part of that contamination... hopefully not frequently...  Years ago a Theater professor at the University of Veracruz in Xalapa said to me, "So, you're a Gringo"... And I said, "I wouldn't call myself that..."  She quickly replied, "But, it's not a bad word, it is historical when the U.S. invaded Mexico in the 19th Century and we yelled at the Green Uniformed soldiers, 'Green Go' (although their uniforms were gray and not green and the Veracruzanos 150 years later don't speak English to know that Verde is Green and Vete is Go).  It's not offensive." And I said, "no, not offensive.  You're just telling me to leave your country everytime you call me a Gringo..."  The Mexicans are concerned that the whole world calls those from the United States, "Americans" as if I decided to claim North and South America my own or as if I was saying that I and the rest of the people born in the U.S. were the only real people living in the Americas...  Now, outside of the U.S. the "intellectuals" with their noses bent out of shape have a valid argument that everyone from the Arctic tundra of Canada to Cape Horn of South America are Americans.  It is so valid that when I write fellow citizens from the United States and use the name they were born hearing, be it from fellow citizens of the United States of more probably from everyone else in the world living outside the U.S., "Americans", I write it in quotations...  Here, the pseudo intellectuals (I call them pseudo because if they had the basic level of intelligence, they would know better than to say certain things such as...) who know better than to call anyone "Gringo", since it's like calling a Mexican "Spic" in the U.S. call people from the U.S. "North Americans".  And no matter how much you explain to them that Canadians are North Americans just as Mexicans are North Americans, they insist on reconstructing continents so they can distinguish the difference between a "Gringo" and a Mexican, believing that everyone born in the U.S. has Anglo-Saxon blood and worships in a Protestant church without images of Jesus bloody on a cross or Saints in all their forms of torture.  Granted, they don't call those Churches Protestant, but Christian, as if saying that the Christians worship a different God than the Catholics, although Catholicism is a Christian religion...  Anyway, I tell "them" almost every day that NorteAmericano (North American) is incorrect.  And they ask me, "Then what should we call you...?"  And, I tell them, "Only in Spanish, since the name doesn't work in English, but the issue isn't there but here, where we speak only Spanish...  To remove US from the "bronca" (conflict), call us or them, EstadoUnidienses... People from the United States..."  Simple... you would think.  Easy compromise for releasing ourselves from the tonteria (foolishness)...  you would think.  But somehow they are ready for THAT, surprisingly and they say, "But, we're EstadoUnidienses also.  This is "The United States of Mexico!"  And, if you look up the history of the legal names of Mexico, you will find that Mexico is not only the Republic of Mexico and Mexico, it is legally The United States of Mexico...  It's on their printed money...  But, I ask, "When someone asks you what you are (meaning what is your nationality, do you say, 'I'm EstadoUnidiense Mexicano'?  When you talk about your country or when others address your country, what is the name used?"  And the answer is, "I'm Mexican, I live in Mexico, They're from Mexico, Cancun and Acapulco and Puerto Vallarta and Tijuana are places in the country of MEXICO... No one says, "The United States of Mexico"...  But, this logical intellectual discussion does not and NEVER results in compromise that one could consider politically correct.  The issue isn't about justice or what is correct.  It is about someone who feels unjustly inferior playing dirty in the attempt towards removing the sense of their inferiority placing the blame on someone who is not to blame...  They strip the U.S. Citizen of their name or their right to call them what they have always been called or decide upon a logical and geografically--historically and politically correct name that "harms" no one, as a group of young thugs would strip a man of his cloths and send him running down the streets naked...  11 years in Mexico... and this is only the tip of the iceburg...

Saturday, November 9, 2013

The untouchable event of you and I

We can't return... at least not in time... and our memories change, become increasingly limited or vague over time.  We can return to the places and the people... But, the places and people evolve... and the events terminated with the events...

I find myselt thinking about that day we visited my mother's house in New Jersey... That last time you went with me to visit my mother... And how I was.  But how was I?  Obstinate?  But why?  And my mother suggested taking you back to the train that took you back to New York.  The following day I encountered the apartment door ajar, the lock broken and believe I called the police, although I should have know it was you.  But so quickly?

I imagine something has me perplexed about the event we can call you and I...  And what it truly "meant" for the one and the other...  Or what it may mean today or tomorrow.  Since everything leads to something else, although we may not know or accept it...  Maybe we invent meanings.  Maybe the inventions aren't illusions or fantasies and share with us some sort of truth about our lives, the universe, the metaphysical...  Maybe...  Maybe those meanings evolve over time.  Maybe we also deny the truth... Maybe it really doesn't matter what is the truth behind all of our experiences.  Maybe it doesn't matter so much what we think.  And the feelings are momentarilly important for moving us...  Maybe there are things we've just gotta do whether we approve of those events or actions or experiences... We are moved for evolving for experiencing for learning for changing perspectives...  We say things that later on maybe we would say we didn't mean...  Of course we meant those things or we wouldn't have said those things...  They had to come out of our mouths so we could learn... so we could react to a situation, to ourselves and wonder why we did such a thing...  Why did we act like a coward, a dependent, an egoistic selfish monster...  An uninterested when we were always interested...  I'm not talking about myself so to speak.  Nor am I talking about you, so to speak.

But I found myself half laying on the couch listening to Los Caifanes, drinking a horrible coffee with milk, since Margarita has the tendency towards preparing coffee much lighter than Nicolas, José or I.  And when you place milk in that coffee, it becomes horribly watered down.  And I was observing Nicolas and José in the kitchen.  José was washing the dishes and I don't know what Nicolas was doing.  And I was thinking about that day and also thinking that I had no desire towards going to the market for vegetables and that I imagine we can get by today.  And thinking about Milan Kundera's "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" I was reading in Spanish.  I had read it in English back in New York in the 90s...

We had planned a weekend visit with my mother in New Jersey.  And at the last minute something happened and I was dodging you on the subway into Manhattan, you directly on my heels with an incredibly determined look on your face.  And you went with me to New Jersey.  And less than an hour later you were on the train back to New York.  The following day you had retrieved some of your belongings... by breaking the lock on the door...  The following weeks I found myself trying to track you down for resolving an unresolvable situation I was trying to disolve for quite a few months...  So, I wonder about those contradictions...  And "who" was it ending the event we called our crazy relationship, if I was always supposedly in-love, although hating every minute of it...  Who was doing the ending if that "someone" wasn't truly you or I?  Foolish questions since I've always understood that answer...  But, if I always understood that answer and how I ended up in Mexico... now married to Margarita 10+ years somewhat successful (much more so than in New York City) and why, then why continue thinking about these things... about that or those events and about you?

Yesterday I saw a photograph on a "friend's" wall on facebook of a woman naked from the hips up and a fish from the hips down.  And that woman was so similar to you... I've seen people who look just like you, and imagine you do some modelling or you participate in certain music videos... a The Roots video filmed in East Harlem...  So, I guess it's impossible not to think about you and the possibilities of your life and what I am doing since that event terminated... And I wonder about my memories and how they gradually fade or evolve.  And I wonder about your and my interactions... and your thoughts that I am sure I will never know...  and why does it matter...  I guess it is interesting.  I imagine you've decided that it isn't interesting and never was...  It must be better for you for advancing in whatever it is the career you are pursuing...  Well, that is my mind partially placed 12 years ago within your obsession with success and glory... And those are my words from back then, probably a bit less intense or critical or accusing, since here in Mexico, I've worked 10+ years immersed in the pursuit of some sort of success and glory...

Remember the S.E. Hinton novel "That was Then, This is Now"?

And that's all we truly have... and trying to understand the difference or the evolution or the consequences...

And had I not met you?  But, you know looking back at the time line and the events and the "coincidences" that fell on that line and how and when they fell on that line, that our meeting and the trajectory of those events and how we ended was inevitable...  So, the better question is;  and with our meeting? what truly happened?  How did it truly affect our evolution?  What does it truly mean for us...

And why attempt returning to those points on the time line?

If I could physically return to that period, that event or those series of events and reactions and attitudes and behaviors, would I?

Or how would I feel?

How would I respond?

What would I change if I could?

I guess we return because there is always something new we can learn from past events...  The problem is that there are many holes in the history, in the memory...  And, somethings scare us if we could recreate the events as we lived them... Do you scare me?  No.  It's not about you, but about me.  I don't scare me in that there is a monster within.  No.  What scares me is being someone I never wished of myself, like running out of restaurants or arguing with you horribly on a busy street or trying to observe you for hours from a hidden place because of my horrible concern about your dishonesty, your infidelity...  What scares me is that part of me that lost control, that obsessed, that couldn't let go, that couldn't just let you live your life so that I could just live mine... The fear of not being as healthy as I would have wished...  Of being out of control... 

So I return for moments at times...  I guess it's because I've evolved greatly and can "observe" from an increasingly healthier place.  Plus, we are aging or getting old.  And somethings we can't do or fantasize anymore... and we observe from a high ledge on the edge of a cliff overlooking a distant beach and the distant waves crashing on that beach and possibly children playing in the surf and their parents and aunts and uncles observing those children as they play freshly...  There are places we can't return if we wish, not even in fantasies...  The fantasies have evolved as has the history and our physical and biological realities...

I like this piece.  And would like to continue.  But, there are things I've gotta do...