Perpetual Novembers; Spring Eternal in my Mind; Late-Summer Labyrinths: And in the end...

Friday, November 7, 2014

And in the end...

It could be the end of the Beatles song on Abbey Road... but that wasn't my intention... it has nothing to do with love or "the love you made..."

In the end we are freed... of suffering... of misunderstandings... of what someone did or someone didn't... of misinterpretations...

In the end, nothing really mattered because it has ended. The relationship has ended. There is nothing to say because there is no voice. There is nothing to interpret, because there is no mind. There is nothing to hear on the other side because there is no ear for receiving the message.

Maybe we start over.

I started over in Mexico. And that's how I like it. It's been good for me. Nothing in the past was good. I couldn't change it or change them, so like I said in the previous pieces of Wednesday "Dust to Dust, Ashes to Ashes? Death as Tragedy and Sentimentalism" and Thursday "Another Person Died..." , "maybe the only way to break a cycle is by removing yourself from that cycle." And that's what I did with moving to Mexico. And it's been good for me.

Repeating histories isn't good for me. Where does it bring us? But, you've gotta understand that we only have a past between you and I. There is no present and there is no future.

And the past is something that harmed me greatly; it stunted my growth... So, if you are only past then it's time to relegate you to Alzheimer's memories... And when someone else dies... or when you die, you have been freed from this psychological issue of yours.

I moved to Mexico. The intention was for freeing myself.

You have no idea how much easier it is for me when I am not thinking about my so-called immediate family, when there is absolutely no sense of connection with them. For me, the connection was horribly negative and full of too much risk.

So, let's leave it at that.

Remember, I studied history in college. And the greatest lesson I learned about history is that it only exists if the "powers that be" wish for others to know about it. History isn't a fact, although what is said may be a truth or full of truths. It can also be highly manipulated. If the data creates inconveniences for a family or an organization or a community or a government, the data is burned or shredded. It's your word against theirs... But, there isn't history. Or their history is fictitious... And the children grow up learning lies. But that's what their parents or their school systems or their governments wish for them... What can I say?

Nothing... if it is offensive... if it is inconvenient... no matter how true it may be... and then it is just my word against yours, which is a very tiresome game and not really worth the lack of return...

You must know I don't believe in activism... not because it is wrong... but because "the powers that be" only allow the movements if they have decided somehow, someway in the future they can use it for their best interests.

It is rare that a person truly worries about the best interests of "the other"... that a person believes in justice for the other... If it doesn't bring them some form of personal benefit, such as increased income or prestige...

No, most humans will return to their own best interests and leave the suffering of the other person to their fate or as some people would say: "their dumb luck"...

If a tree falls in the woods and you don't hear it fall, did it fall?

If a man rapes a woman and no one saw him rape her, did he truly rape her?

If a boy loses his father at a very young age and suffers horribly for that loss and all of the subsequent consequences of that loss and none of the adults believe he suffers that loss and the subsequent consequences of that loss, did he truly suffer the loss?

The answer is, only the woods knows that a tree fell and only the woman (and the rapist) knows she was raped and only the boy knows he suffered the death of his father and the subsequent consequences. There is no tragedy in this. Just difficult experience and we must learn to deal with the issue (the famous words of a ham sandwich without slices of bread on the two sides: COPE) and move on. Except for the tree, I wish these things didn't happen. But they did and they do and only the person within the experience can understand what happened. We can't expect people to be empathetic or even considerate. Or maybe things would have been a bit different, wouldn't they have been?

And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make...

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Unfinished "Self-Portrait at 33"

Something I've dreamed of painting since just after my ultimate surgery in 2001. I post this now since I don't know if I will have the chance to work on it before going back on the road on Sunday... The problem is I've been sick for the past 5 days, painting this for the past week, a few hours per day. Whatever the sickness is, it isn't anything I've known and seemingly changes every day. In order to guarrantee my being well anough for the intense work for the following month, I may have to leave this hanging until I return at the end of August...

"La Sonrisa de Amarillo" (Amarillo's smile).

"La Sonrisa de Amarillo" (Amarillo's smile). José and Nicolas were commenting that I should sell the shirt I use for painting, since it is covered with paint. And then José said, "better yet, I'll give you one of my shirts to paint..." It was a joke. But I took it seriously. He has shirt he bought 4 years ago in Zacatecas with a copy of a painting of a bull in a bull fight. However, the print was erased from the shirt years ago. So, I decided to use the space that had the bull. "Amarillo" (Yellow) was the dog at my in-laws ranch when Margarita and I met. Due to a bad fight, he was left with one side of his mouth and one of his ears mangled, which gave him a permanent half snarl with one fang sticking out. He died years ago. But we often mention him...

New House/Studio Guadalajara

Over 20 years ago our friend José "Montaña" bought a parcel of land in the center of Guadalajara. His uncle who was a constructor/mason helped José build the brick house that has 6 bedrooms. Not long afterward, José entered into his older brother's Indian crafts importation business and decided to sell the crafts in fairs around Mexico. His brothers were one of the first people in Mexico City to enter into the Krishna movement that gave them certain perks. While José became vegetarian 4 years ago, sells the Indian furniture and crafts etc, has a giant shrine to Ganesh in his house and hosts the Mahareshi at least two times a year, José doesn't consider himself a Krishna. For at least 15 years José experienced extreme success in the fairs and was able to send his children to private English Language schools (his oldest son went to University in Texas and Married there),was able to visit with his children the U.S. and India and even bought the "castillo" (castle---an insider joke) next door. For years he used it as a store house and for a shop where Mary had workers fabricating crafts and Mexican/asian Indian style clothing. Then, about 4 years ago, Mexico entered into the international economic crises and José began losing money in the fairs. (I, on the other hand, have managed the situation and the coffee business well enough to be able to improve our economy over the past 2+ years, although this year we lost half our fairs (my decision not to enter into suddenly horribly violent zones where the people are fleeing and have fair to go out to the streets.) Out of desperation, José put the house he built on the market and moved his family into the "castillo"; his children were not happy. The "castillo" was built in the 19th century and has very high ceilings and wonderful giant windows and a terrace surrounding the second story kitchen. After a year on the market, One of José's Asian Indian suppliers bought the house and decided to put it on the market. A year ago, dreaming of having an artist studio/house in the center of Guadalajara with it's majestic tree-lined streets, I asked José to contact the Indian suppliers to see if they would sell the "guest house". José replied that he couldn't locate the Indians' representative in Guadalajara. And that ended that fantasy. However, a year later, upon returning to Guadalajara, Margarita called Mary who asked Margarita if we were in need of a house. We had just rented a house for 3 months (a house infested with cockaroaches). However, I had to see the house. The moment we set foot in the empty guest house without kitchen, bathroom, closets, I was hit with the return of the dream I left behind when we left Guadalajara last November. This time I could see all the projects we would begin over the next 10 years. So, we decided to rent the house and hoped that the 32 day fair in Guadalajara would be good for us; and it was. So, now we are "building" the kitchen, we bought a new refrigerator, are having a stainless steel restaurant sink fabricated for us, are looking for good furniture, looking into nice tiling and thinking about the future one more time.

"Hummingbird Goddess of the Mountain"/"Diosa Colibrí de la Montaña"

Crucified Pregnant Woman

(Unfinished Painting November/December 2010). This was the last painting I worked on before putting aside the painting and drawing for 6 months. I don't have any artist training. I haven't ever taken a painting or a drawing class. I don't know anything about anatomy and I have NEVER seen naked pregnant woman, let alone a naked pregnant woman on a cross. That created a hell of a headache working on perspective and shadowing... How does a head hang with the arms spread outwards to the side? My dilemma. After the fair of Tepic, I asked my friend José "Montaña" to take it with him to Guadalajara. Truthfully, it created so much stress that I really didn't want to see it. The problem is that we don't have a house of our own. I don't have a studio for storing my work and supplies...

Stream of Consciousness Drawing "Your Turned Back/The Cold Shoulder" July 11, 2011

In La Isla de Mexcaltitan, Nayarit

The story goes that the group of Mexica indians had a dream one night of the great city of Tenochtitlan they would construct 200 years later in the Valley of Mexico, now known as Mexico City that later on became known as the Aztec Empire. The dream was had on the Island of Mexcaltitan, Nayarit. Upon leaving his "home" on the edge of the river Antigua in Veracruz, Cortez journeyed to the center of what is now known as the Republic of Mexico and conquered the Aztecs, with the help of the Totonoco indians of the region known as Veracruz. Cortez destroy the Grand Tenochtitlan, probably the largest pre-hispanic city in the Americas and constructed churches and cathedrals where the ancient temples and pyramids had been...

Pico de Orizaba in the Morning

I took this photo during our Sunday morning walk. We found a wonderful route that circles Margarita's parents' house; great for a jogging route. When I've run in Mexico, Margarita was my running partner. Back in 2005, when we were running in the Lakes, there were many times when Margarita ran faster than I ran. But, I always passed her on the hills... The wonderful thing about this route is that it passes through the woods, coffee plantations and sugar cane fields; a lot of hills as you can see... So, we've decided that, if we have a strong finish of 2011, we'll buy land here and build a house.