Sex, Infidelity, Morality, Dropping bombs on Children; Conversations with a Past Life September 16th, 2011

I will write you for weeks after you have stopped writing me... The conversation I carry with me long after I have ceased hearing your voice.  You may hear an echo of mine.  Your response will be the placement of cotton in your ears.  But the echo is within you.  Somehow you will convince yourself that something I was saying was threatening or dangerous and you will turn down the volume of the echo of me.  But we are all intertwined and can't escape the other just as we can't escape ourselves. 

I was with Margarita... sexually...  below or above.  I'm sure it was a beautiful experience...  For her.  For me...  And I was thinking about your short history in Armeria.  ... while "making love?" thinking about a man tied to a tree...  Something sexually stimulating?  Absolutely not.  Sexually distracting... like looking out the window, focussing on a distant point above the brownstones in brooklyn...  Concentrating on my breathing and not on the overstimulating act, perpetually concerned that she will terminate satisfied...  1986 Branchburg, 1992 Flemington, 1996 Queens, 2000 Brooklyn, 2011 Guadalajara.  But I didn't conjure up your brief history in Colima in 1996...  I now carry with me that concern.  And it was with me all the time Margarita had no idea I may have been participating in a slight act of infidelity... With you?  Absolutely not.  Infidelity has nothing to do with sexual act.  It has to do with perspectives each and everyone of us carry within our minds and is about spiritual/intelectual, socio-political connectiveness.  When one "makes love" the idea is that there is a bond between the two people at the moment of the act.  So, my mind should be in only one place at that time.  But, my mind NEVER is in just one place at one time whether or not I am by myself or with another person.  So, if one is to be loyal to me as is correspondent with my character or my personality or my spirit, if that person can truly understand who I am or how I am, then maybe that person would understand that I may be thinking about other things in the middle of a sexual act.  That said, I will never tell her that I'm not 100% focussed solely on what was occurring between us, just as I wouldn't want to know about the fantasies that the other person may be having in order to enjoy the activity shared with me, if she happened to be one of those women speaking in Cosmopolitan in the 90s about the necessity of fantasy for women to accomplish orgasm...

How many people from Branchburg do YOU think can say they've had your experience?  I've wondered how many of our peers from Branchburg and Somerville have died between the late 80s and now and we don't know that they are dead...  And what were the causes?  How many of them are mixed up in things they shouldn't be mixed with?  How many are in jail?  The rest are housewives, bored office workers, mechanics, church goers, non-believers not believing even in themselves nor in their children...  But, you my friend, were so close to participating in a scene from a movie I hope I never find myself in...  And I am here almost 9 years and you are not for 15 years... 

So, why mix all this and possibly confuse you or possibly offend you or possibly make you concerned that I cross the bounderies between a man and a woman who have never met in person as adults? 

How is it that I am having sex with my wife (not so personal because we always find ourselves watching romantic scenes on TV or in the movies or in our minds while reading novels... or thinking about how it is we entered this world as a product of romance between our mother and our father...) and your story passes through my mind.  And if I wasn't with Margarita, I would still have your story passing through my mind.  And I know that I haven't responded adequately to your story and I haven't asked you so many questions that I am sure you will not answer for some reason or another. 

I've never knowingly met a CIA agent.  I would love to ask them all sorts of questions that they will not answer AND if I was in that position to ask those questions, I am sure that it would be just a bit dangerous.  All the important information is more than concealed.  It is protected with a code of silence usually protected by death.  And, since I don't fall on any side of the lines creating the parameter of what it means to be one of those participating in that theater, not even a journalist, not even a researcher for a think tank or for an academic publication, not even a fiction writer seeking storyline...  not even a "delinquent" seeking connections--work--investments--permissions...  there is absolutely no reason I would even come close to knowingly have a conversation with one of those people.

But I always want to understand why...  and that includes answering personal questions about myself.

If I don't write about sexual acts because of being a timid prude, I must ask myself why.  If I write about it and then feel guilty or concerned for writing that, I must ask myself why.  If I don't ask myself why I do certain things, the question is, what does that say about me?

But this isn't about me.  This isn't so much about you.  It's about Lucio's brother.  It's about your long ex-boyfriend's mother.  It's about Lucio.  It's about Armeria.  It's about being a farmer there or about being a poor person trying to get by thinking that maybe there wasn't any risk with his actions or that that risk was minimal because those are activities many have been doing for many years...

Why did you tell me about Armeria?  Many weeks ago you told me that you had a memory problem.  Granted, this is a memory that can't be erased; at least the feelings can't be erased.  The details become erased as is natural.  And I wonder if you were in Armeria when they tied him to the tree.  Did they take the cows?  They could have killed the cows too...  I find it horribly difficult to believe that they left Lucio and his girlfriend alone.  And I am sure you don't want to think about that.  Or maybe you don't have a problem with this conversation.

If you were there at the time of the killing, you would know that they don't just tie someone to a tree and put a bullet in their head.  They tie the person to the tree and they mutilate them...  But this is 1996 and not 2011.  We were in Tepic, Nayarit, on the other side of the mountains from Colima, on the same coast...  We were there for 3 months learning about the most horrific things, seeing the photographs and I was left wondering how people can do such things and in what manner does it serve socio-political needs here in Mexico...  I wonder about the spirits of these people.  Mónica, my Cornell graduated girlfriend from San Juan, Puerto Rico asked me in 1998 if I believe people were born bad... And I said, "definatively NO"...  And I believe that...  But, I wonder how a person can enjoy mutilating people.  But you read about the torture chambers in the Church basements during the Inquisition...  You can travel 165 days per year from the time of "Christ" to NOW  filling each and every day with these horrific events perpetrated by people supposedly "god-fearing" or god-loving or god-respecting or god-believing...  in other words, people who supposedly believe in spirituality and love towards some... 

Does no one understand that an invasion, such as that of Iraq in 2003 results in the destruction of the lives of 100s of thousands of innocent people?  And no one wonders why a non-monstrous middle-eastern child may have fantasies about destroying American and European "monuments"...  But, that aside...  What does it take for someone, supposedly "educated" and supposedly "civilized"  to justify acts that destroy the lives of so many innocent people and create unimaginable suffering for so many others?  What does this have to do with sex?

Well, if the birth of a child is considered beautiful.  Then why is it taboo to talk about sex in a personal manner?  If the lives of all children are considered beautiful, then why is it OK to create such destruction of those children, their lives and their worlds?  If you destroy the parent of that child, you also destroy that child in so many forms...

I don't have children.  I also see over-population as a problem.  I have 8 brother-in-laws and 3 sister-in-laws.  I see many problem--issues connected with one couple having 12 children (13 to be precise, one died in the first week)...  But, living very closely with all of them in one way or another, I can't tell you who shouldn't have been born, since between the first one and the last one, so many have such potential for contributing to this world in truly wonderful ways.  All of us have the incredible potential for not contributing absolutely nothing to this world or society...  Part of my destiny is the birth of 13 chidren through my mother-in-law Paz.  Yes, it's part of my destiny because it has effected my life in ways that having married a woman who is one of only two or three children wouldn't have effected me... 

How is it that I ended up in Mexico?  How is it that you and I are having this "conversation"? And it just so happens that you had this experience in Armeria, Colima never dreaming once in your lifetime that someone who grew up in your community would tell you, "I know that small isolated region of the world!"  And, no, I'm not a CIA agent, nor am I a journalist, nor am I an investigator, nor am I a Jehovas Witness or other form of British or American style evangelist trying to convert Mexicans from Catholicism as is so prevalent here, which is one way of being so close to these incredibly isolated communities so at risk...  I'm not an activist, I'm not a lobbyist.  In fact, I've never participated politically in my life.  I think I've voted once in my lifetime in Astoria, Queens.  But, I don't remember if it was a presidential election.  I did it because Randi probably insisted.  Yes, that makes me a bad "American" because I don't participate in the Democratic Process.  I tried participating in the Democratic Process from Xalapa, Veracruz, since  I felt that George Bush Jr. shouldn't enter into the White House a second time.  But, they never sent me my absentee ballot as was the case for many "overseas" voters...  Do I believe in Democracy?  It doesn't exist.  And if it exists at the very basic level, what influence do you have upon the politician after he or she has entered office?  Could you have voted against the second Persian Gulf War?  Can I vote for Hillary Clinton to ask the Mexican Government to varify exactly where the hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars are going that she "authorizes" be given to Mexico in the name of "the War on Drugs"? 

Smack me in the face.  Tell me to wake up and stop wasting my breath on any of these issues/questions since the truth is that the object in question is on the other side of the tree...  It's not about any of this. 

So, I am left with the question, "Why do people do these things?"  "Why do so many people accept that these things are being done by their very own people?"

Before you can even considering changing the world, you must first attempt truly understanding what is happening.  But, the moment you enter the wide circle of possibly truly understanding, you realize that there really isn't anything you can do at such a grand scale.  Yes, you can call me apathetic.  But, I am just 1 in almost 7 billion and I may die today and my death will only affect Margarita and possibly my in-laws depending upon how they decide to relate to my life with them and now to my sudden absence.  I won't leave behind children, I won't leave behind family.  I left behind all my friends when I left for Mexico almost 9 years ago and, truthfully, my permanent absence will not be much different from my current absence.  But, Margarita will be affected. 

What does this have to do with being apathetic? 

Just look at the trajectory of the socio-political situation in the world.  With the economic crises, what is the responsible response by the world governments, especially by the U.S. government?  Why doesn't your being a voter change that situation? 

The people say, "thank God I still have my job!  Thank God I still have food in the pantry and money for buying the necessities..."  "Lynch people.  Abduct people and line them up alongside deep pits and...  Drop bombs on the communities of people...  Blow up car bombs in community markets...  But give me enough food to eat...  Give me the opportunity to forget about these atrocities happening to people who live in communities far from my own, people I'll never know... and shut your mouth... why waste my time and energy?" 

When I entered Mexico, I thought I was entering a better world.  Maybe you would have told me that I was making a mistake back in 2003.  But I didn't know you then. 

I was sitting in the library of the ecological tourist ranch, Las Cañadas, watching television with Margarita, Gregorio, Alejandro and Margarita's sister-in-law Rejina.  It was March 2003.  The UN forces led by the U.S. military were dumping millions of tons of explosives on Baghdad and certain people looked at me with strange smiles, probably wondering what was passing through my mind at that moment or not nearly concerned about my thoughts or feelings, thinking that "Americans" are war happy...  If I told them that I was horrified or embarrassed or resentful towards this aspect of "American culture", maybe they would have assumed that I was covering up the truth within my spirit or mind, that I was lying.  I remember those complex concerns. 

And then 7 years later I found myself on the other side of the line wondering what was it about "Mexican culture" that made it so easy for so many people to mutilate other people... 

Today I wonder just how intertwined is this aspect of Mexican "culture" with that aspect of American "culture"... 

And I have so many questions to ask you (as a friend, as a concerned and curious human being) that I know you will not answer unless we found ourselves sitting infront of each other in a cafe or walking though the woods. 

What does someone being tied up to a tree and killed in an isolated part of Mexico in 1996 have to do with bombs being dropped in Baghdad in 2003?  What does it have to do with you and me?

But this is my spirit.  It is how I live.  It's how I experience life.  It's how I think.  It's how I relate to people and to life.  I ignore too.  But maybe I ignore less than YOU.

(You being the average person.  It's part poetic, it's part truth.  But, it is not an accusation, since it isn't directed at the person who was in Armeria, Colima in 1996.)

We are catalysts for change.  We inspire.  Offending, criticizing, scaring, preoccupying function equally with loving and caring and nurturing as forms of inspiration as catalysts of positive change...  Awakenings.

If you shut your mind to me, it's all part of the human reality.  You continue participating.  As I have said so many times, "Silence is a message too."  But, silence creates more potential for confusion and misinterpretation than does conversation.  At the very least, as long as there is a conversation, you have the opportunity of explaning yourself to the other or of explaining yourself to yourself, since so often we don't truly understand what we are doing until the other person questions our actions...  and still we may be self-deluded...

Maybe I won't die today or tomorrow.  Maybe I will just truly accept the truth of my life and the world around me and that you and I do not see each other and do not exist in the life of the other...  With that understanding or better yet, with that acceptance, maybe I will disappear from the internet and stop sharing my internal world with you.  Maybe when "making love" with Margarita I will only feel and think about our connection and I won't be thinking about other things that, maybe, possibly have nothing to do with me. 

Maybe I can believe in my life-long dream that another person of the other sex is what is missing from my life and I will stop trying to connect with other people stop worrying about what's happening in the world, since there is only one world and that world is the one I created with Margarita who I was waiting for all my life, since I was a student at Old York School. 

But why is it not enough having this absolutely wonderful/beautiful woman at my side?  Why do I reach into the past?  Why do I think about a different future?  Why do I think about what you said while being intertwined sexually with Margarita? Something that has absolutely nothing to do with sexual/romantic behavior...  Had you been a man who had told me this, I would still be thinking about your experience or the experience of the people more closely effected. 

People want to believe that life is simple and can be explained in one paragraph and organized in a simple list.  The moment you believe that life is beyond you, you become lost.  But, what if your "belief" in the simplicity of life leaves you unprepared for so many things way over your head? Why did they or God take away my...?!!!! 

I suffered most of my life; a suffering caused by something way beyond my means for controlling, since I was a very young child to adolescent...  I understand how denile protects us for a moment.  But, I also understand that true understanding helps us put things into perspective.  Putting life into perspective helps us truly enjoy what truly matters.  But living in fantasy and illusion blunts that enjoyment and sets us up for a loss we aren't prepared to understand or accept, since we spent our lives subconsciously or semi-consciously rejecting understanding and acceptance...  

The Problem with Ross... The Problem with Generalizations; Conversations with a Past Life September 15th, 2011

The problem with Ross Jason Goldstein is...  The problem I have is that I see many different sides at the same time or alternative...  When I entered Mexico, I believed that humans were humans and that I had something to share and something to learn, that there was no true better ground.  I was incredibly idealistic and naive and wish I could have remained that way.  I wish I could live simply and just live with the limits within the new situation.  However, I was struck by a lot of diversity in reactions to life where I was standing and a lot of diversity of reactions to my appearance in the space of the people with whom I came into contact.  Margarita's younger brother Gregorio hated me from the first day he met me.  Why?  Because I was a Gringo.  But what is a gringo and why should he hate me for that?  What did I represent to him if he's never met a "Gringo"?  There are 330 million Gringos in the U.S., millions of them being of Mexican descent.  In a conversation with my mother-in-law years into my life here in Mexico with Margarita, a conversation about my concern about Gregorio's racism towards me and the other possible forms people from the ranch may relate towards me, Paz said, "To tell you the truth, when you appeared on the ranch I was scared.  I had never seen an 'American' before you.  But then I met your mother and Bruce and your friend Scott and his wife and Chris and Robert and realized that you were not to be feared.  I see you as one of mine..." and with tears running down her face she continues, "but I know that there may come a time when you decide to return to your country and I understand, it's something you may need to do..."  Now, let me tell you, the first time that Paz received me at Margarita's side, the first 8 times to be precise, she hugged me warmly and kissed me on the cheek and on the neck.  Now, if she was so scared of me, why did she do that?  Yes, we all seemingly contradict ourselves at times...  Very few of us can speak or write off the cuff exactly what we understand, think or feel...  I don't know if you read the 3 parts of "The 3 Messengers" on my blog about how Margarita and I met and the ecological tourist ranch "las Cañadas" where Margarita worked as the cook and I worked voluntarily...  In any case, if you haven't, the owner Ricardo is a year younger than I am, is of upper upper middle class Veracruz heritage and created this gorgeous tourist ranch dedicated to education on organic agriculture etc.  The kitchen was vegetarian, organic and the ranch had a new-age beat...  You would think that this 32-year-old agriculturalist had a great heart along with his open mind...  That's what I thought.  I thought he was like my friends from New York City with the same ideals.  So, one day I told him that I was in-love with Margarita and I hoped that it wouldn't affect anyone negatively.  His response was, "Look, these people will never let you into their community.  You won't understand them and they won't understand you.  I don't understand them and we come from the same country, the same culture.  But you come from such a distinctly different place than even I.  So less so will you and them be able to get along..."  I lost all my respect for Ricardo after that conversation and was sure that this racist bastard was wrong.  A month and a half later he kicked me off his ranch in the hope of retaining "his cook..."  I've lived 8.5 years with Margarita afterwards and I will tell you the truth; He is correct; he is incorrect.  The problem with the campesino people...  The problem with Gregorio, the problem with Ricardo, the problem with Paz, the problem with Ross...  The problem with Mexico.  The problem with those pinche Gringos, the problem with the "Americans".   Yes, there is a problem.  But it all depends upon which angle you are looking at...  And there is a problem with writing quickly and probably writing while annoyed and with grouping people. My mother is a social worker and always focussed upon the issue of generalizations.  I consider myself a social anthropologist analyst of life and humans after rejecting the study of History as a horribly manipulated socio-political science (and now I am writing quickly off the cuff, which can seem highly flawed....) and I highly believe in generalizations and also highly believe that generalizations are highly dangerous.  My last name is Goldstein.  I was picked on for being a Jew.  I should have learned through life experience that a warning light will switch on the second I say the problem with tall girls like YOU...  Are you tall?  I'm short:-)  In the middle-school dances I always paired up with Marisa di Maria who was a few inches taller than me and never could put my chin on her shoulder as I had always wished...  That's truly a problem don't you think?

Did I tell you that I'm a Gemini with 5 "planets" in Virgo?  I say this because of the goofiness slap-stick comments in the middle of a serious conversation. 

Look, I spend my life thinking about problems, because all societies have them, no matter how rich or how poor they are and many of the people within those societies suffer from those problems and, due to conditioning, subtle learning/influencing and and and, what? the people don't know exactly what it is that is causing their problems.  Why did Gregorio cause me so many problems over the past 8.5 years?  I always turned the other cheek with him and was respectful and considerate.  I even invited Gregorio to be my associate in the cupcake business out of respect for his strengths and in July I told him that I wouldn't sell him one of our refrigerators.  But, since we weren't using it, he could have it.  Afterwards, he related towards me as if I was an asshole.  Granted, that's how he always related towards me.  Look, I don't see the value in selling something I don't use to someone who needs it.  Granted, I don't generally give away personal belongings to strangers.  But, Gregorio isn't a stranger.  I say that because it's not about giving to any given person in need.  There are billions of people in need on this planet.  I'm also in need if you haven't noticed.  That's to say that this isn't a patronizing statement...  But I truly believe that the problem with the world is that we tend to put monetary value upon almost all objects and we can't just give in the name of helping someone else grow.  That's me.  But, I am also very critical.  And when I sense and I see and I hear that people are suffering by the minds and the hands of political and social and socio-psychological and psycho-political systems and also suffering by their own decisions or lack there of and their own prejudices that they inflict upon their children and upon the neighbors...  I can't help but to want to help. But don't confuse me with a typical American white bread idealist activist.  I didn't come here to help people.  I didn't think that anyone was so in need.  I was very naive.  And had I not married Margarita, I would not find myself entwined in this very complex issue (problem).  I wouldn't be focussing on "the problem of the..."  I'm not THAT outsider, since I am so much more inside than Ricardo Romero. I've seen and experienced and learned things about this sector of Mexican society that almost no outsider would experience, but from first hand experience.  I speak and hear a response.  I act and receive a response, regardless of whether or not I merit that response.  At the same time we struggle to survive, Margarita and I, we struggle to lift up Margarita's family and offer hope to this generation of offspring.  No, we don't struggle for any other Mexicans, because that is unrealistic.  And within this struggle we receive a varied array of responses.  And truthfully, I struggle with the question of "is this actually worth it?"  And the answer differs depending upon the day and the mood and how my brother-in-laws are relating towards me etc. 

But, you must understand that if I didn't hear or see or sense the frustration of "these" people due to their not being able to live as they believe others live, I wouldn't meddle in their affairs and I wouldn't complain about their styles...  Gregorio hates "gringos" because Mexicans are taught that "gringos" are to blame for their not being grand and reputable like the "gringos" and the Europeans.  Everytime a Mexican "mojado" (undocumented) is killed in the U.S., the news says that it is a hate crime and Mexicans say, "the Gringos are killing us in the Frontier!  The Gringos don't like us."  In June a young Mexican from Michoacan was killed on the streets of Brooklyn.  The story and the interview of his very simple parents was repeated on the news for 2 weeks.  Yes, there were other stories that could have been aired.  But this one was repeated for 2 weeks.  Their son had just parted with his girlfriend and was brutally beat to death on the corner.  His girlfriend said that he had no connections with gangs, with delinquency.  So, it must have been that the U.S. is dangerous for Mexicans.  Do you know that ONLY 15 percent of Mexicans who crossed to the U.S. return to live in their "homeland"?  That means that there was something worse they left behind in Mexico and that, maybe, just possibly the U.S. is not so bad to them afterall.  And you must ask, "why do so many Mexicans cross to the U.S. when it's a country of horribly racist and explotative people?"  This is my eye.  I've met so many people who have spoken with me about their experiences as "mojados" as "ilegales" as "undocumenteds" that I seem to have an idea of what's going on.  But, the ones who don't want to tell me exactly what they were doing there hint or exhume a certain energy.  I think that so many more Mexicans are in the drug and human moving trade in the U.S. than let on.  So many are returned to Mexico after being "caught" doing something illegal in the U.S.  And that something illegal is that of being "an illegal alien" since that can be heavily disputed... And the question is, "how many of them return in body bags not because a bad "gringo" or a bad border cop killed them but because they were killed by a rival gang or a rival cartel or they were killed "in the line of duty..." or "on the front line..."????? 

What does this have to do with my poorly phrased comment "The problem with the campesinos is..."??? 

One bi-product of NAFTA is a heavy flow of Mexicans to the U.S.  Being that Mexico, although with economy #10 in the world, doesn't export luxury goods, but raw materials, one of them being agricultural products... (Mangos instead of Mango Chutney,  polycarbons instead of computers--that are made primarily of plastic-- ores and metals instead of automobiles, petroleum instead of gasoline, Cattle instead of Leather Couches, milk instead of icecream)... there was an increased demand for agricultural products which created a significant drop in the value of the crops.  If the middle-man exporter could gain the contracts by offering lower prices to the importer (the greater the bulk, the lower the price by unit) that man would become wealthier.  So, the state prices of agricultural products dropped allowing more Mexican produce to be sold to the U.S. but causing the family income of the family farmers to drop drastically. It became very prevalent to see a father sell off land to pay for his son's journey to the U.S.  (The going rate charged by the Coyotes or Polleros was $30,000 pesos back in 2005 and has dropped to $20,000 present time)...  I had $33,000 pesos to my name when I entered Mexico in 2003.  It was the most money I had accumulated in my life up to that moment.  5 months later we were living on pesos we scrambled to aquire Margarita and I...  Struggling 7 days per week, 18 hour days just to get by for our first 4.5 years together and hearing how much someone's "mojado", "illegal", "undocumented" brother was earning in the U.S...  makes one wonder and look around...  And then the statistics come out in 2004 that the #1 contributer to the Mexican economy isn't Petroleum, isn't tourism, isn't drug trade...  It's money sent from the Mexicans in the U.S. to family members in Mexico... 

Margarita wants me to write my "spoken essay" WHO TRULY DOESN'T WANT MEXICANS IN THE U.S.?  It doesn't focus on American racists or Unions or other special interest groups.  It focusses on WHO TRULY WANTS FREE ENTRANCE OF MEXICANS INTO THE U.S. AND WHY?  And the answer is very simple.  But the writing could be very entertaining...  Mexico is the 11th largest population in the world.  After China and India, the U.S. is #3.  Being the world economic and manufacturing leader, the U.S. has a wonderful opportunity having #11 as it's neighbor.  There are 196 countries in the world.  Mexico is a gold mind for business selling basic consumer goods and services.  All you must do is put the money in the hands of the 11th biggest population and influence their buying habits.

Mexico is also the world leader in drug trafficking and is the neighbor to the world leader in consumption of narcotics.  Great opportunity too.  But, what if you could turn the #11 population into a strong narcotics consumer?  All you must do is put money into the hands of their people...  Afterall, Mexico supposedly has a 46% alcoholism rate (is that calculated with the complete 113million population in mind or just the adults?  Is that calculated men and women or just men?)  It's pretty high, don't you think if it's counting babies and children and elderly women...  That would mean that almost all Mexican men are alcoholics, since you must remove the child and the large female population that was not enculturated into the alcohol drinking habit...  In Mexico alcoholism is part of the male socio-political structure (for lack of much better words).  It's very difficult to develop "friendships" in Mexico without the drinking habit...  That said, it is embedded within the modern Mexican culture the tendency or the need to alter one's state with the use or abuse of alcohol.  It's not a big jump to alter one's state with narcotics.  But, the problem is that the narcotic equivalent of tequila costs too much...  So, it helps that someone sends easy money to Mexico from the U.S... 

I've written a lot more than I imagine your comment merited.  But, I think that it is a very complex issue or problem here without an easy response or a simple form of analyzing and addressing the multifacited psycho-socio-politico-economic situation.  This may be posted on my blog also.  I will have to re-read it and remove aspects of you from the letter, probably meaning your name...

I know Armeria, Colima.  It's between Tecoman and Manzanillo.  Did you know that a strong earthquake struck those towns?  I thought it was around 2002, but I'm now questioning the year...  We spent one month of the Pork Flu epidemic stuck in Manzanillo.  Colima (Coco-Limon) or (Coconut-Lime). I love looking towards the right as I make the turn on the super highway that turns out of Tecoman towards Armeria, before and after crossing the river there are wonderful coconut palm plantations.  It makes me think of the introduction of Miami Vice with the so well ordered or lined coconut palm trees.  Absolutely breath-taking!  But, I have difficulty stopping alongside the road for taking the photographs.  1996!  I was beginning my life in New York City. I was working at the Russell Sage Foundation.  I was assisting the visiting scholar from SUNY Stoney Brook on his research into the "history of cocaine."  Paul is a Latin American Historian, Jewish from Washington D.C. married to Lara from Mexico City.  I had absolutely no interest in his research at the time.  I had absolutely no interest in Mexico.  But, I had no idea that my relationship with Randi at the time was what would spin here, 1996-2003 to now...  And Mexico had become violent as it is internationally known now.  A year ago someone assassinated the prior Governor of Colima.  A few years before we first set foot in Colima, the very popular Governor at the time died in a plane crash.  The most popular way Mexicans assassinate their political leaders is by crashing their planes.  Colima is not on the list of the most dangerous states at the moment.  I have to visit with friends in 5 minutes.  So I will return to this.  I hope I never come as close as you came.  It's not something to be taken lightly.  The subject is very intense.  "Colima to Seattle With Love..."  The next James Bond movie..

There's a strange connection between the fact that you met your boyfriend in Washington State and the brother of your boyfriend's mother was running heroine between Colima and Seattle, don't you think?  I just finished reading "The Godfather" written in 1969.  The book mentions that the San Francisco mafia was running drugs from the west coast of Mexico from at least the 40s.  But, the published history of the Mexican cartels has them being born in the 70s and still in miniture until the 80s when the CIA gives them a nice big push during the Iran Contra push for privately financing CIA operations.  Sinaloa had been the main cultivator of Poppy plants at the time...  I mention this because being immersed in the crazy, horribly violent chaos of the past 3 years here in Mexico makes me wonder what the hell is truly going on, since it effects us and the rest of the non rich Mexicans in ways you can't imagine.  1996 is a decade before things began to become crazy here with the "War on Drugs" by the current president Felipe Calderone. 

I think it's very difficult for people in the U.S. to understand where I'm coming from with my writing.  And, truthfully, I don't know how to express the complexity and the confusion, the frustration and the preoccupation.  And suggesting returning to the U.S. with Margarita is besides the point, since Mexico was a re-birth for me.  Returning to the U.S. could be like a re-death...  Plus, my experience, my reactions and my thoughts are 100% in Spanish. What I write is a poor translation of this experience.  In Mexico we are all in the same boat.  There is not much to say about this with others other than speculate about what is going to happen and/or what is happening.

What ever happened with your relationship with the young man with the mother in Armeria?  You're not with him for a long time.  Do you ever think about him and that experience and what became of his mother?  It's way too dangerous a situation and the killing of one family member doesn't usually terminate with that...  The situation becomes increasingly macabre here and I wonder just how much this is part of the CIA plan and who in the organization is directly participating in the gruesome tortures/mutilations...  I'm not asking who as in name and person but how do these people exist?  Are they trained to be this way in the U.S. military etc...?  they certainly aren't born this way....

"The Godfather", Cocaine, Semantics, Freewill, Human Violence, Moralism, Apathy

When I was in Junior College, my philosophy professor (who should have been a Linguistics professor) explained to the class that in war, the concepts of "homocide" and "murder" do not exist, they cannot exist.  By virtue of the event where it's a given that people will be killed by others, you must remove the concept of culpability from the event.  Since soldiers are "working" for an "employer", otherwise known as the military and given arms such as rifles, bayonettes and grenades, it's a given that part of their main responsibilities is to kill other human beings.  Being workers for the military, part of their duty is to follow the killing orders...  So, those humans who kill other humans can't be convicted of murder or homicide, since they were only following orders given by one division of the government of their country.  But, if that same soldier kills someone outside the environment of war, outside of the military work environment, without having been given the order to kill by their military bosses in the name of war, in the name of their country, that soldier has just committed a crime called homicide or murder...  

I'm writing about this while reading "The Godfather", while living in Mexico more than 8 years, while watching how this country has become dramatically more violent over the past 2-5 years, thinking about how the Sicilian Mafia perfected the "industry" of organized crime in the U.S., how they became principal actors in the international drug trade, how the CIA introduced that industry to Mexico, how the Mexican cartels, usurped the industry from the hands of the Sicilians and the Colombians in the U.S. and how today there is so much killing all over Mexico, so similar to that described in Mario Puzo's book "the Godfather", but 40 years later.  

Here in Mexico the fabled drug lords are both feared and admired much as I imagine were feared and admired the "heroes" of the great Italian mafia families.  Saturday evening visiting friends of ours in the center of Guadalajara who were participating in an artesans fair with their Guayaberas clothing business, I noticed a man who looked like a thug standing vigil over a traditional ice cream business.  I couldn't stop looking at this "thug" with the shaved head because he looked so much like the lead character in the television series "The Sopranos" who became the gay assassin character in the Julia Roberts-Brad Pitt movie "The Mexican" (at least that was the name in Mexico).  It turns out that the "thug" is the owner of the ice cream business...  

In any case, why are we fascinated with these characters and the characters portrayed by Al Pacino, Robert Dinero and, especially, Marlon Brando (in The Godfather) if they are delinquents, assassins, murderers?  If they represent insecurity and disorder?  When we go to the best selling movies that tend to be about mafia, drug, CIA violence are hoping that the "bad guy" will be put in jail?  But who is the bad guy in these movies?  James Bond always fought to protect the interests of the civilized countries and with minimal violence.  But, the Scarfaces, the Godfathers and their offspring, the Government-paid spies, the CIA only work in the benefit of the interests of the very few...  But truthfully, how many of us wish for cinema and real life without CIA operatives, CAPOS, sophisticated national and international gangs and international conspiracies?  How many Americans would be truly satisfied to live a decade or so without hearing about U.S. military operations?  

And I think that's why in the end, these groups of highly trained and extremely violent people continue existing in supposedly democratic judicial regions of the world but with impunity, because those permitting their existence understand that, in the end, the public reveers them...  

This is a capitalist world much more concerned about improved lifestyles and increased freedoms than it is a moralist world concerned with all levels of human responsibility and human rights.  It's also a high-stimulus world of increasing rapid instant gratification.  The average 21st century human being seeks information that stimilates their imagination and enables them to continue feeling alive.  Each year that passes makes increasingly obsolete the environmentalist slogan "Live Simply"...  You become increasingly accustomed to receive increasingly intense inputs and have the increased ability for changing your internal stases with ease increasingly differing ways.  That's one of the reasons why the U.S., the #1 consumer society in the world is also the #1 drug market in the world...  

That said, there is a hell of a lot of money invested in and to be earned from the drug trade and from a capitalist perspective, "the War on Drugs" is illogical, much like Prohibition was in the 20s...  Why doesn't the U.S. government fabricate their own arms?  How is it that maintaining the fabrication of arms in the private sector doesn't create a conflict of national security interests?  Being able to fabricate arms gives a hell of a lot of political power to the leaders of that industry...  The U.S. military is a government organization.  The FBI, the CIA, the State Police, the Municipal Police, the City Police are all government organizations.  But who manufactures the arms they use are private organizations...  Does that seem logical?

This is not a political diatribe...  I'm always trying to understand our nature, our true desires in contrast to the things we say... I thought that Mexico in the late part of the first decade of the 21st Century was different from the U.S. and had more violent tendencies.  But then, after seeing and hearing and reading about so much that is going on here and understanding that the origins/the models of the violence here have their base in systems of organized crime and espionage, torture and terrorism in the U.S. (The CIA is expert in torture and terrorism tactics used for influencing social and political change)...  Is this a diatribe against the CIA?  No.  Why not?  Because I'm not a political activist and this game is so much above our heads and even of the heads of the presidents and of the generals...  

So, what's it about?  

Control of markets, control of information, control of power, control of energy...  What does it have to do with us?

What it has to with are fantasies about who we are and how we believe we wish to live; what we believe we wish of our governments and of our world...  It's not about religion, since religion is a socio-political construct shrouded by the concept of moralism and spiritualism.  Religion can be used for aquiring the same political-economic ends as is used the CIA, but on a macro scale instead of a micro scale...  

The truth is that most people give a flying hoop what the governments, the militaries, the CIA, the multi-nacional corporations, the leaders in the financial industry, the leaders in the communication, information technology and publishing industries, the leaders in the energy industries and the Vatican and other religious headquarters of the world do as long as the individual continues living within their comfortable "life as usual" with the fantasy that they will be able to increase themselves over time...  What do I care if there is so much violence and corruption here in Mexico as long as we can live healthfully and safely?  Afterall, this is a war on drugs.  The violence is between the cartels and the cartels and the government.  It has nothing to do with me.  

Would you believe that in the 28 years between entering high school and now, I've never seen cocaine in person?  My last girlfriend in the U.S, aside from being an NYU Film School graduate and a ballet and modern dancer, was a prostitute.  I've spent a lot of time in Spanish Harlem with two girlfriends who lived there.  But, I've never seen cocaine.  I grew up in central Jersey in the 80s, but I've never seen Cocaine.  I had friends and have family members who used it, but I've never seen cocaine.  I was a social worker for the Salvation Army Veterans Homeless Shelter managing 44 "clients", many of them cocaine and heroin addicts. But I've never seen cocaine.  I worked as a social worker in the Salvation Army foster care services in Manhattan, many of the parents of the children in foster care had problems with crack and were true monsters, but I've never seen cocaine.  

What does this mean?  

Well what does it mean to you that the number one killer in the U.S. is alcohol and probably the #1 killer of innocent people in the world too (car accidentes etc.).  Knowing what effect alcoholism has on families and on communities, I'm still not an activist against the sale of alcohol.  Why not?  Because it's inevitable.  Human nature my friend.  

What it means is that millions of people will buy drugs for recreational use regardless of what I think and regardless of the known consequences, and certain people will maintain the market because of it's incredible monetary value.  And this has absolutely nothing to do with me, just as the alcohol and the arms industry has absolutely nothing to do with me.  Does this sound apathetic?  As I have said before, "we are 1 or 2 people in almost 7 billion on the planet"...  Do you remember what you saw looking down towards the street from the observation deck of the Empire State Building?  What seemed like ants walking along 6th Avenue below...  When you are running across the dirt path in whatever forrest or park in which you find yourself, do you worry about all the ants you may be squashing?  Well, that's the truth about the difference between being within the 7 billion mix and the difference between you and I and those who somehow ended up in positions of looking down upon us and upon everyone.  That's what the "pawn" signifies in the game of Chess and why there are so many more of them than there are of the specialty pieces such as the knight or the rook etc...  That's why the inner city black mothers raly on the capital everytime there is a "war" involving the U.S., because it's their sons who end up on the front line... whom are the pawns, who don't go to West Point or Annapolis to become knights or rooks or towers...  But they do enlist in the service for the opportunity of a university level education, technology training and the ability to be respected later on...  Life is a crap shoot, birth is the beginning of that crap shoot.

I've never held a gun in my hand, never seen cocaine, never been in the military and never had "enough" financial security...  And I question my own value systems and constantly wonder what is the truth within and around me.  Should we be critical of these governments and their systems when we have access to the history of governments and we know that this is what governments do?

That's part of the constant question.  Maybe you don't want to get down to the truth.  Or maybe that's why so many people are so apathetic.  

My mother believes in the "one shot deal" that justifies all her decisions, especially the ones against taking risks and addressing and confronting the truth.  She believes that "the one shot deal" signifies that we only live once, nor do we have an afterlife as is fantasized in so many religions and mythologies...  So, she decides that she wishes for pure enjoyment and all that is difficult is put aside...  Even if there wasn't a "one shot deal" and we live for eternities in so many different bodies and experiences, she still has the right to live as she chooses.  I have the right to be alcoholic or a drug addict or an assassin.  I accept the consequences (if that was my choice)...  I accept the consequences of having moved to Mexico without the slightest idea of what it was I was entering.  It's my life.  I also accept the consequences of being conscientious and devoting much time and energy worrying about and caring for other people who are in my life, although I may find myself destitute later on, without the assistance of anyone, since I don't have children.  

Selfishness, hedonism and lack of concern for others have their merits if we think rationally and consider the concept of the 7 billion human ants...  In the end we all die and in infinite ways, so many unplanned.  From the beginning we encounter so many different human interpersonal styles and even our parents may do things to us that we believe parents shouldn't do to their children...  If I can accept that, then I should be able to accept a CIA opporative in Mexico and all the desmadre created here...  

The more disfunctional the family, the more probability that the governments and the private sector has increased free reign for doing what they wish without considering the needs of their people.  Do you understand?  If a child can't criticize his or her parent or his or her aunt or uncle, less would they believe that they can criticize their government or the masterminds of industries...  

Life is a circle; everything is interconnected in some way or another. Acceptance is difficult, especially if we grow up in a culture that installs the illusion that we have the right to speak our minds and demand justice...  But truth is truth.  The question is, "how do you know when you are nearing that truth?"  

How much of your life is based upon fantasy and illusion? of yourself and of the world around you?     

A Rubic's Cube in Mexico; ASSFACE; Conversations with a Past Life, September 10th, 2011

Are you back from vacation?  I imagine you have a family vacation home on the Jersey Shore.  Why else travel so far?  Granted, to visit family...  I'm finally resting and relaxing after a ton of work and exhaustion for a month straight.  So, now I will have time to dedicate to our conversation.  Yes, I think I'm saying that everytime I write you.   We rented a 2 story house on the edge of Guadalajara. So, if I want to write late at night, I just go downstairs with my computer and won't disturb Margarita's sleep.  In San Luis Potosi, my brother-in-law Nicolas slept on the couch in the living room where the kitchen table was, since the kitchen wasn't really a kitchen; we had a small 2 bedroom house for 5 people.  Here we have a slightly bigger 3 bedroom house.  You mentioned Atlantic City.  Were or are you there, south in Ocean City or north in Long Beach Island.  If it hadn't been for Francesca and her family renting every summer in LBI, I wouldn't have known Long Beach Island to Wildwood...  Granted, the grandparents of my RVCC girlfriend Sue had a house near the lighthouse on Long Beach Island.  But as destiny goes, had I not been with Francesca, I probably wouldn't have been with Sue and probably wouldn't have been at RVCC.  When our relationship began I left for Rutgers Prep and had myself kicked out after a month, probably because I was uncomfortable with my sudden popularity there and the possibility of becoming someone.  I imagine, aside from fear of being responsible and successful, I was protecting my first relationship which was with Francesca...  So...25 years later I am in Guadalajara reading in Spanish, Mario Puzo's "The Godfather" without any contact with Francesca and the Jersey Shore but with contact with you, probably the main reason for having become involved with Fran back then.  Had things been different as you know they couldn't have been, I wouldn't be here, I wouldn't be developing a friendship with you afterwards, although on-line, and I probably would be very square in a certain way or another.  People wish for the erasing of negative events in their lives.  But, I believe that the erasing of those events also causes the erasing of the directly or indirectly related positive events  Since we learn from all events, the responses of those learning experiences is what we know as our present life experience.  So, we should embrace all difficult decisions as an opportunity for the blossoming of the unknown.  


From behind me is heard the sound of my brother-in-law José Francisco playing with a Rubics Cube.  My brother-in-law Rafael bought the Cube while we were working in San Luis Potosi.  And now almost all of Them are playing with it.  I have a bunch of great books here, all in Spanish. But, now with the Cube, no one wants to read, although no one will "solve" the Rubics Cube...  I control myself against saying anything, since I know that it's all the same.  In the past I bought books and shared them with everyone who was with me.  Since we have up to 2 months of down time at times, we have much time for reading.  In January, my brother-in-law Nicolas bought a computer and he and Rafael put the books aside for playing Solitaire.  Now they have the Cube.  


So, I just turned to José Francisco and asked, "How long before you solve it?" and he responded, "All my life." and I asked, "why do you waste your time with it?" and he responded with silence...  


We all have our destiny.  Part of our destiny is the influence of others.  I consider myself a catalyst, a counterweight.  I don't believe I came up with the actual word; someone who creates intellectual, psychic or spiritual instability in the name of causing the other person or people to become more conscious of their actions or of their existence...  I can be irritating, annoying and hated at times.  For instance I may say something like, "you prefer being stupid and ignorant than being responsible, respected, successful and intelligent..."  True success is personal; it has nothing to do with economy and status.  It has to do with how you feel and see yourself in the middle of your personal universe which includes the people surrounding you, the socio-political environment within which you live.  It's about self-respect and dignity...  If you truly respect yourself, you are less affected by what other people do and think...  


But what does this have to do with reading, Rubik's Cubes and my in-laws?  


In the begin and in the end they carry within themselves a resentment of being less than the rest of the world surrounding the community within which they were born and raised.  They are very aware of what the rest have and what they will never have.  Mexico is a horribly classist and racist country.  But, first comes the classism.  So, whether or not I open my mouth or whether or not I entered their lives over 8.5 years ago, they live at the bottom of this system. However, changing their lifestyle by introducing into their lives literature, conversation and so many other ideas, concepts and experiences brought to them by so many different authors, offers the possibility of breaking horrible cycles inbred since the Spaniards invaded the Americas 500 years ago. Reading offers ideas and other realities.  Having read offers the individual the sense of having increased theirself, which also offers increased confidence with the accumulation of ideas and experiences...  Reading also slows down impulses caused by the mass media and mass consumerism, it counter attacks the socio-psychological illness called "constant need for immediate gratification"... So, the person creates the possibility of relaxing their mind and bringing themself back to real time, and back to the actual possibility of creating an internal relationship with themself...


The problem with campesino or farmer life living with the crop cycles and with that of the moon is that they live on super slow time...  It's like the phrase about "a watched pot never boils."  With farming, especially crops that have only one harvest per year, the farmer waits up to 9 months per year to see the fruition of his or her work.  Since the cultivation and the harvest are so important within the farmer family, the farmer doesn't put aside their agricultural work for work that may offer more instant gratification.  But how to fill in the time? especially in a classist society where the campesinos (many of them one rung above indigenous) are considered semi-human, which makes them and their children semi-deserving of socio-poliitical-economic consideration meaning that the educational system almost all but ignores their communities...  Without better educational systems, the children aren't offered alternative opportunities within agriculture or outside of the campesino community.  They aren't taught organize their thoughts and to analyze the situation.  They aren't taught to seek better ways of managing their family economy and better ways of managing the ranch/crops; better accounting, better technology, better cultivation techniques, ways of better increasing the property, of better utilizing the property, of better cultivating the crops, of encountering better markets, etc...  Better education offers the community better opportunity for eradicating horrible vulnerabilities caused by class systems very similar to European Feudalism or Post U.S. Civil War Share Cropping... 


The men fill in their time drinking and the women fill in their time giving birth to babies and doing the chores around the house caused by having so many people to care for...  In Mexico, the one true way of feeling like a successful Man or Woman is by having children.  A man without a child isn't a man...  So, if the society doesn't offer other models for creating success, the young adult or the young woman decides to become a parent to fulfill their adult responsibilities...  


I offered possibilities to various brother-in-laws before they "hooked up" and created families at the ranch.  But, since what I offer is new and unknown making it risky and scary, they rejected my proposals and opted for a very difficult life without future with their wives and children, maintaining the vicious cycle of limitation without the option of learning something new... Or maybe it's the other way around; they opt for the simple and known life without opportunity that's easier to accept psychologically and politically than live within the difficult risk of being different from the rest of their family or community.  


There is never just one side of a coin.  It's also incorrect believing that their are only two sides of the coin.  Maybe the coin metaphore is what's incorrect.  Maybe life is so much more complex than a two-sided coin.  Granted, coins have three sides and understanding the edge side is most difficult...  Maybe life is more like a Rubic's Cube. Maybe we'd be better off "wasting" our time not solving the Rubik's Cube than trying to solve socio-psychological/socio-political problems way above and way below our heads...  Maybe I shouldn't be writing any of this, since I can't truly change the situation.  Apathy is a valid reality too...  Why waste your time? And what is time anyway?  Most strong success has to do with to whom you were born, how you were raised and the connections your family and friends have with others...  In the end we are 1 in almost 7 billion people on this planet. Almost none of us able to create the "success" we see on television and read about in the newspapers.  We all struggle to pass the days and to feel healthy and successful; to guarrantee a roof over our heads and food on the table tomorrow.  And in the end, we all die in one form or another and THAT IS THAT.  


Don't worry.  It's just a momentary self-criticism about spending more time on this same theme.  In the end I continue and gain a premium for the work I did in this life...  No, that's not true.  There are no awards; just responsibilities.  Did you accomplish what you were put here to do?  And you continue.  But not with the body you know as you today.  The life cycle of growth and entropy is meant to aclimate you towards the idea of impermanence, change and evolution...  You are prepared for the letting go of your body.  But with all the paranoia surrounding the fear about entropy and death and what happens afterwards, humans have created religions and ideologies/fantasies that mediate the fear of death and afterlife, causing people to live way out of perspective; such as when my mother had her first surgery, which was a facelift...  


I was much more attractive 10 years ago.  My eyebrows have thinned horribly.  Thank god I'm not losing my hair or I may confuse my face for my...  ask me no questions tell me no lies;-)...  I was looking at my New Jersey Drivers License the other day.  The photo was taken on a bad Ross day; I don't even think I had showered beforehand. But, my hair is darker and my facial hair is completely black...  I had a foggy headache  probably caused by existential problems of the time.  But, I still looked better then than I do now.  Maybe I should buy JUST FOR MEN!  Maybe I should have plastic surgery and sew my head to my ass and call myself a Siamese Twin.  Afterall, I was born on the last day of Gemini in my year...  


So, what is the true concern or problem of life?  Classism, intentional ignorance, exploitation, consumerism, blah blah blah, self-image, afterlife, where do we go from here, now that all of our children have grown...? ass-face.  YES!  THAT'S IT; ASSFACE

The Question of "The Illegal Alien" in the United States; now I'm a dead man!

The question of legality always is abstract and questionable... The history of the U.S. is that of aliens be it legal or illegal. When it comes down to U.S./Mexican relations, there are a whole lot of questions below the tables and in private outside the oval office; aggreements well above the head of the presidential administrations regardless of political party. These are arrangements between very weatlhy people on both sides of the border. If a poor Mexican enters the U.S. "illegally" it is for the greater gain of international corporations such as Citigroup, Ford Corporation, Wallmart, Hewlett Packard, SONY etc. Just you watch and you will see how history unravels. Whether or not you give the immigrant legality is besides the point. Politics is the act of balancing diverse social and economic interests. But who gains favor is who offers the greatest benefits or creates the greatest risks. My point of view is that those called "illegal aliens" should be processed like illegals IF THAT'S TRULY WHAT THE U.S GOVERNMENT WANTS. But, in the history of immigration in the U.S. it is shown that there are a whole lot of special interest groups at play, most of them being factories, mining companies, giant agriculture companies, etc. against Labor Unions claiming that the immigrant competes for the workers' jobs... That said... There are very few of us who don't have great grandparents who came here from European countries seeking a better life for their families, inturn giving their children incredible educational opportunities unheard of for the children of workers where they came from... Back to prosecuting illegals, if the idea isn't to arrest them for not having the visas and sending them back to their countries of origins, yes those people should respect the laws and the values of the country where they are living, named The United States of America... Do you know how many Mexicans are working for the cartels selling drugs in the U.S. and also killing people? The U.S. government has the statistics. I've seen those statistics here in Mexico. Do you know that the most violent gang in the U.S. has its origins in the war in El Salvador and in Nicaragua and later in Guatamala? Do you know that their number 1 business is car theft and the shipping of those cars to Mexico and Central America? Now, tell me, how do hundreds of thousands of stolen cars pass through the U.S./Mexico border each year undectected? Why are these gangs and cartels allowed to function in the U.S.? So, I wouldn't be so worried about the "illegal" who came to the U.S. to work in jobs you don't want in order to improve their lives just like your great grandparents... I would be concerned about why the U.S. government allows the U.S. drug trade to be controlled by Mexican cartels within U.S. borders and what is truly going on. When it comes down to it, politics is all about Capitalism. The sale of drugs or the sale of alcohol or the sale of God has all to do with building capital; it's about supply and demand. The demand for drugs is #1 in the world in the U.S. #2 is Spain... It's a very lucrative business and "the War On Drugs" is a lie just as is "the Illegal Alien"... It's all political blah blah blah for appeasing certain interest groups. So, now, if you learn that I suddenly died in a strange car accident and they didn't find my body... I haven't had a car accident since I first began driving in 1986.

Amy Tan on creativity | Video on TED.com

Amy Tan on creativity | Video on TED.com

Elizabeth Gilbert on nurturing creativity | Video on TED.com

Elizabeth Gilbert on nurturing creativity | Video on TED.com

Prologue for Book: "Predictions: The Private Papers of a Reluctant Astrologer"

I found this on Elizabeth Spring's Blog "North Node Astrology".  I discovered her blogs while looking for information on Carl Jung's investigation into Astrology proving his theory about "Syncronicity"...  I recommend visiting Elizabeth's blog's "Carl Jung's The Red Book" and "The Saturn Returns".  Ross 

 

"Isabelle CoCroft"

 


“Falling in love with yourself is the beginning of a life-long romance.” Oscar Wilde 

When I first met Peter I believed in predictions. Now I know “it’s complicated.” That’s the phrase people use to describe their love relationships when some things are true and some things aren’t as they’re meant to be. “It’s complicated” we say—like when two people love each other but question whether they are meant to be together—when they look at their partner and say: “I can’t live with you, and I can’t live without you.” In any relationship at all, there’s often the questions of: “Is this meant to be? Are we fated to be together? If so, why? Am I learning something here or simply repeating an old pattern?”


What does it mean to “fall in love with yourself” as Oscar Wilde was saying in the quote above? Perhaps he meant it just as it reads, but I like to think of it more as falling in love with your Self, as opposed to yourself: your ego. The love of self comes before the love of Self, and perhaps both must come before—or at least along with—the love of another person, who also has a very human self and a very wise Self.


These were the questions that were brewing in my head the day I met Peter. I was twenty-nine years old then and I was pondering my single life. In what way might I be fated to be a solitary Soul? Maybe I would never meet someone to love; maybe I was too proud or impossible. In retrospect, I believe my desire to meet Peter is what helped bring us together—and his desire to meet me. The world desire means “coming from the stars.” Maybe it was meant to be.


I still believe in predictions, and I still believe in love. But at fifty nine years old now, I see that the nature of both love and “prediction” and astrology is quite different than what I first believed. Maybe that is the subject of this book: how they are true and not true—they both change as we change.


I know now that astrological predictions are lived out in very unique and particular ways. It can help us get a sense of what’s happening with us, similar to a weather forecast—the storm fronts and the clearings—but we survive the hard times, the storms and droughts, (like the hard transits of Saturn and Pluto) by enduring and waiting and holding our intention…or better said, by honoring the wisest words I’ve heard from the famous Swiss psychologist, Carl Jung: “Hold the tension of the opposites within you till the “Third Way” emerges.”


He’s calling us to wait and endure until the tides of our unconscious and the conscious merge together. He’s asking us to then observe the presence of something we didn’t notice before. Some people see this third way emerging through contemplation while others will spot a moment of “ah-hah”—of synchronicity when the right action or attitude becomes clear—when a synchronistic event arises as if from “a wink of God’s eye.” 


When the time is right, when we’ve held the tension of the opposites, it’s as if the burning questions inside us are forced to find a way out—and so we act. We love and don’t love, we make daring moves—when the time is right. When is the timing right? Can it be predicted? Perhaps.


When astrologers look at the predictions for these times we live in—like all those “2012-15 predictions,” they are alarmed by how full of challenge and change they are. The predictions sound complicated and full of optimistic pessimism, or pessimistic optimism. You choose. True or not true, fate is questionable, change is hard, and ideas about destiny and free will change—and always we have to keep making decisions.


Predictions are usually a metaphor; but sometimes they are not. Sometimes a “cigar is just a cigar” as Jung’s mentor, Sigmund Freud supposedly said. Yet sometimes it is not a metaphor—sometimes you clearly see that the cigar smoker is a greedy smelly man with a huge ego who wants your sex and your money.


Even when I was very young I pondered questions of fate, destiny, and choice, and when I heard my first astrologer speak, I decided to deal in the world of the big questions—and in the world of predictions. I decided to become an astrologer when I heard my first “wise woman” speak in a chapel in Boston when I was nineteen years old. She understood something about life that I didn’t; she was an astrologer. 


It was then that I decided to join the ranks then of those who were “attempting to read the mind of God.” I believed in astrology then, and that meant I believed that there was a meaning and an order in the Universe that was detectable—as well as standing in awe of the great Mystery. 


Again, I found words from Oscar Wilde that echoed this: “The final mystery is oneself. When one has weighed the Sun in the balance, and measured the steps of the Moon, and mapped out the seven heavens star by star, there still remains oneself. Who can calculate the orbit of his own soul?” 


Wow! Powerfully loaded with astrological words, it hints at a humbleness in Wilde himself, as well as the arrogance he was known for—again, the dual nature of the persona and mask of the astrologer: humble and arrogant to dare.


This reluctant astrologer knows “it’s complicated.” And because I knew I needed to learn about my life direction and the soul’s purpose, I wrote a book: “North Node Astrology.” Now I’m sharing about how feelings and expectations change—and don’t change. And so I began writing this book; a little memoir, a little fiction, and hopefully a lot of useful astrological truth for you, the reader.


And so, “Private Papers” begins with the intertwining story of Peter, Sophie, Kendra and myself: Isabelle. There are emails here of being mentored in astrology. There are speculations about predictions, the nature of astrology, and destiny. How much free will do we have, and can astrology help? You will decide. 


In this story, Kendra and Sophie are about 29 years old and Isabelle is 59. She’s been an astrologer most of her life, and when she first meets Peter, she’s young, and believes in astrology and the inevitability of predictions. Perhaps she underestimates the power of free will and the Tsunami-like impact of the unconscious. Perhaps she has yet to see how our multiple selves and inner voices form a “committee” in the psyche, and like the planets, each have their own agendas and desires that don’t always agree. We each are such a complex and intricate mandala.


Was Isabelle destined to meet Peter at a certain time and place and marry him? Who knows? Would she accept their relationship as it was, without question? No. That’s not what an astrologer would do. Astrologers look up charts and ponder endlessly. They want to know: Were these two people meant to be together or not? Was the hand of fate involved? Why?


And, what about the “Predictions” for us all, now? What about that ending of the Mayan calendar in 2012? Or the astrological “Grand Cross” we are all living through during these years—all those gloom and doom predictions calculated because of the geometric relationships between the planets of Uranus, Pluto and Saturn? True? 


What about the perfect metaphor of Uranus entering Aries in March of 2011 as the earthquake-Tsunami happened in Japan? Uranus, the planet of revolution and unpredictability literally quaked the Earth. The accuracy of the symbolism is uncanny. But what didn’t make the evening news broadcast—or only slightly—was the compassionate and integrated way the Japanese pulled together to help their people. That’s the nature of the spiritual planet, Neptune when it crossed over into Neptune at about the same time. That good news of renewed spiritualty and the coming together of help from all over the world, is not what the evening news focusus on. It’s the bad news, rather than the quiet integrity of Neptune in its home sign of Pisces. 


And what will the metaphors be as Neptune continues to move deeper into Pisces from 2011 through 2025? What about Uranus—in tense “square” relationship to the Lord of the Underworld, Pluto, during the upcoming years? Uranus and Pluto were aspecting each other in the 1960’s as a different kind of “revolution” began—what will it be now? 


As a reader, you don’t need to understand or even believe astrology to read this—but you will learn the language indirectly. And if you are curious for yourself, and for our times, then I hope you are willing to entertain a certain evolutionary hopefulness. I say that because astrology presupposes a meaningfulness and a lack of randomness that suggests a mathematical astrological patterning that can be measured and felt—that manifests itself as a peculiar blend of fate and destiny. At its best, astrology is the positive contemplation of change.


Does astrology help us prepare for the future? Maybe. But perhaps what it does best is to give us a hopeful system of patterns, where cause and effect relates and makes sense, even as the concept of karma can make sense. Some of it is personal karma—personal relationships between what we do and what we get—this patterning of “cause and effect”—and some of our karma is simply the human condition. Some of it is the family and national karma that we inherit, and that we feel powerless to control. Some is grace and some is tragedy.


We can, however, regain a personal sense of power and meaningfulness when we look back in hindsight to see how the “dots in the picture of our life and times” are strung together in surprising and synchronistic ways. There are events that don’t always follow the laws of rationality. How much is serendipity, synchronicity or “kismet”? Good or bad, if meaningful patterns exist, it makes sense that a God or higher power has a chance to exist, and that feels good. 


The synchronicity of meaning-making, in all forms of spirituality and astrology, is most clearly seen in retrospect rather than in prediction. We ponder the myths and the symbols. We look at where and when we were conscious and where we were…unconscious, or just plain oblivious to what we might have known.


We are products of our time—like the grapes in a vineyard that take on the quality of the time and place in which they were grown, we too take on the qualities of the place and time we were grown in. Are you a 1959 type of “grape” that came from a rich soil in Southern France? Or were you cultivated in the stony grounds of a city during a time of war? Your astrological chart is based on this: the day, time, and place you were born, and then the constant movement of time around this.


Most of us want to know more—we want to grow into a larger wiser consciousness. We want to imagine our futures, make good decisions, and create priorities and intentions. We look at how planetary “predictions” may affect our lives. And we go to deeper to find the wells of spirituality and love that anchor us. 

This journey of living out our personal story—the hero’s journey—is the subject of this book, as is the changing nature of life and love as we ripen and grow through the years.


                                                 **** 


And so Isabelle met and married Peter before this particular story begins. She was an astrologer of a certain vintage, and a woman of a certain nature…but then, she took another turn… 



*** "Predictions: Private Papers of a Reluctant Astrologer" will be published this summer.