101

Most religions on this green earth end in a somewhat similar tale - the idea that we leave our earthly bounds and provided we were decent human beings who never approved of genocide, stupidity or jay-walking we will go to a better place in the afterlife (or come back in a position > than the goose we were two lifes ago).  The getting in through the pearly whites is a little more complicated, sometimes there's a saint, a boat with a man requiring the payment of two coins or a dragon guarding the entrance.

JC! Sup homie!

I would use the term "true understanding" in what is about to follow but that would be a paradoxical phrase to the idea of "faith". How can we, despite what Thaler and Sunstein might want us to believe about the predictability of irrationality, understand the irrational? Nash found patterns in the social movements of doves in the university courtyard - he understood them, but those movements weren't random. The moment we begin predicting the drunk stumbles of a half-crawling college students will be the day I ammend this thesis.

A grasp on the concept of "happily ever after" in religion and a true faith should allow us to grapple with death rather well. It would allow us to deal with ti in the same fashion as births, a terminally ill patient healing or a rock statue weeping. With celebration (and papal judges) where we'd hope for those around us to rejoice and celebrate and slap each other in the back at their good fortune.

I don't understand why'd we say losing someone. No. Someone has left and taken a part of you with them and that's why even the most methodical and precise analysis of religion falls through here. The bioethics committee my parents once ran would be proud at my vulcan approach to the final days.

When a person is in pain and the childhood solution - band-aids - is no longer sufficient, when the JV encouragement to "WALK IT OFF!" isn't likely and the doctors don't get to say - fortunately we caught this on time - it's the logical illogical that takes precedence.

But now the binary says 101 with a character of 5.

This isn't angry, it isn't sad. It's a confused mapping of ideas that circle around the idea of a lot of questioning beings.

I wonder what answer the agnostic, dyslexic, insomniac arrived at.

Castillos de Mexico

En tiempos de antaño y más que nada en Europa la mayoría de la gente vivía en humildes chozas de algo parecido al adobe y techos de paja y Madera. Los nobles ricos así como los no tan nobles pero igualmente venditos por el poder divino del dinero construían castillos, pequeños y grandes a la semejanza de los reyes.

Pequeñas construcciones palaciales con torretas, torres y murallas que los defendieran del mundo exterior. Bloques de piedra y gigantescos troncos de Madera viajaban cientos de kilómetros con el poder loco motivo de bueyes y mulas para construirle un techo digno a la gente con el poder adquisitivo necesario. Está claro que esto solo sucedía en tiempos buenos cuando las cosechas no fallaban y no había impuestos adicionales del reino y no había ni guerra ni iglesia que destruyera los planes de los simples mortales.

Y hoy en día miles de turistas viajan a los bosques de Europa donde se esconden estas estructuras que a la vez inspiran melancolía y respeto.

Lo bueno es que México está en proceso de convertirse en la nueva Europa – estamos atrapados en la edad media Europea donde la iglesia es gobierno aunque el Cardenal y Fecal digan lo contrario. Ah! Y la ley también dice lo mismo.

Lo que sucede es que por todo México surgen mansiones por no decir palacios en zonas exclusivas que si no son boscosas son costosas. Del día a la mañana aparecen docenas de albañiles listos para trabajar y hay material como si estuviéramos en remate de aseguradoras. Los permisos para construcción fluyen del gobierno y nadie le pregunta al prestanombres de donde viene el dinero porque el dinero contesta.

Pero son empresas majestuosas de colores chillantes mexicanos con pilastras donde no hay lugar para pilastras y cúpulas árabes que no van con el concepto pseudo vanguardista que los líderes de la más grande industria Mexicana buscan reflejar. Lo mejor de todo es el horror que les ha de dar a los diseñadores contratados a quienes se les indica que dejen este cuarto para el altar de la virgencita – porque ella nos protege – y que por favor le pinten el techo verde obscuro con estrellas DORADAS. De los balazos y las mordidas.

Bardas muy altas, como de 3 pisos para que nadie los vea (y el gobierno no se les meta) con la mayor protección que aprendieron en su pueblo – botellas rotas incrustados en el cemento a lo largo de todo el perímetro de  la barda. Al fin que ni a los genios se les ocurriría usar guantes.

Ya acabadas llegan las picops (pick-ups) de rines altos, llantas anchas y las Navigator para que la señora se vaya de Chopin (shopping). Quien quita y la casa este abandonada dentro de un ano. 

Dry-Freeze

Picture a house of the sort that is common in Allende or Safon books - a house sort of frozen in the past with crumbling adobe walls, corners filled to the brim with dust and a lost cat or two that make us think of deja-vu.

These houses are always abandoned relics of yesteryear in neighborhoods that saw better days when the Spanish (or the French or the English) ruled over a country now ruled by indigenous left-wing zealots that make up for their lack of education with misguided idea(l)s. The next door cafe - once a sign of progress and richness with a bottle or two of fine wine still left - pleads the passerby for a momentary glance that's teased out of them with a plate of delicately crafted charcuterie.

I walked into such a place but it wasn't frozen; it was alive in its stillness. Because of the memories gathered in the form of forgotten matchbooks and restaurant coasters as well as pictures of the sort you buy on a cruise and that is poorly glued to a laminated piece of fancy looking plastic you could have thought the owner had left the place in a hurry one lazy afternoon and had never come back.

A piece of me lives there.
And that's a poetic way of saying a family member is very much alive in it.

A woman who projects more life than she actually has.

Consider the technological marvel of the project. A small, lightweight box of black magic that makes tiny images - for they must be tiny to pass through those skinny cables connecting it to the computer - into huge high definition pieces of art that would have made 12th century European artists ooh and aah with marvel. We've come a long way since human statues.

Though examples in Paris and Puerto Vallarta might suggest otherwise.

She moves carelessly through a clutter precariously balancing her past and present with no obvious consideration for the future. A yell erupts from her in frustration as she looks for the notebook she is holding and searches desperately for the glasses she has calmly sitting atop her head. Of course it makes sense for the crows' footsteps all over her face to be stretched tight by a magical combination of pigs something or other, blended platelets (her own thank god) and ozone and Co2.

She's obviously found the fountain of youth.

Prescription:
Though the reader might be inclined to finish reading this and perceive a sense of dripping sarcasm I would hope that the melancholy of the beginning be kept throughout.

Maybe we'll all grow up to be whatever age we're supposed to be.

Brecha

A common term used for a road that is not a road. It's more of a path but to call it one would be an exaggeration. A flat (sort of) rocky piece of sinewy way meant for mules but used by cars - the sort of road where you wouldn't be surprised if you had to drive past a creek or two to get to your final destination.

The views are inevitably beautiful and precarious as your soccer mom van teeter totters over a 50 foot cliff with little more than a sand bank between you and that beautiful weightless feeling that led us to explore the skies. People say it's part of tradition, that it's part of a Mexico that's fading into nothingness and that the youth will sorely miss 10 years from now.

The youth 10 years from now will wake into a world where internet has always existed, where we pop a morning pill to protect us from the penetrating UV rays because the ozone hole is now just the hole. Where communication could travel at faster than light speed and everyone has flying cars and last names like Jetson. And yes, robots work for us and follow Asimov's laws except that in this movie they don't go psycho on us.

We even put a stopper on death for a while.

Saramago has detailed a thesis on just this topic and the results are not pretty. As much as we would like to extend our brief instance on this earth nature (like England) prevails.

And as always I digress down a brecha myself only to get to my point (insert a sardonic remark here).

The brecha is the last bastion of true Mexican expression; ignoring of course all of the artisan work that the indigenous populations hock in flea markets around Mexico as well as the family run businesses selling everything from hand-made corn tortillas to spicy chillied candy of unclear origin.

A piece of road that washes away two or three times a year during raining season - a road that would be better of if it were only cobblestoned or paved. It's always a quick fix and a hopeful prayer that leads to the reconstruction and people like. Curves so tight and lanes so narrow so as to only let a car pass at a time - and the local farmers will never cease to park on the banks as well as host entire fiestas completely unaware of how horribly they disturb Mexico.

I love it here.

3 colors

Not on a flag or a three piece pimp suit.

Three colors on my wrist - one the tan the sweet sweet Mexican sun gifted me. Another the tender white of the underhand of my hand. The last one is splashed here and there in the form of freckles - sweet little dots of genetic pattern that make me unique.

Take this as an apology I don't know how to phrase.

My friends know that I'll go to the end of the world if they really need me to. Sometimes even to my own detriment. I'm always up for a hug, or a snuggle or a kind word or a good venting wall when you need it and I hope you know that.

The kind of friend I think I am or that I hope I am.

I'd get a phone call sometime in the next 10 years only to hear your voice for the first time in a couple months as you let me know you are now engaged. I make plans to meet up with you at once and celebrate and organize a bridal shower or a bachelor party as appropriate. I'll pick up your parents at the airport on the day off and keep you cool, calm and collected on the outside even if you feel like dying a little inside and you're not sure if that's a good thing or not.

I'd get a phone call sometime after that around the middle of the day as you tell me you're having a baby boy or girl (though I really know that you're hoping for a girl). I'd rush over - hitchhike across the country all the way to Frisco via Denver - if only to pick you up (even though I know you hate it) and give you a heartfelt congratulations.

I'd be in the hospital waiting room or in your room or holding your hand as you bring forth what I could only consider one of the luckiest kids in the world; perhaps even history.

Down the road I'd like to grab coffee with you and reminisce about the times we were young and I was stupid.

And then we'll turn 65 and wonder where the last 40 years have gone and think to ourselves that we started out in the big city and then progressively grew away from each other only in distance. I learned to consider the gap between us only in time zones and not in driving time or flying time or Amtrak time. This way I could be in Chicago and you could be in NY and the distance between us would only be an hour.

This is the friend I hope I am, hope to be and I aspire to be.

I'm sorry.

Meaning of Names

It would be self serving to quote Shakespeare and talk about roses or analyze the greek (sometimes latin) root of words. The latter I leave to spelling bee geeks and champions.

It’s just I find myself in sideways building hurtling through space at hundreds of miles and hour in a system no one truly understands and that is more likely to fail than to succeed. Planes…hmpf!

I’m on my way to sandy beaches, sand sculptures of the Virgen de Guadalupe and whole Fish deep fried with garlic and spice. A place where the Marimba plays in the town square, where rules are lax but the laws exist. It’s a beautiful place corrupted by its residents. It’s a Utopia gone wild. Like a well maintained pond invaded by the Asian Carp.

But the problem here is names – of things, of people, of places of time and thought.

It comes to mind that the movie Jaws would sound silly in Spanish. That a movie called 12 monkeys would sound like a terror flick in German. Maybe it’s just that the expression for kiss in French also has darker and dangerous implications.

And you wake up one morning from the comfortable unconscious that is every memoery before the age of 5 and realize that you have a name – a meaningful one. But so do dogs that are pets and ficticious characters impersonated by an enthusiastic fan at a football stadium. You either like your name or you don’t. You either have a middle name that you will hide from the world, use in a I-have-a-name-but-go-by-JC,JP,LT,etc Maybe it’s a silent tribute your parents decided upon in memory of a distant aunt you’ll never meet or a name your mother read in a magazine while she waited at the beauty salon one time.

I look out the window and I see the ocean.

Tuesday was named Tuesday because that was the day it was rescued.

Buck took the nickname (yet another confounding variable in this study) of “you big ugly beast you”.

And a nice homeless man baptized every man he met, by the mere effect of calling out to them, Jack.

So what do they mean and do they shape us? I’m working on a list organized by names with a map of traits and character strengths and weaknesses in search of a pattern. I’m looking for a revelation that’s a needle in a haystack.

La-sha.

Seattle HipHop

I'm discovering an underworld of misunderstood beats and the brave new world of jazz without brass.

I'm trying to play music without a pentagram, play a guitar without a tabs, whisper my breath into a flute that's escaped my hands - I'm trying to play with the big boys even if I'm still junior varsity on this world stage.

I miss the slinky curves of a note that flat. A full tempo spirito verse followed by a. Quiet. Quick. Quip. Staccatto. They use to tease me with a playful up and down in a chromatic shape with only two colors.

The days of raspy throatiness, glam and made up rock complete with armor and the child of Polaris are long gone. Now we're idolizing music that's hot for a moment, a day or two on the little iTunes sidebar and then dies of into the nothingness of the internet sensation of the hour.

Maybe I'm just melancholy about the days when heavy metal bands would read Hemingway, when Latin American bands would read Lorca. When artists would sing without televised concerts and governments would move. The days when you didn't need a promotional shirt with a continent outlined to care and catching a practiced smile of the reserved-for-dead-heads would make your heart swoon.

I'm not talking about skinny jeans and flannel and long beards meant to show a channeling of times past but that are so carelessly grown so as to create disgust. When tilting your head backwards and covering half your face with your hand and your smile was something not meant to be bastardized by thug thumping of a careless caribbean beat.

I'm not a snob but I like Caruso as much as the next un-classically trained amateur connoisseur.

I know some of you might say that hindsight isn't 20/20 - but from where I stand hindsight gives me a warm fuzzy feeling that no part of the future seems to provide. Maybe it's because I believe in Seattle poets more than Cereal box lycks on tracks.

D.O.A.

Sum-ah-tiiime

I've been asked to write about the day and night like writing is something you do upon command. Like all we ever need is a prompt and a deadline and writing happens.

I'd like to say that writing is green, and by that I mean organic. That it's renewable and vegan and vegetarian and fair trade and that it retains it's soul (albeit a phlegmatic one) even when mass produced in hot new paperbacks on the stands of the local CVS.

I'd like to contend that a book called the Art of Writing fails miserably at stimulating creativity of the sort that yields lengthy stories about a fictional cathedral in middle earth surrounded by aliens. It falls short of teaching its pupils the value of the elements of style and though it hints at their importance, immediately forgets that a good piece is like a carelessly thought out piece of jazz - impulsive and presumptuous.

Think of a lazy trumpet with a clear sound making it's way across the fiendish trails of cigarette smoke in a dimly lit room with a green glow from the Tiffany oil lamps.

I write like a child throws a tantrum. I try to break what few grammatical rules I know: I start paragraphs with the word because, ignore the Oxford comma, sometimes, and enjoy the gushing feeling that a run-on sentence gives me. Like I'm out of shape and short of breath and I'm trying to get to the very top of the hill with the tiny little church.

Think of writing as that thing you enjoy having as your personal little pleasure. For me it was sneaking candy as a little kid and telling raunchy sex jokes when I was still too young to understand them. The men would chortle and laugh (my jokes were good) and the ladies would balance - rather appropriately - their expression between faux disgust and amusement.

It's like enjoying the raspy, throaty dulcet tones of Louis Armstrong. Like dancing on a boat with a city lit up in the background. Like sitting, waiting, wishing on a Friday afternoon with a large glass of ice tea - the glass all sweaty like - and musing.

Writing is...

Seeing

La verdad es que hace tiempo que escribo en español - el idioma no el masculino- y lo mas triste es que extraño la poesía que en alguna época me dio.

A que me refiero? Pues que simple y sencillamente puedo escribir en 4 idiomas, me expreso en 3, soy experto en 2 pero solo en uno puedo escribir oraciones cortas que lleven un mensaje de mayor extensión que las palabras permiten.

Quizas es porque en mi mente la poesia se tiene que leer en una pequena plataforma con las estrellas de trasfondo, las luces del patio prendidas y una pequena multitud de gente sentada sobre mantas en el pasto. Porque la gente de acá, esa que hace poesia "slam", parece que les gusta pegarnos en el corazón.

Pero volvamos a las estrellas, que nos ven como nosotros las vemos.

Mejor dicho, sucede que en mi imaginación las estrellas son sistemas y en eso sistemas tiene que haber, si no gente, algo (alguien?) que se siente a observar por las noches. Lo contrario, la idea de que en este vasto universo en el sucede que nos encontramos - según nosotros porque nadie mas lo ha confirmado - donde hay billones de estrellas y el espacio tiene un significado, digamos espacioso, estemos solos. A menos de que hayamos sido los primeros (y una breve inspección a nuestros "logros" sugiere que no fuimos los primeros), tiene que haber grupos por no decir civilizaciones mucho mas avanzadas que nosotros.

O les dio miedo o pensaron que no valdría la pena molestarse con nosotros. La situación se parece a la que vivimos a diario cuando en camino al trabajo vemos una hormiga, la ignoramos y seguimos con nuestra vida.

Drake trato de cuantificarlo con una ecuación. Tal parece que al tal Drake nadie le aviso que se necesita un numero equivalente de ecuaciones y variables para resolver algo así.

Mientras tanto.

Hola!

(Senior)s

Your AARP card is in the mail and the real world - life - is pouring in through every hole in your tiny little ship. The reality of bills, independence, growth and maturity is becoming something that you no longer long for but instead worry about till you grow weary and you rub your eyes with fatigue.

Soon you'll be wearing those skinny little glasses they sell at CVS just to read your bedtime book - steaming cup of tea on your side and cloth slippers next to the bed. You'll be leaning over and kissing your significant other (for boy/girl friend has become to childish a term) and wishing them a good night - both of you perfectly content to leave the more adventurous of bedroom activities for some other nights.

The nights of Copa Wednesdays and Thirsty Thursdays will soon come to be replaced by Guys Night, Date Night and Work nights (Monday through Friday). 

I've learned from all you what I was supposed to in college - the models and cases and problem sets assigned in class were rarely little more than busy work providing an excuse to get to know all of you. 

Dear Seniors,

If I had a a thousand roses I'd give each of you one of them. I'll settle for a smile and a hug. 

You have been the ever present role-models in this little bubble we call life.

Your Kingdom: 33rd and 42nd and Market and Baltimore.

Like Kings and Queens there was and will be a royal grace to the way you shared advice, midnight conversations full of liquid and sometimes honest passion - always poised and composed even after long hard nights of pounding (fists) drinks at the place with all the smoke.

Good friends and good company are never forgotten.

Here's to you!

Salud!

Sincerely, 

Diego

Mexico

In little over a week I'll be going.

I grew on sandy beaches, cracked asphalt and
a pockmarked face made of potholes
and sad mirages hidden behind tall trees.

I grew up in a Mexico where my mornings started in a sleepy town with cows and a milkman a la fiddler but quickly scaled up to the land of coronas and dos equis only to end the day in a pre-packaged "American" experience involving Starbucks and Johnny Rockets. The dichotomy between the sweet cool air conditioner and the perennial sun burning the back of our necks was as beautiful as the words politician and honesty in the same sentence.

Black and white.

Don't get me wrong, I love my country like a child loves his mother, like  a brother loves his middle school girlfriend with whom he talks on the phone nightly 20 minutes after having last seen her for about an hour. I love Mexico with a grin on my face, the air running through my hair and my hand on the shift stick.

Mexico was my first "bro" - Mexibro.

There were two of them really; the first was one of open fires, warm corn hand-made tortillas with heaped mountains of beans, meat, sauces in every shade of green and red, cilantro, onion and pineapple. The second was one of nightclubs where my friends and I would measure our level of cool by wearing button downs that were taken literally - buttons undone down to the last two - complimented only by the thin gold chain with a hanging cross around our neck.

One was the story of my grandparents and haciendas on a plane that looked alit with fire every sunset - something about the play of sunlight on the red clay ground and raspberry fields. The other was a tale of a city that grew too big for its own overtaxed resources and where city planning involved little more than a prayer and a "vaya con dios".

What I'm trying to say, if there is a point at all, is that behind the lacrimose gas and gang wars between the druglords and the army - there is a beauty that no amount of PR or heart-stopping ads will show.

It's people.