Hi Sweetie, I live as though I am partially blind. I see something, mask it with a justification and surge onward. I have spent 7 days in a dream of which I came out of only yesterday.
I was hit twice in the temple by a jealous drunk woman, offered a charge of crack and sex by a young beautiful black girl, got sick and broke out in crater sized pimples.
Since I faced myself in the late afternoon yesterday, the flu like symptoms have mysteriously disappeared. Could it be that my body is my best angel?
I am led to strange places by subconscious yet conscious Cubans who have a common river running in their desperate brains. “Can you help me”, they say again and again like a constant chant that fills my good senses with bad ideas.
I must have a need. I push all sorts of interesting but wasteful stuff at it and come away without having accomplished the very thing that I sought to accomplish and then I’m exposed to what I don’t want. Now buried, I can’t see it anymore. Write to me, I will explain what I mean or call.
For ever your friend, Karen
2
OK baby, Denial is holding on to what already has died but one won’t learn the lesson of it because feeling and thinking the same old shit is easier. Or, once again, insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result.
Why are you hanging out in bars with shaky Latinos? You’re bobbin’ up-and-down with 3 fingers out of the water. The Cubans are only there to take the rings off your fingers before you go down for good.
You can’t possibly believe that you’re having fun. Where are your guts? Do something different. Don’t go dancing even if you really want to. Don’t rationalize your wants around your desperate needs. This time is not about you but about your family. There is enough there to fill your days and nights. Fuck the-guys-in-the-club thing for a big 8 weeks. I will meet the challenge with giving up or doing what you ask of me for 8 weeks.
I am worried about your recklessness. It is not 1970 when there were virtually no consequences to taking drugs or in a one night stand. I am worried you do not understand you can drop dead, you can get Aids, you can get herpes, you can nose dive and never get out of the spin. I don’t think you can see what your going out and coming back beat up must look like to your family.
Your recklessness in going out and looking for trouble is scaring the hell out of everyone who loves you. Don’t you care? Who is out there cheering you on? What are you thinking? You know what you are shootin’ for while you are in the clubs. Do you have the courage to say it? Is it worth it right now? What happens if your family says enough is enough?
I am ready to hear how mad you are that I would write this. I am ready to read where you see I am fuckin’ up. I am so ready.
I do love you. I check my email every day.
Love, MB
3
Sorry for jumping up-and-down on you in the last email I just don’t get the attraction to the same old scene that chews you up and spits you out again I don’t want to see you keep cripplin’ your relationship with your family because you want to be worshiped by anyone who is willing. You have so much wonderful experiences around you right now at this moment and the moment will not last long.
I check my email everyday. Feel free to write whatever, something like I have. I am not afraid to hear anything although, I might bark a little.
Still your friend? MB
4
Hi Sweetie, Will you please stop being afraid to speak your mind with me. Do you think that I don’t know what your reaction will be when I tell you the things that I do? I expect that someone who loves me as much as you do will tear me up when I fuck up. I give you, if I haven’t already, permission to nail me to the wall, beat me with a stick until I cry out for more love… but I know that I won’t quit going out dancing. I just want to get smarter, quicker. It only took me 7 days to open my eyes. Actually they were open all the time. I justify my blindness. I am gaining much needed experience and will hope to learn more each day. I will find out about myself. I will, I will, I will.
Mexico is the next stop, baby. I have to head home in order to arrive by the 28th. I will arrive late if I can come and see you again.
Gotta go. And by the way, nobody is influencing me. My friend is appalled at my attraction for the wild side. She prefers to die slowly, I, the quick and handy way.
I can’t remember where I was, what city, but I was in Mexico, that I know. Maybe San Miguel de Allende or Guanajuato.
Sunset Art Print San Miguel de Allende
Traveling with college kids put me where I might not have otherwise been. But my decisions were my own. Nobody forced me to do anything. This is just one of many adventures that changed my life forever.
I was having unusual fun inspite of my normally sedate mother/wife self. Alot had changed, me included. A weight of some sort had fallen away. I was ready to take risks.
Not that I hadn’t been happy. I had been very happy but I was very comfortable with this new me. The minute I stepped off the plane in Mexico for a semester at the Universidad de Querětaro, I wasn’t afraid to die.
As we sped through the streets of Mexico City, I felt that if I died, I’d die happy.
Most taxis looked like they had met with many mishaps. The streets were filled with pot holes of every size. There were metal poles sticking out of the pavement with no apparent purpose except as obstacles. There were hundreds of taxis going at breakneck speed and it seemed that no one paid any attention to traffic lights or signs. Whoo, hoo!
I didn’t die but it was not through any good sense that I survived. This is just one of my mis-adventures. I will be painfully honest, so bear with me, if you will. There will be more stories recounted as I dare to share them. Please note and keep in mind, that I have no regrets.
There is a stereotype, widely held in Mexico, that women and mainly American women are there to go wild. As we know, stereotypes often bear some semblance to truth though are more likely to be erroneous or at least an exaggeration. Since I was in Mexico to attend the university, my intentions were far from going wild.
I had never traveled outside of the US. I was a new student, even back home, with one semester of Spanish under my belt. I was a wife of 27 years and I had two grown children. That made me, let’s see, 46 years old. A student of this age was nearly unheard of in Mexican universities. I was the same age as the mother of my host family.
To say the least, I felt very strange and uncomfortable at school and at home, but I was too excited to be daunted by emotions. I was there for the total experience. On arrival, I was not at all prepared for what that meant, but I was soon to find out.
Lupe, the mother and wife of the household, cooked for me and even did my laundry, while I attended the same university as her children. If that wasn’t strange enough, I left every weekend to either meet with the other American students for drinks and music and exploring town, or I hopped a bus to other cities and often to the beach. Not one of the other students were out of their 20s. So, 20 somethings do what they do and so as not to be left alone to wander about, I did what they did… went to dance clubs.
I won’t say I didn’t like it most of the time. I love to dance and no one questioned my age. I started my Mexican adventure nearly 40 lbs overweight. I walked miles to and from the university four times a day. Even universities take siestas and there’s no food on campus. I’d either walk back home or into the center of town to eat. Before long, I had lost all of my extra weight and had a substantial tan and had gained a good deal of muscle and endurance. Those 20 somethings had nothing on me. It helped that I was going to the beach, swimming and walking everywhere.
Back to the dance clubs. Most of the time those nights were uneventful. We’d go, we’d dance our asses off, then I’d go home to sleep, but twice I thought I might die. You’d think after the first time, I would have stayed home, sat with Lupe in her kitchen watching telenovelas (soap operas) while she made me “Bimbo” bread sandwiches with thin sliced ham, tomatoes and pickled jalapeno or sweet pastries and “Nescafe”. But no.
I wasn’t in Mexico to learn how a middle-aged housewife lived, though I really liked her. She treated me like a special guest. We might have become good friends if I wasn’t so determined to see and do everything presented to me, apparently, no matter how dangerous.
Don’t misunderstand me, though. I didn’t go looking for trouble. Perhaps I was naive. I met my husband to be when I was just 16. I married him at 21 and had babies at 23 and 25. From that time forward, I was a housewife and mother. Other than moving, there was little excitement in my life, and as I mentioned before, I had never traveled, we didn’t go dancing, or any of the things I was doing in Mexico.
I was not clueless, however. In the short time I had studied Spanish, I had become sufficiently fluent. Though our classes were described, in the study abroad brochure, as being taught in English, we were thrown into the deep end on site. All classes were taught in Spanish, as were assignments and tests in Spanish.
One time in the post office, I asked a clerk if he spoke English and he responded in Spanish with, “Why would I?” It was sink or swim when a grocery cashier tried to charge me $20 for a can opener. I would have been robbed blind if I didn’t understand that a $5 taxi ride shouldn’t cost $20. Immersion is, no doubt, the best way to learn a language, and as I learned, it can save your life.
Back to the dance clubs. This particular night, a group of my fellow students and I had traveled to, I believe it was, San Miguel… I don’t remember exactly where we were. This fact added to the danger I was in on this particular night. At the time, of course, I knew where I was but no one else did except my friends. No one knew where we had traveled for the weekend, either. We were dangerously footloose and fancy free. No one ever knew where I was except when I was either in the classroom or at Lupe’s.
We had explored the city all day, we had eaten and now that it was nearing midnight, everyone wanted beer (more beer), music and dancing. Who was I to go back to the hotel and go to sleep? So I went along. I ignored alot of things, like everyone was at least 20 years younger than me. And I accepted other things like, I was at least 20 years older than everyone. I felt great and I was doing things that I hadn’t imagined when I signed up to be a foreign exchange student.
The club was pulsating with flashing colored lights and loud music that you could feel in your whole body and it was quite dark. It had been at least 25 years since I’d been out dancing. We were dancing all together when a young Mexican man began to dance with me. He was a very good dancer and it was almost entirely no contact except for some exceptional twirls. This was not the first or last time I danced with some great dancers. No foul. No harm. As the night went on, he stuck pretty close to me. The music was so loud, there was no conversation. My friends and others were dancing right beside me.
In the wee hours, my friends decided to head out and find some food and more beers. I decided that I needed to go back to the hotel and collapse. I didn’t mind going alone since the hotel was close. I walked out of the club and there behind me was the boy I had been dancing with.
I can’t recall his name since it’s been so many years now, but he introduced himself and introduced another young man who he said was his brother. They then invited me to their house, their parents house, to have some food and to meet their parents.
Now before you start jumping up and down and screaming at me about how stupid I was, let me tell you that I met many people, went to their houses and even spent nights in the homes of very kind and hospitable strangers. I would not have known how people live, eat, work and play if I had not taken the risks that I knowingly and willingly took. They were not all good experiences but few led to danger.
So, needless to say, as tired as I was, I accepted their invitation. We walked along narrow cobblestone streets, up hills, into a residential neighborhood, talking and getting to know a little about each other. They were very curious to know what I was doing there. I was certainly an oddity. They were promising some amazing home-cooked food and said their parents were probably still awake.
We arrived at a large colonial style house overlooking the city. There were few lights on. We entered through gigantic carved double doors and into a cavernous and dimly lit living room. The “brother” disappeared down a hallway. I needed to use the bathroom, let’s call him Felix, took me down the same hallway to a fully tiled bathroom that was resplendent with gold framed art and gold furnishings. When I came out, Felix was standing in the doorway of a small sitting room.
He invited me in and said to remove my shoes because of the carpets. I sat on a large divan and slipped my shoes off. Felix said he was going to see his mother about food and he’d return shortly. Of course, I was fascinated with everything. They were obviously quite wealthy and lived luxuriously. Up to this point, mostly I had met villagers in remote places. This was an entirely new experience.
As Felix walked out of the room, he turned off the lights and as he quickly shut the door, I heard the lock latch. I was completely in the dark. There were no windows and there were no cell phones for me to call for help. I stumbled around reaching for the door and trying to feel for a light switch. I couldn’t feel or see a thing. I tried to find my shoes, but they were gone. I didn’t want to get too far from the divan because I didn’t want to lose my bearings and I didn’t want to hurt myself. I waited. I told myself that he didn’t mean to leave me in the dark in a locked room without my shoes. I wasn’t going to panic… yet.
The door opened quickly and closed before I could speak. I was pushed backwards onto my back. I felt long, thin hands on my bare legs, gently moving upwards. I yelled no and wiggled away.
He only persisted for a few moments and was not in the least violent. He spoke quietly and tried to persuade me to give in. I told him, in Spanish, that nothing was going to happen. He left the room. I could hear whistling in the distance… like signals.
Soon, another person came in and the scenario was repeated. Finally, a third person came in. I could tell this was Felix. He was apologizing and telling me that he had misunderstood and thought that I wanted to have fun, all the while touching and carressing my arms and legs and trying to kiss me. Finally, I screamed, what I thought was, “get a life!” I think what I said was, “are you alive?”
Suddenly, he stood up and moved away. He turned on the lights and brought me my shoes. Strangely, he wanted to walk me to my hotel because it was so late and wanted me to be safe.
He did just that. We walked slowly through the dark streets in the early morning hours talking about his life and dreams and mine, too. He dropped me at the entrance to the hotel. We embraced and we wished one another luck and fortune in our respective lives.
I know what you’re thinking… but don’t say it. This was not the only risk I took while in Mexico. I willingly stepped up to the edge many more times. Remember what I said? If I die, at least I’ll die happy.
I didn’t know it when I signed up to study in Mexico that I would encounter so much adventure, but I’m glad I did.
Just thinking this morning… as you display the American flag for the 4th of July… contemplate for just a moment about what that flag really represents.
Think about being of a global mentality, not nationalistic, not patriotic, not about building walls to shut people out, not about killing people who are not like you, not about who’s stealing your jobs, not about robbing other people of their natural resources and occupying land that we are not invited into.
Think about, just for a moment, how our country was founded on the usurping of land that was already occupied and the mass murder of First Peoples already living on this continent for our (that’s you, white people) own gain.
Think about the Black people who were brought here as slaves, not paid, not free, not welcomed, not loved, not equal. Thnk about the new Jim Crow. Think about, still, how they are singled out for failure and are still not accepted as equals… equal in anyway.
Think for a moment about your heritage… where your people came from… if you are not native. How did your people get here? Weren’t they immigrants?
Think about our young men and women who have been sacrificed because our military and corporate government commands them to war. Think about the making of more and more disillusioned and suicidal veterans every day, every year, every decade, every century.
Think about how, instead of us being the salvation of the world… a great country that others can look up to, we are becoming more and more feared and hated and becoming a political laughing stock in the world.
Think about how worried you are about corporate greed and the destruction of the environment for economic gain for a few. Think about how hard it is for us to find well paying jobs, affordable housing, affordable health care, a decent and an equitable education for all. Think about the failing infrastructure, not just in your city but, nation-wide.
Think about big pharma and the drugging of America. Think about GMO and the poisoning of our food and water and how we don’t seem to have any control and how our sustenance has been usurped by Monsanto and other large corporate chemical companies.
Think about a lot more as you raise that American flag in the next couple of weeks. Think about whether you are really proud of what we have become. Think about the future of our children and our grand children and future generations. Think about whether we can heal the wounds of the American people inflicted by the wealthy and powerful.
Think about what you might do to change this; change this with your neighbor, your colleagues, your co-workers, your family, your friends… Think about how you might help to open a few eyes, to open a few arms, to open a few hearts.
Think about speaking up when you hear hate talk. Speak up when you see injustice. Speak up when more war is begun and more war continues. Speak up when sick people want to rule America.
Think about what you are saying when you fly that flag. Think about what our flag means to the other… the disenfranchised, those who stand at the end of a loaded weapon held by an American on their own soil… in their own houses, those who are suffering war at our hands. Think about what the other might think that we deserve…
A little bit of knowledge can be dangerous… as this story proves out.
I don’t know where to begin because I don’t think that I’ve told you enough about my past with Santeria, Palo and Vodou, but this memory came to mind this afternoon and I wanted to write it down. Perhaps, I’ll even publish it without giving you the proper context. To help a little you could go into some of my blog posts that are tagged with Santeria, Palo and Ramiro and the like… yet it might not help at all. But let’s get right into it, anyway.
Without going into any great detail, suffice it to say that I had been living with a Santero (a practitioner/priest of Santeria. My break with him was tragic. After being with him for several years, to better understand him and the culture of Cuba and its people, I studied Cuban spirituality and simultaneously, Haitian spirituality which, of course, both derive from African roots.
In my studies, I came across primary resources written by priests. Primary resources, of course, are documentation that record first hand experiences. These books or pamphlets or diaries recorded the rituals of their religion. I had watched many rituals performed in the years spent with the Cubans. I always felt though that I was standing at the door with the door just barely cracked open and me, I was peeking inside of a room not truly being able to enter, to participate or to even understand what I was seeing.
This new found knowledge, accompanied by my first hand experiences with Santeros and practitioners of Palo and Vodou, proved to be dangerous weapons in my hands.
After my break with Ramiro, I was left with many accoutrements, but this is another story. My heart had been broken and I had seen too many things. I wanted to relieve my broken heartedness and I also wanted to affect others with what I knew. I didn’t really want to hurt anyone, that was not my intention. But these two things alone are a dangerous combination. I wasn’t looking for revenge but this is how it was perceived.
Pepe was a friend of Ramiro’s and appeared on the scene to “soothe my pain”. I didn’t want a boyfriend, I wanted Ramiro back but I wasn’t getting him back, so Pepe became a friend. But this was not how Pepe saw it.
Pepe would not go away. He tattooed my name on his arm. He led his friends to believe we were lovers. That, we never were. My mistake was to allow him to continue to be my friend even when I realized that he was unreasonable.
My reasoning was that Pepe was nice enough. Pepe cared for me. He was willing to tolerate that I was still in love with Ramiro and that I didn’t love him. In a selfish way, Pepe was my connection to the Cuban community and vicariously to Ramiro. In some odd way this helped to ease the pain, to have somebody familiar around.
This is how the problem started and I am the only one to blame. Pepe was insistent and I suppose you could say that I allowed it, I left the door open, I was too tolerant. But as he became demanding, I became frustrated at first and then afraid. I didn’t believe he would hurt me but he had become frustrated, too. There was an element of him being out of control. Here again, I won’t go into unnecessary detail about his fits of frustration. He was refusing to just be my friend. Though I would lose my connection to him, to the Cubans and to Ramiro, it was time for him to go.
I wanted him to know that I was serious. I wanted him to know that I could make him go away. I knew in no uncertain terms that it had to be final and permanent. I thought that my most powerful ability was to use his own beliefs against him.
I knew too much and yet I knew too little. I never should have done this but I did. This wasn’t the first time, nor was it the last that I used what I had learned, that I used ways that I had no business using.
Whether you believe this or not is neither here nor there to me. I don’t care. But this is what witnesses have reported. These are the consequences of my actions. I followed the directions to the letter. There are times that I regret what I did, but they had the results I was looking for. I never heard from Pepe again.
I wrote Pepe a letter simply asking him to leave me alone. I sprinked into the envelope, powders and ashes of certain and specific animal bones, crushed plants, rocks and metals procribed in the books of priests. I carefully copied, by hand, certain ancient symbols drawn in the books. I sealed the envelope and drew certain other symbols that crossed over the seal, so that when opened, the symbols would be torn in two.
Pepe recieved the letter. According to witnesses, when he tore open the seal, a cloud of dust rose into the air covering his face and flew into his eyes. He was blinded momentarily and had trouble breathing. The dust caused sores on his face and neck that lasted for weeks.
Pepe was out of my life for good. I haven’t heard from him or about him for years. I hope he’s OK.
I went for drinks with friends last night at the Altabier Restaurant and Bar. I like going there, alot. I can ask for a pizza that suits my strange tastes.
First, I had a drink called the Cloven Hoof. I should have known better but it started out with a lovely smooth scotch and some other tantalizing ingredients. I tried sipping it but it lured me into slamming it. Down the hatch!
My second drink was an Old Fashioned. Four Roses bourbon, smooth and golden and heavy, laced with just enough ice in a crystal glass. It sparkled like a deep amber elixir with the Mosca cherry hiding half way down. Though I wanted to dive for the cherry, I sipped and chatted about death with my friends. The sky went black and the lights of the city came on and the voices in the bar grew louder, candles were glowing and flickering and time slipped by.
Todd talked candidly about his wife dying just a month or so ago. Noelle, remembering how her husband and she were driving cross country to move to Portland with their two cats, got in a terrible accident that killed her husband and the male kitty, while she and the female kitty survived, was drinking a strange concoction called, “Making Brandy Great Again”.
When I met Noelle, 15 years ago, the scar that slashed across her forehead and between her eyes was red and angry, still. Her scar now, is still clearly visible but “no longer angry nor red”, I commented. She’s tiny and her face is beautiful in the soft candlelight. For her second drink, she ordered the “Santa Muerte”. As we do, she slid the glass across the table for me to try. I immediately tasted the essence of a very old, Victorian house filled with stuffed antique furniture and gilded picture frames and China vases holding wilted roses. Todd took a sip and agreed that it aroused a sense of old stuffed chairs and sofas. Noelle called for a Manhattan, as she said, “I’m passing this on” and slid the drink back over to me.
There I was with my Old Fashioned to my right and my Santa Muerte to my left. By this time I was slowly sipping, enjoying both drinks and the company, immensely. I loved the mysterious Santa Muerte and the ever familiar Old Fashioned. They seemed to fit perfectly together. I was interjecting, into the conversation, stories of the soft passing of Mom and the violent parting of Kristi and Dad. Death hung in the air, as did the joy of sharing holiday gifts and spirits together.
Dolores dropped me off at my door and I drank a glass of bicarbonate of soda and fell into bed after tearing my clothes off. It was a fantastic night.
The night when souls wander freely is fast approaching. The sky is clear and in this chill morning I can even read the constellations. Lights in sickly orange and violet shine eerily from rustling bushes and the withered, brittle leaves falling sound like footsteps following stealthily close behind. A black cat steals silently across my path, but I am not startled; I look behind to see if I am still alone in the black stillness. My gaze reaches out for the lone street light still beyond my rapid shuffle through the dark street. Was the crack in the wall always there or is it opening just for me. Finally. .. the bus. “Good morning, how are you?” “Great”, I say, as if nothing happened.
If loving and being loved leads to the point of a mental breakdown, then let the breakdown commence.
There is nothing more lovely and wonderful than to love and to be loved. Yes, when a loved thing dies, no matter what the form it takes, be it human or animal, tree or rock, a work of art in the form of something to touch, smell, see, taste or hear be it physical or ethereal, there is nothing more transcendent than to have loved or have been loved by that thing.
Life is not worth living if we have not reached those heights of ecstacy or have not descended into the abyss of loss. Those wounds to our hearts and minds, where we have been rent asunder, is where the light gets in. This is the fount of our creativity.
Tears of salt, of our joy and our pain, give flavor to life… makes it savory and rich. It’s why we have something to give to another. Do not fear to love unto madness.
Let the breakdown commence and be glad that your feelings run so deep.
eyeamdust 