Blame

Because you pushed me, I wanted to get away.

You wanted me to be accountable. And I wanted to be free of all that conscience.

I wanted to be innocent of human suffering perpetuated from one to the other. 

But you exposed me to a different world.

A world where “my” people hurt “your” people by ignoring them,
deeming them inferior or out-right punishing and imprisoning them. 

But it wasn’t me who brutalized you. Even though perhaps my outlook and tone of voice reminded you of the people who could feign innocent because it was convenient and much prettier to think that way. Instead of looking how they subtly or wholeheartedly diminished you.

Every time we walked down the street, I felt how prejudice had knocked you down, wanted you to bleed, wanted you to believe that you were less-than, incapable and worthy of suspicion.

I knew that the world wouldn’t take the blame for the stirrings of anger in your belly, and how you had to drown it out through liquid fire as your only way of coping from living around people who never cared to ask deeper how you’re really doing.

And I got the luxury of being the one to walk with you, turning people’s eyes to disdain and disgust. Who would ever believe that God was a loving one in the world of the white people?

But I believed in you. Your heart. Your compassionate values to live in a way that knew it was important to give back to others. To carry your burdens of memories of having lived amongst disrespect and disintegration, from a world that rather would’ve seen you die and go away. Especially someone as vocal as you. Your voice strong and warm and courageous enough to be willing to take a stand against heartless people who like to deny their collective involvement in acts of pure judgment and greed. 

Even though I left, thinking I could reclaim the part of me that just didn’t want to know where it all began, your heart haunts me with a knowing of what matters and is true.  I can’t get away from you, your being embodied in me forever.  My spirit always walking with a knowing of who’s a pretentious fake and who’s genuinely care-taking.

At night I cradle your soul, reminded by your humming and every reason why we are no longer together. At night I keep justifying my movements forward towards liberation and surrender, throwing the pieces of your heartache to the stars, blessing them for you to see, reminding you someone loves you and holds you and always knows you to be way more special in the face of how others have neglected.

Almost Home

“Su boleto, por favor, senor”

“Su boleto, senor” the man says, tapping Richard’s arm with the single-hole puncher. 

“Oh, si. Lo siento,” Richard passes the man, 6 inches shorter than him, his bus ticket. Before getting on the bus, Richard looks back hesitantly, like a lover who doesn’t want to risk bursting into tears with a reluctant yet necessary goodbye, at a town that has become a home to him for just over 3 years.  He rubs the shells in his pocket that he picked up from the beach a mere 20 minutes ago to hold onto as keepsakes, adding to his miniature collection of all the places he’s lived. He’s learned by now that his life would always be transportable, even though his heart yearned to settle somewhere.     

“Su bolsa, Senor.”

Richard hands him his suitcase and climbs up the stairs onto the bus with the familiar groan of yet another journey. 

“Oh, good, this bus has got air conditioning,” Richard thinks, relieved by the lucky break that one gets once and awhile with the Mexican transportation.  “At least something’s working for me,” he’s adopted the national attitude of appreciating the rare blessings of comfort when they are offered.

He sees a woman in the 8^th row looking up at the t.v. screen then down and sideways, not sure whether she should tell the driver that something must be wrong because she’s never traveled on an air-conditioned bus with t.v.’s before while paying the regular fare price, yet she’d be damned to take an 8-hour trip on one of those buses with rusty holes in the flooring.  Richard has seen so many Mexicans from the campesinos shocked like this when they got on one of these new buses for their first time. These simple modern luxuries were part of normal living back in America.

Richard finds a seat by the window in the 11^th row, one where he can lean his head up against it without the partition getting in the way.  He’s praying to Santa Maria that he gets to ride this trip alone, so he can sprawl out his long legs diagonally in front of the  passenger seat beside him, instead of scrunched up with his knees banging into the metal plate on the back of the seat in front of him.

Ten minutes before they leave. Remarkably the buses here are the one thing that stays on time. Richard snuggles into his seat, tilting his hat overtop of his head, ready to zone out into that space where people around here find some kind of peace and freedom from worries or “preocupadas” as they call them. 

“Hey, is this seat taken, SAY-NNNOR?”

Richard overhears the ever-familiar botched Spanish and rolls his eyes under his hat. “Oh el Christo,” Richard mutters.

“The problem with Mexicans,” Richard thinks, “is everyone feigns politeness.”  He’s realized that it’s their way of preserving the face of dignity in this country that is known for uprisings, drug deals and criminal hijackings.  Especially when an American tourist is in the midst, people are wanting to show that Mexicans have a uniqueness far richer than what the American dollar can offer, despite everything the news tells them.

“Hey, is this seat taken?”

Richard lifts his hat. “Oh shit. He’s looking at me.”

“No, buddy, it’s all yours,” Richard gestures, moving his legs but staying in his slouched posture, with his head leaned up against the window.

“Good to see there’s another gringo on this bus.”

Richard pulled back his eyes from the momentary contact he made with the man with white shorts and white socks pulled up to his knees.  He pulls out the folded El Dia newspaper from his moth-eaten cloth bag, opening it up so the right side divides him and the Yankee next to him. “El Gobierno se mata 20 personas Indigenas en las Montanas.”  Richard used to be sickened and horrified by the atrocities against the Indigenous People in Mexico, but it’s now become such a part of life to read about these things – as normal as eating tortillas with cilantro and chili pepper salsa along with a cold beer in the middle of the afternoon. 

“You can read that shit?” the white-socked man says to Richard.

“You mean Spanish?” Richard retorts with the arrogance of a man who knows he’s more respectable in the eyes of the locals. “Ya. How ‘bout you?” Richard challenges.

“Don’t have time to learn that kinda stuff.”

“Well what are you doing here then if you can’t speak Spanish?” Richard says, hoping the white-socked man will get the hint that his tourist status only takes him so far inland--there are common rules around these parts and, despite what most Americans like to think, English isn’t the commodity that people are after these days.

Richard looks proudly at his deeply tanned skin and pulls on the leather and stone bracelet he’s been wearing since the first day he arrived in Puerto Angel given to him by a chance meeting with a local street vendor who Richard helped when the guy had to go take a piss.  That was the first shock for Richard when he landed – how trusting Mexicans were when they liked you and somehow they had honed that instinct pretty well. Guess it comes with the trade – these guys have seen every trick to thievery and have learned not to be fooled by appearances but also won’t let a little misfortune get them down. 

“My name’s George. How’d you do?” the man puts his hand out to shake Richard’s.

“Richard,” he shakes the man’s hand once, with hardly a grip.

“What brings you to these parts?” George says, with the strong Texan accent.

“Long story. Been living here for 3 years and now I gotta go find somewhere else to be.”

“No kidding?! Three years! Lucky man. How’d you manage to make that happen?”

“Didn’t really. It just sorta happened,” Richard responds, really not sure how he ended up spending three years in Mexico, yet knowing that there’s something about the place that charms Time to pass by with the haze of the lulling waves.

“Where’re you from?” George asks.

“The States,” Richard replies.

“What part?”

“Depends on why you’re asking.” Richard usually tries to avoid giving the details of his life, and will first figure out the story of the person who’s asking to give the answer that makes them feel at ease.  Most people wouldn’t understand his life and the only ones who would are those who don’t care much for knowing the truth anyways.

“What? You one of those guys who runs to Mexico because the big guns in America are after ya?”

“If only I were so glorious,” Richard smirks. He likes keeping people guessing about him—he likes seeing their faces change when they see him as tougher than he looks.

“Whatchya doing taking the bus from the coast to the city by yourself? Don’t you know it’s dangerous for tourists on the highways?” Richard says, looking out the window, feeling the bus tilt as it edges around the bend of the mountain. “See all them crosses and flowers? They’re memorials for dead folk from driving these roads,” Richard points. “In Mexico, you gotta get real comfortable with death. It’s at every turn.”

Richard would do this all the time at the resort he worked at -- show this face of calmness about death – as if he had mastered it.  They’d always be awed by how he handled the scorpions and black widow spiders in their rooms. “Ladies – welcome to Mexico. Just count yourself lucky if you return back home alive,” he’d say, sweeping them away without breaking a sweat. This bravado would usually score him at least one lady for the evening.

“I’m here to take pictures of the cactus plants that grow 6’ or taller for the magazine I work for,” George responds earnestly.

“Oh great. A journalist. Just what locals hate. To be romanticized while they struggle just to get clean water. No one will pay them for the pleasure of their seemingly innocent smile,” Richard grits his teeth, withholding what he’s thinking.

“Have you journalists ever thought about paying the people you take pictures of in foreign countries?” Richard couldn’t resist.

“Well, they’ve set new journalism standards and they are considering this along with many other things,” George explains while polishing his camera lens, “and I really don’t think anyone would mind me taking a few pictures. It’s a good image for their country.”

Richard remembers a man he met who carried buckets of water every day up the mountain when he first came to Mexico. This man told him that he made 20 pesos for each 2-hour trip up. “Poco a poco” he said with a look in his eyes that told Richard how people around here have accepted that life is a struggle and one must take whatever they can get. The mountain loomed around them, teaching that each step could easily falter by a swoosh of a mudslide. The man pulled a half-chocolate bar out of his pocket.  “Para mi y para ti”, he said, splitting the chocolate in half. Richard never would have done this for a stranger when he slept on the streets in Pennsylvania. 

“People just need help around here, George. They really don’t care about the rules that much,” Richard said with all his heart.

George went silent.

Richard pulled his hat down over his eyes and leaned against the window, letting the droning of the bus lull him to sleep.

Sunday Cleaning

The silver kettle shines the reflection of the kitchen window along its side. The black handle proudly stands straight up, at least for 10 minutes until someone decides they want to have some tea. The kettle sits on the back element of the left-hand side, with the spout facing inwards, like it’s supposed to. And just to be sure it doesn’t dry out from the heat of the oven, there’s a slight layer of water along the bottom on the inside.

Every Sunday mom cleans the kitchen spotlessly with baking soda and vinegar using the old rags from t-shirts we wore when we were kids—the ones we used to spill kool-aid on because we’d be rushing to go play outside.  Even though we’ve left home and it’s only mom and dad there now, mom still cleans the kitchen – from the top of the ceiling fan down to the space behind the floorboards and the walls -- every single Sunday.  Her routines, she used to say, is what would keep her sane, and children, she said, need routines in order to feel safe and grow up good.

I guess there’s something to it. Though now, as I see my mother wiping down the salt and pepper shakers, I see a woman whose hair has grown grey even though her hairstyle has stayed the same -- rolled up loosely in a bun at the back with bobby pins stuck in firmly. I see a woman whose fingers have knotted into stiff sticks from folding the laundry exactly the same way over the last 40 years.  I see my mother who decided to carry this badge of childbirth and childrearing so greatly that she missed the memo when Johnny, the youngest, left home to go to College, and still cooks an extra plate of food for dinner, just in case he comes back. 

I watch my mom now, putter through the house, with a broom and duster tied to the back of her apron – a resourceful contraption she made on her own that makes her cleaning so much easier.  This woman who made all my lunches, took care of everything from making my bed, to keeping my socks matched, to taking my temperature and putting out my chewable vitamins. She used to put our pencils and erasers in order for when we came home to do our homework. She’d even make banana bread every Friday afternoon as a treat for getting through the week.

“Hey, Mom, I bought these flowers for you. I thought of that summer when the bluebells took over the garden and we were running around the backyard through your clean laundry on the line.”

She took them and replaced them with the garden-cut flowers that were withering. “Oh, this purple will match the fabric on the couch so well,” dismissing any memories of us laughing and playing.

“Hey, Mom, I got the job at the library – it’s pretty good pay.”

“Oh that’s good. You used to read all the time. Couldn’t get your head out of those comic books,” Mom replied while dusting the mantle of the shelf, picking up the family photo with Tommy and his toothless smile. 

“Ya, I like the people, too. They said they’re glad they have me as a boss – I think the guy before me was a bit…”

“…like your father…?”

Mom had never said anything bad about dad before. Never. For all of his anger and beating us.  For all of his drinking and throwing us to our rooms. Mom never let on that she believed he was a hard man to live with. 

“uh….” I said, not knowing how to respond. 

I could hear the football game in the room with fake wood panels. Dad was sitting there in his polyester Lazy-Boy watching the game, perpetually shouting insults at every player’s wrong move – as if he could do it better.

After all my years in therapy, after all the ways I’ve been trying to show mom that there is a better way of life and she doesn’t have to live like this, and having mom defend this man, finally she admits that this man who she has dedicated her whole life to, could very well be an asshole.

Why I Love Learning

Why I love Learning

It expands me. It helps me grow in understanding and compassion. The special relationship between the teacher, the information conveyed, and the student is something that is almost inexplicable. When the ah-ha moment, or when the pieces are put together in the student's mind that makes her see things differently, more clearly, more compassionately, the student is forever changed. Life becomes lighter, easier, funnier and more enjoyable.

The knowledge I like to gain is usually as a tool for service to others – somewhat practical. Even in the spiritual realm of learning how to spiritually listen and connect has a very useful application when working with others in the areas of healing and doing readings. And the satisfaction of knowing that there is more to this world than what meets the eye is such a great revelation through this type of learning.

I’m not interested in learning simply to gain recognition or credentials. Rather, I love learning because it is inspiring, energizing, exciting and opens new doors of possibilities. Learning dispels limited thinking, and brings new focus or energy – making my reality a safer, more loving and humorous place to live.

I can get into the trap of reading, going to classes and staying in my cave of hoarding, without applying or sharing what I’m gaining. I’ve always seen myself as a student rather than a teacher. But I’m discovering that this is one and the same, for eventually the student needs to share and apply the knowledge. This is where the true satisfaction shows itself.

When learning is lined up with Love, so much can happen in one’s inner and outer world, making a clear mind that enjoys the process of life’s unfolding, not seeing something as good or bad but rather to be understood, embraced and cherished for what it is. For a genuine-hearted student, learning is a subtle process of digging within herself to find and reveal the answers, seeing if they fit into her life experiences. Even though many know that 1 + 1 = 2 , it takes a special person to know how to carry this knowledge into so many other areas of life and seeing through that lens of simple truth. Life gets to flow with a grace and clarity unbeknownst to the one who is seeing the world through unenquiring eyes of confusion.

A Strawberry Good-bye

I look across at you, examining your face. The very face I fell for – your blue eyes, your dimples, your wispy hair. The way that you walked, bouncing off the sidewalk on your tiptoes, showed me you were someone who was not on this earth, someone who wouldn’t get trapped into worlds that made you conform to their norms.

How is it that at the beginning of this relationship, every one of your features seemed inconsummable, overwhelmingly exciting, dripping with gargantuan hope that you were not like the other guys I met.

You had ambition. You were successful. You were good-looking. You were light-hearted and funny. You seemed healthy. Every piece of your hair, the crevices on the side of your nose, your freckles and even the wrinkles around the corner of your eyes were enticing –they were yet to become known, yet to be loved, yet to be explored.

The infinite hours I spent staring at my computer thinking about you, double-checking my emails and voicemails at home, waiting to get a message from you – just to know that you, too, were thinking of me. Little ol’ me. The one who had yet to publish anything. The one who still had to cover her insecurities with fashionable, appealing outfits. The one who had a tough time admitting that bills had to be paid and I really shouldn’t be ordering another cocktail.

Through our shared timeliness you became someone to me who I never knew existed—someone who carried the same struggle I did of having been born into the battle line of 2 opposing cultures, struggling to figure out which one to be loyal to, only to resolve that oneself is the only thing that is dependable and worth preserving.

Not to forget to mention how great we looked together -- wouldn’t we be a smash at a fancy cocktail function where ladies show their fine features under silk stockings of high-slit black velvet dresses?

But our dreams seemed to be littered by previously failed relationships, and I could tell that behind the liberal mind of “whatever comes comes” you had noticed your life was passing beyond the veil of denying your desires for home, children and family. Being with me meant forgoing that part of you that wanted more of that. But perhaps you saw this as an exciting experience that could be written about somewhere in trashy literature that would eventually pay a sweet price for saucy screenplay rights so you were willing for it to continue on for a little while longer.

It seems that the only glue that kept our lives intertwining for this long was our shared outlook that life is to be approached by laughing through the nose of false pretensions and belief systems made by others who take themselves too seriously.

As I look at you tonight, I see the moment I said “yes” to our first date and the glimpses of you that made me come back for more. I’d have to admit that the charming air of your successful stature certainly pulled me in. You permitted indulgences of fine wine snootery while boldly being yourself in bright blue-ribboned cowboy shirts.

But each of our meals over the last 6 months have been dotted with this flavour that has become blander and blander in the same way that a snort of cocaine loses its potency the more one becomes acquainted with it. Over time the surf ‘n’ turf dinners start being sprinkled with a poison that reeks of keeping everything on the surface of pleasure without delving into the juicy and sharp bones of each other.

Many early mornings I’d ride away from our ravenous evening, only to have to face the day with the mirror of hickeys lining up and down my neck. Turtlenecks in June don’t quite do the job for hiding double-life secrets from employers. And one can only call in sick so often before it becomes abnormally obvious.

I think the clincher, though, was that date we had when we went for Chinese food. When you pulled out the coupon of Buy One, Get One ½ Price. When you counted out perfectly $11.95 in change and you pushed the payment plate over to me to contribute my $4.95 plus tax and tip, even though you had $30 in your pocket, looking at me with that stare of “I won’t be taken advantage of by some woman.”

I wondered then if you treated all your dates before me this way, ungenerously withholding any opportunity that showed you could support them. I understood in that simple gesture the reason why all the women you met before me had left you. Not because you’re cheap and it’s really not because of the money. But because all you cared about was yourself and you weren’t willing to trust anybody.

This is why we are here tonight at this dinner. My invitation. So I can sit here and look at you and realize that you would not be there for me if I became ill. You would not take care of me if I showed my most vulnerable self and fell flat on my face. You would arrogantly look at me as someone who was weak and couldn’t get up. You would pass me by if I was somehow a failure in your eyes. You would forget me as soon as I didn’t win awards or rise to fame for show business.

Though you may feel confused and unsettled of how this could happen, of why another woman is dumping you, I just can’t find the words to actually say because I know you wouldn’t get it. How could I explain that I’m dumping you because of $4.95 without you saying I’m reading into it too much.

But it’s the one thing that draws the line to all the other times when you just showed you really didn’t care about me in the first place. I was all for your enjoyment. And as much as I tried to turn the topic to our feelings, you were a wizard at changing the subject to the intellectual parts of human history, showing me that you really had no interest in getting to know me.

I eat the last bit of the strawberry soufflé and put my spoon down gently on the side of the plate.

“We’re done.”

I push myself up off of the cushiony chair, place my cloth napkin on the table, get up and walk away, leaving you with the bill.

Stop She Says

This voice has been silenced
by betrayals and burnings
so subtle
it's become normal

belief systems that were
contorted to "fix me"
from speaking truths about actions
and wrongful intrusions

Greedy spirits
love to punish anything
that threatens to expose
its nastiness

uses any means necessary
to diminish her voice that says:
"Stop"

Stop excavating
Stop raping
Stop taking
Stop hitting
Stop manipulating
Stop yelling
Stop warping
Stop forcing
Stop intimidating
Stop killing
Stop groping
Stop attacking
Stop accusing
Stop talking
Stop demanding
Stop imprisoning

Start
Start listening
Start crying
Start stroking
Start apologizing
Start praying
Start giving
Start laughing
Start loving
Start playing
Start planting
Start liberating
Start supporting
Start caring
Start relaxing
Start trusting
Start truth-telling
Start tenderness
Start living

Life is Precious

In the dream
She gave me
her typical silent treatment

life's experiences informed her to
think before She speaks

how those silences used to kill my
need-to-know why and right now
young woman's curious and playful mind

Her knowing smirks
spread thickly like a Mother's superior intution
known all over the doormats of every home

then her voice echoes as if it yawned awake:
"all I ever wanted you to consider is that life is precious. It's as precious as a gem."

that's it.
10 years of silence.
and this is what she tells me.

I become enraged by these pearls of wisdom

All the stupid, misguided, wasteful energy sufferings
when all I had to consider was:
"life is precious. As precious as a gem."

i wouldn't have done this or that
said this or that
or slept with this or that.

this is the beginning of the truly holy life.
no matter how humiliating it has been to get here.

I'll be damned to find out what she says to me in 10 years' time.

Perhaps: "Eating broccoli" will be a profound teaching
when my stomach is beyond capable of digestion.

But her echoing wisdom is from a woman
who has been desperately trying to get through to me.

It's me who couldn't listen.