Selfish

Selfishness has served its purpose in my life, enduring to this day. It is said by some that selfishness can be healthy. I don't know how to gauge or measure my levels of selfishness. I am finding it hard to know how my selfishness is received by others. As long as my selfishness is serving me I rarely take into consideration how it is effecting others. How can I better listen for evidence or symptoms of unhealthy selfishness? 

I think the only assessment tools that I have to work with right now are my emotions. Right now I can only sit with my guilt, regrets, and confusion. There is a grip (a lot) of meaningful emotions in these. I also bring my hopes into my consciousness. My hopes put strain on my internal critic. My critic has no tolerance for hope, and it sort of creates a lactic acid to keep me from remaining to long in hope. After the fatigue of reality sets in, I am sore with discouragement. I think the economy linked to emotions is revealing how exploitative I am. Emotional economy, a concept in my mind where I broker the supply and demand of spiritual aspects of them for spiritual aspects of me.

In working through selfishness I recognize how reckless being selfish has allowed me to be. I have recently felt responsible for only my emotions, but in this moment I am softening to the idea that I am accountable to how I contribute to other's emotions. I think I am beginning to realize that desire also creeps in looking a lot like hope. I think I can watch for how people I admire value selfishness, and fake it until I make it.

Green Chile

I prefer red chile over my eggs
and potatoes for breakfast.
Red chile ristras decorate my door,
dry on my roof, and hang from eaves.
They lend open-air vegetable stands
historical grandeur, and gently swing
with an air of festive welcome.
I can hear them talking in the wind,
haggard, yellowing, crisp, rasping
tongues of old men, licking the breeze.

But grandmother loves green chile.
When I visit her,
she holds the green chile pepper
in her wrinkled hands.
Ah, voluptuous, masculine,
an air of authority and youth simmers
from its swan-neck stem, tapering to a flowery collar,
fermenting resinous spice.
A well-dressed gentleman at the door
my grandmother takes sensuously in her hand,
rubbing its firm glossed sides,
caressing the oily rubbery serpent,
with mouth -watering fulfillment,
fondling its curves with gentle fingers.
Its bearing magnificent and taut
as flanks of a tiger in mid-leap,
she thrusts her blade into
and cuts it open, with lust
on her hot mouth, sweating over the stove,
bandanna round her forehead,
mysterious passion on her face
as she serves me green chile con carne
between soft warm leaves of corn tortillas,
with beans and rice–her sacrifice
to here little prince.
I slurp form my plate
with last bit of tortilla, my mouth burns
and I hiss and drink a tall glass of cold water.

All over New Mexico, sunburned men and women
drive rickety trucks stuffed with gunny sacks
of green chile, from Belen, Beguita, Wllard, Estancia,
San Antonio y Socorro, from fields
to roadside stands, you see them roasting green chile
in screen-sided homemade barrels, and for a dollar a bag,
we relive this old, beautiful ritual again and again.

Jimmy Santiago Baca

Taking Medicine

Can sickness be desired? Is it wrong for me to deny or detour someone on the path of sickness? I am enjoying this concept of illness and wellness. I believe that the well have a formula for being well. I have begun to consider that well is a polarity that needs to be balanced with being ill. Is the formula for being ill just as worthy of praise as the formula for health. Does illness lead to death? A wise man in my circle of faith a long time ago said that a grain of wheat must fall and die for it to produce more seeds. I think I am needing to have more respect for illness that leads to death. Mystically, I think illness has something to say in this world, even potentially teach us. Is the medicine available to me a muzzle on illness' advocate. If I see illness as an intruder then I treat it with disdain, I am aspiring to see it as a messenger who ultimately wants to deliver good news. Even the worst of us wants to be heard.