Through the anger

Looking back at some angry times. I found that the music I relied on helped me to harden the attitude I learned and worked to keep.  It is so poetic and even more meaningful now.  The derived happiness I now cry about is a polar flip from the hatred that once inspired my greatness.  There is so much deep meaning in the sadness that inspires rage, ferocity, destruction, and violence.   If I have learned anything as a counselor in training it is to respect and attend to the screams and banging of indignation and be patient through the madness. If there was ever a theme or set of sounds I can surely recognize it in, it is this. There is a season for everything, it is winter, but I don't find myself lonely or angered. To the warming of my definition of true friend.  To those who might still be, it doesn't have to be the absolute!

"EEEEE the man!"

You can tell everybody!

Alison Quirk: Making a Difference

You gotta watch this to get an understanding for the person who has blessed my home.  Click the image above to watch!

Every Christmas I ask in an egotistical prayer on this blog for God to convert my heart into manger so that Christ might be born again.  My prayer was answered in the tallest way.  Literally on Christmas eve Emmanuel, meaning "God with us" in Hebrew, sent a text, can I stay with you?  Wow!  I couldn't have written a better Chicano Christmas Story.

I had recently spent most of the fall hoping for a shift in my life for the better.  I had reached a stale phase and was wanting a spark.  I got it.  I asked Emmanuel (Eman) if he ever gets sad.  He said in a deep loud strong tone, "Why!".  I asked, because your so far from family, his ex girl friend, or his father's death.  He said, yeah but he can't stay sad, he remembers how many people wish they could have the chance he has.  This was my shift. This was my prayer answered.

I have wasted so much time finding sadness, forgetting that there so much to be joyful about.  He wakes me up!  He fills my home.  He is the breathe of fresh air that gives a lift to my kite that when souring in the sky reads Joy!  He is teaching me how to set aside my sadness and trust that it can dissolve with joy without addressing it.  Absence is a new idea for me.  I am learning about ignoring.  As a counselor I feel obligated not to ignore sadness, but there is a balance between dealing with it and natural decomposition.  There has been a Joy in my home that I had forgotten how to see.  Emmanuel smiles and he takes my heart to happier place.

More recently I asked Eman how often his dad told him he loved him.  He laughed.  He told me that his dad never told him he loved him, he knew it.  He said American parents have to say it because they are so busy that it is hard for them to feel like their kids know they are loved.  He knew his dad loved him.  I asked him how do you say I love you in Nigerian.

When I went to Guate many admired me for what I was doing, but only those who have been understand that I was going to Guate selfishly to learn more about how to be human.  People tell me I am a good person for opening my home to those who need a place to get on their feet, but I know selfishly that these angels get me on my feet.  I recognize that I am finally loving myself, I am opening my heart to help.  Inna Sonku has become a gift I finally give myself.

I know a lot of people love me.  I can slowly start to stop saying I love you.  I can trust that ignoring the fact I never hear the words helps me look for how I feel them.  What landed in my manger on Christmas Eve was an eye site for how I am loved.  I have wanted people to know I love them because I worry that I haven't done enough to show them.

Inna Sonki (I love you!)

The Warrior's Doctor

Can you see there is a warrior struggling to remain healed.  It is obvious to any mystic that the battles fought through ancestors have payed dividends yielded by your constitution.  The battles you have in your future are nicely filed in a floppy worn folder labeled "none of your business".  

You have worn paths of grief and regret that your feet packed firm.  The paths are wearing wider and branching closer to your heart.  The cave that it runs through is losing its advantages.  The shortcut it created leaves the mystery of the forests calling you.

There is a healer in you.  It has philosophical discussions about savagery while the wreckless warrior is shackled by traumatic victims of wars past.  The healer says there will come a time when you'll need to work together.  The treatment given to you in doses of strength, just enough, and with just enough vitality to unchain your wildness one link at a time...Healed!

- Ron Estrada

Official Video (It doesn't "fit", but fit is judgment and fuck judging, that's a divine operation)

Eggusi Soup and Pounded Yamm

I have the fortunate opportunity to share some time with Emmanuel. He has become a close friend of our family. We know him through his friendship with my brother in law Phillip. He traveled here to play basketball. After a tremendous career with Tennessee, he transferred to New Mexico.

 Due to some medical concerns, he can no longer pursue his dream of playing in the NBA. That makes this time with him extra special. He has a wisdom I like to think is because of growing up humble and having to leave his family at the age of 15. He traveled across the globe to pursue a dream and a fulfill the hope his family had for prosperity in America. So I get to hear stories that are encouraging. We talk happiness, culture, and hope. He has an old soul, but the energy of a humgry and youthful 25 year old. He doesn't fit on my couch, the shower, the kitchen, or his bed but we are happy to have him living with us. So I was able to experience a good home cooked Nigerian meal.

I Rigoberta, Otra Vez

You took your tragedy and laid it on paper.  You first adapted to the suffering that felt deserved, maybe not deserved, maybe tradition.  You took your tradition that had evolved into tragedy, maybe not tragedy, maybe genocide.   You took your genocide and spoke about it as if it was confusing to your heart.  Your heart relayed the message to your soul.  From there your soul, which is tapped into the vast cosmos of greatness, sent a message for a translator.  The translator found you and now we have your glory to remind us that justice is a perspective but human dignity is truth.  I live with a heart that is opening, softening, and beating because of your trust in the truth that you and your communities deserve to be treated humanely.  I think about the courage you have, I wonder about the love you learned, and I wait for hope to take flight in more parts of this unfair life.  You are drop of uniqueness in an ocean of creativity.

Its not a New Year!

Just a progression from a collection of yesterdays.  Resolutions are like promises, you can only keep the ones you've already kept or in the middle of right now, most are egotistical.  Fuck that!  Lifestyle is the truest evidence of resolution.  Commerce sucks on the desires and aspirations that I have fell short on for the previous 365 days.  Like vampires, using a scheme called New Year's to promote change, to deceive or maybe motivate a defeated psyche into believe my money can buy commitment, tenacity, determination, consistency, community, or love.  Nah it's not even like that, if I couldn't do it eight hours ago, a Holiday wont be the panacea.  To live my vows is the only resolution I have. 

My vow is to investigate love with the kindness it deserves, to forgive when I fail, and to apply my successes fruitfully within and with others, always.

But, staying in true contradiction, I have learned so much from the "Old Year".  I learned so much about new fears and revisited those I never seem to overcome.  I have learned that my stories I have long created in my head are tragedies, the under dog, or struggles.  I have also minimized my talents and gifts.  I am openly self critical but hesitate to describe how creative I am.  I am quick to take responsibility, but get embarrassed to take credit.  I have self confidence, but at the same time my fear of arrogance has me by the cocos.  I am still growing.  I have slowly opened my mind, heart, and future to accepting the bountiful prosperity that "Hope" grows into.

I have slowly changed my lifestyle for nearly over a decade now.  The newly sprouting lifestyle, stretched into a vision of servanthood and vulnerability.  Only knowing and using my fighting attitude to do it, I tackled some meaningful puzzles.  Over time I have really embraced grief.  Grief can be addicting for it's healing qualities.  It can also be distracting to celebrating.  Being there for others and being honest is not a remedy to conflict.  It actually has helped understand that it can draw confrontation. Being honest is vulnerable but at the same time being misunderstood can turn it into a weapon.  My lifestyle has tilted away from the benefits of joy.  As I feel more settled into who I am, I feel authorized to reintroduce the charisma.

This year I confused myself with desiring happiness instead of opening up to joy, even to the point of exhaustion.  My gift the yesteryear was the superficial longing for happiness.  The hasty expectation for endearment.  I found that longing for happiness, caused me to disregard the intent needed to create genuine joy.  I discovered how being happy does not lead to having joy.  Is there a difference?  For me, yes.  Happiness is like an orgasim, where joy is the pleasure found in helping your lover through suffering.

This is a gift because it compliments my understanding of grief and anger.  In grief sadness leads to anger when neglected.  The same goes for celebration and happiness.  When I have a desire to celebrate and I neglect pleasure I settle for happiness.  But when I investigate my pleasure seeking, I am led to joy.  Sadness does not have to be absent in pleasure, but equally joy does not have to disappear in tragedy.  If either does then I have lost balance.  Everything has beauty and beauty is what leads to acceptance.  Happiness seems to be a product of fun, and I have seen fun as an artificial joy.  Happy is the sweet-n-low of emotions.

Happiness has speckled my radar, for what I think might be my intanglement with injustice.  As part of my education and through unresolved sadness I discovered the burdens of discrimination, misrepresentation, and propaganda.  frustration and anger was created in me and it didn't fit with the new lifestyle.  Dealing with this anger and judgment has been my latest venture.  It brought me down!  

I had forgotten about the gift of teamwork.  I have realized that even my personal pain might be a shared pain.  I spent the last year embracing all the ways I fear, accepting that my anger is really sadness that I can't have the world the way I want it.  I spent much of the the last 365 days reminding myself how I am not like that person, wishing I was more like that person, and wondering what they like so much about that person.  I am chipping away at each fear.  I am realizing I am sad and the sadness is exploited by my efficacy for creating doubt and fear in my constitution.  I have a new found appreciation for hope and who I am.  The friction between doubt and hope has created fuel, projecting me right into striving.  This year was a great reminder that I am just a man, but at the same time with genuineness I can be "the man".

This has been a special transition from a chronological measurement of 2013 to 2014.  I thank you for all you did to help me believe in myself and especially for those of you encouraged me to doubt.  You woke up my fight.  Thank you for all you did to help me put injustice into perspective and understand that I am not alone in my care for others.  Thank you for being apart of my team.  Grieving can be a joyful process, you helped me discover the paradox between being an advocate and needing restoration.

Wishing you a future year that is heartfelt!