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Traditions that Misbehave - Part 1


By working through the emotions caused by the current divisions in this country and the disdain for our president, I am given the blessing of addressing my judgment, anger, and distress over the president's policies.  All peoples, cultures, all heritages misbehave.  I see an opportunity to  recognize how our heritages flourish.  The aspect of my life that I have not spent much time writing about is the collaboration of cultures.  The joy I get from learning and integrating my traditions with other's.  Nationalism and tribalism distract me from celebrating the enrichment that I get to see daily.
Nationalists seem to thrive on comparison, championing, and disenfranchisement.  The whole psychology of the American policy appears to be using some idealized Christian morality to disguise a contradictory attitude towards other nation's resources and their peoples.  The interesting aspect of morality is the convenience that American corporations have designed into rules, governing, and terms by which they are asked to behave.  The idealistic or romantic idea of America is the hard working, early bird, enduring hardship through their faithful work ethic, getting beat down by bureaucracies, and coming out on top.  They tend to leave out the more typical foot in the door, good ole boy, scratch my back and I'll scratch yours, pay to play, big fish eat little fish, resulting in near monopolistic and oligarchical markets.  The later is never considered a misbehavior.  Its often labeled good business, the nature of the beast.  This is what privilege might look like.  And America might be some blend of the ideal and the real.
Where it gets complicated for me is the introduction of policies that seem to accentuate the ethnocentric beliefs.  What seems unfair on my part is the categorization of America's founders and their descendants into an Anglo category.  At some point in history Europeans were griping and slicing the abuse of comforts and preferences of a privileged class.  The early European-American migrant tribes were not homogeneous but segregated by traditions, even divided by their preferred understanding of Jesus Christ.  What united them was not their morality but their cooperation and communal harmony.  This same social interdependence served to protect their foreign lifestyle.  They were foreign, vulnerably leaning into indigenous and other foreigners, migrating to be liberated, before their descendants grew to be possessive and colonial.
I now understand how this scenario is playing out in my life. I am the hypocritical, possibly better labeled perplexing, American, the colonized colonizer, and more proximal the assimilating.
The statements that come from this man, inspire me to accept how other people who share his mindset likely see me, despite not being illegal, Mexican, or from a foreign country.  I am New Mexican and I inherit aspects of a few different mindsets, traditions, and culture.  I look brown, rarely Anglo, and surely at times suspect.  Yet I am from a culture that he likely categorizes as Mexican or at least doesn't have the interest in exploring the nuances, compounded by the prejudicial rhetoric.  This feels like an injustice.  I can finally resolve that it hurts to the point of sadness.

I am not a foreigner in my region, the people who resemble me are often seen as misbehaving, and a large enough portion of Anglo Americans aren't interested in who or how we are unique.  I'm visiting these perceptions of me and mi barrios.  I wonder how often enough Anglo take the time to understand the subtle differences between their own heritages, foreign qualities, and misbehavior.  I am curious about how much the American perplexity for being nationally secure is a way to protect their privilege and ability to live by their own value systems, faith, and mindsets.  How much of the desire for security is actually hiding prejudice?  How this man speaks about people who are not from his traditions helps me to practice the patience that my traditions require of me.

I remember how passionate and reactive I used to be around racial discussions.  I no longer recognize these topics as racial but as prejudicial, preferential, or tribal.  I see my Anglo brethren as evolving through their legacies and human experiences.  I still believe that many people still respond and function with the concept of race being differentiating and hierarchical.  I celebrate that I no longer feel motivated by this foolish facade.  So as I start to see other traditions begin or continue to misbehave, I am called to galvanize and calibrate my own wisdom about how to be well behaved in my traditions.


July Joy

I'm writing after a small layoff.  Over a year has past since I lost a close a friend, my loyal buddy Duke, and most hurtfully my grandmother.  I write in a political climate that is roaring with white privilege, saturated with bigotry, and the gradual wear and tear of prejudice.  This all seems like dilemmas I would have passionately bit into.  I no longer feel this social angst.  Not to say I am pain free, and to surely declare that I am filling with joy.  I'm writing with a full heart.

I am writing rejuvenated.  As life appears to be entering its second half for me, I recognize that pain is not an absolute enemy.  I am painful in this moment and still joyful, as if mastering some form of emotional active recovery, still emoting intensely yet at a pace, a tempo that allows for deep inhales of joy.  I look forward to the new ways life will invite me to grown through pain.  I also know paradoxically I need to learn to celebrate with the momentum of joy.

Where life seemed to be like an uphill climb, I'm now learning to keep my self from spilling over too, as the joyful bursts of painlessness bring an exciting pace that pulls me downhill, times feeling out of control.  Since pain is constant, yet its intensity variable, I describe myself as pain-ing, and suffer-ing.  This is a choice that seemed like the only option for an impressionable man navigating a divorce, single parenting, broken hearts, and emotional immaturity.  With that choice is another choice and those are not the only options because I feel capable of joy-ing, celebrate-ing, and navigating foreign plans.  I miss you "my grandma".  Duke, you'd likely snap at our new little guy Mikko.  He listens like you.

Did wanting to leave mean you wanted to be forgotten

Tomorrow marks a year that a close friend left his human experience and is now onto his next one.  He left too soon...for me.  He was dark and twisted, wrapped up in an understanding that was joyful.  He was the most loving angry friend I've ever experienced.  He drank too much, and on purpose.  He drank to forget, he might have drank to be able to remember, and he surely drank to die.  I tried to be there for him at every turn.  I failed him as his cries for help, in the form of cynicism and helplessness, repulsed me in a way that kept me from sharing in his pain. 

I worked so hard to learn to heal, especially with empathy, compassion and interest.  In this loving friendship I failed.  I couldn't heal him.  I couldn't endure the pain that tortured him.  I hear his voice in my thoughts.  I hope to never understand the pain that kept him from fulfilling his role as a dad, a husband, and a friend.  I am writing selfish and raw because I miss him.

It would have been interesting to see him grow old.  And maybe he did, spiritually.  Learning to say goodbye is the horizon, but using hello is still happening too.  This is why we have to live with the idea that "Life is Hard"  Viviendo es duro! Loving is too.

La Margie


When it's over, I want to say all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
 
When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
 
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.
 
I don't want to end up simply having visited this world

Mary Oliver
When Death Comes

Oh Margie!  Oh my grandma.  You said hello so lovingly, it makes saying goodbye impossible.  I don't know how to capture you perfectly, especially in words. It's also impossible.  I speak as if you're still listening.  I hope you are.  I trust you are.  I have faith you are.  I want to say how much you meant to us, but words can't capture that.  There is nothing I can say that can bring to life the way you'd inspire me to do the right thing. 

I can talk about how you put so much effort into each meal, each corrido, or each story you told. I can't speak enough about how you never let much go to waste, the last spoonful of beans, a corner piece of tortilla, a left handed glove who lost its right hand partner, "gett-a-hots" commodity rice, and the list could extend for hours.  It seems surface to share how principled you'd be like returning every missed call,, creasing your sheets just right, ironing handkerchiefs,  and every household chore perfected.  I can say you spoiled me!  Especially with care and convenience, but it doesn't do your ability to care justice because if we look deep enough you were a Nobel prize winning abuelita, if they had a category for Mothering, you be running away with it.  If they had a Pulitzer for Care, it would be yours.  I feel like you spoiled me, and when I look at how you loved the recipe is that you spoiled all of us. 

You taught me about life without a single lecture, and never asked for anything but for me to be safe...and you did always ask me to clean my room.

I want to describe how you made such a difference in my life, but there isn't a way to paint how your presence could be so comforting. I can only share how you created a home where we all could fall asleep anywhere.  You shared your life in way that was profound with goodwill.  You gave us all a chance to feel loved, cherished, and teased us all into believing we were each your favorite.  You were our biggest fan. 

I praise the life you lived, and I know the only way to genuinely do that is to practice being your best parts, every day. 

You said good bye so slowly.  It still hurts today.  As strong as I feel I can be, remembering you, causes me to fold into tears, like I did when I couldn't sleep over.  Tonight I'm yearning to be in my makeshift bed, at foot of your's, watching grandpa take a knee to pray.  He misses you!  And I do too!

Que Lastima

Valerio 

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