Donde Frijole

 Part I

A polished soul.   I cherish how my grandpa aged.  Describing who he became, can only come with the fortune of knowing who he had been, accompanied by the nostalgia of how he saw himself through his many shared memories.    Remembering is somber, and it feels important to push through painful emotions with urgency because of a fear that the vividness of his memory will fade.  A part of me dies with him now gone. A part of me fights to keep him alive.  I feel the burden of carrying some tradition baring down on me, despite nothing really changing for me.  Getting to know my grandpa's love came with knowing of the painful lessons teaching me to let him go.  The love built up for him and from him was layered with every shared responsibility.  My grandpa worked.  If I wanted to spend time with him it was going to be more often working.  This is how I'll start.

Ricardo woke up  early for as long as I can remember.   His profession required that he was out the door early, far before I was awake.  And his bed covers were pulled up, no sign of him leaving anything messy.  I felt this was an important aspect of what manhood meant.   My grandpa began and ended his day with prayer. Kneeling in his tighty whities, his cotton briefs and white ribbed tank, he prayed in front of his night stand, head bowed. This is as vulnerable as I'd ever remember him.

I rarely saw him leave. As he drove by his childhood home in his truck, column shift changing gears, growling engine slowly warming up, I wonder what thoughts scrolled through his head.  My grandpa's truck was an iconic black 69' Chevy, decorated with wood patterned side trim, and a custom lumber rack. He drove by his mother's house on his commute out into the city and on his return. I have to believe this would make him smile. 

He left his body, lying on an emergency room's bed. His shirt was cut open, his chest red with signs of freshly reddened bruising from the fight his life, the damage left from intense chest compressions. His pants also unbuckled, and stomach bloated, visibily out of sorts, abnormally round. He appeared unconscious with a tube lodged in his mouth. This would be the worst and last I'd ever see him. This commute everything was left messy,  unlike I'd known him to be, and only because this goodbye was out of his control. I buckled up his pants.  I pulled up his sheets.  I put my left hand on his, the other on the crown of his head, and kissed his warm forehead.  I bowed my head and prayed. His work was done.

Richa was called home, November 9 th, freed from his body on a beautiful blue sky day. He was surrounded by loved ones and highly likely greeted in the cosmos by loved ones. And like his black work boots were polished and shiny,  his soul, in my eyes, was polished too. 

Part II

Aging justice

    The ego is a shadow that doesn't have to worry about the social stigma that comes with having white hairs.  Maybe a silhouette of what we think we need to be without the tired eyes.  I walk around looking through eyes that aren't aware of how I appear to others.  I walk around less tuned into what my ego is telling me.  I am curious about this found peace of mind, confidence, or obliviousness.  The idea that I am growing old, invites me to look at what ego means in this stage of my life.  

How does the ego participate in a vulnerable man's heart?  I hope it might be just a piece of me that gets comforted, a restlessness in my head less stirred by all the things I am disappointed by, but definitely the healing of bullied part of my psyche.  A self bullying.  The humility of a greying beard matching a blurring eyesight, feeding a denial lurking around highlighting all of my limits, tiring my sense of self.  Aging is a small reminder of this itchy friend.  The ego, the construct, the psychological scapegoat, steering my selfishness no longer seems ageless.  I might be a little sad about not needing my ego as much as my ego thought it was helping me.  I might even acknowledge or celebrate how it steered me in a direction that allows me to see it as a friend.

    As a young boy, my look in the mirror was a dazzling narcissism with a biting criticism.  As an adolescent the look in the mirror was an exercise in conforming with a confused sense belonging so that I might be satisfying to my elders and leaders.  I might now be an elder.  What also grew in my adolescence was a hope to be desired.  Desired, slightly different from satisfying, I realized that I wanted to stand out in order to be seen, especially by girls, possibly authorities.  My ego is how I describe the boy in the mirror.  Those moments when I look in the mirror and strategize as if there was something I could tweak to be perceived in a profound way.  The ego has been a tool for shaping a self image, cultivating a vanity.  I feel as if I needed to see my reflection to fix the flaws, hoping the adjustments would lead to profits of affection.  

I think my ego, mad at my body for so long, has now tired from the acceptance that humility has afforded me.  I see how time is replacing the angst that my ego once tickled.  The idea of being on the second half of a life's journey removes the need for an ego and emphasizes the hope for legacy.  A legacy seems far different from what the ego steered to. And yet it might have been the recklessness I needed to propel me into adventures that molded me.  My ego is digging through my dreams, hoping to find a place to relocate.  The true self doesn't have to look in the mirror often, a
nd my ego gets a jolt when I do.  A sadness and a madness because this is how glamour dies.          

False summitting is still summitting

 I am sitting on the cement foundation of a ski lift at the top of a false summit in the Santa Fe National Forest.  At the top of the Santa Fe ski basin's Quad chairlift.  Following the tree-line of a beginner run, I have just skinned up my first trek.  It is cold and daybreak, the grey blue filter that slowly unveils the rolling foothills .  This is my first summit on skis.  Skinning is new to me, the act of hiking up hill on skis sleeved with a cloth bottom to eliminate the slick surface.  I had envisioned myself in this adventure called skinning so many times while snow shoeing.  As my interest in being in the wilderness has evolved, so has my interest in accessing the wilderness in any season and in most conditions.  This new skill allows me to get around quicker and with less effort.  Sitting catching my breathe and oddly trying to cool down despite it being in the single digits, I find it still takes plenty of effort.  I am alone on a summit knowing the highest point is still another 45 minutes up.  I am stopping at a false summit.  Something my ego is itching with, ready to reject, and can't hold the idea of not continuing on up. 

    A false summit is the dreaded point on a mountain climb when you feel tired enough to desire that the destination has to be at the top of the upcoming peak, because your legs are telling you it should be.  The lack of anything behind the silhouette of the current horizon gives you that sense of relief that the work is nearly over.  Then as the distance closes, you find as you reach this point there is still so much more mountain to climb.  The false summit today reminds me of the importance of celebrating the journey just as much as I appreciate a true summit.  

    So I like skinning.  Skinning is another way to get into the wild when the weather conditions are truly wild.  I am absorbing that the perspectives I apply in my life are equally a moment in a journey.  Not everything is gonna a climb.  Today it is a false summit, turned destination, and tomorrow it may be a long fall down.  Having the skills to tussle with the paradox while feeling perplexing emotions is the journey.  Being both and is the humanity.  The the memory is the judgment.  And how I choose to implement the experience as a perception, is a skill.  So I continue on my journey.
  

NYC - A capitalist's Mecca

 New York is one of the worlds many union stations transferring money boarding transaction trains destined to finance some believed form of human progress, often creating a sense of American prosperity.  New York is the honey pot people can smell or envision from miles away. The NYC might be the Capitalist's Mecca.  The draw isn't limited to money, prosperity in any elite form might describe its appeal.  I have yet to hear, "I dream of visiting New York to feel the insignificance, view the disparity, and smell the consumption".  If you are an elite then you have some higher level presence in NYC.  There is an allure to New York City that reflects the American angst.  The ambition that seems to have an origin story sprouted in the 1600s through the spread of European immigrant commerce, later to make way for European migrants and refugees. The mercantile trade has been replaced by new modern goods to sell.  The digital age has overshadowed the industrial.  The gentrification still seems the same.  A consequence often ignored in favor of basking in the apparent prestige of luxury, despite the human cost to its inflicted.  

The Dutch called it a New something, the English called it a New York, and every generation since has added their form of New to their perception of it.  A part of me wished the Dutch would have called it shared something, and the English might have followed with Shared York.  Then today we wouldn't have the mentality of turnover and gentrification.  Would immigrants still be drawn to a Shared York.  Would there be such strong desire for individuals to separate themselves from the typical or mundane.  Would there be this illusion of certain types of hard work as inferior to innovation. The melanin rich types of hard work never lead to empires, yet empires are ultimately constructed more often than not by melanin rich laborers.  There is this magical preference for tycoons who have mastered the art of letting their money do the hard work.  These families then carry on a privilege that gets a superior distinction.  It looks a lot like a reasonable competitive advantage, yet they also get to call it earned.  Would we still believe in the lie that some earned a superior lifestyle because of some hard earned path if we measured effort in calories.  

Using a unit of measure that isn't so disenfranchising like currency might make it hard to score hard work in such lopsided ways.  I think we realize that the ownership of many innovations are ignoring much of the collective efforts that establishes the conditions necessary for these break throughs.  I see that New Yorkers along with most American's tend to ignore the sharedness of foundational human technologies galvanized by all peoples.  Ownership of technologies is the new monarchy.  The corporation is quickly becoming the new heritage.  The exploitation of these technologies has become what capitalists like to overlook when advertising to the world their exceptionalism.