How to deal with the Hispanic causing panic? Being New Mexican usually affords you a dog in the fight about how Spanish one is. This post is not about the measurable traits to help with this argument. This post is about my understanding of how the Mexican descendants in the borderlands, the North American Southwest, demonstrate heritage acrobatics to draw a phantom line between an Anglo heritage and a Mestizo heritage. The idea of identity itself is phantom and only a frame of mind. The two words Spanish and Mexican qualitatively not only divide a mindset, but these contrasting signifiers ripple through in Nuevo Mexico’s politics, prejudices, and myths.
Most Hispanics aren’t white supremacist. White supremacist in this context is the belief that Anglo-euro white persons are superior to all other heritages, often using race as a criteria for this belief. This post is also not about breaking down the semantics for what can be seen as white supremacy. I use this as a basis for describing a cultural divide amongst Mexican descendants in the borderlands. The fallout of the Treaty of Hidalgo, was a promise through a “sporked” tongue. This is the type promise where the agreements were implemented with the bigotry and system rigidity that ensure quick unraveling of any promises, and with an invisibility that left Mexicanos screaming with no one to hear. The agreement was implemented in a way that provided loopholes, negations, and forfeitures in a manner that skirted the line of evil, while blowing past dignified. This was a colonial carry over from imperial tactics, but mainly just dirty.
This is where the Mexicano people likely consummated the Corsican relationship between Chicano and Hispanic. It served the newly acquired “American Citizens” a naturalized chance at running the prosperity obstacle course to retain their land, rights, and dignity. Many of these land owning Mexican descendants saw the landscape of this obstacle course. They learned from watching squaters, false claims, vigilante justice, and susceptibility to unchecked white crime. They learned how important it was to claim “White” as a piece of safety equipment. New Mexicans found themselves at the mercy of the American’s appetite for all things profitable.
The paradox here is the wealthy newly naturalized American citizens likely used similar tactics in their past to acquire their capital during the conquest. So the capitalist encounters a more vindictive capitalist and we have two bullies finding new ways to keep their power. The Mexican with much more to lose transforms themselves from Mexicano into something distinguished, Hispanic. The New Mexican northern Mexican villager who somehow had a direct flight from Santa Fe or Albuquerque to Spain. One of the very first Southwest Airlines “gotta get away” deals. Joking aside, elite Nuevomexicanos among other politically motivated people used their Spanish lineage as a litigation tool.
Nearly 200 hundred years later we have people who hold tightly this same Spanish purity myth.
As I recognize my life’s tank dial, move closer and seemingly faster than ever towards empty, I accept how pain and love complement themselves more than ever. I love that I feel pain free and simultaneously respect how pain filled life has to be. My youthful self mildly glamorized a pain filled self perception and romanticized some struggles. I romanticized my story stirring up pain, replaying thoughts of hardship. I think through the years I have learned to value the reflective strategies that help me assess my pain; translate my pain versus indulging. My Catholic faith with its many flaws, provides me with tools that help me understand when and if my pain is phantom or real. Both my romanticized manifested pain and real wounds are impactful.
The phantom pain lead to the stirring up of anger pangs, and the real pains hurt so bad I am led to anguish reminding me they still needing healing. I also get to taste the pain, regardless of its ontology, and can better determine if the pains are necessary or in vain. The strategy I feel most essential to my encounters with pain is embracing paradox. My capacity to scan for paradox is a tactic my Catholic faith instilled in me. It is literally a believe system of contradictions where holding a concept made of competing truths is fundamental. In the context of pain, it is the movement to find a balance between fear and trust. I have to hold the avoidance of pain with the absolute inevitability of pain, like a person who has to breathe in while going under water, building up a panicked eagerness to breathe out. The paradox isn’t the breathing, the paradox is the desire to be where we don’t naturally belong to get a taste the forbidden, at the risk of drowning; we find a way to have both. There are tiny opposites in every paradox creating small revolutions of meaning. At the same time there is a consequential tranquility laying down a stillness. The struggle and or the dance to seek out this idiosyncratic balance is what I call a Chicano style. Finding a personal balance between two competing intrapersonal truths and offering that awareness as a contribution to the everyday interpersonal existence, a Chicano Style. Most healthy cultures have a similar system.
I think there is something revealing about the mestizo attitude that encourages gravitation towards pain. My pride in a Nuevomexicano (Mexican-American) heritage gives me the bedrock to let my pain filled experiences flow right into a humility that my elders prepared me for. Hard work is the place where pain goes to be planted, beads of sweat cool the tempers, releasing tears dripped from the grief, hydrating my seeds of passion. Seeds of passion that were fanatic in my childhood and adolescence. Seeds of passion that were economic and political in my early adulthood. Maybe the social justice curiosity is how I have learned to deal with my pain. Social injustice is the way for my pain to be externalized. How I approach the externalized is how I feel I will heal the internal. If I let the greedy American infuriate me with their disregard for my heritage or perceived dignities then I cannot learn about the defenses of those material imbalances of land, water, money, laws, comforts, rights, or culture. This is where my faith guides me into paradox. The greedy American is in pain, and maybe more pain than me. Their insatiability is the strategy they’ve learned to rely on to ease their pain. I have that same insatiability in me. The paradox is seeing myself as a greedy Chicano, while also defending myself from the toxicity of the greedy American. My peace of mind has to be found through the hard fight of treating my inner insatiable and building up a harmonious internal sense of enough. Then bring this feature to existence in the form of a Chicano ofrenda to my immediate world.
I understand that my romance with pain, gave me the emotional state to write interestingly, at least to me. And at least it felt more interesting as I revisit it. Now I just feel the paradox. The fire that pain once lit, is now more of an irritating burn. I have found joy in the mediocre. I can’t write like I used to. I often feel like my thought process is analogous to a cows digestive system. I chew the same topics, swallow, digest, absorb, regurgitate, and bite a few more blades of tragedy. It doesn’t feel as poetic and color filled as it once did, when I was closer to my pain. I think that balance is easier to choose than preference. My emotions aren’t as contrasting, making it harder to find the momentum to write. With acceptance comes comfort. I haven’t learned to write from comfort.
I wonder if this is a type liminal space that might help with saying goodbye to this world. Does balance fit with acceptance? Is acceptance an illusion that is really just expressing the condition of being option-less. I once relied so much on my grandparents. I relied so much on mothering from, of course Mom, and fortunately my Aunts. I felt such hurt from the lost or missed time with an attentive father. And yet I had the attention of loving people, I found perspectives that highlighted my pain and that I nestled up to. My pain was a fuel for my movement, pain was my rhythm.
I am losing my family and friends. I think this would bring on a sadness that I think I would channel into these perceptions to propagate the same outlets. I’m not sad in the same ways. I am a sad that feels as if it skipped straight to acceptance. I am curious about my comfort with solitude. What is it about balance that allows for an apparent comfort for being alone. My life still feels meaningful but equally it is definitely feeling less certain. I still want to live.
I am guilty of the action and prefer to think of it safeguarded sabotage. I might blow up relationships, more like stress the durability, and likely exercise my reactivity with protagonism in order to reveal the depth of love that truly exists within them. And for clarity relationships in this context are not limited to the romantic flavor. I can’t say that it is test. I can’t say there is any type of thoughtfulness in it. I think it is a modality for emotional protection, and when reckless just a coping strategy. I do this because so many relationships in my life have softly pinched me, bitten me, and socked me. I am sure I have done the same.
Because my safety is found in solace, I think the push is to restore some form of stability to organize my emotions. I retreat. My comfortable distance with gregariousness is kept by the angst from not knowing when my protagonism is not seen as agonism. As I become intimate I am lured into vulnerability and this is where my first defense has been to sabotage for safety, like a tunnel rat might scan booby traps. I blow that shit up. Sometimes it is intentional, more often it just feels like I got entangled.
Experiencing this resistance to the vulnerability and safeguard from deep connection might be our love limit. I want to explore this vulnerability as a spectrum for progress. I find popular enjoyment in using the term push-pull. And isn't this nature or expected. Life is polarities dancing, generating a chaos that tends to result in creativity, consumption, or contribution. It isn't dysfunctional and even better recognized as a natural way of being in or struggling for balance. I have practiced curiosity when I grow aware of these tensions, and this has been a helpful tool for adding focus to the push-pull. This helps me to formulate messages to create healing "space" in and through the back and forth. Space here is defined as a platform for confronting the barriers to a harmonious self concept or inertia to disconcerting for togetherness.
In this next little series I hope to describe my struggle to hold the Chicano identity, while framing my struggle in the above described psychology of safeguarded sabotage. I am going to describe the dysfunction I experienced growing to be American while being seen as something embedded. I'll share my reflections on the symptoms of ignorance and neglect that come from the people, the humans, that label themselves Loving.
There is fable out there that most less fortunate communities use to describe "making it out". I am describing this story we teach each other in the streets, the story reinforcing the analogy seen with crabs in a bucket. I get to write my own version. Who taught you that you are in a bucket?
When I look at who my grandparents were, and for a few remaining, are, I realize the analogy should reflect how who they are coming out of their 1930's-ish New Mexican and South Texas cultures is respectable. I can picture how the bucket came to us. The industrial revolution, came radioactively. The bucket arrived infected with Tuberculosis. The crabs came from the American East bringing this mentality of caste. I think the crabs that escaped their mediocrity bucket, felt a strong need replicate their bucket mentality here.
Now we are being labeled as subversive because many of still aren't fully on board with this form of capitalistic or individualistic mindset. They often call us communist because it is a lazy way of dismissing how important our faith requires us to be communal. The bucket is so much more like a container we were seduced to see ourselves in. It makes me think, one consequence of the great American expansion was to persuade our modest ways of sustenance to be undesirable, and how it ought to transition into a more ambitious competition for prosperity. Did we get pulled into a bucket?
The atomic weapon brought America to New Mexico. And New Mexico's high desert air seduced the Tuberculosis refugee. The same Spanish individualism thought that this part of world now know as New Mexico was gold garden. I am learning and seeing through a different lens that informs me of how fortunate I am to be nestled in this liminal place where we are boring enough to not be desirable, perceived to be inadequate enough to be overlooked, and yet still not subservient enough to be accepted. As a consequence to this fable we rebel by sabotaging ourselves with delinquencies.
I learned in my late 20's that race was a construct and not a biological marker. This expanded my perplexed attitude towards my perception of dominant cultures and my own identifications. I have to admit that it created a disappointment in me that inspired many life changing principles. A hatred for my own contributions to the systematic bigotries. The changes were disorienting. I had new information that highlighted how I didn't belong to a race, how I have privilege despite having embraced a victim's mentality for so long, and how I learned how tainted my origin story is.
I was socially indoctrinated to function believing that somehow I was socially ordered into an ethnic layer tied to the color of my skin. And I had around 3 unspoken layers beneath me, a few complex layers around me and one championship layer above me. And this system of layers was more about human capital than it was ever about superiority. I now find it impossible to participate in life the same way knowing these layers are dysfunctional.
Today it seems like the world is coming to these same realization or maybe resistance to seeing it change. Seems like these layers are being stirred by the complexities of our nations shortcuts, abuses, rule breaking, rule bending, and for sure rule escaping. The Black Lives Matter movement, the Boogaloo movement, the Federalist Society, ANTIFA, Blue Lives Matter and the QAnon folks are all adjusting to the lower layers being informed and the new voices demanding participation where their views historically could be ignored when rule making. We may not have equality but that is not suppressing assertion.
I am as aware as ever of the emotions I still have when thinking about where I land in the eyes of my fellow citizens. I find it challenging and hard to know that I have this information and the systems or eco-systems I live in are still functioning on the legacy caste like mentalities. I find the pain that creates anger in me isn't as overwhelming. I can still feel the injustice while also celebrating the change. I still feel discriminated and I smile when I can't recognize if it is bigotry or because of me .
At times I think some dominant cultures conceal their bigotry far easier now that we have a more ambiguous linguistics for prejudice. I see the opportunities where I might have written off barriers to entry as racist, where earlier in my life I would have felt it wasn't my shortcomings but theirs. I now take more responsibility for making it harder for the systems to exclude me, sometimes by assertion, more often by trusting the process, and when I fall short I let it motivate me to find a different route. The system is going to make space, but not until I let it know I want it to make room.
I am not as surprised or devastated when the Anglo world sees me through fear oriented lenses. I accept the sadness that my culture has such delinquent parts. I still get frustrated with how it seems at times I am catching up to all the other layers of people, whether it be in knowledge, lifestyle, or effectiveness. I am grieving the ways I am not sufficient and can't close the gaps. I seem to be between layers. And I am grateful for the anger and tension because it might mean I am not the only one who has to begin the process of revisiting this looming concept called Race and how it has antagonized the darkest parts of our character.
I am proud of my Chicano heritage, my Spanish origins, Mexican adaptation, and New Mexican simplicity. I am a complicated member of a brave experiment that at times didn't want to include me, found a way to, and is now providing a way to contribute that is safer than other peoples around the world can. I will slowly eliminate my regard for race or speak to the invalidity of Race as a human trait. I will continue to let it draw out emotions working to orient them in way that helps me be more Christ-like and a spreader of dignity
. All of this while hoping that I might create safety that rarely creates danger for the other layers.
I have found a newer sense of love. My role as a father is shrinking, shifting, and at the same time I know it will never go away or the concern lessen. And even on the other spectrum of love I find romance also feels more fluid. I find myself having to spend less and less time with the loves that seem to linger. It is more like cherishing what remains of those experiences,despite knowing I can't touch them today. Hopefully, I'm cherishing these apparent memories, tattooed, and hopefully not scarred. I am appreciative of this reminiscence because it reinforces that when you fully understand loves nature, love tells us that it isn't lost or gone. Lost lovers are actually gone, friends can leave, people can die, but the love they shared with me is still embedded in my psychology. Relationships die, perplexingly leaving me without a cadaver to mourn. We as a culture tend to focus on what is lost mistaking those things for love itself. What a disservice to think love can die. Love is! Love is not the plane dusting a blank blue sky. Love is the chemical reaction waiting, preparing, combusting, cooling, dissipating, and redistributing all the molecules in way that they can love again. My little snow globe has chemtrails and they very well can be vapor too.
The start of October in Albuquerque means hot air balloons
will sprinkle the sky.Today, is like many of the traditional mornings, except for a few things.This year happened to be a cooperative year
for balloon lift offs.The conditions
for a balloon to leave the ground are finicky.In recent years it has been a sarcastic taunting by Mother Nature,
timing her winds and rain, to leave the masses guessing. And this year the rains came, cooperatively, leaving
the ideal windows for plumes of released balloons.Likewise this year was different for my
heart.
Like a hot air balloon being un-packaged, my hope for
cultivating or reviving the Chicanismo that nurtures the creativity in
Albuquerque, in New Mexico, appears to be unfolding in my life.My sky, my winds, my rains, and my ideas are
also ready to be primed for ascension.My soul, mi Alma, might be ready, like the sky, to have all these ideas
ascend and drift across its jet streams.This morning I could feel the lower temperature as the sun rose.
I felt the brisk air as I pulled back the covers.I could hear the click of the heater’s blower
turn on and the rustling of the air forcing its way through the duct work, pushing
out the aroma of burning.With my mind
focusing on anxiety, like the rolled and folded ideas being pulled of a cargo bag.I find it in me to methodically unravel and
stretch the angst.The colder air in my
home adds to the experience occurring in my mind.
A colder air helps a good mass ascension.My passion’s spark, heats up my inner furnace
and blows encouragement into my ideas.The
contrast between the trapped heated air and the frigid sky, creates the
phenomenon of flotation.A delicate
dance between the cold void of injustice and the hot passion filled canvas
dreams. That hot air is like the
Chicanismo spirit being driven against the canvas skin of my ideas and the synchronicity
is what I call my dreams.
The luminarias, more commonly known as faralitos to other New Mexicans, begin to take shape, lining up next to the wheel barrow filled with dirt. Usually two scoops of dirt from an old soda cup will do the job. The bag creased and filled with dirt is ready to find its home along the sidewalk, maybe the drive way, there is also the chance it lands around a tree. It has been my grandpas job for as long as I remember to place the stick between each bag to make sure it fits.
I don't call my grandpa, abuelito or my grandma, abuelita. I call them grandpa and grandma. What a thought to have so close to Christmas. Regardless they are a lot like my parents. I don't call faralitos, faralitos. I call them luminarias, but they both mean the same thing to my Christmas tradition.
The Navidad, reminds chicanos of the luminaria. Not the ethnic Chicano but the cultural Chicano. Not the brown skinned Chicano but the kind hearted. The humble symbolic lantern of light in a dark night. Isn't our life a beacon of hope for one another. Isn't it true that we are lanterns and disorient-able at the same time. I have a small burning candle in my heart. Its sheltered in my core. I am the brown paper bag. It's nestled in a bed of dirt. It lights the idea of home.
I trust the dim little amber yellow glow will be enough to guide my thoughts home. Home has become a journey, the journey. Not so much a place. The destination is no longer the priority because home is a condition more than it is a location. Not a destination that can be marked on a map, but experiences that splash the memories of those who share this life. Experiences, dusting the cosmos like a thin white jet stream left by a plane. A jet that once had a destination but now understands that its duty is to simply keep flying.
No, not like a jet stream. A little less straight, maybe more like the wake from a catamaran on a turquiose sheet of water. A catamaran leaving a carefree and curving essence of existence, gradually extending diagonaly left and right until both vectors seems to disappear. They never disappear though, it dissipates. Unless it finds an object to cause a rebound.
No, not like the wake from catamaran. A little less luxurious, maybe more like the tracks from a lonely snowshoer. A pair of snowshoes breaking through a white sparkly brilliance. Two shoes belonging to one person, crunching along, leaving a rhythm of evidence and disruption for as long as the temperature will allow. An essence that is completely dependent on the weather. My flame leaves experiences like snowshoes from a snowshoer with a pulsing flicker.
But not really like a snowshoer's tracks. Not as cold and surely an existence not so lonely. Maybe, an existence like a poem, always holding at the core the genetic and karmic nature of its author. Sometimes expressing the hurts, joys, and indifferences that reacted with other poets ideas about existing. And maybe like the hustle, shuffle, and buzz of a coffee house that lures poets. A congregation of poets, some who call themselves poets, others who are by mere intrinsic creativity considered poets. A collection of experiences like poets writing in a coffee house, my flame dances with energy.
The flame that I see in my heart is as determined as a jet stream streaking furiously through an empty atmosphere. The flame is as nonchalant as a catamaran in Caribbean sea. The flame fighting to glow can be as unaccompanied as pair of snowshoer's tracks. But usually the flame in my heart is as caring and warm as a coffee house filled with poets churning out ideas. My flame throws light against the shelter walls, animating with every flicker.
My flame flickers on this journey, the attitudes of others rustle my flame, not necessarily trying to put it out, creating conditions that bend, taunt, and tire my teardrop shape of fire. The journey is home, staying my course is my hope, and letting my little light shine is my duty. This little flame needs a cover. A cover that will let just enough light out but protect it from the gusts of discouragement.
Like the brown lunch bag that protects the luminaria's' flame from winds and the dirt nestling the candle's base, my body shields my little flame from fears, sustaining my dreams. The years get more and more trying. It feels like the lonely, cold, dark nights grow incrementally longer, perfectly challenging this weak but untiring flame of mine. Still, tonight, and even today that flame flickers giving life to the rhythms in my soul.
Dance little flame, because there is plenty of wick left.
My maternal grandparents are a large influence on who I am becoming. It seems funny to think I'm still "becoming". I come from privilege and scarcity. Along with so many more positions of operation that can be conflicting . This means that I'm limited and liberated, simultaneously. It's become an interesting dilemma to contemplate on how so much of my early adulthood was centered in an oppressed mentality. Now I'm challenged by the encounter with genuine creative possibility. It seems embarrassing that so much of my self, social, and cultural doubt has grown from variations of culturally imposed limitations, including the defiant pachuco. The Chicano psychology promotes the need for being a radical, counter Anglo culture, or maybe just defiant. It surely instilled an underdog mentality.
My grandparents didn't and don't seem to struggle with identity. If they do they do it subconsciously, passively, and for sure not openly. They label others, but for whatever social and personal influences they don't clearly label themselves. Their generation doesn't have the identity rebellion that mine does. They want to declare how American they are. They have a blind spot for the injustice and limitation that slowly smothered them, possibly through the patriotic propaganda during WWII. They seemed to have one validating system, family. They were raised in a generation that inspired the need for a Chicano mentality, but at the same time were falling in love with an idea of being accepted as American.
My grandparents were taught under a regime of catholic laws and the radical authorities that enforced a catholic tradition of shame and guilt. The penitent facade of Christianity. The religious attitude that paints with broad strokes, rules that seem to stifle the liberated, creative, and revolutionary mentalities. A faith rooted in hesitancy, fear, and obedience. My grandparents are still obedient Catholics, and my culture has exchanged southwestern tradition for new and improved evangelical ways of accessing God. We have yet to grow in the area of awareness.
Then the 60's happened. The Vietnam war happened. Communism happened. The regularity of T.V. happened. The birth of inflamed capitalism. The precipice of the modern age, crawling out of industrial times. America needed an army to train, a population to sacrifice for the capturing of resources. America needed pawns to ensure the war strategy of the wealthy. This was what sculpted my mother and father.
Am I ready to take a step towards accepting my daughters's independence? If so, then my writing is now directed at me. I think my opportunities to feed their ideas and mold them will be expressed differently, more passively. Their lives are now more in their hands than in mine. And I transition effort into accepting their choices, support their growth, and encourage an adventurous attitude. In a more significant way, I feel I am freeing them from my biases and any obligation to my value system.
They will never experience the same culture I did. They will need contemporary tools that will help them learn to be productive people in their culture. They will reflect and fall back on the wisdom every generation seems to. But not because of culture, more because of the human and innate ability to seek healing. I like to say seeking God, the Divine, the Complete, the everlasting fountain. Maybe even going as far to say as common as all organisms. Mi jitas, they will face their own social, ethnic, and interpersonal dilemmas. They may not need to call themselves Chicanas.
I don't value culture in the same ways I used to. It means something different. It isn't worth the same to me either. It is just as important as ever. It holds a different meaning for me. It is beautiful and invasive, a paradox. Culture is a facade established possibly, in a poetical way, to give the soul a face, and the ego fists. It makes me sad and endeared. I am curious what is in store for the New Mexican culture. What will my young ladies call themselves?
What do I call myself?
I am a Latino, with a Chicano lifestyle, from the northern region of New Mexico. After a history of identity crises, I stand poetically looking down into a menacing canyon, with the sun in my eyes, preparing to shed all the conveniences that have come with belonging to a group of people, land, religion, foods, culture. I am practicing being real with myself, more fully human. For much of my life I have felt obligated "to be", maybe more, "to be...long". I am a collection of labels.
I am changing, always, yet in some aspect solidifying. With the changes in perspective I am also writing differently. I feel ready to write about the limits, embarrassment, shame, and contradictions that come with applied culture. It feels complicated having to grow up "brown". I'll share what I feel has become generationaly irresponsible. I want to capture in idea the hardship of having clung to a community built on oppressing, and eventually having to cry out oppressed. I want to tell me, my Chicano story.
The term Chicano has so many meanings. It doesn't have a quantitative nature. It is an identity, a philosophy, a movement, a religion, and what ever the person needs it to be. It has its traditions, conservatives, haters, and abusers. Chicano in my writing will be the culture I know as the following:
Being labeled a radical American citizen having a consquistador's heritage, while believing I am seen as lower, asked to be accountable, yet perceived with less privilege, a revolutionary without country.
I was born human, nurtured like a villager, raised to be Christian, and taught to be American as translated by a bunch of New Mexicans, a bunch of Chicanos. With this I can write my story.
I take words that agitate me and let them burn my thoughts, grind against my morals, weigh on my principles. It is that beautiful agitation. The agitation that feels like God just woke me at 5:15 a.m., nearing a winter dawn and asks me to go for a run. It is cold, mind you, its January. The kind of beautiful that inspires just enough anger to be grumpy, but enough love to be meaningful. The word Homeostasis does that for me.
Homeostasis has entered my mind through conversations about what is normal, and in particular what is acceptable behavior. Normal and stable are often used as calibration tools. Normal carries a stigma for being what is accepted. I have grown to embrace the unique. Even further the radical. Naturally radical is even more seductive for me. Technologically radical would be an opposite extreme and un-favored for its mutative tendency. Technology has shown me a divisive quality in the colonial world. I see it as becoming luxury. Luxury in my opinion is not natural. So homeostasis in nature carries over for me in behavior.
When I think of homeostasis, I think of it as an orientation towards or away from a state. I can also see it as a condition. It can also be dangerous when it becomes a perspective. It is surely not a position. It is the state when my wits, effects, or faculties are moving into or near active recovery. Active recovery being borrowed from the fitness nomenclature, as the bodies search for readiness. I think of it as if life is telling me, things will be alright. It is a feeling where I am not exhausted. I am not indolent. I am not bored. I might not be primed for exhilaration. It's the brief existence when I am least fearful. It may be a time when my aspiration could be pictured as relaxing.
I am symbiotic and alive when nearing homeostasis. Being a New Mexican, Chicano, a brown man inspires me to think about the homeostasis of a culture. If it is, than my Latin derived culture's homeostasis is illusive. Homeostasis when it comes to behavior seems to be heavily subjective, but bounded by the construct of equilibrium. It gives me the image as if my existence hears the wild call from symbiosis. But being a brown man, doesn't make homeostasis convenient for racial, economic, and social factors.
Identifying as a Chicano makes explaining homeostasis interesting. Bluntly, and possibly unwarranted, I observe my culture is diseased, or maybe infected. Surely my culture is not completely unhealthy. I'll explain this perspective in depth soon, but for now I just need to begin with the fact that I see its dysfunction. It makes me understand the need to surround myself with symbiotic systems in order to facilitate personal homeostasis, while I watch my culture moving away from cultural homeostasis.
I see outsiders looking in trying to understand us, describing the New Mexican lifestyle's dysfunctional aspects as potentially being a unique form of homeostasis. It made me cringe to think how people might consider that our version of the Latin culture is acceptable. This comes to mind in the realm of machismo, violence, education, apathy, and cynicism. I am beginning to believe that my New Mexican lifestyle isn't it's healthiest and in denial, being allowed to call itself stable.
So as I look from the outside, as drift further away from the lifestyle of a typical New Mexican Chicano, I evaluate my communities with a cultured lens. I hesitantly but assertively recognize my communities appear naive to conscious progress, a portion seem unaware of the utility for intellect, and enough display attitudes that are uninspired.
I picture my culture with sadness because we appear to admire and cling to our dysfunctions. Maybe it is the only thing we can own. It is the only thing that we can contribute to without being doubted or marginalized. It might be the only thing that keeps us from being white washed. Clinging to our cultural toxicity seems to keep us from being seen as powerless. I cling to my cultural toxicity because I don't know where I belong when I let it go.
...
Next post will describe what I see as Toxic Culture. And yes I will approach homeostasis by also describing the healthy aspects of the New Mexican Chicano, because critical thought requires symbiotic perspectives and homeostasis is my orientation.
With permission from Cecelia, here is her contribution on the subject of toxicity in the Chicano culture. First a brief description about Cecelia. Cecelia and I met at a writing workshop. I was there with a living hero, Jimmy Santiago Baca. He allowed me to participate despite never being published or credited as a writer. Cecelia was there too. She supported me during a really difficult moment during the conference. I didn't believe myself to be a writer and I was among professional and aspiring writers. I was challenged to share my work out loud.
I was asked to read aloud my novice writing. With my voice trembling in my tentative tone, I read a poem. It got rocked and I was told my writing wasn't passionate. I was called out, and I remember it went something like this, "your writing seems to lack passion". With that statement, woke the calloused part of my soul.
I found an inner passion to describe the sadness I live with. I told them about the parts of me that skirt around the big dogs because I don't feel I belong. I have never been asked to read aloud. I told the group how difficult it is to play passionately because what I am passionate about will provoke and confront their privileged metaphorical Anglo playgrounds. I have to be somewhat abstract to conceal the sacredness of the moment and those involved. But I let my educated, learned, and vetted understanding of myself and history propel my passionate, possibly disappointed, perspectives flow.
They came out in a voice that turned from trembling into a shaking near tears fountain of rawness. Out came my thoughts, from the depths of the cellars they have been kept quietly pacing. Like bunched up New Mexicans at the labor lines waiting for the opportunity to contribute to my cause. It felt like a petition, and quickly I realized I had spoken my truth. At the end I found myself embarrassed and ashamed. I felt like I had no right to be so passionate in someone else's passion playground.
But to sum it up, I described how I hold myself back because it feels like my place. My place is modest and purpose centered. I watched my grandmother prepare the best New Mexican food for the richest Anglos in New Mexico, and never ask to be called a chef. I watched my grandpa build cabinets for several churches in the North Valley of Albuquerque never asking for recognition or profits. I try to live the same way.
Here I was a wanna be writer among skilled writers just happy to be in the same room as Jimmy Baca. I couldn't be passionate because I was scared that what I had to say would hurt feelings. The source of my passion is in their ancestors injustice. Especially the judgment, maybe jealousy, I see in how free the Anglo culture is allowed to be proud and loud. The passion I have is rooted in the paradox of being given opportunity to be great but only knowing how to be modest.
Cecelia and a few other strong Latin writers supported me and best of all shared the feelings. I had skeena. I have shared my passion with people who rarely understand and often call me disruptive, cynical, and harsh. I have had to remind myself that I am a tender person who is a warrior. I have to keep close the reminder that I was raised not to fight, and not to be afraid to protect myself. Cecelia ratified my emotions, ideas, and passion.
We sat at dinner and she shared her story with me. I knew after leaving that weekend that I must speak my passions modestly. I will not be afraid to defend myself, my story, and my perspectives. I will know that my truth is not necessarily offensive but can incense emotions in others. It's not my responsibility any longer to wonder how my story will make others feel.
Thank you for the standing along side me. It has felt for awhile as if my ideas are isolatingly antagonizing. It is a joy and relief to be in the spirit of great people like Cecelia.
Cecelia shared the following:
Ron,
This is a reflection on both Toxic Humility and Mistrust of Pride, as I see the two topics inextricably linked - at least in my experience as a Mexican-American woman growing up in southern California in the 50s and 60s.
My father was a strong man, with a humble spirit, and unspoken pride in his heritage, his work ethic and the accomplishments of his children. He taught me "never draw attention to yourself" as that was arrogant and unnecessary. He believed that "If you work hard and do what you have signed-on to do, people will notice and they will recognize you and reward you, as appropriate. You don't need to promote yourself."
I have lived my 65 years of life believing this is true, acting in concert with it and seeing his prediction play out in my own life. And yet, there have been moments when I too have been unable to take pride in the "magnificent" parts of myself and that has felt uncomfortable and (although I never would have come up with the term myself) "toxically humble."
These posts have shined a light on layers and layers of my being and my identity - for me to reexamine. I will let you know where that road takes me. Thank you, Ron.
The New Mexican Chicano has a passionate dedication to suffering toxic humility. We see it in our addicted and violent populations. It seems rooted in the soil of our souls. Its as if we have a responsibility to lower ourselves con dolor. It sprouted for me an obedience, prospering an attitude of subservience. Toxic humility blossoms leafs of self rejection, like a modest tumble weed uprooted and bouncing from barbed wire fences, when God hoped we grow into succulent cedars.
Most New Mexican communities are Spanish descended with Catholic roots. Peoples left here, reinventing here, or who fled here. I am describing people from the 1500's, 1600's, and into the 1700's. We are of the gringo empire. We are the spawn of those with ambitions for gold, who landed here, finding refuge in the pinon hills, ponderosa filled rocky ridges, sage brush mesas, and cottonwood infested valles del rios.
We are of a similar ambitious European unsettledness. A branch on the vine of Monarchies with insecure desire for power and control, acting from discontentment, causing masses to migrate, calling it exploration, and eventually conquering. Most modern New Mexicans cannot recognize their pretentious and imperial beginnings, even though it is paraded in the glorious image of the conquistador. That glory now lives in the shadows of the new conqueror, the innovative industrial American. Most New Mexicans find a way to remain loyal to suffering maybe to distract from the diminished Spanish ego. As if a honorable way to be noticed or respected in this new, foreign, and American way of life.
The conquering Spaniards withered into faith driven humble villagers. They had nothing to offer the royalty, so the withering began and their faith became valuable. And so did the land. As the mestizo cultures began to dilute the hardened pride of conquering peoples, equally a colonial pride was stirring in the east. This mountain desert region was only a pit stop to the riches known in the west. With this desperate form of purpose the subservience was birthed. This region grew from the isolation of Spanish communities. Slowly each community displaced with a desperate grasp at having purpose in an American expansion. Spanish speaking, crucified Christ preaching, my ancestors adapted to desert life, orphaned by Spain. This desperation is how I can envision the conception of my subservient and maybe toxic humility.
I know the Sangre de Cristos, our regional mountains, for their ability to remain overseers of this regions visitors. It humbled the indigenous, the conquistador, and now me. I know their name sake represents my ancestor's faith.
Albeit a subtle hypocrisy, history tells a story of an arrogant Christ focused intimidation. We know the pueblos were coerced. These mountains smoothed and helped a restless conquering people to tolerate a local lifestyle that looks to have grown symbiotic with pueblos.
The indigenous people were converted into Catholics, for sure not wanting to dismiss their ancestral beliefs, possibly understanding that their lifestyle is more inline with divinity than the conquering evangelists. But now those communities are equally tired, trying to find a niche in America. Through the conquest tragedy grew a privileged lifestyle of land grantees, farmers, and shepherds that were coerced into becoming American. We are now a legacy of people that are enduring, ironically a similar wave of evangelists, squatters, speculators, investors, experimenters, and refugees. We are now visitors to the richness of the Sangre de Cristos.
The suffocating conqueror privilege and new desperate desire to belong seems to have left us toxically humble. Humble to point of believing ourselves as destined to suffer in self doubt. I seem to see this inability to feel appreciated, praised, valued, lovable, and worst worthy of the fruits of the spirit in the New Mexican Chicano people I counsel. The first person that comes to mind is myself.
I am my first client. In reflection, I preferred to uplift myself with validation from others, believing they might believe in me. When this failed I had no idea how to deal with the endless need to feel worthy. I forgot that Jesus Christ asked me to live as he lived, free of self depreciation, judgment from and of others, slavery, and free of a toxic humility. I now hear in my darkest moments, "I believe in you", and I wonder if that is me or Him.
I have grown to see my communities' subtle and gradual crucifixion of "hope in self", worried that this might reflect an overall inability to hope period. A slow death by punishing the misunderstood and toxically humble masses. I no longer want to punish toxically humble peoples. I am for a life of gracefully serving them with spirit so that they recognize the greatness God hoped for them.
I wonder how being a divorced dad, raising 2 daughters with a cooperative mother, having 2 respectable careers, and being able bodied keeps me from living a typical or common life of contentment. How am I not fulfilled by the American Dream? Why am I critical about the dogmatic foolishness I believe thrives in Patriotism? How come the privileged cultures allure me, light skinned women dazzle me, black struggle inspires me, my brown in between-ness excludes me, but Anglo authority antagonizes me. I get asked how come I'm so critical or why can't I just have fun. When I take another class at the university I get asked if I am getting another degree. More personally I get asked about where the "old Ron is". I have the same wonder.
I could easily afford a more comfortable and fun-filled life, or can I. I wonder why I don't. I have wrestled the ideas of cynicism and justice. I have experienced barrio life, tasted New Mexico's Norteno culture, even immersed myself into corporate suburbia, excelled through a masters academia, and now find myself content with just enough and culturally hovering. So how come I still grieve?
Despite surviving through a collection of cultures I am still fearful of being taken advantage of, held back, or discriminated. I am afraid and incited when others are too. I am learning that racism is not as obvious as it's ever been. I am learning that ethnicity is less valuable as a generalize-er as it's ever been. I have to consider that holding on to diversity counter intuitively promotes division. I have to hold the cognitive dissonance that is created when I encounter people who don't fit my stereotypes. I have to work through the difficulty and subtlety that bias or ignorance isn't distinguishable or a visible trait, its often felt passively without certainty. I have been called names before, and those times were easy to understand. I knew why I was hated, targeted, or categorized.
But I have to sit back in my solitude and sift through the sadness in my history and present wondering if it's because of my heritage. There are a lot of events in my life that hurt. I cannot say that because I am Latino this happened to me. At the same time I cannot help but wonder if some of what happened to me was because of generalizations, stereotypes, or prejudice. And I cannot help but also worry that my actions or choices have been influenced by my own prejudice or ignorance. I have to consider how my own hatred added to the complexity of distinction and discrepancy.
I am so racial because I have a desire to participate, contribute, and be valued in this lifetime. There are a lot of circumstances that have helped me recognize that how I look, how I see, where I come from, where others come from, the way I sound, the way others sound, and the history that molded me impact the way I react and how people perceive me. I have to believe that you are prejudice because I am. I don't feel dangerous, violent, or menacing. But I am not afraid to fight, I am not afraid of pain, and I will find a way to survive. I strive to be loving, peaceful, and forgiving. But I am also capable of rage, willing to be radical for change, and will hold you accountable before completely accepting you. Maybe it is that you fear me too.
I am so racial because I am afraid of being eradicated, incarcerated, shot for no reason, censored, paid less for the same work, called lazy, called stupid, told I have work only because I'm brown, found guilty for a crime I didn't commit, charged for crime I didn't commit, punished worse than others, treated different, pushed around, banished, neglected and left out. I am so racial so that my daughters can be less racial. I am so racial because I see too many people forgetting that people are still racial and cannot seem to understand how.
In a conversation with a man, who I am learning to trust and value beyond his reputation, a question was posed, what gets our children up and want to learn? What a beautiful question. And of course like the analytic I can be, I started to grip the question. But only for a little while. I let the unknown go into the cold afternoon, into one our final days of summer. I imagine it flew away like a falcon in search of pray.
What it brought back was another question. I woke this morning to the first brisk morning of the year. I had in my head, at the feet of my conscious, the question, what incentives are societies providing to learn? An obvious way to answer was to remember my reasons why I woke each morning to go to school.
I got up early in life because I didn't have a choice. I remember school being a traumatic place. I remember early on it being the place my mom would leave me. I have vivid memories of the emptiness and fear of watching her walk away. I remember the longing and worry that flooded my day.
As I got older I understood that school was a way of life. It was what was done, without alternative. If I wasn't in school, I wouldn't be like other kids. There were aspects to school that I began to enjoy. The incentives began to come. The first was art. I loved drawing, colors, and crafts. The second was friends. I disappeared into recess. The fun we had left deep memories, so much I can still picture some faces and places.
Around the 3rd grade I was introduced to competitive sports. At this time, I was in a modest catholic school and it had sports teams. I played basketball. This is was what woke me up in the fall mornings. This also sprouted twitterpation. I remember trying to impress girls with my athleticism during these years. If I was a winner she would notice me. It is endearing to reflect on now. I see it as the naive mating ritual for what was to come.
That's it for now.
I find it hard to realize that while I was in elementary school I never really wanted to learn . I was wanting to play and learning to love. I went to school because it had kids who could imagine with me that we were being attacked by Dark Vader and his drones (the other 1st grade class), and they need me to protect the Millenuim Falcon (tractor tire). I see that what I was doing was learning what interested me. What got me up and going to school was obligation first and friendship most. I see that intellect was a by product.
This part of the story will helps with that. I was waiting for awhile as my shuttle, a little red Chevy (Hostel Los Lagos red carpet service ;) ) didn't come. I had no number, no phone, a language barrier, and a growing fear. So as I look down the railing of the pick up area, searching for my name over and over. The fear by this point had turned in thoughts, what next. I kept calming myself and with every proposition for help from random locals, my anxiety gathers. The pick up area looks like a concert railing. This culture is very festive and people wait at the railing with signs and whooping, like they do when soldiers come home from deployment.
So, starting to wonder what to do next, i start to pay attention to folks who have been there as long as i have, thinking they are here for the opportunity to make a quick dollar or worst case plan a movida. If i rule them out and I need to ask for help, I can stay away from them. Then I couldn't believe it, but I recognized our bus driver from my trip three years ago. He also remembered me. The small signs that demonstrate things are fine. He help me connect with a little peddler who earlier I had ruled out, but ironically he had the hostel's number. They picked me up in five minutes. Here is Jairo from my trip three years ago.
When things don't work out as planned, I tend to think they went wrong. When I think about what right is supposed to feel like it just as illusive as the feeling I feel when expectations aren't met. I am a father who won't make happiness happen, but I will be a dad who will try. I think my daughters have taught me to hold on to second chances, and to see each chance as a new and different try. Fathers Day is a day to remember that there are men who may or may not have helped life happen as planned. If I look at it a little differently and update my plans I get an opportunity to see how Dad is not an answer to life but a question about my lineage. So to dads who are what you are there will always be plans and hopefully they'll include you.
I am in an amazing space in my life. I am accruing debt at a higher percentage than ever. I wake up and it scares me. I am not buying luxurious things, its just necessities. I am learning to appreciate the dependence that I have chosen, dependencies that are tied to social norm. I realize that much of my life is still geared toward a balance between simplicity and convenience. So I worry, but I don't think I am overwhelmed. Now how do I synthesize this into wisdom.
What first comes to mind is my self perception. Even after 37 years of life, 34 years of memories, and 20 years out of high school I still judge myself. I wake in the morning and recognize that my eyes are a little more tired looking. My body takes a lot longer to warm up when I work out. My joints are more stubborn than I remember them being. But my mind laughs. My mind says "you can still hang brother". If I stop now, it will only get harder later. I rest more and push myself less but I live the same. I am borrowing from laziness to pay off the debts I have accrued with anger and discipline. I am cashing in on some pleasurable comfort, knowing I am going to pay intensity back with interest. I am not wasting my lazy time though. I get enough done, but this allows me to feed my dreams, fears, and insecurities. In my laziness I remind myself of the disappointments in lifestyle, livelihood, and achievement. I am building a stockpile of motivation that I know I can do without but for humanistic reasons have convinced myself I need.
I realize I am willing to live with others, for others, and in spite of others. In the past I was living for me, to get mine. This is a subtle shift towards a community that I can't clearly recognize. The others in the first sentence of this paragraph is as dynamic as the weather. I can't clearly identify who is it that I am moving towards, with, or against. There is appreciation for chaos and a mistrust of planning. I am seeing balance everywhere. I am finding meaning in most or at least looking for it. I am preparing for surpluses and harvests that can't be seen in this drought. I am accruing a personal debt that may not be able to be paid off tomorrow, but I am not wasting the goods rendered. I am irresponsibly being devoted to simplicity. I am choosing to spend credit to keep from having to increase my income. I am spending laziness to keep from having to increase my intensity. I am resting because right now life feels like I can.
So this is a demonstration for how I have taken my criticisms and used them to build a rational for explaining my recent laziness. I might even call it excessive rest to give myself a poetic hug.
I have two daughters who I think about daily, interact with as often as I can, criticize more than I would like, I don't hold enough, but I have told them I love them and that they are beautiful despite my ugliness. Mother's day passed but everyday is women's day. This is intense and raw. Hats off to the courage necessary to express herself in such a profound way. Even as a man I can appreciate the hardship and it will help me amplify a dignified perspective on culture.
The delinquent mind has to be one of the most influential minds in existence. These are the minds that have been neglected by norms, mistreated by convenience, and ignored by efficiency. I have come appreciate the delinquent mind as much as I appreciate the savant mind. The delinquent mind is equally as creative as the savant. We have many new technologies that have been created to adapt to the delinquent mind. The delinquent mind is as efficient in finding shortcuts as the savant mind. The delinquent mind does not fall into the category of common. Often the delinquent mind is left in dismal conditions and molded by misfortune and mayhem. The processes that most people participate in as children like breakfast, school, recess, afternoon snack, leisure activities, dinner, and bedtime don't include the delinquent mind. The delinquent mind is reared in chaos, surprise, and instability. Comfort is not common to the delinquent mind. I think the delinquent mind is restless in acceptance, peace, and uniformity. The delinquent mind is misunderstood and never clear in its message, deliberately mistrusting anyone and most, weeding out those who's intentions are to sabotage the comfort found in being different. The delinquent mind holds part of the truth. The delinquent mind is the consciousness that helps each of us deal with shitty aspect of ourselves and others. The delinquent mind is the willing part of us to die and feel pain. The delinquent mind is the reckless creativity that allows us to go beyond what is seen as rational. The delinquent mind hides behind our shadow, waiting to be punished, and likely the last part of ourselves to be loved.
