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 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.
What shade of Race are you? I think we all need to answer this dazzling yet scary question. It is useful to approach this topic. The seeds for my interest in this topic are the origins of Race as a category. I use the theoretical basis that Race grew from an English Christian need to justify slavery. What does race mean to you? I want the world to begin to recognize our outward features as distinctive but not differentiative. I want us to stop using race as a measurement. I have this strong urge to reverse engineer this complex concept. I want to address how it has deteriorated the opportunity for human harmony across regions, nations, and now, more than ever, the globe. My motivation comes from the heated and explosive phenomenon currently ravaging American popularism. My motivation has grown from my passion for feeling empowered after many encounters with feeling incapable, especially due to identifying with a race. I want to unwrap the grip Race has on humanistic productivity. I want to loosen the grip Race has on humanistic symbiosis. The reversal begins with me. I started this idea with answering these questions myself. What shade of Race am I?
I am an Albuquerque citizen, located in the Central Rio Grande Valley, a city in New Mexico, a state in the United States of America, on the North American continent, and I could continue up and down a cosmic hierarchy of fractal proportions, none significant enough to die or kill for. This is what sets the stage, prepares a workbench for my unraveling and dissecting the entangled pieces that have created my shade of Race. I am excited by how persistent I was to address my racism. I feel I was able to encounter my advantages, disadvantages, and the experiences between. I feel I needed to recognize my own racism before I could detach from the entanglement I had with Race. I have reached an understanding that Race only exists because I, along with the civilized world, give it validity through human characteristic and traits like discrimination, competition, and distinction. I have transcended my original dependence on culture, identity, and belonging to step away from these to see how power and privilege in toxicity has shaped the invisible social thresholds that reinforce and amplifies Race. I did not remove them though. E-race-ing racism does not eliminate how we naturally find discrepancies in peoples’ lifestyle.
Once a boy, wondering when manhood would fit. Wanting my manhood to be genuine, like a dirty work shirt, still functional, completely functional, lying just organized looking folded, enough, next to a worn down broken in pair of leather gloves, making room for a stoic rigid toughness. I no longer want to love like a boy. I am eager for that toughness to protect me from that anxious pain I've felt around love. More feeling like artificial love.
Maybe not artificial but definitely not love. The desire! I am eager to have that discipline to protect me from my desire. Not all my desire. Likely the toxic desire. The kind that leaves me hungry and inflamed. I want the real nutrient filled love.
Stop thinking I'm holding the world, and wonder what is.
The love that strengthens boys, melts the ego, and nurtures the balls, leaving an unwavering, bitter hope for love that is more fulfilling.
When will I have this certitude that men are supposed to have?
The wherewithal that is unaffected by romance's and jealousy's tug;
The immunity to the pain for being alone;
The carefree acceptance for the things about me un-grown;
The Being able to call wherever I have to lay my head home.
When will that come?
I sit thinking how odd it is to suggest, I un-regretfully, today could care less. I wasted so much time wondering if I was doing manhood right. I have reached this point where not knowing fits nice, maybe a little tight.
Is manhood a destination or a figment of societies' imagination?
Something about it feels more like humiliation, for falling short, more or less to the obligation that manhood is cessation.
I seem to encounter more lives that are forward looking, while I feel a stronger urge to look back. These young-bloods look to be encountering choices still worthy of an investment, at a future I remember looking at so filled with stress from the uncertainty of whether I'd get respect.
And so I sit, alone, not knowing, feeling as capable as ever of being gentle, blown away by not needing to claim something as my own. I am more interested in beginning to understand we're never really fully grown. Not so much fearing never reaching complete, just accepting I'm nearing it.
The beauty seems to be that there is still a curious boy in me.
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In honor of the men who are contemplating on the Cosmic Importance of Male Initiation this weekend at the Center of Action and Contemplation.
Race was conceived by colonial cultures to elevate their national distinction. These colonial cultures needed a justification to objectify other humans and distort their existence. Colonials defined these peoples as less than, mechanisms, to fuel their industries. These colonial cultures manifested a convenient economic distinguish-er creating a mindset that allowed them to see their body as superior. This implied inferiority wasn't fake, but surely wasn't necessarily biological or physiologic. The enlightenment gave evidence that the European level of sophistication separated them from indigenous peoples. Colonial's inhuman ideas of superiority seemed to depreciate their progressive cultural uniqueness. It brings some sadness for how the concept of Race obfuscates the capacity for wonderment and gentleness in the Anglo culture. This need for Colonial or Anglo distinction has grown to be an American blemish still trying to make itself a home. The concept has become a barrier to human unity.
As much as I refuse to acknowledge the existence of Race, I have to own that I have integrated some of its toxic attributes into my own values. It has lured me into seeing through the lens of racism. I have to share how I size up Chicanos with the same racist lens Suburbia sees me through. I have to realize that I am the token brown friend at times, sometimes seen through my own insecurity and others times through my interpretation of clues. I have to see how there are times when I try but can't camouflage my brownness with enough knowledge and wisdom to overcome someone's biased idea that my aptitude and capabilities can't be true. I see how I do the same bigotry. How do I dismantle these characteristics in my psyche?
I am challenged, distressed, and flabbergasted by recent racial topics in main stream publications, social interests, and politics. Where is the understanding about Race's fictitious origins. Can't we see the fiction? Can't we teach that Race is an idea not a principle? I become anxious to watch how Race is distorting and distracting large populations from real social progress. I get torn when I get inspired with a need to express my feelings and grievances, and do it without generalizing, implicating all Anglos , clumping together a spectrum of cultures Irish, Italian, Germanic, Greek, Briton, and various Eastern block cultures unfairly, their unique humanity cultural struggle ignored, their effort to express humanisticly, their contribution to undoing the stigmas and tension forgotten. How do I speak to the ongoing struggle while honoring the Anglo cultures that don't explicitly contribute to the divisions of Race?
The challenge for me is trying to hold the understanding for how Race is entangled with profiling, vocation, religion and perception.
The use of my identities within community are frequently overlapping, competing, and contradicting. This makes who I am to others unmanageably variable, despite the importance being accurately identified is for being understood. In this context identity is how I want and need others to acknowledge me. I use several identities to navigate community. I am a counselor, a programmer, and an artist. I am also in pain. The list goes on. I have studied the nature of healing for years now. I have studied the roots of civil wellness. I have taken the time to research what it takes to be a healthy citizen. I transcended the barriers to paradoxical beliefs. My spiritual exercises have taught me to minimize my dualistic mindset, allowing me to see how most significant concepts are rarely black or white. This affords me the opportunities and potentials to benefit from perceptions and choices that can be informed with a complex both and view. I learned this from my earliest days, Christ is both and, God and human, here and crucified. I wonder like most people who are invested in some human growth, what about the opposite. What about the neither or?
If "both and" is seeing paradox then I need to also find a way to see God in the "neither or". There are a good amount of New Mexicans who hang on to the Spanish identity. My guess is that it might be a hope for being seen as civilized, prestigious, or proper. There was, likely is, a prejudice for Mexicanos in my New Mexican communities, despite sharing origins. These same dividing and distinguishing peoples have grown or transferred their loyalty to the new American empire. It surprises me when I think how the Anglo often lumps, us, the descendants from a collapsed Spanish colonization, into one Hispanic bucket, often excluding us from having to own our ancestral brutality. Or maybe the brutality is continued in the space or safe haven found in aligning with the next winning, conquering, team.
I find this desperate attachment to a historical identity crisis, riddled with dysfunction, futile. This clinging to historic grandiosity is a distraction from the fact that in the moment we are "Neither Or". This helps me see that the divisions between people doesn't end with heritage, ethnicity, or locality, it seems to permeate in the imperialism or fanaticism of being on the winning side, convenient side, comfortable side, popular side, or the right side. So for me it helps my confusion to consider that "neither or" is useful when believing there is a complicated side, a paradoxical side, a responsible side, or defeated side. I am not Spanish, New Mexican, American or any other identity, for the first time in my existence I see how futile it is to identify, and still this divides me.
In the moment I am best described as a burst of organized energy that is simply expending a strategic amount of energy to grow and survive. I am in a mindset of electronegativity versus cultural allegiance. I pay more attention to how I am impulsively coerced by my fears to promote self serving thoughts and actions. I am learning to recognize how I am drawn to convenience and comfort. I am disappointed by how freely I donate my resources to allegiances by defaults like ethnicity, locale, or stereotype. Allegiances I can only see as toxic remnants from a pedagogy of purposeless competition. I have been inveigled into being on some team. The people that surround me in the Albuquerque community invite me to be on their Burque team, patriotic people guilt me into being on an American team, and the orthodox people entice me into dogmatic loyalty usually to promote their agenda. So this is why I find it important to be "Neither Or" at times, and while also being "Both And".
Identity has become a psychological luxury, mainly for my ego, like a safety blanket for my self concept. I have slowly learned to consider myself human. This sounds silly. But I say this to express the complexity for how I diversify my identity. I have a suspicion that I collect identities, mainly to feel more valuable and wanted. I am building identities and tearing them down as I am challenged by fear and pleasure, among other motivators. I am at a point where I identify as being human, expressing through a Chicano lens. What is a Chicano lens?
There isn't an answer to that question. I claim it like a country claims its borders, it's there but it's not. It's a luxury. Latinos, especially oppressed Latinos found a way to unite under one psychological banner. Chicano has been an illusive concept to describe. Even having a Latino heritage I could easily find some other Latino to argue its meaning. It is a culture, an identity, a symbol, a political statement, a movement, a people, and a burden.
I learned how to call myself Chicano before I knew what it meant and how complex it was. I come from Spanish speaking grandparents. They were Spanish speaking before Mexican descendants re-rooted in the Southwest. They didn't unite under a Chicano banner. They surely never seemed to consider themselves as being Mexicano. They identified as American. I reflect and with bitterness describe to them the politics and cultural climate of their early adulthood, trying to paint for them how they were likely manipulated into becoming resources for the American country. They never thought how a significant and powerful part of America might hate them, use them, and marginalize them. They were eager to be valued too. They were happy with the life they were handed, and they would say it was what God needed of them.
My grandparents studied sustainable living before it was an up and coming remedy to climate change. It was a lifestyle of survival, empirically effective because they survived. A lifestyle that endured an economic depression, so much that it never registered for my grandparents as depressing. The Great Depression wasn't a hiccup in their comfort, because they were already accustomed to living in scarcity, maybe more like living within necessity. Likely a curriculum in sustainability the way Maria Montessori might describe in her Montessori methodology.
I recognize how Anglos, legal immigrants, have taken this culture that nurtured my grandparents, marketed it, and now call it New Mexico True capitalizing from a history of struggle. A entrepreneurial vision promoting, something more deeply valuable, deeper than allure, deeper than a scheme to draw tourist dollars and no Culture Tax to benefit the generations left competing to continue to feel valued in America.
The lifestyle I was nurtured in, has become entertainment. I see how legal immigrants develop business plans that promote enchiladas for $15 to $30, using the term New Mexican style restaurant. This price is enough to make a whole platter of enchiladas with carne, likely feeding a entire family of eight. They were wrapping tamales for winter, not so much for Christmas or the Special of the day, but because it was tradition and an efficient way to survive a New Mexican winter. They had matanzas for survival not for the peda (drunkenness), or more kindly to celebrate. Our traditions have grown to be a commodity. My elders never thought to turn their traditions into profits, like Kendrick Lamar beautifully explains, it is like "pimping a butterfly". Selling culture is the American way, maybe a colonial way, an imperial way, and it may also be, unfortunately, the civilized way. I am reminded that it is not the Chicano way. A reminder that my identity can be different.
Richard and Margaret Garcia as well as Abe and Josie Estrada have a heritage and history I cling to, the luxurious identity I see as Chicano. I use the identity of Chicano to remind me that I am not of the American dream but a human reality. I was not raised in a culture of entrepreneurial philosophies. I am rooted in thoughtful and humble traditions. When I become jealous and itchy for luxury, I remind myself of the beauty my grandparents survived in, never feeling poor and never needing status. They do although, live needing to be loved, forgiven, respected, and considered. This is what I like to think Chicano means, a Latin, Southwestern American, New Mexican, and Burqueno way to express being human.
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.
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.
My privileged trait is the wounded child in me, embarrassed, feeling unworthy, finally succeeding, hands raised in celebration, but not taking the time to acknowledge the helping hands, the cushioned walls, padded floors, wind at my back, first aid tents, the stepped on, the ripped up, the chipped away, or left behind that contributed to getting me here. That child in me is consumed by the trophy, the purse, the recognition, the celebrity, and the reward. That child in me forgets the preciousness in the journey, the lessons shared, the gratitude returned, the credit due, and the responsibility to look back and give back.
I am guilty of feeling privileged especially to pity. I have appropriately and with enough practicality exhausted my victimization. I have engraved deep enough my sad stories. I have held enough shared sadness to believe in my degradation. I have felt the sting of my disadvantage and inconvenience. I have grieved my perceptions of unfairness. It led me to become a contradiction. It caused me to bite the hand that feeds me. Most of those hands were melanin deficient, blessed, and equally struggling to be loved.
Rich folks saved my life. The taste of class motivated me. The feel of quality inspired me. The innovation that comes from technology taught me. The institutions accommodated me. I have for the past 4 years bitten the hands that fed me. I am embarrassed. Most of the hands had light skin, white skin. Where I came from would have kept me tied up had it not been for those who untied me out there. Out there is complex, rarely absolute, and a playground for cognitive dissonance.
If Dr. Martin Luther King Jr wore a hoodie: My social progress has disconnected me from my social class, a childhood community. I can't relate to the cholo like I once could. I don't know if I am seen as Chicano. I am living among the privileged, remembering like the disadvantaged, and thinking like the revolutionized. I find my interests aren't congruent enough with my hommie's to participate in once cherished careless tomfoolery. My tolerance for superficiality has almost evaporated. The conscious Chicano is unfortunately scarce. The proud Chicanos are just to loud for me. Dr. King how come you never wore a hoodie?
I don't have the street cred passion that might have kept me close to the barrio. I now lean towards the intellect, whom I find often isolate themselves, maybe for the same disconnecting reasons. I am falling into indifference, not able to see injustice clearly, but understanding a common insecurity to compete. I am seeing with non-violent eyes, but blending in like a dude with a hoodie.
I don't feel called to evangelize, revolt, march on main street, sit in, or ask for change. I feel like throwing on my hoodie, popping out 100 pull ups, running some sprints, winking at the cutie with the light eyes, and then grabbing some green tea with a kale salad. For once in my life I don't feel like changing this world, but can't seem to hold back the complaining. I just feel like continuing to ground myself. I feel worn down with resistance. I have a hard time keeping my commitment to uncovering, discovering, and illuminating cultural dysfunction.
The pain, the lactic build up in my heart is there. The easy choice to be like everyone else whispers with pleasure. Being non-violent doesn't mean there won't be pain. I think it should have been called the Without Rudeness Movement or My Truth Hurts Movement because maintaining dignity can be violent. I can barely remember the slang that united me with mi raza. I have learned my way into an upper-enough class. But a class that still can't feel me. Maybe a class that only sees a vato in a hoodie. I am no longer familiar with one community and still not quite integrated into the other. That is what I think of when I see the word "hoodie". I am not quite from the hood, and I am not pedigree enough to be privileged. I will always be just a little bit hoodie.
Dr. King what would you have to say about being somewhere between?
Inspiration is something I chase because I think its necessary for growth. What I have recently acknowledged is that inspiration can leave a bitter aftertaste. The aftertaste is a metaphor for my realization that I get jealous. Seeing someone be great is sprinkled with disheartening toxins.
The variety of emotions that are created when I am inspired are mostly encouraging, but there is a shadow cast. In the shadows I can make out the profile of jealousy. The jealousy provides an opportunity for me to recognize my deficits because I can notice cynicism sparkling. Paying more attention to this I can recognize the judgement. The judgement is my ingrained competitor invoked by my ego.
My ego recalls my lost expectations and my failed intentions. Then it asks my false self to torment my creativity with guilt and shame, holding it accountable for the dreams put aside. The stronger and more stable my false becomes I am allowed to observe the delinquency of my ego at work. I have had the opportunity to see the manufacturing of sadness being pushed out the door into my conscious packaged as cynicism. I am tapping into the sadness that lurks under the comparison and inadequacy that is part of the brew when feeling inspired.
I have a competitive catalyst in my constitution. I have an idea that it lives in my ego. It has motivated, punished, and misguided me. It has a craving for inspiration and cannot digest the judgments that result from interpreting them. I have not learned to take the packages of cynicism and repurpose them as something productive. The consequence is my suffering. I am flushing the filters that help me see sources of suffering to reduce the seepage of disappointment into my happiness. I have found a way to collected and sprout these sadness packages.
The awareness is helping me sprout the toxic packages into forgiveness, grief, and anxiety. The toxicity of my disappointment is positively correlated to the synthesis or coagulation of my sadness. Whether or not the production is useful depends on the toxicity. Regardless it can now be better managed by my improving wellness systems that are alive and thriving. As I am able to metabolize my suffering, I can profit joy.
I have never really felt like I was in love with myself. There is a self hate that I have always held on to. I have rarely done enough to feel worthy of appreciating myself. I have beat myself up far too often. I have cluttered my ideas with doubt. I have chained my dreams with discouragement. I have chosen the conservative routes. I have feared with more intensity than trust. That is changing. I am hardening my values and softening my heart. I am recognizing the beauty in most situations and accepting that perception can be a powerful ingredient to prosperity.
I am working on getting back to spiritual currencies as the core
economy for my life. What this means in English is that I am
finding my way out of consumerism, egoism, and elitism, in favor of
genuine tradition, communication, and symbiosis. I come from
communities that are addicted, depressed, and violent. I have been
fortunate to recognize those traits and characteristics ongoing in
my life, culture, and community, inspiring me to redirect my
education, skills, and talents toward healing the wounded parts of
my internal and social connections. I am learning to go where
accident alters me, coincidence leads, and hope pulls me. I am a
divorce father of 2 daughters who is functioning with a prosthetic heart. A recovering competitor. An aspiring
counselor. And lastly a critical thinker.
I have tried to capture so much of myself in this blog. I have learned to write and think clearer. I have tried to heal my wounds as a divorcee, a lonely man, a confused son, and disabled companion. I find myself in space I have never known.
I might describe it as living in the void. I don't desire much, I don't long for much, I don't grieve much, and I still cannot seem to surface magnificence. I think lethargic might be the best adjective. I feel lost but with no where to be. I feel abandoned with no one to blame. I feel ignored with many people ready to listen to me. I feel asked to be great with a blanket of laziness resting heavily over my lower legs. I feel aimlessly hopeful.
I come across a smiling face and wish I was there. I can smile today, but it is a conscious smile. My smiles are thrown out with obligation. My smiles are worn with fatigue, knowing a smile is the best mask to wear. I receive random calls and messages that remind me that angels speak through the mouths of those I love. I am hearing messages that are instructions to keep the faith, be patient, and conquer my fear of admiration. I am not common, and yet I am not rare, this is the scary space that I worry in.
The only ingredient that I am proud of is my vulnerability. I am vulnerable. I am near honest. I am gripping transparency. I am not crying anymore. I am turning the volume down on my senses, colors aren't as vibrant, music isn't moving my feet, and sugar is giving me the nervous shakes. Is life without ego stale? Patiently waiting for love to fill in the blanks.
My father and I have had a distant or maybe hovering relationship.
It has been a challenging relationship to feel, think through, and come to terms with. I love him deeply, but at times have realized that love doesn't always come in shinny, joyful, or tender ways. I have at times believed that if I had not been born he would have
lived his dreams of playing professional basketball in Mexico. Why I have these
thoughts are possibly a reflection of my love for him, but I know he
wouldn't trade me for that dream. I felt like he might have had the
time and concentration to practice, train, and study the game more if I wasn't in the equation. It
is a hard story to tell myself. It is hard to undo the feeling that I
am an accident. It is partly the truth. I
had to share my dad in space described as loneliness.
My childhood has some memories of hard good byes with my dad. I am from a
divorced family and I didn't get to spend a lot of time with my dad as a
child. The reasons are probably reasonable but regardless unfortunate.
It was always a tragically sad event when I had a short visit with my
dad and then had to say goodbye. I can still remember he smelled of
cologne. I remember his aviator glasses and tight fitting T-shirts. I
would sometimes kiss is smooth shaven, stern, strong and warm jaw. My
dad was a hero to me. I would hug my dad as tight as I could every
time he'd pick me up for a visit. I loved hugging him. I would follow
his footsteps literally trying to mimic his gate. There are so many of
these memories.
I anticipated visits with my dad. He would often take me to
his practices. This is where I learned to love the smell of the gym. I loved the sound of the
leather slapping hands, the rip of net, the bounce off the hardwood, and
the screech of sneakers gripping the floor. I had to visit my dad, when the typical story includes a dad day in and day out. Well not my story. It
doesn't sound or seem right, and I am barely now trying to reconcile the
tragedy of having to experience the longing for my father at a
young age and without explanation. Longing leaves the spirit vulnerable to the shock of goodbye.
For many years I dealt with the pain of these goodbyes with
resentment and confusion. It was difficult because a big part of me
admired, longed for, and desired my dad. I grew up watching my dad
workout. I have my ethic from seeing this. I remember how he would
sweat, zone out, and breathe each breath with agony. I loved it. I
knew that it meant progress and it taught me that not all pain was
bitter. I learned to be a hustler, he never took things lightly and he expected the same from me. I only could watch, but really
wanted to participate. These are the parts of my dad that built my
admiration. These interests keep me appreciating my father, despite learning reasons for my dads absence.
Along with these memories are the painful memories of weekends that
came to an end. When I was a little boy, I had to say goodbye on a Sunday evening.
It was one of the first times I remember feeling that huge knot that
swells in the throat when withholding a good cry. I don't know why but I
always felt ashamed for crying when I had to say goodbye. I remember
being overwhelmed by that knot in my throat as we turned onto my mom's
street, and wondering why life was the way it was. In my mind nobody
else had to visit their dad. I remember the tears being so strong that I
would lose my breathe and have the hick ups for hours afterwards. I
would cry myself to sleep, head berried in my pillow. I am remembering this pain now, maybe cherishing it for what it can teach me about saying goodbye today.
In reflecting on why it is so difficult for me to say
goodbye today, I recalled the memory of my dad. I have never really shared this pain nor given it the focus I
have here. I recalled crying together, me maybe 7 years old, him young and strong, both stretching out biter moments before that dreaded farewell, in my
mom's gravel driveway. Today this memory flooded my chest with sadness and caused me to ball like if I were still sitting meekly in his lap. Why do I
have to always say good bye? I longed for my dad always. The pain I am
feeling right now is tiring. I feel like a boy, but wiping my tears
from my beard reminds me that so much time has passed, years, decades,
since those south valley good byes and I still have not overcome the sadness felt then.
So several weeks ago, on the morning I am having these thoughts about my
fatherly goodbyes, coincidentally, i see my dad randomly on the freeway. What are the chances? Driving into work,
I looked up ahead on the interstate and saw a little green Toyota truck that looks like my
dad's. In a prayerful like way I said, "I love you dad". As I got closer to my exit, I came up
on that truck and it was my dad. I honked and there he was looking as
handsome as i remember. He gave me the stoic and typical one arm up,
hand open, salute, no smile, one glance, and off our separate ways. We
are both men now, yet I feel the boyish desire to be held and told things
are going to be alright. I am still processing the pain, and by the grace
of God I get a chance to work with my dad. I get to be closer to him. I'll be interning at his school this spring.
This semester for my group counseling internship I will be
facilitating men's groups at the school he is working. I have had a spectrum of attitudes towards my dad,
all loving but not all have been peaceful. I look at this opportunity
as a chance for me to see his gold. I get to see him passionate,
again. I get to try and mimic his gate, again. All those years of
watching other kids with their dads and wishing I had mine, are being
rewarded by having the opportunity to be next to him in the service
trenches. I love him. I have failed him. He has failed me. We are a
lot alike and we have grown so different. All of this has helped me understand what it means to feel like a boy, be in a mans body, but be in a father's role.
My dad is not openly a sentimental person and does not publicly express
his love, but when he is in a trusted place he lets me know how much I
mean to him. It reminds me today that the hurt caused by a goodbye is
not a bad thing but evidence of strong love cleaved. I can also trust
that it led to new hellos and deeper understandings of sadness. I am
proud to remember how much it hurts to say good bye to him. It makes
this new hello so much more meaningful. He has loved me in his own way
and often from a distance, not necessarily how we would prefer, but the
way it is. I am cherishing how life taught us both the sadness of
letting go.
I am learning how important it is to recognize those things that don't get done. I could make this post really intimate and explain clearly what this means for me. But simply hinting at the fact that I concentrate so much on what gets done in my daily activities I lose site of those activities that I have dismissed. Try not to apply stigma to dismiss because for me dismiss has a rejecting quality. But I hope you can see dismiss as leading to information and situations that let you encounter without judgment. I am struggling things in my life that aren't getting done and forgetting to be thankful for things that aren't being done anymore.
The philosophy on non-judgement is so merciful. I love myself for my disappointments for the first time in my life. When I let someone down I know it will serve a purpose that will lead to something new in their lives. I have learned to trust that we have the will to take adversity and overcome. I have a foolish belief that if I am failing without malice, then I am living with risk. The next question is to be better aware of unintended malice because intentions don't justify consequences.
So as I think about my life, I tend to remember the things I've done, and have not spent a significant amount of time reflecting on the things I haven't.
It doesn't mean that I create a bucket list. I mean that I must be reflective of the void. I don't want this post to be about the regret or hope. I am describing a non-judgmental inventory of the beautiful void, absent, or replaced. I am becoming aware of the faith in knowing I am spiritually contributing to life everywhere despite my energy only being shared in the things that get done.
You can't weave the wind, breeze, breathe, or mist! That's the
analogy that comes to mind as I tried to write weaving the lover,
similarly to weaving the critic. I can't grasp love, only harness it.
In my look into facades I reached frustration trying to describe myself
as a lover. It even has become irritating, silly, maybe exhausting to
think so hard about all this crap. I find myself even feeling
ridiculous about sharing and romanticizing about this idea of lover. I
was rejected, jealous, and lonely when I started reflecting on
behaviors, and these energies created what seems to be a somber and
deflated spirit. Since then another defense or maybe callous has
developed. The critic in me says sarcastically in my ear, "bueno Romeo
and Juliet, wearing your poet pants, take off your underroos and grow a
pair ". It seems pitiful and pretentious, so I'm putting aside
identifying a facade called lover.
I
can't wrap my thoughts around a concrete or nicely organized lover
concept. I am waking up to reality, smelling the coffee. I don't have a
lover facade that I can conveniently label. I'm partially stuck with
realizing I have some boyish tendencies, often reflected as actions or
attempts to be seen as a loving man. Like if using a veil called lover
will camouflage the insecurities of not knowing how to love. Its
sobering to know that I still can act like a boy who is tossed around
and drug by the hair when times get chaotic, lonely, illusive, slippery,
and desperate. The last part of me that feels like a boy is the part
of me that does not understand the power or utility of love, maybe only
the value.
There are two parts to
understanding how love functions in me. The first is the interpersonal
and the second is the intrapersonal. These two functioning love
processing parts share uniquely several qualities, some are kindness,
romance, dedication, commitment, and desire. I do not have a lover, but
I do love. Love is an expression more than an identity, and it can be
intrinsic or extrinsic. I see love as being reciprocal, the most
difficult of all loves. Love is most importantly applied outwardly and
inwardly by me. Yet It is still uncontained. No sense in ever trying
to weave a concept of a lover. I love saying this. I love accepting
that the part of me that loves and can be loved is unpredictable,
versatile, and unknown.
Love in
me is found in so many ideals and shortcomings, and spans identities. I
am a passionate advocate inspired by an erotic servant. Love flows in,
through, and around my so called facades. Love can move from selfless
action to fantasy. Love disappears and leaves me with an addicted self.
Love is the part of me that has been selective, stable, jealous, and
scared. When love hides in me it has left me vulnerable to being
hurtful, nasty, careless, vulgar, and shameful. Love helps me endured,
emote, long, wait, and grieve. Love causes me to inspire, motivate,
cherish, excite, and celebrate. Love brings out the best expression of
me, the healthiest me, and the most unknown part of me.
I
was not prepared for the idea that learning about love would bring so
much perspective to my cynicism. The released cynicism has opened my
eyes to my narcissism. Love has allowed me to fear in new ways. Love
is not a part of me, its a resource, like water, it flows through me. I
dont have a single part of me that uses love, probably explaining why I
can't define a lover. I have learned that every aspect of my being is
effected by harnessing love or ignoring it. My attitude has changed in
ways that feel corrective because of recognizing and appreciating more
of the qualities of love, the deeper and rich qualities, like patience,
trust, and forgiveness.
I
see myself less fearful of failure and more fearful of being alone.
There is a cynic who is dying in me, and that space is making room for
healthier narcissism. I see healthy narcissism as a label for loving
myself. Please don't confuse this with vanity or conceit. I am going
beyond the stereotypes of self love. I am opening myself up to the void
created by the dissipating anger that was created in me over years of
struggle and perceived defeats.
As
I learn to care for me, I find myself more able to care for others. The
better I understand my shadow qualities the better I am at forgiving
others shortcomings. I have been unprepared for how much self love
could alter my understanding of the world. I am on a "high love
content" diet that will reduce my "high cynicism pressure". I love
myself, and now I am working to be congruent with how I treat you. This
is my way point. I hope to see you along the way, it might not be
graceful but I hope it is received with mercy.
