Pardoning the Ex-tradition of a Legacy

 I come from Latin privilege and Chicano scarcity.  My maternal grandparents are a large influence on who I became in life.  They didn't seem to struggle with identity openly.  They did label though.  And for whatever social influences or lack of need they rarely promoted any label themselves.  They established the bedrock for what I rely on as a character compass.  They created what I know as my family.  They were raised in a generation that inspired the need for a Chicano mentality.

My grandparents were taught under a regime of Catholic dictators enforcing laws that disabled a lot of their reckless creativity.  I paint with a bias that overlooks the love and tradition the same Catholic ordained paradoxically brought with them.  This Christian archdiocese, including the radical authorities, enforced a catholic tradition of shame and guilt right along side a message of stewardship and compassion.  The penitent façade of Catholic Christianity seemed to bind my grandparents into obedient stewards to humility, handicapping them, while protestant Anglos capitalized on their, reformed alignment with prosperity and wealth.  I don't need to be Protestant I need to radicalize my Catholicism.

My religious attitude paints with broad strokes.  I am inflamed by my commitment to the Catholic rules that don't seem to stifle the liberated "Christian".  Blessed are the meek, while my ego looks up at the Christians who seem to be lavished by the sleek.  I am dull by the sadness from the discouraged attitude the Catholic church has towards the spiritually creative and grip on dogma.  I am jealous of the prosperity that comes from Anglo-American Evangelical modalities.  I want the same freedom to interpret and create revolutionary mentalities around the gospel that aren't commercialized.  I want to dismantle the  faith that rooted my grandparents in hesitancy, fear, and obedience.  My grandparents died obedient Catholics and I want to die a believer in Christ.  I don't know how different these deaths are, and pray they lead to the same heaven.

Gettin it right

Part II

 "I'm not a smart man", my grandpa tells me, slopping up fresh pinto beans and green chili with a torn off piece of tortilla.  The tortilla creates a pocket when he slightly folds the tortilla piece while pinching the ends together.  This make shift spoon helps shovels spoonfuls of frijoles while at times becoming a bite of it's own.  "Don't be like me", he continues between bites.  He rakes the plate with each tortilla piece leaving small gravy tracks, whittling his pool of beans and chili into a shrinking portion.  "I wanted to go to school".  He describes how he isn't sure why he couldn't focus.  He hasn't shared what were his barriers but his rhetoric paints a story of an early exit, an easy exit.  

This baffles me because he is such a craftsman.  The education that he did excel in was not in a classroom.  It isn't listed on a transcript in a data warehouse that I can admire.  He doesn't have certifications hung on his walls, highlighting any curriculum that vetted his knowledge against other men.  And I don't know my grandpa as anything other than capable.  This is different than smart.

Grandpa, I want to be like you, and if not being smart is part of that then I will find a way to just be capable.  I want to learn how to come from my day of work and build.  I likely won't build cabinets from scratch but I will create.  It may be a poem, a story, or a reflection.  I hope I can be a learner like you.

Grandpa you didn't get it right, rather you got it well!  I hope you can feel on your new cosmic journey that there was never a smart way and you surely didn't have to avoid the wrong way so strongly.  I hope you see in the heavens that how you lived was valuable and worthy of praise.  The love so many have for you, should help you see that the lessons you mastered are accredited by the ethos.

At times it appeared hard to tell that you cared, were pleased, approved, or were impressed.  I needed more smiles that came naturally, and didn't have to wait for libations. I hope to learn to be sweet without the reliance of beer or two.  I hope to soften my feedback, because it hurt to hear your doubt come through in your praise.  And I remember how much it hurt hearing you doubt yourself, so I hope I can find a way to build confidence with the modesty I admired from you.  

How come you describe yourself as falling short?  I miss you, sitting down under a roof you built, reaching for a salt shaker from a cabinet you fashioned, pouring frijoles into a bowl grandma crafted, scooping chili from pan older than me resourcefully maintained.  You are quality.  Who taught you to hold yourself down?

Part I

Donde Frijole

 Part I

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

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

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

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

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

Part II

Aging justice

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

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

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

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

False summitting is still summitting

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

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

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

NYC - A capitalist's Mecca

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

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

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

Bondability - Who does this mean?

 What is the meaning of each connection we create?  Answering this question will help set the orientation for how we will show up to others.  When a connection is significant we can see the responsibility reciprocated.  There is a positive correlation between effort and interest.  As in our parents, we connect expecting a responsibility, because they provide us with everything we need to survive for such a critical time, likely the most critical connection we have.  Can we survive without parents?  Some people have to, and this does not minimize the need for surrogate families or community when this happens.  The level of responsibility might be associated with the power of the bond.  The covalent strength of the connected parts of our lives synced with the level of devotion and responsibility to the meaning that is rooted in our connection describes what I see as bondability.  The meaning in our connections define the commitment and security of our bonds. 

With meaning I found it easier to understand how to work with reactive children.  What does this relationship mean for this child.  Granted it was usually a best guess, often summed up as speculation, and likely more often projection.  Having an observation in the form of some type of meaning, lets me establish the necessary curiosity that will enhance this guess. The guess evolves into a better informed bond assessment. What does this child need from this relationship and in other words what does this person mean to this child.  Many of the children that I worked with were in foster care or parented by someone other than their biological parent.  So I often had the challenge of working to see what meanings the custodial interactions could mean for the child client.  It is hard to unpack what mom or dad means to a child.  We don't often build that into our culture.  I have never had to think about what my mother means to me. 

As soon as I can start unpacking what I need from the people I know as parents, I can construct an awareness for being accurate with what I need for love.  Mom and dad as archetypes are socially cliché people we dogmatically rely on.  Parents are instinctively vital to our survival.  Through our culture's lens we build up expectations for who we want our parents to be.  Working through the complexities of these influences and how they spill over into less vital, less expectation filled, and more selective relationships is a big part of maturing.  This is what the industry calls "doing your work".  For me doing the work, is the process of understanding what I need in relationship to my environment.  Once I have a strong awareness of what I have needed, I can apply it to the child in front me.  Cultural awareness is a critical component to applying my speculative guesses because my speculation is only as good as my experiences have taught me.  Although I do believe that what we all need is very similar, and paradoxically different enough.  So any empathetic and loving attempt at relating should bring a bondable experience.  This is hard to teach.  

Take a mother and child for example.  There are several hypothesis as to why a mother cares for a child.  And this journal entry isn't revisiting any biological research to interpret any of these, this entry is for capturing my interest to explore the meaning behind a mothers responsibility.  I have to take the child's perspective because I'll never understand what it truly is to be a mother.  As a son I see how the meaning in my relationship with my mother has evolved from being completely reliant and tightly covalent to now becoming balanced or a harmonious covalence. This shift has also help me have new meanings along the  way.  As a youth my mom meant safety, comfort, and home as I have matured this meaning has evolved to become peer, friend, and lineage.  These meanings reveal the philosophical attributes my mother child bond has created, what makes me curious are the psychological reasons and physiological process that get put into play in order for this bondability to cultivate.  

Now how does this apply to navigating a relationship? The fundamental atomic parts of a bond are found in the polarity of what we need!