Vavie, Warrior Queen of the Amazon

This magnificent photograph is of my maternal grandmother, Agnes Costa. She was born in 1918 in the Azores Islands, which belong to Portugual. In portuguese "grandmother" is "vovozinha" or "vovo". For some reason it was easier for us children to say "Vavie", and so this photo is of my Vavie.

Her husband died when my mother was 6 or 7 years old and so Vavie had to take charge of the ranch in order to support her three children. In this photograph we see her on the ranch ready to go.

I love this photo not only because of the emotions it provokes in me as her grandson but also, and more importantly, for aesthetic reasons. Either the photographer had a great eye for composition or by fortunate happenstance all the elements in this scene came together to impart a highly stylized and symbolically provocative image. The horse she's mounted on was clearly bred for hard work as we see in the chest muscles and the very girth of its neck and body. The size and power of the horse is patent and even imposing. The interesting thing is that it is in a very stylized position. The mane standing erect, the head inclined in a submissive position. It reminds me of an antique bronze like this one found in Yemen two centuries before Christ.



On this horse, a woman. The posture she affects connotes power, domination. One arm akimbo and the other holding the reins imparts a sense of control, although easy and unforced. The clothes she's wearing, the boots and overalls, are a man's clothes. In the midst of this most masculine of scenes is a woman controlling his world. We know she is a woman because of her breasts, but what makes this photograph more than a woman on a horse is the position of her head. It is inclined in a flirtatious pose, like those stylized pinups of Betty Grable. She's flirting with the men of her world, but from a position of power. She doesn't have to give him anything because she is in control.

This photo of Vavie must have been taken sometime around WWII. One of the iconic images from that time is of Rosie the Riveter. Her image was found everywhere inviting women to join the war effort. Had Vavie been holding a rivet gun rather than seated on a horse, it would have been the same image. But whether Rosie, Cleopatra, Nefertiti, or the Warrior Queen of the Amazon, they are all present in this mythical representation of woman.



I send you a kiss from afar my dear Vavie.
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If you're reading this, you are very fortunate

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If the world's population of 6 million were reduced to a small community of 100 people, keeping the same proportions we have today, it would look something like this:

43 would lack basic santiation
18 would lack access to clean water
6 of them would own more than 59% of the wealth
13 would go to sleep each night hungry
14 could not read
12 would have a computer
3 would have access to the internet
1 would be living with HIV/AIDS
whoever had a refrigerator, a bed, and a roof over their head would be richer than 75% of the population
18 would struggle to live on less than $1 a day
53 would struggle to live on less than $2 a day

Be thankful for what you have, and fight for a better world.

http://www.miniature-earth.com/me_english.htm
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From Whirlpool to Philosophy

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A living body is not a fixed thing but a flowing event, like a flame or a whirlpool: the shape alone is stable, for the substance is a stream of energy going in at one end and out at the other. We are particular and temporarily identifiable wiggles in a stream that enters us in the form of light, heat, air, water, milk, bread, fruit, beer, beef Stroganoff, caviar, and paté de foie gras. It goes out as gas and excrement–and also as semen, babies, talk, politics, commerce, war, poetry, music, and philosophy.

–Alan Watts, Does It Matter?
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Life Should have a Soundtrack Godammit

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Did you ever have the feeling that something you're experiencing is missing the soundtrack? I guess nowadays we would say audio file, but the idea is the same. Imagine watching a movie with dialogue but no music. Lawrence of Arabia would be about a blue-eyed, tunic-wearing, train-blower-upper rather than the sweeping David vs. Goliath epic that it is. Movie directors add music to give an emotional tone to the story they're telling. The muscial score imparts an emotional unity to the different scenes and helps in bringing it to its end. Even without music, good actors and a good director can provoke emotion, as in theater, but not with the same intensity. I really don't know what it is about music that makes it able to evoke emotions so easily and unify the input of our senses. At times I think about my life, the past and present and everything I've done and I would love to feel the wholeness or unity of it just as one feels the arrangement of notes in a symphony.

This reminds me of a story by Borges (I don't recall the title) in which the narrator speaks metaphorically of all the steps that one has taken in his life, here and there, up and down, and when we look back on it all we see only a confusion of tracks. He says that although we are unable to perceive order in this chaos of events and decisions, from a divine point of view the arrangement of all these steps makes up an intelligeible whole. All the steps are interrelated and impart a unified intelligible sense. Well, maybe God (the big music director in the sky) gets the drift but I don't! I want to feel it! I can reflect on this totality in terms of the goals I have set for myself and see that those goals have been accomplished, but its not the same, its not sufficient.

I think this sensation has a lot to do with what Kundera talks about in The Unbearable Lightness of Being. The main character, Tomas, experiences his being as incredibly light. Everything he does, all the decisions he's made in his life, are the result of his freedom. Among the innumerable ways that his life could have played out, he made a series of decisions that made it play out just as it has. What led him to make these decisions was not something eternal, transcendent, fixed, canonical, or heavy, but rather something based only on the whim of his will. Thus he feels his life as insignificant, as light, as not tied down to anything that could give it the sensation of heaviness. This is how I feel. Although I've had much pleasure, achievement, friends, etc in my life until now, I cannot, like Tomas, avoid the sensation of its lightness. It is this that is unbearable.

In some way I'm looking for heaviness. Many find something like it in religion. I think of my grandmother. For her, her whole life has meaning and sense because it all fits snugly within the confines of the Catholic faith. Everything she's done runs noiselessly along the doctrinal tracks of the cristian Weltanschaaung. For some reason this makes me think of sleeping under the wonderful heaviness of two or three homemade quilts. Sleeping without anything covering you at all is very uncomfortable, at least for me. But where is one to find these quilts? Just pick a religion and say you believe? I know I'm too skeptical or sophisticated for that. Maybe turn myself into a Nietzschean übermensch? Easier said than done. What I'm hoping is that love will do the trick, really falling truly and deeply in love, like the angel in Wings of Desire that falls finally from his heavenly perch into the messy but blissful heaviness of the Earth below.
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Lost in Havana

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I'm alone in the heart of Havana, the streets deserted. The Caribbean sun has long since left it, and the warmth, that hours before bathed this city, leeches slowly away like the tide. But something magical pulses still. Among the normal twilight sounds a city makes I hear a distant modulation in the air, a rhythm that gives tempo to my steps and leads them off. A few moments later I find myself in an alley, and by stoop and stride I face a door. When I open it, the indefinite rhythm of before becomes a panoply of melody and percussion bathed in a voice both sweet and melancholic. There's Omara Portuondo singing as only she can. The place is as empty as the streets outside and the voice seems to come from nowhere and everywhere at the same time. I find myself by a table, a bottle of rum, an empty glass. Before I can take a drink I hear the first chords of "La Sitiera" and in that moment I feel your hand on my shoulder. I look to my side and find your eyes, and an enigmatic smile that says all that there is to be said. We move out to the dance floor, and there, surrounded by tables long ago abandoned, we enter the world that Omara weaves with her voice. I hold your body against mine, and you my gaze within yours, and we dance ever so slowly on these floating notes, on this the verdant ground of our daily communion.
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The Grammar of Love

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I have a friend from Spain who's extremely punctilious about Spanish grammar. She lives here in Mexico and I've actually seen her wince when she hears something said incorrectly (just as an Englishman may wince when hearing an Americanism). She'll say, "No, its not said like that, rather . . ." Apparently she makes these comments for my benefit so that as a foreigner I learn to speak correctly. But I tell her that language is a living phenomenon, it changes and evolves depending on context and use. The point of language is communication, I tell her, so if you understand variant uses then there is no pragmatic difference between your Spanish and Mexican Spanish. But she still insists that the Spaniards have it right. Ok, whatever.

Now on the one hand this is an attitude that is easily revealed to be chauvinistic and elitist, and thus easily refuted. On the other hand, I began to think about grammatical tolerance as a metaphor for love and fidelity. I hope to express this idea in a poem but I still haven't figured out how. For the time being I'll express it here more prosaically. The points of comparison in the poem would be "linguistic communication:love" and "grammatical tolerance:infidelity". We can tolerate variations in the grammar of a language without the latter ceasing to function. We continue to communicate. The question is if, in the same sense, we can tolerate change in the grammar of love. What happens when one violates the strict rules of the dynamic of a relationship? What happens when one is no longer faithful to these rules? Can a couple tolerate infidelity and continue loving just as in language we tolerate changes in grammar without thereby ceasing to communicate? How much can we tolerate? At what point do we stop understanding the other? At what point does the grammar of love, if pushed far enough, begin to dissolve into a cacophony of isolated emotions?
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Slowly

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I climbed a tree today. Its been years since I've done that. People walking by on the sidewalk below looked at me as if I'd taken my clothes off. The birds flew to a nearby tree and from there watched me suspiciously. A column of ants descending a branch not so much as looked at me as they marched by, their little green flags held aloft like sails in the wind. How good, how secure I felt in the arms of that tree. What I most like about them is the pleasure they take in moving with infinite slowness.
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Sudden Salience

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In the Poetics of Space Gaston Bachelard says the following:

“The poetic image is a sudden salience of the surface of the psyche”

This is an amazing phrase. When I first read it I think it produced in me the very effect that it describes, an effect produced, curiously, not by a conceptual understanding of what the phrase means but simply by an aural apprehension of it. The wonderfully sibilant alliteration evoked an image of something sizzling, like a brief flash of fire that singes (so many “s” words here!).

I read the phrase two or three more times, slowly. The author says that it is a salience of the surface of the psyche, not on it. The poetic image emerges from the surface of the psyche much like the ephemeral emanation of solar flares from the sun. In this metaphor the sun is, of course, the psyche. The latter has its etymological roots in the notion of breath but I much prefer the potency conjured in the image of a sphere of fire because poetic images are like sparks, as are ideas, when they are first thought of.

And then there is the word “salience”. Wonderful word! Although most would have to look it up in a dictionary to understand what it means, we seem, in this context, to intuitively grasp its meaning. Perhaps the more familiar adjective “salient” leads us to this apprehension. The very oddness and semantic vagueness of “salience” makes it jump out at us as we read, which of course is an enactment of the very thing that it describes. I love words like this.

If any one has a phrase they love for its poetic/linguistic/aural/semantic qualities, please let me know in the comments and I’ll post those and more in later entries.
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Poems I

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Praxis

There are some things we’d rather stretch to infinity
than cleave,
Or trees better climbed, we think,
than heaved
over,

root-dead.

But we’re familiar with those little practices
of mending,
And deceived that the risk we take
in delight of
rending,

is worth it.

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Cruising

The most difficult part is after
you’ve passed him.
The looks have been given, and cast
back. The coming to a stop.
Beginning to fiddle with pretense.

A smoking habit is good here.
Or a street to be crossed.
Any excuse, the moon even
will do. Yes. Stop just there and gaze up,
hands in pockets.

No need to glance back. He will come.
It is instinct, old as the tides.

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Oblivion

Moments divided
between those
known
and those separated
by divisions of her light
into moments

of oblivion.
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Love, the Internet, and Rational Choice

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Everyone says that love comes when it comes, when you least expect it, and that nothing can be done to hurry it along. Wonderful, I can hardly wait. (Sound of feet tapping). I'm sorry, I'm just too impatient about some things. I've been single for the last three and a half years and have learned to live with my solitude. But I really miss coupled life (shopping, cooking dinner together, farts in bed, choosing kitchen curtain patterns, that sort of thing), for which reason, given my impatience, I've made a concerted effort as of late to hasten Cupid's cherubic butt over my way.

Part of the strategy, actually a pretty big part, has been posting profiles on singles sites. You know, I was thinking the other day that the last time I was single the internet didn't exist! Well, it did exist, but in beta (sans Yahoo, Google, Youtube, etc.). The point is that I met guys the old fashioned way, in bars, stalled elevators, and at the front door delivering pizzas. But now they deliver directly to my inbox. I have profiles on Manhunt, Gaydar, Gayromeo, etc. Everyday I get at least a couple of messages. Quite a few show body parts that polite society speaks of with innuendo and slightly feigned discretion. Some photos are really hot although most just make me laugh or say iieeuuuuu (is that how you write that sound?). But many are from guys looking for love (dinner cookers and curtain hangers). I've met a lot of guys in these sites, had a lot of great, no-strings sex, as well as romance and a couple of good friends, but nothing more. Cupid, wherefore art thou? My best friend, Eugenio, tells me that I don't want to fall in love, that all my sighing and yearning is a load of disingenuous claptrap disguising the fact that I love being single and getting laid so often. Emphatically I tell him no! He tells me I'm too demanding, to which I respond, "of course, I'm not going to shack up with just anybody". Nonetheless, I began wondering if I really didn't have a mental block, some unseen psychic chastity belt. While I was pondering this I stumbled upon a very interesting article which may in some way explain Cupid's extended vacation.

One of the dogmas of Western rationalism concerns in the maximization of utility. The decisions we make, it is supposed, are guided by the sole the sole objective of increasing utility. Quite often, for us enlightened moderns, this has to do with the increase of freedom, which is most easily achieved by increasing the number of choices available to us. More choice = more freedom, and more freedom = more utility, more wellbeing. It would seem that happiness (or whatever utility you happen to be partial to) is a function of the number of options from which we can choose.

The funny thing is that many studies have shown that this turns out not to be the case. Let's take an example from studies of consumer choice. In a grocery store there is a table set up with 5 different varieties of jam. Most people who have jam on their list will taste the different varieties, choose one, and go to the checkout. When you put 20 varieties of jam on the table shoppers will start tasting, go from one to the other, get confused, not remember how one tasted, go back, and so on, until finally the majority give up and leave without buying any of them. Now why is this? In his book The Paradox of Choice (here's a video of him talking about his theory) Barry Schwartz explains that the more options we have, the higher our expectations, the more demanding we are (Eugenio was right!). We worry about making the right choice, choosing the best option, and if we make a mistake we feel regret and blame ourselves.

Returning to my amorous predicament, if I lived in a small town out in the middle of nowhere and there were only three eligible bachelors it would be a hell of a lot easier to choose. But in our modern, complex societies, and especially with thousands and thousands of profiles and personal spaces on the internet, making decisions is far more difficult. "Should I choose him? But what if the love of my life is on the next page of profiles?" See what I mean? Craziness!! When I read these studies it occurred to me that this very phenomenon may be affecting my love life. What do you think? I guess the best thing to do would be to learn to be patient, erase my profiles, and hope to meet the love of my life in an elevator!
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Vignettes I

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The beauty of a word that survives the destruction of the world without anyone there to speak or write it.

You find a tape recorder in the street. You hear a message telling you to turn it over. On the other side, you read another message, scratched with a knife in the metal, and realize that what it says no voice could ever have spoken into the machine.

My words have lost their sense. I see them float up into the air like balloons, spinning about uselessly in space. Months later they descend over Japan. Some guy plucks them out of the air with his fingers and eats them, one by one. He begins to write poetry and becomes famous. And here I am, mute, a sad clown with his gestures and grunts, interlocutor of dogs and hummingbirds.

The man at the counter sells oranges. He also sells the juice of these oranges. And pineapples, and the juice of pineapples. He is a fat man, sitting on a stool fanning himself. Along comes a prostitute. She is a vendor too, but she sneers at the fat man sitting on the stool. She too is filled with juice but she sells only the rind.

The false propriety of trees, standing erect and apart, while beneath, like young lovers at the table, their roots mingle.

I have been without purpose before, between the folds of starched percale sheets, wondering why my body hair grows only so long, pacing up and down a hallway. At the end of this hallway is a small window. From there I can see a bus stop, seven people waiting, their clothes indicating the direction of the wind, their shadows the position of the sun, their blank faces the hurtling steely purpose that approaches, lined with empty seats waiting to be filled.
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The mirror behind your back

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I don't know what I am about to write. So perhaps in this sense it will not do for you to call me a writer. How far, for example, does the artist's signature go in making him an artist? I've been leafing through a book on Frida Kahlo in which are included reproductions of her first love letters to Alejandro. Throughout the letters she illustrates particular emotions with drawings, herself crying, or a dove. Should I include one here? What visual image would be appropiate to what I am feeling right now? But this is silly. I don't love you. Who are you? You are perhaps someone waiting for a bus, or sitting on a toilet. In a spare moment you grab for something more appropriate, something answering to the needs at hand. Ordinary things, things without color, useless as the image of yourself in the mirror behind your back.
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Ray Charles

When I'm down in the dumps, sad, depressed, I put on a Ray Charles song and in a heartbeat things are rosy again and I begin to dance. The same goes for this great photo of Ray. I look at it and it fills me with happiness. The exuberance of the smile, the belting laugh coming out of his cavernous throat, the reflection of piano keys in his sun glasses, it all takes me right to where he is and I feel in my bones the Dionysian vibration of life.

I want my soul to look like the photo!

When the British had an Empire

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One of my favorite books is Lady Chatterly's Lover. Not abstractly or generally, but rather concretely. Among the books that are physically in my library this is one of my favorites. Not because of the story, which I imagine is very good (I've never read it), but because of some special characteristic it has. The edition I have was published in Sweden in 1950. Thanks to obscenity laws, it wasn't published in England until 1960. The wonderful thing about this edition is that on the inside front cover it says, "The sale of this book is prohibited in the United States of America and the British Empire." That last bit really impressed me. I had in my hands a little book that, like David, dared to challenge an empire. That's why I love this book. Its like an artifact, as if in an archaeological excavation they had discovered the very stones that David used to knock out Goliath.

I found it many years ago in a small Jewish library in New York. I paid $2.50 for it. What a jewel! Unfortunately it suffered an accident. I was living in Boston at the time and was getting ready for my move to Mexico (where I now live). I had almost all my books stored in boxes in the basement. I was working then at the Harvard Bookstore and one day during work this huge storm came out of nowhere and dumped a deluge of water. My roommate called me to tell me the basement was filling with water. I paid an obscene amount of money for a taxi but got home quickly and found the basement knee-high with water. I've never worked so hard in my life hauling those boxes out of the basement. I lost a good many books that had to be thrown away, but Lady Chatterly's Lover survived. Its safely here with me in Mexico, with some water stains, with the price written on the inside cover in pencil, and that wonderful and arrogant warning of a lost empire.
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Feast on Your Life

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This blog is called "Feast on Your Life". It is taken from a poem called "Love After Love" written by Derek Walcott, a Nobel Prize-winning poet that I had the honor of meeting many years ago.

Love After Love

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was yourself.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.


This poem is the first match of many to come. Its all about finding again the love of your life, who is yourself, myself, your deepest and profoundest self, the stranger you have abandoned and the cries out to return. I'm so hungry! I hunger for myself, for what I am and what I can be.
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