It is time to bring this series of postings to a close. I hate to see Ode to an Aged Artist come to an end, but the painting, now titled Odas Elementales, is finished and it is hanging in the window of Annex Comics on Broadway in Newport, Rhode Island. It is a good place for it.
The proprietor of Annex Comics, Wayne Quackenbush, has been very supportive to the alternative high school, The East Bay Met School, where I work. He has provided internships to some our students and encouraged other students to display their artwork in his shop. If you are in Rhode Island and looking for a comic book/graphic novel/sequential artwork, you know where to go.
I have enjoyed the process of making and writing about this painting. The title comes from a series of poems by Pablo Neruda that I have quoted frequently in these postings. Odas Elementales is usually translated as Elemental Odes, but I’d translate it as Odes to Basic Things. In the making of this piece, I was trying to do the visual version of what Neruda does in these poems: describe everyday objects in an accessible style. The amazing thing about Neruda’s odes is that in one moment they seem to be nothing more than lovely, clear descriptions and in the next moment they seem full of deeper meaning.
I think of my painting as a self-portrait that I don’t appear in. I’m telling you about whom I am by presenting some of the everyday things from my life: roosters, elephants, the cup I drink my morning coffee from, the quilt design called tumbling blocks, Honduran clowns, some tile patterns that have stuck in my head, tomatoes from my garden, and a little doll bought in a tourist market in Guatemala. These things are present in my mind and attached to some of my sweetest memories.
Can you tell this from the painting? Do these objects seem full of deeper meaning?
Alive
This painting uses all the conventions of the old side show banners that lined circus midways advertising amazing and disturbing attractions. Like them, it is painted on unstretched canvas and has grommets for hanging it. I’ve copied the painted banner within the actual banner that these signs always had and also copied the style of lettering that would have proclaimed, Dickie the Penguin Boy, Jack Joyce’s Performing Horses, Amazon Snake Charmer, Huey the Pretzel Man, Rasmus Nielsen Scandinavian Strong Man, Professor Price Tattoo Artist, Alligator Girl, and Shella Queen of the Jungle.
(My reference was Freaks, Geeks & Strange Girls – Sideshow Banners of the Great American Midway, by Randy Johnson, Jim Secreto, and Teddy Varndell.)
Almost all of the midway banners contained another element, a circle containing the word “alive.” This appeared as assurance to the rubes who were going to pay a nickel to enter the sideshow that they would see the living, breathing, genuine article, not a painting or a statue or a work of taxidermy. However, I think it carries another meaning. I think it is a declaration of existence.
I’m alive! I’m here! I woke up this morning on the right side of the grass! How amazing!
Two years ago when he was eight, my grandson Sammy started coming to Rhode Island to spend a week or ten days with Deb and me during the summer. He made his third visit this July, flying as an unaccompanied minor from his home in Portland, Oregon.
The first year he came was also the year he turned into an avid sports fan. Some developmental leap took place and rather than baseball and football being activities he participated in, they became his lens for viewing and understanding the world.
One day he went to work with Deb at the Alternative Food Coop. They waited on a very small woman who was shopping there. Deb noted that Sammy was scrutinizing this person. When her order had been rung up and she left the store, Sammy said, “I really like small people.”
“Why,” Deb asked.
“Because they have such small strike zones,” Sammy replied.
I believe this change was due to a new level of physical skill that allowed him to really play the games and to know kinesthetically what was going on when he watched professional sports. Also, he learned to read. He knew all the teams, all the players, and all the statistics. He immersed himself in strategy, history, and endless speculation. There was no fact too obscure to be of importance to him and no rule too arcane to get his attention. In fact, the more obscure the more arcane the better. Moreover, he wanted to talk about it endlessly. He wanted to engage in deep discussions of the repercussions of a particular trade the Sea Hawks had made. He wanted to think through, week by week, how an injury could be accommodated to minimize its impact on a team’s chance at the pennant.
Neither Deb nor I had the knowledge to participate in these discussions. We didn’t have the interest either. But I knew who had both: Bob Cohen. Bob has been my friend for more than thirty years and he is the only person I know whose passion for sports matches Sammy’s. I recruited him to be Sammy’s sports buddy during the summer visits.
Here is a scene that took place about 20 years ago. If my memory serves me right, it was probably 1990. Bob Cohen and I were both between relationships. I was forty-five and he was a couple of years younger. His marriage with Suzie had ended for the second and final time. I was near the end of my long, painful unraveling with Mariellen. We were having a beer on the deck of the Coast Guard House on a sunny afternoon in the middle of the summer. I don’t usually go there, but I remember it was hot and the breeze off the ocean felt great.
As we sat there drinking and talking, a woman approached our table. She was dark, pretty, a little round, and a decade younger than us.
She slipped Bob a business card and said, “I’ve been watching you for the last half hour. You’re the best looking man I’ve seen in along time. I decided that if I left without giving you my number, I’d kick myself later.”
Bob gave her a big smile and said, “What a great compliment! Thanks you so much. You made my day. Unfortunately, I just started seeing someone.”
The part about just having started to see someone was a lie, but a generous one. It was more like a gift than a lie.
Bob likes them skinny. I could have told the woman she didn’t stand a chance. Me on the other hand… she could have had me at ‘”I’ve been watching you…”
This guy who gets approached by strange women and turns them down in a gentle, chivalrous manner is part of who Bob is to me. However, I doubt my grandson Sammy will ever recognize that part of him. To ten-year-old Sammy, Bob Cohen is the old guy, his grandfather’s friend, who goes to Red Sox games with them.
During his yearly visits, Sammy sits next to Bob at Fenway Park and they talk baseball.
July 17, 2010. Red Sox vs. The Rangers
Sammy: Lets say Ortiz hits a high fly ball right down the third base line, you know.And Josh Hamilton goes to catch it just before it goes into the stands, but it bounces off his glove and it goes fair, you know. Like if he hadn’t touched it, it would have been foul, but it bounces off his glove on the fair side of the line, you know. Would that be a home run?
Bob: Yes that would be a home run. And that has happened. What a sad moment that would be for the left fielder. Can you imagine how he’d feel making an error like that?
The Ranger’s catcher, Bengie Molina came up to bat.
Sammy: Oh, this guy is so slow!
Bob: He says himself he is the slowest guy in the world.
Sammy: He’s not that great a hitter.
Bob: True, but you can’t forget yesterday he hit for the cycle. He’s a threat.
Sammy: Yeah. Even if he’s slow he can win games.
Bob: It’s a good lesson. You can use your strengths to over come weaknesses.
Sammy took an inning out of the game to cruise the souvenir stands with Deb. He was looking for something to take back to Portland for his younger brother and sister. However, he ended up spending $2.50 of his money on a grab bag of baseball cards for Bob. He presented Bob with a brown paper bag that contained about fifty cards.
It was a great game. Maybe the best game I’ve ever seen. Certainly the best I’ve ever seen in person. It was full of tension, possibility, hope, disappointment, and finally triumph. The Sox won in the eleventh inning. A sacrifice fly by Kevin Youkilis with the bases loaded brought in the winning run.
It was late, about 11:00. We walked to the T station that took us to our car parked at the last stop. On the crowded train, Sammy stood in front of Bob and they went through the grab bag of baseball cards. They conversed about each card. Even if the player was so obscure neither had heard of him, they talked about the teams he had played for, looked over his stats, speculated about what had become of him.
An old guy and a young boy, sharing affection, the afterglow of a great game, sleepiness, and a deep understanding of how baseball informs life.
The Portrait: This is a portrait done of me by the artist Jane E. Harrold, A.K.A. Calamity Jane. Besides being a terrific artist, she also makes amazing cowboy shirts, and has a radio program. Look for her on Facebook.
Looking back over the postings in Portrait of the Artist as an Old Man, I realized none of them are very overtly political. Since I consider this blog a self-portrait, that fact is misleading. Actually, I spend a good portion of my time thinking about politics. However, I tend not to enjoy political discussion all that much. It seems to me they either end up being preaching to the choir or trying to score points against someone you have no intention of really listening to. In my experience political discussions close more doors than they open.
Obviously, I’m leading up to writing about politics and I am challenging myself to do it in a way that is personal and invites people in rather than slamming a door in their face.
I just finished reading Blackwater, The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army by Jeremy Scahill. The gist of what Scahill presents is that Bush came into office with an agenda to “privatize” as much of the federal government as possible, including functions traditionally carried out by the armed services. This was an overt goal that Bush and his neoconservative administration claimed was based on their belief that competition in the market place results in more efficiency than central planning, that corporations, given a free hand, could do everything that government does better and cheaper, including defend the country. Bush, Chaney, and Rumsfeld stated all this before the World Trade Center was destroyed on September 11. After that traumatic event, privatization of the military was put on a fast track so that by the time the US invaded Iraq the State Department and Department of Defense were set up to give out billions of dollars to private corporations to take over functions that had historically been performed by the armed services. Many of these contracts went to a new corporation named Blackwater founded by a man named Erik Prince. Prince was a very wealthy man with deep involvement in right wing political and religious causes.
Not surprisingly, like everything else about the invasion of Iraq, the move to privatize essential military functions went very wrong very quickly. However, it made the people who were awarded the contracts very rich. They profited mightily from the war even as it spiraled downward into chaos. Scahill, whose writing is clear and engaging, tells this story in great detail and with solid documentation. He makes it clear that privatization of the military is a terrible idea, on many, many levels.
My usual response to reading a journalistic expose like this, where powerful people are revealed to be doing terrible things to the rest of us, is anger. I certainly felt anger while reading Blackwater, but much more I felt sadness. I kept muttering to myself, “My poor country. What are they doing to my poor country?”
My most personal connection to the book came as I read about the recruitment and training of Hondurans as mercenaries to send to Iraq. Honduras had initially been part of the “coalition of the willing.” However, it quickly withdrew its regular army troops due to domestic opposition to the war. Despite this decision that the country would not take part in an unpopular war, by 2005 military contractors had set up training bases in the mountains outside Tegucigalpa and were recruiting the same soldiers that Honduras had brought home to go back to Iraq as contracted soldiers. Scahill reports that the Hondurans were paid about $1,000 per month, a small fraction of what people from other parts of the world were being paid to do the same work. So even as cannon fodder, Honduran lives aren’t worth as much as other lives.
I was in Honduras during this period. I had hiked in the mountains where the training base was located. I had no idea what was going on, but I had some contact with the Honduran military and had been thinking and writing about young soldiers.
From my Peace Corps journal- September 25, 2005:
I'm at a Honduran army base in the city of Siquatepeque to give a four-hour presentation on AIDS to the soldiers.This is part of an initiative of the Peace Corps to deliver preventative information to sexually active adult men.I'm at the base with thirty other participants of a “train the trainers” workshop.This is our practicum.
(The manual for the workshop is titled "Aqui Entre Nos... Ideas and Tools for Prevention of HIV/AIDS in the Adult Man." It is illustrated with my Platano Y Tomate drawings.)
We’ve divided up into teams of five and each team is presenting to about fifteen soldiers.I'm working with three Hondurans and another Peace Corps volunteer.
The workshop is fun.It is physically active, packed with games and exercises.The soldiers are having a good time.It has become clear that about half of them can't read or read very poorly.They have trouble counting off by fours.When presented with true or false questions it takes them awhile to realize that the answer will either be true or false.One game involves repeating a well-known tongue twister.Maybe a third of them never manage to say it correctly.They are young and small.Despite the uniforms and the berets worn low over one eye, they strike me as touchingly vulnerable.I'm told later that only the very poor enter the army at this level.If you have more money you can be an officer.These are poor boys from isolated villages a long way from home.
From Siguatepeque, where the Honduran army base is located, it is a twenty-minute bus ride to Comayagua where there is a large American army base.Comayagua is, not coincidentally, a center of prostitution.It is estimated that among prostitutes in Honduras the rate of AIDS infection is 30%.
I'm doing an activity that leads up to the condom demonstration.I ask them to line up in order from the oldest to the youngest with the youngest near the door and the oldest near the window.This relates to condom usage because we are going to give them a sequence of directions for the correct use of a condom and ask them to perform them in order.They like trying to get in order by age, but they can't do it.Two people will ask each other how old they are and stand next to each other, but it won't necessarily relate to the next two.Finally, an officer takes over and organizes them, but when I ask them to go down the line and say how old they are, several are out of order.They think this is very funny, especially the twenty-three year old down between the seventeen and eighteen year olds.Next I ask them to line up by how far their home is from Siguatepeque.Surprisingly they do better at this.There are some energetic discussions about which place is more distant, but in the end they all agree the order is right.I have no way of knowing.Finally, I ask them to form a line with the man with the biggest penis near the door and the man with the smallest penis near the window.The silence lasts three or four beats too long.Then they figure out it is a joke, start laughing, calling for rulers, and jostling to be as near the door as possible.
A young Honduran man named Melvin who came to the workshop with me from Sonaguera takes over and does the condom demonstration.It is soon obvious that many of the soldiers have never seen or handled a condom.They have trouble opening the tin foil packets.They can't figure out which side is up.We are using platanos for penises and they try to put them on with the roll facing the wrong way.
This is all done with great humor, not to mention homoerotic charge.Picture a room full of hot young Latin men holding huge green bananas and helping each other get rubbers over them.
I’m left with the impression that, while it would probably take any of these guys five minutes to get a girl pregnant or infect himself with HIV, their chances of getting a condom on in the dark in a state of excitement are pretty slim.
Perhaps because these boys are young enough to be my grandchildren, all of this strikes me as poignant and some how hopeful.There is so much to do and it needs to happen at such a basic level that it should be possible to make a difference.
I have heard that commercial sex workers charge one price for sex with a condom, but for a little more will let you go "carnita a carnita." At least now, if offered the choice, these soldiers can make an informed decision.That is progress. Right?
("Carnita" is the diminutive of "carne" so it translates as "little meat" or in the phrase for unprotected sex "little meat to little meat."However, the diminutive is used with terms of endearment so perhaps a better translation is "sweet little meat to sweet little meat."I have to admit I like that.)
From my Peace Corps journal – 10/10/05:
I sent out a group email today that described working with a group of Honduras soldiers. (The email was based on the journal entry above.) I wrote about my perception of them as vulnerable young men, poor, uneducated, a long way from their homes and the support of their families. This was an accurate description of my feelings as I stood in front of the group, talking about HIV/AIDS and hoping that the information, to some small extent, would make these young men safer.
However, as I was writing the email a couple of weeks later, another set of more complicated perceptions had crept in.
I’d been reading Inevitable Revolutions by Walter Lafeber. It is a detailed history of the long, sad story of the United States’ exploitation of Central America. For about 200 years now we have had one goal in Central America: profit. We have done anything and everything to keep the balance of cash flowing from South to North. Up until about the 1950’s if anything happened that threatened to interrupt our money making, we literally sent in the marines with few if any apologies or rationalizations. In the 1950s and 60s, in the context of the cold war, with the Soviet Union and China emerging as rival super powers, direct, armed intervention in the internal affairs of Central American democracies became harder to pull off. Our solution was to choose a right wing politician or general, covertly support him in overthrowing the legitimate government, buy him an army and auxiliary paramilitaries, train them at The School of The Americas, arm them to the teeth and turn them loose on their own people. Thus assuring that Central America was a “stable” place for US corporations to make big bucks. Due to this arrangement, hundreds of thousands of Central Americans, especially during the 1980’s and 90’s, were tortured, “disappeared”, lined up on the edges of mass graves and shot in the back of the head, herded into churches that were then burned to the ground, dropped out of airplanes and helicopters, etc.
Inevitable Revolutions, among many other books, tells this history at much greater length, in minute detail, in more academic language, but there is no mistaking that this is the story.
The soldiers who did the killing across Central America must have been just like the sweet, not very bright boys I gave the AIDS workshop to. The victims of the killing were for the mot part poor and powerless, just like the killers themselves.
What is the greater sin, for a boy to be a murderer or to turn a boy into a murderer? I’m glad I don’t have to come up with the answer to that question.
(Speaking of great sin, John Negroponte was US ambassador to Honduras during the 1980s, but his responsibility for the process described above was much greater and included overseeing the US’ bloody role in Nicaragua and Salvador. In 2004 he was appointed ambassador to Iraq. Scahil suggests that his appointment was made with the goal of implementing the “Salvador Option”: getting Iraqis to kill other Iraqis.)
I read the last page of Blackwater and closed the cover. How can it be that this information is available in such an accessible form and nothing changes?
But maybe there is some reason to be hopeful after all. From the New York Times, June 8, 2010
WASHINGTON — Burdened by lawsuits, criminal investigations and negative publicity stemming from its private security work in Iraq and Afghanistan, Blackwater Worldwide is being put up for sale, the company has announced.
Blackwater, which changed its name to Xe Services and brought in new management last year in order to remake its image, is pursuing a sale in part because that overhaul has failed to change perceptions of the company, most critically inside government, which is its main customer.
Erik Prince, the former member of the Navy Seals and heir to an automotive fortune who founded Blackwater, said in a statement given to The Associated Press late Monday that making the decision to sell the company was difficult, but that he no longer wanted to deal with the intense criticism the business has faced.
(My wife, Deborah Drew, and I were Peace Corps volunteers in Honduras from 2005-2007. We went back in November of 2008 and again last week. This post is based on journal entries I made during the latest trip.)
I am sitting on the second floor balcony of the Hotel Guadeloupe II, the hotel where I always stay in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. It is not really a balcony. The hallways are open and there is a low wall and railing that looks out over the street. The doors and windows of the rooms open onto this open hallway.
(How many journal entries have I started with “I am sitting on the balcony of the Hotel Guadeloupe II”?)
There is thunder and lightening. The power is going off and on.
Why am I back in Honduras? Is this the last time or the continuation of an ongoing commitment? Is this the trip where I say good-bye and let Honduras become part of my past or is this the trip where I get clear that international work is a permanent part of what I want my life to be about?
We are in Tegucigalpa to see Hector, a young man from Sonaguera who is in the capital studying medicine. I have my old Honduran cell phone with me. I have at least three numbers for Hector none of which are working. He knows we are here and I feel confident that he will contact us, but what a drag if he doesn’t.
Wait a minute. This is Honduras. Of course things go wrong. Of course the numbers I have for Hector don’t work. Of course the lights are going to go off and on.
May 23, 2010
We spend the day with Hector doing ordinary things that feel extraordinary.
He talks with passion about his studies. Many students have to repeat courses they haven’t been successful in, but he is moving steadily ahead. His only complaint is that he has to share a cadaver with 35 other students and it is in bad condition. It is hard to see the structures they are supposed to be learning about.
We go to the Gourmet Grill for breakfast, walk on Boulevard Morazon looking without success for internet and a new chip for my cell phone, take a taxi to Mall Mega Plaza and see Robin Hood. Then its back to the Guadeloupe for a game of Oh Hell and out to dinner at El Patio.
We say good-bye to Hector.
Deb and I watch the finale of Lost with rolling horizontal stripes on a channel whose signal clicks off periodically.
In other words nothing exceptional happens, so why does every minute feel so resonant? It is not like I don’t have great, full days in my life in Rhode Island. I certainly do, many of them. And yet I can’t deny the power of Honduras for me. I also don’t understand it fully.
May 24, 2010
Eight hours on the bus from Tegucigalpa to Sonaguera. I look out the window the whole time. Taking in the combination of gorgeous scenery and poverty. Memories come to me with every mile. When Deb isn’t reading or knitting, we hold hands and talk. The greenness fills me with emotion. There is no way of holding this greenness in memory. If you are not looking at it, it is gone.
We get off the bus in the afternoon in Planes in a deluge of rain, thunder and lightening. We wait under a shelter where uniformed workers stop cars to check for fruit. We are still a half-mile to the turnoff to Sonaguera, but this is the only shelter. There is a bus coming behind us that will take the turn and go into town. When it arrives 40 minutes later, the rain is still coming down. We know the ayudante on this bus, a heavyset guy who has always been friendly to us. He is glad to see us and surprised that we have returned. We explain, for the first of many times, that we are not staying another two years. We are only visiting.
May 25, 2010
In the afternoon, I sit on the porch of Ligia and David’s house writing. Everyday it is in the 90’s. Every afternoon there are thunderstorms.
The sky turns to slate. All the colors are muted, shifted toward gray.
Yeah! Here comes the rain, just as Legia pulls up on her motorcycle. The dogs are happy to see her. Davissa comes out to unlock the gate. Both Davissa and her mother get speckled with the rain, but it is not until they have the bike under the roof of the porch that the deluge really starts.
I sit and watch the street through their gate. This is the parade that passes:
A boy in a red shirt carrying a large stem of bananas over his shoulder. The bananas must weigh half as much as he does.
A three-wheeled moto-taxi with a sheet of plastic stretched across the door to protect the passengers in the back seat.
A green pick-up truck with steamy windows and a red pick-up with a plastic, five-gallon water jug rolling around in the bed.
A boy on a motorcycle going too fast to catch any details. After he passes, it registers; he was wearing a helmet!
A girl on a bike carrying a huge black umbrella and wearing the universal public school uniform: white blouse, blue skirt. The basket of her bike is full. She stops at the gate and calls out to Davissa. She is delivering tortillas on her way to night classes. Davissa sends her around to the other side of the house where the gate is unlocked.
Two girls on bikes pass going in opposite directions. One has a purple umbrella and wears a green skirt. The other has no umbrella and is wearing a black tank top.They sing out to each other, “Adios,” “Que le via bien.”
The same moto-taxi comes back again.
A few more nondescript pick-ups.
A full sized, bright yellow school bus with lettering that reads Walker-Hackensack Valley, Minnesota Regional School Department.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see something moving through the puddles in the yard. It is a frog about the size of a grapefruit. It hops to the gate and squeezes through the bars. Why did the frog want to leave the yard? Why did the frog cross the road?
It is too dark to write. Mosquitoes I can’t see are probably biting me. Earlier in the day, I saw a map of Sonaguera at the Centro de Salud. It was stuck with two hundred pins clustered in groups around villages. Every pin indicated a case of malaria. I could become a pin in a map.
May 26, 2010
One reason for coming back to Honduras at this time is that William Alvarenga died in a motorcycle accident six weeks ago. We want to see his family, especially his brother Melvin, with whom we are very close. We want them to know that in some small way we share their grief.
The accident happened right in front of the house. Melvin saw it happen. William pulled out of the gas station across the street and rode his motorcycle into the path of an oncoming truck.
We go to the cemetery with the family. I ride in the back of the pick-up with the two youngest kids, Jairo and Jessica. We cross the highway from the house and go into the gas station.
Jairo says, “That’s where my brother was killed.”
I say. “I know. Do you miss him?”
He nods his head and starts to cry.
I say, “I miss him, too,” and start to cry.
William’s grave looks very fresh. It is a mound of loose dry soil covered in plastic flowers, some already fading in the sun. We add our bunch of white plastic lilies. There are no words to say.
May 27, 2010
(In November of 2008, Deb and I went to Honduras with a group of students from The East Bay Met School where I work part time. My good friend and co-worker Mary Vieira went, too. This past February, Mary and her husband, Glenn Spear, had their first child, a little boy they named Rio Hunter. For her baby shower, Mary asked that in lieu of gifts donations be made to help children in developing countries. She designated half of what was raised, $500, to the Clinica Maternal y Infantil in Sonaguera.)
Deb and I talk to several people about Rio’s money. We want Silvia Bardales, a businesswoman and teacher of business at the high school, to manage it and account for how it is spent. We also talk to Nelly, the head of nursing for the town, and to Rosa, the new director of the clinica. They are in agreement with setting up an account with Silvia that they can draw on. Nelly says there is no oxygen in the health center. If babies are born who could use a little oxygen there is no way to give it to them. Maybe they will use the money for a tank and a regulator. It could be used with asthmatics, too. She also mentions that there are a couple of HIV positive mothers in town who can’t breast feed their babies, the money could be used to make sure the babies get formula. Deb reminds her that emergency transportations is often needed. The only ambulance in town is a private one and prohibitively expensive. Rio’s money could fund gas to get to the hospital in LaCeiba.
We plan to find ways to replenish this fund.
Everyone we visit gives us coke. If they know we are coming they feed us soup or fried chicken. I estimate this is a six hen visit. At least six hens give up their lives to make us feel welcome.
May 28, 2010
We leave Sonaguera and go to Tela, my favorite beach town in Honduras. We have a long lazy day at the Hotel Sherwood, looking out at Tela Bay. Tomorrow morning we will go to the airport in San Pedro Sula and fly home by way of Miami and Charlotte.
Here is what I realized on this trip: it is very important to me to go south. Not south to Key West or New Orleans or San Diego, but south to Havana or Managua or Bogotá. It is especially important to me to go south to Sonaguera in Honduras. It is important to me to know the world beyond the boundaries of my own country, to smell other odors, hear other languages, taste sweeter fruit, listen to opinions informed by other experiences, sway to unfamiliar rhythms, learn the names of birds that never fly north of the Rio Grande, feel heat that is only approximated in Miami in August, stand out for the whiteness of my skin, share the street with roosters, cows, horses, pigs, dogs that haven’t been neutered, in addition to bicycles, motorcycles, pick-up trucks and recycled school buses from the US, feel deeply connected to people who are different than me in all particulars, and recognize that they are no different than me.
About the Drawing: The drawing was done by one of the young men in my old neighborhood of Barrio Abajo. His name is Cesar.
