A Rubic's Cube in Mexico; ASSFACE; Conversations with a Past Life, September 10th, 2011

Are you back from vacation?  I imagine you have a family vacation home on the Jersey Shore.  Why else travel so far?  Granted, to visit family...  I'm finally resting and relaxing after a ton of work and exhaustion for a month straight.  So, now I will have time to dedicate to our conversation.  Yes, I think I'm saying that everytime I write you.   We rented a 2 story house on the edge of Guadalajara. So, if I want to write late at night, I just go downstairs with my computer and won't disturb Margarita's sleep.  In San Luis Potosi, my brother-in-law Nicolas slept on the couch in the living room where the kitchen table was, since the kitchen wasn't really a kitchen; we had a small 2 bedroom house for 5 people.  Here we have a slightly bigger 3 bedroom house.  You mentioned Atlantic City.  Were or are you there, south in Ocean City or north in Long Beach Island.  If it hadn't been for Francesca and her family renting every summer in LBI, I wouldn't have known Long Beach Island to Wildwood...  Granted, the grandparents of my RVCC girlfriend Sue had a house near the lighthouse on Long Beach Island.  But as destiny goes, had I not been with Francesca, I probably wouldn't have been with Sue and probably wouldn't have been at RVCC.  When our relationship began I left for Rutgers Prep and had myself kicked out after a month, probably because I was uncomfortable with my sudden popularity there and the possibility of becoming someone.  I imagine, aside from fear of being responsible and successful, I was protecting my first relationship which was with Francesca...  So...25 years later I am in Guadalajara reading in Spanish, Mario Puzo's "The Godfather" without any contact with Francesca and the Jersey Shore but with contact with you, probably the main reason for having become involved with Fran back then.  Had things been different as you know they couldn't have been, I wouldn't be here, I wouldn't be developing a friendship with you afterwards, although on-line, and I probably would be very square in a certain way or another.  People wish for the erasing of negative events in their lives.  But, I believe that the erasing of those events also causes the erasing of the directly or indirectly related positive events  Since we learn from all events, the responses of those learning experiences is what we know as our present life experience.  So, we should embrace all difficult decisions as an opportunity for the blossoming of the unknown.  


From behind me is heard the sound of my brother-in-law José Francisco playing with a Rubics Cube.  My brother-in-law Rafael bought the Cube while we were working in San Luis Potosi.  And now almost all of Them are playing with it.  I have a bunch of great books here, all in Spanish. But, now with the Cube, no one wants to read, although no one will "solve" the Rubics Cube...  I control myself against saying anything, since I know that it's all the same.  In the past I bought books and shared them with everyone who was with me.  Since we have up to 2 months of down time at times, we have much time for reading.  In January, my brother-in-law Nicolas bought a computer and he and Rafael put the books aside for playing Solitaire.  Now they have the Cube.  


So, I just turned to José Francisco and asked, "How long before you solve it?" and he responded, "All my life." and I asked, "why do you waste your time with it?" and he responded with silence...  


We all have our destiny.  Part of our destiny is the influence of others.  I consider myself a catalyst, a counterweight.  I don't believe I came up with the actual word; someone who creates intellectual, psychic or spiritual instability in the name of causing the other person or people to become more conscious of their actions or of their existence...  I can be irritating, annoying and hated at times.  For instance I may say something like, "you prefer being stupid and ignorant than being responsible, respected, successful and intelligent..."  True success is personal; it has nothing to do with economy and status.  It has to do with how you feel and see yourself in the middle of your personal universe which includes the people surrounding you, the socio-political environment within which you live.  It's about self-respect and dignity...  If you truly respect yourself, you are less affected by what other people do and think...  


But what does this have to do with reading, Rubik's Cubes and my in-laws?  


In the begin and in the end they carry within themselves a resentment of being less than the rest of the world surrounding the community within which they were born and raised.  They are very aware of what the rest have and what they will never have.  Mexico is a horribly classist and racist country.  But, first comes the classism.  So, whether or not I open my mouth or whether or not I entered their lives over 8.5 years ago, they live at the bottom of this system. However, changing their lifestyle by introducing into their lives literature, conversation and so many other ideas, concepts and experiences brought to them by so many different authors, offers the possibility of breaking horrible cycles inbred since the Spaniards invaded the Americas 500 years ago. Reading offers ideas and other realities.  Having read offers the individual the sense of having increased theirself, which also offers increased confidence with the accumulation of ideas and experiences...  Reading also slows down impulses caused by the mass media and mass consumerism, it counter attacks the socio-psychological illness called "constant need for immediate gratification"... So, the person creates the possibility of relaxing their mind and bringing themself back to real time, and back to the actual possibility of creating an internal relationship with themself...


The problem with campesino or farmer life living with the crop cycles and with that of the moon is that they live on super slow time...  It's like the phrase about "a watched pot never boils."  With farming, especially crops that have only one harvest per year, the farmer waits up to 9 months per year to see the fruition of his or her work.  Since the cultivation and the harvest are so important within the farmer family, the farmer doesn't put aside their agricultural work for work that may offer more instant gratification.  But how to fill in the time? especially in a classist society where the campesinos (many of them one rung above indigenous) are considered semi-human, which makes them and their children semi-deserving of socio-poliitical-economic consideration meaning that the educational system almost all but ignores their communities...  Without better educational systems, the children aren't offered alternative opportunities within agriculture or outside of the campesino community.  They aren't taught organize their thoughts and to analyze the situation.  They aren't taught to seek better ways of managing their family economy and better ways of managing the ranch/crops; better accounting, better technology, better cultivation techniques, ways of better increasing the property, of better utilizing the property, of better cultivating the crops, of encountering better markets, etc...  Better education offers the community better opportunity for eradicating horrible vulnerabilities caused by class systems very similar to European Feudalism or Post U.S. Civil War Share Cropping... 


The men fill in their time drinking and the women fill in their time giving birth to babies and doing the chores around the house caused by having so many people to care for...  In Mexico, the one true way of feeling like a successful Man or Woman is by having children.  A man without a child isn't a man...  So, if the society doesn't offer other models for creating success, the young adult or the young woman decides to become a parent to fulfill their adult responsibilities...  


I offered possibilities to various brother-in-laws before they "hooked up" and created families at the ranch.  But, since what I offer is new and unknown making it risky and scary, they rejected my proposals and opted for a very difficult life without future with their wives and children, maintaining the vicious cycle of limitation without the option of learning something new... Or maybe it's the other way around; they opt for the simple and known life without opportunity that's easier to accept psychologically and politically than live within the difficult risk of being different from the rest of their family or community.  


There is never just one side of a coin.  It's also incorrect believing that their are only two sides of the coin.  Maybe the coin metaphore is what's incorrect.  Maybe life is so much more complex than a two-sided coin.  Granted, coins have three sides and understanding the edge side is most difficult...  Maybe life is more like a Rubic's Cube. Maybe we'd be better off "wasting" our time not solving the Rubik's Cube than trying to solve socio-psychological/socio-political problems way above and way below our heads...  Maybe I shouldn't be writing any of this, since I can't truly change the situation.  Apathy is a valid reality too...  Why waste your time? And what is time anyway?  Most strong success has to do with to whom you were born, how you were raised and the connections your family and friends have with others...  In the end we are 1 in almost 7 billion people on this planet. Almost none of us able to create the "success" we see on television and read about in the newspapers.  We all struggle to pass the days and to feel healthy and successful; to guarrantee a roof over our heads and food on the table tomorrow.  And in the end, we all die in one form or another and THAT IS THAT.  


Don't worry.  It's just a momentary self-criticism about spending more time on this same theme.  In the end I continue and gain a premium for the work I did in this life...  No, that's not true.  There are no awards; just responsibilities.  Did you accomplish what you were put here to do?  And you continue.  But not with the body you know as you today.  The life cycle of growth and entropy is meant to aclimate you towards the idea of impermanence, change and evolution...  You are prepared for the letting go of your body.  But with all the paranoia surrounding the fear about entropy and death and what happens afterwards, humans have created religions and ideologies/fantasies that mediate the fear of death and afterlife, causing people to live way out of perspective; such as when my mother had her first surgery, which was a facelift...  


I was much more attractive 10 years ago.  My eyebrows have thinned horribly.  Thank god I'm not losing my hair or I may confuse my face for my...  ask me no questions tell me no lies;-)...  I was looking at my New Jersey Drivers License the other day.  The photo was taken on a bad Ross day; I don't even think I had showered beforehand. But, my hair is darker and my facial hair is completely black...  I had a foggy headache  probably caused by existential problems of the time.  But, I still looked better then than I do now.  Maybe I should buy JUST FOR MEN!  Maybe I should have plastic surgery and sew my head to my ass and call myself a Siamese Twin.  Afterall, I was born on the last day of Gemini in my year...  


So, what is the true concern or problem of life?  Classism, intentional ignorance, exploitation, consumerism, blah blah blah, self-image, afterlife, where do we go from here, now that all of our children have grown...? ass-face.  YES!  THAT'S IT; ASSFACE