Perpetual Novembers; Spring Eternal in my Mind; Late-Summer Labyrinths: Margarita

Friday, May 19, 2017

Margarita

I was Margarita's first true boyfriend... I guess I needed it that way... And you may believe that that's wishful thinking on my part... No, it's her word against your needs for believing... We have only one truth: what we've lived and what people tell us about themselves or the events... And, yes, they can be lies... But, at the moment of hearing the statement, should you believe it was a lie? Is that how we should relate towards others...

Margarita was 2 weeks from turning 28 when we met... She says that she didn't know how babies enter the mother's stomach until after the age of 24... Why would she say such a thing if she were lying about herself?

More than 14 years have passed since we first met...

How many times did she witness her mother and her aunt's pregnant? She was the first grandaughter of Angelina and Oligario... How many babies did she carry? Care after... bathe... chase... protect or save from drowning... and yes that happened...

When Eve had her caesarian, Margarita was told that she had had heart surgery... Although, later on, the whole community knew... Eve showed Margarita her horrible scar last month, 13 years later... Margarita says the my scar (3-times opened) is much much cleaner than Eve's...

Margarita has 8 brothers and 3 sisters, 9 born after her... She has somewhere around 56 first cousins... A life of babies and no one explained to her the process...

What does this have to do with intelligence, personal value? Actually, it's circumstancial... one thing doesn't necessarily mean the other... However a family or a community that intentionally leaves the children ignorant and uninformed is a community placed in constant risk of deficiency... the first aspect of deficiency is mental... the second aspect of deficiency is interpersonal... and then you can throw in political-economic, socio-political, dietary, physiological... intellectual...

And my question, concern is and always has been: what possibility exists for progressively, proactively helping Margarita's family and community "pull themselves up from their bootstraps..." Did you know that an "American" was just killed in Veracruz for teaching the community of Teocelo to be self-sufficient and progressive? My brother-in-law Nicolas shared the news with me when we were working in Aguascalientes a few weeks ago... So I looked up the information in English... It's there...

Should I throw them in the garbage? Too much work, too much risk... What's the return? Like my family did with me... Should Eve be thrown in the garbage for what her Brother did, for what her grandfather did with her mother? For what her mother did... for what her uncles did... for what her cousin did? Blame the victim... although we don't believe in victimization reports today, especially if we are feminists... we believe in self-empowerment... But, saying that the victim played a certain role in their abuse, is incredibly risky... a "slippery slope"...

Who is Margarita? How is Margarita? Well, if you speak Spanish and can speak with her, maybe you will know... And if you don't speak Spanish, maybe you're highly perceptive.,.. meaning you'll sense how she is... although she didn't know how women became pregnant even when she was a woman...

Margarita is the person with whom I speak with the most... in Spanish... English doesn't exist... And most of our 14 years together, we've spent talking... Yes, we spend a lot of time reading... I spend a lot of time investigating, painting, writing... although writing puts me greatly at cardiovascular risk...We talk about everything... although, yes, she doesn't replace the friendships I had in New York, nor the friendships that don't exist here... Not possible... Sorry...

In order to obtain something important, you must sacrifice something important...

That's how I see it... Which is part of the reason I don't devote more time to painting or writing... I would be sacrificing our relationship... for what? What risk?

Do I truly have such a potential? Such a talent? And now that FAP was "replaced" by Cardiovascular Disease...

You can place cancer on hold; send it into remission... Yes, you can make it disappear altogether... And if you don't do anything, maybe you have years of survival ahead of you... Cardiovascular disease on the other had, kills you one second or another... 50% without warning...

The interesting thing is that not only did I inherit FAP from my father, I also inherited this extremely alternative cardiovascular disease... The only thing is that FAP kills earlier than the cardiovascular disease... So, we don't know what would have occurred with my father had he not died from cancer...
And when I become worried that "tonight's the night"...? I worry about leaving Margarita within this situation... that she's not prepared... So, I exclaim that I can't die YET... And I continue working towards a positive evolution... putting off the horrible inevitable for her...

And I ask, "why can't I just die?" I don't have the right to die... I must continue being horribly responsible... I can't just relax and let it all go...

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Unfinished "Self-Portrait at 33"

Something I've dreamed of painting since just after my ultimate surgery in 2001. I post this now since I don't know if I will have the chance to work on it before going back on the road on Sunday... The problem is I've been sick for the past 5 days, painting this for the past week, a few hours per day. Whatever the sickness is, it isn't anything I've known and seemingly changes every day. In order to guarrantee my being well anough for the intense work for the following month, I may have to leave this hanging until I return at the end of August...

"La Sonrisa de Amarillo" (Amarillo's smile).

"La Sonrisa de Amarillo" (Amarillo's smile). José and Nicolas were commenting that I should sell the shirt I use for painting, since it is covered with paint. And then José said, "better yet, I'll give you one of my shirts to paint..." It was a joke. But I took it seriously. He has shirt he bought 4 years ago in Zacatecas with a copy of a painting of a bull in a bull fight. However, the print was erased from the shirt years ago. So, I decided to use the space that had the bull. "Amarillo" (Yellow) was the dog at my in-laws ranch when Margarita and I met. Due to a bad fight, he was left with one side of his mouth and one of his ears mangled, which gave him a permanent half snarl with one fang sticking out. He died years ago. But we often mention him...

New House/Studio Guadalajara

Over 20 years ago our friend José "Montaña" bought a parcel of land in the center of Guadalajara. His uncle who was a constructor/mason helped José build the brick house that has 6 bedrooms. Not long afterward, José entered into his older brother's Indian crafts importation business and decided to sell the crafts in fairs around Mexico. His brothers were one of the first people in Mexico City to enter into the Krishna movement that gave them certain perks. While José became vegetarian 4 years ago, sells the Indian furniture and crafts etc, has a giant shrine to Ganesh in his house and hosts the Mahareshi at least two times a year, José doesn't consider himself a Krishna. For at least 15 years José experienced extreme success in the fairs and was able to send his children to private English Language schools (his oldest son went to University in Texas and Married there),was able to visit with his children the U.S. and India and even bought the "castillo" (castle---an insider joke) next door. For years he used it as a store house and for a shop where Mary had workers fabricating crafts and Mexican/asian Indian style clothing. Then, about 4 years ago, Mexico entered into the international economic crises and José began losing money in the fairs. (I, on the other hand, have managed the situation and the coffee business well enough to be able to improve our economy over the past 2+ years, although this year we lost half our fairs (my decision not to enter into suddenly horribly violent zones where the people are fleeing and have fair to go out to the streets.) Out of desperation, José put the house he built on the market and moved his family into the "castillo"; his children were not happy. The "castillo" was built in the 19th century and has very high ceilings and wonderful giant windows and a terrace surrounding the second story kitchen. After a year on the market, One of José's Asian Indian suppliers bought the house and decided to put it on the market. A year ago, dreaming of having an artist studio/house in the center of Guadalajara with it's majestic tree-lined streets, I asked José to contact the Indian suppliers to see if they would sell the "guest house". José replied that he couldn't locate the Indians' representative in Guadalajara. And that ended that fantasy. However, a year later, upon returning to Guadalajara, Margarita called Mary who asked Margarita if we were in need of a house. We had just rented a house for 3 months (a house infested with cockaroaches). However, I had to see the house. The moment we set foot in the empty guest house without kitchen, bathroom, closets, I was hit with the return of the dream I left behind when we left Guadalajara last November. This time I could see all the projects we would begin over the next 10 years. So, we decided to rent the house and hoped that the 32 day fair in Guadalajara would be good for us; and it was. So, now we are "building" the kitchen, we bought a new refrigerator, are having a stainless steel restaurant sink fabricated for us, are looking for good furniture, looking into nice tiling and thinking about the future one more time.

"Hummingbird Goddess of the Mountain"/"Diosa Colibrí de la Montaña"

Crucified Pregnant Woman

(Unfinished Painting November/December 2010). This was the last painting I worked on before putting aside the painting and drawing for 6 months. I don't have any artist training. I haven't ever taken a painting or a drawing class. I don't know anything about anatomy and I have NEVER seen naked pregnant woman, let alone a naked pregnant woman on a cross. That created a hell of a headache working on perspective and shadowing... How does a head hang with the arms spread outwards to the side? My dilemma. After the fair of Tepic, I asked my friend José "Montaña" to take it with him to Guadalajara. Truthfully, it created so much stress that I really didn't want to see it. The problem is that we don't have a house of our own. I don't have a studio for storing my work and supplies...

Stream of Consciousness Drawing "Your Turned Back/The Cold Shoulder" July 11, 2011

In La Isla de Mexcaltitan, Nayarit

The story goes that the group of Mexica indians had a dream one night of the great city of Tenochtitlan they would construct 200 years later in the Valley of Mexico, now known as Mexico City that later on became known as the Aztec Empire. The dream was had on the Island of Mexcaltitan, Nayarit. Upon leaving his "home" on the edge of the river Antigua in Veracruz, Cortez journeyed to the center of what is now known as the Republic of Mexico and conquered the Aztecs, with the help of the Totonoco indians of the region known as Veracruz. Cortez destroy the Grand Tenochtitlan, probably the largest pre-hispanic city in the Americas and constructed churches and cathedrals where the ancient temples and pyramids had been...

Pico de Orizaba in the Morning

I took this photo during our Sunday morning walk. We found a wonderful route that circles Margarita's parents' house; great for a jogging route. When I've run in Mexico, Margarita was my running partner. Back in 2005, when we were running in the Lakes, there were many times when Margarita ran faster than I ran. But, I always passed her on the hills... The wonderful thing about this route is that it passes through the woods, coffee plantations and sugar cane fields; a lot of hills as you can see... So, we've decided that, if we have a strong finish of 2011, we'll buy land here and build a house.