Pico de Orizaba
Taken from Huatusco, Veracruz, the closest town to Margarita's family's ranch.
Tuesday, June 27, 2017
Sunday, June 11, 2017
Wednesday, June 7, 2017
A commentary about the Ricardo Arjona/Intocable song/video and interview "Mojado"
"El Mojado" ("The Soaked"; the indocumented migrant)...Ricardo Arjona was part of the Guatamala Nacional Basketball team before becoming one of the most succesful folk-pop singers of Latin America... If I'm correct, like many other Latin American pop/rock stars, he lives in Miami...
This is the video of how and why the song "Mojado" was produced... A wonderful view of the border between Tijuana and San Diego... along with the interview of Ricardo Arjona and the "Mexican" Norteño band "Intocable" (Untouchable)... I put Mexican in parenthesis because Intocable actually is "American" ("Gringo")... Yes, you heard me correctly... and yes, they "look" Mexican and they speak Spanish... But they are "American" citizens and not Mexicans... meaning that they were born and raised in the U.S. (Texas)...and as they explain during the interview, they have absolutely no experience with Mexican immigrants in the U.S.; all they know about the "mojado" experience is what they read in the papers, meaning that their families are "American" for more than one generation and no one else has been crossing the border seeking refuge with their families...
Arjona wrote the song as a criticism of the reasons why Latinos have the need for travelling "illegally" to the U.S. wishing that the pueblos/countries of origin could offer the would-be "illegals" the ability for addressing the needs of their families (adequate education, clothing and food) without people abandoning their families and risking their lives in the crossing and in the U.S.
"Mojado" (Wet) is the term used in Mexico that originated from the idea of having to cross the Rio Grande or Rio Bravo swimming in order to enter the U.S. Arjona says that the word has two significances... the second significance is that the immigrant is "wet" from all of the tears they shed upon finding themselves so far from their families and all that is familiar... in the name of looking for a better future for themselves and their family... I would say that there is a second significance of tears: tears shed by those left behind who never hear from their father, son, husband, brother and female equivalents because those people died in the desert or were killed by assailants... or became immersed in addictions on the other side... or they created a new family in the U.S... and stopped being in contact with their spouses and children... stopped sending money back...
Now, if the video and interview were in English, I think "Americans" would have a much easier time seeing the point I've been trying to make for years... that "American" doesn't have only one reality, one face, one language or one culture... and that most "Americans" have ancestors who entered the U.S. for the same reasons (lived through the incredibly similar experiences; living in a hostile nation, within an incredibly different culture... standing out as "sore thumbs")...
It's funny, in the book "Rabbit Run" by John Updike, one of the characters tells the main character Rabbit that she believes her family is originally Mexican... (The story takes place in semi rural Pennsylvania in the late 50s or early 60s)... Rabbit responds to his lover, "But you're too tall to be Mexican!" and she calls him a jerk... I mention this because "Americans" tend towards believing that Mexicans are very short... Well, come live here to know the truth... Half of my 8 brother-in-laws are taller than me... Most of Margarita's male cousins are taller than me... Many Mexicans are taller than me... I'm 5'6"... Yes, I'm short, although not incredibly short... So, if many Mexicans are taller than me, then I guess they aren't what "Americans" believe them to be... I think this is important... all of this... if you are truly against the "Trump" anti-immigrant/anti-Mexican movement and all that it seemingly stands for... for putting it into perspective...
This is the video of how and why the song "Mojado" was produced... A wonderful view of the border between Tijuana and San Diego... along with the interview of Ricardo Arjona and the "Mexican" Norteño band "Intocable" (Untouchable)... I put Mexican in parenthesis because Intocable actually is "American" ("Gringo")... Yes, you heard me correctly... and yes, they "look" Mexican and they speak Spanish... But they are "American" citizens and not Mexicans... meaning that they were born and raised in the U.S. (Texas)...and as they explain during the interview, they have absolutely no experience with Mexican immigrants in the U.S.; all they know about the "mojado" experience is what they read in the papers, meaning that their families are "American" for more than one generation and no one else has been crossing the border seeking refuge with their families...
Arjona wrote the song as a criticism of the reasons why Latinos have the need for travelling "illegally" to the U.S. wishing that the pueblos/countries of origin could offer the would-be "illegals" the ability for addressing the needs of their families (adequate education, clothing and food) without people abandoning their families and risking their lives in the crossing and in the U.S.
"Mojado" (Wet) is the term used in Mexico that originated from the idea of having to cross the Rio Grande or Rio Bravo swimming in order to enter the U.S. Arjona says that the word has two significances... the second significance is that the immigrant is "wet" from all of the tears they shed upon finding themselves so far from their families and all that is familiar... in the name of looking for a better future for themselves and their family... I would say that there is a second significance of tears: tears shed by those left behind who never hear from their father, son, husband, brother and female equivalents because those people died in the desert or were killed by assailants... or became immersed in addictions on the other side... or they created a new family in the U.S... and stopped being in contact with their spouses and children... stopped sending money back...
Now, if the video and interview were in English, I think "Americans" would have a much easier time seeing the point I've been trying to make for years... that "American" doesn't have only one reality, one face, one language or one culture... and that most "Americans" have ancestors who entered the U.S. for the same reasons (lived through the incredibly similar experiences; living in a hostile nation, within an incredibly different culture... standing out as "sore thumbs")...
It's funny, in the book "Rabbit Run" by John Updike, one of the characters tells the main character Rabbit that she believes her family is originally Mexican... (The story takes place in semi rural Pennsylvania in the late 50s or early 60s)... Rabbit responds to his lover, "But you're too tall to be Mexican!" and she calls him a jerk... I mention this because "Americans" tend towards believing that Mexicans are very short... Well, come live here to know the truth... Half of my 8 brother-in-laws are taller than me... Most of Margarita's male cousins are taller than me... Many Mexicans are taller than me... I'm 5'6"... Yes, I'm short, although not incredibly short... So, if many Mexicans are taller than me, then I guess they aren't what "Americans" believe them to be... I think this is important... all of this... if you are truly against the "Trump" anti-immigrant/anti-Mexican movement and all that it seemingly stands for... for putting it into perspective...
Tuesday, June 6, 2017
Monday, June 5, 2017
Sunday, June 4, 2017
Golgotha Primal Scream silent for the moment...
Blood as water
What once was your life fluid, what it meant to be you,
Drained, as butchers drain cows and pigs and goats and chickens...
Humans not for human consumption...
Perspectives...
we consume ourselves
we consume others...
Humans butchering Humans
Some believe... only the terrorists
No one else...
The Romans
Never brought to "justice"
What happened in London? In Portland?
Smart bombs
And millions of tons of missiles
Aren't knives or hatchets
or vans driven into crowds...
No horror, no terror
Political and clean; lazer-guided missiles
Christ purified Golgotha
Cleansed our brains of horrifying memories
A brainwashing...
There weren't hundreds or thousands of bodies...
Decaying on a hill...
Just the 3 Marys and Jesus
Terrorism, brutality, horror
Once unpardonable
Sanctified
The only miracle to which you'll believe...
If we believe in Christ, we can't terrorize
If we worship his horrorfying crucifixion,
No other crucifixion can exist
Just as there is only one God...
The Romans cleansed themselves and history...
1700 year legacy of exhoneration of the henous
Pigs lapping up a never ending puddle of blood...
This time, your blood drained
Nurturing pigs
Pigs nurturing humans
Nurturing your captors, your mutilators, your assassins...
In the end, your blood seeps into the earth like water
what wasn't pooled and lapped up by pigs...
your body decomposes
nurturing... nurturing...
nurturing...
What once was your life fluid, what it meant to be you,
Drained, as butchers drain cows and pigs and goats and chickens...
Humans not for human consumption...
Perspectives...
we consume ourselves
we consume others...
Humans butchering Humans
Some believe... only the terrorists
No one else...
The Romans
Never brought to "justice"
What happened in London? In Portland?
Smart bombs
And millions of tons of missiles
Aren't knives or hatchets
or vans driven into crowds...
No horror, no terror
Political and clean; lazer-guided missiles
Christ purified Golgotha
Cleansed our brains of horrifying memories
A brainwashing...
There weren't hundreds or thousands of bodies...
Decaying on a hill...
Just the 3 Marys and Jesus
Terrorism, brutality, horror
Once unpardonable
Sanctified
The only miracle to which you'll believe...
If we believe in Christ, we can't terrorize
If we worship his horrorfying crucifixion,
No other crucifixion can exist
Just as there is only one God...
The Romans cleansed themselves and history...
1700 year legacy of exhoneration of the henous
Pigs lapping up a never ending puddle of blood...
This time, your blood drained
Nurturing pigs
Pigs nurturing humans
Nurturing your captors, your mutilators, your assassins...
In the end, your blood seeps into the earth like water
what wasn't pooled and lapped up by pigs...
your body decomposes
nurturing... nurturing...
nurturing...
Vaginas... Primal Screams... Gritos Interiores... "Prude"
When Anya left me in her mother's studio apartment in Brighton Beach... when she left for Kiev saying she may not return to me... I wouldn't blame her... Afterall, had we known was the purpose of our relationship, for me learning about taking a Greyhound bus from the Port Authority to Laredo Texas for only $120 USD, who knows? Had I known that the "fun" was just about to begin 2 years later, having almost nothing to do with her... had I known that I would obtain what I sought... No, I'm not so easy... for fooling myself... Not that I haven't been a fool... Of course I have! However, it's not so easy as saying "had I known..:" No. We don't know enough for being truly comfortable with our decisions... So, I imagine I would have suffered anyway...
"I wouldn't blame her... Afterall, had we known..." the purpose of our relationship... had we known... had we known...
From that night that I found myself sighing... like a fool... not the first time... that night that she called me back up the hill... I knew... I knew... that I wasn't supposed to kiss her... the awkwardness... Believe me when I say this thought that bugged the hell out of me: "Her forehead was too wide.." No, it wasn't a physical fault of hers... To me, she was beautiful... "Our heads are so different..." I truly believed that there was a conflict within the distinct difference of the shapes of our heads... and that was how we couldn't kiss... Something just didn't make sense... Crazy... yes... but if I told you all of the things that would occur before they occured... that they were set in motion years earlier and thousands of miles apart...
The painting that I'm currently working on... Finally painting "The Woman in the Sky" that I drew at the Tea Lounge in Park Slope 14.5 years earlier, that predicts Margarita and my dilemma in April 2003...
My stating that a man would appear... and help us pull ourselves out of the hole... Something I mentioned for 3 years before Chris appeared with the $30,000 USD...
Crazy is only crazy if it isn't supported by real events...
So, Anya... ?
Did I tell you that the night she arrived on the plane from Scotland to New York City I suddenly felt a horrible familiar tension... Tension... that I only experienced with Anya... for how long? I imagine that it's this same tension that keeps me writing about her... but what is it? Something that continues connecting us... something within which we are mutually immersed?
Debra had a wonderful idea... Since she was leaving for a graduate program at the University of Michigan and would leave her incredibly lucrative nanny job open, maybe I should take her place... Wonderful idea... Me a nanny... For the adopted children (I believe they were adopted) of a very wealthy lesbian couple living in Bergen County New Jersey... So, I went with Debra to check out the situation... a nanny for children... Me... incredibly uncomfortable around children... me awkward around children... me, with absolutely no experience with children, other than working a few months at the Salvation Army Foster Care services... that I dropped a month or less after Anya left for Kiev... a "decision" I greatly regret... And, yes, I do regret... Children... the picked on me... too much... too long... yes, I was a child... Supposedly I wasn't a child when Anya left for Kiev, when she returned from Scotland...
Debra took me to the bus station and she returned to the house where she was terminating as a nanny... It was night... I was thoughtful... buses do that for me... I become meditative staring out the window, watching storefronts, houses, rivers, headlights pass by... Thoughtful... about what I had just experienced and the crazy decision to become a nanny or the equally crazy decision to put aside such a lucrative opportunity... But the tension that began entering my body (not my mind), was not related with the nanny opportunity. The incredibly clear thought entered my head, "Anya has returned to New York City..." And that was that... something to which I must address within the moment...
I returned to my apartment on Ocean Avenue and called Joey... I imagine I was exlaining to her how the trip to New Jersey went... In the middle of the conversation, my telephone beeped, call waiting. I put Joey on hold.
Anya was on the other line, calling from John F. Kennedy airport. She called me before calling her parents... Atypical...
Over time, I've learned to understand things about myself. First, I'm not psychic, no matter what I said about the appearance of Chris or all of the people whom appeared in my paintings before having met them, or feeling that Anya was approaching... That doesn't make me psychic... For me, psychic is having control over the knowing... and truly knowing what will occur... how and when... No, that's not me... although, over time, I've learned that so much isn't actually a coincidence... and that's why I continue writing about Anya... because this isn't about coincidence...
Anya shouldn't have dated me... But we had no other choice... regardless of the obvious problems or issues or tensions or struggles that made it impossible for us to have a future together... irreconcilable differences...? Maybe for the purpose of the relationship... of the experience... Irreconcilable... Sue just appeared in my head... a night when a super blizzard was hitting us at her dorm at Bennington College, where she studied art and then put it aside, when I had absolutely no interest in anything related to art... But, thinking about Anya and irreconcilable differences, that night at Bennington College during the blizzard that never truly materialized... comes to mind... as a photograph... What is that called? What are those connections called?
I can call myself all the things that Anya would call me... now... We were a mis-match... And how lost in the mind was she when she thought she should marry me? I should paint her with her head detached from her shoulders as "Anya, Have You Lost Your Head?"
I don't have a problem pointing my finger at myself... and "how did I get myself into that situation?" A place, situation, relationship within which I didn't belong... Or was it that I was truly what she sought? The crazy artist... The artist who never truly found himself within his art... Pause...
Pause...
Pause...
That was Anya: The crazy artist who never truly found herself within her art... Maybe I had found myself within mine... But, I never found the irregular polygon hole within which I would fit... Truthfully, I had no idea... or maybe that wasn't the issue... She didn't fall in-love with me because she wasn't comfortable with that aspect of her self... She fell in-love with the me she invented in her head... Not with what was actually available for ourselves within our situation... the lives we would make for ourselves...
Her forehead didn't fit with myself.. No matter how much I would sight, I wouldn't encounter the adequate response within the situation... I must remain running behind her, off balance... burning my breaks and my clutch at the same time... accelerating and breaking, breaking and accelerating, but never knowing exactly when I should do one or the other or when I must make the turn... she must do it all for me... until her friend from San Miguel de Allende would show me the exit door... the reason for having put ourselves through such an ordeal, Anya and I...
But you still don't understand my point...
Why was Donald Trump elected? Why must the "American" people and the world be subjected to such an ordeal? Why is there a rampage of terrorist attacks in England? Why doesn't anyone understand?
Do you truly believe that I'm only talking about myself?
When I first met "Estrella" the psychic or the clairvoyant or whatever you should call him, I was working in Foster Care... I imagine Anya had left for Kiev... Or maybe she hadn't... who knows? And, no, this time he didn't say anything about my personal relationships... It was too soon...
When I entered his room, after having waited at least 3 hours, "in line"... beyond the hour of my appointment with him... The first thing he said was, "Have we met before?" I responded, "no"... Then he said, "You're a warlock?" I said, "no"... Now he must respond, "You're afraid of your powers..." To which I respond, "I imagine you have a point..."
What powers? And I find myself asking that question 16 years later...
The other day Margarita said that she loved my drawing, self-portrait of myself beheaded by ants... a response to a Facebook comment by my mother... I screaming at her, not at the ants that had just bitten off my head... I was surprised by Margarita's comment that she loved that drawing... to which she proceeded explaining that it reflected something very primal within... Primal? No, I'm certain her comment was much more profound... Yes, what she loves so much about the drawing was that she sees my Grito Interior... "Grito Interior": Primal Scream... I understood clearly... something related to what Estrella mentioned...
The firewood was green... "the wet wick wouldn't light so we found ouselves in the dark..." The matches were damp... Everytime I became excited, enraged, or enthusiastic, someone threw a bucket of icy water on me...
"The Mother of the Earth" is squatting, about to give birth, but you can't witness... you can't see that part of the painting... I've always been a "prude"... especially with my writing... afraid of being crude or lude or that it would become pornagraphic... and it doesn't matter how Phillip Roth writes or how Ken Follett describes sex scenes between two lovers...
There was a moment in Brooklyn when I wanted to painted lynchings of "black" men and women... photographs I had stumbled across at the Mount Holyoke College library researching something else... Horrifying photos... Photos that tell you of another "America"... Photographs that tell that your perspectives about "the American People" are incorrect... I started painting blood and a raped woman and probably didn't reach the hanging charred bodies... I became sick... Horribly sick... and I never returned to the subject... although it's incredibly important for me...
I do believe that some people paint for shock effects...
Somewhere I believed that paintings should make people feel good... although one of my favorite paintings has always been "Golgotha" at the Princeton University Art Museum... I first went with Sue for her community college art project and then I went with Cathy for hers... (I was still with Sue and never truly cheated on her with Cathy... I should have... My primal scream)... Golgotha... Not just one crucifixion on the hill... but possibly hundreds of people nailed and hanging to crosses... in the foreground, at the bottom of the painting are pigs lapping up the blood...
A very very important modern truth...
Blood as water
What once was your life fluid, what it meant to be you,
Drained, as butchers drain cows and pigs and goats and chickens...
This time, your blood drained
Nurturing pigs
Pigs nurturing humans
Nurturing your captors, your assassins...
But, in the end, your blood seeps into the earth like water
what wasn't lapped up by others...
and your body decomposes
nurturing... nurturing...
nurturing...
No, I'm not a good writer...
Doggy style, or as a bull would a cow... the only way she could achieve orgasm... if I could perform... like a bull... her fingers on that button... what button? I'm a prude... can't write that ... The myth of sisyphus, sifilus, wussy puss... prude... her tongue on the other's clitoris, because sex clubs do that to you... No, her tongue wasn't on the other's clitoris... her mouth bathed in vaginal juices, pussy juice, almost drowning in the viscous fluid, as her friend, the man who invited her accompanyment, was being swallowed... swallowed... swallowed, with his finger in Joey's... Joey's... Joey's... I'm a prude, wouldn't have been that dude for the life of me... Prude? No... No... Not actually an interest of mine... Just as I couldn't just kiss Anya because I was supposedly within the situation, because I was attracted to her... I couldn't kiss her... Randi I were a couple how many days before we actually kissed... on the Amherst lawn just below Amherst College, where they were showing open-air movies... we were laying on a blanket... very romantic... although not the first romantic moment... It was just the right time... the moment... We were an item, a couple... and hadn't kissed for at least 4 days... for at least weeks... We knew we were an item the moment we decided to live together that summer... Psychic? Just things we know... circumstances to which we are being prepared... Randi? 2 years... 2 years... of preparation... for that true meeting... I didn't paint her...
Because I didn't paint... No interest... Not even while visiting Sue at Bennington... Randi and I had met when Sue and I were still a couple... No attraction... but what truly is attraction? Is it something you decide, determine?
Remembering vaginas makes me sexist? Georgia O'keefe? Vaginas can be disappointing... They can be frightening... They can be amazing... like sculptures... like a Georgia O'keefe painting... Vicky's turned into an orchid that turned into a serpent, a cobra... days after Valentine's... days after she broke up with me on Valentine's... Something was occurring in Margarita's life that day... a connecting I forgot about... Yes, we can be reaching... or I can be teaching... But Vicky returned to my apartment for one last experience... for some reason I brought something out of her that... How many times have I cooked something that I just loved... loved...? Although I ate more than what was necessary, before turning off the lights in the kitchen and the study, and going upstairs to bed, I had to serve myself another portion... That was Vicky's last visit... and I said I would paint her vagina... since I had never seen anything of the sort, not with her during those two months... No drugs... never been a problem of mine...
Something occurred that had never occured before, now afterwards... we never had to do the dance, no movement of bodies... and she would suddenly say, "it's coming! It's coming! as if she were pregnant and her water was breaking... not urine... not cum... no viscosity... no smell... bedsheets, mattress drenched... no smell... never... Seth would accuse us of having drenched his brother-in-law's bed that New Years party in Hillsborough... Foolish us! Foolish us! Vicky the alcolic modern dancer... became incredibly caustic that night after enough drinks... Mr. Hyde...
Walking along Prospect Park West, where Randi ended up living after we broke, Vicky pointed to the brownstones and said, "one day one of these will be yours!" People shouldn't say things that aren't true... We turned down 9th street towards Dizzy's... There is only one person living within our bodies... One day I would work with Matt, the owner of Dizzy's... One day I wouldn't own a Brownstone overlooking Prospect Park...
One day I wouldn't become that husband Anya imagined upon leaving Scotland for New York... Randi had said that she knew we had serious problems... that she knew that it was improbable that we could make it to that end... So why did she become so angry, resentful? Afterall, we were friends, weren't we? But, Anya never allowed us to be friends... because she didn't believe men and women could be friends... She didn't believe that women and women could be friends... and she had her list of reasons... Maybe she's changed her mind... She says that people don't change... although she did... when she returned to me... Maybe she would have said, "I love you" this time... instead of responding to my foolish statement, with tears in her eyes, "But I don't feel the same way towards you!" Laying on the floor of her bedroom, because we didn't fit in her single mattress bed... she had said once, "I imagine this is symbolic that I will never marry, because I bought a bed that fits only one person..." We were a "couple" (couple of fools) and she repeatedly talked about her concern about being a spinster... about what her father said... what other's believe... that she was too old (supposedly making her too ugly) for marrying...
I imagine she married... why does it matter? I'm just a gossip queen I guess... Or maybe because Anya marrying would mean that she could evolve, change...
She's married to me, although she doesn't want to acknowledge that... Inextricable...
Can I get pornographic with you?
Drenched white panties... no viscosity I can recall... on the couch on the first floor of the duplex, looking out to the wonderful patio-porch-deck... That day I would have sex with 3 women... Why? Remember Joey and my issues with her? Did I explain those? My problem... not actually an existential problem... Drenched white silk panties... And the last time I would be untrue to myself... what I loved between her legs... the most beautiful of vaginas... kind of like straight out of Pink Floyd, "The Wall"... Like a Georgia O'Keefe Painting... too wet... too white and silky... no smell whatsoever... I couldn't return... And there was the Haitian woman I met on the subway... we bumped into Joey on 6th Avenue... very awkward, although Joey understood... the situation she believed she put me in... And the young Haitian woman at the Moonstruck Diner (where Vicky dumped me that Valentine's Day), repeatedly saying, "Do you like Peach Cobbler?" When we bumped into Joey, Joey was looking for "honest" work... I imagine I wasn't working... And "Peach Cobbler" (like Anya) insisted upon paying for EVERYTHING... That night was the last time I would lay with her... like Anya... Bitches in Heat and I was just a dumb mutt trying to stop being so dumb... She said that my penis was beautiful... and I am shy about painting it... although it's in "Self-Portrait at 33" with my colon in my hands... Her's was the smallest, cuttest vagina I had ever seen... She didn't like oral sex... What did she want with me? I will never know...
Fortunately for me, no sexually transmitted diseases... Fortunately for Margarita... How foolish we can be...
And why didn't I paint vagina's... maybe I could have had a show... maybe I could have sold... easily... and Anya wouldn't accuse me of not being an artist... Or maybe that's just the point: I don't paint vaginas... my primal scream...
Or maybe it's because of flashbacks... memories pre-dating puberty... what made me so precocious and then so prude...
Who showed me theirs who shouldn't have... I know Anya, you probably shouldn't have, although that was beyond our control... Anyway, this really has nothing to do with you... does it? Or maybe you would see things differently...
"I wouldn't blame her... Afterall, had we known..." the purpose of our relationship... had we known... had we known...
From that night that I found myself sighing... like a fool... not the first time... that night that she called me back up the hill... I knew... I knew... that I wasn't supposed to kiss her... the awkwardness... Believe me when I say this thought that bugged the hell out of me: "Her forehead was too wide.." No, it wasn't a physical fault of hers... To me, she was beautiful... "Our heads are so different..." I truly believed that there was a conflict within the distinct difference of the shapes of our heads... and that was how we couldn't kiss... Something just didn't make sense... Crazy... yes... but if I told you all of the things that would occur before they occured... that they were set in motion years earlier and thousands of miles apart...
The painting that I'm currently working on... Finally painting "The Woman in the Sky" that I drew at the Tea Lounge in Park Slope 14.5 years earlier, that predicts Margarita and my dilemma in April 2003...
My stating that a man would appear... and help us pull ourselves out of the hole... Something I mentioned for 3 years before Chris appeared with the $30,000 USD...
Crazy is only crazy if it isn't supported by real events...
So, Anya... ?
Did I tell you that the night she arrived on the plane from Scotland to New York City I suddenly felt a horrible familiar tension... Tension... that I only experienced with Anya... for how long? I imagine that it's this same tension that keeps me writing about her... but what is it? Something that continues connecting us... something within which we are mutually immersed?
Debra had a wonderful idea... Since she was leaving for a graduate program at the University of Michigan and would leave her incredibly lucrative nanny job open, maybe I should take her place... Wonderful idea... Me a nanny... For the adopted children (I believe they were adopted) of a very wealthy lesbian couple living in Bergen County New Jersey... So, I went with Debra to check out the situation... a nanny for children... Me... incredibly uncomfortable around children... me awkward around children... me, with absolutely no experience with children, other than working a few months at the Salvation Army Foster Care services... that I dropped a month or less after Anya left for Kiev... a "decision" I greatly regret... And, yes, I do regret... Children... the picked on me... too much... too long... yes, I was a child... Supposedly I wasn't a child when Anya left for Kiev, when she returned from Scotland...
Debra took me to the bus station and she returned to the house where she was terminating as a nanny... It was night... I was thoughtful... buses do that for me... I become meditative staring out the window, watching storefronts, houses, rivers, headlights pass by... Thoughtful... about what I had just experienced and the crazy decision to become a nanny or the equally crazy decision to put aside such a lucrative opportunity... But the tension that began entering my body (not my mind), was not related with the nanny opportunity. The incredibly clear thought entered my head, "Anya has returned to New York City..." And that was that... something to which I must address within the moment...
I returned to my apartment on Ocean Avenue and called Joey... I imagine I was exlaining to her how the trip to New Jersey went... In the middle of the conversation, my telephone beeped, call waiting. I put Joey on hold.
Anya was on the other line, calling from John F. Kennedy airport. She called me before calling her parents... Atypical...
Over time, I've learned to understand things about myself. First, I'm not psychic, no matter what I said about the appearance of Chris or all of the people whom appeared in my paintings before having met them, or feeling that Anya was approaching... That doesn't make me psychic... For me, psychic is having control over the knowing... and truly knowing what will occur... how and when... No, that's not me... although, over time, I've learned that so much isn't actually a coincidence... and that's why I continue writing about Anya... because this isn't about coincidence...
Anya shouldn't have dated me... But we had no other choice... regardless of the obvious problems or issues or tensions or struggles that made it impossible for us to have a future together... irreconcilable differences...? Maybe for the purpose of the relationship... of the experience... Irreconcilable... Sue just appeared in my head... a night when a super blizzard was hitting us at her dorm at Bennington College, where she studied art and then put it aside, when I had absolutely no interest in anything related to art... But, thinking about Anya and irreconcilable differences, that night at Bennington College during the blizzard that never truly materialized... comes to mind... as a photograph... What is that called? What are those connections called?
I can call myself all the things that Anya would call me... now... We were a mis-match... And how lost in the mind was she when she thought she should marry me? I should paint her with her head detached from her shoulders as "Anya, Have You Lost Your Head?"
I don't have a problem pointing my finger at myself... and "how did I get myself into that situation?" A place, situation, relationship within which I didn't belong... Or was it that I was truly what she sought? The crazy artist... The artist who never truly found himself within his art... Pause...
Pause...
Pause...
That was Anya: The crazy artist who never truly found herself within her art... Maybe I had found myself within mine... But, I never found the irregular polygon hole within which I would fit... Truthfully, I had no idea... or maybe that wasn't the issue... She didn't fall in-love with me because she wasn't comfortable with that aspect of her self... She fell in-love with the me she invented in her head... Not with what was actually available for ourselves within our situation... the lives we would make for ourselves...
Her forehead didn't fit with myself.. No matter how much I would sight, I wouldn't encounter the adequate response within the situation... I must remain running behind her, off balance... burning my breaks and my clutch at the same time... accelerating and breaking, breaking and accelerating, but never knowing exactly when I should do one or the other or when I must make the turn... she must do it all for me... until her friend from San Miguel de Allende would show me the exit door... the reason for having put ourselves through such an ordeal, Anya and I...
But you still don't understand my point...
Why was Donald Trump elected? Why must the "American" people and the world be subjected to such an ordeal? Why is there a rampage of terrorist attacks in England? Why doesn't anyone understand?
Do you truly believe that I'm only talking about myself?
When I first met "Estrella" the psychic or the clairvoyant or whatever you should call him, I was working in Foster Care... I imagine Anya had left for Kiev... Or maybe she hadn't... who knows? And, no, this time he didn't say anything about my personal relationships... It was too soon...
When I entered his room, after having waited at least 3 hours, "in line"... beyond the hour of my appointment with him... The first thing he said was, "Have we met before?" I responded, "no"... Then he said, "You're a warlock?" I said, "no"... Now he must respond, "You're afraid of your powers..." To which I respond, "I imagine you have a point..."
What powers? And I find myself asking that question 16 years later...
The other day Margarita said that she loved my drawing, self-portrait of myself beheaded by ants... a response to a Facebook comment by my mother... I screaming at her, not at the ants that had just bitten off my head... I was surprised by Margarita's comment that she loved that drawing... to which she proceeded explaining that it reflected something very primal within... Primal? No, I'm certain her comment was much more profound... Yes, what she loves so much about the drawing was that she sees my Grito Interior... "Grito Interior": Primal Scream... I understood clearly... something related to what Estrella mentioned...
The firewood was green... "the wet wick wouldn't light so we found ouselves in the dark..." The matches were damp... Everytime I became excited, enraged, or enthusiastic, someone threw a bucket of icy water on me...
"The Mother of the Earth" is squatting, about to give birth, but you can't witness... you can't see that part of the painting... I've always been a "prude"... especially with my writing... afraid of being crude or lude or that it would become pornagraphic... and it doesn't matter how Phillip Roth writes or how Ken Follett describes sex scenes between two lovers...
There was a moment in Brooklyn when I wanted to painted lynchings of "black" men and women... photographs I had stumbled across at the Mount Holyoke College library researching something else... Horrifying photos... Photos that tell you of another "America"... Photographs that tell that your perspectives about "the American People" are incorrect... I started painting blood and a raped woman and probably didn't reach the hanging charred bodies... I became sick... Horribly sick... and I never returned to the subject... although it's incredibly important for me...
I do believe that some people paint for shock effects...
Somewhere I believed that paintings should make people feel good... although one of my favorite paintings has always been "Golgotha" at the Princeton University Art Museum... I first went with Sue for her community college art project and then I went with Cathy for hers... (I was still with Sue and never truly cheated on her with Cathy... I should have... My primal scream)... Golgotha... Not just one crucifixion on the hill... but possibly hundreds of people nailed and hanging to crosses... in the foreground, at the bottom of the painting are pigs lapping up the blood...
A very very important modern truth...
Blood as water
What once was your life fluid, what it meant to be you,
Drained, as butchers drain cows and pigs and goats and chickens...
This time, your blood drained
Nurturing pigs
Pigs nurturing humans
Nurturing your captors, your assassins...
But, in the end, your blood seeps into the earth like water
what wasn't lapped up by others...
and your body decomposes
nurturing... nurturing...
nurturing...
No, I'm not a good writer...
Doggy style, or as a bull would a cow... the only way she could achieve orgasm... if I could perform... like a bull... her fingers on that button... what button? I'm a prude... can't write that ... The myth of sisyphus, sifilus, wussy puss... prude... her tongue on the other's clitoris, because sex clubs do that to you... No, her tongue wasn't on the other's clitoris... her mouth bathed in vaginal juices, pussy juice, almost drowning in the viscous fluid, as her friend, the man who invited her accompanyment, was being swallowed... swallowed... swallowed, with his finger in Joey's... Joey's... Joey's... I'm a prude, wouldn't have been that dude for the life of me... Prude? No... No... Not actually an interest of mine... Just as I couldn't just kiss Anya because I was supposedly within the situation, because I was attracted to her... I couldn't kiss her... Randi I were a couple how many days before we actually kissed... on the Amherst lawn just below Amherst College, where they were showing open-air movies... we were laying on a blanket... very romantic... although not the first romantic moment... It was just the right time... the moment... We were an item, a couple... and hadn't kissed for at least 4 days... for at least weeks... We knew we were an item the moment we decided to live together that summer... Psychic? Just things we know... circumstances to which we are being prepared... Randi? 2 years... 2 years... of preparation... for that true meeting... I didn't paint her...
Because I didn't paint... No interest... Not even while visiting Sue at Bennington... Randi and I had met when Sue and I were still a couple... No attraction... but what truly is attraction? Is it something you decide, determine?
Remembering vaginas makes me sexist? Georgia O'keefe? Vaginas can be disappointing... They can be frightening... They can be amazing... like sculptures... like a Georgia O'keefe painting... Vicky's turned into an orchid that turned into a serpent, a cobra... days after Valentine's... days after she broke up with me on Valentine's... Something was occurring in Margarita's life that day... a connecting I forgot about... Yes, we can be reaching... or I can be teaching... But Vicky returned to my apartment for one last experience... for some reason I brought something out of her that... How many times have I cooked something that I just loved... loved...? Although I ate more than what was necessary, before turning off the lights in the kitchen and the study, and going upstairs to bed, I had to serve myself another portion... That was Vicky's last visit... and I said I would paint her vagina... since I had never seen anything of the sort, not with her during those two months... No drugs... never been a problem of mine...
Something occurred that had never occured before, now afterwards... we never had to do the dance, no movement of bodies... and she would suddenly say, "it's coming! It's coming! as if she were pregnant and her water was breaking... not urine... not cum... no viscosity... no smell... bedsheets, mattress drenched... no smell... never... Seth would accuse us of having drenched his brother-in-law's bed that New Years party in Hillsborough... Foolish us! Foolish us! Vicky the alcolic modern dancer... became incredibly caustic that night after enough drinks... Mr. Hyde...
Walking along Prospect Park West, where Randi ended up living after we broke, Vicky pointed to the brownstones and said, "one day one of these will be yours!" People shouldn't say things that aren't true... We turned down 9th street towards Dizzy's... There is only one person living within our bodies... One day I would work with Matt, the owner of Dizzy's... One day I wouldn't own a Brownstone overlooking Prospect Park...
One day I wouldn't become that husband Anya imagined upon leaving Scotland for New York... Randi had said that she knew we had serious problems... that she knew that it was improbable that we could make it to that end... So why did she become so angry, resentful? Afterall, we were friends, weren't we? But, Anya never allowed us to be friends... because she didn't believe men and women could be friends... She didn't believe that women and women could be friends... and she had her list of reasons... Maybe she's changed her mind... She says that people don't change... although she did... when she returned to me... Maybe she would have said, "I love you" this time... instead of responding to my foolish statement, with tears in her eyes, "But I don't feel the same way towards you!" Laying on the floor of her bedroom, because we didn't fit in her single mattress bed... she had said once, "I imagine this is symbolic that I will never marry, because I bought a bed that fits only one person..." We were a "couple" (couple of fools) and she repeatedly talked about her concern about being a spinster... about what her father said... what other's believe... that she was too old (supposedly making her too ugly) for marrying...
I imagine she married... why does it matter? I'm just a gossip queen I guess... Or maybe because Anya marrying would mean that she could evolve, change...
She's married to me, although she doesn't want to acknowledge that... Inextricable...
Can I get pornographic with you?
Drenched white panties... no viscosity I can recall... on the couch on the first floor of the duplex, looking out to the wonderful patio-porch-deck... That day I would have sex with 3 women... Why? Remember Joey and my issues with her? Did I explain those? My problem... not actually an existential problem... Drenched white silk panties... And the last time I would be untrue to myself... what I loved between her legs... the most beautiful of vaginas... kind of like straight out of Pink Floyd, "The Wall"... Like a Georgia O'Keefe Painting... too wet... too white and silky... no smell whatsoever... I couldn't return... And there was the Haitian woman I met on the subway... we bumped into Joey on 6th Avenue... very awkward, although Joey understood... the situation she believed she put me in... And the young Haitian woman at the Moonstruck Diner (where Vicky dumped me that Valentine's Day), repeatedly saying, "Do you like Peach Cobbler?" When we bumped into Joey, Joey was looking for "honest" work... I imagine I wasn't working... And "Peach Cobbler" (like Anya) insisted upon paying for EVERYTHING... That night was the last time I would lay with her... like Anya... Bitches in Heat and I was just a dumb mutt trying to stop being so dumb... She said that my penis was beautiful... and I am shy about painting it... although it's in "Self-Portrait at 33" with my colon in my hands... Her's was the smallest, cuttest vagina I had ever seen... She didn't like oral sex... What did she want with me? I will never know...
Fortunately for me, no sexually transmitted diseases... Fortunately for Margarita... How foolish we can be...
And why didn't I paint vagina's... maybe I could have had a show... maybe I could have sold... easily... and Anya wouldn't accuse me of not being an artist... Or maybe that's just the point: I don't paint vaginas... my primal scream...
Or maybe it's because of flashbacks... memories pre-dating puberty... what made me so precocious and then so prude...
Who showed me theirs who shouldn't have... I know Anya, you probably shouldn't have, although that was beyond our control... Anyway, this really has nothing to do with you... does it? Or maybe you would see things differently...
Thursday, June 1, 2017
Artist or Prostitute... That is the question...
She asked him, "if you don't think of selling your paintings, why do you paint?"
This wasn't the first time they argued about whether or not he was truly an artist... on a prior occasion she had said, "One reason you're not an artist is because you don't paint everyday..." To which he responded, "look, painting isn't my only artistic passion... The days that the painting clearly isn't working or I'm not inspired, I cook... A sure bet... never fails me... and we've gotta eat. Why not eat inexpensively and what you truly crave? Other days I write or I read... I don't know how that would discredit me as being an artist..."
Her block-headed stubborness had been grating on him for awhile... His girl"friend" was rapidly taking the form of a horse with blinders pulling a carriage through Central Park, her self-constructed trap... He thought of calling her a stubborn mule... Instead he responded out of character,
"Now tell me, honestly dear, when we 'make love', are you really practicing for a role in an upcoming porn movie?..."
a pause, allowing the impact of the question to sink in...
"...I mean... afterall... in your mind... passions are truly valid ONLY if you're being paid... So, maybe it's true what the feminists say when they defend prostitution; that all women prostitute themselves to their husbands in some way... an exchange of sex for their husband's paycheck, the house, the nice car, the vacations... so why give it up for free and permanently? I mean, that's what you believe isn't it? Everything comes with a price tag and must be exchanged for money... In order to be an artist, I must sell my paintings... 'straight from the horses mouth?..."
This wasn't the first time they argued about whether or not he was truly an artist... on a prior occasion she had said, "One reason you're not an artist is because you don't paint everyday..." To which he responded, "look, painting isn't my only artistic passion... The days that the painting clearly isn't working or I'm not inspired, I cook... A sure bet... never fails me... and we've gotta eat. Why not eat inexpensively and what you truly crave? Other days I write or I read... I don't know how that would discredit me as being an artist..."
Her block-headed stubborness had been grating on him for awhile... His girl"friend" was rapidly taking the form of a horse with blinders pulling a carriage through Central Park, her self-constructed trap... He thought of calling her a stubborn mule... Instead he responded out of character,
"Now tell me, honestly dear, when we 'make love', are you really practicing for a role in an upcoming porn movie?..."
a pause, allowing the impact of the question to sink in...
"...I mean... afterall... in your mind... passions are truly valid ONLY if you're being paid... So, maybe it's true what the feminists say when they defend prostitution; that all women prostitute themselves to their husbands in some way... an exchange of sex for their husband's paycheck, the house, the nice car, the vacations... so why give it up for free and permanently? I mean, that's what you believe isn't it? Everything comes with a price tag and must be exchanged for money... In order to be an artist, I must sell my paintings... 'straight from the horses mouth?..."
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