I have always dreaded social etiquettes, particularly small talk stuff. More specifically, I dread how to respond to the simple query "How are you?" For a moment, I am torn between responding with the old cliche' expression "fine, how are you? And then diverting the focus away from me with anything, like "nice day, huh?" Or "How you doing?"
But for some 15 years now, since my wife became increasing ill, I have dreaded the question even more. "How's your wife?" From close friends or family who know of her illness, this scares me even more.
Should I just lie and say "fine", "she's better"? Or should I tell them the truth and launch into details on medications, side-effects, failed surgeries and treatments, incompetent doctors, and how hard it is to see her writing in pain 18 hours a day, and be unable to do anything about it?
With certain people, even after repeated updates on her condidition, I am shocked by by their response, "Oh, I didn't know she was ill?" "What did you say was wrong with her?" Don't they pay attention? I've told them a half dozen times over the past two years. Don't they know it hurts to be asked the same question again and again and have to repeat the same answer to the same person?
I know people mean well. They shake their heads appropriately. "Hope she gets better", "Tell her I'm praying for her", is little help. "Thanks, I'll make sure to tell her." I lie. But in truth, I almost wish they didn't ask. They innocently expect I'll say "Oh, she's better." But I can't. I wonder if they think I am making it up to gain sympathy?
I am so tired of the well-intentioned advice. "Oh, I was in a lot of pain a couple of years ago. I know what she if going through." No you don't. "I drank this tea, rubbed on this ointment, saw this doctor, and it went away." There is little we haven't tried already. The pain is worse, damn it. Name the med, we've tried it. Name the tea, she drank that, too.
Not long ago she got a phone call from a distant friend, who told her in a scolding tone: "You are still in pain? You need to get a hold on yourself. Get up, get out of bed. Do things. You are making yourself sick." My wife cried hopelessly for some time afterwards. If only it was so easy.
Obviously, this friend does not have to help me pick my wife up from the floor when she has dizzy spells and falls, or hear her moans of pain as she tries to walk across the room, or get in and out of bed. I know her friend meant well, but it did little to cheer up my wife, or to give her hope.
Ironically, some friends greet me and don't even ask about her anymore. Did they forget? Are they being discreet? Are they being insensitive? I guess they know what I will say already.
Chronic pain is unrelenting. It is mean, cruel. It is unfair. "Your wife is chosen by God", says one dear friend, "Her suffering will save many souls." But this can't be God's will. "All things happen for a reason". Oh yeah? I have heard them all. "Don't forget God performs miracles", they say in an attempt to comfort us. But there is no parting of the sea here. Instead, the sea deepens.
"How much worse can it get?" She moans in frustration. "Don't you dare ask that question", I scold her. It can get worse, much worse. I don't pray for miracles any more. God must already know we need one. I pray for courage to be her crutch, her support, but I am running out of what to say that will give her hope to live on. "Think about your kids. Think about your grandchildren. Think about the new baby grandson coming in April."
"I know, I know." She nods in tears.
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Friday, December 16, 2011
Ode To The Caveman: My Friend, Jesus Cuevas
I called him "The Caveman", his surname "Cuevas", meaning "cave" in English. But more than that he did tend to be loud, brash and a shade crude on occasions, a Chicano caveman, a Chicano Aborigine if you will.
We vaguely knew one another as kids, since my dad, then estranged from my mom, and his family lived at "La Sesion", as it was called in our Barrio, Spanglish for "section" as in "section house", since it belonged to the Southern Pacific Railroad, providing housing for its workers.
It was one large rectangular yellow, wooden building with a series of small, two-room apartments. My dad and his dad, both worked on the railroad. When I visited my dad, I would see Jesse and we would talk. After my dad died, I lost all touch with Jess but would see him around from time to time. It would not be until years later, after I married that I would meet him again, this time to become close friends.
Living in Modesto with my new Mexican wife, we made it a point to shop for groceries as frugally as possible, and since I was only making a minimum wage as a florist at the time, that drove us to South Modesto, and Crows Landing Road, leading straight into the heart of "Oakie Town", as we called back then. We could get eggs, meats and vegetables much more cheaply than we could in downtown Modesto, especially at one Supermarket just past Hatch Road.
And it was precisely there one day that I again met up with The Caveman, who was working in the vegetable department. We shook hands and I introduced him to my new wife. He too was married at the time, and had two young children, a boy and a girl and as we left, we promised we would call him and invite him and his family over for dinner sometime. The year was approximately 1967.
And we did.
This began a renewed friendship that would flourish until 2002 when he died. We discovered so much in common between us. I was doing art work, drawing, painting, and found object sculptures and he was vastly impressed by my work, and the fact that though I was a meager florist at this time, I held a Master's Degree in Art. We also discovered that we liked to eat, drink beer and wine, and smoke a little "yerba" too!
We would listen to music, get a little high, and philosophize (bullshit) on life and art. We also shared our "Mexican-ess" and the ideology of the rising Chicano Movement, of Chicano Art with one another, and though his wife was White, she "understood" Mexicans.
In time, I began to challenge Jesse about developing his obvious interest in art. "Go to college. Take some art classes and get a degree", I urged him. The Caveman was about 30 at the time. "It's never too late, dude", I repeated. Apparently, it worked and in just a few years, Jesse had graduated from college with a Bachelor's Degree, and soon after, earned a Master's Degree in Art!
He went on to be hired at Stanislaus State University in Turlock, CA. as a recruitment officer and continued working as an artist, mostly painting.
Oddly, there was one painting which he worked on for years and never really finished, one inspired by an actual photograph of the famous revolutionary leader from the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920), Emiliano Zapata, holding a rifle.
I am not sure why he never finished this painting. While it was part of his Master's project, he continued to repaint it, over and over, and each time he showed it to me, it displayed new strokes, new colors. We never really talked of why he could never just let it be, though that bothered, even upset me.
We also never talked of what that image of Zapata symbolized to The Caveman. Did he see himself and his own restless, revolutionary spirit in Zapata? Did it remind of his past, his buried cultural roots?
On his death bed in the hospital, I last saw him, a disheveled replica of the loud and boisterous Caveman he once was. He lay motionless, mumbling incoherently one moment, as if in restful sleep, a faint smile on his face, then he would erupt in a thunderous laugh and totally coherent dialogue.
He died a young man, leaving his painting of Zapata unfinished. But though The Caveman might have lived to 90, I suspect he would have repainted his canvas again and again. But then, is anything ever really finished?
Monday, December 12, 2011
And Do You Think I Am On A Bed Of Roses?
The massive murals 8' to 10' high and 20' wide, depict in powerful images and color, Mexico's turbulent history, its rich Precolumbian past, the Spanish Conquest, War of Independence, the Mexican Revolution, Mexico's role in world history and the cosmos.
One of Siqueiros' best murals depicts the torture of the last Emperor of the Mexica (Aztecs) Cuahtemoc, by the Spanish Conquistadores. Here, Cuahtemoc is pictured being tortured by the Spanish, clad entirely in armor, with no trace of humanity visible. The flames sear his feet and those of a friend, in fervent prayer. Cuahtemos's face is taut, filled with contempt, as he conjures his last ounce of courage.
His eyes appear teary. Every muscle taught. The red flames flicker off the face and bared canines of a snarling dog, and the metal armor of the soldiers holding steel lances. An Indian woman, behind him raises her arms begging for mercy.
When the roomfuls of gold that the Spanish believed the Aztecs possessed fail to materialize, accounts tell that Hernan Cortez, captures Cuahtemoc and with a cohort, bounds and lays them on a slab, lighting a fire to their feet, in an attempt to force them to confess the location of the "hidden gold".
When Cuahtemoc refuses, his partner supposedly begins to weep and cry out in pain, at which point Cuahtemoc turns and stoically says to him, "Do you think I am on a bed of Roses?"
Despite his short reign, after the death of Moctezuma II, (1520-1521) that ended with the conquest of Mexico in May of 1521, his story is told and retold in Mexican history with a sense of pride, symbolizing Mexico's refusal to bow down to foreign domination.
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
The Reason For The Season: Baby Jesus
How can we be so afraid of offending others with our beliefs? In the watering down of religion, any religion, we lose its original meaning, intent.The clerks who are told not to wish clients a "Merry Christmas" and replace it with "Happy Holidays", the teachers who are warned not to decorate their classrooms with "religious symbols", to the debate of whether we should "ban" the nativity scene from the White House lawn is debilitating.
Have we gone overboard on separating Church and State? "In God We Trust", is still emblazoned on our national currency and "one nation under God" still uttered in the Pledge of Allegiance, which some Americans are now refusing to take.
Whether we believe in Jesus or not, in God or not, this is part of our American "culture" and we need not fear it. Doesn't Freedom of Religion guarantee that too? Religious freedom is not about the absence or banning of religious beliefs but about the right to believe what we choose, or not believe at all.
At the very least, shouldn't we preserve Christmas and Easter for example, just as they are, with all of their religious associations, as a cultural tradition, as we would any other cultural tradition, native arts, language or history?
In a society that includes so many distinct cultures as does our own, this seems to me especially vital, especially valuable.
Monday, November 28, 2011
Then, we all oooed and aaawed for about 10 minutes watching this mini-human, a boy, kick and squirm, roll and punch inside the womb. "Look, there's the head!" "Look, look, the penis! All in High Definition.
We marveled at the little hands and counted the tiny toes. Yup, there's five, one-two-three.... There was the little face, eyes closed, the heart beating like tiny drum, the umbilical chord. As he tumbled and kicked I said "He's gonna be a Futbol player!" And they all cracked up.
As we watched, I marveled at our new technology and how in the old days we never knew the gender of our babies until they slid out on the delivery table!
In fact, when my wife was pregnant with our youngest (we have two boys), our oldest son was already three years old and my wife, who had mysteriously forgotten about all the problems she had with that labor, crooned "Oh let's have another baby, a little sister so he can have somebody to play with??" She talked me into it. In fact, I had to be talked into the first one too!
It just so happened at the time I was reading a book about the power of the mind concerning how if you concentrated on the preferred gender of a fetus, you could kind of "will" it to be a boy or a girl. It had to be a constant and willed power of thought, each hour of every day, speaking to it, singing to it, and even calling it by his/her name, so we named our unborn baby "Christina", painted her room pink, and my wife knitted little sweaters, caps and blankets, all in pink, of course.
Well, it didn't work! And a bouncing baby BOY was born! We were shattered! We didn't even have a name for him! So much for the power of positive thought.
And now, as we watched the 42" flat screen in our bedroom, we all "knew". It will be a boy. No surprises. No amazement. No wondering. No mystery. No waiting. There was no mistake; there was the penis.
But as we watched I could stop myself from wondering about how we would feel if we saw the baby had no hands, no feet, or only two fingers on one hand? After all, we had asked to "see"?. We had asked to "know"?. Could this be why we all count the toes?
I those ten minutes I also could not stop from thinking about abortion, and about the debate concerning when "life" begins and at what point is a fetus in actually human. As long as we don't see the baby moving inside the womb, the heart beating, and count the five fingers on a tiny hand already, we can justify abortion.
But the sonogram should put all that to rest: We rest our case. There, in plain view is the penis.
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Be Careful What You Ask For Because You Just Might Get It.
Why are we so disenchanted with the so called 1%? What has happened to us is simply of product of our incestuous love with CAPITIALISM. We love it. We cherish it. We teach it. We worship it to the condemnation of every other system, especially Socialism.
Ironically, one the best example of successful Socialism might have been the early CHRISTIANS, who according to the Acts of The Apostles were prompted to put all of their possessions into a pile, to then be levied out according to those most in need. Whether it worked or lasted might well have depended on the morality and fairness of those deciding who the most needy were. One for you, 19 for me?
Seems to me that any system on its face, is amoral and can only become moral, if its proponents are moral. Any moral system can be corrupted by immoral servants of that system. Conversely, do you suppose an inherently immoral system might actually become moral if moral individuals administer it?
So, if we succeed in bringing it all down, Wall St., the Banks, the giant corporations with nothing carefully thought out to replace it with, were are traveling headlong into ANARCHY, a most frightening and disastrous prospect.
I would caution the well-intentioned and those who just like the idea of protesting as adventurous, to occupy their mind with looking up the word ANARCHY, and study a little about those societies and nations of the past who succeeded in bringing it upon themselves.
And even Anarchy could work, but it would depend on moral and responsible adherents, which at present Americans seem to be woefully short on, especially the younger generation.
Dios Mio, we just might get what we ask for.
Friday, November 4, 2011
Pearls Before Swine: On The Importance of Being a Good Audience
My life as a visual artist, took a strange detour during the 1980's into the world of drama. I guess it all began in High School when I wrote and performed a little 10 minute farce I called "Bad Day at Black Rock", a spoof on bad Hollywood westerns of the 50's, during the school's annual crazy week, called The Insanities.
I had never been on stage before and was terrified of standing before a live audience. Nonetheless, with my buddy, David Hitt, we pulled it off, complete with laughs and a healthy applause. Our audience of peers had been forgiving!
Sometime during the 1980's, I began directing the Chicano Teatro (Theater) class at our local community college, part of our Chicano Studies curriculum. I took it over from two earlier instructors. Though I had no real knowledge of drama or theater, other than working with them on the wings for a coupe of years, I winged it for the first years by relying on short one-act plays of Chicano playwright, Luis Valdez, and El Teatro Campesino. In time, I would write and produce many original one-act plays, skits and 2-3 full-length plays as I became a more competent director. I loved playing cameo roles in many.
I concentrated on a mobile, street theater style, like that of the Teatro Campesino who started by perfoming in the orchards on the beds of pickups, often using the workers themselves as actors, and the San Francisco Mime Troupe, who I had seen perform at our college. In order, were basic and simple props, homemade costumes, with quick scene changes with meager sets. For theme and subject matter I chose family, culture, the Barrio, the farm worker, education.
Much of my spiel to the student-actors, (the majority had never been on stage before) had to do with the "audience" and how it was our job to entertain them, to make them laugh, to make them cry and that if we if we failed, the fault was ours.
There were good and bad audiences as we took theater to their turf: Jails, prisons, schools, churches. We had to work extra hard to demand attention from a cafeteria full of 7th or 8th graders! Try it sometime. "Now, students. Students! Students!! Students!!! STUDENTS!!!! If you don't quiet down we are all going back to the classroom!" The principals would cry. "I have never seen our students pay attention to any program like they did today", was the ultimate compliment.
The students hated rehearsals where I drilled them on their lines, movement, facial expression, diction, enunciation, delivery and concentration. But their biggest obstacle was being on time. "I can't do it Mr. Rios. I just can't do it!" They whimpered and complained after being told over and over: "One more time, but this time I want you to mean what you say."
Perhaps the most disheartening and scary of all was to play for half empty houses, whether for a roomful of 50 or 100. Empty chairs hurt. I counted each one. On the other hand, a full-house, noisy and anxious just before the opening lines, primed us. Backstage, I divided my attention between casting a critical eye on my actors and watching the faces of our audience. Did they cry, laugh when they were supposed to? Did they laugh in the middle of a serious moment?
I heard that audiences of Greek Tragedies in ancient Greece were not adverse to watching the same plays over and over. Thus, they knew the story, the plot, the climax and in the middle of some especially dramatic scene with the villain sneaking up behind the hero with a dagger, might shout out to the protagonist onstage "Look out! He is standing right behind you!!" My mother, watching her soap operas on TV, would become so engaged in the story that she constantly booed the villains and cheered on the heroes.
"Andale, malidito!, Aprovechado! Te lo merecias!!" She might cry out to a villian getting his just dues. "Pobrecita", she would woo to the poor undeserving heroine whose life was being torn apart by opportunistic men. This is what audience is about! Gut laughter. Tears. Anger. Sympathy. Empathy. Catharsis.
Suspension of Disbelief, it is called. When the audience allows itself to be transported by the story to a place far removed from reality, their own daily stuggles and problems and become engaged in the imaginary world of Literature. It was beautiful to see, especially in a non-traditional audience of people who never went to plays, who had never seen live actors on a stage, especially children.
The clapping and whistling at the end of a show, even during the show (sometimes), a standing ovation even from half the audience, these two minutes of appreciation made the hours, days and months of preparation worth it. What a joy it was to see the look of satisfaction, pride, self-worth on the student-actors' faces, as they bathed in the glory of this fleeting moment in time.
But no matter how good we were on stage, a bad audience was a nightmare. People bored. Talking. Jeering. Not laughing. Not reacting. A 15 minute skit turned into a tedious and seemingly endless chore and all you prayed for was for it to end so that you could get off that stage! We never got tomatoes thrown at us but an unappreciative audiences were just as bad.
The is no art without an audience who knows how to appreciate it. The artist who says "I just create my work for myself", is lying. If all I do in create art for myself, what point is there in creating it? I don't know about you but I never turn down a compliment, especially when it is genuine.
A woman once told me after I read one of my poems, "Oh, Mr. Rios I loved your poem so much, it almost made me cry!" "Almost? I guess I must have failed then, because I cried when I read it." I told her.
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