A Christmas Story

A Feliz, Summer Navidad in Paraguay

On Christmas day in 1995 I sat with my cat, Michi, and my sister, Susana, watching what seemed to be more of a summer barbecue than a Christmas celebration. The sun was gleaming behind the silver Paraguayan clouds onto the brick patio of my grandmother's house. I sat in the shade, racing toy cars; the only thing I brought with me from home besides clothes (but clothes don't really count to you when you're six years old). The patio floor was always a cool place to be, the maroon tiles didn't catch the sun in the afternoons. The smell of asado engulfed the whole front yard and the sound of the meat sizzling on the charcoal grill seemed to harmonize with my uncle’s laughter. I always wondered how a skinny man could produce such a trombonesque laugh.

The whole day was slow. There were barely any cars that drove by the street. Horse-drawn carts rolled by sporadically and vendors would yell their products in a perfectly repetitive cadence; it was strangely comforting, like a lullaby that called for an afternoon nap. I never understood exactly what they said as they rolled along and all I knew is that I saw piles of unpeeled corn sitting on the cart among the other strange items. We never bought anything from the vendors but I still appreciated them. The wind was soft, gently pressing on blades of grass until they chimed like small chandeliers. The whole day seemed caught in a slow cycle; I sat and waited for something to happen, thinking of why mom wasn't there.

Home was in Brooklyn, but my sister and I lived in Paraguay. Our house was a three story "dream house" my mother built with money she made from housekeeping and cooking in the states. The house wasn't fully complete when Susy and I were living in it; my mother couldn't afford to finish it after we were born. She couldn't afford to keep us in the states with her either and sent us to live in the house. (The house was never finished. My mother never lived in it either. It was sold a few years ago). Although my mother couldn't afford to have us live with her, she always brought us home for the holidays, to spend time in New York with her.

She took us home, to Greenpoint, Brooklyn, in early December the year before but we never got to spend Christmas there. That year was the year my mother and my father finally had enough of each other. We left our house (or rather we were kicked out of our house) and forced to stay with my aunt in Queens for a few weeks, until the holidays passed and we were sent away again.

I had a lot of questions that year, mostly about why we weren't at home and why Dad didn't want us there. I never got any answers to the questions, but I remember my mother telling me to "not think about all the bad stuff in my head." I cannot remember much else. I cannot remember what my parents fought about. I cannot remember the seriousness of the argument and how it could be enough to make my father leave us during the only time of the year when he had to see us.

We stayed in Sunnyside, Queens that Christmas and when the holidays passed we were sent back to Paraguay. The holidays passed as fast as the traffic to JFK International Airport did but I didn’t think about it too much. My aunt was there to entertain us with her antics (drinking wine until everything became funny). The next year, I didn't think of the bad stuff either, I learned the art of embracing the quiet afternoons, a humbling observational technique that rubbed off on my personality through the years.

I woke up from the slow daydream of the afternoon in Paraguay when my cousins, Alejandro and Matias arrived from their house. Susy, too, was brought to life by their arrival. Alejandro and Matias were not much older than I was, Alejandro was the oldest out of all of us, a year older than Susy; I was the youngest of the group. My grandmother classified us differently, in a rather methodical way. Susy and I were known as "buenos," the good children, and Alejandro and Matias were known as “cabesudos,” or knuckleheads. They were a typical pair of brothers for the time; independent boys trying to be "badder" than the other boys, openly neglected by their father who had taken a second wife.

The Christmas celebration in Paraguay was generally simple that year. There weren't too many questions to ask; the adults ate and laughed at my uncle's jokes while listening to Spanish harp and guitar play on the radio. The children sat anywhere they chose, as long as it wasn't near the adults table; we were too young to listen to what they were saying. It was an unspoken rule; we would go, take our food, as much as we wanted (even though that amount was always decided by the man with the biggest knife) and retreat until we were called. The four of us did just that, we took our asado and mandioca (boiled yucca, a staple part of the Paraguayan diet, used almost as a substitute for bread or potatoes) and made a holiday of it.

Loli, our grandmother's mix-breed, a God-knows-what dog, became our source of celebration. She was a big black dog, no real distinguishing features except for a tiny tail, the remnants of a long whip that had to be cut off for purposes I considered pure evil (I still don't know why she had to have her tail cut and thus consider it simply an act of cruelty). Alejandro dug up a pair of neon green sunglasses and Matias transformed our dog into the world's most badass dancing canine; she became an instant international sensation. Loli had spectacular choreography done by Matias and the will to succeed in bringing Christmas cheer.

The day's heat was unforgettable. It's hard for two kids from Brooklyn to imagine a Christmas where we could sweat under the sun and play in the grass with our cousins and dog. As I sat on that porch, in a place far from home, I began to understand that Christmas is not “Navidad,” just like “Jorge” is not “George.” The two cannot be interchanged and yet they both belong to me. That year, I was transformed into a bridge, a place between two places; a bridge between two continents, two families, two holidays, two languages, two names and two identities.

I chewed my piece of asado and forgot about thinking long enough to enjoy the fact that the dog was wearing sunglasses. Together, the four of us sat and watched as Loli danced our Christmas/Navidad dances for us. Her tongue bounced up and down as she stumbled on her hind legs while Matias held her paws. Loli seemed to be very happy and for more than a single moment, for the span of an afternoon, we all did. Maybe we really were. Together, we, four neglected and innovative children, made our own holiday. Michi, the cat, was there too, watching with disinterest, waiting for the heavy Paraguayan sun to fade away and quiet to return, waiting so things could be normal once again.

Mind on it's feet

My window is alway cold
even when its closed, I put my
finger on it feels like a warm ice
cube, it has a lot of finger prints
on it, the reflection makes my room
hover outside of my house, covered
in finger prints. Maybe I love
her, she's my friend and I know I do
but in love? Thats a different
question. People make questions
and try to answer them but feelings can't
be answered ever. We feel things that
don't make sense and our words
do makes sense. I've never liked
the word tense, like past tense
and present, its based on experience,
its stuff that happened and
will happen or happening. Its mind
blowing. We have a system to describe
things that happened and will
or won't happen.

My feet bouncing are a flickering
candle flame, just dangling there.
You cannot control your feet, they
are hands but a more rebellious and
temperamental version. Even people
that work with their hands all day come
home to tired feet. I let my feet do
what they want. You have to be careful
though, if you let them roam then they
will force you to roam. Feet are bulls,
ferocious beasts that are completely
amazing when trained. Hands are hawks
with precision and attention to detail.
Able to caress fine textures with smooth
grace and tenderness.

At the end is a mind, like a little child
perched on a rock, unstable and young.

Finding a little fire

Sometimes is hard to find a little fire.
Like when you have tired eyes with eroding
contact lenses in them or when the same words
stop meaning the same thing, repetition weighs on
you and tide upon tide of complacency crash against
you like an outstayed beach trip. I think people
need it, need to lose their fire sometimes, need
to be pushed to a limit of absurdity. You can't
blame another person when they don't fit
the role you've created for them. I think a person
can push themselves as hard as they want: to a
point of tears, blood or whatever else comes out
of their body, but another person simply can't.

When you try to ignite someone's flame you
run the risk of setting a fuse ablaze, inciting a
new set of events leading up to an eruption.

Its hard to say what I'm really trying to say or
just to think of the point of what I'm saying. I think
its for me, to realize that maybe I'm doing fine
just following my own path and others cant hate
me for it.

I think of where I'll be in 20 years. Not physically,
like where in the world or what job I'll have or
whatever, but I think of where I'll be mentally.
What will i be thinking? What's going to really matter
and why will it matter. Most of what is happening in
my life right now won't matter to me in 20 years, or
even 10.

Its more important to focus on whats lying just
ahead or whats in front of me now. In reality, I should
be taking care of myself now, not some future
version of me; he can take care of himself.

Living is like trying to keep a little fire burning.
We're given this little spark and then tiny ember
to hold on to, to protect against the elements
that threaten to put it out. Our whole lives
revolve around safeguarding this aspect of ourselves.
If we care for it just right then we'll have it for
as long as we can. If we don't feed the fire, it'll fade
away. If we feed it too much, it'll blaze and burn out.

I guess the biggest question is: What keeps your fire
burning?

The concept is cliche but I've never actually thought
about it.

Its both funny and sad how something so dear to you can fall to the outskirts of your attention. This blog in particular has completely fallen off my area of concern. I think its caused me a lot of anxiety over the past few months, the whole "losing track of your own interest" idea. I'm going to see what I can do about posting new poems and or just random posts about myself and life for me and the few followers i have =[ to read. Either way, ill try to just get into the habit of writing. As I've learned over the past few years, the more you write the higher the chance that you'll write something good. Anyways, thats where I'm at right now, peace.

Apples On An Archer's Range

The floor is the sky,
Endless black with white light,
it sits like us when we lie,
a scornful potent night,

Now its brown,
Makes us hurt and we're bored,
We look endlessly down,
Nothing to us but crossed swords,

Infinite math folding miles,
Connecting dots one by one,
With gold smiles,
War is undone,

Forest green soreful illusion,
Cure for diagnosed pain,
Insane talk mental confusion,
Freedom killing the brain,

Remembering the cure,
Once absurd never heard,
Unwritten word unpure,
Dreams obsequiously procured,

Complexity forms,
Colors under eyelids change,
Quiet under storms,
Apples on an archer's range.

Picture this post

Picture this post, labeling itself as prose, apposed to conditions, of verse, not rehearsed, preconditioned as written lines, supposed to attrition and rhyme, but containing rhyme, obtaining time cluttered lines redefining inclined, muttered in syllables, uttered in the lyrical in sync and cyclical and cynical the whole sense is stolen tense, even clinical in sense, golden intense shine, this wrapped moment in time, trapped stolen intimate but not inclined to refine its cluttered lines, time obtaining rhyme, containing, but rhyme and attrition to supposed lines written as preconditioned, rehearsed not, verse of conditions, to apposed prose as itself, labeling, post this picture.

Two Week, True Love

Two Week, True Love

I’ve been thinking
about this thing called
love lately, and
it’s become
just a little bit clearer,

I think it became clearer
while we were both standing
in front of my bedroom mirror,
naked, distracted, by the
conversation we were having about
the origins of Western love ideology,
its roots in Greek mythology,

About how the gods split
the human being into two halves,
when human pride tested their powers,
leaving souls cursed to long
for their mate, about how soul mates
know not the bounds of age or sex
and their love can overcome any social
construction, put in place
by those who don’t see that love
will forever float above human law,

And yes, we were still standing naked
in front of the mirror 20 minutes later,
caressing each other,
completely wrapped up,
in each other's words,

And yes, we were still
wrapped in each other's
words,
about another hour later,

We talk about it but,
What is it?
What is this “love,” at this age,
twenty years old,
just the cliché word used to fill poems?
Or a word we overuse, abuse,
laugh at when our friends get
tangled in its silky web?

Love is, the broken condom…
at 9:30 in the morning,
the lack of panic, shame and blame, it’s
kissing you after we assessed the damage, it’s
the me not packing my bags
even though my boys and I
planned to haul ass to Canada, to
start a new life when the first one
of us planted the accidental seed,

Love is, when we whispered,
“I need you, I want you” on the
R train to school,
forty minutes later, its that
you’ve been late to class
every morning for the past
two weeks and said fuck it,
life’s too short and you’re my baby,

Love is, that we’re fucken crazy; love
is that I’ve lost two earrings and
about five pounds in two weeks with you,

We believe it so its true,
when they say you’re young
and it’s just “new” we say maybe,
but fuck you anyway because
well we’re in it now, so
might as well live it up,

Love is that we call it luck,
that we’re young, impassioned lovers
who just don’t give a care, so

Pull my hair and kiss my chest,
in the dark, so when you
hurt me tomorrow's light,
it’ll be alright,
because tomorrow is tomorrow
and tonight is tonight, and

Trust me, it’ll be a long night.