What A Voice!

Amy - rest in peace!

No shame

Shout out to Amy Winehouse...wherever you are tonight girl...we'll be playing your music...

Missing the poetry and the poets

Healing Earthquakes...probably my favorite works of Jimmy Santiago Baca. Please take time to listen to the first or last ten minutes or so when you have time...it's Baca reading a portion in the first ten minutes from Healing Earthquakes which I posted back in September or in the last ten minutes, the piece titled 'Healing Earthquakes".

After that bookstore meeting, I couldn't help but write about the experience and decided to post it on my MYSPACE blog...one of my pieces, I believe that was inspired.

Working in juvenile detention I used to be surrounded by poetry and poets - often silent and waiting...for eruption, for expression, or immersed in words of truth and pain and intimacy that allows one to make an attempt to live, to reach in and then out, to heal, to be understood. I believe this poem below does just that. Thank you Rene Aguiluz for this verbal interpretation of Baca's "Who Knows Me But Me".

Vestiges of Fall fading fast...

Yes! Yesterday Omaha, Nebraska

received the first snow of this winter season!

So this is me...just reminiscing

about what's soon to be a distant memory.

Pumpkin carvings extraordinaire!

What my room mates do with their spare time!

Really!! These pumpkin carvings were amazing!

My camera could not do them justice at all!

Placed strategically on the porch Halloween night,

the pumkins delighted the "costume partiers".

I don't usually don't "do Halloween" but I was home alone

and left with explicit instructions by my two room mates

to "pass out the candy!"

So I did as I was told, since they weren't yet home

(...conveniently, or so I thought).

What amazed me was that I heard only one

"costumed character" utter the words "trick or treat".

I'm thinking that "trick or treat" is out

and just "being cute or scary-seen but speechless" must be in.

Things that make you go hmmm..

.-in more ways than one!

-pic off A Zombie Daily

It's amazing what people (alive or dead)

will find to do with their spare time.

According to my brother, OJ...I guess Utica was visited by

a lone zombie on Halloween

walking the streets after dark,

witnessed by many, scared the heck out of some.

(Identity still unknown,

but then I'm thinking it's not unusual for zombies

to remain anonymous)

Oooo...CREEPY!

Relocated to where?!? O!

I'm now living in Omaha, Nebraska.

I'll leave the story about why I left Albuquerque for another post.

Occasionally Michelle and I have been able to go for walks together...

whether it's downtown or just in the neighborhood,

the weather's been sensational and ideal for being in the outdoors!

I wondered why Michelle was toting along a bag of crackers.

And here I thought maybe Michelle was just prepared

for a lengthy stroll or hike. Silly me!

Michelle is out of crackers...but this little guy or girl is waiting patiently...

and seems to understand intuitively

the potential power of "making eye contact".

Poor little one!

We both felt bad that we didn't have more to feed em,

they seemed so hungry. But there was so many of them

and well...I guess...didn't Jesus say "the poor will always be with us"?

Whoops! A little larger crowd to dinner than anticipated!

I was amazed at the coloring on these flock...

quite a variety too!

Doing what I do...

enjoying the out of doors!

A path in metro Omaha near Stinson Park

There are various walking paths for the choosing...

This walk is Michelle's favorite...the river walk in downtown Omaha

I've given up the mountains (for now) but not the water...

and that Missouri River is one large body of water.

The River Walk along the Missouri River

Downtown Omaha

Getting used to the time change.

I can't believe it gets dark by 5:30pm now.

It feels so early...for a night owl anyway.

Sights of downtown Omaha - O!

Seasons Quickly Passing

Vestiges of fall

Is winter really just around the corner?

A walk through the park

Little beauty!

Nothing like something white, wet and cold to break a fall reverie!

pic taken Saturday, November 13, 2010

The snow started falling Friday evening about 5:30pm.

First snow this "coming winter" season.

The heavy wet slushy stuff-

perfect for making snowmen, but their lives will be short-lived,

because the snow is melting fast!

I believe I have arrived in a cooler climate!

Storytelling on Sunday - Storyteller: Jimmy Santiago Baca

I remember in my younger days, sitting around the table after dinner, listening to my father tell stories and talk about his childhood and growing up. His stories were quite interesting, but back then I was so absorbed with my own life as a teen and pretty much focused on my own rapidly approaching freedom and future. Now my memories of the exact details of his stories are so fuzzy, and so thinking back to those moments, what I wouldn't given to have somehow frozen those stories in time or to have taken the time to write them down! How many personal stories are left untold or unrecorded?

As I've begun to make attempts at recording other's stories, I've learned some hard and painful lessons about hearing and recording the stories of storytellers. I've found that when hearing a person's untold stories, particularly if it is someone you think you know well, you may experience thoughts and emotions towards the person that are unexpected. I've learned it is imperative that one listen and write the stories told without judging the storyteller. Once a storyteller offers to bare their soul, you must enter that space with respect and humility, lest the stories be locked up or lost for a lifetime. The storyteller, I highlight this Sunday, often speaks of such reference and humility towards others, himself, and the earth's inhabitants in his own storytelling.

I am easily mesmerized by colorful storytellers as I find my own storytelling so matter of fact. It takes a certain frame of mind, knack or skill to tell a story in a way that leaves the listener spellbound. There is one such storyteller who calls Albuquerque his home...Jimmy Santiago Baca. I've been reading and sharing his works since 2007, mostly with young people in detention. I just recently had the chance to meet him and what an opportunity! Meeting one of my favorite poets/storytellers face to face! The following piece is one example of Mr. Baca's work....

Tire Shop

I went down yesterday to fix a leak in my tire.
Off Bridge Street, there's a place 95 cents, flats fixed.
Smeary black paint on warped wood plank between two bald tires.
I go in, an old black man with a Jackie Gleason hat greasy soft
with a mashed cigar stub in mouth and another old Chicano man
working the other pneumatic hissing tire changer.
The walls are black with soot, brown black dust everywhere
and rows of worn tires on gnawed board racks for sale,
air hoses snaking and looped over the floor.
I greet the two old men, "yeah! how's it going?" No response.
They look up at me as if I just gave them a week to live.
"I got a tire needs a tube." Rudy, a young chicano,
emerges from the black part of the room, pony-tailed and plump,
walks me out to my truck and looks at the tire.
"It'll cost you five bucks to take off and change." I nod.
He tells the old Chicano who pulls the roller jack
with the long steel handle outside, and I wait
in the middle of the grunting oval tire changing machines,
while the old guy goes out and returns with my tire.
He looks like a disgruntled Carny handling the Ferris wheel
for the millioneth time, and I'm just another ache in the arm,
a spoiled kid. I watch the two old men work the tire machines
step on the foot levers that send the bars around

flipping the tire from the rim and I wonder

what brought these two old men to work here

on this grey evening in February-

are they ex-cons? Drunks or addicts?
He whips the tube out. "Rudy", he yells,
and I see a gaping hole in the tube. "Can't patch that", Rudy says.
Then in Spanish slang says, "No podemos pachiarlo."
"We got a pile of old tubes over there,
we'll do it for ten dollars." At first I think he might be taking me
but I hedge away from the thought and watch the machines work
the spleesh of air, the final begrudging phoof! of rubber popped loose
then the holy clank of steel bar against steel and ever gently
the old Chicano man, instead of throwing the bar on the floor
takes the iron bar and wipes it clean of rubber bits and oil
and slides it gently into his waist belt in such a way
I've only seen mothers wipe their infant's mouth.
And I wonder where they live, these two old guys
I turn and watch MASH on a tv suspended from the ceiling
6 o'clock news comes on, Hunnington Beach blackened with oil.
Rudy comes behind me and says,

"F**ing shame they do that to our shores."
I suddenly realize how I love these working men, working in half dark
with bald tires, like medieval hunchbacks in a dungeon.
They eat soup and scrape along in their lives,how can they live,

I wonder, on 95 cents a tire change in today's world?

I am pleased to be with them and feel how barrio Chicanos

love this too-how some give up nice jobs in foreign places

to live by friends working in these places and out of these men

revolutions have started. The old Chicano is mumbling at me

how cheap I am, when he learns my four tires are bald and spare flat,

shaking his head as he works the tire into the tire well.

I notice his heels are chewed to the nails and his fingernails

are black, his face a weary room and board stairwell

of a downtown motel given over to drunks and derelicts,

his face hand worn by drunks leaning their full weight on it

wooden steps grooved by hard soled men, just out of prison

a face condemned by life to live out more days in futility.

I bid goodbye to the black man chomping his ancient cigar

the Chicano man with head down and I feel ashamed,

somehow, that I cannot live their lives a while for them.

Grateful they are here, I respect such men, who have stories

that will never be told, who bring back to me my simple boyish days

when men in oily pants and grubby hands talked in rough tones

and worked at simple work, getting three meals a day on the table

the hard way. They live in an imperfect world

unlike men with money who have places to put their shame,

these men have none.

Others put their shame on planes or Las Vegas

These have no place but to put their shame on their endurance,

their mothers, their kids, themselves,

unlike men who put their shame on new cars, condos, bank accounts

so they never have to face their shame.

These men in the tire shop have become more human with shame.

And I thought of the time my brother betrayed me, leaving me at 14

when he vowed we'd always be together. He left to live with some

rich folks, and I was taken to the Detention center for kids

with no place to live I became a juvenile filled with anger

at my brother who left me alone. These tire shop men

made choices, never to leave their brothers, in them

I saw shame with no place to go, but in a man's face, hands,

work and silence. As I drove away, nearing my farm

I saw a water sprinkler shooting an arc of water far over

the fence and grass it was intended to water-the fountain hitting

a weedy stickered spot that grew the only single flower anywhere

around in the midst of rubble, brush and stones.

The water hit and touched a dormant seed that blossomed

all itself into what it was despite the surroundings.

Something made sense to me then and I'm not quite sure what -

an unconditional love of being and living

and taking what came one's way with dignity.

That night in my dream I cried for my brother as he was leaving

all the words I used against myself, rotten, no good, shitty, failure

dissolved in my tears. My tears poured out of me in my dream

and I wept for my brother and wept when I turned after he left

and I reached for my sister and she was having coffee with a friend

I wept in my dream because she was not available for me

when I needed her, and all my tears flowed and how I wept

my feeling, my pain of abandonment, all my tears became

that arc of water and I became the flower, by sheer accident

in the middle of nowhere, blossoming...

Jimmy Santiago Baca