My Mother, and More on Life and Death

(Sorry, this is a few weeks old. I have trouble keeping up with my own writing, editing in time...)

Yesterday morning, Sunday, like every Sunday, my mother called me. I talked to her for a few minutes, giving her updates on my health and the things I am doing, or the ones I can tell her about. And, after giving me the updates from her side, she told me that my grandmother, Nona, the Italian one, went on Saturday to my cousin’s place and they show her pictures of me on Facebook, and there were some pictures there from a bbq I went on the 4th of July which she didn’t approve of. The pictures in question were taken when I was enjoying Stefan’s jacuzzi with Bernard, Elif, her kid and another kid. I was wearing a blue bikini.

-    La Nona says that you were in a small pool, like a bathtub?
-    No ma, it is a Jacuzzi.
-    Well, but she said that she couldn’t see what you were wearing…
-    A bikini, bigger than any of the tiny ones they wear in Argentina (the bikinis there cover the minimum indispensable of the rear parts, of all parts for that matter. The style is called cola-less…)
-    And she says he looks so much younger than you…
-    He is three years younger than me, yes. Rob was 6 years younger than me…
-    But you should be careful what you put on the Internet.
-    I didn’t put the pictures up. Somebody else tagged me.
-    That’s even worse! People talk…
-   
People talk yes, they talk all the time, too much and about things they have no business of talking, and if they do, why should we care! We have such different lives, my mother and I, that sometimes I think she cannot even imagine.  Ever since I left, when I was 24, now it’s been 15 years since then, I had the freedom of telling them only what I wanted them to know. You, Americans, think that’s normal. You are used to leave home at 18 when you go to college, and live in separate cities all your life since then. In Argentina families are much more close knit. I didn’t leave my parents house until I left the country. I tried to when I was 19, but my father didn’t wanted me to so he build me a room in what it used to be the garage so I could have privacy, but specially, so I could bring the piano there so I will stop waking them up at 8am when I started practicing. People there are used to know everything about everyone, and my mother is always worried about what others will say or think about what we do, specially, what my cousins and aunt will say and think of us. And that worry limited her all her life, afraid of doing things because, what will people say.

But I have to say, my mother went a long way. Her mother, la Nona, didn’t know from where the baby was going to come out when she was in labor. Nobody had told her. Even she said to me once: we lived in the middle ages then, the dark ages. We didn’t’ know anything about sex, nobody talked about it. My mother had to finish elementary school as a homeschooler, because Nona took her out of school when she had her first period. Señoritas are not allowed in school according to my Nona. It is dangerous with all those men around. They wanted to find her a husband when she was 17. So, I understand that my mother did already a lot to free herself from those restrictions and limitations they pilled upon her. Her parents didn’t want her to go to high school, she had to learn to sew and cook instead, but they finally gave up when she was 17, so she started school when everybody was finishing.

So this life of mine here, it is a mystery to her, she cannot even start to imagine it. She will not imagine that, after she called me on that Sunday morning, we made love, I got up, smoked some before drinking mate made on the electric coffee machine while listening to Led Zeppelin… The small everyday things are different. Here I don’t have to walk the few blocks to the bus stop, or walk to the bakery in the corner to buy facturas, or do the line for two hours at the bank to cash my check. I can’t drink mate talking to her and Nona in the afternoon, or she cannot see when I practice piano, when I write, who I am with. Here I go out with the car, go swimming, when I need to buy food I go to the grocery store, or anything else go to Target… I cannot tell her about all the little things, my fights with my cat that walks all over the counters, that gets me up at 5am, my war with the clandestine mechanic of the block that steals all the parking spaces, my last adventure trying to find a maria dispensary open…

But Adrián, the friend that recently passed away, reminds me that life is here to be lived. We came here with a mission: live life. This, who we are, this combination of atoms, will live life the way that only this particular combination that makes me can live it. And no matter how others try to tell me what to do, there is always going to be something that this person, me, does differently than any other person. 

Yes, I am talking about death lately, with Kim my room mate’s girlfriend, and her theory of the meat robots, and it came to me the realization that yes, maybe there is an afterlife but it is not this identity the one that lives on. This identity dies with this body. We all go to join the big sea of souls, the source, and this identity, this cuca, disappears. But it is bliss to join the whole, it is bliss to disappear, it is a different life. We oscillate between life and death, between individuality and totality, yin and yang, and I thought, life is this, this identity, and I should try to make the most of it, the most of this identity, before it disappears again in the whole. A drop of water joining the sea. And this particular drop of the sea took on this identity with its quirks and problems and psychology, and it is what it is: Me. Me is this, and this can go places, be happy, be sad… be alive on this earth. It might come back again, as the Hindus believe, reincarnation, but it would not be me, it would not be cuca the one that comes back. It will be a piece of the whole, a drop of the sea, but how much of cuca will have? I don’t know, maybe nothing.

So today I was seeing everybody as a brother, because, after all, we are all part of the same, we are all from the same source, but as we come here, we take in a personality, a certain combination of atoms and energy, and we take on this individuality that separates us from the whole and that allows us to experience life in this earth, which otherwise, we couldn’t, not in this way, with the senses. It is a treat.

What little story I have just invented. Pretty little story. Well, I guess it helps me go to sleep at night, makes me feel at peace somehow, as if being part of something bigger than myself made me feel, “important?” Is that the word? I don’t know. Makes me feel that I want to do the best I can of this particular combination of atoms, this energy that is me, I want to make it fulfill its potential, all the promises, its dreams. I’d like to make it fly.

Maybe that’s why we are so scared of death. Because once we are dead we can see how stupid we’ve been, how we missed the point, how we didn’t understand its meaning.  And how afraid we were.

Diatriba de lo pequeño

Este texto lo escribí hace dos años y estoy pensando incorporarlo a la novela. Cleopatra dice:

 Es que hace falta un poco de valor, mucho, para ser artista, para crear. Por eso es que no todos llegan. No tiene nada que ver con el talento, pero con el valor. El valor de decir y hacer lo que sea, lo que fuera, lo que salga. Valor para darlo a conocer y dar la cara, admitir, con toda seguridad, esto es mío. Es por eso que nosotros no pudimos. Nos faltó el valor. No creo que nos haya faltado el talento, de eso teníamos de sobra, imaginación, locura. Lo usábamos para vivir. La vida fue nuestro canvas y ahí lo pusimos todo. Pero nos dio miedo. Nos dio miedo dejar una marca, indisoluble, en el tiempo. Nos dio miedo dejar algo contundente a nuestro paso. Nos dio miedo decir, sí, soy esto, ¿y qué? Pensamos que tal vez los otros no nos iban a aprobar. ¿Quiénes son los otros? Nuestros padres, primero, nuestra familia, nuestros amigos, la comunidad donde nos movemos, vivimos, la comunidad de artistas, de los que hacen lo mismo que nosotros, el mundo. Estamos tan preocupados por lo que los otros van a decir y pensar acerca de nosotros, que no podemos hacer nada. La preocupación nos paraliza. Nos escondemos. Y es así que reemplazamos el hacer arte por el vivir esta vida extraña, cautivante a veces por lo fuera de común, fuera de las reglas. Fumamos para olvidarnos de la realidad, para hacerla un poco mas fantástica y menos repugnante, menos parecida a lo que es. Tal vez los repugnantes somos nosotros.

Es que nos odiamos tanto. Odiamos nuestros cuerpos tan lejos de perfectos, nuestros cuerpos con kilos de más, con arrugas y señales de decadencia. Ellos también nos muestran que el tiempo pasa y nosotros nos quedamos ahí. Odiamos nuestras mentes que nos entretienen con frivolidades, estupideces, cosas pequeñas de todos los días. ¡Odiamos esas cosas pequeñas! Odiamos nuestras vidas pequeñas e inconstutiyentes que no nos llevan a nada, solo a más vidas pequeñas y a más días iguales como éstos, pequeños, iguales. Odiamos nuestra pequeñez y nuestra cobardía. Odiamos al mundo por aplastarnos y obligarnos a aceptar una realidad que no construimos, a la que caímos casi por dejadez, por temor, por ese miedo a lo desconocido. Somos tan pequeños como la realidad que nos rodea todos los días, y por eso nos odiamos. Odiamos lo que somos y lo que nunca vamos a llegar a ser. Odiamos esa posibilidad que se quedó estancada en algún punto de la historia. Esa posibilidad que no se realizó pero que nos hizo soñar y esperar y pensar que tal vez algún día se realizaría. Odiamos nuestra esperanza, y lo que queda de ese deseo de superarse, de tal vez llegar a ser eso que quisimos alguna vez. Odiamos ese pequeño deseo porque ese deseo nos mantiene deseando y alertas, pero resulta que lo único que queremos en realidad es desaparecer, no estar, esfumarnos como el humo que sale de la pipa, quemarnos como esas hojas secas que al menos, en combustión, sirven para algo.

Nos escondemos. Jugamos este juego de decir que queremos hacer algo, pero no lo hacemos. ¿Por qué? ¿Por qué no lo hacemos? Porque si lo hiciéramos se terminaría el juego. Y tenemos miedo de que termine porque a lo mejor perdemos. A lo mejor al final del juego nos damos cuenta de que había otros mejores que nosotros, damm it, y si no terminamos el juego nunca nos vamos a enterar, right? Entonces seguimos jugando, así, escondiéndonos de vez en cuando saliendo a la luz por unos segundos, y volvernos a esconder. Por unos minutos pensamos que tenemos algo, que andamos detrás de algo, por unos breves instantes nos imaginamos que ahora sí vamos a poder, que ahora sí estamos detrás de una idea fantástica. Pero al poco tiempo empezamos a perder velocidad, a perder el impulso, y así sin darnos cuenta, estamos fuera del juego otra vez, mirándolo todo detrás de las vidrieras, contemplando cómo los otros juegan y cómo a nosotros nos gustaría participar pero no tenemos tiempo, no tenemos dinero, no tenemos lugar, no tenemos ganas, y sí, y no tenemos lo único que hace falta tener: pelotas.

Por eso el humo ayuda, el humo crea castillitos en el aire, fábulas a las que nos atajamos, nos colgamos de esas colitas de humo que flamean en el aire y nos llevan con ellas por unas horas así, a flotar por sobre todas las cosas y verlas ahí abajo pequeñitas. Entonces por lo que dura el efecto somos grandes, gigantescos, estamos arriba del mundo, arriba de todo y de todos y los esquemas ya no importan, nos sentimos superiores y omnipotentes. Somos los dioses de todo y de todos y nos olvidamos de quienes éramos. Hasta que se acaba, y la vida vuelve a ser pequeña, fea, absurda, e inconsistente, como nosotros.

Diabribe of the Small

This is a text I wrote a couple of years ago that would like to include in my novel (Original in Spanish). Cleopatra says:

The problem is that, to be an artist, to create, it takes a bit of courage; actually, it takes a lot, not a bit, a lot. That's why not everybody makes it. It has nothing to do with talent, but with courage. The courage to say and do whatever it takes, whatever it has to be, however it comes out. Courage to make it known and show your face to declare with all certainty, this is mine. That's why we couldn't. We lacked courage.  I don't think we lacked talent; we had enough of that, imagination, craziness.  We used it to live. Life was our canvas and there we put it all. But we got scared. We got scared of leaving a mark, indissoluble, in time. We were afraid of leaving something concrete behind as we passed by. We were afraid of saying, yes, this is me, so what? We thought that perhaps the others were not going to approve. And who are the others? Our parents, first, our family, our friends, the community where we interact, live, the community of artists, of those who do the same things than we do, the world. We are so worried about what others will say and think about us that we cannot do anything. The worry paralyzes us. We hide. And that's why we replace doing art for living this strange life, captivating some times because it is so out of the ordinary, outside of the rules. We smoke to forget reality, to make it a bit more fantastic and less repugnant, less like it is. Maybe we are the repugnant, not the reality.

It's just that we hate ourselves so much. We hate our bodies, so far from perfect, our bodies with extra pounds, with wrinkles and signs of decay. They too show us that time goes by and we got stuck there. We hate our minds that entertain us with frivolities, stupidity, small every day things. We hate those small things! We hate our small and inconsistent lives that take us nowhere, only to more small lives and more days like these, trivial, repeated. We hate our smallness and cowardice. We hate the world because it crushed us and forced us to accept a reality that we didn't build, which we fell into almost out of laziness, fear, fear of the unknown. We are as small as the reality that surrounds us every day, and that's why we hate ourselves. We hate what we are and what we will never be. We hate that possibility that got lost at some point in history. That possibility that didn't happen but that made us dream and hope and think that sometime it could realize itself. We hate our hope, and what is left of that desire for improving ourselves, the desire of maybe getting where we wanted to be at some point. We hate that small desire because it keeps us wanting and alert but it happens that the only thing we really want is to disappear, not to be, to vanish like the smoke that comes out of this pipe, we want to burn like these dry leaves that at least, while in combustion, are useful.

We hide. We play this game of saying that we want to do something, but we don't do it. Why? Why don't we do it? Because, if we did it, the game would end, and we are afraid for it to end because we may lose. Maybe at the end of the game we realize that there were others better than us, damn it, and if we don't finish the game we would never know, right? So we keep playing, hiding once in a while, coming out to the light for a few seconds, and hiding again. For a few minutes we think that we have something, that we are onto something big, for a few instants we imagine that yes, this time we will be able to, that this time we are behind a great idea. But, after a little while, we start losing speed, losing the impulse, and without noticing, we are out of the game again, watching life behind the glass windows, looking at the others playing, thinking of how much we would like to participate but we don't have the time, we don't have the money, don't have the space, we don't feel like it, and yes, we don't have the only thing we need to have: balls.

That's why the smoke helps; it creates castles in the air, fables to which we can hold onto. We hang from those little smoke tails that fly in the sky and take us with them for a few hours, to float over everything and see the world down there, small. Then, for as long as the effect lasts, we are giants, we are on top of the world, on top of everything and everybody and the schemes don't matter anymore, we feel superior and powerful. We are the gods of everything and everybody because we forgot who we were. Until it ends, and life goes back to being small, ugly, absurd, and inconsistent, like us.

Notes From the Teacher's Notebook: Death

My friend Adrián died last Tuesday night in New York, a hit and run when he was taking a walk at 2:30am. He died instantly. He was 29 years old, and very talented. He was a clown, an actor, a dancer… a charismatic person. Many will miss him, and I know that it is specially hard for his family.

Adrián was the youngest brother of Adolfo, a friend from the MFA. Adolfo got him involved with the performance of Solaresque, a poetry-dance-music piece created with the direction of Juan Felipe Herrera and the texts written during his poetry workshop. We got along well, so we collaborated in another piece for a performance night in Riverside. We met one afternoon at his parents’ house, where he was living, and improvised with masks and other things, around the theme of dogs. It was a dog night. So we came up with a piece with a very long name. It was the funeral of a dog. It started with the two of us walking out from the back of the audience, I was playing the bandoneon and singing opera, and he was carrying the bag full of stuff on his back. It was clownish sketch, something I had never done before.

That was the only piece we collaborated on together. We talked about doing something else in the future, but we never managed to find the time to meet. He was not living in town and every time he visited we couldn’t get together because of one thing or another, again and again. Last year, in October or so, he sent me a text message, where he just said, I am thinking of you. I didn’t recognize his number because I didn’t have it anymore. I had lost my phone with it. So I texted back, who is it?  Although, I thought it might be him. And he texted back, Adrián, I am in New York.

Adolfo gave me the news at 8am on Friday. I called him: I feel for you. It hit me hard, so I can only imagine how it hit you. The injustice of it all, the non-sense. I had to teach at 10:30am, so I went for a walk before my student came to calm my mind. I went to the Altadena library, by the Christmas Tree lane. It’s a very relaxing street, with the pattern of the trees’ shade on the asphalt. I go there when I need a walk. I always have books from the library on my night table so I have something to return there every time I go.

George, my student, arrived a bit early and sat down at his favorite Ikea chair with his notebook. George is from Trinidad, I don’t know his age but probably around 70. I told him about the death. He said, “That’s why I don’t worry about anything anymore. We don’t know when it’s going to be our turn.” He makes fun of me because I always work so hard to teach him something. Sometimes he comes, and if he didn’t write anything that week, we just talk. He comes for composition lessons, not piano, and he scolds me when I try to teach him piano and when I try too hard to give him ideas. He says, I do it because I want to, so if there are no ideas this week, that’s ok. They’ll come.

But that day, with the news of death fresh in my mind, we started talking about the inevitability of it, and I started thinking, why bother, if anyway, we all gonna die. And I suddenly saw myself talking to my students, the kids, pointing at them with my ugly finger, my witch face, my awful teeth and skin, screaming at the top of my lungs: “You’re gonna die anyway, so, why bother? Practice, don’t practice, it doesn’t matter! You’re gonna die!” culminating my fatalistic speech with a screeching laugh while the students run away.

I woke up from that vision, and after talking with George some more, I put the matter aside and I didn’t tell any of my other students about it. I didn’t have to teach in the afternoon, luckily. I had planned to write at that time, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t do anything, I couldn’t stop thinking about death, Adrián, the meaningless of it all… and then I realized: I’m gonna die too. I’m not gonna live forever. It’s just so hard to let go. So attached to life, to the little things, to human contact. How could you let go of that?

But, it is what it is. Sooner or later, I’ll have to accept it.

Since I couldn’t write, I decided to go for a hike. On my way there I decided to call my friend Ngoc. We talked for an hour. Then I called Liz, for another half hour or so. Then I went to see Bernard, and I talked with him too. We went out, and in the middle of sushi, its strong taste, the heat of wasabi raising to my nose, the pleasure of the crab and fish, I thought of Adrián, so I raised my sake cup and made a toast for him, to you, Adrián, en agradecimiento, por ayudarme a apreciar las pequeñas cosas, que at least, yo todavía disfruto (to you, Adrián, because you helped me appreciate the small things, that, at least, I still enjoy).

And, just in case, I put the phone number of my parents and sisters in Argentina on the fridge. You never know when something might happen, when someone will have to make the dreaded call.