Tremors.
I am taking lunch. I do not like to take lunch, because it leaves me alone with my thoughts. As I still have good days, very good days, bad days, and terrible days (yesterday was a terrible day; today is better), it's not always a grand idea to settle in for filling a stomach on second thoughts.
Instead of thinking, then, I will recount:
He said to me, when he came to Brazil, "What haven't you done yet that you'd like to try?" This led to any number of adventures, not the least of which had me parachuting out of a plane.
This morning he said again, when I relinquished the results, "What haven't you done yet that you'd like to try? I will make it happen."
I told him the cruise would suffice, not to worry, but he persisted. "There must be something," he said. "We will teach you yet, to live."
No, I replied. I work with possiblities, and the only things I've left undone are things that I can never do again. I asked if he could turn back time; he said he wouldn't, because then he'd lose me. I smiled at that, but it scared me a little. See, I've heard those lines before, and I am suspect of them.
He changed the subject, then--he often does. His practical side kicks in, and he cannot help himself. The man is thorough--dogmatic. He is persistent. This also means he's stubborn, but so am I.
"Well," he says, "what's be done about it?"
Nothing, I answered. I'll go to sleep for a little while and wake up with hope.
He frowned and said I am too much like a philosopher. He'd rather a straightforward answer when it comes to numbers and charts; he does not see the beauty in manipulation.
There's nothing to be done, I said. I'll do as I must, when I must, much like I always do. I only hope that I am not alone when I wake up.
"I will make it happen," he says--this man of action. I will make it happen.
I would be lying if I said I weren't scared; conversely, I am also at peace.
from Healing Earthquakes by Jimmy Santiago Baca
I bought it on my way back from Brazil, but I will never send it.
I want to return to living with simple dignity,
not life of crystalline goblets brimming with wine
Super Bowl tickets and Costa Rican vacations
I want to sit on the
plank bench in the backyard
of a friend in the barrio and hear
the story of how he came up with a goat for the Fourth of July
...
I want to cry until my ears
and nose and eyes are puffy red from crying
yeah,
I've changed from a museum Chicano to a goat-stealing barbequeing
vato
from a professor chairing a VIP round-table commerce
to a poet working with kids in the barrio boxing gym
and open my cherry-box heart and give each child a chocolate poem
...
I'm trying to say I have changed and I celebrate my change
and I no longer adjust my
life to fit your entry and exit
no doorman here shimmying my
life to close quietly and open easy
I am strange and hesitant
proud to have survived
and I don't carry a business card to mark my wolf territory
no portfolio or ID except my poems
But it's not even that--what I am trying to say is that
I've crawled out of the smashed wreckage of my life alive
in a crazy living way
death made each of my steps upward
take me deeper down to seeing myself
how odd I should still be here
putting myself back together
and that I am makes me want to
sing and tell the world how afraid I was
to speak the truth
to claim myself a poet
...
I somberly intoned the rules of my childhood games to all
inhabitants of the prairie
and all of it out of pure love for
life and people.
And that is not it either--I have changed and healed myself
...
I said no to the raw and bloody world
I screamed against it all
I turned away from it
until I had no scream left
one had to turn mean one had to get drunk one had to destroy
oneself
as much as possible and still live to do it
again the next day
a mule for the beating board I was
and now there's a change come about
I feel I've descended on a refuge lake
that leafed laughter in me as I glide softly down
to a place I've been longing for, blue heron man-hard for
others to take me down, I glide on my own and stand on the
place
I choose--but even that's not describing this change in me.
Instead of thinking, then, I will recount:
He said to me, when he came to Brazil, "What haven't you done yet that you'd like to try?" This led to any number of adventures, not the least of which had me parachuting out of a plane.
This morning he said again, when I relinquished the results, "What haven't you done yet that you'd like to try? I will make it happen."
I told him the cruise would suffice, not to worry, but he persisted. "There must be something," he said. "We will teach you yet, to live."
No, I replied. I work with possiblities, and the only things I've left undone are things that I can never do again. I asked if he could turn back time; he said he wouldn't, because then he'd lose me. I smiled at that, but it scared me a little. See, I've heard those lines before, and I am suspect of them.
He changed the subject, then--he often does. His practical side kicks in, and he cannot help himself. The man is thorough--dogmatic. He is persistent. This also means he's stubborn, but so am I.
"Well," he says, "what's be done about it?"
Nothing, I answered. I'll go to sleep for a little while and wake up with hope.
He frowned and said I am too much like a philosopher. He'd rather a straightforward answer when it comes to numbers and charts; he does not see the beauty in manipulation.
There's nothing to be done, I said. I'll do as I must, when I must, much like I always do. I only hope that I am not alone when I wake up.
"I will make it happen," he says--this man of action. I will make it happen.
I would be lying if I said I weren't scared; conversely, I am also at peace.
from Healing Earthquakes by Jimmy Santiago Baca
I bought it on my way back from Brazil, but I will never send it.
I want to return to living with simple dignity,
not life of crystalline goblets brimming with wine
Super Bowl tickets and Costa Rican vacations
I want to sit on the
plank bench in the backyard
of a friend in the barrio and hear
the story of how he came up with a goat for the Fourth of July
...
I want to cry until my ears
and nose and eyes are puffy red from crying
yeah,
I've changed from a museum Chicano to a goat-stealing barbequeing
vato
from a professor chairing a VIP round-table commerce
to a poet working with kids in the barrio boxing gym
and open my cherry-box heart and give each child a chocolate poem
...
I'm trying to say I have changed and I celebrate my change
and I no longer adjust my
life to fit your entry and exit
no doorman here shimmying my
life to close quietly and open easy
I am strange and hesitant
proud to have survived
and I don't carry a business card to mark my wolf territory
no portfolio or ID except my poems
But it's not even that--what I am trying to say is that
I've crawled out of the smashed wreckage of my life alive
in a crazy living way
death made each of my steps upward
take me deeper down to seeing myself
how odd I should still be here
putting myself back together
and that I am makes me want to
sing and tell the world how afraid I was
to speak the truth
to claim myself a poet
...
I somberly intoned the rules of my childhood games to all
inhabitants of the prairie
and all of it out of pure love for
life and people.
And that is not it either--I have changed and healed myself
...
I said no to the raw and bloody world
I screamed against it all
I turned away from it
until I had no scream left
one had to turn mean one had to get drunk one had to destroy
oneself
as much as possible and still live to do it
again the next day
a mule for the beating board I was
and now there's a change come about
I feel I've descended on a refuge lake
that leafed laughter in me as I glide softly down
to a place I've been longing for, blue heron man-hard for
others to take me down, I glide on my own and stand on the
place
I choose--but even that's not describing this change in me.