for mari's myspace 

espantado

from the blog of elmaschingon

El Espíritu No Sabe De Tiempo

Wednesday, February 22, 2006

I wore a watch to sleep because I never knew when I couldn’t sleep in the middle of the night, and I’d toss y turn, then stare at the ceiling before I’d check what time it was. I’m not one for big alarm clocks. “It’s 2:49 am,” I told myself.

I used to contemplate the reason why I’d wake up at this precise time. Was it the exact time I died in some other lifetime? Or perhaps, it was at this time that my spirit fled my body. “Estas espantado,” me derian los abuelos. “¡Apurale, mujer!” la abuela yelled at mamá, “Dame un huevo y esa yerba.”

A friend once told me she went to see a fortune teller, you know, the ones that read your hands, the cartas and own large statues of both Catholic saints and death. Her parents made her visit the fortune teller after she’d randomly lose track of time, suffered from insomnia, and whenever she found sleep, she’d awaken feeling just as tired and haggard as she felt before. It wasn’t depression, my friend told me, it was el espíritu, the soul.

“What about your soul?” I asked.

“Estoy espantada,” she said,”I’ve been for such a long time, that my spirit has a tendency to leave my body even when I do fall asleep.”

“Is that why you feel like shit when you wake up?” I asked.

“Yes, that’s why I feel like shit when I wake up,” she grins, “fucker.”

I ask her to clarify (the whole spirit stuff), since she hasn’t explained what that has to do with time.

“The spirit knows no time. It can come and go as it pleases. Some people have more control of it than others, pero, answer this,” She tells me, “Have you ever seen yourself sleeping?”

I tell her, perhaps, in a dream.

“What if it isn’t a dream?”

I stare at her. And she continues.

“What if that’s really your espiritu watching itself as it returns?”

“¿De donde?” I say with a smirk, “If my spirit is having more fun at night than I am, and this is why I can’t sleep, then I want to be where my espiritu is.”

“You are,” my friend says.

“I’m in two places at the same time?” I ask.

“There is no time!” She says, and rolls her eyes.

“Answer me this then,” I tell her, “So, if there’s no time, then why do I feel I have to be in control of it?”

“You know for someone who believes in ghosts and aliens, you’re more a Scully than a Mulder,” she says.

On one of those nights, when I couldn’t sleep, I grabbed my journal and wrote: When I take my watch off, time isn’t bound to me.

I understand I’m not in control. That watch, is just a safety net, allowing me, with a glance, to direct me to what I should be doing. There are days when I feel that time is at it’s end of its tether, each strand tattering inch-by-inch, I lose it. I’m angry, sensitive, scared, defensive, and anxious all at once. I tell myself that it doesn’t make sense, nothing makes sense. I can’t even breath, the air is thick as if a rag is over my face (where the hell is my inhaler?)…like I’m drunk without even drinking.Se me cierran las puertas, here, now—there is no time.

¿Estoy espantado? My spirit out of the body and it can’t come back in?

But I go about my day trying to ignore this pagan feeling—más Scully que Mulder, my ass. Then it hits me, the fact that I have less time than I did yesterday.

PHX, AZ - 4/10/2006

Immigration Rally/March

just got done getting our signs and T-shirt ready. Pyched about the marches SI SE PUEDE.

Cesar Chavez Day

On the first anniversary of Cesar Chavez' death,
Dolores Huerta and Arturo Rodriguez are marching
in Sacramento at the end of a pilgrimage of 343 miles
retracing Cesar's march from Delano to Sacramento in 1966.

April 1994


---
I was wrong for some reason I thought that the 15th was his b-day. It is today the 31st. this day is not only about him but the message, emotion he helped create in the Chicanos and Chicano Movement that continues to this day. Plus the people that made the movement go, thanks Dolores, and Jesse De la Cruz and the whole De la Cruz familia.

OLD School

one of my friends put this on myspace damn I still look like a dork almost 12 years later. From my first Homecoming back in high school 1994!

Even in Avenal

Back in 1996 I tried to lead a protest against Prop. 187 (anti immigrant bill) and then later against Prop. 209 in my high school. Sadly very few decided to join me so it was a silent protest for me and a few friends and some ditching of class. Now 10 years later the beast is around in a new round this time federally and an issue has again caught the fire and minds of our gente. Here from today's front page Avenal Progress, damn from Detroit to LA to DC. I'm so glad its spreading sometimes democracy can feel soo good!

---------

Students march against HR4437

Joe Santino/The Progress Students at Avenal High School demonstrate Tuesday morning. (March 29, 2006)

The Avenal High School student body staged a walkout at 11 a.m. Tuesday in protest of HR 4437.

Enrique Jimenez, one of the “committee of ten” that came up with the idea to march said, he thinks the law (HR 4437) is wrong.

“They want to criminalize everyone who supports illegal immigrants while trying to kick everyone out of the country that is illegal,” said Enriquez. “It is wrong.”

Some of the signs made by students said, “we’re not criminals,” “we’re helping our families,” “we did not cross the border, the border crossed us,” and “no to HR 4437.”

“Students were going to walk, were going to leave campus, but we wanted to make it a safe protest within the law,” Enriquez said. “We met with Dr. Mellor to see what we could do to avoid breaking any laws and get cited, and we talked with staff about leading a march that would be within the law.”

Enriquez said their priority was not only getting their message out, but the emphasis was also on safety. “We didn’t want anyone to get hurt,” he said.

“Everybody participated and we know what we had to do and it worked,” he said. “There was no violence and no tickets issued.”

“Before the march, students came to a couple of faculty members expressing their concerns about the ramifications of their impending action,” said Victoria Taylor, a teacher at the high school. “They asked how they could do a march and continue their education the same day, and do it within the law, and it worked.”

After the march around campus and a short rally, the student body split into a few groups and marched through the city - accompanied by staff - yelling USA, USA, USA.

They were noisy, but everything appeared to go well as they got their message out.

Joe Satino

(March 29, 2006)

Latinos get political!

I remember the debate for prop. 187 this is completely different, plus being on the federal level.

Update - I got this picture from the Latino Pundit who's blog is very good. Aplogies for not stating that earlier.

Great Ciuapilli Picture

Don't see her well but I think the picture is cute.

Damn Lakers

Freaking Kings lost to kobe and the lakers

Whiny babies

So glad pilli isn't very whinny

just read the first few paragraphs its short.

Conservative Babies?

Staples be gone

Yay I got the last staples out yay for me, appears as if this is going to be an intresting month. So much for the staples ordeal!

Snow day

Pictures from Avenal the day it snowed, with a bit of Pilli

Snowy Pictures from Avenal

Belated Cesar Chavez Day

Remembering a Movement, a man, and a causa, sadly the renewal of the need to fight the good fight.

Friday Pilli blogging

I got back last night and then drove to Bisbee to help mari out with her big project, it was cool, met lots of cool college students, guess ASU isn't so lame as before, it still is mind you but not as much. Got some of my staples out but still need to go back for the remaining 5. Missing the little pilli hopefully next weekend we'll go up.

here is Pilli with the magic box my mother's Camera came in.

Last day in LA and snow in Mexico

Saw some people hung out with family, have to drive tonight. But before I leave LA I wanted to drop a post that had the crazy global warming induced Snow in Avenal. From the Avenal Progress.

Its snowing

Joe Santino/The Progress (March 15, 2006)

Its snowing! was the message bouncing through the phone lines in Avenal Saturday morning, as many residents were brought from sound sleep by the jingling of the telephone or a call from another room in their house. The little bit of snow that fell in the Valley was multiplied in the surrounding foothills and gave residents a beautiful “Winter Wonderland” sight. Along with the storm that hit locally Saturday, came road closures - Cottonwood pass on Highway 41 for one - slowing or detouring traffic for a while. For many it was the first time actually see snow falling. This was the first snow in Avenal in about 20 years.

(March 15, 2006)

In LA till thursday

Here with Alex, Alvaro and Irene.

Pictures from the March in DC for Immigrant rights. 

This is a screen of my pictures 

Beware the Ides of March

You know who you are Julio! just wachala

Staples

So tonight I was planning to drop some cool ass DC pictures and the protest that I went to on the US Capitol. But this morning at 9am I got bopped on the head like little bunny fuufu did to the field mice. A stainless steel sink knicked my head with its corner and busted a bunch of blood. Got 15 staples to the left side of my skull, crappy hair cut and better phone reception. Here are some pictures it didn't hurt till the staple were in my head.

In DC

At the Havana Village

New photos

So for Valentine's Day we (siblings) got my mother a new digital Camera, so we see more pilli and more family.















Pilli at Eliana's Birthday party 2/25/06



Ciuapilli and Family in Avenal 2/17 - 2/20

Friday Pilli Blogging

Pilli standing proud by her boat made in Avenal. And combing dad's hair.

cheney as a lego

Pilli dancing

Watch her dancing.

300th post

yeah most of them are pictures but this one is a video.

Beware the language is a bit cursy.

Update!!! do to some copyright laws I was forced to take this video down. :(

what a dick!

I shot a man in the heart and face.

I love lamp.

Sad day at the Olympics

My favorite female athlete in the world and second pick for wife, has ended her quest for the gold. She is my age and a great competetor, world of sports is diminished with her pulling out. May she stay succesful in the rest of her life and a good spokesperson for my generation.

So true

Early Pilli Blogging

I'm out of town till sometime on friday but wanted to be early with it rather than late. Here are some more exclusive picture of the world's one and only Ciuapilli.

We want Hispanics

Reposted from the The News Blog with Steve Gilard

The recruiters don't tell you about this,
do they.

Army Effort to Enlist Hispanics Draws Recruits, and Criticism
By LIZETTE ALVAREZ

DENVER — As Sgt. First Class Gavino Barron, dressed in a crisp Army uniform, trawls the Wal-Mart here for recruits, past stacks of pillows and towers of detergent, he is zeroing-in on one of the Army's "special missions": to increase the number of Hispanic enlisted soldiers.

He approaches a couple of sheepish looking teenage boys in the automotive aisle and seamlessly slides into Spanish, letting loose his pitch: "Have you ever thought about joining the Army?" "Did you know you can get up to $40,000 in bonuses?" "I'm from Mexico, too. Michoacán."

In Denver and other cities where the Hispanic population is growing, recruiting Latinos has become one of the Army's top priorities. From 2001 to 2005, the number of Latino enlistments in the Army rose 26 percent, and in the military as a whole, the increase was 18 percent.

The increase comes at a time when the Army is struggling to recruit new soldiers and when the enlistment of African-Americans, a group particularly disillusioned with the war in Iraq, has dropped off sharply, to 14.5 percent from 22.3 percent over the past four years.

................

"We see a lot of confusion among immigrant parents, and recruiters are preying on that confusion," said Jorge Mariscal, a Vietnam veteran who is director of the Chicano/Latino Arts and Humanities Program at the University of California, San Diego, and is active in the counterrecruitment movement.

.....................

That many Latinos in the military are immigrants, or the children of immigrants, typically engenders a sense of gratitude for the United States and its opportunities, something recruiters stress in their pitch.

Poorer and less educated than the average American, some Hispanics view the military as a way to feel accepted. Others enlist for the same reasons that may attract any recruit: the money, the job training, the education benefits and the escape from poverty or small-town life.

.................
Patriotism alone, though, does not account for the rise in Hispanic enlistment. The increase has gone hand in hand with a vast Army marketing campaign that includes Spanish-language advertisements on Univision and Telemundo, the country's two largest Spanish-language networks, and on the radio and in Hispanic publications. The budget for this campaign has increased by at least $55 million in four years.
.......................


The recruitment campaign has in fact divided the Latino community. Some of the country's high-profile Latino organizations, like the League of United Latin American Citizens, support the military's efforts, viewing it as an important path to socioeconomic advancement.

"The fact that Latinos are underrepresented in the service causes us concern because the service is often a way to the middle class for many immigrants," said Brent Wilkes, national director of the league. "If you don't have a lot of options, would you rather go into the service and get a middle-class career, or stay in the fields all these years?"

But community activists in places like California and Puerto Rico call that logic wrongheaded. "This is not the time to sign up," said Sonia Santiago, a psychologist and a counterrecruiter in Puerto Rico who founded Mothers Against the War after her son, a marine, was sent to Iraq in 2003. Dr. Santiago has routinely confronted recruiters outside schools. "Those benefits don't mean anything, if they are buried or sick for the rest of their lives," she said.

Critics also say that Latinos often wind up as cannon fodder on the casualty-prone front lines. African-Americans saw the same thing happen during the 1970's and 1980's, an accusation that still reverberates. Hispanics make up only 4.7 percent of the military's officer corps.
...................

For bilingual recruiters, tapping into the Latino population has its own set of frustrations. Often, Latinos are willing to join the Army, but cannot. During his rounds at the Wal-Mart, Sergeant Barron encountered a number of illegal immigrants; they are immediately disqualified. Other Latinos lack adequate English skills or high school degrees, he said.

In the past year, a Latino counterrecruitment movement has arisen in several major cities with the goal of blunting what organizers call overly aggressive and suggestive recruitment in Latino neighborhoods. Some critics say recruiters sometimes gloss over the risks and mislead potential recruits and their parents. Latino parents, especially those who speak little English and know little about the military, are especially susceptible to a recruiter's persistence and charm, critics say.

....................

"Given the fact that we are a nation at war, recruiters have to be up front about the risks," he said.

How many members of LULAC's board have kids in the military?

My bet, not many.

But for the eses on the block, it's a great deal, until their parents are crying in the hallways at Walter Reed or at their untimely funeral.

They are so desperate for soldiers, they will teach them English. Of course, those with poor English skills are guaranteed a tour in the leg infantry

Plans to open up an Army "Career Center" in my neighborhood have been bitterly opposed and it remains closed. The mostly Puerto Rican pols were outraged by plans for its opening.

The difference here is ethnicity. Central American and Mexican immigrants are prime hunting ground for the Army. Dominicans and Puerto Ricans are much more likely to be resistant to these pitches, as blacks have become.

posted by Steve @ 12:41:00 AM

Marisol Silva getting ready for a presentation. With straight hair! Que Sexy!

Great....

from the well duh files....

Depression might be part of being a parent

GAINESVILLE, Fla., Feb. 7 (UPI) -- A study by Florida State and Vanderbilt Universities finds parents have significantly higher levels of depression than do adults who do not have children.

Florida State Professor Robin Simon and Vanderbilt's Ranae Evenson said even more surprising was their discovery that symptoms of depression do not go away when the children grow up and move out of the house.

The researchers, who analyzed data from the National Survey of Families and Households, theorize parents are still involved in their adult children's lives and continue to be concerned about them. That has an emotional cost, they said.

The researchers also determined there is no type of parent who reports less depression than non-parents. That, Simon said, is significant because other major adult roles in the United States, such as being married and employed, are associated with enhanced emotional well-being.

The study appears in the American Sociological Association's Journal of Health and Social Behavior,

Sunday Outing

Yoko Furukawa / The Arizona Republic

Derrick Suwaima Davis, a Hopi/Choctaw, competes in the Adult Division of the 16th-annual World Championsip Hoop Dance on Sunday at the Heard Museum in Phoenix.

Saw Rick Chavolla, Amy and Oscar too it was fun.

Cool Links

http://redruth.greenbean.org/~ben/4CR/smb_super_synth.swf
That's Super Mario Brothers... its great!

here is something for you Brokeback Mountain. Its as good as the movie. Just like Back to the Future.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfODSPIYwpQ

Friday Pilli Blogging

Rant

this poem embodies what I've been feeling as of late. would have loved to heard her recite it. Plus does she remind you of anyone?

Diane Di Prima


Rant

You cannot write a single line w/out a cosmology
a cosmogony
laid out, before all eyes

there is no part of yourself you can separate out
saying, this is memory, this is sensation
this is the work I care about, this is how I
make a living

it is whole, it is a whole, it always was whole
you do not "make" it so
there is nothing to integrate, you are a presence
you are an appendage of the work, the work stems from
hangs from the heaven you create

every man / every woman carries a firmament inside
& the stars in it are not the stars in the sky

w/out imagination there is no memory
w/out imagination there is no sensation
w/out imagination there is no will, desire

history is a living weapon in yr hand
& you have imagined it, it is thus that you
"find out for yourself"
history is the dream of what can be, it is
the relation between things in a continuum

of imagination
what you find out for yourself is what you select
out of an infinite sea of possibility
no one can inhabit yr world

yet it is not lonely,
the ground of imagination is fearlessness
discourse is video tape of a movie of a shadow play
but the puppets are in yr hand
your counters in a multidimensional chess
which is divination
& strategy

the war that matters is the war against the imagination
all other wars are subsumed in it.

the ultimate famine is the starvation
of the imagination

it is death to be sure, but the undead
seek to inhabit someone else's world

the ultimate claustrophobia is the syllogism
the ultimate claustrophobia is "it all adds up"
nothing adds up & nothing stands in for
anything else

THE ONLY WAR THAT MATTERS IS THE WAR AGAINST
THE IMAGINATION

THE ONLY WAR THAT MATTERS IS THE WAR AGAINST
THE IMAGINATION
THE ONLY WAR THAT MATTERS IS THE WAR AGAINST
THE IMAGINATION
ALL OTHER WARS ARE SUBSUMED IN IT

There is no way out of a spiritual battle
There is no way you can avoid taking sides
There is no way you can not have a poetics
no matter what you do: plumber, baker, teacher

you do it in the consciousness of making
or not making yr world
you have a poetics: you step into the world
like a suit of readymade clothes

or you etch in light
your firmament spills into the shape of your room
the shape of the poem, of yr body, of yr loves

A woman's life / a man's life is an allegory

Dig it

There is no way out of the spiritual battle
the war is the war against the imagination
you can't sign up as a conscientious objector

the war of the worlds hangs here, right now, in the balance
it is a war for this world, to keep it
a vale of soul-making

the taste in all our mouths is the taste of power
and it is bitter as death

bring yr self home to yrself, enter the garden
the guy at the gate w/ the flaming sword is yrself

the war is the war for the human imagination
and no one can fight it but you/ & no one can fight it for you

The imagination is not only holy, it is precise
it is not only fierce, it is practical
men die everyday for the lack of it,
it is vast & elegant

intellectus means "light of the mind"
it is not discourse it is not even language
the inner sun

the polis is constellated around the sun
the fire is central

REVOLUTIONARY LETTER #34

Diane Di Prima is a poet of Italian American heritage, and a wonderful beautiful beat poet from the 60's going to write and post some stuff from the 60's. Getting into a very 60's ish vibe... change, fight the power. I"m on the lookout for some Mexician stuff, please help if you know of any. She wrote a book that was entitled Revolutionary Letters. Enjoy.

H ey man let’s make a revolution, let’s give
every man a thunderbird
color TV, a refrigerator, free
antibiotics, let’s build
apartments with a separate bedroom for every child
inflatable plastic sofas, vitamin pills
with all our daily requirements
that come in the mail
free gas & electric & telephone &
no rent, why not?

hey man, let’s make a revolution, let’s
turn off the power, turn on the
stars at night, put metal
back in the earth, or at least not take it out
anymore, make lots of guitars and flutes, teach the chicks
how to heal with herbs, let’s learn
to live with each other in a smaller space, and build
hogans, and domes and teepees all over the place
BLOW UP THE PETROLEUM LINES, make the cars
into flower pots or sculptures or live
in the bigger ones, why not?


Here's another one i like. 

My Lover's Eyes Are Nothing Like The Sun  

for Sheppard

These eyes are amber, they
have no pupils, they are filled
w/a blue light (fire).
They are the eyes of gods
the eyes of insects, straying
godmen of the galaxy, metallic
wings.
Those eyes were green
are still, sea green, or grey
their light
less defined. These sea-green
eyes spin dreams on the
palpable air. They are not yrs
or mine. It is as if the dead
saw thru our eyes, other for a moment
borrowed these windows, gazing.
We keep still. It is as if these windows
filled for a minute w/a different
light.

Not blue, not amber. But the curtain drawn
over our daily gaze is drawn aside.
Who are you, really. I have seen it
often enough, the naked
gaze of power. We "charge"
the other with it / the leap
into non-betrayal, a wind
w/ out sound we live in. Where
are we, really, climbing
the sides of buildings to peer in
like spiderman, at windows
not our own

A website with some more of her writing.
http://www.angelfire.com/mn2/anarchistpoetry/Diprimadir/Diprima.html

Mis Queridas de Avenal

Will People whom read or look at the great Ciuapilli pictures please Comment. I know I put the verification but I would love to see people's comments and thoughts.

Brokeback Ricky?

I expected to write a full length post on Brokeback Mountains cuz I thought is as great but I found a quote from Ricky Martin that sums it up all so much better. PS- I'm not infering Ricky is gay although if he is that's cool, but I do like his music. UPDATE - don't know about the golden shower thing though...

Ricky Martin is not taking criticism about a sexy interview he had with Blender magazine lightly, reports Yahoo! Music. The Latin singing sensation has stood up to backlash he's receieved following an interview with the sexy music mag where he said, "I love giving the 'golden shower.' I've done it before in the shower. It's like, so sexy, you know, the temperature of your body and the shower water is very different." Ricky went on to say, "I'm open to everything. There are moments for soft, gentle sex. And there are moments for a good spank in the butt."

Philly Buster!!

Everyone call and support your Dem Senator I don't have one so please call for me. We need to filiabuster Alito, it maybe to little to late but miracles do happen and at least the public will know Dems mean what they say

This is, as Senator Kennedy reminded us, a generational battle. Samuel Alito on the Supreme Court could turn back a generation's worth of progress in civil rights, in worker protections, in equality for women, in environmental protection, in the fight of the little guy against the corporation. And Samuel Alito on the Supreme Court will affect the generations to come. We cannot afford to refight the battles of the past 40 years during the next 40 years.

This is an uphill battle, but one in which we can at the very least achieve a moral victory. Approached with principle, with passion, and with vigor, a moral victory is not a hollow victory. As Senator Kennedy told us, "You don't ever lose fighting for principle, for what is decent and right. You don't ever lose when you have the power, the force of being correct."

Just a Thought

I would like to find out how fast and by how much have scholarships numbers risin compared to the rate that tution has risen in the last ten years. I do believe that the high millions that Republicans claim there are for people thur scholarship for college are but a drop in the bucket. Plus compare the supposed rising number in millions of the total scholarships with the inflation/ book prices and tution basicly the cost of going to college.

In an aside my brother in-law is happy he's only going to be 14000 in the hole for his four years of college while between our marriage were at 100,000. I wonder whos going to buy a house first in this debter economy?

Plus... are the rich capitalists truly benovolent, great helpers of society? Are the rich the ones that create the new technology or the guy or gal busting her ass in the middle or bottom rung of the company? thoughts people thoughts... Is democracy formed to protect the rich minority of society?