Tu No Puedes Con Migo

When Ray Barretto died, I frantically tried to find my Indestructible album that I hadn't listen to in about,uh, . . . forever. Good thing I cherish this emotionally valuable piece of music, huh? The good news is that I found it. The bad? I found it in a box in the garage as a cassette. Remember those? Cassettes? The things that have the tiny film tape that are precariously fragile BRAND NEW, so let's not talk about the state of the 15-year old tape as found in my garage. I mourned, and then realized the remains were a lethal weapon. The shards of the busted plastic case clearly a dangerous shiv and the tape itself, which only breaks in the middle of your favorite song when you're trying impress someone with it, could be fashioned into a durable noose.

I thought, No problem, right amazon.com ol' buddy? We'll find Indestructible. But then Three Sheets pointed out that though amazon sold the CD, they were trying to fetch $95.00 for a used copy. WHAT IN THE HELL. Still calm, I tried other on-line distributors. Nada. HOLY SHIT. I had had this problem once before when I looked high and low for a particular Maraca y Otra Vision CD that I HAD TO HAVE and I found it only after entering a narrow record store in Spanish Harlem. When I asked the storekeep who was behind the glass case counter displaying bongs for the CD, he said, "You won't find this west of Hoboken." No shit, and I grabbed the CD from his toying hands. So, would my search have to be this elaborate for Indestructible? I was up for the challenge.

I turned to eBay (western whistle sounds) and blew on my fingers. There was one copy being offered in CD form. It was a burned copy and I realized right then that I am not a collector only an appreciator of the music. I just needed to have this CD in my collection. I typed in $20.00 as my max bid and the wait for the vicious eBay war began. I know how those sharky eBay buyers worked, how they manipulated time. I vowed that nobody was gonna get this CD but me. I figured as long as I paid less than $95 all would be right in my world. But no one else bid on my beloved album, and I got it for $9.50. SWEET.

The CD arrived yesterday. And I haven't listened to anything else since. I've kissed the xerox'ed cover a couple times. To be honest, I was surprised at how emotional the songs still make me. Even now that I'm more emotionally evolved -- blahblahblah -- the music moves me in similar ways. It's not melancholy music where the songs allow you to feel badly for yourself until you're all cried out. It's is all-empowering music. It makes you curl your lip at all the shit weighing you down. Makes you stomp your feet and dance around the house entranced by and intertwined in the rhythm until you're a sweaty, sobbing heap on the floor. This album means so much to me that I once wrote an entire short story based around the second song, El Diablo. I've done three literary readings in the last two years. I've read from this story each time and I always choose the part of the story where I sing one of the lines from the song: "Pero yo tambien soy fuerte, y yo no caigo Lucifer." But I'm strong too, and I'm not falling because of you, Devil. And obviously Devil means anything, everything dragging at you. I heard the song again for the first time yesterday, blarring it in my car like it needs to be, and I sucked in my breath at certain verses and didn't fight the tears. I thought, That's right, tu no puedes con migo -- you can't fuck with me. I'll fight all that weighs me down until I can't any more. The song Indestructible does the same thing to me. As the deep congas and the cracking bongo and the timbales and blasting horns and the percussive piano and the base of the song converge into a religious experience, the vocalist sings, "In this moment, everything is possible." And I believe it. I really do.

The door to music was really opened to me twenty years ago when I dated a conga player, The Congero. We met when I was asked to dance in a show. We danced Caribbean folk dances in a progression around a night club to marching drummers that followed us. As a favor, The Congero played for the dancers. He had played with Mongo Santamaria and many other greats. He was an amazing musician. His mind worked in ways I had not witnessed before; he brilliantly saw patterns of music beyond sheets of it. He was engrossed with anything rhythmic and to him that meant everything. Everything had rhythm. Anything could be played as a percussive instrument. His specialty besides the congas was bongo and during his solos he would jump off stage and with the drum between his knees he'd walk to someone in the audience and play rhythms alternately off their legs and off the bongo. He could find the off beat, the dead-on beat, the in between, the syncopated, the beat wanting to be a beat, but what I thought he did most amazingly was play melodic congas. He would tune five congas to different notes, and he'd play a song like, Ain't No Sunshine on the drums. It was so beautiful and sad sounding this way.

If you date a percussionist seriously, there are certain things you are required to know. The basics of rhythm. How to find the clave in salsa which is an underlying ancient African rhythm that all salsa is based on. You need to know how to differentiate between drums and between rhythms. As a dancer, this was not hard and I wanted to learn every nuance. Every tiny beat I wanted to know what it was and why it was what it was. The more I learned the more obvious it became that everything is in fact rhythm and that a drum will only call you back to that fact.

Other than his musicianship, the other great thing about The Congero was that he was the first person that told me regularly that I was smart. He recognized my intuitive intelligence even though I had no formal education. I wasn't sure if I was dumb or smart. This wasn't a self depreciation thing. I just really was unsure if my thinking was relatable to anyone else. But he pumped up my smarts. Almost daily. And he genuinely made me believe it.

It all sounds like a dream, doesn't it? But sadly, The Congero was a lying, selfish cheat. He was a Taker. Three years we dated, and I was a dedicated little servant. I cooked and cleaned and laundered and served. I was known in the salsa circle as The Congero's woman and I was respected and treated well. But just because I was the queen didn't mean The Congero wasn't fucking every girl that crossed his path at the local clubs and on the road. I don't think I'm exaggerating the "everyone" part. I call it Pussy on a Platter Syndrome. That's what musicians have. Every woman was turned on by The Congero's musicianship and that kind of attention is hard to refuse, I imagine. I turned an eye from it for most of the three years we were together. I let him talk me out of my "paranoia" many times. Until I found naked photos of one of his lovers packed in a bag as he was about to go on tour. I was done then. Done. He was defensive and told me to leave. And I did. I left and never looked back. And then his pleading began. The marriage proposals, the promises, all the things I wished he'd said before. He begged for years. Begged. For years. But my light for him had been permanently extinguished. Tu no puedes con migo. When the light was gone, I felt bad for him, not angry. He was tormented for a very long time for his inability to be loyal to a good woman. He still may be. As for me, I got the good end of this stick. I just had to pay a very high price in exchange for two life-changing things: A belief in my own intelligence, and an education in the complexity of rhythm, in all its forms.

photo booth friday

Aliso Viejo Theaters, March 2006
Lord, he's handsome.





And for Gratuitous Gorgeousness Friday, the Sisters Pug. Here's Carmen the morning after she sprained her ankle and immediately after coming home from the vet. How bummed does she look? She busted her wheel because she and Lupe were fucking around like they do every day and night and they fell off the couch in a whirl of fawn fur. There's Lupe, too, feeling guilty, trying to make her sister feel with her presence.

They Are Woman

I said to Maya, "Y'know how last month was Black History Month?" We had had many talks about this. We had gone to the African Family Festival at the Bowers. Her school had acknowledged it. She said, "Yea." I said, "Did you know that March is Women's History Month?" She said, "What?"

When I explained what that meant, she was excited to hear stories about important women, even if these stories will only be told by me. Apparently, this is not on the school's agenda.

For Black History month, the Orange County public school system talked a lot about Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks -- which, thank god-- but many important leaders and figures were neglected. But it is difficult ---and ridiculous-- to have to cram the history of so many significant people into 28 short days. Anyway, in terms of the civil rights movement, I always talk to Maya about Malcolm X too. I tell her, "Many people don't want to talk as much about his contributions." I imagine our conservative school system would think they were promoting violence or radical activism, but I explain to Maya, "If you were told you were less than human, and not allowed to have basic human rights, wouldn't you want to rise up and physically fight against that?" Maya asked, "What if they had worked together more, Malcolm and Martin?" I said, "They were fighting the same war, but in two different ways. And that's ok." I also tried to explain that George Washington came to this country and organized his group to take a stand against mistreatment, and Patrick Henry proclaimed, "Give me liberty or give me death", and these things are regarded as historically heroic. Malcolm X was basically doing the same. Washington and his crew were not non-violent. They were fighting for freedoms. Why is one heroic and the other radically dangerous?

I tell her, "Just keep in mind that the spin on history is not always what it seems."

Pieces come together for her in conversations like these. Especially when the complexity of discrimination is put in more relatable terms. I see it in her face: Things are not always what they seem. Examine situations from all angles. She is getting this slowly.

So, now we're cramming for Women's History Month; a month to display our brave groundbreakers and prove that they are still important, and that we still need them. The empowering that goes on in my house is a year-round event. It doesn't stop because I'm aware that the issue of women's rights still gets eye rolls by the majority of people. And I'm aware that the strength of my girls still needs to be validated and fought for outside of our house even if they are completely unaware of this. But I gladly clear the brush for the groundbreaking they will do in their lifetime.

Today in TaeKwonDo, my six year old Mina had sparring. She is excited by sparring because she's good at it. She was paired with an older, taller and shyer girl. And Mina wailed on her. I heard one mom say to the other, "What is she doing? She's so rough." Then they realized I was behind them. They turned around and giggled backbitingly. "Boy, Mina is so tough," a mom said fakely. I said, "Yea, well her sister's a black belt and they go at it at home." She said, "They're the ones that did that dance at Christmas time?" I nodded. She said, "Mina was so sweet then. What happened?" And the words What Happened made me want to snatch her tongue from her mouth. I said smiling, "This is TaeKwonDo. She puts on the sparring gear and spars. She's tough." They nodded and as she turned back around I could feel her eyes rolling at the unladylikeness. It saddened me profoundly. Because had they been our sons, nothing would have been said at all. It would not have been "cute" that my girls take TKD seriously or that they want to be masters some day or make the Olympics or own their own studios.

When we left, I high fived Mina for her great work, and we went home to tell Maya and Papi the story. I told Maya, "See? This is why we need reminding of women's history because sometimes people forget that we can do anything." And Papi said, "Just sing them the song already." And I told them the I Am Woman story and then I belted out what I could remember. The girls laughed and it was their turn to high five me.

self portrait tuesday, up!

YO! Look, Husband fixed my upload problem via IM -- he's a genius! And now my entry feels anticlimactic, in more ways than one. Feh.

Here's my first entry for SPT's March theme which is suppose to capture The Progression of Time.

Here's the progression of my new, awesome short story. Viva la Process 'cause writing is fun, kids!

I Am Woman

My mother was part of the 70's feminist movement. Back then, she drove a battered Toyota Celica with a spider cracked windshield, and the de-hinged driver seat was held in place by a bike rack, but the bumper was plastered with stickers that read: "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle" and "Question Authority" and "Women, Take Back the Night." When she attended assertiveness training seminars, I listened. I eavesdropped on her conversations with her womens group about all the things that kept women back. I got to march in an ERA rally, and we went to many female centric festivals where I walked comfortably among a radical community of artists and lesbians and Buddhists and Sikhs and jewish mystics and tie-dyed psychics and healers and dreadlocked goddess worshipers and crystal-toting witches and professors and philosophic lay abouts. I loved them all.


And yet I went to a Catholic elementary school where the girls weren't allowed play with the boys and where we had to wear dresses as uniforms. I was confused. The God represented at school seemed exclusionary and wrong. I felt I was being tested by a higher spirit to fight the injustice presented to me. I felt I had to carry on the battle as I was taught outside of the school walls, like I was a child solider for women's rights. I played kick ball and dodgeball with the boys regardless of the rules. I got into shoving matches with boys as I stood my ground against their ignorance. I'd say things like, "Tatum O'Neil is a good actor." While my classmates shouted that she was an AC-TRESS. And I'd say, "Men and women act so they are both actors." I could never get this to catch on. In fourth grade, my mother was called by the principal because I nonchalantly questioned the priest's stand on abortion in front of my class and my teacher. He was making a passing comment about the evils in the world and after he rattled off abortion as one of them, I raised my hand and said, "What if a girl is raped or in trouble or can't have a baby?" I remember the room going mute. They were aghast, looking at each other. I was regurgitating the feminist rhetoric for sure because they were the ones that shouted that I could do anything. They were the ones that celebrated goddessness and the power of my girlhood. Not the red-faced priests or the nuns in bondage.

At the end of fourth grade, I signed up for the annual talent show. When I told my mother that I was going to participate, she said, "What will you do? Dribble a basketball across the stage?" Which I felt was a fucked thing to say considering all her boisterous friends claimed I could DO ANYTHING. Everyday after school I practiced my act. I put on the music and did my thing for hours until my mother got home from work. When she took me to the auditorium the night of the talent show, she still did not know what I was going to do. I handed Sister Mary Theresa my album and told her to play the first song. I walked out on stage and though I was nearly blinded by the lights overhead I could see many parents and the smattering black and white of the priests' suits and the nuns' habits. My music began and at the top of my nine year old voice I belted out Helen Reddy's I Am Woman. "I am woman hear me roar in numbers too big to ignore and I know too much to go back and pre-t-e-e-end." I could hear giggles in the audience, but that didn't make me feel bad. I felt they were diggin it. When the bridge came, I really went for it: "Wwhhoooa, YES I am wise, but it's wisdom born of pa-in. Yes, I paid the price, but look how much I've gained. I am strong. STRONG. I am invincible. INVINCIBLE. I am wwoooo-mmaannn!" I was thrilled, man. I felt charged by saying things so powerful so loudly, and I could see my mother just beyond the lights sitting on a fold-out chair with her mouth slightly open.

Afterward, the nuns laughed and shook their heads at me. They made comments that I took too many vitamins and that if they didn't watch me close enough I'd be "swinging from the chandeliers." But I really thought I was the child solider. That I was fighting the good fight.

Photo Booth Friday

UC Berkeley, 1987

I completely forgot about this photo booth "project" I did back when I was nineteen and all deep and shit. I didn't actually go to UC Berkeley. I just wandered around the campus like a fool hoping I'd get a degree via osmosis, through big prayers. Hmm, not much has changed.

During this time, I lived at the University Hotel on Shattuck. I rented a small room which overlooked the avenue, and it had flimsy walls, a saggy twin dressed in over-bleached sheets and a pedestal sink. An oxidized mirror hung above the sink, but I don’t remember a dresser in the room. But I built a bookshelf out of scraps of wood. It was like an altar for the few books I had transported in one box in the '79 Ford Escort which had blown a head gasket within seconds of reaching Berkeley. I had left the car where it died a few blocks north of Telegraph. The door to my room, Room 2, had been painted brown about seven billion times over every kick and punch mark. It was also miscut letting in triangles of hall light, and it made the most frightening sound when rattled.

Room 2 was not a suffocating cell as some had suggested. Above my bed, I had hung a Georgia O’Keefe poster of a bull’s skull that floated against a water-blue sky and a clean, beige desert. I had one lamp that gave off pretty lighting; lighting that I imagined would be in the finest of homes or rooms because of how it illuminated my books and my poster and my bed. I’d sit on the skin-thin charcoal carpet -- the type that lines garages -- and I read Alice Walker and Garcia Marquez and I listened to my radio. Once the sun set on Shattuck, the confrontations began and no matter what time it was, even when they woke me at every hour, I strained to hear what they argued about, what they were shouting. Why were they shouting at three in the morning? I’d peek over the window sill, a half a foot above my bed and I squinted to see their expressions as they slurred their words when they fought.

Every resident of the University Hotel shared one bathroom which, from Room Number 2, was two doors to the left and six doors towards the interior of the hotel. Walking down the hall towards the bathroom, the light dimmed to darkness as the hall disappeared deeper into the hotel. It was a precarious trek to the bathroom. I would always hesitate to go from the lighter side of the hall to the darkness. The energy did not swirl; it was stuck in place. You waded through the vibe to get to the bathroom. You didn’t have to hear the rumors and stories of the University Hotel to feel the thickness of the hall.

Every Monday night, I took a long bath in the bathroom because it was cleaned on Monday afternoon. Through the hall I ran with my shampoo that I used for bubbles and my soap and my towel; a set of clean clothes. I’d lock the bathroom door quickly and pretend the bathroom was my own. The toilet was chipped and the lighting was grim; one exposed 40 watt bulb. The floor was grey-white and patterned with tiny octagon tiles. There were many tiles missing from the floor exposing the concrete beneath. Large, permanent orange streaks like brush strokes ran from the tub’s faucet to the drain. But it was clean on Monday nights and I filled it with soapy hot water and I would slip into my fabricated luxury. I closed my eyes and relaxed there until the water was tepid and until I wondered too much whether the bath tub was really clean at all.



I suppose I'm also deeming the end of the week: Gratuitous Gorgeousness Fridays. Here's Maya washing dishes. It was only a matter of time before I could get her to dance. There's also a picture of Papi & Mina & Lupe watching a basketball game. Happy Friday, familia. This is a long way from the University Hotel, from where I'm standing.

A Reading & Writing Ramblings

Last night I went to a reading. My friend Maile Meloy read from her new novel, A Family Daughter. It's her third book published in six years. She has been taking the NY literary world by storm. Which is unbelievably fantastic.

Maile and I met at a writing conference eight years ago. We were in the same group workshop. And that year I met and connected with two of my favorite people: Maile and Honduro. I've remained close with both. Honduro had caught my attention at the conference because his story was told in the perspective of a college girl who gets drunk on spring break and ends up sloppily -- sans purse and dignity -- on a beach in Mexico. It was funny and real and sad. And I noticed Maile because she had wild red hair surrounding a conservative, shy face. She was generous and intelligent. And every time she spoke, I listened.

While Honduro and I are like two sibling-like goofballs that can ramble about everything from important matters to the nonsensical, Maile and I are very different, in backgrounds and interests. We don't always talk a lot but we have an underlying connection that I don't think either of us could explain. It's like we are two hooks traveling in opposite directions that have linked together while passing each other; we like being hooked together in this way even if we don't understand the bond. She makes efforts to come to birthday parties. She visited me days after Mina was born with farmers market goodies. And she has always been a huge supporter of my fiction, which humbles me to near discomfort. I offer my teeny tiny support for her. I'll drive far to hear her read. I'll buy all her books, new and hardcovered. I'll wait in long lines to get them signed, and when I get to the front of the line, I hold it up because as we try to catch up in small minutes. And because I had brought her a slice of vegan cheesecake because, y'know, that's how I say congratulations for writing a NY Times praised novel.

She reads her work beautifully. Confidently with a slight Montana accent though I didn't know there was such a thing before I met her. I don't have another friend from Montana to verify this, but let's just pretend there is such an accent. Her writing work ethic is phenomenally focused and her style and voice are classic and timeless.

Last night, I listened to Maile read words from the new novel in a crowded and famous old bookstore where the lighting is institutional yellow and where you can still actually smell the scent of books, and I tried with all my might to breathe in some inspiration to get more focused about my own writing. I breathed in and out. I lost grasp of her words a couple times, selfishly, because I was reconnecting myself to thought, to pen, to paper. I tried to draw a jolt of drive from her. And she gave it to me, unselfishly, because that's what kind of friendship we have.

I walked back to my car after the reading and the air smelled like night-blooming jasmine. It was an exact smell of when I was a kid walking in spring-time nights in Santa Monica, and it caused my breath to pitch high in my throat. I would've walked the few miles to the beach on a trail of the jasmine if I didn't have such a long drive back. That is something I do -- I suppose many people do -- in fits of inspiration; just walk or drive. So, on the drive back, I played no radio and I tried to sort it all out in mind. I know I can make this all work somehow, the job, the family, the this, the that, the writing. I know if I just concentrate, focus, I can get it all done. And I sorted and I thought. Forty five minutes later I had the first three lines of a new story that I had started a few days ago. I just kept repeating the three lines over and over because I didn't want to write them on scrapes of paper while driving on the freeway late at night. Not like I haven't done that before or read stories in moderately slow moving traffic, but I decided to play it safe and just repeat the words. When home, I typed out the three lines. The initial thrill had passed because I realized, glaringly, that it took me an inspired hour to come up with just three lines. I considered jumping back in my car for a jaunt down to Costa Rica to possibly eek out a full page or two.

I want to drop kick the I Can Do It All notion off of my second-story balcony. But it's the best option I got right now. I need it all: the job, the family, the writing, the this and the that. Tomorrow I'll try to focus again and come up with lines four and five. Maybe six even.