Reubicación / Reurbanización / Gentrification

Una película corta sobre Reubicación / Reurbanización / Gentrification en el vecindario de Echo Park en Los Angeles. Seguro que lo mismo está pasando por todos lados en los EU y a través del globo. ¿Están enfrentando lo mismo en su vecindad? Lo mismo está pasando en Houston--el racismo, la alegría que se sienten algunos al reconquistar el barrio. Podemos aprender.

A short movie about Reubicación / Reurbanización / Gentrification in Echo Park in L.A. Of course, the same thing happens now all around the U.S. and the world. Is your neighborhood facing the same? Much the same is happening around Houston--the racism, the glee around retaking neighborhoods. We can learn.


Help Iraqi Refugees

Iraqi translators who have worked with U.S. Forces have been killed and are being killed in huge numbers. Here is a link to an article written by an American ally about one Iraqi translator's case for asylum. It's a disgrace that the U.S. would use these individuals and then watch them die. Go to the website for the List Project as well to get more info about the problem or donate to help these individuals find refuge in the U.S. You can also get more info and find ways to help at Refugees International. An article on Common Dreams from May had this figure:

It is an absolute scandal that in the past seven months only 69 people from Iraq have been granted refuge in America.


Important to note that if our U.S. government was at all humane or just, we would have hundreds of thousands of refugees from Iraq arriving to the U.S., not just a few individuals. And Little Baghdads sprouting up next to the Little Saigons througout America. But something tells me that won't happen anytime soon. And definitely will not happen unless we raise our voices.

Repersonal Transubications

Jamais real, toujours vrai. - Antonin Artaud (Citado por Eileen Myles, Cool for You)

Never. Siempre.

Nunca existió, pero es verdadera. - Tomás Eloy Martínez, Santa Evita

Somewhere in this long walking, journey, promenade. At some point decided was. To invite that story on to paper, to print out, but hardly the goal any longer. Hard to leave.

Somehow the story tells itself in sidewalks, barstools, curtains, creaking doors and comals. The struggle for. Lucha? Continually this return this word that moment. A space, a certain location in a chronology. Those souls yearning for a change to live. Through this keyboard, blood. No one notices these strokes, these scrawls. All for better, just eyes hold back really. Write til knaked knuckles bleed. Translate then.

Un alma que no ha sido escrito es como si jamás hubiera existido. Contra la fugacidad, la letra. Contra la muerte, el relato. - TEM

Put oneself simply in flight. Birds don't ask. Stuck in a million patterns, no. The desert and cowboys drown in Gulf Coast backwash. Modern cockroaches take long baths in the waste and overflow. Been years since pronouns could. Imagine a future without your self. Fracaso. Necesitaba ayuda en ese entonces. Alguien que me dijera: los hechos fueron así tal como los contaste.

La realidad no se puede contar ni repetir. Lo único que se puede hacer con la realidad es inventarla de nuevo. - TEM

Invent the stories then of for our ancestors. In the end, whatever I write have written is will be wrong. The style, the truth, the growth delayed. A mistake engraved on paper computer screens, to last as long as this network of the future reverberates. As if inventing could be salve on this wound. Doubtful. Yet, let them search me out, say, those were not ages of disaster calamity. We are to recreate what we never knew. A responsibility to reimagine what is fleeting lost. To make our own selves responsible for recovering afterward.

Chingado yo

Era un día para acabar con el concepto de días. Uno de éstos. Ya ves. Las llaves se me cayeron mil veces. La puerta chilla como bebé (Le tengo que poner una bujía nueva). La capacidad de embarazarse no es universal. Una injusticia que no se cambia por peticiones mandados por el Internet. Tengo que escribir más. El señor de al lado casi casi se cae al suelo, agarra la cerca nuestra, se estabiliza, se va caminando en medio de la calle iluminado por la streetlight, diría farol, pero se me hace muy cursi, muy peninsular. El yo que escribe. Chingado yo. El día se acaba. Y el yo con ganas de escribir a diario.

A survivor, not a victim

Sometimes the deep, gnawing, overpowering doubts and fears and shame of a hate crime are what really does the greatest damage. In this case.


The Houston Chronicle says his death may yet provoke the passage of the hate crimes bill in the Senate (though Bush says he will veto). Hopefully, some good will come yet.

* Just sent off this email to the Chronicle. Hopefully they will print it.

It is important that we realize that David Ritcheson was not a "victim of a pipe attack," as the Chronicle has decided to refer to him in all of its articles on his untimely death. Rather, Ritcheson was a survivor of a hate crime. Like many survivors of trauma, some of the worst pain comes in the ensuing years as one struggles to process the experience and its attendant humiliation, guilt and shame. The Chronicle, and the city as a whole, owe it to Ritcheson to remember him not as a victim of a pipe attack, but rather as a strong, compassionate survivor of an awful, hate-fueled attack.

**
Update: A phone caller from the Chronicle informed me my letter would be published on Thursday.

*** Update II: The letter is published on the Chronicle site here. Not sure how long that link will work. Even though Ritcheson didn't make it in the end, language is critical in how we remember what happened to him and how we think of him as a human being.

Las estatuas de la libertad fronteriza

Right on, Omar. Maybe if we could get organized and put statues of liberty the entire length of the border, from Playa Bagdad to Ocean Beach, from South Padre to Playas de Tijuana, maybe just maybe someone would see the irony of it. And learn something? Or not. But it would still be a chingón art piece.

De todos modos, aquí está un nuevo video de Omar Pimienta del Ranch de la Tía Juana. To see more of Omar's work, check out his blog personal (I Was Your Imperfect Past), su proyecto de Un foto diario de la frontera y su nuevo proyecto Desde la liber. Y no se olviden: enjoy the Discovery Channel voices and the imágenes impactantes del video. La estatua de la libertad frente al muro. Millions clamor to purchase the T-shirt, ya sabes???

Lack of Interpreting Services Kills!

Medical interpreting is a right not a privilege.

LOS ANGELES — A young Korean woman died late last year while receiving treatment for cancer at a Los Angeles County public hospital, leaving behind a husband and two children. Family and friends of the woman say her death could have been prevented had the hospital provided adequate interpreter services.


The young woman known as Ms. Kim, 36, had been undergoing chemotherapy for stomach cancer before she died. Her family says that they made several requests for an interpreter during those treatments, but hospital staff said that no one was available. Her family also said that on another occasion, Kim had scheduled an appointment to see her doctor, but waited all morning for a Korean-language interpreter. When no one arrived, Kim left the hospital without seeing her doctor.

Read more here.

mi moto

enchanted by your oil on my face. lulled to pleasure having mounted you. this sweat, this grime, this summer spattered on my glasses on my face. an exercise in unimaginable titillation. senses expanded ready to receive. air sky glinting steadily on rooftops sheathed in graying asphalt shingles. small children stop plant feet straddling bikes and fences watch with pupils enlarged whites of eyes engorged imagine the speed. what matters is the slickness of satisfaction this joy ride an excuse to travel down jefferson telephone leeland dumble bell clay harrisburg altic polk henninger collier bump bumping over railroad ties and down inclines. visiting tambourines and summertime highscepades holding babies as the speed comforts youngones before sleep. an excuse for renewal. no a reason. all the while breathing in nighttime liberated from the cage of the houstonian transnightmare.

Para los que se han cambiado

¿Qué podemos hacer cuando lo que éramos antes ya no es lo que somos ahora?

(Cuando me diste el ácido, no te hubiera podido imaginar pintando didjeradues. Cuando no sabías qué opinar, cuando te aplacaste, nunca te imaginé abrazando ese campesino anciano, perdidos los dos en medio de la Sierra de Perijá. Y tú, que caíste en el pantano de los ricos, proteges animales. Nunca lo hubiera adivinado.)

Miren, ya no bailemos así. Es noche, ya no tenemos que entretener a los niños. Sentémonos a esperar y dejar que una calma desconocida nos invada. La alba del día ya no falta mucho, e imaginándola, formemos una imagen de la novedad, del futuro nuestro. Pero ustedes todavía no ponen atención.

Escuchen. Imaginemos que estuviéramos sentados en mi porche, descansando, fumando unos churros, dejando que fluyera el tiempo. Escucharíamos el zumbido de las abejas carpinteras escarbando hoyos gigantescos en las paredes de la casa que pago mensualmente. El sueño y la pesadilla se combinarán.

Ya dejen de criticar a los perros. El ruido que hacen las gallinas me estorba, me marea, me deja con la boca seca y las manos sudadas, arruinadas. Y pese al desastre, sumamente feliz. Dejen de burlarse de nuestras discapacidades. Dejen a las ratas la sustancia que éramos antes, no la machuquen, porque ya llegó una época más tétrica, un mundo menos acogedor.

¿Se acuerdan? Es la primera vez en años que nos hemos visto. El silencio nos hubiera matado si no fuera por nuestras visiones. Y por nuestros logros.

Pero siguen sin escucharme. Ahora no me vengan con que no les importa. No me vengan con que somos todos iguales. Quiero oír el chirrido de la cigarra, mientras nos acariciamos los pies en el suelo lodoso. Quiero que nuestros padres nos dejen a solas en el balcón para tomar botellas de tequila que compramos del Oxxo en la esquina. Y cuando vamos a la plaza, quiero que el sueño por fin se vuelva realidad. Los quiero cargar, cada uno arriba de mí, sobre los hombros, sobre la espalda. Sus líquidos escurridizos, sudor y secreciones, me alisarán el pelo, me suavizarán la piel, me dejarán aceitoso y orgulloso. Las columnas nos circundan.

¿Qué les puedo dar en cambio del sueño cumplido? Nada, desafortunadamente, nada. Sólo el saber que nos hemos cambiado, aunque no tengan la capacidad de aceptarlo.

Sé que ya se quieren ir. No se preocupen por mí. Seguirán todos vivos, activos, felices detrás de mis párpados. Donde quedarán hasta la iglesia se cae y el sol mata esta noche inconfundible.

El sol de Texas / Under the Texas Sun

Pues, ya salió el libro. El sol de Texas, escrito por Conrado Espinosa, ha sido reeditado por la primera vez desde 1926 cuando se publicó en la Viola Company de San Antonio, Texas. El libro es una novela extraordinaria que cataloga las experiencias de dos familias inmigrantes mexicanas durante la primera mitad del siglo XX en Texas, mientras viajan desde México a la Plaza de Zacate en San Antonio, pasando por pueblos pequeños de Texas como Wharton y Victoria hasta llegar al final a trabajar en las refinerías de Poraza (Port Arthur), todo el tiempo trabajando en los campos agrícolas y en el traque (los rieles de los trenes). Escribí una introducción para el libro (en inglés y en español) que da un análisis inicial al nivel histórico y literario.

El libro se ha publicado (en una edición bilingue con una traducción al inglés de Ethriam Cash Brammer) por el Proyecto de recuperación de la herencia hispana en los Estados Unidos mediante Arte Público Press. Se recomienda conseguir una copia del libro de Arte Público o de una libreria independiente como Powell’s. ¡Chéquenlo!

~~~

Well, the book is out. El sol de Texas by Conrado Espinosa has been republished for the first time since 1926 when it was published by Viola Company in San Antonio, Texas. The book is an amazing novel which catalogues the experiences of two mexicano migrant families in the first half of the twentieth century in Texas as they travel from Mexico to La Plaza del Zacate in San Antonio, across small Texas towns like Wharton and Victoria and all the way to the oil refineries in Port Arthur, all the while working in the agricultural fields and on the railroad tracks. I wrote an introduction for the book (en inglés y en español) that provides an initial historical and literary analysis.

The book has been republished by the Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage Project through Arte Publico Press. Get a copy through from Arte Publico or from an independent bookstore like Powell's. Check it out!

Too Many Books to Read, Not Enough Lives

This from an interview with Eleni Sikelianos, whose work I met last summer and have since adored.

My most place-specific work seems to appeal to readers in the widest range of places. But that is the truth of place — it carries every other place in it, historically, psychically, or potentially. It’s true in a very real, material way — how our commodity demands wreak havoc in other parts of the world, and in all that has been exported or imported from and to a place, in terms of peoples, fauna, flora.}

The whole interview is here.

Catching Up

Si hay alguien allí en el ciberespacio que lee este blog que ha leído Celestino antes del alba, la primera novela de la pentagonía de Reinaldo Arenas, por favor que se comunique conmigo. La leí hace unos días y me ha dejado confundido y desesperado, para no exagerar la cosa.

Segundo, I just saw Last King of Scotland, then looked for more info on elements of the film, particularly the events at Entebbe in 1976, Idi Amin, Forest Whitaker, etc... I found this quote in an interview with the British actor who plays the Scottish doctor, an imperialist hooligan youngster looking for a good, sexy adventure in Africa, but who finds disaster and his own personal corruption:

I don't think its difficult to imagine yourself, if you're honest, doing really bad things. What makes someone good or bad is deciding not to, when you want to. Hopefully I wouldn't want to, hopefully I wouldn't be as arrogant and egotistical and self-serving as Garrigan. He's not an evil guy, but he is all these things. In that situation, I was playing someone who wasn't humble enough to not follow their dick, at one point their ego, at one point their job. I think for me I always saw Nicholas as the British imperialist, he might have been young and it might have been the 70's and he might have been a bit left wing, but he was still a young imperialist. In that he selfish, he corrupts and destroys.

Read the rest of the interview here. Email me if you have any thoughts on either topic: Celestino antes del alba, the morality of "deciding not to, when you want to" or anything else.

Bayuk

You, friend, came to my city. As if the city breathed. As if thick soup bayou water and flying fish.

Bayou from the Choctaw bayuk, through the Louisiana French in 1710 or 1766 or 2005. These languages write marshy stagnant sluggish inlet or outlet of a river or lake or swamp. Slow movements evade verdorous riverbanks where catfish store their colonial coins. Frondescense hides five hundred million dollars in golden silver coins waiting in the muddy thicket. Glop. Stock markets explode. Glop. What wouldn't wait that long to be free?

For you, friend, the air was thick and helped you breathe. You rolling down down from the dryland Rockies across Panhandle plains and North Central Falls, the motel you survived brothels and pimps. Your breath smoothed as your pharynx supposedly relaxes. A place you felt you knew, this South from films and genes long removed. The refineries chuckled and burped out greater quantities of belching white smoke. The cruise ships moored on cobblestone coastal alleyways expelled waves rippling currents black black clouds of soot and incinerated waste. A miracle of the Gulf, you amazed: no continental shelf to fall off. The towering tankers lumbering by around the ferry boats at Bolivar. Citgo sells oil for the Bolivarian Revolution, sends tankers north to East Beach where we gape. Out there fisherman look for sand fish on the 22 1/2 Fathom Lump, wait for days for rescue swim to platforms appear at lunchtime sunburned and disastrous.

The water full of tar whitish pinnacles and the remains of sandbars made balls liquified and sand particles recreated.

The bayuk made history weighted charged with mud and silty bottoms. The bayouque drew our Gulf Coast unity traced our ways of life through folklore, right. The Ship Channel is the bayou and made the Bay orange brown and colorblind green. Water quality is reality. And so, when you asked what a bayou was, questioned me for its origins, I laughed and said, "There, allí, lo ves." El bayou, el que nos lleva de la mano.

What matters is saying yes.

The thing is, I really like saying yes. I like new things, projects, plans, getting people together and doing something, trying something, even when it's corny or stupid. I am not good at saying no. And I do not get along with people who say no. When you die, and it really could be this afternoon, under the same bus wheels I'll stick my head if need be, you will not be happy about having said no...No is to live small and embittered, cherishing the opportunities you missed because they might have sent the wrong message.

- David Eggers. The entire rant/dialogue is here.

Walking on Ponds

Walking the lantana, wandering shade pond asphalt tracks through. Running bayou vistas, could walk so far to fall through walkman bridge bike reeds engage the shore. Sun beating down on jerking, mad fish flying above the surface, suspending if only for a moment, breathing in the air escaping the current and the murk.

Letting Go

Being a writer, one has to live by letting go, by renouncing the reaching of this or that shore, but to let oneself become the meeting place of both.

- Rosario Ferré, "On Destiny, Language, and Translation, or, Ophelia Adrift on the C & O Canal"