Friday, June 16, 2017

I WISH SOMEONE WERE WAITING FOR ME SOMEWHERE-- Anna Galvada

“Quand j'arrive à la gare de l'Est, j'espère toujours secrètement qu'il y aura quelqu'un pour m'attendre. C'est con. J'ai beau savoir que ma mère est encore au boulot à cette heure-là et que Marc est pas du genre à traverser la banlieue pour porter mon sac, j'ai toujours cet espoir débile. [...] Je voudrais que quelqu'un m'attende quelque part... C'est quand même pas compliqué.” Google Translate

"Barking Kitten" Book Review

Image result for i wish someone were waiting for me somewhere quotes

Wednesday, June 14, 2017

The Dinner Guest

A lifetime ago, George and I were invited to dinner at a popular café on Broadway in San Antonio's affluent Alamo Heights. Among the guests was a Latina professor of Latin American Studies, taking her place at the table to enjoy some fine food and great music with friends old and new. The conversation drifted to the topic of racism.

In one of many moments when I should have listened rather than spoken, I interrupted to make a thoughtful comparison. Being a young professional woman and idealistic liberator of all things, I said that as a victim of sexism I could definitely identify with racism.

Exasperated, the professor retorted, “You can never understand racism because you have never experienced it.” She went on to say, “Look at you. You are white with blonde hair and blues eyes. Yes, you may have experienced sexism, particularly because of the way you look. But sexism is not racism.”

Suddenly, dirty windows were clean. I couldn’t really empathize with oppression observed but not lived. I may have had many struggles due to being female in a male dominated society, for example. A "latch key kid," I may have struggled with class-ism. However as perpetual benefactors White people cannot claim to be victims of a system we continue to perpetrate inadvertently or deliberately.

Forever "awakening," I defer to the disenfranchised and marginalized to lead as I follow, opting to listen rather than speak. Humbled by a Latina American’s powerful words as well as those of James Baldwin and others, I can only effectively “shine the light, and get out of the way.”

"(James Baldwin) made it very clear to me that all of us white liberals--guilty, well-meaning people--were merely a big flashlight cast upon the evil of racism, and the flashlight found some corners where it continued, and still continues, to live. 'Throw the light,' he told me, 'and then get out of the way. This is our battle to win,'" Marlon Brando.

Tuesday, June 13, 2017

"The everyday becomes hateful, there's just one place to live-- the impossible," Reinaldo Arenas

Autoepitafio

Mal poeta enamorado de la luna,
no tuvo más fortuna que el espanto;
y fue suficiente pues como no era un santo
sabía que la vida es riesgo o abstinencia,
que toda gran ambición es gran demencia
y que el más sórdido horror tiene su encanto.

Vivió para vivir que es ver la muerte
como algo cotidiano a la que apostamos
un cuerpo espléndido o toda nuestra suerte.
Supo que lo mejor es aquello que dejamos
– precisamente porque nos marchamos – .

Todo lo cotidiano resulta aborrecible,
sólo hay un lugar para vivir, el imposible.
Conoció la prisión, el ostracismo,
el exilio, las múltiples ofensas
típicas de la vileza humana;
pero siempre lo escoltó cierto estoicismo
que le ayudó a caminar por cuerdas tensas
o a disfrutar del esplendor de la mañana.

Y cuando ya se bamboleaba surgía una ventana
por la cual se lanzaba al infinito.
No quiso ceremonia, discurso, duelo o grito,
ni un tumulo de arena donde reposase el esqueleto
(ni después de muerto quiso vivir quieto).

Ordenó que sus cenizas fueran lanzadas al mar
donde habrán de fluir constantemente.
No ha perdido la costumbre de soñar:
espera que en sus aguas se zambulla algún adolescente. (Nueva York, 1989)

"Self Epitaph," Reinaldo Arenas

Reinaldo Arenas Bio

"Amoreena," Elton John