At Last...

It doesn't seem possible, but it is: my event has come and gone.

After all is said and done, it was good fun. Planning like a wild woman up front pays off. This year I actually had time to talk to folks, notice the flow of things, and enjoy some of the music - instead of running around like a lost looking for her mommy. Guess that's why they call it planning.

I look for miracles in most things these days. On Sunday, I found my miracle in the weather; miraculous or not, the cold, windy fog of the week prior, folded into a beautiful, sunny, picturesque day - ideal for margaritas and sailboats.

I have some photos of the event I can post later. The one posted is credited to Steve Sando from Rancho Gordo. Steve has been with us since the beginning of the event. And since the beginning, he's believed in it, in its' potential-- in us. We like Steve.

The folks who shared their goods with the public on our behalf were amazing - too many to name.

The day after. It's always an achy day, one I spend in disbelief -- amazed that I, someone who doesn't even host dinners, or my own birthday dinners for fear no one will come, put together a third annual event - and about 300-400 people show up! I walk around the next day, ecstatic that its over and resting. I can't wait until we're a large enough event, grossing enough money that we can splurge on hired help to schlep things around.

I spent my Monday at the Sutro Baths -- the salt water baths created for the folks with discretionary money of the old days. Huge, beautiful cliff front property. The wind was blowing, but I was so tired to care. It actually felt good; it kept the aches away. I was warm enough with my jacket, and the sun was just warm enough to compensate. I felt alive. Suffice to say - the afternoon was perfect. Really.

Here's the thing -- there were swallows flying all around me, I discovered a new mallow tree (which I'm going to go back to and steal some cutting from in the cover of night), the crashing waves was just loud enough to hear from where I stood, but not enough to drown out the swooshing of the grasses and songs of the birds; the sound of gravel under my feet reminded me of the simple things I enjoy. I could nap under the sun, wind on my face - to hell with caring about hyper pigmentation. I was feeling blessed.

Just to be able to move in slow-mo, my god that was a good enough reason to bask in the sun. An easy, calm place to sit and imagine the sounds, conversations and music '20's, '30's and '40's - the energy is still there. It's palpable.

Well, now off to wrap up the details of the event so I can start heading home. I'll see who my traveling companion will be - I'm thinking Stevie Nicks. I love listening to her on Hwy 152 - especially as the sun is just before the setting time.

Belladonna at dusk feels good.

This can't be happening...

It's been like heaven, it was so bloody beautiful these last three days.

And it was so blimey hot - yesterday, I forgot I was in northern California for all the profuse sweating of my face and constant wiping. It felt like I was home. In SoCal. But I wasn't. I was in San Francisco - and it was Bloody Beautiful - you'll have to take my word for it.

It felt good, like my annual fundraising event was destined to be a success. How could it be anything but with this gorgeous weather, and people anxious to get out and explore the city and its happenings.

So why couldn't it continue?!

Because even the weather is out to make me crazy, cause me heartache and headache - and stress me out. It went from 98 degrees beautiful, to 60 and ugly, cold, windy and ridiculous in less than a day -- windy, like wicked witch of the west windy. This isn't even funny or amusing.

I need the nice weather back for the next 4 days for crying out loud.

I'm tired now. I'm working on this event, and I'm tired. Out all day, errands, negotiating, settling, taking care, placating -- all in the name of raising funds for our organization - through this event.

But I have a minimum word count to make tonight. Wednesday almost gone, and I've no words to impress with, no musings to tell about, no thing exciting enough to wonder on. But I'm not inclined to give up and go to bed just yet. I know this is the lazy man's way, the path a less resistance - pictures - since they're worth a thousand words and all like that. Actually, it's quite brilliant!

So, some pictures to show how beautiful it was on Sunday. Enjoy, these 'words' from me to you!

All three thousand of them.

On this day in San Francisco, Saturday, April 18th...

I have several email domiciles - my pied-e-terre on a budget, and the only way I'll ever afford a second home, or vacation home, anywhere other than this one bedroom flat in the suburbs of good old Long Beach, CA.

As usual I was going through my poetry email - Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac is the first thing I read each morning - with my cup of coffee (the coffee helps me with the European countryside or Italian piazza affect) - when I came across this entry about the San Francisco earthquake of 1906.

Since I'm actually in San Francisco on this very day, at this very moment, I thought I should post it even though it's not Wednesday -- in it's entirety. All credit, of course, to Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac.

Mr. Keillor, please don't sue me. I've no deep pockets, not even my own house, for you to attach - only several virtual pied-e-terres you'd have no use for -- unless you have the imagination, good sense and good coffee to imagine big - in which case the view from my window by the lake can be very nice:

It was on this day in 1906 that one of the worst natural disasters in the history of the United States occurred: the San Francisco earthquake. The shaking started at 5:12 a.m. on a Wednesday, and lasted just over a minute, with the main shock 42 seconds long. It erupted along the San Andreas fault, which runs the length of California. The epicenter was two miles off the coast of San Francisco. It was probably about a 7.8 on the modern Richter scale.

In 1906, San Francisco had a population of 410,000 people. The earthquake and resulting fires left about two out of every three residents of the city homeless. The earthquake ruined many buildings, but historians estimate that 90 percent of the destruction to the city came from fires that followed the earthquake, rather than the earthquake itself. The initial fires were caused by ruptured gas lines, and then firefighters decided to blow up buildings with dynamite, hoping that they would create firebreaks. It didn't work, and it's estimated that half of the buildings blown up by dynamite would have otherwise survived. On top of that, since insurance covered fire damage but not earthquake damage, people started setting their own homes and businesses on fire. But as it turned out, insurance companies could not cover the massive disaster, so people didn't get their money anyway. About 500 people were shot and killed by police and federal troops who had been called in to keep order. Some of the people who were killed weren't actually looting — they were trying to rescue their own possessions.

The city of San Francisco hurried to rebuild in time for the Panama Pacific International Exposition in 1915. In the rush, many building codes and regulations were ignored, and buildings built after the 1906 earthquake were actually less seismically safe than those built before.

The beauty just outside my window makes it difficult for me to imagine the horrors of this very day, at exactly this hour, 100 years ago. I'm told Noe Valley, where I stay, was essentially unaffected by the earthquake because of the bedrock it's situated on, and the fires never made it up here - but I find it impossible to believe that it was 'unaffected.'

About 3 short blocks from where I sit, at Dolores and 22nd, sits the fire-hydrant used to keep the fires from burning down Noe Valley - it was the last remaining functioning fire-hydrant -- one working fire-hydrant, that stopped the fire. It sits bronzed, and well attended to on the exact spot where it helped folks that day feel some measure of success.

Each year a ceremony is held to commemorate the heroes, and remember the lost. Each year the numbers of those in attendance dwindles; earlier this year the last living survivor of the disaster of 1906 left this world - he was only a child when it happened -taking all living history of that day with him.

But the fire-hydrant remains.

Seventy Five Words

When the sun is out of sync
out of lock step, out of rhythm,
when water does not cool,
sun does not warm,
and sunflowers forget to reach
up, tiptoe to god and songs silent;
when salmon rush down river
down river down river
desperate for an end,
straight into the arms,
and mouths of Great Browns -
crushing spines, crushing pain -
(where is my consoling crush, my Great Brown?)
languidly I try to breathe you in
but you are gone - and for the first,
and like a child
morning scares me; I'm afraid
of what sunrise will feel like on my skin
without yours, warm, on mine.

Sorry.
So, sue me.

I'm trying to write 75 words a day each day in April

it's the 12th, and it doesn't take a genius to see that I'm about 825 words short.

W.S. Merwin got me thinking about this. I reviewed his comments about Ezra Pound - about writing 75 words each day - that's all you have to do to be a poet.

But you have to have something to write about. Hmmmm.....

Anyway, translation was the next thing. I do that - to gain something to write about. And not only in Spanish, but I translate Italian poetry - and that is useful - getting rhythm of words in three languages, and to increase my understanding and ease in three languages.

So, mi dispiace...you'll have to put up with this for about 1,350 more words...this hurts me more than it hurts you ---honest. Just know, te voglio bene, and April 30 is not too far in the distance.

Don't blame Mr. Merwin, but do check out the video links....great stuff.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QQ1aCS6Pbw

Poetry on Sundays:

I've been thinking about what to write about this morning. Stuck. Nothing new. Nothing interesting, nothing except problems - and who wants to write about that. Maybe some fresh air will help.



I open my front door, and, almost like a synchronized dance, a beautiful, green throated humingbird flew down to drink from the purple blossom trumpets of the Mexican Sage bush. The swoosh of the door, quietly dancing with the swoosh of his wings.



Yesterday I was wondering whether to get rid of the Mexican Sage bush. Even though it's finally blooming, it needs more soil, more room to grow, and so I was thinking of getting rid of it - of giving it to my brother who has a big yard with plenty of elbow room for roots.



Was it for his benefit? Or was it for mine?

Was he telling me "I need this plant as much as you neeed an idea"



Maybe this is the agreement -
the two-birds-with-with-one-stone agreement.
purple blossom trumpets
in exchange for an idea,
maybe even a poem.

National Poetry Month

So, here we are, April 1st and it's National Poetry Month...but that ain't no joke - it really is!

I'm taking these morning hours just for me - and poetry. I admit that while I've been working in San Francisco I've not been anywhere near my poetry - well, not like I'd like to. I'm so involved in other work that I don't get around to giving it more than a cursory glance.

But starting today, and every day in April, I am going to spend time with poetry even if I don't get to work on my own poetry, new or revisions, and even if I only blog about it on Wednesdays.

So you all (I flatter myself here - do I think anyone is even reading this blog? But just in case...) get to suffer my indulgence.

And to get it started, I'm focusing on Sandra Cisneros today I admit I have not read a lot of her work. I've enjoyed every interview I've been fortunate enough to listen in on, a lecture she gave at Cal State Dominguez Hills and write-ups about her books in Books and Author sections in local papers, but I don't know much of her work first hand and this exercise will actually get me to do what I should have done a long time ago -- read her collection of poetry (and reread others) that's been sitting in my bookshelf.

I came across a poem this morning (I'm ashamed to say its been sitting on my bookshelf for the past two years!) that cracked me up because the experience is familiar to me and it happens often, un no se que - and it's usually brought to my attention by others, in fact, it's always brought to my attention by others. It's much like having an accent: you don't know you even have one until someone points it out. It's like that, a curiousity about my being Mexican.

I think it's mostly due to the fact that I confuse a lot of people - I think I have one of those faces that can be anything: Hawaiian, French, Italian, Filipino, Samoan - I've even been asked if I'm Black - in my travels. When folks find out I'm Mexican, they all have questions, a story or want to talk politics. It's mostly funny - sometimes frustrating, sometimes sad, sometimes infuriating ("I like Mexican woman because they're all so sweet and docile"), but mostly it cracks me up. And Sandra captured the experience beautifully here, in her poem Mexican in France:


He says he likes Mexico.
Especially all that history.
That's what I understand
although my French
is not that good

And he wants to talk
about U.S. racism
It's not often he meets
Mexicans in the south of France.

He remembers
a Mexican Marlon Brando once
on French tv.

How, in westerns,
the Mexicans are always
the bad guys. And -

is it true
all Mexicans
carry knives?

I laugh.
--Lucky for you
I'm not carrying my knife
today.

He laughs too
-- I think
the knife you carry
is
abstract.


This makes me think of questions asked, and situations encountered in my travels, in Cuba, in the Dominican Republic, in Italy, in England - about Mexicans. I guess we're an abstract lot. I also remembered a time one of my brother's friends wanted to meet me: he wanted my brother to introduce us because he wanted to marry a Mexican woman because he likes Mexican food and he likes that Mexican women are sweet, family oriented and soft spoken. My brother had to disabuse him of that notion where I was concerned.

I don't try to hide my 'Mexicana-ness' but it's interesting how people interpret it -react to it. Most times I don't get angry. It amuses me most time, actually, it cracks me up - it often says more about the other than me. What else can you do but respond, laugh and then write about it? But it's also an opportunity - I chose to take this approach - to shed some light, to teach.

This poem makes me think, too, of Porky and a day in my life that I hadn't thought of in ages - 15 to 20 years or so.

Porky was a cholo who became a part of my life for an entire day on what was probably one of the worst Saturdays of my angst filled, late bloomer (I was 19) life.

It was supposed to be a fun weekend with my only two friends. My parents were strict and would never have let me spend an unsupervised weekend with friends, so I I did what any good daughter would do: I lied. I told my mother I'd be with my best friend Olivia and her parents (who my mother had met) on a family camping trip.

It turned into the weekend from hell that wouldn't die. Through no wish or fault of my own -only my own making - I was dragged through the worst slapstick, keystone cop, Rebels without a Cause B movie.

Porky nearly got us nearly killed twice, nearly arrested once, made us have to outrun L.A.P.D. through Echo Park, made us crash through a wedding party taking the requesite bride-and-groom-on-grassy-knoll pictures. I wasn't told until later that Porky was under strict orders, by his probation officer, to not be anywhere near the park, or general Echo Park area.

Porky, who 'borrowed' a cigarette from some veterano he'd never seen before, who, instead of thanking him for 'lending' him said cigarette tells him instead 'a rato te mato'. this set the tone for the day.

The veterano didn't take too kindly to being threatened with death by this mocoso - especially not after just having given him a cigarette. As I'm getting into the back-seat of Silvia's car I see him signal to two cars filled with his homies (Silvia was our driver - she was the only one of us with her own car -- a green camaro -- and Porky was her friend). The veterano and his buddies jump into their cars as we jump into our...and chase us...yes, I was in a car chase through the streets of downtown L.A. - me, Olivia and Silvia - and Porky, chased by two cars filled with angry cholos, badder, older and meaner than Porky, with weapons - and scarier than shit.

Scarier because they had their respect to regain.

In the car Porky is laughing, not understanding why this guy is so pissed, sticking his head out the window yelling maricon for getting pissed off - baiting these guys. Me, I'm yelling at Silvia for bringing Porky along in the first place - and I'm seriously praying. Olivia, she's got a frozen look on her face, staring straight into nothing, saying over and over shut up Porky, Shut up Porky. I know she's scared. Olivia grew up in quiet, calm suburbs - this was entirely new to her. I didn't. I was familiar. Because I was familiar, I feel I had a better handle on the situation, and more fear -- because I was familiar.

I never liked Silvia very much, but despite that, on this day I admired her incredible driving skills.

We out ran them.

Between Silvia's driving and my familiarity with L.A. streets, we lived to tell about it, only to have to run again when Porky decided he would treat us to hamburger, except Porky doesn'have money for hamburgers so he orders Silvia to drive to the First Street Mercado.

I thought, okay, maybe he has a Tio or Tia who owns a little taqueria who would feed us - I realize I haven't eaten all day long and I'm starving. Thank god for Tio's and Tia's. But when we get ther, I find out there is no Tio. There is no Tia. Only Porky who proceeds to rob a guy - stabs him once in the shoulder - for hamburger money. I refused to eat. Especially when we have to run again because the sirens are getting closer.

But wait, there's more!

It was almost the longest, most frightening day and night of my life to that point. I just wanted to go home. I prayed it would end - I promised never to lie - ever again, at least not to my parents.

When it all ended, so did my friendship with Silvia - a friend who could introduce me to someone like Porky, who held me hostage with the situation for an entire day, unable to get away from them unless I called my family and outted myself for having lied to my parents about where I really was - and with whom - a friend, who I discovered, knew many more Porkys than I suspected - and I didn't care to know a single one.

Anyway, Sandra's poem, her line "Lucky for you/I'm not carrying my knife/today" took me back to that weekend with Porky.

Porky, who in between bouts of laughter as we tried to outrun the veteranos, told Olivia he loved her...that he loved her so much he would tattoo his ass with "son tuyos" (they're yours) ...there's no higher compliment that some bad ass cholo dude saying his ass is yours....I guess.

Did I mention Porky was funny.

Bastard.

Orale Sandra, keep 'em coming.