I began waiting tables on some nights now. So I have to dress up a bit every now and then. I thought I looked cute in my ridiculously priced Prada frames and cashmere sweater, until the East European girl at work told me in a heavy accent that I looked “gay today.” She burst my fucking bubble. I wanted to go home and change.
Other then that the day was slow, money was made, faces were missed and dreams were dreamt.
Today was an over all bad day. Work was long and tiring and I spent must of my hours doodling sketches.
I began my morning dreaming that Mike (Someone long gone) was next to me in bed complaining about feeling sick. It’s the kind of dream that you wake from and hate yourself for having allowed yourself to believe to be real. Not a happy start of day.
Thought about the guys in Texas, and how this hurricane will screw us up further then we all ready are.
Me, hating my time at work.
I pictured someone who might actually hate their job a lot more then I was at the moment.
(Don’t ask.)
Got a sweet tooth? I got the hook-up.
Me and Ann (Sous Chef/ FoodNetwork "Iron Chef America") at work.
She was recently appointed as Head Chef of one of our newest restaurants. Congrats.
Getting pretty for work.
Look at me acting grown with a Cigar in my mouth.
(This was forwarded to me today, I had to share it with you guys.)
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THE SITUATION
You are in Florida, Miami to be specific. There is chaos all around you caused by a hurricane and severe flooding. This is a flood of biblical proportions. You are a photojournalist working for a major newspaper, and you're caught in the middle of this epic disaster.
The situation is nearly hopeless. You're trying to shoot
career-makingphotos. There are houses and people swirling around you, some
disappearing under the water.
Nature is unleashing all of its destructive fury.
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THE TEST
Suddenly you see a man in the water. He is fighting for his life, tryingnot to be taken down with the debris. You move closer. Somehow the man looks familiar. You suddenly realize who it is. It's George W. Bush!At the same time you notice that the raging waters are about to take him under forever. You have two options--you can save the life of George W. Bush, or you can shoot a dramatic Pulitzer Prize-winning photo,documenting the death of one of the world's most powerful politicians.
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THE QUESTION
Here's the question, and please give an honest answer:
Would you select high contrast color film, or would you go with the
classic simplicity of black and white?
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My first birthday.
Today was perhaps the second time that I have spoken to my Grandfather in twelve years. I miss him so much. He lives in Cuba and recently received a travel visa to visit the U.S. He is a humble and wise man who times his well thought-out phrases. My mother remembers him hitting her once in all her life on the buttocks and never once arguing with my Grandmother in front of his children. He and my grandmother have been married for over sixty years and have never once faltered each other. Everyone loves him, including me, his distanced grandson. I still remember sitting on the porch of his house atop the hill where it was built waiting for him to come home, usually with a sack full of Mamey which he knew I loved. I remember sitting on the porch with him awestruck as he pitted and peeled the red fleshy Mamey for my anxious lips. He loved to tell me stories during nightly blackouts and test my knowledge of animal sounds. I can picture him now, shirtless as we all usually are, rocking himself gently to sleep in the outdoor patio of our Miami home. I can’t wait to see him.
It can either free you or misdirect you. Howwill you let it shape you?
I was five years old then. I remember standing atop a stool while my grandmother stood before me chanting in an African dialect as she “cleansed” me with ewe (herbs) and a raw egg, which was to absorb the bad that ailed me for all of those years. I had suffered chronic bronchitis and upper repertory infections most of my early life. You see, a week after being born, I was taken to my grandparents house were my parents lived. The old house was undergoing some remodeling and construction. The dust, mold and cement were too much for my undeveloped immune system. I almost died and after several weeks, in intensive care, I spent the rest of my early adolescence being rushed to the hospital, sometimes up to three times a week. One day the doctors finally decided that I was to be operated on. Abuela (grandma) saw different. She was determined by love, faith and a tradition she never abandoned. When her ritual was complete she bent low and kissed my forehead assuring me that I would never acquaint the scalpel. Incidentally, we fled Cuba a few days later and after being lost at sea for a week surrounded by unforgiving waters, without food, drink, or medication, I was rushed to American doctors who assured my parents that they were mistaken. They were baffled and explained that I was perfectly healthy and showed no signs of ever having any of the medical conditions they claimed.
Hallelujah. The making of my spiritual self was taking shape.
Needless to say prayers, African rituals, Saints, deities, superstition, fetishes and iffy home remedies governed my childhood and resulted in a makeshift spiritual Identity of my own. I have however learned over time that this experience is not unique to me but in fact shared by many, especially Latinos of Caribbean descent. Yet, many of us continue to maintain our institutional religious identity for some reason or the other. The real question is; why do we often differ from other Catholic groups in the way that we practice our “Catholic faith.” Why is there a shift in our doctrinal adherence in comparison to say Spaniards or Italians? What are the circumstances; politically, geographically, historically and of relation to social differences along the lines of race and class, which resulted in our makeshift deinstitutionalized practice folk Catholicism?
The role of the Church has always played a role in the shaping of Latino Identity. During the early stages of colonization there was little separation of Church and state. One of the main premises for colonizing the Americas other then the accumulation of wealth was the spreading of the Christian faith. Pope Alexander VI, himself of Spanish birth, had high regards for the Spanish sovereigns, Ferdinand and Isabella whom were credited with the overthrow of the Moorish power in Spain, and perhaps regarded as iconic defenders of Christendom, during the initial “discovery” of the Americas. The church also played major roles in the division of foreign territories when Pope Alexander VI’s later established the Line of Demarcation to ease the tensions between Portugal and Spain. Also important to acknowledge is the role that the Church played in the areas of education and the influence that clergy academia played in the shaping of the settlers worldviews. Thus, it is safe to assume that the connection between state and church were for the most part interrelated at many levels during the initial forming stages of our identity.
It was this arbitrary relationship between secular and political forces that later reinforced the suspicion of peasants and some of the city’s working class alike of secular institutions with claim to power which often time paralleled in identity with higher social economic groups. These differences amongst the social classes later developed an urban-rural dichotomy of racial and class segregation. Hence, skepticism toward authority grew and dominated the culture of the peasant and especially the Black mixed population’s view of institution’s ecclesiastical leaders. For Latinos of the Colonial Period the ritual process of Folk Catholicism was a means of overcoming institutional indifference, building and maintaining identity. The very value of which, could be questioned as a process of hegemony in regards to the social value given to the church by the ruling class but it is most importantly and undeniably a process of self-empowerment, identity, and community resourcefulness in the face of indifference, limitation, and oppression.
The Church or rather the presence of the Vatican and its followers, armed with bible, indifference, judgments and whips in one of the largest historical sweat-shop and genocide sectors of the world resulted in earthy flower home alters, healers, spiritual mediums, un-canonized peasant saints, Voodoo, Palo Mayumbe, Santeria, and countless other makeshift faiths. The folk practice and the ritual synchronisms, which resulted from the miscegenation of the lower classes and the ideological efflorescence between Criollos, native borne individuals, Caribbean Indians and those of African decent, were in fact the farmer’s response to his search for God in the church’s absence, hypocrisy and lack of support in his quest to please the God of his ancestral jambalaya.
I myself strongly identify with the personal God experience. I pick and choose what I like from this and that, so long as it feels good to me, inside, where it most matters. After all, I believe that religion lives within us and all paths share an essence which is beyond the understanding of dogma. It is a universal phenomenon that has for some reason or the other been the sole thing that peoples of all geographies throughout ages have agreed on. It is a primordial instinct, an unconscious connection to our Godhead. This connection is in a sense lost the moment it is shaped by man’s created world of constructs, of religions and all which encompasses our misapprehension of the nature of the actual while confounded by the physical. Once we begin to absorb information, form opinions, ideas, and doctrine, we loss sight of that which was pure; the essential nature of religion. A little spark of it resides within us. We call it Spirit and its only job is to love blindly and celebrate a creative force beyond our scope of understanding that is hallow, venerable and never chooses sides.
