Keep reading this love song, life dance.
Allow the different voices from all the books to guide you to your final creative response on your identity...it does not have to be a finished work, just some sense of who you are today, who are are willing to share.
Thank you all for sharing these books with me.
Healing Earthquakes Part 1
ReplyDeleteI have never read a book like this. I am almost tempted to put put my thoughts to paper about this reading in the same way it is presented to us: as a stream of thoughts. Baca reminds me of reflective people watcher. I get the visual of man sitting on his front porch watching the world around him and pointing out the little things in life that others miss. But he is doing through his point of view. Much of this resonates with me because of my family in New Mexico and the time I have spent there.
He then gets more personal and talks about the prejudice he and his family endured. His grandfather was not afforded the same rights and courtesies because he did not speak English. Baca saw this as his grandfathered being perceived as ignorant or stupid. The same reason my grandfather refused to have his children speak Spanish.
YES...I believe it is ability to voice what he sees that makes his work so powerful. How many times have I or anyone walked by or forgotten or simply pretended something/someone did not exist.
ReplyDeleteI have to backtrack a bit because after reading book one, I kept thinking of one of my uncles. Then something from book one, Eight, clicked. Baca talked about angels, in Sanjo cleaning their wings, angels in Alameda Barrio, etc. (19-21) I think what he means by angels are men that have done time. He uses a lot of metaphors for birds throughout the book. He had also mentioned how the sign “v” with your hands apart meant free. So these are free birds that have done their time and transformed. They are hardened yet have become tender. My uncle, I actually have many uncles that did hard time, but the one I thought about and dreamt about, was my dad’s baby brother. He was closest to him. I have my uncle’s bible, one that he had when he was in prison. He was away for about fifteen years. One of the last memories of him I have before he died was he telling us the story of how he wanted to be a preacher, he had such a love for the bible. But his life took him down another path. I have two things of my uncle, his bible, and his Winchester. My dad died four months after my uncle, but the hardest thing for me was seeing the light gone from my dad’s eyes after my uncle’s passing. My dad’s family were hard workers, but a lot of the hard life Baca talks about in book one and on page 167-168, “every court tried to subject me, every school tried to shame me, every job tried to enslave me, every map tried to reroute me, every book tried to describe me,” speaks to the racism Chicanos had to learn to survive. Drug use, drug dealing, was a way out of poverty and a slave life of farm labor. And with a “war on drugs” being really a war on minorities, it was hard to disentangle a meaningful life from racist, classist, imperialist, white supremacy. This is a very taboo subject, talking about incarceration and drugs, another of my dad’s brother’s was murdered in Chicago, and another overdosed, another one did hard time as well. One of my aunts that I am closest to, I love her, but you do not cross her, she'll cut a b*tc#.
ReplyDeleteOn page 114, Baca talks about friends collecting threads and wrapping up prayer sticks, which I believe are sage sticks. I have a beat poet friend that told me about how when he was homeless he would go and collect sage and sell them as smudgesticks. So this is a way for people to sustain themselves when they are down and out.
I forgot to mention that many of my uncles served in the Army, as many minorities did and were in the front lines. They enlisted well because they were drafted, but because it was a way out of poverty. When they came home, they couldn't get out of the rut of poverty nonetheless.
DeleteHealing Earthquakes, Book 3
ReplyDeleteAgain I will backtrack a little, but he mentioned in Book 2 I believe when he went to visit his granmother’s one room house, which was still inhabited by his uncle, he decided to go to a pond rather than go inside the house an visit his uncle. He saw a white owl, that he believed was the spirit of his grandmother protecting her uncle. This reminded me of Bless Me Ultima, by Rudolfo Anaya. So Baca uses birds as metaphor frequently, and Baca usally describes himself as a hummingbird. Huitzilopotchli, a Mexica god of war is also depicted as a hummingbird. On 161, he sees a prairie dove that lands a foot from him as he reads passages from a manuscript and he sees it as a spirit blessing him. So he tends to see these birds in moments that are a fork in the road of his life. I love his metaphors. I love that I feel, taste, and smell his poetry. I don’t typically like love poems, actually I hate love poems, but this is different. I’ve heard plenty of bad poetry at countless poetry readings. That is why I loathe love poems. As soon as someone says they are going to read a love poem, I already know its going to be bad. That is just my experience. Erotic poetry that I have heard has also been bad, but Baca….I love it. It was very sensual, spiritual
Thank you...that means so much coming from you because I can only imagine how much poetry you have heard! And thank you for some of your insights. I have loved this book since I first picked it up in Taos. I knew I was missing some of the subtle metaphors so your shared insights are welcomed.
ReplyDeleteIt must be hard loving someone that cannot love you back and part 3 of the book gave us a clear understanding of that. During the reading he projected himself so deeply that I could almost sense his loneliness and sadness. It was sad reading about him using alcohol as an escape and that got me thinking of all the people out there dealing with the same problem, how it affects their life and their family. Loneliness can be one of the worst feelings in the world. His life seems to follow a cycle, he used to be unhappy until he met Lisana and when she left he went back to being unhappy. He mentioned how he felt alive with her but after she left he feels like he is not alive anymore, like he lost it all.
ReplyDeleteThrough the poems he has mentioned his faith and how in certain occasion it has been compromised. You can clearly tell he is mad at God and I can understand why, he had a tough life since he was a kid so he needs to blame someone but I believe that was part of his healing process because he later asked for forgiveness to La Virgen. My favorite part of the reading was when he mentioned how the white dove helped him heal and understand his mistakes so they won't happen again. In catholic culture a dove has always been consider a symbol of peace and guidance.
As I mentioned before I believe his commitment is what makes his poems be so honest. Even if he goes through difficult times he is able to transmit those feelings and he talks about never stop dreaming. It's just like he mentioned we bloom, we snip then bloom again like roses.