The Faralito
Orlando Lujan Martinez
In Malcolm Lowrys novel U,nder the Volcano, written in 1938, Godfrey Fermin, a former American Consul, living in the town of Cahnahauca Mexico, is spending his last day on earth in The Faralito, a sordid dark tavern next to a deep barranca. The barranca's steep incline is an tangle of thick jungle, at the bottom a sluggish stream flows toward the sea.
The consul is an dipsomaniac and on the terminal end of a monumental mescal drunk His slow tango with mescal is about to be concluded. The consul is going to be assassinated and thrown into the deep barranca because, in a drunken stupor, he naively mentioned, to the bar owner, he was in Madrid; a stronghold of the Spanish Republicans, Communists, Trotskyites and the International Brigades, who were the first to fight fascism, during the Spanish Civil War.
A number of Federal soldiers are huddle together, in dusty uniforms, at the far end of the bar voices dropped to a inaudible murmur talking about Fremin because the Faralitos owner had told them about his causal conversation with Fermin, and they are now beginning to suspect the consul is either a Troskyite or a Communist or a former member of the International Brigades. Poison words to the militaries who supported the dictator of Mexico during the 1930s. Occasionally one of them turns to look at the Consul, sitting at a table drinking mescal and reading the love letters of his wife
Fermin is the prisoner of mescal and is familiar with delirium tremens and its world of hallucinations, the late night crys of animals being slaughtered in the kitchen of his house, and the hundreds of dead cattle now posed on the slope of a hill opposite The Faralito. But the consul, despite these apparitions, and the months of submersion in mescal, still manages to think of love. He is reading the love letters of a wife he is separated from, not as the source of a possible revival-which is impossible because his life has been taken by mescal- but as a love dead of true lovet and the dismal memories of a lost soul.
Yet, he is still able in his sodden mind to think about the wonder of love. “What is there in life besides the person who one adores and the life one can build with that person?“ his wife writes. But he is no longer a participant in the pageant of love. There is nothing left of life to build on.
Across the world, thirty years later, in 1968, in the steaming jungles of Vietnam an American soldier is killed by North Vietnamese solders, now silently running down a path. They are numb from fatigue. The death of the American was done with courageous determination, but without hatred.
The soldier will never see his wife in the Sangre De Cristo Mountains of New Mexico again. And spring, summer and winter will pass again and again without him. When he died his life and love became memories that live on in the family picture album. The picture with his unforgettable smile is the one his wife will remember when decades later with her tearful face reflected in the black granite, she tucks a letter to her enternal lover into the crack between the granite slabs of the Vietnam Memorial Wall. The letter says, in part,: “You made my small world shine and my life count for something good. I finally understood for the first time, that love is greater than death. I will remember you forever.
She still believes one beautiful sunlit summer day he’ll walk in the back door. and call her name in such a wonderful tone of vioce that tears will fall.
When the Federales came to an agreement they rose slowly, scraping chairs, and walk silently, in the gloom of The Faralito, towards the Consul: the Troskyite or Communist and former member of the International Brigades.
The barranca next to The Faralito, carved into the earth by 500,000 years of the streams erosion, waits patiently.
Thursday, November 27, 2008
God, Goodal and A Dove
God, Jane Goodal and A Dove
Orlando Lujan Martinez
Jane Goodal said "the sacredness of Nature and God surrounds us and is in all living things and inanimate matter and life is one interconnected whole."
A mother dove built a nest on a vega (post) protruding from a wall on my adobe home and soon two baby birds were born.
Several times a day I would stand below the nest, I did this because I believe that God wanted me to interconnect with nature and knew for certain the mother dove would understand. I look up and coo to her and the baby doves, sending them a message of love and friendliness. I wanted her to know that she and her chicks were wonderful and welcomed.
The mother dove look down on me with that one peaceful eye, on the side of her turned head. She was happy with her two young doves. She was a symbol to me of God and Nature. Then one day they were gone and I missed them.
The next day I walked out of my home in the peaceful and light of morning, the mother dove flew down, from the sacredness of Nature and God, fluttered close to my shoulder and landed directly at my feet, then waddle off watching me, her head turned side ways, with one peaceful eye, saying "Thank you for caring." I cooed back "Your welcome." I knew that God was here at this moment.
Orlando Lujan Martinez
Jane Goodal said "the sacredness of Nature and God surrounds us and is in all living things and inanimate matter and life is one interconnected whole."
A mother dove built a nest on a vega (post) protruding from a wall on my adobe home and soon two baby birds were born.
Several times a day I would stand below the nest, I did this because I believe that God wanted me to interconnect with nature and knew for certain the mother dove would understand. I look up and coo to her and the baby doves, sending them a message of love and friendliness. I wanted her to know that she and her chicks were wonderful and welcomed.
The mother dove look down on me with that one peaceful eye, on the side of her turned head. She was happy with her two young doves. She was a symbol to me of God and Nature. Then one day they were gone and I missed them.
The next day I walked out of my home in the peaceful and light of morning, the mother dove flew down, from the sacredness of Nature and God, fluttered close to my shoulder and landed directly at my feet, then waddle off watching me, her head turned side ways, with one peaceful eye, saying "Thank you for caring." I cooed back "Your welcome." I knew that God was here at this moment.
Bishop Desmond Tutu
Bishop Desmond Tutu
Orlando Lujan Martinez
Noble Peace Prize winner Bishop Desmond Tutu came to Denver in 1984 to speak about the apartheid dictatorship of South Africa and the freedom of the Black South Africans. He was speaking at an auditorium near the Denver Bears baseball field.
I was a supporter and admirer of Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela , Bishop Desmond TuTu and the goals of the African National Congress. And Joe Slovo. the white communist, who help to break the back of apathiet and bring freedom to the South African people.
On a warm summer night I drove into the parking lot and went to the stage entrance in back of the auditorium where i used my Montelibre Monthly press card. to gain admission to an area where only the officials, VIPs and other important people were allowed.
I walk to the a wing of the stage and I stood their for a moment looking across the audience, hearing the murmur of their voices, and then turned to look around in back of the stage where i knew Bishop Tutu would be.
I walked into a large room that was softly lit and empty except for the solitary figure of Bishop Tutu in dark violet suit and the white priest collar standing in a pool of soft light that lent the sence an apperance of the opening of a stage play .
Bishop Tutu radiated an aura of holy peacefulness as i walk up and said "How are you Bishop Tutu I am Orlando Martinez and I have admired you and Nelson Mandela valiant struggle for Black African Freedom and I am certain that freedom is near.
And I took his out-stretched hand. it was as soft and light as an angels hand. He smiled and looked at me with gentle eyes and said in a soft voice "Thank you Mr. Martinez."
He had a poise of confidence, a twinkle in his eyes, and a sense of well-being that I have seen in few people.
We talked for a moment in the dim lit corner of the room and i went away feeling that I ad met someone specaiI, a true man of God, and that wonderful had happened to me.
Since then Nelson Mandela was released from the prison Robben Island and became the President of South Africa. Mandela has received more than one hundred awards over four decades, most notably the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993. He is currently a celebrated elder statesman who continues to voice his opinion on topical issues. In South Africa he is often known as Madiba, an honorary title adopted by elders of Mandela's clan. The title has come to be synonymous with Nelson Mandela.
Mandela has frequently credited Mahatma Gandhi for being a major source of inspiration in his life, both for the philosophy of non-violence and for facing adversity with dignity.
Orlando Lujan Martinez
Noble Peace Prize winner Bishop Desmond Tutu came to Denver in 1984 to speak about the apartheid dictatorship of South Africa and the freedom of the Black South Africans. He was speaking at an auditorium near the Denver Bears baseball field.
I was a supporter and admirer of Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela , Bishop Desmond TuTu and the goals of the African National Congress. And Joe Slovo. the white communist, who help to break the back of apathiet and bring freedom to the South African people.
On a warm summer night I drove into the parking lot and went to the stage entrance in back of the auditorium where i used my Montelibre Monthly press card. to gain admission to an area where only the officials, VIPs and other important people were allowed.
I walk to the a wing of the stage and I stood their for a moment looking across the audience, hearing the murmur of their voices, and then turned to look around in back of the stage where i knew Bishop Tutu would be.
I walked into a large room that was softly lit and empty except for the solitary figure of Bishop Tutu in dark violet suit and the white priest collar standing in a pool of soft light that lent the sence an apperance of the opening of a stage play .
Bishop Tutu radiated an aura of holy peacefulness as i walk up and said "How are you Bishop Tutu I am Orlando Martinez and I have admired you and Nelson Mandela valiant struggle for Black African Freedom and I am certain that freedom is near.
And I took his out-stretched hand. it was as soft and light as an angels hand. He smiled and looked at me with gentle eyes and said in a soft voice "Thank you Mr. Martinez."
He had a poise of confidence, a twinkle in his eyes, and a sense of well-being that I have seen in few people.
We talked for a moment in the dim lit corner of the room and i went away feeling that I ad met someone specaiI, a true man of God, and that wonderful had happened to me.
Since then Nelson Mandela was released from the prison Robben Island and became the President of South Africa. Mandela has received more than one hundred awards over four decades, most notably the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993. He is currently a celebrated elder statesman who continues to voice his opinion on topical issues. In South Africa he is often known as Madiba, an honorary title adopted by elders of Mandela's clan. The title has come to be synonymous with Nelson Mandela.
Mandela has frequently credited Mahatma Gandhi for being a major source of inspiration in his life, both for the philosophy of non-violence and for facing adversity with dignity.
The Communist Manifesto
The Communist Manifesto
Orlando Lujan Martinez
Yes, I’ll admit that I’m extremely wealthy and have enough money to buy anything my heart desires. I have possessions piled up in my Westchester mansion that I brought from exclusive shops and art galleries on Rodeo Drive and Park Avenue. When I’m bored I go shopping and always remember a saying that I read in the autobiography of socialite Doris Duke, “If you have to ask the price you can’t afford it.”
One day Ibough a book I was sure would shock and delight my friends. It was a recent printing of Karl Marx’s The Communist Manifesto. Its bright red enameled cover, with black sickle and hammer, was the idea of the books publisher. The proprietor of the book store said the historical significant book was selling exceptionally well as a novelty, a tea table book, and a conversation piece. I brought one and put it in an easy-to-notice place on the tea table next to a very expensive vase that I purchased on shopping sortie in Palm Beach.
When my friends saw the “The Communist Manifesto” they laugh and said “How clever of you, I must get one myself.” Are you a bad Communist they ask and giggle. When I said yes, to go along with the joke, they broke out into gales of laughter. We had a lot of fun. You see we have in this country, I learned in American Government 103 in high school, a ideal called freedom that allows me to posses this bad book full of some really craze nonsense like “Workers of the world rise and break your chains ” and the class struggle, whatever that means.
One day I went to New York to attended an art reception for Fabrizo Plessi at the Guggenheim First Floor Gallery. I was thinking of buying one of his fabulous painting and was willing to go as high as 200,000 dollars. I stayed at the fabulous Sherry Netherland, one of the favorite haunts of Doris Duke, may the sweet dear rest in peace, and it was such a beautiful afternoon that I decided not to call my chauffeur and walk to the Guggenheim gallery.
I turned here and there, mingling with the common folks, and after taking a wrong turn I got lost and I found myself in a strange part of the city that looked like an third world country or Africa. It was definately not a place to be after the sun went down. I blinked my eyes in disbelief. There were signs of pervasive poverty everywhere old cars, dilapidated tenements and hordes of poor people of a darker shade milling about for as far as the eye could see. It was a very depressing place and was definitely not the New York that Frank Sinatra, “Old blue eyes,” celebrated in the song New York New York.
I was frighten and wondered why, oh, why did they want to live in such terrible poverty. I couldn’t believe that such a place existed in our beautiful country, sweet land of liberty, the land of Lincoln and Jefferson and the birth place of democracy. Where were the manicured lawns and the rose bushes of the American dream? How could this happened in the land of the free and opportunity.
You can’t imagine how relieved I was when I finally got to the Guggenheim, Everyone who was someone was there. Even Hillary Clinton was there that wonderful charming woman who someone called a carpetbager and opportunist on television. I stood drinking a cocktail, which God knows I needed after my ordeal in the heart of darkness, and chatting with the delightful Katherine {Bunny} Barrington attired in a dress designed by Alfonso, the rage of Costa Bravo, that can only be described in the words of Cole Porter as “Too marvelous for words. “
Bunny proceeded to tell me about a wonderful week in the Bahamas with the cream of society where the food was scrumptious, and the conversation divine. It was heaven you must go she said in that wonderfully modulate voice of a Vassar graduate and professional socialite. Her father, you must know, left her 500 million dollars. She is an American success story.
That evening while sitting in the great room of my twenty room mansion, with horse stables, four car garage, evening and morning patio, basement exorcise room and lap pool, admiring the Fabrizo Plessi’s painting I had purchased for 180,000 dollars, I looked down at “The Communist Manifesto” on the tea . table and wondered why on earth would Karl Marx write such a weird book
Orlando Lujan Martinez
Yes, I’ll admit that I’m extremely wealthy and have enough money to buy anything my heart desires. I have possessions piled up in my Westchester mansion that I brought from exclusive shops and art galleries on Rodeo Drive and Park Avenue. When I’m bored I go shopping and always remember a saying that I read in the autobiography of socialite Doris Duke, “If you have to ask the price you can’t afford it.”
One day Ibough a book I was sure would shock and delight my friends. It was a recent printing of Karl Marx’s The Communist Manifesto. Its bright red enameled cover, with black sickle and hammer, was the idea of the books publisher. The proprietor of the book store said the historical significant book was selling exceptionally well as a novelty, a tea table book, and a conversation piece. I brought one and put it in an easy-to-notice place on the tea table next to a very expensive vase that I purchased on shopping sortie in Palm Beach.
When my friends saw the “The Communist Manifesto” they laugh and said “How clever of you, I must get one myself.” Are you a bad Communist they ask and giggle. When I said yes, to go along with the joke, they broke out into gales of laughter. We had a lot of fun. You see we have in this country, I learned in American Government 103 in high school, a ideal called freedom that allows me to posses this bad book full of some really craze nonsense like “Workers of the world rise and break your chains ” and the class struggle, whatever that means.
One day I went to New York to attended an art reception for Fabrizo Plessi at the Guggenheim First Floor Gallery. I was thinking of buying one of his fabulous painting and was willing to go as high as 200,000 dollars. I stayed at the fabulous Sherry Netherland, one of the favorite haunts of Doris Duke, may the sweet dear rest in peace, and it was such a beautiful afternoon that I decided not to call my chauffeur and walk to the Guggenheim gallery.
I turned here and there, mingling with the common folks, and after taking a wrong turn I got lost and I found myself in a strange part of the city that looked like an third world country or Africa. It was definately not a place to be after the sun went down. I blinked my eyes in disbelief. There were signs of pervasive poverty everywhere old cars, dilapidated tenements and hordes of poor people of a darker shade milling about for as far as the eye could see. It was a very depressing place and was definitely not the New York that Frank Sinatra, “Old blue eyes,” celebrated in the song New York New York.
I was frighten and wondered why, oh, why did they want to live in such terrible poverty. I couldn’t believe that such a place existed in our beautiful country, sweet land of liberty, the land of Lincoln and Jefferson and the birth place of democracy. Where were the manicured lawns and the rose bushes of the American dream? How could this happened in the land of the free and opportunity.
You can’t imagine how relieved I was when I finally got to the Guggenheim, Everyone who was someone was there. Even Hillary Clinton was there that wonderful charming woman who someone called a carpetbager and opportunist on television. I stood drinking a cocktail, which God knows I needed after my ordeal in the heart of darkness, and chatting with the delightful Katherine {Bunny} Barrington attired in a dress designed by Alfonso, the rage of Costa Bravo, that can only be described in the words of Cole Porter as “Too marvelous for words. “
Bunny proceeded to tell me about a wonderful week in the Bahamas with the cream of society where the food was scrumptious, and the conversation divine. It was heaven you must go she said in that wonderfully modulate voice of a Vassar graduate and professional socialite. Her father, you must know, left her 500 million dollars. She is an American success story.
That evening while sitting in the great room of my twenty room mansion, with horse stables, four car garage, evening and morning patio, basement exorcise room and lap pool, admiring the Fabrizo Plessi’s painting I had purchased for 180,000 dollars, I looked down at “The Communist Manifesto” on the tea . table and wondered why on earth would Karl Marx write such a weird book
Clarification and Being
Clarification and Being
Orlando Lujan Martinez, IWAA
Jean-Yves Leloup,mystic, theologian and scholar, book about The Gospels of Mary Magdalene is a thought provoking book that believers, skeptics, agnostics and atheists should read.
One of the proverbs from the Gospel of Mary Magdalene.: The teacher(God) answered: All that is born, all that is created, all the elements of nature are inter-woven and united with each other. All that is composed will decompose; everything returns to the roots; matter returns to the order of matter:
These words, written 2,000 years ago, are not religious dogma, linguistic meanderings or rhetoric, but ancient knowledge which coincides with what science knows to be true today. Here science and spiritually meet and separate at the same time. Science does, not yet fully agree, with the spiritual dimension of the proverbs from The Gospels of Mary Magdalene. For she knows that the teachers words are the beginning of the return to being fully human and discovering the Real world and the wisdom of God which are also the words of ancient wisdom.
Leloup comments on “everything returns to its roots; matter returns to the original matter. All evolution involves a return. To return is not to go back--rather to go forward..... It is a return to the place that is our origin and our destiny....We return to the Source and the beginning.|"
The Gospels of Mary Magdalene are about a Kingdom we can know as living Beings in this world. The knowledge is meant to re-interrogate humans with their selves so they can become fully human and above the illusions, attachments and the suffering brought to life through the seven deadly sins of: pride, lust, envy anger, covetousness, gluttony, and sloth. Which are present, and the motives, in the greater sins of genocide, wars, murder, fraud, violence, pedophilia, rape and the sins of skepticism. pessimism and cynicism which are the final disillusionment. For God says: There are no sins. It is man that makes sin exist.
Leloup says: “Through the poor use of our senses, intelligence, and emotions, these faculties have become disoriented-they have lost there orient, that is to say, their attunment with the Being that is at the heart of all impermanence, transitory phenomena of the world. It is only this disorientation that enables us to pervert ourselves, society, and the universal order itself.” As we have noticed in the turmoil of our senses and in the world.
And again: “Furthermore the Kingdom that is spoken of in The Gospels of Mary Magdalene must not be confused with the return to some sort of lost paradise or a state of consciousness. Rather it is the awakening to this very dimension of Being that is the source of our existence now, and of the mystery of there being something instead of nothing."
Orlando Lujan Martinez, IWAA
Jean-Yves Leloup,mystic, theologian and scholar, book about The Gospels of Mary Magdalene is a thought provoking book that believers, skeptics, agnostics and atheists should read.
One of the proverbs from the Gospel of Mary Magdalene.: The teacher(God) answered: All that is born, all that is created, all the elements of nature are inter-woven and united with each other. All that is composed will decompose; everything returns to the roots; matter returns to the order of matter:
These words, written 2,000 years ago, are not religious dogma, linguistic meanderings or rhetoric, but ancient knowledge which coincides with what science knows to be true today. Here science and spiritually meet and separate at the same time. Science does, not yet fully agree, with the spiritual dimension of the proverbs from The Gospels of Mary Magdalene. For she knows that the teachers words are the beginning of the return to being fully human and discovering the Real world and the wisdom of God which are also the words of ancient wisdom.
Leloup comments on “everything returns to its roots; matter returns to the original matter. All evolution involves a return. To return is not to go back--rather to go forward..... It is a return to the place that is our origin and our destiny....We return to the Source and the beginning.|"
The Gospels of Mary Magdalene are about a Kingdom we can know as living Beings in this world. The knowledge is meant to re-interrogate humans with their selves so they can become fully human and above the illusions, attachments and the suffering brought to life through the seven deadly sins of: pride, lust, envy anger, covetousness, gluttony, and sloth. Which are present, and the motives, in the greater sins of genocide, wars, murder, fraud, violence, pedophilia, rape and the sins of skepticism. pessimism and cynicism which are the final disillusionment. For God says: There are no sins. It is man that makes sin exist.
Leloup says: “Through the poor use of our senses, intelligence, and emotions, these faculties have become disoriented-they have lost there orient, that is to say, their attunment with the Being that is at the heart of all impermanence, transitory phenomena of the world. It is only this disorientation that enables us to pervert ourselves, society, and the universal order itself.” As we have noticed in the turmoil of our senses and in the world.
And again: “Furthermore the Kingdom that is spoken of in The Gospels of Mary Magdalene must not be confused with the return to some sort of lost paradise or a state of consciousness. Rather it is the awakening to this very dimension of Being that is the source of our existence now, and of the mystery of there being something instead of nothing."
The Face Of God
The Face Of God
Orlando Lujan Martinez, IWAA
In The Young Lions captain Christian Diesel ( Marlon Brando) is a decent man who is loyal to Hitler, to the economic goals of the Nazis, and approves the war because he says, "It will be good for Germany." But it is near the end of the war and the captain has seen while walking through the devastated ruins of Berlin a boy, on crutches, missing a leg and is starting to think about the futility of war in which he has killed and seen many men killed. And has talked to a commandant of a death camp, while retreating through Poland. who has been ordered to kill the 10,000 jewish inmates before the Americans arrive.
Captain Diesel and a woman companion are at dinner with an old friend, also an officer, and his wife, the discussion turns to the defeated Germany and the tragedy of the war.
Diesels' friend says, at the end of his dialogue, about the futility of the war, "Germany is losing the war and after all the blown off arms and legs everything will remain the same," Then leaves.
Captain Diesel sits with his elbows on the table, his fingers rubbing above his eye brows, his friends words have disturbed him, he is remembering the boy in Berlin, and he says, quietly, to his woman companion,. "We are in a hole and you have to keep something in front of you or you will go insane."
Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz wrote in A Life With Karol that In all the images of Karol he has seen, the one struck him most vividly in his heart is the one of Karol's' first visit to Poland, in 1979.
"It was morning, the Vistula was in the background and the sun was barely up. Warsaw was bathed in a extraordinary light. As soon as the Pope started speaking the whole crowd of young listeners was seized with excitement. And at the end of the speech his thousands of young listener, as if on cue, simultaneously raised their little wooden crosses, towards Pope John Paul 11.
But that sea of crosses: held in front and towards the Pope, contained the seeds of something much greater than even the popular Poland's Solitary Revolution which was happening at that time."
Cardinal Stanislaw continued, "The students adoration of Karol held a "mystery" which I wasn't completely aware of at that time." Dziwisz did not see that mystery again until many years later in the endless throngs of people who came to say their last farewell to Pope John Paul II . The intensity of feeling in the crowd revealed the profound legacy of Karol Wojtyla.
I, over the years, had watched The Pope on television and seen the humanity, the loving kindness on his face, and in the holy bearing of Pope John Paul II and did not see the "mystery" and therefore I could not find the words to tell myself what I was witnessing "in front of me" and therefore could not tell others, until Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz describe what I had seen in front of me when he wrote in A Life With Karol.
"He showed the face of God. Gods human face. He displayed the features of God incarnate."
Orlando Lujan Martinez, IWAA
In The Young Lions captain Christian Diesel ( Marlon Brando) is a decent man who is loyal to Hitler, to the economic goals of the Nazis, and approves the war because he says, "It will be good for Germany." But it is near the end of the war and the captain has seen while walking through the devastated ruins of Berlin a boy, on crutches, missing a leg and is starting to think about the futility of war in which he has killed and seen many men killed. And has talked to a commandant of a death camp, while retreating through Poland. who has been ordered to kill the 10,000 jewish inmates before the Americans arrive.
Captain Diesel and a woman companion are at dinner with an old friend, also an officer, and his wife, the discussion turns to the defeated Germany and the tragedy of the war.
Diesels' friend says, at the end of his dialogue, about the futility of the war, "Germany is losing the war and after all the blown off arms and legs everything will remain the same," Then leaves.
Captain Diesel sits with his elbows on the table, his fingers rubbing above his eye brows, his friends words have disturbed him, he is remembering the boy in Berlin, and he says, quietly, to his woman companion,. "We are in a hole and you have to keep something in front of you or you will go insane."
Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz wrote in A Life With Karol that In all the images of Karol he has seen, the one struck him most vividly in his heart is the one of Karol's' first visit to Poland, in 1979.
"It was morning, the Vistula was in the background and the sun was barely up. Warsaw was bathed in a extraordinary light. As soon as the Pope started speaking the whole crowd of young listeners was seized with excitement. And at the end of the speech his thousands of young listener, as if on cue, simultaneously raised their little wooden crosses, towards Pope John Paul 11.
But that sea of crosses: held in front and towards the Pope, contained the seeds of something much greater than even the popular Poland's Solitary Revolution which was happening at that time."
Cardinal Stanislaw continued, "The students adoration of Karol held a "mystery" which I wasn't completely aware of at that time." Dziwisz did not see that mystery again until many years later in the endless throngs of people who came to say their last farewell to Pope John Paul II . The intensity of feeling in the crowd revealed the profound legacy of Karol Wojtyla.
I, over the years, had watched The Pope on television and seen the humanity, the loving kindness on his face, and in the holy bearing of Pope John Paul II and did not see the "mystery" and therefore I could not find the words to tell myself what I was witnessing "in front of me" and therefore could not tell others, until Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz describe what I had seen in front of me when he wrote in A Life With Karol.
"He showed the face of God. Gods human face. He displayed the features of God incarnate."
The Message
The Message
Orlandp Lujan Martinez
If you read between the lines of the bible you will discover the true message of the Bible-the word of God-which the religious martyrs feel is so important that it is worth dying for. The Bible was written in a direct word for word literary manner that tends to make it confusing to many people and its message obscure. This requires the reader to interpret what is really going on between the lines of the seemingly obscure rhetoric of the Bible.
Thus the German protestant theologian and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer (executed by the Nazi’s in 1945) can write in The Cost of Discipline: “Jesus does not promise that when we bless our enemies and do good to them they will not use and persecute us. They certainly will. But not even that can hurt or overcome us, as long as we pray for them. For if we pray for them, we are taking their distress and poverty, their guilt and perdition, upon ourselves, and pleading to God for them. We are doing vicariously what they can not do for themselves. Every insult that they mutter only binds us more closer to God and them. Their persecution of us only serves to bring them nearer to reconciliation with God and further the triumphs of love.”
But the word “martyr” does not mean, in the original greek, the acceptance of death, it means “witness” -one who testifies with their very being, body and soul and this they accomplish as ordinary person, intractable and patience in their defense of the truth.
I have followed him home, here, to the cross. If I must mount it, he assures me, I will not do it alone.
In death the martyrs says to others, What I believe in is so important that it is worth dying for.
Oscar Arnulfo Romero Archbishop of San Salvador said days before he was murdered, “Tell the the people that if they(The death Squad's hired but the rich) succeed in killing me, that I forgive them and bless those who do it. Hopefully they will realize they are wasting their time. A Archbishop will die, but the church of God, which is the people, will never perish.
And you will know the truth and the truth will set you free, John 8:32
...the agony and courage of a Nazarene carpenter who refused, 2,000 years ago, to hold his tongue to please the powerful.
but Jesus actions at the Temple had another purpose as well; to demonstrate to the masses that they had the right and the power to challenge those who lorded over them.
Orlandp Lujan Martinez
If you read between the lines of the bible you will discover the true message of the Bible-the word of God-which the religious martyrs feel is so important that it is worth dying for. The Bible was written in a direct word for word literary manner that tends to make it confusing to many people and its message obscure. This requires the reader to interpret what is really going on between the lines of the seemingly obscure rhetoric of the Bible.
Thus the German protestant theologian and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer (executed by the Nazi’s in 1945) can write in The Cost of Discipline: “Jesus does not promise that when we bless our enemies and do good to them they will not use and persecute us. They certainly will. But not even that can hurt or overcome us, as long as we pray for them. For if we pray for them, we are taking their distress and poverty, their guilt and perdition, upon ourselves, and pleading to God for them. We are doing vicariously what they can not do for themselves. Every insult that they mutter only binds us more closer to God and them. Their persecution of us only serves to bring them nearer to reconciliation with God and further the triumphs of love.”
But the word “martyr” does not mean, in the original greek, the acceptance of death, it means “witness” -one who testifies with their very being, body and soul and this they accomplish as ordinary person, intractable and patience in their defense of the truth.
I have followed him home, here, to the cross. If I must mount it, he assures me, I will not do it alone.
In death the martyrs says to others, What I believe in is so important that it is worth dying for.
Oscar Arnulfo Romero Archbishop of San Salvador said days before he was murdered, “Tell the the people that if they(The death Squad's hired but the rich) succeed in killing me, that I forgive them and bless those who do it. Hopefully they will realize they are wasting their time. A Archbishop will die, but the church of God, which is the people, will never perish.
And you will know the truth and the truth will set you free, John 8:32
...the agony and courage of a Nazarene carpenter who refused, 2,000 years ago, to hold his tongue to please the powerful.
but Jesus actions at the Temple had another purpose as well; to demonstrate to the masses that they had the right and the power to challenge those who lorded over them.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Captain Courages
Captain Courageous
Orlando Lujan martinez
I walked up to my dying fathers hospital bed, took his hand and said hello father and was surprised when, from his gaunt face came the clear innocent voice of a young boy. The boy who herded sheep with his father. I was astonished and listened with wonder, eyes filling with tears and a small grasp of wonder almost escaped my lips. The light in the room became pure and bright and a stunning summer day lay in Gods splendor outside my fathers hospital room. It was a lovely day.
A Tsunami survivor said he fled with many people up a hillside to escape the Tsunami. They were frightened and he was standing alone on a hillside, desperately worried about his brother, who disappeared during the Tsunami, when a man detached himself from his wife and three children, walked over and invited him to be part of his family. He said that in spite of the devastation, carnage, tragedy, grief and the death of people, friends and family there was, “a exhilarating feeling of love between the survivors.” Who was the creator of this moment?
In the old 1930s movie Captain Courageous, the captain, played by Spencer Tracy, is pinned against the side of his sailing ship by the rigging of a sail that broke off during the storm. The waves are crashing against the ship and will eventually pull Captain Courageous to his death. Suddenly the cabin boy, played by nine year old Freddie Bartholomew, rushes up and desperately clutches the captains hand, he loves the captain, and does not want him to die. He is sobbing and begging the captain not to die. The captain, who is in terrible pain, tells the cabin boy, in a gentle voice, “Don’t worry about me. It’s okay. I am ready. You don’t cry to much about me. Have a happy life.” As he assures the boy he shows no fear and his eyes are full of concern for the sobbing boy.
The great transformation day is here for Captain courageous, he has faced death and won several times before, but now he knows death is inevitable and is using his death as a way to teach the young lad how to die with courage. With Gods grace the captain is showing the young boy that death can be bravely met and can be defeated, and is not just just a sorrow but also revelation. Death is nothing life is everything he is teaching. So that in the distant years, the young boy will remember this shinning moment, as a beautiful but tragic memory and will, at the time of his death, use it to give him the courage, to be like Captain Courageous.
The broken rigging creaks, a grimace of pain crosses the captains face, and the sea rises in fury. Several of the ships crew rush up, pulling the sobbing cabin boy away just as the sea takes the captain to his death.
Love and God is there In Darkness at Noon, Arthur Koestlers book about the Spanish Civil War. He writes about a member of the International Brigades who discovers Gods love in a barren cell of a prison where the fascist dictator Francisco Franco has put him to be executed.
The prisoner stands, in the dark, head tipped listening intently, in a aura of peace, with love and sadness to the voices of his doomed communist comrades coming across the inner yard of the prison, bravely singing The International, the anthem of International Communism and the Proletarian, the noble cause of the martyrs. In death the martyrs says to others: What I believe in is so important that it is worth dying for.
Note: Thus the German protestant theologian and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer (executed by the Nazi’s in 1945) can write in The Cost of Discipline: “Jesus does not promise that when we bless our enemies and do good to them they will not use and persecute us. They certainly will. But not even that can hurt or overcome us, as long as we pray for them. For if we pray for them, we are taking their distress and poverty, their guilt and perdition, upon ourselves, and pleading to God for them. We are doing vicariously what they can not do for themselves. Every insult that they mutter only binds us more closer to God and them. Their persecution of us only serves to bring them nearer to reconciliation with God and further the triumphs of love.”
Orlando Lujan martinez
I walked up to my dying fathers hospital bed, took his hand and said hello father and was surprised when, from his gaunt face came the clear innocent voice of a young boy. The boy who herded sheep with his father. I was astonished and listened with wonder, eyes filling with tears and a small grasp of wonder almost escaped my lips. The light in the room became pure and bright and a stunning summer day lay in Gods splendor outside my fathers hospital room. It was a lovely day.
A Tsunami survivor said he fled with many people up a hillside to escape the Tsunami. They were frightened and he was standing alone on a hillside, desperately worried about his brother, who disappeared during the Tsunami, when a man detached himself from his wife and three children, walked over and invited him to be part of his family. He said that in spite of the devastation, carnage, tragedy, grief and the death of people, friends and family there was, “a exhilarating feeling of love between the survivors.” Who was the creator of this moment?
In the old 1930s movie Captain Courageous, the captain, played by Spencer Tracy, is pinned against the side of his sailing ship by the rigging of a sail that broke off during the storm. The waves are crashing against the ship and will eventually pull Captain Courageous to his death. Suddenly the cabin boy, played by nine year old Freddie Bartholomew, rushes up and desperately clutches the captains hand, he loves the captain, and does not want him to die. He is sobbing and begging the captain not to die. The captain, who is in terrible pain, tells the cabin boy, in a gentle voice, “Don’t worry about me. It’s okay. I am ready. You don’t cry to much about me. Have a happy life.” As he assures the boy he shows no fear and his eyes are full of concern for the sobbing boy.
The great transformation day is here for Captain courageous, he has faced death and won several times before, but now he knows death is inevitable and is using his death as a way to teach the young lad how to die with courage. With Gods grace the captain is showing the young boy that death can be bravely met and can be defeated, and is not just just a sorrow but also revelation. Death is nothing life is everything he is teaching. So that in the distant years, the young boy will remember this shinning moment, as a beautiful but tragic memory and will, at the time of his death, use it to give him the courage, to be like Captain Courageous.
The broken rigging creaks, a grimace of pain crosses the captains face, and the sea rises in fury. Several of the ships crew rush up, pulling the sobbing cabin boy away just as the sea takes the captain to his death.
Love and God is there In Darkness at Noon, Arthur Koestlers book about the Spanish Civil War. He writes about a member of the International Brigades who discovers Gods love in a barren cell of a prison where the fascist dictator Francisco Franco has put him to be executed.
The prisoner stands, in the dark, head tipped listening intently, in a aura of peace, with love and sadness to the voices of his doomed communist comrades coming across the inner yard of the prison, bravely singing The International, the anthem of International Communism and the Proletarian, the noble cause of the martyrs. In death the martyrs says to others: What I believe in is so important that it is worth dying for.
Note: Thus the German protestant theologian and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer (executed by the Nazi’s in 1945) can write in The Cost of Discipline: “Jesus does not promise that when we bless our enemies and do good to them they will not use and persecute us. They certainly will. But not even that can hurt or overcome us, as long as we pray for them. For if we pray for them, we are taking their distress and poverty, their guilt and perdition, upon ourselves, and pleading to God for them. We are doing vicariously what they can not do for themselves. Every insult that they mutter only binds us more closer to God and them. Their persecution of us only serves to bring them nearer to reconciliation with God and further the triumphs of love.”
Here Chickee Chickee
Here Chickee Chickee
Orlando Lujan Martinez
Because something bad was happening everyday somewhere somehow Vincent Rodney started to question the sanity of everyone: including himself. He needed some questions answered. Who are you? Why all these mess ups? Who can be trusted? Why is everyone wearing a mask? Is everyone craze? and whatever ever happened to integrity, sincerity, honesty, righteousness and plain common sense? And why is the Easter Bunny, Tickle me Elmo and Chicken Little hiding under a bush in the backyard. Do they know something he doesn't know. Here chickee, chickee.
When Rodney has trouble sleeping he descended down the curving stair case into the living room of his luxurious house, on a hill, where he sat in the dark listening to Joni James singing When You Wish Upon a Star, with the curtains open, wondering, lonely and looking down on the twinkling lights of the city. (Where at the Casino Royal a man in a black suit and bowed tied, recently arrived in a French gray and opal blue limousine, is betting 10,000 dollars on the next roll of the dice. He has the confidence of one that can afford to lose. At his side Pinky Purdom smiles in a gold satin sheen evening gown.) A white bone moon stood over the house on the hill.
Rodney is lonely, and insecure because he thinks no one has any respect for him despite his brand spanking new car, groomed looks, wonderful personality and beautiful house. Some times his insecurity would turn into anger and make him an aggressive driver, and just this morning he got angry and cut off a car because it was going to slow. The guy kept following Rodney honking his horn real mad. Rodney flipped him a birdie.
The drivers replied was to put his arm out the window and fired a couple of shots which was, in Rodney opinion, in step with the growing violence in American society. Rodney was shocked and frightened but also knew something like this would happen sooner or later. So he was going to start carrying a gun under a newspaper on the front seat for protection and just in case. Where are the cops when you need them?
Rodney always worried something or someone somewhere somehow in someway would snap. What would snap was anyone's guess. And who knows what’s on the menu of the paranoid mind after decades of posing as a sane person.
Rodney's garage is full of survival equipment: ten drums of gas, ten drums of water, an electric generator and stacks of canned food. All the stuff he will need when environment collapses. The government pamphlet didn’t mention toilet paper: a absolute necessity in an emergency and one of the civilized worlds greatest contributions to society or the guns, the bullet proof vest, gas mask and plenty of ammunition, just in case.
When the Nuremberg trial judge sentence Herman Goring sentenced him to death. Goring said “I don’t care I lived well for 15 years.” A practical approach which Rodney didn’t have. He was scared and a guy who is always looking around for a way to get out of life without dying.
The government pamphlet also said when the Pandemic Flu gets to your town, presumedly on the back of a Road Island Red Chicken, your survival is going to depend on you. Wash your hands frequently stay away from coughing. Don’t expect them to save us. Don’t go to the hospital because they will be packed full and there is no cure for the flu anyway. Bad news, and he had foolishly thought that money, democracy medical science and a roll in the hay was the answer to everything. Even the very wealthy are going to pay this time because there is no place to run anywhere anyhow. The Casino Royal will close because the croupiers, kitchen help and maids will be home sick or dead. Pinky Purdom's paramour will be still bowed tied but this time in a coffin.
Rodney hope his neighbors have prepared for the coming catastrophe because if they come over to beg for food he just won’t answer the door just like he did with the Jehovah Witnesses. And just in case they persist well....
In addition to all of Rodney personal problems, real and unreal, over or under the counter, cause by other people, of course, there's been more bad school shootings and the bad news from Iran is that they are going to build a nuclear bomb. They say If we have some then they want some too and then, too boot, there is world warming, militant Islamic terrorism in Afghanistan, Iraq and other parts of the world.
And North Korea has set off a nuclear bomb. They say the leader of North Korea is a nut case and might do something somewhere that wasn't nice. The only answer for Rodney had was to keep spending, keep up a good front, and hope the politicians will find a way to avoid a catastrophe.
And Rodney though why is this happening to me I didn’t do nothing. That of course is exactly the problem: no one did nothing. When someone pointed a finger at them and said why didn’t you do something they could say it wasn’t my fault because I didn’t do nothing. They figure if you didn’t do nothing then you couldn’t make mistakes or be blamed for anything. Remember it was mistakes that started everything everywhere anyway.
Arthur Rodney had not made a mistake for 60 years. What do you mean his 30 years of marriage to the wrong woman, and his 4 years in the joint for being in the wrong place at the wrong time are mistakes. Those weren’t mistakes he was a victim of circumstances. And when he beat his brother out of 10,000 dollars because he didn’t have the brains not to lend it to him that was his mistake not Rodney's. See Rodney knew what a mistake is. And besides he had never made a mistake since yesterday.
Then one beautiful sun shinny morning with the birds chirping happily doing loup-de-loups in the sky Rodney Looked out the kitchen window and seen Eddie, his beloved white doggie, over in the corner of the yard eating something strange. After eating the taste morsel he stagger across the yard and toppled into the fish pond dead. Some son-of-a-bitch poisoned Eddie!
This was more than he could take the stress of constantly living on the edge of disaster was getting to him. After giving serious time to the study of drink and dope he found out that they weren't the answer and in the end they don’t play games. Sooner or later they take control and use you to destroy you.
Rodney was desperate and decided, after seeing a few hallucinations one eerie still night around midnight, that it was time to change a life style that had him whipped so bad that he turned to God. What else could he do. Who else is their? He tried everything and still needed someone who really loved him and had an answer for what this madness was about.
To create the right ambiance for his new spiritual life he had the house painted white and the rooms painted white. The rugs white and the furniture too. If white is good enough for Cher and Barbara Streisand then it’s good enough for Rodney too.
Everything is going well. Rodney is out of the loup and into peace and trust and church services. Then in one of the sermons Rodney found out that it was his fault everything is so messed up because he didn’t do anything. And that he would have to love his neighbors as himself, and do something about the bad things happening everywhere, somewhere, somehow, and in somew
Orlando Lujan Martinez
Because something bad was happening everyday somewhere somehow Vincent Rodney started to question the sanity of everyone: including himself. He needed some questions answered. Who are you? Why all these mess ups? Who can be trusted? Why is everyone wearing a mask? Is everyone craze? and whatever ever happened to integrity, sincerity, honesty, righteousness and plain common sense? And why is the Easter Bunny, Tickle me Elmo and Chicken Little hiding under a bush in the backyard. Do they know something he doesn't know. Here chickee, chickee.
When Rodney has trouble sleeping he descended down the curving stair case into the living room of his luxurious house, on a hill, where he sat in the dark listening to Joni James singing When You Wish Upon a Star, with the curtains open, wondering, lonely and looking down on the twinkling lights of the city. (Where at the Casino Royal a man in a black suit and bowed tied, recently arrived in a French gray and opal blue limousine, is betting 10,000 dollars on the next roll of the dice. He has the confidence of one that can afford to lose. At his side Pinky Purdom smiles in a gold satin sheen evening gown.) A white bone moon stood over the house on the hill.
Rodney is lonely, and insecure because he thinks no one has any respect for him despite his brand spanking new car, groomed looks, wonderful personality and beautiful house. Some times his insecurity would turn into anger and make him an aggressive driver, and just this morning he got angry and cut off a car because it was going to slow. The guy kept following Rodney honking his horn real mad. Rodney flipped him a birdie.
The drivers replied was to put his arm out the window and fired a couple of shots which was, in Rodney opinion, in step with the growing violence in American society. Rodney was shocked and frightened but also knew something like this would happen sooner or later. So he was going to start carrying a gun under a newspaper on the front seat for protection and just in case. Where are the cops when you need them?
Rodney always worried something or someone somewhere somehow in someway would snap. What would snap was anyone's guess. And who knows what’s on the menu of the paranoid mind after decades of posing as a sane person.
Rodney's garage is full of survival equipment: ten drums of gas, ten drums of water, an electric generator and stacks of canned food. All the stuff he will need when environment collapses. The government pamphlet didn’t mention toilet paper: a absolute necessity in an emergency and one of the civilized worlds greatest contributions to society or the guns, the bullet proof vest, gas mask and plenty of ammunition, just in case.
When the Nuremberg trial judge sentence Herman Goring sentenced him to death. Goring said “I don’t care I lived well for 15 years.” A practical approach which Rodney didn’t have. He was scared and a guy who is always looking around for a way to get out of life without dying.
The government pamphlet also said when the Pandemic Flu gets to your town, presumedly on the back of a Road Island Red Chicken, your survival is going to depend on you. Wash your hands frequently stay away from coughing. Don’t expect them to save us. Don’t go to the hospital because they will be packed full and there is no cure for the flu anyway. Bad news, and he had foolishly thought that money, democracy medical science and a roll in the hay was the answer to everything. Even the very wealthy are going to pay this time because there is no place to run anywhere anyhow. The Casino Royal will close because the croupiers, kitchen help and maids will be home sick or dead. Pinky Purdom's paramour will be still bowed tied but this time in a coffin.
Rodney hope his neighbors have prepared for the coming catastrophe because if they come over to beg for food he just won’t answer the door just like he did with the Jehovah Witnesses. And just in case they persist well....
In addition to all of Rodney personal problems, real and unreal, over or under the counter, cause by other people, of course, there's been more bad school shootings and the bad news from Iran is that they are going to build a nuclear bomb. They say If we have some then they want some too and then, too boot, there is world warming, militant Islamic terrorism in Afghanistan, Iraq and other parts of the world.
And North Korea has set off a nuclear bomb. They say the leader of North Korea is a nut case and might do something somewhere that wasn't nice. The only answer for Rodney had was to keep spending, keep up a good front, and hope the politicians will find a way to avoid a catastrophe.
And Rodney though why is this happening to me I didn’t do nothing. That of course is exactly the problem: no one did nothing. When someone pointed a finger at them and said why didn’t you do something they could say it wasn’t my fault because I didn’t do nothing. They figure if you didn’t do nothing then you couldn’t make mistakes or be blamed for anything. Remember it was mistakes that started everything everywhere anyway.
Arthur Rodney had not made a mistake for 60 years. What do you mean his 30 years of marriage to the wrong woman, and his 4 years in the joint for being in the wrong place at the wrong time are mistakes. Those weren’t mistakes he was a victim of circumstances. And when he beat his brother out of 10,000 dollars because he didn’t have the brains not to lend it to him that was his mistake not Rodney's. See Rodney knew what a mistake is. And besides he had never made a mistake since yesterday.
Then one beautiful sun shinny morning with the birds chirping happily doing loup-de-loups in the sky Rodney Looked out the kitchen window and seen Eddie, his beloved white doggie, over in the corner of the yard eating something strange. After eating the taste morsel he stagger across the yard and toppled into the fish pond dead. Some son-of-a-bitch poisoned Eddie!
This was more than he could take the stress of constantly living on the edge of disaster was getting to him. After giving serious time to the study of drink and dope he found out that they weren't the answer and in the end they don’t play games. Sooner or later they take control and use you to destroy you.
Rodney was desperate and decided, after seeing a few hallucinations one eerie still night around midnight, that it was time to change a life style that had him whipped so bad that he turned to God. What else could he do. Who else is their? He tried everything and still needed someone who really loved him and had an answer for what this madness was about.
To create the right ambiance for his new spiritual life he had the house painted white and the rooms painted white. The rugs white and the furniture too. If white is good enough for Cher and Barbara Streisand then it’s good enough for Rodney too.
Everything is going well. Rodney is out of the loup and into peace and trust and church services. Then in one of the sermons Rodney found out that it was his fault everything is so messed up because he didn’t do anything. And that he would have to love his neighbors as himself, and do something about the bad things happening everywhere, somewhere, somehow, and in somew
New York New York
New York New York
Orlando Lujan Martinez, IWA
I've always thought I was as important as the next guy or any movie star, president or entertainer and had the disturbing habit of looking people straight in the eye and telling them the truth and what was really happening. The way is really is, in my opinion
An attitude that could lead to an confrontation with the social orthodox authority that dictates how important you are. It says that if you are not somebody then you are, obviously, a nobody. But when it meets a guy who thinks he is a somebody, without their approval or certification, then something interesting is bound to happen.
Such was the rule of society when I went with a friend, Edward Monjares, the Director of the Human Rights Department of Albuquerque, and his patriotic veteran father, to see the Folkloric Spectacular of Mexico, at Tingle Stadium, on the New Mexico State Fair Grounds.
To open the show the mariachi orchestra played the Star Spangle Banner and I wasn't going to stand up just because i didn't what to be another one of those patriotic sheep, but since Eddie and his father got up and daddy placed his hand over his heart like a good patriotic American, I stood up immediately to show I was a patriot too.
It was a great show with a big mariachi orchestra on the main stage and on two other smaller stages, in front. colorful Mexican Folkloric dancers twirled, the women skirts flaring with color and the men in somber black with silver spangles, white shirts and large sombreros. It was a musical magical spectacle and a magnificent show of Mexican culture.
And then the lights dimmed as a spotlight captured a singer on stage. in a tuxedo, who sang -to everyones delight- New York, New York: in the sophisticate style of the King of New York Frank Sinatra, which completely took the hearts of the audience:
Start spreading the news. I'm leaving today I want to be part of it-New York, New York
These vagabond shoes,are longing to stray
Right through the very heart of it-New York New York.
I, Eddie and the patriotic daddy sat in the upper left balcony, and the rich, the famous and the VIPS sat in front-row center. It was a sparkling show and at the end of the show I decided to go back stage and the dancers what a marvelous time I had, and to congratulate them for their magnificent performance. You know just like a VIP; a very important person. would do and VIP describe me exactly.
So I searched around for a way to sneak backstage and went across a section of unoccupied seats down a short flight of steps into a dim hall and walk up it until I came an a brightly lit large room where the performers were having their pictures taken by a professional photographer, one who went by the rules.
So I walked up to the edge of the beautiful and handsome group of dancers like I own the joint and stood besides one of the beautiful dancers. They were smiling and radiating happiness and there I was next to them smiling and radiating happiness too.
Then suddenly, my happiness was interrupted by the photographers loud voice hollering "Hey you! Get of the out of the picture!. Who do you think you are, anyway!''
"What do you mean who am I?" I yelled back, "I sir am the guy that brought the ticket that pays the salary of everyone in this room, and I am a fan, and I deserve to be in the picture," and looked around for approval from the performers.
The guy was a little startled by my reply, which was full of bravado, confidence and in command of the situation-I knew what I was doing- And just as he was about to open his mouth again to call for security, a cooler head, someone with authority and common sense, and who knew I was right. decided that it would good public relations if the performers were photograph with me: one of their adoring fans, holler to the photographer. "It's Okay! It's okay! Let him stay!" So I stood there with my arm around one of the dazzling women happy as a hog at the trough. They happy. Me happy,everybody happy and it was fun and It was just one of those fabulous nights.
Orlando Lujan Martinez, IWA
I've always thought I was as important as the next guy or any movie star, president or entertainer and had the disturbing habit of looking people straight in the eye and telling them the truth and what was really happening. The way is really is, in my opinion
An attitude that could lead to an confrontation with the social orthodox authority that dictates how important you are. It says that if you are not somebody then you are, obviously, a nobody. But when it meets a guy who thinks he is a somebody, without their approval or certification, then something interesting is bound to happen.
Such was the rule of society when I went with a friend, Edward Monjares, the Director of the Human Rights Department of Albuquerque, and his patriotic veteran father, to see the Folkloric Spectacular of Mexico, at Tingle Stadium, on the New Mexico State Fair Grounds.
To open the show the mariachi orchestra played the Star Spangle Banner and I wasn't going to stand up just because i didn't what to be another one of those patriotic sheep, but since Eddie and his father got up and daddy placed his hand over his heart like a good patriotic American, I stood up immediately to show I was a patriot too.
It was a great show with a big mariachi orchestra on the main stage and on two other smaller stages, in front. colorful Mexican Folkloric dancers twirled, the women skirts flaring with color and the men in somber black with silver spangles, white shirts and large sombreros. It was a musical magical spectacle and a magnificent show of Mexican culture.
And then the lights dimmed as a spotlight captured a singer on stage. in a tuxedo, who sang -to everyones delight- New York, New York: in the sophisticate style of the King of New York Frank Sinatra, which completely took the hearts of the audience:
Start spreading the news. I'm leaving today I want to be part of it-New York, New York
These vagabond shoes,are longing to stray
Right through the very heart of it-New York New York.
I, Eddie and the patriotic daddy sat in the upper left balcony, and the rich, the famous and the VIPS sat in front-row center. It was a sparkling show and at the end of the show I decided to go back stage and the dancers what a marvelous time I had, and to congratulate them for their magnificent performance. You know just like a VIP; a very important person. would do and VIP describe me exactly.
So I searched around for a way to sneak backstage and went across a section of unoccupied seats down a short flight of steps into a dim hall and walk up it until I came an a brightly lit large room where the performers were having their pictures taken by a professional photographer, one who went by the rules.
So I walked up to the edge of the beautiful and handsome group of dancers like I own the joint and stood besides one of the beautiful dancers. They were smiling and radiating happiness and there I was next to them smiling and radiating happiness too.
Then suddenly, my happiness was interrupted by the photographers loud voice hollering "Hey you! Get of the out of the picture!. Who do you think you are, anyway!''
"What do you mean who am I?" I yelled back, "I sir am the guy that brought the ticket that pays the salary of everyone in this room, and I am a fan, and I deserve to be in the picture," and looked around for approval from the performers.
The guy was a little startled by my reply, which was full of bravado, confidence and in command of the situation-I knew what I was doing- And just as he was about to open his mouth again to call for security, a cooler head, someone with authority and common sense, and who knew I was right. decided that it would good public relations if the performers were photograph with me: one of their adoring fans, holler to the photographer. "It's Okay! It's okay! Let him stay!" So I stood there with my arm around one of the dazzling women happy as a hog at the trough. They happy. Me happy,everybody happy and it was fun and It was just one of those fabulous nights.
A call to my nephew in Denver
A Call To My nephew In Denver
Hey, Doug how you doing? I thought your pun Cinco De Drinko about Cinco de Mayo was great. I sat down next to this Mexican guy, with a lot of tattoos and real big, on the Cental Avenue bus in Albuquerque. He told me that he was going to Denver in a couple of days. Pretty soons we were laughing and talking-you know how La Gente is- and I was thinking that such a happy guy wouldn't mine a little fun pun-a laught on himself-and I tolds him your pun, and I laugh and... he didn’t. I knew I was in trouble. He looked at me real mean and asked, you think that's funny? and I replied immediately, of course not i was just talking.
Who told you that, the guy with a snake tattooed around his neck, asked and I told him that you told me that. Then he asked me for your address, while fiddling with some heavy looking object in his coat pocket and I”m sure it wasn’t a strawberry popsicle, so I gave it to him. He said that he wasn’t going to beat the shit out of me because I gave him a burrito i had in my pocket.
Prior to our misunderstanding I found out that he was the leader of the Mexican Mafia at Gull Island Maximin Security Prison. He had just gotten out after serving twenty years. Sorry about this Bud. But here’s how to handle it. Go to a pawn shop and buy a piece. Park your van several blocks away.from your house, an empty drive way may convince him that your not home.
And hang a large Mexican flag on your front door. Don’t turn on your lights at night. Sit around in the dark and whisper and a little prayer wouldn't hurt a flea. And under no circumstances, if he catches up with you, tell him your a Hispanic. Because-I repeat-there are no Hispanics in Gull Island.
Hey, Doug how you doing? I thought your pun Cinco De Drinko about Cinco de Mayo was great. I sat down next to this Mexican guy, with a lot of tattoos and real big, on the Cental Avenue bus in Albuquerque. He told me that he was going to Denver in a couple of days. Pretty soons we were laughing and talking-you know how La Gente is- and I was thinking that such a happy guy wouldn't mine a little fun pun-a laught on himself-and I tolds him your pun, and I laugh and... he didn’t. I knew I was in trouble. He looked at me real mean and asked, you think that's funny? and I replied immediately, of course not i was just talking.
Who told you that, the guy with a snake tattooed around his neck, asked and I told him that you told me that. Then he asked me for your address, while fiddling with some heavy looking object in his coat pocket and I”m sure it wasn’t a strawberry popsicle, so I gave it to him. He said that he wasn’t going to beat the shit out of me because I gave him a burrito i had in my pocket.
Prior to our misunderstanding I found out that he was the leader of the Mexican Mafia at Gull Island Maximin Security Prison. He had just gotten out after serving twenty years. Sorry about this Bud. But here’s how to handle it. Go to a pawn shop and buy a piece. Park your van several blocks away.from your house, an empty drive way may convince him that your not home.
And hang a large Mexican flag on your front door. Don’t turn on your lights at night. Sit around in the dark and whisper and a little prayer wouldn't hurt a flea. And under no circumstances, if he catches up with you, tell him your a Hispanic. Because-I repeat-there are no Hispanics in Gull Island.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
A Shopping Ttrip To The Coronado Mall
A Shopping Trip To The Coronado Mall
Orlando Lujan Martinez
Like most parents, in the South Valley of Albuquerque New Mexico, Henny Mary Sanchez didn’t know how much her 7 year old son Andrew really knew or understood. Sometimes Andrew's capricious and unpredictable nature would surprise her.
Henny is not the usual South Valley mother. Many people thought of her as a loose gun, and the more exstream ones said she might be cognative impaired-which made her very interesting, indeed.
“Are you coming to tell me a bed time story, momma” Andrew asked as he stood in the bedroom hall, in floppy rabbit slippers, hugging a teddy bear. An aura of angelic innocents followed Henny's son around like a pet puppy. Andrew is the love of her life, her darling boy and sweet potato pie.
“I’ll be right there my darling boy’ Henny said.
“I love you” Andrew cried over his shoulder going down the hall to his bedroom.
After the bedtime story Andrew asked “When we go to the mall tomorrow can I look at the puppies?”
“Yes, you can but it’s not to buy just to look, okay?” Henny said.
“Okay momma,” the sweet angel replied.
The next morning Henny’s eyes popped open just as the lukewarm rays of an early morning sun peeked over the chicken house. In the fields next to Henny’s modest home, off Isleta Boulevard, cows loitered chewing on the sweet grasses that grew abundantly in the South Valley.
In the hidden distant countryside, past the 7/11 on Isleta, a dogs bark and a roosters distant crow could be heard in the still warm quite air. The long morning rays swept the countryside clean of the last remnants of the night. A mile way, across lush fields, a silent flowing Rio Grande, snugly bordered by tall cottonwood trees, surged gently against its banks. Fifteen miles away Albuquerque's tall building could be seen, outline against the towering Sandia mountains-which some called The Watermelon Mountains-, rested peacefully in the soft golden embrace of a new day.
Henny got up in the dewy early morning air and went to wake up her little angel, Andrew. “Wake up, my honey” Henny said sitting on the edge of his bed, petting Andrew's head, enchanted by the sight of her beloved son. A rhapsody enter the room with the beautiful morning.
“It’s a beautiful morning” she whispered close to his ears.
“I’m awake Mama” he smiled from the pillow, hugging a black eyed Teddy Bear.
“Wash and get dressed because we are going to the mall.”
The sun slanted across the kitchen table as Henny made breakfast for
Andrew then he went out to fed the rabbits and chickens. After breakfast Henny said firmly “Well. were off to the mall to get you some school clothes and remember that I’m the one who’s doing the picking-not you because I’m grown up, right?.”
“That’s okay with me but don’t forget the puppies.”
“And were not going to eat everything in sight or buy anymore toys. You have enough” she looked Andrew in the eyes, shaking her head no.
“Sure that’s okay with me but don’t forget the puppies ” he smiled just like he got up on the right side of the day.
“Don’t worry I ain't going to forget about the puppies and do you know why I'm not going to forget.?
“Why, momma.?
“Because your ain’t going to let me forget. That’s why.”
They drove past the 7/11, small houses sitting in clusters of trees, up to the highway and across town to the Coronado Shopping Center. Along with her legitimate shopping Henny planed to do a little shoplifting, her way of beating the system-keeping her hand in. Her excuse for breaking the law was that if that CEO at Elron could swindle millions of dollars then she was entitled to save a few bucks by shoplifting. This excuse would never stand up in court if she got caught. She knew it, God knew it and the judge knew it.
It was a fine summer day with a flock birds banking against a southwest wind in the sky, as Henny and Andrew parked in the lot and walked to into the Coronado Mall. They stopped at the pet shop to look at the cute puppies jumping happily up on the glass window with their tails wagging and tongues hanging out.
“Hey, momma i want one of these” Andrew said, with his face pressed against the glass window.
“We already have three dogs and we ain’t getting another one”. Henny explained patiently.
“Well, I want another one anyway. This one” he pointed a stubby finger at a puppy licking the glass.next to his face,
“I said no! now come on we have things to do.”
“I ain’t going. I want a puppy.” Andrew insisted.
Henny looked around to make sure no one was watching, and whispered in a threatening manner. “You just wait until I get you home.” Henny quickly grabbed Andrew's hand and dragged him off.
“I’m not going I want a puppy” Andrew hollered, as he jerked free. Henny took another cautious look around, to see if there were any witnesses and said in a angry voice.
“You little rascal you're going to pay for this” and tried to grab Andrew as he jumped out of her reach. Then Henny smiled sweetly and lied ”Okay, okay I’ll buy you three, but I don’t have the money with me. We’ll come back tomorrow, Ok”
“Wow, your the best momma in the whole world’ Andrew told the best liar as they happily walked off hand in hand.
Henny and Andrew walked around for awhile window shopping and then they went into a store that Henny knew had several items that she needed. A story with low security that Henny had been in before and the usual place where she did her extra tax free shopping. Henny walked up and down several aisles, acting like she was just another customer, with little Andrew tagging along thinking about the three puppies he would never get. She stopped at a shelf and looked both ways and put a item into her coat pocket.
“Why did you put that into your coat pocket, momma?” the watching Andrew asked.
“Shsss” Henny knew she had made a mistake by letting Andrew see her shoplift. “Don’t talk so loud, think puppies.” Henny whispered to Andrew.
“Can I put one into my pocket too?” The innocent Andrew asks.
“We only need one’ Henny assure him. Why, oh why did I let him see me. Henny admonished herself, I’m I craze our something.
“But I like that kind.”
“For Christ sake, forget it!” she took the unpredictable Andrew behind a display rack. “Shsss, don’t talk so loud.
“Is this a secret, I like secrets,” Andrew said with his eyes wide open.
“Yeah, sure it’s a secret, ha ha” Henny laugh in a sinister manner, as she twisted off the top of a bottle of vitamins and poured the contents into her purse. Henny though that since Andrew had already seen her shoplifting, then one more time wouldn't make much of difference.
“Why are you...”
Shsss and to take Andrew attention away, she said “Honey, look at them Mickey Mouse balloons”
“I want one” Andrew immediately replied.
“You can’t have one,” the exasperated Henny said.
“Then I want my puppies” he persisted.
“For crying out loud!” the exasperated Henny cried looking at the mall ceiling. “Why me!"
Henny proceeded to buy Andrew some school clothing and as they walked out of the Coronado Mall Henny thought that it was time to give up her shoplifting career because Andrew might pick up the habit.
But shoplifting had been fun, she enjoyed the adventure and like living outside the law. The loose gun would have to find some other way to beat the system.
Orlando Lujan Martinez
Like most parents, in the South Valley of Albuquerque New Mexico, Henny Mary Sanchez didn’t know how much her 7 year old son Andrew really knew or understood. Sometimes Andrew's capricious and unpredictable nature would surprise her.
Henny is not the usual South Valley mother. Many people thought of her as a loose gun, and the more exstream ones said she might be cognative impaired-which made her very interesting, indeed.
“Are you coming to tell me a bed time story, momma” Andrew asked as he stood in the bedroom hall, in floppy rabbit slippers, hugging a teddy bear. An aura of angelic innocents followed Henny's son around like a pet puppy. Andrew is the love of her life, her darling boy and sweet potato pie.
“I’ll be right there my darling boy’ Henny said.
“I love you” Andrew cried over his shoulder going down the hall to his bedroom.
After the bedtime story Andrew asked “When we go to the mall tomorrow can I look at the puppies?”
“Yes, you can but it’s not to buy just to look, okay?” Henny said.
“Okay momma,” the sweet angel replied.
The next morning Henny’s eyes popped open just as the lukewarm rays of an early morning sun peeked over the chicken house. In the fields next to Henny’s modest home, off Isleta Boulevard, cows loitered chewing on the sweet grasses that grew abundantly in the South Valley.
In the hidden distant countryside, past the 7/11 on Isleta, a dogs bark and a roosters distant crow could be heard in the still warm quite air. The long morning rays swept the countryside clean of the last remnants of the night. A mile way, across lush fields, a silent flowing Rio Grande, snugly bordered by tall cottonwood trees, surged gently against its banks. Fifteen miles away Albuquerque's tall building could be seen, outline against the towering Sandia mountains-which some called The Watermelon Mountains-, rested peacefully in the soft golden embrace of a new day.
Henny got up in the dewy early morning air and went to wake up her little angel, Andrew. “Wake up, my honey” Henny said sitting on the edge of his bed, petting Andrew's head, enchanted by the sight of her beloved son. A rhapsody enter the room with the beautiful morning.
“It’s a beautiful morning” she whispered close to his ears.
“I’m awake Mama” he smiled from the pillow, hugging a black eyed Teddy Bear.
“Wash and get dressed because we are going to the mall.”
The sun slanted across the kitchen table as Henny made breakfast for
Andrew then he went out to fed the rabbits and chickens. After breakfast Henny said firmly “Well. were off to the mall to get you some school clothes and remember that I’m the one who’s doing the picking-not you because I’m grown up, right?.”
“That’s okay with me but don’t forget the puppies.”
“And were not going to eat everything in sight or buy anymore toys. You have enough” she looked Andrew in the eyes, shaking her head no.
“Sure that’s okay with me but don’t forget the puppies ” he smiled just like he got up on the right side of the day.
“Don’t worry I ain't going to forget about the puppies and do you know why I'm not going to forget.?
“Why, momma.?
“Because your ain’t going to let me forget. That’s why.”
They drove past the 7/11, small houses sitting in clusters of trees, up to the highway and across town to the Coronado Shopping Center. Along with her legitimate shopping Henny planed to do a little shoplifting, her way of beating the system-keeping her hand in. Her excuse for breaking the law was that if that CEO at Elron could swindle millions of dollars then she was entitled to save a few bucks by shoplifting. This excuse would never stand up in court if she got caught. She knew it, God knew it and the judge knew it.
It was a fine summer day with a flock birds banking against a southwest wind in the sky, as Henny and Andrew parked in the lot and walked to into the Coronado Mall. They stopped at the pet shop to look at the cute puppies jumping happily up on the glass window with their tails wagging and tongues hanging out.
“Hey, momma i want one of these” Andrew said, with his face pressed against the glass window.
“We already have three dogs and we ain’t getting another one”. Henny explained patiently.
“Well, I want another one anyway. This one” he pointed a stubby finger at a puppy licking the glass.next to his face,
“I said no! now come on we have things to do.”
“I ain’t going. I want a puppy.” Andrew insisted.
Henny looked around to make sure no one was watching, and whispered in a threatening manner. “You just wait until I get you home.” Henny quickly grabbed Andrew's hand and dragged him off.
“I’m not going I want a puppy” Andrew hollered, as he jerked free. Henny took another cautious look around, to see if there were any witnesses and said in a angry voice.
“You little rascal you're going to pay for this” and tried to grab Andrew as he jumped out of her reach. Then Henny smiled sweetly and lied ”Okay, okay I’ll buy you three, but I don’t have the money with me. We’ll come back tomorrow, Ok”
“Wow, your the best momma in the whole world’ Andrew told the best liar as they happily walked off hand in hand.
Henny and Andrew walked around for awhile window shopping and then they went into a store that Henny knew had several items that she needed. A story with low security that Henny had been in before and the usual place where she did her extra tax free shopping. Henny walked up and down several aisles, acting like she was just another customer, with little Andrew tagging along thinking about the three puppies he would never get. She stopped at a shelf and looked both ways and put a item into her coat pocket.
“Why did you put that into your coat pocket, momma?” the watching Andrew asked.
“Shsss” Henny knew she had made a mistake by letting Andrew see her shoplift. “Don’t talk so loud, think puppies.” Henny whispered to Andrew.
“Can I put one into my pocket too?” The innocent Andrew asks.
“We only need one’ Henny assure him. Why, oh why did I let him see me. Henny admonished herself, I’m I craze our something.
“But I like that kind.”
“For Christ sake, forget it!” she took the unpredictable Andrew behind a display rack. “Shsss, don’t talk so loud.
“Is this a secret, I like secrets,” Andrew said with his eyes wide open.
“Yeah, sure it’s a secret, ha ha” Henny laugh in a sinister manner, as she twisted off the top of a bottle of vitamins and poured the contents into her purse. Henny though that since Andrew had already seen her shoplifting, then one more time wouldn't make much of difference.
“Why are you...”
Shsss and to take Andrew attention away, she said “Honey, look at them Mickey Mouse balloons”
“I want one” Andrew immediately replied.
“You can’t have one,” the exasperated Henny said.
“Then I want my puppies” he persisted.
“For crying out loud!” the exasperated Henny cried looking at the mall ceiling. “Why me!"
Henny proceeded to buy Andrew some school clothing and as they walked out of the Coronado Mall Henny thought that it was time to give up her shoplifting career because Andrew might pick up the habit.
But shoplifting had been fun, she enjoyed the adventure and like living outside the law. The loose gun would have to find some other way to beat the system.
The Church Clock Is Softly Ticking
The Church Clock is Softly Ticking
Orlando Lujan Martinez
The clock is softly ticking. The hours bid a gentle goodbye to doves cooing in the church tower and to the sound of a smooth white stone dropped into a well. A wandering breeze murmurs in the cloistered trees and in the flowers that wait patiently for the first glow of day. In the courtyard of San Felipe church, across the way, fragrance of damp earth and fraternal darkness mingle with the holy night. The roses sit in mute beauty, deep red nestled in green enameled leaves, beneath a dome of glittering stars and planets. In the starry night sky a full chalk moon shines down serene, whispering.
In the dusty church basement a mouse twitches its whiskers, round black agate eyes glinting, among the stored religious items of the past. Above in the church, where God awaits the faithful, a gold cross glistens from behind the pulpit and the votive candles, lit for a deceased love ones, flicker in their blood red glass jars.
Aeons ago we came out of Africa dark skins glistening, nature and spirit one. We are the roots of a great oak tree, and the faint ripple of a breeze on the face of a quite mountain lake. We are made from earth,water, air and then God created the spirit that gives grace and meaning to life on beautiful earth turning in the majestic star sprinkled universe.
Drifting over the rim of the night, bells faintly toll from a distant hidden valley, huddled in green trees, through which the pure currents of an august river rushes to the sea. Next to the river a lonesome road passes old barns, moon glowed fields, silent stalks of corn, and dim houses where the sound of children laughing is mingled with the peaceful summer, and the sweet smell of hay.
The warm glow of the houses pale windows reach into a dark yard where a. Calico cat walks softly in the moon shadows. The motherland spreads across the horizon into the engulfing darkness with its twinkling towns and mournful midnight train whistles. Just below the horizon the pure sun, source life, slants brightly across verdant fields. lengthening the shadows of fence posts and calling the rooster to herald the arrival of morning and Gods wonderful day.
Orlando Lujan Martinez
The clock is softly ticking. The hours bid a gentle goodbye to doves cooing in the church tower and to the sound of a smooth white stone dropped into a well. A wandering breeze murmurs in the cloistered trees and in the flowers that wait patiently for the first glow of day. In the courtyard of San Felipe church, across the way, fragrance of damp earth and fraternal darkness mingle with the holy night. The roses sit in mute beauty, deep red nestled in green enameled leaves, beneath a dome of glittering stars and planets. In the starry night sky a full chalk moon shines down serene, whispering.
In the dusty church basement a mouse twitches its whiskers, round black agate eyes glinting, among the stored religious items of the past. Above in the church, where God awaits the faithful, a gold cross glistens from behind the pulpit and the votive candles, lit for a deceased love ones, flicker in their blood red glass jars.
Aeons ago we came out of Africa dark skins glistening, nature and spirit one. We are the roots of a great oak tree, and the faint ripple of a breeze on the face of a quite mountain lake. We are made from earth,water, air and then God created the spirit that gives grace and meaning to life on beautiful earth turning in the majestic star sprinkled universe.
Drifting over the rim of the night, bells faintly toll from a distant hidden valley, huddled in green trees, through which the pure currents of an august river rushes to the sea. Next to the river a lonesome road passes old barns, moon glowed fields, silent stalks of corn, and dim houses where the sound of children laughing is mingled with the peaceful summer, and the sweet smell of hay.
The warm glow of the houses pale windows reach into a dark yard where a. Calico cat walks softly in the moon shadows. The motherland spreads across the horizon into the engulfing darkness with its twinkling towns and mournful midnight train whistles. Just below the horizon the pure sun, source life, slants brightly across verdant fields. lengthening the shadows of fence posts and calling the rooster to herald the arrival of morning and Gods wonderful day.
The Grassland
The Grassland
Orlando Lujan Martinez
The Homestead Act has the reputation of being a benevolent government land give-away. A part of American mythology that has been romanticized in movies and history books. When in truth it was a tragedy for 48 percent of the people who recieved land in the 102 years The Homestead Act existed.
The farmers given land with adequate rainfall were successful but the ones given the arid land of the Great Plains suffered sever hardships and many were defeated. When a farmer failed the same unproductive land was given to another farmer and the sad story would be repeated. It was a betrayal, and a violation of trust by the government. But since the majority of the homesteaders were poor immigrants and the unemployed they were considered expendable in the long term political and economic goals of The Homestead Act. While a disaster for many farmers it succeeded in opening up federal lands, stolen from the Native Americans, to private farm ownership. It was nation building.
Wes Jacksons book Becoming Native to this Place, reports that when Nick Fenton researched the secession of deeds to his land, in North Dakota, he found that between 1885 and 1955, fourteen families had tried and failed to survive on what was now his center eighty acres.
These haunting words of loneliness from, The Giants of the Earth , Ole Rolvaag’s classic novel of the immigrants experience, tell how a Norwegian woman responded to the treeless, unbroken plain of grassland: “All along the way, coming out, she noticed this strange thing: the stillness had grown deeper, the silence more depressing. She realized it had been weeks since she’d heard a bird sing.”
The Homestead Act (1862 to 1976) gave each settler 160 acres, a mule and plow. Unfortunately 160 acres was not enough land to sustain the farmers or produce farm income. Insufficient rain on parts of the Great Plains and other areas was also a problem. Because of these conditions 48 percent of the farmers failed. There were thousands and thousands of victims of this land give-away. Richard Manning documents in Grassland: The History, Biology, Politics and Promise of the American Prairie , “ They filled the poor houses, insane asylums and graveyards.”
The terms of The Homestead Act required the homesteaders to stay on the land five years, build a house, and improve the land before getting a clear title to the land. This meant plowing up, “sod busting”, the ancient and complex root system that dominated the central plains.
The rich top soil, found beneath the sod, did not guarantee success because some areas did not have the minimum 6 inches of precipitation needed for sustenance farming. The farmers were unaware the free 160 acres would be the beginning of years of near starvation, hardships, and suffering. They lived in poverty in the vastness of the ocean of grass until their spirits were broken. This story was repeated in counties all over the Great Plains.
Allen Reed, president of the Little Museum on the Prairie, dedicated to the homesteaders, attempts to romanticize and idealize the suffering of the Great Plains settlers.by making the dubious statement, “Perhaps the power of the homesteaders comes from the simplicity of their existence.” Power from “ the simplicity of their existence?” What power came from poverty and the defeat of 48 percent of the farmers by the grassland, and therefore did not complete the five years necessary to get a clear title to the land. They were the governments second victims. The Mandan, Lakotas. Dakota and Yankton Sioux, the native tribes of the North American Great Plains, who were murdered for their lands or forced to live on reservations were the first victims of imperial expansion.
The immigrants came to America fleeing poverty, political oppression and religious persecution. They wanted jobs, a peaceful life and instead, found death, poverty and hardship disguise as the benevolent Homestead Act. This deception made the innocent homesteaders odyssey on the arid Great Plains into the greatest of tragedies and betrayals.
Ocean of Grass
Edward Hirsch
The ground was holy, but the wind was harsh
and unbroken prairie stretched for hundreds of
miles
So that all she could see was an ocean of
grass
Some days she got so lonely she went outside
and nestled among the sheep, for company.
The ground was holy, but the wind was harsh
and prairie fires swept across the plains,
lightning up the country like a vast tinder box
until all she could see was an ocean of flames.
She went three years without viewing a tree.
When her husband took her on a timber
run
she called the land holy but the wind was harsh
and got down on her knees and wept
inconsolably,
and lived in a sod hut for thirty more years
until the world dissolved in a world of grass.
Sergei Ivanova’s painting The Death of a Settler is a memorial to poor farmers. It shows a poor farmer who has gone east, fleeing the famine, with his family in search of better land and has died on the road. He lays between the wooden harness handles he had been pulling the wagon with all their processions. His wife, laying hopeless on the ground, has covered his face with a cloth and placed a holy icon upon him. A young child sits forlornly on the ground nearby looking at her fathers covered face. The picture is about the death of a poor farmer but it is also a requiem for the mother and child who have little chance of survival, during a time of famine, on the remote wagon road in the Russian Steppes.
Orlando Lujan Martinez
The Homestead Act has the reputation of being a benevolent government land give-away. A part of American mythology that has been romanticized in movies and history books. When in truth it was a tragedy for 48 percent of the people who recieved land in the 102 years The Homestead Act existed.
The farmers given land with adequate rainfall were successful but the ones given the arid land of the Great Plains suffered sever hardships and many were defeated. When a farmer failed the same unproductive land was given to another farmer and the sad story would be repeated. It was a betrayal, and a violation of trust by the government. But since the majority of the homesteaders were poor immigrants and the unemployed they were considered expendable in the long term political and economic goals of The Homestead Act. While a disaster for many farmers it succeeded in opening up federal lands, stolen from the Native Americans, to private farm ownership. It was nation building.
Wes Jacksons book Becoming Native to this Place, reports that when Nick Fenton researched the secession of deeds to his land, in North Dakota, he found that between 1885 and 1955, fourteen families had tried and failed to survive on what was now his center eighty acres.
These haunting words of loneliness from, The Giants of the Earth , Ole Rolvaag’s classic novel of the immigrants experience, tell how a Norwegian woman responded to the treeless, unbroken plain of grassland: “All along the way, coming out, she noticed this strange thing: the stillness had grown deeper, the silence more depressing. She realized it had been weeks since she’d heard a bird sing.”
The Homestead Act (1862 to 1976) gave each settler 160 acres, a mule and plow. Unfortunately 160 acres was not enough land to sustain the farmers or produce farm income. Insufficient rain on parts of the Great Plains and other areas was also a problem. Because of these conditions 48 percent of the farmers failed. There were thousands and thousands of victims of this land give-away. Richard Manning documents in Grassland: The History, Biology, Politics and Promise of the American Prairie , “ They filled the poor houses, insane asylums and graveyards.”
The terms of The Homestead Act required the homesteaders to stay on the land five years, build a house, and improve the land before getting a clear title to the land. This meant plowing up, “sod busting”, the ancient and complex root system that dominated the central plains.
The rich top soil, found beneath the sod, did not guarantee success because some areas did not have the minimum 6 inches of precipitation needed for sustenance farming. The farmers were unaware the free 160 acres would be the beginning of years of near starvation, hardships, and suffering. They lived in poverty in the vastness of the ocean of grass until their spirits were broken. This story was repeated in counties all over the Great Plains.
Allen Reed, president of the Little Museum on the Prairie, dedicated to the homesteaders, attempts to romanticize and idealize the suffering of the Great Plains settlers.by making the dubious statement, “Perhaps the power of the homesteaders comes from the simplicity of their existence.” Power from “ the simplicity of their existence?” What power came from poverty and the defeat of 48 percent of the farmers by the grassland, and therefore did not complete the five years necessary to get a clear title to the land. They were the governments second victims. The Mandan, Lakotas. Dakota and Yankton Sioux, the native tribes of the North American Great Plains, who were murdered for their lands or forced to live on reservations were the first victims of imperial expansion.
The immigrants came to America fleeing poverty, political oppression and religious persecution. They wanted jobs, a peaceful life and instead, found death, poverty and hardship disguise as the benevolent Homestead Act. This deception made the innocent homesteaders odyssey on the arid Great Plains into the greatest of tragedies and betrayals.
Ocean of Grass
Edward Hirsch
The ground was holy, but the wind was harsh
and unbroken prairie stretched for hundreds of
miles
So that all she could see was an ocean of
grass
Some days she got so lonely she went outside
and nestled among the sheep, for company.
The ground was holy, but the wind was harsh
and prairie fires swept across the plains,
lightning up the country like a vast tinder box
until all she could see was an ocean of flames.
She went three years without viewing a tree.
When her husband took her on a timber
run
she called the land holy but the wind was harsh
and got down on her knees and wept
inconsolably,
and lived in a sod hut for thirty more years
until the world dissolved in a world of grass.
Sergei Ivanova’s painting The Death of a Settler is a memorial to poor farmers. It shows a poor farmer who has gone east, fleeing the famine, with his family in search of better land and has died on the road. He lays between the wooden harness handles he had been pulling the wagon with all their processions. His wife, laying hopeless on the ground, has covered his face with a cloth and placed a holy icon upon him. A young child sits forlornly on the ground nearby looking at her fathers covered face. The picture is about the death of a poor farmer but it is also a requiem for the mother and child who have little chance of survival, during a time of famine, on the remote wagon road in the Russian Steppes.
the Magical Babalu
The Magical Babalu
Orlando Lujan Martinez
Edmundo Serano is a gentle man, and a doer of good deeds, who is always looking for the opportunity to do another good deed. Edmundo, for the most part, is satisfied with life, and has learned to cope with its ups and downs, sad and happy moments, discouragement's, set backs and regrets. He found out that to forgive and forget is the best way to cope with these problems but one regret continued to haunt him for years after it happened. A regret he thought needed redemption and forgiveness from God before he could have peace of mind.
It-the recipient of Edmundos good deed and the cause of his regret- appeared one night as casually as a new snow fall. It- the happenstance-caused Edmundo such great sorrow that he would try not to think about it. When he did his eyes filled with tears of remorse. He sometimes thought he was to blame but then at other times wasn’t sure if he was to blame at all.
Rows of icicles hung from the gutters and gables of houses in the bitter cold snowy night A flume of frosted vapor, from a roof top vent, floated up into the crystal cloudless sky where a gorgeous white winter moon rested in the stars. When Edmundo returned from dinner, it was late in the evening and the streets were empty.
When Edmundo opened the front door he felt a little push against the bottom of the door. He looked down and seen a big gray Manx cat, with no tail, trying to push his head through the crack of the slightly opened front door. The cat wanted to get out of the cold so Edmundo opened the door and let the cat go in.
It was obvious, from the cats handsome well kept appearance, it came from a good home where it was well fed and loved. Edmundo wonder what kind of strange circumstances brought, by happenstance, this unusual cat to his door. Edmundo named him Babalu, a word from a Desi Arnez Cuban song. Ai Babalu ia a Babalu ia is a line he remembered from the song. Babalu means "holiness" if the Afro/ Cuban Santeria religion.
Babalu gracefully walked around the house, purring and rubbing against the furniture and Edmundo’s legs thanking him for bringing him out of the bitter cold. It was the loudest purr Edmundo had ever heard. It was the purr of a contented cat. Years later, through the mist of time, it occur to him that Babalu was mystical cat, and perhaps a messenger from other portals.
When Edmundo returned from work, the moment he set foot in the door there would be Babalu, in the same place every day, across the living room purring and rubbing against the couch. Edmundo guessed Babalu watched for his return from a window and then would go to greet him. He was perfectly content, peaceful and as Edmundo, recalled later, had a sacred and artistic nature.
One evening Edmundo sat in the cozy warmth of his house reading and listening to the song To Dream the Impossible Dream from the Broadway musical Man From la Mancha. Babalu purr loudly and rub against Edmundo's legs but on this evening Babalu’s loud purring and unconditional love annoyed Edmundo, for some strange reason, and the innocent Babalu became the recipient of that discontent. Edmundo (on the way to his regret) picked Babalu up, and remember the words he said forty years later, “Okay, okay, that’s enough,” and put him out into the bitter cold night. And alas, alas, the innocent Babalu did not know why he was put out of the warm comfortable house.
Edmundo didn’t put Babalu out because of cruelness but, he realize later, it was just a way to get rid of the purring and...perhaps... ( part of the dreadful regret) the unconditional love that it represented. Babalu became the victim of a spontaneous reaction Edmundo could not control because it came from a deep seated punitive emotion established long ago. Edmundo had, without knowing why, renounce Babalu’s love. The night Edmundo carried the purring Babalu (he thought Edmundo’s touch was affectionate) to the door and put him out it was fifteen degrees below zero. Edmundo had mistakenly though Babalu would be okay because his fur would keep him warm. Years later Babalu’s warm fur and purring would haunt Edmundo. Leaving Edmundo confused and full of regret because he wasn’t a mean man and was, in a sense, as innocent as Babalu.
Babalu disappeared for a couple of days until one morning Edmundo’s father told him Babalu was by the side of the house. Edmundo went to look and found Babalu sitting in the bitter cold in a patch of bright winter sunshine, leaning against the house, to sick to move but the moment Babalu seen Edmundo- his friend- he started to purr. When Edmundo remember that moment later ( and the glorious winter day) it broke his heart and he was grief stricken and wept. Edmundo took Babalu to a veterinarian toId him that Babalu had an advance case of pneumonia, and couldn’t be saved. So the beloved ( Edmundo discover his love for Babalu that fateful day) Babalu was put to sleep. Ai Babalu ia a Babalu ia. It was a tragic end for the mystical innocent Babalu. But Edmundo was as innocent as Babalu because he was the helpless victim of a condition reaction and did not know, a simple thoughtlessness, would have such fatal consequences for Babalu.
Years later on a cold winter evening a neighbor knocked on Edmundo's door and told him she seen a mother carrying a kitten go under his porch. He looked under the porch and in the flashlight beam a cute white kitten was looking over a pile of rags. Edmundo knew when the real cold weather arrived the kitten would freeze to death. (Maybe he thought of that because of Babalu.) So he crawled under the porch got the kitten and took it in the house. He put the kitten, who could barely walk, by the open kitchen door and braced open the screen door.
It wasn’t long before the kittens mother looked in the door, then cautiously went to her kitten, and that is when Edmundo close the door, trapping her inside. Edmundo named the kitten Bucky Linn. Finding them homes would be another of his good deeds. And then he remembered what a recipient, of one of his good deeds had said in a letter to him, “...the giver becomes part of something vast and beautiful...”
Edmundo gave the little kitten Bucky Linn and her mother a lot of kindness that might have been to make up for what he didn’t give the mystical Babalu. They slept in a comfortable box next to the stove until Bucky Linn was weaned. Then Edmundo and a friend, Kimi Jackson, found Bucky Linn a home with a lawyer and his mother went to live with a couple on a farm. It was a happy ending for all. And the mystical sacred and artistic Babalu, watching from the memories of Edmundo’s mind, was proud of him and started to purr and Edmundo's regret vanish. Ai Babalu ia ai Babalu ia .
Orlando Lujan Martinez
Edmundo Serano is a gentle man, and a doer of good deeds, who is always looking for the opportunity to do another good deed. Edmundo, for the most part, is satisfied with life, and has learned to cope with its ups and downs, sad and happy moments, discouragement's, set backs and regrets. He found out that to forgive and forget is the best way to cope with these problems but one regret continued to haunt him for years after it happened. A regret he thought needed redemption and forgiveness from God before he could have peace of mind.
It-the recipient of Edmundos good deed and the cause of his regret- appeared one night as casually as a new snow fall. It- the happenstance-caused Edmundo such great sorrow that he would try not to think about it. When he did his eyes filled with tears of remorse. He sometimes thought he was to blame but then at other times wasn’t sure if he was to blame at all.
Rows of icicles hung from the gutters and gables of houses in the bitter cold snowy night A flume of frosted vapor, from a roof top vent, floated up into the crystal cloudless sky where a gorgeous white winter moon rested in the stars. When Edmundo returned from dinner, it was late in the evening and the streets were empty.
When Edmundo opened the front door he felt a little push against the bottom of the door. He looked down and seen a big gray Manx cat, with no tail, trying to push his head through the crack of the slightly opened front door. The cat wanted to get out of the cold so Edmundo opened the door and let the cat go in.
It was obvious, from the cats handsome well kept appearance, it came from a good home where it was well fed and loved. Edmundo wonder what kind of strange circumstances brought, by happenstance, this unusual cat to his door. Edmundo named him Babalu, a word from a Desi Arnez Cuban song. Ai Babalu ia a Babalu ia is a line he remembered from the song. Babalu means "holiness" if the Afro/ Cuban Santeria religion.
Babalu gracefully walked around the house, purring and rubbing against the furniture and Edmundo’s legs thanking him for bringing him out of the bitter cold. It was the loudest purr Edmundo had ever heard. It was the purr of a contented cat. Years later, through the mist of time, it occur to him that Babalu was mystical cat, and perhaps a messenger from other portals.
When Edmundo returned from work, the moment he set foot in the door there would be Babalu, in the same place every day, across the living room purring and rubbing against the couch. Edmundo guessed Babalu watched for his return from a window and then would go to greet him. He was perfectly content, peaceful and as Edmundo, recalled later, had a sacred and artistic nature.
One evening Edmundo sat in the cozy warmth of his house reading and listening to the song To Dream the Impossible Dream from the Broadway musical Man From la Mancha. Babalu purr loudly and rub against Edmundo's legs but on this evening Babalu’s loud purring and unconditional love annoyed Edmundo, for some strange reason, and the innocent Babalu became the recipient of that discontent. Edmundo (on the way to his regret) picked Babalu up, and remember the words he said forty years later, “Okay, okay, that’s enough,” and put him out into the bitter cold night. And alas, alas, the innocent Babalu did not know why he was put out of the warm comfortable house.
Edmundo didn’t put Babalu out because of cruelness but, he realize later, it was just a way to get rid of the purring and...perhaps... ( part of the dreadful regret) the unconditional love that it represented. Babalu became the victim of a spontaneous reaction Edmundo could not control because it came from a deep seated punitive emotion established long ago. Edmundo had, without knowing why, renounce Babalu’s love. The night Edmundo carried the purring Babalu (he thought Edmundo’s touch was affectionate) to the door and put him out it was fifteen degrees below zero. Edmundo had mistakenly though Babalu would be okay because his fur would keep him warm. Years later Babalu’s warm fur and purring would haunt Edmundo. Leaving Edmundo confused and full of regret because he wasn’t a mean man and was, in a sense, as innocent as Babalu.
Babalu disappeared for a couple of days until one morning Edmundo’s father told him Babalu was by the side of the house. Edmundo went to look and found Babalu sitting in the bitter cold in a patch of bright winter sunshine, leaning against the house, to sick to move but the moment Babalu seen Edmundo- his friend- he started to purr. When Edmundo remember that moment later ( and the glorious winter day) it broke his heart and he was grief stricken and wept. Edmundo took Babalu to a veterinarian toId him that Babalu had an advance case of pneumonia, and couldn’t be saved. So the beloved ( Edmundo discover his love for Babalu that fateful day) Babalu was put to sleep. Ai Babalu ia a Babalu ia. It was a tragic end for the mystical innocent Babalu. But Edmundo was as innocent as Babalu because he was the helpless victim of a condition reaction and did not know, a simple thoughtlessness, would have such fatal consequences for Babalu.
Years later on a cold winter evening a neighbor knocked on Edmundo's door and told him she seen a mother carrying a kitten go under his porch. He looked under the porch and in the flashlight beam a cute white kitten was looking over a pile of rags. Edmundo knew when the real cold weather arrived the kitten would freeze to death. (Maybe he thought of that because of Babalu.) So he crawled under the porch got the kitten and took it in the house. He put the kitten, who could barely walk, by the open kitchen door and braced open the screen door.
It wasn’t long before the kittens mother looked in the door, then cautiously went to her kitten, and that is when Edmundo close the door, trapping her inside. Edmundo named the kitten Bucky Linn. Finding them homes would be another of his good deeds. And then he remembered what a recipient, of one of his good deeds had said in a letter to him, “...the giver becomes part of something vast and beautiful...”
Edmundo gave the little kitten Bucky Linn and her mother a lot of kindness that might have been to make up for what he didn’t give the mystical Babalu. They slept in a comfortable box next to the stove until Bucky Linn was weaned. Then Edmundo and a friend, Kimi Jackson, found Bucky Linn a home with a lawyer and his mother went to live with a couple on a farm. It was a happy ending for all. And the mystical sacred and artistic Babalu, watching from the memories of Edmundo’s mind, was proud of him and started to purr and Edmundo's regret vanish. Ai Babalu ia ai Babalu ia .
Friday, November 21, 2008
The Accessories Of Wonder.
The Accessories of Wonderment
Orlando Lujan Martinez
Jane Goodall writes “Then there are the chimpanzee waterfall dances, which are a delight to witness. Sometimes a chimpanzee, usually an adult male will dance at a waterfall with total abandonment. Why? Could it be that it is a joyous response to being alive, or an expression of the chimpanzees awe of nature? Where, after all, might human spiritual impulses come from.“
Jane Goodall wonders whether these dances are indicative of religious behavior-precursors of religious ritual. She describes a chimpanzee approaching the falls, with slightly bristled hair, a sign of heightening arousal: As he gets closer, and the roar of the falling water gets louder, his paces quickens, his hair becomes fully erect, and upon reaching the stream performs a magnificent dance close to the foot of the falls. Standing up right, he sways rhythmically from foot to foot, stamping in the shallows, rushing water, picking up and throwing great rocks. This water fall dance may last ten or fifteen minutes. Chimpanzee also dance at the start of heavy rains and during violent gusts of winds.
Goodall asks: “Is it possible that these performances are stimulated by feelings akin to wonder, awe and spiritual impulses?” After a waterfall dance the performer may sit on a rock, eyes following the falling water perhaps wondering: What is it, this water? Waiting for the moment of relevant.
Through the application of mathematics science knows that water, a transparent liquid, is composed of oxygen and hydrogen, both gases and elements. Information the dancing Chimpanzee could not know. The Chimpanzee apparently thought the water was wonderment.
Through research done in philosophical mathematics scientists concluded that, the universe and world,so precisely constructed and perfectly balanced by gravity, electronic fields, neutrons, protons, particles, molecules, sunlight, water, air and the 103 elements that made earth and humans, was created by "intelligent design." i.e. a supreme deity (God to the believers)
The phenomena's of miracles, intuition, mental telepathy, autism, mysticism, love, logic, well-being, soul and heart and all other mystical magic emotions have escaped the scientists mathematic equations and remain inexplicable.
The spiritual wonder of the chimpanzees dance at the waterfall, spring and the silent beauty of a snowfall remain in the magical domain of mother nature and the spiritual Go
Orlando Lujan Martinez
Jane Goodall writes “Then there are the chimpanzee waterfall dances, which are a delight to witness. Sometimes a chimpanzee, usually an adult male will dance at a waterfall with total abandonment. Why? Could it be that it is a joyous response to being alive, or an expression of the chimpanzees awe of nature? Where, after all, might human spiritual impulses come from.“
Jane Goodall wonders whether these dances are indicative of religious behavior-precursors of religious ritual. She describes a chimpanzee approaching the falls, with slightly bristled hair, a sign of heightening arousal: As he gets closer, and the roar of the falling water gets louder, his paces quickens, his hair becomes fully erect, and upon reaching the stream performs a magnificent dance close to the foot of the falls. Standing up right, he sways rhythmically from foot to foot, stamping in the shallows, rushing water, picking up and throwing great rocks. This water fall dance may last ten or fifteen minutes. Chimpanzee also dance at the start of heavy rains and during violent gusts of winds.
Goodall asks: “Is it possible that these performances are stimulated by feelings akin to wonder, awe and spiritual impulses?” After a waterfall dance the performer may sit on a rock, eyes following the falling water perhaps wondering: What is it, this water? Waiting for the moment of relevant.
Through the application of mathematics science knows that water, a transparent liquid, is composed of oxygen and hydrogen, both gases and elements. Information the dancing Chimpanzee could not know. The Chimpanzee apparently thought the water was wonderment.
Through research done in philosophical mathematics scientists concluded that, the universe and world,so precisely constructed and perfectly balanced by gravity, electronic fields, neutrons, protons, particles, molecules, sunlight, water, air and the 103 elements that made earth and humans, was created by "intelligent design." i.e. a supreme deity (God to the believers)
The phenomena's of miracles, intuition, mental telepathy, autism, mysticism, love, logic, well-being, soul and heart and all other mystical magic emotions have escaped the scientists mathematic equations and remain inexplicable.
The spiritual wonder of the chimpanzees dance at the waterfall, spring and the silent beauty of a snowfall remain in the magical domain of mother nature and the spiritual Go
The East and West
Orlando Lujan Martinez
The East and West
The sage brush and bushes were bending in a stiff wind outside the "Last chance Truck Stop", 10 miles west of Walsenberg Colorado, when I stopped for a cup of coffee before driving over La Veta Pass into the San Luis Valley.(El Valle) I was on my way back to Albuquerque from Denver where I had been visiting friends. As I paid my bill, the waitress asked if I could give a man, who she indicated with a look, a ride to Fort Garland. I turned to see a small oriental man who looked friendly and interesting so I went up to inform him of his good fortune. You give ride,? he asked. Thank you. Wind velly hard. No can ride bike. Last two miles velly hard. I give you one dollar a mile. No problem, I told him, but I can't take your money because I'm going that direction anyway.
He introduced himself as Bu Fanzhou of Beijing China and gave me a business card indicating he was the director of the Overseas Development Center for China Sports Magazine. Lucky he knew some English because the only Chinese I knew was off the menu in a Chinese restaurant. Bu was a nice chap with an aura of serenity seldom found in North America. I was driving a station wagon so it was no problem to load his bicycle and side saddles into it. A sign on the bike read "Around the World, lets go" Since I am a writer I recognized my opportunity to cement a friendship between China, El Valle, and Albuquerque a hands across the ocean kind of deal, and write a story to boot. Ah so-lets go-I told him. We are very fortunate to meet each other. Me go Los Angeles Fanzhou said. Now me go Durango. Durango nice place? I told him that Durango was nice place but to many tourists.
We clipped out of the parking lot on the next gust of wind and headed for Fort Garland. Everything is okay now I told him as we drove up the windy highway. I knew this was going to be a interesting ride because Franzhou had told me, in velly broken English, he was a photo-journalist on his way to visit every city that hosted the summer Olympic games in the 20th century before ending his journey in Sidney, Australia, for the 2000 Games. He was coming from Atlanta Georgia, site of the 1996 Olympic Games on his way to Los Angeles the site of the 1960 games. From there he was going to Sidney Australia for the 2000 games.
What a catch I thought. I had to learn real quick like to understand him for this story. Here is what I pick up out of the tatters of his English. That America wonderful place. Colorado wonderful place. Americans wonderful people. Hey, I broke in. China wonderful country. Chinese wonderful people. He laugh ho ho. I laugh ho ho. We happy. Fort Garland l lets go I told him. When we got there he asked me to drive him to the Great Sand Dunes National Monument 30 miles out of my way. He thought I was on his payroll. No problem I told him you writer me writer. China America friends. Not like bad Iraq. He laugh. I laugh. He knew joke.
At the sand dunes he took a lot of pictures and I could see he was a professional. Stooping, moving from side to side to catch the right angle. The Beautiful Sangre de Cristo Mountains towered over the sand dunes as the sun set. Sunset he said and laughed like it was a new word. We stopped to take pictures of some deer by the road. Deer lovely he say and I say deer our friends. We smile knowingly at each other and deer with peaceful eyes kept feeding in the serenity of our understanding.
On the way back to Fort Garland we talked about the invasion of China in 1932 and the following 13 years of war. Actually 16 years when you add the 3 year war between the communist and Chiang Kai-shek nationalists. At one point he asked me, "you like Japanese?" With just a hint of suspicion. Feeling me out. Probably remembering the rape of Nanking and a few other vicious war crimes by the Japanese, and I said magnanimously, I like everyone. No matter what color or nation. And he said you talk like man in the sky. One of those charming, unexpected, compliments that stay with you for a long time.
Fanzhou said, I sing you Chinese song . The melody was pleasant and I was pleased to hear the song in light of the fact that I never could have imagined being sung to in Chinese, on a road going through the San Luis Valley, in the interior of North America. Fanzhou Pu sang two songs and interpreted part of the second. They were not, I could tell from the two lines he interpreted , about the frantic love that much of America songs are about. Fanzhou said that the song was about two sweethearts who were separated by circumstances beyond there control and the man, who was in another town, is singing to her "There is no post office in this town. So I write you a letter on a cloud in the sky."
Then I sang the "Waltzing Mathtilda " the informal national anthem of Australia, which I knew would be the last stop of his journey. Fanzhou Pu clapped along as I sang. He happy. Me happy as I drove with my new friend across the homeland of my ancestors under the grand star studded sky of the El Valle de San Luis, the head lights cutting through the darkness, and beyond the horizon of the night Fanzhou homeland, ancient red robed China lying in the sunlight. The East and the West had met on a peaceful night. It was getting late so I say me hungry now. Me too Franzhou say. We go eat. I would like to offer you dinner. You generous friend. So we went to Alamosa, ate some Italian food, and then I found him a motel. We sat in his room talking for awhile. When I got ready to leave he put $80 on the table and said it was for me. I told him that I did not want the money because I did want to turn our pleasant time together into a commercial transaction. He looked a little befuddled so I told him you writer, me writer. America and Chinese friends so I do not want money. At this point he got a little insistent, pushing the money into my hand. I figured it was some kind of cultural thing so I finally took the money rather than disturb him any further.
I breezed up the valley full of spaghetti and Chinese memories, and carrying the burden of those eighty dollars. I got a room in the old Palace hotel in Antonito. From my room I could see the tree peaks of Los Mogote's resting in the night.
In the morning I went to see my friend Father Felix Lopez, the pastor of the Our Lady of Guadalupe, the Oldest Church in Colorado. We sat in the kitchen of the Theatine seminary house in Antonito talking about how everyone was always talking about God. Just talking and not doing. God this. God that. God talked to me last night. How they had seen God come around the corner of a shed one night and just kept right being sinners. We agreed that some people have forgotten how be generous, sensitive and caring. Yes, a bunch of hypocrites, probably me included and maybe Fanzhou. Who knows? Who's perfect?
I told him the story Fanzhou and as I approached the part about the money it became perfectly clear this tale would end up to be a story of caring and giving, like a letter on a cloud in the sky. He gave me $80 I told Father Felix but all I wanted was the happy memory, nothing else, and I put my burden, the $80 on the table, "Here give it to the poor". There are many people out of work they will be happy to revive this the good Father said. I smile now as I write about it. God happy. Father Felix happy. The poor happy. Me happy. Franzhou happy. The East, El Valle and Albuquerque have met.
The East and West
The sage brush and bushes were bending in a stiff wind outside the "Last chance Truck Stop", 10 miles west of Walsenberg Colorado, when I stopped for a cup of coffee before driving over La Veta Pass into the San Luis Valley.(El Valle) I was on my way back to Albuquerque from Denver where I had been visiting friends. As I paid my bill, the waitress asked if I could give a man, who she indicated with a look, a ride to Fort Garland. I turned to see a small oriental man who looked friendly and interesting so I went up to inform him of his good fortune. You give ride,? he asked. Thank you. Wind velly hard. No can ride bike. Last two miles velly hard. I give you one dollar a mile. No problem, I told him, but I can't take your money because I'm going that direction anyway.
He introduced himself as Bu Fanzhou of Beijing China and gave me a business card indicating he was the director of the Overseas Development Center for China Sports Magazine. Lucky he knew some English because the only Chinese I knew was off the menu in a Chinese restaurant. Bu was a nice chap with an aura of serenity seldom found in North America. I was driving a station wagon so it was no problem to load his bicycle and side saddles into it. A sign on the bike read "Around the World, lets go" Since I am a writer I recognized my opportunity to cement a friendship between China, El Valle, and Albuquerque a hands across the ocean kind of deal, and write a story to boot. Ah so-lets go-I told him. We are very fortunate to meet each other. Me go Los Angeles Fanzhou said. Now me go Durango. Durango nice place? I told him that Durango was nice place but to many tourists.
We clipped out of the parking lot on the next gust of wind and headed for Fort Garland. Everything is okay now I told him as we drove up the windy highway. I knew this was going to be a interesting ride because Franzhou had told me, in velly broken English, he was a photo-journalist on his way to visit every city that hosted the summer Olympic games in the 20th century before ending his journey in Sidney, Australia, for the 2000 Games. He was coming from Atlanta Georgia, site of the 1996 Olympic Games on his way to Los Angeles the site of the 1960 games. From there he was going to Sidney Australia for the 2000 games.
What a catch I thought. I had to learn real quick like to understand him for this story. Here is what I pick up out of the tatters of his English. That America wonderful place. Colorado wonderful place. Americans wonderful people. Hey, I broke in. China wonderful country. Chinese wonderful people. He laugh ho ho. I laugh ho ho. We happy. Fort Garland l lets go I told him. When we got there he asked me to drive him to the Great Sand Dunes National Monument 30 miles out of my way. He thought I was on his payroll. No problem I told him you writer me writer. China America friends. Not like bad Iraq. He laugh. I laugh. He knew joke.
At the sand dunes he took a lot of pictures and I could see he was a professional. Stooping, moving from side to side to catch the right angle. The Beautiful Sangre de Cristo Mountains towered over the sand dunes as the sun set. Sunset he said and laughed like it was a new word. We stopped to take pictures of some deer by the road. Deer lovely he say and I say deer our friends. We smile knowingly at each other and deer with peaceful eyes kept feeding in the serenity of our understanding.
On the way back to Fort Garland we talked about the invasion of China in 1932 and the following 13 years of war. Actually 16 years when you add the 3 year war between the communist and Chiang Kai-shek nationalists. At one point he asked me, "you like Japanese?" With just a hint of suspicion. Feeling me out. Probably remembering the rape of Nanking and a few other vicious war crimes by the Japanese, and I said magnanimously, I like everyone. No matter what color or nation. And he said you talk like man in the sky. One of those charming, unexpected, compliments that stay with you for a long time.
Fanzhou said, I sing you Chinese song . The melody was pleasant and I was pleased to hear the song in light of the fact that I never could have imagined being sung to in Chinese, on a road going through the San Luis Valley, in the interior of North America. Fanzhou Pu sang two songs and interpreted part of the second. They were not, I could tell from the two lines he interpreted , about the frantic love that much of America songs are about. Fanzhou said that the song was about two sweethearts who were separated by circumstances beyond there control and the man, who was in another town, is singing to her "There is no post office in this town. So I write you a letter on a cloud in the sky."
Then I sang the "Waltzing Mathtilda " the informal national anthem of Australia, which I knew would be the last stop of his journey. Fanzhou Pu clapped along as I sang. He happy. Me happy as I drove with my new friend across the homeland of my ancestors under the grand star studded sky of the El Valle de San Luis, the head lights cutting through the darkness, and beyond the horizon of the night Fanzhou homeland, ancient red robed China lying in the sunlight. The East and the West had met on a peaceful night. It was getting late so I say me hungry now. Me too Franzhou say. We go eat. I would like to offer you dinner. You generous friend. So we went to Alamosa, ate some Italian food, and then I found him a motel. We sat in his room talking for awhile. When I got ready to leave he put $80 on the table and said it was for me. I told him that I did not want the money because I did want to turn our pleasant time together into a commercial transaction. He looked a little befuddled so I told him you writer, me writer. America and Chinese friends so I do not want money. At this point he got a little insistent, pushing the money into my hand. I figured it was some kind of cultural thing so I finally took the money rather than disturb him any further.
I breezed up the valley full of spaghetti and Chinese memories, and carrying the burden of those eighty dollars. I got a room in the old Palace hotel in Antonito. From my room I could see the tree peaks of Los Mogote's resting in the night.
In the morning I went to see my friend Father Felix Lopez, the pastor of the Our Lady of Guadalupe, the Oldest Church in Colorado. We sat in the kitchen of the Theatine seminary house in Antonito talking about how everyone was always talking about God. Just talking and not doing. God this. God that. God talked to me last night. How they had seen God come around the corner of a shed one night and just kept right being sinners. We agreed that some people have forgotten how be generous, sensitive and caring. Yes, a bunch of hypocrites, probably me included and maybe Fanzhou. Who knows? Who's perfect?
I told him the story Fanzhou and as I approached the part about the money it became perfectly clear this tale would end up to be a story of caring and giving, like a letter on a cloud in the sky. He gave me $80 I told Father Felix but all I wanted was the happy memory, nothing else, and I put my burden, the $80 on the table, "Here give it to the poor". There are many people out of work they will be happy to revive this the good Father said. I smile now as I write about it. God happy. Father Felix happy. The poor happy. Me happy. Franzhou happy. The East, El Valle and Albuquerque have met.
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Clinb Out Into Air
Orlando Lujan Martinez
6020 Kathryn Ave. SE # 16
Albuquerque NM 97108
Climb Out Into the Air
"He will meet us in the air"- Matthew 24
Buddha explains no thing arises without cause, there is no uncaused cause. Some people believe the appearance of miraculous and astounding individuals are caused by the God given spiritual soul i.e. the vital creative benevolent principle in the emotions, and actions of humans. The word soul is used in a secular manner to describe the exceptional: soul food, soul music, soul kisses, soul mate and soul brother. Soul implies that the object of its attention is outstanding and the very essence of good.
Joseph Conrad writes: “A human that is born falls into a dream like a human who falls into the sea and spends its life trying to climb out into the air.“ The faithful believe the soul/spirit can lift them out of the sea. But because the soul resides in the invisible subconscious mind, what we presume to know about it will always be a supposition and a mystery until it is personally felt. The soul shows us the marvelous and mystical underpinnings of reality and make us wonder.
Some people are blessed with soul, unknowingly, and it is the events of history that chooses the time of their appearance. Some of these people are Muhammad Ali, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Cesar Chavez, Sophia and Hans Scholl- German martyrs executed by the Nazis in 1941. Sophia Scholl knows the soul when she writes about pressing her face to an apple tree, “Could it be I hear a secret throbbing. I press my face to the trees dusky warm bark, and think, My Homeland, and I am so expressively graceful.”
In the soul song requiem,Wind Under My Wings, Pattie LaBell sings to her departed sister, Jackie. LaBell tells her sister, in an voice soaring with soul, You ‘re the wind under my wings, Jackie, and in another line, Did you ever know you ‘re my hero. They are words of love sang for the listening soul of her sister and as a message, a reminder, to the listeners that if they love someone to tell them that before it’s to late. Pattie LaBell sings: Life is not about money or fame: it’s about soul.
Other soul songs with lyrical distinctive messages of love, hope and revolution are, Starry Night , a song about Vincent Van Gogh, Bridge Over Trouble Waters, Blowin' in the Wind; Sing by Barbara Streisand; We Shall Over Come and the mournful Taps that honors the fallen. The music is wonderful but it is the words of songs that captures the heart and soul, enriches life and makes them special. Modern soul songs of this nature are as vital and important as great literature.
Maya Lin gives “cause” when she said the Vietnam Memorial Wall was conceptualized to be completed by the thoughts and the feelings-meaning sorrow and love- that the people brought to it. It is a way of saying that once we can confront and go beyond death, we find renewed life. When the mourners look into the polished black granite of the wall they can see their faces, with the names of the honored dead cast over them, and at that moment they become part of the mystic and magic soulful essence of Vietnam Memorial Wall.
Maya Lin's’ soul, the souls of the mourners and the dead are imbued in the spirituality (soul) radiating from the Vietnam Memorial Wall. It is a memorial that honors the men and women who were killed in vain in sorrow of the Vietnam War. It is an antiwar memorial that does not glorify war nor the state.
When Buddha explains: no thing arises without cause, there is no uncaused cause- what Buddha is saying is that there is no happenstance or miracles because everything has cause. Einstein said the universe was not created by accident i.e. had cause.
There was confirmation the souls presence at the opening ceremonies of the 1996 Atlanta Georgia Olympic games. Where a full stadium and millions of television viewers watched as the torch bearer, Muhammad Ali, a beloved American hero, climbed the stadium stairs, in the radiant aura of his soul and truth, to light the Olympic flame.
The name of the torch carrier was not announced but everyone knew instantly who it was and a wave of wonder swept the stadium. “It’s Muhammad Ali.” they said in amazed voices, some with tears of joy in their eyes, as a huge cheer rose from crowd into the night sky. Such honor and adoration has no been accorded to many men or women. Muhammad Ali is a honored legacy of the Civil Rights era, the struggle to stop the Vietnam War and the history of our land. He is a national treasure.
It is said no narcissistic human can reflect the love and the bidding of the soul. Marilyn Monroe had fame, fortune, and bueaty-the temporary possessions of a secular life-and was still unfulfilled and went looking for love in all the wrong places. Marilyn had trouble in identifying herself even when looking in a mirror.
Marilyn, like most of us, was searching for her soul. Marilyn did not have heroes, beliefs, faith or mentors wise enough to interrupt her plunge into the hell of drugs and fractured identity. She had lost the beat, crucial to keeping her song in rhythm, and was a magicians trick. Did President John F. Kennedy sense this when he introduced her at his birthday celebration as the late Marilyn Monroe, three months before she committed suicide. Spiritually dead she died alone one night in a drug induced frantic flight from the emotion pain of herself and a reality that had become a demon.
The reason for Marilyn Monroe sadness is expressed in the lyrics of a Cole Porter Lorenz Harts song, Spring is Here: Spring is here why doesn't it delight me / Spring is here why doesn't it excite me / Maybe its because nobody loves me.
But she died redeemed and standing up to be counted. Marilyn Monroe last picture was The Misfits. A movie about a woman who teams up with three men to capture wild horses. The movie moves pleasantly along with Marilyn not knowing the fate of the horses they had captured.
Until the day she innocently asked one of the men, Clark Gable, where they were going to take the captured horses and he replied they were going to be sold for dog food. Marilyn immediately came unhinged and cried. “Oh, no!!.” “Why didn’t you tell me !!’ jumps up and runs into a field barren of foliage, turns with her knees together, hand grasped in front of them, face contorted with anguish, and her body bent over in emotional pain and cried in despair, “Murderers.!! Murderers!!” at the startled men. Sending the message that a horrible crime was being committed. A crime against the humanity of the soul.
There she was a narcissistic women-thought of as sex symbol, and the late Marilyn Monroe-emotionally alive, vibrant and dazzling in her protestation of the coming deaths of the innocent horses and against a world she did not understand. Marilyn's performance was so passionate and authentic that one could conceive that it was the real Marilyn Monroe on that barren field doing what the soul asks of a compassionate soulful women.
The soul, the integrity and nobleness in humans, is described in Arthur Koester book, Darkness at Noon. He writes about the courageous, and doomed (many were executed the next day), communist prisoners who proudly sang the communist anthem The International , from a upper cell blocks of a fascist prison during the Spanish Civil War, as they waited to be executed. They truly believed that communism would eradicate poverty and courageously gave their lives for that cause.
And I cannot take leave at this moment because it is essential to my soul that I write-in remembrance-about Bartolomeo Vanzetti and Nicolo Sacco, Italian immigrants and anarchist who were executed in 1929, for a crime they did not commit, by the state of Massachusetts. In his last letter, expressed in wonderful words that are intrinsic to the soul, Bartolomeo Vanzetti shows he understanding the mythic meaning of their martyrdom: “If it had not been for these things(the trial,death sentence and innocents ) I might have live my life talking on street corners to scorning men. I might have died. unmarked, unknown, a failure. Now we ( meaning his codefendant Nicolo Sacco) are not a failure. This is our career and our triumph. Never in my full life could we hope to do such good work for tolerance, for justice, for man’s understanding of man as we do now by accident. Our words-our lives, our pains-nothing. The taking of our lives-lives of a good shoe maker and a poor fish peddler -all. The last moments belong to us-that agony is our triumph.”
And with those finale words, imbued with soul, Bartolomeo Vanzetti reaches down, from the freedom of air, to pull others out of the sea.
There are children dying of starvation in Kenya. Come join us in saving them. The Christian Children Fund number is 1-800-776-6767. Give and be blessed. It will be good for your soul.
6020 Kathryn Ave. SE # 16
Albuquerque NM 97108
Climb Out Into the Air
"He will meet us in the air"- Matthew 24
Buddha explains no thing arises without cause, there is no uncaused cause. Some people believe the appearance of miraculous and astounding individuals are caused by the God given spiritual soul i.e. the vital creative benevolent principle in the emotions, and actions of humans. The word soul is used in a secular manner to describe the exceptional: soul food, soul music, soul kisses, soul mate and soul brother. Soul implies that the object of its attention is outstanding and the very essence of good.
Joseph Conrad writes: “A human that is born falls into a dream like a human who falls into the sea and spends its life trying to climb out into the air.“ The faithful believe the soul/spirit can lift them out of the sea. But because the soul resides in the invisible subconscious mind, what we presume to know about it will always be a supposition and a mystery until it is personally felt. The soul shows us the marvelous and mystical underpinnings of reality and make us wonder.
Some people are blessed with soul, unknowingly, and it is the events of history that chooses the time of their appearance. Some of these people are Muhammad Ali, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Cesar Chavez, Sophia and Hans Scholl- German martyrs executed by the Nazis in 1941. Sophia Scholl knows the soul when she writes about pressing her face to an apple tree, “Could it be I hear a secret throbbing. I press my face to the trees dusky warm bark, and think, My Homeland, and I am so expressively graceful.”
In the soul song requiem,Wind Under My Wings, Pattie LaBell sings to her departed sister, Jackie. LaBell tells her sister, in an voice soaring with soul, You ‘re the wind under my wings, Jackie, and in another line, Did you ever know you ‘re my hero. They are words of love sang for the listening soul of her sister and as a message, a reminder, to the listeners that if they love someone to tell them that before it’s to late. Pattie LaBell sings: Life is not about money or fame: it’s about soul.
Other soul songs with lyrical distinctive messages of love, hope and revolution are, Starry Night , a song about Vincent Van Gogh, Bridge Over Trouble Waters, Blowin' in the Wind; Sing by Barbara Streisand; We Shall Over Come and the mournful Taps that honors the fallen. The music is wonderful but it is the words of songs that captures the heart and soul, enriches life and makes them special. Modern soul songs of this nature are as vital and important as great literature.
Maya Lin gives “cause” when she said the Vietnam Memorial Wall was conceptualized to be completed by the thoughts and the feelings-meaning sorrow and love- that the people brought to it. It is a way of saying that once we can confront and go beyond death, we find renewed life. When the mourners look into the polished black granite of the wall they can see their faces, with the names of the honored dead cast over them, and at that moment they become part of the mystic and magic soulful essence of Vietnam Memorial Wall.
Maya Lin's’ soul, the souls of the mourners and the dead are imbued in the spirituality (soul) radiating from the Vietnam Memorial Wall. It is a memorial that honors the men and women who were killed in vain in sorrow of the Vietnam War. It is an antiwar memorial that does not glorify war nor the state.
When Buddha explains: no thing arises without cause, there is no uncaused cause- what Buddha is saying is that there is no happenstance or miracles because everything has cause. Einstein said the universe was not created by accident i.e. had cause.
There was confirmation the souls presence at the opening ceremonies of the 1996 Atlanta Georgia Olympic games. Where a full stadium and millions of television viewers watched as the torch bearer, Muhammad Ali, a beloved American hero, climbed the stadium stairs, in the radiant aura of his soul and truth, to light the Olympic flame.
The name of the torch carrier was not announced but everyone knew instantly who it was and a wave of wonder swept the stadium. “It’s Muhammad Ali.” they said in amazed voices, some with tears of joy in their eyes, as a huge cheer rose from crowd into the night sky. Such honor and adoration has no been accorded to many men or women. Muhammad Ali is a honored legacy of the Civil Rights era, the struggle to stop the Vietnam War and the history of our land. He is a national treasure.
It is said no narcissistic human can reflect the love and the bidding of the soul. Marilyn Monroe had fame, fortune, and bueaty-the temporary possessions of a secular life-and was still unfulfilled and went looking for love in all the wrong places. Marilyn had trouble in identifying herself even when looking in a mirror.
Marilyn, like most of us, was searching for her soul. Marilyn did not have heroes, beliefs, faith or mentors wise enough to interrupt her plunge into the hell of drugs and fractured identity. She had lost the beat, crucial to keeping her song in rhythm, and was a magicians trick. Did President John F. Kennedy sense this when he introduced her at his birthday celebration as the late Marilyn Monroe, three months before she committed suicide. Spiritually dead she died alone one night in a drug induced frantic flight from the emotion pain of herself and a reality that had become a demon.
The reason for Marilyn Monroe sadness is expressed in the lyrics of a Cole Porter Lorenz Harts song, Spring is Here: Spring is here why doesn't it delight me / Spring is here why doesn't it excite me / Maybe its because nobody loves me.
But she died redeemed and standing up to be counted. Marilyn Monroe last picture was The Misfits. A movie about a woman who teams up with three men to capture wild horses. The movie moves pleasantly along with Marilyn not knowing the fate of the horses they had captured.
Until the day she innocently asked one of the men, Clark Gable, where they were going to take the captured horses and he replied they were going to be sold for dog food. Marilyn immediately came unhinged and cried. “Oh, no!!.” “Why didn’t you tell me !!’ jumps up and runs into a field barren of foliage, turns with her knees together, hand grasped in front of them, face contorted with anguish, and her body bent over in emotional pain and cried in despair, “Murderers.!! Murderers!!” at the startled men. Sending the message that a horrible crime was being committed. A crime against the humanity of the soul.
There she was a narcissistic women-thought of as sex symbol, and the late Marilyn Monroe-emotionally alive, vibrant and dazzling in her protestation of the coming deaths of the innocent horses and against a world she did not understand. Marilyn's performance was so passionate and authentic that one could conceive that it was the real Marilyn Monroe on that barren field doing what the soul asks of a compassionate soulful women.
The soul, the integrity and nobleness in humans, is described in Arthur Koester book, Darkness at Noon. He writes about the courageous, and doomed (many were executed the next day), communist prisoners who proudly sang the communist anthem The International , from a upper cell blocks of a fascist prison during the Spanish Civil War, as they waited to be executed. They truly believed that communism would eradicate poverty and courageously gave their lives for that cause.
And I cannot take leave at this moment because it is essential to my soul that I write-in remembrance-about Bartolomeo Vanzetti and Nicolo Sacco, Italian immigrants and anarchist who were executed in 1929, for a crime they did not commit, by the state of Massachusetts. In his last letter, expressed in wonderful words that are intrinsic to the soul, Bartolomeo Vanzetti shows he understanding the mythic meaning of their martyrdom: “If it had not been for these things(the trial,death sentence and innocents ) I might have live my life talking on street corners to scorning men. I might have died. unmarked, unknown, a failure. Now we ( meaning his codefendant Nicolo Sacco) are not a failure. This is our career and our triumph. Never in my full life could we hope to do such good work for tolerance, for justice, for man’s understanding of man as we do now by accident. Our words-our lives, our pains-nothing. The taking of our lives-lives of a good shoe maker and a poor fish peddler -all. The last moments belong to us-that agony is our triumph.”
And with those finale words, imbued with soul, Bartolomeo Vanzetti reaches down, from the freedom of air, to pull others out of the sea.
There are children dying of starvation in Kenya. Come join us in saving them. The Christian Children Fund number is 1-800-776-6767. Give and be blessed. It will be good for your soul.
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