#12--Of Angels and Dreams

Here ithey are...Challenging and imposing: The Blank Page, my sense of responsibility and having no idea of what to write about... Let me tell you about a woman I met this week. I went down to the cafeteria at work looking for frozen yogurt. Mercedes, the cashier, kindly as usual, helped me fill my little cup because my non-functioning hand can't be bothered with daily stuff as this. While Mercedes and I were trying to figure out how I could handle carrying cane and dessert with one hand all by myself, a lady in line offered to help me to my desk . Mercedes (Meche) has practice and experience with me, since frequently enough she and Sylvia, the other cashier, get my coffee and morning pastry ready in such a way that I can manage walking with my breakfast wrapped in bags, in a way that I can walk with my cane and carry my goodies back to my desk without spilling my drink. After my stroke, I'm no stranger to human kindness from the most unusual sources. So once again, I remembered the importance of humility and the value in accepting help, and I allowed this person whom I had never met to bring my yogurt to my desk. She told me she lost her husband Carroll to Lou Ghering's some years ago and that she tries to make it a point to help people with limitations such as myself when she gets a chance. I told her that for that moment I saw her as an angel and that I was grateful. When she asked if she could help me with anything else, I just said feeling the tears coming into my eyes, to please pray for me and my healing, as I tend to do now when I have conversations like these with virtual strangers. A couple of days later she walked with me again and gave me a beautiful rosary with wood beads that I received with due humility. What an offering! What a privilege to someone like me, for so many years an atheist, to receive the grace of this wonderful gift. Thank you, Liza Nelson. I treasure it with reverence, and see it as a conspiratorial wink from God. My dream? It was wonderful. Sunday morning I woke after dreaming that my left hand was finally again under my command. I was in uncontrollable tears. I called my mother to tell her that I would start the day working with both hands a-flutter and happy over my keyboard. Coincidence? I choose to believe not...

Post #11 -- A Fragment of My Psyche

This past week I went to see a movie produced by Spain, Mexico and France in Spanish titled "También la lluvia" (Even the Rain) about a movie director Sebastián (played by Gael García Bernal) who travels with his cast and crew to Cochabamba, Bolivia, because his producer, one Spaniard by the name of Costa (Luis Tosar), somehow has figured out that his tight budget will stretch further in Bolivia where apparently he can get extras for the movie for about two dollars each a day.

The movie is set in 2000, before the the named Water Wars in Bolivia are about to start and when the population will resist and fight against the privatization of water.

Sebastián is directing a movie about the New World around 1511, movie that aspires to be faithful to historic events and attempts to portray the manner in which the Spanish Crown through the likes of Cristopher Columbus, Bartolomé de las Casas and Agustín Montesinos dealt with the indigenous population of the new continent.

So we see the filming of Indians being burned at the stake refusing the acceptance of the Christian principles as presented by the Spaniards who immediately began demanding everything gold and total submission.

Another heartbreaking scene that is unable to be filmed for Sebastián's movie has us witness how the Spaniards follow a group of Indians, among them many women with their infants in arms, as they are being pursued by the Europeans and their hounds and when facing death, the mothers choose to drown their babies before leaving them for the dogs. The Indian "actresses" hired for this scene refuse to do it, even after Sebastián and his crew try to explain to them that the babies would not even get wet and they show the women the dolls that they would submerge in the water. It seems that historically this is what happened. The "actresses" cannot bring themselves to do it and that moment ends with one of them quite tenderly beginning to sing a lullaby to calm the crying babies.

Daniel is one of the Indians that has an important role to play in the movie as Hatuey, a rebellious Taíno Indian. But Daniel, the actor, is also a committed political activist that is an ouspoken and courageous leader against the privatization of water in Cochabamba 2000.

For me this movie hits home. As a Latin American, as a mestiza, I know that the blood that courses through my veins is Indian and European, specifically Spaniard. I don't care about which might be more dominant. It would be counternatural to deny either. I hurt for the Indians and wonder about the willingness with which they forego all their riches for some pieces of looking glass and shiny stones, how willingly we embraced another culture, language and religion. Maybe we resisted but in any manner I lost that part of who I am. I don't know much about the Indians, I don't know any of their languages. From the Spaniards I have the beautiful language I speak, the beautiful books I read, and though I've never been to their peninsula, and I know my life is forever linked to them, I would never call Spain my "Motherland," because the cost paid by the indigenous peoples from where I come was a high one indeed.

So, that made me think that this "resentment," if I can call it that, is too old to carry around without acknowledging it. I hope that by doing that, the 21st century Margarita I am now can be liberated of this opressing past, and as a civilized human being I can embrace any member of the human race and call myself their sister without worrying if they came from the east or west of the Atlantic Ocean.

I really liked Luis Tosar, the guy who plays the producer Costa, as well as Juan Carlos Aduvuri, the actor who portrays Daniel/Hatuey. They both show depth, feeling, intensity and the contradictions of the land and the ocean that divide them.

Post #10 -- Me, at the Movies

Okay, so I’m one of the rare people that has the uncommon privilege of sometimes flexing at work and being able to leave work some Fridays at one. When that happens I’m a lazy bum. I rarely do anything that one might consider productive for a working wife and mother. Me? I choose to go to the movies.

Trust me, there is something to be said about being at the movies by yourself. I know the movie theater is a very loud space, but I find it to be an almost private, quiet and silent place. This allows for me to be in a mode of reflection and escape.

I usually have to ask for help and I’m escorted with my soda and my nachos to my place. And then I escape for a couple of hours far away from my routines, the demands of my everyday life and I almost can forget about my cane and my weakened body.

Most times the movies do what they’re supposed to do: entertain me, at times even chuckle, maybe show me things I can appreciate like fashion, beautiful faraway destinations I dream of visiting and pretty people. But then you have the movies that touch your soul.

These are the movies I like to comment on. So, this past weekend I finally got to see "Biutiful".

I wouldn’t say it’s a movie for escape, because it doesn’t take you to a lighter place than yours…You know, where the homes you see are nicer than yours, where people are beautiful and look good even sweating or even when they cry, and in general, live a life with more means than you. Well, "Biutiful" speaks from the other side of the spectrum of light, prosperity and beauty.

You’re in Europe which evokes images of art, history, museums and beauty. But it shocks you because you’re taken into the life of a dying man, living on the outskirts of his society, who is caring for his two kids, and to top it he’s psychic and his bipolar and addicted wife comes and goes from their lives. The “hero” (Javier Bardem) is not a hero in the sense that Tom Cruise or Harrison Ford are heroes in our American movies. This man, Uxbal, deals in human trafficking, is full of contradictions and faces moral dilemmas he tries to resolve as he lives his last days. And it hurts to see the wretched lives from which he profits.

In spite of all the poverty you witness, the squalid places we, as humans, are able to call home, the activities we dare do to generate some bills to survive, the luminosity, the grace in this movie, if any, is that our humanity stubbornly shines through. Be it in the Chinese men and women that work in the sweatshops and construction industry or the African guys that sell knockoff designer bags on the streets where tourists conglomerate unaware of the dark underbelly of this incredible city they visit.

The movie paces slow and gives you no respite, not even when Mateo and Ana, Uxbal’s kids, smile and try their best at just being kids. Not even then because you're aware of that underlying threat that something more awful will eventually happen.

I didn't get a bit of relief until towards the end of the movie when I was able to cry the sadness I was feeling, when Uxbal holds on to his Ana with all his strength and asks his ten-year-old daughter to please not forget about him.

I know that this type of story is probably true and real in all urban places of our planet, be it New York, L.A., Mexico City, Sao Paulo, or wherever. I’ve always heard and known about the beauty of the city where "Biutiful" happens, but I left feeling that I really don’t need to visit Barcelona before I die.

Post #9 -- Justin: My Valentina's Crush

This past week Justin Bieber turned 17. I know this because I was informed by Valentina that Justin was born on a Tuesday (“Just like me, mommy!”). On that day I wore a purple sweater. I explained to Valentina that I didn’t wear it to “honor” him, but to make her happy since the day before she had been Facebooking for everyone to wear purple on March 1. Besides, I didn’t want to be the cause of her morning pout.

I admit I can see how very cute the kid is. He was adorable at two when pounding on his toy drum set. What mother can resist his baby cuteness? I will say that my baby was way cuter but I’m big enough to admit that The Biebs was cute from the get-go. I tell Valentina he’s so pretty he could be a girl.

Anyway, I get fiercely defensive about Valentina and her crush. I tell her father to just let her be when he shows signs of getting sick and tired.

Valentina has NINE posters of Bieber on a wall of her bedroom. When she was a little girl (how I miss her!) she was into The Cheetah Girls, even Miley, and most recently Selena Gomez (not anymore because she “stole” Justin from her).

Her posters made me remember my dad’s reaction when I started with my crushes. In my day, it was all about Juan Gabriel, Julio Iglesias, Camilo Sesto, Sandro, Raphael and Emmanuel. They were very famous in Mexico in the late seventies and eighties. And I had their posters on the wall of my room. Until the day my dad walked in saw my lineup of famous hotties and without saying a word tore them off my wall. I was very saddened but he was my law and ultimately, the one I wanted most to please. I guess he had a hard time accepting that his Tita was growing up and no longer just his little girl.

Somewhere in my heart I know I can’t do that to Valentina. I don’t want to encourage her to be star struck. To the contrary, I want her to know how inaccessible these famous people are. I want her to know that getting to meet Justin is as probable as me winning the lottery and not living in debt. But her heart is also involved and I believe all these feelings over The Biebs are a natural part of her transitioning into adolescence. So this is what I honor when admiring her posters and her purple shirts and phone wallpaper, and the Justin music she constantly listens to on her phone. I even helped her think (hopefully with some semblance of objectivity) through the points she argued with one Nicholas Jacques on Facebook and whom suddenly stopped the debate when Valentina questioned the “artistic value” of Britney Spears, whom apparently he really likes. We're still waiting on his reply.

Any time I tell Valentina about the possibility of Justin knowing that she likes him, what does she tell me? Mommy, NEVER SAY NEVER!