CORPOREAL TOPOGRAPHY (OR, SIMPLY, INTOXICATED POETRY) –– This ante meridiem a northern New Jersey drunkard stopped in front of "my" table––my usual spot at a local café––and informed me, fellow addict of another substance (caffeine): "You look like you could be from New York City or Bayonne. Maybe you're from Guttenberg, but I can't see your legs." My (legless, yet migratory) body as ethnoscape.

I don't know how historically––or even culturally––accurate this entertainer's claim is ("El único chino que canta en español"), but I'm certainly willing to believe this amusing Central American dose of orientalism. (Window display from La Pupusa Loca #1 | West New York, NJ)

Whoa!!! I don't know how I feel about this universalist approach to racism Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez takes in her blog regarding "Sonia Sotomayor's Ignorant Comments." She calls the New York judge a racist for her "wise Latina woman" assessment, and I am not sure if she's opposing Sotomayor's nomination based entirely on this nugget. In an academic context, Sotomayor's stance would be posited as "essentialist." Paradoxically, Valdes-Rodriguez also falls under this same essentialist trap: that she can spot or be more sensitive, to use her own phraseology, to "stupid things different groups say about each other," just because she is a Cuban and Irish American "mestiza" (as though "unmixed" racialized others like "brown" Latinas and Latinos would not be privy to this kind of outlook). U.S. Latinas and Latinos would grasp such an amalgamation as Valdes-Rodriguez's as "mestizaje," though she seems to regard her mixture as more (nearsightedly) exceptional because of its immediate, locatable ties to "whiteness." Sotomayor and Obama are seemingly in conversation insofar as they both seem to be inviting an ethical approach to the U.S. Constitution. As an ethical call, this approach seems more like a "judicial rhetoric of care," where certain aspects of one's biography can inform the judicial process in meaningful and critical ways. (By the way, I like this contention by Chris Smith in New York magazine. He urbanizes––and nativizes, I dare say––Sotomayor to the Empire State: "What’s especially heartening about Sotomayor [. . . ] is that she’s rooted in real, physical, urban life." Nicely phrased, and in another context, too.) The key in that wise Latina soundbite, I would argue, is not so much that the ambiguous Latina woman is a Latina, but the adjective that precedes this racial category, "wise." What does this sagacious intelligence entail? Somehow I can't help but think that it's kind of like the double consciousness Du Bois talked about in the Souls of Black Folk. I usually find Valdes-Rodriguez's posts refreshing, but I am sorry to say that I must respectfully disagree with her on this one. If we're going with the race narrative, let's pick the most obvious one that is so under-analyzed in this nomination, and post-Obama's 100 days at that. Why can't Latinas and Latinos––who can be of any race––be "post-race"? Why is it Sotomayor that brings issues of identity politics to the forefront, as the New York Times intimated yesterday (Peter Baker, "Court Choice Brings Issue of 'Identity' Back Out"), in ways that Obama's presidential candidacy and Presidency did not and have not? Why is Sotomayor "affirmative action" and not Obama? Let's stop the demonization of this woman. Such cantankerous public discourse has disturbing echoes of what happened to Lani Guinier. All of a sudden, Latinas and Latinos appear as though they're the only ones with "identity," while the rest of the United States of America is inhabited by universal humans with no tinge of difference.

Seasonal ritual: I awake to be spasmodically teased by pollen. And greet the promise of relief in a limited selection of copyrighted flavors: Allegra, Claritin, Singulair, Zyrtec. / Pop goes the world, sang Men Without Hats. I stand in fairly mute acceptance of what’s been socially popping––remarkably or unremarkably dating me: Obama’s first 100 days. Theorist Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick dies at fifty-eight (cause: breast cancer). After 124,465 days, Britain honors a woman as poet laureate. Mexicans, swine flu, and the Ugly Betty metropolis of Queens cease to be a threatening trinity. H1N1 migrates, intensifies, and the President of the United States of America instructs me to wash my hands. Obliteration. (Meanwhile, chemotherapy's been the thing that's been keeping you alive. . . .) / Borrowed words and states of mind, with due thanks to Patrick McGrath: “I was approaching forty and I no longer regarded my life as possessing unlimited potential.” / Reusable, unsalvageable phrases: How’s life treating you? / How are you treating life?

Point for mirthful consideration: giving the unconscious a day of rest, courtesy of Patrick McGrath's novel, Trauma. So it runs:

(Charlie:) "Not imaginary, babe, just concealed. You deny the unconscious?"

(Nora:) "Oh, I don't know! No, I suppose not, but can't you just give it up on Sundays?"

Excellent article published in the New York Times, "Advances Elusive in the Drive to Cure Cancer," by Gina Kolata. The piece highlights Phyllis Kutt's battle with recurring cancer. It's a moving story of medical neglect, human perseverance, and social perception of the conspicuous markers that speak––"scream"––cancer. Kutt articulated for me the visual distress and disgust I've been eyeing as other humans gawk at my mother's baldness: "It's fear. You're part of the death group." To which one can only add––and by no means dismissively––aren't we all?

THE MERCY PAPERS: A MEMOIR OF THREE WEEKS –– It was, indeed, the subtitle that lured me into this powerful work of creative nonfiction, for what could it be that propels––demands––an author to chronicle, in an unsparingly detailed and raw form, an exhausting journey of twenty-one days? These are not pages for the emotionally illiterate. Those three weeks, I learned, are Robin Romm's tribute to the waning days of her mother's life––passing, lingering, finally being claimed by the breast cancer that was diagnosed nine years prior. Those three weeks, I also concluded, represent Romm's emancipatory discharge at the hypocrisy, or even the abounding––and at times callous––stupidity of humans, as they turn into an expectant audience of a certain type death. "What softens the harshness of living?" asks Romm. Adding my own query here, can we comfort others and ourselves beyond over-worn clichés in times of medical failure or corporeal betrayal? Perhaps clichés––their verbal reproduction, their unthinking substitution for reflective speech, for the unfolding loss they're supposed to articulate––are what ironically shed light on the need for comforting, interpretive silence. The gleaming significance of this was particularly highlighted towards the end, as Romm concludes with 12 forceful blank pages, writing: "How do I end a book about loss? Loss doesn't end. It goes on and on and on, written on every day that will follow." Her irreparable loss left me thinking that, unlike Joan Didion's posthumous year of magical thinking, Romm's life since her mom's diagnosis had been lived as the continuous years of magical thinking and rethinking while living. Year after year of melancholy for the present––cosmic sadness––for what has been lived and the living moment; of one's desire to live (even if life is shit, as someone spat at me once, in a wounding ejection––at the time, anyway––of discourtesy, disdain, and loathing); of wondering if one can ever be ready to lose one's mother; of wishing your life would go back to––or can at least regain––the taken-for-granted unmagical routine of the pesky quotidian. Year after year of "pain and a deep, toothy hollowness inside me that will go on grinding forever." Because whether it's breast cancer or what-cha-ma-call-it, "Death is available as tuna fish, as milk."

I finished Patrick French's authorized biography of V. S. Naipaul, The World Is What It Is (Knopf, 2008), a 554-page grabbing portrayal of a man whose disciplined and dedicated priority has been applied to the exclusive acts of cultural production and intellectual thought. This extraordinarily written volume had me invariably thinking about where the human resides in Naipaul's active construction of a writer's identity, especially one who is born in a seemingly Podunk geography, and whether his ingenious existence as an author trumps the human failures and disappointments one finds as a reader. As illustrated, it is as though Naipaul's being has doubtlessly been dependent on unraveling and chronicling, at the global level, the force of coloniality and modernity, and the ways that dislocation, language, and migration alter both subjects and national landscapes. The World Is What It Is proves engrossing in this way. It doubtlessly becomes literary history. Readers get a context for how each book was written, becoming an indispensable resource as it takes us to the formation of a body of work before the adherence of such literary categories as "postcolonial" and "multicultural." What I was most surprised to discover, however, is the prominent role that initial sexual repression and domesticity play in this writer's life, which later leads to uncontrollable carnal desires that are squeezed in between Naipaul's writings. There are the prostitutes early in his career and then a cosmopolitan mistress with whom he traveled all over the world and who would satisfy his sexual needs, often violent, after he completed his works for more than two decades. The wife stayed at home; the lover eagerly waited for his availability. I do not necessarily care about these hedonistic moments. But it is as though the book becomes an intertwined account of Naipaul's sexual and writerly evolution, which could just as well lead us to another book title: His World Is What It Is. More often than not, Naipaul sounds irritable and surly, and with a variable conduct one can only paradoxically describe as an approximate mix of quixotic, autistic, and chauvinistic. Clever wit reigns supreme. One questions how Naipaul privately interacts with those close to him and how they shape––if not "humanize" his work. The reader finds that everyone––family, friends, acquaintances––prove to be democratically discardable. To a certain extent, this biography seems like an homage to the breast-cancer stricken wife who selflessly loved her husband––the writer she privately referenced as a genius. The reader also benefited from the fiscal and emotional support she gave her husband. As The World Is What It Is shows, Naipaul depended on his wife, also an Oxford graduate, for her critical eyes and ears. That Naipaul authorized such a volume is indeed a testament to his own valuable assessment regarding the literary merit of authors' autobiographical experiences: "The lives of writers are a legitimate subject of inquiry; and the truth should not be skimped. It may well be, in fact, that a full account of a writer's life might in the end be more a work of literature and more illuminating––of a cultural and historical moment––than the writer's books."

tegan and sara | «hop a plane» | (begging «ocean please, help me drown these memories»)

WETBACK LIT AND LATIN AMERICA –– On 16 October 2008, Sergio Ramírez published an op-ed piece in Nicaragua's La Insignia, asking a question that I initially thought would be of some critical use to my areas of specialization and investigation. His point of deliberation centered on whether the new Latin American novel would be written in English. While I have translated his column, titled "La nueva novela latinoamericana," below, I must note that I was left deflated after reading it. With its surfeit of generalizations and flowery style, I respectfully diverge from Ramírez's dehistoricized opinions.

I wonder what analytical directions Ramírez's viewpoint would have taken if he had a wider and more robust understanding of U.S. "Latino" fiction, dating, shall we say, as far back as 1848, when Mexicans became "Americans" (or "'Mericans," in the Cisnerian sense, as evinced in Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories). Ramírez offers a short-sighted genealogy of U.S. Latino and Latina fiction (which interestingly becomes, under his collective and regional optic, "Latin American")––one that "begins" in the twenty-first century and specifically through U.S. public recognition of "immigrants" like Junot Díaz, who won last year's Pulitzer Prize, and Granta's literary affinity for Daniel Alarcón. (I insist on my insertion of scary quotes around the word "immigrant" because one of my stringent preoccupations is: At what point can a migrant be "indigenized"?) I am pushed to inquire why Nilo Cruz's Pulitzer Prize from 2001 did not count for Ramírez (said work cannot be dismissed just because it's a play), and why Oscar Hijuelos's 1990 Pulitzer win with his novel, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, was equally dismissed. What do these "other" Pulitzer voices add––or take away––from the "new" Latin American novel that is supposedly being written in English? Ramírez's linear connection to Latin America seems rather essentialist to me, as Díaz and Alarcón are doubtlessly intertwined with the U.S. landscape, not to mention that Díaz is also actively engaging with the Francophone and Anglophone Caribbean (a map that is often erased from "Latin" America). More pressing of all is this: there is not an authentic Latin America in the particular Latino productions that define Ramírez's "new" Latin American novel, just as there is not an authentic United States. There is, though, a simultaneous function of double exile in the deracinated world of U.S. Latina and Latino letters.

And why is English the only language that is being transformed in U.S. Latina and Latino literature? I would think that Spanish is being altered also. Giannina Braschi's unparalleled use of bilinguality in her novel, Yo-Yo Boing, comes to mind as a key illustration of how language is brilliantly and creatively employed in metropolitan centers that, to paraphrase from V. S. Naipaul, become nation-less cities. What specifically constitutes the "newness" of which Ramírez speaks? And what about the slew of bestselling authors like Sandra Cisneros, whose House on Mango Street was translated into 11 languages, and whose latest work, Caramelo, clearly influenced Díaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao in certain stylistic maneuvers, the most obvious of which are the playful footnotes in Díaz's narrative?

I am also not keen on Ramírez's evocation of "Latin American ghosts." If anything, I would think such spirits would be Indigenous. There is, as well, a moment where Ramírez tenaciously refers to these literary or sociopolitical Latin American evanescent forms as "wet ghosts" (like wetbacks), as though Latin American literature from Latin America (I must qualify here since Latin America has many more different traditions and literary moments than evolving U.S. Latino letters), is ridden with the "same" problems as U.S. Latina and Latino literature. It is not. Nor are they studied in the "same" way in the U.S. academy. Never mind that a Latin American writer from Latin America, I am certain, would not fully appreciate an affiliation with a U.S. racialized group whose creative impulses are often regarded––and too often dismissed––as overly dependent on a largely working-class sensibility. There is a danger when U.S. Latina and Latino literature is simply relegated to the world of lived experience.

Still––or, however it may be summoned––the wetback motif is tired and stereotypical. Not all "immigrant" writers in the United States have arrived vis-à-vis that pejorative state of wetness. Ramírez adds that Latino novelists will be first-tier writers one day, contradicting his own Pulitzer methodology, where such a prize already equates prestige and literary status. The idea of literary genes is unconvincing to me: having an interpretive voice and literary panache cannot be accounted for in biological terms.

Having said that, let's call this piece what it really is: a cursory review of two novels by two Latino male authors.

The New Latin American Novel
SERGIO RAMÍREZ

Will the new Latin American novel be written in English? I ask myself this question in light of the emergence in the United States of an innovative list of young narrators whose literary language is English. Despite their immediate Latin American roots, there are two dazzling stars among them: the son of Dominican immigrants, Junot Díaz (1968), and the son of Peruvian immigrants Daniel Alarcón (1977). Both arrived quite young with their parents to the ambiguous territories of the American dream.

It is not new for Anglo-Saxon literature to have a billboard constantly nourished with the names of immigrants, or to have the children of immigrants abandon their ancestral tongue to write in a new one, the one in which they have had to grow up, despite maintaining their bilingual qualities, their maternal language at home, and English in school and on the street.

We can start with examples from Joseph Conrad, who did not even speak English well. And when engaged in conversations with his editor, with whom he did not get along, he would get angry, entangling himself in his rough Polish accent until mumbling incoherences. But he is one of the great style masters of the English language, just as Vladimir Nabokov, whose maternal language was Russian, learned English from the lips of its British leaves. Without Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Nabokov's Lolita, English literature would be one-armed or dislocated.

Today, literature in the English language from the beginning of this century is a literature of immigrants, where two worlds dispute with the author. The old world of his parents, and not infrequently their own world, the one from afar, with all the power of its local colors, outlandish and bloody, and its adopted new world that strikes the narrative experience with its innovation and strangeness. They narrate the shock of two worlds that sometimes results in a catastrophe, and at times in an epiphany.

Junot Díaz was awarded this year the Pulitzer Prize, the most prestigious honor in the United States, with his first novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, after having harvested fame with his book of short stories, Drown. Meanwhile, Daniel Alarcón, nominated as one of 21 best young novelists in the United States by Granta magazine, shook the literary world with his novel, Lost City Radio, in 2007.

Separated by a decade in terms of their birth dates, something which in the vortex of Latin American literature can become a bottomless breach, in addition to their double common thread, English as a language of literary expression, and their immigrant condition, or children of immigrants, they are still identified by another factor in their own literary genes: the ghosts of the Latin American reality that persecute us all, writing in Spanish, or English. And when I say reality I am speaking of that which has to do with public life, the horrors and hallucinations of social and political reality, the one that comes from recent history, or distant history. The amazing excesses of dictatorships, crime, torture, and the disappeared. The Dominican Republic and the Trujillo dictatorship; Peru and the Shining Path. The old ghosts that left the basements of presidential palaces have not stopped making the chains sound when dragging them.

And those ghosts cross U.S. borders like so many other clandestine ones, hidden in the genes, or in the luggage of immigrants who one day will be first-tier writers. Wet ghosts who do not allow themselves to get out of the way.

In The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Generalissimo Trujillo and his sinister cohort, his son, Ramfis, fleeting heir to the throne, his son-in-law Porfirio Ruborosa, the precursor to playboys, refined torturer Johnny Abbes García, who used a dungeon dwarf to crush between his teeth the prisoners' testicles, the cautious doctor Balaguer, who will always be washing blood off his hands, guide the novel. And the Trujillato's satanic atmosphere will be always in the worst dreams of the characters who have turned into immigrants. They will always be returning to that atmosphere, each time putting one foot in the island from which they left, a hell disguised as paradise, even if it costs them their lives.

Meanwhile, the narration flows in a splashed English at each Spanish step of the Caribbean, which is the same Spanish that the immigrants have brought to New Jersey, where the novelist was crammed as a child with his parents. If he is the owner of two worlds, he is also the owner of two languages, or, rather, of a broken language, alive and woken up.

Daniel Alarcón, in turn, moved to Alabama as a 3-year-old with his parents. In Lost City Radio, a young peasant boy, abandoned, comes to the capital from the deep of the mountain range, appearing in front of a radio talk show host with a list of the disappeared from his town, which has been devastated by blind violence. Shining Path rebels kill without mercy, and the repressive army kills without mercy, too. Mercy and justice have ceased to exist for the poorest, squashed by clandestine power as well as official power.

There is not one line in Lost City Radio that says the novel is about Peru, but it is Peru, or any other Latin American country possessed by its ghosts, or their curses. The damned destiny, the same Dominican fukú of Junot Díaz's novel, an inheritance from the African slaves that his characters cannot escape, and neither can those from Daniel Alarcón's novel. And they cannot free themselves from violence, a character that exerts its own sovereignty and that does not abandon them not even in dreams, wherever they may be, in the land that they have left, or the land in which they have arrived. Not even we, as authors or readers, can rid ourselves of it.

Masatepe, October 2008

CHEMO SCHEMA –– It's been part of our routine for more than two months now. My mother and I arrive at the George Washington Bridge Bus Station via NJ Transit (the 181 Union City/New York line, for inquiring minds), board an M100, and depart at 168th and Broadway. Destination: the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center at Columbia University Medical Center. In truth, I wasn't expecting my mother to be getting her chemotherapy there, but that locale was already in my radar since the surgeon who performed her mastectomy is affiliated with Columbia-Presbyterian. Her breast cancer survivors' support group is based in said hospital also. These things stood out in my mind, particularly since the monosyllabic New Jersey oncologist to whom my mother was referred treated us like nonwhite plebeians. The last straw with this doctor was when he sent my mother home with a variety of loose leaf bearing undecipherable medical prose and charts. He told her that she needed chemotherapy, and that if I needed to speak with him, I should do it later in the week because he had too many patients who needed him at that moment. My mother came home in tears, shaking. She was in shock after receiving such a lexically-challenged explanation (she had been told previously that she did not need either radiation or chemotherapy by this same specialist). And I certainly wasn't going to spend idle hours suspended in the unknown. It pained me to see her so confounded by these new developments and so perplexed by her inability to have a graspable language that would allow her, at the very least, to form a working idea of what was happening to her body. I called the doctor as soon as my mom got home, wondering about his professional ethics (but keeping that sentiment to myself), as he inattentively sent a senior citizen into the world in a clearly troubled state––without any understanding of her medical situation, without a rudimentary overview of what specifically was it that demanded this immediate intervention.

So we crossed the medical border into Manhattan. And it's like being bumped from coach to first class.

Chemotherapy can be a scary thing. A friend gasped after I said there was no way around this treatment for my mother. I felt useless. And powerless. Perhaps the most eloquent thing I could think of was a passing excerpt by Jacques Lacan in My Teaching, where he elaborates on the unconscious: "The unconscious is not a negative characteristic. There are lots of things in my body of which I am not conscious. . . ." I kept thinking of chemotherapy as a conscious "thing" uncontrollably tapping into the hidden crevices of the bodily unconscious, destroying good and bad cells, injecting hysteria, unaware of what "it" was physically and psychologically doing to my mother––and me. (I include myself because as a great friend put it, "the supporter needs support, too.")

The words of a medical doctor friend of mine, whose mom died of advanced breast cancer, convinced me on the merits of this treatment: "Listen, your mom should receive chemotherapy. The benefits outweigh the risks." After two consultations and check-ups at Columbia-Presbyterian, my mother decided that she would receive chemotherapy––Cytoxan and Taxotere, to be more specific––or, as the Latinas in my mom's breast cancer group poignantly and interchangeably call it, la gasolina and el diablo rojo.

I write this post after my mother's second chemo session (two more to go). Though I typed "routine" in the beginning, it's hard to get used to the idea of what will be done to the body once you take the elevator to the 9th floor of the Irving Pavilion (children and adolescents are on the 7th floor), check in with the receptionist who always asks for my mother's date of birth, and wait to have a paper bracelet ID tag printed out and placed around the wrist (light hospital humor: "try not to lose it 'cause it's very expensive"––insert smiley face here). Patients wait for their names to be called by the nurse who will be responsible for them during that particular session. Once seated on a recliner, the nurse finds an appropriate vein for the three-hour intravenous feeding of chemicals––medicinal bottled water––defying color, class, age, gender, nationality.

Chemotherapy is temporary, but the temporary stretches out.

FIRST SESSION –– We ask for a seat facing the gray and industrial looking river. Susana, a breast cancer survivor from the support group who must undergo 27 chemotherapy cycles, shows up just in time, as promised, for the first session of my mom's gasolina. Susana lovingly holds my mom's hand and reads her a passage from Isaiah 43, as the nurse instructs my mother to make a fist with her left hand and struggles to find a cooperative vein. The needle is inserted. Susana gently tells my mom, "look at me, look at me," and reads: "When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee. . . . " Susana's positivity, radiance, and luminous spirit gets my mom through the overflowing rivers of chemotherapy. My mom's eyes are watery. I bite my lips, thinking of my '90s pop reservoir. A musical fragment of U2's "Ultraviolet (Light My Way)" comes to mind: "Oh, sugar, don't you cry / Oh, child wipe those tears from your eyes / You know I need you to be strong / And the day is as dark as the night is long . . . ." Susana was a true gift that day. The three hours went rather quick. My mother mentions this to her nurse, who smiles and teasingly comments: "You want more, mami?" I sat next to my mother throughout this session. And I sleep next to her a week later in the hospital for two nights when she's admitted into the emergency room with a "neutropenic fever," which could lead to infection and serious complications. I find this wonderful blog Killer Boob, an excellent and hopeful resource on those unsettling days.

INTERMITTENTLY –– A friend calls excitedly one night. Melissa Etheridge was just on TV, he says, talking about her breast cancer and how she coped with chemo side-effects. "Oh my God, she was so convincing," he emphasizes. "She said pot is the only thing that got her through." I like the idea, but my mom is such a square, despite legitimate medical reasons, and I know she'll be more frightened by this option than find comfort in it. Her response is a quick and already expected "no," with the additional reminder that "the stuff is illegal in New Jersey."

SECOND SESSION –– You could say we are slightly more at ease and have some idea of what to expect now. My mom's hair has started to fall out, so she decided to have a buzz cut earlier. The hairstylist thought she was being nice and doing my mom a favor by leaving her with more hair on her head, and was reluctant to shave it all off. My mother had to insist to keep la máquina going, please. When we got home that day, my mom says that she looks like la pelona (meaning Sinéad O'Connor) and starts singing "Nothing Compares 2 U." Once at the Cancer Center reception area for another chemo round, she takes off the hat recently purchased from the American Cancer Society. She hates wearing wigs, and she's suffering from hot flashes these days, a chemo side-effect that has taken her back to menopausal symptoms. The hat contributes to her discomfort. A Latino man stares at the baldness in freakish horror. Or shock. Or fear. I am horrified by his human stupidity, using my mother as the material embodiment and apparition of cancer. He and his companion have heads full of hair. I want to scream: It's the chemo, not the cancer, you idiot. Alas, that is not the point. My mom and I quietly––absentmindedly––watch The View on the flat screen TV, waiting for her name to be called. Waiting, like the rest, for another battle, adding these rotating cycles to the growing list of survivors.

I can't quite recall how I stumbled upon Book of Clouds (Black Cat, 2009), Chloe Aridjis's debut novel, but I am glad that I did. (It should be noted, as well, that Francisco Goldman's blurb sealed the purchase for me.) This wonderfully written book––coupled with the protagonist's witty tonality––makes for a truly pleasurable read, morphing into a protean tour of both city and narrator, as the subterranean unconsciousnesses of these two selves supplement one another. Aridjis's work is not so much about missed encounters––continuous episodic nuggets of what ifs––by the narrator, Tatiana, a Mexican-Jewish expat in Berlin. The novel, instead, seems to function as the travel notes of an acutely observant dweller whose quotidian urban forays in Germany's capital city defy succumbing into insignificance. Both Tatiana and Berlin are interdependent beings who strive to make sense of––if not definitely know––what is too often dismissed or forgotten, in commuter passing, as the unknown. In this sense, Book of Clouds is profoundly grabbing in its juxtaposition of self and space and the inherent tensions between a foreigner's findings in a nation that is not his/her own––that is, bureaucratically speaking. Who embodies the city? How does the (stateless) foreigner claim it? And, indeed, what constitutes the natural world in such a setting? Despite the apparent transiency of the narrator, the text is an enduring dissection of the geographical now and then, and how these relate, to borrow from Tatiana's own language, to one's "inner landscape." Book of Clouds could no doubt be framed in a global Latin American context of comparative migrations. As this work illustrates, the first world metropole is being alertly noted and transcribed with "different" voices and "other" eyes.

THE LYRICAL SOUNDS I'VE BEEN MISSING –– Here's one song of which I was completely oblivious: "Blame It" by Jamie Foxx. Francisco, my driving instructor, had me navigate a Joisey highway for two hours during my last class, loudly tuning into New York's Z100. As the newly, but no less questionably christened "campeona," I know I am becoming a better driver when musical sounds do not bother me, and Foxx's risible ode to inebriated behavior contributes to my on-the-road relaxation: «blame it on the vodka, blame it on the henny | blame it on the blue tap, got you feeling dizzy | blame it on the a-a-alcohol | blame it on the a-a-alcohol.…» I say: blame it on everything, but the novice driver.

I saw Sin Nombre at Lincoln Plaza Cinemas this past weekend (cash only, I was inconveniently informed when I turned over my debit card for said matinée). I won't offer a synopsis of the movie, particularly because a plethora of them are already in circulation (including this reputable description from Sundance, which awarded two prizes to this flick), and besides, I'm not one for mere summation. I prefer, rather, to probe into what I "got" (or, better put, didn't "get") out of this cinematic enterprise. I felt obliged to watch Sin Nombre because of the Central American referents, namely those that entail Northern-bound border journeys that are intertwined with Mexico. This was a most fascinating triangulation at work here between El Salvador, Mexico, and the United States, as Central American migrants board the "Train of Death"––that is, Mexican freight trains carrying these undocumented individuals for nearly a span of 1,000 miles. I don't necessarily find the connection between a virginal and seemingly naive––but ever so determined––Honduran girl and ex-Mara Salvatrucha gangster a convincing one. Nonetheless, this link did spark the following query: What would happen if transnational Central American gangs would use their hypermasculinity, alongside their expertise of the region through their greatly amassed––but still unnameable––criminality, not so much to target innocent victims, but to serve as cross-border chaperones that guide and protect vulnerable men and women from corruptive elements? This would be far provocative for me: a cinematic re-interpretation and re-imagination of what is taking place "down there." To watch such literal reenactments of the Train of Death had me wishing that I should, instead, be watching a documentary. As this NPR discussion on "Morning Edition" noted, however, many Americans will now know, at the most basic level, what the Train of Death signifies due to this film. Even more, these journeys will also be included, or so I hope, as an integral "border matter" discussion that is not exclusive to the United States and Mexico.

NO, THEY DIDN'T | YES, THEY DID –– Is there a real and compelling link between Barack Obama, and the newly elected President of El Salvador, Mauricio Funes? Funes's party, the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), may remain, as many popularly conceive it in international venues, a political affiliation populated by vintage rebels that once threatened Ronald Reagan's America. Echoing the Obama campaign through a slogan of "safe change" and motifs of hope, Funes made explicit comparisons between himself and the forty-fourth U.S. President. "My candidacy represents hope," he told the Miami Herald. Further highlighting one of Obama's campaign staples, Funes's slogan stressed: "Hope is being born. Change is coming." Just this past Sunday, the day of the election, I received a group email from a renowned Salvadoran cineaste who casted his Funes vote sporting a t-shirt with Shepard Fairey's now immortalized "Hope" image of Obama. "I voted without fear," the filmmaker announced. "I voted for democracy, for Maurico Funes, but also for Lula, Obama, Gorbachev, for freedom of expression, for economic freedom, for the end of monopolies, and against the great power and impunity of those that have absolutely everything." Fair enough. Obama is a great inspiration. Yet we must also ask: In light of the recency of Obama's tenure in the executive office, how else could Obama's membership in the democrat wagon be further qualified? As a moderate? Centrist? Or, as some on the right claim, a "Marxist Democrat"? Other than problematic renditions of hope and change, what is it that specifically unites Obama to the FMLN and El Salvador, a nation that folklorically speaking, still believes that there are no black people––and thus no traces of blackness––in El Salvador? Index fingers, I presume, would readily point to Honduras, or the coasts of Belize and Nicaragua. Arguably, then, Obama's message became "post-race" in El Salvador, consumed by "non-black" mestizos who also chanted "Yes, we can!" It would have been audacious and incredibly provocative to see how the mixed races embodied by Obama––and how "sí, se puede," the language of Cesar Chávez and the United Farm Workers––could have been integrated and localized in El Salvador's ethnoracial landscape and agricultural economy. Funes's cost-effective appropriation of Obama was unquestionably catchy. And more: it was victorious. But there has to be a political responsibility when mimicking––or to put it with less veneration, piggybacking on––someone else's political campaign. Obama, after all, was largely speaking to first world U.S. citizens, while reassuring his nation that American economic and military stability must be preserved. How is this reconciled by a Salvadoran party that, in one way or another, must be historically skeptical of U.S. influence and domination in the Americas? There is no doubt that El Salvador needs socioeconomic, political, and cultural transformations. But rather than recycling sound bites from the North so facilely, it would be far more insightful, at least for me, to actually work through and find El Salvador's own language, one that would manifest that nation's needs from within, and on its own terms.

In a Pet Shop Boys mood . . . «One day I'll read, or learn to drive a car / If you pass the test, you can beat the rest / But I don't like to compete, or talk street, street, street»

And this one––

PERUANAS –– I love these two "PeruAnas" that are––and are not––from Peru, in referential terms. I found the three images below scattered throughout the East Village. The blank between the first name ANA, and last name, PERU (indeed, the "same" applies for the "other" ANA PERU that is PERU ANA) is, of course, intentional. It points to two different, but echoing, "Peruvian" subjects. In their destinationless state, ANA PERU and PERU ANA provide us with a paradoxical but ever so determined destination: public space in the übercrowded first world metropole. So seemingly plain with its capital letters, the ANA PERU PERU ANA tag goes beyond penmanship. Inscribed with so much possibility, it is part of the city text––a marked skyscraper with infinite names whose stories are being fleetingly penciled in, but that nonetheless linger through the preliminary "sketches" captured within the meanings of ANA PERU PERU ANA. How many of these "Peruanas" exist in the City? How––and when––do we "see" them? What is their life span?

mates of state | «get better»

CAR CRAVINGS (FOR THE MOMENT, AS THESE ARE, NEEDLESS TO ADD, SUBJECT TO DEBATE … AND CHANGE) –– Now that I can more seriously entertain the idea, I am thinking of either a VW Jetta SportWagen or a Subaru Forester. I want something sporty, not too "sedany," and that won't make me, a rather small creature of 5'4", pull the driver's seat almost all the way to the front. (I don't want an airbag exploding in my face, thank you.) And I will definitely test drive the New Beetle and Mini Cooper, just for curiosity's––or . . . iconography's––sake.

LEARNING TO DRIVE AND OTHER LIFE STORIES (WITH APOLOGIES TO KATHA POLLITT), OR … AS A FRIEND COMMANDED, «THAT IS SO LOW-CLASS AND GHETTO YOU HAVE TO THEORIZE IT!» –– I'm still thinking about the theoretical elements of my driving lessons in Hudson County, New Jersey. But as of 3 February––the day I passed my written permit test (let it be known: it was on the first try, and quite frankly, I'm still amazed. I worried endlessly over that dizzy multiple choice test. ("I don't know why, stupid people pass it all the time and drive, and you have a doctorate for God's sake," the same wise friend quoted above told me, even as I bemoaned, "I haven't taken a test in over a decade!")––and $350 dollars in lessons later, I have been a student in three driving schools. For years I have failed to accept driving lesson invitations by well intended folks because I didn't want anyone, without a driving pedagogy, screaming at me in utter impatience. (Only recently, Charlie, my neighbor in North Carolina, had me briefly drive around and around in a fairly empty parking lot, but we both got nausea and possibly a touch of whiplash, so the experiment came to a quick closure.) Fully aware that I need to drive and finally have a car (and soon), I have tried to put my nerves aside, and set my mind to task. The only problem has been the driving school practices in northern New Jersey that are making me go insane. All I want are driving lessons from a professional, and in the convenience (if such a thing can be said) from a car that announces to the world: NOVICE DRIVER ON BOARD. I am getting my driving lessons, no doubt, but with a touch of Latinaje that is just simply over the top. So here go the driving lessons, and, oh dear, here's to the public life lessons:

˚ My first instructor was Leo, a fiftysomething Cuban American, who met me outside my mom's apartment building with the car running. Anticipating some kind of pedagogy, one that would at least explain the workings of an automobile, I disclosed that it was, officially speaking, my very first time in a car. My point seemed useless: What?? Learn about the stick shift?! How to turn a car on and off? Leo had other beginnings in mind. He instructed me to get on the driver's side and go, y rápido, ¿eh? We needed to go pick up his son at his job and then take him home (???!!!!). His son was "por ahí," Leo declared ambiguously, waving his arm in a general direction. His son, I learned about 30 minutes later, was like three towns away. Leo gave me instructions in Spanish, and I had no idea what he was talking about. After all, I had studied the driver's manual in English. I clarified that I spoke Spanish well, but that English was my thinking language, and that I preferred to learn how to drive in English. Concentrating on the technical language of driving in Spanish, which is sometimes foreign to and uncomfortable for me, while being behind the wheel in urban streets stressed me out. Leo was very much the patriarch, and to say that he made me anxious is to put it rather mildly. He unabashedly told me that he would talk a lot throughout our ride. Whenever he felt like it, he would just insert his hands on the steering wheel with my hands on it, without even uttering an "excuse me." And certainly without letting me know what I was doing wrong. Leo took all his phone calls, and more than once, he dialed his son to scream a "Ya voy, Pipo, ya voy." Leo would put his hands over his face often. He also repeatedly bit his nails out of habitual nervousness. My hands were sweating, I kept too tight a grip on the steering wheel, my back was killing me, and rush hour traffic, blending both Manhattan and New Jersey commuters, was just beginning. Driving close to the Lincoln Tunnel, I was being put in defensive and offensive driving situations at once. I suppose this is a good thing to learn, but it didn't feel so adequate at the time. I feebly reminded Leo that putting me to drive like that was perhaps too soon. Plus, I felt like I was serving as his personal chauffeur and doing his errands. This was certainly NOT the kind of lesson I was expecting from––let alone for which I was paying––a driving school. When I told a friend of my distressing first class, their response was, "Oh, my God, he had you driving the Latin way! All tough. You start in empty parking lots." I actually used this same driving school for another hour the following week, while I researched other places. I got stuck with Leo a second time, which was equally distressing. He made driving seem like a hideous chore. Rather than telling the owner not to assign me Leo, I just never called them again.

˚ My second instructor was Marcelo, a Jersey City-born Puerto Rican, who enthusiastically welcomed me with the statement: "Great! You speak English!" Marcelo was super nice at first, and he actually did have a pedagogy. He had the patience of angel. The logistics of parallel parking and the "K" turn clicked for me all because of his teachings. But the honeymoon came to an end after my second class with Marcelo. It turned out that the driving school Marcelo works for was double dipping on my time and an Asian teenager's. All hell broke loose on the highway last week. Marcelo had me pick up the Asian teenager who was having a road test around the same time for which I had paid. Said Asian made us wait in an idle car outside her house for about 15 minutes, which was like $20 of unused time for me. When she saw me behind the wheel she said, in complete annoyance, "You have another student here!" She immediately called her mother to scream and complain in Asian. Meanwhile, Marcelo was talking to his boss in Spanglish. I was supposed to get all three of us back on the highway, even though that was my first time in such a setting and I had no idea where to go. The driving environment, for a complete novice like myself, was just out of control; the loud linguistic collage sounded like nails scratching a chalkboard. I stopped the car, and told the Asian girl that we had to compromise because I had paid for two hours' worth of classes and that the school still owed me time. "You need to calm down," I urged. "I'm not talking to you," she screamed. "Well, stop colonizing my space. I need to have peace of mind as I drive," I retorted. "I need to get out of here," she said and walked off. Twenty minutes later, as we're back on the highway, the driving school calls back, telling us to return and pick up "la oriental malcreada." Recoge esa niña, the order continued, and take Claudia to the road test (WTF???!!!). I was gonna be a prisoner for like another two hours in that car, when all I wanted was a 2-hour driving lesson. I was so angry, being bounced around like a yo-yo all over northern New Jersey, and neither Marcelo nor the driving school seemed to care about customer relations. That was the end of that.

˚ I found another driving school last week. Before I scheduled a time with them, I prefaced my needs with: "I hope you don't think I'm too demanding: I want a driving instructor who speaks English, and who does not use me as a driver for personal errands. Also, I don't want to go road tests by force, unless it's mine. Can your agency just offer what I am asking for: driving lessons?" The Latina said "yes," and explained how her company's classes are organized, which sounded reasonable. I had a two-hour class with Francisco this afternoon. He was great. Most importantly, I learned and gained confidence. On the charming side, Francisco kept calling me campeona, which I thought was fun-nee. "What do you mean you can't do that?" he asked rhetorically, as he had me parallel park between two cars rather than the standard orange cones. "Tu dale. Tu eres una campeona. ¡Dale campeona!," he cheered, coaching me through another maneuver, driving, less cautiously, in reverse, and my foot pushing––duro, pero duro, as instructed––the gas pedal. . . . Until next class.

MAKE OF THE ANECDOTAL WHAT YOU WILL –– The picture on the left, of course, features my large, $4 nonfat latte from my much adored Joe the Art of Coffee in NYC. We shall depart, for now, from the visual of that couture coffee cup and the world of microfoam, and turn our attention to contemporary linguistic concoctions of the café con leche, as conceived and ordered in northern New Jersey. (My, my, there's even a Wikipedia entry for café con leche. I'm so glad that this staple has its own––however brief––explicatory spotlight.) So this AM, as I was about to order my coffee at an Argentine bakery, the customer in front of me ordered "un café hispano." Thinking of some new Pan-Latino beverage that I was missing, I felt compelled to update my knowledge of "culinary Latinidad" and ask, in English: "Excuse me, what is that?" The Latina responded with a modified translation: "Oh, it's Spanish coffee." I thought that her answer might be along the literal lines of "Hispanic coffee." But "Spanish coffee"? As though the coffee beans came from Spain. As though the coffee itself was Spanish. Not that "Hispanic coffee" is any better, but my summation was that this Hispanic drink was, indeed, a café con leche made from an espresso machine. Café hispano, I furthered reasoned, was drunk by a multitude of Hispanics in the United States, which may or may not include Spaniards, and differed from drip American coffee. Regardless, I'll take neither Hispanic coffee nor Spanish coffee. Far from being a purist, I nonetheless can't help but lament: since when did café con leche cease to be café con leche?

SPEAKING IN ANZALDÚAN TONGUES (BUT MORE DESERVING IS RIGGS'S ["ETHNIC"] NOTION OF "TONGUES UNTIED") –– A lecture delivered by Zadie Smith at the New York Public Library in December 2008, "Speaking in Tongues," has been reprinted in the New York Review of Books. Smith's piece provides some illuminating insights on Obama's malleable linguistic code-switching across constituencies and internal U.S. color lines. A fundamental concern for skeptics, as Smith points out, is «How can the man who passes between culturally black and white voices with such flexibility, with such ease, be an honest man?» The article textually moves between U.S. and British cultural practices and representations, and indeed, canonical literary figures abound. And though I welcome such analysis, I was struck by the ways in which Gloria Anzaldúa unwittingly influenced some aspects of Smith's interpretive lens. There was absolutely no mention of Anzaldúa, just as César Chávez and the United Farm Workers proved invisible, despite the appropriation of their "Sí, se puede" / "Yes we can" motto during the Obama Presidential campaign. The very title of Smith's reprinted NYRB piece reminded me of Anzaldúa's foundational essay, "Speaking in Tongues: A Letter to Third World Women Writers," from This Bridge Called My Back (1983). Since "speaking in tongues" has become so commonplace, we can, in all fairness, overlook this absence––somewhat. Consider, for instance, the passage pasted below, with its simultaneous straddling of mestizaje, mulataje, and other navigable cultural crossings defying "authenticity" and essentialism. If Smith's spin (homage?) doesn't scream Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987), I don't know what would to a critical Chicana, Chicano, and U.S. Latina and Latino readership:

«But I haven't described Dream City. I'll try to. It is a place of many voices, where the unified singular self is an illusion. Naturally, Obama was born there. So was I. When your personal multiplicity is printed on your face, in an almost too obviously thematic manner, in your DNA, in your hair and in the neither this nor that beige of your skin—well, anyone can see you come from Dream City. In Dream City everything is doubled, everything is various. You have no choice but to cross borders and speak in tongues. That's how you get from your mother to your father, from talking to one set of folks who think you're not black enough to another who figure you insufficiently white. It's the kind of town where the wise man says 'I' cautiously, because 'I' feels like too straight and singular a phoneme to represent the true multiplicity of his experience. Instead, citizens of Dream City prefer to use the collective pronoun 'we'» (emphasis added).

'CAUSE I'M TOO (YEAH . . . UNAPOLOGETICALLY) ABSORBED BY MY OWN EXISTENTIALIST CRISES –– Spent most of my day in the city today, needing some space to breathe and think––in light of the fact that my mother begins chemotherapy next week (I've wholeheartedly offered to shave my hair off in solidarity, and well . . . we shall see how this works itself out in 07047, where local banners claim it "A Progressive Community")––pedestrianly thinking about this heady question presented in David Shields's Enough About You: Notes Toward the New Autobiography: «When a self can (through language, memory, research, and invention) project itself everywhere, and can empathize with anyone or anything, what exactly is a self?» (73) Hmmmmmm. But I also wonder which part of "self" one looks for, and indeed, to where does a varying, and no doubt wandering, self go? And how is such a self reproduced? If a self can project itself "everywhere," then it would be most extraordinary and provocative, it seems to me, to theorize these unbound "selfhoods" as they metamorphosize into an awkward echo, some kind of wonderful mimicry where the "originating" self is not an essence, but a starting point on the map. "That" self of which Shields writes has been exchanged; its context shifts and relocates depending on the reader and writer. The possibilities behind the self's landing and re-landing––its very transiency––is what would keep my self-reinvention going, thereby evolving and involving continuous processes of being . . . lost and found.

QUOTIDIANLY GRAPHING AND ELLIPSING MYSELF –– In these dire recession times, I engaged in a self-caring capitalism. Book buys: My Teaching by Jacques Lacan (Verso, 2008) and The Idea of the North by Peter Davidson (Reaktion Books, 2005). Seeing that "Ray Guns Are Not Just the Future," the new CD by The Bird and The Bee, was on sale for $10 at Virgin, I picked that up, too. And I didn't forget my little Theo: he got his three-month supply of Drinkwell® fountain filters from the Petco at Union Square. As always, I visited the little felines that are up for adoption at that store. I almost left with a gray cat. (An inner voice reminded me that pet adoption was not in the budget.) Some of the biographical nuggets for the cats break the heart, especially since some of them appear to be victims of the economic crisis as well. More than one included a line like "Owner was evicted" as an explanation for a cat's homelessness. | And when I took the N train back, I heard a trace of a subterranean conversation where one guy began to tell the other, "According to Frederic Jameson. . . ." | My iPod touch soon played the most appropriate lyrics, which transported me to my Manhattan/northern Jersey borderlands: «Got killed by ten million pounds of sludge / from New York and New Jersey.» Only this hybrid ooze with NY/NJ specificity––or, rather, it is only these particular "frienemies"––that can make one go eew!, while simultaneously chuckle in understanding and familiar "geo-charm."

WHEN ICONOGRAPHY SPEAKS | WHEN THE THIRD WORLD GRATES AGAINST THE FIRST AND BLEEDS –– I love this piece, titled "Business of Illusion," by Izel Vargas. One of the reasons this work speaks in such a compelling way to me (and there is so much in Vargas's oeuvre that does) is because I've been thinking not so much about who benefits from this business, but who pays––and how––for the cost of accessing such illusions in the so-called first world. The pop iconography advancing this piece is certainly forceful in its palimpsestic palate representing mundane manifestations of life and cultural consumption: a Dora popsicle; a comic book/graphic novel snapshot; an armless border patrol agent; coyote/teeth/walking tracks; and a black backdrop somberly taking us to what Zoe Valdes may have so keenly framed as El dolor del dólar. And what might this dollarized pain in dolorous dollars––but really, in Anzaldúan terms, open wound––be in this work's gendered representation? (In my case, this postcolonial, fronteriza wound amounts to my mother's breast cancer in the industrialized world. Like the faceless, armless, and somewhat disabled patrol agent, one could say that breast cancer survivors who may have had mastectomies and glands removed, also confront restricted movement since their arms, post-surgery, cannot be as active, lest they face lymphedema.) The asymmetrical "partnership" between developed nation and underdeveloped migrant is produced by three different stages of trapped, even cornered, sociocultural and political "apparitions" here: girlhood (i.e., Dora), adolescence (i.e., pop nugget of a character I like to imagine as a factory seamstress), and unrealized adulthood (i.e., border patrol agent)––a trinity of serviceable braceras paying for what I'm dubbing as "The Price of Personal Progress." A price playing out every industrialized moment of our lives. And yet it is the seeming invisibility of violence that most interests me, highlighted through torn, bloodied arms. This affliction extends to possibly more subtle terms in their inherent social trauma, the invisibility of almost crossing, of almost being, but of being voiced by Vargas's distinctly talented optic.

PASSING THROUGH –– A few weeks ago, a friend, who is also a visual artist, asked me some questions about border crossing for his project, "Latino/a America: The New York and North Carolina Suites," which is currently on exhibit at the Branch Gallery in Durham from 16 January–28 February 2009. To my surprise, an excerpt about a fairly recent North-North (i.e., Canada-United States) border crossing of mine was included among other narratives. My brief "testimonial" was placed alongside various maps, similar to the one shown on the left, of individualized journeys throughout the Americas. I can't remember what exactly the artist compiled to represent my particular story, but part of my quotation was included in this article by Jessie Tang in Duke's student newspaper, The Chronicle. The context for my quote, in relation to the "Latino/a America" exhibit, as posited by Tang, follows: «From the rips, coffee stains and dirt, each map has a story to tell. What becomes apparent is the underlying inevitability that, as traveler Claudia Milian puts it, 'the body is the map. . . . We're pushing the continent southwards.'» Golly gee, I sound so invitingly tangible and perty. . . . (I am being ironic, cyberfolks.)

STILL IMMORTALIZING THE MIXED TAPE IN MY WALKMAN –– God, how I loved this B-52's song. Still do. . . . «Wanna be the daughter of Dracula / Wanna be the son of Frankenstein / Let's meet and have a baby now . . . »




La! La! La! La! La!


And since I'm still on a B-52's kick, here's another OBG (oldie but goodie). . . .

RICA, RICO: THE TEXTUAL RICHNESS OF IT ALL –– I had to laugh this morning when I read this article about misinformed and uncultured British citizen Samantha Lazzaris, who thought she had booked a "trouble-free luxury" trip to San José, Costa Rica and landed in San Juan, Puerto Rico. (The map on the left is from the Mail Online, which includes this caption: "Costa Rica [left] is the jewel of Central America, while US-owned Puerto Rico lies 1,300 miles away in the north-east of the Caribbean." Costa Rica sounds like the ultimate adornment, whereas Puerto Rico, as U.S.–owned, sounds like a trinket.) Learning of her mistake from a taxi driver, Lazzaris admitted, in this simply unbelievable quote, that: "I didn't believe him. I was in shock. I looked around the airport, saw posters of Puerto Rico everywhere, and thought, 'What am I going to do? Where is Puerto Rico? Where am I?'" (The existentialist dimensions brought by Lazzaris's series of questions did not go unnoticed by me. She "forgot," however, a fundamental meditation in philosophy: "Who am I"?) Most unfathomable––but entertaining––is that during this trip free of supposed distress, yet full extravagance, Lazzaris "had planned to spend 16 days trekking in the jungle, relaxing on the beach and doing some work for a local charity." A charity in the jungle?! Spare me of such warm benevolence, please.

Browsing through YouTube, I found this Andrés Valdivia version of the song "Yo te amo, te amo," first introduced to the Hispanophone world sometime in the 1980s, when Televisa had a monopoly in the United States and Mexican singer Yuri was . . . a lowbrow rage. Ms. Yuri is stinky cheese, to be sure. But Valdivia's rendition of "Yo te amo, te amo" made me appreciate the oppositional redundancy of its lyrics much more: «tómame, déjame / cómprame, véndeme / atame, suéltame / quiéreme, olvídame». (Smiley face: ahhhh, those Siempre en Domingo evenings, may they rest in peace.)

Let's appreciate our AFTER, Valdivia, first, moving to our BEFORE (AKA Yuridia Valenzuela Canseco) second.





Oh . . . and I adore the cheap Warholia repetition––or, put differently, the super duper optical effects of the day––comprised of seven fragmented Yuris below.

Picking this up from msnbcdotcom: the most popular and unusual cat names in the United States. (And nah, my feline's name is not on the list, which moves him into the most liminal of spaces, I think.)

Let's start with the most unusual cat names (I'm torn between Buddah Pest and 80 Bucks. I think the latter may be an homage, if not a pesky reminder, of the total cost of the pet fees involved in adoption. Heck, 80 Bucks is better than 50¢):
1. Edward Scissorpaws
2. Sir Lix-a-lot
3. Optimus Prrrime
4. Buddah Pest
5. Snoop Kitty Kitty
6. Miss Fuzzbutt
7. 80 Bucks
8. Sparklemonkey
9. Rosie Posie Prozac
10. Toot Uncommon

The top cat names are:
1. Max
2. Chloe
3. Tigger
4. Tiger
5. Lucy
6. Smokey
7. Oliver
8. Bella
9. Shadow
10. Charlie

HERE'S ONE FOR THE ARCHIVE –– I accidentally, but quite gratefully, found this rare footage of Roque Dalton reading the poem "Sobre dolores de cabeza"––a reading that I appreciate, shadowy (if not phantasmagorical) footage and all.




«Es bello ser comunista,
aunque cause muchos dolores de cabeza.

Y es que el dolor de cabeza de los comunistas
se supone histórico, es decir
que no cede ante las tabletas analgésicas
sino sólo ante la realización del Paraíso en la tierra.
Así es la cosa.

Bajo el capitalismo nos duele la cabeza
y nos arrancan la cabeza.
En la lucha por la Revolución la cabeza es una bomba de retardo.
En la construcción socialista planificamos el dolor de cabeza
lo cual no lo hace escasear, sino todo lo contrario.

El comunismo será, entre otras cosas,
Una aspirina del tamaño del sol.»

PROJECT (CUBAN AMERICAN) RUNWAY –– Some Obama inauguration facts that may seem a tad frivolous, but that nonetheless caught my attention. Michelle Obama wore an Isabel Toledo dress for the swearing-in ceremony. Why does this matter? Well, dear readership, it makes a world of difference in my little collection of autobiographical nuggets. It just so happens that Toledo, a Cuban American, is a graduate of my alma mater, Memorial High School (go Tigers!) in West New York, NJ. (There's a great 1998 feature of Toledo in the electronic pages of The New York Observer.) As an aside, I was invited to speak at MHS last fall for a class there. The students were incredibly engaging. Knowing the types of socioeconomic challenges that can surface from this predominantly Latino, working class high school, I am always inspired by the amount of talent, accomplishment, and migratory and self reinvention that walks in and out of the halls of this urban educational space.

. . . And speaking of U.S. Latinaje and public discourse surrounding perceptions of a binaristic, black-and-white U.S. ethnoracial history: I watched a bit of the inauguration coverage on Telemundo this morning. I delighted in hearing some personal moments by that network's national correspondent Lori Montenegro, who Latinized Obama's blackness. As we have continually seen, Obama's blackness is invariably relegated to the United States and Africa, bypassing, in this nearsighted process, how blackness informs, flows, and intermixes with Latin America and U.S. Latina and Latino bodily spaces. These bodies and geographies also brush alongside and commingle with diasporic blackness. Montenegro spoke about growing up in Florida and asking her mother why they couldn't go to a particular beach. Her mother answered "because we're black." So the point in all of this is that U.S. Latinas and Latinos have not been so neatly severed from Jim Crow practices of segregation and that these stories need to be added to larger discourses of U.S. blackness. Which reminds me of William Faulkner's suggestion in Light in August. That is, of the geographic intertwinement between two distinct but comparable Souths: the U.S. South and Mexico. There, blackness is socially and regionally accounted for in collapsible Mexican and black terms. These two simultaneously signify, in Faulknerian language, "nigger blood."

It's presidential inauguration countdown and time for Theo, my beloved cat, to join in the festivities as an Obamicon.

A-OK –– It was late in the evening, hours after landing in North Carolina, when I learned about the U.S. Airways crash into the Hudson River. I, too, had flown earlier on Thursday, 15 November, from the much dreaded La Guardia airport to North Carolina, delayed by the morning snow that had thrown a monkey wrench into my schedule. The specifics that my closest friends and family had about my flight information were simply reduced to La Guardia and North Carolina (other relevant particulars included La Guardia, American Airlines, and Raleigh-Durham Airport). Upon hearing about the crash, they immediately bombarded my cell phone, leaving concerned messages. I did not get these urgent messages until later that same day: I had turned off my phone earlier and had forgotten about turning it back on. Their tones freaked me out. I had no idea what they were talking about. Phrases were thrown like "call me back immediately"; "I need to talk with you"; "it's important that you call back as soon as you get this message." I grew concerned about a growing community of friends that seemed to all be facing strange calamities in one day. Alas, it was all cleared, and thankfully, we are all well. I flew back to NYC today, and found the headline on the left. But seriously: pluck 'em?????

Just sharing a shot from my flickr photostream. I took the photograph this evening before meeting some friends at Amsterdam Billiards. I've passed this place for so many years without going inside. To summon the well-worn phrase: never say never. So there I was, even though I don't know much about billiards (shame on me, I suppose, especially when I am so . . . tragically uncompetitive when it comes to sports). Alas, it can be fun, depending on the occasion.

Not unlike me, a lot of people must be listening to one Patti Smith CD or another after last night's event with the artist as part of the TimesTalks series. A dear friend invited me to the Punk Rock 'n' Poetry interview with Smith at the Times Center. The exchange between Smith and NYT music critic John Pareles was phenomenal, in that both artist and critic participated in a meaningful dialogue. (There was a moment when Smith sang live, and Pareles asked her about the different voice ranges she had utilized for the song. He had counted at least 7 voices. Smith appeared genuinely appreciative of that detail, evoking a thanks, man kinda feeling.) But the uniqueness of the event, of course, was not due to Pareles leading the discussion, but to the incisive detours and relevant parenthetical moments of luminance that Smith afforded her audience. Speaking of her beginnings as a poet, Smith, another Jersey gal like myself, discussed her intent to always pursue the physical nature of poetry, to contribute to a different kind of poetic energy, which in and of itself leads to the inner narrative of a song. Pareles observed that her songs had a form of gender mutation, taking into account her "beyond gender" statement from her 1975 album Horses. (The statement also punctuated being beyond race, one might as well note.) Smith's response to the gender point was provocative: as an artist, she stressed, you don't have a gender, you're beyond gender, and thus move into different psyches and characters. She learned that from Joan Baez, Smith explained, who often sang from a male point of view of the female. "I don't like to be pigeonholed when I'm trying to do my work," Smith added. "As an artist, I feel I should be able to move from one skin to another. As an artist, I'll go wherever I want." But she's also an ordinary human, she seemed to plead, with ordinary concerns and everyday practices, underscored by her admission that "I've washed many a sock for my man." The other two things that resonated for me: her take on CBGB's and religion. On the former: "What CBGB's represented to me is that the concept" of the people owning rock and roll "started to become flesh." But since the club's closing in 2006, it was important "not to romanticize CBGB's because it means possibility. Anybody can have CBGB's. It's a state of mind." On religion: "I love that art comes out of religion. [. . . ] Prayer can unite us all psychically. Prayer is a beautiful thing." Smith also took us to larger philosophical concerns, noting that prayer points us to larger preoccupations such as "Why do we exist? Is there a God speaking to someone beyond ourselves?" Very inspiring. And quite real. Indeed, there was much affinity––"kinship," she called it––and gratitude between artist and audience. And Smith autographed my Horses CD. Too cool for school, I say.