All We Have Is Time: Memory's End

My Friend, Betty. QEPD.

Michael Sedano

 

 

“We have nothing but Time,” we told one another as we walked along garden paths. The phrase was a magic incantation for us, lost in the folds of a curtain we couldn’t see beyond. Our world held no hope, no future, only that curtain. Our spouses lived with dementia and dementia means no hope, no future, only the opacity of that curtain’s certitude that death would raise the curtain. All we had was Time.

Memory Club 2018: Michael, Kayley, Randall, Betty,
May, Julia, Tom, Rich, Barbara

 

Betty, when I met her, offered the world a vivacious redhead with a ready smile and a feisty attitude. We were members of Memory Club, six couples living with a dementia. Betty and Rich had season seats at the chamber concerts Barbara and I attended, so we joined forces, had  dinner, made a night of it. When Time weakened our spouses we stopped.

 

Betty and I sought respite walking the county Arboretum and Huntington Library's gardens, talking, remembering, making sense of the world as it found us. Rich died first. We walked and talked about being alone. Barbara died. Betty and I walked and talked about life after dementia. We were never romantic. Our friendship had weathered the most severe tests imaginable; we would hold onto our memories together.

 

Betty fell hard in a parking lot. Xrays discovered lung cancer. Our garden strolls disappeared, instead, I drove Betty to City of Hope for six months, two or three times a week. She was chronically fatigued and we did not walk anymore. I would visit Monday mornings, cook her breakfast, greet her caregiver, and go about my life. I have a new life. I missed a few visits.

Two months ago, Betty texted me. She'd moved into a hospice facility; a house in a quiet Arcadia neighborhood. I visited on Mondays, urged Betty to eat the breakfast on her tray. She wasn't particularly interested in food.

 

Last week, Michelle, a loving caregiver, texted me. Betty is in her transition period now. She sleeps a lot , doesn't eat or drink. The next day, I visited.

 

Betty spoke magic to me in what was our penultimate visit, only three days before our final visit. I sat on her bed, stroking her knee, talked about our friendship. She was frail and quiet. Her eyes opened blankly and she cried out, “ow, ow, ow,” and closed her eyes. I stared helplessly at her.

 

Then Betty opened her eyes, looked at the ceiling then looked down and made eye contact with me. “I love you,” she whispered and smiled. “I love you,” I answered. I left encouraged that she had more Time.

 

Our final visit came with sad acceptance of rapidly approaching Time. Betty's body had grown beyond frail, she was a whisper of the person I'd left only three days earlier. Now she lay eyes blank and mouth open, the oxygen cannula hanging loosely at her nose. The hospice manager told me she’d been asleep two days and only today had opened her eyes to the room around her.

 

Michelle put a chair at the bedside. I sat and leaned toward my friend. Betty smiled when she recognized me. Her mouth moved, I could see her tongue forming sound but her lips did not move. 

  

I told Betty she is strong, holding onto life with all her might. She could not see herself, I saw how cancer had already sucked all life out of her. Her alabaster-white skin covered bones on her face and arm. I held her warm hand, told her what I believe--her spirit will return to visit me in the form of a butterfly or a hummingbird when I walk the gardens. She smiled. I told her I was going to the Arboretum to sit on the bench she willed to the garden. 

Betty whispered sentences that I could not make out, her body no longer possessed energy to form words. But Goodness came from her body, from that small weakened smile, from the breaths that should have been words. Even though I did not understand her final whispers to me, I think she was repeating the last words I remember she said to me, “I love you.”

 

Monday, December 30, Time ran out for Betty. She died quietly in her hospice bed, only a mile from the Arboretum where we walked seeking respite, understanding, and biding our Time.

 

El 2024 por Xánath Caraza

El 2024 por Xánath Caraza

 

Con el fin de año hago un pequeño recuento de los eventos que formaron parte de estos 366 días que conformaron el 2024. Agradezco a todos los que compartieron conmigo, de una u otra forma, este ciclo literario, amistoso, familiar y curativo. El reencuentro con poetas, amigos y escritores siempre es un placer y qué mejor manera de cerrar el año que con un ensayo fotográfico de algunos de estos momentos.

Agradezco a las editoriales FlowerSong Press y Somos en escrito que amablemente publicaron dos de mis poemarios, Tejerás el destino / You Will Weave Destiny y Corazón de agua / Heart of Water este año. No puedo dejar de mencionar a la Dra. Natasa Lambrou quien organizó un encuentro literario en Cuba y presentó mis dos poemarios. Así mismo a la Dra. Heather Ostman del Westchester Community College Humanities Institute quien me invitó a Nueva York a presentarlos. También quiero mencionar a la maestra Malena Flores de la Escuela Normal Veracruzana en México quien organizó la presentación de mis dos poemarios. Incluyo a la poeta Laureada Golda Solomon quien organizó un par de eventos para mis poemarios en Yonkers, Nueva York. A la artista Concepción García Sánchez quien incluyó un par de mis poemas en el Festival de Venecia para Día de Muertos. No quiero dejar de mencionar al Writers Place, de la ciudad de Kansas, a la Facultad de Lenguas Globales y Culturas de la Universidad de Missouri-Kansas City, al Johnson County Arts and Heritage Center, al Intercultural Dialogue Student Association y al Dialogue Institute quienes apoyaron mis actividades creativas. Así como a la editorial Riot of Roses por incluir algunos de mis poemas en la Antología Somos Xicanas. Por último, agradezco a Steve Holland quien caminó conmigo los 366 días que conformaron este 2024.

Aprovecho para desear a todos nuestros lectores un buen 2025 y que todos los retos que enfrentemos sean resueltos de manera positiva. Que la poesía nos salve. A continuación algunas imágenes.

Nacimiento Art

Every Christmas since 1990 my wife Flo traveled to Lamar, Colorado, where she and her father José displayed his 200 plus nacimientos for the community. When my father-in-law passed away, Flo brought her dad’s nativities to Denver. We exhibit a few nacimientos at Christmas in our home and invite the family for tamales, enchiladas and to exchange gifts.  Here are a few photos from various years.

I hope this holiday season finds your piñata filled with all the good things you desire. Merry Christmas!  Happy New Year!

                                                   

     

Later.

____________________________

Manuel Ramos writes crime fiction.

Chicanonautica: Rant for the End of 2024

 by Ernest Hogan

 

This’ll go up the day after Christmas. I’ll be back in California, SoCal, that place where I was born. My mom is having her 90th birthday. 

It’s always a little disturbing going there. It’s great to see my family, but everything keeps changing. Like the rest of the world, only faster.

California has always had one foot stuck in the future. It gets more futuristic every day. What’s a wandering, native son sci-fi writing Chicano to do? What I usually do: keep my eyes open and my sketchbook handy, jot and sketch what I encounter and the visions that it gives me. 

No time off for me, especially since the flow of the universe keeps kicking me out of my usual environment lately. Everything’s a-changing. Cue the Nobel prize-winning rock star. Can you say future shock? It’s not just this year. It seems every year is trying to outdo the last. 2024 really knocked me around, and here comes 2025 . . .

It’s not just the election. All kinds of things are happening. 

Everything is all fluxed-up. By next December, we may not recognize the world we are living in.

There’s a Latinoid renaissance going. I can’t keep up with all the books and other Cultura manifestations. It’s not making anybody rich, but Western Civilization still hasn’t figured us out yet. They’re not even sure if we exist. 

Maybe we’re just a weird rumor--a hallucination brought on by some bad mescaline that Hunter S. Thompson bought on L. A. and that article for Rolling Stone. Maybe if they imagine hard enough we’ll all disappear, and they’ll be back in a safely Anglo America again . . .

Naw, they're going to have to do mass deportations, even though they don’t have a clue how. Just try to go into the barrio and check everybody’s ID. Where is the barrio, anyway? It extends far beyond the traditional borders of Aztlán. I've seen signs of Chicanoization near the Canadian border.

Maybe the barrio, like Hollywood, is more of a state of mind, rather than a location. But what state? What mind? What location?

And I just realized that I made over a thousand dollars from writing this year, even though I didn’t submit anything. An experiment in aggressive marketing is in order.

Anybody want to publish some crazy novels and stories?

I’m in the final year of my sixties. Might as well have fun in a gonzo, Chicanonautic way.

Heh-heh-heh . .  .

Ernest Hogan will keep on being the Father of Chicano Science Fiction . . .

Esperanza Caramelo, the Star of Nochebuena

Written by Karla Arenas Valenti.

Illustrated by Elisa Chavarri.

 

Publisher: ‎Knopf Books for Young Readers 

Language: ‎English

Hardcover: ‎40 pages

ISBN-10: ‎0593488679

ISBN-13: ‎978-0593488676

Reading age: ‎3 - 6 years

 

 

A festive nochebuena treat for little ones who believe in the magic of Christmas (and the deliciousness of cake)!

 

On the night before Christmas, a spark of magic lights up Lita's Pastelería, and Esperanza Caramelo blinks open her eyes. Esperanza is a spun-sugar ornament, meant to sit atop the Nochebuena cake—but tonight she whirls through the bakery, singing and dancing, throwing a fiesta with all the other ornaments until . . . disaster strikes!

 

Can the cake be saved in time for Christmas? The clock is ticking, but on Nochebuena, anything is possible—and Esperanza never gives up hope.

 

 

Esperanza Caramelo, la estrella de Nochebuena 

Era la víspera de la Nochebuena, una noche en la que reina el asombro para aquellos que creen en magia. Para Esperanza Caramelo, una niña hecha de azúcar, esta sería una Navidad como ninguna otra…

 

En la víspera de la Nochebuena, un destello de magia despierta la Pastelería de Lita, y Esperanza Caramelo abre sus ojos. Esperanza es una figurita de azúcar, hecha para decorar un pastel de Nochebuena. Pero esta noche, Esperanza da vueltas por la panadería, cantando y bailando, organizando una fiesta con todas las otras figuritas de azúcar. Todos están felices hasta que… ¡ocurre un desastre!

 

¿Tendrán tiempo de arreglar el pastel antes de que sea demasiado tarde?

 

Review

"Valenti whips up a delectable tale of whimsical enchantment, with Spanish sprinkled throughout....Like a dash of sweetened wishes." —Kirkus Reviews

 

"Richly ­illustrated with vibrant colors, this picture book is sure to please." —School Library Journal

 

"The sweet backgrounds are full of delicious and delightful clues and plenty of other details to keep readers invested as they root for this unlikely heroine."—Booklist

 

"This book is sure to satisfy any reader’s sweet tooth." —The Horn Book

Karla Arenas Valenti is the author of many books for children of all ages. She grew up in Mexico City in a house that was built around a tree and surrounded by magic (which has stayed with her long into her adult years). Her storytelling is seeded in Mexican culture and lore, and often deals in explorations of philosophical and identity-based themes (inspiring the mind) while also taking readers on riveting magical realist adventures (inspiring the heart). She currently resides in the Chicagoland area.

Elisa Chavarri has illustrated numerous books for children including Pura Belpre Honor book Sharuko. She graduated with honors from the Savannah College of Art and Design, where she majored in classical animation and minored in comics. Elisa hails from Lima, Peru, and resides in Alpena, Michigan, with her husband and two young children. 

Review: Denvercentric Chicano Literature

Review: The Last Client of Luis Montez. Manuel Ramos. Arte Publico Press, 2024. 

            ISBN: 979-8-89375-001-0

Michael Sedano

Luis Montez runs a one-lawyer Denver firm surviving from client to client. In a major victory, Montez frees a low-life. His reward is getting arrested for murdering the low-life, a scion of wealth. The innocent lawyer descends into a moral hell in his quest to gather evidence of his innocence of murder. Who done it?

Author Manuel Ramos gives this plot of innocence in quest of vindication his signature chicano noir treatment in The Last Client of Luis Montez: A Luis Montez Mystery from Arte Publico Press (link).

Readers who enjoyed Ramos' 2023 The Ballad of Rocky Ruiz will be happy to see Arte Publico Press' release of its fourth of the five-title series of Luis Montez mysteries. The Luis Montez series, first published in the nineties by other houses, comes together for contemporary readers in the hands of Houston's Arte Publico Press.

The University of Houston-housed Arte Publico Press launched the series in 2023 with The Ballad Of Rocky Ruiz: A Luis Montez Mystery. That was followed by a pair of titles in 2024, The Ballad of Gato Guerrero: A Luis Montez Mystery, and the recent release of The Last Client of Luis Montez. Not yet published is Blues For the Buffalo. The press'  silence on the fifth title, Brown On Brown, adds mystery to when the series will be complete. 

Book marketers note how mysteries sales go up when other adult fiction sales decline. They attribute the jump to readers needing "cozy" literature, stuff that doesn't overdo the gore and psychology of lethality. Not mentioned is the inherent expectation that mystery novels will bring vicarious excitement, tension, interesting characters and setting, and above all, atmosphere.

With a Luis Montez novel, it doesn't pay to get all psychological. Montez, for all the seriousness of serving clients, is impetuous and wild. He would be a mujeriego, a roué, but younger women don't throw themselves at him. Then again, Montez feels himself past his prime y casí ya no puede but his imagination pushes him into erotic fantasy:

It was Glory Jane, of course. She stood very close, bending and weaving from the crush of the customers and effects of the Sin Fron's ghastly version of margaritas. Her breasts squirmed beneath her loose blouse, straining to pop out in freedom, and I was tempted to hold them to secure their modesty. The point of Glory Jean's knife, pressed against my kidney, brought me back to the immediate agenda.

Montez is more likely to be the old pendejo, getting seduced by a scheming conspirator and winding up in deep caca of his own doing by falling for the hottie. She wasn't after Luis, she was in it for the money.

The situation would be funny but for the darkness Luis sinks into questing to prove himself innocent. He goes on the lam, kidnaps a con man and his sister, burgles a client's house and get busted by them then holds them hostage. There's a chicano dick who wants to chalk up a score to even old resentments from movimiento days. And Luis has been thoroughly dumped by his former lover. And maybe Montez' beloved father is dying. Ramos builds some really dire circumstances.

Lower and lower the detective-malgre-lui sinks in the lawyer's astonished mind but survival and innocence drive the character.

Denver in winter becomes a meterological hell with slushy streets, punishing wind-driven cold, treacherous traffic. The atmosphere challenges Ramos to capture the misery that cold weather visits upon denizens of frozen cities:

At 3:30 in the afternoon, cold long shadows draped across the skyline, covered the parking lots and darkened most of downtown Denver. The streets were cold; the buildings were cold; I was cold. The January air whipped through the canyons of the skyscrapers, then aimed straight for me. Gusts twirled around my legs, raising bits and pieces of ice that clung to my heaviest pair of wool socks. I inhaled coldness through clenched teeth. Frigid slivers of oxygen and pollutants knifed down my throat and into my lungs. A drop of moisture stubbornly clung to the numb tip of my nose, and I ached like an old miner. I coughed and wheezed.

For this reader, synesthetic miserable cold awakens miserable memories of being miserably wretchedly unbearably cold while serving on a Korean mountaintop missile site, the world's highest. But weather isn't the novel's most important element. The Last Client of Luis Montez is a classically outstanding murder mystery, it keeps readers turning pages to assemble clues and confoundments Ramos masterfully doles out.

Who not only killed the liberated low-life, but why cut him into gory pieces? That happens off-stage, like the coziness criterion holds. Ramos holds down the intensity, talking about sex, for example, and not writing it. Blending telling with showing keeps the action flowing, leaving readers to fill in their own blanks, like Glory Jean's blouse.

Fill in those blanks on a cold day when all you want is to sit in front of a glowing space heater or a crackling fireplace. Give yourself a day or so to devour the story of this chicano lawyer up against all sorts of odds; a broken love affair, a seriously ill father, possible disbarment and imprisonment. Heck, he could have been shot as a felon on the run. When a cop drives his car off a remote precipice into thin air, detectives search for ways to connect Montez to that.

Ramos creates not only exceptional mystery stories, he's writing Chicano Literature. The character, his intimate and familia environment and hangouts, his history as a student activist in the movimiento, hasta the food Montez likes, it's raza. And it's exemplary writing; Ramos is a writer's writer.

There used to be a common complaint that our gente can't readily find themselves in mass media. Arte Publico Press makes it easy to find Ramos' soon-to-be four resurrected masterpieces. Navigate to the publisher's website (link) and place orders. Or give the ISBN to your indie brick and mortar bookseller, the book will soon be in your hands. 

The five Luis Montez novels make a worthy addition to a reader's library. Readers relatively new to cozy literature should welcome finding Luis Montez stories. Fans of the character will scoff at "cozy" because they enjoy filling in those blanks while tsk-tsking the character's pendejadas and empathizing that the character's exigencies drive him to darkness. That's what makes it good.

In The Last Client of Luis Montez, when light shines on everything, happy readers delight in already guessing the outcome, or slap their knees admiring the writer's craft.

Ramos' mysteries may be coming to streaming channels soon. I read somewhere the author's work has been optioned for broadcast development. A ver.

September Promise Realized

Early September this year, La Bloga-Tuesday celebrated the reincarnated Huizache (link), that moved from Texas to Davis, California. It was Houston's desmadre and Davis' windfall, publishing the distinguished magazine's tenth edition. La Bloga promised to share Number Eleven's appearance.

Students and aficionados of Chicano Literature need this collection of contemporary work. "The Magazine of a New America" offers a definitive snapshot of the state and nature of Chicano Literature. It's an important journal that libraries and bookstores should shelve.

Number 11 is here. Link. 

Poetry Connection: Connecting with Local Poets in Goleta, CA

Melinda Palacio, Santa Barbara Poet Laureate 

David Starkey, Cie Gumucio
Anna Mathews, Daniel Thomas, Shirley Geok-lin Lim, and Dylan Farrell

In a case of IYKYK, then you know that the Goleta Valley Poetry Series is one of the best kept secrets in our local poetry scene. Poet Laureate Emeritus, David Starkey, runs the series twice a year. He pairs seasoned and youth poets, with the help of Cie Gumucio who is the Santa Barbara County Coordinator and Poet Teacher with Cal Poets in the Schools. Starkey says he adopted the idea from a New England poetry series, The Liar’s Bench. This month’s Goleta Valley edition was outstanding. Perhaps knowing that the series might be put on hold due to the library’s upcoming renovation made each reader stand out for me. There was something special l about each of the poets. The librarian’s are committed to the poetry series and just might come up with a creative way to keep it going throughout the renovation. Let’s hope they come up with a solution to keep the biannual series going. Meanwhile, if you want to write more poetry in the new year, sign up for David Starkey’s Ekphrastic Poetry Workshop at the Central Library next month on Sunday, January 12. 

The line-up included Dos Pueblos High School student and 2023 Poetry Out Loud Regional winner, Anna Mathews (you may recall Anna Mathews from previous columns), 6^th Grader at Mountain View Elementary, Dylan Farrell, Daniel Thomas, and Professor Emerita Shirley Geok-lin Lim, who merits her own write-up, look for more in a future poetry connection column. A proud Goleta resident, the UCSB Professor Emeritus said she was happy to be presenting at her local branch.

Anna Mathews is a poet to watch. As a Poetry Out Loud Regional winner, she knows how to deliver a poem, even offers some hand choreography. Her powerful poems linger in the ear and heart. Dylan Farrell, age 12, opened the reading series. He said it was his first poetry reading. However, he seemed so at ease at the podium, you would think he was a much older, seasoned poet. 

Nightmare 

written by Dylan Farrell

6th Grade , Mountain View Elementary

Nightmare 

Tonight in the darkness, an image struck me

a land where love is a dream and hate is a dark reality where you find

strength in pain and beauty in death

when I arose from my slumber I vowed not to let this dark illusion become

a reality

yet my wounded heart fell

so I looked out the window, a portal and I threw my heart out

I projected my thoughts in to the infant void

I screamed my mind to are beautiful country trying in vain to rid my life of

this nightmare

And the void answered back showing me a land of dreams a land where

you can unshackle your chains and set down your burdens

where love is your guide and hate is only a dark thought in the back of

your mind

As I looked through my portal my wounds hurt less and my scars

healed

yet my nightmare remanded It haunted me endlessly so I spoke

“‘I have tried fighting you and I have tried pushing you away so all that's

left to do is to embrace you” and so I did

And I have never stopped

I hold it still to this day and for some strange reason I see things differently

when I see things hurt and tinged with despair

I look back to where we started

I look at a nightmare and I see a dream

Dylan wrote the poem after a presentation and lesson to his 6th-grade class on how poets and politics have intersected over the years by Cie Gumucio. The class discussed Martin Luther King’s I have a Dream speech, Maya Angelou’s poem, Still, I Rise, and they watched and listened to Amanda Gorman’s The Hill We Climb. Cie asked the students to reflect on the inspiring words of each poet and write their own poems about their hopes for the future. 

This week’s poetry connection features a poem by Dylan Farrell and two by Daniel Thomas who is equally at home writing about music and stillness. There’s a spiritual, yin and yang quality to his work. His collection of poems include, Leaving the Base Camp at Dawn (2022) and Deep Pockets (2018). He has an MFA in poetry from Seattle Pacific University, as well as an MA in film and a BA in literature. 

THE FADO SINGER

Daniel Thomas

The word itself contains shadows,

as if the singer stands poised

between the saddened past

and the always fickle future, in a now

lit only by a glaring spotlight

that shines the sequins of her silver

dress and deepens the night sky

hidden in her eyes of black onyx.

Her long arms gesture to the balcony

and her voice trembles through

a languid melody in a minor key,

while three guitars pluck percussive

notes that frame her liquid arcs

like the simple setting of a fine

carnelian stone. Her Portuguese words

grant me liberty to hear only

rhythm and melody and the mouthed and trilled

consonants and vowels that might speak

of lost love, or death beside us

in the dim hall, or the deep sorrow

in these things we live beside. And so

I am transfixed by the origin of drama,

before plot or theme, just

the one life that shines through

her face, stares into darkness, sings

the pure song of her dangling fate.

GREEN PEARLS

Daniel Thomas

When illness stills you, and worry weights

your limbs—when you rub your eyes to wake up

and the rose light of evening slants

across the dusty table—you take a walk,

but the neighborhood is empty—even the birds

have flown, taking with them the furnishings

of sound that make the world inhabitable.

You remember Midwest autumns—how herds

of maple leaves skittered across the blacktop.

Nestled among tree trunks and leafless shrubs,

they found their place of winter rest.

You, too, hurry down the driveway, brittle

as the dried husk of a seed pod. But within you—

green pearls in a frail shell.

*an earlier version of this column appears in the Santa Barbara Independent