Guest Columnist: Xánath Caraza. Latino Writers Collective en Chicago.

Xanath Caraza

By Xánath Caraza (see Xánath's bio following foto credits)

When I think of the word Chicago, immediately what comes to my mind is Sandra Cisneros, the Chicago Art Institute, the National Museum of Mexican Art, the Blue Men, and Carlos Cumpián. We, the Latino Writers Collective (LWC) of Kansas City, received an invitation for a collective reading in Chicago to promote our award winning fiction anthology, Cuentos del Centro: Stories from the Latino Heartland (Scapegoat Press, 2009), and we were so excited that we could not wait to arrive at the event.

--English language column continues below.

Cuando pienso en la palabra Chicago, lo que viene inmediatamente a mi mente es Sandra Cisneros, el Instituto de Arte de Chicago, el Museo Nacional de Arte Mexicano, los Hombres Azules y Carlos Cumpián. Nosotros, el Latino Writers Collective (LWC) de Kansas City, recibimos una invitación para una lectura colectiva en Chicago para promover nuestra antología ganadora de ficción, Cuentos del Centro: Stories from the Latino Heartland, (Scapegoat Press, 2009), y estábamos tan emocionados que no podíamos esperar para llegar al evento.

¡¡Chi-ca-go!! El Latino Writers Collective de la Ciudad de Kansas leyó en la Windy City en la noche del 5 de diciembre de 2009, de 6:30 a 9 en Latte en Lincoln, auspiciados por MARCH/Abrazo Press que es dirigida por el dinámico y afectuoso Carlos Cumpián.

Entre los miembros de LWC que asistieron al evento y que con gran entusiasmo leyeron para la audiencia de Chicago estuvieron José Faus, María Vazquez-Boyd, Christina Rodriguez, Ericka Cecilia, Gustavo Aybar, Gabriela Lemmons, Linda Rodriguez, Mario Duarte y Xánath Caraza. Sin embargo la noche fue más que una lectura. Fue el principio de nuevas amistades e intercambio de palabras y experiencias, porque tuvimos la oportunidad de escuchar a dos poetas locales de Chicago. También escuchamos las impactantes palabras de Cynthia Gallaher y la lectura llena de energía del mismo Carlos Cumpián.

¡¡Qué noche!! Un verdadero lujo para LWC. La atmósfera casera en Latte en Lincoln, el aterciopelado vino tinto para brindar y las presentaciones de Carlos Cumpián fueron parte de las delicadezas de esta ocasión. En las palabras de Carlos Cumpián: “Cuando Linda Rodriguez me presentó a LWC fue en la Conferencia de 2008 de Association of Writers and Writing Programs, a través de su antología ganadora de poesía, Primera Página: Poetry from the Latino Heartland (Scapegoat Press, 2008). Después ella me pidió leer, sólo leer un manuscrito. Estaba lleno de voces diversas del Midwest y encontré en sus cuentos mucha narrativa poética. Era un tesoro y las críticas lo han probado. Entonces, terminé por escribir el prólogo para Cuentos del Centro”.

Mientras termino los últimos toques a estas palabras de nuestra noche en Chicago, me asomo por la ventana para ver las luces de la ciudad; ahora sé que estoy en casa. Gracias Chicago y gracias Carlos Cumpián. Chicago, hasta la próxima.


Chi-ca-go!! The Latino Writers Collective from Kansas City read at the Windy City on the

evening of December 5, 2009 from 6:30-9 at Latte on Lincoln, hosted by MARCH/ Abrazo Press led by the dynamic and warm-hearted Carlos Cumpián.

Among the LWC members who attended the event and enthusiastically performed for the Chicago audience were José Faus, María Vazquez-Boyd, Christina Rodriguez, Ericka Cecilia, Gustavo Aybar, Gabriela Lemmons, Linda Rodriguez, Mario Duarte, and Xánath Caraza. However, the night was more than just a reading. It was the beginning of new friendships, and an exchange of words, and experiences, because as well we had the opportunity to listen to two local poets from Chicago. We also listened to the powerful words of Cynthia Gallaher and the energetic performance of Carlos Cumpián.

What a night!! A real treat for LWC. The cozy atmosphere at Latte on Lincoln, the velvety red wine for toasting and the introductions from Carlos Cumpián were part of the delicacies of the night. In the words of Carlos Cumpián: “When Linda Rodriguez introduced me to LWC, it was at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference 2008, in Chicago, through their award winning poetry anthology, Primera Página: Poetry from the Latino Heartland (Scapegoat Press, 2008). Then she asked me to read, only read a manuscript. It was full of diverse voices from the Midwest and I found in their stories so much narrative poetry. It was a treasure, and the reviews have proved it. As a result, I ended up writing the foreword for Cuentos del Centro”.

As I’m finishing the last touches of these words of our evening in Chicago, I look through the window to see the city lights below; now I know I am home. Thank you Chicago, and thank you Carlos Cumpián. Chicago, we hope to return there soon.

Fotos:Stephen Holland-Wempe.

Top: con Carlos Cumpián.

Bottom: Mario Duarte, Xanath Caraza, Jose Faus, Maria Vasquez-Boyd, Ericka Cecilia and Gustavo Aybar.)

Biographical Statement: I’m a traveler, educator, poet, and short story writer. My original work and essays have been published in El Cid, Revista estudiantil del Capítulo Tau Iota de Sigma Delta Pi, La Sociedad Nacional Honoraria Hispánica, Utah Foreign Language Review, Present Magazine, and Latino Poetry Review. I have also been published in the following anthologies: Cuentos del Centro: Stories from the Latino Heartland, (Scapegoat Press, 2009), Primera Página: Poetry from the Latino Heartland (Scapegoat Press, 2008), and Más allá de las fronteras, (Ediciones Nuevo Espacio, 2004). I’m a member of the Board of Directors of the Latino Writers Collective, Kansas City, Missouri. I love hiking, Concheros, Baroque music, and a warm cup of oolong tea.

La Bloga welcomes and encourages guest columnists. If you have a book review, arts or cultural event, a significant reading experience, or something from your writer's notebook that you'd enjoy sharing with La Bloga, click here to discuss your proposal.

Michael Sedano's regular Tuesday column returns next week, December 14, with his review of Mexico City Noir.

Guest Columnist: Healing Times

Editor's Note: La Bloga welcomes Guest Columnists. La Bloga encourages Guest Columnists. Raza interests range widely, arte, artists, collecting; literatura; food; health; memory. Today's Guest Columnist writes geographically from East Texas USA, and physiologically from the heart of GOPlague Country. La Bloga wishes Maria Miranda Maloney well, and all our gente, as we confront this GOPlague.

•michael sedano

Healing Times

Maria Miranda Maloney

December ends in hot and breezy days. 

The air carries the scent of the Gulf of Mexico, distorts our vision with its constant heavy morning drizzle. 

Outside, birds warble, roosters crow, and the wind sweeps swiftly among the last remaining leaves that cling to bare, twisted limbs of the giant Oaks surrounding my property. Behind this curtain of nature, the screech and growl of a trash truck makes its way slowly through the neighborhood. 

There is something to be said about today: It's beautiful. 

It's as if I am standing at the edge of the shoreline, and the ocean's breeze rouses my skin. There is no day like today. I also have Covid for the second time this year. 

The virus moves silently inside my body. Except for the congestion and the static noise in my head, I feel relatively well. I write the latter with trepidation because my tomorrow is uncertain. 

Experience and science dictate that there is no such thing as a “mild” case of Covid. To announce that one has a “mild” case of the virus is to say: For today, I am alive. I am breathing, but the uncertainty consumes the mind. 

I give instructions to my family; what to do if things escalate. What to do with me. 

I picked up the Omicron virus, the latest variant sweeping the nation. 

I know the place and time it entered my body. I saw the signs around me that I choose to ignore because I wanted badly to be with family, to share a milestone with a loved one. But there were flags all around: people unmasked, eyeing me curiously. 

This was an East Texas town filled with unmasked people. At the restaurant that afternoon, I was the only one wearing a medical-grade mask, and as I bit into my celebratory meal, I breathed, too, the virus-laden air. 

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not blaming, so much as accepting, that I tragically exposed myself knowingly, even when I understood the choreography of this virus and the dense obsessiveness of this East Texas town to defy CDC and Fauci’s warnings. 

There's sadness, too. 

My mind reckons with the past two years since the pandemic began officially in U.S., on March 13, 2020, by Proclamation 9994, when the deliberately unmentioned in the White House, finally declared a national emergency:  Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) was pandemic. 

I say the past two years because the rest of the world was already dying before deliberately unmentioned conceded to reality. 

China and Italy were dying. The news reported daily on the devastation, cameras panning the desolate streets of Italy. I read messages on social media, Italians begging everyone to take the pandemic seriously. 

I don't remember the first day of quarantine, when the sun was out. I remember the night. The awfully silent night, thick with humidity that swelled against the outside of my bedroom windows. 

There was no last-minute rush of engines to the grocery stores or whatever human sounds condense the night. Instead, for the first time since I moved to East Texas, I heard the whimpering of coyotes close by; perhaps, scavenging the neighborhood for food or wandering at the edge of the national forest; perhaps sensing safety that no bullet would find them. 

I listened to the squeal of bats outside the house, circling the top of our home, and the incessant chirping of crickets. 

As the quarantine moved into late Spring and the nights stretched brighter, the nocturnal sounds of creatures became my companions. They made me forget the isolation manifesting itself in my tearful bouts and anxiety attacks during the day. 

What is it like to live in these days of pandemic and dissent? 

When deliberately unmentioned made himself god, the world was no longer safe. The U.S. broke down, opened wounds, festered in hate with a scent like a body dying. 

But there was compassion, too, in the folds of our beings, with friends reaching out through social media, virtual meetings, in texts, and telephone calls. We connected, made new friends online. 

There were family deaths. People we loved died. Then, too, people we loved turned away from us. For many of us, our homes became a microcosm of the world outside, a dysfunctional system of opposition and unstoppable disease. 

My home became a battlefield of politics and skepticism toward the virus. And we suffered for it. Our lives were a corkscrew, twisting and turning, pulling and pushing, watching only the bubbly life we had created remain intact in the bottle of our minds. 

What have we become?

I grieve my losses—emotional and physical. I grieve the loss of a life I thought I had. 

The pandemic has exposed our vulnerability as Winter exposes the Oaks' limbs. Somedays I fear what I've become, or discovered, about myself. The darkest part of me uncovered that I cannot hide. I also unearthed my yearning to live a life of beauty and substance. To bare myself down without excess or want for more. 

I've learned to navigate this new world, but I'm exhausted. I'm mostly exhausted of the constant polemic on social media and news shows; exhausted, yes, even of those I love who still make light of everything and the seriousness of our reality. 

When we had the opportunity to come together as one country, one community, one family, we didn't. There were some communities who worked together to curb death, but not here. No, not in the place where I make my home, where American exceptionalism, it’s mantra, is a delusion of grandeur and righteousness that leaves no room for discernment. 

As it turns out, American exceptionalism is the disease. Its distorted concept of humility masks lack of self-love. Its distorted love of community warps into a practice of arrogance feeding off humiliation of others. 

And when this is over, if it is over, this pandemic, we're still left with our condition: immeasurable trauma. 

For many, our bodies carry the traces of the virus we suffered. And there’s the emotional trauma,  residues of lost relationships and lost dreams. 

Trees tell their story. Limbs stretch, twist, bend, grow boney, thick, calloused, strong, weak. Limbs will break when a strong wind pushes against them. We are like trees, too. We are like their limbs, bearing our winters in our exposed skins, detailed with the rabid hurricanes; the fears and losses that leave marks as if any other wind will break us.

Yet, many of us remain connected, hopeful for another better spring of rain and new life. Our limbs are carved with wisdom, too—all we weathered these past two years. 

I hope tomorrow I will awake and see the Oak before me and say out loud: "We lived, and we’ll live through another year." 

My Best 2 Minutes: KMart Farewell

Oracy Month: Here's How

Michael Sedano

Two Tuesdays past, La Bloga-Tuesday declared our plan to join this year's observance of 100,000 Poets For Change by means of anyone who has the ganas to record yourself reading two minutes of something you wrote.

Who better to give voice to your arte than the one who labored long and intensely to get the right words in the right place to tell the story just as it came out?

Here is an example of a "my best two minutes video" I recorded after three rehearsals all the way through, cutting the text as I went to fit the time while adjusting each reading to fit better how the words feel in my mouth.

Press Record, breathe, begin. Record the title later. Don't worry about flubs, but go ahead and make an edit, or do it all over again. 

Add titles and original music if that fits your best two minutes.

This reading has 300 words; two minutes with a separately recorded title. The video uses the simple title and transitions tools iMovie provides. Windows has similar free software.

Read along with the video. This is what this story is supposed to sound like. How would you read it?

Metiche

Michael sedano

 

Lemuel Sepulveda raises his right wrist above his eyes. 3:44. Time to rise and shine, take a leak. 

 

Leave a leak, Lemuel jokes for the thousandth time, as he turns to sit on the toilet seat. His nalgas cover the stink of two days pee don’t, poo do. Drought time.

 

The faintest glow now limns the ridgeline behind the mountains. He makes out leaves against the sky. Morning has broken. Pushing against the window, Lemuel smiles at the gentle breeze infiltrating his aerie. Light creates its own weather, he thinks. It’s going to be a wonderful, beautiful day, totally relaxing. 

 

Somewhere in the night a couple fight. 

 

She screeches in pain. He growls miserably. Words, hers. Shouts, his. She screams in alarm. muffled hard sounds, a weight thuds to the ground. Lemuel is at his front door Lemuel is outside on his sidewalk. The man tells the woman this is her fault, she made him so fucking mad. There’s anger in her voice, “It’s my fault and it’s my apartment.” Lemuel sees them now in a pool of light. 

 

A bulky figure splays on a pile of bedclothes, a sheet hangs from the window above them. Only twenty feet away, Lemuel announces himself as he closes the distance toward the now silent man and sputtering woman repeating “get out get the fuck out of my house”.

 

“Hey you guys. This is really awful” is all Lemuel Sepulveda can say.

 

Lemuel wakes sometime later. He can’t say when, exactly, his Fitbit and iPhone are no longer on him. He staggers to his feet and walks painfully up the street to his front door where he vomits on it. It gets worse. When Lemuel Sepulveda goes to wash his bleeding nose, his lips and eyebrows in the mirror wear bright pink lipstick.

Guest Writer: Jim Marquez

We invite Jim to choose 2 minutes worth of this text and send us a video as his "Best 2 Minutes". A major challenge for anyone reading this is ethos, the character of the reader real, or assumed. The story offers a range of attitudes and responses that create ethos. The oral reader instills their own ethos into what's already in the writing. Finding congruency between your oral ethos and the story's enhances a reading. "The Voice" will never capture the ethos of a piece of writing nor a poem. The art already has a voice. Locate it, share it.

Lament For The Death of A Kmart

Jim Marquez

When I was a child my mother used to take me shopping with her every week to the local Kmart on Whittier Boulevard in East Los Angeles, off Goodrich, in the “Commerce Shopping Center”. Mom loved that place, Kmart. You could buy so much for so little. It was the poor Mexican mother’s Rodeo Drive. 

My dad worked a steady, factory job, and with what little he made, Mom, with the aid of magic and education from Roosevelt High, managed to buy a house, two cars, pay for most of my brother’s university, my university, and buy me whichever toy I wanted for Christmas. Well, not every single one but damn near close. And books. Yes, lots and lots of books. God bless them. God bless Mom. She knew something was up, because, when, at 4 years old, I entered kindergarten, and was reading three levels higher than anybody else. So, the books. 

Usually at Kmart. Great damn selection there. They had coloring books! Monster books! Nature books! Dinosaur books! Map books! “Activity” books! Story books! Disney books! Young adult fiction books! Sports books! Comic books! An entire aisle of books! Oh my god it was like a candy store to me. And I am beginning to tear up writing about it, remembering it (at the moment, December 18, 2019, I am in Paris, in the Marais Quartier, at the desk in my hotel room, listening to the soundtrack of “Amélie”; so melancholic because no matter how wanting Amélie is of love, that look she gives the camera at the end tells you she will leave him soon enough, because they all do) and crying because I wish to God I can be there again in Kmart and live it all over. 

Get more life. Not a do-over, per se, just do that part because it was so much fun. Happy. So happy with my books, and Mom saying, “Go ahead, pick your book for the week. Take your time.”  

Mom had a ritual. The night before, Mom would look over the advertising papers inserted into the L.A. Times or the Herald Examiner. Mom would say, “Let’s see what the specials are,” and she’d study the damn thing for almost an hour, circling items she wanted with a pencil then writing them down on a shopping list. Just to make sure. 

Sitting there at her side I had no inkling she would die. No clue what a horror show it would be when she got old and sick and took three weeks to die in a despicable excuse for a doctor’s hospital in East LA. That time by her side seemed to last forever. It just never crossed my mind what would happen. How could it? 

You could see Mom’s eyes light up when she turned the pages. “Oh, look at this!” or “Your father would like this!” or “Do you think your brother would want one of these?” or “See? They have socks on sale. You need new socks!”

The next day while dad was at work we’d take her beat up 1948 Dodge Plymouth for the two-mile trek. Later, after selling the car we’d take the “Commerce Bus” or “the Whittier Bus”, we rode the RTD. Nothing stopped her from Kmart.

Once we got to the parking lot of the shopping center occupied with Kmart, small no-personality shops, numerous faceless food places, “Two Guys,” then later a “Target”, and a movie theatre, Mom slowly patrolled, looking for a parking space close to Kmart’s entrance. Around and around, looking, waiting, cursing under her breath, Mom was in no hurry.  

After finding the perfect spot, a spot she had made two or three passes on already, she’d say, “We got everything?” and check the doors several times to make sure they were locked. Paranoid? Maybe. But years later, doing this weekly trip, on her own, some jackass stole the tags off her plate. Couldn’t believe that. Neither could she. And she started going less and less. Then, driving less altogether. Until the day she could drive no more. 

Upon entering Kmart you smelled the popcorn. You couldn’t miss Kmart’s huge deli-counter with fresh popcorn, ICEE slushes (cherry, my favorite; coffee, mom’s) with that creepy polar bear on the cup. An old-fashion meat slicer ran for sandwiches from fresh, greasy hams or dry turkey breasts. 

Armed with popcorn and ICEE, you entered Kmart to spend the next two hours. 

I looked up at mom pick through the ladies clothes, the soap dishes, the towels, the bags of clothespins, Aquanet for her, Vitalis for dad and the Jurgens hand cream, the Vick’s Vapo Rub despite the fact we already have two jars sitting in the white, metal cabinet on the back porch, St. Joseph Aspirin (orange flavor) for me, that god-awful liquid Sudafed for me (childhood hay fever), Rolaids for dad, his Pepto-Bismol, tin cannisters of Sucrets, Juicy Fruit gum, (7 sticks for $.25 for long lasting flavor, and in single stand-alone packs, thank you), Mother’s Root Beer in a jug (was it a jug?), dishwasher liquid, Lysol for the shitter, a thick, plastic pouch of tiny green, wax army men (100 count!) for me, a can of Wilson tennis balls for my brother, maybe if I was lucky a Hot Wheels car as a second toy, Eveready Batteries, size ‘D’, for the hundreds of flash lights we have scattered all over the house because “you never know”, Anacin in the green bottle for mom’s headaches. And then she picked up the things she wanted on her list.  

I can’t forget “Blue Light Specials”. Good God. The selling of crap left over from last season, of overstock, or something broken, bundled, and tossed into a shopping cart somewhere in the store. 

Find the “blue light”, like the one you’d see flashing atop a police car in Paris, but here attached to a six-foot tall aluminum pole sticking out of a wooden box on steel wheels. The “blue light” was rolled to where the flash-sale would be. There would be an announcement in English and Spanish. A Kmart employee in a god-awful aquamarine blue smock would be there to flip a switch on the box. A mad dash ensues. All over the store shopping carts turned on a dime and came crashing through the aisles, knocking over sales racks, rolling over women’s feet in terry-cloth house slippers, dragging and sometimes running over confused, frightened, and crying toddlers.

Women pulled and scratched and tore the items out of other women’s hands. They bumped shopping carts. They cursed at each other in English & Spanish & Spanglish. Mom included.  

And what was the “blue light special” this time? Light bulbs. G.E. 34 watt and 52-watt bulbs. “But, Mom, we only use 40-watt and 60-watt bulbs. Who uses these?” “You never know,” she’d say. Four boxes she’d buy. Regular $.75 for four bulbs. “Blue Light Special” price? $.64 a box. Save $.09

Then it was onto the book aisle where I’d slowly walk up and down the aisle. Touch the books. Pull them off the shelf. Put the book to my nose and flip the pages so I could smell the ink. The paper. Inhale. Breathe out. Mmmmm. What a great smell.

I’d grab a book on movie monsters: Godzilla, King Kong, The Werewolf. Or a Scooby Doo adventure book. Full color was like watching the cartoon itself!  “Peanuts” paperbacks, sadly, always in black & white. Maybe a map book on the cities of Europe. Puzzle “activity” books. The material sounds a little corny, I know, but I was 5 years old. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. 

After a choice was made it was off to the dark cafeteria at the back of Kmart. Nobody was ever there where heap, yellow plastic paneling separated diners from shoppers. 

Only a little something to nibble on. Mom still had dinner to make at home. So it was a kid-size fried burrito for her and a plain hot dog for me. Always plain. No fries, those were too expensive. Just the hot dog. The seating area was unnerving, shadowy, hushed, echoey, but I didn’t care. It was sitting there, chilling with mom, at two in the afternoon, new book in hand, belly full, school and the neighborhood far, far away, my short, stubby legs dangling over the edge of the chair as we sat at our table and ate in silence. My brother was in high school and wouldn’t get out til later. Dad at work. It was Magic.

And suddenly I was no longer going to Kmart with Mom. I had entered middle school then high school. That was ok for Mom, though she would never say anything, because she knew about the inevitability of time, and let it go. Besides, she liked going on her own. I think. Or maybe not. I never asked. I should have asked. Or, she’d go with her sister, or, on rare occasions, with Dad. 

You know those high school years. They’re insulated and histrionic and you forget you were a child because you’re so goddamn much in a hurry to become an adult. And then once you’re the adult you’re fucked.    

One day, about three years after Mom’s passing, I saw a poster stapled to a telephone pole near a bus stop on Whittier Boulevard: KMART GOING OUT OF BUSINESS SALE!! EVERYTHING MUST GO!!

I had to pull over. What?! True, I hadn’t been there in forever, but at that point I was still caught up in years-long depression of losing Mom. It hit me hard. Closed. Everything must go. Goddamn. No more Kmart. 

I practically grew up there. Week after week. With Mom. Always with Mom. Always an adventure. Mom bought me my first baseball mitt there. First basketball. First tennis racket. Halloween costumes. Later, I bought my first pool cue there. Bowling ball. Fishing tackle. And now she’s gone. This is gone. 

I stared into space and thought of it all, there, parked on a side street, engine still running. “See, Mom? They couldn’t survive without you” I said, aloud. 

I made it a point to go that weekend and visit one last time. Maybe pick something up. Take a photo. This Saturday for sure. Maybe Sunday. But the weekend came and went, and I didn’t go. Monday then. After work. Not then either. Ok, ok, then this weekend. Get up early Saturday morning and see what’s-what. But no, not then. KMART AND ITS FAMILY SAYS THANK YOU EAST LA! GOODBYE!

There’s a Ross Dress for Less in the spot where our Kmart used to be. Overheated. Suspicious security guards. Clothes packed onto the sales racks so tight you can’t pull one shirt out unless a half a dozen others fall to the ground with it. Thousands of people in mile-long lines being suffocated by narrow lanes of last-minute buys for way too many water tumblers, canisters, plastic reusables, crumbled cookies, and stale candy. 

“We’re going to Kmart  tomorrow. Let me get the papers.” And I would say, quite simply, naively, not a clue in the world, “Ok, Mom. Cool.” 

Jim Marquez,  born & raised in East Los Angeles, has travelled the world many times over. He was living, exploring, and writing in Paris for  months when the pandemic broke out and his life there was cut short. He was sent, government mandated, back to the States. Jim’s work has appeared in Flux, Hispanic, Modern Drunkard Magazine, Gallery, Soma, Citizen LA, Artillery, Gadfly, LA Weekly, LA Times, Eastern Group Publications, FEAR. He is the author of 17 books. Jim’s latest is “A Mexican-American in Paris: Beastly Tales Romping Across Pre-Covid Europe! The Writer’s Cut! Vol.1”. 

Books: www.lulu.com/spotlight/jimmarquez

Instagram:@thebeastlywriter 

Guest Columnist Nicki De Necochea: Collecting Chicanarte

Editor:"What is Chicano Art?" A question akin to answering, "What is Chicano Literature?" Clear your throat, rare back, and don't say anything. Let the art do the talking. Arte becomes in the eye of the Collector. Definition by acquisition. Not because the Collector says so, but because the Arte says so. A work calls out "here I am, Chicano Art!" and the Collector buys it using checkbook logic. What moves you to pass or pay?

In this series on collecting and collections, La Bloga explores the genre of chicanarte and collecting it. We welcome Guest Writers to share their motivations, goals, point-of-purchase decisions, deal-breakers, and other boundaries between you and a red dot on that wall wtih your name on it.

 michael sedano

 

ART COLLECTOR OR ART ENTHUSIAST

Nicki De Necochea 

If the definition of art collectors means they are people who truly love and value the pieces they purchase, then any one of us can be an art collector when we buy original art.     

Con La Vida No Se Juega. Nicki De Necochea

I am an artist and lover of art, but not necessarily an art collector in a formal sense.   Perhaps an art collector is the more serious art connoisseur, who researches and analyzes; and with the fatter wallet, and a penchant for calculating their purchases as investments for future gains.   I love living with my art  and that of others, love appreciating it every time I walk into a room.                

I am an art enthusiast.   And while my “collection” might garner increased value over the years, my art buying is driven by a love impulse.  

If I love it, then the next question is likely whether I can afford it.  I would imagine professional collectors have those questions too, just on a much more business-oriented and larger scale.  

The art purchases of originals made over the years have been impulse decisions, made with my eyes and my heart.   It’s artwork that I’ve been drawn to without explanation or any deep analysis, but represent the things that move me like culture, community, the piece’s unspoken message, and also the raw talent transformed to human energy and passion, put to canvas.    

The image I have of a serious art collector is also one that is cash-flush, and shops for pieces with a well-motivated intention to “collect” and in the long run to invest in pieces they are banking will grow in value as the artist grows in popularity.   

These collectors have likely researched with a passion and anticipation that their choices are a calculated investment, and at some level a gamble on the likelihood that the artist and the pieces increase in notoriety and value.   

In my twenties, I recall being drawn to local art that I could not afford, dreaming that one day I would be able to dress my own walls with original pieces.    Little did I know, some thirty years later that those pieces would mostly be the ones created by me, as I shed my self-imposed limits and began to paint in oils not so long ago.  

Cruz.  Emilia Cruz 

In the last few years, I found myself drawn to the works of some of the artists who were posting their art on social media.   And gradually I began to follow a few of these artists on their on-line pages.   My appreciation for their work compelled me to reach out to a few to ask about their work.  And on one occasion, so drawn, that I jumped in the car and drove for hours to attend a gallery show, wondering if I could even afford the young artist’s work.   Well, that was one of my first investments in a piece called “Cruz”, by Emilia Cruz a very talented Los Angeles artist.   

Colores Del Campo. David Flores

Then, I fell in love with a piece shared by an artist, David Flores, on his Facebook page, that just spoke to my love of vibrant color and cultural imagery.   It, gave me a heart tug as it represented to me the women of my culture.  

Still Life. Arthur Carrillo

Another piece was purchased because of its intricate and unusual still life objects using a photo real technique, by Arthur Carrillo, whose work I love and appreciate and admittedly could never undertake on my own.  So precise and a bit surreal.    

On one occasion, I attended a Frida festival in my local community, and gravitated toward a life size (or near life size) “Frida” by artist Jorge Pina, who creates using wood burning tools to generate images on large wood panels.

 I handed him my card, and shared my interest and attraction to the painting but didn’t believe it would “fit” on any wall in my home.   The only color on the piece are Frida’s scarlet lips.  

My decision predicated on whether I had any wall space left on which to display her. 

Big time collectors I doubt think that way.   I live with my art; it’s not stored, it’s making me happy every day.  So, if buying original art which we love makes one a collector, then perhaps I’m headed in that direction.    

Pan con café. Jana Ayala

 NDN 070221

Two Voices: On-line Floricanto in Poetry and Prose

Labor Day 2019. La Bloga On-line Floricanto features two superlative voices celebrating our humanity. It happens, and there's no coincidence, these are women's voices. These two writers, María Elena Fernández and Jean Hooper, make a perfect September song for September's first Tuesday.

So How Was Your Week This Week?
María Elena Fernández

Written for the opening of the exhibition Enter the Goddess Portal at Tonalli Studio, East Los Angeles, Sunday, August 11, 2019

Meet me at LA Plaza, then Union Station
close the night out at Mayfair Hotel
Three bailes, all free, amigas!
I texted Friday night
leaning back
legs horizontal on my pine green couch

Commanded my body to rise
Instead discovered the anchor bearing heavy on my chest
The tar too reemerged
like black mortar between my back and couch
Repeated commands, but my muscles lost the match
Again
Just like Monday afternoon

Three destinations that Monday morning
LAX, Burbank, back to my east Hollywood home
Three hours down, then up the 405, across the 134, southeast on the 101
public radio, my non-stop buzzing passenger
Now two days after our El Paso brown 9-11
Finally, I could hear, could process: There was a manifesto.
Could conceive it, not utter it: It’s our turn. They’re shooting at us now too.
“El Paso Texas, The largest mass shooting of Latinos in U.S. history”
blurted the national newsman, stripping me of denial’s shelter
How I yearned to talk to those rabbis
the ones who get on the mic the very next day, declare
“We will not be afraid, we will continue to go to our house of worship.”
How dear Rabbi, how? When I just want to crumble.

Decided rest was in order on my green couch
Breathed
Made my to-do list
Lifted arms and head, but nothing else followed
An anchor bore deep in my chest
the chain a snake circling my aorta
Thick, stretchy tar seeping from my back onto the couch
Hay que lavar los platos, start prepping classes
My torso wrestled against the iron and the mortar
y también ir al mercado
Wrestled again
Until finally I surrendered
to a day worthy of luto
An hour crept by, then another
My heart heaving grief
trapped in the anchor’s rabid claw
I was too alone
Grabbed el celular
“Amiga, do you have a few minutes? I need to cry.”
Not yet untangled, called another
And the anchor lifted to half its weight
Still I needed nature’s salve
“Ve te a caminar,” the voice boomed
And to bribe myself into action
included an image of a butter pecan ice cream cone in my hand
strolling on my Fern Dell Park walk
The anchor released just enough, the tar melted
Suddenly I was upright
gliding alongside giant shiny green
elephant ear leaves lining a brook
frozen creamy sugar and crunch fueling my gait

Now Friday night
and I am again horizontal in the voracious green marsh
the anchor not crushing, the tar not as thick
but enough to be honored
So I texted las amigas: staying home to write
I might make it to the last baile
Maybe

How did I go from planning three bailes in one night
to half-way buried in the dark green abyss?
The anchor would not shift, stayed stubborn, until finally I asked
How did I survive this week?
How did I stay off the pinche pine green vortex
between Monday and tonight?

Haz memoria, María Elena, tienes que hacer memoria.

Tuesdays I have a standing commitment
To make dinner for my parents and sister
give Mami and sis a night off of cooking
So three days after la matanza and only one day
after my sentenced communion with my couch
I delivered, because I said I would
And with zeal devised a special summer treat
Mexican chicken salad tostadas y ensalada de nopales
even though I hate deshebrando, took three hours to get the meal to table
I made it Mexican because the peas, cilantro and jalapeños are green
the bell pepper red and summertime maíz so pale, almost white
Decorated each tostada with a flower of aguacate petals
and chopped red bell pepper center

Wednesday, four days after the brown 9-11
had a mammogram scheduled
After probably seven years of avoidance, decided the time is NOW
And hell no, nothing and nobody was going to keep me
from remedying the long lapse of neglect
Because I intend to keep these breasts
healthy, lovely, packed and stacked into a push up bra
for as long as I can stand these wires and pulleys

And while I was at it, the same day got the ultrasound
doc said I shoulda had in March
to see if that two millimeter kidney stone is gone now
maybe explains that dash of irritation after I pee
Because damnit I want to know if that thing is still insida me
I ain’t cool with no burning sensation, mild as it may be

That same night the pine green abyss winked my way
beckoned me to lie down on it’s lap
Because that night I planned to attend a dead man’s concert
Honor a music man in our circle, only 33
creator of guitar rhythm and joy for so many bailes, so many years
killed by a firearm at the end of his brother’s forearm
crystal meth possessing his hand, fingers and trigger

But I resisted the green swamp
I had a purpose: be together, honor our brother music-maker
Yet the anchor weighed down enough that I could not indulge
my pre-club ritual and slip into the short black dress I picked
with the gold and aqua maya stela down the front
The summer time doctor’s office outfit would have to do
pale pinstripes on light blue wide-legged jeans, matching sky blue peasant top
The half-inch midriff all I could offer for a semblance of night club seduction
But not a second thought to changing out daytime hoops
for the club-night three-inch diameters

Congas galloped, keyboard scatted, electric guitar demanded
wall to wall bodies dance exuberant
in our dark red and burgundy, velvet and vinyl vintage cave
on Hill Street and 2nd

A pesky and clingy date
the anchor hung pressed against my heart
I didn’t dance
But I could listen, I could sway
and with the others declare loud, “Carlos Zaragoza! Presente!”

Thursday, five days after la matanza
and three days after my exile on the ravenous green grave
I boarded a bus with CHIRLA, warriors of immigrant rights
to rally at San Bernanrdino’s Adelanto Detention Center, the largest in California
For so long my heart broken, watching images of brown sisters and brothers crammed in cages on my TV screen
Finally, the day I longed for, to plunge both hands into defending them
for their “crime” of wanting to work, survive as best they can
On the bus Sunshine Janeth blared on the mic
“Who wants a burrito?” “Quien necesita agua?”
I discovered a former student sitting in front of me
seven years after graduation, now the lead organizer
Next to me I chatted with la Sra. Rosa, migrant from Mexico
who took buses all the way from South Gate to join us

More devotees boarded at our Diamond Bar stop and then again at San Bernardino
Finally at our destination we poured off the bus
Were handed red and white picket signs
“Stop Hate” “Migration is a Human Right” in bold black letters
Across the street we were greeted with the GEO group’s sirens blaring
and a mere nine counter protestors
with their “We Love ICE” signs and nasty megaphone
On our side, four massive speakers mounted on the roof of a van erupting cumbias
And the crowd that I thought would be around 50
multiplied into a wave of at least 200 dancers

A podium perched on the back of a black pick up
Two brown girl MCs commanded the mic in Spanish
English and impeccable lipstick
The alternative white girl reverend with the cropped platinum blond hair
white collar and glitter blue acrylic nails blessed our gathering
Jaír gave his testimony “Me arrestó ICE saliendo de mi casa al trabajo”
21 days detained in Orange County, leaving his wife and children behind
until CHIRLA lawyers delivered him home

The white girl on the sidelines with the glasses, messy hair
and black White Silence is Violence t-shirt
turned out to be an entertainment lawyer turned immigrant rights lawyer
and true to her t-shirt: “Where are the white people? White people, time to fucking get loud! Use that privilege!”

La lider Angelica closed the ritual across from the horizon’s setting sun
“Hermanas, hermanos! We are going to take their hate and build our own beautiful, beautiful shield of love! Our love is more powerful than their hate! This is our country, this is our land! And we believe liberty and justice is for everyone!

And I was exactly where I wanted to be

But the act of resistance I’m proudest of
was pushing that pinche probiotic up my vagina
for four nights in a row instead of just two
the holistic doc said it would only take two nights
to trounce that damn infection
but it refused to get all the way better
I tried again and no dice

“Four nights, I’m gonna do four nights,” I told myself
“do it the natural way.”
But I let six months lapse, until I decided the week before
before everything happened, that Monday through Thursday
would be my non-negotiable

I managed it Monday night-after half a day on the pine green quick sand
Tuesday night after the summertime Mexican meal at my parents’ house
Wednesday two a.m. after getting home from honoring the dead sweet musician
And Thursday midnight after the protest and two hours strapped into that bus

Undeterred
Because it is my intention to make love again
To you, my beloved, as yet unnamed
And that ain’t happening until that sticky
stinky white cosa is all cleared away
Because I am determined
You will re-enter the goddess
enter the portal, enter the dragon
whatever you want to call it
You will return

I venture to confess this
because a goddess after all is a woman
and we got real woman parts and real woman problems
Point is, can’t wait till the coast is clear, querido.

And on this Friday night, ya que hice memoria
Ahora que escribí este poema
The anchor has crumbled, liquefied,
dripping red life force back into my heart
I lift my chest
The tar transformed to jasmine petals
floating down from my back
their aroma lifting me

I am standing
And it’s only 11pm

Amigas, I’m going to make it to that last baile!
And this time, I will do much more than sway
I promise

August 9, 2019


Born in Los Angeles to Mexico City immigrants, María Elena Fernández is a writer, performer and professor. She holds a bachelor’s degree in American Studies from Yale University and a Master's degree in U.S. History from UCLA. Her first person essays have been published in the anthologies Waking Up American and Remembering Frida. As a freelance writer for the LA Weekly, she wrote about Latino music, books and film. Her full-length solo shows include the hilarious Confessions of a Cha Cha Feminist that she toured across the country and the poetry performance, Ancestral Body Navegante. She is currently developing a new solo show The Latinx Survival Guide in the Age of Trump. She teaches history, literature and the art history in the Chicana/o Studies Department at Cal State Northridge.

Readers can find more information and contact the artist via The Face.


The Platform
Jean Hooper

It had to be at least 10:20 pm. I had just walked to the subway stop at Civic Center after watching the Temptations musical at the Ahmanson Theater. Now I stood alone on the Red Line platform looking up at the screen to see when the next train would arrive. I sensed some movement. I glanced down to see a young man in his thirties materialize, heading for me. He spoke in the silent public area. “How do I get to Riverside?” he seemed to ask the air. Except he was addressing me.

I sized him up quickly, which is my habit when I wait for the train, and my personal requirement when I wait alone. Noted: homemade-looking neck tattoos. Grimy demeanor. Black t-shirt and long shorts. Broken blood vessel in left eye. Shaved head. Wristband with ERIC GARCIA in a large font. Clutching clear plastic bag of documents. This guy just got out of jail, I’m thinking. It is late at night, and why is he at this stop when Men’s Central is adjacent to Union Station? Mentally I shifted gears and replied, “Union Station. You want the train on this side.” He was close by now, looking at me with an uncomprehending expression. Dulled. “I’m going there,” I continued. “You go where I go.” Still not registering. “Come with me on the next train. I will show you.”

As if in a movie, the train rolled in miraculously before we had to attempt another exchange. He followed me docilely. Once we were in the train car, I realized I couldn’t just hop off at the next stop and flee to my connection. He looked too helpless and disoriented to leave with verbal instructions. We alighted at Union Station. I asked him to follow me through what looks like a labyrinth to the uninitiated, reminding him we would find the Metrolink upstairs.

On the escalator, I observed offhandedly, “Did you just get out?” Warily he focused on me, saying, “How didja know I got outta jail?” “Well, ERIC,” I answered, eyeing his wristband, “I’m a teacher. Do I look like a teacher to you?” As if this were not one of the more exaggerated non sequiturs I have groped for in my time. He nodded. I asked if he had family in Riverside, did they know he was released tonight? He said his mom lived there and he would find her. I asked if he had her phone number among his papers, and he said no, he didn’t know it.

Because I really was a teacher in alternative education, I recognized so much about this fellow. His marginal existence, his lack of resources, his essential alone-ness. I thought back to my long-ago student, Jeremy, who once confided to me about his release from juvenile detention, that day he went into the sunshine anticipating his mom would pick him up, and no one was there for him. Bravely, he tried to downplay the disappointment and rejection, though we both understood it would always remain buried in one of the lower stratum of his psyche.

“Come with me, Eric.” I glimpsed a security man near the Metrolink ticket dispenser. It was close to 11 pm. “Excuse me, sir. My friend Eric here needs to get to Riverside.”

The security man was joined by an ancient man in a Korean War Vet cap and another younger man in a neon vest. “No train to Riverside til 4:00 am,” he said, as the other two men nodded enthusiastically. “I’m gonna punchum,” Eric muttered softly.

I turned to Eric and said, “Eric, I need you to behave. This man is trying to help us.” Eric grew meek again and looked down. What I learned was that Eric would be rousted out of the waiting area at 1:00 am when the LAPD closed the station for several hours. The security man shared this not unkindly; it was pertinent information.

In my head I felt the exasperation building. But somehow this nameless security man took it upon himself to advise Eric, “You can sit over there until 1 am, and after the police leave there is a place you can wait quietly and I’ll be right here.” I felt my emotions surge at this stranger’s kindness, and I sent Eric over to the bench so I could have a word. I thanked the security man for his generosity, telling him this fellow just appeared out of nowhere to me. The guard wondered aloud if Eric had paid a fare, which we both doubted. “Yeah,” he mused, “he just got out of jail. They all carry those plastic bags. But I can’t let him be outside here at night. He’ll get assaulted out there.” I agreed, saying Eric was too fragile to protect himself.

Eric beckoned me. I half thought he might punch me now, just out of unpredictability. Instead, like a child, he spoke. “I’m hungry. Do you have food for me?” I knew I had a 5$ bill and my TAP card. I told Eric I had no food, but that I would give him five dollars in case he might find something to buy. “But you must behave in here for five hours. Can you do that?” He nodded solemnly. “Be careful,” I said, as I hurried away toward the Gold Line.

I nodded thanks to the security man. To the left and above me was The Faces of Los Angeles mural (or so I call it). I looked up at everyone on the mural and thought, please, watch over us. Then I hurried down the emptying concourse to find my train home.


Jean Hooper lives and gardens in Altadena. She retired from teaching high school in 2017.

She volunteers as an ESL teacher in Atwater Village, is a new devotee to morning bootcamp, and watches for joy in the ordinary.
Fotocredit: @mauragracephotography.com