All a man needs out of life is a place to sit ‘n’ spit in the fire.
While walking around the neighborhood this morning with Jaimito in his stroller: "Look, Jaimito, a helicopter."
"A copper-copper?"
"Yes, a helicopter."
"Oh,
I see it. I see it," he exclaimed excitedly. "Ooo, Daddy, da’
copper-copper, w’ d’ ting, dat go ’round, ’round ’round, ‘n’ it go up
‘n’ up." He threw his hands up in the air.
"Wow, little boy,
great explanation of rotor lift. How did you know about that. You’re
smart, you must take after your Papa (grandpa) Jim."
I was confronted today with a misunderstanding that I didn’t know
how to correct. Laura’s mother called to ask if Santa, the
woman who helps us with our house and kids, could leave work early
and help her with something. She went into this long-ass explanation
of which I could not make heads or tails. “Yes, sure, it’s
fine with me,” I said. “No problem, I’ll tell Santa.”
When I went out, I chuckled with Santa that Mami Nellie needed her
to run some sort of errand. I asked her if she had already explained
it to her, and if she understood. Sure, she said. I chuckled, I
have no idea what she wanted, but the details weren’t important, I
said, she could leave early to help Mami Nellie.
But I made a crucial mistake, and I could sense it immediately. I
said, “No me importa.”
Literally, it’s not important to me, or in my mind expressing that
the details weren’t necessary or important. Mami Nellie needed her
and that was good enough for me. The problem in Spanish, is that for
some reason, that direct “No me importa.”
Seems to take on this formal tone in some grand manner as if I was a
king on high and I were to say, “I give little import to the
suffering of you worthless peasants. No me
importa.” Right after it came out of my mouth, Santa’s
tone changed, and I knew why.
“Ah, if my worthless life isn’t of any import to you, then
fine…” That’s not what she said, but that was the tone, that
I got back.
“But, Santa, you misunderstood. I wasn’t saying…”
The words were right, just that they weren’t. Arrggghhh, how do I
fix this? “Santa, are you offended. I didn’t mean, I
misspoke.” And she said, no, that it was fine, no problem, and
cast her eyes down, as is done on this island. Conflict, discomfort?
Just redirect, route around, don’t meet it, don’t acknowledge it.
All happens here in what is called an indirecta,
an indirect way of dealing with discomfort. It is unspoken, but for
those of the same culture, clearly understood.
I got it, all right, I just couldn’t figure out how to fix it.
So, I fired up my indirecta powers in
Laura and explained the exchange to her. I’m going to make this
culture’s tricks work for me. If Santa couldn’t bear to face me
directly because of my offense, I must work an indirect path through
someone else. Laura is the perfect vehicle. She can explain where
it went wrong, why being an ethnic American makes these things all
the more confusing. My Spanish is good enough, my accent neutral
enough that most people would assume a much higher level of cultural
comfort than prudence should dictate.
You see, Puerto Rico is extremely mono-cultural, that is, there is
a large degree of cultural homogeneity. Everyone is in the club and
knows the secret handshake without having to ask nor assume anyone
doesn’t know it. There are rules, etiquette, modes of behavior that
are assumed universally.
However, if you are American, if you speak English – they can deal
with that, no problem. There’s an abstraction, you are clearly not
from here. You are an outsider. There are different rules. Puerto
Ricans get that, and adjust accordingly. It’s not so tough when
faced with an obvious gringo right off the boat.
My reality on the other hand, is quite different. I deal with
everyone in Spanish, fluent Spanish, comfortable Spanish. The people
with whom I deal in this mode, do not put on their “dealing
with gringo hat” and as such will see me through their
culture’s eyes rather than as a foreigner. They attribute to me a
cultural comfort much greater than reality.
The problem is, I’m still an ethnic American. My attitudes, my
modes of thought, my manner are still American. I am direct. I
don’t beat around the bush. I don’t shy away from argument. The
indirecta is uncomfortable to me, as I find
it deceptive, disingenuous. I don’t roll with punches as easily. I
want to punch back. I get angry more easily. To a Puerto Rican, it
can become jarring. Excited speech can quickly be taken as angry
speech. Try to address the point of offense to clear it up? Hah,
you may as well try to dig a hole in water. They will quickly deny
they are offended, not wanting to admit weakness. You press them to
accept your humblest apologies for your poor words. They shrug it
off, deny offense, give a quick smile, and stay offended for life.
They will hang on to their offended demeanor like a life preserver
and will not give it up… ever.
Misunderstandings occur not because I’m American, but because I
seem like a Puerto Rican. It doesn’t happen often, but I can tell
immediately when it does, like a slow motion train wreck about which
I can do nothing.
Luckily, I have Laura to smooth things over, to explain away my
cultural faux pas as I go on about my bumbling ways, like a bull in a
china shop.
Fundamentalism: Freedom from distractions
New Age: Freedom from
restrictions
Each has a drawback:
Fundamentalism: Has restrictions to true choice
New Age: Loss of direction to distractions
Let me explain. With fundamentalism, for example, Southern Baptists or Shiite Muslims take great pains to separate men and women, the temptations of the flesh. Rigorous precepts of co-mingling, no alcohol, no dancing are enforced to allow men and women to go on with their lives without distracting temptations of the flesh. Fundamentalism has at its core a belief that the flesh is VERY weak, and must be chained up, covered, locked down and put away. The spirit soars in inverse proportion to how detained is the body.
This actually works pretty well, and isn’t necessarily a terrible thing. After all, it still is an attempt at living a life of meaning and usefulness, instead of a life mired in selfish desires and self destructive behavior.
But Fundamentalism assumes weakness, and therefore never expects too much of one.
Its drawback comes when those external restrictions are removed. Without the enforcer, the jailer keeping your body locked up tight, without the imposition of rules, without a learned internal decision-making capacity, you can fall victim to excesses for which you are not prepared. Think the “preacher’s son/daughter” syndrome or “Catholic school girl.”
Secondly, fundamentalism has a spirit crushing affect on those that fall ever so slightly outside its ordered confines. I’ve known several Mormons, both active in the faith and fallen away from it, and the commonality among them is the crushing expectation of the community. This can cause them to raise to great heights, but can
just as easily drag them to deep lows. To get a divorce in the Mormon faith is one of the most unforgivable transgressions. Pre-marital sex? Drinking? Carousing? Men, failure to provide for your family? The Mormon community exacts a heavy, many times, unspoken toll on those not strong enough to keep the rules of faith.
New Age, on the other hand, is a recent phenomenon. It strives to remove restrictions from the individual. It seeks to unlock your hidden potential. Give up your petty fears, focus on the self, and you shall be free. Your guilty heart holds you back. Your fears, your past, your transgressions, your weaknesses, they all have one thing in common – they conspire to drag you down, lock you up, keep you miserable. That cannot be God’s plan for you. New Age strives to unlock all the chains that bind.
It’s a lovely message for those that have been beaten down, for those that feel that they have never been realized. It may be the first time that some of them have felt any self-worth. Perhaps it was a battered wife, an alcoholic, an abused child, or any of the variety of broken souls that litter the earth. New Age religion offers these people a way out, an offer of acceptance and non-judgment.
It really is a lovely message, but it has a fatal flaw as well. Excessive focus on the self causes a loss of awareness of the other. Take for example the author Richard Bach, of Jonathan Livingston Seagull fame. His recent explanation of his divorce is revealing of the pitfalls of New Age thinking.
…Leslie and I are no longer married. Soul mates, to me, don’t define themselves by legal marriage. There’s a learning connection that exists between those two souls. Leslie and I had that for the longest time, and then a couple of years ago, she had this startling realization. She said, “Richard, we have different goals!” I was yearning for my little adventures and looking forward to writing more books. Leslie has worked all her life long, and she wanted peace, she wanted to slow the pace, not complicate it, not speed it up. Not money, not family, no other men or other women, separated us. We wanted different futures. She was right for her. I was right for me. Finally it came time for us to make a choice. We could save the marriage and smother each other: “You can’t be who you want to be.” Or we could separate and save the love and respect that we had for each other. We decided the marriage was the less important. And now we’re living separate lives.
Do you see the same thing I see? Lack of passion? Lack of focus? Lack of heart? Here’s someone who’s painted himself into a corner of denial. Look, buddy, just admit you two screwed up. You couldn’t compromise. You couldn’t make it work. Each was more in love with their “self” than the “other”. Examine your limitations. Learn from your failure. You’ve got to see where you’ve screwed up. You’ll not learn from it if you don’t see your failures in a cold clear light.
One would believe that New Age opens up an infinite variety of experience, a limitless, endless array of choices all of which are equal and none of which are right or wrong. They simply are. With little framework to define a right path or a wrong path, people may wander around without direction, without purpose, or perhaps the main purpose being self-fulfillment. Like little ants wandering around randomly looking for food, deep New Agers suddenly come upon a morsel, and being so cut off from the other, do not even have the capacity to communicate the message of what they have found. They are content to let the colony discover the morsel for themselves, for how could they be so arrogant as to assume this morsel is fit for anyone else but themselves.
Without at least some level of rigor, decisions become bland, tasteless, without risk, without price. A marriage ends because it did. We chose not to be married, and it was the right choice for us. We become so detached from each other, so free, that we may as well just float away in our own little bubble, little known to the universe, having never wanted to risk offending it with our failure.
I’ve always had a deep distrust for both extremes, that is, fundamentalists scare me with their rigorous intolerance for distractions and those that bring them, and New Agers scare me with their aimless free floating lack of commitment. The truth must lie somewhere in the middle, somewhere between crushing restrictions and overwhelming relativism.
Today was also the day that Jaimito stopped saying Wiederwo
(WEE-do-woh) for Superman. Don’t ask me where he got it from. but
Laura and I delighted for a couple of months while we would ask him to
repeat "Superman" and he would concentrate and say distinctly
"WEE-do-woh." I’m sad that he’s not saying it anymore. Now he says
distinctly "Superman." Jaimito, Mommy and Daddy loved your Wiederwo.
Can’t you indulge us with your cuteness for a little while longer?
Jaimito got his first haircut today. What a big boy he was, very
serious, very still. Earlier it was all he could talk about though. In fact, he’d been talking about his haircut since this
weekend. I had mentioned that I needed to get mine cut, and Laura
had offered the idea of taking Jaimito for his first. "It’s
getting kinda long," she said. Jaimito must’ve overheard,
because he could talk of nothing else. "Daddy, we gonna get
‘aircut?"
"Yes little man. We’re going to get a haircut." And we
got in the car and drove off to the local Army post.
Once we got to Ft. Buchanan, we had to stop and get gas.
"Daddy, an’ da ‘aircut?" he asked turning his hands
palm up and shrugging his shoulders.
"We have to get gas first. We’re going to get the haircut
soon." And as luck would have it, the gas station didn’t accept
ATM payment. Sigh – I went to take out cash.
"Daddy? An’ now da ‘aircut?" he asked again, looking
bewildered.
"Soon, Daddy has to get money to pay for the gasolina."
Gasoline sounds cuter in Spanish.
"Oh, da ‘asolina’" He was satiated. Whatever it was
that Daddy said must be okay. Jaimto seemed to be thinking, I don’t know really, but he doesn’t seem worried why should I be?
We took out money. Daddy pushed the funny buttons, and Jaimito
retrieved the cash from the máquina.
After he pulled it out, he looked in the slot to see if there was more.
Good idea.
We got back in the car and drove once again to the gas station. This was just not going to do. "Daddy! Da ‘aircut!"
He wrinkled up his nose in an exasperated fashion.
"Just a second, little man. We’re going to get our haircuts
next. We’re going now. Just a second."
And he acquiesced. Okay, Daddy, whatever.
Once we had paid the gas, climbed back in the car, driven over to
the PX (where the barber shop was), and dismounted the car again,
Jaimito’s alegría begin to take hold.
He started talking excitedly about "Da ‘aircut" and I
would excitedly confirm the hair cutting.
We jumped over some rain puddles in the parking log. Jaimito
loved that, "Wheeeeee! Daddy, da agua!"
Once inside the shopping area, he bolted to the barber shop, but
upon opening the door, he got quiet all of a sudden. Hmm, the moment
of truth has arrived. I’m scared, he seemed to say.
There was an open chair, so there was to be no hesitating. "Up
you go, little man." I told the barber that this was Jaimito’s
first haircut, so we had to save the hair. "My wife will never
speak to me again, if I don’t collect his hair." He chuckled
and began to snip snip on Jaimito’s fine honey colored wisps. Jaimito
was frozen like a statue throughout the entire procedure. Was he
scared? We he just concentrating? I couldn’t say, but I kept up a
barrage of reassuring words and smiles. The other barbers
all remarked how well he had behaved. "Kids twice his age don’t
sit this still," said one.
And when we were done, there stood revealed the handsomest little
hombrecito that I have ever seen. And the
kicker is that on the car ride home he taunted me, saying, "My ‘aircut
better den yours." I couldn’t believe my ears. Did he say what I
thought he said? I laughed with him and said that mine was better. It
went back and forth until I agreed that his was better.
Hey look Amazon, I know you’re
all busy and whatnot to ship one stupid little itty bitty CD to me. I
ordered it in February and by June, you’d not sent it. Your suggested
resolution was to cancel the order. I did so and selected another under
the false hope that I may one day hold it in my little hand.
It
is now October, and I still have not seen ANY product from you. You
sell CD’s, right? I see that they are featured prominately on your
website.
Your little shop does, however, seem to be entirely
uncontaminated by CD’s. I just have to ask you: Do you in fact have any
CD’s at all?
The security guard stepped out of the bakery, his wrinkled navy
blue uniform baggy around his tightly cinched belt. He wore
comfortable shoes with thick white socks. He walks a lot during the
day, so comfort remains high on his priorities. He had gone into the
bakery to get a cafecito, a small coffee in a tiny white
styrofoam cup. Soon he would return to patrolling the tiny strip mall.
On his way through the swinging glass door, he jostled the full little cup and spilled
hot coffee on his fingers. Our man held on though, held on for dear
life. I could see the pain in his face, but he wasn’t going to give
up that coffee.
Damn
– now he had hot sticky coffee all over his hand. No napkin – he
checked his pants – clean. He sighed mild relief, the
uniform would go for one more day without washing. He exchanged the
cup to his left hand and shook off the drops, and turned looking for
something upon which to wipe his little fingers. He reached out to a
bright
yellow metal pole, a parking barrier, its top peeling paint and, after
a quick glace around to see if anyone was looking, wiped his hand upon
its top, down the side, and gave it a slap.
He brought the cup to his lips and gingerly took a sip.
There it was. He had rousted the great
beast, disturbed its slumber. He wasn’t sure if he had meant to or
not. Foolish pride? It glared at him with its steaming fiery
eyes, sizing him up. Its tail twitched in the dim
light. He stood frozen for what seemed an hour, wondering if this
would be the end, if his luck had finally run out. Would this
creature devour him here.
The beast snorted.
That was all.
He had elicited a
snort.
He exhaled, relieved but a bit taken
aback, dare he say disappointed; disappointed not to be dead? He
stood for a moment shaking from the adrenaline and tension. "Beast,
I will make a meal for you yet, " he muttered as he stomped off.
"What was that? D’you say something?"
Billy, glanced back at the news editor,
"Hrmph… nothing."
He knew the story wasn’t worth two
bits, small time political scandal, one where the poor slob
bureaucrat got a luxury car, a few bucks or other such
nonsense. Small time stuff. Everybody was scraping by. It’s just
one tiny little stupid little story awash in a sea of similar tiring
uninteresting shit. He was boring himself thinking about it. Why
the hell had he written the piece in the first place? He fancied
himself an investigative journalist. Journalist, now there’s a funny
word, conjures up a mythical mission to expose the underbelly of the
beast, be the final check and balance to any system of government.
Billy smiled. He felt better again. Gotta pump myself up, he
thought, as he left the office.
"In a slump, Billy?" a woman asked.
"Yeah… no. Well sorta. Too many
stinking rats around this place. Nobody cares about the damn things.
Oh sure they complain about them, but who’s gonna go clean ’em out?"
"You lost me." She pushed her
glasses against her brow, "Are you trying to get the city
exterminators on your bad side now?"
"Ho ho, you’re a damn
fine comedienne now aren’t you," he chuckled. "No, it’s just
that if I could take all the rats and cram ’em together into one big
unholy monster, I might have a story, that’s all."
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