El Gringoqueño

All a man needs out of life is a place to sit ‘n’ spit in the fire.

Page 49 of 51

Ah, Now I Understand

Figured out what Jessie’s bad habit is. She likes to shred things. Note to Olaia, keep your toys put away… hmmm, maybe I can work this to my advantage *GRIN*.

Quote came to me in the car coming home from Reserve Duty. Don’t risk your life uselessly. USE it riskily. I was just thinking about people that have to thrill themselves with risk, bungie jumping, extreme sports, running with the bulls, whatever we can dream up to tempt death. This isn’t a useful way to spend your life. Now if you risk yourself in the service of others, save a buddy, stop a crime, struggle against politcal or religious oppression, do charity work in crime ridden areas etc. Now these are uses, and I imagine you’ll feel a lot more alive.

Olaia, the Cow Girl

We went to a birthday party for one of Laura’s cousin’s daughters, Ana Isabel. It was in Guayama where Laura’s Uncle, Tio Benny (hehe, Tio means uncle… so that’s Uncle, Uncle Benny) has horses. At first Olaia was a little tentative. We finished one and a half laps and she said to me, "Daddy, I’m done."

"Oh, okay, little girl."

We went inside to play party games, run around, snack etc… and she kept trying to sneak out to see the horses. Hehe, that little girl finished the day with about 10 laps on the horseys.

OlaiaDaddywithHorse.jpg

We also picked up a cute little stray dog that we named Jessie, after the Jessie from Toy Story II (whom Olaia loves). This little dog was recently abandoned and we gave her a new home, so it seemed the right name. She was lost and now she is found. And she IS the sweetest little dog. At 10 weeks, she is a little bundle of energy, but I can not figure out why someone would have abandoned her that way. Some people.

The Creation’s the Thing

I’ve been listening to Performance Today, a classical music program
from NPR, every day for the past two months. There’s nothing that I’ve
enjoyed more than my daily dose of classical music, commentary, and
history. Today, Fred Child related an interesting footnote to one of
Haydn’s works. Haydn’s newest piece was anticipated with great
expectation. His publisher was taking pre-orders on the score while
Haydn finished it up. That’s where I began to think.

Imagine, no CD’s, records, tapes, broadcasts. People (although
probably only the wealthier class) actually got all excited about a new
score coming out. They went out and bought the paper copy, brought it
home, learned, practiced, and played it. That was pretty much the only
method of reproduction that existed. If you wanted to hear a
performance you’d have to go to one. You as a listener didn’t control
when and where the performances happened, so if you wanted music on
demand, you had to play it.

Contrast this simpler form of music on demand to today’s digital
streaming, napster, cd’s, Direct TV, DVD’s etc. These days you have
access to thousands of hours of music at the touch of a button, from
anywhere, while you’re jogging, driving, sitting, or studying. Where
are we going? Obviously consumption of music has risen each year since
CD’s where introduced. Since Napster came along, CD sales have
increased over 50%. I’m sure the average music collection of Americans
has grown considerably as well, both in pirated and legal works.

I pondered all this while listening to music and enjoying myself. It
was easy, I sat there and listened. Imagine how long it would have
taken me to write Bach’s Passion of Matthew? It’s a lot easier to
listen to it than to write it, or play it. Playing it would require me
to study it, Bach, and other performances by Bach devoteés. I would
probably have to learn other pieces by Bach first, study technique,
history… wow. That’s years of preparation, careful dissection, and
practice. It is certainly easier to listen to it.

However, I do so wish that I had the time to learn to perform or
write. One day, I keep saying, I will dedicate myself to learning an
instrument. I’d like to be able to express myself in music. Sure it is
infinitely more work than listening or consuming, but to create
something… this is the joy of being human. I add maybe one or two
pieces of music to the world, in my own little corner. Maybe just
friends and family hear it. Maybe just Laura. Who knows, but it adds a
little piece of sustenance to our hungry world. It maybe feeds
someone’s soul just a bit. No one artist can create the world’s
repertoire, just as no one can right all the wrongs of the world, feed
every starving person, or save all the children. But if we all do a
little, take a leap, give of ourselves a bit instead of consuming,
eating, stuffing our faces with more and more and more every day, maybe
then.

So music is big business there days. "What is going to sell?" the
Sony execs ask. Creation is falling on fewer and fewer shoulders all
the time. Orchestras around the country have been failing at an
alarming rate. Pop music, never a bastion of creative integrity has
gone from hiding pre-fabbed bands, keeping the secret that Milli
Vanilli didn’t actually, write, sing or produce their own songs, to
just doing it right there on the TV for millions to see. Who cares if
they have talent. They look good, they can dance… the corporate
interests will take care of the slick packaging. Isn’t it funny that
there is more food in America than ever before, but more and more of it
is being grown by fewer and fewer people. Is this how the disease,
pesticides, and antibiotics have sneaked in? Is anybody at the wheel?
Who’s driving this bus?

It’s all connected. You name it, our military power is being
consolidated into fewer and fewer hands. Smart this and smart that. You
only need one person these days to take out a city. Take our Government
(please); far from the days of grass roots support and involvement, we
get all of our information from CNN. Just serve it up steaming hot and
we’ll suck it down without even a second thought. Does it matter that
it’s not quality, that it doesn’t demand back from you? No, I’d rather
just sit here. No wonder America is the fattest country on the planet.
Is it also why we’re the hungriest as well?

And there I sat. Wasn’t it a wonderful dream.

Contorted for the Sake of Music

Well, we’ve been in Puerto Rico for almost 3 years now. I wonder if
should change the title of this website to say, "What is Jim up to?" I
first created it so that people (parents and friends) would know where I was. "Where" isn’t as big a deal anymore. "What" is more interesting at least.

I’ve been consumed with work mostly. Business is going okay… we’re
running out of money, and things look grim. I believe the long term
prospect is very good, but we have to pull off some miracles between
now and then. Blah blah blah. Working hard, not doing much else,
except…

Being obsessive about classical music. There’s this great radio
program called Performance Today on National Public Radio. In Puerto
Rico, it’s broadcast on a dinky little university radio transmitter. I
could only pick it up in the car. It’s a two hour program, and so I
never quite got to listen to very much of it. I sometimes would pull up
to an appointment and sit in the car for five or ten minutes while I
finished the piece like savoring a nice slice of pie. You always hate
to rush it.

It always nagged me, tugged on my self… not a waking moment passed
without thinking of a way to hear all of Performance Today. Their
commentary, music from around the world, and history lessons are so
valuable that even missing a single day is devastating. How to get that
program recorded, I pondered.

Okay, first things first. Reception is terrible at our house. I
tried small antennas, stringing them around the house, contorting and
balancing them trying to find a sweet spot. Sigh, no avail after a few
days of fighting, the static still ruined my listening experience.

Meanwhile, I had set up a special program in Linux to record it
digitally every day while I was out. At least I could record the
program, but it still sounded crappy. Since it was in digital format, I
tried cleaning out the pops and static with a little program. It
worked, albeit not as well as I would have hoped. The "cleaned" signal
was decidedly flatter than the original. No pops, but the experience of
sitting in a concert hall just wasn’t there. It still bugged me.

Bring in the big guns. I stomped off to Radio Shack one weekend to
buy a rooftop antenna. I picked up a nice big one on clearance for 40
bucks. Not bad. Bought mounting hardware, wire, grounding kit etc.,
loaded it up and motored home. Since I am impatient, and I didn’t have
time to install it on the roof, I stood it up in the back yard, strung
the coax cable through the window and connected it up. I asked Laura to
listen in the computer room to see how the music sounded while I stood
in the back yard holding this contraption over my head. "How’s it sound
now?"

"Bad."

"Okay, now?"

"Better."

"Better-fine, or better still bad."

"I don’t know, what do you consider good enough?"

I fiddled a bit more

"Oh, stop there, it sounds the best."

Groan. There I was with this thing high above my head contorted,
leaning trying to avoid the trees. I placed it down best I could
pointed it roughly in the same direction as before and went inside to
hear for myself.

"Hey that sounds pretty good. I’ll leave it like that for a while."

The Olympics are Dead to Me

Got disgusted with the Olympics a bit early this year and decided to
go right into Halloween. Is it just me or have the Olympics lost their
spirit in the past ten years?

I guess it all started going awry for me after they started
admitting professional athletes. I think it was summed up
unintentionally, but pretty well, by Venus Williams after winning the
gold medal in women’s singles tennis. "How does it feel to win a gold
medal?" She was asked.

"I never really much thought about it. I guess… I um.. it feels pretty good. I’m just so happy."

She tried to recover but the truth was there. Of course the slip is that she really hadn’t
thought about the Olympics. For her, the basketball dream team, and the
professional cyclists this was just another world class meet, not
something for which they had sacrificed, suffered, and struggled. The
struggle was before, when they were working to go professional and make
a career there, gain fame and fortune. Now after they are on top, we
say, hey why don’t you come out and win a gold medal for your country.
Maybe it’s ratings, maybe it’s national pride, win at all costs, whip
the world so to speak, but there just isn’t the personal passion that I
remember as a kid and teenager. Now it’s just one more notch on the
belt. Hrrmmpfff, *shrug* just another big meet.

I never get to see wrestling, probably one of the oldest and noblest
sports in Olympic history, naw, nobody’s ever heard of this kid from
Iowa. Oh wait, he beat the Russian… okay let’s show that match. Bah!!
I want to see amateur athletes struggling, fighting, and happy with
winning a bronze. Where was the decathlon coverage? Where was
wrestling, shot put, discus, javelin, swimming? These sports were
covered only marginally… perhaps there weren’t enough famous American
athletes there. Oh well, I guess, I’ll stop complaining. In the
meantime I’ll sit back and enjoy the newest most fantastic-liscous
sport we could have ever dreamed up… synchronized diving. AHHHHH, now
we’re getting somewhere.

Zombie Lights, Sucking the Juice from My Eyeballs

joemoon.jpgI’ve always loved the movie "Joe Vs. The Volcano." It’s always
touched me in ways that only a handful of other stories or pieces of
art do. I always thought I was the only one. Then I found out through
an idle web search that there are a lot of people out there who have
dedicated a lot of time and thought into enjoying and studying this
movie. Imagine my surprise and delight. Some great stuff.

A great essay

This guy sums up just how I feel about the movie and indeed it’s a
pretty good life philosophy for me. Then I read this other one that
started me off on my own little wandering path of thought.

Another great essay

As our business has gotten funded and we are moving out our fog of
discontent, things are starting to make sense again. Once again, I’ve
learned some valuable lessons from Puerto Rican culture. I’ve been
noticing that people generally put up with a lot from one another and
are slow to break ties over disputes, ill words or broken promises.
Perhaps it’s the island culture that no one is very far from one
another and getting along is sort of a survival instinct.

Part of the reason most people behave better with strangers than
loved ones, is that strangers, others, co-workers, and friends are
quicker to throw you away if you screw up. You put yourself on your
best behavior directly proportionately to your imperiled value to the
other person. In Puerto Rico, office cultures are sometimes what we
Americans would call unprofessional… lots of noise, people maybe
talking loud. People are quicker to bring their home problems to the
office, bring their kids, bring their personal lives into the forefront
of their professional lives. I suspect that since Puerto Ricans are
slower to throw each other way, in a way it’s like family. You deal
with it and try to make it better instead of cutting the guy a pink
slip, check and sending him on packing on his merry way.

Viserally, Puerto Ricans are connected to life in a far deeper way
than most Americans… work, life… these two aren’t seperate.

Increasingly I’ve seen technology make culture take on a more
drastic meaningless existence. Movies are all show and no imagination.
Two hours is a very short story if it’s all visual. And breathless
wanting kisses of the forties have been replaced by a carefully crafted
sculpted silicon breast shot. Shakespeare in Love? Shouldn’t it have
been Shakespeare in lust?

The fast pace of the Internet makes ALL the rules able to be
rewritten in a matter of months. The WAY of doing things seems to go
extinct overnight, with the next new thing growing ever closer and
closer. To what are we beholden? Increasingly we grow dissatisfied with
religion. We shift from thing to thing looking for some sort of self
satisfaction, peace, or wellness. We flit and click and jump from one
thing to next hoping that it will fill us. We don’t want to hold too
tightly to any one thing for fear it will evaporate in a heartbeat. So
we tie down emotionally and fill our lives with eye candy… the
illusion of life.

At work we can be replaced without a second thought. Shareholders
you know… Downsizing, cutting middle management, move to new
facilities, restructuring, not making the cut are all reasons people
are tossed aside.

Quoting Joe in the movie Joe vs. the Volcano, "Zombi lights… sucking the juice out of my eyeballs."

It’s difficult now, with all external indications that the US is
doing very well. We have lots of jobs, money, and we are busy busy
busy. Gotta move, gotta do, gotta be.

I sometimes criticize Puerto Ricans for not caring about doing a
good job, being lazy or not being efficient. But Laura shamed me the
other day as I was bitching about something she broke or damaged,
saying to her, "At least I care about how I treat things."

"Too bad you don’t feel the same way about people," she shot back.

And damn it if she wasn’t right. We Americans are so pointy clicky,
efficient, and bottom line oriented that we seem to forget that people
are more important than things. It’s easy to answer correctly on a
test, but hard in practice. That’s one thing at which Puerto Ricans
excel. Things are inconsequential. Sure they love gadgets, cars, and
all manner of cool toys, but 99% of them are damaged in some way…
including all these new Jaguar’s I’m seeing recently. You work it out,
it’ll work out. Está bien… tranquilo.

And so there I will leave this for now. I’m still learning, still
growing, still failing, but every once in a while these things just
come out of the blue and hit you over the head plain as day. I hope the
Latin influences of family, culture, fun, and society can have some
great positive influences on the American way of life.

Registering to Vote

I registered to vote here in Puerto Rico. Laura’s sister,
Nellie, kept bugging us (Miray, Laura, and me) until we finally got
around to it. Feels good. Now I feel more a participating member of the
island. As far as the candidates go, I don’t believe that any make any
sense except for the Statehood party, Partido Nuevo Progresista (PNP).

Partido Popular Democrático (PPD) which is the commonwealth status
party just wants to remain semi-autonomous. No vote in Congress, just
the good will of the US. It’s like having no responsibilities and
living at home with mom and dad. It’s gonna get old eventually. The
only solution is to move out, get a job, and visit during the weekends,
and don’t bring home your laundry.

As far as the independence party goes, Partido Independentista
Puertorriqueño I don’t know what to say. Keep dreaming maybe? Hehe, get
this, the party was founded by a guy named Gilberto Concepción de
Gracia [corrected his name and of course the next part is rendered moot ]. It can’t be his real name. He must have changed
it because it means "Gilbert Conception of Grace".  What a nut. I wonder what his mother said? Anyway, if Puerto Rico cuts
loose I don’t see it staying afloat. Too far out and too dependent on
the US’s economy. To become independent would be like moving out from
your parents and becoming homeless but having too much pride to ever
ask for help or just trying to do it on your own. Doesn’t make sense
either.

Really, the only fair choice is for the statehood party. It gives
Puerto Rico power as a state and keeps it from falling off the face of
the planet. I mean after 500 some years of being a colonial possession,
how does it think it could hack it on its own? Commonwealth is just the
same old mooching off your parents and eventually it gets old.

The Great Salmon

How do you judge the value of a salmon steak. Take the person who
buys it. Without the money for having bought that salmon steak it
wouldn’t be a reality. It would never arrive to the hands of the
seasoner. Sprinkle lemon, a little cilantro. Sprinkle precious drops of
olive oil. Rub it into the pink meat. Let it set. So without those who
would season the meat, there would be no great salmon steak. You have
to give those seasoners credit. Let’s pass that filet to the grill.
Without the griller, the right temperature, a few smoldering briquettes
for smoky flavor. Watch that meat, it only takes five minutes to cook a
piece of fish to perfection. Too hot, it’s blackened… too cool and
you risk it falling apart. Pass that fish to the serving plate. They
eat it, exclaiming, "Wow, that was the most wonderful salmon I’ve ever
eaten. My hat is off to you chef."

"Ah, but," he replies, "I couldn’t have done it without the
seasoner. That salmon was only as good as the seasoner. Seasoner, my
hat is off to you."

She smiles politely, "Very well, but without the buyer, I wouldn’t
have had anything. Without that great delicacy to start with, I
wouldn’t have anything to season."

"Thank you, but my part is a small one." says the buyer.

It was a fine salmon and all are in accord. They had made a fine meal and it was a team effort.

And then my mind drifts off to the salmon waters of the North
Pacific. I see a great strength darting through the cold ocean waters.
Is this greatness a gift of the buyers, seasoners, and grillers? I
think this as I imagine its life, and I see that the grand beast was
magnificent.

Blind Spots

olaiapeeking02.jpgOlaia has been growing with us for the past 11 months now. For the
first 9, she was an abstraction, something we were anticipating but had
no idea what to really expect. How would she change our lives? What
would she be like? I’ve been doing some video editing of her to send to
our families and after watching her (both in person and on film) over
and over, I find that I have some strange feelings, feelings that I
didn’t expect and maybe don’t quite understand yet. I look at her
there. In one scene she’s in her bouncer seat, (thanks Leila) and I
feel like it’s the first object in her life that she can interact with,
as in touch, and manipulate. I watch her struggling with the little
spinners and gadgets that make up the play bar in front of her. She now
reaches out and hits what she’s looking at. Sometimes she’s not
successful, but she’s getting better. Today, however, she got her hand
caught under the bar and rather than put her arm down and withdraw it,
she tried to raise it against the bar. Obviously she felt that this
thing had stolen her hand and that she was stuck. Daddy was right there
and as she started to cry for help, he was there to gently pull her
away from the entrapping device. Ahh, I don’t know what I would have
done without you, daddy.

OlaiaPeekingfromBubbles.jpgIt was then that I had this overwhelming sense of, I don’t know
quite how to say it, protection? of needing to help her, of wanting
something. I can’t explain it. There she was this little girl, so
helpless, so dependent on her parents, trying to reach out and really
trying, but having trouble. There was this melancholy, this regret that
she would suffer failure at some time in her life. She’s going to have
hard days ahead and even though daddy will be around (I hope so
anyway), I can’t help but feel worry, angst, and well, my heart just
goes out to her. I watch her on her tummy trying to lift her head, she
does it for a few minutes but after that she gets tired and ends up
face down on the mattress. Poor thing. She does so well, but then she
can’t, and she kind of panics (because she can’t figure out why she
can’t lift her head and why she’s face down), and daddy helps her out.
Ahhh, much better. She just has such an earnest look on her face, like
she’s really really trying and just can’t do it. I don’t know why, but
it breaks my heart.

I wonder if we ever figure out how to succeed here in this life.
Life is just one big confusing trial after another. There’s childhood
where everything is so new and you’re so dependent. There’s adolescence
where suddenly when you thought you were getting the hang of things,
the rules change. You turn 18, graduate from high school thinking you
know everything, and bam, college is another blow to your mastery of
the universe. You follow on, conquering challenges (because your
parents taught you well), and again you find yourself graduating and
being as lost as you were as a newborn. What do I do with the rest of
my life? Have I made right choices? Why are these things such surprises
to us and why do we place our hopes in our experiences that flee us at
such regular intervals?

There are lots of places where we trip and wish there were someone
who knew it all to help us out. What’s the big picture? Do we spend all
our lives gathering consciousness only to in the end fall short of
complete awareness. At seventy we still get our hands stuck under
symbolic bars and instead of having awareness of what to do, we yank
and pull and scream and cry, not getting it and not really having
learned the smallest lessons, the ones that release us from a prison
where we are just children crying out for our daddies, so helpless and
alone.

I have to say that all these things go through my head as I watch
Olaia struggle with awareness and I am reminded our own struggles. They
are no different and she is just at the beginning of a long and
complicated road. I wish I could take it all away just make it all
simple. I’ll do my best, but I know I can’t do it all, and I know that
some day she’s going to have to figure out that bar herself.

Now, lest you think I’m being all melodramatic and fatalistic, I
know life is a wonderful gift, but I just can’t help but wish we could
transcend our human frailties, our inability to "get" certain things.
There are math problems that just perplex me and that bugs me. I can
feel sometimes the limits of my brain, the places were my consciousness
fails to penetrate. I know where they are and that bugs me. There are
certain things that I just don’t get. Certainly we all have our blind
spots, but wouldn’t it be nice to find a way just clean them out and
illuminate and move beyond our sticking points?

I just love that little girl so much it would be a wonderful gift
indeed to bestow upon her a calming awareness that it’ll turn out all
right, a peaceful mastery of her surroundings, and a tranquillity that
will never allow her to be caught below another bar.

Se Pinchó la Goma (Flat Tire)

The Day of the flat tire. I don’t know how many of you have had flat
tires, but today I have been initiated. This is no small thing. I am
sure that aside from excuses for arriving at meetings-work-dentists
appointments late it is a rare occurrence. Let me tell you about how it
works down here. Half the cars drive around with those ridiculous
little donut wheels (small spare tire). It’s almost an epidemic. The
other day I say a BMW (a nice one too) driving around with that silly
little wheel. If he had been in a car locker room the towel whipping
would have been fierce.

It’s all fun and games, however, until it happens to you which if
you live in Puerto Rico, it will. Maybe it has something to do with the
heat (perhaps the rubber is half melted anyway allowing anything from a
toothpick to a hard jolly rancher to penetrate your side wall), or the
fact that the streets seem to have an extraordinary quantity of pot
holes and debris. I don’t know. But today I came out to the parking lot
to find out that I had a flat. Aw man. I breathed a sigh of relief,
however, because thank God that it didn’t happen in rush hour traffic.

I whipped out the tiny silly diminutive God-awfully goofy little
spare tire and cranked up those silly little toy jacks that take a
million turns to go up half an inch, put the silly spare on and drove
gingerly (avoiding pot holes and debris) to Santurce, a working class
neighborhood (some would call it a tough neighborhood) and found a guy
who repaired tires… for, get this… $5. Yes, you heard right. $5.
Tire repair around here is such a booming business that they charge $5
a tire and work around the clock. Hell, maybe I should get out of the
computer racket and cash in on the booming flat business. So the guys
found the hole repaired the tire and slapped it back on in about 5
minutes..

…which is good, great wonderful, brilliant, but remember that $5 I
was talking about? I didn’t have it. I had $4.50. Now I couldn’t
exactly try to scam this guy out of fifty cents on an already
impossibly low fee. Wouldn’t you know it, they didn’t accept credit or
ATM. To further compound matters, I was in an area where there were no
ATMs. Oh, did I mention it was now 5 o’clock. Aw geez, now I have to
navigate down streets that when they were designed were intended to be
two way streets. Today, however, Puerto Rican’s have taken parking to
new levels as cars are stacked on either side in impossible
configurations making this already small two way street an even smaller
two way street. So it became the Samurai on the bridge all over again.
You gonna back up to the nearest cross street or am I? I think not
knave. I have to find an ATM. You will suffer should you wish to
challenge me. It worked, he backed off and up he went to the nearest
cross street. I gave a little wave of thanks and made my way into the
heart of a six pack a day smoker, potato chip snarffing, egg guzzling,
red meat devouring, whole milk drinking, 500 hundred pound overweight
50 year old. CLOGGED is the word that kept rearing it’s ugly head as I
banged on my steering wheel and cursed the accursed traffic and the pot
hole ridden tiny streets. After about an hour, I spied it, an oasis of
money. A-ha, doh!, I’m on the wrong side of the street. Quick stop in a
gas station-run across the street on a pedestrian cross walk that only
half remained-narrowly missed by cars honking at this brazen fool who
stepped out of his car for even a millisecond-lunging for the security
of electronic cash, information age technology that would save my ass,
give me my cash and allow me to get on with my life.

So the deed it done, now I have to get back to the tire shop. To
relive the feeling, reread the above paragraph. Now I arrive back to
the shop and it’s closed. Ah, there he is. I breathe a sigh of relief,
and notice the humble tire change guy hanging out at the bar next door.
Here’s your money, I say, and thanks for your patience. Whew. The day
is done, the tire is repaired, I can go home complete, satisfied, whole
again.

I’ll worry about putting that jigsaw puzzle called the jack, lug
wrench, wing nut, spare tire assembly sometime next month. For now
it’ll just kick around in the trunk. Hey, maybe I’ll need it again
really soon.

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