VIVENT LONGTEMPS LA FAMILLE Honestly, I can’t believe how hard this last month has been in art making. Frustration, anger, hurt, dread, stifled, resenting - and that’s just the inner conversation I am having with myself! It’s never easy especially when you are chipping away at something difficult, a bit at yourself and a bit at the brutality outside. Remember when art was fun and frivolous? Oh good, because I can’t. Don’t get me started on the exterior world. I’m sure we’d all love to live in the plush soft interior of ourselves, where no one annoys or disrupts your flow, but I know that no one is immune because I saw Diana Ross, draped in a huge fleece poncho, at the Toys ‘R’ Us on La Cienega Boulevard and 18th impatiently waiting for the gaming clerk to come unlock a cabinet. See folks - no one gets out alive. Cruel world. I wish I wasn’t so sensitive. I admire those people who can shut it all down at the drop of a pin. I don’t know if that is even possible, but I take it all so personally. Ah well, having been raised religiously all I have to do is topically say to myself is ‘but what about Mexico or Africa or even this damn country’ and my emotional barometer lowers considerably. It’s always worse somewhere else, I just can’t find parking… That all went away this weekend. The tonic is always the same and it came at just the right moment. Yesterday I had the joy of celebrating someone else, my brother the sweet musician/postal worker with a heart of gold, a single father who puts nothing in front of his love for his two boys. His sacrifices have been enormous and he doesn’t just love them he enjoys being with them beyond belief, the three Alfaro musketeers. I don’t know how they do it frankly, even with his twenty plus years on the postal graveyard shift, but somehow they always find a way to get through. Mexicans not Mexicants... Every year each member of my family gets to decide where they want to have their celebratory birthday lunch. This year my brother had us meet down in Newport Beach and we took the ferry over to Balboa Island. A long leisurely day doing what my family does best – arguing, talking loudly, laughing a lot and eating, of course. I hope I don’t sound like a broken record, but I still can’t believe my father isn’t here with us, especially on these trips. You can sense him though, his presence. But still, an ache, small now, an ache still sits there in an empty chair across from me. As for the living, they are crazy. We complain and yet we can’t stay away from each other. By the end of the day, my nephew Raymond has taken to yelling in the back of the car about being held hostage on the longest drive down Beach Boulevard from the ocean to northern Orange County. “Doesn’t anyone care that I had a knee operation and that I am prone in this position for endless hours?” The laughter is drowned out by our awe at the sun setting and the drive through Little Saigon. The word ‘torture’ echoes in the back of the SUV, but it’s muffled by the laughs it generates. Cruel loving family we are. Like most Mexicans, there is my blood family and then there is my extended family. Chosen maybe, but bound by culture and tradition. A family I made when I was in High School. This morning I woke up excited to meet my comadre, Alicia, the mother of my godchildren, and this other family for a breakfast in Pasadena. It’s been too long. I’ve been wrapped up in a couple of years of grief, sorrow and the proverbial cycle of making art. But so has she. A father gone as well, and we haven’t really shared this unique condition with each other. The Hamburger Hamlet on Lake has become a 24-hour DuPar’s, home of the pancake. This seems right for us. Yes, we could go to a fancy brunch, but let’s get real, we are going to act exactly like my blood family – talk too loud, argue, laugh and eat, of course. We are, in the end, working class Chicanos from the inner city and diners make perfect birthday sense. My compadre, Joseph, walks in and I thought he was still working in France. I want to break out in tears, but I don’t. Why don’t I? I want to say I’ve missed you pal, buddy, old friend, long long time friend, but instead we hug it out and begin the Xmas planning and laughter. Everyone pitches an idea for our Christmas celebration. ‘My Big Fat Greek Christmas’ came in a strong second, but ultimately I lose out to ‘Christmas Down South’ and that’s only because my compadre promises to fry chicken and make macaroni & cheese and cornbread, a family led by their stomachs, so sad. After a while we settle in to something I’ve been practicing since my dad died – the seemingly small stuff of family and culture. The stupid jokes that probably won’t make it into a play but crack me up nevertheless, the small talk and the familiar, the ease of being with people you have known your whole life, nothing big, nothing dramatic, just being with each other and knowing how good that feels. I am at the Starbucks right now in Mid-City, the one on Pico at Rimpau. There are two guys who have obviously just met, one is checking out a camera in a box that the other is selling. They’ve been at it for about fifteen minutes and just a few minutes ago, things got tense. They started a little argument. Accusations got thrown about in louder voices and the tough Starbucks chola just came over and asked them to ‘Keep it down guys…’ The prospective customer stormed out and the guy with his camera in the box is looking around embarrassed. The Ethiopians are staring back. God I love it here, I should just write my epic trilogy and call it ‘Tonight at Starbucks’. This would never happen with either one of my families. They would immediately yell and scream and then realize how ridiculous it all was and hug it out or bring it to the larger family who would yell and scream even louder and make everyone hug it out. There would be tears, accusations and then there would be another birthday lunch and all would be forgotten. Yes, today was a good reminder of what it means to be a Chicano. And I will never be able to escape it...
Posted on: Mon, 24 Nov 2014 05:36:01 +0000
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