Life is first wide, then narrow. The sky is higher when you are a child. You put your hands to so much, knowing by feel. Remember that, navigating your dear path.
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Life is first wondrous, then wonderful. One thing after another dazzles the child mind. We mature into refinement, into numbness, waiting for that one thing that arrests the eye.
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Life is first given, then imagined. The mind makes a world its own, the body reaches for that mind world. Inward, outward, a dance of hope.
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Life is first wide, then narrow. The sky is higher for a child, who knows by putting his hands to things, who grows to walk his narrow path on his own.
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Life is first wonderful, then wondrous. One thing after another stuns us into laughter & leaping. Children are numb to nearly nothing. We grow into that.
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Life is first given, then imagined. All the body has is limits & gravity, a narrow path rather than a story, once upon our time.
The last row of a plane is the one that makes you feel each bump, each jostle worse than anywhere else on the plane. If you’ve got a week stomach or an overactive imagination, the last row reveals it.
I can sit still, but even in the backrow I can’t think still. I’m a serial mental fidgeter. I find it difficult to do breathing exercises even on the ground. These chaotic & capricious eddies of air come patternless and unannounced, and they frighten me. I’m short, so I can’t distract myself easily by looking over the seats. So I look out the window.
We are above the clouds now, a cruising altitude. Clouds as far as I can see framed by the pillshaped window and bisected by a glossy grey wing. The wing gives me a sense of scale, but a false one. “It’s a seventy-foot wing,” I guessed, “so each cauliflower cloud is about …” and I have no formula in my mind that would place me on one corner of a triangle, the edges of the wingspan along legs of two sides of that triangle such that the clouds might be the base of the triangle opposite my vantage / point. It isn’t a mar de nubes, though I want to write down (I do write down) that it is. It is bumps & bumps, hillocks & eruptions of powderwhite, of charcoal grey, of flat muted blue. All in one long vista.
I imagine them all gathering in some wind event, a rainstorm-to-be right outside my window, all that potential to feed the earth, to cleanse, to bring spring. My stomach & my anxiety ease.
The engine hums, and I feel my left shoulder get colder & colder. Row 28 Seat E watching The Departed on a laptop has leaned forward, a trickle of air from the spigot above bouncing off his broad fleece back & ricocheting onto me. I turn to the window again, looking back behind the crew’s galley, back toward the sun.
We’re flying pretty much due northeast now, late afternoon the last day of the first week of spring. (I’m heading to a committee meeting, the last such meeting, unbeknownst to me, the other members, or the administrators. We had our last meal in the hotel that last night, numbed by the rich meals we’d paid for out in the city. “Isn’t it a luxury to just sit here,” one member mused, vulnerable through our years of working together, “sipping wine, and talking books? This was all I ever wanted.” “Same”, we each said, “same.” I’m on the way to that weekend meeting; she’ll say that on Sunday night. two nights from now. This flight is AA2019 Friday March 28, 2019, DFW to PIT. Covid is a year away.) You can’t see the sun, just a plexiglass refracted setting of rays disappearing into the cloudscape, now a long sheet, a kind of celestial milky opaque bubble wrap.
It is still at 550MPH–it is the kind of stillness you feel only at 550 MPH. The clouds varied & linked thick, revealing no glimpse of shaded land below. I don’t know where we are. We’re high enough in the air that we could be anywhere.
I’m almost there.
I wrote this a while ago, while nervous on a flight. The title is from one of my favorite Laurie Anderson songs. I didn’t take a photo that day. The photo above is from July 14, 2022 on the AA1331 LAX to DFW.
These are songs of praise, songs of belonging, songs of family, faith, & joy. Of all the blessings of being born to my people, of all the blessings of having a personal compass pointing south, I am blessed to have been raised with the Virgen de Guadalupe in my life.
I’ve heard the jokes about how frequently she appears in the most unlikely places (tattooed arms, back windows of trucks, miraculous tortillas, etc. etc.), and I’ve probably laughed at a few of them. What’s no joke, though, is being raised to know where you belong, to know where to turn, and to know that when things are difficult, there is a lady full of love who will ruega por nosotros (that is, who will pray / beg for us).
The first piece is about the Virgen pendant I got for my thirteenth birthday. The second is about a life of stages of faith & doubt, but a life where the Virgen endured as a light & an example.
Ave Maria. Por vida.
VIRGEN.
On my thirteenth birthday, we crossed the border. Starched guayaberas
& dress slacks, shined shoes reflecting the high summer sun.
As often happened when we were down in the valley,
we occupied an entire room to feed the extended family.
Passing elote stands & kids selling chiclets, a neighborhood dusty
& busy. In Miguel Alemán, we were comfortable but conspicuous.
Clearly there for the day. A luxurious & easy crossing,
lower prices & local color. We took up the whole
sidewalk, loudly, happily. My gran'pa paid for the whole thing,
including this Virgen I wear still. "Mi'jo, que dios te bendiga."
AVE MARIA.
Before I grew into doubt & anger, disappointment & disgust
with the church, I prayed daily to
Virgin Mary.
She was calm & beautiful, her pain serene,
not a crown of
thorns.
Let it be done to me--disarming
service & bodily yielding, faithful, maternal & beautiful,
clothed in the stars & sky, atop the moon.
Pray for me, Mary. I will be good.
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This blog post is part of the #31DaysIBPOC Blog Series, a month-long movement to feature the voices of indigenous and teachers of color as writers and scholars. "Virgen" arose from an exercise with students--one memory, ten lines, ten words each; "Ave Maria" from another exercise--one object, ten lines, line length depending on the digits in your phone number. That is, if your area code is 214, line one is two words long, line two is one word long, and line three is four words long, etc. Here's a thing I wrote for the series a few years ago. Please CLICK HERE to read yesterday’s blog post by Agnes Lopez. Please CLICK HERE to be uplifted by the rest of the blog series.
I’ve been keeping notebooks only for a couple of years, almost never sharing my work. Maybe both parts of that are a surprise to some — how new I am to personal writing, how rare it is that I share it.
Some friends online encouraged me to write & post for the month of March 2022. I’m gonna try to post every day. My sincerest gratitude to these friends, friends I’ve never met in person. Here goes somethin’.
juvenilia 1: compositions produced in the artist’s or author’s youth 2: artistic or literary compositions suited to or designed for the young
middleagedmiddlechild. 