Life

This post was going to be a long rant about how I am sick and tired of being sick and tired. After a long week battling a sore throat, I succumbed to antibiotics the following 5 days, only to find out on the last day that, alas, the pain and rawness in my throat are back again.

It's in times like these that I reckon how much I need some sand, a Caribbean beach and the soothing nothingness of a blue ocean's horizon. I miss living close to a beach. And no, Coney Island or any other dirty, stinky, filthy New York City beach just doesn't cut it because I actually may end up with a cut up foot if I don't watch every step I take.

No.

I need salty clean and fresh blue water. I need the unrelenting wind that only comes with whirly waves. And no, neither a river nor a lake or needless to say a pond or lagoon can make me happy.

It's why I've never believed the Babalawo who dare to read my Orisha as Osun and not Yemanya. I can't understand how I can be an Oshun if I hate mountains, rivers and lakes so much. Am happiest when I know I have a sea or an ocean where I can rest my weary soul.

Am getting old.

Am pining for my old Puerto Rico days.

And it's making me think about what would be for me a heaven on earth.

The answer is simple : A house, close to a Puerto Rican beach yet with a nice pool for a backyard.

No...not "Jon Stewart." I'm talking about John Stewart, Provost of John Muir College at the University of California, San Diego. I found out this morning that John Stewart, a man who had a profound affect on my life in college, died last year.

I am an alumnus of John Muir College and UCSD and I knew John Stewart. I should note that we never called him John or Dr. Stewart or Professor. He was always "John Stewart." I don't know why. Some combination of closeness and respect. I probably last talked to John Stewart some 20 years ago, though he may have written me a letter of recommendation or two after that. But probably even that level of contact ended by 1990 or so. For a few years now I have wondered if he was still alive and well. When I knew him he was already 70 or so, and he was backpacking in the backcountry with myself and other gung ho college kids. He might not have been the fastest of the bunch, but I am willing to bet he could have out hiked us if push came to shove. He retired the same year I graduated, so my graduating class was the last he presided over as Provost. I remember being asked to give a short speech at a tree planting ceremony in his honor, an event where the music was played by folk singer and marine biologist Sam Hinton, another friend of John Stewart's. I can't remember what I said, I just remember feeling honored to be asked to do honor to this man. The tree is probably still there, I suppose.

It's in moments like these that my love for dictionaries knows no end. Today is Epiphany Day. Here's what I found for the definition of epiphany :

epiphany |iˈpifənē| noun ( pl. -nies) (also Epiphany) the manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles as represented by the Magi (Matthew 2:1–12).
• the festival commemorating this on January 6.
• a manifestation of a divine or supernatural being.
• a moment of sudden revelation or insight.

DERIVATIVES epiphanic |ˌepəˈfanik| adjective

ORIGIN Middle English : from Greek epiphainein ‘reveal.’ The sense relating to the Christian festival is via Old French epiphanie and ecclesiastical Latin epiphania.

Now, I've repeatedly said here how even though I am an atheist, I am strongly attached to many of the catholic rites I grew up with. This has to do with what Joseph Campbell called The Power of Myth. I love mythologies, I love the stories humans have created and propagated through millennia in order to justify our existence.

I've been missing "Navidad en Puerto Rico" for a long time. It is the perfect social expression of our mulatto culture and mythologies and it's nothing, and I mean, nothing like Christmas in New York or anywhere in the United States.

In Puerto Rico we call today El Día de los Reyes Magos. It's the day catholics all around the world use to commemorate the Three Wise Men's visitation of the baby Jesus in manger in the middle of nowhere in Bethlehem. That's where the "manifestation of a divine or supernatural being" comes into play on this day.

On this day we kind of do what anglos do with Santa Claus. On the evening of the 5th, kids gather grass and water dishes for the three kings' horses. Parents put together candy with a little "ofrenda" of rum. "The magic revelation" happens when the kids go to sleep.

My parents loved to get their Reyes Magos on and would go as far as get coconuts and, in an unironic Monty Pythonesque moment, clopclopclop their way around the house while scattering the grass, emptying the bowls full of water and washing down a coconut candy or two with the "ofrenda" they had left out for themselves.

I tried doing the same for my kids but it just doesn't work out the same. For one, all the kids in Puerto Rico wait eagerly for Los Reyes Magos. Here in New York? Not so much. Not even american catholics celebrate the day!

Yet what I love and miss about los Reyes Magos is that it marks the half-point of our Christmas festivities.

Yes people, we Puerto Ricans have to do things differently, especially if it involves partying. In Puerto Rico we don't have 12 days of Christmas. We have 22 days.

So Michael R's calls last night to ask if I am still alive. I have been incredibly busy trying to juggle 6 different projects plus the kids plus Xmas and well, he reminded me how guilty I have been feeling about not being able to blog not even part-time these days.

So this morning I was thinking, hmmmmmm, do I use "Staying Alive" or "She Works Hard" for my "I'm not dead yet" post?

I settled for Donna and not the Bee Gees, first because of Travolta and second because my present situation is very 1980's, very recession and Reaganomics with a whiff of Iran-Contra secret war. I get the embed and here's what I got :

I can't believe I had no memory whatsoever of that white woman. "She works hard (for the money)" has never been in my mind a song about "working poor" white women. And the fact that her song is being told by a black woman ... wow.

It's debatable whether Hip Hop won out and took over MTV. At the time it was a big deal to see people like Donna Summers even though she was the biggest female pop vocalist in the United States (if not the world). Prince, Michael Jackson : they were on semi-regular rotation on MTV only because they were the acceptable "poppish" negroes.

I have officially arrived as a geekette. I thought that going to She's Geeky was the way for me to declare myself as a geekette among equals.

Nope.

It wasn't enough to go to Mountain View, home of Google, in order to feel myself at ease among women who tech.

No.

It took my computer breaking in order for me to reckon how much I depend on it for my every day living.

I am truly hurting here.

Yeah! Bejata is back!

I first wrote about Bejata back in 2006 but Bernard is back from a blog hiatus, so it's time for an update.

Bernard has one of the most corageous, provocative yet heart-warming series written on any blog, Black Gay Men at Midlife.

If it is not easy being a gay black man in America, it can be twice as hard for those reaching middle age. Bernie with this series seeks to expose those stories but what he also does is to expose the misconceptions, hypocrisies and ageism that exist within the black gay community and use that opportunity to start a dialogue about "what's next".

Check out the whole series. Another favorite? His sports archives. You're going to have a hell of a blog ride.

I have mentioned it before, that when I travel for panels or conferences, it takes me a few days to get back into blogging.

Day trips actually get to me more than transatlantic or transcontinental trips. At least I can sleep if the trips are more than 4 hours long. On short trips, I rarely get to rest --even at the hotel. I guess I am a creature of habit that is sensitive to change.

Which explains my kids comment from the other day.

When I travel I get "penalized" for my absence. I don't think The Kids mind my absences so much as their father who then ... ahem ... disappears during the evenings for the next few days after one of my business trips.

This changes the dynamics of evening reading since, due to his work schedule, that's become his one job in the evenings. And it's one job he usually does as I prepare for my second shift of work in my usual 10-12 hour work days.

Lets take a test drive?

Perhaps it’s time to take a car for a ride, and see if I can still remember how to drive.

That feeling of wondering about maybe driving again. What would I drive given the chance? One of those new modern cars, I hear the damn alternators are water cooled, or would I be more at home with a car that has a little less newfangled high maintenance features.

A car with experience in the ways of driving – one that drives itself instead of relying on constant user feedback?

Perhaps a car that can both drive itself and allow a little mutual road rally dancing – autopilot or drive by the seat of the pants.

Where is the comfort zone with this new means of transport? Does it need premium fuel or cough sputter and croak? Can it live off the land a little? How about a little fresh table scraps in the flux capacitor (Back To The Future style). Oh how precious to go with the flow.

I can remember the smell of leather seats when getting into a new car for the first time in ages. As apposed to the familiar I know every creak and vibration, the response to the steering wheel of the bumpy dirt road vs. the roll and sway of a lane change as we motor down the highway.

Remember that Fall cruise for the colors, and being one with the car so well that you can look around at the tree lines and clutch/shift/steer/brake completely detached from the act of driving? And then get behind the wheel of a car never before driven, and you cant find the windshield wipers, how do you turn on the lights, how do the brakes feel, can I start this damn thing without having my foot on the brake? Autopilot.

I wrote a post about the good stuff that happened in 2006. Everytime I sat down to write about the bad and the ugly of last year, I'd become paralyized by the massive amounts of badness and uglyness that permeated the year.

There was the triumvirate of firecrotch (Lindsay Lohan), skanky chocha (Paris Hilton), and white trash poontang (Britney Spears).

Ugh Britney.

Anorexia became the new black with Nicole Ritchie it's standard bearer. Yeah sure, anorectics have been banned from catwalks across the globe what with four dead models sacrificied to the disease but when we still have a coked-out yet incredibly rich Kate Moss prancing around ... well ... no wonder it's still considered hot in Hollywood.

There was also the crazy whacked out Tom Cruise with his scientology slave Katie Holmes and their tethan child. And Star Jones. And Donald Trump. And Kid Rock and Pam Anderson.

But those are just the entertainment.

What about Darfur?
Do you remember the devastation of Lebanon?
Then there's the never ending carnage in Iraq.
And the immigration raids.

Do you know where habeas corpus went?

How about Mark Foley?
Ted Haggard?
Samuel Alito?

The thing is ... all of this is too abstract, too far away when compared to the death of my niece Lydia.

And now 2007