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"Insecurities are like running into that jerk of an ex-boyfriend and finding out he is in love with another woman."

I am not a very religious person, but I am a spiritual person. I know my life sucks most of the time, but I know that I am loved by some higher power watching over us, I feel it in my gut, in my soul on a constant basis. Last night I had a horrible nose bleed, I haven't had a nose bleed since elementary school. It was scary, I thought maybe I was dying or something. During the non-stop bleeding I managed to freak my boyfriend out too. He was trying to help me and I kept pushing him away. I was scared, and I noticed that when I get scared I am really defensive and irritable. I am glad that he was patient and stuck by me even though I was definitely displaying a dislike of his presence. He's either been accustomed to rapid mood swings or was genuinely concerned about me, or maybe both. I was exhausted after the nose bleed incident and fell right asleep. This morning on the bus I thought about how patient and loving Carlos was with me, even when I was such a pain in the ass. Aside from the lovey dovey stuff, I earnestly felt that I was blessed. I was blessed to have someone so understanding, so supportive, when I can be such a bull headed Taurus, to but it lightly.

I put the thought aside and I began reading this interview in "Poets & Writers" with four major editors, talking about their work and what writers should know about getting into the publishing industry. They talked about writing that was necessary, urgently present in the lives of day-to-day person. They talked about writing that took you to other worlds, like what reading was when you had a good childhood imagination. I thought about my writing, and felt like I'd never make it as a writer. The thought was depressing. I'm not good enough.

God must know be now, because he knows praise from others lasts a matter of minutes and then it fades into the long episodes of insecurities that my mind makes up. To make things a little more explicit, I ran into an old friend. One that isn't really good at giving compliments, but one who can spot honesty when he sees it. I talked to him about how I was all confused about life again. I didn't know if I wanted to be a teacher. I told him how this academic year had been focused on writing, and this had changed my whole perspective about what I want to do with my life. I love what writing did to me. It turned my skin inside out and opened a part of me that has been dormant and scared for a long time. Writing gives me energy, no matter how depressed and tired I am. The moment I started talking about what writing meant to me with him, the less I forgot how much of a bad writer I was. He told me that this feeling that I got from writing was my sign that I found something that I loved doing and worth pursing at all costs. He didn't tell me I was a good writer, but he let me tell myself that no matter what, it was something that was important to me.

It is nice to be able to recognize and cherish the gifts God gives to you. I don't doubt for a second that I am not loved by some higher power, something that makes us a whole as humanity, that connects us with each other in such special and inspiring ways. I just thought I'd share that with this open space I have.

Nobody ever gets me?

So I changed my screen name on myspace to the depressed jalapeñita and now my friends are starting to ask me if I'm alright or if I need someone to talk to? I love them, but sometimes I think I am always the weirdo of the group. I get these ideas in my head that I think are awesome, that people just don't get. Like the depressed jalapeñita...I thought people would automatically get that I was depressed because most people think that people from Seattle are depressed because of all the rain we get...and the jalapeñita part because I am a little fiery beast sometimes...but oh well, I guess sometimes you gotta be your only fan.

My Traditions

 

I left like a turtle

home on my back.

Remembering my traditions, they were simple

tortillas y tamales

are what I remember the most

without my grandma they aren't the same

My grandmother didn't come out of a fairy tale storybook

Her eyes deep

her hands always caressed with the scent of Oil of Olay

she didn't sit in a rocking chair

her house didn't smell like roses

it was more like mothballs, that as a child fascinated me

The roses were outside

a patch of strawberries and fallen apricots from a neighbor's tree accompanied them

I can still remember the Moses Lake chill awakening my bones

running from the old Cadillac to my grandmother's kitchen

in the dead of night

she always had a plate of something

good to fill my tummy with

and a flour tortilla

 

In the mornings after my grandpa's cup of coffee

feeding the chickens and a dirty dog named Fido

I would help my grandma with the tortillas

I would watch her knead all her love into her big mix in the white ceramic bowl

cover it with a tollita

and wait for it to rise

we would sit and pick through the good and the bad beans

until she would take her fat islands of dough and place them on a burnt comal

Her house filled with Tejanos mixed with noise

a bottle of R-n-R and a game of Thirty-One

the kids sat at the little table to play Loteria

with my grandma's bucket of pennies

There always seemed to be a thousand and one kids leaving the door open

my grandpa yelling after them

Christmas time came with a table filled with my tias

spreading the masa

and my grandma cooking the meat

it wasn't the same without my grandma

because mis tias with all my love

wouldn't make the tamales right

one year uncooked

another without salt

 

I had nicknames like toothpick or flacita

mainly because I was picky eater

except for when it came to chile con carne and a tortilla

from my grandma's cocina

in those meals was her expressions of all her love

all of her stories

that I have grown to understand

closing my eyes and breathing in the memory

will always bring me home

I remember my traditions

I remember my grandma's tortillas y tamales

An Ode to My Mother

 

"We have the beauty of our self awareness (and he who does not love himself does not in fact love anyone else!)"-Ricardo Sanchez Mi Canto Y Grito Mi Liberacion

 

Someone should have told my mother this

Made her sit and listen

Not like her daughters, not like me

 

Me, her conflicted little poeta…

Cruised and tattooed

La mas chigona in some circles

And the quiet one in others…

The only candidate left out of three daughters

To breed her paradox of culturas

Into an institution of higher education

My mother always knew I was

Stripped of my tradition

Entering catholic school con vergenza

Verguenza of my dark skin

And bus tokens that rode me to school

And then back to her again

Yet she knew I was humbled by all her perdonames

The perdonames that as a Chicana

I was destined to carry

Even when I wasn't sorry

Her perdonames that she learned to capture in her giving spirit

I never made an honest confession to a priest

And even the confessional lie was made under necessary circumstances

However,

Today I confess the greatest of my sins

Hoping to purify my self of the sin

Of not professing my love for my mother sooner

 

My mother has endless arms

Which adverted the rain Seattle would always bring

It was only in the rising of the sun,

Practically dragging me from my sleep

Did I ever loath them

 

In the gracious years of my youth

I felt the striking clock

That took my mother away from me

In the mornings that gave the clear signal

Of our departure from one another

Her to work, me to school

It was a horrible event indeed.

Fore' it would take my mamacita away from me,

And I would miss her eyes

Sweet and small like mine

 

Adelita, my mother

Is what I have called her

I will not call her adelita for her toil that

She reaped as a wife or as a daughter

But for her endurance that she embraced me in

Her endless arms that would not carry hopelessness.

The bandalero that she wore was more of a string of cuentas

Cuentas from the fields of asparagus and onions,

Of crowded cars going and coming from Texas to Washington,

Like wanders in their own land

Cuentas that told of the powder that was thrown on her head

Because all us Mexicans have lice they said

Each cuenta of being punished for speaking Spanish in school

Shot like silver bullets from her gritos

As she marched for a better way of life

 

I do not call her adelita for her strife as a wife,

Or as a daughter,

Because I feel she has not come to arm herself for that war

I waged a war a long time ago

Not knowing it

To liberate her

To liberate me

To liberate la chicana

My mother is the adelita of her day

Now I must take up arms in a new unofficial movement to liberate our selves

From the cage of oppression

That is present in our day

I have learned to march and be a carrier of justice

I have decided to stand against the pesticides

Polluting the mind of our young Chicanos and Chicanas

She liberates me, and her love

Hides in the blankets of my writing

Here in this institution without her

 

2012: Science or Science-Fiction?

On December 21, 2012 an ancient Mayan system of counting days will end and the planets in our solar system will be aligned with our Milky Way Galaxy. A program called 2012: The End of Time? put on by the History Channel has Mayan scholars, like Joseph Joschman and book authors like John Peterson that state that some of the events like global warming, species depletion and rapid climate change might be indicators that we are headed towards a crisis or dark time in our Earth's history. Was the ending of the Mayan long count calendar a preparation for a great sacrifice that the people of the land would have to make in order to bring in the new long count? Or is someone just trying to sell a story?

 

Before getting into the central issue it is important to understand what this Mayan system of counting days really is. The Mayans refer to this system as the long count and is also known as the Aztec Calendar. Embedded in what we know as the Aztec Calendar is the Mayan long count and other pertinent religious factors that combine areas of advanced math and astronomy as way of communicating with the their god, Huitzilopochtli, the sun god of war. Because of this use, the Mayans refer to this mechanism as their sun stone, a template to help them communicate with their most powerful god.

In the book called Maya Cosmos: Three Thousand Years on the Shaman's Path the three co-authors and archeologists, David Freidel, Linda Schele and Joy Parker elaborate on the structure of the long count calendar. The Mayan believed that time only appeared to be linear, but was really unfolding in a "cyclic structure" (pg. 63). One comparison that the book makes is the way one might look at the surface of the earth. To the naked eye the surface of the earth appears flat, but the surface of the earth is actually round, and in this way so is time. So with this in mind one will understand the two circular structures that make up the Mayan long count.

 

Carl Johan Calleman's book called The Mayan Calendar and the Transformation of Consciousness goes further to explain it in numbers and symbols to make the system as simplistic as possible for the reader. The long count is calculated through the tun (360-day period) and the tzolkin (the 260-day period) . The tzolkin which simply means "count of days" consists of two wheels that run together. The first wheel is the 20-day count, or uinal which is represented by sacred animals that represent a spiritual power for that day. The second wheel is the 13-day count and it is represented by numbers and is known as the trecena. Basic math to remember is 20 times 13 equals 260 days. Calleman goes further to explain this system in his book, "The Long Count is the name given to the chronology used by the Maya in the Classical era to keep track of the long-term passage of time. The Long Count consisted of thirteen baktuns, which are periods of 400 tuns…one baktun is…144,000 days, amounting to 394.3 solar years."

 

In Calleman's book he claims that the beginning date of the thirteen baktuns of the Long Count was August 11, 3114 B.C.E. and the thirteenth baktun ends on December 21, 2012 which ends the long count. This is same time as the alignment of the planets and the sun with the Milky Way Galaxy. EJ Zita, a professor from the astronomy department at The Evergreen State College states this date a little more simplistically, "…the 2012 marker…[is] a reset point at which the Mayan calendar starts over. This is consistent with other elements of Mayan astronomy and cosmology. They were careful observers and had a uniquely accurate record of the repeating cycles of the 5 different patterns that Venus exhibits…" So what about this alignment with the Milky Way? Well, professor Zita elaborates on this point for us as well, "The solar system is embedded in the Milky Way. Consider marking a dot on a CD. The dot is our solar system, and the CD is the Milky Way. The CD spins, and the dot spins. Alignment of the dot with the CD is meaningless, unless there is a third object to define the "line" with respect to. Otherwise they are simply part of the same rotating system."

 

To the Mayan this "third object" or important factor that would complete the three points to the equation might have been the return of Quetzalcoatl. In An Illustrated Dictionary of the Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya the co-authors, Mary Miller and Karl Taube elaborate on the creation story. They state here the myth of the five suns, the destruction of the previous four and the creation of the fifth. "Following the flood ending the fourth sun, Tezcatlipoca and Quetzalcoatl raise the heavens by transforming themselves into two great trees."(pg. 70) Tezcatlipoca is elaborated in this book as the "smoking mirror" and Quetzalcoatl is known as the "feathered serpent." Calleman also signifies Quetzalcoatl at the very beginning of his book, "…the Mesoamerican deity called Quetzalcoatl by the Aztecs…symbolized light as well as duality and is the carrier of the energy 9 Ik in the Sacred Calendar…it has been suggested that his earthly incarnations were manifestations of the same energy as that of Christ."

 

In an on-line article that I found (http://members.shaw.ca/mjfinley/creation.html) it points out a significant event in the creation myth of the Five Suns in the Codex Chimalpopoca:

"the world will pass through five "suns" ruled by different solar deities. The 4th sun ended when "it rained so hard the sky fell down." Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca changed themselves into trees. As the trees grew, "the sky was pushed up." Then these gods traveled the "White Road," the Milky Way, to meet in the heavens."

It might be wise to mention that a Codex (singular form of Codices) is an ancient Mayan book that recorded history, poetry, religious rituals, the art of healers and medicine men, creations stories, and scientific and mathematical advancements of the Mayan people. Most were destroyed during the colonization period and only four remain. The idea behind this was that in order to create the fifth sun there needed to be a great sacrifice, so Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca sacrificed themselves. Some might connect the alignment with the Milky Way as the return of Quetzalcoatl, also known as Kukulcan, the plumed serpent.

 

This return requires an equal amount of sacrifice, which was demonstrated by the Mayans and Aztecs through their famous ball games. In this game played, which was considered a ritual and not a recreational activity, the players object was to get the rubber ball into the hole (or hoop) three times. The ball itself was made of the sap of a sacred tree, and the hole was very similar to the structure of the sun. On the History Channel's program they pointed out that the Mayans predicted three solar eclipses that year, and the ball entering the hole might be an indication to those three eclipses. Once a team has accomplished getting the ball through the hole three times, the group's leader is sacrificed to the gods. The History Channel connected this as a symbolic representation of the sacrifice we will have to endure as a people with the coming of 2012.

 

Professor Zita had some controversial remarks regarding some of these speculations, "I have found that when I watch their shows that are outside my field of expertise, they seem pretty compelling, but when I watch something that I know about, I find significant errors and misleading information. Astrophysicist Neil de Grasse Tyson in particular has made a career of exaggerating "end of the world" scenarios in order to seize public attention."

 

This return of Quetzalcoatl brings to light another prophecy that Christians are all too familiar with, judgment day and the return of Jesus Christ. This arouses the curiosity that the creation story might have been established to prepare the people for a great religious event or it just might have been a way to explain the alignment and a day of honor to this event in the "heavens."

 

Stating the fact that the sun stone and all its scientific and mathematical calculations was a way of communicating with the Mayan god Huitzilopochtli one might understand the need to have an exact science of math and astronomy in order to accurately connect with their god. Mayan society was highly advanced in their mathematics and astronomy, so much that all of their temples were built with exact calculations and correlations with the cycles of the sun. While visiting the Yucatan peninsula in the summer of 2004 my tour guide of the Mayan ruins in the region explained how some of these calculations manifested like it the example of the legendary temple Chich'en Itza. The temple was built with such precision that the architects were able to recreate a serpent alongside the pyramid during the spring equinox, which has consistently created large amounts of spectators during the event. Another scholar interviewed in the History Channel's 2012: The End of Time? Gregg Braden, author of The Divine Matrix, states that this advanced mathematical system that the Mayan developed calculated all solar eclipses, equinoxes and solaces with incredible accuracy that one might wonder what significant event they were preparing for by ending the calendar on the exact date of the alignment with the Milky Way.

 

Professor Zita ended our interactions by stating, "…big fads among modern American for creating new philosophies/spiritualities/pseudosciences loosely based on Mayan (or Hopi, or Taoist…) ideas that they poorly understand. Some of these enthusiast add their own elements to the philosophy and then market it to groups of western peers…The most "successful" cultural appropriators become very popular and make a lot of money, not necessarily with much real respect for or understanding of the founding culture."

 

This leaves the question are we being hoaxed by manipulators or are we being prepared by fragmented past information?