Peace for J.

I lay supine on Wilshire and Veteran

subtle ground cracks tickle the spaces

where my skin collides with concrete

gaze skywards

beyond brutal timbre of recreated blasts

I hear you utter

I can't marry you because you're not Jewish

From Westbank to Westwood

2pm on Saturday

middle of the street

my head on foreign legs

stacks of bodies

occupy tire-marked roadway

this is the die-in

simulated death

of silence

my skull caresses asphalt

black dirt on red hair

a melody of two thousand heart beats

rhythm to your little song

no girlfriend of mine

will support Palestine

red white green and black

insignia of aspiration

for harmony

you slip in and out of my consciousness

I've never stared at the sky 

while laying in middle of the street

Lost Angels

a helicopter circles in a blue abyss above

scrapes the sky

later I rise from concrete

plant feet in cement terrain

ear memory of you declare

even though you voted for Obama

you can still be my girlfriend

you place index fingers in ear drums

as our hymns form sound paths through urban walkways

from the river to the sea

Palestine will be free

I march

one stranger two thousand times

intone the enflamed chants of a people

who burn their vocal cords for peace

on the corner of Veteran

loud speakers detonate sound bombs

genocidal anthem of Gaza

vicious reverberations

shake the ground

I rehear you whisper

how could you support the enemy?

I would leave UCLA and take up arms in Tel Aviv

in a heart beat

the hum of pseudo explosions reside

increase drumming

two children entertain crowd with

polyrhythmic hand slaps

i unshake memory

yesterday you say

it's a shame I'm so liberal

an indignity 

I went to call

then

in one more redundant insult

of romantic hatred

you call it a disgrace i come from Berkeley

a land where each inhabitant is so radical

they incapacitate themselves to think critically

if only you had listened to me say

i spend more time in temples than churches

how graceful to produce a bireligious child

i adore your faith

still

you beg i come over

your ficante

flesh knows no politics

polar opposites

swear you unwish to reconcile our difference

crave to combine our mouths together

outside a memory of your orison for we

to dazzle the body with colorful friendship

this procession incantates miles down city blocks

a plea for peace

my voice ripples sound waves

sends subtitles to you

one final attempt to profess

you never hear me speak

I won't marry you because you're not Christian

what a shame you're so conservative

I defriend you for fighting for your country

In my homeland: selected images

Zanzibar, Tanzania

(not Tanzania, Maputo, Mozambique:)

Zanzibar and Maputo in Black and White

Growing in Berkeley

There was a kumquat tree in the courtyard of our apartment building. In the summer we attached bicycle tires to the forceful branches and made swings. If one were to rest too long on the circular rubber it would make marks in our back sides, so we cushioned the inner-tubes with sweatshirts and towels for long-lasting swing comfort.

That tree was always full of kumquats. The hundreds of people who dwelled in that massive compound never noticed the soft sweetness of those tiny Chinese oranges. Maybe it was always there so we didn’t perceive it. That seems to be the way it goes, you never know the blessing of a tree of free ripe fruit until you’re in a foreign supermarket staring at your own urban oranges, expected to shell out 10 dollars for a kilo.

In Berkeley we had so many kumquat trees, plum trees and blackberry bushes. On my block there was a man with a large lemon tree and in the summer when all the fruit was at its juiciest we used to get sticks and whack the fruits from the neighborhood foliage. We used to pull out the edges of our t-shirts and make pouches for the fruits, the juice from which inevitably stained the cotton.

Most of the trees and bushes were sort of on public property, except for the lemons. These we would sequester by sticking our childhood hands through fence holes while grabbing the yellow rinds.

I never cared much for yellow citrus, but when you’re seven and broke you have to figure out a way to make some money. My friends and I would borrow our mothers’ sugar and take water from the tap to make lemonade. When we did not have lemons, we made kool-aid and would sell it in Dixie cups for a quarter. Our adult patrons frequently tipped us generously. Not because we had produced superb beverages, but because we reminded them of the times when they sold icy libations to summer thirsters.

On the weekends I would collect my coins and go to the flea markets. For a dollar, I would buy bubble necklaces, colored bangles and poppers from wholesale venders.

People, where I lived, used to be bighearted with food, but flowers were another story. Old women and some elder men invested countless hours in their gardens and would run you over with their walkers or beat you with their canes if you dared lay a finger on their impeccable rose patches.

My mother loved flowers and a festive, free bouquet of flora was a great gift for a jobless youngster to give her parent. One day I decided to collect a creative assortment of local flowers. Because I did not want anyone in my neighborhood to catch me, I convinced my friend to join me on the other side of town to collect the perfect arrangement of flowers.

We had walked past bushes and trees of suitable flowers when we arrived at a perfect garden of roses.

It was a mid-morning weekday on a residential street with no cars in the driveway. The lights were off and it appeared that no one was home. There were so many roses, though we only picked a few as we were not greedy bouquet makers. As I was pulling the last pink rose from the bust I felt a liquid pelt in my side. I turned and saw a boy my age with a super soaker, 35 MPH water gun. He was joined by his younger brother who must have been on rose petal patrol because the two proceeded to spray us with machine gun water, chasing us down the block, trampling the few flowers we had acquired until we finally lost the two maniacs. I did not pick flowers for a long time after that.

Now that I am allowed to go out alone after dark, I embark with a scissors, sack and raincoat in tow, tip toeing down familiar blocks with the certainty that I probably won’t get caught.

Running from the Bulls: Las fiestas de San Fermines

I was not supposed to sleep on the park bench in Pamplona. Sit and guard our stuff: that was my task for the one hour of rest my travel mates had been allotted after 23 hours of running wild in the streets of Spain. I was the only sober one in our group, and by the looks of things, I was probably the only uninebriated person in the entire city. Thus, we concluded that I would stay awake while my friends joined the other heaps of foreigners camped out on the city lawns and public benches on the first night of Las Fiestas de San Fermines.

I’m sure this fiesta made famous by Hemingway’s class, “And the Sun Also Rises” is a real hoot if you have a proper places to lay your head. However, cozying up on a pile of wood near a plot of dirt perfumed by liters of urine courtesy of my sangria-drinking co-fiesters is enough to nauseate any nostril. Although, as I sat staring at the sleeping bodies of young people from Europe, the Americas and Australia, I gradually adjusted to the smell and the wooden bench began to soften as I gave into the forceful lull of sleep.

I’ve never been one of those people who can go days on end without sleeping. Prior to spending time in Spain I did not drink coffee. Due to the fact that I would be out and about in my home base city of Salamanca until the sun was born each day, I got in the habit of consuming half a dozen espressos daily. Weeks of bad sleep caught up with me and I had begun to slumber with all the other exhausted travelers at 4 am in Bosque Country. It wasn’t that we enjoyed the Spanish concrete or had a special affinity with the Navarrean outdoors; apparently if you don’t book your lodgings a year in advance, you’d better arrive in the city with a sleeping bag and a can of mace.

Everyone was dressed in white with a red handkerchief around the neck. Truthfully, people started off in white, but turned a shade of red and purple throughout the festivities as celebrators doused one another in Sangría and Kalimotxo: the red wine drinks of choice for the festival. I wasn’t wearing white, but my arms had already acquired the distinct spots of red wine splashes from drink fight crossfire on several occasions.

I don’t remember for how long I had been sleeping. All I know is that I had awoken to an itch on my neck. As I attempted to scratch the skin, my hand encountered a head of curly hair lying snug against my chest. I jumped up and the foreign head made a thump on the bench, which caused its owner to stretch and ask, “¿Qué pasó?”.

What did he mean, “what happened?” There were many open spaces, and it was unclear to me why this dude had decided to snuggle up to me and take a matinal snooze. The guy said something to me in Basque and passed out in the space I had made available when I stood up. I woke my friends and decided to begin the day again. The first hints of dawn were clearing the horizon, which meant that el encierro would begin in three hours. And this is what we had come here for.

Las fiestas de San Fermines originally began in the mideval period as a secular fiesta, which has its roots in the celebration of summer solstice. Later cattle merchants came into town with their animals and integrated bullfighting into the celebration. By the late 1500’s, it was named after Saint Fermin who had died a bloody death after being dragged through the streets of Pamlona by raging bulls. The bull, as a historically sacred animal, is the center of the festival.

Nowadays, during the weeklong event, at 8 a.m. el encierro takes place during a half mile strip of corredor in Pamplona. People run in front of the bulls, under the assumption that they will not die. However, during each festival a dozen people tend to die because they are not trained, are drunk, hungover or simply unfit to outrun a wild animal. It’s tradition. Kinda like sacrifice. Before el encierro begins, the runners sing a song that invokes the protection of Saint Fermin, which, in my opinion, is counter-productive because didn’t he get killed by bulls? At least they have the red handkerchiefs, that is the magic cloth which protects the bull runner.

By seven a.m the entire street was covered with people, and I could hardly get a glimpse at the corral which had been installed to keep the bulls from getting loose onto the street. My friends wanted to see the running of the bulls, the fantastically famous action which we had travalled hours by bus to witness in person. It became apparent to me that even though I was in Pamplona, it was highly unlikely that I would get a clear glimpse of el encierro through the mobs of locals and visitors. At this point, I was exhausted and impacient and could hardly stand to deal with another group of rowdy people. I decided to wonder off.

Why all this fuss over a pack of bulls? Aren’t they just angry cows? Hadn’t I seen enough of those at the petting zoo? I mean, it wasn’t like they were letting lions loose of something. Over a day of waiting and I had decided that it did not matter, that I had come all the way to Spain to improve my Spanish and to celebrate my transferring from Vista to Cal. This was my achievement and forget about San Fermines.

I did not know where I was going, as I hadn’t even bothered to purchase a map for my short visit to the city. I wondered up hill, and came to a clearning where visitors had pitched camp. The smart ones came with tents, while the others simply sprawled blankets over the verdant grass. I walked to the edge of the street and bellow me was a magnificent view of the city, the cathedrals and houses on the hill sides glistened in the early morning sun. The people rushed to the corral for el encierro and I remained there, staring at the majestic countryside, at peace in the morning calm.

I gazed out into the city of Pamplona, as the cheer of onlookers roared through the streets. I sat under a patch of short trees in the shade until the running ended. Finally I got up in search of coffee and ran into my friends who couldn’t believe that I had missed the action. But I found something better.

A few days latter, I received an email from my mom who said she had seen the bull running on the news. At least one of us saw the bulls.

Worker Bee

Bee Pollen increases your sex drive and is supposed to make you energetic all around. That is what I used to tell my customers at Frozen Fusion. Along with Echinacea, ginseng, calcium, astragalus, ginkgo baloba and a host of other powdered vitamins to excite the frozen fruit drinks, I was forced to explain the various powers of our boosts to the patrons of an independent smoothie shop on Telegraph.

Curiously enough, when I informed the smoothie buyers of the various benefits of Bee Pollen, the male patrons tended to opt for other dietary supplements, while the female smoothie drinkers would often perk up and request a heaping spoon full of arousing pollination. That was probably the only interesting event that took place during my time at that little hellhole. I used to stand there for eight hours without a break while my supervisor and coworker got stoned in the stock room.

I did time at the fast fruit shop on the weekends of my senior year in High School. The manager was such a pot head that he did not even know that I was 16 and not a student at UC Berkeley. “Dude, so like, what’s your major?” He asked me one day and when I told him high schools were majorless, he said, “Oh man, I totally thought you were, like, a student at CAL, and stuff.”

A few weeks into my life as a slave to frozen fruit drinks, I got jobs at the City library and at the City Fire Station and left the now defunct, Frozen Fusion. Going to school full time and working two part time jobs was, as I soon learned, slightly impossible for people who have to sleep, so after a few weeks I quit my job at the Fire Station and worked as a teen intern at the North Branch of the Berkeley Public Library.

I was used to working and never imagined what life would be like without a job. One time, when I was 12 I asked my mom for some money and she told me to get a job. So, the next day I went to school and checked the student newspaper for openings. I got a job cleaning the lawns of my junior high for $4.60 on Mondays at 7 a.m. I later earned an extra $2.00 a week cleaning the crock pots for nacho lunch sales. Although the economy was better then, seven bucks a week only got a girl so far in the mid-90’s.

The next year, when I was 13 I lied and said I was 14 and got a job selling newspapers for the San Francisco Chronicle. One did not earn money by the hour, one had to walk door to door and sell subscriptions to the Bay’s famous periodical. After 40 hours of work I had clocked an astonishing $32 in commission and thus ended my brief interlude as a sucker for the Chronicle. About seven years later I won a first class trip to Hawaii through the SF Chronicle, so now I call it even.

In high school I had all kinds of jobs. There were the steady ones: working at Vista Community College. This money never seemed to be enough for me and so I got gigs working in the catering industry. Truthfully, I hate catering with a bloody passion, but it’s an easy way to rack in some dough.

It’s not the catering that I hate per se, it’s serving people. Mainly in concession stands this does not irritate me as much as banquets. During basketball and baseball seasons, I would go after school and work the stands at Haas Pavilion at UC Berkeley and at the New Pacbell park in San Francisco. These jobs were annoying but they motivated me to want more.

The worse gig I ever had was as a server for a 3000 guest reunion at Stanford. I had to wear a white tuxedo and bowtie. In addition to this, I was ordered to carry trays of flaming cakes and almost caught my hair on fire. When I blew out of the flames in fear of igniting my tresses, the Stanford alumni yelled at me, and asked, “Do you know how much we paid for this dinner? Why are our candles not lit? ” Luckily for them I needed that money for the prom, otherwise I would have told them what they could have done with those candles.

In 2000 when I graduated from high school I got a career position at the library and worked there until I left for grad school at UCLA. When I used to tell people that I worked at the library, they often asked, “Is it boring and quiet?” It is often difficult to sum up the experiences at my branch but boring and quiet are two adjectives that most definitely do not apply. My seven years as a worker at North Branch is a story in and of itself. In addition to the interesting people employed in the library industry, are the very curious characters who frequent public libraries. I will tell you more about that later.

Whenever I get a new job, I like to track down a smoothie with bee pollen to celebrate for old times sake. This libation helps me remember that no matter how irritating a job may be, it could always get worse. Luckily, now that I’m teaching again this quarter, I have yet another reason to jump up and down and thank Deus that I don’t have to ever serve another smoothie in my life.

Redness Sake

I never thought about dying pubic hairs. In the East Bay Express’ favorite letters of 2008 there was a message to the editor about coloring one’s naughty bits. Apparently 40% of women over 40 experience a change in their southern hairs. Now, “Betty Beauty” offers a way for middle-aged women to feel and look younger in all of their glory by coloring their sensitive body hair.

I realized that there was finally a benefit to being red headed: we don’t go grey. Or at least that is what my mother told me. We might, eventually, end up going white, but the red heads in my family have not gone white until later lifetimes. My grandmother, who died in her 80’s had left the world behind with her red hair still afire.

Given that red hair is a genetic mutation experienced by less that 4% of the world population, those who possess the various shades of this rare hair do not undergo what Blondes, Brunettes and Black-haired people experience. This fact became a problem in my 8th grade life sciences course at Willard Jr. High when my teacher said that everyone’s hair would turn grey, eventually. I kindly informed her that redheads do not go grey, though she snapped at me that I was wrong. When I told her that my grandmother’s hair had altered its hue but retained its original fire, she told me that my grandmother probably dyed her hair and did not want to tell anyone. My teacher, who was a royal wench, refused to even entertain the notion that one of her students might know something she did not. Rather than tell me that she would look into the matter, she gave me detention for back talk.

I used to detest the color of my hair. Mostly, no one else had a color like mine where I grew up. Even in my immediate family, I was the only one with this strange hued head. Depending on the lighting it looked orange, gold or maybe strawberry blonde. It wasn’t blonde in comparison to my mother or sister’s hair and it definitely wasn’t as dark as my aunt’s brunette strands. Whatever it was it was weird and I was the only one who had this shade. Okay, perhaps not the only one, but it felt strange carrying a mass of these uncategorizeable tresses on my head.

The first thing I learned about my people was that we were hot heads. That is what a pastor told me when I used to go to church at The Salvation Army. He was the first person I ever met with hair like mine, and his was more enflamed, like a tomato. Apparently popular Anglophone literature depicts my redheaded ancestors as bad tempered and impossible to negotiate with. From Shelley to Salinger, redheaded characters perpetuate illtempered stereotypes. Although all of these representations were not, necessarily, malintentioned: take Queen Elizabeth, for example, who put my red haired people on the fashion map. And, let us not forget about Botticelli whose Birth of Venus painting gave the goddess a head of red. Then, there is my favorite contemporary Black Atlantic mermaid: Mami Wata, who, in spite of being a figure of the African Diaspora, is often depicted with Red Hair. While studying her in all her mermaid glory last Spring at UCLA I was told that she was restricted to the Atlantic, although I was determined to discover her Indian Ocean Counterpart. One day in September while strolling through the Mozambican Museum of Art in Maputo I ran into a painting, whose image was the Mozambican version of me, but with a fin. At long last I had found Mami's East coast cousin A Sereia, with red hair.

I used to think that when I traveled, people would automatically know that I was a foreigner because of my hair. Although in Mexico I was lovingly known as Güera (light-skinned girl), in Argentina I met red headed Porteños who looked more like me than my own family members. In Brazil, mostly, people just assumed I was from the South. I learned, too, that hair determines little when one can dye or change its texture. Because really, Redheads are the most global of souls, we pop up everywhere, from rural Sub Saharan Villages to Nordic ice lands, you’ll find us, a compilation of long forgotten recessive genes, holding on to the last of our kind.

Today, after reading the article about the special hair dye, I wondered, why simply dye ones hair a natural color. If you’re going to go there, why not go all out, like neon pink or purple? It’s not like everyone would see it if you didn’t want them to. I say, Betty Beauty Products better let the girls really have some fun.

Nowadays there are so many ways to spend my money I could hardly think of wasting it on that. Still, one must have options, right? Like for funds for a flight back to the Netherlands, where, for one weekend in September, on Red Head Day in Breda, the naturally toned Red heads of the globe gather to celebrate everything RED.

In The Bag

It’s not like there were strap-ons in there, but still, when the customs official in Dar es Salaam opened my duffel bag filled with a thousand condoms and a stack of plastic gloves I couldn’t help but shiver in the Indian Ocean heat. It would not have been so bad, had the woman not proceeded to pull the items out of the bag, while a line full of Tanzanian onlookers gazed curiously at the items being taken through the checkpoint, onto the ferry to Zanzibar.

It was my third hour in the country and I was already embarrassed. Even though the merchandise was part of a donation I was carrying to Mozambique, the people who where all around me bulged their eyes and looked me up and down. Who knows what they were thinking, I tried to stay calm, hoping the little booklet on HIV education would catch their eyes and they’d know that this was not my personal stash of travel latex. Then I remembered those booklets were in my other suitcase.

The customs official refilled my luggage, zipped it up and tossed it to the side with a huff. I pretended I did not know who the bag belonged to, but since I was the only foreigner in the huddle, it was pretty obvious. Granted, there are worse objects a traveler could be caught with. Like whips, weapons, drugs, sex slaves or mail order brides.

At the Berkeley Public Library, where I used to work, there was a librarian who had a mail order bride. He worked at a different branch, though I had seen him on a few occasions from afar. Word in the stacks was that he had acquired a girl 30 years younger than him from Uzbekistan.
I don’t believe that she was actually sent to him through the mail. It used to be that lonely men would select their perfect brides through a catalog, but in this day and age of Match.com, E-Harmony and the like, it’s usually done online. I wonder what the internet has done to the Mail-order Bride Industry? Furthermore, is there such a thing as a mail-order groom? Hmm, I like to shop…

Then again, if one had acquired a significant other abroad, this would not be known to customs officials upon crossing the border if one did not want to give up this information. But drugs, that’s another story. About a year before the film Maria Full of Grace came out, I traveled to Argentina with a classmate from Cal who ran in a circle of mules in Buenos Aires. She claimed not to be one herself, though she told me stories of one guy who was practicing swallowing large capsules for a run to Belgium. He was a young Paraguayan father-to-be and had taken up the opportunity to make some money. I don’t think he actually made it though, having thrown up a half million pesos worth of merchandise on the ride to the airport.

I could never be a smuggler, because every time I go through customs, I get nervous. It’s always the same questions, “What were you dong in Brazil? Did anyone help you pack your bags in Portugal? How long did you stay in Kenya? Are you carrying any weapons? What do you study?” Even so, it’s the way they say it that gets me to thinking, “Wait, am I carrying any weapons? Did I purchase a pack of crack and forget about it? Am I smuggling emeralds in my tampon box?” The customs officials are almost always serious, and for some reason they always put the fear of god in me. Then I remember, breathe, I didn’t actually break any laws.

Another time in Argentina, I was on the border of Paraguay and Brazil with a friend from Colorado. She had been in country for three months and needed to reenter the country to get another 90 days. There was a little hut on the edge of the river Paraná with a customs official in the post during office hours. We found a fisherman who agreed to row us across the river to Paraguay for 10 pesos. It was nearing 5 pm, and we assumed that an hour would be time enough to cross the river, sink our toes into the Paraguayan soil, and float back to Iguazú before closing time. We were wrong.

We presented our passports to man in the wooden box, who stamped our exit visas and bid us adios. After making the mark in our passports, the Aduana official informed us we had to spend the night in the other country before returning to Argentina. This might not have been a problem, had we had luggage and money with us. Our items were stored in our lodge in the city, and the fisherman had agreed to send us ashore in the semi-tropical jungle. The closest Paraguayan city, Ciudad del Este, was a few dozen miles from there.

After some angry greetings in Castellano, pleas and tears, the customs official agreed to give us a reentry permit with the promise that we didn’t come and bother him again. Isn’t it weird to go to another country for an hour?

Even when I went to Tijuana, I stayed for a few days. Okay, so I once went to Spain for 20 minutes, but I went back the next day and spent the night. Even stranger to me, is to go to another country and not tell anyone.

The friend I mentioned from Cal, was one such person. While in Buenos Aires, she complained about not having enough funds to leave the capital, and thus she opted not to join me on the trip to Iguazú. She also said she hated London, didn’t like the way they treated her people. After my six -week stay in South America, I returned to Berkeley to relax before the new semester. My friend, who had stayed on for another 6 weeks had not contacted me in awhile. When I finally heard from her, she was in London, accompanying her friend, who I know is a master mule. Not that I thought she was smuggling items across continents, but it was a bit fishy. Later that year she told me that she had also gone to South Africa before returning to Argentina. I still don’t know what she is into, but one really has to check their travel partners at the door, even if they are students at the best university in the nation.

The mules my friend ran with once mentioned that if I accidently lost my passport and they found it, they might be inclined to offer me 6000 dollars if I let them keep it. 6000 USD in cash was a lot of money at a time when I was down to my last hundred. I thought about it for a minute, and even though it would have been exciting to earn that much money for losing my passport, I opted to earn my dollars the honest way. When my passport was actually stolen last year at a club in San Francisco, I didn’t earn any money. Although it enraged me to shell out another hundred bucks for a fresh booklet, I learned my lesson. I also realized that when carrying questionable objects abroad, as long as it’s legal, there is, as they say in Brazil, No Stress.