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It’s been quite a while since I’ve posted. Lately things have been busy in my life, certain changes taking place. I am curently working on a literary visual project which is important to me. I am also in a new relationship with a most amazing woman!  Blogging has taken a backseat for now. However with that said, the situation in the U.S. is getting much grimmer for U.S. imperialism and monopoly capitalism. 

More recently, there has been quite alot of movement for the Louisiana Jena Six, (six African Americans who stood up against segregation and racism in their school and community and who are being targeted by the state and government for their resistance), and the movement to Return and to Rebuild New Orleans, in which the International Tribunal on Katrina and Rita shows the failure of the US state in actually providing assistance to the people of New Orleans and exposes the criminal activities of the US state and government against the people. For more information on this please visit www.usmlo.org:

Justice After Katrina
http://usmlo.org/arch2007/2007-09/VR070919.htm#oa

Katrina “Shoot to Kill” Orders Gave Green Light for Jena
http://usmlo.org/arch2007/2007-09/VR070921.htm#1

Katrina, Jena, Iraq Show Necessity
http://usmlo.org/arch2007/2007-09/VR070930.htm#01

In addition to this, is the ongoing activities of the U.S. imperialists to militarize the society. Part of this is the role of the police, of which the NYPD, is trying to establish as a standard for all police throughout the country. Here is the report and analysis of this:

NYPD Report on “Homegrown Terrorism”

http://www.usmlo.org/arch2007/2007-09/VR070925.htm#03

The NYPD report in .pdf format:
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/files/NYPD_Report-Radicalization_in_the_West.pdf

Another part of the militarization of society is the military excercises of NORTHCOM [Northern Command] and NORAD known as Vigilant Shield 2008. Here is the article: http://www.usmlo.org/arch2007/2007-09/VR070925.htm#02

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In the world of art, I am currently impressed by the work of Matthew Woodson, whose work can be found here: www.ghostco.org His illustrations are awesome!

Also check this little vid out:

BREAKDOWN

Two nights ago - another dream.  In this dream, you came to me, looking lost and confused.  I came over, by your side, in a private corner of an incoherent world.  We looked at each other and then, in that moment of us together again, I felt that historic fear which fell upon me like a dagger in my heart - my last moment ever with you.  I leaned over to you and whispered in your right ear what I’ve been wanting to say since our kiss goodbye: I Love You.  I said it twice.  I Love You. You continued to look at me, your eyes full of fear. 

Up until this time, my Armour has weighted me down - I was unable to speak, unable to move, unable to communicate.   Yet now I feel I have been set in Motion.  My Armour - My Love for You - is becoming a Formidable Force.

My dream ended quickly yet Breakdown has begun. 

GHISUGO, on vellum

GHISUGO, on vellum

About a year ago, I was flipping through one of our National Geographic magazines and found an article about the oldest Mayan Mural found in Mexico by archaeologists. Of course, this editorial, was not without photographs of these murals. The article can be found here. They were stunning, awesome, beautiful.  

Looking at the photos of these paintings, I was drawn to its simple form and the complexity make-up of its storytelling.  The presentation of its human features, such as the nose, mouth, eyes, as well as the style of headdress and costume that represented divinity,  power, authority, wisdom, and knowledge.  I found that thickness in line art to be fascinating - like looking at the some forms of graffitti pieces.  It held me, and then I was hit by an idea: I wanted to draw something similiar.  So turning to the literary project I have been currently working on, I decided to depict some characters of my own, trying my best [perhaps in vain] to emulate and imitate the style of the Mayan artwork.  

Hence, a tiny tiny glimpse of another world, GHISUGO. 

I decided to post this piece online, after watching Apocalypto over the weekend. 

The Day The World Went Away

For the past couple of nights, I’ve been having dreams about someone I love and care about very much.  Someone who is no longer in my life.  In my dreams, we are together again and talking like we used to do and then my feelings for her come out.  I wake up and I think about it.  I can not help but feel guilty.  I feel guilty because I think I left her at a time when she really needed me.

About a week ago, I went to see The Fountain at the cinema.  It was a movie about facing life and death, beginning and end, birth and rebirth. I was extremely impressed with how the film tied the Tree of Life with the Mayan mythology of creation.  It was a very good film although quite sad.  The issues raised in the film were issues of extreme importance to her.

I am haunted by something she once said to me.  I am re-thinking all the reasons for why I’ve tried to shut the door.  The poem I wrote, A Few More Goodbyes is Not Enough, I must finally admit, was for no other.  It was for her.  Who am I fooling?  Some change has taken place in me today, although it is too soon what that change actually means right now.  I feel invigorated somehow.  But I have no plan.  I feel I know what I must do, I’m just not sure if I am ready to do it.

With every invigoration and inspiration there is always an abiding sadness and loneliness that comes with it.  Today I came across one of my favorite Nine Inch Nails songs The Day The World Went Away. It was a song I remember playing while sitting on the bus en route to Anchorage in Alaska.  I was in the military then and the song expressed my feelings at that time of complete loneliness, bitter hopelessness, and despair.  I was going through a very rough time in my life and adjusting to military discipline and bearing didn’t help me much.  I found this video on youtube, and it is the one video I have not seen by NIN thus far.  Today was quite an emotional day for me.

The Day The World Went Away, Nine Inch Nails

Affirming Identity whilst in a State of Abandonment: Introduction I

The following entry will be the introduction and the groundwork for another entry I am working on regarding identity and memory.  It was my first entry to our Colombian Adoptee Search and Support (CASAS) Group.  This entry can be found in the CASAS archives dated May 17, 2002 - two years before my trip to Colombia in April 2004.  

Fri May 17, 2002:

I wrote this out of fustration one day, and thought I’d share it with everyone. I like to write and originally it was to be part of my disasterpiece* because thats what being adopted feels like…. I am just beginning to look for my birthparents also.

According to some official papers, my sister and I were abandoned in Colombia, South America July 4, 1981. According to the same papers, a woman by the name of Mrs. Martha Rodriguez, on that day brought two minors to Fundacion Los Pisingos, a private home for children and orphans. The two minors were brother and sister, my sister and I. Mrs. Martha Rodriguez, according to the papers “attested” that she had been sent by Mrs. Beatriz Socoloff, a volunteer of this private home. After being questioned Mrs. Beatriz Socoloff denied this, she “said she had sent no one.” According to these papers, Mrs. Martha Rodriguez only gave her phone number and had left the children at the orphanage. Other sources have said that “a mysterious woman” promised to return but didn’t. Whether this promise was made or not cannot be known. After the children remained 2 or 3 days in the institution, Mrs. Martha Rodriguez was called at the number she had left. The number corresponded to a place called the Techo Hippodrome**. It could have been a cinema, an auditorium, or a theatre but this cannot be known either. Whoever answered said that they didn’t know her.

According to the papers, photographs of the children were published in a newspaper of national circulation, La Republica, on the 4th of September 1981. The results were negative. It was resolved in this document that my sister and I were in a “state of abandonment” and to proceed with the legal procedures to put us up for adoption.

From the time we were left at the orphanage to the time we left with the American couple that adopted us in December 1981 we had been in a “state of abandonment”. Unbeknownst to me at the time, the “state of abandonment” would become a familiar state of being as I grew up in the United States. I was to find that, personally and in contrast to the official documents, that I have always been in the “state of abandonment” and that this state never officially ended with being adopted. I took it with me to a new world and a new family.

According to certain individuals, the official papers became the official history of these two children. It was a beginning to a new life, a new experience, and new relationships to build upon. According to certain individuals. According to me, the official papers became the official excuse to deny my history and identity. It became a history to live up to, to get used to and to accept. The fact remains, I have never lived up to it, I never got used to it, and I never accepted it. Since I was little, I’ve had to carry memories and a past of Colombia before being adopted. My memory, I always thought, was the key back to Colombia, back to “me” as Colombian, back to my mother, land, history and past. I thought it was the key to rest and peace. My memories are not enough. As the years went by and I began to grow up, the “state of abandonment” has grown up with me in its full realization. The realization that if I am to be abandoned then the world deserves to be abandoned too by me.

The official documents were supposed to be the beginning of a new life for me. But in the long run, it has had the opposite effect. The official documents became the end of the world for me, as I knew it.

[Note: *The disasterpiece has been completely swept away by another literary project I am currently working on - a mythological history of another world]

[Note:**The Techo Hippodrome was the name of a track used for horse-racing and betting in a section of Bogota, known as JFK (named after John F. Kennedy).  It is now abandonned.]

Introduction to be continued…

One Fate, One Destiny

“…Show me a way I can live and I’ll grow,
There is a way that we can learn for ourselves…” - Sepultura

I am, by my curious nature, a bookworm. Although I am a Writer, there are three factors that contribute to my being a Writer: 1) My experience within objective reality 2) Music and 3) worming and scouring through various texts, papers and pamphlets. Whereas writing is my attempt at making coherent my world of confusion as I perceive it, perusing through literature is a state of refuge for me, especially when issues of adoption accentuate and intensify. When this becomes the condition, I find myself (and my experience) torn over and squaring off with objective reality. In such situations I have a tendency to detach myself from the world I am a part of and become increasingly attached to my comfortable notions of safety and security. The kind of fight that is required of me will be a fight to re-establish, re-attach, and re-affirm my rightful place in the world. That is, to understand my experience within the context of objective reality. As of now, I fear to be losing this fight. A growing armour threatens to cover me head to foot, choking my ability to communicate, express, and interact, and blocking my ability to move, learn and develop. Because I am choosing to express this means I am still in the fight. I am resilient and persistent and I must remain so.

Before I get into the final report on St. John’s University Conference on International, Transracial and Transcultural Adoption, a word or two about the adoption community in general. First to reckon with the facts: 1) There exists an adoption community and 2) there exists also a world in which all of us belong to, the real world as is, consisting of many communities, the adoption community included.

There exists among these two points a disconnect that whatever happens to one community bears no relation to what happens to another and as such bears no relation to the world at large. The very nature of adoption itself, as can be seen from the families who make up the adoption community, tells us otherwise. The very events and developments (whether social or economic) that lead to acts of relinquishment, placement/displacement and exchange of children (bordercrossings), and fostering and adopting itself tells us that different communities are not separate worlds unto themselves. In fact, the adoption community tells us that different communities in existence today is an integral part of the fabric of the world and society that gave rise to it, the adoption community is no exception. The idea that one community is separate from the other is, in my view, false. The fate and destiny of the adoption community is intricately linked and tied up with the fate and destiny of all communities and as such the world at large and vice versa.

The most important thing at this point is how the adoption community views itself in relation to these matters. In doing so the adoption community will most certainly have to square off with objective reality. There are indications that the adoption community is doing just that. With that I encourage the adoption community to keep pressing forward, even in the face of the most difficult questions and challenges that adoption has brought forth, to be persistent in finding out.

[Note: Posted to the Yahoo! Colombian Adoptee Search and Support Group under thread entitled "Our Fates and Destinies Intertwined"]

A Reflection On What We’re Fighting For

WHILE drifting silently in the canoe with my comrade and friend, I saw a reflection on the water of the sun, clouds and blue sky. For a moment, in that peaceful stillness and quiet, I found myself thinking of our planet earth moving with incredible speed through the vacuum and vastness of space around the sun, seemingly lonely in its orbit, always in constant rotating motion. In my mind, I saw the earth swinging around the sun like a giant clock working upon enormous invisible gears. I felt incredibly small as I was a mote matter of consciousness and being. And just as I was about to become lost in my imagination to the limits of mind and universe, my thoughts and concentration were broken by sudden movements in the water. And I looked and my gaze pierced through the transparency of my reflection. Beneath the surface of water, schools of fish were darting about and I could see plantgrowth life that was flourishing there and for some reason in that quiet solitude among the songs of crickets and movements of fish I could not help but think of those who were collectively fighting and putting up a just struggle for a peace to call their own.

At one of our camp meetings someone said that the world is in turmoil therefore for us youth, we are in turmoil. The struggle for this peace has been waged historically and heroically. I thought of the great sacrifice of the oppressed nations and people of the world who struggled against the forces that sought and brought turmoil into the world. Today the world is a different place than it was when the Soviet Union and People victoriously defeated the armies of fascism and aggression. Today we have the resistance in Lebanon, in Iraq, in Afghanistan and in Palestine against imperialism and dark brutal reaction.

In the canoe with my friend and comrade, the responsibility to face this turmoil, to block the world from falling apart and to secure a bright future and a peace to call our own never felt heavier. The task felt monolithic before my brain - but I wasn’t alone in the world. This task isn’t mine alone, like everyone in this world I am a part of it and I have a part in it.

[Note: This piece was writtened in August 2006 during the period when U.S.-backed Israeli imperialism and aggression was on the offensive against the heroic Lebanese people. Israel's aim was to crush and wipe out the resistance in Lebanon, namely Hezbollah, and as such, failed to complete its brutal military and political objective. This was a profound defeat for the aggressors and a sound victory for the Lebanese resistance and freedom fighters! Long live the Lebanese Resistance to U.S.-Israeli imperialism!]

A Few More Goodbyes is Not Enough

By Yours Truly

I feel like my heart is going to give way
To the mounting pressure of loneliness

My thoughts wander in the land of yesterday
It is dangerous to be companionless
Meandering through the wayward roads of memory

I cannot help it - I must think of you
To say goodbye a few more times

A few more goodbyes and
Your absence the weight of mountains

A few more goodbyes and
“I love you” from a ferocious impregnable place

I cannot venture further
For here at this juncture
Mountains devour mountains relentlessly
and I will still love and miss you
In the end.