Everybody Is Nobody

Banned Book Report:

Nobody’s Son: Notes From An American Life, by Luis Alberto Urrea. Tucson, U. of A. Press, 1998

Information that is frightening to the rich and powerful should be the headline, the lead story, shouted, shared and splattered over the Interzone. As if it might change their minds.

Last June the Arizona Department of Education [sic] shut down the “Mexican American Studies” curriculum in Tucson schools, and in December a judge “justified” the action. No matter that students in the program had a nearly 50% higher graduation rate than the rest of the kids. The law (ARS 15-112) says you can’t teach a class aimed at a specific ethnic group. What this really means is that you can’t teach a version other than the “white”-washed European version.

No one is disputing the accuracy or quality of the censored texts; only whether they should be taught. So I borrowed one from the (socialist!) local library, to see what frightened the cowardly government into suppression of knowledge in the public schools.

“Nobody’s Son” might be a reference to Richard Wright’s classic “Native Son”, since the main characters could both be said to be an offspring of the societies that spawned them. Or not. This is not an epic novel, but a collection of stories from childhood, cultural criticism, and existential introspection.

Nobody’s Son is also the title of the first section, the tale of Urrea’s conflicted parentage, citizenship, childhood, and language. Blue-eyed Mexican dad, New York mom, rough ‘hoods, typical poor childhood and atypically vicious family fights, sometimes race-related. Harrowing and darkly entertaining, but nothing new as crappy childhoods go. And nearly all of us south, central and north Americans are mongrels.

The English language is a mixed breed to begin with, he notes, it’s impossible to speak “English Only.” No argument here; for business reasons alone it’s wise to be bilingual in border states. Intentionally creating misunderstanding does not help if we actually want “justice for all.”

His dad teaches him to be proud to be a “greaser.” Mexicans repaired the pioneer wagons and greased the westward wheels. “So when they call you that, hold your head up. It’s a badge of honor. We helped build America.” (p. 10) That seems safe, patriotic, and inclusive. Does suggesting Mexicans belong here threaten the power structure?

By the time Salem, Massachusetts was founded, his Spanish ancestors “…had been prowling up and down the Pacific coast of our continent for several decades. Of course, the Indian mothers of these families had been here from the start. But manifest destiny took care of us all—while we greased the wheels.

“Them wagons is still rollin’.” (p. 12)

Maybe this is where the book starts stepping on toes. To point out the fact that the war on native peoples is ongoing, is to subvert the accepted historical narrative. The United States is still trying to steal Natives’ water and land, and suppress what remains of their devastated cultures. Courts and classrooms are now the battleground; lawyers, judges, and legislators have replaced the cowboys and cavalry. Every treaty has been broken and innocents still die unnecessarily. The powerful may prefer to hide this fact lest we withdraw our silent assent.

Part two of the book is five short pieces, the first a fun memoir of early childhood in Tijuana. Life itself is “magical realism” when everyone believes in ghosts. Reminded me of my own hijinks, raised among religious folk. And, like mine, his childhood playground is now in the shade of a freeway.

Next is the obligatory “growing up Catholic” piece that everyone who grew up Catholic seems compelled to recount. The twist is the religious discrimination sub-text; black, white, or brown, you got beat up if you got caught wearing the Catholic school garb. This section made me laugh a few times, and ends with young Urrea getting a nun-administered ass-whipping, as if his street battles weren’t enough.

I guessed what the Ed Abbey essay was about before I started it. Abbey was pretty flagrantly racist toward Mexicans, but Urrea decides to forgive him and accept the rest of Abbey’s work anyhow. Which is what I had to do way back; you don’t have to like everything your favorite writers crank out. This section felt like it was stuck in to make the book fatter.

“Whores” is seething revenge on the macho culture that made his childhood miserable. After supper at a family holiday, a group of the most macho make a visit to a low rent Tijuana house of ill repute. As he recounts the darkly comedic evening, he savagely attacks the misogynist and bullying aspects of Mexican culture. A lot of solid punches in a short piece, angry and heart-rending.

 

“Sanctuary” is the strongest piece in the book. Chronically ill, with both parents working, the author ends up in the hands of his father’s co-worker’s “hillbilly” family. He gets well, but also learns how a loving household functions.

His own home felt like a battleground, but

 “At Mama Chayo’s house, however, everyone was loved. Period. There was always enough love to go around….

“By love I don’t mean drippy sentiment…. Love, in that house, was a bedrock fact, not discussed nor fretted over, never analyzed and barely recognized. Love simply was.”

Abelino and Mama Chayo “…had been married forever, and they still loved each other enough that they could love everybody else. True love seems to be a spiritual loaves and fishes; it doesn’t get used up, but keeps regenerating itself to feed all comers.” (p. 133)

The young author learned from his saviors what happiness feels like.

Mama Chayo dies suddenly of a stroke, and

“Right at the end, after all the many mourners had passed by…right before they closed the box forever and carried it to the hearse, Abelino stepped up to her. He didn’t weep. He stood silently, gazing down at his one love, his one true destined love, the companion of more than a lifetime, and he studied her face. Then, with no emotion showing on his face, he reached into the coffin and put his palm against her cheek. His big, iron, calloused worker’s hand. It trembled slightly, and it landed on her flesh as delicately as one of her butterflies. Just a second, no more. But all the love in the world was there, in his palm. All the love in the universe, and all the tenderness, and all the grief, and all the beauty collected there in his hand and lay against her lovely cheek.” (p. 151)

My God, people! You mean these Mexicans are capable of love like everyone else? Bad news for racists: you are wasting a lot of time, energy, and hate; people are the same everywhere.

The last section of the book is a meandering reverie, of a road trip undertaken after the death of his mother. Having driven many an aimless road trip across the same intermountain west, I found it a bit dull. The “old west” is full of weird people, far from their ancestral home, often stupid and/or xenophobic.

In that sense, this section serves once again to connect Urrea to the rest of us. Nearly all of us in the western States and northern Mexico are from somewhere else, rootless hungry ghosts. And, people are strange when you’re a stranger. I am fourth generation in Arizona but I still feel like a tourist sometimes.

Nobody’s son turns out to be everybody’s. Cultural differences aside, we’re all just humans and the way forward is with love. What sort of racist brutes would suppress such information? The good old-fashioned Arizona Department of Education [sic]! The common humanity of “Nobody’s Son” is a refreshing and often humorous antidote to such intentional hate and ignorance.

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Do Not Be Ashamed

You will be walking some night

 in the comfortable dark of your yard

 and suddenly a great light will shine

 round about you, and behind you

 will be a wall you never saw before.

 It will be clear to you suddenly

 that you were about to escape,

 and that you are guilty: you misread

 the complex instructions, you are not

 a member, you lost your card

 or never had one. And you will know

 that they have been there all along,

 their eyes on your letters and books,

 their hands in your pockets,

 their ears wired to your bed.

 Though you have done nothing shameful,

 they will want you to be ashamed.

 They will want you to kneel and weep

 and say you should have been like them.

 And once you say you are ashamed,

 reading the page they hold out to you,

 then such light as you have made

 in your history will leave you.

 They will no longer need to pursue you.

 You will pursue them, begging forgiveness.

 They will not forgive you.

 There is no power against them.

 It is only candor that is aloof from them,

 only an inward clarity, unashamed,

 that they cannot reach. Be ready.

 When their light has picked you out

 and their questions are asked, say to them:

 "I am not ashamed." A sure horizon

 will come around you. The heron will begin

 his evening flight from the hilltop.

-Wendell Berry

Fun With Guns And Drugs

Our good “Christian” nation is proud that everyone is free to own as many killing machines as they want. Jesus Himself had an impressive arsenal. He told us to love one another, but carry a killing device just in case. If He’d been “packin’” on that fateful day, he could have died in an exciting gun battle, instead of that miserable ‘hanging on a cross’ affair.

Any country like ours is bound to have a shooting “incident” every now and then. Why does everyone still get so upset? The women and children murdered as we Europeans overran North America were as innocent as any other mass shooting victims, yet their slaughter was part of our righteous destiny. The occasional shooting of our own innocents, by our own fanatics, appears to be our destiny as well. And just as righteous.

 

Our beloved military has set the current standard. They routinely murder civilians—“collateral damage”—by the score. People guilty of being in the wrong place at the wrong time—just like our home-grown massacre victims. So get used to it. If your country is making war and selling death machines all over the world and to your own citizens, there will be random mass killings. Simple math. As a nation we long ago decided that this was part of the equation of so-called freedom. Jesus would be proud.

What goes around comes around, for individuals and for nations. Or, “…whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” Galatians 6:7 KJV

(If we as a nation ever decide to be peaceful, maybe we should start by dismantling our multi-megaton atomic monster, still capable of world holocaust. The potential for global genocide/suicide turns every psycho killer and suicide bomber and their crying survivors into disturbing background noise. If you manage to hear anything.)

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Call me brave or stupid, but there is nothing that frightens me enough to cause me to purchase a killing machine. Our governments’ evolution into a “police state” makes me a little nervous, but not enough to want to kill any of their hired gunmen--yet. Weapons are expensive, loud, require regular maintenance and “target practice”, and I have never needed one for anything in my 50-plus years in gun-happy Arizona. Also, I am unstable mentally.

Prophet Doug Stanhope:

“I don’t have a gun. I really shouldn’t have a gun. I’m against gun control, I think guns should be out there, but I know I’m a responsible drunk and drug user, and I should not--with a small man’s complex, a big weakling, and a lot of hate and talking sh*t in strange places--I should not be carrying a weapon, it’s just responsibility, it’s personal responsibility. Other people should learn that, know who you are. I also am a violent alcoholic and I know how I’m going to feel in the morning and there’s not going to be a lot to live for, and I should not have a Glock underneath the pillow before I can get a cup of coffee in me, a cigarette, and think things through.”

From the “From Across The Street” CD. 2009 Stand Up!/-ismist Recordings.

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The Actual United States Policy on Guns and Drugs:

Fun for grown-ups.

Prohibition is impossible, and creates long term jobs for many.

Everyone should use wisely as many as they can afford.

Sometimes people die.

Carry on!

Shart Profiteers

West of Winslow

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It’s Hard Work To Simplify Life But It’s Cheaper.

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Bed problems began hundreds of years ago, as people became too delicate, or arrogant, to sleep in dirt with bugs and other critters. As mankind grew more sensitive and superior, mattresses were raised off the ground altogether. This provides space for modern man to store dirty clothes and breed ‘dust bunnies’.

The underside of the mattress has long been a popular hiding spot for “French postcards,” the women’s underwear pages of the Sears catalog, and other printed pornography. With the advent of the Interzone, its only function now is as a place to wipe night-time boogers, for those too sleepy to get up and blow their nose. (Which is also what pajama pockets are secretly for.)

A broken weld on this bed’s old “frame” was efficiently fixed with a stack of books, but the owner wanted something sturdier. After much careful measuring, a stack of old lumber was sawed and screwed together, but didn’t fit. On the second try, the perfect fix, pictured above, was installed. This should hold indefinitely, unless Grandpa and Grandma really get rockin’ some night. Let us pray for them. Total project cost: zero.

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In North America, life without an electrical food refrigeration device is considered barbaric and inferior. The rest of the world thinks we are idiots. Such luxury is convenient, expensive, and an indispensable component of our slow environmental suicide.

In my sons’ run-down trailer is a beat-up refrigerator. A water leak caused the kitchen floor to sag, which caused the “fridge” to lean slightly forward, which caused its door to regularly swing open on its own. Their solution was to prop it shut with a big water bottle. This worked well for weeks.

I fixed it properly for them, however. Cut two three-by-three inch squares of scrap plywood, and placed them under the front corners of the fridge. Now gravity shuts the door as god intended. Total project cost: zero.

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Birth of a word: shart. A “shart” is when you inadvertently go “number two” (or “drop a deuce” in my sons’ vernacular,) when all you expected was a little gas. Shart studies show that statistically this is just as likely to happen while completely clothed.

The world needed such a word. Folks who choose to be offended by certain mouth sounds don’t know this one. You can use it like a cuss word and no one flinches. Eat shart and die, full of shart, and shart-head—see? Completely inoffensive! As in “The battle between races is fake bull-shart, the real war is the rich versus the rest of us.”

Also a perfect excuse for work tardiness: “Sorry I’m late, boss, but I had to go home and re-shower, ‘cause on the way to work I sharted.” They assume you would never tell such an embarrassing lie, and thus never suspect it was really a roll in the hay, an extra cup of coffee, and several bong hits. The dumb sharts.

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Every other so-called “first world” nation uses some form of “single payer” health care system. A large majority of educated people favor it in these retarded States. No one should be without health care if we are still trying to be the Greatest Nation Ever.

Instead, it’s all about profit. Replacing compassion with capitalism helps rich people make lots more money off our accidents and sickness. They give a portion of their evil gains to congressmen, to make sure extortion from the ill and injured continues. Best system in the world, and the reason we are 49^th in the world in infant mortality, while paying the most per capita. Cuba is 40^th. (Afghanistan is dead last, 222^nd; America’s road to hell is paved with good intentions.) (Statistics from our beloved KGB, oops I mean CIA.)

The fact that a common and successful system is never seriously considered by our “leaders” is a tribute to our corporate masters’ control of the dialogue. Our propaganda machine is the most efficient in history. Nice to be number one in something besides our war budget! Greatest Nation Ever!

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Life Is A Giant Amusement Park But Most Of The Rides Suck. Also, the good rides cost more, and the best have long lines of unhappy people, sweating and waiting for their chance while the kids bawl.

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From one of the pullouts at "Petrified Forest National Park," I forget which.

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THE SECRET NEWS

By George Carlin

(News ticker sound effect)

ANNOUNCER: (whispering)

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, it’s time for the Secret News.

(News ticker gets louder)

ANNOUNCER: Shhhhh!

(Ticker lowers)

ANNOUNCER:

Here is the Secret News:

All people are afraid.

No one knows what they’re doing.

Everything is getting worse.

Some people deserve to die.

Your money is worthless.

No one is properly dressed.

At least one of your children will disappoint you.

The system is rigged.

Your house will never be completely clean.

All teachers are incompetent.

There are people who really dislike you.

Nothing is as good as it seems.

Things don’t last.

No one is paying attention.

The country is dying.

God doesn’t care.

Shhhhh.

(from “When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?” Hyperion, New York, 2004.)

Money Can Always Buy Happiness

It is one of those bogus sayings that poor folks repeat until it becomes accepted wisdom. They burn their last $20 on lottery tickets and, of course, don’t win. Stuck eating peanut butter and stale marked-down bread another week, they sigh: “Ah well, money can’t buy happiness.” Really? Is that why you keep trying?

They say it again when another “celebrity” enters drug rehab. Money just took Blondie McDipp from a two year cocaine, booze, and wanton sex romp, to a luxurious “facility" with gourmet nutrition and socially acceptable replacement drugs from state-licensed drug lords. Put all that happiness on the celebrity moron’s bill.

Money may not always buy happiness, but it most certainly can. You just have to use it properly.

Doodads do not deliver delight. Your Cambodian Nose-Hair Trimmer, Dominican Lawn Ornament, or Ugandan Shoe Glitter Kit will not make you feel better beyond the joyous initial penetration of its unyielding plastic packaging. Be grateful instead, after sniffing a flame to remove stragglers, that you don’t inhale burning hair often. Be satisfied by decorating your yard with a big rock, knowing no one will bother to steal it or smash it with a baseball bat. And forget the glitter, it’s like a terminal disease: no matter how hard you scrub, it never quite goes away.

Buying life insurance will not bring “peace of mind” (the mellow version of happiness.) The problem with “life insurance” is that it only pays off when you are “dead.” What a scam! Pay money every month to make sure your angry wife and lazy offspring get it later? It is a miracle of salesmanship made possible by cultural death-denial. Better to use “insurance” money for a monthly party, thus “insuring” that you have an actual life. Mama will cheer up, and the kids can learn the traditional drug addictions (alcohol tobacco caffeine and sugar) in a warm and friendly environment. Or, if they see adults acting like drunken idiots, go “straight edge”, which may or may not be happier but is certainly cheaper than every addiction.

A new car won’t make you happy. The joy is shaken with the first depreciating bump out of the lot, and fades monthly. When you are still making payments on a fender-dented, spill-stained, stinky-juice-leaking, clattering at each bump like a cow-bell piece of mostly-plastic crap, your only emotion is anger.

Buying a house is worse. Sure, it looks nice, all empty and clean. But with all your crap moved in, it looks disappointingly the same. And due to EEFA rules (Everything Eventually Falls Apart), you will now spend most of your valuable spare time fixing broken stuff, or working a second job so you can pay someone else to fix it. How many people do you know who paid off their mortgage? Owning a home is part of the American Dream because it is, indeed, a dream. The American Reality is that the only legacy you will leave your surviving loved (or tolerated) ones, will be a crumbling shack and a monthly payment.

Would giving your money to a church make you happy? Maybe, if you’d like to help some fruity pastor, who may never have worked an honest day in his or her life, tell people what not to do. Churches want money for “missions,” to convince us heathens that no matter what we believe, it’s wrong, that their church alone is right, and that we will burn forever if we don’t agree. This brings us great joy and peace, and the pastor gets a new car. Suddenly, coke, booze, and wanton sex seem quite sensible.

It is never possible to purchase happiness by “investing.” Investors are nervous wrecks, trying to supernaturally predict bubbles and pops. Only a few lucky pricks, that “manage” the investments, manage to get rich, the rest lose. What a great system! Like casinos, with slightly better odds if you read a few thick books first.

Paying for a warm dry place to sleep, and enough food and drinkable water to stay alive, sets the stage for possible happiness. Spoiled North Americans may add heated water and a flush toilet for contentment optimization.

And if, through some accident of hard work, theft, or luck, you actually have extra money, simply give it to someone who hasn’t got any. Poor people given sums of money become instantly happy, no matter how fleetingly. See? Money can always buy happiness!

Carnal Fire Knowledge

Isn’t fire wonderful? Keeps you warm, cooks dinner, and fun to watch. Caveman technology, but it can still beat a computer in a fair fight. Fun to play with, too, right kids?

Many life-changing lessons are fire-related. Vividly I remember looking at the kitchen stove and wondering: is it still hot after the gas flame goes out? So I touched it, what more straightforward test could there be? My first blister, and my best tear duct work-out since infancy.

Soon thereafter, I dripped wax from a burning candle onto Grampa’s new Stetson (a “cowboy” hat popular with bogus cowboys since that’s all there are, really). Grampa never said a word, but mom administered my first serious bun-warming. The lesson here was “Don’t Piss Mom Off.” At five, probably not in those words.

A bottle cap at a campfire re-taught me the heat retention capability of metal. A melting plastic car, driven by a toy soldier, taught me that burning plastic sticks to you when you touch it--and keeps burning.

As a kid we used to go camping for weeks at a time. What a great place to play with fire, when the old farts weren’t looking! 

Then Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, bigger fires and far less supervision. Sometimes they had fire building contests!

The “Safety” part of the “Fire Safety” badge was just a smoke screen, you still got to play with fire. Most importantly: a can of beans, strategically placed in a campfire, will blast hot beans everywhere when it bursts.

Massive desert bonfires, of pallets swiped from behind supermarkets, lit our teen beer parties. Nothing draws folks together for drunken revelry like a 16 foot tower of flame.

Though none of us goodly youth were pierced or tattooed in those days, some have nice scars from hot coals and pain-tolerance one-upmanship. A contest usually won by the numbest. Afterwards, more beer was always the prescription for break-through pain.

To guarantee myself at least four camping trips a year, I took each of my four sons on an annual birthday camp-out. Being allowed to play in a fire is a fantastic gift for any eight-year-old! With me by their side, or a few feet away because of all the damned smoke, they could run their own field tests. Metals glow red after the paint burns off. Aluminum cans eventually melt into an ashy puddle. Plastics are best—what serious camper has not experienced the thrill of watching a plastic bread bag, impaled on a stick, in flames and dripping colorful little fireballs?

You can tell a kid over and over to “be careful or you’ll get burned.” After their first painful self-cooking, you never have to say it again, even to your stupidest.

For 17 years I have heated my home with a wood stove in the living room. It’s ashy, smoky, a danger to drunks, idiots, and babies--and dirt cheap ‘cause I burn scrap lumber and old pallets. We can connect with our prehistoric past by the glow of the fire, while watching untalented modern humans make asses of themselves in the glow of our electronic amusement device. I want to integrate the experience, but the TV won’t fit inside the stove. Might have to axe it.

(Note the duct-tape jacket repair)

The yearly “Burning Man” gathering in Nevada is just an excuse for adults to go play with, and around, fire. We have no need to go; we are still living that dream. Even now we fiddle in the flames when camping, how can anyone help it? Final life lesson: it’s OK to play with fire, as long as you don’t poke anyone’s eye with a burning stick. This has worked for us so far, anyway.