Animus Mundi

You Are Who You Are

2009-01-30T12:54:00.006-08:00

I Can Handle My Enemies,

but I Cannot Handle My Comrades

Being left means having principals that promote more good principals. Why do people support those that lack principals? For any reason. If you partake of what someone offers, and have gained from it, then a measure of thanks is due when it is your time to leave. No true leftist tucks his tail between his legs and slinks off in the night, to only reapear elsewhere without a word being mentioned of it. That is how an enemy acts, a hyprocrite. This type of dishonesty is what allows mankind to destroy itself if they so choose. One should not have to stand alone in this fight against the evil that America heads. To unite one must stay with it, constant, intent on the purpose, but all too many on any side have not the ability to do this. Its a self seeking world and people just drift on, to whatever brings whatever they think it is they need that day. Life as a game, as something out there outside of yourself, the constant search for entertainment, even in ones desire to protest or rebel or attempt change. Making it into something that fulfills an inner need much more than an outer one that includes all. Revolution as a hobby.

One cannot build if they cannot put down roots, accept what the situation is they have chosen, and make it into something worthwhile. This is what a true leftist does, puts the situation before himself, gathering people of like principals to create a power. Using what is there and making it theirs. To explore is one thing, the desire to learn and experience more. But if one leaves principals behind, courtesies, respect, and honesty to do so, that spoils any attempt at moving ahead. One can not build from a dirty base. And those that are drawn to this, out of whatever reasons, become that. You are who you walk with.

I am so very glad to see this ugly false and evil world in a collapse. May all who have made themselves part of it, in action or in thought perish with it and the true and good people who were not part of that abuse, take their rightful place.

Being left is standing on your own, living what you believe in, and keeping a balance that brings progres. Some people can expound on all that should be, they can see the truths, but still, they do not let it become who they are, it is only their image they are building, their cover. Those type expose themselves in time by by proving what they really are, and they continue on in their hyprocritical ways not caring about what could have been, but merely, what is next for me.

And to those this was not addressed to, please know who you are.

About Statistics

2008-03-13T09:58:00.002-08:00

Mexico and Statistics

I have long been suspicious of numbers and their use to adjust reality to a desired view. When statistics are taken, at what point do they draw the line that this one makes it in the first column and this one does not? As in child care or unemployment. Mexico has some very shocking and disturbing numbers posted against it. But for the most part, they do not seem to be the normal at all. So one has to question who did the counting and how and why. Because of the natural migration of people to where the wage is higher in what was historically very recently their own land, and the statistics claiming how many have no work, it makes Mexico look like a land of total poverty and hardship. This is not so though. But unfortunately it is the information most outsiders have, and from this they form their opinions.

Who gets counted as unemployed in Mexico. The migrants with jobs across the border? They show no employment record here. And what about the vast amount of people who are self employed? Unlike America, where most have to work for a boss and be counted for taxes, many Mexicans never enter that type of system. It takes little money to live on here and the need to hold down a full time job does not appeal or apply to many. This is a family oriented nation, and not all need to work at a formal job in order to support the household, but they still are useful in many other ways. All these are counted and added up against Mexico’s record.

And of course, with statistics there are some truths in them to be found if they are not taken as the whole answer. Mexico City is the largest city in the world. And with any large city, it has terrible poverty, and all that goes along with living in an unnatural situation. And in southern Mexico people are in a transition from traditional times to modern times and frequently lost somewhere in between. But this is just certain groups of people in certain areas. What statistics do, in their full final sweep of one report covers all, is make Mexico look like it is this way everywhere. That each town has its slums and poverty and unemployed, without exception. That this is Mexico itself.

But this is not so at all. Mexico for the most part is full of towns and villages that exist very well and should be a model of what poorer people can make of their life and surroundings. There is no hunger, no rampant disease, no beggars or abandoned children. It is a natural society, and all fit in. Family oriented and taking care of itself. If only the world could see this much larger side of Mexico, instead of the one painted by statistics. And of course, there is the whole world of the well to do and well educated here, that is rarely even known about by the average person elsewhere.

Like many things America does to harm those countries it wants to dominate and oppress, statistics are used as a subtle weapon to shape the image of a country in the eyes of the world. Say Mexico, and one is suppose to think of poverty and corruption. When this is not what it is, only in limited areas, as in any country. It is the Americanization of the world that wants everyone working a full time job provided by a rich person, so all can be accounted for and benefited from by advancing those at the top. People not buckled down to this system are useless to it and only provide a living for themselves. No upwards flow of money. Just hand to mouth. They are not liked at all.

And with this image, so well publicized and pushed by America, its story is told by many who come here, already steeped in the false impressions created. They come to report on the dumps and orphanages, the big city horrors, crime and unemployment. Some not even realizing they bought into a distortion and are perpetuating it by repeating it. The lie being, that is not all of Mexico only a part. But this is the popular thing to do, so much of what Mexico really is, is lost to the world. Its strengths, its special people, its way of survival with dignity and happiness. The living close to nature, not over consuming, using what is readily available, keeping a balance that could save our earth if the greedy would do likewise.

How does one fight the image statistics leave in their trail? They are known to be the final proof in showing how it really is. But it is not really that way as a whole, so how does one bring back the reality of the rest of Mexico for the world to see it by? It is what Americans call a smear campaign, and people willingly or unknowingly promote this. Even some of the best people do, not realizing it.

2008-02-07T13:13:00.000-08:00

Unwise Man

2007-08-08T18:57:00.000-07:00

When it is said that America needs to be stopped in what it does in order to save the world, one thinks of their wars and invasions and underminings. And as evil and threatening as these things are, there is still another and entirely different type of threat coming from them. It is the direction their society and culture are taking that is an all consuming danger to mankind also.

The name homo sapiens, whose Latin meaning, is wise or knowing man, could well be changed to homo americanus, or some such thing. Unwise man, unknowing man, man who no longer needs to think, his needs and security taken care of, his wants tended to, his mind filled with what makes him think he knows all he needs to. And the worst of this, is he is fed on trash and lies and that is what he produces in turn.

Americans have a sick society that taints all it comes in contact with. Their belief that bigger better and more are the goals to reach in life rape the planet of its resources. People so mindless that they brag of their country and shout their love for it while killing and destroying to get what it takes to support them in the style they desire. It takes a twisted mind to feel pride while you are committing horrible deeds.

Much of American society is constructed to make people accept atrocity and horror, perversion and corruption. A daily part of life, one way or another. Very little shock or awe or shame left over anything. The warning signs for wrong have been long lost. Their entertainment is at extremes, pushed to the max to stretch their senses to where danger just seems like cheap thrills and a way to kill some time. Many just sit at home and can watch extreme sports or brutal movies on tv, or real war and killing on their limited to their view, news outlets.

Now even their children are showing the signs of their nations lifestyle and mentality. It is the breakdown of the family too. Each taught to seek his own selfish needs, too consumed with his own image and schedule to build a real home to venture out into life from and learn. A society that cares far more about its animals than it does its people, which is very telling. It should be both. Americans are taught to dislike, or even fear their poor, and envy and imitate their rich. A truly deluded populace, just cooperating tools of their government, playing out the parts handed to them thinking its called freedom because they are content with it.

These people are a failure of mankind to develop into something superior, something beyond that which destroys its own planet and kind. They have veered off into a direction that will destroy all eventually. Willfully ignorant, driven by greed, uncaring and heartless. It is the sum total of Americanization that needs to be resisted and fought against if the world is to be let go on in a positive and compatible way, making its own choices and growing in its own ways. How unfortunate it is that this Americanization has spread world wide, no longer just being a disaster of one nation, but a tendency in many. This route, that is mistakenly called progress, but in actuality plunges us into a darkness we may never recover from. Without respect for each other or the world and nature itself.

Fair and Unfair

2007-06-22T12:01:00.000-07:00

I watch Mexico tightening up, it is a long way from being like America, but none the less, you can feel and observes certain parts tagging along behind in some sort of imitation that is too close for comfort. It seems a country, in order to work the money flow from the bottom moving to the top must organize all precisely, so that none drifts off. When systems don’t work, it makes it harder for the rich to get richer, for the government to take advantage of the working and poor class. So, calling it modern and progressive these systems are now being made to adhere to. There is some good and some bad about this happening. The government should have more money to spend on its people, for improvement of its country, if hopefully they are honest enough to do that. The bad side is, that it leaves no room to wiggle. By that I mean, it becomes its own trap. Rules and laws should be guidelines not absolutes to be abided by, fair and unfair is what counts. There are too many outside situations. This is where the poor get stung, sometimes life keeps them from being able to conform. So instead of punishing them for it and pushing them further into problems, the laws and rules should sway and accommodate these people.

Here is an example. It is the time of year here what we call The License Plate Police are out in their special marked cars to stop people whose tags are due. Every year this effort gets stronger. They have set up a relatively new system were if you let your license plate expire, you get a fine. But right now still, many even years behind do not get fined yet, only when they pay up and enter the new system.

This week my husband was stopped by these type of police, they suddenly came out of nowhere and were behind him with their small yellow flashing light. The van he was in had not been updated for more than several years, it just got put off somehow, probably not the money and the inspiration to do it at the same time. The policeman filled out a form and had him sign it. He didn’t have his drivers license with him, he had forgotten and left it in another car. And the van is registered in a friends name, so it was a little slower than usual with the confusion. Maybe ten minutes. Both police really admired our dogs and we had to get one out to show it off. They gave him instructions how to find the new DMV office just built and what times the line was the smallest. There was no extra late charges, but there will be next time if we are late again. All shook hands and thank yous and left.

Here in the neighborhoods there are many cars that have very old plates or California plates, or none, which technically are not allowed. But here we call them, Around Town Cars. You don’t go out on the main highway with them, you just stick around close. The local police pay no attention to these. Who really cares, it is not like it is a harmful crime, if you cant afford tags, or sometimes the paperwork makes it almost impossible or to expensive. These people, the poor, need to take children to school, a nearby job, grocery shopping, seeing family, or using the car to make the rounds selling things. Just let things be, and don’t interfere with the process of survival. But, as I said, this is not a money making situation that will flow up to other levels, it just benefits the poor. The rich want to squeeze them for anything they can and make their systems work to their full capacity, not satisfied with what they do get already.

And now, another example, to show the other extreme. America, Oklahoma, a Sunday afternoon. My husband and I were 3 weeks into an experiment to see if we could live on the family farm. A ride to town for an ice cream cone and the scenery. As we drove thru a small town an off duty cop in his family car pulled the truck over. He asked the routine questions and realized we were over the time to have the license plate changed over since we were going to live there. This is illegal and cannot be accepted or tolerated. Where would America be if it let its people break such laws? So, the end result occurred. The sheriff came out in his squad car, the fire chief stopped in his and the city tow truck arrived, and several spectators. The truck hauled off to the impound, my husband to jail and me left along side the road with my dog, 3 water barrels, and a big box of tools. And then ensued the threats to shoot my pit bull right on the spot. Justice was served, but not before I pointed out to the crowd, which was the worse crime, what they did, or what we did. But they did not get the point and all drove off leaving me scared half to death and no idea how to get home or my husband back. Not to mention the price for our sins against their rules.

I so hope the world never becomes one big America.

La Mordida

2007-05-30T14:21:00.000-07:00

World map of the Corruption Perceptions Index, which measures "the degree to which corruption is perceived to exist among public officials and politicians". Blue colors indicate little corruption, red colors indicate much corruption

Now who do you suppose could have made this map??? America of course, in their dishonest way of trying to pretend that they are not corrupt, and more so than many. This is a good example of how Americans become so brainwashed, giving them the proof they want that they are superior, so they do not question any further than that. Look, right there in pretty colors, and they are blue, of course, as they pat each other on their backs for it.

La Mordida, My Opinion

How things work in Mexico is always fascinating. There is a system, which is commonly called La Mordida, the little bite, or the name the Americans give it, corruption, that is much misunderstood by many, since it is not their system. In many ways it is against the larger progress, it stays a small time thing, when done in balance. It keeps a country from getting to much of its power going to the top. And this is why it has come under attack as a method that must be changed. The men on top are not getting their cut, it stops before it gets to them. While in a country like America, everything that comes down, the government gets its share, they loose no opportunity. Everyone and everything is milked.

Here is a good story as an example. Last Sunday morning my husband called a very high official at his home from a phone number that had been given to him for other business reasons quite a while back. He explained to this man that he had an opportunity to import several very large truck loads of equipment and parts for one of our businesses here. He explained that right now money was very short, and asked if he could pass the truck loads with no charge. And in exchange this winter when my husband breeds his dogs, the personal protection type, he will give him a puppy. The answer was, yes, of course, that sounds fine, it is a deal.

Stories like these are common, and looking at them goes from total disapproval, to acceptance that this is the way things are, a good deal. Some want to say this is wrong, it abuses a system where everything should be to the letter of the law and no flexibility. This particular deal leaves the next government official on up and the money trail, ended right there. So this is the objection, the top is not getting fed. But it is true, a government must make its money so that it can serve the people with the necessities of running a country correctly. So if this where to happen every time, the system would starve itself out, and only a few would benefit. But here is where balance comes in. For the most part one follows the rules, but on the exception, one does not. Life is not cut and dried, and neither should be money matters and business. It is always minding those laws that create a monster of it that has no give and take.

The Americans want to call it corruption, because of the word itself, it is negative and implies wrong doing and rot. This word is meant to influence the average mans thinking, it scares him and he knows corruption is wrong, so Mexico and its much freer and looser system is wrong, evilly wrong. But this is a lie, Mordida is a system, just another way to do things. As long as greed does not overcome, then it works, but no system does not suffer when greed is allowed to take over. Like the American government, taking way more of its share, for things like war and invasions, and leaving many of its citizens and businesses near broken from it. To me, this is corruption, the use of public money for bad intent and not to the benefit of mankind or their citizens.

In Mexico, on the everyday level, among the average citizen, this little play of money exchanged for a favor being done keeps a certain balance, and allows room for a fairness, for a chance, that might not otherwise be possible. A little favor, in exchange for a little money or whatever is available. The Americans want a paperwork trail, an accounting of every cent. But here, we are not at that point, and may we never be, that much efficiency leads to a system that no longer takes in the people at the bottom. The Mordida system is far from faultless, and far from being just corruption. It is a stage in development, it is workable, it is acceptable.

One of the problems is that Americans will use this label, corruption, for the local policeman who takes a little extra, or a drug lord who makes his profit illegally, or a politician that absconds with a fortune. So it makes it look all on the same level and like a major crime against humanity and civilization. But in reality, it is just a way to deal with money, make money, and keep things moving along. Each his own judge on how to handle it. After all my many years here, I have not seen where it is a harm, when not abused. The only harm is the image the Americans want to give Mexico because of it, and their false sense of superiority because they say Mexico is run on corruption and they are not.

There are far more problems in this world than the Mordida system, and much worse things to label corruption. Like the American destruction of over 1,000 hospitals in Iraq, this is corrupt, as well as illegal.

Self Servers

2007-05-13T13:45:00.000-07:00

I have just been looking into one of the political chat rooms on the web. The sort that people in them call themselves progressive and part of the solution. Needless to say, the room was peopled with Americans, and those who have been Americanized. They talk as if the rest of the world does not really exist, only in relation to their own country. I saw them lightly and humorously talking about cannabis, one saying how she uses it, another says all politicians should get high. Then many added their lols and yeses.

They think no further than their own wants. Who do they think pays the real price for their preference for cannabis, or other choice of illegal substance. Countries are controled, made and ruined by who America gives the illegal drug traffic too, who they declare war against for it. Centuries of traditional crop growers of cannabis, a families or a villages income, is put out of a way to make a living because of American interference. And these Americans who allow their country to make a war on something such as drugs, or cannabis, which is merely a very useful plant, rarely stop to think what this war means, other than their inconvenience or possible imprisonment for it. They demand their rights for what substance they want to enhance their life, they buy illegal to get it, therefore supporting keeping it illegal. For their pleasure, wars are fought, fortunes made and lost, people jailed and killed, and worst of all, the common man, the farmer, risks his freedom or must give up his crop. I wish that every American who uses an illegal substance everytime they used one it would flash before them all the death and ruin and interference this choice causes. If Americans want to use drugs, they should make it legal, so other countries were not trapped by doing something America has claimed illegal. Americans take their crimes against the world so easily, as long as they are getting what they want. It is not until they are hit themselves of the illegality of it, that they question these laws, but only in regards to themselves and just how it would affect their own country. That is always their first thought, how does this affect me, never what impact does this have on the world and the people of it and their freedoms and rights. Americans might not take their cannaibs use seriously, but so many suffer from it, wars are fought over it. While they sit in chat rooms and joke about it, they call it freedom. But at whose expense. Shame on these people who can look no further than themselves.

And that story of making cannabis illegal because it is bad for people is so ridiculous, compared to what America leaves as legal substance. The way to protect society from substance abuse is not to war on other countries, but teach their society how to control its own urges, instead of going to all extremes to satisfy them. Americas drug habits are not the worlds problems, but their own. Either refuse to use illegal subtances that harm the world with their restriction, or get your government to give you the freedom that you should have in a so called free country so the world is not oppressed by you.

No Threat

2006-10-19T13:50:00.000-07:00

One can sense the world out there, feel its pulse. It is at a high pitch and harder than ever to block out. I think the idea of peace is past and all we are left with is an unsure future of violence. It is right out there, the world about ready to erupt, one way or another. Even if it is just the collapse of America and the shake up afterwards. Life here in Mexico provides such a different view of it. Living in a country that is in peace provides a good background. Problems like Americas war on drugs and government disputes and frauds is minor when compared to a country that wants to take over the world and makes wars on it to get what it wants. Mexico is no threat, that is how it should be. America is the biggest threat the world has. Not only does it dominate Mexico over drug rules but it threatens to turn it into a nation of consummers dependant on corporations. The reason why Mexico has drug crime is because of the illegality of it, keeping it a major force and income for America. Mexico is still considering making drugs legal because of the sheer absurdity of crimminalizing what is a personal problem. It keeps the law enforcers busy with nonesense when they could be fighting real crime. It causes a whole underworld that dominance is being fought for as America continues to upset balances. It does not seem possible that one naion could be causing so many problems, but the closer you look the more you discover. Like a festering wound. Mexicans live like there is no government, while Americans are their government. Comparing these two countries makes Americans look ridiculous liars when they call Mexico corrupt. Which there is corruption, but nowhere near the scale of America. Its usually money matters, not killing and plunderint at will. I wonder if America will finish itself off fast or if it is going to take a long time, bit by bit Or perhaps an outside force will end it. The balance of America could be titled so fast and throw its over dependant people into chaos. It is almost like a contest, will they do themselves in or will someone else first. I should imagine it is like any dying creature, its weakness is sensed and then it becomes prey. Talking here with people who don´t know America is evil is knowing how far brainwashed they are. Perhaps if they could see themselves, they might come closer to being able to save themselves. But I don´t see either happening.

Spoken Plainly

2006-10-16T14:37:00.000-07:00

My family was here over the weekend to visit, they live across the border a ways. Amazing the border, just that line and so much changes, the view just takes on a whole other aspect, in so many ways. It was brought up in conversation with them, my family, that Hugo Chavez was undignified and distasteful to talk about Bush the way he did, even if they are against him. I think strong truths are not popular in America, they want them in shades that better match the trimmings of their minds. Everything broken down into something else, fragmented. What else should a pow wow of governements be for if it is not to tell the truth and expose the liars. The whole world would do well to shout America is evil and Bush is the devil. Perfect words and fitting concepts.

Mexico is more plain speaking than America, they do not pad their sentences so and are use to just simply saying what a thing is. I have learned from this to pick the simplest idea. Plain speaking. But this conversation happened over dinner in a good restaurant with good music with a family I love despite their American faults. I realize they are trapped within their culture so they can move smoothly to get what they want and go where they are lead to go. So I could not call them on their smug attitudes that Chavez committed a social sin by resorting to saying what he really thought. All I did say is I thought him a hero of the poor and that all leaders should be as honest in their attitude. But of course this brought a change in conversation back to childhood memories and what else to order next. Oh well, no sense to make war at the dinner table, its bad for indigestion, I let that battle be lost. But thinking back on it, I could tell, that was an adopted attitude, one they have been groomed for. That they could not accept the truth and the message behind what Chavez said and instead look down on him shows their minds have been manipulated to all think the way their government wants them. They cannot accept strong truths. It is easy to look down on actions, the American media told them to have that attitude. Its strange to watch people who have been so easily brainwashed. Why could they not have cheered Chavez for having the bravery and the heart to bring up something so important as the evil of Bush and his country. We need so much more of this.

No wonder I let this go over dinner, because now that I think about it, it makes my head ache that a society could be more concerned with their reaction of dislike for the way the message was delivered, than for the actual truth behind the message itself. Here was a chance to call out yes, yes, this is true, that is what this president is, let the world know it and beware, let our people see what the world thinks of him. Help us stop him. But all Americans want to do is just look down on this and belittle it. Which is defending Bush and all his evil.

Without Cars

2006-10-11T17:13:00.000-07:00

So many people in my area where I live here in Mexico don´t have cars, never have. I get to thinking about what that means and how it changes my life from theirs. It is simpler in that it requires a simple routine. Choices narrow down. Life must be lead less spread out. No major expense of it either, the freedom from the responsibility of a car. The bus to the last stop then walk. One can only carry so much groceries when they walk. These people walk past my house, I´m beyond the bus stop too, with my cars. There is no sidewalks, just a dirt road so everyone picks the easiest route between holes and rocks while the cars and trucks dodge them. I´m on a very steep long hill. Lots of traffic comes by too, they have to drive to the top of the hill to drive down the other streets as they are too steep and rocky to drive upwards on. My street is the best for that, paved almost to my house. No cars, no payments and they are walking to houses they own. They may not be finished and they might be crude but it is theirs. Sometimes modern man gets so stretched out in his needs and making life comfortable and good for himself that he looses it. Like he is always chasing it, while I see simpler people so very happy, content, and in place. One cannot help but wonder what all this drive to get ahead and more is about. Eat what you can carry home and most of your money for food. Base your entertainment around the life of your house. All those needs cut out. I watch these people walking, laughing, talking, smiling, you can tell by the way they carry themselves, they feel good about life. The further you go into being modern the more complicated it gets and the more responsibility. Simple looks in balance and very good indeed.

It Is Obvious

2006-10-09T11:49:00.000-07:00

The weather has suddenly turned cold, too early in the year, the day dark and unpleasing. I look at today's news wondering what paying attention to the details will bring me. I read the names, of the ones pushing oppression and the end, but for just a few of the star players I forget them. I much rather not get caught up in the game and understand the rules, and lack of rules, for it. Or who is who. I know America is a war country, I know its leaders corrupt and its society ill. I have a general idea of how their type of democracy was suppose to work and why it did not, and its obvious to the world that now it has been taken over and heading towards goals the masses had no idea were ahead. But I don't need to know their names or their lives or which one did something more scandalous than the next. People seem to spend more time finding out what is wrong than they do protesting what is wrong. When you read American blogs frequently they are like in a secret language with references to all kinds of people and obscure situations and odd comparisons. No wonder it is hard to understand, people can get lost in the confusion until their senses dull. I am sure all this is of importance somewhere but one need not know this and all the other things like it, to know what is right and what is wrong. Its very apparent that America is evil and in the wrong from just looking at the major signs. Knowing the details of evil is the job of some to fight it on the level they find it on, but knowing the truth, all one has to do is look at the overall view. Government hijacked, society sick, its people deluded and brainwashed, and, wanting to take over the world any way they can and use it for their own. Just this very obvious view of America should be enough for every person with hopes of a better future to be aware that it is something to fight against and be got rid of. Beware America, that is the message to spread, resist the Americanization of the world. Dark thoughts, dark days, how I wish the sun would just break loose of these clouds and warm me. I don't want to know to much, let them keep their details and I will watch the results, they are what really tells. Enough America for today, life should be good.

Litany for Dictatorship

2006-10-05T18:03:00.000-07:00

Litany for Dictatorships

A poem by Stephen Vincent Benet (1898-1943)

For all those beaten, for the broken heads,
The fosterless, the simple, the oppressed,
The ghosts in the burning city of our time…

For those taken in rapid cars to the house and beaten
By the skillful boys with the rubber fists,
-Held down and beaten, the table cutting the loins
Or kicked in the groin and left, with the muscles jerking
Like a headless hen's on the floor of the slaughter-house
While they brought the next man in with his white eyes staring.
For those who still said "Red Front" or "God save the Crown!"
And for those who were not courageous
But were beaten nevertheless.
For those who spit out the bloody stumps of their teeth
Quietly in the hall,
Sleep well on stone or iron, watch for the time
And kill the guard in the privy before they die,
Those with the deep-socketed eyes and the lamp burning.

For those who carry the scars, who walk lame - for those
Whose nameless graves are made in the prison-yard
And the earth smoothed back before the morning and the lime scattered.

For those slain at once.
For those living through the months and years
Enduring, watching, hoping, going each day
To the work or the queue for meat or the secret club,
Living meanwhile, begetting children, smuggling guns,
And found and killed at the end like rats in a drain.

For those escaping
Incredibly into exile and wandering there.
For those who live in the small rooms of foreign cities
And who yet think of the country, the long green grass,
The childhood voices, the language, the way wind smelt then,
The shape of rooms, the coffee drunk at the table,
The talk with friends, the loved city, the waiter's face,
The gravestones, with the name, where they will not lie
Nor in any of that earth.
Their children are strangers.

For those who planned and were leaders and were beaten
And for those, humble and stupid, who had no plan
But were denounced, but were angry, but told a joke,
But could not explain, but were sent away to the camp,
But had their bodies shipped back in the sealed coffins,
"Died of pneumonia." "Died trying to escape."

For those growers of wheat who were shot by their own wheat-stacks,
For those growers of bread who were sent to the ice-locked wastes.
And their flesh remembers the fields.

For those denounced by their smug, horrible children
For a peppermint-star and the praise of the Perfect State,
For all those strangled, gelded or merely starved
To make perfect states; for the priest hanged in his cassock,
The Jew with his chest crushed in and his eyes dying,
The revolutionist lynched by the private guards
To make perfect states, in the names of the perfect states.

For those betrayed by the neigbours they shook hands with
And for the traitors, sitting in the hard chair
With the loose sweat crawling their hair and their fingers restless
As they tell the street and the house and the man's name.
And for those sitting at the table in the house
With the lamp lit and the plates and the smell of food,
Talking so quietly; when they hear the cars
And the knock at the door, and they look at each other quickly
And the woman goes to the door with a stiff face,
Smoothing her dress.
"We are all good citizens here. We believe in the Perfect State."

And that was the last time Tony or Karl or Shorty came to the house
And the family was liquidated later.
It was the last time.
We heard the shots in the night
But nobody knew next day what the trouble was
And a man must go to his work.
So I didn't see him
For three days, then, and me near out of my mind
And all the patrols on the streets with their dirty guns
And when he came back, he looked drunk, and the blood was on him.

For the women who mourn their dead in the secret night,
For the children taught to keep quiet, the old children,
The children spat-on at school.
For the wrecked laboratory,
The gutted house, the dunged picture, the pissed-in well
The naked corpse of Knowledge flung in the square
And no man lifting a hand and no man speaking.

For the cold of the pistol-butt and the bullet's heat,
For the ropes that choke, the manacles that bind,
The huge voice, metal, that lies from a thousand tubes
And the stuttering machine-gun that answers all.

For the man crucified on the crossed machine guns
Without name, without ressurection, without stars,
His dark head heavy with death and his flesh long sour
With the smell of his many prisons - John Smith, John Doe,
John Nobody - oh, crack your mind for his name!
Faceless as water, naked as the dust,
Dishonored as the earth the gas-shells poison
And barbarous with portent.
This is he.
This is the man they ate at the green table
Putting their gloves on ere they touched the meat.
This is the fruit of war, the fruit of peace,
The ripeness of invention, the new lamb,
The answer to the wisdom of the wise.
And still he hangs, and still he will not die
And still, on the steel city of our years
The light falls and the terrible blood streams down.

We thought we were done with these things but we were wrong.
We thought, because we had power, we had wisdom.
We thought the long train would run to the end of Time.
We thought the light would increase.
Now the long train stands derailed and the bandits loot it.
Now the boar and the asp have power in our time.
Now the night rolls back on the West and the night is solid.
Our fathers and ourselves sowed dragon's teeth.

Our children know and suffer the armed men

Just Thinking

2006-10-04T15:30:00.000-07:00

Today is one of those days I don´t care to think about America. I like to just feel being here, in Mexico, simple and easy. It feels like the load is light. I am so glad that the government is not so oppressive and so dangerous to its own and others that it weighs on me daily. I would hate to be part of what is happening across the border. Which reminds me, the wall. America is building a 700 mile wall along the border to keep the workers out and its going to cost billions. It is so backwards. Lots of contracts were handed out over it, but of course, the whole border scheme is a money maker. There, now I have thought of America again, when I did not want to. How quick life can slip into reminders of it. Like yesterday, finaly I find out what this huge buidling is that is being built, about the biggest I think I have seen here. It is a Walmart. It was like staring the enemy in the face when I realized, made my stomach turn. The thought of it kind of crept along with me all day, another battle lost. But today the weather is such, hot sun, clouds, cool breezes and quick little wind brusts, that it just sort of blocks out what does not fit. I have been out preparing soil in pots to make new spring trees for my property. I plan on staying here forever so I will get to see them grow up, such a good feeling, looking at a tree you planted. Life can be so simple and so good, just into the right flow, everything fitting, working all towards the way you want it. But one is lucky if they have control over their own lives, it does not take much to give it up to a source, like government brainwashing. You could just walk into a store, not knowing all its vile and viscious history, look around and decide that there are so many things you want that you never had before. So easy to hook people into the more more more system. I try not to think of America on such a nice day but when I come to my blog and confronting the outside, I know my time here is best spent with the forever message, Beware America. One can really not say that enough, not even when they are in their own little almost paradise and could so easily leave it to the rest of the world. Well, I think I will wander off and go back to not thinking about the Evil America and have a good rest of the day.

About Getting Along

2006-09-30T10:58:00.000-07:00

I think the reason why everyone can't get along is because they are arguing about the technicalities. They might all be pretty much going along in the same flow, but all they see is their own view of it. I am talking about what is called The Left. Instead of banding together and finding their similarities they separate while guarding their differences. It seems arguing is the method to convey ones information and that the important thing is that your own view wins out. Like a competition, verbal war. How much more progressive if we could use peaceful ways of telling each other our beliefs, if it is peace we are truly trying to achieve. All The Right needs is one popular leader and one set of plans and they are all lined up and following, no need for thoughts of their own. The left just drifts. Why do people have to pick out views and make them theirs and think they are the ultimate and defend them? If we are to believe in differences then why can't we accept differences in how we head to the same goal. Away from oppression and the Americanization of the world and towards freedom. We should learn to get along with those who share this direction and build our strengths, not divide ourselves. It seems peoples attitude is a cross between a bar room and a battlefield and the event is on. We must learn peace with each other first, if we hope to spread it. Save the arguing for the enemy, put up the fight there, hate what they stand for, while our forces gather and spread. There is a lot to be said about getting along as a method to straighten things out.

Shame on America

2006-09-26T10:51:00.000-07:00

Americans have lost their sense of shame. For some reason they remain proud of their country and think their system worth fighting for. You would think everyone of them would be ashamed to be part of such a nation and live from that feeling instead of thinking they deserve it all. They are all part of their wars, sacrificing their children to them. They run off of fear and greed and ignorance. They could have the truth but everything about their system tells them to ignore it and they do. They are even allowed to criticize their government so they can pretend they are not the bad parts of it and still feel good about themselves. War is so much a part of their lives they easily accept it as a necessity to maintain what they have. Living at the expense of other lives is truly evil. They think that they are not part of the rest of the world and separate beings that should have more and better. They have been brainwashed to be so sure of their superiority that all else looks like a bad imitation to them. Their very lifestyles are a rape of the world. Why when there is such damning evidence against them, can't they see they have become the worlds worst enemy. They are an enemy to their own selves and do not yet realize it. The so called war on terrorism has made them a target for revenge. They tell the world, we are sorry about our president, next time we will vote for another, so it will all be ok again. Not knowing that from the first white man to step foot on this soil, that wrong has been done and continues, a nation built on these wrongs, climaxing out to be the threat of the world. America needs to be stopped, totally dismantled, turned into something harmless and let the world go on its way and see if peace can develop without the head warmongers looming over it all.

A Sunday Song

2006-09-24T09:37:00.000-07:00

Click

Another Freedom

2006-09-21T16:00:00.000-07:00

Back to the subject of building my house. I have been thinking of how wonderful it is to build whatever one wants, no limitations. It´s that kind of neighborhood here, no rules, just as long as you stay within your boundaries. One can build a tarpaper shack or one can build a mansion. It is your own business and no one judges. Here on the streets of my village all kinds of houses in all stages can be found. Rich and poor, one after the other. One stays in their neighborhood as they progress and just builds more. The tarpaper turns to block or wood, the block gets plastered, the wood painted, sometimes in months, sometimes over many many years. Its stages of growth. One of the best parts, the most wonderful, is that it is all paid for as you go. No payments, all yours. Just let your imagination go with what you can get and build whatever you can.

I have outgrown the first house my husband built here. It was always just a temporary one, even if it did last ten years now. Now the next is growing up, and again I think of how fortunate the freedom to build what you can and want is not taken away like it is in America. Americans have to build their houses like they are worried who is going to live in it next. Everything is rules and regulation and threatened fines and shut downs. One must build for the neighborhood. The loss of being able to start small and keep adding is a great one. Having to build it all complete to some idea of perfection make affording it a horrible obligation. Here, one can just live in one room, then add the next, building with what comes up. If you are poor you can receive land here, or for very little buy a piece and then start. The poor always have this chance. To be able to have a home is what is wanted and anyone should have that right to a little land and a little shelter. A country like America leaves to room for the poor, only those who want to make it on a larger scale. But one cannot get rid of the poor by outlawing what they need to do to cope.

I have no idea how long it will take to build my new house, all according to how money and time come in. Since it will be red bricks it will be easy to build slow and in stages, waiting for the right windows to come along. My imagination roams all over when I think of sun shining thru glass, so many possibilities.

The Paper Game

2006-09-15T16:27:00.000-07:00

About a month ago a new person moved into the neighborhood. The old man, Don Jose who is one of the original people in this area, he has rentals now that he is older, well past retirement, but still likes to work. So this new young man rented one from him. It was to be $800 pesos a month, but when he saw the visiting mothers car, which was almost new, he made the rent $1000 pesos. Don Jose always charges according to the ability to pay. Which is wise. Being very many young men in this neighborhood he was near unnoticed by my husband or I until just yesterday. As he, Tommy, walked by the fence that runs along the street on my property, he paused to ask for work. There are workers here, so there was no work, but a conversation started. It switched to Egnlish very soon, which is unusual for here, not to many speak it where I live. I was quick to notice his English was better than his Spanish and asked why. And then he started on his story, his past. Born in Mexico and brought to Long Beach California at three months of age. That was the last time he was in Mexico, unil now. His mother is a waitress and had several more children on the north side of the border and a new husband. He was brought up American style, enough money, enough luxuries, enough plenty. The first summer after his high school graduation he made a mistake, like youths can often make. At the wrong place, wrong time. On the way to go play ball, three friends decided to break into a house they saw the neighbor leave. He had no nerve for it and debated out front waiting, but to late. A squad car pulled up, the boys inside ran out back with what they stole and escaped. He being out front, like a target was easily picked up and taken away. Being a true Mexican, he would not tell on his friends, so instead of being given a light sentence he received two years in the state penitentiary at Lompoc. This is something his mother would remind him of on her visits. That she was the one who came, put money on the books, and would be there for him when he got out, not his long gone friends. He wasn’t ready for prison, he had been a good boy, not to experimental, stayed away from drugs, just a little marijuana, quite sensible. The stay there hardened him, one could tell. At the end of his jail stay, upon release he was suddenly taken to Mexicali, Mexico and dropped there late at night from a bus. He was told just before leaving his papers were not straight and his Mexican birth made him not a citizen. They told him next time he was caught across the border it would be five years in jail, for any reason, even just living and working. So he got a job picking asparagus and learned what hard work was. He has kicked around a lot since then. Just recently on Saturday night on the way walking home from a job, he had bought marijuna and some groceries. The police here stopped him, took both and all his money and told him to run. He said he never ran faster, he did not want to experience Mexican jail and the cops were smart enough to know he did not need to either. He has been here three years now and is almost twenty two years old. He has improved his spanish and definitely learned quite a lot of the ways of the land, necessity taught that. He misses his family and his college plans, but his safety here is more to him and his family then his being with them up there in such a dangerous for the innocent country.

Choosing Ignorance

2006-09-08T10:44:00.000-07:00

Remaining ignorant when truth is available is a choice that many make. Pick and choose what fits into your belief system. Americans and many others are comfort seekers and do not like disturbances. Part of being American is wanting to be looked up to. Americans need to show off who they are. They think they are superior and it is their job to enlighten the world with what they are. Here in Mexico Americans are looked at as being naive and blundering, without bad intent, for the most part. Americans are so sure of their selves they do not see that there are other ways that are not theirs, not just people being wrong. Americans do not see they are being laughed at and being tolerated.
Americans see themselves as helpers of the world and take this to heart like it is true, that it is necessary for their make up. When you point out to an American all the evil their country does, they say, yes but what about all the help we give. They hang onto this image like it is their own and when anyone tries to show them other views, they become immediately defensive. It is very sad, but Americas better side only serves as a smokescreen for the much worse that gets excused or hidden. These people hold on to what they themselves are and want their country to be that way too. There comes a time when what a country , or a person, does gets looked at as a whole, not its various parts. America is an evil country, it abuses the world and itself. American people respond to power, not truth, and whoever has the most power sways them. They can exist with the truth available to them, but never really let it enter their reality. They keep it outside themselves. They are aware that their country has done some very wrong things, but they grab hold of what they see as what it did right and use that for an excuse. Ever shifting their view to the more acceptable. Remaining ignorant, that’s how the American is able to be proud of his country and think it will succeed.

Living your Beliefs

2006-08-29T10:50:00.000-07:00

For so many, what they live, and what they believe are two different things. Many do not live their beliefs, only hold them inside. Making thoughts and goals of them. Not realities. They may make good companions, but beyond that add little, especially to the outside world. Many would do different if they could. But most of those would not, if it meant a sacrifice in another area, like security or ease. They would rather keep their dreams conveniently out of reach. Why change when you can stay the same. America is a nation of just such people. Ideally probably quite a few of them do not want to be killers and wreckers of the planet. And even a few try to live in balance in a land that demands imbalance. A society sickens when its better part must be stifled down, even to each individual, so they can live with the shame of what their country does, to others and it´s own. What of the so called caring, to have the leader of the nation you proclaim to love, the head of a mob of power hungry murderers out to rape the world. They cannot divorce themselves from what they do not like about America, it is as a whole in what it does, it is the outcome that counts, the results. Each adds up to what it is. In America, you cannot live as you believe, or you must believe in the wrongness of it. It is a nation that makes you live a lie. And freedom always strangles when you lie.

I live my beliefs, I always have. I feel it’s the only way to live, by not compromising them. Its lead me on an interesting and very meaningful path. Putting principals first. There was a time when America appeared worth saving, but that was just an illusion. It has been doomed from the start. Just shooting up on violence and greed until its topped itself out on it. Exposed its insides for what they are and now no ever hiding them again. Only for those who willfully hide from the facts of their country so they can live what is known as the good life off the illgotten gains. America is past its time, as a nation, but as a force it sweeps the world in its corruption of society and methods. Even if one leaves America, to do the right thing, they must always fight Americanization, wherever it is. America the country, is nothing but a quick experiment in history, all about ready to finish its change since its fall from belief. One should love their life, but not such a country.

Tagged

2006-08-28T14:02:00.000-07:00

It is my way to not fill out questionaires, and I don´t like playing games, but I do like books and enjoyed reading what others answered. So today, I decided to add mine to the rest of those "tagged". Thank you Redwine.

One book that changed your life?

My great grandmothers Grimms Fairy Tale Book from her library. So big and old, musky smelling, full of illustrations and strange tales. I had to sit on a special chair to read it. It took my imagination.
One book you have read more than once?
The Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy. Now and again I reread it, among others.

One book you would want on a desert island?

I would rather write a book in those conditions, than read one.

One book that made you laugh?
It seems most books make me laugh for one reason or another, but I think the author that amuses me the most is Charles Dickens. That is who comes to mind at the moment. I rarely read a book that is written for humor. And suddenly I remember The Horses Mouth, by Joyce Carey, that definitely made me laugh.

One volume that made you cry?
Cry the Beloved Country by Alan Paton. I read this when I was little more than a child and I remember crying so much.
One book you wish had been written?
An impossible book, the history of the world and mankind as it really happened, with all the missing pieces.
One book you wish had never been written?

The Bible. I wonder what would have evolved if that particular book had not come along at the right time and become so popular.

One book you are currently reading?

From Indian to Chicano by James Diego Vigil, I just started it.

One book you have been meaning to read?

I have been meaning to read a book by Chomsky, perhaps the one called Hegemony and something, I forgot. He seems to have made an impression and should also be explored. But I have not gotten to it yet, he seems so American and so dull.

Something Nice

2006-08-27T16:50:00.000-07:00

I always think Sundays are good for something special. This link is to some music that impressed me.

Beautiful

2006-08-23T11:25:00.000-07:00

Sunshine raying down from clear skies early in the day make the world seem beautiful. I try not to think of those who cannot feel it from lack of choice. I just have to get out and stand in it. Today it makes me want to feel the earth in my hands, so I garden. Touching the soil is like getting your hands in the tortilla dough, so basic. That and the sea air, so big, so full. What is government, or for that matter, the world, as I stand here in my own. They only touch my mind if I call them up. There is beauty and life goes on. I wonder what humans part is in it. The great undoer? What of people who walk out their door to ugliness, do they have to look for a curbside tree, a glimpse of sky crisscrossed with electric lines. Open their curtains but only to see their neighbors windows. View is so important, not just mental, but visual. One needs to feast their eyes so they do not hunger the brain for want of beautiful. You could see a bird on a branch and make it into a picture that tells the all. And you could see the world unfold in front of you, every splendor revealed and not notice if your not open to it. Beauty. This fresh air just washed over me, tingling the senses, the bird sounds clear and carrying. Do people forced from their homes, walking homeless to a destination they never wanted, do they see the beauty along the road and feel relief from it, or does it only mock them? Sometimes beauty can make you ache with it, its so powerful. Sunshine picking out each object, like everything counts. Some don't care about beauty, although it is hard for me to believe. Their souls must be shriveled, their minds drab and flat. What if prisons used beauty to heal and soothe their inmates. They must be so deprived of it that healing what wounds brought them there is near impossible. I think of office and factory workers too, slaves to the indoors. The mind can feed off of beauty and grow to keep taking in more. One needs a beautiful view to take part of and it has to be replenished as often as possible. So many ways to make things beautiful. I am now going back outdoors, to take in just a little more and forget everything but that. Late summer.

On Your Own

2006-08-21T15:21:00.000-07:00

It´s a warm morning with a cool light breeze. My island, I call it mine because it is in my view, drifts in ocean haze yet. A white blot on the horizon, a cruise ship departing on its endless rounds, full of paid for a good time people. I was down there yesterday, on the beach that is out front here. Next to the harbor and its breakwaters is a little strip of beach land that the fishermen are taking over, just right above the hightide line. Sand and rocks and small cliffs behind. Sometimes it becomes apparent that land has no owner holding it totally legally and that gives the edge to move in on it and make it yours. This will be the fourth jump I have seen on property on the ocean front. All these places are where a boat can be launched in good weather. The first, Puerto Nuevo started out like this one here twenty years ago, a few shacks pieced together and being lived in and worked from. Puerto Nuevo is now rows of streets with seafood restaurants two stories high, one after the other, souvenier stalls and liquor stores. (what more does a tourist need?) As I sat on the cliffs above these little shacks started here, watching a fisherman mend his nets I am struck by the freeness of his life. This shack is wood washed in and brought in, a couple car hoods, various tarps and plastics, dirt floors and carved out dirt steps leading to it. The kitchen is outside and has a place for a wood fire and a refrigerator grate to cook on. He has two homemade stools and a chair without a back around it. If he can hold onto this property perhaps someday he can get papers for it, if not it is his for now, free of charge. It’s a life that’s been there time on end, fishing, just like his ancesotrs. Living form the land. His movements are so practiced, his space so well used, so inventive. I could smell the fish he was cooking. I know that type, he would have invited my husband and I to eat gladly if we would let him. Perhaps next time, and I will bring some tortillas or bread for it, maybe some beer to wash it down. It is a wonderful thought, to just pick a spot, take it and use it and make a living from it. A country that allows the poor a place and a way to make it is a good thing. Some countries the gap is so wide the poor must just stay where they are at. No way out. I have seen the poor get free land and make it into something and sell it, buy more, and go from there. Some have got very rich this way, using their wits and starting at the bottom. Tonight as the sun sets I will go back down there, to watch the progress and see what the catch of the day is. I think it might be one of those pinkish grey sunsets, slowing fading into the ocean, the colors all subtle and soft blending in with the lapping of the waves. The ocean has been calm.

Contentment

2006-08-18T09:49:00.000-07:00

A Point To Ponder

*
A boat docked in a tiny Mexican village. An American tourist complimented the Mexican fisherman on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took him to catch them.

*
"Not very long," answered the Mexican.
"But then, why didn't you stay out longer and catch more?" asked the American.

*
The Mexican explained that his small catch was sufficient to meet his needs and those of his family. The American asked, "But what do you do with the rest of your time?"

*
"I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, and take a siesta with my wife. In the evenings, I go into the village to see my friends, have a few drinks, play the guitar, and sing a few songs . I have a full life."

*
The American interrupted, "I have an MBA from Harvard and I can help you! You should start by fishing longer every day. You can then sell the extra fish you catch. With the extra revenue, you can buy a bigger boat."

*
And after that?" asked the Mexican.

*
With the extra money the larger boat will bring, you can buy a second one and a third one and so on until you have an entire fleet of trawlers. Instead of selling your fish to a middle man, you can then negotiate directly with the processing plants and maybe even open your own plant. You can then leave this little village and move to Mexico City, Los Angeles, or even New York City! From there you can direct your huge new enterprise."

*
"How long would that take?" asked the Mexican.

*
"Twenty, perhaps twenty-five years," replied the American.

*
"And after that?"

*
"Afterwards? Well my Friend, That's when it gets really interesting," answered the American, laughing. "When your business gets really big, you can start selling stocks and make millions!"

*
"Millions? Really? And after that?" said the Mexican.

*
"After that you'll be able to retire, live in a tiny village near the coast, sleep late, play with your children, catch a few fish, take a siesta with your wife and spend your evenings drinking and enjoying your friends."

*
And the moral is:Know where you're going in life... you may already be there.

World Americanization

2006-08-15T11:57:00.000-07:00

It would be good if what is bad about America was just in America and theirs only. But America belongs in essence to the world now, it is no longer just the country, it is the process. Americanization. It happens all over the planet, in perfect imitation or in its own form.

*
America sets itself up to be a world leader when at heart it is rotten. They have no good intentions first. What good they do is just to make an opening to slip in the bad as easy and as unnoticeable as possible. They even try to disguise their wars of greed for capitalism by calling it stopping the terrorist and saving the world. They peddle their image to the point where many across the world think it is the goal. It is frightening to see a nation of people narrowing their minds and lives down to a useable stroke and all the while thinking it is freedom.

*
America is at fault because it projects the image of success with the average citizen having so much available to him. It makes it look like their way is the good way, the way to get what you want. And people know what they want because they watch tv and ads and see all that there is, and its price. What is really a life of all fitting the one mold leaves them with no facility to see what they have lost. And what they have lost is so much, almost what it is to be human, an individual, instead of a number working for wages and living to support a government. They have possessions, and that can look good, lots of new shiny things, and they have positions, safe and secure and they are told this is success. Not realizing true success is within. America stifles creativity. All gets reduced down to the same boil, the same tune. And so, in order to have this success one looses all but the process.

*
It is the saddest thing to see the world turn the way of America. Greed, capitalism, fascism, militaristic, radically religious, many many bad labels. It is a way to enable the rich to get richer and poor stay poor. And to make every poor mans dream to be like the rich and all his goals to strive for that, or live in failure. The signs are easy to recognize, the turning to self, the disintegration of the family, learning as entertainment instead of thinking, lack of manners, changing the diet to unnatural food, idolizing the rich, living in debt and letting oneself to be so easily brainwashed. Among others.

*
A future where the world resembles America is like giving up on mankind. Living for what's next, instead of what is. Each little wedge of Americanism anywhere in the world is a defeat, a loss to society and man and his potential. Americanism is a world disease and spreading like a plague.

So Much of It

2006-08-09T16:27:00.000-07:00

Learning and discovering about the world was a different thing before the rot of America cracked open and came oozing out all over the place. So much news about America, dominating everything, even ones attention. It makes the globe look like a target of conquests and oppressions and defeats. Watching America as it crumbles and exposes itself one sees all manners of horrors. War as a business technique. Torture as an acceptable method, selling weapons to anyone that will buy, pushing bunk religions to fit the newest cause. It offends the senses to have to realize the depths of their depravity. They have even turned learning into entertainment so no one has to think. Consumerism and capitalism. Global warning and waning resources. America is right in the forefront of all of this, paving the way, joining up with those that will go for it. Their government cares for nothing but their greed and this uncaring filters down to where it has dissolved the family unit. No one cares anymore, you can see torture victims and dead babies, that’s just the norm now, thanks to America. People using the name of their god to excuse what they do because he is on their side. Their Hollywood putting out mind trash and their news propaganda. Even their diets turn against them with their fast foods and overeating, turning even mealtime to disgust. America seethes with a sick hatred, a hatred of each other, of the black, of the brown, of the white, the yellow, the different, themselves. They don't hate the crimes of their government, they overlook them in order to overlook their guilt. The more one looks at this country the more one sees the worst side of humanity. One should be aware of all there is one can be aware of, but must one learn it from the glare of the atrocities of the Americans continuously. Why do I see the torture photos in my mind, I knew torture was wrong and I was aware that it is used. But must I have it spread out all over as a daily event as I wander thru my news sources. Must America continuously bump up against my sensitivity until it gets use to horrors. These things should not predominate what a nation does, but what America does fills me with disgust. I wish my mind could go back to where it was before all this finally erupted, all those thoughts of the wrongs that can be done did not collide on the surface and push up against the meaning of everyday life. America is a blot on the existence of mankind and a wound on the mind.

Ramblings

2006-07-28T11:20:00.000-07:00

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So many things on my mind this morning as I do what I do at this time of day. Working, playing, drifting, thinking, habits, chores, attention, distractions. So I pause a moment to sit before this screen and try to capture it. Floaty thoughts, hard to grasp. Wondering about the world. This computer brings it to me. I see life, all around me, I'm right in the middle of it, but the world and its details is something that has to be fished in. Hunted for. No TV no radio, no papers, this is it, besides word of mouth. Here I see not just that which is reported and commented on, the news and information sources, but also the blogs and personal sights and posts. Strange way to look into someone's life. I read of a woman who hurts because she wants to love her people and her country and cannot, because of what she finds out about them. But her love is still there and suffers so. One could heal the world if one could harness that force and spread it evenly. She loves humanity now, and our earth instead. The dogs are barking, cowboys on their horses going by. It's a gray day, dripping dew, all is damp. The horses shine with it. Going to work on a horse down a dirt road. A little hay instead of some gas. And I turn back to the computer after gazing down the road after them. Reading now what the ones that think they are the intelligent ones of the bunch think. Amusing how many ists and isms and ites they can get in one sentence. A constant proving of their realm. I wonder what the cowboys were thinking, I could hear them laughing, laughing with the goodness of life. My dogs bark so much, but no one cares, it's just dogs barking, so what. They keep checking the fence lines, ever curious of what goes on, open to it, as I sit fading out from it. My mind once again picks up the question of how a woman can belong to an organization that claimed to be against pornography and then use it for her humor. Just recently she was worrying about one thing leading to another and now she seems to make no connection between her crudeness and what she professes to be against. Where does disrespect for the sexual and private really start? I think of the cowboys again as my dogs start to settle in and slow down. American women have a reputation for looseness and are not respected here, although treated politely. The easy hugs and kisses, the touches and the pats, bold laughter among those you just met, looking into peoples eyes prying. It makes me glad I am who I am and not that. A quiet buenos dias from me, when one tipped his hat as he passed the gate. I think of people that I can respect, its mutual. Then I read a poem from India, some days there are new ones on this site. I reread the one about women, and feel a feminine hurt. Why do cultures suppress us so, how does one escape. A man answers her back and feels his guilt, how beautiful that it touched him so. So special. I wonder if the cowboys have wives and how they treat them. I've known these type of women, been in their houses, shared with them. So accepting, so into their role, mother, wife, housemaker. Here come the dogs, to settle back down around me, secure in that all is fine and waiting for the next alert, the cowboys forgotten. I look back on my screen once more, turning to a favorite site for bits of a book, poetry and offerings on life. But once again, no new post, only the lonely girl on the bicycle on the empty tracks. I suppose waiting for the writer to come back, I have grown to quite enjoy him. And I realize, the day is moving on and so must I. I put my thoughts of what my screen brings to a distance in my mind and watch the sky as the sun tries to make its breakthrough. Time to get busy, I suppose.

My World

2006-07-22T12:38:00.000-07:00

It's time to be thinking of my new house again, money is coming in this summer and perhaps there will be enough left to build some more on it. The foundation was put in ten years ago, but nothing much but plan after plan has happened since. Which has been good in some ways, because those plans have slowly thru the years developed into the ultimate house plan. I've lived in that house for years now in my mind and walked around the rooms to see how they will feel. I even know where the furniture will go. I set out there on the empty foundation right where it will be gazing at my so fantastic view. Actually, it's one big room. 26 feet by 36 feet. When I get that done, I will put another little room on the side for the bath and laundry, I don’t want any walls dividing up that big space. I'm putting a wrought iron fence around the bed area, waist high, to keep the dogs off it, but it wont close things in much. I want the feeling of a large area around me to stir around in and feel the space. The red bricks for it were delivered quite a few years back when an American brick company here failed. They were little more than the price of delivery. So they wait, along with the tin roofing that came at a tremendous bargain. It will have styrofoam in the rafters to stop the heat and cold. All this is carefully thought out because it is what cost the very least and is available here. True, the house won´t last down thru the ages but it will last my lifetime. All the windows will be second hand, which I already have collected up much of. I don't have the front door yet, it has to be really special because my last houses ended up with having no real front and no real front door. I might even get a doorbell, but I don’t know what for, as it sits in the middle of my land surrounded by a chain link fence. Very private, all the passing people see is the backs of my buildings. I dislike front doors that strangers can come up and knock on and you have to open to see who it is. I like to keep them waiting at my big iron gates, greeted by my dogs.
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So, maybe with luck I can bit by bit have the cement poured for the floor, how solid and good that would feel, I could sweep it. It feels so good to spend so little on it, make it so simple. So much waste can go into homes, I don't like big houses, lots of rooms. And besides, I like to see my living in front of me, all gathered together, not divided up into walls and doors. My kitchen will be in one corner, where the view looks towards the sea and mountains. Galley style, small and efficient. I don’t store much, so I don't need many cabinets. Just one big floor to ceiling pantry for whatever ends up in there. Simple living is done best in simple lodgings.
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I'm not sure what I will do with the storage shed turned house I live in now when I move out. Maybe give it to the dogs, or maybe rent it out if times get harder. It is very small and does not face the view right and it is not really finished up either and a little sagging to one side. Once your in, its harder to work on it. But it is always good to have extra buildings, you never know what could come up. Like the work shop building, it just keeps growing and sheds pop up all over for one thing or another. Then there is the little house for my mother too. That is all completed tho, she likes things that way. I don’t mind living in an unfinished reality, it sort of keeps things open. Time sure slips by, ten years so far here, I am always so grateful I can look out my windows and see the home I will have someday. No sense in getting in a hurry, life is plenty good in the inbetween. And one of the nicest things, it's all paid for as I go. The property paid for too when I bought it at a very affordable price. I can't imagine living with payments to meet, what a loss of freedom. So I anxiously wait to see the worker and my husband stir up by hand those first bags of cement to put in the far corner where the view is best. I will have to get an umbrella.

How Would You Know?

2006-07-21T14:15:00.000-07:00

I don’t get much communications with Americans, and when I do they interest me as a slice of what that society is made up of. Today two have been brought to my attention. The first, Patrick Henry, a rather clever writing young man, which he shows off to his best effort here on his site, psychic head. I gave a brief answer on his comment section but felt more was due his efforts. Plus he has been good enough to comment on my blog, the July 6th post, The Consumers. He brought up several good questions, ones quite commonly asked. I will post that here in its entirety because I felt it an important exchange. Good things to learn.

Patrick Henry: You point out things which may or may not be true, depending on your point of view. What do you suggest to fix the 'problem'? If America is so bad, why do the citizens continually send money and aid in the form of food, clothing, medicines, time, etc. to less-fortunate countries? Every one of your posts and the Far-Left Queue talk about how bad America (the U.S.A.) is and unfair to the rest of the world. From reading your posts, it appears there are more personal issues with you than you admit to your readers and possibly yourself. It is easier to blame and denigrate than offer solutions.
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My Reply: Hola PH, good questions. I don't think there is an ¨Answer¨ to the¨fix the problem" question, as you suggest. To many problems, to many answers. For myself, my part, I live simply, by choice. You ask about Americas gifts to the needy. In order for America to pull off its atrocities it must have a front. Not just for the world, but for its own gullible people to swallow. Give some hand outs one place and destroy another, or do it at the same time and place. It's the method. Take what you want.
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My blog is about Evil America, so of course that is what I write about. I do it for people like you who are interested in another view, one not available to them. By the way, Further Left is the name of my other blog, The Far Queue, a very talented writer about all life. But I do like the name Far-Left Queue. I am sure there are personal issues, admitted or not, but that’s not important here or what I am here for. Its not a confessional diary, just a simple blog on bad America.
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All I can do is set an example by my life of how it should be and pass on my truths and views for others to draw their conclusions from. Which you seemed to have done. Don't forget to keep an open mind, there is always more to be learned than what you think you know at the moment.
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And then the second comment directed at me from the ever attempting humorous Elastic Waistband Lady: Papi has his own theory about La Zatikia, who was born in America, by the way. He speculates that her Mama was knocked up by some sleazy white guy, likely during a one night stand, and she holds all white men accountable for her abandonment and neglect as a child. Of course, Papi's opinion is purer than yours or mine Patrick, because of his brown skin and Spanish accent.
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This one represents well one of the deep problems corrupting America. The descent of their societies, and in particular women, their minds into their gutter. I have found many American women to equate equality with the ability to talk foully. It is a sad approach. A shame they cannot see how bad they make themselves look with this kind of talk. It degrades women worldwide. But that is the trouble with America, so much of the small stuff they do harms so much when it is done on such a large scale. No wonder family falls apart there and their children turn violent and brought up to be soldiers for the cause of more more more.
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And it seems like maybe Papi´s skin is getting a little whiter and his accent a little less the longer he stays in America, he should not have left his heart behind.
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So, that is today's lesson for me on The American Way, if you can't speak the truth, make up a lie. That goes for both my new American followers and their words dedicated to me. Thank you both for proving my opinion.

Why America?

2006-07-10T15:42:00.000-07:00

America, America, the words I have heard echo thru all my travels and all my stays. What else could this mean but the United States of America. The people are called Americans, they are known by no other title .United Statesians, USA ´ers? If asked their nationality, they must reply either where they are from or say American. God Bless America. This statement was meant to mean United States of America, certainly not the rest of the continent, being that the Americans have their own gods that bless them. When speaking of this country one has choices of what to call it. But somehow saying, The United States of America is to much of a mouthful. Just like Mexico, its real name is United States of Mexico, but no one says all that, just simply Mexico. To call it by initials, The USA, is easy, but just a short cut and not a name. To say The Americas means the continet and its countries. That one country took the name of all does not mean it does not still belong to the others also and just as much. But say America and what comes to mind is the land between those over guarded borders. A name of a continent, north central and south, the name of a country, and the name of a people.

This is the way it seems to me and why I call it America.

The Consumers

2006-07-06T09:42:00.000-07:00

Is it wrong to benefit from wrong? Can an American live in luxury and not be part of the guilt of his country? They think that disapproving their government in words excuses them. They can hate their president and they can be against their wars but of what use that when they still go ahead and live the life style. America is a land that is perfecting it for the use of the rich. A breeding ground for the greedy and privileged. Their whole system is geared that way. And even most of what they call their poor are rich in comparison. It is only the ones that could not fit this system, that fell out of the direction of it that suffer from want. Follow the rules and go along with the rape and ruin of whatever it takes to make it go and they have it made for themselves. Talking bad about their country makes them feel good. Good because it changes nothing, just the continuation of their greedy needs. Most actually love their country and are proud of it and themselves. How can a nation be proud with such a recent history of such violence and deceptions that still contaminates so much. What they love is their possessions and their security. Even in their prisons they are taught to be taken care of. Always this dependency that their government creates to keep them trapped. Their lifestyle is extremely out of proportion to what a person can use compared to what our earth has to give. If everyone lived like Americans the world would already be used up. And daily, they just consume and consume, like there is not end to it. They are a nation of fat people worrying about eating to much. Their minds are taken by what they can get or do next when they have not even paid for the last excursions into excess. And these people, the Americans, they feel it is their right and they complain it is not enough. Worshipping their rich and imitating them. Living on credit, like life is a game. These people have had their minds arranged since birth and all the processes after to think of themselves first. The brainwashing trick of narrowing their view down to what they want and who they think they are. They don’t see the world suffering, only in faddish conversation, just to be able to say, see, there I do care and I read the headlines too, I know everything. But they don't really care, they are too dulled by what they have become for that. If they did care the burden of the guilt such a nation should really feel would crush them. If they really cared they could not so consciously overindulge. They would not be proud of their stolen name America, it would represent the oppression and the horror it really is. They would hang their heads in shame, or raise up and revolt and refuse to live the good life at such a price. America is an evil place, and benefits from that rot a persons soul and mind. You can see it in the corruption of their society, of their family. It is a sick country, at the brink of its demise. Yes, it is wrong to benefit from wrong, just watch America, and you will know that to be a truth.

Keeping the Balance

2006-07-04T10:57:00.000-07:00

My brother brought me down a new set of dishes, they are very nice to look at. I did not need new dishes, mine are fine and I like them very much, collected from all over, so many colors. But he says its always good to get something newer and besides, they all match. And my birthday is next month and he had to get something. I went to put them in my cupboard and the dinner plates are wider than the shelves. He says his dishes are that big, but they fit. His wife had him put in new cabinets on the last kitchen remodeling especially to hold this newer bigger size. They give the message you need to make more food to fill them up. I like small meals. I picture fat Americans with heaped plates, eyes shining, lips parting. These dishes will be hard to get use to, I can tell. More more more and always bigger. I am lucky I am poor and can't afford cabinet doors yet, so it does not hurt if they stick out. I am wondering if I should make more coffee in the morning, so the cup does not look only half full, kind of stingy. But I only like so much coffee and that’s that. Oh yes, it's not a cup it’s a mug. Such a descriptive word. But perhaps I should not complain, because I too benefit from American excess. It is time for my brothers windows to be changed out to the latest type. His new ones will be so much more efficient, and they really do look like wood. He will bring me down the old windows and I will store them for my real house I am going to finish building out there on the rest of my property. Someday. Provided they don’t get the glass broke out of them from storms, rocks, dogs and various accidents, like the windows from the last time he replaced his. I've noticed its hard to care for windows when they are not in the wall. But I will try, free windows, that’s nice. As I sit here writing this and wondering about it all, I wonder how well oversize dishes will store.

Shopping Trip

2006-06-22T11:17:00.000-07:00

I went to the grocery store yesterday. A little bit more money than usual had come in and I had $500 pesos to spend anyway I wanted to on supplies. Its called El Mendado here, the weeks supply of groceries, when you can afford that much, or the days supply when that is how you live. That’s where most of peoples paychecks here in Mexico go to, food. It had been a while since I shopped in a store of any size, this one being not one of those that is a threat to mind and body upon entering, but a medium one. Calimax, there is a chain of them here. This one is right off tourist row downtown, but they stay to their own street, so very few adventurers come in. I skipped the fruit and vegetable section right off, since I buy fresh from the Indian vendors who set up on the street corners in my village. Then on to the dairy section. I picked out some milk, since the carton was almost empty at home. No cheese because I buy goat cheese from a neighbor. I checked out the yogurt, but the flavors sounded scary and there was no plain. I didn’t get any sour cream, which I use on vegetables instead of butter because I already had one I got from the little market a quarter block down from me. It has one aisle and a big refrigerator, unlike some of the smaller stores here where you stand at the window and point what you want. Then on to paper supplies. I picked out colored napkins, that was a treat, I don’t use paper towels but I found a new bright green sponge. And then on into the canned food section. I put four cans of beans in the cart, then took out two, how many can beans can you use when your use to making your own. Noticing that I was a good deal of the way thru the store and had hardly anything I went up and down this aisle again. I found canned whole tomatoes that I could use in case the tomatoes were to ripe from the vendor and I did not want to buy them, I could still make what I was going to. There was such a variety of salsas I finally decided on three, one for the bottle and the buffalo on the label, the other because it was so inexpensive and the third because it was what I used anyway. I didn’t bother with the bread, tortilla and cereal row. Cereal always reminds me of cow feed and I don’t like it. I prefer fresh fruit and bakery products. I go almost every evening to the bakery right down the hill from me to buy hot rolls, whatever is just out of the oven, and fresh milk. And every morning an old man pushes a wheelbarrow by with fresh tortillas, so no need to leave the house for them. This being a modern store it had its meats already cut and packaged on display. I dislike this type of meat and distrust where it came from. I go to a meat market where they raise the meat themselves and you just tell them how much you want. And the rest of the time I buy fish down at the harbor or the fishermen on their way home. Then I went thru the store one more time, just because I was there and thought I might as well make the most of it. I bought a brand of soap I never used before, it was on sale in little buckets. Buckets are useful. A jar of mayonnaise, although I had not run out yet and some mustard, which I have not had in years. Not sure what I will use it for, it makes me think of hot dogs. At the check out stand I received about three fourths of my money back. So still feeling rich I tipped the old man sacking groceries well and the old man guarding the parking lot. That was nice. Maybe if I don’t go broke before then I will have the leftover money still to use next time I want to do a shopping at the big store. It could last a long time this way.

Animal Shows

2006-06-09T16:11:00.000-07:00

I went to the dog show yesterday. They are still quite rare here. It was put on by Aquas Caliente, the famous dog race track here in Tijuana. It and all the other casinos are owned by Hank Rhon, the mayor of Tijuana. He is an animal lover. His office is filled with animals, parrots and monkeys, dogs, big cats. And at his race track he keeps enough animals to be called a private zoo. Lots of them are gifts and rescues. There are hundreds of sheds and stables and barns. But its not set up like a zoo, its all very casual and you have to explore around to discover all the types. I was noticing how just common chain link fence is used to keep in the lions and tigers, I thought it took more than that. My husband and the worker and I were walking between two rows of cats that seemed to be mostly sleeping. Then half way down we came to a cage where one leaped up and charged the fence and hit it with his paw. Suddenly the next cage four tigers crouched and acted like they were creeping up on my dog, staring at her. All three of us ran back down the narrow dirt path and far from those cats, terrified. But my dog was never scared, I suppose because its in her heritage to hunt jaguars. She got her championship papers this time around, next she will go for grand champion. I have always had strong feelings of revulsion for "beauty contests" and a heavy dislike of dog clubs until I moved to Mexico and learned to see another side of this part of the dog world. Not that I have changed my mind on the American version, I still compare it to Hitler and his master race. The fact is, breeding weaknesses into dogs in order to maintain certain looks is a crime against nature. And of course America has taken this love of dogs and wanting to maintain them and taken it to far, so far that it is a menace more than anything else. But here in Mexico, all this is brand new, this pride in a dog and realizing its worth. I support these shows in every way I can. It is a civilizing factor for a people to learn to respect animals. When a person can care about the suffering of an animal it makes them so much more aware of the suffering of mankind. It develops a side to a person that enables them to look beyond themselves. When I first moved here to this part of Mexico there was no dog food. Most dogs were just fed tortillas and scraps and left to fend for themselves. Now, over 25 years later all the markets sell dog food. Even the little ones in handfuls in a plastic sack. There use to be one vet only, he was very old fashion, now there is a dozen or more really good vets and a vet hospital. It makes a child different growing up being good to animals, instead of immune to their sufferings, or causing it. I think this is a really important thing and that is why I have always worked with people and their animals and am in that field now. Being in touch with animals opens the mind and leads to a better life. It has been very satisfactory seeing these improvements here.

News from Venezuela

2006-06-07T10:10:00.000-07:00

The post below is from a relative, just back from Venezuela. It shows a side of this country not often seen.

Venezuela is so relaxed. When was the last time you EVER thought you could relax around cops?! The Venezuelan military [all over the place] are young men and women from the barrios who operate like the Peoples Liberation Army did in China in the 1950's, 60's, 70's. They talk to people, help people carry their groceries; place telephone calls for you if you look the slightest bit confused. They are the ones who went and got President Chavez when the right wing kidnapped him from the presidential palace. The army parachuted onto the island off the north coast of Venezuela where he was being held. Now this is impressive. They had to go get the plane, etc, etc.
We traveled around in the interior of Venezuela for two weeks, on a bus, stopping at places our guides chose, lived in. The communes we visited were cooperative villages that are now self sufficient, completely, and they make things for Cuba, other nations and give quantities away. Cuba sent 20,000 doctors and Venezuela is just seeing their first graduating class of doctors coming home from Cuba.
We heard 7 women speak about their group of 14 who one day went and took over a middle class medical clinic, with machetes! They went in and told the rich doctors to leave. Loud but productive conversation. And THEN they phoned the military for back up..
We went to a chocolate collective. Same family that has farmed this land [42 hectares] for 350 years. It was a slave colony originally. What beautiful Black people, just awesome. They speak English, French, Spanish and Portuguese, and Creole. We saw cattle that were a cross between local mountain stock and French Brahama cattle; very hardy; very good looking; docile and well adapted to hot climes.
All the dogs look the same; wild type. Hogs, chickens, etc, have all been improved for high yield. The farms have small lakes that supply water everywhere. Can't make big lakes [but there is a huge one in central Venezuela] because the hard rains wash everything. It has the highest rainfall in the western hemisphere
Oil: Venezuela is building a pipeline from their oil fields/refineries, to Buenas Aries. The oil will be exchanged for other products; no even exchange expected.
When Haiti recently inaugurated Rene Preval as President, a tanker of Venezuelan oil, which had pulled into their harbor the day before, was unloaded. The Haitians don't have to make any payments for 2 yrs., then they have 25 years to pay for it, at 1% interest. that's a gift.
We visited a factory, really a commune, where shoes and farming clothes were being manufactured. We saw 10,000 boxes of work shoes ready to be sent to Cuba. Venezuelan people have health care in their neighborhoods. Every few blocks there is a brick round house, with a visiting room on the first floor and above is where the Cuban doctor lives. He is on call at all times; does workshops every day about preventative medicine.
I saw maybe 10 old people during the whole trip, other than the bunch of oldsters who were part of the tour. Dengue fever, yellow fever, cholera, malaria and those are just the ones I know about. Not a place I could live, I don't think. But the Venezuelan people we saw, in many towns, were healthy, not over weight and hard workers. The teenagers were awesome: attentive, helpful, hard workers, proud of their lives.
Venezuela makes their own trucks, buses, motorcycles, bicycles, all motor driven things.
Oil: Venezuela is cleaning up that huge lake in the interior, that the oil companies from outside, for years, had just dumped in. The govt. is lifting huge barges that just sank when they couldn't travel anymore; finding barrel graveyards and bringing these things to the surface; filtering escaping oil eddies, blown by the wind.
We were there when the World Social Forum was happening. Went to a workshop, featuring about 15 speakers over a few hours, giving views on how to build examples for extracting and refining oil in an environmentally considerate way. It's not new science; the govts. just have to make the effort.

I´ll Never Return

2006-06-03T10:55:00.000-07:00

"I'll Never Return"

By Meena (1957-1987)

founding leader of

Revolutionary Association

of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA)

I'm the woman who has awokenI've arisen and become a tempest through the ashes of my burnt children

I've arisen from the rivulets of my brother's bloodMy nation's wrath has empowered me

My ruined and burnt villages fill me with hatred against the enemy,

I'm the woman who has awoken,

I've found my path and will never return.

I've opened closed doors of ignorance

I've said farewell to all golden bracelets

Oh compatriot, I'm not what I was

I'm the woman who has awoken

I've found my path and will never return.

I've seen barefoot, wandering and homeless childrenI've seen henna-handed brides with mourning clothes

I've seen giant walls of the prisons swallow freedom in their ravenous stomach

I've been reborn amidst epics of resistance and courage

I've learned the song of freedom in the last breaths, in the waves of blood and in victory

Oh compatriot, Oh brother, no longer regard me as weak and incapable

With all my strength I'm with you on the path of my land's liberation.

My voice has mingled with thousands of arisen women

My fists are clenched with the fists of thousands compatriots

Along with you I've stepped up to the path of my nation,

To break all these sufferings all these fetters of slavery, Oh compatriot,

Oh brother, I'm not what I was

I'm the woman who has awoken

I've found my path and will never return.

Keeping it in mind

2006-05-31T16:14:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I feel it slipping. My hatred of America, my horror of it and my disgust. Here in a country where life is good, freedom is real and principals still count it is easy to forget the corruption that is right up there just north of my border. The border is a festering scar, but better a separation from America and its creeping ways, then wide open to their total abuse. Open it for work, but don't jeopardize the Americanization of this country, what has rubbed off already is destructive enough. But this is not my life, I don't live this, this view of America and its underhanded murdering ways must be searched out. They try to hide their dirty truths behind words of brainwash and glory to their gods but if you watch a little, add it up, its real apparent. But why should I care, my life is good, I live good, and where I live is good. Is it because I was born in America and am angry at my own people, or perhaps because an evil of that scale overpowers the whole world and is a threat to all. Reasons can be so many.
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I feel hating America is something all caring people should do. Hate evil, what else is that emotion for but to cause an abhorrence. To think that hate means killing, revenge, acts of destruction is wrong. One can hate calmly and cleanly and deeply and do nothing more than feel it and voice it. It is a force that is in humans to use and to be told we are not allowed to weakens us. So does turning the other cheek.. America should be hated, and that force, like love when it is used right, will build and overwhelm if let be. Hate without evilness. If we do less than this for a country that is murdering people daily for their own money driven agenda than we are part of that evil.
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So as easy as it would be to just slip into the goodness in life I must retain a part of myself, to give my hate to America or I have failed to take a stand. I think about it now, that land that has warred, murdered, raped and destroyed for what it has, never changing, always evolving into something worse. My constant hope, may it do itself in with its excesses and let the world move on.

"So many gods, so many creeds,so many paths that wind and wind while just the art of being kind is all the sad world needs".

--Ella Wheeler Wilcox, American poet, 1896

The Event

2006-05-30T11:37:00.000-07:00

Sunday I went to an event here, east of where I am, inland in the valley of Gaudalupe. It is known as the wine country now. Dia Del Caballo , horses, art and wine. A great combination in beautiful surroundings. A big ranch in the middle of grape vineyards out in the middle of nowhere. Two thousand people showed up. Even tourist bus loads. And they all came down the miles of narrow bumpy dirt roads and had to follow the map of all the turns till they finally got there. I'm not use to crowds so the noise that many people make surprised me. We were under Arabian style tents, maybe they hold the sound in. My booth this time had my puppies in a big pen with hay, they looked so good. I felt sort of overwhelmed by all the people wanting to look at them and waiting in line to get information on them. I even sold one of my book to an elderly German couple who did not speak English very well. When I wrote the book, it was my first, a practice one and I based it on my own life, because that seemed easy enough. But now I must tell people when they ask what it is about that it is about my life, not just a story. Sort of an exposed feeling, but I can't think of anything else to say. I still can't get use to the part they want me to sign it, it never really comes to me as what to say.
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One of the best parts about the event was the way the Mexicans were dressed. This was an event for rich people as it cost $20 to just get in. Women's cowboy boots come in so many styles, and so do their hats. And the men had on shirts with horses and ranch scenes and pearl buttons and huge, really huge, belt buckles. The children too, all decked out like modern day cowboys. Then there was the Indians in comparison who looked like they rode in right out of history. The performers on the horses had on traditional outfits, the big sombreros and spurs, pants with silver buttons down the legs. Flamenco dancers in so many colors and their hair done up in combs and shoes with taps. There must have been five hundred tables spread out all over with people drinking wine and eating all kinds of food cooked up there from all the food booths. Drinking but no drunks.
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This event was to benefit the children here with downs syndrome and I donated part of my puppy sales to them, so this felt good too. These children came and looked at my puppies and I let them hold them and have their photos taken with them. It was strange to see how they took to each other.
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Such a positive day with so many beautiful sights, even nature put on her display of such perfect early summer weather. My husband and my sixteen years old worker and his two eleven and twelve years old brothers were with me. It was very wonderful to be able to witness this and being part of it we were there from early morning to sunset and did not miss a thing. I even got to seem my friends the Indians, down from the hills selling their baskets and artwork, and that is very special to see them always.

Viva Mexico, life is so good here.

My Nightmare

2006-05-23T11:14:00.000-07:00

My sixteen years old worker brought a movie tape to me yesterday to watch. My husband gave him a video machine for Christmas and he and the neighbors trade off tapes all over the neighborhood. This particular one he said is very popular. The Day After Tomorrow, I think that is what it was called. The tidal wave over New York looked very real and I admit it was exciting seeing the statue of liberty drowning but the best part, and the reason to be watching it, is when all the evacuated Americans make a run for the Mexican Border. This few minutes was an attention getter here. Hoards of pushing shoving rude Americans demanding entrance into Mexico as their own country failed them. Ever since Americas nine eleven day I have had this fear, this mental picture of that very thing. Even dreams about it. They would be coming here by the thousands, for one reason or another. Seeing it on a Hollywood film was very visual. And then nature herself added to it by being a heavy cloud cover day here and so very unusually cold and then an unexpected storm in the night. Wind and rain from all directions, very violent and mixed right in with my dreams. The thought of America come this way in a panic is a very bad thought because I live only 75 miles from the border. Americans don't like to hear no for an answer and feel those who have less than them have less rights so I know how they would be acting. Sometimes Hollywood predicts future truths just by following where things will likely lead. I sure hope this time it never comes true. All those Americans, so many of them, living out what they helped to cause. I'm glad I don't watch movies hardly ever and sleep better because of it. Even though moving a lot further south might be better, you never know.

Adaptable

2006-05-18T10:35:00.000-07:00

Being an American in Mexico makes for a life where you are always aware of the fact that you are different. Even in the midst of discovering how alike your are. Eventually one becomes not really an American, but not a Mexican either. Drifting in a rather free spot somewhere in between. Between cultures. It is a good place, if your not looking for confines. It is good to shed what is not really you, but just a nationality, leave it behind. I think I would always choose to live where I was different, its very good.

It is true that I am like most of my neighbors, just trying to live day by day. Unlike almost every single American here, my husband nor I bring in American money thru some American source that is sent to us. Americans don’t come here to work, not unless they are high up in some company with a very American wage and a very American place to live. In the 26 years I have lived here, we have had to work for our living. This has been the great experience, hard but what made Mexico open up. Living it as the people do, the daily struggle for existence, the challenge to make it. On the inside and competing.

Being close to the edge lets you look at life closely too, there are few disguises and smoke screens. One of the better ways to make a living in Mexico, as many do, is to have many ways to do it, flexible. One can really be creative and free this way, doing what can be done at the time. It is important how we make our money, since most of us seem to have to take a lot of our time to do that. This process, making a living, should stem from what you do in life anyway enhanced to the point where it makes profit. One needs to like what they do or they are compromised. Money made from regretted effort can spoil that which it touches.

It is good to live in a country where one is free to be poor and free to enjoy it and free to choose what they like best to survive and free to be not one thing or the other. So much space.

Blogging

2006-05-16T17:11:00.000-07:00

My mind keeps wandering back over a post written on a blog I enjoy reading. Its about writing blogs and contact. There is such a difference in presenting oneself to people between here in cyberspace, or face to face in many ways. All we have is our thoughts, flowing down from our minds sorted into the order of our words methodically typed out on a screen to send off. But that process perhaps distills a clear stream for many. Whoever we write as, here in cyberspace must be one of ourselves, so then much is according to how divided we are. Some fool themselves thinking they are doing it to fool their public. Which is more real, that within, or that without when you are looking at yourself? Talking in person with people supports so much more complications to hit on reality and not get side tracked. Here we are communicating more to ourselves than anyone else, the audience becomes vague in the effort. It can be very personal with no one to face, no personality in front of us to bounce the words off of and watch and listen to responses and judge opinions. We can just sort of rattle loose inside ourselves. Provided we look inward, but some only see what others might see of them, the cover, and they work on that. But for many, the cover is all they are, so this is true too, the act.
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And as to knowing people here, we can know them, if we are selective. But like anywhere, if we collect them up and try to put people where we need and want them, it will be disaster. This space should be an extra one, to further oneself, not a means to fill a hole that has always gapped. Peoples essence comes through, you can feel them, and if you don’t let your needs get in the way, you can tell who they are. But like in life, friendship is rare and a gift when it does come, internet or not. If a person is honest with themselves it comes through anywhere. Writing on blogs makes another extension of ourselves and we can make that as meaningful or not, as we desire. Its all according to what you want to fill your life with.

Bad Man

2006-05-13T12:54:00.000-07:00

Put a Stake

Through Freud's Heart

Asia Times Article. I like this article on Freud. It holds many of the same opinions I have of him, so naturally I like it. I never can understand in a world were enlightenment is available how the majority of people sway towards someone as off balance as this man was, and still is. The mans mind was twisted and he made a lifestyle of it, a way to see the world. Sex and drugs sell though, so this could be a reason for his popularity. People tend to stray away from thoughts that one should guide oneself and that the power comes from within, not from who you follow. What if we were not followers but found our own paths and realized our own truths. There would be more room for harmony because real truths are simple and the natural conclusion to come too. So many false leaders and people hanging on their distorted words, trying to force them on what they do not fit till all is obscured. How can we live right if mankind allows themselves these views of men who could not even solve their own problems and became obsessed with them and passed that obsession on. I am glad to see such a fine article detailing the crimes against balance of this man and his followers. I hope many that should, read it

The Book Event

2006-05-08T18:02:00.000-07:00

I took my book to the American book fair Saturday. It was a book signing for the authors who live in my area and write of Mexico. I am trying to sort out what to think of the whole thing. Beautiful resort right on the ocean and lots of plants and flowers, exotic. A nice place to launch my book, along with the cyber world. An American event, and I noticed that alcohol was a major theme. A full bar, wine tasting booths and in the evening tequila tasting. I don’t drink. I could tell they were getting very tipsy towards the end when I left early, loud and friendly and they have an odd way of making jokes right off and your suppose to respond in kind. Which I never learned how too. It was my first full on gringo even in 25 years here, so it was kind of like culture shock. I observed them.
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My husband has many ways of making money here in a country that is hard to make money in. Unlike most Americans, we must make our living here, no other money. If one business is lagging usually one is doing ok. So my book booth was more then just my book. It is also an information booth on these and our friends businesses. What was interesting as we passed out this information in an attempt to attract new customers, I was selling them a book that will offend them most likely. A little to much talking bad about Americans, although its very mild. Courting them while bashing them. It should be interesting to see how they react. The worst they can do is not give us our business, and who cares, it's just money.
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I had to sign the books that were sold, I had no idea what to say, so I simply said, enjoy and signed my name. I think I should have dated it, but did not think of that until today.
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I have noticed this before. These Americans are Animal Lovers and into animal rights. It seems like all of them are, like a fad. They worry over the street dogs and the worse the condition the more they get into the description and the disgust. They take great pride in finding these dogs and healing them. They form organizations and clubs. It sort of has a religious feel to it, their belief in it making them better people, like atoning for some American sin. Killing people in Iraq and saving dogs in Mexico, such an odd people. They don’t do that much for their own homeless on the streets. Some dogs just don’t have it so good, that’s a fact.
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But back to book, it was good to sell it, that’s what I wrote it for, to help make a living here. Next book though, I don't think I will hold back and just tell the more digestible stories, there are much deeper truths to reveal.

Prison of Nationalism

2006-05-04T20:12:00.000-07:00

It is hard to tell where one leaves off what they left behind and becomes not that. I feel my roots, they can't be transferred even if my mind and body are elsewhere.

Schooling, it clings. Held captive. Threats on parents you must have your child there, or else. Everyone must get brainwashed, no child left with a clean mind. It is more of a process of unteaching what you naturally learn, than teaching what you need to learn. Hard experience to shake off.

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Left when I was seventeen. I loved the orient, I saw life is whats around you, and that’s so changeable. A few visits and stays back where I had left served to remind me it was not real. False life, empty lies of America. Then Mexico, 25 years now. So good. But I'm still me, but that is good too. But all of it is me, so I am American, in parts. It is sort of like a crime, but sort of like a victory, to overcome it. A lifetime of seperating it. Can one escape oneself?

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I confess to being a proud example of what I am not. I have been thinking all this week, so full of boycotts and demonstrations, of what it means. This singling out, pushing down, putting aside, of one type over another. After all, we are just all people, so what.

Target

2006-04-24T11:10:00.000-07:00

Now more than ever it is uncomfortable to be an American. You can leave your country for its wrongs and let another adopt you, but you cannot leave your nationality behind. It is shameful to be an American, one feels part of a dirty crime. At least before their nine eleven day one just felt part of a general hoax and the image of the tourist while in other lands. And with attitude and looks be able to manage to say, I am American, yes, but not one of them. With this one could still feel good about themselves and those you came across felt and knew this. You were accepted for who you were. But this America as Evil is to big of a thing to overcome. If your American, your American and your face and voice represent that horror.

I feel very sad that I have lost my middle ground, where I could be not this or that, because it did not really matter. But what does matter is evil. And America is evil. It leads the way. The oppression of mankind for the gain of the few has been a conquest since one man decided himself better than the next. Not until this new century has technology and trail and error made it possible. America was poised just right for this occasion. The American people have been sold out and sacrificed to this cause. They think they sit on top of the world because they have big paychecks and so many many possessions, but they do not realize the emptiness of their lives or their pursuits. And they do not add up the price that is really paid for what they feel is the best life.

I am part of war and greed and oppression, that is my heritage and cannot be undone. America makes me dirty. I am a reminder, a messenger with my blood of these crimes. No matter my actions or my thoughts or who I really am. To be American is to be tainted. How can I tell the world I am sorry with all my being for what my country does. It could have been a leader to better and fairer things with its position, but it did not. I chose differently, but my birth traps me. America the trap. Yes, very sad. So many reasons to dislike America, and some are personal.

Dog Holacaust

2006-04-09T15:58:00.000-07:00

The Killing Fields Of Denver

Genocide Of A Breed

It is part of Americas racist war mongering mentality that makes them turn against even their own pets. America is practicing its nazi beliefs on its animals, singling out certain breeds and killing them off. People are having to leave their homes and towns and move on trying to find places where the authorities will not treat them like crimminals because of their dog choice. This is getting very extreme when the law can snatch your dog up and murder it or snatch you up for having it. In America, if you don't walk a narrow line your going to find trouble, follow the rules or else it won't look like freedom.

Here is an article telling of one city out of manys experience with these Breed Specific Laws.

Complaints & Comparisons

2006-04-07T11:15:00.000-07:00

My answer below, to a post I read on a site for Americans living in Mexico. I can't answer there as they do not let differing opinions in.

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Americans in their endless pursuit of complaints and comparisons have now come up with the idea that Mexico and America should have the same policies on immigration. In America, when you get your papers you are without limits, you can become a politician or a priest or a failure or both or anything else. In Mexico, if you weren't born here, then you never can have equal papers or rights. Mexico is for the Mexicans. America is for the immigrant, ever since the Indians lost it. That’s just how it is.

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So this new rush of Americans to Mexico for good living at their beloved cheap prices is saying things like "how about removing the obnoxious restrictions on gringos buying land near Mexico's coast? It is kindof hard to take seriously all the rhetoric on friendship and partnership amidst such blatant discrimination". Don’t they realize every country must do things differently. If Mexico let everybody in and they could do whatever they wanted there would be no more Mexico. Just another mess like the Untied States of America. There only hope now is these new immigrants do better with their country.
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"There isn't much wrong with Mexico that capitalism and cleaner politics can't fix. What Mexico needs is freer markets, less corruption, and the rule of law. What's good for Iraq is also good for Latin America. Two great people movements, going in opposite directions, will lead to a better life for Mexicanos here, and there as well". Another comment by an American living what he calls the high life on an American income in a country where that is a fortune. Will capitalism bring the simple poor mans farm or family business back to him, or will it just continue to kill that very good and balanced way of life? Free markets basically mean open to be taken advantage of. And corruption he says, because there is a pay off system here, mordida. How dare a country that kills cultures and people world wide and destroys their own government and society call others corrupt. A country that spends most of its budget on wars. And how can its citizens after witnessing the useless terrors of Iraq claim Mexico needs the same? What do these Americans know of a better life when they themselves can so easily accept the evil of their country? Family respect and dignity and the love of freedom are still strong here in Mexico and all but faded out of existence in America.

It's Good This Way

2006-03-27T16:10:00.000-08:00

One needs to have land, a little piece to borrow from the planet, for your lifetime. Otherwise your going to be paying someone for a place to call your own and regularly owing for it. That’s a major loss of freedom. Then the next thing you need is the freedom to do what you want on that piece of land. Build a life on it. This should be anybodies right. The property should be a price that you can pay at one time so that one does not have the imbalance of payments. If your rich this reality does not apply, because then its only a matter of money, but if your poor this is very real and very right and good. An empty piece of land. Like an artists canvas that your going to paint your lifes story on. Bring what you have and make the start. Starts arent that important because they are so far from the end, which holds all the accomplishments. So, cardboard shack, tent, trailer, or even the open air if need be. And before any of that, get the plants in, so they grow with it all. This is the place your life will be.

It's good to be in a house that grows.A constantly emergy structure. Its good to do your own work. And it is very good to make it like you want it. Some people are satisfied with a tiny shelter, leaving them close to nature, their time and energy free for other pursuits. And some prefer to keep on building, adding, accumulating, improving. Whats important for this process to feel free and good is to not buy more than you can pay for. A few sacks of cement, a beam or two. So as you look around you, you know you don’t owe for it and it is all yours. Nice new building materials and lots of professional labor may produce a quick eye pleasing result, but the feeling that you didn’t pay for it yet doesn’t feel good.
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Second hand materials are in keeping with the times. We have long ago used up more new than we ever should have. A little at a time. Get a room to get out of the weather and store things in, dig a hole for the wastes, and set up a sheltered spot to cook and wash dishes. Haul in some water and get out the kerosene lanterns. Then, when and if you can, get hooked to the utilities. Thru the years this process produces wonders of creation. If you do your land right, you can use it to make your living from, if you don't have another way. Since you have claimed this piece of earth to be yours for your existence then you should be able to do exactly what you want with it with no one elses say so. Home sweet home.

In modern so called progressive societies where almost all is finished before owning or using it and nothing is paid for fully yet and where for many nothing will ever really be theirs but part of their wages, it leaves an emptyness where freedom should have been. A dead end to construct your own life and no way out. An endless existence of no where to belong, to settle and build and have your freedom.
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The word poor has to much thrown into it. It could mean you only own one car and a little house or it could mean you do not own a thing. And there is so much inbetween those two situations. Poor without poverty, poor with balance, poor and natural. The poor for the most part live right. Their main problems being to protect themselves from the rich. A favorite quote, if the poor lived like the rich the world would already be used up. These overstuffed houses, mini mansions, with all the goodies on credit, meeting the deadline so it doesn’t get taken. Working your life away so that the biggest presentage of your money goes for rent or payments. Juggling, ducking, dodging, playing games to keep afloat. Always wanting whats next because all it does is make a little bit bigger bill. It makes a state of mind that’s like a rat on a treadmill. No center.
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Living right is a great contribution and a worthy life. What more can we do than do our part right. Without abuse or greed, without taking part of what we don't believe in. Maintaining our freedom.

Treading

2006-03-21T16:04:00.000-08:00

Life is good even with the evil swirling around out there. I guess maybe that’s what makes it so worthwhile, it being good. Good is work, like diamond mining, you have got to dig for it. Evil is easy, it just spreads all over, common place as clouds. We aren't born anything, except who we are. And that will go according to what we did. Babies can be evil and hate can be a good thing. Listening to some really great music you can kind of get the rhythm for these kind of things. Over and over again. Nice is a good word. The English version of it just sort of short circuits it a bit though. Amable, simpatico, better in Spanish. Simpatico is something you can wrap around yourself and the world has beauty. Wandering along the coast line, seeing what the high tide pushed up and finding treasures. Warm winds and nights that glow. Soft sounds and coyotes howling, smelling the heat of the hills. You know it's there, evil. Reach out to it, remember what you learned, they are doing bad things. But not in my head, not in my back yard nor home, that’s freedom they aren't going to get from me. Free to be good and have it good and take what you want because what you want is good. It's the shame, the comparison. Good is so good, and evil is so evil and the two are for the taking. Harmony, chaos, corruption, balance. It hurts to rot. Sort of a deteriorating feeling, like life is no good anyway so you might as well. You jump in and don't worry about how to stay afloat, your drowning anyway. They are out there killing, right now, sending their armies out, doing it. Those they kill, they die as I think of beauty and good things. Look at the colors on a peacock, he has twelve different types of feathers to adorn him, why is he so beautiful? Life is good, there's the island out front, drifting in the mist, a swell breaking on the south side, no one lives there just goats running free and happy. I wonder if they know about me. Least we forget, while we wait for our doom, life is very very good, so much beauty, so much awe. It feels so good to be alive, like some rare privilege. Chill nibbling at my warmth, but can never penetrate the core. More beauty than one can fathom, amid all this disaster and tragedy, mine to make my life good while the world suffers. The good life, living good, so good. Why do they do all this evil? They don't need to, it would roll right along without it.

Heavenly Mike

2006-03-19T14:40:00.000-08:00

He came into our lives at the right time. My husband needed a watchman for our home here in Mexico. Due to immigration problems it had become necessary to live elsewhere for awhile and due to land disputes we could not leave our property unguarded or it might get jumped. So it was a dilemma.

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One day as we were driving down the highway pondering on what to do we saw an old man walking down it. My husband said I wonder who that is, not being that many walking on that highway. I told him, its our new guard. He pulled to a stop and asked the man, a hobo and an american, where he was headed. Mike, because it said Heavenly Mike on his baseball cap, said Argentina, I have been walking since I left Florida.

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I told him jump in, I will give you a meal and a place to sleep, I could tell he was an honest man. All he had in the world was in two plastic sacks and he had white hair and clear blue eyes. He stayed almost a year. The only thing he asked of us in return for his guarding was the promise to not overload him. He would look a little shakey and worried when he said it. He said he might turn into a revengefull jackass if that happened.

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So he took over the guard shack and just came out to make the rounds and prowl at night. He never changed his clothes the whole time. He had a warm musky garlicy smell about him, not bad. I gave him new clothes once, but he kept them pressed under his mattress wrapped in plastic. He saved everything, even all his empty cigarette packs. He told me many things about his travels, how everyone was good to him and the police let him pass. House wives feed him, even McDonalds gave him a free hamburger. How he slept on benches and drain pipes and cooked on wood fires. He shared his recipes with me. Flour fried in garlic with catsup, a favorite. And how to use ground coffee six times before giving up on it. He said he was a man with a skillet and to not talk to him about anything that could not be cooked in one, that would be useless. He also told me that most people are pushy crackpots and to beware of the handshakers. He spent lots of time straightening his shack and writing things on tiny pieces of paper that when I saw them never made sense.

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Then we moved back in to our abandoned home, to repair and replace and set it up again. He watched, but stuck to his rule, don’t over load me, so we asked nothing of him. A brave handsome man with a beautiful smile. I did not mind him there. Until he started to answer my questions before I asked them. I would think, who took my dishsoap, and he would say, the kids have the soap to wash the car. Then one day I felt my mind a little invaded, and I thought to myself, that is creepy, I wish he would go away and leave my thoughts alone.

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So he came into the house when my husband returned and said, Well, it is time to get walking, before I turn into a revengefull jackass, again. Argentina waits. He packed a plastic sack, refused money, put his new clothes on and carefully packed the old, laid out all the cigarrette packs on the cot and counted them, then walked away forever, turning back just once, to take off his Heavenly Mike cap and tip it at my husband and I in farewell.

Poor and Proud

2006-03-15T15:49:00.000-08:00

He Who Divides and Shares

is Left with the Best Share

(Old Mexican Proverb)

The word poor means different things for America than it does my country, Mexico. Poor in America means failure and a disgrace that deserves no respect. This is sad because poor should mean just not having much money and nothing to do with the person. Poor in America is associated with the word trash and riffraff and lowlife and never-do-well. Here in Mexico poor means you are a worker and have little money to save as it needs to be spent on daily survival. There is nothing wrong with that, its how it's always been and should be. Living working, making it, but not going beyond what one needs, our share.

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One of the reasons poor in the American way is very sad is because they have been groomed to be misfits and examples, the weak exception that did not make it. Government and society have left no natural place for those who don't want to keep moving higher, or cannot. You can't outlaw a class or type of people, but they have tried. And by outlawing what one needs to be and do in order to live poor and decent, it does not make them disappear. Poor exist, in harmony, or in abuse.

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Poor is natural, it allows one to find the simple in life and make it surround them and fulfill them. Poor is something to be proud of, it means you did not take more than was yours. One can be successful at being poor and make a worthy life of it. But one cannot have this choice in America. You make it good, or you don't, and if you don't your no good. But here in Mexico, it is beautiful, peaceful and balanced. The poor are proud.

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The very essence of America is set up to be rich and richer. It's there in all the details. If one wants to buy small amounts of food and household needs, they cost more. The smaller the more expensive. Here in Mexico one can buy a part of a bag of soap if they cant afford the whole. Toothpastes and aspirins come in such small amounts as needed very cheaply. One cannot hardly find a one burner stove plate, only as gourmet items at fancy prices. Here, one can buy a clay and wire one for just pesos. The banking system is such a con in America to make people participate. I should imagine it is hard to function in America without checks and cards. Here you pay a bill at a bank to the persons or company account and simply fax the receipt it has been done. You don't even need ID. One cannot even buy a used mattress there, it is illegal. And the worst, the poor of America never have a chance for a little bit of land to live their lives on, but here in Mexico, land is free to all the poor who want to use it.

America has made its poor a disgrace, no one or themselves have respect for them and they have so little hope for a future. Many are in jails being used for slave labor. The poor keep getting squeezed, used, oppressed. Their government gives them enough money so they circulate it and are not dead ends, but nothing else to help their lives. This money traps them, belittles them and makes them beggars who loose faith in themselves. The poor here are respected, a force that keeps the country in balance. It protects the family, home and the worker, it makes life right. The freedom to be poor and proud

Harmony and Tolerance

2006-03-01T15:10:00.000-08:00

The below quote is a comment from a friend posted on Furtherleft Forum. I wanted to try my thinking at answering to it. (Thank you sonshine, and I hope you don't mind.)

"I dream of a wand and the power to make peace thats the LaLa land i live in where people are kind caring and giveing to thouse in need .Like if you need food something to do feed them if thay need work give them if that need love hug them if thay need clothes give them if thay need a home a simple shelter help them why cant we live in harmony and tolerance >?????? someone at least ancer me that ?"

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Answers, if there is questions there must be answers, it would seem. But one so much simpler than the other. And questions can have so many answers. But I tend to move toward the simple ones, like you, sonshine, suggest above. Take care of it, provide for it. What is around us is our responsibility. You seem to have the answer to that one. But what good answers if they don't become realities. It takes the many to believe to make that so. Now, the reality is, not caring. Each for their self is what is preached and pushed into the minds.

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For one thing Americans, as an example, are too what they think of as self sufficient. They probably have adopted this attitude to make up for the fact they are so dependant on the unpleasant ease their government provides for them to the point where they rarely need to think outside the bounds. I watch Americans sometimes down here in Mexico. They want to do as much work as they can to build their own house, to prove something to who or what ever. There goes the local labors jobs. They live here rich and mop their own floors. There goes a maids job. They give to red cross, and the man who delivers their water they give all their left overs too and a good tip too. Charity fulfilled, guilt need not be theirs. Building a high threshold to suffering.

*
We don’t know how to take care of our own anymore. With the loss of the family structures strength in modernized people, we step further and further away from it. Our governments do not want us to take care of each other. They would rather provide, so the dependency is on them. People helping each other is a power they can't afford to let free. Modern mans main message seems to be, think of yourself, spend your life on searching for that, there is always more so go after it. And man puts on the blinders and tunes out all that he can that interferes with that pursuit and to hell he says with anyone that gets in the way of it.

*
You ask, sonshine, why we can't live in harmony and tolerance, and my best answer, for today, is, there is no profit in it. No advantage for those who want the advantage. The power greedy.

Take a handful more than your share and you have tipped the balance.

It Could Be

2006-02-24T09:10:00.000-08:00

* *

Everything keeps getting stirred more and more potent. The new ingredients bringing it to a boil that will soon not be able to be contained. Mankind is being driven to another war, more war, continuous war, worse war. As it always has been. Soldiers and workers. Each incident touches off much more now, the reaction much greater. Rubbed sensitive to near any sight. It's the timing now, just insert whatever in at the right place and it explodes.

*
Why shouldn’t mankind head towards its end? But sad that end can't be from loving use and careful maintenance, like that of a well aged respected elder. Endings are so important, they dictate the process to reach them. This ugly ending the few have planned for the many makes life's process sour and for the wrong reasons. And wounded people respond to what is worst around them. It may be true this planet only holds so much for so long. But we can still respect it. Evil men have always ruled so many. People are weak and sell their freedom for a price that threatens their very existence while thinking that is what it takes to get what they want.

*
All of us, either from caring or uncaring, heading into this battle of the future that is here now. It touches every one, as this attack takes on so many faces. One can feel it pressing in on them, impending disaster. What will these evil leaders do with their results once they have gone to far?

*
It can be felt all around one, like a cloak, hanging there heavy. It is happening now. And if you ask what is IT? It is the irretrievable step to the end. To late. The country that claimed it would lead to freedom has sold itself out and the world around it falls in line all to frequently. Everything that is started is always ending, but endings are endless. Why pick this one? It taints our everyday life with the reek of its possibility.

*
Those who accept America in anyway, no matter their location or birth need to know they are at fault also and part of that guilt. America is the worlds worst danger and its worst evil. If we have any hope of a different ending the world must rid itself of this problem in order to face a better future.

*
Untied States of America Must End.

Vanquish Them

2006-02-19T13:02:00.000-08:00

* *
“…the true knight-errant, though he may see ten giants, that not only touch the clouds with their heads but pierce them, and that go, each of them, on two tall towers by way of legs, and whose arms are like the masts of mighty ships, and each eye like a great mill-wheel, and glowing brighter than a glass furnace, must not on any account be dismayed by them. On the contrary, he must attack and fall upon them with a gallant bearing and a fearless heart, and, if possible, vanquish and destroy them.”

– Don Quixote (Chapter VI), by Miguel Cervantes

http://www.esquadraoatari.com/ Click on video, then go to the third one listed. Reason of the Stonge Age.

The Process

2006-02-16T19:39:00.000-08:00

What better word is there for this most recent form of atrocities and crimes against man, but Americanization? I do not give them, the people, credit for advancing to this stage faster than those around them, but know that they have been groomed for it beyond their understanding, by clever men, time and change itself. It has settled there, to breed, this phenomena. What infects America is not unique, each country seems to have its own brand along with whatever dose, or overdose of America it mixes in. All governments contribute to the problem, all societies have those who only care about the self and not the whole. But America is the perfecting ground for this process, the energy that wants to encompass all. It is used and abused by those the world over that have that grip of control that can subdue man to near a machine. You don't have to be American to be in the club. And you don't have to be American to be Americanized. Like many diseases of decay, who knows where they started and where they have spread, but one can easily identify the area of worse concentration that keeps the rest festering. It is plain to see, it is America that is all over everything, all into what it should not, corrupting.
*
One should beware of America, its people and its government, but most of all, beware the process and recognize it in your own country and your own self, it comes in many forms. This type of mind controlling, freedom destroying technique has been in process since man first wanted to enslave his own.
*
Give the people what they think they want, tell them it is good and they are good, then get them to back you in anything without it touching them much, mix it with fear of loosing it all and keep their minds dulled down to not complain too strongly, and you have an obedient productive slave to put to the best purpose for the oppressor. The American Way.

Where Are They Headed?

2006-02-04T11:57:00.000-08:00

Stuff stuff stuff and more stuff, as my friend sonshine comments. How much do we really need. Excess weighs heavy, it is a load. Each object claiming a piece of the owner. So many sink down out of sight in a bog of possessions. They turn into what they have. Defined by their choice of material things. The more you have, the more you are.

*
It has been my experience that less feels much better. I know for Americans they want to spend their big wages or their credit on what makes them feel they are almost as good as the rich and heading that way, but to have that as a goal makes present day life ring empty. If you don't believe in the rich, don't imitate them. There is nothing simple about life in America, like all is a drive that is dialed in for consumption at an astonishing rate. Always on the go, looking for what they need next.

Constant state of change searching for what is supposed the next best thing, the ultimate, the state of the art, perfection, the American Way.

*
Here in Mexico, I live in balance, taking no more than my fair share, living as my neighbors do. Simply and naturally without a lot of fuss. Needs are small here and life is very big without the clutter of more and more. It feels so good to me, so right, that I can survive so well on so little. And it is not just the accomplishment that feels good, like a sacrifice, because it is not. Simple is good, it feels good, it makes the rest of life seem simple and good. I feel no need to get more than what I have right now. Im not going anywhere but here, and I am already there. Life is so very very good here. It is a reward for living right.

It's a sad thing when a country turns people into something that is not acceptable and even those we love we cannot tolerate because of the extent of the damage done by their governments effort to enslave their minds. Love them yes, like you would the sick and wounded, but don't ever let that love condone what they do as bearable, or you are one of them and lost as they.

Although I do fear them beyond help, now. Too late

Gossip

2006-01-30T11:44:00.000-08:00

An old memory, while my brother visits. Out of our youth. Standing on a cliff here in Mexico overlooking the ocean waves far below, and another cliff and other waves comes to mind for us. Our father saying, always remember this, and learn from it. Walky Walky Jump. That is the name the natives of this small island in the Ryukus off of Japan gave this cliff and its surroundings. The American soldiers pursued the village people out of their homes and when these people reached this cliff, they jumped, rather than face the soldiers and their guns. Mostly women and children and the old. Walky, walky, jump! A chilling feeling to stand in that spot, and chilling once again to think of it.

Disturbing thing, although I love my brother. Visits from the land of plenty, America. Two worlds, in many ways not to much similarity. In his, always a forward movement to gain more, in mine, just being in place and part of it. It is not good to see America thru an American's stories. Good and bad, they all seem to be an indication of its very rot. My peace believing brother's daughter, at 19, is taking off in life to live in Hawaii with a military man, a sergeant in the army, 25 years old. He has just reinlisted for more. A commando with 180 men to train and $7,ooo dollars a month to do it. She hates Bush, she hates war, she does not like his military side. Half Japanese, half Portuguese, his families first child born in America since many of their family moved from Hong Kong. Extremely rich and a major donator to the University in my brothers city. Her parents send her off with new computer, microwave, television, bedroom set, and all the appropriate clothes for the climate. An American farewell to a daughter. I have my doubts. But she is in love, so that is that.

My brother, his conversations are a constant display of the excess he lives with. He has brought me months supply worth of laundry soap. His new washing machine is so high tech it takes a special soap. Not long ago I inherited his families bed sheets. They all got the bigger fatter better mattresses and they take bigger better sheets. And a big box of door knobs, his wife decided that burnished copper had the better effect, compared to the polished copper. One must realize, these are important things in America. His car can start while he is in the house, when he presses a button on the key. The key lights up too. He made stations come in on my radio with just putting his 180 station, $12 a month satellite radio next to it. He took photos of my dogs on his phone to send his son. He downloaded all sorts of music on my computer from a mysterious little machine his daughter had. $500 dollars for his eye glasses, a simple prescription in a very simple frame. And near another hundred for his dark glasses, I don't know why. And now everything in showing off food seems to be raspberry. Raspberry beer and ale, salad, fish sauce and foot message oil. My head is full of it, I feel it going rank and stale there already.

And for all the rest of it that goes with what I have just revealed, I want it to just settle on out of my memory, too much nonsense. I won't think about comments like, And of course daddy had to have the $1,200 mirrors put on his new truck and the skylight with the moon roof was an extra, but it makes it so much nicer and the heated seats are really a necessity, even if it is a work truck.

These Americans, they talk like a price tag is attached to all they tell, telling the price of everything. It is one of their reasons for buying the most expensive they can, for the telling of the price. Not jeans at $12 dollars, but jeans at $120. Then to hear the stories of a family I seldom bother to think about except to wonder about Americans. A cousin, she receives $365 thousand every three months, an inheritance from her mother. The head librarian for a major American county for the Unified High School district, with an income that was so ridiculously high that I got confused on hearing it and forgot what it was. How much money does one really need? And that is little money compared to her husbands job of driving a crane often used to juggle around bombs for quiet military reasons. She shops in Paris for her clothes and Price Club for its bargains, like my brother does. They both agree you can save so much when you buy huge amounts. Like the paper plates he brought, so we did not have to wash lunch dishes that day, one thousand of them. I don't even use paper plates.
Such a list of petty complaints I have today, picking those nice Americans apart, I should be ashamed to stoop to collecting details like that to feed my anger at greed stricken America. But I am not, I am just very thankful I can see all this, and who and what these people are. I am also very thankful that I am not one of them by my own choosing. All these people are doing is adding to the number of Americans abusing the world and supporting a government that is the worst evil the world has yet encountered.

Are they good people living good lives doing good things, raising good children or are they the very mechanism that allows this disaster for mankind American government to force onwards? They think freedom means the right to anything and everything, more more more and more. And all the while not knowing that they have already drowned in the pool of their own excess and are like the walking dead, slaves to a system, loosing what it once was to be yourself and not a government plot.

Old memories, continuing stories, family, differences, realizations, conclusions.

Not Better in Anyway

2006-01-28T12:14:00.000-08:00

False sense of superiority. This is the Americans. Unescapable as a whole, a generalization that is true because of its majority. Americans judge of a persons worth, is their money amount. Not birth, or who you are. And their nation has the most money (power), so they are the best, just by that reasoning. They consume more, spending eating using taking. But they do not feel the wrong of taking more than their share. They only complain because what they think is their share is not enough, or that they have to pay for it. Imbalance is what they expect, they are American, superior, and should have more by that right. And it is with this attitude they are posed to jump the world and subdue it down to readably usable for their own needs.

Beware their government. But it has exposed itself for all to see, beyond repair of their lost image. The danger is the people of this country themselves. Arrogant and selfish. Brought up on the idea of getting what they want, no limits. Polishing themselves to their reflection of perfect. And then looking around when they do seldom find themselves out of their own environment and noticing its not them, so it must be wrong. And this makes them feel good. For they define themselves even more so by what they dislike than what they do like. A constant collecting of facts that they feel can reaffirm their delusions of self.

This process comes from the government. A nation carefully steered to loose its humanity and become worker drones, producing consuming and complying. As is so obvious, family is not even a strong concept in this country among those long time settled there. Morals and tradition and respect have lost their place also. They think their possessions and their payments are the goal in life, and for them, that is true. The American represents the way of the world gone wrong. The way of horror stories and science fiction. The mind taken over, the senses ruled by outside sources, lives of conformity for efficiency. All this is easy to see, by just observing them. They cannot see themselves, as that would undo their governments intent, but from the outside looking in, it's as obvious as an illness in its final stages.

Resist your own Americanization, no matter where you are, as it is not contained to its own country, but spreads. Disguised as something better, until it is to late.

Morning glory

2006-01-22T11:08:00.000-08:00

Life is beautiful here in Mexico. You can feel the echos of time behind it. So still on Sunday morning, you can feel it. The sun is peaking over the hills and one by one settling down into the canyons between the structures, warm and light on one side, still chilly and dark on the other. Neighbors standing in the streets visiting to keep warm in the rays of it. Its been a long time since I came here to live. I can tell this has become part of me, my surroundings. So much beauty. Right now the sun reveals the lavender house with the purple boganvilla, it just brings it to life as it moves down the wall. The blue house with the multi colored roof partially covered in a blue refugee tarp will be next. I can already see the morning glories covering an old car frame begin to open up. A man slowly works his way selling hot tortillas from a wheelbarrel he pushes. If you buy your tortillas hot you don't have to have the expense of reheating them. Which is something to consider when you live close with not much money. There go my neighbors from up above me, the whole family dressed for the day. The father pushing the baby carriage, the mother carrying one and the rest old enough to walk. I wonder where they are going, all so proud looking. Not church, it is to early. I can hear the bells when they open for business. And speaking of business, I am wondering if the bakery will open early this Sunday and be selling bread so hot you can't hold it. Everything just seems to fit in place, like life is a whole and contained right here within. No jarring realities here. Life death, birth, tradegies, scandals, yes, but not wars and being part of what makes oppression, the sin of taking more of your share, or the horror of apathy from easy living and brainwash style entertainment/news. I can feel life just drifting by on its endless pattern. But as I sit here and write of this on this connection, my computer, to that other world, I know inside me it is so close to coming to an end. Life as real, life as individual, life as living your own. The shaping of Americanization threatens all in its sweep for world dominance. It is the people, as much as the government who make this so, by being who and what they are, Americans. Mindless consummers, living easy and complaining about the details. Never seeing the whole of their evil. Only America, at this moment in time, which we are all in, is put together so as to destrory so much so quick. It has the jump on the world and can take it, if we so allow it. All the right ingredients. And sitting here, in my cozy little shack made mostly of what was second third and fourth hand materials pieced together over many years, feeling so good about my surroundings, who I am and who I am with, I can see, and so deeply regret, what can be lost.

To Much Truth?

2006-01-17T16:18:00.000-08:00

Perhaps there is a thing as to much truth. It can be potent. We may have natural protections against something that can be so intrusive. Built up over the ages. Little glimpses only, here and there, letting it filter into place as close to comfortable as possible. So it does not disturb the makings of life.

Those who proclaim the real truths of it are usually shunned. It takes some popular character of the times to promote half truths and diluted realities for the public to take a cling to. Digestible and acceptable. Bush is bad. That is an easy one, all they have to do is point a finger. Americans are bad. No, that is not an acceptable one, even tho very true. A nation of abusers. But this can be swallowed, Americans are good, but they do bad things. But not, Americans are bad but they do good thing to look good when they are not.

The truth is, if you don't believe in it, don't participate in it and you won't be part of it. Otherwise you are.

The truth, Americans are bad. A simple truth. They have built and created a nightmare of a government that threatens the whole world and breaks all civilized and decent boundaries to achieve it. Then they smugly live in this raped land and call themselves great and greatest. Down to each person, being better just by his being American, unquestioned. This takes a sick and deluded populace to do this. They know their country is doing wrong, but are to proud of what they perceive to be their preservation of their good side to do anything more about it than comfortably protest and wait for voting.

Americans should hang their head in shame, realize that they are looked on by the world as oppressors and murderers, ruiners of nations and peoples and ecology for power and profit. Being American is being part of a great crime. You are all criminals that live there, pay your dues and live off the plenty.

Here in Mexico, life is not tied to what government does and is. Life is about yourself and how you conduct it. But in America, you are your government, and you are the extension of what it does. You Americans must live in the truth of your guilt, in the full light of it. Or you will never change your country because you are to busy hiding from your own part. It is your responsibility to stop your government from what it is doing to the world. And since it only worsens, it is obvious you don't care. And you will pay for that. The truth is, you deserve what is going to come to you for not stopping it way back when you could. The truth is, you Americans are lazy and greedy and willfully ignorant, addicted to easy living and low grade entertainment that doubles as brainwashing. And you complain and claim to know it all.

From the outside looking in, you look like deluded greedy gullible fools, selling your minds and souls by payments to a fantasy life. You pat your pocket then your belly and they feel full and the entertainment is endless, and feel that truth to be enough to say your world is right. But America is a lie, from beginning to its impending end, a lie that has torn a world apart by its deceptions.

The truth is, if we want to save our planet and retain our personal freedom, America must be brought down, at whatever cost. And to see the whole of this truth and to act on it is what we must do, not take it in half measures for our own use.

The Trap

2006-01-09T10:36:00.000-08:00

I have always had an aversion for schooling. It felt to much like shaping. I don't talk much ever about school, or listen to people who do, especially their earlier experiences with it. Kind of like getting thru a jungle without too many bites and the chance of loosing who you are to the unfriendlies. It is a wicked world that wants to take your essence and distill it down into a packagable mix of its own usability.

So, here I am, my life in Mexico, free of that trap so long ago sprung. Shedding my Americaness like a snake skin, layer by layer.

Watching Americans you have this feeling they are a structure, erected to a common cause of alikeness for easy handling. Empty minds and no hearts, just drifting along where popularity and influence take them. Then they have the false ego to be proud of it and get the idea they are better. Deluded populace, for the most, they don't even own what they have. And have to work their lives away paying for what they already use.

Here in Mexico, as I look out my windows, all I see is paid for, property, houses, cars, clothes. We own it, it is ours. This is a major difference on how life feels, and something to be proud of. We are called poor here because our houses are simple and built of what is avialable and not to much money. Built a little at a time as we live in them, always changing, always improving. No payments, a way of life.

Americas poor mostly rent from the richer. Belonging to nothing of their own. It is not good to live in someone else's place, a loss of freedom and the better meanings of life. I keep steering my life away from the just cresting tidal wave of Americanism, keeping track of what it is, and seeing where that leads. Did you know, that in America, the land of the so called free, it is illegal to sell a used mattress? They must be shipped off to other countries or taken to the dump. You cannot rid yourself of your poor by making laws that eliminate their lifestyle. I am poor, in American terms. And I planned my life that way. But it is not poor, it is free and good and real and in balance. Once I sprung that trap, back as a child first seeing what school meant, and not going for it, it opened the world to me and my own mind.

So much of what goes on should not be accepted without thought, but most don't realize its even something to think about.

What Everyone Should Know

2006-01-03T11:49:00.000-08:00

I woke up with a hangover this morning. Throbbing head, queasy stomach. It had been way to much and things like that should be taken in smaller mearsures. America does it once again to me, it makes me sick. Yesterday, while on my search here in cyberspace for the truth of it all, I came across a huge dose of it. I was given a link:

http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/2005/pinter-lecture-e.html

It was from someones opinion I respect, so I was ready to read the article closely. The man who won the Nobel Peace Prize for Literature, his acceptance speech. It went smoothly into descriptions of writing and meanings and ways, then suddenly exploded into an accusation against America and an exposure of many of their dirty evil secrets and deceptions. So on target. I felt that way when I read Jungs Memories, Dreams, Reflections. Like I had wrote it, that suddenly I had the ability to put down so accurately what floated in my head. This man, Harold Pinter, he sees what I see and he feels the shock and horror the way I feel it. America, the greatest evil ever. It is the truth, there are those born with the vision to see it. The horror of such evil, if it does not reach one, and sicken them, then you are lost, one of the mindless hypnotized the author speaks of. The fooling of a nation of people into thinking they are great, when they are the scum of the earth.

I read the article right off upon getting it as I sat here at my computer. Then I printed it out so my 84 year old mother could read it too. Her words on finishing it were, this is the most frightening and horrifying thing I have yet to read. Pure truth, the truth that so many cannot see. My son still in America, the same as those in Germany who comfortably watched that evil come about.

And then when my husband and I settled in for the evening, I read it out loud to him, as is the way he likes me too. Hearing it in my own voice and seeing my husbands reactions it hit me even harder. Evil is such an ugly ugly thing to look at up close. I said to him, but why does not the world, or someone, bring them down? His answer, no one can, they are in power. What will bring them down is the abcess festering inside that will erupt and destroy them from within. They are ruining themselves.

What does the world think, what does America think, this respected and distinguished and accomplished man, at the ceremonies for a peace prize, condemns this country so totally? The shock and the awe, rippling through the audience, as these words reached them. They cannot be ignored, this truth has got to be bigger than the lie of America. We must all see it for what it, and what its people are. A threat to mankind and the earth as we know it. Like Harold Pinter ended his speech, a loss of the dignity of man, if America succeeds.

American Interference

2006-01-02T13:18:00.000-08:00

It has been a debate inside myself to tell this next post. But what is truth if one must hide it. This is very personal, but also something that which should be shown. I live in a village in Mexico that directly gets hit by the results of Americas War on Drugs. After the revolution here many of the generals were gifted land. The land along the coast of the state of Baja California was divided up among a group of them. This was prime growing land for marijuana that supplied the American need. So even though it was all but forgotten land, along the unhealed scar of the border, it was desirable because of the profits it could bring in. The generals got rich. And as time went on their children inherited that harvest. America decided to make it illegal as a tool to carry out their goals of oppression. Mexico has been told time and time again, you make and keep that crop illegal or your country won't get loans and support and we won't give you the certification that is needed for it. So the underground was created. Same needs from America, but now the game of fulfilling them around the net of the law. Which was fairly easy, after all, it was just a game for some and a way of life for others. But then America got to taking its own rules to seriously and became to greedy for the profits. They stirred a real war, to use it, again, to add to the American fear that is needed to push issues and bend realities to get what they want. And as well to manipulate whole nations. So the drug culture was perfected. The drug lords dethroned and running, and all those under them snatching up the broken pieces of an old system. And Americas plan to squeeze the most money coming and going from drugs make it so incredibly profitable that there are many ready to risk all to have a piece. A world of danger and chaos.

But for many, the top is not where they want to be, they just want to sell the family crop, like they always have. Narcotraficantes are what they are called. My neighborhood is full of them. One of the remaining areas where somewhat of a truce is called and it is let be. But it is changing too. These families have a good income and can live better than usual lifestyles. This benefits the whole neighborhood. My area has little crime, very safe for women and children and the people here back each other. These are fine family people, well mannered, clean living and better educated. I know, because I live among them.

And now to tell about my New Years morning, always a day that makes you think more about the content of it. A rancher, from a family here, had come to my house early to buy their little daughters two of my pups. They had parked outside my gate and we were visiting around the bed of the truck while the girls and pups played inside it. Then suddenly four Mexican special unit police trucks and a car came cruising past. America requests this type of action and the obligation must be fullfilled. A show of force, their part of fighting the war. Every once in awhile they have to bring someone in too. We stepped back out of the road to give them room to drive by and my husband said a polite goodmorning in response to one of the machine gun toting polices good morning, riding standing up in the back of a truck with another. The pup room was the closest shelter, so we all spent some time in there waiting. They circled, and came up on the house just down the street and swooped on it. But to late, the family had left in time, their music still playing and the kids Christmas toys out in the yard. It was just a show, good enough, and then the well armed police left. They don't do this because they fear the evils of marijuana, they do it because their captain said to because we have to look right for the Americans.

Why does America have to creep into so much of life that is not theirs? Why must even the peace of a new year in a good village be shattered because of Americas interference. Why can't this nation leave others alone? So what if a family keeps on growing what they always did and sells it to the ones who always wanted it. America has totally no right what so ever to force these things to happen. They ruin the peace wherever they go. Claiming that is what they are making.

Such a Loss

2005-12-29T19:33:00.000-08:00

A book has found its way to me. Typee by Herman Melville. I have read many by him, so this is a treat finding another, and what is said to be one of his best. One of the first things I do with a book is look at the dates, but none are on this book anywhere. No hint it was written in 1846. I have found several stamps though, it is from Oceanside High School in California. In the back is a card for the library it lived in, in the 1950's. Those first ten years it got a lot of usage. A wonderful sea tale, full of adventure and the exotic and the realities of life, written to perfection. Then comes the early 60's where it shows another 3 years and no more history than that. Hardly read at all during that time, no longer recommended by the teachers I would think, or no students who desires these sort of stories anymore. I wonder why this beautifully bound book, full of color illustrations was sent away. Maybe it is the picture inside the front cover, a beautiful dark girl, in a long clinging skirt with a wreath of flowers not quite covering her naked femininity, smoking an opium pipe while standing in a canoe being admired by the man she is with. "Fayaway and I had a delightful little party on the lake", is what its title is. Not a good influence on such young minds, perhaps those who pick and choose the school books thought. I open the book to glance in, there is one of Melville's favorite words, heathen. I saw that just the other day, the word heathen. In my old Webster dictionary, as the first description for the word ethnic. I never really thought them the same. Its strange how what we read and what it is suppose to mean is so arranged. And then always rearranged by the times and how our society guides us. Perhaps after I am gone and this book no longer has my shelf, it will end up where so many more like it have gone, disappeared and forgotten. How sad, it really is a treasure. And how sad the world, so anxious to go head long into a future that does not value such things.

Fence Around Their Heart

2005-12-20T11:38:00.000-08:00

The reason why life is so much better in Mexico is because there is heart. Many will ask, what is heart? An organ? The symbol of love? But most don't know it is a place inside you were you are connected to the goodness of mankind. It keeps life beautiful, warm, friendly and progressive. Having heart. It is what keeps families what they were meant to be and villages running. Heart is something you have to be close to, or you won't know it is there. Here in Mexico, it is what so much of lifes decisions are based on.

One may look at the problem of America as politics and a bad leader and corporation greed. But this describes most countries. Politics is just that fragmented layer on top for the few to use the many out of their need for direction. For the many, life is not politics, it is just every day existence, no matter what the "big guys" up above are making. Here in Mexico we are not our government, we are the people of the land. The land and history, a way of living that has seen the centuries pass and still persists. In America, what the threat is to the world, is loss of heart. A submission to better shape oneself to the needs of your controllers. The mind brainwashed, not enough, they must drain their society of heart, of care, because care for those type always stands in the way.

America is without a heart. A land raped and captured so very recently the wound still bleeds and festers everywhere. And on such a base, its people have become the world leaders in living for oneself only. In Americas search for itself it has narrowed down to its own needs like there is no other. This is government down to the individuals. Somehow, the formula to take the human out of humanness had been extracted and now the latest weapon to enslave mankind. The world beware heartless America, unless it become like it and die from within also.

(this post inspired by one who has no fence around her heart, living in America, proof that one can still hold onto it if they want)

The Last Time

2005-12-15T13:45:00.000-08:00

I was just wondering when the last time I had been across the border into America. And then, coincidence as usual, I find this post below, dated February of 2004. It was my last time there. So far, good luck, I don't have to cross again. Hopefully never.

I went to California yesterday, early in the morning. It is not far from here,about seventy five miles. So many worlds away though. Knowing your going to cross the border is something I can't let myself think about until just as you get there. The thought of how long the line is can ruin a beautiful drive if allowed to. And it really was unusually beautiful yesterday, the waves were so big and so many sets rolling in with the morning sun on them. White and foamy and clean. The highway goes along the edge of the ocean the whole way, except the last few miles through the side of Tijuana along the big fence with all the lights. I wonder why they leave the lights on during the day. I have three toll booths to go through, each over two dollars. One of the toll takers gave my dog a piece of burrito. The soldiers had on new spring uniforms. They are so young and look good.

The border line was only twenty minutes,compared to a couple of hours or more frequently. The lanes keep breaking up and everyone has to fight for their place so it is exciting, or sometimes, very annoying. The guard was the type that takes extreme offense when they ask why you are in Mexico, and you answer because you live there. It is better to say I am a tourist and I am so glad to be coming back home and take a good bath. But it was to early for that story. Besides, lying can get you caught up too. So he asked us, my husband and I, for what purposedid we cross the border. He was told because we have to get the smog check done on my mothers car. He asked for proof of this story. I gave him the papers that came in my mothers mail, they were in the envelope they gave us to be mailed in. He looked at it and said something. My husband missed understanding his unknown accent. He loudly repeated, then if your going why is the envelope sealed, and then handed itback. My husband flipped it over and said to him, look it is not sealed. He went into a rage, told us how to respect America and then told us to get out of there fast. That over we went to the nearest Mexican restaurant and had breakfast and cinnamon coffee, just to get back in the right mood.

The smog check went great. Funny sort of people who work at gas stations and stand around looking at car motors. I took the dog for a walk around a couple of blocks. The landscaping on every house was different. It was an old neighborhood so the trees were big. Incredible green lawns, such a variety of grass types. I felt like I could have just kept on walking for hours looking at it all. Excess excess excess.

After that things went bad. I need a huge rice cooker for my dogs. I went into two of those huge stores that when you stand at the entrance it becomes near terrifying, the thought of trying to narrow it down to the one thing you came for. More excess and unnecessaty, baskets totally full, people eating samples, lines a longer wait then the border was. No rice cooker, but I gathered up a few things that I thought might save some money, if I had really needed them. Then my time limit ran out for a situation like that and I had to abandon the cart in the middle of the store and escape, my husband in agreeance. There was even a line getting out of the parking lot. So next I tried a grocery store but did not even get out of the car after seeing the odd looking strikers out front. Exhausted I went next door to a Starbucks. There were homeless looking for change in the phone booth, a girl with a child walking with a please hire me I am hungry sign on her. A small booth set up to fingerprint children to help when they are abducted being run by a girl with orange hair and rings in her tongue and eyebrow and a betty boop tatoo revealed by her very low blouse. At least the coffee was good.

Giving up on all else my husband and I decided to get back across the border. I forgot to mail the envelop for the DMV. That border guard must have jinxed it with his touch. I hate lying to my mother, but I have not confessed it is still in the car, complete now, but still not on the way with the deadline so close. The moment I crossed the border my whole body changed, relaxed, breathed easy. Driving along looking at all the border jumpers all along the fence waiting for their chance I felt so sorry for them and so glad I was back home again.Then the whole drive back and the ocean the whole way. By the time I got back home I was healed again knowing that I don't have to put up with that sort of thing. At least not until my mother has another one of her it has to be done in California errands for me. Think I will go stand out in the rain and almost sunshine right now just to wash this last little bit of memory away as I post this.

Stunned

2005-12-11T10:41:00.000-08:00

Strange people. It makes one wonder. Friends, enemies. Causes. Competitions. Its all quite a show. Leave your body behind and come play in cyberspace where you can narrow yourself down to a character you want to be in a mind story. Whatever your need, you can build it. For many it is more important to have an enemy, such a simple thing. The need to dislike what you think you dislike, just find a place to lay it on it. Preferably something familiar, that is the easiest. Like the last person you called friend, or the last place you liked and then didn't. So much pain, so much frustrationn, it needs a place to find a home to run to its ruin, as is the habit.

Grabbing hold of petty differences, false interpretations, twist and turns,convoluting what was, into what it never was. It's a big river, the flow to freedom from the oppressor, the rights of every man. If we are headed the same way, why search the edges to find the differences and get snagged on them. Those who have heart can read the hearts of others and know their truths behind their words, no matter how they are arranged. Such wasted effort, trying to bring down a fellow traveler.

We who claim we want peace and healing, if we cannot get along with each other,despite the fact that we are not all the same, have made ourselves a determent. Getting along, world wide or one on one, starts with getting along. So simple. And if you find a place you feel does not fit your idea of getting along, then go elsewhere. But becoming one of those who want to ruin what others have, it would seem, makes you more like the enemy than not.

Some More on Hate

2005-12-06T09:44:00.000-08:00

In response to Littlebitofsonshines comment on my Hate Well message. To me, this is a very important subject.

I feel you are one of those rare gifts to mankind, Sonshine. It is good to be able to know a person like you and I wish many more were like you. All love and giving. But for the average human we have both and fight to deny one, or the other. Love and hate. We are taught that it is our hate that makes us do wrong, but this is not so. As you can see, love has equal crimes. Love or hate can become a disease, just the same. Energy does not kill, only when it is misguided and misused. It is neither love nor hate that makes us do wrong, it is how we handle them. It is a mistake to think that hate must lead to negative actions. It is the person themselves and who they are. I would not feel right not hating evil, it is what it deserves, my strongest emotion of rejection, nonacceptance. Hate, like love, is used by the few to manipulate the masses. If we are followers and use either for destruction, it is our own fault for being ruled.

I have spent my life helping to better others. I have never done an evil thing out of hatred or out of love. I am very proud of who I am and what I do. I hate America and I hate those that accept it and aid it. I do not want to make wars or harm people. I do not fight that way. Hate has made me take a stand against what I cannot approve of and has given me the strength to find a way of life I could love and respect.

I fear it is the loss of our ability to cleanly and clearly hate that has enabled the people of America to live a near guiltless life in the middle of all that harm and killing they do. They know its wrong, but it does not make them that uncomfortable. If they hated what their country has become they would do more than just feebly protest through the decades, they would not be able to live with it either.

I have no love whatsoever for that country, my hate has the chance also of healing what's wrong with America. It should be hated for the evil it has become and let that very hate it has brought on itself take care of it.

Something Positive

2005-12-04T07:05:00.000-08:00

Inspired by a little red fish.

I like it so well when it’s the full moon here. Night diving is perfect in the light of a full moon. It filters down through the water and illuminates the shadows. Lobsters don't come out during this time, they prefer darker nights. Its odd how lobsters and eels always hang around together, I suppose they must like the same kind of housing. Ever catch an eel? They practically tie themselves in knots squirming on dry land but cant get anywhere. I've seen them snap there jaws so hard it took a chink out of a steel blade. They're good to eat but a little greasy. Lobster is better but you have to cook them live to taste just right. Of course if they are dead before you get home you can slice them in half and fry them. But you cant freeze a dead lobster, they taste bad. Its odd on a lobster trap how if you wire a hunk of zinc to the bottom all the corrosion gathers on it instead of the trap. Low tides and small waves are best for lobster traps, you can get them in real close to shore. Of course you have to count the waves to do this and time it just right. Lobsters like to eat limets, the little oval shell that sticks to the rocks. Of course they like abalone best, but its to much of a temptation to eat it yourself. It takes about an hour to gather a gallon of limpets. It takes about two gallons of limpets to bait about 20 traps. With crabs its a lot easier. Of course their traps have to be put on a sand bottom. They really like fish guts and heads. When all else fails either lobsters or crabs will eat canned sardines in tomato sauce. All you have to do is poke holes in the cans and wire them in the trap. Cabazones are a great fish. They hang out near the rocks. There meat is blue till you cook it. They have no scales but if they poke you it stings. They make really good eating but not as good as garabaldi, the gold fish of the sea. California's state fish. Seems a shame to eat one almost, they are so beautiful. Cabazones are the ugliest fish I have seen, except for a dog shark. Cook them and they turn to mush, animals won't even eat. But the tastiest fish is manta rays. The wings off of them is better than lobster. Sheephead, half black and half red with their huge buck teeth for eating shells are a good catch because there is a lot of meat but it lacks flavor. And of course the fish from sand bottoms is always a little blander and softer. Like halibut and sea perch. But its nice to fish for them because you can stand in the surf. Then too you have a chance of getting a tiger shark or a skate. But halibut since they live on the bottom and eat trash have those long worms in their meat always. Now if you have a gill net out you can catch all kinds of things. Thresher sharks, sea bass, ling cod, cabrillo and tunas. But tunas are good to catch with a pole from a skiff, it goes fast. The scariest thing to bring up in a small wooden boat is a shark. They're hard to kill in a crowded space. Drop lines work good for rock cods and corvina. Its hard to keep the seals away from this though, unless you clang rocks together under the water, this hurts their ears. A good way to get what you want and take your time is to use a hookah. A line hooked to an air pump on land, but you have to remember to put mineral oil in it so you don't get petroleum in your lungs. Good way to look for abalone too. The red abalone sell the best, mild and soft. The blacks ones which are in closer are tough and chewy with a strong flavor. I like these best. Certain abalone guts are really good to eat too, the ones that have ate the right sea weed. Certain crabs to if when you pull them out of the cooker and turn them on there backs to open them will have a hot soup inside them that goes great with lime and hot sauce. Just like sea urchins, just take them by there purple spines and crack them open on the spot, a little lime juice cooks them and you have an instant snack. The orange color of their insides is such an odd shade. Urchins are worth a lot of money and well worth collecting. The deeper the water the bigger they get. You can store them in cages in the ocean for days and feed them till they are full so you get more money. The Japanese buy them. They fly them there. Japanese also buy the abalones they are raising commercially now too. But my all time favorite is just plain blue shark. I never get tired of it. Besides I like to collect their jaws. Now this talk of fish could just go on forever. I remember seeing a dammed pond from an underground spring out in the middle of high desert and it was brimming full of gold fish big enough to eat. Never figured how those fish got there. The Indians sure liked them. But like I said the subject of fish is never ending.

Hate Well

2005-12-01T14:21:00.000-08:00

What is this word called hate and why do so many think it is wrong? It is a force, like love, a full circle. I think that the common man has been taught that he is not suppose to feel hate and if he does he has sinned. And the common man, of course, does not want to sin. So he takes the right to his own powers and forfeits one and becomes the weaker for it. Hate constructively, love constructively, live constructively, and fully. Your owners, the rich and few, do not want you to hate, they tell you to love, even your enemy. As a society we have become afraid of hate, its not polite or acceptable or quite civilized enough for our refined and filtered and confined tastes. We are constantly drummed into our minds, love not hate. But they come together, strong and useable and must be handled with balance and understanding. It is correct to hate evil and it is correct to love good. We do not need to let our hate turn us into killers and liars and destroyers, even as those that use love for that same purpose. We, as a people, need to take back our human right to hate openly and positively that which is wrong, or we cannot stop it with half felt measures. There are many things I hate and that hate has stood me to make many of the right decisions in my direction in life that have been very positive. Hate well.

Simple is Better

2005-11-28T14:07:00.000-08:00

Simple, the word I build my life around. It is because I have found out simple is better and I like life good. Simple brings more pleasure and meaning. I tried life in America a time or two, but simple can't apply in a country that is so fragmented and exaggerated. Nothing is quite right and it makes you want to search for the next thing. Like you might be missing something if you don't. Excess wieghs heavy and there is always a heavy price for carrying it.

One of my most thankful things in life, the one I am always saying to myself, how lucky I am, is that I chose Mexico for my country to be part of. It just suits my natural sense of freedom and justice and rarely bumps up against my sense of invasion that America bombards ones mind and rights with by the minute. Being American is like a mental illness that clouds ones vision to the point of delusional and gullable. It is laughable when one looks at what Americans think is the good life. Making their life their jobs so they can support the payments on what they already have and hardly have time for and don't really need. All those complicated things to make life easier and more desirable for them. Americans idolize their rich and will go to any lenghts to imitate them in their own lives and do that while they curse those rich for being what they are. So many things are mixed up about this nation of failed people.

Here, poor is respected, it just means you don't have much money. In Mexico you can be very poor and live very well. In America, being poor means failure and exclusion and shame. The lives of the poor in the state of Mexico I live in are very good happy full lives. They take their enjoyment from family and nature and the daily routines of life. They are in balance and it shows. Very good people here in Mexico. And for this I can still go on believing in the human race bettering itself. For if it was left to judge mankind by America and its spread, one would have to truthfully say it is an ugly experiment. A type of people who must always consume more and more, focus on them ownselves only, and not be able to learn from outside sources has its own doom built in.

Its strange how I am 75 miles away from the scar of the border to America and life is what it should be, and then cross it and the world becomes ugly and hostile and selfish and no principals. It is so easy to recognize an American, there is nothing else like them, even their imitators can't get it down totally.

A complicated mess.

Many Roads

2005-11-23T11:24:00.000-08:00

Checking out the wastelands of yahoo as I do every now and again I found this complaint on my messenger from an angry young man. He writes rather well, being pushed by so much hostility, although he lets his imagination get out of bounds a little to often for the sake of making it sound worse to himself.

I learned on yahoo that most people think progress is conflict. If your not outdoing the next with the brilliance of your argument, your loosing, and the purpose is to win. I watch these type come into Further Left Library and Chat Room. They say, Ok, I'm here, what are we going to debate about? Then I tell them, no, we are here to get along. This is a shocking concept to them. How can getting along solve problems and bring peace and healing? They say we must disagree, divide up our differences and thrash them out until we are enemies and only focus on those fragmented differences, we thrive on conflict. This is how the American mind has become, the only answer, fight.

I experimented once with fighting on yahoo, jump on whoever I could and rip into them. It was always the same, no one changed, nothing came of it, but a few thrills for saying what I have always wanted to those American idiots and fools. But I don't sit still and saw the dead end. The progress with being with a few people you trust, exploring and learning the truths of this confusing times and helping each of us to respread them in our own ways is a treasure. As Pocho said in the blog Forum in the article titled We Are the Message, this use of the internet to form small groups of people who are dedicated to change, when all accumulated amounts to a massive force. This force, the message from the truth tellers, could very well overwhelm the evil that is at this moment overtaking us. If we can't get along with each other, how can we work towards peace? I would much rather have a home base in cyberspace to work from than a battlefield of monotony and uselessness to dump my beliefs. There are many roads to making change.

And now to take a moment to reply to this overeducated underlived young mans effort on scolding me for not being what he wants. I would call my beliefs Old age, not New Age. Dating back thru time to what is simple. Live your beliefs or they are nothing but talk. If you believe in good, be good. Respect is one of the most important things we can offer the world and its people. Politics and Religion are traps of the power hungry and not to be believed in, but guarded against. They do not hold the answers to life and getting along. And as to his suggestion below that I am too pathetic to live, no wonder he has turned to politics as his religion. I am sure this young man has much time and money wrapped up in being schooled for his opinions and I hope someday life can teach him where those opinions really belong, and that he get can on with all we really have, today.

Below, I post his message, out of interest of what is in the minds of these sorts. Attack mode only, so American, even when they are in France.

You're full of new-age spiritual mumbo jumbo - that is, garbage, complete garbage. Truer spot inside yourself? You're so self-righteous and self-important, and when I ask you for answers, you have none. You tell me "to be part of something good you have to be good", but you aren't something good. You're completely full of shit. All this "i live life according to my beliefs" doesn't mean shit, at all. You think you're a rebel because you somehow live life according to your principles? That's nonsense. I'm not giving you a bad boy attitude, I'm just asking questions that you are completely incapable of answering.
Getting along will not change anything, and that isn't your interest. Conformity is what this is all about, and you want people to have your opinions. You don't understand the world and what's needed in the world. What's needed is more conflict, but you can't deal with that. Everything you do and say is anti-democratic, it's fascist. Those who won't say what you want them to say, who won't repeat your droning beliefs are EXCLUDED, that's the opposite of freedom, liberty, it's the opposite of justice, it IS fascism. You think you're in a privileged position but you're nowhere
And, politics and economics ARE everything when it comes to change. What else is there? The revolution is either political and economic, or it's nothing. "Living life according to your principles"? THAT'S COMPLETE SELF-RIGHTEOUS NONSENSE. You think you're special in this world, and you're not, you have no answers or solutions. In fact, you want to completely ignore what's going on in the world, because you're too self-important to care about anyone but yourself. You don't see how many people in the world have it so so much worse than you, you're too busy feeling sorry for yourself to change anything.
If anyone, you're the one who's acting like it, you won't let anyone challenge your fragile little world, whereas I DEMAND conflict, I DEMAND to be challenged. But you can't take it. You're too pathetic to live.

And such are the words of the very angry and mixed up young man.

Drifting

2005-11-21T17:20:00.000-08:00

I think I waited to late to become an adult. It seems to take practice and I skipped it to long. It seems like I took my retirement first then starting out in life to make it secure and productive towards some end or other now that I am old. At least that is my story to myself today, because I have not been responsible, again. Taking care of life as a thing used to get where you want to go is very tricky and you have to learn your own rules, even if its just to break them. It is hard to do what is called working, doing your job, making money. Or at least it is for me, because it seems to take time. That's the hardest part, where do you fit that in, work? But as I had found out, one can't go too many decades without settling down to what's ahead without missing something that should be part of it all. But its so easy to put off work, when you are your own boss, especially if you aren't a boss.

Another day in Mexico passes, the last of the sunset set streaked with deep red and the piece of moon showing will be a deep orange again tonight because of the hills burning from fires started on their own from heat and dryness. I have drifted away from the news again, its so easy to do. Moving away from what is ugly and offensive. But my awareness has not dulled, one can feel the coming catastophre of the fall of America in the very atmosphere, like one of those surround sound speakers I have heard of. We get asked now and again what we contribute as humans, but is that really important, just as long as we don't take more than what is balanced? Real answers are simple, glaringly apparent when displayed plainly. What good are fine beliefs if you don't live them? What good is knowledge if your only going to repeat what you learned, not what you know because what you know is buried under all those fragmented layers of this so called schooling process.

I suppose the simple answer here is, I should be keeping track of work records before I forget again, instead of entertaining myself with my blog. I am not sure what I have accomplished in life so far, but whatever it is, it makes me feel very good about who I am and what I do. If you cant be proud of yourself then you haven't lived right. But life never takes care of itself on its own from your past merits, you have to keep on trying. And that means always taking that chance to make your own life better and that of those around you, simply and respectfully and responsibly.

Now, hopefully, back to important work, if a puppy does not cry or a horn honk at the gate, or I misplaced the papers again. Plus I have to find the right working music too, hopefully that won't take long.

Grocery Stores

2005-11-16T09:11:00.000-08:00

It sometimes feels strange when I think of grocery stores and what I need to get from them today while I am in town. They say it is cheaper. That was one of the exciting things about moving from the country, so many grocery stores. I sit here with pencil and a scrap of paper making a list. Mouse traps is all I can think of. I have salt and sugar, the soap has not run out yet. I need to get some food, there is really next to none in the house. But a grocery store off out in town, big and nice with near everything, is not a good place for that. I want four hot rolls from the bakery and they always have fresh milk, corn tortillas from the factory as they come off the conveyor belt. And lately there has been some just picked vegtables sold out of the back of a truck parked near the school. All this right in my own village. I could even walk, if I liked walking steep roads. And if I am in the mood, maybe the meat market, the man raises his cattle out in the hills behind me. Or the harbor out front, to see what has come in on the boats. Yes, strange, nothing really in those big stores, and I feel silly pushing a huge cart empty or with what I could have got right where I live, from a neighbor. Aisle after Aisle, wondering which one might have some real food. Plus, it makes my feet ache and exhaust me. Its seeing all that excess. Such a reminder of where man has got himself. Everywhere you look, we seem to be in a head long rush to change humanity into something I don't think was ever meant to be. Bottled, canned, packaged, our food and our minds, for easy use. The further you move from simple the further you get from whats good and right. Maybe some might think shopping in those shrines to excess gives them freedom of choice and expression, but I think it compromises a person to consummerism. Which of course is oppression. The new form of oppression, excess american style.

Why Say That?

2005-11-15T14:09:00.000-08:00

9/11 - Tragedy, or perhaps an opportunity to revel in another set of senseless deaths, Pocho?

I just read this comment on the Further Left Forum Site. ( http://further-left-forum.blogspot.com/ ) I suppose this must be war with words. This style of attack. Apparently it does not need to make sense or really be connected. It seems the object is to make an insult, the worst that can be brewed up, and then hurl it out, like jabbing in the dark with a sword.

These warnings to the oppressors of the world must be looked on as a form of victory. These very oppressors are the ones who make non violent messages useless to themselves. This so called 9/11 message got thru to the deluded, a little, and made them look around and realize the heroic America image had changed to one of being the worlds enemy, while they were off pursuing their personal needs. A few of them have even gone so far as to question why and with their limited vision wonder what they can do.

This is victory, the oppressor must be made aware of himself and the nation that spawns them stopped, before all is lost to the sweep of the deadly disease of Americanism.

It is not the deaths that are reveled in. That type of thing belongs to the soldier who is trained to commit them. What is applauded is the attempt, the reason and the fact they scored. If only America could hear what the world is telling them, but they can't hear. So the messages keep having to get louder. Americas choice, they could stop now.

If someone does not like the fact that 9/11 represents the fall of an evil empire and that many took heart in seeing it brought to its knees, they need not resort to the limiting remark it was just enjoyment of death itself that makes them feel that way.

With all the confusion going on in the world, and all the need to ban together to make the best of it, we need not make up the absurd to disagree with those we basically agree with. One should confront what is really behind the remarks they make of that sort that make no sense, but reveal much of those making them.

Tradgedy and victory always go together, you can't separate them.

No Sense of Good

2005-11-10T11:00:00.000-08:00

Americans in their fragmented reality slip and slide between the meanings of their words. Lovers of loopholes. Yes, but you said, is one of their favorite retorts. I took your words to mean this or that, is another. It is because their minds are so legal, wrapped up in a nation of legalities like a buffer against thinking on their own. Hanging onto each word like it is the point of the sentence. Taking which one they want, to run their next thoughts from. They examine so closely they can't see.

Copylefted. I learned this in Further Left Library Chat Room http://www.lagunanet.net.mx/pocho/ . It means take what you want or need, feel free, it's everyones. Ahh, the American mind clicks, free, oh boy, that’s easy, no rules, so I don't have to have limits. I think I will just take their name too and pretend like I am them. Look, it says here in the fine print its ok to be unethical. What? They have asked me not to steal, I mean share, the name? What rights have they, how dare they. I will take what I want, I am American and that gives me as much right as I need.

Without that attitude, they would not be able to be making this much fouled attempt at taking over the world.

If your good, you sense what is right and wrong, you don't look for wiggle room to try to still make yourself look good when you are not. If you know what low life sneak is you wouldn’t be imitating one and then trying to excuse yourself by saying, it’s the wording, it let me do it. No sense is what is common in America, no sense at all of what is right or decent or respectful. But then again, how could they, their country is criminal on almost every count. They don't want change, they just want to look good when they aren't.

Migra

2005-11-09T13:42:00.000-08:00

I shook hands hello today with a man I met 15 years ago, or more. It brought back a rush of memories, as I was not expecting this encounter with him. And how far different it was than the time before. Just a polite hello and glad to hear life is going well for you while exchanging a few more pleasantries in the grocery store down town here in my part of Mexico.

The first time we met was at my home, the middle of the day with his gang of machine gun toting back ups from the Mexican Immigration Office. He was the important man there at that time. Suddenly they were surrounding my house, so nothing to do but stay and see what they wanted. My husband had been reported for working and he had no papers for it, being a "wetback" from the other side. We had been working for years, but had stepped on a rich mans ego and this was the weak spot where he could gain some of it back. A little bribe and his friend migra man was glad to take care of it, since we were breaking the law anyway. That’s the custom and in many ways not a bad one, if its not you getting the bad end of it.

Migra gave us two hours to get our business straight and then to report to his office where he was talking deportation. Instead of just loading us up right then and gone for good. But I love Mexico to much to get kicked out, so my husband and I went into hiding for eight months. Its good on the soul to get rousted from the everyday and thrown into what makes you wonder and look close. Provided you make it back around again and life goes on as you always intended it to.

The first week was the hardest. A cowboy camp on the riverbed, turned to shady dealings. Every sound was an alert to run and hide in the reeds. I left a book there for those times, inside a coffee can. And I also got covered with bites from some unseen thing that lived there only. I hardly ever get bites, it seems more like a character weakness. I saw a jeep with less than a hundred miles on it, taken on a joy ride from a San Diego car lot and drove straight across the border. No one ever came to get it.
And then from there, place to place, each with its own scene, its own view into a nation that holds so many secrets close to itself. On some Sundays my husband and I could go home, quietly and cautiously. That was Migras day off too. It would be a celebration, a get together of the village where news and encouragement was exchanged. And much laughter about how the great migra could not find two Americanos. And being Mexican, of course they never gave us up, not for a moment, none of them.

But after eight months, and harsher weather on its way, it seemed enough. My husband had the favor done for him of the use of a very influential lawyer, a Chinese man with an adobe house full of Chinese art. The only thing to do, turn ourselves in. It was hard to walk into that office, even with the assurance beforehand that we would be walking out still free, and no time behind bars and wondering what the sentence would be.

At that time too, we shook hands, the first time. He said, brave Americanos and sentenced us to a life of tourism, vacationing, exploring, fishing, partying, spending, whatever it is tourist all do. It said so on this official paper, and said there was no second warning or we would be gone for good. He was polishing the handle on his pistol the whole time, then stood up shook hands again, and said, your real lucky, this time.

But, of course, one must work for a living if they are not rich and Mexico is a practical nation and does not get hung up by their laws. So it was back home and back to work again. The rich man had long forgotten and the migra had better things to do.

I still kind of seem to feel the tingle in my hand though, for that brief moment when ours touched in that handshake today. Good thing Mexico believes in what is fair, not what is legal. He is such an impressive looking man still, very handsome and stern. I would hate to be doing anything really wrong and get caught by him.

Evil America

2005-11-02T08:24:00.000-08:00

Exchanging thoughts with two minds I respect (in Further Left Chat, of course) I once again touched down on the horror of America. I journeyed thru the yahoo chats some time back, and saw a sampling of what it is to be American, living there and doing it. Where is their heart? Long gone in a game of trying to escape the guilt of being themselves and the heritage of their murderous and barbaric land. In Americas head long rush to possess bigger and better and to get what is theirs by their so called right of privileged birth, they have opened themselves up to their governments technique of turning them selfish so they cannot unite.

I read what the bad and ignorant had to say in the cesspools of yahoo. The Bush lovers and the war worshippers, earth destroyers, revelers in prejudices and greed. So obviously wrong, but not the only wrong. It is the ones that claim they are doing good that should be watched as well. The ones who spin the illusion of America the Great, the ones who say, it's not us, it's them, don't blame me, blame my system. Their belief in their pick and choose what part of America they want, to put their faith and pride in, is what keeps the country running and enables this evil. This nation needs to be put to an immediate end and anyone who hinders that is an enemy of the world.

I watched these empty hearted selfish do gooders. They make me fear for the future of mankind. To become aware of how they are is to touch on the sickness of their country, its internal rot, that spreads like a plague. They think living right is arranging your words to reflect what you think should be, not living what should be. They live a lie, everyone of them, and that lie has compromised each one as an individual.

I am sad, thinking of these Americans I met here in cyberspace and how each one seems to confirm the reason America is now a failure and a danger to the world. Weak people, easily led astray with their governments clamp on their ability to distinguish truth or fight for it. Live in America and all you can see is America, the rest of the world is just an ignored back yard to abuse as you want.

Shame on all you complaining hypercritical self deluded Americans. You need to look at yourselves, and improve that before you can expect to perform miracles on your used up country.

Oh well, at least I am here in my much loved Mexico, where life is so very good and free and living great just comes naturally. The day, warm and breezy, will soon overtake me, and that world of oppression and dreams gone wrong will fade away and once again life and living will be what it should. So many things to enjoy.

Machines of Loving Grace

2005-10-29T12:01:00.000-07:00

It has been a week of computer challanges. I have managed a new computer, after too many oddities to deal with in the last. But this did not solve the problem, it has somehow transferred these oddities to the new computer. I like to think it must be me, not quite able to accept the modern world and its ways. But most likely, it is just computers, manmade and faulty and a sign of the times.

But, as with most things, this will pass and computer bliss is on its way soon, when all works right, my words fall from my mind just right on the page, and when clicking the publish button actually publishes the post, not makes it disappear into oblivion.

All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace
by Richard Brautigan 1968

I like to think (and the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammals and computers live together
in mutually programming harmony
like pure water touching clear sky.
I like to think (right now please!)
of a cybernetic forest filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully past computers as if they were flowers with spinning blossoms.
I like to think (it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal brothers and sisters,
and all watched over by machines of loving grace

A very interesting man that wrote this. Here is a few links to sites about him.
http://www.rooknet.com/beatpage/writers/brautigan.html
http://www.litkicks.com/BeatPages/page.jsp?what=RichardBrautigan

I like Sundays

2005-10-23T12:20:00.000-07:00

Mexico is predicted to have more economic growth next year than its richer than anyone nation next door. It is hard to figure out what poor is suppose to mean. I thought if you made more, you were richer. But, as every good American mistakenly knows, Mexico is poor, dirt poor. Why else would its people come across their borders seeking work. But, of course, this makes Mexico richer, the flow of easy American money. Americans would go next door to work too if they heard the wages were higher. Just like they send so much of the everyday work to other countries to do for them, it makes more money. Seems like everyone is doing the same, going to where it makes you the most. Or, at least everyone that was not satisfied with what they had and had to do something else.

I think sometimes Americans picture a deserted Mexico, with all its workers over on their side, taking their unwanted jobs. But, to the contrary, this is a nation full of hard working people, with only a small percent making that sad trip. But there is more migrants than ever before, this is true, now that America has tipped so many balances and made the time on end lifestyle here unkeepable. America is the bringer of so much destruction in so many ways. Its not just their bombs and bullets that threaten humanity but their mentality. A nation of evil doers for the sake of getting what they think they want most. The American dream, their right.

And sitting here in Mexico surrounded by the so labeled poor, life fits so well. Making do, content, happy and not worrying. Life is so very good. How can these Americans sleep at night knowing they participate in this mass evil of their killer nation and its out of control rulers? A sick nation in its death throes, trying to bring all down around it in the name of their disease, greed, at its extreme. It is a chilling thought that such a place exists, the never ending conquest to harness the masses for use by the few, combined with the modern technology and modern brainwashing to do so. Perfect timing, and they are going for it first and fastest, like they were invented for it.

But it is Sunday, so I will leave my thoughts of such an ugly place here and just go on with my day like none of it exist. My husband is expected home any moment, with fresh baked rolls and, avacados. I have the papaya and tangelos all ready. Now just to boil a stick of cinnamon in the water for the coffee and all should be just right. Its so quiet here Sundays, you can feel it. Peace is the word that comes to mind.

The fields below

2005-10-20T15:15:00.000-07:00

It's this extra dimension to existence that exists nowhere, that I can pinpoint, that I balance my life out with for the sake of being aware. Cyber Space. One more frontier. Maybe some day it will become more real than real. "But do you really know him? No, I have only met him in person". My computer world is all scattered right now, due to a break down and the welcome miracle of a new computer. But not all has fallen back in its familiar colors and places and more changes are yet to come. So I wait to gather it back up again and put my own order to it.

I wonder why when its so easy and good not to hear the news, why soon I will return to it. One time, for about 15 years, I almost heard nothing of the outside world. Even missed some of Americas continuous wars. What does it have to do with my life here in Mexico where one rarely feels the waves of the worlds events. For some, the truth is quite an addicting thing, the only thing that can really satisfy, good, bad or indifferent. I think that is why, when I could be safe in my mind from the worlds evil that America heads up, I come here to spend some of my day searching and learning that truth. But, what can I do with it? I have this feeling though, like water, truth spreads wherever it touches. And that truths, linked together with others truths, become stronger.

I feel clean and good. Contributing to America is one of the eviler things a person can do. And if you live there, that is what you do. Any good a person says they are doing within is just an illusion, all contributing to the lie of America. If help was to have worked, it would have long ago. All signs say it is on its way out in a very ugly and disgraceful manner. I feel good because I purposefully do not live in that country, even if it is the one most suited to making money and sustaining a lifestyle that all to many feel is where success is at. The goodness of living poor and simple in Mexico has manifested so much that I feel rich without money. What more could I want, than what I have. Except for perhaps a proper behaving computer.

Remembering a Zapatista slogan, Like the dews in the mountain tops, truth will trickle down to water the fields below.

Admiration

2005-10-14T09:01:00.000-07:00

I saw another view of Mexico last night. For months now my husband has been working on remodeling an office building into a three room skin therapy clinic. His work was recommended to the woman doctor by my husbands business partner, the vet. And since this is a trusting circle of friends she told my husband to spend whatever was necessary to make it look professional and appealing. It just was finished yesterday, in time for last nights grand opening. All in pinks and shades of lavender and creams. Tile and glass bricks. Like something out of a cosmetic ladies dream. Certainly not my reality, where life is simple and unnecessity not a necessity. But still very beautiful, in that way.

A ways into this project more was revealed about the young doctor. We were wrong to think she was from a rich family, as often is the case here, and that they were backing her. She came to this state, Baja California, when she graduated. Her husband and mother worked to put her through school. She made a success here with a clinic in a small hospital. Then they sold the ranch in Guadalajara. And with careful planning it enabled her to rent an office in the most popular area, which is used by well to do and progressive Mexican women. Hussongs Plaza, the place to say you have been to.

My husband admires those who have made their own way, out of the little they started with. So he decided that he would go way beyond the work she asked for. He told me if she was going to make it with clientele like that it would have to be an extra special job. It was like a hobby for him, making each aspect its most. It seems so almost silly, a skin clinic and its perfection, in all that goes on in life that counts so much more in the scheme of things. But then again, it is one persons life and my husband just made hers greatly enhanced. These things make him feel so good. He has admitted, he spent much of his wages from her on materials that complimented the work done, not the on sale ones she wanted.

So here we are again, another job done and still wondering where to get the money to live daily life with and wondering where the next money will come from. It feels real good, its always been this way. And sitting there last night in the plaza patio with more then 50 people, drinking heavy red wine and mango margaritas listening to new age music watching a full skin treatment and body massage on a white lounge chair on the dance floor I realized once again how many sides of Mexico there are. Not just the rough and tumble easy living one I knew for so many years. But this is Mexico too, changed and modern. This is not me though, or my world, it was just a very brief glimpse and a good one. Great people, positive, well dressed, polite and fun loving. The doctoras evening was a total success. Her mother, husband and two sons, standing with her. It is so good to know if one wants to, they can do just as they planned. My admiration to her. And Mexico, for keeping its balance and being a country where life is so good.

No Running

2005-10-11T11:18:00.000-07:00

Now, I have just read that American playgrounds are putting up signs that say, "No Running", for the safety of the children playing there. How far can one paranoid self indulged nation take itself? I suppose to extremes, is the answer. Judging from their American taste for extreme and what they think that might imply.But I also noticed the words No Running because it made me think of other things. I think that's what I have been saying to myself, no running. My life is scattered about my small piece of land. House one place, the office another, one shop over by my mothers little house and the laundry room. The secret garden and the vegetable garden. And out towards the view the dog yards and the park and little orchard. The guest house and then some more shops, or tallers as they are called here. Its a lot to make the rounds of, checking this and that, finding looking, working, watching. I always wanted my small world to look in on itself with a fence around it, all contained and having what I need to make my life full. So this is it, it happened. But it is a lot of walking. I think, what if I were like the rich, a house so big if I forgot one of my shoes it might take me a real long search of a mansion to see where it got lost. One might have to start running, just to cut the time down for those types of disruptions to the flow of having it all. But anyway, to get back where I started, I have decided even if life keeps growing so well, for safeties sake, I'm not going to be running either. Every time I do, the dogs keep thinking its a game and gang up on me. That is one of the problems of a dog pack.Life should be slow.

Got English?

2005-10-10T09:14:00.000-07:00

I have stolen johnny patriots post from out of my emails today. A little view into where the American mind is heading. Here it is, in whole:"The Catholic church was a sinking ship. Then they embraced the Mexicans living here. I do not attend church anymore. My church started the two language service. Call me intolerant but English has always been the language of my church and of America and suddenly they want to do both English and Spanish. I guess I am intolerant! I am now a man without a church and a political party. Soon, if the powers to be have their way, I will be without a country. Got English?"As though America came tumbling out of creation speaking English and is meant to stay that way forever. In a nation that arranges the world for their use, there is such intolerance of change within their own. How have these government pampered people come to the conclusion because people migrate north to work, as they always have and will, that all is lost for them, their country ruined and their lives threatened.This is what their government wants, turmoil, mistrust, fear, anger, hate, and their all time favorite, terrorism. All within their own bounds. A weak and fragmented populace. Now to even mention the loss of their so loved church because of the language of the invaders being used. Stripped of all they were taught that what made them American. Now they are lost. Lost and so vulnerable, ripe, for their government to finish the take over of what once was the American dream. The unaccomplished dream, now dead and replaced by a very evil and dangerous government that threatens the whole world.But that is America, and one must be careful not to let it overshadow their own world if they do not live there. Which I don't. I am right here in Mexico, not far at all across that border, but worlds away. And it is my own world here that I have created, with my husband, that is my strenght and freedom. It is so very important to feel right in how you live, day to day.And for me, today has been a good one, once again. Even if I know so much of the world suffers and problems mount by the minute.

How to settle down to it

2005-10-09T09:11:00.000-07:00

It seems so hard to write in one place, when it is meant for another, the leaps of cyberspace are so hard to grasp, so far from pen and paper. But soon this post will appear on my new blog and take its permanent home there. Its something I have thought about ever since first finding the computer to open to the world. Telling it, the world, who I am and how I live. What I say is one thing, and I say much, but so can anyone. It is how we are that has the real meaning to it. Like how could anyone ever feel good about themselves choosing to stay in a country as criminally insane as America and be part of it in any way. They can stage their acts of opposing and protestations, but they still live the life and support the country. Every time I stop and think about that I am writing for my blog, strange word that it is, it sets me back a little and my thoughts scatter. How delicate a task it can be to catch these things and set them down right. But for now, I am content, this making of my blog feels like progress. I wonder how long it will take to feel at home on it. For now, enough.

where did it go

2005-10-07T18:16:00.000-07:00

everything just keeps disappearing, or never appearing in the first place.