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i have often wondered—due to my own curiosity as well as certain comments or interactions—that because my focus is so narrow in my blog (this blog, that is) if many others feel that i am one dimensional in my thinking. or if i am not aware of complex interactions of privilege and power and myriad other confluences of society and interpersonal dynamics that affect how we all work together in the 3D. i am...i try to focus on the nexus, on the overlap whenever i can. i see it more and more every day. and some writing is forthcoming that will relate this. i have come far in some of my thinking. i have far to go in much of it. it does not happen quickly.

i think that all these things: class, race, sex, geographical markers (dialects within america), experience with family of origin, heirarchy in sibling tree, philosophical bent, lingual style (colloquial vs slang vs formal-normally class markers but they don't have to be)....they come into play in life. and other factors influence the interaction. invisible things. pulses, waves, reflection of color rays, things for which we've not yet named. karma, even? i do not think for a moment that life is so predictable or concrete as "me brown" "them white." ah, if only things were so simple. anyway, that doesn't even fit with my overall ways of thinking...there's too much mestizaje in my experience.

but this is a school for me. and even like when i write my way through a story, i start with basics. sometimes even with placeholders. here, i have read history (and continue to), learn it, and incorporate it. just as i write a song with an augmented D# alternate fingering so i can remember that new chord. lesson, practice, demonstration all in one. if one were to read from the start of my blog to now, they would easily experience a shift as i learned more about what i talk about and adjusted my views. i hope there will be much more of this. as i often say, i am moving. not arrived. when i write long essays questioning people's motives and deeds and purposes online, i know it's not always clear—and will not always be—that i am both speaker and audience. i am there, in that audience with those to whom the writing voice speaks. i heed this voice, the one in my writing, i listen to it, it is spoken for my benefit.

i am here teaching myself. that is why the focus is so strong, that is why the inundation. it is not an accurate portrayal to read of me as a person...and in stasis. only as a leaning, a motion. i've learned a lot in this last year (more, as the "journey" started before the blog). i've moved beyond the pathetic shapes offered by the mainstream media as well as my own absorbed aversion and reaction to my family situation. i have always been glad for the scant memories of my early familia which i relate. (someone i read lately talked about how "our grains are our history" or something and i loved it. corn does this for me. it lives in my earliest memories, so dear, nanita smackin out tortillas, walking past the market of women making and cooking them, grinding corn.) but i reacted to the overall entire breakup of my family and ensuing challenges in the new family in different, complicated ways. i do not feel at war with so many of those situations anymore. this is good. i am not, on one hand, defending my mexicanness at one moment, and then wearing clothes that confuse people as to my racial intentions another moment. because i have learned things. and faced myself, and am not shrugging from shadows. i was once not only of "fluid" identity, but also of conflicted symbols and i will tell of some of these stories in my next entry of The White Lens which is sure to be a solid one, and maybe one of the last for a while, as it brings us up to speed on so much of what i have to say so far on that. but who can really say about these things? i'm very often wrong when i predict what's in store for one of my next installments in a series.

and this is why i want to live to be so old. i am almost forty and i feel like a child learning. growing. and like these trees out my window, i welcome this light. i've been such a fool in so many ways. and yes, i continue to be! and i do know that i will always be. but perhaps i make more and more of my way into the audience, or listen more. or announce the speaker as a clown. or wear bigger and better shoes. i don't know. but i feel i'm moving forward.

or...maybe that's an illusion given me so i don't give up. then again, would that be such a bad illusion?

it feels good to get in touch with the mexican american community. amazingly, i am soon being flown to both L.A. and then in July, to Washington D.C., as a result of readers or organizations paying my accommodations to attend immigration marches. i am very excited about this. a little anxious. for one thing, i really don't like flying anymore. even though i grew up flying often, going coast to coast as my family formed, reformed, moved, and various times in my adult life. (hell, i flew a few weeks after 9/11!) also, i do not want to get shot with rubber bullets or be faced with helping someone up while a wall of riot cops descend on me!

but i'm pretttty sure that is not going to happen, and is only fear of the worst. sometimes i tend to get a little uneasy around cops. they pretend that is unnatural! but why on earth would you not feel happy and calm around men who carry weapons and assume you to be lying and/or potentially dangerous?

i will be writing on both instances, and in one, i will be throwing together some press releases or writeups that will be fed to some hungry national database, so you might see some work from me in that area or on the wires.

i guess i got tagged as "activist" when i got into that RNC thing. being one of the RNC 1800, you know. OPERATION OVERLORD 2 and all that shit. government control bullshit. i remember the NLG lawyer talking to me after. he was very cool. he was all like "the idea is to get this off your head so you can take part in other actions without an ACD hanging over you." and i was like "other actions"? and i realized soon that everyone there thought i was a lifelong action-maker/activist. that it was basically my life and focus. but i'm not really an "activist." sure my mom was a hippie, and i absorbed many views that Activists share. and i may go to these marches and many more. but i am just a person. just a person who gets pissed off when he sees things that he thinks are wrong.

i do think some of who i am, my ultra fiery defiance came from fighting back to years of what i experienced as either excessive, ignorant control (school) or male threat (ala LegalWhiteFather or males bigger than me who always hated my tone and vocabulary—my mouth), but i don't think they installed a sense of justice in me. just that my inherent senses were aggravated...or honed.

i can't know so much about that stuff. only guess.

i read recently on someone's blog, i guess a commenter was sort of smirking how heavy introspection in posts was just privileged behavior, or american behavior, or "maybe young" behavior they added. i smiled, thinking even using a computer is privileged behavior. i mean, you know...unless they were transmitting their condescension via mental digging through the soil of an ethernet hookup. we love to find people over which we can gloat! it's such a hard treat to resist. sort of a psychic circle-jerk where nobody sees each other's face....

labels are fun, but they pen you in. i think we need labels, so we don't call everything "it" and everyone "hey," but the danger lies in when we buy the hype. i am not known entirely by being "the unapologetic mexican," and i will never be a "Democrat" (and certainly not a "Republican"!) and no, i am not an "Activist." i guess i'm more comfortable with "brown-eyed writer" because that is evident, and felt...or even "high school dropout" because that describes a truth at least in happenstance.

i am okay with "artist" because i really do fit much of the quintessential "artist" description. i'm okay with "pisces" because the first time i read a book that talked about pisceans, i was like "wow, that really is like me," and almost all that is described about the broad example of a Pisces still fits me.

"man" is troublesome to me, i've always been small, nobody ever thought of me as one, and more often than not "men" wanted to beat my ass, or did so, or made me feel uncomfortable when i pointed out that a leaf turning under a hot hand of wind was beautiful, or tried to steal or sleep with my girlfriends. or i just talked too much to be a Clint Eastwood type character, a Man's Man. i find that "artist" is so much better because it lets me be intuitive, emotional, expressive and sensitive. and "man" does not. so i don't really think of myself that "man" way. it's not important for me to be thought of as stoic, or good with tools (tho i am), or into sports (i'm more into the designs of the teams clothing), or whatever the hell being a real "man" brings you. i've always felt like pinochio in that sense. i could never fit myself into the molds it seemed many wanted me in. and i don't mean to fit myself into a mold now. i don't want to be moldy.

i look forward....i see myself in the sand. i remember san diego as a child, the prickly pears. i remember clay being shaped by hands on clay wheels. los artistas, las pintoras, El Centro Cultural de La Raza, la energía. days before the cold frosted hinges and forest bears, i don't have to bring the bears. i used to shave my head all the time...and i am growing my hair out again, it's the longest it's been since i was 19. it feels right. feels new, and yet, old and peaceful like the days i was 5 or 6. a movement forward, and a return. i see a workshop with sun. smiling faces. i see the deep green of a bobbing leaf, and the drenched red of flowers. i see a hot noon light, black shadows underfoot. i feel wind, warm wind on my face.