[Below, as you can see, is a still of a moment where we all wrote our deepest secret on a post-it note and then shared them with the room. After, we cried and beat pillows as we pretended they were stuffed full of Chris Simcox's undies.]

I can blog on some things, I can tell you my experience, I can share drafts with "allies," (I'm watching the guy from Opportunity Agenda now on the vid say so, he says they don't want them "distributed too widely" verbatim), but that we ought not, please, just "throw them up on the web." The web is a sticky jernt, so I can dig it.

I haven't gone into the traveling story, but I want to say--even without my addition of going out on the town the night of Sept. 10 (tho that sure helped)--it was the worst collection of traveling incidents I think I've had. And I've done a lot of traveling. Oh wait. That summer of 2000 that I traveled across the entire country on a Greyhound THREE TIMES was worse. But this time competed!

Anyway, it was pretty impressive how many big shakers in this pro-immigration movement were repped. Again, I don't know how deep this "secret" thing goes, so to err on the side of judgment, I won't reveal any names aside from a friend (Kyle De Frenchsomething) from Immigration Orange (guess which one he is in the above pic, ahem). I was pretty honored, once again, to be considered a part of such a jazzy meetup. As always, Po' Boy Nezua's attention was fought for by both the content of the gig as well as the fact that all the amazing buffet meals in the super-pricey midtown lawyerish building were served, of course, by brown people.

I guess it's something I ought to get used to. As Kai and I talked about later that night, as we waited for the garage to bring his ranfla up to la calle. All over the world, (on the whole) darker people serve the lighter people. (Of course our strategy group had many members of The Brown™--Indian, Xican@, Hawaiian, African American, Asian--so we didn't suck). Of course this Brown Servant dynamic is not systemic as all of us enlightened people know. It's just, well. The way the baked clam bounces, qué no?

This time, unlike the last shindig, I took no video of the injustice. I was too busy stuffing my face with elegantly buttered string beans, tiny sweet brownies and saucy chicken parm.

You can see here a clip of a PowerPoint presentation screen that proves the Pro-Immigration movement (as composed of groups like MIRA, NCLR, NCIR, etc) are (at least now) aware of what I call the "Brown Blogosphere." I very purposely have cropped this image to a fair degree, to leave off certain blogs. I do this in the spirit of the gift of kindness to the one gunman at the execution who (uknowingly) has a blank in his chamber. Firing squads were thought to need this so that the killers (killing the killer) could live with what they had done; each one could imagine his has the blank, not a bullet that was aimed so carefully at a human's vitals.

Well...my cropping this pic is...sort of like that. But without the vitals. Basically, feel free to imagine your blog is up there, but cropped out, and it may be. I don't care how socialjusticey you are; we all have ego involved in what we do, because we, as bloggers are motivated, caring, ambitious, loudmouths. And I don't want anyone hurt that they aren't up there. Yet, I surely can't avoid showing you that I'M ON TOP!!!! Because...well, that's the kind of caring, ambitious, loudmouth that I am.

Though you can see my blog's tagline was...subtly removed. And I don't blame them.

Listen. I'm not here to be any kind of Leading Voice on immigration (jeje...as if this is a possibility I have to worry about). Let's get that claro. And when I sat and gave my presentation, I talked about (as I've written before) my favorite metaphor regarding human migration. The way I connect it back to osmosis, how nature will equalize disparate concentrations that exist on either side of a membrane, how nature is never static and nothing knows a boundary that is not traversed; how even our very cell membranes traffic in a huge exchange of enzymes and other proteins; how our electrons, the very matter that makes us up, jumps around and trades places, shells, and spaces with the electrons of other beings and "things." That is reality.

A wall...a border wall, a Palestine wall, a Baghdad wall, a China wall, a Mexico wall--it is like a grave lid, like a jail cell. These things we want never to budge. These illusions of contained and codified darkness give us comfort. I don't want that comfort. That is a false comfort, a silk opaque and mauve-weave blindfold that ties us to a sad, fearful, and cruel way of living. We may not escape it during my lifetime. But all the while, in this taut thought in which I'm taught to be caught, I am freefalling more often than not. I am Keep Growing, Still Flowing, Ever Flexing, UnKnowing. And that is how I see the world breathing best.

Later, a few things happened, when each of us four panelists made our rounds in a "speed dating" sort of dynamic through quadrants that the room was divided into.

One thing was that in one group, someone asked me (not unkindly) "So...I take it you are against having any sort of border?" And I answered "Well...there is no such thing as a border. It is a political invention. Anymore, it is used mostly to funnel money and power away from the weaker and to the stronger." And then, much to the obvious facial dismay of at least one person, I gave my USA/Pyramid/Pharaoh/Border/Slavebase speech. And I laughed in that little group and said "You see why it would be dangerous to have me as a blogger connected with your coalition!" And we laughed. (Update: I don't mean to leave out or discount the handful of people who came up to me through the day and sincerely thanked me for what I felt like was a very disjointed and rambling presentation. Most people were actually very receptive...I guess I sometimes focus on those who are not so much. Bad habit.) I'm sure they were happy at least I was aware of how my thinking "fits" (doesn't) into the mainstream conversation. These people seem concerned about this type of thing in general. The public perception of a Pro-Immigrant choice of attitude/framing....the intensity of our speech. And strategically, shouldn't they be? I think so. I think they are wise to be nervous, given the hate that is out there already.

Yet...that same hate is why I don't bother trying to please the Hate. This morning I read a post on a "3-Year-Old Raped By (Illegal Alien) Uncle, Officials Say." Which was....well. Getting up in the morning and reading shit like this--and the flood of vile commentary that follows--is why sometimes I stop blogging on the media's reporting of this stuff. I don't know about you. I can't take it for long. The shape and persistency of human hate is...daunting. And if these monsters can speak their "truth," well...I'm going to speak mine. But the truth is most of this just makes me sad.

People, this could be YOUR baby girl. Every day, the odds are better that it WILL be. [...] Call and write your Congressmen today and everyday and demand that they start protecting your family. Send the link to this case. Use www.congress.org to get the contact info. It's free!

And the case here is ANOTHER Illegal creep who keeps getting put back on American Streets!

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You are a freak. Without a doubt you would never say that to a white males face. I know for a fact you would never say that to my face or the crowd of white males I associate. We can only hope a mass revolt happens and you and your kind disappear from this land. Putting you and your kind accross the border will be a pleasure.

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Go to the mall and see how Mexican women keep an eye on their kids. They'll sit an eight-year-old in front of the TV at Sears and walk around to other stores. It's someone else's job to watch their kids. Just ask one.

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Pedophiles from around the world go to these mestizo countries in South America to take advantage of tens of thousands of orphaned kids on the streets sniffing glue.North America is next if we keep letting these lower sub races in.

It goes on and on and on....for pages of comments. Sometimes these don't make me so sad. Sometimes this rising, everpresent skulking and slimy emotional and spiritual fecal verbosity makes me very, very, very angry. (And oh, aren't they so happy to have a nasty story like this to feast on. But this story or another story, all this anti-"ILLEGUL" talk, of course, is simply a vent and an allowed stage upon which you can feel the sulphourous wind billow relief from under septic stones as an ancient hate rises up and is allowed again to show its stringy sallow face in the light of common conversation.) Either way, it never makes me feel like being gingerly. That I can say pretty safely. I'll let the cooler-headed thinkers and feelers bake the Ginger. Me, I'm here con una copa del fuego, however hot it burns.

Porque, this hate is left over. And hushed tones left it over. These hate-filled fools have been taught fake history. Taught with the same agendas we use today to glority eternal World More and More War. And if the moral and correct lessons had been taught to all USA children in schools about how The SuperPower Comes to Be; if we'd been taught this all across the land, instead of the ranting of Manifest Destiny's bloodsoaked command, maybe like Germany, we'd now have a collective consciousness of sorrow and guilt and atonement over how cruel we can all be, and how capable of falling into dangerous delusions and dreams. Maybe we'd be more aware, maybe we'd not step right back into the same killing and stamping stance so very quickly. Maybe more of us would carry with us this knowledge.

Maybe we'd be wiser instead of richer.

But in the Haunted Land, we get so high on the flapping flagpole rainbow fumes of self-delusion and conquest. And so it goes. And so do the descendents yet believe. And so the hate finds a home where it never left. And now in the middle east, where the new gold lies, we still make stirring machine gun speeches that are seeping wells of tarry lies.

So yes. We will all speak back to the whole in the way our role makes clear to our hearts, I imagine. I'm finding mine.

Which is why I now make clear: While I was pimping XP's Adopt-a-Blogger idea, and other ideas, it ain't about me. I'm not here to be some leading blogger on immigration. I am noticed because I can write like one hundred thousand aryans, and because of my daily nine mugs of corazón. If any of the people from that meeting, or from those big advocacy groups are reading now (I know some are) and actually want to hook up their institution with a blogger, please don't be scared off by me. I don't represent all of the Latin@ blogs, or the Pro-Immigrant blogs. If I'm not your cup of gasoline, please see Marisa, please see Manny, please see Liza, please see Duke, Please see XP, please see my sidebar and theirs for many other links. I will never be contained by proper political framing. That is not my thing. I am just here running my mouth about what sits right in my belly, and that's all I've ever claimed. I'm feeling out my heart, and sometimes that means saying that my own government and the US culture is a vampirical, murderous, disgusting, black-bag job of a hype-fested falling down pyramid. Sometimes I will say more positive things about it, but the bottom line is, I don't want any affiliation that pressures me to say anything other than what I feel. But these blogmig@s of mine? They are long-working, hardcore, pro-immigrant warriors, and in their bulletins and writing, they generally subscribe to the assumed current legal and philosophical framing of our system. Or at least dance with the reality that it exists; NOT to say they are fools that overlook the things that are flawed and historically wrong with it. They do not. They are some smart cats. Go grab 'em up!

Another thing that happened was a (lovely) Latina (sorry, I don't remember her name) came over to me and told me I had helped her break through her screenwriting problem...she had had a monologue that she had been stuck on and she was taking notes furiously as I recounted my Osmosis metaphor of immigration. I said "I want to audition!" when I found out it was for her monologue...but I don't think she took me seriously when I said it for one reason or another. But amiga, if you are reading, I do want credit in some way if you use that speech in your film! At least a small one in the end credits somewhere. My art and writing I am very proud of and though I know one day I'll be dust and no writing is ever totally original, anyway, it's really mostly what I got going up in this place. You know?

For those concerned, I worked out my hunger problem in the airport. Which was tough. Because man, let me tell you--food is EVERYWHERE in that place. Shiny colored bags of chips bursting from racks like a rainbow of cheap energy, happy smells of pizzas and coffees and roast beefs and baking breads and glossy pretzels and steaming soups...I was beginning to go into Steal mode in my mind, darting eyes. And then, as my hands began to shake more and more from my hypoglycemic tendencies, I began noticing the vast amounts of food that people were wasting.

Man drop half piece pizza in box with three fat crusts and tosses on the trash and my belly drops to my shoes. Girl closes lid on hot container of soup, and still half full stuffs it in a bag with an untouched apple and drops it in the garbage. Tall, handsome, arrogant pilot sharply incises his sandwich with bright white teeth as he talks, letting the thing sit for two minutes as he chats, his hand loosely gripping the tomato-layered, mayo-smeary hero as if it is worth a nickel, all the while the smells and scent of this food surrounding me like a ever-shrinking hurricane of despair.

Finally I went to the service desk and said, "Is there any way I can get a meal voucher from the airport? I've been on standby since 11 am and I'm starving." I just put it out there. I don't even know if I mentioned the delay at first, or adlibbed it watching her subtle eye reactions to my words as they came out.

She punched in my tickets did some typing, saw that my standby flight had been hours late, and you know: airport policy is to give a ten dollar voucher if this happens. Technically, my actual flight was scheduled for five pm, and my standby flight--even though two hours late--was still forty minutes earlier than my actual original scheduled flight. But there was some grace in the black woman's face as she listened to me tell my tale. And black, brown, white, or otherwise, I have always hoped that hunger is something we can all understand. When we forget what hunger feels like...we do some stupid things, I think. Like forgetting how many, right this second are aching inside and who have no Delayed Flight story to fill up their belly. And really, how quickly, we can be right there. Forgetting what, in our short time on this planet, is Important. (It ain't walls. It is Hunger. And Hope.)

Anyway, maybe she did, maybe the computer info just lined up right in her monitor, and all the right bells went off, but I got the ten bucks and I ate two personal pan pizzas in a row, and didn't even leave a sliver of crust.

Now I'm home, where I have nine guitars and drums and mics and a Macintosh computer. I still don't own a credit card or a bank account. For now. But I can bang a drum that makes you wanna come over and start over and over and over--

and out.