The Day After the Dia ...

Dia De Los Muertos

I went to a gallery showing last night at a trenoid place in West San Antonio; it's near enough to the old bad neighborhoods to make it risky but near enough to a police window-front to make it the show you could take your kids to, even if you're not Bohemian's or gypsys. So you could walk 'in the darkened streets' without fear of a mugging. It was dimly lit for ambiance, and to use candle power for the exhibit, which should be more interpersonal as a show. It was a shrine exhibit for Dia De Los Muertos, or Day of the Dead in the calendar of the church. Halloween is October 31st, All Saints Day i November 1st, and Day of the Dead (Or Dia de los Muertos) falls on the 2nd of November. The day is a part of the Catholic-ization of the New World when Spain moved people here in the 15th century. As the priest saw the rituals of commemorating and celebrating the dead they decided to incorporate instead of intrude or eradicate the ideas so the day was born.

In central Mexico & many parts of the Latin-American world you can find HUGE celebrations going on, which include cleaning the grave, bringing flowers, and reminiscing about those who've left this world to be with God or the Ancestors (or whatever your particular belief is). Around the world there are many ways to celebrate and remember but this is particular to me since I live here & am Hispanic of birth.

So I see all these shrines, some amazing, like the artist who drew out a 'calavera' (Skull) on the floor using just natural ingredients like cactus, salt, corn meal, black beans and such, to one made on with one picture and a half-dozen wilty flowers done at the last second. but all the rest hung in between, most very personal and some very blase, made up of little silly things like Billy dolls & a sign saying Andy Warhol, as if we couldn't understand the inept idea of Andy's sexual & sensual nature in his art.

What took me was that in the morning I awoke with my neighbor Mr Losoya, who was walking his little dog, Brownie at 5:30 a.m. She was up crying like a fiend and needing to be let out and I heard Blondie, my big lab agiated (or wanting to join in) so I met him in the back yard and I told him what today was for me. He smiled, and both dogs romped and ran, chasing each other & emptying themselves of whatever was inside.

"Do you know where I can get some cheap flowers Xavier?" I asked.

He looked at me puzzled: "Why? Seeing your mom? Maybe for my wife for her bad cooking?"

We laughed then I said, "No, I always take them flowers."

"Aaahh ... it's Dia today; not just daylight savings time."

I smiled in the glow of my Maglite and called my dog back to me; sadly he had to chase his for a few minutes until I offered Brownie a treat and she came back to be leashed and stay inside. After breakfast & a little time to check e-mails & scribble a few lines for my term paper I found a chance to leave and hope the cemetary was open, or at least the gates popped where I could slip in and say my prayers.

Joe died when I was 20 in 1987, a suicide for a tormented mind that wouldn't be still or calm, no matter what or why or how. Alcohol, risk, lust, love ... nothing mattered and he always felt useless. Nothing anyone would ever say would keep his mind tranquil and he died at his own hand.

She was 18, barely and in a car with someone she loved. They missed a turn and crashed, dying hours later of torment and bodily anguish. I cried for her; even when I low she always brought me up. And though 20+ years have passed since that awful night, I kept thinking, 'If I haad just stayed on the phone a little longer with her. Then she'd be alive. She'd of gotten to be a mother and a wife, a lover and a poet, a singer and a college graduate, and yet ... I felt as if it were in my hands, her destiny.

I can't control destiny or fate any more than I can make the breeze stop or the ocean leave the sand dry. I can't wipe away the tears and stop my own heartbreak.

Or can I?

I was thinking about how I used to spend the day in the past, which began with church, then flowers, and finally a night in either a local strip bar or roaming drunk trying not to fall over 3-d installations made my poseur artist who can call a chewed wad of gum on vellum paper "introspective" and "artistic" and ask for $3500 for the piece. Always, after the tears, came the clarity of mind and the desire to drink and drown my despondency in beers and chicken wings remains.

I did see one thing: art is always going to be a possibility in my life, no matter what I do or where I go.

It makes me smile a lot thinking about the possibility since I am a goon, a weirdo, and a person dying to make his dreams come true. I go from the hopes of being a loser to being a winner, and I found a few little items on the net to make me smile.

So I am going to make a little change day by day and moment by moment.

And I'm not gonna cheat myself of that.

Blessings & thanks for listening,



Julian