The Might of the Mitas

Well, for reasons that should be obvious to everybody, religion seems to be moving into my weekend.

The pope, for example, is infuriating traditionalists in the Catholic Church by washing the feet of two women last Thursday. And apparently people have been requesting that for years, and it’s been strictly forbidden, because it’s a slippery slope indeed. You remember—Jesus washed the apostles feet, and the apostles were all guys, and so therefore if the pope washes anything but male feet, it’s an instant and infinitesimal leap to the ordination of women.

What? You don’t see the logic of that! Well, heavens, anybody can see that!

The pope is something of a loose canon, it seems. For the moment, he’s saying “screw it”—or the pontifical equivalent thereof—to the papal apartments. He strolled through them—I saw it on CNN—shook his head, and all but tut-tutted. (Hmm, and I was sure I was gonna get a red squiggle there….).

Even worse, after all Ratzinger did to move the church right back to the 1950’s (or was it 1550’s?) what’s the new pope doing? Taking the bus to work; wearing white shoes, not the famous Prada red; and what about that Latin Mass, so dear to Ratzinger’s heart? Apparently, the new pope couldn’t give squat.

Yes, there’s every indication that this will be a dangerous pope. He’s got the right moves, he’s playing the media and the publicity machines as well as Rostropovich did a cello. What you won’t see, though, is any budge on doctrine. He’ll be a John Paul II—all charm on the outside, cold steel within.

Well, I was musing on all this yesterday, as the procession moved down the street. Each year it gets a little bit better, or at least tarted-up.  The Roman Centurions were wearing quite rich gowns, and the whips that they were using on the cross—unlike the Philippines, we reign in the sadism, here—weren’t visibly from the adult bookstore. The only thing that marred it was the music—if the liturgy is as bad as the music, post Vatican 2, I’ll cast my vote with Ratzinger on that score.

But the real dish, the big news is that yes, Aaron is the father of Samuel Beníquez.

This is a true Puerto Rican thing—the burning question of whether Aaron, who is the Holy Spirit, the Mita (new word for you, computer!) and who is also 91 years old is the worldly father of a guy named Samuel Beníquez.

“Well, of course he is,” exclaimed Mr. Fernández, when I questioned him on the subject. “Everybody knew he was, and anyway they just came out in court with DNA testing that proved it….”

OK—here’s the deal. In 1897, in a small town west of San Juan, a child named Juanita García Peraza was born. She had a sickly youth, and so she prayed—good child of two ardent evangelicals, of course she would—to God. She made the standard deal—heal me and I’ll serve you.

God, of course, came through right on call, and Juanita began preaching in her church. And she was a whiz—or must have been—because pretty soon she was pissing off the guys. So they told her to take a hike, and she did; in 1941 she started her own church, with eleven others. In 1947, she moved her church to the business district of San Juan.

Now then—having a church is one thing, but you also have to cook up a theology to string along with it. And here, with great Puerto Rican zest, Juanita let fly with a lovely, completely ridiculous piece of nonsense for which the adjective “errant” was utterly made.

Juanita, you see, is the Holy Spirit in its third manifestation. Yes, the first manifestation was Jehovah—definitely respectable—the second was Jesus—also no slouch!—and the third was Juanita, now to be renamed “Mita!”

I hear you, you infidels, sniggering out there—suggesting that the Holy Spirit may have let things slip just a bit, by choosing a lowly girl from Hatillo, Puerto Rico, as his or her or its next residence. For shame! Have you forgotten the lowly birth of one Jesus Christ!

Oh, and one other thing. Juanita, before moving to San Juan, is praying away one day, but wait—let me copy and paste from the church’s own website. They tell it better than I ever could….

Teófilo came from a family with scant economic resources. He liked commerce and sold everything he could buy or was given to sell, in order to help his parents. His father was a sugar-cane cutter and often when he went to work in the early hours of the morning, Teófilo would take him breakfast in the fields. In the afternoons, he worked with his father in the family's corn field, where he was assigned chores since his early years. As a child, he was an exemplary student; he loved his teachers and his teachers admired him. His conduct was blameless and he was punctual and responsible.

One day, some years later, while walking through Arecibo, Teófilo saw two ladies, and one of them, Juanita García Peraza, caught his attention because of her honest bearing. It was God's will that his parents should attend the same church that she attended. When Teófilo heard her speak, his soul vibrated, and even though he was only a child at the time, he understood that the awaited Christ was the one he heard through her. He felt an inexplicable bond to her and followed her everywhere she went.

During a visit Juanita made to Don Pedro and Doña Concepción, she said to Zion: "In your prayers you offered me your son and I have come to find what you promised me." Zion and Pedro realized they were indebted to God and from there on, Teíto, as he was affectionately called, without abandoning his love for his parents, dedicated his life to the Lord's service.

Teíto was in the habit of visiting sister Juanita García Peraza. During one of his visits, as he watched her pray, he knelt silently in a corner of the living-room so as not to interrupt her. Suddenly, the Lord's Holy Spirit entered Juanita took her out and, through her, searched for the ointment (which the Holy Spirit has always used to anoint His chosen instruments). The Lord's Holy Spirit addressed Teíto and, through sister Juanita, anointed him to the Lord's Ministry. Teíto's soul filled with joy. Later, the Lord's Holy Spirit changed Teíto's name to Aarón. Shortly thereafter, Aarón and his parents were part of the group of eleven who left the Pentecostal Church with the person of Mita. Despite the Minister's call for him not to follow Mita, because he realized that Aarón had great spiritual potential within the Pentecostal movement, Aarón categorically refused to stay, because he understood that he had to heed the Lord's call before that of another man.

Bíjte? as we say down here—you see?

Well, the devil prowls everywhere, and is it a surprise that when Mita died there were some who succumbed to the wickedness of suggesting that Aaron might not be the anointed one? Well, yeah, everybody knew about the affair he had had—the one that produced Samuel. Actually, says Mr. Fernández, the rumor is that he had two more children besides Samuel.

Mr. Fernández also may not entirely believe the version of the succession put out by the church’s website. Here it is, the lovely, true and teaching story:

Mita sowed in Aarón the seeds of all those qualities that a prophet must possess: integrity, firmness of character, disposition to sacrifice, courage to face trials, wisdom and divine discernment, temperance, benigness, kindness, charity and, above all, an immense love for souls. He learned every day; he had Mita to follow as an example.

Having been chosen before birth and having been anointed to be a Minister of the Kingdom of God, when Juanita García Peraza passed away, the Lord entrusted his People to Aaron, saying: "Care for my children and I shall reward you".

In 1970, when Juanita García Peraza passed away, Aaron courageously assumed the leadership of the Mita People. Under his leadership, there has been a great expansion of Mita's Work in Puerto Rico, the United States, the Dominican Republic, Canada, Curaçao, Colombia, Venezuela, Costa Rica, Panama, El Salvador and Mexico. He has used all his energy and courage to the praise-worthy effort of taking this proclamation to far away lands. The Mita temples in Puerto Rico and abroad have been built under his leadership and supervision. He founded the Colegio Congregación Mita (Congregación Mita School), the El Paraíso Shelter and Institution, and the Office for Counseling and Social Assistance. He has faithfully fulfilled the prophesies of Mita, promoting the integral development of our People.

Wow—what a guy!

Mr. Fernández, his ear perhaps polluted by the filth the Devil has spilled into it, disputes this. So does the article in Wikipedia—perhaps a bit more balanced. What is known is that after Mita’s death, the whole church waited around three days for her to resurrect. Mita, however, chose the subtler strategy of incorporating into another body; the Holy Spirit has no need for cheap carnival tricks.

At any rate, the Mitas are as easy to spot as their church—which is a six-story affair with a temple accommodating 6000 people. The men dress in white, the women in long dresses, long hair, and utterly no make-up. Oh, and right—they don’t drink, smoke or gamble.

Well, I’m thrilled to report that the news that Aaron is after all the father of Samuel Beniquez has not dented an inch the faith of the mighty Mitas—a newspaper article states that they are more united than ever. I leave you with this last gem from the doctrine page of the website:

On Faith, the Mita Church believes the Lord's Holy Spirit is on earth, that His new name is Mita and that, through Aarón, He governs His Church and guides it through truth and justice towards salvation. The Mita Church is founded on the spiritual environment of human beings. It is the continuation of the Primitive Church of the Apostles and Prophets that performs a work of good, acts on faith and is uplifting. By this means, God extended to the human beings the opportunity to attain what their lack of faith makes inaccessible: salvation and a full life in complete communion with the Creator. Such a life knows no limits because it is guided by the Lord's Holy Spirit.

See? When you have that on your side, what’s an out-of-wedlock child or two?

Varying Wildernesses

It’s one of those moments when you know intuitively that it’s true. When Susan Cain in the TED talk below tells introverts, “hey, it’s OK to withdraw—seek your wilderness, that’s where the creativity comes from,” I was back behind the building at work, looking on at the iguanas resting in the trees, or the egret sailing off lazily as the barking dogs attempted chase.

I had left behind a huge open office with little individual workspaces and four-foot partitions. The noise level was high, despite constant reminders to respect other people’s privacy and not to play loud music, have loud conversations, or—and this drove people nuts—go away from your desk leaving your cell phone blaring your favorite—and no one else’s—ringtone.

On Friday afternoons, all pretense of work or an office environment was dropped. People roamed the aisles, talked to their friends, laughed, planned—or actually started—their weekends.

Cain is right, as well, about the constant pressure to be in a group, to be a part of a group, to be contributing to the group, to be a leader in the group. Staff meetings were agony for me—I liked virtually all my coworkers individually, but together they drove me nuts.

First of all, nobody came on time. Second, there were constant interruptions. Third, the same people who always talked, well, always talked. So we always agreed to do whatever it was they had decided to do, and so why were we there? Was it really necessary to gather us all together to rubberstamp what was going to happen, anyway?

(When, by the way, did we decide that “rubberstamp” is one word? It seems ominous, somehow—as if it’s legitimizing something that very much shouldn’t be….)

Even worse was the portion of the meeting where a dinámica would be rolled out. The purpose was always some corporate hooey about increasing trust, fostering teamwork, building effective networks—whatever. Once, construction paper was passed out, and each person was given the name of a colleague. With glue and crayons, we were told to make a hat, and adorn on it some emblem or symbol of the person whose name we had been given.

I saw my hands making it, and watched in horror. To my right and left—as well as in front and behind—people were making orderly, ordinary hats. My own? Well it was a lop-sided affair that had three horns stuck out the top of it—God knows what I was thinking—and little paper dreadlocks hanging down the back. To this I applied colors that instantly clashed—I never got around to learning the color cycle, which is why I always wear black pants and a white shirt: that way the tie won’t clash…see?—and then began to contemplate what symbols I could impose upon my creation.

The problem being that the person whose name I had been given was absolutely the blandest creature I had ever met. Right, I thought, so I’ll just draw in some abstract figures, and let her figure it out.

It was a monstrosity: a misshapen, disfigured, cruel joke of a hat. What if I added some curls to the side?

Made it worse….

OK—string little doohickeys from the three horns?

Horrible.

The room had grown still, all were finished, all eyes were on my hands, wonderfully finding new ways to make the hat uglier. I myself watched in horror as the thing grew in hideousness, a hat with a terrible genetic malformation exposed to horrific blasts of radiation. At last, the director of the department put an end to it.

It was time—I had to present my hat. The problem being that my recipient was one of two colorless women who had the same position, very similar names, almost similar physiognomies…oh, and they always hung out together.

All I could do was call out her name….

She lifted her hand to her mouth and gasped as I marched the abortion over to her and wedged it one her head.

It got worse—I was asked to explain the meaning of the abstract figures I had scratched on the hat.

“Kindness,” I said, pointing to something that looked like a chewed up dog toy.

“Carefulness,” I said, thinking anybody so boring had to be careful.

And the last?

“Precision,” I said, and retreated to my chair.

At a certain point it was clear. When they announced the “realignment” (get with it—it’s no longer called a “restructuration”) it became obvious. All things come to an end. I had my meeting with the HR people from Bentonville, the meeting that began with the question, “now, what is it exactly that you do,” with the explanation followed by blank looks and noncommittal murmurings.

So the day when I came upon the most zealous of the dinámica guys filling up buckets of water before the staff meeting?

I couldn’t, I absolutely couldn’t bear to find out—would someone be blindfolded and told to carry the bucket of water through an obstacle course without spilling one drop—just by receiving feedback from the rest of his team?

I was free, I decided. Nothing I did was going to alter my course, change my destiny, save my job. I was coasting along to that Friday morning that indeed came—the one announced by the E-mail stating “your attendance is mandatory.”

So I can’t tell you, dear Reader, what manner of nonsense got done on that bucket of water. I was out, as ever, peering at iguanas, consoling myself with a warm bit of wilderness outside before plunging back into the madness inside.

Two Muslims (Part Two)

Readers may remember my rant against a “religious” Muslim, who in the name of Islam was going to kill his 15-year old daughter for the sin of writing a boy’s name in her notebook.

Three hours after writing the post we’re in a cab, John and Jeanne and I. The driver is clearly an Arab, and—let’s assume—Muslim.

The first thing he says?

“Wow, Ma’am, that’s a wonderful button you’re wearing! I love it!”

“Oh, you mean the one of Big Bird?” asks Jeanne.

“Yeah, it popped right out at me—even before I stopped! Love it—it’s terrific!”

And so we meet our second Muslim.

Who doesn’t lack for words, nor opinions. In fact, he’s on a par with Puerto Rican volubility—and that’s high in the nineties on the standard scale.

“My daughter just loves Obama—she calls him ‘Barrack.’ And the other day, she told me, ‘Daddy, why does your belly stick out and Barrack’s doesn’t? You’re never gonna get to be president with your belly sticking out!’”

Jeanne inquires—how many kids does he have?

Two girls—12 and 5.

And he wants to know—where can he get that Big Bird pin?

The pin is round, has Big Bird smack in the middle. Above—“Save Big Bird.” Below—“Vote Obama!”

“I was almost going to give him mine,” says Jeanne later, “but I have a collection of pins going back decades, and this one is special.”

That’s when she remembers—the Obama campaign committee is striking camp at Broadway and 93d. So she proposes that he stop, she’ll get out, grab one, and we can be on our way.

“God bless you, Ma’am!”

So we do, picking up one for me as well.

Well, the cabbie is ecstatic with the gift; he can barely wait to get home and give it to his daughter.

We go on to talk politics.

“You know, it’s incredible to me that the first thing the Republicans are saying is that they’ll do everything possible to prevent Obama from doing ANYTHING! I mean, aren’t they elected to lead, to make compromises, to make the country a better place? Isn’t that what we pay them for?”

A cab? Nah—we’re in the Democratic National Convention, with the cabbie the keynote speaker!

“And you know, what I like about Obama is that he’s all about the next generation, about improving the schools, about making a world that’s better for all, about seeing your kids go places that you couldn’t get to!”

Balloons are dropping!

“People come into my cab who are Republican, I tell them ‘hey, that’s OK! We’re all American, we’re all working for the same goal, and even though we may disagree, that’s great! That’s what makes us strong! That’s what unites us, our ability to listen, criticize, compromise, and respect each other! That’s the American way!’”

Confetti!

“I see my kids learning things I never knew and I know that their world is going to better than mine!”

And the spotlights pan the backseat!

Fearing that at any moment the Stars and Stripes Forever would fill the taxi, I asked about the gasoline situation. The governor has imposed rationing, and so you can only get gas every other day, depending on the last number of your license plate.

And yeah—that applies to cab drivers, as well.

‘What,’ I think, ‘that’s completely outrageous! Gas is the lifeblood of this guy’s business!”

The guy responds—he was in a line from 7 to 11PM to get a tank of gas.

Right—but what about tomorrow? Will a tank of gas last him?

“It’s a hard life,” remarks Jeanne. “Most cabbies gotta make 200 bucks a day, just to pay rent, expenses, gas….  So a lot of them have partners, who can work the extra shift.”

I’m thinking something different. I’m thinking of two parents, two fathers. And three girls. One father is somewhere in Pakistan, planning—perhaps—a ritual killing of his daughter in America.

The other father is on the streets of Manhattan, driving for hours on end, thrilled that a stranger—now a friend!—would stop and buy him a campaign button.

Two fathers, both Muslim.

One has gone forward—physically, to another country; spiritually, to another reality.

The other is locked into his past.

We should have a word, I think.

“Two fathers, both Muslim,” I wrote four paragraphs up.

A word for a father who is, and who is not.

Multiple Worlds

It’s one thing to be motherless, another to be familyless—and that’s how it was beginning to feel. And though the Fernández family does very well—excellently—in some areas, even exceeding my own, they can’t compete in others. Who else but Johnny has been observing my muddled attempts to open containers, waiting for my imploring eyes to lift to his. He’ll take the container, slide his fingernail under a slot hidden somewhere, and open it in seconds. Pass it back to me.

He once taught me how to fold a shirt—a shirt we were giving to a little Puerto Rican kid living up in Spanish Harlem. I’ve forgotten the process now, of course, but not the thought—is a little kid gonna care? Is he gonna see all John’s careful, neat, ordered work? Nah—it’s Christmas morning, he’s ripping into his presents, wrapping paper flying everywhere, the tape stuck to his fingers or nose!

It’s a thing with John—he can’t abide something less than tidily done.

Well, they lead crazy lives, these two. And there are more of them than me / us. So it was time to come up to a city still recovering from a disaster.

Which announced itself at the airport. Waiting for the luggage, I watched a news reporter follow a social worker around the darkened halls of one of the projects. Knocking on doors, checking on people. 60,000 people are still without power.

The gypsy cab driver, checking his GPS for directions to West End Avenue and 93.

Hunh?

A New York City cabbie can’t get to an easy mark on a grid? I begin to explain.

“Listen, just go up to whatever-that-bridge-is-that-comes-into-125^th, you know, up there in Harlem…”

“Listen, Buddy, you think I don’t know my city?”

We have a breezy confrontational exchange—quite pleasant after Caribbean gusto and cordiality, which variably turns into action.

Some of the bridges are still closed.

Oh, and the subway is jam-packed, and quite slow.

But the world of Upper West Side Manhattan is unaffected. Yes, trees are down in Central Park, and the North Woods is closed. Widow-makers, I think, and then remember that Jack told me that curiously, the branches that are resting in forks of trees—until they fall on the victim walking under them—tend to come down on perfectly still days. One of those things he had to say in lieu of “I love you….”

The supermarket, as usual, never ceases to astound. The logistics—how do they get all this stuff into the city? And what stuff it is. Pomegranates? Syrian figs? Thirty-five kinds of olives? Who buys this stuff?

And curiously, little bits of Puerto Rico are incorporated here. I’m in line at the deli, wanting my lox and bagel. The lady in front of me is ordering pinchos and then it’s my turn. Another guy takes my order.

“¿Son de cerdo o de carne de res?” asks the pincho lady.

Pork or beef?

Pure Puerto Rican Spanish, as is the pincho.

So I switch to Spanish, as does the clerk, and we’re all 2600 miles south. 

Or maybe farther. Since I enter John and Jeanne’s apartment and discover disorder, for the first time in my life. Then I see—I’m backstage, behind the scenes, and the stagehand is Ángela, the cleaning lady from Queens, via El Salvador.

Well, I’m curious about life, or rather lives, and we chat. She’s not a lady who much likes, or practices, taciturnity (what! No red squiggle? Did I get away with it, or has the computer given up on me?).

Mostly in English, some in Spanish. In fact, she’s set this stage for almost a decade now, and met and knew Franny. We talk about life—how it takes her two hours, now, to get home to Queens by subway. So she’s spending the night with her mother, up in a project in Harlem. How lucky they were that the hurricane hit Jersey, not the city. How fast the power had been restored, all things considered. How good it was to have work.

Well, last week it was the hurricane. John stood and watched through the window as the transformers blew across the river in New Jersey. “Looked like the 4^th of July,” he reports. (Note to John—tempting as they are, windows tend not to be the best places to stand afront {no, computer, I did mean that “afront”} in hurricanes.)

And yesterday it was the Nor’easter. Well, there’s snow in the Park, and this morning I was much more in Wisconsin that Manhattan. Snow on the ground, the trees losing their leaves, a dark, cold sky. Squirrels leaping branches above the urbanite dogs below.

Leave the park, and it’s city, all right, with chrysanthemums still blooming over patches of snow.

And oh, another thing different.

Marc.

Always before, this city had overwhelmed me, mocked me, doubted that anything would come of or from me. It had scorned me, or rather sniffed at me.

Wrong.

It hadn’t. I had come limping with self-doubt / self-defeat leading to the point of despair and suicide. The city had welcomed me. I had slunk back from its embrace.

My Spanish is better than Ángela’s English, and we’re saying farewell. I escort her to the door of the home that’s not mine but is; a home that is, in a way, more Ángela’ s than John or Jeanne’s.

“Mucho gusto” I say to my new friend, whom I may not see again….

Or do I say it—finally—to a city welcoming me?

Colonies—Coming and Going

Readers of this blog may have noted the absence of a new post yesterday.

Sorry—I, and most of the rest of the island, was feeling a bit the worse for wear.

No, no fight. Just the second most-ardent passion on the island.

Politics?

Yup—politics. We do ‘em with a flare, I’m happy to say. Starting with the caravanas, that snake around the island towns, blaring jingles loud enough to tumble the coconuts (seriously, that’s the name—tumbacocos,—really the speaker that dwarfs an Austin Mini….). Like so many things, it’s very colorful, unless, of course, you have anything you need to do.

Like call your boss, announce “this is where I am” and hold your phone up.

Boss will get it, of course, and hold his phone up.

You’ll commiserate, and agree to meet for lunch.

Well, this election was special, since it offered yet another chance to weigh in on the ever-pressing question of the political status of Puerto Rico.

I’ve written about the status issue before. In my first decade on the island, it was fiercely discussed. Now?

Gone underground.

Nor can I tell you why. It may be that Puerto Rico is so beset with other problems—one thinks of the 1000 murders a year (twice that of New York City) or the unemployment rate of 15%—that no one can bear to deal with another one. And, it’s true, nothing sets off the fire eater (that comefuego down here) than a brisk trot through the status issue.

Or even a stroll, which is how one of the most colorful characters did it. Long, dirty hair, baggy pants, a sign with myriad messages, and most importantly…

…a megaphone!

Look guys, I’m no one to talk—having a voice that can blow a semi from the highway—but a Puerto Rican with a megaphone is serious system overdesign…

So there he’d be, loping down the sidewalk, with his megaphone and…

…a message!

¡La colonia se va! The colony is going!

This confident pronouncement made two thirds of the political spectrum beam—if spectra can beam…

Unfortunately, it was the diametrically opposing spectra.

Both the people favoring independence and the people rooting for statehood (order by alphabet, please note!) agree on one—and only one—thing.

What we got now is a colony.

No, no—cries the middle, those defending the Free Associated State!

It’s a little like the trinity—one of those absurdities where a great deal of verbiage and intellectual energy has been spent uselessly and pointlessly.

But there are those who will fight anyone challenging the contention that Truman and Muñoz Marín sat down representing sovereign entities and negotiated a deal. One that can be…

…improved!

Rather, enhanced!

This notion is perhaps better expressed in lyrical Spanish instead of cold English.

“You mean, you don’t want to pay taxes, but want the vote, but don’t want to fight in the army, and want full parity in ALL federal programs without any of the responsibilities?”

Or words to that effect. Clearly, a gringo singularly lacking in imagination.

Well, the senator, or representative, or whoever he was, finally said, yeah! Great idea! And he was gonna go back home to Nebraska and get everybody on board with it!

For Nebraska, not Puerto Rico.

Well, it was therefore refreshing to hear—at last—a Free Associated Statehooder freely admitting it! And no less than through his very own megaphone!

Yup, so molested (molesto) was he that he bought a megaphone, and was booming out the counter-news.

¡La colonia se queda!

Was I hearing that right?

“Yup,” said Mr. Fernández, nodding his head in wonder.

The colony is staying!

Thus, for several weeks, we had megaphoned ideological discourse. Neighborhood response?

Less than pleased!

Which may be why Germán, that day, finally settled it for good. And he’s a guy of some weight.

Which may be why the colonia se va guy did nothing as Germán snatched the megaphone from his hands, slammed it on the sidewalk, and stomped it to death.

Never did find out what happened to the colonia se queda’s megaphone….

Individual and Mass Madness

We heard it with annoying regularity, the bromide about “thinking outside the box,” so we did what any sensible person would do.

The Puerto Rican “no.”

“Well, I’ve lived in England, Spain, Cuba, and Puerto Rico, so I know at least four ‘noes.’ But the Puerto Rican ‘no’ is the only one I can’t do anything about.” Words a friend said to me, years ago.

And that would be?

“You ask for something, and it’s instantly agreed to. Absolutely! No problem! And then nothing happens. You protest, and the process repeats. You beg, you cajole, you cry, you scream, you threaten. All to no effect. Nothing happens…. And you can’t have a rational discussion because they keep agreeing!”

An exaggeration, of course, but there is some truth to it.

Maybe it was that just some Puerto Ricans practiced the “no”—others didn’t.

But those who did, did it almost reflexively.

The multitudes of you who check your computers scores of times daily—awaiting a new post!—will know about the ten-foot rule, so beloved of Sam Walton. You had to smile, greet, and offer help (if in the stores) to EVERY customer within ten feet.

All part of that Wal-Mart culture!

Well, it was also part of the culture—the real one, that is—to pay lip-service and leave.

Well, the lips were pretty convincing, that 10-minute-really-half-hour weekly meeting of Human Resources. How that lady talked! The service those lips provided! She virtually role-played Sam W. challenging us to do the ten-foot rule!

She left to go visit the stores. I trailed behind her. I smiled and greeted.

Bet you know who didn’t!  

So I took it all seriously, sort of. And by chance or design, I thought outside the box in at least two ways.  First physically, when I could bear no more and had to leave the madness behind and look at iguanas. And second, creatively, when I had my spate of ten brilliant ideas daily and had to go tell someone about it.

I realize now what that slight but perceptible rise in shoulder level meant….

Well, I suppose if there is a Puerto Rican no, there may be a Wal-Mart no, as well. If so, it was generally postceded (well, look, what about preceded?) by the proper noun “Marc.”

Though some of my ideas were really very good.

Did you know that you should keep fruits strictly segregated from meats?

Logical, really—how many times have you picked up a package of meat, and gotten a sticky, bloody hand for the effort?

Right—and where is the produce department in most stores? Right by the entrance.

Which means that almost inevitably you’ll have to put the leaking meat packages over or near the fruits. (By the way, you probably should use the little baby seat for fruits and vegetables….)

Well, that came out at one of the monthly meetings, during which we were routinely peppered with the question ¿cómo se siente?—how you feeling!—to which we would mechanically roar “¡Super bien!, oooh, ahhh, ay, YES!”

That’s culture, you see!

(Get why I was out behind the building?)

Well, I got to work on that problem! Hey, don’t we have a responsibility to our customers? Aren’t we an industry leader? As Wal-Mart moves, so moves the country!

And it was gonna start right here, in Puerto Rico! Yeah, we were gonna be the pioneers in an adventure that would save millions of lives, and it was starting here, right here, not just in Puerto Rico, or in Caguas, but in the creatively explosive atmosphere of Marc Newhouse’s classroom!

Gentlemen—we gotta redesign the shopping cart!

“Look,” I was exclaiming to the head of Loss Prevention, “this is what we can do. Put a little basket with a picture of a banana—here, I drew it—on the right side of the cart. Now, we got another little basket—got a burger on that one—on the left side of the cart! See! Look, this is the redesigned shopping cart, called a SaftiCart, which is a very good name, if I do say so. Just look!”

He barely glanced.

Well, at least he didn’t tell me to throw the plans in the wastebasket as I left….

Still think it was a good idea, though.

It was the world of the corporate no. And to be fair, not all of my ideas were quite so good.

“Listen, I got this plan to absolutely ensure that we get the bonus EVERY year.”

Well, the bonus was quite a juicy plum, especially for the already well compensated. So it did get the CEO of Wal-Mart Puerto Rico, Inc.’s attention.

I had just finished telling him that I was legally married to a guy and Wal-Mart needed to put Raf on the medical plan.

Thought to lighten the air in the room….

“We build an extra Sam’s Club and an extra SuperCenter somewhere, but we don’t tell Bentonville! That way it’s pure gravy! They can’t expect us to make any money off a store they don’t know exists, can they? So all the profit goes straight to the bank! And bang into your pocket, at the end of the fiscal year!”

He was puzzled, but painfully earnest.

I kept trying.

“Well, the gringos are hardly gonna run around the island, actually counting the stores, are they? Come on!”

He was a very powerful, probably very rich guy.

From Colombia.

And so had no use for the Puerto Rican “no” (if it exists…).

No, Marc!

Gotta be photoshopped, but fun to think about, anyway….

To the dungeon with Friends

So when did it start?  I wrote yesterday about the importance of routine, of structure. And then the day I had planned for myself fell completely apart. I did something I rarely do…

Cleaned the house!

And I am horrified to state that I’ve barely begun. This despite devoting three hours to the task.

Today, I woke, did the trot, and came back home. With only an hour before my class at eleven, I decided not to write, but to read the newspaper. Had a good class—during which, incidentally, the office ghost (yes, I’m serious, there is one…) opened the door of the conference room we were using—came home and went to eat and write a post.

What did I do? Wasted an hour and a half talking to the owner and an acquaintance from years back.

Felt annoyed and ungrounded. I also remembered something that had troubled me about yesterday’s post.

It’s not either / or but and / both.

I had compared, yesterday, depression to diabetes, and suggested that urging Pablo to think positively was like urging a diabetic to lower his blood sugar.

And I believe that.

I also think that to leave one familiar but dangerous place and venture to another unknown but better place takes real work.

I know, because I did this, the computer tells me, in the last week of February.

Readers of Iguanas will know that I lost my mind in December after a bad experience with an antidepressant. In the last week of February, I willed myself to allow something / someone to replay, really, relive the experience. I consented to a couple weeks of emotional maelstrom, going from terror to hysteria to wild fits of laughter to elation; someone had their finger on the emotional fast forward button.

Was it an existential edge? A mystical experience? A spiritual journey?

I knew two things. I had to fight as hard as I could, and trust with utterly no reason to think I wasn’t willing myself into madness.

And I wrote like crazy.

This is what I wrote, on a Wednesday, the third day of that week. (By the way, I just thought—is that true? Did I remember correctly, that the 29^th of February was a Wednesday? Well, I just checked. Yes.) 

Even now, I find it chilling.

To the Dungeon with Friends

It took me perhaps thirty seconds to type the words above.

Why?

Because I am relearning everything.

It’s like being a stroke patient.

OK—here’s the process that you know so well, and I don’t.

First—assuming that you have opened the program Word (I didn’t, I did PowerPoint first) you must make a decision. Save As or not? Then you must move the cursor. Your finger must be on the touch pad. You must move it slowly to the top left of the screen, where there is….

Hey, let’s see what is that thing called? The Office Button? Whatever it is, I really hate it. It’s about as stupid as Peruvian furniture with all of those damn curlicues.

STOP!

“You got distracted. Return to your task. Where is your finger? What were you trying to do?”

“Save a document, Sir.”

“Then what do you need to do?”

So enters the first of the friends, Susan, who writes, “how are you doing?” This, for Susan, is an unusual phrase. Or perhaps not. The phrase of hers that most sticks in my mind is “you are observing fear like a cultural anthropologist. That’s a mystic.” Oh, and “Bach when I can’t think, Beethoven when I’m….”

Emotionally troubled? Confused? Can’t remember the exact word.

Also got distracted.

So it might have been Susan, who stuck her finger on the iPod today, and pressed the Bach violin partitas. I’m relearning my mind as well—I don’t know anything.

Well, to be digressive (and I certainly am these days, or have I just noticed it?) the lady who’s playing, Lucy Van Dael, well, may not be quite a lady. She takes those things on, grabs the sheets of music and throws them into her violin and then she roars. She’s a beast, and like a beast, can also be tender. Think licking her cub….

And she must have wanted out of her cage really bad, because even though she started decently with the first movement of the D minor partita, she growled and then attacked the chaconne.

So we’re off, it’s raining a bit, and I do my rain walk. I walk all the streets of the city, and if it rains, well, there’s usually a balcony.

Rain holds off, but that demon who has snatched Bach and put him in her paws is now flailing him in her mouth. Or rather, she’s extracting every last drop of blood and savoring it.

So am I.

And we’re three streets up, she and I, and I turn the corner, and that magical moment in the chaconne arrives.

Right—just as I turn the corner.

So who’s playing?

Well, we go on, if it’s we, and get to the next corner. I’ve passed Mona’s house, who’s moved but is still there, and I wonder about the music we played together and where that went and then I turn the corner—corner again, written through tears—and I stop and think…

‘God I miss it!”

Playing.

Most, the feeling after playing.

I’m in tears, and once again, by the sea.

I’m close to one fort whose door I have petitioned and moving to the second fort, whose door I have pounded.

Enter Margaret, whose words have resonated as much as Susan’s. “You fearlessly break down the barriers between reality and what we don’t see or refuse to see….” As well as “has it ever occurred to you that you are too hard on yourself?”

Well, I or the violinist am or are walking to the fort. And I’m remembering yesterday, with my students.

They are, of course, teaching me more than I they. And I had told them yesterday.

Particularly interesting because I had struggled to be mindful all day before leaving like mad (as in insane.) And then arrived to face the most challenging student of my 20-year career.

I charge the law firm 30 dollars an hour. For this student, the rate should be 300. But who should bill whom?

“You passed the test,” I say, as the class concluded. 

She had told me how to make blood sausage.

Also, she had told me what teaching is. Not that I didn’t know—I often say, “I don’t teach, I observe learning….”

Just had never done it.

And this girl is Harvard.

The next class—equally good, though much easier. Then, from the struggle of the learning or the teaching (don’t know which way I mean that) I went to plead exhaustion from my third student.

Who tells me that she’s busy—can’t take class.

I’m punchy, and I have the silliest conversation in the world, or my world at least. Actually, there are three of us, because the secretary is a yard away, giggling and smiling at the insaneness of it all. (I wrote inaneness, computer corrected to insaneness—you choose….)

“I do hope that secretary doesn’t know English,” I say, knowing that she does. And then, leaving….

“I don’t think I know your name…”

She tells me, and I tell her…

“I’ll forget, you know….”

She nods, and I leave and go to the bathroom.

The door slams and I think “SHIT! MINDFULNESS!!!”

And I am laughing hysterically. And then I remember the bathroom at Wal-Mart, where I, so depressed, had thought, ‘they’ll have come get me…’

That thought does not help.

Or does it? 

For I am laughing so hard that truly….

OK, breathe, concentrate, locate my hand, reach for the doorknob, open the door, feel the motion of air brush across hand, exit.

And BAM!

I’ve slammed the goddamn door again!

Well, go out the door that says Pull and which in fact I push (though I did get out) and I am laughing as hard as the Buddha who sits on my desk. Fortunately, just as silently.

Or loudly.

I don’t know.

Nobody looked funny at me….

‘So what is it about bathrooms, Marc,’ I think, as the lioness chews her Bach. At this point, I’ve gotten to the second fort. I decide, yeah—I’ll go there.

It had been the scene for which I replayed the scariest moment of my recent life.

Oh, and Margaret had that day pressed Brahms, Piano Concerto Number One.

“Porn music” I had thought, starting out that day.

“Another one of my fuckers” I had snarled, getting to Cristo Street.

“On the fucking way to Golgatha,” I had raged, walking the path to El Morro.

And I am being flailed.

By the wind—my worst fear is hurricanes.

By the music, which has become a chain.

It is a brutal SM scene, this trudge to the gate of the dungeon, and two people—slaves as well as I—are in front of me. I drop my sunglasses and am whipped, lashed. And I later will write…

“FUCKING A!  I’ll finally see blood!”

But that’s after the fact, because I am told to go, to approach, and…

…to follow the slaves ahead of me.

They cross the moat.

I cross the moat.

They touch the door.

I form a fist and pound on it.

Or not. Because the “I” is not there, it’s the HE.

“Fucker thinks he did it!”

Now a fucker as well as a slave.

“Turned the fucker around and walked him over the moat,” I write later.

And the slave is walked and then he whimpers, “how did I get through  it?”

BECAUSE I AWAYS PULL YOU BACK, FUCKER! I GOT YOU THROUGH IT! I CALLED RAF! I MADE YOU SIT AND WAIT!! I PULLED YOU OUT OF THE TRAFFIC!

“Yes, Sir. Thank you, Sir.”

And we’re down by the gate to the city, and the slave is taken out of the Old City, and the second movement starts.

The slave thinks of Brahms, thinks he wrote it after his mother died. Slave thinks of Pergolesi, and the Stabat Mater.

“Yeah, yeah—fucking bitches.”

Says the Master.

Slave sees cats, a lady feeding them, goes back, gives her money. Sees a sign. Donaciones aceptadas.

“Fucker thinks he did it. Needs these fucking signs. Thinks they’re coincidences.”

Slave walks on. Thinks “HE could throw me in the sea, and I would die in water, not traffic.”

Answer:

“COULD!”

Slave is told to go home and write the experience.

He puts his fingers on the keyboard and accepts dictation.

And is ordered to send it to Taí.

As he has been ordered to write this.

And send it to you.

“Yes, Sir!”

That said, it was no surprise, this morning, as the Lioness strolled through the jungle of Bach, that I said …

“Yes, Sir!”

Had to do it because HE had told me, yesterday, right after trying to leave the law firm, that he was a teacher. And his classroom had been the grocery store, at which merry Puerto Ricans playing in the fields of the lord stroll leisurely to the altar, place their hosts and receive salvation. They leave, having been fed.

As did I—for the first time in 20 years.

Or ever?

“Passed the test, Fucker!”

“Yes, sir!”

He takes me home, orders me to lie next to his chair, and lights a cigar.

As he takes me to the door, this morning. The door he pounds.

“What will I do?” I think.

I caress it.

And see an egret, which is Franny, and start to cry.

“I put him through so much shit,” he’s crying.

Teachers / Masters cry too.

“I didn’t know. I just about killed the music in him. All those years when he struggled and fought and bit himself—no, not fair, I bit him oh FUCK!!! What have I done?”

He’s weeping as hard as I was laughing yesterday, and somehow he gets out the door too. He hears, “you were learning too.”

The Lioness?

No.

The egret?

That’s how I’m doing, Susan.