Montalvo Channels Javid

Well, I thought it was all completely bogus, until two things happened last weekend:

1.     I became weak and massively depressed

2.     I remembered chymopapain

Start with the weak: I had somehow managed to put on my shorts. What couldn’t I do? Zip up my fly.

Continue with the depression: I was in bed, sobbing and saying, “I can’t stand it—I can’t stand getting up in the morning and not knowing what’s going to hurt! I can’t exercise, some days I can’t write, I can’t see so I can’t read—every fucking thing I did to stave off the depression I can’t DO anymore! And it’s so FUCKING unfair!”

I could go on and on about this disease, named chikungunya, which is an alpha virus—no idea what that is, but boy, is it true—that’s running through the island like kids run through amusement parks.

Or is it chikungunya? Because, though the search engine of El Nuevo Día refuses to divulge it, I seem to remember that half of the cases sent off to the lab for testing of the disease are coming back negative. So what gives?

Well, it could be a different disease—since I haven’t had the rash that normally accompanies the disease, nor has my pain been so severe that I am literally “bent over,” which is what “chikungunya” means in whatever African language it sprang from. But neither has my disease moved on in that “two to five days” that every writer—not one of whom, clearly, have had the disease—but instead has lingered, very much an unwelcome guest.

Then again, we may have a lousy test for the disease, since some tests—forget the technical name here, but I think it’s “high specificity”—are extremely accurate, but also have a lot of false negatives.

Then we come to the conspiracy theories, to which even the man who looks into my eyes and pronounces them beautiful—my ophthalmologist—subscribes.

“Hey, how is it that they fly that American doctor with ebola—wait a minute, computer, are you serious? Since when are we capitalizing diseases, for God’s sake? And isn’t that buying into the hysteria that we’re all being adjured to resist? Any red squiggles if I write “cancer?”—to Atlanta a month ago, and boom, he’s cured? Do they expect anyone to believe that? Nah, they introduced the disease and then they’ll come up with the drugs or the vaccines in a couple of years, just like they did with AIDS….”

This man, remember, is a doctor….

Well, the conspiracy theories are running rife, but before anyone un-aching up there sniffs at the idea, it is true that Puerto Rico has a terrible history of being the experimental playground for every new drug. Want an example? Well, when they needed to test the Pill—interesting that that cap seems to be the accepted way to refer to the oral contraceptives—the scientists decided that it was too controversial for North American society. So, according to PBS:

In the summer of 1955, Gregory Pincus visited Puerto Rico, and discovered it would be the perfect location for the human trials. The island, a U.S. territory, was one of the most densely populated areas in the world, and officials supported birth control as a form of population control in the hopes that it would stem Puerto Rico's endemic poverty.   

And what was the thing about thalidomide? Was I right in thinking that it had been tried out here? Well, still can’t tell you, since I got detoured by this:

Como sacado de una antigua película de horror, entre 1994 y 2005, el Instituto Nacional de Alergias y Enfermedades del gobierno de los Estados Unidos y la compañía farmacéutica Andrulis realizaron un experimento con la Talidomida en niñas y jóvenes puertorriqueñas con VIH-positivo.   

Guys? You mean to tell me that as late as 2005 you were giving thalidomide to kids who were HIV positive? So I should laugh if my ophthalmologist—along with half of the rest of the island—thinks somebody slipped a new virus into the mosquito?

Enter Montalvo, who at the beginning of this wretched three-month relationship with the alpha virus—and by the way, I have rarely scaled from the omega host to even a phi level—announced with the confidence of the young that he had a cure, and, though nasty, would have me running marathons up Mt. Everest in days, singing arias in full voice as I whizzed past the sherpas. All that had to be done was boil a papaya leaf!

To that end one was procured—passive voice intentional, since Montalvo snatched it from a tree on private property, but hey, at least it wasn’t that famous blue macaw!—and went to our house and boiled it. Then, he proceeded to make us all drink it—and a spoonful of sugar? Forget it, dive into the sugar factory!

So on Sunday, most of the bottle of vile nastiness remained in the refrigerator. Was it any good? Could anything make it worse? Was it worth it? Raf brought me half a cupful, and I swallowed it.

Why? Because I was desperate, and because I remembered, I think, that a famous surgeon up at the University of Wisconsin had used an enzyme in papaya to treat herniated disks. Damn, was it Dr. Javid—and that’s a serious insult, that red squiggle—because Dr. Javid was able to cure people by injection, not a painful surgery? And sure enough, here’s JAMA—that’s Journal of the American Medical Association, an organization not often associated with wacko treatments:

Since all patients met objective criteria for diskectomy, favorable results from chemonucleolysis spared most the trauma of surgery and its attendant convalescence. These results indicate that chemonucleolysis can and should be considered an advantageous alternative to surgery in appropriately selected patients. 

Curiously, the article lists just one author, which in three decades of peering at medical studies, I have never seen. And yes, it’s Manucher Javid, MD. And sadly, he must have died right before the Internet stumbled in, since I couldn’t find much on him. Though there are four cassette tapes of an interview done in 2004, along with the following description:

Early years and family in Iran; Baha'i Faith; Journey to United States; Medical education; Research; Residency; Application of urea solution to neurosurgery; Promotion to full professor; Creation of department of neurosurgery; Recruitment of a department chair. 

Well, was it suggestion, was it Javid, was it Montalvo? I hope not the latter—I’m far enough along in fatherhood to hate it when the smug little brat turns out to be right. Because in three hours the depression had lifted, though the weakness persisted. I continued drinking the stuff, and yesterday was able to write and play the cello. And now I’m out of the stuff, which means it’s gonna be me, not Montalvo, trespassing on private property and committing modified arboreal theft.

Ready for the next conspiracy theory? Consider this, from Wikipedia about chymopapain, the drug Dr. Javid used to treat herniated disks….

The sale and distribution of chymopapain was discontinued in the United States on January 27, 2003 after the company producing it decided to stop selling worldwide.

Know what I think? The patent ran out, and the profit from what was very likely an easily-extracted enzyme from what in the tropics is almost a weed? Not there!

Is it the chikungunya—which forget ebola, deserves a cap—or are there really more bastards out there?

  

Thus Spat Montalvo

Well, it was an article I had to read, as well as a video—posted below—that I had to watch. And here—doing what every good writer does, namely pissing someone off—is what the article had to say:

I think many white, suburban, and privileged folks in STL think that the only people who care about Mike Brown are uneducated criminals. They comfort themselves with that. That people who know Classical music?! That understand the word Requiem! They care?!!!? GASP!!!

If anyone needs it, here’s the info: STL stands for St. Louis, and Mike Brown was the kid slaughtered by the cops earlier this year in Ferguson, part of the St. Louis metro area. The article was about a protest against the killing Brown at a performance of the Brahms German Requiem. The protestors, stood up, sang a song, unfurled a banner, threw hundreds of pink valentine, oh hell, here’s the picture:

   

You know where this is going to, right? Because I’m white, privileged, and live in a wonderful part of town—Old San Juan—if not a suburb. And if I haven’t written a book on classical music, I’ve certainly written half a blog.

“Motha fuckah! What a Niggah!” exclaimed Montalvo, who turned up again, after a couple of weeks of not being anywhere except—we all hoped—somewhere, and after not responding to my voice mails, which were non-existent, since he has not activated his voice mail. So I get the same damn woman—does she never sleep?—saying the same damn thing—and does she never tire of it?—and refusing to respond when I say, “well, dammit, tell the customer to active ate his damn voice mail! Isn’t that your job?”

“That is so retarded,” sputtered Montalvo, after I had initiated the sputtering by telling him how annoyed I was. “Why should I initiate my voice mail if people can text me? That is SO retarded.”

“Well, I don’t text!”

Since Montalvo’s mother taught him how to text when he got his first cell phone—age three or so—Montalvo was rendered speechless. But that was quite unnecessary: the look said it all.

We were in the sister store, Mi Pequeño San Juan, where Lady had shifted from café owner to housepainter. This she does by sitting down, chatting with whoever comes by, sipping a beer, and painting little plaster houses of Old San Juan. And since Lady had had her birthday last week, Montalvo had arrived with a present, namely a book. But not just any book, but Rilke’s Book of Hours.

“Amazing,” I said, “because guess who sent you Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet? Susan!”

Susan being an a absolutely tremendous lady—as well as a  “white, suburban, privileged woman who definitely knows what “requiem” means—whom Montalvo doesn’t know, but does, since she sent him another book just a month ago. So Lady gets the  Book of Hours, and Montalvo gets the Letters, and I get nothing but that’s fine because had felt such a surge of love, love of a kind I had never known, a love that was still warming me, even…

…as he was calling me a retard.

So for these occasions did God send the selfie, and here it is:

And sorry Susan, this may be the only thank-you note you're ever get!

   

Well, what’s been the point of this long digression? Well, everybody knows or can figure out who Lady is, Montalvo is holding his book, and I’m floating above them. And Montalvo—on occasion—refers  to himself as a Niggah. Lady doesn’t, but her mother was ebony black, and her father of Scottish origin. So can someone out there peer at the picture and tell me that I’m the obvious white dude? Because I don’t see it.

Well, Lady announces that selfies are all nice and good, but that she’s also really hungry, and what is she to do about that, since can’t we all see that ball an chain around he ankle. We try, we can’t, but we get the message, and run for food.

“And how is your heart, my son,” I tell him, since Montalvo is passionately involved in a half-reciprocated love affair with a “lady” of Florida.

“Motha fuck, how do you know this shit,?” he says, and spills the tale of woe. He can neither stay nor tell her to go…I’ll leave that unsaid, since Montalvo is swearing enough for the both of us. This is, of course, an old, old story; as well, when you are stretched on this rack for the first time, it matters not that millennia of men have endured it. As Montalvo would say, “it’s a motha fucka…”

Do I know the girl? No. Do I like to see Montalvo suffering. Also, no. So, time for a fatherly chat.

“Montalvo, you know what a,,,” lowered voice here, we’re in public, “…cock tease is, right?”

“Yeah,” he said.

“Well, there can also be emotional cock teases….”

“What’s that?”

Well, years of teaching have taught me: students forget definitions, but everybody remembers a good story…

“Look my cousin was religious, and he was crazy enough to hook up with a really religious woman. So he’s twenty-five or something, and he’s visiting this girl for the first time in months, and then Karen—the girl—says to him, ‘Philip, let’s both undress, lie together, and just be together, only holding hands, IN THE PRESENCE OF THE LORD.’”

Well, those caps imply emphasis, which it really wasn’t, since my voice was soaked with sanctimonimoniousness. (I know, computer—you want sanctimony, but it’s not the right word.)

Montalvo explodes with laughter, all heads spin, and all ears hear, “Shit, what a motha fuckin’ fucked-up chick!”

So I told him, “you get it now?” Then the food is ready, and Raf drifts up to the shop, and we drift back to Lady with the visible / invisible—but still very much felt—ball  and chain. And then we doing what we do so well in Puerto Rico: hanging out, talking, enjoying each other’s company, and letting world keep screwing itself up without our notice or worry. And I drift off with Montalvo back to the café, and quiz on that word he always doesn’t remember, to the point of wanting to get it tattooed on his forearm.

“Enjambment,” he says referring, if this were a poem,

to this, the skipping to a new line when it shouldn’t.

And there’s a lot this kid, my son, doesn’t know, though he graduated high school with an over-3.0 GPA and has two years of college. There’s the word, “exasperated…”

“OK, so I’ll tattoo that on my other arm….”

So then Raf drops the news that the Met broadcasts are starting this month, and Montalvo can use the encore ticket: the first opera will be Macbeth, about which Montalvo knows, or at least he knows Shakespeare, since he and I have been reading sonnets together.

And he knows—this Niggah about opera—because we saw Otello this summer, and he—Montalvo, ot Otello—had inquired: did Netflix have any operas?

“I’m gonna watch ‘em all….”

Now then, let’s skip a couple thousand miles north, and get down to listen to the Brahms’ Requiem, or at least to watch the video. What’s my reaction? Well, it more a dialogue:

What does the death of Michael Brown have to do with Brahms and thed Saint Louis Symphony?

Well, isn’t classical music classist? Isn’t it the music of the rich, the privileged? The people who get rather different treatment from the police when stopped? And did you see any black faces at the concert, or anyone under 60?

Did they put a sign up: Whites Only? And just as I think that slavishly trying to be a “whitey,” I also think that be able to be nothing more than “street? A Brotha? Well, that doesn’t get you very far….

 And what in hell is the conductor doing just standing there? Granted he was taken of guard, but I’d have gestured to the orchestra to stand, and then strode over and wrapped my arm around the first—and hopefully cutest—protestor there. Oh, and then dedicated the concert to…

Do I have to tell you?

My point, if any of you Devoted Readers, have stayed with me? Well, I’ve got a self-defined “Niggah,” son who knows the word “enjambment” and will learn the word “exasperated” and wants to see all the operas on Netflix, and had never read a word of Shakespeare until I sat him down and slogged through a sonnet with him.

“Everybody knows the sonnets of Shakespeare,” he said importantly, to a stranger a couple days later….

So we’ve fucked up—we who can allow a perfectly intelligent “Niggah” to go through life with no more hope of an education than the prayer of a chance that he’ll  meet a white “Niggah” willing to take him to the opera and teach him the word “enjambment?”

And one good thing about Montalvo? He welcomes everybody into the shops, tells them to ask any questions…in short, he’s a good worker, and quite polite.

Well, mostly…

Because he had made a sale of one of the little houses to a Japanese lady, explained the uniqueness of what she held in her hand, called her Ma’am, and had told her that Lady, still painting those houses, would personalize the little house, if the Japanese lady so wished. So I stood up, feeling achy and wanting my bed, and Montalvo handed the house to Lady, and sat down, to sip a bit of water from his bottle.

“I leave you,” I said to them…

“…in the presence of God!”

And then it’s BAM! And Raf and Montalvo are exploding with laughter, and I know a good exit when I see one, so I only hear Lady say, “what did I miss?”

“Montalvo spat on the floor,” Raf tells her, and it’s then—only then!—that the Japanese lady whispers apologetically and Orientally:

“…and also my leg…”    

Right, so he does have another side, my opera-loving, enjambment-knowing, lady-spitting son. A side he was willing to show, all to help his month do business at the Gay Pride Day down in Cabo Rojo!

Hey, every blog can use a bit of beefcake once in a while!

   

      

The Homosexual Lurking Outside the Schoolyard!

Dammit, Jack, when in the hell are you gonna get it through your Norwegian granite skull—you died in 1993!

But no, there he was, ordering me from my sick bed on one of the hottest days of the year up the steepest hill in Old San Juan—oh, and we’re also having Sahara Dust, which is sand blown all the way over the ocean to land on cars and make little grey blotches and to paint the sky an eerie fuzzy blue—now, where was I?

Oh, yes, my dead father, a mighty laborer in newspaperly fields, had decreed: I had to go up to Lincoln School—quite lovely, and overlooking the ocean, though no one inside can see it, since they have those stupid slate-things called Miami windows, and my, aren’t I digressive today?

Anyway, when Elizabeth told me that the entire school was closed for the day, and that the first lady of Puerto Rico, in a stunningly lame imitation of Michelle Obama—and by the way, she sent me an email saying “I need you, Marc!” Hmmm, everything OK up there at the White House?—at any rate, when Elizabeth told me that Wilma Pastrana, the first lady of Puerto Rico, is going to plant a garden with the teacherless schoolchildren of Lincoln School next Monday, what did I do? I put one and one together and got…

…three.

True, I’m an ardent conspiracy theorist, but really, what do YOU do when people come to your house? Especially when it’s the governor’s wife? Especially when it looks like this?

Did I find the photo I wanted? Of course not, so here’s a word picture: the average public school in Puerto Rico has either over-grown weeds embedded in trash, or dirt / mud festooned with garbage.

So, I trudged up the hill and finally got to the school and then, feeling totally guilty—what I do for you, Dear yet Demanding Readers!—I began standing on tip-toe and peering over the cement walls surrounding the school. First—checked out the parking lot, and there were cars. But no sign of anyone doing maintenance—as I suspected—so I presumed they were the teachers’ car. So I walked three-quarters of the way around the school, and began to feel REALLY criminal when a car slowed and followed me on my tour? Had I been found out? Even now, was someone calling 911 to report that a tall, middle-aged gringo….

Nope—he was looking for parking!

Halfway around the block, it began to worry me: first I had seen the parking lot, which—unlike the school—enjoys a superb view of the ocean—no wonder those teacher’s cars looked so relaxed—but here’s the point: it was concrete. Next came two basketball courts—more concrete. Then the entrance to the school, with the sidewalk leading up to it—still more you-know-what. 

Next came a wonderful little homage to our greatest president: and this one I found!

    

Why is this photo so big? Well, the statue has a charming story. When I first moved to San Juan, twenty-some years ago, Abe was sitting quite correctly—as well as honestly—in his chair. Unfortunately, he had lost his head, and I don’t mean that metaphorically. Or had he been beheaded? Was his head in the clouds, or was it in the sand? What I am trying to say was there was no head.

Enter—if an aging memory serves—a charming, gringa sculptress, and was she going to suffer that to happen to Abe? Absolutely not! So she strode into her studio and produced a very nice reproduction of that famous head. What happened?

Whoever put the head of Abe Lincoln back on the body of Abe Lincoln stuck it ever so slightly to the left. So for the last ten years or so, poor Abe has had to sit under the hot tropical sun, or alternatively suffer raging hurricanes, all with an acute torticollis, which no Educated Reader of this illustrious blog need be told is a pain in the neck. So, now you know where Abe went off to! Excellent fodder for that cocktail party you’re going to tonight!

So the serious question arose: where in the world was doña Wilma going to plant that garden? Did she have a pick ax, or maybe a jackhammer? Would she be using it, or would she dare to entrust the task to those little boys and girls! Because it sounded great on paper—all right—screen:

Siembra Vida. El programa busca replicar en escuelas y comunidades la iniciativa del huerto casero que la Primera Dama instaló en La Fortaleza. El propósito es promover una mejor seguridad alimentaria para el país y el amor a nuestra tierra, al tiempo que se fomenta la actividad familiar para beneficio de una mejor alimentación.

Do I need to translate? No, because either you know Spanish or you’ve seen Michelle planting gardens and stressing nutrition. Oh, and guess what? Wilma also has a program called Activa tu Vida, and just imagine what that’s about! Dammit, Michelle, think up your own goddamned programs! Really!

 Oh wait, Michelle got there first….

OK—so now I was becoming increasingly alarmed—was it my civic duty to report the lack of a common element of gardens—dirt—to the office of the first lady? Well I squinted into the sun and saw—distantly—something green. So either it was a very large teacher’s green car, or space for a garden. Know what? I was too tired—and it was too hot—to check.

Right, so I went back to the café, passing the fast food restaurant where—so says Lady—the owner will not allow her children to eat. Then I got to the café, where Elizabeth retroactively saved me the entire, arduous journey by informing me that no child in the public school system in Puerto Rico—think it’s about 50,000 kids—has attended school today.

Yeah?

It seems that today is devoted to celebrating the much underlooked school lunch workers!

Yes, those ladies who toil in hot kitchens with offensive smells and kick away the rats as they edge toward the stove, and lug out that rice and those beans and stand over it while food is flung—we hope—all around but past them, accompanied by a din the which there could be no dinnier? What miserable, miserly scoundrel could begrudge them a day off?

Three pages, 1094 words—all for a trip up the corner!

Hey, not bad for a writer!    

One Child, No Teacher

Well, there are problems I can take care of, and problems I cannot.

Hold it—my own problems? Curiously, I’m completely incapable of solving them. However, I may have come through for Elizabeth, the manager of the sister store of the café where I write, but then again…no. Whose shoulders does it fall on?

You.

Elizabeth has two children: a boy and an 11-year old girl. It’s Wednesday, the first day of October, and shortly after noon. So, stretching—and boy, what a stretch it is—back to my own schooldays, I would imagine that this child, like me, would have had English, Arithmetic, Social Studies, and now be in the lunchroom, facing down that peanut butter sandwich that was as invariable as the old green couch in the living room. But what is this child doing?

…lying on two pillows in  the Sala Poética—the back of the store, where poetry is read every Tuesday night. And why is she there?

There’s no teacher.

Somebody finally said it, and he can commit every sin in the book until the end of his days: he’ll still fly through the tollgate into heaven, his heavenpass secured to his forehead. And who is this man? A federal judge, Jose A. Fusté, who said the following:

El juez federal José A. Fusté destacó que "no es un secreto" que la calidad de educación en las escuelas públicas en Puerto Rico es "deficiente, incompleta, vergonzosa, negligente, lamentable y no honorable…"

I could translate, but it’s easier just to do this:

1.     juez/ judge

2.     destacó / stressed

3.     calidad / quality

4.     escuelas / schools

5.     vergonzosa / shameful

Bijjte, as we say down here?

The judge, you see, has been appointed to…wait, I’m too tired to look it up, and the nice thing about the chikungunya, now in its seventh week? I don’t have to trudge fruitlessly through Google. More to the point, it’s a detour. Through the French countryside? Nope—think New Jersey.

“Thirty-four years,” thundered (well, you translate tronó) the judge, referring to the case of Rosa Lydia Vélez, a desperate mother with a kid who needed special education, and who took the school system to court. And guess what? The case is still going on. And the great thing, at least in this case? Judges get to be as peeved as they want, and to say stuff like this:

El juez federal José A. Fusté, utilizó una opinión el martes para dirigir una amenaza de cárcel a los funcionarios del sistema público de enseñanza que no implementan la orden del tribunal para cumplir con los servicios del Programa de Educación Especial para una niña con síndrome Down en el tiempo determinado.

(Short version—the judge is gonna throw the Education Department officials in charge of complying with a court order in the slammer if they don’t get their act together pretty soon….)

Can I be a judge?

What else did the judge say? That there are two systems of education in Puerto Rico: public and private. No surprise there, and that’s true in many countries. But he went on to say that it was completely unfair that those who cannot afford a private school are completely…

…you know, I’m a writer, so I should have a word for this. But I don’t, because the word hasn’t been conceived for the atrocity of taking a child’s future and tossing it in the gutter. Oh and then parking your Jaguar on top of her.

Think I’m exaggerating? Think the schools aren’t that bad?

Well, I can’t find it now—but Puerto Rico ranks 50-something out of 60-something countries. I think we beat out Haiti, though! Oh, but I did come across this:

El Departamento de Educación (DE) publicó sigilosamente en su página de Internet un informe que refleja un panorama muy preocupante de la educación pública puertorriqueña, al concluir que el 91% de las escuelas no cumplen con los estándares de calidad educativa.

In other words, the Department of Education (caps by convention only) is itself admitting that nine out of ten schools don’t meet their own standards.

Enter the governor, who came out yesterday, pointing his finger at the…

…parents!

Sorry—it wasn’t pointing the finger: it was raising the finger. The middle one, if you hadn’t guessed….

Can I find the article? Of course not, so I’ll repeat what Elizabeth—remember Elizabeth, whose child has now seemed to have disappeared?—said:

“The governor said that it was the parents’ fault, for not sending their children to school! So he’s going to crack down on those parents….”

Well, Elizabeth is sending her child to school, and what is the school doing? Sending her child away!

Enter Nico, the father of Naïa; Nico’s the (part) owner of the store. So I ask, “hey, where’s Naïa?”

“She’s in school, of course…”

…a private school.

If anything happened to Naïa, my heart would break. But for Elizabeth’s child?

My heart is breaking….

“The teacher will be out for the entire week.”

That means that this girl will be playing video games all week.

“Great,” I tell Elizabeth, because the chikungunya? It doesn’t improve the mood.

“On Friday, get all the parents who are attending Lincoln School in Old San Juan and whose kids don’t have a teacher together. Demand that the kids go to the school, and then walk their children down to the governor’s mansion, and tell the guard that they’ve gotta do something with their kid, ‘cause they’ve gotta get to work.”

Well, that was the plan, but now? It turns out that there will be no classes for anybody tomorrow, and very likely no one will be at the school. But no problem, since the governor's wife will be up at the school on Monday! And what will she be doing?

Planting a garden

So now the parents are planning a protest for Monday. Will it happen? Who knows?

Did somebody put LSD in the water?