dust

I have identified three aspects of the Rio Grande Valley as Particular Impositions. They are: the sun; the wind; and the dust.

Between the first two, there is no relief. There is heat, interrupted--though these interruptions grow less intense as the nights grow shorter--by the wind, which then rattles my eardrums. They both force my eyes shut and find ways into my home, overwhelming the AC or music with which I seek to drown both out.

The dust, akin to heat and wind only insomuch as they exasperate one another, must be considered as a monster in its own right. It is not incessant. But when it is, it overwhelms. It obstructs; it chokes; it scratches. I see it clouding at my feet with every misstep and behind cars with any swerve. It is so grainy on overheated skin and so everywhere after unexpected gusts of wind.

And even though the dust is not always, when I imagine the Valley, it settles itself onto everything.

I miss New Orleans

and Who Cakes in New Orleans, or rather, Kenner

Lately I have been considering and discussing writing a blog post on God billboards, but I can't seem to get around to actually doing it.

As I write this, I'm switching back and forth between my blog tab, a tab with a New York Times piece on concentration, a tab with a New York Times article on genius, and facebook. The first article explains that I can't actually be reading/writing all this at once and am losing productivity in the process; the second tells me that if I were to just focus on writing, I might become a great writer; and facebook is so much fun that I'll never get around to developing "a deliberate, strenuous and boring practice routine" and stick to it and become a genius.

What gets me is this:
1) In order to reach one's full potential, one must be able to concentrate.
2) In order to concentrate, one must be able to tune out other stimuli.
3) I can't tune out facebook. How are my students supposed to tune out hunger, abuse, violence, drug- and alcohol-addicted parents, poverty, and just being teenagers?

I always, always tell my kids that they CAN develop their brains into anything. They can be smart enough to do anything, to become anything. They are not inherently anything--anyone can shape themselves into anything.
I do believe that whole-heartedly. I COULD tune out facebook, and they could tune out reality.

I also know, that my genius kids, all else tuned out, will have to work 7 million times harder to be on par with their wealthier counterparts. They've already lost years of practice and learning that others have on them. And it kills me how much potential and intellect is lost--cures for cancer and hilarious comedy shows and historical perspective--because so few of them believe that the 7 million times harder work will actually pay off. Because so few of them even know what that--genius, discovery, innovation--looks like. And, of course, my students are NOT stupid, even the most difficult of them, they've just focused on all the more immediately stimulating things.

I don't know really what more to say. It's just heartbreaking. As a teacher, it's basically my point to refocus them. But to this effect, and to their overwhelmed brains and bodies, I'm kind of beside the point. What I teach is often no where near the point. And for many of my little kiddies, there is no point.

It is really one of the most wonderful feelings to recognize oneself in another's writing. I don't mean finding which characters were inspired by you in friends' stories; but rather, realizing that your emotions can, and have, been put into words. Sometimes I don't even know that I'm feeling something until I see that it is capable of being felt.

I'm getting married soonish. I never took marriage or love or gross stuff like that seriously before. It seemed irrational and oppressive. But now,

Let the lover be disgraceful, crazy,

absentminded. Someone sober

will worry about things going badly.

Let the lover be.

From Essential Rumi

by Coleman Barks


I wish I had a dreamy photograph that I could insert here.

You know,

it amazes me that I can

1) look into a place
2) take pictures of that place
3) yell hello and have a yelled conversation with the people in that place
4) hear the same birds and river noises as those people
5) fish the same water as those people
6) probably be hit by a well-launched water balloon from those people

but I can't
1) walk a couple hundred feet to shake hands and picnic with those people without violating international laws.


Note to Self: Look into legality of cross-border water fight.

Last Saturday

I spent the late afternoon at Anzaldua Park and Dam, on the Rio Grande, taking photos and reading. People from both sides went into the river to fish. At most, the water was chest-deep; I guess because of the dam. The water gushing through it filled the air with a gentle roaring. The sound and the sun made me sleepy. The book kept me awake.
I believe the park will end up on the Mexico side of the border wall, even though it's in the United States. One of these days, I'll want to lie down again on the sticker-filled grass, and I'll need a passport.
I could walk across the river. What would they do, deport me?








Why are the pictures so small and blurry?

Aqui.

South Texas is the only place I've lived that gives me a sense of the roundness of the Earth. The sky is not an endless expanse; if I look far enough past the dryness, I can detect a curvature in the land. Above it, the crystalline blue ceases to be a canopy, but rather becomes a blinding white wall I might, at any moment, roll in to.

And there's little here in this misnomer of a Valley to keep me from doing so. It lacks the opposites-attract pull of my family. It lacks the heaviness of buildings erected on the winning side of history. It lacks the cradle of live oaks clearly demarcating the roads and paths. Here, I depend on my own sense of balance and stability to keep from tumbling into the place where blueness fades into nothing.