Juan of Words

El Rabo Verde Y La Chica Fresa: A Thanksgiving Day Wish

Buenos deseos para el Turkey Day

Oldies but still goodies!  These song bring back memories for me.  My sisters in the restroom, putting on their makeup, layering their hair with coat after coat of Aqua Net, my brother manually creecing his pants with an iron and the bottle of spray starch (they had to be just perfect), me running around trying to figure out what to wear that wouldn’t make me look funny…

At parties, our neighbor Candy in her shiny, red, chiffon dress dancing puras vueltas round and round the pista – a tiny husband in tow furiously trying to keep up with her meneadas caderonas.  She was a Señora in all her age and size, but that never stopped her from having fun.  I guess that’s why I like my musica de baile so much – because no matter how old you are, how bad you dance, or how funny you look, it’s never a big deal to just let loose and move your body.

I’m thankful for that, and lots of other things.

Les deseo mucho baile y buena musica en su Turkey Day!

Corazoncito Tirano

Corazoncito tirano...

Tyrant because you are unyielding, uncontrollable and impatient!  Never can one aspire to hold domain over your desires and palpitations…even in the hardest of times, when doing so would avoid mountains of pain, all we are left to do is plead for your mercy.

El corazón no se manda, por más que uno quiera.

And it’s true.  Because no matter how hardened one becomes, how angered and infuriated, how trampled on by life we feel, we can’t avoid the act of yearning for what our heart desires.  Sure sometimes the pain subsides.  The yearning lessens.  Mind can fool itself into believing it has any tiny bit of control over the corazoncito, but nothing like that call in the middle of the night to shake us back into the very core of our reality.  In an instant, that mad flood of raw emotion, bringing us down, humbling us, to the honest truth of how much we really do care.

Maybe it doesn’t happen often, or nearly as often as it should,  but when it does years become seconds, time irrelevant, stupid fights and grudges forgotten.  Because in the end, that’s what those things are, unnecessary.  Band-aids we place on our wounds to subdue them, perhaps for survival, to live with them, and what we forget is that what they are is just that, never more.  Just a quick fix that can easily be undone

Personally there’ve been hundreds of times I’ve foolishly hardened myself, led myself to believe that I just did not care anymore, that I could truly runaway from me…from the things inside of me that I just can’t control.  Yet for all the coercion and manipulation it took me to get to that high, each time, on the painful crash down against the pavement of my heart, I remembered those words…el corazón no se manda, el corazón no se manda, el corazón no se manda!

The thing is, as hard as it is to achieve, it’s not until we accept this fact of life that one can truly begin to understand the inner workings of the heart.  That beyond all personal choice and preference, the heart is completely autonomous and overbearing.  A tyrant perhaps, but at least one that always has our best interest at hand…even when it doesn’t exactly feel like it.

Short And Sweet

Mexicanismo

As a challenge to myself, I’ve decided this new post will be just that – short and sweet! Short like the few years I’ve spent living on this little place called Earth.  Sweet like the very many fleeting moments everything seemed just about perfect.

Pues casi, casi...autentico hasta el 100!

Lazy Saturday mornings.  Loud Sunday afternoons over fajitas and hollering kids.  Trips down to Dallas, San Antonio and San Luis.  Endless conversations.  Torperias we couldn’t help but laugh at.  Tonterias, Loqueras, and Burradas. Sad, but happy moments.  I dos.  I wills.  Promises kept.  Promises broken.  Yes, even a few of those.  Little feet, big hearts.  Big hearts and their detallitos.  More cursilerias than anything else…but that’s the great thing about being mexicano, we live for the cursilerias.

The bad stuff, not so much!

(Ciento veintiseis palabras)

How Do You Properly Dispose Of A Veladora Once It Burns Out?

Veladoras and a question

A candle yes, but not just any candle. Una veladora. The kind with Mary, Jesus or a Santo on the front side, a prayer on the back side, and a glass container to contain all of its holiness in one place.

This is not a sacrilegious post…let me just get that out of the way now.  And no my blog is not becoming a strictly Christian or Catholic themed website, although I don’t necessarily think that would be a bad thing…but of late, religion and the methods we employ to express our faith have been omnipresent in my mind.

You see, a few weeks ago, after years of resisting the urge to buy a veladora, my wife and I were doing our usual late night grocery shopping at the giant flagship ‘multi-ethnic’ store near our house when there they were.  All lined up in what I think is supposed to be the Latino aisle of the store, rows and rows of glass-contained candles.  Some short, others tall, in different colors, and all beckoning me to come over, just a little closer.  I didn’t want anything too flashy or too big.  The Virgin de San Juan, was nice and it made me think of the Iglesia de San Juan of my youth…not to mention she is the official virgin who oversees all of the San Juans of the world like me.

In the end it was a small white veladora with the image of Jesucristo on it that won me over.  As soon as we got home I lit it up and in a matter of days we had pretty much gone through all of the white wax inside that tiny container.  At home it reminded me of the altars my Mamatule (my grandmother) always used to have setup in that tiny extra room of her house – way up there on the hillsides of El Sauz, Cerritos, San Luis Potosi, Mexico – with the celophane flowers, in reds, yellows, and blues, La Virgen de la Rinconada centered at the very top, and pictures of all of us at her feet where Mamatule pleaded for out happiness and good health every chance she got.  

El cuarto de La Virgen de la Rinconada.

My mother, on the other hand, was never a big user of the veladora. Usually they’d come out in times of great difficulty or distress, when it seemed only a Virgen, a Santo, or Jesucristo himself, could help us overcome a certain dilemma.

Maybe it was for the same reason I hadn’t bought a veladora in so many years?

As trivial and mundane as it might sound, my main reason for avoiding this specialty of Christian candles for so many years is the single and solitary question of how to properly and respectfully dispose of a veladora once it has completely burned out?

Just throwing away the empty container seems very disrespectful to me.  The same applies to any other items, from business cards to calendars, with any religious images on them.  I always feel guilty about throwing them away, and so they just accumulate in my car, in my house, even in my wallet.  The 2004 calendar/business card from ‘Estetica Unisex Evelyn’ still sits in my wallet to this day.  It’s faded, dirty, and outdated, but how can one throw away anything with the image of Jesus at the cross on it?

Help!  Necesito recomendaciones.

Un Padre Nuestro Y Muchos Anhelos

Prayer.  We grew up with.  In bad times and in good.  Whether it was in appreciation or desperation, a ‘Padre Nuestro’ and an ‘Ave Maria’ always delivered a certain peace of mind.  Like saying “I’m not sure what’s really going to happen, but no matter what, you’re going to be okay.”

Even now it’s hard to believe so blindly. 

Even moreso that I can believe so blindly…but I do.

Impossible to deny.  Faith can move mountains!  Maybe not literally, but the amount of weight it can lift off one’s shoulders, if only for a moment, is pretty incredible.  My heart has learned to pray in the true sense of the word.  Asking a higher power for strength in times of weakness, for courage in times of fear, for guidance in times of uncertainty, for solace in times of turmoil, and for comfort in times of sadness.

No longer with the jaded undertone of youthful disbelief and stupidity.  Now fortified by the so many years of nothing but faith alone seeing us through. 

And while I won’t say I know every single word to my ‘Padre Nuestros’ and ‘Ave Marias,’ the few I do know make me feel a part of something much bigger than myself.

Apparently Our Stars Are Stars Forever – Case In Point, Cuchi Cuchi Charo at Latin Grammys

La Charo still cuchi-cuchi-ando-ing her way into our hearts

Not that there’s any real reason why we should have forgotten all about this Latina bombshell of yesteryear, other than the fact that we rarely see or hear from her on any television or radio airwaves anymore…not even the “MAACO para ellos, MA-CO para nosotros” commercials that she was so famous for, most recently, are broadcast much of anywhere anymore.

Still, at the 2010 Latin Grammys, there she emerged, characteristic big hair and scantly clad bottom all in tow, in all her splendor…as the star she has always been to us.  Maybe because of her history as a pioneer, maybe because of her energy and passion for life, or maybe just out of respect, but as soon as Charo stepped onto the stage we all knew who she was…cuchi, cuchi, cuchi.

Which begs the question, maybe our stars are stars forever?

Long after their album sales plummet, long after they can’t even get the Señora roles anymore, long after their many stages of plastic surgeries and liposuction, face lifts even, we can’t ever seem to stop talking about the artists they once were, the roles or songs we remember them by, the changes (physical or otherwise) they have undergone, and how we think they might end up…in the long run – you know, before they take that final curtain call on life.  Morbid maybe, yes.

But also a little endearing…to know that the Cuchi Cuchi Charo’s of the world will always have a place in our hearts.