messtiza: underneath we're all loveable

Fake Guns

2006-10-10T14:39:00.000-07:00

I wonder if the police would shoot Kenneth if they saw him on the corner, 7 years old in a hooded sweatshirt, cap gun in his hand. The orange tip's been popped right off taking away the toy-ness and he knows it's wrong to have it in school today but still he brought it and now it's waiting on my desk for his father to show up.

How can I let Kenneth know it's more serious than a whooping? In an elementary school where the month of August saw two children's brothers slain, this gun feels heavier than the cheap shiny plastic encasing a round of caps. In a neighborhood where walls are sprayed with epitaphs and white crosses line far too many furrows of the hill, how can I give it back to him?

Un Día Sin Inmigrantes

2006-05-02T23:02:00.000-07:00

I can't say that the marches accomplished anything else than giving folks self-respect and hope, but hey, we need those things to live. It gives me a whole lot of pride to know amongst those 100,000 people in the streets of San Francisco, 106 were students from Daniel Webster. That's 106 out of 220 and nearly our entire raza population.

They Lie

2006-04-25T15:37:00.000-07:00

Wide whitened magazine smiles taunt my right side while the left offers up tooth-decay and gummi bears. I try to escape the piped-in Rod Stewart, visualizing my online banking account and wondering if the medicine should wait until tomorrow. The line crawls while two toddlers crawl between their mama's long skirt.

A teenage Chicanita still stuck in her beige school uniform sighs, pouts and adjusts her backpack which carries a collection of pins: one about attitude, another about being cute. The third is a big hot pink pin that proclaims "Military Recruiters LIE!" Suddenly I am wearing a proud smile wider than any one of those interchangeable pop-starlets that line Walgreens check-out aisles.

I never know how much I need hope until I actually find it.

Para Las Malas

2005-11-19T11:19:00.000-08:00

Mala mujer yo soy
Y no lo sabía hasta hoy.
Soy mala mujer porque
Yo sé muy bien quien yo soy.

Hago lo que yo deseo
Y yo sé lo que yo creo.
Tengo ganas de vivir y querer
Y por eso soy mala mujer.

Strike Free

2005-11-18T02:10:00.000-08:00

The 790 strike has been averted and while I'm relieved, I must say that me and my coworkers were entirely ready to shut down our Elementary School.

The fact that the superintendent instructed families to send their children to school in the event of a strike was truly criminal. She knew that teachers wouldn't cross and schoolbuses wouldn't run. And although I was instructed to remain silent, I had conversations with parents and children about the impending strike and the safety issues that might arise if the staff honored the picket line. I am just glad it didn't have to reach that point...

Myths, Ideals and a Catalyst

2005-11-07T01:54:00.000-08:00

How did the general populace fall for the myth that a big hearted beautiful shiny "America" and some obtuse definition of "HARD WORK"(tm) granted everyone their rights? How the did the fights of workers and organized labor get so lost in history?

I grew up with the belief that the best job in SF is working for the San Francisco Unified School District. A City job held a certain level of respect, security and leverage but I no longer see that respect nor that security. As benefits are stripped away and the cost of living is factored into the superintendent's paycheck but not ours, I am losing my patience and my hope.

But at least this is balanced by a gain of respect and hope in my fierce coworkers and union leadership. Although the usual tactics involve offering up the faces of The Youth as rallying cries for action, I will not invoke the children in this passage. Instead I am going to invoke my father. I am doing this for him because he's put his life into this city and now, as a strategy to cut off the dead weight and fix future budget crises by denying full retirement to long-time workers, he is about to be laid off. This threat has been held over him for years and within the next few months it materializes into a fight or a whimper.

Things need to change.
And I need to change them.

Count Down

2005-10-22T01:23:00.000-07:00

The strike vote has already passed by 90%. The district declared an impasse in negotiations. Now it's just the logistics and our next meeting is October 27th.

Weeks ago we were soothed, told it might only be a five-day strike but the way administration has reacted makes me think otherwise. We have seen obviously fake bulletins on boards to confuse workers about rallies, meetings and votes. Two workers have been written up for talking about the strike. The union has been banned from using the school mail (well just Local 790, not the administrators' or the teachers' union) making communication solely based on fax transmissions, emails, furtive phone calls, and word of mouth. We keep receiving exacted mail delivery from the SFUSD with charts and graphs that are misrepresentative and combative towards the union leadership. (BTW, the contract negotiation team is comprised of longtime clerks, janitors, a houseparent and an absestos abatement worker.)

Both sides are shoring up and honestly, I am past feeling scared anymore. I am ready.

A Fair Contract

2005-08-23T14:43:00.000-07:00

We are janitors, secretaries, clerk typists, accountants, payroll clerks, houseparents, nurses. We clean the schools. We answer the phones. We apply bandages to bloodied elbows. We make sure the district is reimbursed for serving the students.

Almost 50% of us work part time due, and another 12% work less than 4 hours a day in order to deny us full benefits and breaks. The district has been steadily serving lay off notices to full-time employees, offering them 3, 4, 5 hours or 6 hours with a split shift and two job assignment numbers (and no lunch break)--and workers are often forced to take them or are denied unemployment. And now, on the heels of the superintendent receiving a 20% raise and a monthly "living expense" higher than our monthly wages, we are about to receive paycuts, layoffs and mandatory unpaid furlough days. We are being used as the solution in the district's mismanagement of funds.

As the first day of school approaches, we have no contract.
There has never been a SEIU strike in the public schools in San Francisco but come the Tuesday after Labor Day, we will be voting to strike.

I feel like I am working for a huge corporation, not a public school district.

Real Mexican Included

2005-07-11T11:37:00.000-07:00

real mexican included with every enchilada
(or how to tell if a mexican if authentic)

so what if i were a mexican strapped with a gun?
you know, a bandido, an insurgente
a romanticized rebel with olive skin and piercing eyes.

or if i were this hardcore troubled youth
sureña chola gangstacita
with switchblade in the back pocket
and a crucifix around my neck.
would that be good?

how about if i was serving you
some of that real mexican food
un plato de cultural purity,
un plato de mexican monoculturalism
because of course all mexicans are the same
and so is the food.

what if i were the beautiful mexican woman
the one people write songs about
like a sexy mexican maid
a tijuana mama, a hot
blooded maria garcia chichitecameca
the kind that makes mexican women look h-o-t
in a strategically torn blouse and erect nipples
like almost dead
in the arms of a seriously muscular aztec warrior
at the foot of popocatepetl,
like any of those big tittied mexicanas
in those authentic taqueria calendars
or printed onto short sleeved t-shirts.

of course let's not mention the mexicans
who are whiter than the u.s.a.
or the indios who don't speak spanish
the black mexicans
the biggest city in the world kinda mexicans
the mexican jews
the messy mestizos.
because it's so much easier to talk about
real mexicans and
real mexican food
and real mexican crafts and
real mexican kitsch
and real mexicans for sale
special limited time offer!

AK-47

2004-10-20T17:45:00.000-07:00

The bus ride today was filled with older women in the front discussing yesterday's murder.
"They just keep killing us."
"Who?"
"We do. Us, ourselves."

Yesterday about an hour after I got to work, someone was shot to death in the Potrero Hill projects, on the same path that rumbling bus takes through rows of temporary military housing from the 1940s.

Two other people were injured, hit by the spray of the AK-47; one of them was the son of a coworker. Her eyes fixed on mine as she expressed her desire to leave, to get out of this reality of disproportionate gun violence. Her son was on his way to the Neighborhood House to check the job board when the car screeched by and unloaded bullets into the windy summer air. Luckily, the fat on his stomach and sides saved him from a paralyzing spinal injury.

On the back of the crowded bus there was a group of elementary school-age boys with fresh new toy guns purchased from the 99 cent store. During the entire ride, the four boys pulled the triggers, until the constant clicking became as normal as the purr and struggle of the engine.

Shards of Memories

2004-09-28T16:08:00.000-07:00

Long ago I summed myself up in part of my history:

Eating 75 cent corn tortilla burritos from the liquor store on the corner where the cholas hung out and perfected that stance, that glare, that embodiment of "don't fuck with me." Listening to grandma cooking beans and burning eggs in the early morning and her snoring in the darkness of the bedroom after breakfast was made. Thinking "mija" was a nickname and wondering why it was only grandma who came to visit for long periods of time, and never my mother's mother (who never understood my nickname.) Being unable to understand any spanish words except mija, híjole, chíngate and mota. Hearing about wars in central america and the holy land. Hearing WAR on the radio. Hiding from the madness of the school yard during lunchtime in the orchestra practice room, bleeding low cello tones where only I could hear them. Experimenting with hairspray and kohl eyeliner with my friends in the hour before school started. Realizing why certain family members stayed away and why my father would never step into my mother's parents' home only an hour away. Knowing what I was...to them.

Eyes of Glue

2004-08-18T23:31:00.000-07:00

She told me how sometimes her or her friends just felt like having western eyelids that day. It was fashion. Temporary.

The intersections of performance and self-image collided via wallet-sized photographs of a friend's sister. She had recently had her eyelids sliced and sewn. We dug our fingers into the shag of the living room carpet, unwrapped burritos and beer and pondered how applying glue to your eyelids could ever be considered an accessory.

RIP Gloria

2004-05-19T19:25:00.000-07:00

It hit me last night while in the middle of rearranging furniture. My belongings were spread out everywhere: papers upon books upon photographs upon unmatched socks. While sorting that disheveled mess of disassembled shelf and altar, I couldn't help but cry. I don’t want Gloria Anzaldúa to be dead.

Amidst the mess, I grabbed a notebook and started drawing. There, now you can be my moon.

Nos Unimos

2003-04-02T07:32:00.000-08:00

The following is from an email I received from la mami más chula, la Irinacita.

PUEBLOS OPRIMIDOS NOS UNIMOS
Como latinoamericanos y caribeños conocemos muy bien la represión del imperio norteamericano que nos ha plagado desde que nos deshicimos de los españoles. Ellos han dominado nuestras economías, ejércitos y gobiernos para robarnos de nuestras riquezas. Es por eso que salimos a la calle y gritamos ¡YA BASTA! con esta guerra injusta de Estados Unidos al pueblo Iraki!

Hoy en día los pueblos del mundo estamos creando una emoción de Conciencia Mundial y es por ese lado que debemos empujar la lucha. Porque los pobres y oprimidos de cualquier parte del mundo también son mis hermanos y hermanas.

Como luchadores y luchadoras por un mejor mañana necesitamos unirnos por encima de estas fronteras falsas para poder tener más victorias en los años que vienen. Primero que todo somos pueblo, luego por factor cultural somos latinoamericanos, caribeños e indígenas.
NUESTRA PATRIA ES AMÉRICA

BOLIVIA
A Bolivian indigenous woman whips a US like flag as hundreds of indigenous protest against the US led war and against the US aligned Bolivian government politics in the streets of La Paz, Bolivia on Thursday, March 27, 2003. The U.S. government offered Bolivia $US 10 million in emergency aid Thursday, provoking criticism that the U.S. is propping up an unpopular government seen as a human rights abuser. AP Photo/Dado Galdieri

People protest against the US led war against Iraq and the US aligned Bolivian politics in front of the Spanish embassy in La Paz, Bolivia on Thursday, March 27, 2003. AP Photo/Dado Galdieri

PERU
Soccer fans of Peru's Universitario display a banner that reads: 'Strength to the people of Iraq', prior to the start of their team's Libertadores Cup first round match against Argentina's Racing Club, in Buenos Aires, March 25, 2003. REUTERS/Marcos Brindicci

COLOMBIA
Police arrest a student during a protest against the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in front of the U.S. Embassy in Bogota, Colombia, Thursday, March 27, 2003. Some 1,500 protesters, mostly university students, marched to the embassy where police fired tear gas and rubber bullets after the demonstrators burned tires, tossed small explosives at the police and burned the U.S. flag. AP Photo/Fernando Vergara

Protesters aid a student who was wounded when police fired rubber bullets and tear gas into a crowd of some 1,500 demonstrators who tried to march on the U.S. Embassy to protest the war in Iraq, Thursday, March 27, 2003, in Bogota, Colombia. Some 1,500 protesters, mostly university students, marched to the embassy where police fired tear gas and rubber bullets after the demonstrators burned tires, tossed small explosives at the police and burned the U.S. flag. No serious injuries were reported. AP Photo/Fernando Vergara

Protesters burn a U.S. flag at the main square in Bogota, Colombia during a march of some 100 people to oppose the US-led invasion of Iraq, Tuesday, March 25, 2003. AP Photo/Fernando Vergara

A protester wearing a kaffiyeh scarf marches in front of a banner reading 'No to the war against Iraq, Not in our name, the Colombian people' during a march of some 100 people to oppose the US-led invasion of Iraq at Bogota's main square, Colombia, Tuesday, March 25, 2003. AP Photo/Fernando Vergara

Fans of the Argentine soccer club River Plate stand behind a banner that reads 'Bush assassin' prior to a match between their team and Deportivo Cali, from Colombia, in the Libertadores Cup first round in Buenos Aires, March 20 2003. REUTERS/Enrique Marcarian

A demonstrator burns the U.S. flag during a protest in downtown Bogota,Colombia, Thursday, March 20, 2003. Approximately 150 people participated in the demonstration to protest the U.S.-led attack on Iraq. AP Photo/ Javier Galeano

GUATEMALA
A protester wearing a mask of President Bush adjusts the mask during a protest against a possible U.S.-led war with Iraq in front the U.S. Embasy in Guatemala City Saturday, March 15, 2003. AP Photo/Jaime Puebla

Children on board a city bus cheer at a protester wearing a mask that looks like President Bush during a protest against the US-led war in Iraq in front of the US Embassy in Guatemala City, Guatemala, Thursday, March 27, 2003. Some 200 protesters gathered in front of the embassy to voice their opinion. AP Photo/Moises Castillo

MEXICO
Mexican students protest against the US-led war on Iraq, launching mock, cardboard missiles at the U.S. embassy in Mexico City, March 26, 2003. REUTERS/Daniel Aguilar

A Mexican man takes part in a protest against the US-led war in Iraq outside the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City on March 26, 2003. REUTERS/Daniel Aguilar

Mexican students burn a paper copy of a U.S. flag outside the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City during a protest against the US-led war in Iraq on March 26, 2003. REUTERS/Daniel Aguilar

VENEZUELA
Members of the Arab community in Venezuela hold a portrait of Iraq`s President Sadam Hussein as they take part in a protest against the Iraq war in Caracas, March 25, 2003. Venezuelans students and members of the Arab community in Venezuela demonstrated against the US-led war against Iraq. REUTERS/Jorge Silva

A Venezuelan man hangs a banner with an effigy of U.S President George W. Bush during a protest in Caracas, March 25, 2003. Venezuelan students and members of the Arab commnunity in Venezuela demonstrated against U.S.-led war against Iraq. Banner reads: 'Stop the Massacre' and 'No more blood for oil'. REUTERS/Jorge Silva

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez displays a frontpage of a local newspaper which reads 'Blood bath' during his weekly television show in southwest Guanare, Venezuela, Sunday, March 23, 2003. Chavez, an outspoken critic of what he calls 'colonial powers' exerting their influence over other countries, irritated the United States in 2000 by visiting Saddam Hussein. AP Photo/Simon Gacia, Miraflores, HO

BRASIL

Children from public schools, including one wearing fake bandages (R), protest against the war in Iraq during a demonstration in Brasilia, March 26, 2003. Hundreds participated in a rally against the war in the capital. Brazil's tourist center Rio de Janeiro has reacted to what lawmakers called 'U.S. aggression' against Iraq by declaring President George W. Bush 'persona non grata'. Fernando Gusmao, author of the mainly symbolic measure unanimously approved by the municipal legislature, said he would hand the document to the U.S. consulate in Rio de Janeiro and the Embassy in Brasilia. REUTERS/Jamil Bittar

A child waves a white flag during a protest for peace at the Sao Paulo central market in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Wednesday, March 26, 2003. Dozens of children gathered to demand an end to the war in Iraq. AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills

Children from public schools protest against the war in Iraq during a demonstration in Brasilia, March 26, 2003. Hundreds participated in a rally against the war in the capital. REUTERS/Jamil Bittar"

ARGENTINA
Fans of Argentina's Gimnasia y Esgrima La Plata welcome their team while they show a banner that reads: 'Bush assasin', prior to their soccer match against Chile's Cobreloa in the Libertadores Cup first round match in La Plata, some 50 kms (35 miles) south of Buenos Aires, March 19, 2003. REUTERS/Marcos Brindicci

Some 50 antiwar demonstrators hold candles during a protest outside the U.S embassy to protest against the war in Iraq, Thursday, March 27, 2003 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko

An anti-war demonstrator burns an effigy representing the US during a demonstration outside a McDonald's restaurant to protest against the US-led war against Iraq, Wednesday, March 26, 2003 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko

UNIDOS SEREMOS INVENSIBLES

The Deer

2003-03-16T21:29:00.000-08:00

Buckled into the passengers seat, I saw the sunset cast orange the silhouette of a doe grazing an accidental field in the small space not yet cemented right off the 880 freeway. Near the drainage pipes, at the bottom of the hill from the rent-a-space, there with thousands of cars racing by, she stood with her evening meal. And I know it's because of this last week and especially the last two & a half days of US bombing and imperialist power-flexing but I just couldn't help but feel my insides twist as the tears swelled up and out of my eyes. It was visceral inspiration of that moment, the sheer force of survival in a inhospitable setting where things just aren't suppose to stay alive.

Why Am I So Upset?

2003-03-11T04:34:00.000-08:00

What do I say when asked why am I so upset by this war? I try to write it but the words never suffice...Maybe it takes a lifetime of silence followed by one of wailing and yet another of word after word to express my insides at this time.

It's more than war; it's the inevitability of this war as thousands upon thousands of missiles tear apart a country and it's people (and we all knew this would happen eventually.) I see this not as a campaign for "iraqi freedom" but as the political colonization of a land and her people, controlling their resources and their self-determination as the government of the U.S. invades to set up yet another puppet "democracy" to funnel out political for financial support, to create another partner in the crime. And here I exist feeling helpless in this history which happens yet again and again...

My thoughts are fractured and often possessed by an urgency that I can't hide in any sort of insulation; I can't live in this material reality and avoid the fact that there is a war right now, that this is how it works. This is a constant reminder of a history of brutal colonization in the physical, the mental, and the political definitions of the concept. The connections weigh heavy on my mind, and I have visions of the immediate and far futures that are nightmarish as I imagine of how the history of colonization and globalization may be written generations from now. Right now I wonder what direction will this take if the resistance is solidly wore down, if not by economic, political and mental pressure, then by millions of pounds of bombs? How much can we take, can this earth take? Please note: there are a million more points to address in this line of questioning.

I am consumed with the now and the past, connected by desperation screamed into an air turned heavy with burning buildings and bodies, the massacres for the sake of some sick kind of freedom, the realization of a people when they/we see the death of their/our rights to control their/our land, to own their/our resources as even the freedom to exist starts to fade. How did it and how does it feel to see a nation murdered at that initial point, while the first bloody battles for dominance turn a homeland into a battlefield? When indigenous existence is criminal in one's own home, in defense of one's life against an invading force? I only know how it feels generations later, reading that history, seeing the images, imagining the rest, viewing the present as too connected, as continuation.

It makes me think of cities burned so that they could be forgotten, history destroyed as codices were charred and buried, women raped and men slaughtered, holy statues shattered so that the spirits of a population could die as well. The colonizers destroy everything and offer it back to us, only it is their version and they expect us to take it. And because we have nothing left anymore, we do.

Perhaps my sense of urgency is from the fact that this has happened before and it will happen again but maybe if I am actively oppositional, if I record my thoughts and connect to the past, I can somehow avenge my own ancestors and this existence inextricably rooted in the conquest of nations, murder, colonization and resistance. It's that I see images of dead brown bodies and I also see the correlations to a history of conquest in all it's forms, colored black and white in history books when it should bleed from the pages. Lands murdered and controlled by well executed plans and metal constructed to kill and this will happen again and again and again and again as it's accepted as some sick normality as the rest of us fight those battles affecting our immediate survival within a system of domination. This history is the still in it's beginning and this shit will not end so neither will my being upset, nor my attempts to end this destruction and domination, nor my constructing modes of survival and creation outside of the dominant methods, and never will cease my small words filling up a piece of a huge sky.

Gold

2002-07-08T16:45:00.000-07:00

Viewing the towering twenty-five foot tall altar layered and lacquered in gold, La Virgen's solemn eyes and bronzed face at the focal point, I can only think of how this gold was mined on the backs of the indigenous peoples of sudamerica and centroamerica, of africanos imported to die deep within mine shafts, and how this colonial culture still pulls us deep into it's mineshafts replete with poisonous thick air and carefully carved tunnels.

Haiti. Cuba. Puerto Rico. Jamaica. Mexico. Perú. Bolivia. Y tantos más...Drained of gold, of lives. The placard for the museum's display avoids the whole history and says that the contents of this room signify the melding of cultures during the Spanish occupation of the americas from "discovery" until the 1820s. There is no mention of the constant rebellion, the strategies used to protest and counteract colonization, or of the millions of people used as extinguishable labor while colonial New Spain flourished and shipped tons of gold into the banks of Europe and into the churches and into the crucifixes hanging on the walls, gold leafed onto statues, into the immense altar standing before me.

I feel disturbed and almost sick yet compelled to inspect every object captured under museum grade glass to find the indigenous patterns, the local histories carved into the figures of saintly statues forcibly introduced into the homes of so many populations. I imagine the secrets in each piece, the histories I cannot scrap together with the investigation of each creation and a history of books alone. There are indigenous faces in the carvings of christian saints. There is the brown skin of jesucristo, the mahoghany image of San Martín de Porres, the indigenous symbols woven into the cloth for an altar...There is a history of resistance.

Juarez

2002-04-12T22:20:00.000-07:00

Wednesday night I viewed Señorita Extraviada, a new film by Lourdes Portillo concerning the unsolved murders of over 260 women in Juárez, México, across the galvanized border from El Paso, Texas.

Her 65 min. film covers angles which have been absent from the very limited mainstream coverage of the murders by the U.S. news/media machine. She discusses the extreme difficulties in finding people with whom to discuss the murders; the correlation to NAFTA and the related rise of the maquiladora culture; U.S. and Mexican government inaction; policies of intimidation, rape and murder on part of the la Policia; and connections to narcotrafficking. Unlike the sensationalistic U.S. news shows which routinely offer display of pile after pile of bones and decaying bodies, Portillo's film serves as an homage to the lives of the slain women connecting their images with names with stories and meaning.

Please visit Lourdes Portillo's site to find out more about the situation in Juarez, how you can help and how you may view this important film.

Shop 'til Your Caught

2000-12-01T23:15:00.000-08:00

Three years ago we were four Mexican girls with boxes of Pocky treats and overpriced stationary amazed that the neoprint machine had frames of Aztec pyramids and Mexican soccerball motifs instead of the usual happy smiling creatures. We posed and giggled while the machine took our picture. The marketplace's employees stared at us like we were all insane. One of the older Japanese women took off the uniform blue apron and slowly approached us. She looked nervous and probably didn't realize I saw exactly what she was doing: watching and waiting for us to steal, four brown girls out of place and loud. She fixed the same display over and over again and I clued in the other girls about what was going on. I announced to them loudly, Look, she is waiting for us to steal everything in sight. This time she was the one who was caught. She rushed back to her uniform and we just laughed and left.

Exhibits

2000-09-17T19:39:00.000-07:00

Friday night, 2 days after the full moon and we're walking through the Mission catching up on six months of lived life. After burritos and observing teenage drug dealers count money and profess their love for us, I accompany la niñaluna to Galeria de la Raza for an opening art exhibit but the building is locked and looks dead except for a cryptic note about meeting places on the security gate. She says how there's an exhibit at another gallery about seven blocks away and I hesitantly agree to go despite the event advertising containing obvious stop signs like "evolutionary music."

It's at 20th and Florida and upon sight of the sidewalk in front of the Culture Cache gallery niñaluna remarks that we should just keep on walking. But the scene is too tempting to continue on; like a car crash appeal–something hideous and potentially intriguing to dissect. The main exhibit is based on the 7 deadly sins using mixed media technique with christian imagery and daily tools rendered useless by fire. I stand around in a daze, listening to conversations and staring at people who mix and mingle and seem like they just got off work from their important suit professions and didn't have enough time to change.

On the opposite side of the showing, two artists are doing their thing painting huge images as onlookers stand around practicing the perfect bored stance. It feels voyeuristic as hell and I wonder why any artist would put themself through this. One of the artists is young-ish and Latino using acrylic and canvas to create soft spraycan style abstractions. I wait for someone to comment that his art is "so street" but luckily do not have to endure that brand of idiocy.

Next to him a woman is painting the image of a vacant looking woman on a cityscape. The painted woman seems to be in every piece, I notice, like some dark skinned woman of color motif with large exaggerated eyes, lips and nose. I look at the artist who happens to be a white woman with blond hair and particularly thin anglo facial features and note how strange and fabricated it is when the art seems so disconnected from the creator. I wonder if this is the her she sees as abstraction, the colored woman within, wanting to be free with nature yet trapped within the city but it seems more offensive than anything that could be artistically justified. I wonder if the artist realizes the implications of being a white woman creating images of "3rd world" women (or actually the same damn "3rd world" woman) in all of her pieces. If she realizes what it means to create such art in this gallery smack dab in the historically Latino Mission district at an event triumphed as a showcase of "community" art wherein the concept of "community" is obviously used to promote the exhibit as valid and attract those who are interested in their false and self-congratulatory bonds with "their" neighborhood.

By now it is definitely time to leave but niñaluna decides to take a look at the flyers for the event and gallery in a real masochistic move. She shows me the advertising material for this evening's event and upon seeing how it's produced like some street smart hip hop stylized flyer, I tell her she can just put that back where she found it. It was of course a flyer proclaiming "Culture Cache" as a community art center, and to prove the fact I suppose they thought it appropriate to use wyld style graffiti lettering for that straight from the street appeal.

We quickly get the hell out of there and walk to 16th and Mission to catch trains back to our respective homes. On the way we discuss art produced by white women and men that incorporates images of people of color, "tribal" motifs, non-white cultural references, and characters of non-English/ non-European languages. I feel relieved that I'm not the only one who was disturbed by the white woman at the gallery who used the woman of color as her artistic trademark. Niñaluna relays the story of a friend who was a white hippie-ish woman who used images of non-white cultures because "white america is so boring." I start cracking up at the idea that someone would think that was a justification, just imagining what I would say if someone ever said something of that (lack of) gravity in my presence. Niñaluna says she just told the woman to stop talking because she couldn't stand to discuss the matter anymore without becoming extremely upset.

Eventually we hit 16th and Mission and board the train. After hugs and goodbyes, I transfer to another train and find my favorite seat, relieved to be away from bullshit galleries and gentrification gone mad. At the stop before mine, the train is delayed by track work for 20 minutes and we just sit there. I finish reading a zine, then a little newpaper and then stare off into the night outside. I catch the reflection of a woman with braids sitting across from me in the glassiness of the window and remember how my aunt gave me a photgraph of her from the days she lived in New Mexico.

In the picture, my aunt is sitting, staring at the camera with trenzas and turquoise necklaces and earrings. It was a rare photograph photos from her younger years; she was 18, pregnant, and everywhere she went, tourists begged to take her picture mistaking her skin and bone structure for Dine/Navajo (as if that's the only southwest tribe). After stating that she did not want to be photographed, often the camera crazed people would try to snap a quick photo but she was prepared with a newspaper or purse to shield her face from the flash.

I wonder if the photo-happy tourists thought she was some crazy india who was scared they were trying to steal her soul with their image replicating invention. I wonder if in some way that was true; a bit of her was indeed stolen, a misrepresentation on glossy prints. and how maybe in some way, that was true. False photographics truths, unwanted documentation and sterile "historical" proof in a 3x5 photograph, in acrylic on canvas, in graphite scratched onto paper, in poems, stories, essays, history books and paintings mounted on gallery walls....

Eating

2000-03-03T10:52:00.000-08:00

Get ready for the first day of work and try to look professional. Mirror reflects back some oddity in a sweater and skirt. Suck it in and stick em out and wish for no tits and no hips and no. Try on five outfits. Throw clothes on the floor. Forget about breakfast.

And then remember high school, being broke as fuck and never wanting to go home. Eating one bag of gardettos, diet pepsi and corn tortillas every day. Working and drinking and smoking and working and working and not doing homework and not going to class because work was only a block away from English class and work paid and school didn't. And food wastes money. And food makes you ugly anyway. Skinny days and pretty days and everyone always said, you should be a model and you are so beautiful and your hair is so long and it didn't matter that food slipped through hands. Diet soda and newport cigarettes and forty ounces and 1/8 of an ounce and holding back some girl's hair cuz she got sick from the liquor cuz she didn't eat either.