Obama's Life & Mine

Have you ever read a book that you're glad you read because it somehow sheds light into your life? I've felt this way with J.D. Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye." I read it when I was 16 and I felt like I was Holden Caulfield. I was confused about life and thought everyone except me was a phony. The book comforted me by making me realize these thoughts were normal and that I wasn't alone on this.

This is the way I felt when I read Obama's autobiography "Dreams From My Father", that I wasn't alone in terms of an identity crisis I was going through. Who knew I had one, right? I was confused about myself up until I read this book. This book has helped me understand the what it means to be Mexican-American.

After receiving my MA in English followed by teaching a Chicano Studies class, I realized that I wasn't sure about what direction to go in. It was because of this class that I ended up hanging around with friends who lived in the town by where I grew up. Hanging with these friends in East Los was a breath of fresh air for me. It felt that way because I had not been around these people and these places since I left Highland Park and graduated high school. It was so refreshing to be back. It was a world I was familiar with. I shared common experiences with the individuals I came across, whether it was speaking Spanish, practicing Mexican customs and traditions, and or simply growing up in the streets of LA.

By being exposed to this world I realized that education and the dominant American ideology had sucked me into a vacuum from which I didn't get out of until I read this book. Obama was conflicted about being Black and American. It wasn't until he traced his African-American history as well as his father's African roots that he realized being an African-American is a puzzle that has dictated his life until now. For me, my parents are both from Mexico and I knew about their roots and history, but I knew little about being Mexican-American until I went back to the places I had grown up in and seeing how much I had left behind. This is helping me explain why I feel more complete now than I did before and understand myself better. Which leads me to conclude with that cliche saying, "you don't know where you're going until you know where you've been."

The Hanged Man

According to folk, the hanged man comes down from the tree when he gains illumination. Time stands still while he hangs on the tree. Observing, absorbing, seeing. In tarot, the hanged man represents inversion. A change of perspective. Suspending your thinking for a moment and letting new things in. The need for growth. The process is often uncomfortable. You move from one stage of life into another. Change. Painful but healthy. This card strikes a cord for me. I've been fixated on what's next for me. I finished school, I'm working. What's next? I feel like I've been in limbo. I'm a goal-driven person; for me, idleness equates to self-destruction that is a product of some type of malady for which the only cure is labor. And so, I am suspending my thoughts, looking at the world upside down, turning the hourglass on its other head.

"Calma, calma, que no panda el cunico,"

says El Chapulin Colorado--arguably, the best Mexican superhero ever. The closest phrase I can think of in translation is "don't panic." It's what we hear during a nervous breakdown. Which makes sense cause when you think about it, people panic because they're scarred. It's fear of the unknown. Fear paralyzes. I feel paralyzed at home. Not necessarily paralyzed but helpless to a daily situation that has been ailing me for years. It's between a couple. They are a pair that doesn't match. This is evident to me almost everyday of my life. How can it not, I live with them. I see how one of them makes life a living hell for the other. I can help end this cycle by suggesting a way out. And so my moral dilemma is whether or not to participate. From a psychological standpoint, this is devastating for me because I've seen this couple together all my life. I don't know how life would be for me without the two together. I've never fully cut the umbilical cord. I am afraid of what's going to happen when they split. Roles will be reversed. Which will be mine? (sigh) I'm not sure yet.

relationships+balance=?

It's easy to forget who you are when you're in a relationship. You get so fixated on the other person you forget your daily routine. You forget about doing your laundry, about your job, about your debt, about all those things that make up your life. You get so consumed in the other person. I get scared when I recognize it. Cause I notice that I forget about the world. I'm not sad or mad. The things that had been bothering me before all of a sudden disapear when I'm with that other person. And when I leave that person and enter the other world alone, I enter it peacefully, with a new set of eyes. But at the same time, I enter it preoccupied with the other person. So it's a constant back and forth pull. Which leads me to believe that relationships are hard work, especially for me because I suck at balancing. I always sway too much to one side. I never stay in one spot. I move around alot (my RLS, short attention span, and the fact that I suck at yoga balancing poses is proof). I know that the middle ground is balance. But how do I balance?