The Circle of Life or Not A Good Lunch for ZZ

Out of the corner of my eye I caught ZZ the cat zigzagging up and down in the screened-in porch. How cute I thought. But it wasn’t. With some fear for my fingers, I snatched from his clamped and salivating jaws a very checked-out looking finch. It had come into the porch through a door the wind had opened.

I screamed "No!" over and over and so loudly that Susie came running, thinking I must've been captured by Pipe Creek pirates. I handed her the poor, startled, fainted creature and collapsed to have a good cry. Susie took the little bird to a flower pot in the garden where it would be safe from ZZ who was locked up in the porch. 

I slowly made my peace with the circle of life in Zee Zee the porch kitty's kingdom. I waited ten minutes and went outside to check on the bird and heard loud bird calls of alarms from the trees. I thought they were warning the little fallen fellow about me. Meanwhile, ZZ, who had found an unattended door and had gone to look for its lost lunch was hiding in the bushes. Suddenly the little bird flew low past me, and this time, and only by a few inches, escaped ZZ, who surprised us both, and flew in the direction of the trees.

I hope the little guy is safe for whatever is left of the rest of his life. This one half hour was rough enough to last anyone a lifetime. 

I secured ZZ in his porch and the little side garden where the life and death drama took place was peaceful again. I marveled at the way the place had changed. It had been a stubborn eyesore for years.  After a trip to Hill Country African Violets and Nursery in Boerne, we spruced up our neglected garden. Our friends, Tony Reyes and Tony Villarreal, who is a landscape designer of some renown, helped to inspire us. We planted Copper Canyon daisies, ground sage, iris, pink salvia, red shrimp plants and, most importantly in our drought, we ran the sprinkler on a timer for 5 minutes every day.  

The place went bonkers. Our wild onion and dollar succulents loved the hydration.  We added a small fountain with colored lights that I rigged with a champagne cork in an old planter. Susie added bluetooth-controlled colored lights on the porch. Then she installed two finch feeders and tray feeders by the fence and studio door. Things got very interesting. Especially for ZZ, who got to reign over the bees, birds and butterflies of his African savannah from behind a porch screen. 

The cold weather has not dropped to freezing yet, and everything is still blossoming and growing and blooming. Some colors are faded. In this year of firsts in our lives, this long neglected garden reminds me that we need our health more than anything. Past that, even during a drought, life and beauty are sustained by the basics, and little cariño.

A Fawn In the Mid-Day Sun

 

The sunlight in October is less intense and blinding than earlier in August.

The sun peeks sideways at us, not directly overhead or quite as hot as Hades.

I can see this mid-day in October instead of squinting blindly into the haze and heat.

She stands at the end of the driveway and at first I think she floats above the road. 

She seems lifted with light shining from below.

A fawn stands staring at me as I stand staring at her.

Her outline is vaporous and charged with light. Her belly glows.

Caliche snows upward from below us, bouncing off her belly and the cenizo.  

Limestone dust flurries as she startles and leaps into the field her curiosity abated.
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The Hero's Journey in Life is Beautiful

This movie is a two-for-one. The first half of Life is Beautiful (1997 winner of three Academy Awards) is a comedy-romance beginning with a straight-from-silent-films convertible with failed brakes taking our protagonist, Guido, careening downhill into a village lined with townspeople awaiting the arrival of Italy's king and queen. Instead they get Guido, waving frantically at them to clear the road. They respond with Nazi salute. That's a clue where this film is heading, no brakes applied, either.

A love story soon ensues between Guido and the village's school teacher, Dora, who is engaged to the up-tight town magistrate. It's no contest. Dora is beguiled by Guido's magical nature, which is alone is worth the price of admission to see Life is Beautiful part one. The sparse, pointed poetry of visual tricks build believably with grace and timing. There is a series of traded hats, cracked upon the magistrate's head eggs and keys dropped from the heavens. This is a master class in visual gags that drive the plot forward with mechanical precision.

The second half of Life is Beautiful is set six years or so after Dora dumps the magistrate and rides off with Guido atop Robin Hood, the horse who's been painted with anti-Jewish slurs. The couple's son, Joshua, appears ready to start school when he and his father are taken by force to a concentration camp along with the other Jews in the village. 

Joshua becomes the story's hero. Joshua's journey from innocence into the unknown is through a prison where he and others await their murder at the hands of Nazi thugs. Is he aware of where he is? His father's purpose in life becomes to convince Joshua he is safe instead of in danger, that he is playing in a fantastic game instead of awaiting execution. 

This killing ground is where Guido's magic is put to its greatest test. Guido uses the same idealism that he used to win over Dora's heart to shield their son from fear. To keep his son occupied, Guido concocts a contest in which Joshua has been signed up to play. He invents points that can be accrued by being quiet or by hiding. The aim is to win the prize of --what else would a kid want--a life-size army tank. 

Joshua may or may not be entirely distracted from the pain and squalor by the game. He plays the game and by doing so, he survives hiding in his new surroundings, the hunger for food and worst of all, separation from his mother Dora, who is with the women prisoners. Joshua shows signs of giving up on the game, but he is drawn back by Guido's trumped-up contest when his father tells him that he is just a few points short of winning, never comprehending the danger he is in. 

The boy's hero journey from the corridors of hell back to freedom comes from his faith and trust in his father's persuasive coaching and winking-eye humor. 

When the war ends, the Nazi's flee like roaches and the camp is liberated, Joshua is the first to greet the Allies. He is lifted onto the army tank his father had promised awaited him, the winner of the contest. Final Score: Innocence- One, Nazi Thugs -Zero. 

Life is Beautiful's first half convinces you that magic is anything but magical; Instead, you see that it is made by the hands of artful humans. The second half of the film shows you how vitally important it is to protect --by any means-- a child's heart from fear. When everything is taken from you-- by circumstances as banal and dead to all imagination as a concentration camp-- Guido's wit, and how he used it, show us that our minds contain weapons more powerful than any used against us. 

I caught a glimpse of my shadow

I wasn’t taught to be thankful to me or for me. 

I was to others, yes. 

I teach myself this now that I have time. 

To stand straight up, my entire length, in gratitude for my cells, my biology, my organs and their systems, millions of muscles, rivers of circulation, the miracle of my whir. 

My heart, brain, big toe, eyelash and my hard-working ass. 

I stand erect. Corrected. 

Let all my remaining moments be in thanks. 

Let my posture announce my unending gratitude.

Better late than never. 

All of us don’t get to say this. Think of the cheerful service of my skeleton, tendons, the full service intake and output systems, respiration, eating and digestion. 

All these years and rarely a hiccup! 

I’m grateful for those gentle reminders that suddenly appear to release my left shoulder and to trust that the earth can bear to support me without my help or participation. 

Gracias a la Vida

 Gracias a la Vida.

Vida on the STARZ network breaks new ground in television storytelling with a chilling chingazo. For those not familiar with the term, it’s a big, honking whack.  

There are enough conflicts among families, cultures and economic classes  to fill the toughest Telenovela rulebook. Add to this mix generous servings of sex with a twist: Vida sex scenes are usually plot elements for characters to evolve. Crunchy on the outside, creamy on the inside. Yummy.

What Vida does best of all, however, is shine a light on the margins, seams and borders — those fragile and also those that are fixed—between the old and new. Vida does television surgery on eras, cultures, sexual orientations and generations then lays them open for us to see how we live and love, how we balance our values, what we keep or discard as Vida, life itself, veers just out of our reach.

Vida is funny in a heartbreaking way. It travels the rocky paths of traditional Latino patriarchy, but the journey includes modern versions of machismo lite, with new ways for power to proceed wearing new clothes.  There are woke, willing and even some representative weasly Latinos in Vida. Young and veteranos, too. We see every bump, misstep and chingazo that Vida may deal them with no sentimentality for absorbing the shocks. 

The series confronts a neighborhood’s gentrification in East Los Angeles. It follows a video blogger, Marisol, as she chronicles local businesses being remade for incoming yuppies, leaving locals without affordable services. 

The series unsentimentally examines Mexican American culture’s unequal treatment of daughters and sons. A caring and devoted daughter, Marisol, is overlooked in her father’s will, while her brother, whose irresponsible forgetfulness is the cause of her father’s accidental death, is left the family home. Marisol‘s journey from dutiful daughter to the girl who falls for the wrong wrong guy to finally forging her own difficult way to fight gentrification and landing a freelance job as a video blogger is a tale of triumph after betrayals and scorched friendships in her fledgling career as a neighborhood activist. She convinces her brother to add her name to the deed. Indeed. 

The force of the series is its ability to hold firm in its commitment to celebrate and affirm Latino culture, complex and  intact, the good, the bad, the whole enchilada. Vida walks with head held high to take her place at the great American table, unapologetic and without the need of an invitation. 

I am grateful for Vida because it recognizes all culture’s little treasures, the taco houses, the corner bar, that hold our history and lives as much as our homes, churches, schools and museums. 

The series itself is an example of fighting for justice and representation that echoes Vida’s fictional main storyline.

I’m most grateful to have lived long enough to see series show runner Tanya Saracho (born in Sinaloa, Mexico//Raised on the TX/TampsBorder//Nurtured by Chicago Theatre) and her team of creatives take the tools of entertainment and train them on social justice and empowerment both on screen and mas importante in the writing rooms of a television network. Gracias a la Vida!

Silverleaf Linings

Maybe the hardiest living thing in all South Texas —next to cactus (native) or Johnson grass (invasive)—is the common Silverleaf Nightshade. 

Here is the memory right out of my mental moth balls: I’m about seven or eight years old and walking the three blocks to school in the early morning. I am proudly toting across my shoulder my bright plastic and cardboard book satchel full of arithmetic workbooks and books with stories that my teachers call readers. 

Our street is unpaved until the north east corner of the school. I walk along the fence and notice for the hundredth time clumps of low, dusty green plants with small blue pointy flowers, each with a crown of yellow stamens. As usual, I am day dreaming. 

On my seven-year-old mind: If my Mama bought me PF Flyers like they show on TV, could I really run faster? 

My present-day mind: Forget the Saturday morning cartoon tennis shoe advertising, kid. I wish I could run just for a minute with your brand-new lubricated knees!

On my seven-year-old mind: Is my best friend Joyce Brown going to invite me to play at her house after school this week? I hope so! She has a dog!

My present day mind: Forget friends and dogs. Pay extra careful attention today to the arithmetic lesson. You are about to overlook a sequence in solving long division problems that will haunt you worse than a ghost.

The years wore PF Flyers and over all the decades the Silverleaf Nightshade followed me into all my yards and gardens. 

They are reminders of both my once much-lubricated knees, and also of the abundant and volunteer beauty that nature always provides. 

Earlier this week, I saw that a patch of Silverleaf Nightshade had overtaken the paths of our vegetable garden. Before I started up my weed eater, I pulled out a large handful of stems loaded with flowers for a vase on our kitchen table. 

Those flowers have brightened breakfast, lunch and dinner all week. Their resilience and persistence are reminders during this pandemic that, as Glennon Doyle writes, “We can do hard things.“

There is comfort is knowing that whether in walking long distances, making and keeping friendships, doing long division, or riding out pandemics or standing up for demonstrations that affirm that Black Lives Matter, always nearby and nearly underfoot stands a little plant with blue and yellow flowers and dusty green leaves. 

Pain and Glory, The Story of Pedro Almodovar

Amy Winehouse may have gone back to black, but Pedro Almodovar chose going back to color. 

During most of the 2019 film, Pain and Glory, Almodovar's choice between black or color is too close to call. On the pain side of the story, there is a lot, and it's physical as much as it is spiritual. On the glory side of the story, there is less than there is pain, but as Almodovar shows us, even in small amounts, glory is catalyzed by healing.  

Salvador Mallo is a thinly-disguised version of the film's director, Pedro Almodovar. Salvador is a film director who has stopped working. His body is racked with pain and mysterious ailments.  His memories of childhood are a counterbalance to the darkness of his present pain-filled life, yet they provide no way forward from his painful present.

 Salvador as a child is portrayed by Asier Flores. As an adult his character is played by Antonio Banderas. 

Pain and Glory is the story of how friends, some long-standing and others long-lost, reflect back to us the self that we cannot see on our own.    

A chance encounter with an old friend who has seen an actor he once worked with starts the film and Salvador's journey.  A screening is planned for the remastered version of the director's break-out 1980's film. This is not a cause for celebration. He has been unwilling to see the film for 30 years. Salvador's break-out film caused him a near breakdown: He had a friendship-ending quarrel with one of the principal actors. His addicted partner of three years left Madrid for Buenos Aires and a new life.  His efforts to be the son his mother always wanted ended with her death in an ICU in a hospital in Madrid instead of within the traditions and customs of her village where he had promised she would be taken to die.  

In one of the movie's luminous flashbacks Salvador as a small child teaches a young, handsome mason from his village how to read and write. After setting in some tiles in Salvador's mother's sunny kitchen, the mason removes his clothes to wash off the mortar.  He asks Salvador to bring him a towel. The boy faints either because he’s been in the sun too long or because he is overcome by the sight of the mason bathing. 

Almodóvar uses color in this film as in his whole work like a painter. Whether you are in a cave, a doctor's office, kitchen or a theater stage, color is as important to the story as the actors. And it is most important in this film, because Salvador, who  lives in the dark literally works his way back into light and color. 

This film is about choosing carefully. Almodóvar clearly made the right choices.