La Vida Es Como El Chile Verde, Picante
Pero Sabroso
Life
is Like Green Chili, Spicy but Delicious
Me puede decir a que hora abren an
santuario? I direct the question to an old man, wrinkles etched onto his
affable face. He sits in the church courtyard quietly taking in the rays of the
New Mexico summer morning like a raven perusing the world from afar. He looks
up at me and replies, but I do not completely understand because the Spanish he
uses resides in labyrinthine causeways of the past. I realize that though we are
both conversing in the same mother tongue, the dynamics of phraseology,
tonality and rhythm are traversed by centuries of experiences, of history,
making communication between us difficult. My Spanish is the language of
central Mexico, where the vowels lose strength while consonants are fully
pronounced and the sing-song tonality of indigenous peoples is deemphasized. His
is the language of our ancestors, forced upon the natives by well-intentioned
but often brutal Old World friars; it is a marriage of Castilian conquistadores and Nahuatl poets, sequestered but nurtured over the centuries behind
adobe walls and under Southwestern skies. I thank him for his kind, albeit
incomprehensible, response, concluding that I am a time traveler caught up in
the paradox of a fourth-dimensional arena. Rather than fleeing, as is my nature
whenever disoriented by exotic, extrinsic ways, I prepare to drink from the
chalice blessing me with an opportunity for new sensory delight. Little do I
realize that as I prepare to unhinge myself from my bungee-cord concept of
reality, I will be catapulted toward dormant realities. I continue on the high
road from Santa Fe to Taos, a road that unlike the modern fast-paced interstate
of the low road, is fraught with footsteps, wailings, ghosts of the past. Picaresque
images materialize, worlds where straw is gold, where faith is genuine, where
life and death are part of the bargain. And unlike mirages in the summer sun,
these images remain as substantial as Paleolithic hand stencils.
Over
the decades, my faith in organized religiosity has been shaken by the doxology
of paint-by-the-numbers philosophies. I weep for conflicted gay folk who
ultimately succeed in sacrificing themselves because of on-going wars between
ingrained beliefs and self. I cringe at endemic violence and bigotry
perpetrated in the name of God, at the narcissism of religious orthodoxy. Within
the silent adobe walls of northern New Mexico, I am surrounded by hand-hewn
cottonwood santos arrayed in
home-spun cloth and weathered retablos graced in straw to imitate unattainable
gold. The beatific looks on their faces look down at me with healing hope.
Faith weaves its tendrils within me like morning glory vines awakened in the
first glow of dawn. I may not understand the ways of people whose cultures have
slumbered in a time cocoon, but I want to understand the faith that inspires
them to recognize the voice of eternity in the rustling of the wind against the
red willow branches. I want to understand what drives them to walk through the moonscapes
of their deserts to reach their altars, what healing potions they drink from a curandera’s micaceous cup, what secret memories
they subdue when in the midst of an outsider.
Continuing
on the high road to Taos, a joyful whirlwind of warm air hovers unobtrusively
around me. It hums melodiously as I stand in quiet meditation next to the mud-plastered
exterior walls of village churches and ancient acequias. It reverently glides through the mishmash of grave
markers at the village camposantos, crosses
whose sun-bleached and splintered wood return to the secret occulted realm like
the brooding bones enshrined beneath the earth. The light plays tricks upon me
as I weave through the canyons and fingers of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. The landscape seems sublimely remote as
though the ancestors watch and spiritual energy smiles. A light vertigo sensation
arises within me as I walk among the fragrant chamiso, larches and piñones.
I find myself humbled when I come across a procession of mourners. On their
shoulders they hoist a simple pine box that serves as the eternal bedchamber
for the deceased. They are dressed in the black weeds of grief, the women’s faces
hidden by black rebozos and wisps of
hair billowing in the breeze. It is so simple, so refined, so real. I want to
stop and root myself into the depths of the sandy soil, yet I hesitate, for I
find it eerily wondrous to walk in canyons breathing out the names of all that
is immortal. Driving further, I note the super highway of the low road snaking
through the desert below, I realize it is time to move on. Prior to my
returning back to my world, I utter a silent prayer of gratitude. The journey on
the high road from Santa Fe to Taos connected me not only to a part of history
that is drying up like an uncorked inkwell in a ghost town schoolhouse, it
connected me to myself.
Being
gay has not always prepared me to embrace the diversity of life within my own community.
I am aware of fortifications that isolate. Derision, rejection, and worst of
all, reciprocating invisibility result in a segmented community. My journey
into a world I thought existed only in shadows taught me to appreciate the diversity
within my own family. I learned that though I and my brothers/sisters may fail
to recognize each other, bridges constructed but abandoned long ago are still
traversable. In a dream of unrestrained idealism, I invite all members of my
community to break bread and drink wine with me, and if we are not too drunk by
the end of our festivities, to dance like celebrants in unison even as the
ticket taker validates our tickets. I’ve learned to rejoice that I am the son
of a woman whose many breasts have nurtured legions of children. Through my
brief foray into a peripheral world, I learn that life is a kitchen preparation
in which ingredients, bitter chocolate, savory peanuts and sesame seeds, spicy mulatto, pasilla and ancho chilies,
and pregnant raisins marry upon a volcanic stone altar, creating a mole ancient
and wise, yet young and vibrant. Whereas
the end result is a sacred dance, the process of preparation is the victory. A 38-year-old
Spanish poet, Federico Garcia Lorca, was murdered during the Spanish Civil War by
the Fascist militia for his being gay. In one of his writings, he reached back
to a friend who had taught him to smack his lips even as the sauce dribbled
down his chin. Garcia Lorca wrote, “Not for a moment, beautiful aged Walt
Whitman, have I failed to see your beard full of butterflies. All we have are our hands and a hole in God’s
earth”—Federico Garcia Lorca
© 28 Dec 2015
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