This Week In The Dream Antilles

A 2006 photo: Marine Cpl. Megan Leavey with Sgt. Rex in Iraq

Have you noticed that sometimes your Bloguero completely loses his equanimity? Your Bloguero thought so. Be warned.Here it comes again. Nothing, nothing at all makes your Bloguero lose it like military bureaucracy. Your Bloguero points out that there is a reason, a very good reason why all of the vehicles the army owns have FTA scratched into them. And that reason has to do with how the army handles the very many small, non-life-and-death matters that matter to the soldiers.

This week began with efforts to remove vile, misogynist Lush Rimshot from the AFRN airwaves. Senator Levin sort of helped, but not enough that any desk chair jockey with scrambled eggs on his headgear would read his statement as requiring anything, or even threatening to require something, or starting a painful Congressional inquiry. No. In dealing with the military bureaucracy, the only thing that really matters is an order. “May I please have some more, sir,” just doesn't get it done. That is uniformly (your Bloguero knows) greeted with scoffs. And raised eyebrows. And it’s ignored. Especially if it involves changing anything. No. An order is what it takes to change anything. And only an order will do. Will AFRN get such an order about Lush Rimshot’s program? Time will tell.

And then, today, there was this item. Your Bloguero knows. There are a whole lot of very important things that need doing, that merit your attention, that deserve widespread notice. Your Bloguero knows all that. Yes, there are big, important things that deserve ink. But your Bloguero wants something small. Your Bloguero would like to point out that a very simple, short order that the dog, Sgt. Rex, be discharged and given to his former, loving handler, ex-Cpl. Meagan Leavy, would make your Bloguero, ex-Cpl Leavy, ex-Sgt Rex, dogs and dog lovers and citizens everywhere very happy. Ecstatically happy.

For just this once, do you think the military could cut some of the red tape bs and just send Sgt. Rex home? You know what to do. Start with Senator Schumer and President Obama. Let them know that Sgt. Rex and Meagan Leavy need to be reunited. And they need it now.

This Week In The Dream Antilles is usually a weekly digest of essays in The Dream Antilles. Usually it appears on Friday. Sometimes, like now, it's something else entirely. To see what essays were in The Dream Antilles in the past week you have visit The Dream Antilles

This Week In The Dream Antilles

Your Bloguero missed his self imposed, usual Friday deadline. The dog ate his homework. No, he just got a cold and wouldn’t get out of bed. This is what your Bloguero does on the very rare occasion when he has a cold. When he feels sick. He doesn’t call the doctor, and he doesn’t go to the pharmacy for something to knock out the unseen invader. No. He just gets in bed. Pulls the covers over his head. And he stays there. He explores in depth that fuzzy zone between awake and asleep, being thinking and dreaming. He doesn’t eat. He has soup. And broth. He drinks water. He travels only as far as the bathroom. He does not communicate with the outside world.

Today, after three days, he is much, much better. Thank you. The cough is almost gone, his nose is red but has stopped dripping as much. He is weak and spacey. Very spacey. Very altered.

At some point early this morning, your Bloguero had a dream.

In the dream, your Bloguero was driving his father, who passed away two weeks ago, to catch a train. He was an old man in the dream, just as he was before he passed away, in his 90’s, frail, frequently short of breath, entirely conscious, cogent, alert. First, your Bloguero was driving a VW bus with his dad. They had to abandon that and start driving another car. They failed to put Dad’s suitcase in the new car. They spoke briefly about it and headed for the station anyway without it. They’d come back and get it. Later. When they got to the station, your Bloguero simply could not navigate the parking lot. Every road went the wrong way. All the arrows on the pavement went the wrong way. All the turns were forbidden. Finally, frustrated, your Bloguero parked the car illegally, in a no parking no standing zone, and began to walk slowly with his Dad to the station. Dad has to walk pretty slowly because he gets short of breath from chronic heart failure. But there’s a problem. They didn’t know where the entrance to the station might be.

In the distance, they saw some uniformed men tending a parking lot, and there was a policeman there. They could ask them where to go. The sun was shining, it was bright, and it was hot. Your Bloguero had, as he had for the past few years, his Dad holding on his right arm, walking slowly with him, hanging on. Dad said, “We have 20 minutes.” Then he said, “I can’t go this fast. I have to stop. I have to wait.” They stopped. And stood still in the hot sun. Who, your Bloguero wondered, was he to hurry his father? Who was he to be concerned about making the train? How dare he? Your Bloguero said, “I’m sorry, dad, I’m really sorry.” Your Bloguero woke up crying.

This Week In The Dream Antilles is usually a weekly digest of essays in The Dream Antilles. Usually it appears on Friday. Sometimes, like now, it's something else entirely. To see what essays were in The Dream Antilles in the past two week you have visit The Dream Antilles

This Week In The Dream Antilles: Borodin Edition

Alexander Borodin (1833-1857)

Last week, there was no This Week In The Dream Antilles. And no explanation for why. Your Bloguero spent the week in hospital with his Dad, and then on Friday, February 17, his Dad passed away. He would have been 93 on March 10. He did not suffer, and he was not in pain. He had a remarkable, productive life. And your Bloguero, who is filled with gratitude for having such a wonderful father and teacher and friend, deeply grieves his departure.

So there was no This Week last week. And there’s not going to be much of a This Week this week either. Your Bloguero finds himself feeling untethered, inarticulate. Unable to write an honest sentence. Much less a paragraph. And he’s not sure what might be next.

There are just two things quickly to tell. First, your Bloguero’s dad was a life long pianist and music lover. He’d forgotten more classical music than your Bloguero ever learned. Just before his passing, your Bloguero asked his current top 10 in classical music. His answer: Borodin, firmly in first place for the string quartets; Sibelius in second for his symphonies; and all of Rachmaninoff in third. After that, your Bloguero learned, it gets complicated. Very complicated. Supposedly great composers get dissed for all kinds of failings. Never mind what.

Your Bloguero suggests that you listen to Borodin, and see whether you can discern how Borodin, rather than the many others whose names start with the same letter, got into first place. Here you go, just a taste of the Second String Quartet:



Failing to find words to describe precisely what about the Borodin String Quartets makes them so extremely great, for which your Bloguero craves your forgiveness, your Bloguero can offer you only this remarkable poem by Charles Bukowski (1920-1994), “the life of Borodin”:

the next time you listen to Borodin
remember he was just a chemist
who wrote music to relax;
his house was jammed with people:
students, artists, drunkards, bums,
and he never knew how to say: no.
the next time you listen to Borodin
remember his wife used his compositions
to line the cat boxes with
or to cover jars of sour milk;
she had asthma and insomnia
and fed him soft-boiled eggs
and when he wanted to cover his head
to shut out the sounds of the house
she only allowed him to use the sheet;
besides there was usually somebody
in his bed
(they slept separately when they slept
at all)
and since all the chairs
were usually taken
he often slept on the stairway
wrapped in an old shawl;
she told him when to cut his nails,
not to sing or whistle
or put too much lemon in his tea
or press it with a spoon;
Symphony #2, in B Minor
Prince Igor
On the Steppes of Central Asia
he could sleep only by putting a piece
of dark cloth over his eyes
in 1887 he attended a dance
at the Medical Academy
dressed in a merrymaking national costume;
at last he seemed exceptionally gay
and when he fell to the floor,
they thought he was clowning.
the next time you listen to Borodin,
remember...

This seems oddly fitting for This Week this week.

This Week In The Dream Antilles is usually a weekly digest of essays in The Dream Antilles. Usually it appears on Friday. Sometimes, like now, it's something else entirely. To see what essays were in The Dream Antilles in the past two week you have visit The Dream Antilles.

This Week In The Dream Antilles

First, Salvador Dali. Then, Willard. It’s the anagrams that keep on giving. And oh what strange things, what strange associations the mind makes.

Your Bloguero is informed that the surrealist leader André Breton coined the anagram "Avida Dollars" for Salvador Dalí, to tarnish his reputation by the implication of commercialism. Very clever. And intentional. But when your last name is Romney, and the letters that spell “money” are obvious and comprise 5/6ths of your family name, you have a big problem. Especially when the US economy is in the gutter, and you’re running for president in 2012, and you want to claim that you can end the depression. And it escapes no one that you have tons and tons of money.

As if that weren’t enough, the problem is exacerbated by the design geniuses who created Willard’s logo. Look at these awful examples:

They made the “R” essentially unreadable by turning it into a flag-thing, leaving you, dear reader, with a 5-letter scramble that can only spell one thing, “money.” Just look at it. Just think about it. Look at this terrible logo. Ask yourself, “What’s the word that comes to mind.” You don’t think, “Oh, he’s the guy to fix the economy.” Nope. You think, “Money. He has tons of money. He’s really, really, really rich.”

This isn’t rocket science. When you think about Romney, because you see his name somewhere, it’s unavoidable. The mind is in control. You have to associate his name and logo with the word “money,” of which Willard has far more than anyone else.

This inevitably feeds the meme that he’s a very, very rich guy and that he’s, therefore, totally protected and completely isolated and thoroughly out of touch with the middle class, the poor, and probably even a lot of people who think of themselves as rich, just not as rich as he is.

How can he ameliorate this? Certainly not by making speeches about the glories of capitalism. Or talking about his success in plundering companies. No. Goodness. The reminder of all of these unfortunate associations dominates his name. Look. Look at his name. You see it. It’s not his fault. He didn’t make up the name. It’s not a nom de guerre. Would that it was. No. It’s right there in his birth name. He has it. His father has it. His kids have it. R+money.

And unfortunately, once you focus on these letters, just one time, dear reader, you cannot miss it. Again. You cannot forget it. You cannot look at his name and not think, “Oh, money. There’s his money again. It's R+money.” Whenever you see his logo, you automatically think, “Oh, money. R+money.” And that involuntarily and automatically associates with the thought "out of touch." With privilege. With not being like your Bloguero and you. With being rich and having the world handed to him on a sterling silver platter by a liveried butler. With Richie Rich.

His handlers and Faux News try to shield him from the devastating anagram by referring to him solely as “Mitt,” a monicker (like Kimberly and Muffy) that reeks of the upper class, prep schools in Connecticut, being a legacy (and not the sharpest tool in the shed) in the Ivy League, and the kind of privilege and seashore homes and yachts and snootiness that you can imagine. He's part of the people that Jay Gatsby aspired but was unable to become because of the source of his funds. You can fill out the entire picture.

But look, it gets worse. “Mitt” isn’t really his first name. His first name is really “Willard”, and that name, which your Bloguero and Al Sharpton prefer, reminds of just one thing, rats.

Yes, your Bloguero can hear you complaining. “Come on, Bloguero. This ‘analysis’ if that’s what it is, is too far fetched for us. We don’t believe in this kind of semiotics.” Hah. Don’t be skeptical. And don't be silly. This is a problem as old as Shakespeare:

'Tis but thy name that is my enemy;

 Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.

 What's Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,

 Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part

Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!

 What's in a name? that which we call a rose

 By any other name would smell as sweet;

So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd,

 Retain that dear perfection which he owes

Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,

 And for that name which is no part of thee

 Take all myself.

Oh, be some other name indeed. Don't like the Bard as a source? Fine. How about Marshall McLuhan instead, "Diaper backward spells repaid. Think about it."

Before its too late, and it may already be just that, Willard needs a logo that manages to obscure this name problem. Something simple that makes all the letters the same size and font. But look. Willard’s been running for president for an eternity, and, if you didn't understand this already, he just doesn’t get it.

This Week In The Dream Antilles

A new window has opened for your Bloguero on the meaning of “insignificance.” Your Bloguero is delighted to be able to tell you about it and to allow you to infer, if you wish to, how he and you may now be the zenith of insignificance (Note: or the nadir of significance, if you prefer).

On Ground Hog Day the “celebrity businessman” who calls himself “The Donald” endorsed Willard for president. (Note and digression: your Bloguero does not refer to this person as “Mitt”. He will never refer to him by that name. “Mitt” is a preppy, friendly, brotherly, harmless sort of name. “Willard,” the candidate’s real moniker, reminds of rats and is, therefore, preferable). It wasn’t much of a surprise. It was an ersatz "surprise." A manufactured event. So, of course, there were front page stories, and videos, and the kind of breathless oohing and ahhhing reserved for contrived, fabricated, apparently meaningless events. (Note and digression: Your Bloguero notes that such oohing and ahhing isn’t required and never accompanies really breathtaking, really surprising events. The Egyptian Soccer Riots for example. Those are accompanied by eye popping incredulity. By gasps. By screams. They don’t need a laugh oohing and ahhing track). But your Bloguero digresses.

And in the midst of the simulacrum of excitement, CNN reported deep in its story:

It was unclear whether Trump's decision will have any impact on the Republican race. A Pew survey last month found that 64% of definite and likely GOP voters said an endorsement from the reality television star would make no difference to them.

In the survey, 13% said it would make them more likely to back a candidate, while 20% said it would actually make them less likely.

May your Bloguero translate this paragraph? 84% of “definite and likely GOP voters,” almost 6 in 7, said The Donald’s endorsement didn’t matter or would make them less likely to vote for whoever the Donald chose to endorse. Your Bloguero wonders who “definite and likely GOP voters” might be and whether, having scrutinized the potential nominees, admitting to be a “definite or likely GOP voter” might be tantamount to admitting that one had a diagnosed thought disorder or suffered from delusions (Note: Even if the assertion that these people are mentally ill is problematic, your Bloguero does not retreat from it. If the reader is more comfortable with the venerable assertion that they are “fools,” the reader may so edit the previous sentence). But your Bloguero digresses. A further translation: even among the zealots nobody gives a hoot about The Donald’s endorsement, or they just don’t like it.

Your Bloguero was talking about “insignificance.” If an endorsement actually hurts the candidate, why would the candidate show up to accept it amidst all the oohing and ahhing reserved for such obviously fake events? Wouldn’t the candidate be better served by actually campaigning in Nevada or Maine or making speeches to likely primary voters, the people whose votes he needs to receive to win a primary? Put another way, what kind of loon seeks out and accepts an endorsement in New York City, which is not having a primary this weekend, that will hurt him with voters in states having primaries he is running in? Why would Willard show up to kiss The Donald’s [expletive deleted]? Thereby, as the Bard said, hangs the tale.

How naïve even to ask such a thing. As if this had to do with voters. As if this had to do with directly seeking votes. Tsk. Tsk. No. As everybody by now knows, the candidate is always better served by fellating a ginormous donator like The Donald than by doing the actual campaigning, the shaking hands, the eating corn dogs, the VFW halls, inspiring his GOTV workers. (Note: the adjective "ginormous" refers to The Donald's money, and not to any part of his anatomy). The old school, get out the vote stuff. The old routine of getting votes directly. This, herman@s, is not about The Donald’s appeal to voters. It’s not about old school politicking. That, as your Bloguero and CNN have pointed out, is the definition of “insignificance.” Of no importance. Without importance. Without meaning. With no significance. Meaninglessness. The Donald’s appeal to voters is the very definition of “insignificance.”

No, this is about something else. You know what it is already. Admit it. Ok. If you insist, your Bloguero will tell you. It’s about money. Dinero. Moolah. Cash. Greenbacks. What used to be called “bread.” Surprise! It’s about Citizens United and the spigot of funds The Donald claims to possess and to be willing to turn on in the service of Willard, and the supposed message from The Donald’s explicit endorsement to other fat cats to pony up. To pay up. To buy the votes. To buy the TV attack ads. That's why The Donald is significant, and we, compadres, aren't. We're insignificant. We cannot fund a campaign that is about meeting our desires. Nope. All we can do is vote for whatever candidates others have bought for us. We are that insignificant.

The opposite of “insignificance,” the precise antonym is what Willard expects from The Donald. And what he showed up on Ground Hog’s Day to attain. How many zeroes are in the number?

This Week In The Dream Antilles: Mud Season Edition

Last year there was a fierce Winter. Huge, frequent snowfalls. Extraordinary, aching, persistent cold. And this year, as if finding mercy, Winter has so far been quite mild. A deep snow at the end of October melted quickly. There has been no extended, sub zero cold. And there has been little snow. Yesterday’s foul weather warning was unjustified: the feared storm turned into copious rain. Streams and ponds and lakes are not fully frozen. In short, mud season has arrived early and it may persist.

Mud season turns the world monochromatic. The sun is weak. The sky is overcast and gray. There is no snow cover. Fields and forests and dirt roads are all brown. And so we wait. We make it a practice not to complain. Not to jinx whatever clemency we’ve received. We wonder. Is the future a plunge into growling arctic blizzards, or is it a slow but muddy slog toward the Equinox?

Robert Frost:

Looking For a Sunset Bird in Winter


The west was getting out of gold,
The breath of air had died of cold,
When shoeing home across the white,
I thought I saw a bird alight.

In summer when I passed the place
I had to stop and lift my face;
A bird with an angelic gift
Was singing in it sweet and swift.

No bird was singing in it now.
A single leaf was on a bough,
And that was all there was to see
In going twice around the tree.

From my advantage on a hill
I judged that such a crystal chill
Was only adding frost to snow
As gilt to gold that wouldn't show.

A brush had left a crooked stroke
Of what was either cloud or smoke
From north to south across the blue;
A piercing little star was through.

This Week In The Dream Antilles is usually a weekly digest. Usually, it appears on Friday. Sometimes, like now and for several of the past weeks, it isn't actually a digest of essays posted at The Dream Antilles. For the essays you have to visit The Dream Antilles

This Week In The Dream Antilles

Joe was enthusiastic. He bought a .32 and a box of bullets at a pawn shop and was headed across the fields to shoot some beer bottles. Target practice. “Man,” he smiled at me, “Man, you need one of these, too. For protection. You can never tell what will happen around here. You have no idea how crazy these people are.” He got there before me. He, too, was from New Jersey. Maybe he knew what he was talking about. But we weren’t supposed to have guns. We were supposed to be non-violent. But maybe I did need protection. There were a lot of people around who were not thrilled at our arrival. There were rumors. And, of course, threats.

The police headquarters was on the dusty, main street of the town. On the white side of the tracks, down the block from the gin, across the street from the drug store. I walked in in the middle of the afternoon. The old police car was parked out front. The street was quiet, it was hot, and there was a single officer inside. He woke himself up, pulled himself out of the wooden armchair he was leaning against the bars. I put the brown paper bag (he would have called it a “sack”) on the counter, and quietly informed him, “There’s a gun in there. It’s mine. I want you to look at it and write down the serial number, and I want you to take my name and address, so that if I have to shoot somebody, you’ll know it was me who did it.”

He didn’t seem at all startled by the request. He already knew who I was. And why I was there. He knew all about the rumors. And the threats.

In the bag was a heavy, black, snub nosed .38. A police special. It wasn’t at all for shooting targets. Neither beer bottles, nor small animals. If you wanted to hit something, or more likely someone you’d have to be standing right next to it or him. But this gun had one enormous virtue. When you fired it in the dark, it was very loud. Like a cannon. And it made a bright yellow flash. In other words, it was perfect for me. One squeeze of the trigger would scare anybody to death. Including me. You’d think of just going home. Or back to wherever you were before. You wouldn’t think about much more than that. You’d want to leave.

After my visit downtown I put the loaded gun under my pillow. And life went on more or less as before. Community organizing. Playing with the dog. Going to meetings. Visits to the store to buy single cigarettes. Trips down the highway to buy cheap, hot beer. Answering questions from distant supervisors about what was going on. The constant talking of organizing. Eating barbecue. Putting coins in the jukebox. Talking some more. Visiting the neighbors. Talking some more. After a while, it wasn’t a big deal any more that there was a bump under the pillow. I took it for granted. I continued to watch my back. And my step. But the ugly rumors continued that they would get me.

One Fall Saturday night it was cold and raining. I was alone at home watching television. Home at the time was a run down, rotting shack in the edge of a small cotton field near the railroad tracks. The dog was sleeping on the floor. A leak in the roof near the entrance was dripping into a coffee can. I heard two or three cars pull up, heard their doors slam, and heard the occupants yelling and bumping into things. They were calling me all kinds of unkind names, telling me how they were going to beat my posterior, telling me immediately to bring my buttocks out of the house. When I looked out the window, it looked like they might be carrying shotguns or rifles. I couldn’t recognize any of them. I turned the lights off. I went to the bed and reached under the pillow. They continued to yell epithets and threaten and describe the things they were planning on doing to me. They said they were going to inflict various kinds of physical injury on me, burn my house down to the ground, and kill the dog who they thought only barked at white people. It was true about who the dog barked at, so he started to growl and bark at them. I quietly opened the window at the side of the house, pointed the gun toward the sky, and fired a single shot. Boom. The boom echoed around the town. As I was afraid it would, it scared me nearly to death.

“Oh hell,” one of them shouted. “I told you he’d shoot. Let’s get the hell out of here.” They jumped back in their cars and drove off into the rain.

My heart was pounding. I was shaking. I picked up the phone to call Joe. “Listen,” I told him. “Something just happened. You know that gun I got?”

“Did you just shoot somebody?”

“Nobody got hurt. But I’m shaking. I need you to come and get me and let me stay at your house tonight. Just for tonight. I don’t want to be here if they come back tonight. It’s too scary.”

He came and got me. To my unending gratitude, they didn’t come back.

Instead, one afternoon about two weeks later one of them drove off the road in his pick up truck. He intentionally ran over my dog and killed him.

This Week In The Dream Antilles is usually a weekly digest. Usually, it appears on Friday. Sometimes, like now and for several of the past weeks, it isn't actually a digest of essays posted at The Dream Antilles. For the essays you have to visit The Dream Antilles

This Week In The Dream Antilles

[Note: Your Bloguero has rendered the following dialogue into common English. Originally, it was in the local, mumbled dialect of Limestone County, Alabama.]

“Look, the first thing we do is drink this moonshine. See how clear it is? This whole mason jar. It’s a quart. Wonderfully clear. Nothing in the bottom. No twigs. I got it from Mr. Toney. And it’s good. We drink it first. And then we get the lights out and we let the dogs go. The dogs know where to go. They know what they’re supposed to do. They look for the coons and they tell us where they are. Then they chase them. When they have the scent, they call. And they will chase them up a tree. And they call when they’re up the tree. It’s a special barking. We just run after them, see? With the guns. And the lights. It’s very dark out there already.

“Now the most important thing about this hunt – I know you never did this before, right? – the most important thing is when the dogs get the coon treed, we have to get there. In a hurry. To that tree. Because very soon, that coon is not going to stay up in that tree with the dogs barking at it. Nope. He’s coming down, and he’s going to be mad, and when he does come down, he’s going to fuck these dogs up. You understand what I’m telling you? We don’t want that to happen. Look at Old Lester over there. See that he has no left ear? See that he’s got a scar across the top of his head? He’s a great coon hound. That’s what we’re talking about. We don’t want that to happen to these dogs. So when the dogs are barking the special bark, telling us that the coon is up in the tree, there’s no time for fooling around. Got to run and get there in a big hurry before the coon changes his mind about staying up in the tree. And then you have to shoot him out of the tree. That’s what the lights are for. You shine them up in the tree so you can see the coon. That and making sure you don’t trip and break your head while you’re running.”

“But,” says your Bloguero. “It’s really dark now. There’s no moon yet. And the paths in these woods aren’t clear. And if we drink all of this shine, how the hell are we going to get to some tree that’s far away in time to shoot the coon before he comes down from the tree? I mean, it sounds like we could be stumbling around drunk in the woods and tripping on things and getting all scratched up. And we could easily shoot ourselves while we’re running. And not get to the tree so fast. In other words, this could be a disaster.”

“Oh you a city boy, aren’t you? I know you never did this before. That’s not bad. Look. We’re going to show you how to do it. We’ll get there. We might get a little scratched up by the bush, and we might trip on some roots, and we might take a while to run to the tree. We might get pretty drunk. But don’t you worry. We will get there. These dogs need us to get there, and we will. Matter of fact, we almost always do. I’ve been doing this since I was 10, and I’m 70 now. And Obie over there, he’s 72 now. We’ve been hunting together for 60 years or so. So we know how to do this.”

“But what about Lester’s ear? And how the hell can 70 year old men who are completely drunk and carrying loaded guns run through the woods without getting hurt? Are you sure this is safe?”

“Look, I told you before, we’re not perfect. Sometimes we fuck up. We try not to, but sometimes it can’t be helped. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t try to do this any more, right? We are not retiring from this. I mean: this is all that can happen when you go coon hunting. There can be problems. Of course. Like anything else. And we try to make sure they don’t happen. But we’re not stopping until we can’t do it any more. Right now, thank God, we can still do it. So we do.”

This Week In The Dream Antilles is usually a weekly digest. Usually, it appears on Friday. It's a digest of essays posted at The Dream Antilles in the previous week. Sometimes, of course, like right now, it jumps the rails and doesn't tell you anything about the past week. Sometimes it gets all distracted and goes completely astray. To know what's on the Dream Antilles you have to visit it.

This Week In The Dream Antilles

Your Bloguero hints you should buy his new novella

As you can see, your Bloguero has returned. He enjoyed his time away from the incessant yadda yadda and habla bla bla of the Blogosfera. He enjoyed his vacation away from his faithful keyboard. And from the odious task of promoting his latest book. He is now wearing conspicuous relaxation across his forehead. And he is so restored, believe this or don’t, that he’s not even going to complain, not even a little bit, that his return was not met by jazz bands, a parade, people throwing candy and beads and flowers. And pouring him drinks. He returned without any of that hoopla. Well, ok. He’s prepared to wait for that until February 21:



Actually, your Bloguero first returned on January 1, 2012, as originally scheduled. His first posting tried to focus on general gullibility. To your Bloguero, it seemed a trifle too easy, too comfortable to climb back into blogging. Oh well.

Then he wrote about nests that he found abiding in the fields, quoted two wonderful poems, and served up a Haiku. If the weather in Eastern New York and Western New England were not unseasonably warm, your Bloguero would never have wandered the fields and would have had to climb through deep drifts of snow to find these abandoned nests.

And your Bloguero got down to Three Kings, also called Epiphany, and the story of the Tres Reyes Magos. Today, January 6th, is Epiphany. Your Bloguero wishes you Feliz dia de Reyes Magos!

The last post of the week was sad, the death of the author of the Bass Saxophone, Josef Skvorecky.

This Week In The Dream Antilles is usually, like this post, a weekly digest. Usually, it appears on Friday. It’s a digest of essays posted at The Dream Antilles in the previous week. Sometimes, of course, it jumps the rails and doesn’t tell you anything about the past week. Sometimes it gets all distracted and goes completely astray. Not toay. Your Bloguero is thankful that didn’t happen this week.

This Week In The Dream Antilles: The Polar Express

A gray December afternoon. 4:30 pm. Your Bloguero sits near the fire, and his eyes slowly close. The galaxy of bright dreams just under his eyelids begins to shimmer. He can hear his breathing deepen, his chest is rising and falling. Soon there will be bright lights, magical thinking. There will be dreams. Maybe it will be the Polar Express. But something’s wrong. He wonders what it could be. Something is not right. “Oh,” he thinks, “It’s Friday. You forgot the weekly digest, the one you’ve been writing for all these many months. This must be the one you don’t write.” This wakes your Bloguero up with a start. The dream journey is aborted. The Polar Express isn't coming for him. Your Bloguero begins to ponder.

There ensues a debate. “Nobody reads it anyway, nobody cares, you see, virtually no one comments or recommends. It won’t even be missed. Let the dreams begin. Forget that post.” This negative, critical, disparaging thought is of course opposed. Your Bloguero is adept at having contentious debates with himself. Especially if the choices are dreams or writing, his own sloth or productivity. “It’s not so hard, and it’s good to have a weeky practice, and who knows what you’ll write, it’ll be fun. And if you do it before Friday is over, you will have completed this task and will be able to pick it up again next week, when, hopefully you’ll feel more like writing.” This chatter seesaws back and forth for a while. Yadda yadda yadda. Habla bla bla bla bla. It disrupts the incipient nap. Your Bloguero finds himself at the keyboard instead of the dreamy pullman. He just wants to check in, insert a place mark on Friday, December 16, 2011.

Chanukah is next week; Christmas, the week after. Solstice is next week; Kwanzaa, the week after. And Festivus is next week. ‘Tis the season. Your Bloguero dispenses with his usual remarks about the pernicious Festival of Capitalism and wishes each of you and your families and friends a very happy Holiday. May it be a day of comfort and joy. May you be happy and find delight.

Your Bloguero would be remiss if he didn’t repeat, given the season and its expected shopping behavior, that his new novella, Tulum, is now available, and you can should buy it at Barnes and Noble, Amazon and iUniverse. This would make a perfect stocking or Kindle stuffer. It would make a lovely gift. Your Bloguero thinks you would like to read it. No stocking should be without one. And lest he not admit it, it will profit your Bloguero.

This Week In The Dream Antilles is usually a weekly digest. Usually, it appears on Friday. Sometimes, like now and for several of the past weeks, it isn't actually a digest of essays posted at The Dream Antilles. For the essays you have to visit The Dream Antilles

This Week In The Dream Antilles

Your Bloguero And The Book

You probably didn’t know that your faithful Bloguero was interested in commerce. Actually, to tell the truth, he really isn’t. But he can’t lie. Even though he has neither real skill for commerce nor any interest in it, even though in general he could care less about it, he finds himself now personally involved in it. Namely, selling his book, Tulum. Your Bloguero can hear his faithful but somewhat intellectually snobbish readers (and his many wise-ass critics) saying, “Selling? Ewwww. How could you?” Your Bloguero agrees that selling is often crass, sometimes beyond distasteful, and frequently involves prevarication if not outright fraud. But this, your Bloguero assures himself and you, is a different matter. This is something else entirely.

After all, your Bloguero is not going door to soon-to-be-slammed door trying to sell encyclopedias or Bibles. He’s selling fiction. Magical realist fiction. He’s selling a book he wrote. What, you might ask, is so hard about selling fiction? Isn’t most political speech in the US just selling fiction? Isn’t most advertising just selling fiction? My goodness, your Bloguero hears you saying, in this season, the season of vast capitalistic excess and unnecessary expenditures, isn’t the main activity selling fiction of various sorts? All right. You’ve got a point there, but your Bloguero will not be diverted by it. Your Bloguero is selling only his new novel, Tulum. And he’s not at all that committed to doing that in the tradition, shameless, well worn way.

There are obvious problems with your Bloguero’s selling this book. Your Bloguero thinks of himself as a writer (he hopes that is not offensive to you for him to say it). And he thinks he is a terrible salesman. He doesn’t like selling. At all. He has little or no positive experience with it. And to make matters worse, your Bloguero’s psyche screams vociferous objections to tooting his own schnozz. In other words, your Bloguero doesn’t want to pimp his book. Or himself. Or his "abilities." That seems unseemly. And as if that weren’t enough, there’s your Bloguero’s fabled and oft practiced sloth and indolence. These subvert selling and all other commercial activities. Put it this way to keep it simple: Your Bloguero thinks that if his book is any good at all, it should simply sell itself while your Bloguero returns to daydreaming and making up his third book. Your Bloguero shouldn’t have to occupy himself with the physical activity and mental exertions involved in selling his creation. Look. Your Bloguero writes magical realism. So if this book is going to sell, it’s logical, isn’t it, that it should only be sold magically.

Do you hear your Bloguero whining? Making excuses? Walking back the expectations? Your Bloguero is more worried that he sounds a lot like Ignatius Reilly. But no matter. Your Bloguero would like to sell many thousands of copies of his book through the magical reality of the Internet and through the magic of word of mouth. That is the sum and substance of your Bloguero’s sales business planning. Magic. When one writes magical realism, one doesn’t complete the book and then suddenly act like one just spent 5 years writing financial non-fiction. No. There has to be some consistency between what’s in the book and how it exists in the world, doesn’t there? So if the book is magical realism and fiction, it has to be sold magically. There. Your Bloguero said it. Your Bloguero doesn’t want to hear anyone criticize or analyze his motivations in making this assertion.

Anyway, that’s where you come in. This is really simple, and a solution beautifully fitting your Bloguero’s laziness and magical thinking. It is not a linear solution. It is not logical. But, alas, it’s your Bloguero’s magical solution. And his magical solution is his only one.

Here it is: your Bloguero wants you to buy a copy of the book (or more if you feel called to do so), read it, and write a short review at Barnes and Noble, or Amazon, or iUniverse, or on the Blogs or Facebook or wherever, and, whether you liked it or not, though the thought of the latter possibility disturbs your Bloguero’s feelings, tell your friends and family about it. And soon it will be, as Arlo once sang, a movement. And then, after a very short while,Tulum will magically be ubiquitous. Think of this: Your Bloguero will be lying on the floor with his faithful dog and staring at the ceiling and dreaming up something new, and as he does this, the book, this very book, will be selling effortlessly. Magically. Thousands and thousands of magical sales. An avalanche of books. And you dear reader will have made this possible.

One last thought. Your Bloguero would also like you to realize that no Christmas or Channukah or Solstice stocking is complete without a copy of this book in it. Yes, yes, your Bloguero knows that there are no Channukah stockings. Not yet. But he thinks there should be.

This Week In The Dream Antilles: Lester Maddox Edition

Oh please forgive your Bloguero his excesses and tantrums.

Yesterday your Bloguero was vexed and found himself exploding when Noot Gingrich proposed yet again that poor children (read: poor, urban children of color) work as assistant janitors and that they mop floors and clean bathrooms. These children, Noot told us, don’t have good work habits, and neither do their parents. They need to learn them, he opined, and that dollars must be earned solely by the sweat of their brows and not from engaging in the illegal activities that are so very pervasive in their neighborhoods. Your Bloguero imagines that this “idea” will eventually emerge in Congress as the “Poor, Urban Children’s Mandatory Work Act of 2012,” and that it will void child labor laws and make degrading manual work a pre-requisite to receipt of school nutrition programs if not elementary school attendance itself.

When your Bloguero was a child in Newark, his school didn’t have a course in brooming so that he could be channeled into a life of required, permanent manual work, showing up on Monday mornings for inadequate pay, and submissive obedience to the straw boss. Your Bloguero wasn’t asked to trade his pens and pencils and crayons for brooms and mops. No. Back then, it was a world of upward mobility. For everyone. And it was fervently asserted, everybody could become President, and the elementary school was everybody’s first station on the trip toward a good life. The good life, your Bloguero was always told, was built on merit. And education. And hard work. And desire. Your Bloguero notes that there could have been far worse things to tell him, including that he should start sweeping now because that was his station in life.

Noot is an experienced politician. He is far from congenitally tone deaf. And he knows how to whistle for the dogs. Let’s recall that he’s from Georgia. And let’s also recall that it wasn’t that long ago that Governor Lester Maddox was passing out ax handles in Atlanta. And so, dear reader, this ain't no dog whistle. It's blatant racism. Just look at Noot’s characterization of the neighborhoods in which poor children are raised. This isn’t code; it’s Noot mashing the black keys on the electoral piano with his elbow.

These neighborhoods and their residents, Noot would have us believe, are dominated by shiftlessness, by drug dealing, by welfare queens, by benefits fraud, by crime, by illegal activities of all descriptions. Your Bloguero spares you a repetition of the litany of historic grievances against the urban poor encapsulated in Noot's remarks. So Noot’s resurrecting the pre-integration Georgia of 1953. And he’s saying that the children who are raised in these ghetto neighborhoods need to be put in their place because their families won’t do it. And the rest of the populace shouldn’t have to pay for it. And the place where these children belong, less you forget it, is as assistant janitors while they are in elementary school. Who are they to aspire to be president?

Your Bloguero is enraged. He notes in passing that this isn’t the first, nor will it be the last time that a presidential candidate plays the race card before November, 2012. Your Bloguero just wonders why there is a storm about Herman Cain’s affair and his serial sex harassments, but so far blatant racism seems to be getting a hall pass.

This Week In The Dream Antilles

A Friday that feels like Sunday. Unless you’re engaged in the widely hyped capitalist feeding frenzy called “Black Friday.” Or some of the many other activitie your Bloguero disdains. Today your Bloguero’s world is divided into only two parts, day and night, the 1% and the 99%, those who think today might be Sunday and those who think it’s for filling up the credit cards, those who are hung over from tryptophan and wine and those who are not. This way of experiencing the world, sharp, high contrast dualism, is disturbing to your Bloguero. But what can you expect when the first meal of the day is left over turkey and chocolate cake?

A day to make the crooked straight and the rough places plane. And for this:



This Week In The Dream Antilles is usually a weekly digest. Sometimes, like now and for several of the past weeks, it isn't actually a digest of essays posted at The Dream Antilles. For that you have to visit The Dream Antilles.

This Week In The Dream Antilles

The Old Fruteria, Tulum

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays this courier from the swift completion of his appointed rounds.

Right. But when it comes to the Weekly Digest and your Bloguero, things happen. Clumsy, annoying things. Things that could easily derail this essay. Things like somehow deleting every shred of the final draft of this post before it was saved. Stupid, aggravating things. Things that make this a painful, unnecessary re-write from scratch. Things that make your Bloguero wonder whether the All Knowing Universe is trying to tell him in a special secret code not to post this essay. But even that paranoid wondering will not stop your Bloguero. No. Not now. Nor will it stop him from doing his crazy, eccentric, aerobic Happy Dance. Nothing can stop that. Not today. Not now.

What’s the dance all about? Thank you for asking.

Your Bloguero received via email about an hour ago the proofs for his new novella, Tulum. The cover. The inside of the book. The whole thing. All of it. That started the Happy Dance. Why? Why indeed. Because that means that the very last, the final step in evicting this book from its large, dusty, cluttered corner office in your Bloguero’s mind and sending it to live elsewhere, in your Kindle or bookcase, is finally at hand. After a long five years. Let your Bloguero repeat that for emphasis. Your Bloguero has arrived at the very last, the final step in the production of this novella. And very soon, to your Bloguero’s utter relief and delight, it will be out of his head and living elsewhere.

This weekend in a hyper-caffeinated, vigilant, extremely focused, narrow, tunnel vision way your Bloguero will read every single letter of the 197-page document with a blue pencil in his hand, ferreting out the problems, finding them all (he truly hopes) and fixing each of them. Some problems, particularly the written evidence of your Bloguero’s infelicities and shortcomings as a writer, will, of course, have to remain. Your Bloguero’s limitations come with the territory. He’s the last one who can recognize or fix them. But the orthographic and typographical issues? Those are much more visible to your Bloguero. Your Bloguero will root these out and mercilessly extirpate them. He hopes. Bring on the French Roast. Bring on the chamber music. Take the phone off the hook. Bring on the withering gaze and stare.

Maybe Tulum will be available before Christmas. Your Bloguero doesn’t know. He does know that the task at hand will be completed by the end of the weekend. No matter what. No excuses.

That having been said, is your Bloguero now going to turn today’s weekly digest into a crass, commercial plea filled with hype, distortions, and outright lies stating that you simply must buy this book? Or else? Hardly. Your Bloguero isn’t like that. Well, at least he’s not like that today. He’ll be satisfied today if you go to “Tulum: The Novella’s” Facebook page and click “like” so that you’ll be informed of when this book is finally available through the usual commercial channels. He’s not demanding your money today. Not today.

Yes, your Bloguero would love to sell thousands of copies of this novella, and yes, he’d like your help in making that happen. When it’s out and available there will be plenty of time for his sales spiel.It will likely come masquerading as a weekly digest. He can't help that.

In the meanwhile, please join your Bloguero in the Happy Dance. Cue the loud music. Roll up that rug.

This Week In The Dream Antilles is usually a weekly digest. Sometimes, like now and for several of the past weeks, it isn't actually a digest of essays posted at The Dream Antilles. For that you have to visit The Dream Antilles

This Week In The Dream Antilles

Well, well, well. And tut, tut, tut. Your Bloguero feels ever so sweetly but wrongly chastened by a Maddow Blog article by Kent Jones on November 9. A taste of this article about referring to one’s self in the third person, if you really insist on it:

That word is illeism. The act of referring to oneself (often habitually) in the third person.

According to Wikipedia, illeism has a variety of uses including self-promotion, to give the speaker lofty airs, to illustrate the feeling of being outside one's body and watching things happen, as a form of sarcasm or as a way to show dim wittedness, such as when the Mongo in Blazing Saddles declares: "Mongo only pawn in game of life."
So why does someone become an illeist? According to Yahoo answers:

Because when you do that it makes you feel like you're not so alone. It's a psychological way of making yourself feel like there's someone with you, even if it is only yourself. He was probably picked on as a child, that usually being the cause for this behavior. On the other hand if he's doing this in a joking fashion, its just that, a joke.

Aha! it could be a joke. That backs up Rachel's Herman Cain is a Performance Artist theory.

Wait a second. Wait one forking second. On this pop psychologizing and its implicit fault finding of your Bloguero and negative judgments about him, your Bloguero, who almost always refers to himself in the third person in these Friday posts, calls, to adopt one of Maddow’s pet phrases, “Bull pucky.” That’s right. Bull. Forking. Pucky. Bull Pucky, you hear? Bull pucky. Bull pucky. Bull pucky.

Let’s look at the facts.

Is your Bloguero trying self promotion in this post? Right, like your Bloguero is the Deion Saunders of the small blogs, on some of which his Friday posts get, oh wait for it, two, count them readers, count them, two reccs. Or giving himself lofty airs? Right, like your Bloguero is some kind of authority on something or claims to be? Seriously. The only thing your Bloguero is an authority on or has even claimed authority about are his own multifaceted idiosyncrasies. And those, to his sincere regret, are many, but he knows them intimately. Or, did you check this out? Your Bloguero is outside his body? As if he were Emanuel or some other channeled, discorporate being? Not so. Totally untrue. Your Bloguero is living in his body as he types this out. His fingers are cold. One does not have cold fingers unless one has a body. QED. And is your Bloguero sarcastic? OK, ok, ok, ok. Well, all right. Sometimes he’s sarcastic even when he uses the first person. If you grew up in Newark like your Bloguero and spent some of your waking hours at the local courthouses observing what passes for justice in America, you’d be sarcastic, too. You might even be more than sarcastic. You might be postal. Not your Bloguero. Your Bloguero is a pacifist of sorts.

Look, you don’t have to write in the third person to be disillusioned and to lash out in sarcasm or rolling eyes or making faces. C’mon, admit it. And is your Bloguero, heaven forefend, dimwitted? One, even if that one is solely your Bloguero, hopes not. What an insult.

And then there’s the hardest question. How can you even ask it? Is referring to one’s self some kind of joke? Is this a joke? Is your Bloguero making a joke? Your Bloguero takes umbrage at the suggestion. And also a double martini. With two olives. It’s not a joke. No joke. It’s life itself. If life’s a joke, it’s not your Bloguero’s fault.

No. Why does your Bloguero have to explain himself to smart people like Rachel Maddow and Kent Jones? Look. Writing in the third person at its very worst is a pose taken by the eccentric (there’s that word again), offbeat narrator of these Friday post. That’s who shows up every Friday. The Bloguero. That’s who’s been showing up every single Friday since February with this digest. If you were Deepak Chopra you’d note this bizarre, quantum equivalence:

weekly digest = the Bloguero

.

Anybody who thinks this is wrong, or a problem, or weak physics, or has some other wisecracks or criticism about it, just raise your hand. Go right ahead. Raise you hand. Right now. Your Bloguero will now ignore all that snickering and the waving hand too. Nobody, including especially your Bloguero, has to put up with these indiscreet, prying inquiries. The idea of asking for an explanation. Humpf.

This Week In The Dream Antilles is usually a weekly digest. Sometimes, like now and for several of the past weeks, it isn't actually a digest of essays posted at The Dream Antilles. For that you have to visit The Dream Antilles.

This Week In The Dream Antilles

Your Bloguero is embarrassed. He was going to tell you that the dog ate his homework, so there was no “This Week” this week. He even discussed it with the dog. Would she be willing to take the blame for this week’s soon to be nonexistent post? No, she would not. Speaking as a 10-year old, experienced Golden Retriever owned by someone who claims to be a writer, the dog says only this: “Give cookies. And, by the way, suck it up, hot shot. You’re the one who’s supposed to be the writer. Not me. Stop complaining. Just hammer it out.” That is cold. Very cold. But good advice. And to think that your Bloguero thought the dog was going to help. And provide an excuse. Alack. What a disappointment. Your Bloguero also thought there was some drug he could ingest that would get him to write the post, but alack and alack, he confesses he can’t find it.

Your Bloguero’s desperation runneth over. Every Friday. Without fail, your Bloguero has committed to post on four group blogs and his own blog. Like clock work. No matter what. How, your Bloguero wonders, can he explain that this week there just is no “This Week.” It’s just not there. It wasn’t written. It wasn’t posted. Poof. It’s gone. Probably, he can’t. Probably, you, dear reader, don’t want to hear the whining, excuses, lies, and assorted, inventive short fiction about your Bloguero’s lack of output and the claimed, creative “reasons” for it. Know what? Your Bloguero is not exactly captivated by inventing excuses either.

So perhaps a confession will suffice. This week your Bloguero was obsessed with something. And he didn’t do much writing because he was totally obsessed with this and he doesn’t write when he’s obsessing.

A bit of probably unnecessary background: your Bloguero has now reached a certain age. It’s the age at which the Government is supposed to provide Medicare. But. And this is a very big but, your Bloguero is so far from retiring that that “R” word is not a regular part of his regular internal discourse. No. So he’s not getting a gold watch. And he’s not moving to Arizona. Or Florida. And he’s not departing on his Spiritual Journey to Benares. Or even Benares on the Atlantic (Palm Beach). Or buying an RV. Or a boat. Or a vineyard. Or a trophy wife. Or a set of golf clubs. Nope. Nada. None of the above. Not one of them. Your Bloguero has other concerns, concerns that are more important to him. Specifically, your Bloguero wants to know what he has to do so that he will be referred to by others as “Don David” or “Don davidseth” or “Don Bloguero.”

Maybe that’s not a big deal to you, especially if you live in one of the many Gringo parts of the world where honorifics and polite address are utterly irrelevant and where disrespect is the order of the day. But let your Bloguero assure you, this is a big deal to your Bloguero. A very big deal. One he has relentlessly been obsessing about for a week. One that has become a consummate distraction to him.

Look. Being called “Don [insert first name]” is a very big deal to your Bloguero:

Although originally a title reserved for royalty, select nobles, and church hierarchs, it is now often used as a mark of esteem for a person of personal, social or official distinction, such as a community leader of long standing, a person of significant wealth, or a noble, but may also be used ironically. As a style, rather than a title or rank, it is used with, and not instead of, a person's name….

Today in Mexican-American communities, the Don or Doña is used in honorific form when addressing a senior citizen.

source

Right. It’s an honorific. For people of esteem. For senior citizens. Your Bloguero consulted with his usual, expert cultural consultants about this, and they each told him uniformly that he was old enough, yes, that he didn’t need to have many grandchildren to merit the title, yes, and because he was a nice guy and held in esteem generally, he could properly be called “Don Bloguero.” Right. Good enough.

But why then, your Bloguero wants to understand, is he NOT called “Don” anything? Ever. It has never ever happened. Surely, it is not your Bloguero’s obligation to tell other people that he has now assumed the rank of Don by virtue of his age and being an esteemed and great person, so, therefore they should now begin to address him as such. No. It is not your Bloguero’s function to demand this title. Instead, what is required, your Bloguero thinks, is for the larger community spontaneously, without prompting, without coaching or wheedling or paying of mordidas, to confer the title, to begin to call him Don. All on its own. Spontaneously. Without hinting or demands from your Bloguero.

You can, your Bloguero is sure, anticipate the problem here. That is what your Bloguero has been obsessing about. Can’t your Bloguero pick up this title? And if he can’t, what exactly has your Bloguero done so that he does not merit being called “Don Bloguero?” And what, pray tell, does your Bloguero have to do to be referred to by his important honorific. It is important to your Bloguero to be referred to by this title. Maybe it's his vanity. Maybe he's finally bugged out completely. Maybe. But he wants to be known as "Don Bloguero", and he won't tell anyone that's what he wants.

If you know the answer to this quandry, please write it on a $500 peso bill and mail it to your Bloguero immediately.

This Week In The Dream Antilles is usually a weekly digest. Sometimes, like now and for several of the past weeks, it isn't actually a digest of essays posted in the past week at The Dream Antilles. For that you have to visit The Dream Antilles.

This Week In The Dream Antilles

Ebbets Field, Brooklyn

These days your Bloguero isn’t much of a baseball fan. His current team of choice, the Mets, flamed out early in the season. They were so bad that your Bloguero pronounced their season over on April 21, 2011. After that, your Bloguero treated the Mets with the revulsion he usually reserves for serious hangovers and the less benign forms of dentistry. Something to be given a very wide berth. Something to be avoided at all cost. But tonight is the climactic Seventh Game of the World Series. And last night’s Sixth Game, so the Trad Media inform, was a wonderful game. So maybe tonight’s game might be worth watching. Right.

It’s never that simple. There’s always the past to consider. And matters of the heart. When your Bloguero was small boy, he was a Brooklyn Dodgers fan. He loved the Dodgers. He loved “dem Bums.” He particularly loved Roy Campanella, Jackie Robinson, Carl Furillo, Pee Wee Reese, Gil Hodges and Duke Snyder. And others. All the other baseball cards were meaningless; only the Dodgers counted. The Giants and Yankees were obviously teams of spoiled patricians; the Dodgers were the people’s choice. Hell, the Giants and Yankees were probably Republicans. Or worse. They certainly weren’t the lovable underdogs. How could any self respecting kid like teams that always won? Or pretended they did?

Yes, the Dodgers lost almost all of the important, big games back then. To the Yankees. To the Giants. It was a tradition. But that didn’t matter. The Dodgers were great players, and they were a great team. And there was always next year. Your Bloguero loved that they might lose, but that they tried hard not to. And he knew they were trying hard. What else was there, other than to show up and try hard? Your Bloguero liked the innocence and simplicity of that.

One morning your Bloguero awoke and learned that his beloved Dodgers had decided to abandon him. They announced they were pulling up roots in Brooklyn and heading to Los Angeles for the next season. Just like that. Poof. Here at Ebbets Field today, gone to LA tomorrow. Loved today, leaving behind your Bloguero, heart broken and abandoned tomorrow. And why? There was no reason your Bloguero’s 10-year old brain could understand. Ten year olds in love with a team don’t care about finances. Or revenues. Or anything else. They care about the game. They care about balls and strikes. Your Bloguero was stunned. And hurt. And perplexed. Asked your Broguero to any who would listen, to any who might be able to explain it to him, “You mean that the team I love is leaving me and going to the West Coast, to California for reasons I don’t understand?” Your Bloguero could not forgive that Sandy Koufax, the greatest pitcher ever, your Bloguero’s favorite pitcher, would not be throwing in Brooklyn but in LA. And that the home games would begin because of time zones at 10 pm in New York, past his bed time. He'd never see his first love again. There was no justice in that. At all.

So it’s the Seventh Game of the World Series tonight. And it might be interesting baseball to watch. But it’s also irritating the small, old scar your Bloguero has on his heart, the one that marks where the Dodgers were yanked away from him half a century ago. And your Bloguero wonders whether like him, all of the men of a certain age who used to be Brooklyn Dodger fans when they were kids, have the same small scar that marks the very first betrayal of their most avid love. And whether the World Series makes it ache.

This Week In The Dream Antilles is usually a weekly digest. Sometimes, like now, it isn't actually a digest of essays posted in the past week at The Dream Antilles. For that you have to visit The Dream Antilles.

This Week In The Dream Antilles

This morning's sunrise in Bahia Soliman, Tulum, Mexico

Your Bloguero was awakened shortly before dawn this morning by the persistent dinging of his Blackberry. About 24 dings in rapid succession indicating the receipt of emails. Your Bloguero imagined that he had somehow, despite his best efforts to the contrary, achieved minor celebrity status. He was not sure how that could be, or what he could have done, but what else could have him receive 24 emails one after the other? Today, after all, is Friday. Friday is auspicious, your Bloguero thought. It’s a great day to open the floodgates of fame and adulation. Why not? No such luck. Opening one eye, your Bloguero discovered to his annoyance that the 24 messages were emails from his automated friends at Yahoo telling your Bloguero that he had sent email to a bad address, and that the email had been rejected by the recipient’s ISP. Your Bloguero opened his other eye. There was obviously a problem. Your Bloguero had not sent any emails to anybody on that account. So, your Bloguero’s razor sharp wit figured, somebody else had sent them. How very disappointing. It wasn’t fame that was dinging so insistently. It wasn’t adulation, praise, recognition. It wasn’t anything good. No. It was hackage. Plain and simple.

And who, your Bloguero wondered, might have decided to hack this account? This was the account associated with your Bloguero’s postings on various group blogs. Had your Bloguero so enraged someone with something he had recently written that he provoked such a hack? Your Bloguero could only hope. Was this pay back of some kind? Your Bloguero should be so lucky. Who would have done that? What followed were the kind of pre-coffee conspiracy theories reserved for such abrupt, early wakings. In two words, incipient paranoia. But alas. Even this was too puffed up, too egocentric, too self important. Your Bloguero wasn’t being treated to well deserved, well earned attack. No. Nothing that good. Nothing that heroic. The email had a link in it. It was commercial spam from Romania for erection enhancement. If you will pardon the pun, how very deflating. How contracting. What a lame way to start Friday: changing the password so it won’t happen again.

The next thing will doubtless be responding to the numerous emails – your Bloguero received one while writing this -- telling him he has been hacked. And telling the recipients, that yes, your Bloguero knows and he’s changed his password and he regrets any inconvenience.

How disappointing. From web hero to complete sucker in a nanosecond.

This Week In The Dream Antilles is usually a weekly digest. Sometimes, like now, it isn't actually a digest of essays posted in the past week at The Dream Antilles. For that you have to visit The Dream Antilles.

This Week In The Dream Antilles: Not Columbus Edition

Once again, your Bloguero notes that it is Columbus Day Weekend. Your Bloguero often takes ten days off at this time. Why? Funny you should ask. Your Bloguero has short answers: it's his Birthday. Your Bloguero was born exactly 399 years after the christening of Cervantes in 1547. Also, it's a weekend he takes off to help facilitate a Shamanic Men's Retreat. This year will be the second wonderful year of that gathering. And finally, your Bloguero cannot abide the celebration of Columbus Day, which he sees as the beginning of the subjugation of this hemisphere. The last is best expressed in this 2008 post:

The Church In Baracoa, Cuba

Across the Caribbean from desde Desdemona is Baracoa, a small town inaccessible by land from before 1500 (when Columbus first landed there in 1492) until the 1960's. In 1512 Baracoa was the first Spanish settlement in Cuba. It's like Macondo. The lush forest of the Sierra Maestre and El Yunque, the tallest peak in Cuba, tower over the town. The town is nestled against the warm ocean. North of town is Maguana, a beautiful, white beach, shared by tourists and occasional foraging pigs.

Join me in Baracoa. We can celebrate Not Columbus Day together.

In the church in Baracoa is a part of one of the original crosses that Columbus planted in Cuba when he first landed there. It's not under guard. To see it, you knock on the back door of the church. Nobody there? Go across the street, as Bardo did, to find someone in the Parochio to let you in. Bardo goes and asks to see El Cruz. The woman behind a counter says ok, let us find the key. She takes Bardo across the street, opens the back door, enters the silent, dark church, and in the nave there it is, in a glass case with no security at all, El Cruz de la Parra . The cross's 500 year old wood (it's been carbon dated) is held up by a metal holder (which is from much later on).

In many ways this is the most important relic, and maybe the most important marker in the history of the Western Hemisphere. It represents the beginning, the zero mile marker on the highway from then to now. If Columbus, instead of planting a cross and taking on the conquest and/or conversion of indigenous people, had said, "This place is really great so let's hang out here and enjoy it with the locals," the last 500 years would have been significantly, inconceivably different. And maybe, Bardo reminds us, a whole lot better. Bardo cannot believe what he's looking at. He makes a small donation to the church, and wanders off into the heat of the day. The woman closes up the church. Nobody else is waiting to see the cross.



If the Cruz were in New York or Madrid, it would have laser Mission Impossible security, armed guards, and lots of publicity around it. Lines of buses of tourists. Souvenir shops. Air conditioning. T-shirt sales. But there's none of that in Baracoa. Just the cross and the empty church in the middle of Baracoa.

Bardo buys a bottle of Habana Club rum ($3.25), sits on the roof of the Casa Particular where he's staying, and wonders if Macondo could be any more beautiful. He decides Baracoa is perfect and beautiful. He loves the way the mountainous jungle cascades to the town at the edge of the ocean. Columbus, he thinks, was right about one thing: Baracoa is one of the most beautiful places Bardo has ever seen. About everything else, he decides, he's with Alejo Carpentier, Columbus was dead wrong.

This Week In The Dream Antilles is usually a weekly digest. Sometimes, like now, it isn't actually a digest of essays posted in the past week at The Dream Antilles. Your Bloguero regrets that this week because two of his recent posts, one from this week and one from last week, are among the best he has written. Regardless, please leave a comment so that your Bloguero will know that you stopped by. Or click the “Encouragement Jar” if there is one. Your Bloguero likes to know you've visited.

This Week In The Dream Antilles

A week of horrors, death and killing. The death of Troy Davis. The evaporation of the illusion that justice would somehow be served in his case. The negation of hope for mercy and compassion and life for Troy Davis. A killing in our names we were unable to stop. We could not, did not spare Troy Davis. We killed him. And we killed a part of ourselves.

We have lost our way. And we have broken ourselves apart. We believe in the illusion that we are all separate, that we are fragmented. We don’t see ourselves as every bit of the entire phenomenon. But we are all of it. Every single bit of it. We are all of it: we are the failed rescuers, we are the victims (Officer McPhail and Troy Davis and their families and friends the homeless man who was shot), and most importantly we are the executioners (wearing a black hood or shooting Officer McPhail or denying the stay). Inside each of us is all of them. Inside us is the person who killed Officer McPhail. And Officer McPhail. And Troy Davis. And those who killed him. And those who judged him. And those who advocated for him. And all of the families of all of these people. All of them is inside us. A huge loud, bloody cacophony. We truly are Troy Davis. And we also are Officer McPhail. And Justice Scalia. And every single person touched this week by this killing, especially those we most blame for this execution.

But we deny it. We cannot accept it. We cannot allow it to recognized inside us, in our hearts, our minds, our souls (if we have them). It is unacceptable to be all of this. It is denied. We consign all of this ugliness to our Shadow. To the unseen. To the denied. To the disowned. To the unacceptable. We can’t see it in us, but everybody else can.

We are oh so dangerous like this. We are blinded like this. We cannot love anything or anyone like this. In our panic to deny and disown all of this and our dread of our own painful, complicated human ugliness, we are filled with fear. We deny it. And we lash out. And we kill. We kill it outside of us, because we cannot countenance its existence inside each and every one of us. We kill outside because we cannot love what is inside.

This has to stop. We are dreaded Angulimala, with his chain of fingers around his neck, whom the Buddha himself told to stop. But we are also the Buddha. We need to abolish the death penalty, and we need to accept, in fact love the parts of us that are so invisible, so unacceptable, so horrible. These parts and our efforts to ignore them are driving us crazy. And they are making us kill. We need to stop ourselves.

In Troy Davis’s memory, we need to commit once and for all to ending State Killing. For everyone. And part of that commitment, if we are to succeed, has to be to healing this enormous fissure inside us.




This Week In The Dream Antilles is usually a weekly digest. Sometimes, like now, it is not actually a digest of essays posted in the past week at The Dream Antilles. For that you have to visit The Dream Antilles. Please leave a comment so that your Bloguero will know that you stopped by. Or click the “Encouragement Jar” if there is one. Your Bloguero likes to know you've visited.