Compton

I read somewhere…oh yeah on myspace that you know it’s true love when “it’s complicated”. Compton IS a complicated city.  I’m sure you’ve heard of it?

Various stories, news reports flashed on television, interwoven with the lyrics of gansta rappers like EZ-E, Dr. Dre and The Game. Surely you’ve bobbed your head to their beats? The tales these rappers and news reports tell are not make-believe stories but they make folks  believe what’s only half true and the other half  folks fabricate on their own  cause folks just don’t know no betta'.

COMPTON!

Did your mind conjure up something all tingly and California-sun warm? There are tales that people tell tales I have to hear whether I’m checking in at a small inn in Santa Fe, New Mexico or taking a tour through the Polynesian Cultural Center in Oahu, Hawaii. I hear the tales of my city.   “Is it as bad as they say,” asks the Miami transplant now residing in a slower paced Santa Fe and working in Guest Services at the small inn.  He hands me the key to my room I give him a blank stare.  “Compton?”  He says as he points at the address on my driver’s license when I don’t answer his question. I didn’t know what to say.  I was dumbstruck and got doubly-dumbstruck cause I can’t believe this question still dumbstruck me.  I hear it all the time. 

Cut.

Flash forward a few months after New Mexico. 

Scene: the beautiful island of Ohau:

  “Hello, my name is Lemeki and I’m from Compton,” the Fijian tour guide cracks a joke before he started his lecture on Polynesian culture to the attentive all-tourist-filled audience.

Compton.  It’s the place where drive-bys occur, where every one of my middle school years is marked with memories of racial riots among Black and Latino Compton High youth trying to annihilate each other. Black on brown violence, no title on the line, no million dollar award- shit not even the pride of bragging rights.  Just plain ignorance-laden poverty-driven violence. I never understood why they did it nor how my sisters, all three of them, managed to study in those conditions. I knew I didn’t want to go through it and I fled, found a different rout towards my high school dimploma.  On a big bumble bee of a bus that chauffeured my ass to C.A.M.S (the California Academy of Mathematics and Science).

Cut. 

Flash back to my 9^th grade year. English class, students are seated in a circle cause it’s group work time.  Not sure what the assignment was cause we we’re talking and not necessarily working.   “So do you have to wear a bullet proof vest?” asked the curly-top Jewish boy in my group. My homie, Mike who also got picked up  in Compton, turned to look at me and busted out laughing. Mike saw the “beat down coming on” expression on my face, turned to Jewish boy and proceeded to bust out laughing in his face.

“What do you mean?” I asked in my most mean-mugging face. 

“Well, you know, you live in Compton and, you know, there’s a lot of gang ware fare there.”

“Oh, I said. Yeah I hear you but my vest is in the cleaners today and my glock is in the shop.” I’ll spare you the details of how the rest of the conversation went down, just know that no, he didn’t get a beat down just an angry lecture. Compton = gangs?  I’ll admit to that but there’s so much more.  There is also poverty and underserved communities. As I mentioned before I attended high school at C.A.M.S, which by the way, Los Angeles Magazine ranked as the 4^th best high school in Los Angeles this year. I would say 95% of the students who attended got bused in from their respective districts and all the students were at the top of their class in their respective middle school.  I rode on the Compton and South L.A. bus. Just to tell you, in order to remain a student at C.A.M.S you had to maintain a certain GPA which I don’t recall at the moment nor could I find said information on their website. If you didn’t maintain that GPA then you were placed on academic probation.  My first semester, which also happened to be the first semester ever at C.A.M.S, was the school's first semester and practically everyone from the Compton/ South LA bus was placed on academic probation and required to take a tutoring class, which we all affectionately called the “dummy class”. I think the administration was surprised but obviously ready and willing to address the problem. This was my first experience seeing the inequality in the quality of education I received in Compton and what other students in other districts like Palos Verdes, Long Beach, Torrance etc. had received. I was one of the lucky ones though because I had been tracked as a gifted and talented student, which meant I got the opportunity to learn from the best teachers at my Compton schools.

Compton.  The Williams sisters first learned their game here, at the imperial tennis courts to be exact.  But not even their fame and winnings would spare them from later learning that their sister, Yutende Price, got shot down in a drive by.  Compton. It’s quite a distance from here to Beijing, China the destination of the 2008 Olympics where Tayshaun Prince and Lisa Leslie got their necks looped with gold medals for being the best basketball team in the world. For Lisa this would be her fourth, Mr. Prince is also a member of the 2004-05 NBA championship team the Detroit Pistons.

Compton home to 100,000 inhabitants 51% of those are Latinos, no longer a chocolate city. But the change in racial composition is not the only change that Compton has undergone. After receiving a State Enterprise Zone program, Compton has experienced a lot of business and industrial expansion (we got our own Best Buy and a Magic Johnson 24hr Fitness, ya’ll!) new houses have been built AND a new senior center is in the works.  My city even has it’s own district comprised of 24 elementary schools, eight middle schools, three high schools, and one adult school, which also serves as an alternative school.  The district maintains five alternative learning schools unfortunately our schools have not yet reaped the benefits of the State Enterprise Zone program at least not from what I’ve seen and read in the papers. The sad thing, I would say downright heartbreaking thing, is that across the nation, the world, things are so financially hurting that a few shops at Compton’s new shopping plaza have already closed down. We’ll see if Best Buy is a best bet in this city at this time.

As far as I can remember the educational system in Compton has always left one wanting more. Sadly enough in 1993, my junior year of high school, Compton Unified got taken over by the California Department of Education due to gross, funky ass mismanagement of the dirty presidents.  In 2004 Compton Community College lost it’s accreditation again for mismanagement and fraud.  FUCK people, when can we stop fucking ourselves over?  

I want to say that I am leaving but I’m already gone.  Writing from my new place, new home full of pine smell and homie feel. But still want to share what I felt as I arrived to here. 

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Part of me is afraid to leave mostly because I have to change my route to achieving my dream, changes and very unexpected surprises and leaps in personality.  Just another way of saying that I feel like I’ve grown.  It’s not so much just the moving part, the literal move from one space to the other, I feel that I’m trying to be present and aware of her…my love.  Give a relationship 5 years, that’s sort of like the rule of thumb, huh? I didn’t really believe it until that day when I heard it twice in one day.  It was one of many things that I experienced in 1 day- it was a deja vou day, I suppose.

 I heard that twice in one day and once from my own mouth.  So I can’t stay in one place, marry my dreams to a site.  They come with me- they are my part; a part of me.  I say this as I’ve packed up most of my shit in preparation to bounce from the CPT. I want to work with the youth here, in this city, I want to have the talented ones, the expressive ones, the accomplished to the 10^th degree, the motivated one.  Yes it sounds elitist but the truth is that they can all be…

Accomplished, expressive, talented, motivated

I just want to say that it’s about over coming challenges.  Hopefully the students

Will see it too

 

It must be true.  I have a riddle for you…

“Cual de los dos amantes sufre mas pena? El que se va o el que se queda

Answer: El que se queda, se queda llorando

Y el que se va, se va suspirando.”

Not mine but...

I liked it. I found it while web-surfing the other day. It’s what I do in between my writing (some times), to look up facts for my story, to scratch an itch or just kill some time while my own ideas are idle. Sometimes I open one too many tabs, lose track of unnecessary windows and finally reload after reload- I don't remember my way back to my purpose of going on-line in the first place. All this to say that I ran across this quote

"Our lives are shaped by the significant truths we say or don’t say." I read it in this article:

http://life.gaiam.com/gaiam/p/RelationshipFixHowtoTellDifficultTruthsSoPeopleThankYou.htm

I am a writer but still plagued by miscommunication. It's the feelings; they get in the way. I want them when I need to induce more writing but feel so uncomfortable when they are happening “live and direct” in me. And when they're happening they require all of me. It's like trying to talk when you're yawning, not only is this a pet peeve of mine and not too mention somewhat gross and unattractive. Think for a second...who do you know that has a sexy yawn? But above all, when yawning, you need your whole mouth do it. You're jaw movement is practically involuntary. Trembling like it's cold, but it's not it's just you opening your mouth wide and sucking in deep! That's how involuntary my feelings can be- but there not supposed to be. (rolling of eyes) I know. So just read and enjoy why it’s important to tell your truths- in order to do that you have to be honest to yourself.

What up G!!

Hey Homie!

Just kidding. How are you Juan? It has been a while since I’ve written to you.  Been through a lot actually in the last few months; have been healing from various injuries from exercising mostly my shoulder, hand. They feel a lot better because I’ve been getting pricked with needles; acupuncture it really does help. That and the extra deep massages they game me each time I went to a session. I recently got over a little health scare. The doctor found an ovarian cyst…so I had to wait out 3 months to see if it was dangerous to my health or not.  It wasn't. I’m abut to turn 32 so technically I’m considered low risk para esas cosas. Still it makes you think the things that are yet to come for me as my body ages. Not sure if you remember but I’ve always been an active person, physically I mean I’ve always liked to run, be outdoors work on my body and now my bones ache. Still I want to run a marathon! It’s one of the things on my “bucket list” things I want to experience before I die. 

I started teaching. I’m working with high school students at Roosevelt High in East LA. It’s an after school project that I am overseeing.  It’s a fun thing to be involved in because it has so many layers. Well first let me tell you that it’s an oral history project, students are going to interview a few older-female-activists that have shaped and influence the communities of East L.A. and Boyle Heights.  They will interview them, on video camera and then we’re going to take all the video footage to create a documentary called “Las Grandes de East L.A. and Boyle Heights”. I’m really excited about the whole project but have been a bit bummed cause we’ve had such low attendance.  Only two students have come consistently and of course we’ve continued the project with only the two of them.  Actually we’ve had really good sessions with them, they have liked the class discussions and the materials we’ve shared with them so far. I think they’re into it.  Ok I know they are I should stop being in disbelief about it.

This Sunday we’re going to go see a play called “Boyle Heights” I figured it's a good way for them to see te we work others in the community are creating about this community. At the end of the project students would have contributed to the preservation of history of that community.  They are being historians. So back to the layers…well you have the youth, Adilia (program assistant) myself, Dionne (professor at Cal State LA) and Susana the (lead teacher at Roosevelt) and finally the older women activists that we’ll be interviewing. That makes for a whole lot of generations!  It’s awesome for me too because I get to visit a high school campus very different from the one I attended. Here they have 5,000 students and the campus is pretty big, my high school had 500 students and we took classes in bungalows. So it’s cool to see the jocks, cheerleaders, activists, rebels, cholos, chachas, nerds, loners. Roqueros and what evers walking around.

 

Dude! Let me tell you the one thing I am totally grateful I didn’t experience at my high school that they have there is the rat problem.  This one time we were meeting and then we saw one race from one end of the classroom to the other. But hey look on the bright side-the district is spending money on uniforms, 2 per student. So it’s nice to experience the contrasts in my high school experiences.  I almost can’t wait to get to the end of the project cause I know the work we create is going to be so awesome. Just like the process has been. 

p.s. got the image from www.museo.org/site I believe it's from their current exhibit "inside/Outside North&South.  No artist name listed

Better than Caldo de Pollo!

 For the past two weeks I have been participating in a workshop series called “Our Barrios, Ourselves: Writing from Cement and Skin,” is a Playwrights Intensive. For the past two Sundays I have gathered with other writers from across Los Angeles, and one daring dedicated writer who drives down from San Bernardino to join us.  Oliver Meyer and Luis Alfaro have edified us…and I would add the whole class. The exercises the sharing of ideas, the commiserating and co-epiphanating has been so motivating.  This for me has been better than caldo de pollo (salvi or Mexican!) como me han destapado estas sesiones.   Las palabras sabias de Luis, the way Meyer lead us to be in tune with our feelings and senses, basic shit but so helpful and great in it’s pureness.  They, the established playwrights, didn’t offer anything magical and my collugues didn’t talk about being plagued by anything mystical but hearing the plethora of ideas, voices and experiences was so nourishing, me senti alimentada y satisfecha. Just what my soul needed.  Writing circles the chicken soup of the writer’s soul?

 

There is so much more that I want to write about this experience but I’m tired right now and must go to bed. I’ve been in Fresno for the past few days and I’m dying to pounce on my bed and plop my head on my own pillow. 

p.s the workshop series is brought to you by the East Los Angeles Repertory Theater Company www.eastlarep.com 

What’s In a Name?

What’s In a Name?

                        What’s In a Name?

                                                What’s In a Name?

I got so embarrassed when he asked me. As Raquel would say it- I felt like he had just looked at my asshole.  Ashamed, embarrassed that he had pointed it out all the while pushing back the rush I got from thinking of showing him some more.  Bending over spreading them if you will. Can I be an introverted exhibitionist? Cause that’s how I feel at times with my writing. I perform it- but that’s about the only way that I felt more reassured of doing it.  In other words, I’m insecure about my writing.  PHEW! Ok there I said it.  But I have been saying it a lot. I will probably say it a lot more times. I will be obsessed with writing about how I have problems writing.  I will write myself into and out of a paperbag.   I believe it was either Stephen King- I could be way off but someone suggested that the struggling author, the writer’s block inflicted author to just sit at your computer and write an excuse. What ever it is that is impeding your writing. Time, fear, lack of ideas…wah, wah, wah.  Tell yourself why is it you aren’t writing. Get my drift? Fuck yeah you do cause we’ve all had that person in our lives who is always farting around us- the person who comes to stink up your day with their foulness. They complain about the same thing, their boss, their partner, their weight, their mother, their kids. Anyway some fucken repetivite bullshit until one day you just don’t have anymore answers to give, don’t have enough care in your body for this persons condition, their troubled state: they rather talk about it than do anything about it. So you cut them off like a stinky turt. No more.  Anyway this exercise, this entry is an exercise in that: in how to stop farting about your writing. When I write excuses, I am being my own naggy bitch and the point of writing these excuses is that eventually you’ll get tired of farting and stinking up your screen and your files with excuses that you have only two choices: stop writing or fucken write something else.

Anyway now back to that embarrassing moment- I felt scared cause I felt as if I had been discovered. My tapaderas was blown off. BOOM! . A super hero tries to conceal his/her identity- only a few people know about them, right? And one of them has to be, eventually, the novia. Like mine,eventually, knew my secrete except with me there was no beso desenmascarado like the hanging Spiderman.  El mio fue mas como un egg on my face.  I felt busted- had to come clean. Not that I didn’t want to or don’t- but we hide our identity to protect our loved ones from harm. It’s me I’m really protecting.  But…you’ll see. 

I am Agente Zero-Ocho, my hero persona. I ride this here red , encountered by those that surf. Here is where I put on my writer face and attitude.  The one that allows my mind to take leaps, strew one sentence after another like energy bolts leading my path. I see ahead of me and swing freely.  Back to my curious co-worker who thought it was funny how I spelled the number 0 with a z and not c like in Spanish cero.  He doesn’t know that Agente Zero-Ocho is not only a spanglish word but the “Z” as visual and audio effect to my fantasy.  Aesthetics?  Z hints at Zorro- the master swordsman enmascarado, not a superhero per se but more like a costumed crime-fighter but the two share sever characteristics. “Drat!” I thought, “now he thinks it’s a misspelling,” I freaked out a little then realized it wouldn’t be the first or last time (i.e. mexicanfulmoon). I didn’t speak up because I chose to continue concealing my identity. Unlike Ironman, I’m not ready to shout it to the world. The truth?  I also enjoy the idea of being discovered. Since I really can’t fly and shit, my ass is in the chair when I write…but every particle of me starts to race when I think of my writing being a piece of the words already floating out here…to be continued. 

Manifesto?

 I.

Carpe diem!  Seize the day! Seizing it our way!  What the fuck do we have to lose? Balls out we bring it to the stage.  All the shit we think about, are close to, have been touched and troubled by gets dickwhipped in our process circles. That’s where we create what you see before you- that’s how we make sense of the world. Art- our life. We seize the day ‘cause tomorrow we’ll be gone like the homeless elbowed out of skid row (of all places!)  by expansionism, gentrification and the mantra: “if we build on top of that mess then no one will ever know it was there”. Dolla! Dolla! Bills ya’ll! Gone! Like yesterday’s hood-fame act. Gone!  Like a dead-beat dad. Gone! Like the fourth member? And who will remember?

II.

We remember. What once existed and what scarred us with its absence.  The lack of female masculine role models is my phantom limb. The craving for connection – constant need for validation lands one in painful positions, huh? It distorts you, turns you into a crazy curious character navigating through queerness (or what eva’) in bars diluting fears and insecurities with dollar specials, fading memories with lung swelling hits to the head. Throwing chingazos at each other and oneself, getting into debt but still not enough to buy enough time to make everything right.  I won’t go quietly and fill another role. The only Ugly Tia role I’ll play is one I write! Ya Basta to awful hair! And incase no one's ever said this to you...just worry about being you.  I had to find reasons to feel good about myself. I came together with the BdP- pulled myself together to gender fuck, not give a fuck and make sense of the mess that held my spirit down tight, tighter than electrical tape on tender-boi-tits.

III.

Seize and discard! Those masks used to conceal true selves; it’s not worth living with your back against the wall. Take control; make the calls in your life. No one should cash their dreams out on you. Search for something completely different. We’ve stepped into our post heroic masculinities. Ditched the pedestal pimping mentality and got hooked on the process of processing and transgressing our layered-self’s to reach self love. Can’t be what I’m not and won’t try to be who you think I should be. I gotta speak the pain not wallow in it. There’s no time! We aint got time and don’t want to wait for the moment. So we make every life/performance/life a moment. This is a moment. There I go again dishing out these crazy-mixed-up metaphors who knows we may create a masterpiece or just a feeling that haunts you. So, see us for what we are. Can you? Oh, you think you can?

IV.

This trio was once a quartet. Circumstances brought the four together but sometimes it’s the break ups that help you see the real shit before your eyes. Remember the past for what it was but always keep your eyes on to be. Yup, this trio goes back to last century, sometime  before our first exhibitionist  act on stage. Mmm. Mmm. Ahhh. Ahh. But we've got more shit than years between us. This thing is personal. The way writing collaborating and performing together is personal. You can’t do it with just anybody! We got more shit than years between us. We are poets, storytellers to whom much has been given and we know much is required. I’m not just quoting scripture here- this is our attitude.  We feel gifted so we gift you our art.  

p.s. Isn't this an awesome poster? The pic was taken by Mr. Hector Silva and the design- a Tricky Troll (Raquel Gutierrez) creation of course. 

Snail Mail

I don’t do it only because I have a slight case of technophobia but because it actually gives me a reason to smile when I collect my mail.  That’s why I write letters to some friends, yes the old fashion way. I got two pen pals have had them for more than a year now I would say even though email is so immediate and I sit in front of a computer all day at work so it works for me but neither one of my pen pals has the means to access e-mail so we communicate through mail. They are not the first people I community via snail mail with, I love sending updates and some of my short stories to my niece. But again, my pen pals don’t have the advantages I have even the telephone gets costly for my pals so this is how we can keep in touch.  

I love receiving friendly letters in the mail although it does get a bit tiresome sending them out.  With letters you have to actually write them and sometimes my carpal tunnel acts up so I can’t hold the pen then my penmanship sucks so I worry that the person on the other end won’t understand me anyway! I cheat sometimes and type the dam thing. Then you have to write the address down and even though I’ve been writing to my pals for more than a year now I still haven’t memorized their addresses; where’s autofill when you need it.  Then you place the letter in the envelope, seal it don’t forget the stamps which by the way are more frequently increasing in price, like at the pump, so you’re better off buying the “Forever First Class Stamp” it’s value is guaranteed no matter the increase. I know I didn’t get it either until I checked out the US Postal Service website http://www.usps.com/communications/newsroom/2007/sr07_011.htm which states:

“Research has shown that customers prefer the Forever stamp for the convenience it offers by easing the transition for mailing letters when prices change. When postage changes in the future, it will reduce the need to buy one- and two-cent stamps.

The last thing you do is Drop that baby in the mail and wait. There you have it. I was just being dramatic about the “tiresome” bit cause of course I still want to keep in touch. I must say that I like the lack of immediate gratification, letters come in spurts and you’re not robbed of the element of surprise by a chime going off announcing its arrival. I like looking through my mail and finding that one envelope with handwritten addresses. Maybe even some tape across the lip of the envelope to reinforce the confidentiality being transmitted.  Sometimes you get an envelope that looks like it was hit up by some taggers, the sender just had so much to say the letters contents spilled out.  Unlike the other items I receive in the mail those letters are the only giving ones; not out to collect my money.  They give me laughs, secretes, hope and contact…a bond with another individual. Yes like e-mail, but different ritual.