it’s a tuff spot in her speech use. she knows enough that she tries to speak in some pretty ambitious sentences now, but half of it is mushmouth to me. i can’t help but start laughing from deep affection, watching her hand gesture and her forehead wrinkle as she launches into her talk. frustrating to not understand it so well sometimes. i don’t want her to take it as her fault. we work it out.

she hears “agua” a lot, as well as “water” (water said with an oregon accent and a slightly new york-tinted accent, both) and it has all worked out so far to waga. she’s quite a character. when i get to playing on the congas, when i fall into a groove, you should see her start dancing. moving her shoulders forward and back one by one. she’s beautiful and funny.

joy, originally uploaded by nezua.

Lunita cracks me up. She takes a blue marker and scribbles on her VHS tapes. her favorite movies, she brings me a tape of Fantasia with scribbles and I don’t get mad of course, but laugh and say “Oh, very pretty!” but she had other ideas.

“Oh nooo” she says. That’s what she says when she sees something out of place or wrong. Like when the people who did the front stair repairs used concrete with pebbles in it. She stopped and pointed at the patch with the odd texture. “Oh nooo.”

She wants me to clean the tape now, wants me to show her how to clean the scribbles off. She assumes they will come off. She’s right, when I scrub, it comes off. She brings me another tape. I tell her “It’s okay,” meaning we don’t really need to take the scribbles off. But she insists. Points at it urgently. “Oh noooo!”

Won’t play it until it’s cleaned. So I clean it. Try to sit back down and finish up what I’m writing. She comes to me with another tape. “Oh noooo.” I say “It’s okay, Luna. It can stay like this, really.” But she gets upset, “Oh nooooo!” and now she’s not just evoking sorrow and alarm, she sounds aggressive. And I just begin laughing. “What are you getting angry for?” I ask her. “You are the one that scribbled on it! You didn’t even get in trouble!” I’m still laughing the whole time. Not angry, just cracking up in earnest. “If you don’t like them scribbled on, stop scribbling on them!”

I hadn’t brought up that she is the one that did it yet. She gets it, and leaves the tape on my desk, goes back to the living room. She suddenly looks happy to escape the conversation.

So funny. Reminds me of us grownups. We scribble on things and then get mad because they are scribbled on. Blame it on others. Want them to fix it. Kids are just straightforward…we learn later how to confuse ourselves about these things.

Yeah.

All Luna’s life (and before she was born) I will sort of orchestrate certain sounds or songs. Like the THX sting and the FOX Pictures riff, and the opening song to the first Star Trek show. I like the physical channeling of the energy. Luna is used to this, and she now does it faithfully if you play Star Trek.

When I first played Fantasia for her, she was delighted to see the conductors! Doing what papi does! To music! It was so funny to see her jump right into conducting along with the movie. How many two year olds can you sit down in front of Fantasia and they not just watch through the non-cartoon part, but conduct along with it? Too much.

my oldest son emailed me from my site a few days ago and asked me to get in touch with him, i think it was the next day…or maybe it was two days later that i called him, but oddly and unexpectedly, the day happened to be mother’s day and it hadn’t occurred to me that it might be an strange moment to call except he was just sitting down to dinner with her and i hope she didn’t think i was trying to pull some kind of clever macaroni coup on her special day.

yeah and of course i do not mean that i won’t discuss US politics again, those aren’t my intentions. it’s specifically the primary madness that continually tractor beams my mind! but what are ya gonna do. my job can often orient me back in that direction. and i didn’t tell you, i may yet get into the DemocraticNationalConvention as a blogger in august. not through my job. more on that later if it happens. but i’m sure that will ramp up all the lunacy again. regardless, for today, I’m sure you know how i feel. for the moment, the primary hoedown—and even junk between mccain and obama etc just the whole bag—is fredo and it is dead to me. i will take it out on a boat and come back alone!

it is only when the warm weather returns that i realize for many months i’ve been chilled and kept subdued in a state of wanting. in a lacking of light. and it happens over and over. every year, and yet—with every winter comes a new forgetting.

and shortly after, a new remembering.

somewhere in all of this, my back muscles knotted up something fierce. it is actually really painful and cramping my movement. i think i need to immerse myself in a hot, hot shower. knead that out. i wonder, again, how much of that is from the bed. i keep looking at them. its such a chunk of cash, but i am sure it’s worth it. to wake up feeling rested and not aching and cramped for space. this will be the next purchase. this also means that lil ‘nita needs a new bed, as she now has the air mattress which she sleeps in more and more. tho she still wakes up and crawls into bed sometimes. she’ll be happy to get a real bed, her own.

it’s odd, the offense some feel when you affiliate and align yourself with your heritage(s) where you did not before. there were one or two people at the start. they liked me much better when i didn’t bring up many things. it’s still like my father said. so many will appear claiming authority to tell you who you are. well, he didn’t say that. i’ve paraphrased him by now. he said something like “everyone seems to know better than you,” when it came to feeling out your identity, your meaning as attached to what you are made of ethnically, socially, whatever.

ever since crazyface tried to use the word “jew” to stab at me recently, i have been thinking more and more on that side of my family. i’m writing a long post on it. soon, i am thinking i may change the star in my UMX symbol to some fashion of a Star of David. the eagle, the serpent and the rock at the start of tenochtitlán, in front of the Jewish star. i was using the EZLN star, but i think its time for this change. i have to try the design out. it may mean a new blog. or it may just mean a tweaking of the old. more on this later…this quandary i’m in lately over whether i should change my UMX blog as i change…or just let it rest at some point as an archive and sign of an earlier time and move on.

i’ve just been thinking of it a lot, jews and mexicans. how both peoples have been persecuted, displaced, despised and hunted, becoming almost nomadic in quests to live and survive. nowadays illegal is slurred and dripping with ugliness and hate and a blanket license to treat as subhuman just as much as jew was in scary days past. not that people cannot resurrect that ugly past with much more than one word.

i was not taught much affiliation or pride with being descended from jews or mexicans, but (in addition to my personal need to reconnect with my roots) as both peoples are under attack, and have been, i feel very strongly that my remaining silent and unidentified with them is somewhat disloyal. not to die out, and not to hide out. it’s never been about pretending to be something i’m not. to me, living under some adopted name and by speech and appearance attempting to distance myself from these is pretending. and i feel a duty to underline and resuscitate my affiliations with mi antepasados and my ancestors, considering not only have the groups typically been “nomadic and hunted,” but specifically, my ancestors who came into this country only 2 and three generations ago on both sides did so to live, to prosper. for a chance at a better life or even moving away from violence that sought them. not simply to move in some exotic or worldly way.

and i’d have to add that it’s not all about them being persecuted. it’s about the name of jews being used in israel to oppress others, and i feel i should say something on that, too, as i do not approve of that, and would add my voice to that disapproval. as a person, and as someone affiated in some way, even if small. but i’ll save the rest for the post.

there is so much to know as a craftsperson and an artist who uses digital means. oh if it were only so easy just to write and make visual art/video or record music. before any of these finished products can be presented, there is SO much learning about the tools. ugh. mix camera with computer (shooting/editing video) and you have a library of information you have to know. how tape is made, how it captures, what 60i vs 24p vs 24Pa mean, how to digitize them, how to use various software programs, tools IN those programs, how they all interact, how to troubleshoot problems in everything from blogs to mixing boards, i can go on and i know you know what i mean. i taught myself adobe illustrator “on the job,” as when i illustrated my first book (i’ve written a few, only one is published now), it seemed that vector art would be a better bet than pixel-based art, so i had to learn the software. that’s usually how it goes. need gives way to self-teaching in a new area. i love the new learning. and the bigger knowledge base. as i’ve said before the more you learn the more it can overlap and intersect, and thus deepen your understanding in all areas at once, a sort of whole-greater-than-the-sum-of-parts thing, but with understanding and intuition to use that understanding in new ways. sometimes all the pockets of ignorance that can rise up and stymie a project at various points, or the demand for time that is needed to keep moving forward with different learnings in different areas is frustrating. and the technology moves so fast that you really have to work hard to stay on top of all the changes in all the various places. but nothing makes me feel more alive than learning something new. well, perhaps that is hyperbole. but if so, only barely.

i was really annoyed that my obama vid showed so much interlacing. i wont bore you with technical talk, but there was a lot to figure out in the way of avoiding that, and i’m still not sure i get it all. it will take a few times shooting/editing more until i can test out some things and see what the best workflow is. interesecting considerations between cameras, formats, software, settings, final presentation format, etc. ugh.

i’m so hungry. i guess i should push Submit (on the compression window, as well as for this post) and then go eat. and then shower to try and work out these knots. and then come back to this virtual tail-gunner seat and try to finish up icirr. hop back to richard’s illustrations before dawn tomorrow. hit UMX posts in nibbles, hope to have a solid one for monday. i think i may have some Headline posts saved up not posted yet. see if those are still timely, fill the weekend up a bit. i think i have a youtube on reserve too.

lately my dinners have been so big and heavy full of sauces and calories and flavors and butters and steaks and i wonder if i’m trying to put on weight for the summer. it’s all very odd. i was running on the regular and really getting fit. and then i just sort of fell into king henry the eighth mode. a drumstick in one hand, a carafe in the other, and gravy running down my neck. mmmm. gravychest. it’s like i’m singlehandedly battling (and batter-ing) winter away from the dining hall doors. trying to bundle up in a regal layer of fat or something. hunker down in my throne room of ribeye. king fatty will rule with a tenderized fist.

moo-yah!

And here is a series of myself and mijita, mi queridita lunita.

1

this was before she was born. that’s papá practicing with curious george, who seems out of it.

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

she’s so fierce.

and now—all grandparents are gone. my mother called me today and told me. i may have mentioned to one or two of you. the cancer my nana had. seems like it crept up fast. the last couple days it got worse…my mother said nana told her no, she wasn’t suffering…but she “wasn’t happy.” if you knew nana, that means a lot. so, she decided to die. and that’s nana. strong spirit. strong as ten motherfuckers. i know she’d rather go than become something other than she’s always been. i have a lot of memories of her, and she was special to me. more on that later.

peace.

[quicktime]http://www.xolagrafik.com/bideo/nitajamz/nitajamz.mov[/quicktime]

update: if you double click this, an audio file should play.

should i be hurt that la novia tried to entice me to come by saying “free boooooze!?” yes. i’m deeply hurt. there is no choice but to drink my pain away. see what you’ve done?

feliz, bitchez! out!