Saturday, June 24, 2006

the refrain of Mexican love songs

I have at last found an on-line shelter and repository for the literary passages I treasure. When I find a group of words that creates an entirely new thought in my mind or floods bold hues from the color wheel of knowledge into my living room, I am excited. I work to make this happen at least once a day, preferring multiple times.


June 24, 2006

Mexico is poor. But my mama says there are no love songs like the love songs of Mexico. She hums a song she can remember.

Men sing in Mexico. Men are strong and silent. But in song the Mexican male is granted license he is otherwise denied. The male can admit longing, pain, desire.

HAIII-EEEE- a cry like a comet rises over the song. A cry like mock-weeping tickles the refrain of Mexican love songs.

Richard Rodriguez, “Proofs”

Friday, June 23, 2006

Discovering Self

It is strange to join the world of blogging fools- publicly displaying my thoughts to other Web users- because I have always considered myself a private person, careful with my cascading trains of thought and sparkling epiphanies.

Yet, here I am flashing my private bits to the masses, feeling nervous and downright revealed.

Writing has always caused me to ask myself the question: Why is my writing important or interesting to others: if, in fact, it is. So many writers through the centuries express in words what it means to be human- their intellects trapped within rough, oily, thick or sensitive skins- squealing to assert mind over matter. Themes emerge of human suffering or fleeting joy, recycled again and again in the orbit of eventual mortality.

What strikes me as promising though is that no individual human being can ever truly have the same experience as another human being. The individual and solitary perspective on existence and its connection to the human condition is what a writer brings to her pages.

As a writer, I see it as my job to capture the smallest details that personal observation will allow and serve those remnants of being alive to my readers on a silver platter.

Appetizers for the mind and annotations on life if you will.

I must always remember that the main course of a savory piece of work only satisfies a reader’s palate if her mind has something to chew on after she swallows the last word. And, I want the reader to return to my vegetarian kitchen of intellectual delights.