Liz,
Are you ghosting me? Scared you again? I’ve been online for a while after a huge meal and taking a nap; then began wondering what happened to you. I thought we were just getting started. Remember mentioning Elvis’s Jungle Room in my last email? I found a blurred image of that carved fieldstone archway in the den’s fourth wall. My two years in museum security might explain why I placed myself beneath it, out of the way, to look over the room; and, if the walkway was crowded when you visited, I can see how you passed by the dark alcove behind it, with the white door in the back. It took those light strange knocks before I turned and saw it. Those raps didn’t come from the right, or left, or above since all solid masonry. Looking through that country door’s little glass panes expected to see a guard giving me the evil eye—not Elvis’s kitchen; do you remember how it was roped off? He had it all in his little mansion. So sad he died middle-aged, drug addicted, bloated on his bathroom floor. Can you imagine Elvis, maybe an other spirit, seeing me lean on those polished grey fieldstones?
Liz, I think you are off on one hundred Palestinians killed for each murdered Jew, as a final body count in Gaza. They have gotten away with killing around ten to one in past military actions. They push their luck before stopping because of internal and global pressure. They. They: whoever they are. I agree it is an epic disaster. Painful to look at mutilated innocents and so many crying traumatized young children. Rather not think about the Middle East…instead meditate until I no longer feel my body. Just gave to Jewish Voice for Peace and If Not Now Movement. Mass demonstrations are necessary.
What recently happened close to home was no epic disaster: just very sad. My aunt Monin’s recent funeral…last week the death of the old man in 1A…sad. Yet, happy they both reached ninety-five without suffering no more than the usual misery for their age. His funeral mass at Our Lady of the Cenacle was nice: nice in the sense that he got what he wanted—children, grandchildren, church friends, and others there. He went to this church every week while he could still walk, next to Maple Grove Cemetery where his wife is buried. Makun went to the wake yesterday, Masayo and I went to the Mass today, she went to the interment after, while I left for a medical appointment. This one is done looking at dead bodies in boxes or put in the ground. God and church meant a great deal to titi Monin and Don Jaime, so seeing them off there felt right.
I revised that first draft of “Boricua Standing at Divided Attention.” Sent the piece to Counterpunch and it was published on the 12th, before Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza was hit. No doubt, some will want to see an antisemite and Hamas supporter in my lines; with Counterpunch’s rep, I can imagine a large shithead, with no life, hacking my computer or blog. Have you seen how anyone, especially if Muslim, using the words apartheid, fascist, and genocide are attacked?
Siempre pa’lante, if I turn this email into a poem, should I note my father was chalky white, with Jewish ancestors from Spain and Portugal…or that many Puerto Ricans are surprised to hear about a Sephardic Castro lineage? Think it will help save my skin at all? No way, right—the way extremists are going after their own.
L, don’t be a ghost.
Peace,
A
PS. B’Tselem