Saturday, April 26, 2014

Illusions of Life: Gabriel Garcia Marquez



-I have learned that a man only has the right to look down on another man when it is to help him to stand up. -Gabriel Garcia Marquez 

Illusions of Life: Gabriel Garcia Marquez

by Armando Ortiz

I discovered illusions through your words, and the characters conceived in your mind became archetypes- mythical American figures.


I felt the scent of death and marveled at the mystery of love- as people floated to the heavens and spirits were sequestered to the earth.


Making me relive my visits to Guatemala, and looking back with wonder, while traveling down the river of your youth with mountainous steam clouds floating in the sky, and a Latin American blue, crystal clear- god’s oil painting.


Love was at the heart of your fables, and compassion at arm’s reach. You wrote, and I saw with my eyes, how the general on horseback liberated countries. I felt the cool breeze on the Andes Mountain along the streets of Los Angeles.


Those books taught me history and to love, and showed what life could be as a child through adult eyes. I became a Spanish gypsy, wandering the western hemisphere, and connected to my own heritage through food and song by looking through your mind.


Sunday, April 20, 2014

Growing up in Los Angeles (Part Seventeen): Stained Glass on the Ground



Part 17: Stained Glass on the Ground

by Armando Ortiz

One day Pedro was on the second floor of the church sweeping and picking up debris. After a few hours of gathering pieces of drywall and splintered wood, he decided to take a break in one of the rooms. He went inside and slightly opened one of the windows that faced the alley and noticed that the kids were all in a circle. There were two kids in the middle of the human circle punching each other. The memory now is quite vague but it certainly was a fight, because at the end one of the contestants was bloodied and crying. It makes one wonder how the actions of others have a more profound effect on the viewer. Those kids probably were not aware that they were being watched, nor were they aware of their reality. To them it might have been a fight, just a fight, where there was a winner and a bloodied loser. 

Maybe it is one of those things that one will never really know. A lesson that is being acted out in real life. How many life lessons had he participated in unconsciously that taught someone else or left a lasting impact on some random person without him knowing? He couldn’t remember who had won or if the two had been too bloody to be able to point out who was the victor. One thing is for sure, at that moment the tears that flowed down the cheeks of the two kids, blended with the blood, creating a gorier scene that looked like condensed raspberry syrup, resembling the very pieces of glass that he’d come across outside the church grounds, Pedro never forgot the scene. 



Friday, April 18, 2014

The Flow of Life


The Flow of Life

by Armando Ortiz

Art is the medium through which culture is diffused and exchanged. Culture may be suppressed, but the real story is being played out now.


I’ve paid to see beauty, I have touched great booty. I can say that I’ve traveled far, and had foreign conversations, alienated a few and sought by many.


Cultural, not civilized, the cabarets and street vendors, that let us relive our hungers of desert dreams. Waking up not knowing what’s ahead. The bridges to unexplored lands, oasis of thought, are still over there standing like granite pillars of memory.


Culture is language, a ying yang of theories, that reach our ear, painting a watercolor with sounds of thunder, and washes that streak on the canvas, a musical center of sounds.


How do you maintain sanity when beauty is everywhere?!


Time passes by, numerous crossroads, endless flow of people float, moving forward, toward unknowns, going down that eternal way, where the ashes are taken away, and like paper-mâché boats that aimlessly navigate; the widening current becomes our stay.


Thursday, April 17, 2014

Roberto Bolano's Third Reich: Book Review


Roberto Bolano's Third Reich
by Armando Ortiz

Bolano is meant to be read at the edge of the city, where the ocean meets land, and honey baked skinned birds flutter about, with locks of gold.

Where you see cinnamon women with floating feet, smelling of sweet navel oranges, and yellow lemon flavored, sweet and sour to the tongue.

On the coast of the city, where the sun dangles above the desert mirage, with waves of dizzying spells, and waters that sway like an old rocking chair, an endless roller coaster ride, a continuous ocean signal of distress, filtered with the conscious mind of bliss.

I'm happy with my L.A., lost in its wilderness of surprise, where short men with moon goddesses walk about, and her morning voice haunts these memories, with body reliving the times I bit down her areola.

Bolano lacks citrus in his writing, because he was happy with black bread, wine and cheese, but it’s as good as it gets.

The edge of Los Angeles, is where the West ends, and citrus auras envelop all where book and sun come alive. 


Monday, April 14, 2014

Beijing Summer: A Poem


Beijing Summer

By Armando Ortiz


She is the song that reminds him of other songs, the first scent of a blooming rose.


He closes his eyes and remembers the purple plums they ate under the tree, beside the man-made lake.


Her heat and the sun’s rays made that hazy summer bearable.


His head lay on her thighs and her sandalwood fingers felt its contours.


Those eyes open, while sitting on a chair on the balcony, and traffic passes bye.


The melody that they heard with the scents that were felt are now only traces, but that mind still carries the moment within.


Monday, April 7, 2014

Fire Keeper: Poem


Fire Keeper

by Armando Ortiz 

I am unable to contain fire or control spirits.


The knowledge to harness energy, I lack.


And the ability to keep the flame burning at night, I miss.


I fumble through life like a flying ember with no destiny.


But your light ignites a flicker that moves this body.


Energy pulls me towards you like a magnetic body.


I am under your spell and orbit around your force of gravity.


I offer myself as protection and envelop you with my warmth.