Joshua Memorial Park
by Armando Ortiz
In September, the high desert is an oven,
with plastic flowers and visitors,
that can’t silence the laughing crows,
perching on green pine trees.
The last time I saw you,
death had already taken your lungs,
but now artificial carnations wont wither,
and stand straight against the sun.
Part 15: D.A.R.E. to Save Each Other
By Armando Ortiz
About three of us almost broke down that day. It might have been four, but I can’t exactly remember. Mariela was the one that actually shed a few tears, but they dried before streaking all the way down her cheek. We had finally graduated from the D.A.R.E. program. None of us in the class had signed up to take the bi-monthly class. The officers came and talked about their experiences in the field and the dangers of drugs. I knew drugs were bad, heck, these eyes had seen people smoke crack, and observed crackheads go at it on the sidewalk of our neighborhood, but could not conceptualize drugs in a family or my life. The cop wore a deep blue uniform, and her long hair was kept in a bun. She was Hispanic, with light brown skin and green eyes, which made you think of Veronica Castro every time she visited our class. Her last name was Garcia. Officer Garcia would stand in front of the classroom and talk about life as a public officer and give us many reasons why not to turn to illegal substances.
After the program was over we were going to get awarded a black T-shirt that had the acronym D.A.R.E. emblazoned across the front of the shirt, with bright red letters. If you wanted a shirt and if you wanted to complete the program you had to give a speech/pledge about never touching drugs. Well, the day came and all of us had to go up to the front of the class and each had to promise to never do drugs and explain the dangers of drugs. Two classmates whom I rarely spoke with standout from that day. The first said that he would never do drugs, because drugs could kill people, but before he could complete the word “kill,” he jerked a bit and his face, especially around the eyes wrinkled up. He had dirty blond hair, and his parents were from El Salvador. He liked eating cheese pupusas and his favorite sport was kickball. He was one of the best in our class. The next up was Evelyn. She went up there and stood tall.
“I will never do drugs because drugs hurt your body, and my mother’s cry,” right after she said “my,” she looked at the audience, which was about 25 six graders, who were all too familiar, but now she looked lost, like a deer that was about to get slammed by a car.
She had a desperate look, and those hazel eyes looked side to side after she completed her first statement going on to say, and with a slow tone, “Drugs were dangerous because it hurts family and make grandparents cry.”
Evelyn was from Guatemala, from the highlands of Quetzaltenango, and a bit shorter than the rest of the students, but was smart, witty and always full of smiles. She would tell jokes to make us laugh, but on that day those marble eyes glazed up and got unusually watery, and suddenly turned completely black. After completing her speech she managed to get back to the seat, not one tear fell. Only sniffing once or twice, but we convinced ourselves that it was probably some type of cold that she had suddenly acquired.
It was my turn. I had not given this activity much thought. We had been told weeks prior about this mini-ceremony and that we’d get some T-shirts but we would have to make a pledge. So, the time for me to go up came, “I promise to never do drugs.” I began to choke up, but continued with my talk.
Other students, who made up the crowd, just saw the image of their classmate in the flesh. He promised never to do drugs and to not do bad things, like get drunk because it made the family unhappy. Though it didn’t seem like he choked up, and no one noticed his eyes glaze up. At that instant the cop tilted her head and wondered. Though her body posture had changed a bit she was too preoccupied in fulfilling her duties to really pay attention to what was going on or maybe she was observing.
At that moment as he gave that speech the class before him was silent and appeared motionless. Ms. Hopkins, to the right, was silent and heard our pledge. She wore a white Adidas sweater, and light blue Adidas running shoes. She sat on her desk and took notes. The class was still there, silently listening to all the other classmates go up. No one really knew what the other was experiencing or going through. We were all inside that shoebox of a room, in the maze of our minds, and the momentary experience of being social, and yet though we were all there, none of us really knew each other or our very selves. Too many things were happening to really comprehend the gravity of life and all its consequences. We were all forced into that situation, as speakers, audience, and public servants, and yet none of us could really protect the other from themselves or their temporal realities. At that instant the handcuffs of the police officer were made obsolete, her gun was powerless, the ears of the audience were blind, and their eyes dumb to the sounds that the children saw in their homes, and the strange and incomprehensible situations that would continue to occur.
That same river
by Armando Ortiz
By the river we shed tears
Reliving age old battles
As the fallen floated by like withered flowers
On the streams we were born with screams of lorn;
Into the flow of time, bloodied, we were thrown-
With her we fell in love, and her milk we yearn
Into the rapids of vice we were swallowed
Hoping to drown the sorrow with handmade gallows
Only to open our eyes to the white garble of life’s desire
The currents are ceaseless, and relentlessly ever present.
The Intercept of Land and Ocean
by Armando Ortiz
Look at the ocean, close your eyes, and see the sounds of midnight;
Waves crash and come alive with the phosphorus glow of magic,
Sit on the sand and feel it adjust like a mattress that offers a starry delight,
Grains, though many, make up a bed of golden feathers found inside heaven’s attic,
Dreams, though never known, come alive with holy heart felt rite,
And play with the words of soul and sole and stroll on the tattered valleys;
Walk in darkness with ease and sleep with the light of sun, lacking fright
Swinging the cane of Cain and carrying on shoulders Sisyphus’ chain
Lying at the edge of the ocean pondering the unseen noises of morrow
And after traversing through unknown lands and pondering the deepest thoughts
Attempting to grasp the complex instances of gesture and words of sorrow
Like Poe we ask ourselves as our eyes look west, and the mind thinks to be; is a dream within a dream.
The Scent of Orange
by Armando Ortiz
Today I remembered those white hands, as I cut these oranges in half. The scent felt like touching fine silk.
You’d wake up in the morning with my hand tracing the contours of your thighs and we made fresh squeezed orange juice. The transparent yellow pulp would float to the top of the glass.
I also remembered the endless rows of orange groves that were hidden from view, off the highway.
My family would drive to Lake Piru and stop the car beside the road and everyone’d get off to pick a few oranges and fill a couple of market bags while cars zoomed bye and paid no heed to the city people that were picking fruit.
A lot of things are hidden from view these days, like your voice, which I carry with me always, and the mornings when we’d have breakfast together on the 17th floor of the building where you lived, hidden from the people outside below.
Somehow your breath is intertwined, like a braid of hair, with earlier memories talking to me in indecipherable languages, and I get lost, like my fingers did when feeling your Hellenic curls.
I squeeze these oranges, to cool my body and absorb its vitamins. The citrus scent you had that night was sweet to the tongue. The taste still lingers.
I recall riding my bike up the Glendale Hills, with my friends, where all the homes had orange trees in their backyards, and we’d stretch our arms and grab two or three, taking them and peeling as we rested. They were sweet and full of water, just like you were that day.
So many images that a simple fruit can conjure up is amazing. What will my future memories be mixed with is a questions that is better left for the present moment I am enjoying
Turquoise and Coral
by Armando Ortiz
Coming into your focus is my hope,
To exist in your memories the goal
Allow me to enter your world and feel your sorrow
Let’s paint the sky a turquoise blue and shed coral tears of joy.
Let’s go inside the room of silhouettes
Where hopes reveal the path
of coral and turquoise,
The sky dangles from your ears held by silver moon light
And you carry dawn’s aura in your arms
Your eyes are embedded with coral and turquoise,
Your legs feel hot, like the desert air
we bleed sugar cane beads making corral
and turquoise mosaics on beds of bliss
Pink flesh and blue cries
The sky is born from your thighs
And you weep tiny dew drops of ecstasy
We see the true and real
Touching and groping, we traverse dark planes
we are at home with each other.
Dawn is permanently frozen in turquoise and coral
Dreaming of Life: Poe, Whitman, and ZhuangZi
By Armando Ortiz
As I searched for some topic materials for a student I was tutoring, the idea came up of introducing him to a few poems by Edgar Allan Poe, and while looking for two that would be a good fit, I came across A Dream Within A Dream. After reading it I was left feeling that somehow this particular piece went well with a poem by Walt Whitman, though I had trouble remembering which piece that was. After choosing the later and The Raven, the lesson was pretty much set on what the discussion would involve; hope, dreams, and the symbolism of the raven. Later the idea that had been born while examining some of Poe’s works returned like a bird that lands on a branch and perches outside your window, propelling me to write on A Dream Within A Dream, and Whitman’s Facing West from California’s Shores. Though plenty has already been written by both authors, my reinterpretation of their pieces along with personal past experiences will crystallize, in some way, the messages that these two authors attempted to convey. I will then end my brief discussion on these two poets with an older writer, Zhuang Zi, and compare his piece The Butterfly Dream to the ideas gathered from Poe and Whitman.
Both authors stand at the edge of the giant land mass of the North American continent and look towards the ocean, watching the waves and viewing the horizons of the East and West coasts while the approaching, yet diminishing soapy waves slightly touch their feet, concurrently their different perspectives connect with me on a personal level. My experiences matched the things they talked about, though not in the manner that they wrote. Reading their passages transported me back to the Summer of 2001, to the beach, where my body sat on the sand and looked out towards the ocean, my mind pondering the future; I’d be flying to South Korea soon. Sitting there I thought of the other side of the ocean, and wondered if there were people also sitting and looking toward the ocean facing my direction, as I faced theirs.
In South Korea, I visited Seoraksan National Park, which lies on the East Coast, and on the first day of arrival I explored the fish market that was by the coast and got to see the Pacific Ocean for the first time, from the other end of the world. The ocean was still blue, maybe a slightly deeper blue, and the waves appeared magnificent with their engulfing white noise, and with my back to the fish market, where hundreds of squid hung drying on wires- I stared across the massive body of water, thinking what people on the other side of the ocean were doing.
My eyes had glanced through A Dream within a Dream, but they had yet to decipher the words of Whitman, and still the meanings of both writers were far from becoming internalized in my life, but that’s no longer the case. Ten years later, as I read those passages once again, the past immediately reappeared, like discovering an old random photograph of vivid memories. Whitman stands looking West, pondering life, and all that has happened to mankind and his own life, and takes us back to the times when we traveled alone in a cramped bus or inside a cold train cabin where people asked innumerable questions about our lives and family in a language one was yet unable to register. On a personal level, the things seen and experienced in the past twelve years have been like one endless adventure, like an extended journey of discovery and learning, and yet all of that was expressed and rediscovered within Whitman’s lines. As I read those lines for the first time, I was immediately transported to the places I had once walked through, like the night market of Urumqi, China and as I continued toward the end of this piece it seemed to affirm life’s great gift. It took me through an epic journey where my life joined the life of many strangers that have walked and traveled this earth and have made the present moment their home.
Whitman has several lines that punctuated with realities that I had once experienced, like traveling through the Northern parts of the Himalayas in Sichuan, China and though I’ve yet to claim having traveled around the world, the long road trips and the long train rides seemed to merge with his lines, “Long having wander’d since, round the earth having wander’d,” and there I was now in Santa Monica beach pondering life, and wondering what the future held. With every gain there is a loss and with every action there is a reaction.
Facing West from California’s Shores
Facing west from California’s shores,
Inquiring, tireless, seeking what is yet unfound,
I, a child, very old, over waves, towards the house of maternity,
The land of migrations, look far,
Look off the shores of my Western sea, the circle almost circled;
For starting westward from Hindustan, from the vales of Kashmere,
For Asia, from the north, form the God, the safe, and the hero,
From the south, from the flowery peninsulas and the spice islands,
Long having wander’d since, round the earth having wander’d,
Now I face home again, very pleas’d and joyous,
(But where is what I started for so long ago?
And why is it yet unfound?)
-Walt Whitman
Reading Poe pulled me back to the present and made me think of life’s ephemeral experiences that are accented by our present emotional roller coaster rides, and the pace at which nature, though slowly, at a patient and steady pace passes us bye, making us reflect on our unfolding realities that can be traced back to the moments where we made decisions on a whim or due to someone’s random advice. Decisions that took you from climbing a peach tree in the front yard of the house as a child to hiking up the sacred TianShan in China as an adult, and the thought of the undecipherable future comes into focus. “Is all that we see or seem, a dream within a dream”? His piece is more personal though in the sense that it revives emotions experienced with loss and with the closing of relationships along with the uncertainty of tomorrow’s hope. At the moment it happens all these feelings come alive, like a dry creek bed in the desert that suddenly becomes a raging river with the rabid summer rains that are difficult to control, and yet after an hour of downpours, everything dissipates and things go back to normal. Poe looks at the waves making contact with the coast, and thinks, “Yet if hope has flown away, in a night, or in a day, in a vision, or in none, is it there for the less gone?”
Time passes, and we want to hold on to the precious memories that seem to keep us from getting hurt by the world, but as we head West and we follow the sun to the edge of the continent one comes to the conclusion that at times we just have to let go of the past and move on because time is ceaseless; “I stand amid the roar of a surf tormented shore, and I hold within my hand grains of golden sand- How few, Yet how they creep through my fingers to the deep,” and in the end we will ask if all this that has been experienced was a dream or “a dream within a dream.”
A Dream Within A Dream
Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow –
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.
I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of golden sand –
How few! Yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep – while I weep!
O God! Can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! Can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?
-Edgar Allan Poe
The possibility of Chuang Zi, a Chinese poet and philosopher from the Fourth Century BCE, having visited the ocean and pondered the very same thoughts that we have while looking at the waves and getting caught up in our introspection of life is very likely. In this case though, he writes about dreaming as another being, and gets caught up in his dream, but then stops to wonder if what he dreams is reality or a dream. As time passes and as we come to the realization that we cannot be anyone but ourselves, and reflect on the decisions made, one cannot help but think that if this life is and were a dream then we are living an incredible reality, because it suggest that we are in control of this dream and all possible outcomes are probable, and yet they are not, because in life the future is obscure.
The Butterfly Dream
Once Zhuanzi dreamt he was a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn’t know he was Zhuanzi. Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakable Zhuangzi. But he didn’t know if he was Zhuangzi who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Zhuangzi. Between Zhuangzi and a butterfly there must be some distinction! This is called the Transformation of Things. -Zhuang Zi
Life in its entire vicissitudes remains ours to make, like the painting that all writers have claimed life to be. It is ours to set up, sketch out, test out, prepare and paint, and like Gabriel Garcia goes on to describe in his epic novel, One Hundred Days of Solitude, we choose what to do with the life that we are given.
