December 4th - Feast Day of Santa Barbara

Why i love this world.

December 1st - Feast Day of Blessed John van Ruysbroeck

A little birdie told me:
My book is now listed (and the cover illustrated) on the Heyday Books website, "COMING IN MARCH 2008." Things are starting to get real.

Nov 30th - Feast Day of St. Andrew the Apostle

And here I'd always thought that Andrew was one of the more uninteresting saints....

Twice I'd encountered him on the streets of the City of the Angels: first, as San Andreas Avenue, on western Mt. Washington; and then, passing almost the entire north-south breadth of the city, as St. Andrews Place. Certainly St. Andrews Place is a fascinating street to study, traversing so many communities and economic classes of L.A. - even boasting a classic encounter between rich and poor at the intersection of St. Andrews and Venice Boulevard, where the wealthy neighbors to the north set an iron gate to keep out their meager neighbors a block to the south....

No, the problem seem to lay more with the saint himself - a stodgy sort of fellow, rustic and lacking in discernible character traits.

But I just saw, on the Patron Saints website, a great little legend or, better, superstition about the fellow:
"An old German tradition says that single women who wish to marry should ask for Saint Andrew's help on the Eve of his feast, then sleep naked that night; they will see their future husbands in their dreams."

Apparently, as patron saint of unmarried women, Andrew has been able to convince maidens over the years to shed their clothing in exchange for a little matchmaking. In this vein Wikipedia informs us that "In some areas in Austria, young girls would drink wine and then perform a spell, called Andreasgebet (Saint Andrew's prayer) while nude and kicking a straw bed." The goal of this slightly odd activity is that it would "magically attract [her] future husband."

It's such a fascinating idea, that somehow over the years a tradition developed, of thousands of women going to sleep in the nude the night of November 29th; and of sometime soon thereafter (for the belief must have had some efficacy for it to endure) these women would marry "the man of their dreams," as it were.

Why would St. Andrew have exacted such a bargain though? Why did he choose only to help women who sleep in the nude the eve of his Feast Day? What is Saint Andrew really like? How does he feel on his the morning of his Feast Day, as these women awaken? Now I have a great curiosity about him.... I'm going to have to think on this for some time.

Nov 6th - Feast Day of Saint Winnoc

This morning I saw them - when did they appear? - six great pink, white, and creamy flowers on our silk floss tree in the front garden. A ladybird on the flowering jade tree outside my studio. Then, while writing this, an insistent, muffled knocking sound led me to watch a red-crested woodpecker working its magic on the dead branches of our apple tree.

Nov 3rd - San Martin de Porres

Today we received the proofs for my book! My publisher, Heyday Books, in Berkeley, just Fedexed the proof from the printer in Singapore.

The layout is so lush, so rich and nuanced; so empathetic with the trust of the narrative and the paintings.

Totally apart from the fact that the artwork is mine, I love the look of this book. It has beauty, it has mystery, it has poetry, and it has wonder and pain.
When I met my publisher, Malcolm Margolin, he promised to be not
only a good publisher but a good friend. He has seriously undersold himself in both categories.
I am a very happy - and grateful - guy. Bless All the Saints. Here's to San Martin de Porres.

Nov 2nd - All Souls Day

A misaddressed envelope bubbled up to the surface of the day's mail the other day. This happens with some frequency since we learned our mail route is considered a "training route" for new USPS employees. As soon as a mail carrier gets good at knowing where all our neighborhood mail goes, she/he gets shuffled off to a better route - and we get the next new guy. As it happens, this envelope was only off by one house, but the addressee name caught me off-guard: Stephen Strigle.

We moved into our home eighteen years ago; a rambling old cottage on a cul-de-sac, sharing a common driveway with the tottering two-story house next door. Because of the common driveway and the friendly warmth of our neighbors, we quickly got on intimate terms, sharing conversations in Spanish, home-cooked meals, and vigilance when one another was gone.

René was a handsome, very religious and elegant fellow who was being cared for by his sweet and long-suffering mother Irma, as he waited through the final long fragile months of health complications from AIDS. René doted on our then-young son, Jacobo: When the 1994 Northridge earthquake hit on a pre-dawn January morning, Irma told me that René's first words when she checked on him were "Está bien el niño?"

When he had been well, René related, he had hosted great rollicking parties (a discreetly walled outdoor jacuzzi, a huge outdoor above-ground swimming pool inside a circus tent), and his house would be overrun with guests. Now that he was ill, sedate, and moving gingerly through life's shadows, no one called, no one visited.

René passed away while we were in Mexico visiting family: I've always regretted I didn't give him a rosary and photo of Jacobo to take with him that last emergency trip to the hospital; it would have meant a lot to him. In any event, René visited me - a floating winged spirit - to say goodbye in the early morning darkness the day he died. "René se fué", I told Mimí in the morning, and it was true, we learned when we returned to L.A....

René's mother, Irma, stayed behind, first to put things in order and then, after all the legalities were dealt with, as ownership of the house passed to her and to her eldest son, Luís, they settled in. Our kitchen window faced their kitchen door, and soon a little community tradition developed: If we glanced out and saw either Irma or Luís step out onto their sunlit porch to light a cigarette, and if we weren't busy, we would rustle up a couple of cups of coffee and join them for a kaffe klatch. It leant a great feeling of connectedness to our daily lives.

It was also how we learned that things were about to change again, and that Irma was going to bear a second cross: her youngest son, Chris, a gorgeously flamboyant elf, had been diagnosed with AIDS and was going to need her care.

René and Chris could not have seemed more different. René was very religious and had a priest visit him for counseling and last rites; Chris viewed it all through the lens of Catholic kitsch and wanted a funeral that would be "muy gay." René, embarassed, refused to even pronounce the name of the disease that ravished him, much less own up to it; Chris was as out as could be. And Chris, at least, had a lover, Stephen, who remained with him to the end.

Chris' illness progressed much more rapidly than did René's: very soon we were visiting him in the hospital, drugged into a pain-free sleep. Our last visit there, Chris lay sprawled and splayed across Irma as she sat on the hospital bed, cradling her frail skeletal, still-beautiful son. Bathed in the afternoon light the scene was a perfect Pietá, and I badly wanted- but could not bring myself to beg permission - to return to the car for my camera to record this Passion image.

Before dying Chris made his mother promise to look after Stephen who, in a further punishing irony, was also diagnosed with AIDS. Stephen moved into a tiny room of Irma's and Luís' home and remained professionally active almost to the end, driving away each day, his leather briefcase in tow, to - where? I seem to think he was in law or medicine: medicine, I think. A Stephen Strigle appears on Google as a cytotechnologist working (and writing) on AIDS research in the mid-1980's to 1990's: maybe this was him.

Whomever he was to the greater world, Stephen was in a sort of holding place in our world. He had been part of Chris' life that had remained removed, perhaps willfully ignored, by Irma; he did not share the cultural characteristics of his caretakers; and he did not speak Spanish (Irma's only tongue).

However, Stephen had been disowned by his parents - or at least by his father - years before for being gay, so now this little world around our common driveway was what there was of home for him.

Home did not last long: Stephen passed away fairly quickly, at the hospital. The next morning Luís brought me a little sheet of paper with a phone number: Stephen's parents, somewhere in Orange County.

We had talked often, throughout Chris' and Stephen's illnesses, of this abdication of paerntal love. How was it conceivable, we wondered (without coming to any resolution), that a parent could disown a child? Irma and Luís felt it was cultural: a Mexican parent, they swore, would never abandon a son or daughter, and certainly never leave them as they died. But, from my experience conducting altar-making workshops with HIV+ recent immigrants in the early 1990's, I knew it did indeed happen, tragic and immoral as it seems.

So: the phone number. I wish I still had it. I tossed around in my head what I might say, whether I should rail against whoever answered for being so inhuman, whether I should ask them why they had acted - or really, not acted - as they did. In the end I just called and verified that I had the right number.

The father answered, and when I told him Stephen had passed away, he said only "Well I guess that's it."

"It?" I wondered. Your son dies and you say, well that's it, as though dinner's over, or a game on tv?

I added that Stephen had left behind a number personal items - a typewriter, some books, papers, and so forth; but the dad didn't want anything that had belonged to his son.

There's a lot I should have said then, or done; at the very least I should have asked to speak to the mother: we'll always have our share of "should have's." Presumably Stephen's parents will suffer through theirs.

Stephen had been blessed to be welcomed into Irma's home and care, but the three illnesses and deaths had taken a great toll on her, and now this house and Los Angeles itself were inalterably entwined in shades of sadness. Irma and Luís moved back to Nogales; a few years later Luís phoned to let us know, briefly, that Irma had passed on as well.

The house across our driveway has sat vacant for several years now. Its grey paint peels everywhere; its windows are all barred or boarded up; the back yard where the tented pool once sat is periodically overrun with vociferous, choking vines; and the persimmons and figs we once all feasted on barely announce themselves: dry, tiny and bitter from lack of water.

At the edge of the house, maybe fifteen feet from my studio, there's a chicken-wire avaiary. From the time we moved in it was filled with parakeets and finches; their singing provided an audio track to my painting and drawing - until René, Chris, and Stephen died, and Luís and Irma moved away.

Metaphorically, all this decay and loss is a bit overripe for an autumn tale.

I haven't crossed our driveway to clean the ex-neighbors' garden or to water Irma's old rose bush and bougainvelia because, after all, it's not my property: it's someone else's responsibility. But it is my life that's being affected by the loss and I should take responsibility for my life.

This envelope bubbled up to the surface of our mail the other day: maybe I should open it. Maybe I should start pruning back the plants I see from my kitchen window and studio, even if they're not mine, but because they remind me of Irma, René, and Luís. I could get a few parakeets, too, and spruce up the aviary. I'll name all the parakeets Stephen.

Oct 27 - Feast Day of St. Abraham the Poor

What is it about tortillas?

My friend Joe Bravo has a show that opened tonight at KGB Gallery, just north of Downtown LA. Joe is a generous soul, a gentleman with a soft voice and calm attitude. Principally a graphic artist and designer, I've seen Joe around for a long time, and it is good to see him getting recognition and support.

After years of painting on canvas, Joe has received extraordinary attention with a series of paintings on tortillas: Tortilla Art. Beginning with renditions of rather anticipated Chicano icons, like the Virgin of Guadalupe and Che Guevara, he has moved, largely in response to an invitation to exhibit in Hong Kong, to include Chinese imagery. This painting (above right), of a Chinese songbird and poppies, is my favorite, possibly because it is quieter and more lyrical; less insistent on dominating the tortilla's humble surface textures and tones.

It would seem that part of the fascination with the concept of placing an image on a tortilla relates to the tradition of finding an image on a tortilla. It's technically referred to as pareidolia, the discerning of apparent faces and other figures on unlikely surfaces - like a tortilla, some wood paneling, water stains, and so on. There is even at least one movie about this, wherein someone notices an image of Jesus on a tortilla; and I seem to recall a play where someone finds the Virgin Mary, as well. The possibilities for taking this beyond fascination or simple reverence, all the way to kitsch, meanspiritedness, pathetic delusion, and greed, are pretty much endless. Here's a clip of a mother and daughter who contend a store-bought pretzel resembles Mary holding Baby Jesus - which they hope to sell for $1,000 to buy the girl a horse she wants.

I think, though, there's something more special about the tortilla, not just because it is handmade (although that's part of it), but also because of its centrality to Mexican identity.

Far as I know, the first artist to play with Tortilla Art is José Montoya, who created a pretty nice piece (detail, at right), entitled Cuautemoc on a Tortilla [sp], in 1971.

The hub of the universe of Tortilla Art, probably, would have to be the artist collective known as The Great Tortilla Conspiracy, headed by Rio and Rene Yanez and Jos Sances (?), that not only creates imagery on tortillas, but invites and assists others to create their own.

The work is decidedly uneven, in a popular art kind of way, but some of the work is dreamy and gorgeous. Two versions, both by Rio Yanez, are my favorites. The first, of iconic actress Maria Felix, appears at the top of this entry. The other, of Frida Kahlo, is so quietly moody, it almost converts into an icon all its own....