The times they are a changin'
The sun is out, the sky is blue, its beautiful and so are... wait a minute this is not about prudence at all. It is about hope, albeit possibly misguided hope. It is Wednesday, I get to pick my baby up early from school, which means I get a whole extra hour of kisses (you would think that your kiss threshold would be met after five and a half years of unabashed mommy worship, but no, I can never get enough). "Why do I love you sooooo much?" I ask for the umpteenth time, as I want to squeeze her into oblivion, to assuage my unending enamorment. "Because I'm sweet, and kind, and I love you the most..." she begins the laundrylist of reasons I have heard, and she has repeated, easily a hundred thousand times before. Daddy intervenes to lick her cheek, "Sí, estás dulce..." "Daddy, she doesn't mean sweet tasting, it's a metaphor."
So what if the president is an f'ing moron, so what if we will have like-minded morons as ambassadors to the UN, and serving on the Supreme court, and infiltrating every aspect of our personal life any day now? Today, in class, the reading we were discussing was one on Mexican-Americans. Now as an instructor, my first and foremost goal is not to promote my own political agenda, but rather to create a safe and welcoming environment in which my students can learn and speek freely, regardless of their view points (the political agenda has to be more insidious - ha ha). I try very hard to model tolerant behavior and moderation in my teaching, while bringing to light social realities to which my cherubs may not have been previously exposed. There was some discussion about the Chicano movement, the Black Panthers and the Feminist movements of the 60's, and what the "Raza" was about (damn me, I can't ever not go off on a tangent). So I ended up talking about Vasconcelos and his "Raza Cósmica" (glossing over, of course, its inherently racist overtones like the idea that the "defective" qualities of certain groups would mystically drop off upon misegynation) and the power of the visual forms of public art of Mexico in the 1930's and how that was translated to the political movement of the 60's in the U.S. We determined that for a public that was largely illiterate (post-Revolutionary Mexico), the most effective way to spread a message was visually... Of course I failed to mention that music is the other most powerful way to spread rhetoric (both subversive and government sponsored propaganda - just look at the Cultural Revolution and Chairman Mao's early control over musical production in China...), even though yesterday I had them listening to Cultura Profética "Ideas nuevas" (not often do you get a chance to teach the word "teta" and "demagogo" in the same class and have them both referring to the U.S. government.
Ah yes, well, it makes me happy to be driving in the car with my little girl singing Silvio at the top of her lungs: "Ojalá pase algo que te borre de pronto..." even if she doesn't really know what it is that she is singing about. Perhaps the times are changing? Will there be substantive political change for when she is a teenager? Will this schizophrenic fundamentalism get itself on some heavy narcotics? Who knows, but here's to hoping for the next generation!
On that note, returning to the song of the day: Homage to Bob Dylan, 1963.
So what if the president is an f'ing moron, so what if we will have like-minded morons as ambassadors to the UN, and serving on the Supreme court, and infiltrating every aspect of our personal life any day now? Today, in class, the reading we were discussing was one on Mexican-Americans. Now as an instructor, my first and foremost goal is not to promote my own political agenda, but rather to create a safe and welcoming environment in which my students can learn and speek freely, regardless of their view points (the political agenda has to be more insidious - ha ha). I try very hard to model tolerant behavior and moderation in my teaching, while bringing to light social realities to which my cherubs may not have been previously exposed. There was some discussion about the Chicano movement, the Black Panthers and the Feminist movements of the 60's, and what the "Raza" was about (damn me, I can't ever not go off on a tangent). So I ended up talking about Vasconcelos and his "Raza Cósmica" (glossing over, of course, its inherently racist overtones like the idea that the "defective" qualities of certain groups would mystically drop off upon misegynation) and the power of the visual forms of public art of Mexico in the 1930's and how that was translated to the political movement of the 60's in the U.S. We determined that for a public that was largely illiterate (post-Revolutionary Mexico), the most effective way to spread a message was visually... Of course I failed to mention that music is the other most powerful way to spread rhetoric (both subversive and government sponsored propaganda - just look at the Cultural Revolution and Chairman Mao's early control over musical production in China...), even though yesterday I had them listening to Cultura Profética "Ideas nuevas" (not often do you get a chance to teach the word "teta" and "demagogo" in the same class and have them both referring to the U.S. government.
Ah yes, well, it makes me happy to be driving in the car with my little girl singing Silvio at the top of her lungs: "Ojalá pase algo que te borre de pronto..." even if she doesn't really know what it is that she is singing about. Perhaps the times are changing? Will there be substantive political change for when she is a teenager? Will this schizophrenic fundamentalism get itself on some heavy narcotics? Who knows, but here's to hoping for the next generation!
On that note, returning to the song of the day: Homage to Bob Dylan, 1963.
posted by ilana at 3:10 p.m.
11 Comments:
HE SIDO SERENATEADA Y CON DEDICATORIA Y TODO!! Graziaz.. ya mismo entro a Amazon a conseguirme el disco.
Con mi mamá, en sus raras demostraciones de cariño hacia mí, hacíamos un diálogo similar. Ella me preguntaba cuánto la quería y yo le decía que mucho. Ella me prgeuntaba que si mucho era poquito y yo la abrazaba y le decía que hasta las estrellas... ese sigue siendo mi parámetro de amor, el que llega hasta las estrellas...
Tu comentario en el que decías de las voces que te atosigaban, yo también las escuché y yo también me pregunté muchas cosas que aun hoy me pregunto y que tengo pendientes de solucionar e implementar. Hoy sé que la revolución, al igual que la caridad, empieza por casa. Talvez no pueda cambiar al mundo, ni a mi país, pero sí puedo hacer de mi mundo y de mi entorno una pequeña utopía sin repetir los mecanismos de los bravucones que hoy lideran tantos gobiernos.
Me hubiera encantado estar en tu clase!
De nuevo, reverencia indú de agradecimiento por el detallazo, Sole.
A capella? ¿Ilana? Multi-talented is what you are. Seguimos el proceso de limeración bloggérica...
Yo a mis hijas me las como a besos, y de verdad, no hay límite a la cantidad de besos que puede uno dar y recibir. Justo hoy, en una de las múltiples sesiones diarias con mi hija menor (que es la que aún me lo permite sin límite), se me ocurrió preguntarle cuanto me quería. La respuesta fue muy sencilla pero casi inexpresable (por escrito): se me quedó viendo con sus ojitos abiertos como peras, como diciéndome "qué pregunta tan tonta", y quitó sus brazos de alrededor de mi cuello para abrirlos lo más que podía e indicarme que me quería con todo su ser. Y todo eso con una dulcísima y picarísima sonrisita en sus labios. Me derritió...
Sole: no me hagas llorar... y sabés lo peor de todo, tuve una familia normal, quiero decir papás que me amaban y cuidaban y enseñaban a ver el mundo con ojo crítico y a ser independiente... ¿por qué carajos, con qué derecho estoy insatisfecha?
Isabellita y yo tenemos este juego, yo le pregunto cuánto y ella anuncia, cada ves más rápido mientras gesticula en grandes trazos: "up to the moon, down to the ground and back, up to the moon, down to the ground and back, up to the moon, down to the ground and back... and all the way to Africa, and Jupiter!"
Otrova: limerate todo lo que quieras, creo que estamos a distancia segura para que no haya malos entendidos;)
Las niñas siempre matan con su dulzura ¿ verdad?
No se me va la ternura que me invadió al visualizar a tu hijita cantando "ojalá pase algo que te borre de pronto, una luz cegadora...". Un efecto parecido me produjo el comentario de Otrova sobre su propia hija. // Cuando nazca mi bebé (aún no sabemos si será niño o niña)y esté en esa edad le preguntaré cuánto me odia, (como para darle trabajo en el futuro a algún pobre psicólogo.)
A mí también me causó muchísima ternura el comentario de Otrovas (no hay cosa más capaz de conmover a una mujer que "ver" -o imaginar- a un padre cariñoso) en especial la imagen de los brazitos alrededor de su cuello.
!Ilana, yo no sabía! Apenas nazca mi bebé lo voy a entrenar para que me demuestre cariño frente a las minas que me quiera ligar.
No hace falta el entrenamiento, lo hará solito/a (pero tendrás que cerciorar que sean tus minitas tan perversas como yo, de otro modo, no te puedo garantizar resultados ;) y vieras que casi comenté que te estaba divulgando un secreto (¿cómo te diste cuenta?)
Ya yo había descubierto el poder "ligador" de los hijos/as... ¿recuerdan mi post sobre el supermercado? Allí había un hint de eso.
Debo confesar que desde que tengo hijas no he querido "usar" ese "poder ligador" que ellas me confieren (me parece poco ético usar a tus propios hijos para eso, sobre todo que mi esposa no se lo merece). Mis sobrinos, cuando yo era soltero, eso fue otra cosa (y otra época).
spoken like a true gentilhombre... you know we're just kidding, right? Jamás sería capaz de utilizar a mi hija como palanca en el corazón (o pantalón) de otro... pero creo que esa dignidad es al pedo porque no funciona de la misma manera para las mamás...
I wasn't preaching, and I know you were kidding...
Na más que como últimamente ando sin inspiración para postear, al menos me inspiro para comentar en los blogs de otros :-0
Publicar un comentario
<< Home