I have a cousin MIGZ…

and when he was a big, round headed, silent, big eyed baby being baptised, he was so scared he crapped all the way up his back from being carried. He lives in Japan now and is soon to be married.

He is a Christian. The way only a kid from a Colombian family who grew up in Miami can be. When I asked him how he came to Christianity he surprised me by telling me that he remembered a conversation he had with me. With ME of all people.

He said that he remembers saying about how religion was just a way to control people etc. He surely had expected me to agree or confirm this, considering that I was a pretty rotten apple.

I dont remember this conversation and was shocked at the answer I gave him apparently. It seems that I told him that there was more to it than that and that each person must find their own way to God, that the traffic on the way is irrelevant.

When he was a baby we used to jokingly call him the bishop because of his calm, wide-eyed serenity, truly a beautiful child.

He prayed for me on skype and im not making fun, and im praying for the most beautiful snow to adorn his wedding as a gift from me.

I admire people who can write fiction. For me fiction can only be an element of truth, a magnifying glass or a loudspeaker.

There is something about the sound of a soft rain on a tin roof. Its almost wind-like in its ebb and flow, as if someone were trying to tune into specific radio station and going through all the frequencies. Now that were sliding into our only other season, its hard to tell the time, especially when you can no longer use the sun as a clock. The sun becomes a sneaky child, hiding from and peaking at you unexpectedly through out the day. You can no longer count on him, hes free to do whatever he wants behind the clouds. The clouds are now your new sun, and watch you suspiciously from morning to night. The moon and stars have also punched out, replaced by a red and neverending piece of mis-placed dawn. The birds and wildlife are quite pleased with this arrangement as are all living things. The orchids and bromeliads finally relaxing and drawing water in humid breathes. This is the time of the year where I feel im on an island. Ive always played this game, even as a child. Pretending that just behind the horizon was a rocky cliff facing the ocean. The change in my mind and body was almost narcotic when I would do this. Very hard to stop this self-administered dose of joy. One minute everything is damp and grey and cold, and in one quick second the sun blasts through everything and every drop of water becomes crystaline and beautiful, everything green shades of emerald. The birds racing through the sky from tree to tree in lunatic extacy. Its like a sudden un-predictable rush hour, several times a day. And then suddenly your in New Zealand or Hawaii and not landlocked between two mountain ranges almost exactly in the middle, in the emerald heart of Colombia.

There she goes. The clouds are amazing, I wish you could see the mountains.

“All the forms are known”. Thats what Neal Cassidy said to Allen Ginsberg in a frenetic conversation at the City Lights bookstore a while back.

So now the unfortunately artistically afflicted have some great challenges in this recent world. Technology at the ready, inviting artistic expression from every human being. How does a painter or photographer or writer seperate himself from the eternally clicking masses? Working harder seems to be the only option.

Im sure that any seriously intentioned artist feels a sense of what I mean as only a brief sigh. Imagine the seasoned photographer, carrying his box camera through a swamp waiting for the perfect light to land on beautifully imperfect plates. Must be frustrating, although light doesnt lie. Thats the beauty of it.

So your a writer, or a photographer or a painter. Does this bigger battlefield perfect or drown your work?

Are you inspired or frustrated? 

Or patiently waiting, a ship that may never come in…?