Loved Ones

"I will go with one understanding," Ultima cautioned.  She raised her finger and pointed at both of them.  The gaze of her clear eyes held them transfixed.  "You must understand that when anybody, bruja or curandera, priest or sinner, tampers with the fate of a man that sometimes a chain of events is set into motion over which no one will have ultimate control.  You must be willing to accept this responsibility."
My uncle looked at my mother.  Their immediate concern was to save Lucas from the jaws of death, for that they would accept any responsibility.

"Bless Me, Ultima"

In this song, at the end when the boy actually loves the girl he offers his wallet, his Grandfather's pocket watch, anything he can to get her away from the thief.  Eventually he offers the breath from his body and even himself in he place of his wife when she is struggling after childbirth...

We are so willing to do whatever it takes to protect those that we love.  We accept any consequence, we make deals with other people and we even try to make deals with God at times.  Ultima warns them here that no one knows what will happen if she saves Lucas, but it could come at great price.  I think that often, when people are so desperate they would sell anything, do anything in order to help our friends or family.  There are many movies out there with parents who would go to the ends of the earth, hold up an entire hospital, make deals with dangerous people or even sell themselves to the devil for the protection of their children.

Why do we get so irrational in these circumstances?  I know that we love them, we want what is best for them, but to go to te extent of breaking the law, doing what we know is wrong and accepting whatever consequences come with it...why?

 This song is about a parent praying so hard over their child, also offering to take his place if the Lord will just save the life of the child.

I don't know where we start believing that we can bargain that way with God.  Do you think that it works?  Do you think that showing that kind of desire makes a difference?  I know that it maks us feel better, like it is the only thing that we can do to help, but why do we do it?

What if...

"My father nodded.  I saw him stand beside Chávez and put his arm around his shoulders. Now he too was armed.  I had only seen him shoot the rifle when we slaughtered pigs in the fall.  Now they were going armed for a man."

Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya pg. 17

What happens when the common man has to take up the sword, or rather the gun in this case?  Latin and South America are full of civil wars, revolts and times when one had to take up arms or suffer.  As in this story, many of them were not traind for war, they were common people just living their lives, but when the situation became dire they would pick up whatever they had and fight for their rights. 

This idea of people having to pick up and leave their normal, everyday lives and go to war is a recurring one throughout history.  In the Triple Alliance War the army that Brazil formed was made out of 'volunteers' from the poor and the slaves.  They were taken from their everyday life, given a gun and sent out to use it.  In the war for independence and freedom from Great Brittain here in the United States, not everyone in the U.S. was trained in the military, yet people were needed to fight against the Brittish troops so anyone who could and wanted to joined in.  And what about being drafted during the war....

I thought it was really interesting how he chose to include this line into the book, that the dad was taking something that the children had often seen used.  Something that was used to bring them food and proffit by killing the pigs; something that was now being prepared to possibly take the life of another human being.

Would you be able to do that?  If asked to go to war could you pick up a gun and go?  How about if you were in the place of Antonio's father, could you just pick up a gun and go?

I do appreciate though on the next page when they find the man responsible, that Narciso tries to reason with the men reminding them that this is a man, not an animal.  So although he is prepared and ready to do whatever is necessary, he is not blind to others and does not enjoy bloodshed.

So one last question, would we be in the angry mob, clamoring for justice and ready to shoot the man on the spot, or would we be like Narciso and try and reason with him and avoid the bloodshed?  Or will we even have the choice if it comes to this kind of situation?  

And Life Goes On

"Now that death had resumed its normal rhythm, it's tempo accelerated only by certain raw winds, the planters have themselves over t drinking and card-playing, demoralized by their forced association with the soldiery..."

The Kingdom of this World a Novel

-Alejo Carpentier

This excerpt makes me think about death in our own lives and how it is extremely tragic at the time, but life continues to move forward.  Often we feel as though life should stop altogether because of the tragedy that happens in our life-the unexpected death of a parent, the grief at the loss of a sibling or even a child that is taken from this life far too soon for our liking. 

The world seems to pause for a moment, everyone giving out condolences and offering you time to come to terms, but all too soon life picks up again and one is expected to get back into the swing of things. 

Other people seem to forget what is forever branded upon our hearts and don't understand why we are continuing to live in the past.  Why is it that we cannot understand each other's pain beyond a certain point?

I love how Kenny Chesney expresses it in his song "Who You'd be Today".  He talks about how it isn't fair that this person died too young, how he can't forget the memories and the pain and is always thinking about what that person would be like today if they were still alive.

Why is the pain so bitter?  Esecially as members when we know that we will see them again, that they are free from the pains and afflications of this world?

I don't think that there is an easy answer to these questions.  While death is something that will eventually happen to all of us, it seems that it is something we are rarely prepared for.  It's like we all know that we are going to die, but we don't really believe it.  Why do you think think it is such a hard concept to grasp?  Is it because our minds naturally shy away from unpleasant thoughts or things that we cannot control?  Or does it go along with the mindset that most people have, that they are an exception to the rule?  That mindset tells a person that: I can text while I drive because nothing will happen, I can ride a motorcycle without a helmet because I won't crash, I can go hiking or spelunking by myselve because I won't get lost, or I can go running alone at night because there is no way I would ever get raped...right???  

What are your thoughts on this?  Do you agree with my theory or do you have a different one?  Have you noticed these things in other people?  Have you experienced it yourself? 

The Foreigness of Time

"I know that of all problems, none disquieted him more, and none concerned him more than the profound one of time."

"The Garden of Forking Paths"-Jorge Luis Borges

What is it about time that makes it seem so strange and foreign to us?  When we are kids it seems to have little meaning, we don't count the day out in hours and minutes but rather in seasons and daylight-time when we can play.  For a bullrider 8 seconds may very well seem to last for an eternity, to an employee on a lunch break 30 minutes can seem like 5 because it goes so quickly.  I know whey I was on my mission some days felt like they would never end; whereas at other times it felt like I merely blinked and two months flew past!

Yet, with all of this we use time for everyhing, we base our lives around being on time, workin, going to meetings-everything is based around a time schedule.

We have been studying a lot of different movements in class and how time can change many things.  We've been watching the way that art changes over time, how relationships can change over time and just the effect that time can have on a culture and civilization and it is crazy what can happen in a relatively short amount of time.  In my Port 355 class on Brazilian history and culture we are currently studying the 1800's and everything that happened there.  They went from a monarchy to political back to monarchy, freedom of the African slaves on to get indentured servants out of immigrants, all sorts of wars and revolts, changes in the economy...!  It is amazing how much can change with time.

Sometimes I wonder what would happen if we could go back in time and change things, what that would affect.

How can time be so elusive to us and why does it seem

to move faster the older we get?  I don't know if it is ever something that we will be able to grasp in this life, but what do you think?

"Mira, como lloran sus ojos"  

-O Padre 'Maria Candelaria'

We've talked quite a bit in this class about religion coming in, the Virgin Guadelupe and how the people accept it, with a little variation of their own.  The people are obviously religions in this movie as it is mentioned what the priest talked about on Sunday, or how they all go to the church to get a blessing on their animals.  When the priest says the above quote to Maria Candelaria she immediately regrets what she said and talks about how she is sorry and didn't mean to make the Virgin cry.

Even with all of this religion is not enough to make the people move past their traditions and accept Maria Candelaria, no matter how much the priest preaches at them, condemns them, scolds them. 

This would be a really good time to go off on how we need to heed the council of our church leaders because if they keep talking about the same things it means we are obviously still doing them...but instead I want to focus on the first part of this, the part where Maria Candelaria realizes what she is saying and asks for forgiveness.

I love BYU classes because we can always tie our material back into the Savior, like we talked about how Maria Candelaria is a representation in ways in the film of the Virgin Mary and her fiancé represents Christ,

But anyway, forgiveness is always an option, we are never too far off track to come back and repent.  Wether we are behaving like Maria Candelaria and blaming them for never helping us, or if we find ourselves acting like Cortez and his men and using our religion as a way to control and have dominion over another people (or rather in our time it might be abusing our callings), we can repent and move forward with a clean slate.

Someone in class mentioned the fact that this made them think of the saying, "No good deed goes unpunished", what do you think about that?  And if this is true, is it even worth our time to try and repent and lead good lives, especially since we saw how it ended for Maria Candelaria?

Nationalism

"After about 1950, musical nationalism in Mexico declined rapidly when new aesthetics and their corresponding styles emerged"

-Leslie Bethell, A Cultural History of Latin American Music

It is interesting how this kind of trend transcends cultures and subjects and can be applied to many things.  Life has a way of just carrying us along and taking us to new and exciting places that cause us to forget some of the emotions that went along with the old stuff.  This made me think of the paintings that we have been looking at in class by various artists. Art, as a whole, has kind of evolved together.  You have the painters in Latin America immitating what is happening in Europe, then they kind of go off on their own nationalistic, cultural kind of paintings, and then we see it coming back to what is happening in the art world around them with impressionism and the more modern looking, make-you-think kind of painting.

There is nothing wrong with this, it is just an interesting observation.

A tie that I was able to come up with as far as people being super into the whole nationalism scene and getting way involved is what was happening right here in the United States after 9/11 happened.  I still can remember the surge of country music that was all geared towards nationalism, what it means to be an American, and how great America is.  I remember all of the American flags that I saw flying, some even attached to the windows in cars, and how everyone just seemed to pull together and find pride and courage in their nation and their country.  

Toby Keith demonstrates this in his song "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue" which was just one of the many songs that came out at this time.

Well, times are changing.  And while I am not saying that we do not have nationalism or that people do not care about their country, it has just moved in a different direction.  Song writers went back to writing about love and being cheated on, the American flags on the cars were replaced with BYU ones or other things, and we as a people have gone back to worry about ourselves and those closest to us and not focussing on the nation as a whole anymore.

I don't know if that came out right and I wasn't trying to offend anyone so I apologize if I did.  To me it seems like nationalism is mainly important when the country is faced with extreme difficulties, or when competing against another country in sports or the olympics!

What is your take on nationalism?  Has it declined like it did after the 1950's in Mexico's music, or like I am claiming it has here in the US in the last few years, or do people just show it differently? 

Boomerang

"This man had a serious defect: he could not stick to a job or trade.  He lacked stability; called it 'hard luck'"

-Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis

Father loves Mother

I find it fascinating in this story that a man who spends his entire life running away from situations that are unpleasant to him decides to make a living catching runaway slaves.  The story goes on to describe many of the jobs he tried and all the excuses he came up with to leave perfectly good jobs be it because they were too time consuming, too back breaking or too hard to learn. 

The story seems to come full circle in a couple of ways for me.  First off just this idea of the runaway turning on others who would runaway.  The second thing is that he finally gets something worth fighting for, a family.  He is willing to do whatever it takes to keep his wife and his child.  What he ends up doing in order to protect his own assets, is to catch and turn in a women who was doing the exact same thing that he was, she was running away and she was doing whatever she could to protect her child.

It is interesting to me that because of his own circumstances he was willing to turn a deaf ear on the women.  Even as he watched her miscarry her own child because of his treatment of her, he did not care at all. 

"You're the one to blame.  Who told you to go having babies and then go running away?" Is what he asks the pregnant, runaway slave when she tells him her master will whip her.

In a way this reminds me of "The Emperor's New Groove" when Eezma reprimands the peasant about his state of affairs and blames it on him.

I recently watched the film "The Official Story" which is about Argentina during the Dirty War.  The movie is about a family, the parents and their adopted little girl.  Throughout the movie the mom becomes suspicious that their daughter was stolen from one of the people who "dissappeared" during the war and that her husband is not the man she thought he was.  The husband does not care at all what happened to the mother of the child or how it happened, he knows exactly where their daughter came from but he turns a blind eye on it much like Candido Neves. 

At the very end of the movie he comes home from work and his wife is there but his daughter isn't.  He goes a little crazy and asks her where their daughter is.  She coolly responds by asking him how it feels to be the one that is missing a child, trying to drive home to him the emotion that these other people are feeling.

There is so much violence and hatred in the world and it is easy to put up our blinders to others pain, as long as we get what we want we are fine.  We need to take down those blinders and be aware of what is going on around us.  It is time for us to dust off the Golden Rule, "Do unto others as you would have done unto you".