Cheesy Rat Blues

  I remember the person I used to be. I remember him very very well, and I am proud of him and also of who I am now. Genuinely proud, with love and kindness and compassion, and with sadness. And when I play this song , it feels very much that both that person I used to be and the person I am now are experiencing it, simultaneously. I sway from the pain and sadness I felt in my heart at the time to the compassion and love I feel in my heart now, and its all for the same person, for me. And for the first time in ever my life, I look back at that person with love, with pride, with appreciation, because he never gave up. He held himself with his values, his courage, and his own arms, when he would drift off for showers that lasted 15, 20, 30 minutes resting his chin on his arms as the melancholy leaked out of his pores. He faced crippling, life long depression and made a life of service for himself. This would be what he would be to the world, pushing forward in every way he could, alw...

Holding this soft, small living creature in my lap this way, though, and seeing how it slept with complete trust in me, I felt a warm rush in my chest. I put my hand on the cat's chest and felt his heart beating. The pulse was faint and fast, but his heart, like mine, was ticking off the time allotted to his small body with all the restless earnestness of my own. -Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle Arise from sleep, old cat, And with great yawns and stretchings... Amble out for love -Issa, Japanese Haiku Kiko and the lavender moon Out playing, makes believe Nobody can see And then he waits And then he fakes And then he bends And then he shakes He plays and plays Still playing till he Goes off to sleep Kiko and the lavender moon Out dancing making faces at A big black cat And then he flies Up to the wall Stands on one foot Doesn't even fall Dance and dance Still dancing till He goes off to sleep He always sleeps Till the sun goes down He never wakes Till no one's ar...

The title of this blog is a quote from an interview with Duke Ellington, who when asked "I thought you played piano?" said all he did was dream, all the time. These days jazz appeals to me because it sounds like dreams and dreaming, which feels safe and comforting and free. ******** I grew up in South Sacramento, in what we later learned is called Glen Elder, but which we knew as The Creek. We spent most of our school days walking to school, be it elementary or middle school, and even high school (though usually on a bike and then driving). When I went away to college, the neighborhoods that Occidental College straddled in northeast Los Angeles (Eagle Rock, Highland Park) felt very familiar to me. Not in a "ice cream parlor on the corner who's owner knows your name" but in a keep your head on a swivel for threats. I walked around some of it but knew what lots of kids from similar neighborhoods also knew, that having a quick way to get out and away in case anythi...

"I do not believe that Mahmoud Khalil should have been in a position to teach the public a lesson about principled solidarity and principled action. And yet, when he was taken away from his family, unjustly detained for over one hundred days, had the moment of this child's birth stolen from him, and endured the horrors of separation and detention (which of course are not unique to him) he often made efforts to decenter himself, to recenter the Palestinian people. He did not waver on his principles or his stance in order to appeal to some imaginary moral center of the state. He was steadfast in his beliefs and his purpose, and he was steadfast in his own humanity, which allowed him clarity when it came to the humanity of others. I was a teenager in the months immediately following 9/11, and, at the time, my initial approach was to make these incredibly flawed and ridiculous (but youthfully and foolishly idealistic) appeals to the Broader Public. This might seem familiar, becaus...

  Watching the Olympic women's bike road race last summer as they tore through metro Paris was absolutely enthralling. It was iconic in so many ways: cyclists and their lean profiles flying in piles of groups through fan lined cosmopolitan urban trappings, peeling past historic sites and locations. Architecture, effort, various cameras flying along like peering birds as everyone flies along. Except over a 170 mile course at 26 mph. 6000 feet of climbing, 4-5 hours of machine forged legs pistoning at an unconscionable pace. Absolutely enthralling and exhausting, I wonder what these athletes do after the race. Eat a giant cheeseburger? Do a blood transfusion? Sleep in an ice bath for an hour? My favorite Olympic sports are swimming and anything with a relay, but these competitions that integrate the host city are really awesome. And an American won out of the blue! Just sucked up to the favorites and fried them like eggs on the last leg to the finish line. The Olympics inspired me to...

I've been trying to find / engage in opportunities for real joy instead of release (which is what SM scrolling and dumb TV is). Release is needed sometime, but man it is NO substitute for real opportunities to engage in joy. And it some ways I am rediscovering the feeling of real joy in activities I can do for myself. I do experience real joy anytime I am with Jody, but she cannot and should not be the sole source of such experiences. Many of us need joy these days. I cannot enjoy joy absent hope though. Without a sense that holding space and a desire for a new reality is authentic, joy turns purely to release, or escape, for me. So they feel intertwined. A few perspectives have helped me to frame both joy and hope. ******* The first is a piece by John Cave, which he shared on the Late Show recently. In responding to a writer's question about having faith in people, "do you still believe in us?", I feel like he was responding to me when he wrote the following : "...

The past two to three weeks have really done a number on me. I am frustrated, enraged, sad, and frequently beside myself where I have to stop wherever I am and say out loud "what the fuck are we doing??" The denigration of public service, the undermining of our institutions, the cruelty for cruelty sake is really painful. And no one seems to care. I don't know how to deal other than to retreat into myself, which is the opposite of what I know to work. "Lean into community", but the way I experience this feels deeply personal and vulnerable and my community of public servants and educators are all feeling this in some kind of uncommon or new way. The discomfort is a new level of discomfort.  I think it's a combination of things. I have never in my life been this compassionate and empathetic an individual, due possibly to my relationships (my family with Jody and Linds, and others), my age, my gradual growing realization of what matters to me and that which is...

I connect to the creative and those trying to make a difference, specific to a thread of humanity commonly on the side of ethnic, historic, racial, and economic justice. Self determination and agency, health and prosperity, opportunity and advancement. I look to my own family's history and see those pathways, but many don't have them, and the pathways are not strong. Strengthening them and making them more accessible is my cause in life. I've done this throughout my career, and these efforts are how I have most strongly practiced my values in life, in a variety of ways. I am most fortunate to have had this cause and path find me, and to have given myself to it in the grand scheme of things. But I feel a strong resonance to the creative community. I think all of us do in our own way, be it through fashion or music or more. I love and appreciate the arts and I see the arts in everything. The arts have given me a perspective, a vocabulary, a critical perspective on a great dea...

Never forget when someone else wrote it, before, and said it better.  "Of all the animals, man is the only one that is cruel. He is the only one that inflicts pain for the pleasure of doing it. It is a trait that is not known to the higher animals. I have been studying the traits and dispositions of the lower animals (so-called), and contrasting them with the traits and dispositions of man.  I find the result humiliating to me.  For it obliges me to renounce my allegiance to the Darwinian theory of the Ascent of Man from the Lower Animals; since it now seems plain to me that the theory ought to be vacated in favor of a new and truer one, this new and truer one to be named the  Descent  of Man from the Higher Animals. In proceeding toward this unpleasant conclusion I have not guessed or speculated or conjectured, but have used what is commonly called the scientific method.  That is to say, I have subjected every postulate that presented itself to the crucial...

Some threads in the social media universe have been lambasting brown folk, women, the marginalized, liberals, anyone who isn't butthole licking the current administration and its proponents, as having some kind of moral defect for either showing some kind of glee at the harm upon their own that has been occurring, or for going about their lives investing in their own happiness which includes copious degrees of "...we'll see about that!" For starters, no one gets to say shit about me creating and taking joy on a daily basis from things that do no other any harm. Especially being a hater. My own version of this criticized behavior ain't got shit to do with any of their lives or livelihoods. You didn't show up on election day. Wipe your own kids asses and leave me alone.  For a country that really REALLY makes hay out of white people (especially white men) saying "leave me alone!", it sure does like to bother the rest of us. Take your failure at winning...

  My grandfather spent some time in El Paso, Fort Bliss specifically during his time in the service in the late 1940's. Some of his musical tastes definitely were influenced by his time in the south-southwest, as he would play cassettes of Tex-Mex music in between his choice of Mexican music stations on the AM radio in the central valley of California. He would play his radio with these stations on as he would shuttle his grandkids around from house to house visitng family and having a good time. The five of us, my two cousins, two brothers, and me would pile into his green van and go caravaning around the unincorporated farm lands and family homes of Merced County. A trip to the convenience store for candy for each of us to pick and either a tall can or four pack of Michelob for grandpa ("the champagne of beer") would fuel us the whole day through.   I listen to an absolute pile of jazz these days, and it has only grown in the past few years. But at my core are two disti...

I gotta put this down somewhere just so I can remember what matters when I can't hear myself. Why love, creativity, and curiosity matter the most to me and should matter more to us all.  Love To be a part of, to draw from, to give to, and live with community. One, or a few, or many, but to live for each other, to foster connection, in recognition and celebration of our individual and collective humanity. To live in gratitude, and to express gratitude, for all we have and all that has been given to us, through all means. Creativity To experience, and seek to experience. And to express what that experience means to us, how it has affected us, changed us, supported us, and connects us to each other. To express this Curiosity To learn, to seek to learn, to develop and create new knowledge and come into understanding and possession of new thoughts, ideas, truths, facts, realities, and values. To teach, to foster curiosity, growth, and love of learning in others. To inform and seek to in...

I wrote this a few years ago and am reposting it on January 11, 2025, the 6th anniversary of my father's passing. I share it today because I will be thinking about and feeling him today and a few more after that. I'll be back to my regularly scheduled programming soon enough, probably after playing some more Wayne Shorter.  ******* Five years ago my father visited me in the early part of December for one of our annual Christmas time get togethers, something our relationship at a distance permitted on a yearly basis. Usually we went to a restaurant, other rare times both he and his wife would visit me. The joint visits were always dicey; his wife's personality required varying levels of management. But 90% of the time I was a good son and did my best to make accommodations. This particular time my dad was visiting my home and I was making us big salads for dinner. His limp had progressed (regressed?) well past the walking cane stage to full blown walker by this time.  It was...

"Two years beofre Ellington died, in 1972, Yale University held a gathering of leading Black jazz musicians in order to raise money for a department of African-American music. Aside from Ellington, the musicians who came for three days of concerts, jam sessions, and workshops included Eubie Blake, Noble Sissle, Dizzy Gillespie, Charles Mingus, Max Roach, Mary Lou Williams, and Willie (the Lion) Smith. During a performance by a Gillespie-led sextet, someone evidently unhappy with this presence on campus called in a bomb threat. The police attempted to clear the building, but Mingus refused to leave, urging the officers to get all the others out but adamantly remaining onstage with his bass. "Racism planted that bomb, but racism ain't strong enough to kill this music," he was heard telling the police captain. (And very few people argued succcessfully with Mingus.) "If I am going to die, I'm ready. But I'm going out playing 'Sophisticated Lady'...

The phrase "Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations", or IDIC for short, is the foundation of the Vulcan philosophy of life that symbolize "the elements that create truth and beauty" from the tv show Star Trek.  Their symbol for this philosophy is an off centered triangle overlapping a circle that looks like this: I wore a velcro patch of this symbol at my grad school graduation when I became the first person in my family to earn a doctorate degree. I also hit up fools with the Vulcan hand salute too: 50% of all students across all fields fail to complete the dissertation they start, and the number of Latinos who earn a doctorate is less than 10% in 2021. The numbers were worse in 2016 when I walked the stage in my fancy viceroy looking robe. So yeah, it felt special, a small bit because so many of my sci-fi heroes were scholars or accomplished academics. To be honest the only person who could have graduated from the Vulcan Science Academy in my family was my fa...