September 26, 2023
This morning there is only the smallest fraction of my dream left. All I remember was being in a room where my art was displayed, the focus was on the painting with the dark blue background. The chickadee was prominent. I suppose this is in relation to a conversation had at work yesterday about selling my art so I could get to Bolivia.
I also feel it’s important to mention meeting a man at the store yesterday who I felt was Latino. He had a fairly strong accent despite his good English, but there was just something about him. He asked if we had books on the great philosophers like Nietzsche and Marx, which I understand were also of the same interest as my father. When he left, I stood in the store feeling this strange calmness, as though I was being reminded of who I was by this man walking through the door. He said something strange when he left, which was perhaps just an issue of language connotations. He said “thank you for letting me in”, which was heard and commented on by the other customer in the store when she came to pay for her purchase. In any case this led me to search for confirmation about my fathers reading interests, which led me this morning to find a short book online which I downloaded for free, explaining why Che became the man he was. Brilliant really, turning my day around as it has reminded me why I feel so out of place here, why my thoughts are so different from most everyone living here. It also explains my frustration about feeling stuck here.
Excerpt from the book written by Richard L. Harris in 2011, entitled Che Guevara: A Biography
Readers of this book are encouraged to approach the subjects discussed in the following pages with compassionate objectivity. Adopting this perspective is especially advisable for those readers who have had the good fortune to be raised in relatively affluent and secure living conditions and who now are fortunate enough to find themselves living in comparatively stable and nonthreatening political, economic, and social circumstances. Unlike these readers, the majority of humanity has been raised in poverty, and they are now living in relatively unstable, impoverished, and threatening political, economic, and social circumstances. Consequently, their views of the world around them and their aspirations and frustrations are quite different from the views and aspirations of the minority of humanity who live in affluence and relative security. For this reason, they are more willing to support revolutionary leaders and movements that promise to improve their living conditions and circumstances through the violent overthrow of the existing social order.
Che’s life provides an excellent case study of how individuals become revolutionaries—how the conditions and circumstances in which they live can lead them to follow this path. Che Guevara the revolutionary was molded by specific historical circumstances, societal conditions, and socio psychological factors. The term “revolutionary” conjures up in the minds of many people a stereotype of a wild-eyed, bearded extremist who is driven by some fanatical urge to destroy the existing order of things, no matter what the cost in human life and property. Che Guevara does not fit this stereotype. In order to understand why Che became a revolutionary and why he died as one, it is necessary to put aside any preconceptions one has about revolutionaries and examine carefully his life and circumstances. Only by examining carefully the life of this remarkable man is it possible to gain insight into why he became a famous revolutionary and why he died a tragic death as a revolutionary guerrilla fighter in Bolivia at the age of 39.
To understand why men and women like Che Guevara choose to live and die as revolutionaries, it is also necessary to recognize that the main stream media’s coverage of subjects such as revolutions, revolutionaries, socialism, communism, democracy, poverty, guerrilla fighters, terrorism, Latin America, imperialism, the role of the U.S. government in international affairs, and many of the other subjects discussed in this book often provides a quite biased and misleading perspective on these subjects (see NACLA). One of the main reasons their coverage is biased and mis-leading is because they tend to frame, or explain, these subjects using a culturally and politically ethnocentric perspective.
That is to say, they present the world from a middle-class (and above) North American or European cultural and political perspective, and they rarely present alternative views of the world from other social-class, cultural, or political perspectives. Moreover, they often do not provide adequate or accurate information on the political, economic, social, and cultural circumstances in which the majority of the people in Latin America (and Africa, the Middle East, and Asia) live. Apart from in-accurate reporting, they often misrepresent historical processes and re- port on political leaders, social movements, and political events using a narrative that reflects the fear of change and perceptions held by those who hold power and enjoy many privileges rather than the views and interests of those who have little power and few or no privileges (see NACLA). Consequently, they do not do a good job of presenting the often radically different and opposing views people in this important region hold on subjects such as the ruling political and economic elites, social inequality and social justice, revolution and revolutionaries, socialism and capitalism, democracy and oligarchy, the military and police, poverty and human insecurity, and the role of the U.S. government and large transnational corporations in the affairs of their countries and the region.
September 27, 2023
The grackles have been coming into my yard for most of the summer. They are getting ready to go south for the winter, so because I’ve put nuts and seeds out once more, they have begun visiting my yard. This morning as I drank my coffee, I was distracted by the numbers flying in and out of my tree, so had to get up to see what was going on. There had to be close to 100 birds in my yard for a few minutes. Something spooked them causing a rush of wings as they took flight, circling then leaving. It was quite impressive really to watch so many birds all take their cue to leave at the same time, which inspired me to look up the spirit meaning. This actually has quite a bit to do with my emotional slump of late too, close to tears most of the day. So the paragraph which got my attention is as follows:
One central message from Grackle has to do with your words. Be they the words spoken to people you know or sentiments going out to the entire world; you have information, often happy tidings, begging you to share. Don’t stand in fear of your importance. Sing your song loud and long, letting your vision shine even if it goes counter to what some consider the norm. The distinctive music will reach the people who most need to hear it.
Don’t stand in fear of your importance, being the key sentence – reflecting my inner turmoil. I have actually, my whole life, stood in fear of my importance. Brought up to believe I was nothing, yet understanding I was important to those who were no longer in my life. Still I struggle to allow myself to feel what was so easy to believe as a child.
September 28, 2023
It was his voice. Since the moment he walked into the store and said hello, I have been captured by his aura, often brought to tears each time he came into my thoughts after his departure. A sort of melancholy has gripped me, so I just let it play out until I understood why. It was his voice, combined with the knowledge the books he was looking for would have also been my fathers choices. His skin tone his accent, all played a role in triggering my reaction to his sudden appearance in my day. I just wanted him to stay and talk to me, tell me where he was from and just enjoy the familiarity for a little while longer. It was also what he said – “thank you for letting me in” which to anyone else would have been a strange statement, and admittedly it was to me at first also. Now I understand differently. It was a choice to allow my father back into my life, it was a choice to be guided out of ignorance, live the balance of my life with knowledge of him and then respectively myself. I chose to accept him back into my heart.
It seems like a lifetime ago, yet it seems also as though it just happened yesterday as well – the day a young man came into my place of work over a year ago, whose eyes were those of my father. When I looked him in the eyes, it was as though I was brought into another place and time, the moments standing still, yet rushing by, leaving me with the same comfort of familiarity experienced the other day. It is quite extraordinary to find myself in this space which comes and goes in the blink of an eye, yet stays inside my heart for months. Don’t give up, don’t get distracted, remember your goal – this is what these experiences represent. Despite the impossibility in my mind, I know that it will happen at the right time.
It is important to note this knowing which presents itself to me when change is about to happen. So many little things happen to suggest this, but it is mostly the change in my thoughts which give me the understanding. If I try to see myself for example, in the spring digging in my garden here at this house where I live today, I cannot picture it. If I wonder about making it to Bolivia, despite my lack of resources and my concern about going alone, I see myself clearly standing in those surroundings. What if I am not the daughter of Che Guevara? What if the purpose of this journey is to discover this truth? How will this change my life as I redirect the thoughts of the last 6 years believing in my discovery? And if this is the truth I discover, what then was the purpose for this series of clues which led me to this conclusion? This is a real possibility.
There is nothing written by Che shared with the public, to suggest I exist, so why are there so many strong emotions attached to my thoughts of him? Why do the tears flow, the sadness invade and the determination to find the proof exist in my mind? Where could this idea possibly come from, inspiring so many stories and comments written by me? How crazy would I have to be to dream this whole story up, convince myself by pulling tiny almost invisible threads out of the ether to build my case? My imagination is not that good, or at least I have never thought it was. How did I get here, from the inconsequential woman who was nothing more than a shadow, content to be forgotten and have an uneventful life? If our dreams are our minds need to work out life’s problems, then how did my dreams lead me to establish my claim if there was not some fragment of the life I write about present already? People, places and events I had never read about suddenly began plaguing my dream time, terrifying me for years with no concept of why until I started researching in 2017, this man so loved or hated from every corner of the world. Where did the sudden incredibly life changing need to investigate my upbringing come from?
0 Comments