In 300 AD a rich Turkish wheat merchant had a son and named him Nikolaos. His name meant, “The victory of the people.” When the merchant died, Nikolaos inherited a large estate and he decided to help the poor. Nikolaos found out who had serious economic problems and decided to help them. Nikolaos entered their houses secretly in order to remain anonymous. While they slept, he dropped gold coins inside their shoes or down the chimney if the house was locked.
When I met Stela she would talk about synchronicity. She used to say, “Do you believe in synchronicity? It is the temporally coincident occurrences of acausal events.” I was skeptical and would argue that any similarity of events is a mere coincidence. I thought to myself, “Maybe she was right after all.”
Stela remembered water and then she made a video performance with water images; she experienced death in her family and an installation of roses came about. She re-called a childhood image of rows of sticks and she made a photo series of barren trees landscapes. She saw pattern in everything and produced rich textured poster designs. I was impressed by Stela’s connection with her collective unconscious. It was an inspiration for me to find hidden connections, which sometimes reveal themselves through unlikely happenings. So I become more intuitively aware and acting in harmony with these forces. My drawings are now connected to the outside world.
He was six years old and did not know why he loved so much all saints inside golden baroque churches. He looked in fascination their faces with expressive glass eyes, virgins with real hair and clothes, faces with pain or bliss and some saints looked up into the sky, waiting for something. The closest thing to these wondrous figures where nativity scenes. He asked many times for a nativity scene from the artisans in the market, but his parents did not buy him a set.
One December weekend the family went for dinner to cousin Vico. In his room Vico, a teenager, had a nativity scene all hand painted. “Truly magnificent” he thought. So he took a chair and climbed up to the highest shelf and put the three saints into his pockets. Upon returning home he set up the nativity scene in the food pantry room. He spent and hour stirring and inspecting each figurine. He set them up innumerable times. His mother went to find him in the hiding place and did not say anything. Next morning she returned the nativity to Vico. “No Sunday allowance until next Christmas,” said the father to his son.
The Chat Noir Club, The Dream Night club in Miami Beach has an interactive and surreal playground of performers. It includes contortionists, models, burlesque, drag, fetish and live music. I saw Sarah Palin appearing there doing Poplitics. According to Natasha Tsakos Poplitics is: 1) The science of turning politics into a form of spectacle 2) The art of disguising political issues through sex appeal and pop culture 3) A marketing strategy used to divert the public’s attention.
July came with the circus. There was a certain sub-culture aura about the circus. It brought magic, band-music, exotic animals, weird characters, acrobats, clowns and daring acts under its large kaki tent. There were two clowns one teasing the other by taking items of his deep pockets while the other took them away. We were certain that one of them was Stromboli in disguise. The red nose clown took out saws, flutes, tools, flowers, hammers, live doves, long handkerchiefs and more! The best part was when the clown made an elephant appeared in mid-air. Every matinee the circus was full.
Some people in the city thought the Russian circus brought gypsies and that children could be stolen and made into slaves for the circus. Moms would say their little children, “Do not stay out after six, or else the gypsies will steal you and take you to work for the circus.” Now I think it is all nonsense. But then, we believed Sromboli was around the corner and if we did bad things, he would take us away with Pinocchio.
She was a Gaucha in her 20’s raised in the Pajonales of the North. They called her “Maria Se Va” after a Cardoso’s song.
Hunting Jabali is a great sport for gauchos and their dogs. As in the Native American tradition of the Lakota, after hunting you ask your brother spirit permission to eat him. It is a natural, traditional, ecological circle. One day a new venture of European tourists came from Buenos Aires with a helicopter. The Porteño company said that they hunted 160 “chanchos” in one day. The pampa was tinted with corpses.
That month when the full moon came out, Maria Se Va went into the pajonal and made a spell, a huaylicho. She chanted to the moon, Mother Quilla, make our wild pigs turn into straw when hunters see them. The spelled worked and the jabalis were camouflaged.
She was 6 and had a matching top and shorts with tiny pink flowers, fatty legs and a bincha (hairband) around her head. “Papa all I want for Christmas is a Topo Gigio” the father said “We’ll see what baby Jesus bring you.”
Early morning under the nativity scene there was a medium sized red box. Stella opened the box and screamed “Topo Gigio!“ She bathed him, talked to him, washed his clothes and went to bed with the giant Italian mouse. Some days she even brushed his 6 mustaches.
After college and well into her 30’s one day looking through a Billiken magazine she wondered where he was. That Christmas she flew back home and asked her mother. She said, “When you went to college Topo Gigio run away.”
His son had Grave’s disease. At lunch he made a drawing for his father of a skull to clarify how the surgery was going to be. Dr. Lee would slice both sides of each of the eye sockets bone. This way the eye would fall back in place. He could not sleep in worry that night thinking of having a blind son. Once the surgery was done he slept by his side. Dr. Lee asked the young man to count his fingers, “ Three, two” he answered. “A successful procedure” said the Dr. The father realized for the first time how the gift of sight. After that experience he woke up happy to be able to see.
There were two brothers born in Chincha, Antonio and Nicolas. Their grandfather baba told them African oral traditions and sang Batá and Guaguanco; multirythms taught by repeating the beat sounds. “When I was brought as a slave from Africa we built the railroad between Lima and Huancayo. At night we wanted to play drums but did not have any. So we made out with the kitchen’s fruit boxes.” The kids learned that day how to play on a box. They soon made a cajon with baba. At 14 and 10 they were asked to play in weddings and Saturday parties.
Trompos
Every June in Lima wooden tops appeared in the farmer’s markets and corner stores. They were made out of orange tree’s wood and they had a citrus, fresh smell. The artisans inserted large nails as tips with a specific purpose: to play “cocinita,” little kitchen and to be able to inflict serious damage onto the enemy’s top.
In school we read “El Trompo” by Jose Diez-Canseco. The story was the life of Chupitos, a ten-year-old mulatto boy playing tops with the gang in a 1930’s downtown Lima. Her mother left home when he was seven. His father raised fighting cocks and would say to his son, “Really, women with bruises are like bruised tops. Never!” This was a lesson for Chupitos. After loosing his top in the “Cocina” game, he asked his dad for money to buy another wooden top. Later he won the cocina game pushing Carmona’s top into the circle called, the kitchen.
“El Trompo” was the same story as our top games in the park. We were also 10-year-old kids playing tops. It was the best winter game to play with neighborhood kids. I practiced alone everyday in my humid, gray patio. I tied the string around the top, threw it swiftly. And lifted it on my hand. When I felt ready I would put my top inside my pocket and would go to the park to play with anyone there.
I played tops for three winters. Many times I lost to expert players from other neighborhoods they cracked my top in two. I saved money and bought another top to continue playing. It was a great tradition.