Life is at a crossroads for the simple reason that I am getting older and yes older. I still have my black hair, still have my teeth, a few extra pounds and my memory. I have posted on facebook commentaries dating back to the years of high school about rejections whether it never being asked out for the Sadie Hawkins Dance by the women as they are suppose to or complaining about being rejected for the year book staff. My journalism fromt he beginning were tainted and have never gone anywhere. Hell I even vented at the arrogance of the honor students who thought they were too good because they were the selected smartest students according to the curriculum but come on, high school teachers are not necessarily the most appropriate at judging what is quality. They are high school teachers not members of the Noble Prize Award committee. Teachers who got their credentials from National University.
The commentaries even from friends have been fascinating to say the least with comments about let it go, its been 20 years, you can't live in the past, something is wrong, what does this say about you and move on. But I don't see it this way, maybe because these were rejections of the innocence when one is not defensible and you take them at face value and move on. But those rejections linger in ones life at least for me because I have a memory that is like a megabyte, I just don't forget and closure is something I want in the form of revenge. I am vengeful and have always been because I was never the one who wanted to harm somebody, so why would someone want to harm me in return. When someone has done me harm, its the Apache, I contemplate patiently and I do respond like a wrestler should with a reversal or a counter in boxing and its not with malice as those rejections were. I counter simply by bringing up something that would be memoried away and it seems to resonate because some took it personal even though nobody was mentioned. As a matter of fact I have forgotten many individuals and faces as 25 years of post graduation takes its toll and eternity fades away.
What struck me the most was the mere mentioned conjured up personal reactions when the questions posed were generalizations of the nobody, just circumstances of ponderings. In youth, I just swallowed the rejections in adulthood I question and challenge because arbitraryness is the rule of the law and if the popularizaiton of continuous 25 years later we are still the same and that is one place I don't want to be in because I'm getting old and I don't have to swallow rejections. At least now I can say, I hated those rejections or those people with their click mentalities and vice versa, I don't forget those that were the kindest when I was the most vulnerable like Louie Marin who gave me rides after wrestling practice and I didn't have to walk home, or my mother who would pick me up from football practice, fed me in the car and made sure I made it to work. And even the young woman who introduced me to life without me knowing what to do. I have never forgotten her and never will even when I did fail her because of my immaturity. Who knows I might be a grandfather right now or I would have caused her pain too as I seem to do frequently. I just don't like others determining my fate and that's my pedo.
On another note, I wrote an article for an online journal titled "A Voice For Men" under "Demonizing Machismo" under newer rejections for my thinking. But now I'm an adult and I don't hold back so I critiqued how places such as CSUN or Tia Chucha's bookstore along with feminist faculty and girlie men not only rejected my published book known as Huevos because it counters Chicana Feminism and advocates for Mexican American machismo. How threatening and logical is that, a bookstore who cries all the time about not selling enough books and they are not the only ones, refuses to sell my book because of its content. But if it was Gabriel Garcia Marquez book, "Memorias de mi Putas Triste" they would have no problem promoting it.
My reaffirmation was when I wrote the article the feedback on the site had 25 plus comments applauding what I wrote and cheering me which both reaffirmed what I said and have encouraged me to continue writing my convictions because I can't be afraid of the world. And what others think, I'm not in it for a popularity contest but to express what I feel which is ultimately what I do when I write or publish my books. By the way, I have two books that will be published within the summer on my grandmother's Apache Spirituality and my time at a Protestant Anglo church as a teenager. Will be you informed.......................................!
