Being Here and There
I was attending a small class in South America,
A small class with the august and emminent Gonzalo Rojas
The poet, and learned scholar.
Friend and colleague of Nobel winners, living and dead.
He was old, and wise, and erudite.
I know I learned things from him and them, perhaps I should have taken better notes.
More inspiration, more analytical prowess.
Chileans have created their stories, their cuentos
They and their neighbors, across mountains and borders.
Naming them: Borges, Salazar, Vargas Llosa, Garcia Marquez.
Luminaries and large portents go with them.
Of course there are many, many others. Hartos
As they say in the land of Auracanians, los mapuche
Mixed as mestizos crossed with criollos and Europeans
The western world has met once again, time after time.
I learned some things from him, perhaps not much transversely.
As things are.
He liked the words or analyses of Ian Hasegawa,
The Japanese-Irish Canadian, from the northern plains.
Having lived in the country of the penguins south of me.
Land of legends and myths and heroic natives, with names known
on streets and vecindarios
Most natives of the country looked at them as champions,
Despite dark and ignominious fates.
The nation evolved and survived.
Mixed blood and shared histories.
A nation comes together.
A nation and people, un pueblo, to be respected.
Don Gonzalo was more than just from Chile. He was all of South American
More like Che Guevara
He of the motorcyle diaries and more
Where Rojas convened with Don Fidel
The Castro of books and movies, mammoth chapters and world history.
Did Gonzalo know Che? ? El Che?
Who knows? Who knows whose visage they place on their youthful (and ignorant) t-shirts
Who can tell me how wrong the works and legacies of Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and the savages
of the left would maim and stultify our earth? Our human family, partially destroyed.
Capitalists are not perfect, none of us have been.
And Jesus, I submit, was a carpenter and a cleric, not a capitalist or entrepeneur.
He had bigger fish to fry, and grander fish to catch, and assist.
Jesus was greater than all the wealthiest and most dreadfully powerful men and women.
He was the best among them all, with little money or care for it.
Yet He rendered what He rendered, and we love Him for it.
My professor Gonzalo was not a believer, no creo. No un creyente de Dios, me imagino
But nevertheless, or sin embargo, Don Gonzalo contained all the nicest parts of human and God.
Knowledgable, wise, kind and just to his degree, like a king.
He was there, and I imbibed, and perhaps lapped in some sense.
Or wonder, or mystery. Or even a sense of art and beauty!
I could only hope.
Ojala'
I could only hope, all these years later.
That I can be here and there.
Gracias, mi profesor.
Muchas gracias por compartir.
Y, como canto' la chilena Violeta Parra,
Gracias a la vida.
Gracias por sus clases.
