America for Sale: Dinner with Obama, John Steinbeck’s Will, and Hair from the King

Last week for a window of a couple of hours, you could have bought yourself an opportunity to have dinner with Barack Obama for as little as $10 dollars. In twenty-eight days, you could bid for an Elvis Presley inch of hair glued to some glossy paper. You could also buy John Steinbeck’s will for $14,250. And if you have a little more to spend, you could buy Ernest Hemingway’s childhood house in Oak Park for $525,000.

These types of sales are not new–for the layperson with some money to splurge, a potpourri of celebrity-touched items makes its regular rounds on Ebay. Scarlett Johansson sold a kleenex she used to blow her nose for $5,300 (reportedly, the cold came from Samuel L. Jackson.). A chestnut from Anne Frank’s tree sold for $8,000, while Tony Blair’s watch sold for $150.

For the more affluent class, the detritus of celebrity has always been available on Sotheby’s, Christie’s, and the like. James Joyce’s wartime passport sold for 61,250 GBP, Jaqueline Kennedy Onassis’ tape measure sold for $48,875, and Marilyn Monroe’s television sold for $29,900.

American Odysseys: Writings by New Americans

Image by the Vilcek Foundation

I have been lost in a great haul of edits for my first novel, NIEBLA. Editing can be like having an obsessive, endless fascination. Sometimes I feel as if I am lost building and rebuilding a house of cards.

Then something great happens.

I just received my copies of American Odysseys: Writings by New Americans, an anthology put out by the Vilcek Foundation. It’s such a beautiful book. Liesl Schillinger, literary critic for The New York Times, was part of the jury panel that put together the anthology as was Billy Collins, Heidi Pitlor (of The Best American Short Stories), Jeffrey Shotts (of Greywolf Press), Wayne Miller (of Pleiades), the agent Arthur Klebanoff, and Brigid Hughes (of A Public Space). Charles Simic won the Creative Promise prize.

Read more here:

http://www.vilcek.org/prizes/jury-members/2011/index.html

I have to thank my friend Cristina Correa for letting me know about the Vilcek Foundation. I love her.

In Progress

The end of last year and the start of this year have all been very hectic. I’ve been meaning to start a Kickstarter campaign in order to do research for my book this summer in Colombia. Below is my grandfather’s business card. Who would have thought curanderos even needed business cards? Please check back for updates!

Cures you of all kinds of illnesses: Diabetes, Obesity, Sinusitis, Epilepsy, Cancer, and Witchcraft

Every Day

The surfacing of certain desires

—the French flick at the end of the eye
surgical gossip
clean sheets
Film Noir
More milk than coffee in my coffee
sober inferences from dreams—

are all my mother
when she was twenty-one
before
child bearing.
But I do not wish to bear

children.
I can be my mother’s twenty-one
for a life time.
Until I’m thirty.
And even then.

This is what happens to everyone.

The Sea and Other Transgendered Words

In the capital, we say el mar.
The sea as masculine, far away, roaring at the shores of Colombia thousands of miles away; while we in Bogotá stand high on a plateau, hemmed in by forested mountains and visited nightly by fog. It seems fitting that the sea be seen as some male presence, roaring far away.
In the seaside towns of Colombia they say la mar.
Mariners, fishermen, hunters, women at the seashore all call her that.
I like to think that the ocean’s gender-change happened at sea.
Maybe lonely mariners who nightly observed that body of water foam at their starboard decided that the ocean was a she.
I like this idea so much, I don’t really care to find out the truth.

The Man Who Could Move Clouds

Here is an excerpt of what I am working on now–a creative non-fiction novel about my grandfather, a curandero who could move clouds:

It was the summer season in 1985 when Nono announced his own death. He heard it whispered in his ear: “Rafael, you are going to die,” and he knew right then and there that he’d be dead by the time the first rain fell.

But it was Mami whom received the first sign.

A black moth. It entered into the house through the window above my crib. She could tell it carried news, but I cooed and moved my arms and took no notice at all. The black moth fluttered in the corners of the pastel ceiling and bounced against the low hall, and then it came to rest on the kitchen sink. On the cool steel of the faucet it opened its wings and then closed them.

“Vete, mal agüero!” Mami said, blowing on the moth, but the moth’s carbon legs remained firmly planted and only its left wing moved lightly like a sail taking wind. Mami knew someone was going to die. Mami’s arms were useless. She felt like an orangutan, with her arms heavy, always hanging down.

Mami had lost the movement in her arms when I was born––curiously and for no reason. First the movement dried up in Mami’s fingers, then her wrists, then her arms. It was a miracle the paralysis did not advance beyond her shoulders and onto her heart. That was what Mami was afraid of and she prayed nightly for God to allow her to take care of her newborn and her two-year-old girl. The doctors called Mami a mystery of science and there was nothing they could do. Nono was sure it was a trabajito someone had put up against Mami, and Mami did have a lot of enemies who did witchcraft.

So when the black moth appeared in Mami’s house, she was sure it was announcing her death. She blew on the moth and cried terribly until she was out of breath.

Seven days later Nono heard it whispered in his ear that he was going to die.

Tout en Majuscules

Once you acquire one typewriter, it is easy to acquire a second one. All typewriters are beautiful, but here the problem is that there is always the novelty of the European keyboard. I couldn’t help myself and bought a black Underwood at a flea market.

Wanted: Parisian Typewriter

Moving around so much, has taught me a thing or two about necessity. Those questions; what would you take to an island if you were to be stranded there? If you had a suitcase…?
Well, I need a typewriter.

The French use eBay like Americans use Craigslist. The European incarnation of eBay feels like a market, with short descriptions instead of detailed histories, a button to ask a question, another to dispute the price, one to make an offer, and an invitation to finish the transaction in person. It is on ebay where I find my typewriter and the next day I am on a train. There are three train transfers, domed-ceiling tunnels, cultural advertisements, and an onslaught of faces thinking in French. I know they are thinking in French because of the way their mouth gathers up in an ô.

That’s what my mouth does when I form my lips around French. Rounded, delicate sounds: pâtisserie, boulangerie, a bientôt, vraiment. In the train I begin wondering if my mouth changes depending on what language I am thinking in. It’s proves to be a tough observation to make, as I have to catch myself thinking in a language when I’ve already forgotten to watch for the shape of my mouth and then notice the shape of my mouth. I decide it is easier to observe others.

I notice some French women have that constant ô shape on their lips, while others do not. I wonder if the others are simply thinking within other groups of French words–the et ending ones–prêt, anglais–and whether I should approach them and just ask what language they are thinking in, but I don’t have enough French to pull this off in a suave way.