A Chiapas Story-part 3

The DVD kept playing. The semi-tropical rainstorm kept pounding on the tin roof. Kids in traditional woven indigenous clothing kept popping into the store, soaked to the bone from walking across town for a can of preserved jalapeños.

We all sat around the table on wooden chairs, staring at the television set. We were on our third DVD by now, this one the same as the first two: Evangelical Christian women from Mayan indigenous parts of Mexico, Guatemala and El Salvador, singing cheesy praise songs. All Mayan Evangelical music videos, all the time.

The singer in this DVD had a deer-in-the-headlights expression on her face as she sang about God’s love. A sort of “oh, shit, am I really doing this” look in her eyes.

Much of the text was misspelled in the videos. The end credits invited other Evangelical musicians to come by the studio and record “gragaciones en estudio” (translation: “in-studio regordings”).

The DVD was titled “La Invasión de Dios”. The special features included an evangelistic campaign with a famous Guatemalan pastor.

I’ve heard that some communities in the Mayan highlands have gone to war with each other over the arrival of these new religions. A couple times in the past, people got chopped up with machetes for trying to start a new church. As I watched this video, I was starting to understand why.

The next song on the DVD was “El Tren del Evangelio” (The Gospel Train). Every three seconds, a computerized train sound effect would play, drowning out the singer and making it impossible to hear the lyrics. None of these singers sang in a Mayan language, even though most of their target audience didn’t speak Spanish as a first language.

I started to watch the expressions of my companions to see what their take on this whole evangelistic DVD thing was. They didn’t seem to be Evangelicals themselves; several of them wore Catholic crucifixes, scapulars and Virgin of Guadalupe medallions. Not even the shop owner seemed to be Evangelical. He had an image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus up in the corner of his store (this is what Evangelicals call “Satanic idolatry”.) As far as I could tell, nobody was into the whole praise music-thing. It seems that this store owner had just acquired a handful of these worship DVD’s and figured watching them was better than staring at the wall.

Every cut-away to a new scene in the music video was performed in the cheesiest of fashions. The screen would turn into a butterfly and flap its wings and fly away, or it would turn into an inner tube and float off into the distance.

But none of the men seemed to be making derisive comments either. They joked in a subdued, good-natured manner. And I thought, maybe these guys don’t care about how cheesy these types of church-people videos are. Maybe they actually were listening to the message of grace and forgiveness, and were able to totally look past the gaping holes in production value. Maybe this obsession with “production value” (a concept that is extremely relative) is foreign to a lot of these country folk.

The music video ended with a shot of the singer randomly staring at a rock in a field. She didn’t appear to realize she was being filmed.

And maybe, I thought, maybe a blanket condemnation of cheesy Christian music videos is just as Manichean and judgmental and over-simplistic as the Holy Rollers’ unquestioning acceptance of them.

Still, whatever their opinion of the “God’s Invasion of Guatemala” series was, the men were definitely not giving their full attention to this DVD crusade. And when the shopkeeper’s teenage son came in from the rain with a SmartPhone and started playing a California porno he had downloaded, all the men crowded around immediately.

This was definitely more interesting.

A Chiapas Story-part 2

I thought I’d test the waters on the Zapatista front. This was, after all, the heart of the guerrilla uprising. Who knows, maybe I could convince the shopkeeper into launching into a political rant of some sort.

We were discussing greetings, comparing the relative benefits of the English language “jelou” and the various Mayan greetings (which I have yet to figure out—it seems like every damn person says something different when they greet someone, and I have yet to nail down a simple all-purpose “hola”).

I casually mentioned in passing, “Is it true that some folks in this area greet each other with their left hand instead of the right?” Of course, this was a reference to something I had read about; this was a politically-charged habit of Marcos and some of the other guerrilla commanders.

“I don’t know about that,” the store owner said. He stared at the dirt floor. The Guatemalan singer continued to croon in the background on the TV set, accompanied by an electronic synthesizer. Every song had at least one moment of blatantly incorrect notes hit by the piano player. “Stuck pigs,” as they call them in show business.

“The only time I’ve seen someone greet with their right hand,” he continued, “is if they’re mad at their neighbor for some reason. It’s like a way of making it obvious that I’m not happy with you, by giving you the wrong hand when I greet you on the road.”

That’s all the left-handed shake was for this guy. Not a clever way for a revolutionary to show his preference for the Left wing of the political spectrum.

Just a big Mayan middle finger.

A Chiapas Story

After clearing the plot of land with our machetes, we stopped into the general store for a refresco. We made it inside just as the mountain rainstorm hit.

It was a small wooden shack, a corrugated tin roof that made the pounding rain resound with a fierce echo. A scattering of products lined the walls—Coca Cola, Arco Iris snack cakes, canned chiles, plastic bags of laundry detergent. A television set had been set up on a simple wooden stand next to the crude table where we sat drinking our Cokes. On the TV, a DVD played of a woman from Guatemala singing Evangelical praise songs.

We sat around chatting with the owner. The rain was in full force, rattling on the tin roof. The men leaned on their machetes and sipped from the glass Coke bottles, some of them wearing the boots, jeans, checkered shirts and cowboy hats typical of Mexico’s country towns, others in traditional native one-piece garments. The rain made it difficult for me to make out the conversation in Tzotzil—the Mayan language spoken in this part of the Chiapas highlands. Spanish is definitely a foreign language out here.

Every now and then, a young boy or girl would run in holding a piece of plastic tarp over their head, sent down the road by his or her parents to buy one of the five grocery items available in this store. Invariable, the kid would poke their head in the door, stare at me in disbelief, then look around at the other men incredulously. The expression on the kid’s face seemed to say, “Are you guys SEEING this shit over here? What’s the deal with the white guy, man?”

I was able to follow the conversation enough to figure out that the men were talking about the rain coming down: “vo” in Tzotzil. I decided I’d capitalize on the occasion to try out my Tzotzil and make an ass of myself in the process. After the shopkeeper handed me my Coca Cola, I told him, “Koalabal, vinic” (“thank you, sir”) holding up the bottle. I decided to flex the word “koalabal” some more.

“Thank you all, gentlemen.”

“Thank you, general store.”

“Thank you, chair.”

Then came the real kicker. I leaned towards the open wooden door, looking up at the dark rain clouds above. “Koalabal, Chac”. This was pure gold—the men cracked up laughing at the cultural reference I had just dropped. I had showcased my knowledge of Mayan history by thanking the ancient pre-Hispanic rain god Chac for the downpour.

Success!

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my adventures, it’s that there is no better way to bond with other men and overcome cultural differences than doing manual labor together and dropping a well-placed cultural reference.

Also, being willing to make a complete ass of yourself.

I Know Why the Davis Sings

This poem was inspired by my time in Russia, working under the yoke of the repressive Russian Baptist Church.

After months of tirelessly serving the Baptists, they surprised me and Grant by sending us an email listing all the things about us that they disapproved of. (The list of sins included "playing Solitaire on our laptop", playing cards being verboten in the Russian Baptist cosmos.) Oddly enough, in the letter of condemnation, the Baptist Grand Dragon mistakenly wrote my name as "Davis" three times in a row, for no apparent reason.

Thus sparking a poem on the divided nature of my soul in 2004, as I tried to be a missionary.

My apologies to Maya Angelou.

* * * *

I KNOW WHY THE DAVIS SINGS

The David leaps

On the back of the wind

And floats downstream

‘til the current ends

And dips his cup

In the keg of beer

And dares to drink it dry.

But the Davis stalks

Down his Baptist cage,

Condemned by pastors

Thrice his age,

Accused of sins

Which Betty Page

Would shy from at her wildest.

The Davis dreams

Of a different world

Where flags of joy

And peace unfurl

And Baptists cannot

Make him hurl

By curtailing his freedom.

The David pees

Into the breeze

And stands and laughs

Amidst the trees

The backsplash

Matters not to he,

For the David has his freedom.

But the Davis chafes

At legalist rules

Imposed by

Sanctimonious fools

And silently screams

At Baptists tools…

For the Davis longs for freedom.

Turning Thirty

A poem about the follies of youth...and about learning to age gracefully.

* * *

Turning Thirty

I

see

a callow college junior

doing everything she can

to keep a full-time job

and sing on stage

and see if she can land

a major scholarship

by taking twenty units at a time

and sleeping two hours a night

and

I

thank

God

I’m turning thirty.

I

see

her youthful, bleary eyes

that fight like Hell to blink back sleep

which she denies herself

because she read online

that she could keep

herself alive with five REM cycles

of ten minutes each per day

and so she fights the laws of Nature

and

I

thank

God

I’m turning thirty.

I

see

the twenty-one year old

who saunters by and turns their heads

with her impossibly taut body

and sure, her flirting may have led

one of these furtive admirers

to think that she was interested

but she just laughs and struts along

and

I

thank

God

I’m turning thirty.

I

see

a world prostrate itself

before her youth, I watch her bask

in the warm glow

of adulation

and yet she never stops to ask

if it will be like this forever,

if time will also stop to bow

before her as she passes by

and

I

thank

God

I’m turning thirty…

I

see

a kilogram of silicone,

a silent sentinel

that stands abruptly at attention

and announces to the world,

“Behold! This forty year old woman

is still highly fuckable!”

as she lasciviously sips her tea

and

I

thank

God

I’m turning thirty

I

see

her makeup caked on, yellow

like Saddam’s uranium

her Prada bag is full of birth

control devices, and her son

is graduating from high school

this year, but still she soldiers on

to perpetual adolescence

and

I

thank

God

I’m turning thirty.

I

see

the Orange County housewives

on the plasma TV screen

insisting they’re still young enough

to primp and fuss and whine and scream

their glassy eyes have all the seeming

of a demon’s who’s been dreaming

of when it was still sixteen

and

I

thank

God

I’m turning thirty.

God writes a letter to Harold Camping

I just dropped this letter in the mail addressed to "Reverend" Harold Camping:

* * *

Dear Harold,

I hope you learned your lesson with the whole “the-world-didn’t-end-on-May-21” thing.

Now if you would, please stop preaching bullshit in My name. ‘Preciate it.

Yours truly,

-God

P.S. Dude, your mom’s hot.

* * *

I wish I could tell you what Camping's response was, but I'm afraid we'll never know...this was the return address I posted on the envelope (see here for the significance of the area code):

YHWH
7 Celestial Way
Cielo, CA 722500

On the Heavenly Realm, and Other Unpleasantries

Will there be any stars in my crown, in my crown?

-Old folk hymn

No not one, no not one…

-Slightly less old folk hymn

* * * * *

Sunday School teachers say the stupidest shit sometimes.

Miss Smitchens told us that God had a wife. No further explanation was needed—little Scotty asked if God had a wife Up There, and she responded, without further extrapolation, “Yes, and her name is Heather”.

I think that was the time I saw Miss Smitchens’ slip sticking out from under her wool skirt. I knew God didn’t want me looking at the teacher’s slip, or feeling the way I felt when I saw her underwear. That wasn’t the way an eight year old was supposed to feel toward his Sunday School teacher; it was the way God was supposed to feel toward His wife.

I felt guilty…but I couldn’t stop staring.

Miss Smitchens’ favorite topic was the Afterlife. She described the glories of New Jerusalem to us, how everything was so beautiful that they could afford to pave the streets with gold and still balance the budget of municipal expenses every year.

On a different Sunday while the grown-ups were in Big People’s Church learning some virtuous lesson from the Beatitudes, Miss Smitchens explained to us kids that when we all went to Heaven, each of us would get a crown; we would have a star in that crown for every person we had converted to Christianity.

My first thought was, that’s bullshit. I didn’t have access to anything close to the sort of mass communication network that someone like Billy Graham had at their disposal. It was anything but a level playing field. Not fair.

Eventually, though, I resigned myself to the fact that I wasn’t going to get any stars in my heavenly crown. I figured I’d settle for serving coffee to the people who had stars in their crown, and I’d be OK with it. I mean, even in Heaven, someone had to wait on the people who really deserved to be there.

Besides, I figured, most of them would probably be dicks about the whole crown thing anyway, and maybe I could spit into their coffee when they weren’t looking. Someone would have to take them down a notch every now and then.