**** not finished, work in progress ****

i was born in Santiago, la capital de La Republica de Chile on November 19, 1977 en el barrio de Providencia. i was born premature and laid in an incubator for a short time. My mother and father often recount how a large earthquake struck Santiago a few hours later or the next day, i am not sure. But my mother ran from her hospital bed into the hallway fearful that something might have happened to me. She was assured by the nurse that all the newborns were doing just fine. who knows if i even opened an eye. either way my chemicals and first thoughts must have been rattled and shaken up, kind of like soda when you shake the bottle or the can its in. I was told that i was very white with rosy cheeks and black, black hair that spiked up like i had seen a ghost. i would be curious to find out if my hair was standing up before the earthquake hit, hahaha, that might explain why my hair refuses to not stand straight up. did you catch that, a double negative. Anyways.. . . .
i was born under the stern and brutal dictatorship of one augusto pinochet (i refuse to even capitalize his name, as i feel he doesn't even deserve that, and oh so much worse, death would be optimal). When my mother went into labor, it was night time, and as in all dictatorships, there was a curfew (to control the people) and thus people were allowed out only for emergencies. So my father with my mother in the passenger seat drove very slowly with a white handkerchief tied to the antenna so the military wouldn't spray the car with machine gun fire or just run the car into an earthly tomb swimming in blood with a blast from one of their tanks.
Remember how i was telling you before that i was premature ? Well the ironic part is that i was born premature because i was too big. You would normally think that a premature infant is small and fragile, well i was big and square with wide shoulders and rolls in my legs and arms. Not fat, but masiso (castellano for big in a strong way). i left the hospital and went home with my parents and my beloved brother Anibal, who was 8 years young. i was told i was (and still am) the carbon copy of my dear father. my brothers godfather ***** named me "el waton copion" (the fat copycat). years later he was found in a pool of blood in the taxi he drove, shot in the head. everyone suspects that the government killed him, but it is almost impossible to prove, unless you wanted to end up the same way. poor man. i still think of him some times, and i hope he did not suffer in his last seconds. i never met him but i can say that i love him. my father has told me that one day he had this feeling that my brothers godfather was in the room with him and he was telling him "please take care of my wife and kids, make sure they are okay financially. . . . " My father shaken up soon learned of his death. again, i hope he did not suffer in his last seconds, i would do anything to take back any pain he felt. and as all living creatures must do, we continued. life continued marching on. i would say marching forward, but sometimes i feel that civilization is marching, or should i say, tumbling backwards.
i do not remember much of my time in Chile. i left when i was 3. Regardless i was surrounded by my cousins and brother as i was the youngest and would chase them around when they would play. i was always left behind because i was so young.
Soon after my cousin Alvaro was born, we are about 1 year and 1/2 apart. Alvaro, i really like that guy. he is a good very good decent person. confident and trustworthy, tall with wavy hair, determined and focused. Un Cartagena like his father Nibaldo. i love my cousin.
i have to apologize to you the reader, whomever you may be, i hope you are not bored. but this is my story.
my earliest childhood memories come from when my immediate family moved to the US, Iowa to be precise. Iowa City to be a matter of fact. Hawkeye court to be annoying!
haha. anyways, i can say with the strongest sentiment and emotional intelligence that i would not trade in my youth in Iowa for anything in the world. the quintessential childhood running in fields of grass and flowers, climbing trees, jumping in muddy puddles catching frogs and snakes, earthworms and bird eggs. Raccoons and spiders, butterflies and fire flies sang and danced all around me all day and all night, and i was right in the thick of it all. i was nature and nature was me. i had two mothers growing up in Iowa, my birth mother Nelly, whom i love dearly, and mother nature, who i respect dearly, who cradled me and nestled me in her harvest of life and death, the giving and taking of life, the transferring of energy and matter to other bounds. at night the sky was something that is completely indescribable. the quantity of stars, dazzling, brilliant, some shooting was a maze of endless thought and wonder. my dear father would take me out on walks at night in fields of grass and old farms and we would gaze and talk about everything that pertained to my life, i lived in Iowa until the 3rd grade. Mosquito bites and muddy feet and torn jeans was an everyday occurrence that i can still feel if i close my eyes. and i always shed a tear when i do. something so beautiful that i wish all children could experience. i have this pain inside for my brother, who went to high school in Iowa City. There he was bullied and pushed around, darts were thrown on his back when he turned around one time after lunch. My beloved brother, i was just a kid and of course what did i know. i could not help you my brother. he was tender and considerate, a beautiful person, humble and confident, helpful and caring. he changed after his experiences in high school. humans and civilization are so ugly and unjust, i find more fairness and justice in mother nature then in what we call "civilization". more barbaric atrocities are committed by humans and their so-called civilization then any other force. yet we think we are some superior form of life. a complete joke and yet here i am, in the midst of it all. this makes me very sad. so very sad. this feeling that we are superior and that we were created by some supernatural being for a superior purpose then animals and plants is what emboldens people and their stupidity.
so many things bring me to tears, concrete neighborhoods, children playing on streets and walls, pavement and curbs. evilness, and the hurting of others. how different things could be, call me an idealist. i consider myself to be more human then most. human because i accept that i am an animal, that i am not better or superior to any other life form on Earth, just different. in this way, i experience my environment differently.
It snowed so much in the winters that my brother could pick me up and throw me into the snow and i would just sink into a crater and still never touch the frozen tundra that lay beneath. Oh my beloved brother. i do love him so very much. i know he has pain inside of him, for being that sensitive kind and beautiful person coming from Chile where people are warm and caring, education is valued, children are valued, childhood is valued, family is so important, to this. I do not expect people from the US to understand this because if you grow up here, how can you know anything different. there is enough blame to go around. my brother is tender and sensitive. like phantoms of the opera, my brother and i hide our sensitivity and stand upright our humanity in the shadows that mask corners and dark descending stairwells to basements that smell of musk and growth.
i do not know if humans are better then how we have been so far. i do not know if we are capable of being any better, and so my humanist, socialist ideas, go for not and i wonder about giving up on humanity and conceding that humans and systems run by humans cannot actually be good and decent.............