Journal Post for Sunday, September 02, 2007: Peter S. Lopez

@8:45 AM

It is a warm Sunday morning. Primo Mark is suppose to be leaving for San Francisco soon and I will be manning the base camp here. I am still a single man and sometimes get lonely, especially when I indulge my own remnants of selfishness and am not helping others. My purpose in life is sublimely simple: to help the people.

On the other hand I do not have the personal attachments that most people have that are usually sources of life stresses, hassles and problems: mates, children and pets. So I count my blessings and do not dwell on apparent curses. Writing can be a lonely endeavor yet it can eventually combine with other minds and souls to enhance humane knowledge in general.



"Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer's loneliness, but I doubt if they improve his writing. He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates. For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day."~ Ernest Hemingway

This school semester, I am taking a Creative Writing Class at Sac City College and need examine the history of my own personal writings. So these are my memories and thoughts about it all.



I know that growing up I use to fiddle a lot with pen and paper. I use to draw diagrams, play paper games and leave notes taped onto the refrigerator when I felt unloved in one way or another that would greatly affect my affectionate mother, Ella. My quietly stern father generally ignored me as I grew up. He just did not know how to relate to me, an inherited inter-generational trait. There were a few times when we would go out fishing with Tio Armando and my Cousin Dingus (Armando Jr.), but there was little more than that in terms of normal exchanges and conversations between my Dad and I. I kind of had to figure out life among the living for myself and this has been a great blessing in the long run.

Thus, being a natural native intellect, I gravitated towards pen and paper and always magnetized towards books. I started reading, improving my vocabulary and wrestled with complex philosophical questions. I was beginning to comprehend the cosmos and how I fit into the larger scheme of things… or not.

In the late 1960's, when I was in my late teens, I got a job as a Young Organizer during the War on Poverty years and started up a local newsletter called Juventud Adelante! or Youth Forward! We had an old mimeograph machine, five reams of paper and I think we had about five double-sided pages with each issue of about 500 copies. Strangely enough, it became the local Chicano Movement newsletter. We had articles in it on current Chicano Movement events and issues. I remember the great artists, Jose Montoya, Esteban Villa and other writers, including the late Lorenzo Patino, would contribute to the paper. They became art professors and of course Lorenzo, who had been the Sac State MEChA leader, later became a Judge appointed by then California Governor Jerry Brown. So there were some interesting beginnings.

So I wrote a few articles about the Chicano Movement. One time I got a letter or article about unity between blacks and browns that was published in the Black Panther Party national newspaper after there had been a riot. Thus, I was interesting in writing and publishing but when the Chicano Movement faded out I dropped it and get involved in other activities in life, including my rapidly developing alcohol-drug addiction. Sex, music and drugs were my main life theme and I had a lot of fun along the way.

At times I began writing around the concept of Chicano-Brown liberation, but I never really finished one that I saved. Perhaps I already had my perfectionist trait, which can be a great handicap for writers striving to write the perfect letter, essay or book.

Growing up along the way I wrote some poems, none of which I have now, but I realized the power of a poem. I realize now how a given poem kind of taps into our subconscious and one can come out with stuff, thoughts and ideas that probably would not have come up otherwise. Then, is it really coming from our own individual subconscious or can we at times become a 'channel' for creative sources outside of the realm of our ordinary human consciousness? Perhaps both.

Around the year 2000, later on in life, I started getting actively involved in writing again, especially when I got into knowing about computers, the Internet and online progressive groups. The Internet has revitalized the almost lost art of letter writing and now many people write Emails that never would get around to writing a letter otherwise. Eventually I started my own Yahoo Groups and realized how certain times what I wrote was actually being read by others and had an impact on others. There were times when I would spend a few hours on just one Email posting to a group. I have learned since that sometimes a few succinct sentences can suffice and less can be more.

Over time I saw the timely wisdom of first writing stuff up in a Word Document, then, transferring it to a Yahoo Email to post online. I got hip to doing this especially after I would spend a long time on a given Email, be getting heavy, then, my computer interconnection on the Internet would become disconnected and I would lose it all. At times this failure in connectivity really caused me great grief and I would just give up and go outside and play. I learned that when I was writing something heavy that it was better for me to write it first in a Word Document, then, if I lost Internet Connection, I would still have my post ready for posting later on no matter if I lost Internet Connection or not. Sometimes I would start to respond to an Email, then, get more involved in it than I first thought I would and it would get longer and more involved, then, wham! I would lose my online connectivity. This would usually happen when I had telephone connection snags. Nowadays I dig Comcast cable and so I do not have that connectivity problem.

So it is not just a problem of Internet connectivity, but being able to preserve what we are writing on no matter what our connection online or more importantly with ourselves!

What will be left of our time on Mother Earth after we depart this lifetime to show any proof of life for posterity?

For a writer there can be the hang-ups involved in opening up to the unknown anonymous reader and just throwing it all up there no matter what controversial ideas, opinions or positions may be involved. Over the years I have pretty much exposed myself ~ my inner soul psyche ~ and even have an Online Journal that can function as a permanent storage chamber.

I am blessed by having a Christian Ministry that involves working with homeless people who are have made a decision to get into progressive recovery from all forms of drug addiction and help lead this Ministry with a recovery group called CASA ~ which stands for Christians Against Substance Addiction. We meet every Sunday at 7 PM and there is also a CASA Yahoo Group and CASA Blog that I keep going.

Of course, homeless people I work with in recovery do not usually have Internet connection but it is hoped that will improve over time, especially as their lives improve, they get their homes again and get onto the great Information Superhighway of the Internet.

My involvement with CASA is centered on our open meetings at the Salvation Army Homeless Shelter and I am the one who usually conducts CASA Meetings, though, I get other group conductors to facilitate CASA Meetings from time to time so I can pursue other interests. I got involved in CASA over ten years ago when it first got into the Salvation Army Homeless Shelter as a shaky confused client and other than a couple of my own relapses some years back I am usually at CASA Meetings on Sunday evenings. I am glad that this evening my younger Brother Roberto ~aka: Tata, Booby, Payaso~ will be running the meeting this evening.

In my ministry work with CASA and I strive to stay Honest, Open and Willing to change as a key dictum in my progressive recovery from drug addiction. It is a truism that people are often as sick as their well-kept secrets and the truth will set us free.

Conducting CASA Meetings has helped to encourage many others in their continued recovery and me on a spiritual level in many ways. CASA is based upon the original AA 12-Steps Program. We profess that the central principles of the whole AA Program and other anonymous based groups first came from the Holy Bible itself, not just the Oxford Group. So people who get into AA, NA, DRA or other such groups ignore the intelligent ideas, basic beliefs and core principles of the Holy Bible to their own peril. Many people are spiritually lost in the wilderness of Amerka!

I had to wash a load of clothes and clean up some clutter here. The dog is lounging on the couch. Chilling and glad to be inside where it is cooler.

Nowadays, my big writing project is writing a book on the concept of progressive recovery and related issues. I believe that drug addicts should get into recovery and that a big factor in their success in overcoming addiction is getting outside of themselves and getting actively involved in positive, productive and progressive community action.

I have come to accept the fact that I am a slow tortured writer. I am still 'an unpublished writer' with no book on mine on my bookshelf. I do not have the free time as others do to devote just to writing, as I still have to work in a regular job for a living. I have a perfectionist streak that can be maddening. Plus I still have a touch of OCD and a tad of ADHD. Alas, I am still trying to write one true sentence. Pray for me!

I am a writer when I am involved in the creative process of writing and when I create in my writings I feel closer as a humane creature to my Creator. Plus, it helps me to concentrate, think deeper and analyze matters that concern me and stuff that many other people I know struggle with on a constant basis.

What is the meaning of life? Does life have to have meaning or can it just be life? If there is a God why does it seem that the Devil rules supreme? What makes a happy serene soul? What gives us purpose and fulfillment? What is to be done to deal with the horrible state of the world? With all the teachers, doctors and professionals in the world, why do billions of masses of people worldwide always endure in the endless misery of poverty, suffer in so much basic ignorance and lack the native intelligence and determined drive to radically transform the world for the better by any means mandatory? What are the strategies and set of tactics we require to impact on our world? What can we create to create a better humane world superior to the present insane and inhumane world?

Many people of low or no self-esteem do not fully fathom the truth that we can all have a book, a song, a poem or a dance that we can contribute in the act of creation and the art of creating. Ultimately it is all between our eternal soul and our Loving Creator, not others who are also living their lives out upon Mother Earth with their fears, anxieties and insecurities.

We need to clearly understand that no one is perfect or correct all the time. While we are alive in the process of living life our ideas and ideals can, will and should change, develop and evolve over a lifetime, especially when we are open to new ideas, new concepts and new theories that influence creative thinking. Thus, from time to time we should go back and examine ourselves in terms of our basic philosophy on life among the living, then, move forward with courage in hand and take decisive action to help others in all our ways.

Writing has healing properties and I have greater clarity of mind now than I did this morning. I have not even checked my Email. So much of it can be drivel, egocentric and preaching to the choir while civilization is collapsing around us. We cannot even protect Sister Elvira, cannot even liberate Brother Leonard or give every innocent child a clean glass of clear water! This is civilization?!

Today I am hibernating inside where it is cool with the cooler on and it is now hot and breezeless outside. My cell phone is off re-charging and I am not answering the landline. I have faith that life goes on within us and without us.

Today I only want to call Sister Guadalupe who is dying of liver cancer at Sutter Hospital still homeless and abandoned by her blood family. I have CNN on for what it is worth. I guess I will take a shower and walk over to the corner store a block away and get the Sunday Sacramento BEE. Stay safe!

Come Together & Create!
Peter S. Lopez ~aka Peta-de-Aztlan
Yahoo Email: sacranative@yahoo.com

Bloglink:
http://peta-de-aztlan.blogspot.com/2007/09/journal-post-for-sunday-september-02.html

c/s