Too Old

Do we ever get too old to practice our profession? With this new world of social media, it seems that in many instances, this might be the case. Those of us who did not spend half of our careers in front of a computer blogging or tweeting or posting, but out in the field, are now realizing that our worn boots might not always make the grade. Knowing the story might not be enough. Everything is digital. Which is great. A tool to marry to traditional. Should it be the "be all and end all?" Those of us who have been there, done that, bought the movie and the T-shirt, and the shirt is ragged because it has been through so many spin cycles, are coming home to realize that one must also tweet the god damn thing. I remember that when I started, I used to run with the soldiers with a reporters notebook tucked in the back of my trousers. The pen was mightier than the platform. With this I am not saying that social media does not have its place. It does. But where do you leave experience? Just asking. But, when the shite hits the fan, who are you going to call?  

Risk

Risk comes from not knowing what you're doing.

Warren Buffet

Sometimes in life, there rises before you a Rubicon. It takes strength and grace to start to cross it when it becomes clear that you have to leap. Without a clear safety net. You just hope that before you hit the ground, your feet come down from under you and you hit it running. There is a fear that impulses and fuels the move. Shut your eyes, leap and feel the abyss. (Some might call this marriage.) I had a guru when I lived in London. She had run with Andy Warhol, or so she said. She had this way of viewing risk, which I thought very interesting, apart from pretty visual. Risk is like being pushed into crossing a desert. Many stay behind and refuse to venture out into that dry, sandy unknown. Those that do dare start walking do so alone, trudging through that quagmire of confusion and apprehension. They feel there is no one else out there. No kindred spirit. But, come the half way mark, they start seeing shadows at their side. Closer to the finish line, they start identifying fellow travelers. Those souls that also dared. Upon the finish line, they come to understand that they have just become members of a very special tribe. Los Cojonudos.

Take a risk. Flaunt the norm. Settling for the ordinary is boring.

Going Home

I lost my ruby red slippers. I can't go back home again. Not the home I knew growing up - the one gift wrapped in my memories. In truth, I don't think that anyone can go home again. What one can do is acknowledge that "home" is where the source is, where everything else stems from.

My "I" lies in Puerto Rico. I was born and raised on the island. The labels used in America - Hispanic, Latina, Minority, were confusing to me. I am Puerto Rican. That is the core I built upon. My journey into adulthood took me to England, the United States, El Salvador, Cuba, Sierra Leone. I am now like a tree whose roots have extended far beyond its base.

I tried to go back about four years ago. I accepted a job in media and decided that I would give back what I had gained in the many years I was away. I soon learned that what I thought was a positive was considered very negative back "home." I was not only perceived as different. To those that had stayed, I had stopped being Puerto Rican. I became somewhat of an anomaly. I soon found out that one can never go home, but must also never look back in anger. Just accept what was, where you started from and confirm where you are. And go from there.

Charlie Sheen

I am a bit confused. Who is using who? Charlie Sheen using the media or the media using Charlie Sheen? So Piers Morgan woke up to his highest ratings since inception after Sheen brought his madness to the chair. His Sheenisms are being compared to poetry and have become the grist of late night jokes. I have to admit that I am fascinated by him and have begun to wonder if this isn't the best acting this side of Jack Nicholson. Tiger blood and warlocks indeed. But I am not so sure that the media should continue to provide him with a venue, seeing that now his small children are involved and it is getting messy. Crazy is great for ratings and Charlie Sheen does it better than anyone. But there is something malevolent and dirty about watching a personal meltdown up close. Something Roman Circusish. The "Goddesses" make me cringe and he looks terrible. Maybe taking away his podium could be a good thing.

Thinking about Miguel

I have been thinking a lot about my friend Miguel Gil, who was killed in an ambush in Sierra Leone more than ten years ago. Miguel was a very special person, a man with a mission, a missionary with a camera. A face like a Goya painting, with brilliant blue eyes and hands that moved like doves. As a very religious man, his work was more than a calling. It was akin to a prayer. A prayer to the human condition,  individual courage and justice. He was one of those members of the tribe who lived and breathed journalism, who are not afraid to put his or her life in danger to tell the story. I guess that I have been thinking of Miguel because, as I look at the landscape of today's journalism, I see very few Miguel's. Very few that are willing to go that extra mile. No matter what has been said about Lara Logan, she took that step, and for that she should be admired. It is still good, solid reporting that is and will ever be king. No matter how much the new technology facilitates our work. Those that are willing to go into what Perez Reverte called "territorio comanche" are the ones that have earned the right to call themselves journalists. Maybe I am old school, but that is the way I see it.

So now we are on to Libya

Gaddafi. What a character. He is something straight out of a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel a la Autumn of the Patriarch. There is a great story written in The Independent by Robert Fisk. It seems that just weeks ago, our dear "coronel" was asking for a good doctor to give him a face lift. I guess he felt that he didn't look his best. Now he can look forward to exile and a good tan. I wonder if they have the correct hair dye where he is going. I loved his "I am still in Triploi" statement complete with umbrella and Lady Gaga sunglasses. That America supported this guy for so long is really an embarrassment for us all.  Here a taste of Fisk's wonderful writing:

So even the old, paranoid, crazed fox of Libya – the pallid, infantile, droop-cheeked dictator from Sirte, owner of his own female praetorian guard, author of the preposterous Green Book, who once announced he would ride to a Non-Aligned Movement summit in Belgrade on his white charger – is going to ground. Or gone. Last night, the man I first saw more than three decades ago, solemnly saluting a phalanx of black-uniformed frogmen as they flappered their way across the sulphur-hot tarmac of Green Square on a torrid night in Tripoli during a seven-hour military parade, appeared to be on the run at last, pursued – like the dictators of Tunis and Cairo – by his own furious people.

The YouTube and Facebook pictures told the story with a grainy, fuzzed reality, fantasy turned to fire and burning police stations in Benghazi and Tripoli, to corpses and angry, armed men, of a woman with a pistol leaning from a car door, of a crowd of students – were they readers of his literature? – breaking down a concrete replica of his ghastly book. Gunfire and flames and cellphone screams; quite an epitaph for a regime we all, from time to time, supported.

And here, just to lock our minds on to the brain of truly eccentric desire, is a true story. Only a few days ago, as Colonel Muammar Gaddafi faced the wrath of his own people, he met with an old Arab acquaintance and spent 20 minutes out of four hours asking him if he knew of a good surgeon to lift his face. This is – need I say it about this man? – a true story. The old boy looked bad, sagging face, bloated, simply "magnoon" (mad), a comedy actor who had turned to serious tragedy in his last days, desperate for the last make-up lady, the final knock on the theatre door.

Let's just hope that Saif goes away along with Daddy. And that we do not have to pay at the pumps.

Simplicity

Simple is what I call my Yoko Ono period. White on white. I have been finding that at this stage of the championship, I need less, want less. I no longer crave the titles and the long hours. I would rather be recognized for my fabulous flower arrangements than my spreadsheets. I loathe the word "execute." I know so many women that will end up with fifty cats, old power suits in a dank apartment with frayed 90's furniture. I Thank God for my redundancy's and my search for re-invention. I still want to be a pirate and write the great novel. I imagine that it took all this time and all the bullshite that one must go through to arrive at the conclusion that cardboard boxes are better than Ikea.   


"The best things in life are the nearest: Breath in your nostrils, light in your eyes, flowers at your feet, duties at your hand, the path of right just before you. Then do not grasp at the stars, but do life's plain, common work as it comes, certain that daily duties and daily bread are the sweetest things in life. Robert Louis Stevenson.


PD: And if that shit fails, a nice blend of Xanax and Bacardi will do nicely. Fuck Yoga.