The Notebooks of a Chile Verde Smmuggler-174-end

“You’ve got exactly seven hours and seven minutes to change the fate of the world”

Here Herrera is still mocking American culture and its game as he did with his own game show. How they image in the most impossible things because it is the most entertaining to us. They ask the weirdest questions and have the weirdest results. No one can really change the fate of the world but because like to believe that so they tell them they can, and soon after everyone will forget it happened.

“I confess, I buried the chiles from Food City, three blocks from Huerta Street- it was a father thing”

Here Herrera finally tells us the real meaning of the title of the book, why he smuggles chiles even though it isn’t illegal. It represents his heritage as a Chicano and that it is passed down to him. This is his way of showing how he must smuggle himself into the country as a Chicano and to hide it a bit in order to fit in.

The Notebooks of a Chile Verde Smmuggler- 151-174

"Of course chicken don't talk- this was the first piece of common knowledge that had to be discarded."

This quote is referring to a family that owned a chicken farm. The son went to Stanford and got a B.A. and changed the family business to corporate business. This quote brings some humor into the situation I think. He is talking about how the son went of to college and learned to much, that know he much teach his family. First thing is that he must change what they have known forever. They have always been a small family raising chickens, but know they have to change and learn about corporate America. They have to drop what they thought. They thought chickens don't talk, but there son has taught them different, they do talk, and it all seems crazy to them

“A TV game show (a mix of Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune, somewhere in the Post-Macho Southwest, slouching through the twenty-first century).”

This is Herrera description of American culture television. And its macho status that comes form it. How both the Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy have to do with winning. Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy both are games were you wager money, he wages other things that have to do with mexican and american culture. He is making fun of these american games.

The Notebooks of a Chile Verde Smmuggler- 131-151

“A writer with maids. Not in my book, buddy. Never in my book. My mother was a maid in El Paso, Texas, long enough. Are writers maids, now? Who do we cook for carnal , carnala?”

Herrera got his inspiration writing from his mother, who wasn’t well of at all. He doesn’t think that writers are people that live with maids, the ones that do it for the money and fame, but rather the ones who write from the soul and not through popularity. They write from their past. But he also contradicts himself. Does that mean that all writers now have to be poor to have troubles to write about? Or can some writers not have troubles and be well off? Does someone’s past tell weather or not they are a writer? It shouldn’t.

“I am that paper, I am those words now, that ink burns pyres in every cell.”

Herrera has become his writing. He writes everything he knows and has known. What comes into his mind goes on paper. What makes him who he is all written out. So there for what he is, is on the paper. The ink burns into every cell and he will for ever be on that paper, and that paper will represent him.

The Notebooks of a Chile Verde Smmuggler- 106-130

“Perhaps the notion of being American is off center- there is no center, I guess that’s the thing.”

Here Herrera is writing a letter to Victor, his Chicano activist friend. He is talking about how America doesn’t really have a backbone. No set ground that everyone has in common. There is no center where everyone meets on a common basis. Everyone talks about America being so great and the land of the free, but there is no real sense of community with everyone so different and no center to meet on.

“Ain’t nothing better, than pulling over- after the pizca in Fresno, on the way to the next one in Delano.”

Here Herrera is driving in California and loves the aspect of pulling over and just letting go. That in California its so nice you can pull over on a drive and just watch and feel free. He is on the road so he has no obligations, he is just driving and has pulled over for a break to relax and just breathe the Californian air.

The Notebooks of a Chile Verde Smmuggler- 81-105

"Fifteen years later at another institution in a much smaller room at Zapata lounge, a Chicano dorm: no special lights, just an expensive mike." (83)

He is describing a typical Chicano club. The lights are dim and they don't focus on the looks of the singer or speaker but rather what they are saying. They aren't these fancy club with shinning lights and people shouting, its quieter and they just relax more. But at the end of the page he says "but, who listens?" He thinks it as changed. Those lounges are no longer the same people less people because everyone has left for the other American "institutions"

"the earth that moans from pollution, quakes from its own tectonic blast? The earth divided? The earth abandoned, the earth reclaimed through armed struggle, through one more war? Power through ledges, thru words, thru flesh.” (97)

In this poem he touches on political, war, environmental, and racial issues. In this quote he talks about the earth, and what we have done to it. How we have made it moan because of our pollution and how our war as split it up and fought for it with flesh and blood. And how we over look that as we just go along with it. The earth struggles as we tare it apart.

The Notebooks of a Chile Verde Smmuggler- 55-80

"Things Religion Makes Me Do

Sit back, cross my legs, and cry." (61)

He writes a list of "things religion makes him do" and none of it is very good. The last one alone makes it sound like he doesn't like religion and the things it does to people. Some of it is very weird and not what you would think, but he is trying to portray that religion can make people do weird things because they believe it is ok in God's eyes. That even though strange, it has a purpose.

"I was invited to give a commencement rap a few weeks ago for the English Department at San Jose State University. A women asked me what writers influenced me, who did I read? I said, my mother. Lucha Quintana. Have you heard of that writer? The women's neck twisted. No, she wanted to know "what writers!" She wanted to ask the usual worn phrase. Ginsberg, Artaud, Nervo, Lorca, Neruda, Popa, HIkmet, Rodnati, Walker. These are the shadows-I should have told her." (69)

Here you can tell that he doesn't do what people expect of him, and he knows it, but still does it. He sticks to what is close to him and his heritage. He was inspired by his mom, not some well-known writer that everyone reads. He doesn't like that everyone does that, they all read the same group and expect that professors and everyone to be impressed by that. He sticks to his past and what’s close to him to make his writing more personal.

The Notebooks of a Chile Verde Smmuggler- 30-55

"A sad-eyed blond women drives a flashy red-orange Audi thru the chasm of a basement parking lot underneath.."

This represent the typical American person that that is unhappy with their wealth and situation. Everyone always seems unhappy with their lives even though they have the nice cars and accessories. She is driving a nice car, but has a car ticket and is clearly sad and stressed. This flashy car is not what can make her happy.

"As Chicano artists, we have always pulled out our images, landscapes and symbols from the gut to the page, from the bile to the open forum; historias terribles of our people, our time; historical suffering in vitro" (43)

He is distribing how Chincanos find their artist drive from there sufferings. Thier past isn't pretty but that is how they do art and it doesn't have to be pretty to mean something. They find their troubled pass what makes them and that is what they use to drive them.

The Notebooks of a Chile Verde Smmuggler- 1-29

"You keep on telling me that Chicanos are authentic Americans, that this is the first lesson." (18)

Here the author is talking to Victor, who is a Chicano activist. This book focuses on various views, not the typical views on life. There is also a lot of Chicano activism and showing how they are just as much a part of America as say the typical white American person. They fought hard to be there and deserve it just as much and they are the true Americans for their effort and pride.

"I drop my burdens.
As I walk, I drop my burdens.
As I walk, I melt with the snow" (8)

While a lot of the notes in the book are about Chicanos activism and American idealism, the author throws in times where he just realizes, he steps back from the stressful life of American culture and being active in it and "drops all his burdens." He sits and doesn't move and melts as spring comes like the snow melts. HE drops all the problems of living in America and just melts down.

First Paragraph of Final Paper

In Jack Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums and in Annie Dillard’s Seeing, they experience spiritual content in nature and try to escape the fast pace materialistic culture that is so prevalent in the country today. They find stress and unhappiness in modern day culture and go to nature to escape this. They both are sending the message to look to nature find spiritual happiness and to revitalize yourself. Both Karouac and Dillard find spiritual value in the solitude of nature and encourage the reader to take a leave from society and observe nature closely to appreciate the restorative “gifts” that nature offers to the human spirit.

Interview

Subject: Reike Master

Person: Debbo

Question 1: How do you find time in the day to step out of culture and practice reike?

Question 2: How did you become a reike master?

Question 3: Do you believe you are a counter culturalist and why?

Question 4: Explain the basics of reike therapy and what it does to a patient?

Question 5: American culture today can cause many people stress how do you escape that with reike therapy?

Question 6: When did you first hear about reike?

Question 7: In what ways has it changed your life style?

Question 8: If you agree that is counter culture how do you think it is?

Question 9: Do you believe that people who get reike therapy experience some counter culture experience?

Paper #2

Dharma Bums and Great Gatsby

Sandra Cisneros

“You live there? The way she said it made me feel like nothing. There. I lived there. I nodded./ I knew then I had to have a house. A real house. One I could point to. But this isn’t it.”

She grow up moving a lot from different apartment that were not very nice. With her parents always saying it would get better she hopes and dreams it will. It isn’t until someone else from outside the family puts in her brain that where she lives isn’t very nice that she feels the need to get out. She wants to get a real house and is determined to do so. But what is a real house? To her since she grew up with that dream, a real house is one with stair and many bed and bathrooms and a yard with trees.

“She likes looking at the walls, at how neatly their corners meet, the linoleum roses on the floor, the ceiling smooth as wedding cake.”

Sally grew up in a bad family where she never could really find home, because she disliked it so much, she didn’t feel comfortable there. She marries quickly to find a sense of comfort she never had. She is kept on a very tight leash in her marriage, but for her it is ok because she as the home she never had before that is clean and has what she likes. It is a false sense of security that she never had so she overcompensates for it.

Seeing- Annie Dillard

“The difference between the two ways of seeing is the difference between walking with and without a camera. When I walk with a camera, I walk from shot to shot, reading the light on a calibrated meter. When I walk without a camera, my own shutter opens, and the moment’s light prints on my own silver gut. When I see this second way I am above all an unscrupulous observer.”

Here Annie Dillard goes into more detail about what seeing really is. Its not just looking at something. Like throw a camera lens or a picture itself, but actually observing your surroundings. You have to be aware at all moments and focused on the now and not the future. She says that when she has her camera she focuses to much on that and not on what is really happening. But without her camera she acts like the camera and she is taking mental pictures of everything, not specific shots here and there.

“Darkness appalls and light dazzles; the scrap of visible light that doesn’t hurt my eyes hurts my brain. What I see sets me swaying.”

Annie Dillard spends a lot of time talking about darkness and lightness. Its not just what you see but what you don’t see. There are things in darkness as well as light. Here, even thought she spend time talking about nature and being outside, she seems to dislike the light in her eyes al the time. She enjoys the darkness as well and the emptiness of that isn’t so, in your face.

Seeing- Annie Dillard

“What you see is what you get…nature is very much a now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t affair.”

A lot of what Annie Dillard is trying to convey is that you have to look closely and keep your eyes open to see the good things in life. Everything is in detail. She talks about when she is little and she saw everything and how she misses that. Now she passes thing by and she is missing out on so much that nature can offer. She says late that nature is a free gift, but in order to see this free gift you have to watch closely because it can be there one second and gone the next.

“The lover can see, and the knowledgeable.”

Here she goes to visit her aunt and uncle who live on a ranch and have lived with horse forever. She tries to draw a horse and everyone criticize it. Her see is saying when you love something or know so much about it, you recognize the small details that no one else can see. When you are passionate about it you can pay attention to small details and find so much more than a first glance. There for the people who love and know, are the once who can see all.