Tino Villanueva

Listen, you who transformed your anguish into healthy awareness, put your voice where your memory is. You who swallowed the afternoon dust, defend everything you understand with words. You, if no one else, will condemn with your tongue the erosion each disappointment brings. You, who saw the images of disgust growing, will understand how time devours the destitute; you, who gave yourself your own commandments, know better than anyone why you turned your back on your town's toughest limits. Don't hush, don't throw away the most persistent truth, as our hard-headed brethren sometimes do. Remember well what your life was like: cloudiness, and slick mud after a drizzle; flimsy windows the wind kept rattling in winter, and that unheated slab dwelling where coldness crawled up in your clothes. Tell how you were able to come to this point, to unbar History's doors to see your early years, your people, the others. Name the way rebellion's calm spirit has served you, and how you came to unlearn the lessons of that teacher, your land's omnipotent defiler.

The unrestricted sun had split the day in two, and now we went on the edge of the afternoon like a tableau of bent figures made of faded blue duck. We went like a wandering and stinking, sweating brotherhood, pull by pull between the leafy cotton plants, with the pathetic appearance of arriving at the end of the furrow. But we always arrived in a rush to get there, and the sole logic was we had to move over to the next furrow, and no one could stop the counterflow down it. And I, the dusty kid left behind in the middle of the field, held prisoner in my own slow shadow, was right in not giving in to the absurd pace of tradition. So my days burned up in that captive state of childhood. Then, yes, it was then the venturesomeness of sedition overtook me. Saturdays, after noon, the body finally lying down in the waves of the aluminum bathtub. And in the liberating rite of the water, I could shed the grime and contemplate the muddy waters of time. So it was, with the ablution of the weekly bath, I exiled myself each time from what I was.

Bick Benedict, that is, Rock Hudson in the Time-clock of the movie, stands up and moves, Deliberate, toward encounter. He has come out Of the anxious blur of the backdrop, like Coming out of the unreal into the world of What's true, down to earth and distinct; has Stepped up to Sarge, the younger of the two, And would sure appreciate it if he: "Were a Little more polite to these people." Sarge, Who has something to defend, balks; asks (In a long-shot) if: "that there papoose down There, his name Benedict too?," by which he Means one-year old Jordy in the background Booth hidden in the bosom of mother love of Juana, who listens, trying not to listen. Rock Hudson, his hair already the color of slate, Who could not foresee this challenge, arms Akimbo (turning around), contemplates the stable And straight line of years gone by, says: "Yeah, Come to think of it, it is." And so acknowledges, In his heart, his grandson, half-Anglo, half- Brown. Sarge repents from words, but no Part of his real self succumbs: "All right— Forget I asked you. Now you just go back Over there and sit down and we ain't gonna Have no trouble. But this bunch here is Gonna eat somewhere's else." Never shall I Forget, never how quickly his hand threw my Breathing off—how quickly he plopped the Hat heavily askew once more on the old Man's head, seized two fistsful of shirt and Coat and lifted his slight body like nothing, A no-thing, who could have been any of us, Weightless nobodies bronzed by real-time far Off somewhere, not here, but in another Country, yet here, where Rock Hudson's face Deepens; where in one motion, swift as a Miracle, he catches Sarge off guard, grabs His arm somehow, tumbles him back against The counter and draws fire from Sarge to Begin the fight up and down the wide screen Of memory, ablaze in Warner-color light.

Untitled, 1965, by Alberto Valdés I’m not easily mesmerized. But how can you not be drawn in by swirls, angles and whorls brought together to obey a field of moving colors layered, muted    ... others bright that make you linger there? Just look at those Carpaccio reds. Right then my mind leaps to Cezanne: his dark-blue vest in Self-Portrait(1879–1880); the Seven Bathers(ca. 1900) wallowing in blue; his blue beyond in Château Noir(1904). Consider now the three, or is it four figures in Alberto Valdés’s Untitled(ca. 1965). They are wayward energy, moving right to left (the right one more sensuous than the rest) about to dive into the deep-blue waiting — call it the unknown. I’d like to be there when they meet that blue abyss head on. Will they keep their shape, I wonder, or break up and rearrange themselves into a brighter, more memorable pose ...    into a bigger elemental thing? I’m really asking this: When they run into the landscape of  blue, will these figures lose their logic of  luster? Will they lose their lucid argument of color, their accumulated wealth of geometry? Will they still engage the entire me, hold me, keep me mesmerized?

Boston, 1973— Years had passed and I assumed a Different life when one night, while resting from Books on Marlborough Street (where things like This can happen), there came into my room images In black-and-white with a flow of light that Would not die. It all came back to me in different Terms: characters were born again, met up with Each other in adult life, drifted across the Screen to discover cattle and oil, traveled miles On horseback in dust and heat, characters whose Names emerged as if they mattered in a history Book. Some were swept up by power and prejudice Toward neighbors different from themselves, Because that is what the picture is about, with Class distinctions moving the plot along. A few Could distinguish right from wrong; those who Could not you condemned from the beginning when You noticed them at all. Still others married or Backed off from the ranch with poignant flair, Like James Dean, who in the middle of grazing land Unearthed the treasures of oil, buried his soul in Money and went incoherent with alcohol. When the 40's Came, two young men were drafted, the one called Angel Dying at war. It's a generational tale, so everybody Aged once more and said what they had to say along the Way according to the script. And then the end: the Hamburger joint brought into existence to the beat of "The Yellow Rose of Texas," Juana and her child the Color of dark amber, foreshadowing the Mexican-looking Couple and their daughter, all in muteness, wanting To be served. I climbed out of bed and in my head Was a roaring of light—words spoken and unspoken Had brought the obliterated back. Not again (I said, From my second-floor room)...let this not be happening. Three and-a-half hours had flicked by. As the sound Trailed off into nothing, memory would not dissolve.