4/08/2007
Sometimes, you've got to laugh.
For example: since I've become Mr. Border, writers about the border and immigration wnat some of that Devil's Highway presence added to their books--or at least their publishers and publicists do. I like to lend a hand if I can. Now, Sam Quinones is one of the great writers about these issues. His second book was coming out. Called Antonio's Gun and Delfino's Dream. You ought to read it if you're interested in that world. But the publisher, University of New Mexico, felt it was IMPERATIVE to have a blurb on the cover from me. Wow, I thought, they like me! They really really like me!!!! So I gave it a blurb--it's a good book, why not? Well, the hardcover came yesterday. UPS and FedEx come here in a constant parade, dropping off books and manuscripts and even gifts. I'd like to see more checks, but that's just me. Anyway, the book looks good, and I was amazed to see that I was the only blurb on the cover. Big! In red! And THEY TOTALLY MIS-SPELLED MY NAME!
They made up a new name. It's vaguely Middle Eastern, I've decided. I am now Luia!
Cinderella and I laughed and laughed when we saw it. It's like poop-patrol in the back yard, or trying to get Eric to take out the trash, or trying to convince the new dog to stop peeing on the couch. Real life brings you back to earth.
How important was it, really, to have my name on the book cover? Har har! I hit the treadmill this morning still smiling about it.
This is good, because Easter is hard for me. I used to call it "Eastern" when I was a kid. Yeah, Eastern--brings back levels of regret and sorrow I don't know what to do with...those sad Easterns when my tattered family tried to be happy for a morning. Then that small troubled family shattered. Then my dad was dead. And my mom--the neighbors found her Easter week, dead and alone in her sad house. 1990. I spent that week attending to her details--David and poor ol' Vic the Bear (in a coma now for years) watched over me in my panic.
I watch the kids rip open their baskets and can't believe I have somehow given them all this: Eastern, chocolate, a big house with big trees and a big yard and big turkeys in the garden and visiting ducks and geese and squirrels and chipmunks and an invisible midnight coyote that gives the possum and the 'coons fits. It's good. It's happy. Even though Easter for me, like Christmas and my birthday, is blue. But it used to be black.
And blue is my favorite color.
I'm thinking of you this year. I'm thinking about embracing you, even you gnarly cops and bikers and cholos. But especially, you. My dear friend. And thanks, UNM, for the Monty Python moment!
Yrs., Luia
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For example: since I've become Mr. Border, writers about the border and immigration wnat some of that Devil's Highway presence added to their books--or at least their publishers and publicists do. I like to lend a hand if I can. Now, Sam Quinones is one of the great writers about these issues. His second book was coming out. Called Antonio's Gun and Delfino's Dream. You ought to read it if you're interested in that world. But the publisher, University of New Mexico, felt it was IMPERATIVE to have a blurb on the cover from me. Wow, I thought, they like me! They really really like me!!!! So I gave it a blurb--it's a good book, why not? Well, the hardcover came yesterday. UPS and FedEx come here in a constant parade, dropping off books and manuscripts and even gifts. I'd like to see more checks, but that's just me. Anyway, the book looks good, and I was amazed to see that I was the only blurb on the cover. Big! In red! And THEY TOTALLY MIS-SPELLED MY NAME!
They made up a new name. It's vaguely Middle Eastern, I've decided. I am now Luia!
Cinderella and I laughed and laughed when we saw it. It's like poop-patrol in the back yard, or trying to get Eric to take out the trash, or trying to convince the new dog to stop peeing on the couch. Real life brings you back to earth.
How important was it, really, to have my name on the book cover? Har har! I hit the treadmill this morning still smiling about it.
This is good, because Easter is hard for me. I used to call it "Eastern" when I was a kid. Yeah, Eastern--brings back levels of regret and sorrow I don't know what to do with...those sad Easterns when my tattered family tried to be happy for a morning. Then that small troubled family shattered. Then my dad was dead. And my mom--the neighbors found her Easter week, dead and alone in her sad house. 1990. I spent that week attending to her details--David and poor ol' Vic the Bear (in a coma now for years) watched over me in my panic.
I watch the kids rip open their baskets and can't believe I have somehow given them all this: Eastern, chocolate, a big house with big trees and a big yard and big turkeys in the garden and visiting ducks and geese and squirrels and chipmunks and an invisible midnight coyote that gives the possum and the 'coons fits. It's good. It's happy. Even though Easter for me, like Christmas and my birthday, is blue. But it used to be black.
And blue is my favorite color.
I'm thinking of you this year. I'm thinking about embracing you, even you gnarly cops and bikers and cholos. But especially, you. My dear friend. And thanks, UNM, for the Monty Python moment!
Yrs., Luia
# posted by Luis @ 10:12 AM 
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