234. Song / Poem "Resurrection", Inspired by Luis Alberto Urrea, "It takes a great loss to make a great find"

Here is the pdf version of the poem above:

http://stokastika2.googlepages.com/resurrectiongreatlossfind.pdf.

I can't believe it took me so long to finally get to these poems. Three things happened after the Writers Conference that has made life unstable: (1) strenuous dental work (2) the Gap Fire in Goleta, California, a couple of miles from my rented house near by Dos Pueblos High School, and (3) major problems with my external hard drive--which I purchased a few external hard drives to deal with Fragmented Data Management (FDM) as well as Fragmented Mental Management (FMM), apparently Karl (my Dr. Jeff Dozier Ph.D. student super coolio housemate) also has the same problem. I wonder if we need to visit shrinks or just deal with our horrid fragmented data. I have come to realize in the world of multi-media I have generated some megamondo files, and I need to strip these files from my word docs and perhaps even my jpgs, which are now ALSO accumulating as megamondo files. Shxt.

I started formulating "Resurrection" right after the Santa Barbara Writers Conference. One of the most inspirational speakers I was lucky to witness and photograph was Luis Alberto Urrea. He told this rather graphic story of how his father came from Mexico with all that he had--his beat up car and 1000 dollars, just to watch his son (Urrea) graduate from UC San Diego. Along the way he was mugged and hijacked by the Mexican Police. And he was left in some hospital in Arizona (I believe) to die. His cousin got to him before he died. And then some famous author (Irving?) had some workshop at UC San Diego, and Urrea submitted some writing about the death of his father and how he could not process what happened to him. This famous author took him in and published his work. And through his father's death, he founded his dream life as a writer. What tragic irony. I also remember him telling a story how he got a janitorial job at Harvard by submitting his poetry and short stories, ha ha ha. I was so inspired by Urrea that I gave him an image of my "think outside the box" squirrel and bird. He signed one of mine. What a thinker-outside-the-box!

I wouldn't call this situation a Darwin Award. I would call it the Social Darwin Award. You die through the means of the fxcked up rule systems and lawnessness of a society. I think a lot of people have not been given Social Darwin Awards. And I declare the Father of Luis Alberto Urrea to receive the First Conscious Social Darwin Award.

I was also inspired to write Resurrection through a close friend of mine--who also lost a lot. I won't get into it.

And through my own experiences, externalized by Urrea and my close friend, I started a poem, "It takes a great loss / to make a great find / through your grievous death / I found my gracious life...."