Café con Cass story & design portfolio

Shedding the transient, revealing the true.

Have you ever owned a Buddha? Worn sandlewood beads around your neck or called yourself a Buddhist by nature?  Everyone has the right to claim such an identity because regardless of the distractions in the present day, we are indeed Buddhas and within the identity we mutually possess other states of life that make us human…life states including anger.

In the wake of using my art for peace, and working on the backdrop for a presentation I will be giving with the New York Zone behind the scenes group at the Florida Nature Center I received an upsetting e-mail from someone close to me who when I say blue, they say well yellow and the rainbow. This email came the day after a series of dreams exploiting all fears from my past relations to this particular person… I know my unconscious has prepared me from this moment. Please see Homecoming under Paintings for a point of inference.

It is in this moment, I must surround myself with LIGHT. I can not afford to dim it for others. I am staring at a sticker that says, “Stop Bitching, Start a Revolution…”

In celebration of this sticker I present to you Part 1, the bitching:

If I were to transcribe my anger
To the Ebb and Flow of tides of Del Mar
I would not do justice to the fact that I am pissed the fuck off.
I am so pissed off, that the single thought that occurred to me
While the act of watching the news today acted as the drop,
Consumed by the entire ocean of rage
As the goddesses look on, it is apparent that we have angered the Gods.
The motion of my words don’t come from guitars that croon
I am pleading with humanity
That has turned their backs against each other
Making it impossible to see that we are all the same.
For we are not the same in this moment blocked by the ego.
It truly feels like the whole fucking world is about to end
And there I am watching.

Part II: The revolution…

Precarious journeys
Through festivals of the human spirit
We bend and traverse to see what is next,

The essence of your being lies in the perfect point of reflection
I am left screaming your name wondering if you can hear me.

Beyond the hills of purple majesty
Where the blood runs though the blue sky
The grain is the only resolution without violence;
Movement through the wind
I have lost my brother within my own country

I calmly guide you’re your eyes to mine
Pleading at the first pang of jealousy
you will be reminded of bond we share irrespective of loyalty
that sways us into irresponsibility.

In this land I am reminded of how young we truly are.
There is no coincidence that I have been born American.

I have been chastised and discriminated against for the color of my skin;
I have been called White by my own parents
whose blood runs thick through island sand and colonial forefathers who have come before me.

My brother, you can see what I feel without sight
The beauty of this life for me is
That I can only be what transcends the language we learned in school
Because we were denied the native language of our parents.

As long as you didn’t hate out
You only continue to hate yourself.
And that my child, is the balance we are confronted

As our parents have been discriminated in ways that we have not.
Sometimes I feel like me life is not my own.
Sometimes I feel estranged from my own blood line
which only makes me grasp onto humanity tighter
Without claiming my own space.

Can you not see me for everything that defies light
and sinks into your heart;
Everything that I have to offer goes past the forefront
And sinks deeper into a place where your ancestors
Cry for me as I beg mercy for the wrongs that I have done.
What mercy can exist in this world when you think
I am responsible for decades of past oppression
Because you perceive my as White.

So I went on living and hating myself
For the color of my skin when I let someone else define me.
What privelage is this?

I don’t hate you for calling me White today,
I only hate me on the day he raped me of my culture
In my father’s attempt to erase the pain of Nuyorican and
The race wars of Washington Heights,
The estrangement of la isla del Puerto Rico.

I became so consumed with my own anger that I can barely sleep
As night and now I sit in anger, alone.

I had forgotten who I was.

Confined to my own thoughts, my body no longer a prison
When I still can not convince you that I am some derivative of Latino
In the function of humanity.

I was born to not to care in a time
where everyone cared about the cared about the color of their skin
even if it’s only related to a false tan.

I am quantumly displaced in time, 25 years past the hippy bus
I am picking daisies form the flower shops on streets that have run cold.

There is no humanity in this revolution.
I am left to my own voice,

and I sing louder.

I can not stop singing songs of freedom among amber waves of grain
As I cradle my self to sleep only to dream of tomorrow
For the past are only nightmares of blood shed of my brothers and sisters.

I know that I can not be free, if they are not free.

I woke up to hymns of the revolution swelling in the tides of shame,
Pleading with my self to be freed.

If I were to transcribe my anger to the ebb and flow
Of the universe it would not do it poetic justice.

I do not want to live this life any more where my house
Is filled to the brim with no room for me to step inside.

I have assigned others to live it for me, they are partying to
Unfamiliar tones as I wait outside without clothes.

I left myself at 12 when I allowed you to rape me of my culture;
Convincing you that the only color of my privalege could be White.

I am peach.

I am make my way into the room and I am ordering people to leave
For not all have my best interests in heart.

In my wake of authenticity;

No Sabia que hay dolor en este mundo
No Sabia que dolor habia mas cerca que yo.
No Sabiq que hoy dolor en mi casa
En Los ojos de los nenes
Porque no sabia que hay tanto dolor en mi carazon.
En la familia mia.

Who is living in this house?

Estoy caminando en la oscuridad.

The light are off now, there is no switch.

Preguntando el cielo;
Donde esta la unico lugar de donde venimos y regarasamos.

Amor.

Love.

Porque mis padres no me quieres con todo que yo ser.
Solamente hay un cheque adonde habia mi alma.

Yo camino sola buscando otra manera a vivir
En el mundo que olvidio que hay tantos calles
Para irnos a la misma lugar.

Digame, que te pasa contigo mi pana.
Que paso con la revolucion?
Estoy gritanda en la calle preguntando a cielo si alien
Me escuchan.