Category Archives: Family

Karma and Me

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Progeny, it turns out, was not all I hoped it would be, what I expected it’d be, all that I worked so hard to make it.  Futility?  Perhaps.  But then again, perhaps not.  Apparently, despite their reflections, opinions and observations concerning me, my three sons are happy with who they are, and, in an important sense, they’ve highlighted the many errors I made.  Not as a father, although they’ve plenty of complaints, but as a son to an amazing mother I too often took too much for granted.  Especially when I was younger.

And then, I wonder. 

I wonder how my mother felt about her own progeny.  Thinking about it objectively, were I her, I would have considered us an ungrateful bunch, too often, in my sister’s case, bitterly critical, and in my brother’s, unable to wean successfully, and in mine, to whom she gave more than to any of my siblings, perhaps too cocky, to sure I was right and she was wrong.  Too distant.  Too much like my own sons.

Karma’s a bitch, but as someone who hates to be indebted, it’s better this way. 

Who knows, perhaps I’ve accumulated a positive balance.  But I so wish I would have been a much better son, a more understanding son, a more accepting son, one who more vocally expressed his love, admiration and gratitude.  Now, given the ways of destiny and time and entropy, it’s too late.  Unless somehow my mother, from far beyond the veil, can sense what I now feel and what I now understand and can enjoy it, revel in it, and somehow grasp and hold it.

What I wouldn’t give to be able to correct all my past mistakes, to have been more understanding, less egocentric, more empathic. 

More like her.
_______

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution. Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony.  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

Of Cerulean and Cyan and Vermilion Too

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A young man wonders about colors, specifically two, although perhaps three.  He’s been named after one of them, although little of anything concerning the color seems to apply to him.  He wonders what his parents had been thinking when they chose that name for him, and he reflects that he’s never actually been christened, so perhaps the name has not yet been as impactful as his parents had hoped.

He might have elected to study art, but he studied language instead, as had his mother.  His father, a florist, wondered why.  Sometimes he did too.  His mother was pleased though, and his two sisters didn’t seem to have ever considered why he studied what he did, or why his name often seemed so blue.  At first blush theirs seemed a bit more traditional, but that wasn’t quite true.  Hmmm.

Cerulean leans more towards blue than does the more balanced cyan.  And cerulean, although a light variant of blue, is darker than cyan.  Of course, that means that cyan leans more towards green than does cerulean, which just shares green’s echoes and smiles, and perhaps its similes, and that cyan is darker, but not much.

The young man thinks they’re friends, and that perhaps, at one time or another, they’ve been lovers, or perhaps just kissing cousins.  In imperial Byzantium they might have had an awkward relationship, with cerulean angry at cyan’s flirtation with green, but he wonders how they got along in subsequent Muslim caliphates, perhaps in Istanbul?

He wonders how cyan and cerulean feel about azure.  Or how cerulean feels about vermilion, either cyan’s complement or antithesis, depending on perspectives.  Or how vermilion feels about cyan, a complex relationship.  And whether their feelings are reciprocal or complimentary or constant or true, or just passing fancies.

He wonders if his parents had been high when they’d selected his name.  It could have been true, they were free spirits of sorts, floating along life’s byways and sometimes stumbling along a highway or two.  It didn’t matter though.  He loved his name, and he wondered whether he’d ever find its mate, and what she would be like, and whether she’d love her name too.

Cerulean and cyan, and vermilion as well.  Perhaps, in addition to colors, they were places and times in which to lose oneself, or perhaps to find oneself, were one lost.  Like somehow lost quantum paired electrons, or just sundered hearts, or misplaced halves of the same fruit, or rainbows that had lost their colors and now dressed only in shades of grey.

He might have elected to study art, but he studied language instead, as had his mother.  His father, a florist, wondered why.  Sometimes he did too.  His mother was pleased though, and his two sisters didn’t seem to have ever considered why he studied what he did, or why his name often seemed so blue.  At first blush theirs seemed a bit more traditional, but that wasn’t quite true.  Hmmm.

A young man wonders about colors, specifically two, although perhaps three.  He’s been named after one of them, although little of anything concerning the color seems to apply to him.  He wonders what his parents had been thinking when they chose that name for him, and he reflects that he’s never actually been christened, so perhaps the name has not yet been as impactful as his parents had hoped.
_______

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony.  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

The Eighth Day of May

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Today, May 8, 2023, is an important day to me because two very important people were born on that day, long ago.  Vicki Meryl Forest (now Baker) and Michael Harris Jordan.  Two very different people important for very different reasons.

Vicki is 70 today.  She and her delightful family were wonderful to me during very difficult times.  Unfortunately, in the end, I couldn’t bring myself to culminate the wonderful relationship we shared because of the trauma of the one that preceded it.  Vicki deserved everything I could have given, she was an amazing woman, a delight in every sense.  I know that whoever she’s with today is a happy man, and I’m certain she made a wonderful mother.  I often recall her father Irvin and mother Lucie, her sister Elise and nieces Jennifer and Melissa, and her brother-in-law Saul Sklar, with whom I still correspond from time to time.  I recall them all with a great deal of love.  Vicki was sunshine crystalized, I’m pretty sure she still is.

Coincidently, Michael would also have been 70 today.  He was a fascinating person, the son of my friend and sometimes client, David E. Jordan, a financier of sorts, as was his son.  He was short and stocky and funny and creative and bright, a great chef and a very decent man.  He experimented with all kinds of things during his life, which unfortunately, ended much too soon.  Not that everything in our relationship was rosy and bright from a professional aspect, but that was more due to his dad’s misadventures and to one of his brother’s machinations.  But in sum, it was a privilege and a joy to have been a part of Michael’s life.

It’s a pretty day high in the central range of the Colombian Andes where I now live, close by to a volcano seemingly stirring by the side of a tall former glacier, far from the Islands in New York where I met them both, and the Florida peninsula where I last interacted with them.  But they’re comfortably ensconced in my memories and in my heart.

And they always make the eighth day of May very special.
_______

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony.  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

Black Listed Gifts

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I was watching the “Black List” last night, “binging” on the latest season available on Netflix, an obvious US propaganda piece as is most of what comes out of Hollywood and its clones (the reality as far back as Woodrow Wilson’s epoch).  But amazingly, in that episode something resonated in a humanistically positive manner. 

Imagine that. 

For some unfathomable reason, I enjoy the program.  Perhaps it’s the acting, especially by James Spader.  And it provides insights into the manner in which US propaganda has culturally conquered much of the world with brazen distortions.  But I rarely find the really useful human element that permits us to better understand ourselves, and improve who we are.  The element essential in great works of art.

I did last night, and it involved a gift, the gift being a very used old portable radio.

Economically, today, I am not well off.  But like most among my current peers, I am living well enough, largely because I became an expatriate of sorts, living in a beautiful albeit affordable place, a beautiful city high in the central range of the Colombian Andes.  Beautiful mountains, snowcapped peaks, thermal springs, perpetual spring, but no oceans or beaches.  A place where social security is a bit more than enough to get by.  But where friends and family are a long way off.

I’ve been much better off, wealthy even, in a past where limousines were not an occasional luxury but a normal tool, where the making of an expensive gift was “no big deal”.  But I’ve also been much less well off than I am now, and it’s that time in my life that resonated with the “Black List” episode I viewed last night.  And it dealt with the character I find least interesting, least credible, most boring: Diego Klattenhoff as agent Donald Ressler.

The resonance involved the realization that the most important gifts I ever made where those that involved something I already owned, something I had to sacrifice under the circumstances of the moment because I lacked the wherewithal to merely “buy something appropriate”.  Usually it was a book, but sometimes a keepsake I’d picked up somewhere or other.  It involved a sacrifice of something for which I really cared, something I’d miss, but which to me, at the time, seemed important to pass on.  I’ve also received gifts like that and last night I realized that I’d not appreciated their worth at the time.  I do now.

In this materialistic and polarized world, one where empathy is hard to generate and harder to find, where a touch of humanity seems a rare thing but is actually omnipresent, hidden in the quotidian, especially in the lives of the least well-off.  Hidden in plain sight amidst the most vulnerable among us.  Hidden among that silent majority where almost everything involves a sacrifice, but where such sacrifices are joyfully made and never regretted, but also, perhaps, as in my case, where such sacrifices are not quite fully appreciated by the recipients.  At least not until it’s much too late to express our gratitude.

It made me think, especially of my mother.  Eventually a single mom who made the best of what I’ve become and accomplished possible without ever stressing the many sacrifices she and the rest of my family had to make, things I just took for granted until she was gone. 

Her case and mine, unfortunately, are not unusual.  Especially today when the generational shift is so bitter, and where too many of the young consider themselves ethically and morally superior, while concurrently entitled, and view their parents and their parent’s generation as out of touch bigots.  A generation that has no idea what the adage “it’s better to give than to receive” means, or worse, that it even exists.  Where giving is something that’s done with the taxes other people pay, and mainly given to industries dedicated to legalized murder on a massive scale, in the name of liberty and peace and equality.

Amazingly, the episode made me think, rather than just react and enjoy the action and the acting.

Talk about finding pearls in a dung heap!
_______

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony.  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

Introspections on an Early Spring Evening in April during 2023

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Pipes, a variety of pipes, large ones, long ones, meerschaum pipes, water pipes, he’d had many, and brandies too, although mainly fruit brandies, peach and apricot especially, but sometimes cherry, and of course, the good ones, Cardenal Mendoza in the corked box, and once in a very long while, two or three times perhaps, Gran Duque de Alba. He’d preferred the Spanish brandies but the best one had probably been an Armagnac, 25 year old Cles Des Ducs. It came in a beautiful crystal decanter in a wooden cigar box, both of which he still had. He also loved Grand Marnier, although somehow, it seemed to get sweeter as he aged, and then, too sweet. But his current wife still enjoyed it. And of course, wines, especially those red wines from the Bordeaux region he’d loved when he lived in New York, but could now rarely obtain.

He’d enjoyed symphonic music, classical, especially Beethoven, but Mozart as well, and Tchaikovsky, and Brahms, and Vivaldi, and Shubert. And all of the foregoing because his mother had led him to believe that his long-vanished father, whom he’d eventually located, late in life for them both, had favored them. Perhaps he had but it was just as likely that his mother had invented the specifics as part of a virtual profile, one she’d created to guide him into becoming the man she’d hoped he’d be. And for the most part, perhaps she’d succeeded. But not totally; he was pretty deeply flawed in too many ways. His sons had told him so, … eventually. His mother had been an amazing woman in every positive sense. Not perfect, her insecurities made that impossible, but then again, she’d somehow overcome every obstacle life had thrown her way, and there were many of them, among which, were his father, and his step father, and who knew who else. Perhaps him as well.

The pipes were all gone. His lately returned father had appropriated a few, his favorites, and his second son’s friends had stolen the last ones during a party of sorts at his apartment, they used them for pot and hashish and who knows what. And the alcohol came and went, but it was not all that important to him, thank goodness. And the music, … well that stuck, but supplemented by classical guitar and flamenco works which created another virtual world for him, an Arab sort of world fading into Iberian imagery set in Granada, and Valencia, and the Alhambra, and even Johnny-come-lately Aranjuez.

Cigars had been a stage all their own, one he sometimes used to market his law firm, and when that was gone, his strategic consultancy, and when that was a memory as well, his writing, but never his university academic endeavors, smoking had become anachronistic by then, and although he tended to love anachronisms, that was not one.

It was a sort of strange day in early spring high in the central range of the Colombian Andes where he now lived, as usual, in a home reminiscent of a museum, a large apartment full of old books already read, many several times, but some, not at all. The Quimbayas Cumanday, a snow-clad volcano that overlooked his tenth floor apartment was no longer quiescent, but not altogether active. It seethed and spumed ash and shook the surrounding mountainsides several thousand times a day, but the tremors were slight, at least for the most part, and neither he nor his wife were very troubled by them, at least not any more. If it were to erupt, the magma would slither down the other side of the glacier, although streams of mud might prove troublesome to nearby towns. It was over fifteen thousand feet high, and the city in the sky where he lived was above the seven thousand foot mark, leaving a great deal of space to be filled before magma ever became a problem, or before beaches were created through global warming, which to him would be a blessing; he missed the ocean.

He loved seeing the Quimbayas Cumanday, now called something else, the name of some bureaucrat or other, and the other three chains of snowclad ranges visible from the windows in his bedroom and his library and his guest room, and he wondered what it might look like, should it erupt, and what it would sound like, and whether it would be during the day or would waken him and his wife in mid-night, or whether it would really ever erupt at all. The small constant tremors made that less likely as they constantly released pressures that would otherwise build up. Quimbayas Cumanday seemed to know just what it was doing. He wondered whether referring to Quimbayas Cumanday as an “it” was insulting, but then again, how to know if it was a “he” or a “she”. Divinities are sort of strange that way.

The day was drawing to a close and soon the sun would set, pretty much behind the tall gothic cathedral that graced the city, the second tallest in the hemisphere, as he understood it. The sun set there during the periods closest to the equinoxes, then moved in a range, left and right for a while, and beyond the sunset he knew lay the Pacific Ocean, lightning and thunder there making the view of the west visible from his apartment’s long corridor, decorated as an art gallery of sorts, a periodically entertaining spectacle. Not that he could see the Ocean, it was too far away, but he knew that was where the sun set, and that it was from there that the thunder and lightning played.

Soon it would be dusk and the moon and the very few constellations and stars and planets visible, Venus and Jupiter among them, would come to visit. He loved the view of the night sky as seen from distant oceans or from desserts where billions of lights and stellar clouds created insuperable cyclical works of art and prompted speculation on the natures of divinity and time, and of eternity and infinity, and of mathematics and physics, and perhaps, of other distant species. But little of that was visible amidst the light-pollution generated by the city.

He loved the instant of transition that twilight turned dusk represented, as purples and oranges and lavenders and greens darkened and slowly became indigo. To him that was a magical instant repeated twice each day, a cycle reminiscent of the only two times during each day when broken clocks and timepieces were perfectly balanced.

He often thought of his three sons at dusk, now grown and estranged, living far, far away, and wondered at might have beens, and of all the people he’d known and somehow wronged, and of how he’d change things, if he only could. And of his father, gone for good now, and of those family members he’d treasured now gone as well. And of his many former classmates and students now scattered around the world, and of those curious people who read the articles and stories and poems he published, and wondered whether they took them seriously, or, like his sons, took him for a fool.

And he wondered what was to become of a world that in so many ways seemed to be headed headlong towards perdition, but also, gratefully, of the southern hemisphere which seemed to be finding its own way, learning from the many, many mistakes of its northern brethren, the self-proclaimed elder brothers and bearers of the “white man’s burden”.

And finally, he knew, his wife would soon call him to bed and that he’d lie pleasantly at her side, trying to fall asleep, fitfully at first, and that he’d eventually dream strange and entertaining dreams of far-off places and strange things, and of people and places he’d known, and then, as he woke, he’d wonder which realm was real.

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony.  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

Introspection: a senryū of sorts in e minor flat

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Fidelity was not his strong point, … well, … in affairs of the heart.
Aesthetics mattered too much, although it was far from the only consideration.

But temerity usually kept him faithful, at least for a while.

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; all rights reserved. Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at https://guillermocalvomah.substack.com/. He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

On the Day Designated Internationally to Honor Men

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It’s March 19, 2023, a Sunday and a day purportedly designated internationally to honor men, but as a holiday, it’s sort of a flop.  It’s not a great day for florists or restauranteurs, or for retail sales or for holiday bookings.  But perhaps it’s meaningful if we take a moment to recognize our less fortunate male brethren.  And there are so many.  And holiday’s all too often, rather than being happy days, are those most filled with regrets, and nostalgia, and melancholy.

So, … today, I’m thinking of all of the men who work diligently to support and protect their families, but who are deprecated for not spending enough quality time at home, and of those men who, through no fault of their own, have been sundered from their families and have lost everything they ever accumulated, who are left to live out what remains of their lives alone, and to those fathers who, after an unsuccessful relationship with their wives, find themselves estranged from their children. 

Of course, there’s another side to that dismal coin, men who are appreciated and beloved by their families, loved by their wives and admired by their children, but sadly, in today’s dysfunctional world, they’re the exception rather than the norm.  And of course, there are plenty of men who, because of their conduct, deserve their fate; but also, too many who don’t.

It’s an issue that’s not impacted by race, religion, national origin or political tendencies, … it just is, and there are few support groups to help these victims cope, nor any entertainment series to highlight the issue, nor any visible champions to highlight and ameliorate their plight, or legislators looking for legal and judicial reforms to resolve the social tragedy they represent. 

Just a few of us who, from time to time, remember and reflect.

Something to think about as this purported holiday fades to grey.

_______

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at https://guillermocalvomah.substack.com/.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony.  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

If I Only Could, I Surely Would … or Would I?

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After a bit over three quarters of a century, the “sounds of silence” have acquired a new meaning, one no longer political.  They now represent the realization, one often addressed by many of all ages, regarding the importance of appreciating the value of solitude and self-reliance.  Not because others have let us down, that would be merely reactive, or because our health is failing and mortality seems near (it’s not, or doesn’t seem to be), but just because, after so many experiences, good as well as bad, we may finally realize to whom we owe ultimate loyalty, perhaps even love, although love seems to become more nebulous as I age, something I know is different with many, perhaps most others. 

In my case, I’ve come to realize that “hello darkness my old friend” is not a rhetorical use of an oxymoron, but a realization that the person I am, the person I’ve been, really is an old friend, one who will not abandon me regardless of how often I criticize myself, and how frequently I’ve regretted paths not trod as well as turns I’ve taken.

The friend in the mirror does not look as he once did, but subtly diminishing eyesight makes the site at least tolerable, as does the care I’ve taken of the body we share, at least usually.  Our conversations are more wide ranging as well as more profound, and rather than seeking answers, we now more frequently enjoy the expanding range of fascinating questions which experience permits us to explore, the new dimensions of our perceptions, jokes now finally fully understood.  Old books reread with new meanings found.  Poetry, finally making more sense, at least sometimes.

The world, as it seemingly aways has, seems bound for hell in a handbasket, and I keep trying to make a dent, however small, in efforts to salvage it.  Although now, I’m not as sure as I once was, why.  I really think I understand Cassandra’s primordial frustrations, perhaps those of the primordially long chain of parents as well, and, of course, to some extent at least, my own. 

From the shadows I think I hear Ebenezer Scrooge whispering “bah humbug”, even when Christmas is long past and not yet near.  And I smile, perhaps even chuckle.  Perhaps he had a point.  Perhaps he was right and the three angels sent to devil him were wrong.  Or, perhaps not.

Cycles seem concerning.  How does one break free?  Do I really want to?  Or would it be awesome to be able to start anew, this life’s lessons not just learned but remembered too.

“The sounds of silence, I’ve loved that song, the words, the tune.  Meanings I once thought I’d grasped.  And I wonder, … how would I write that song today, … if I only could.
_______

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony.  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

Reflections on the Feminine versus the Transgendered on International Women’s Day, 2023

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International woman’s day falls on March 8 this year, 2023.  A Wednesday, smack dab in the middle of the week.  An interesting coincidence given the nature of this article.

It is, of course, more than anything, a commercial holiday.  One designed to induce men to spend more money or else be considered inconsiderate, insensitive cads.  But as superficial as that reality is, there is an underlying verity and it’s not limited to one day.  It involves the transcendental importance of the feminine in our lives, and that is true whether one is a matriarchalist-feminist (possibly a neologism) or patriarchialist-misogynist (also possibly a neologism).  I wonder if rather than concentrating on the superficial requisite compliments, obeisance and, of course, gifts, one might not consider the challenges being faced by women not only from men, but now also from men who have decided to compete directly against women through gender reassignments of varying degrees.  Most noticeably in athletics, but also in areas of aesthetics formerly the realm of women and, when one considers the issue seriously (as it deserves to be considered), in a number of much more important areas. 

The transgender issue is highly volatile and controversial with purportedly “woke” cancel culture warriors (dedicated to ever increasing polarization and avoidance of empathy) forbidding serious discussion concerning its controversial aspects.  Aspects such as how it relates to the rights of minors versus the societal duty to protect them (e.g., the concept of statutory versus assault based rape).  Aspects involving quota based allocations in the area of employment, political candidacies (in Colombia for example, half of all candidacies are reserved to women), economic and employment set asides and commercial opportunities.  I believe the transgendered, whether male to female of female to male, have a fundamental right to be free of official discrimination but how does that conflict with the special set asides to promote the ability of women to compete in diverse fields?  Whose rights should prevail?  How valid are the arguments on both sides?  Is there an area for reconciliation?  What date has been set aside to honor the transgendered, one might ask, and then, is one day enough, shouldn’t there be two, each based on the original biological gender?  And what about the non-binary?

There is now an ideological as well as practical battle among liberals and progressives between feminine oriented feminists on one side and transgender activists on the other, a fundamental rift involving a number of critical areas, a conflict as serious in many ways as is the battle between feminists and misogynist, perhaps, in reality, even more so.  This is an issue former Congresswoman and current army reserve lieutenant colonel Tulsi Gabbard has raised, firmly supporting the side of the feminine oriented feminists (Tulsi, whom I admire, very much exudes the aroma of a presidential candidate wannabe).  But, of course, there’s another side to the argument.  One with its own champions although their arguments appear poorly articulated, appealing more to woke ideology (if it exists) than to reasoned logic.  A seemingly objective and charismatic spokesperson akin to Tulsi on that side is essential if any equitable resolution is ever to be attained.

The foregoing is easy to ridicule, but ridicule and calumny are really the toys of the purportedly woke, not of those seriously interested in fairly and equitably resolving important societal problems (rather than using them to promote personal political agendas).  These issues have profoundly serious as well as superficial components and perhaps, on this day, a day dedicated to honoring women, they merit serious consideration and active, objective discussion.

Something on which to reflect in a non-judgmental fashion, one free of censorship, on this eighth day of March in 2023.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony.  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

Introspective Reflections on October Melodies

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There are transcendent days in one’s life, for good or for ill.  Day’s when everything changes, when new paths are trod and old ones abandoned.  The month of October for some reason has been transcendent for me.

October, in the northern hemisphere: browns and gold and oranges where green had been.  Not yet snowflakes but storms of cascading varicolored leafs accumulating in deep drifts.  Closer to the equator, the weather doesn’t change seasonally but rather, daily, and leaves tend to stay green, albeit in myriad shades, and flowers bloom all year.

October, as it shifted into November, was my son’s favorite holiday season as they preferred witches and ghouls and werewolves to robust old gentlemen dressed in red, riding in sleds pulled by eight, or sometimes none reindeer.  But they did like the gift giving aspects that followed on the heels of the winter solstice.

For me, October has had special meanings all my own.  Rites of passage seemingly.  Especially on two very different albeit perhaps complimentary occasions.

In 1952, on October 12, then Columbus Day (now a day to revile old Cristoforo and those Europeans who followed him and devastated what to them seemed like a new world), I left the beloved city of my birth to join my mother in what was to become our new home, or a collection of many new homes, all too many new sort of homes, in the United States.  First in Miami and Miami Beach in Florida; then in Charlotte, North Carolina; then back to Miami; then on to New York (in numerous places over the years including Ozone Park, Hollis, Queens Village, Flushing); then on to Charleston, South Carolina; then back to New York, for many years in the old Otto Khan palace in Cold Spring Hills, then to “the City”, then in Glen Cove; then back to Florida, Fort Lauderdale that time; then Hendersonville, North Carolina; then Florida again, various places in Marion County; and then ….

October 16, 2007, was another such day for me, although it sort of started on the afternoon after the Ides of October, a sort of 48 hour long day.  It started in Charleston, the Holy City to those closest to me.  The day before had been the end of Parents’ Day weekend at the Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina, my alma mater.  My eldest son, Billy, had just received that ornate band of gold that made us brothers, as well as father and son.  It was his senior year, as it had been mine forty years earlier.  Our family was really together that weekend, together for one final time.  And it may be that we all sensed it.  My marriage to Billy’s mother had been over for a while although shards still prickled and stung, but I’d hoped then that something of family could be salvaged.  I was wrong.  It was a day for endings.  But the next day was a day for beginnings.  A long day that started on Monday morning at the airport in Charleston, then continued with a layover in Atlanta, then possibly one in Panama City (in Panama, not Florida), then one in Bogota, in Colombia, and finally, ended on Tuesday, in Manizales.  Manizales where I’d been born sixty-one years earlier.  Sixty-one years, two months and twenty-two days earlier.  In a sense, I was going home, but to a home that had vastly changed since I’d last lived there as a young child, as I’d changed, as had my life.

The flight was long, but not just in distance and layovers, but metaphysically long, as though I were travelling to an alternative world, perhaps one of those posited in quantum hypotheses and M Theory.  Or in the imaginings of Nikola Telsa concerning fairies and changelings, long before electric cars brought his name back from the grave.

Since that Tuesday in October when I arrived, arrived knowing virtually no one, and with no idea how long I’d remain or what I’d face, my life has changed completely, but echoes of my old life linger.  Most I savor and treasure.  I’ve not abandoned it, not really, only now, it’s lived primarily in virtual space, that strange new reality, neither inner nor outer, and all too often impossibly unreal.

Improbably for many, many reasons, my life has blossomed in Manizales.  I was welcomed by hundreds of strangers as a sort of prodigal son returned, but not an impoverished and needy prodigal son, but rather, as one who had a great deal to offer, a great deal to share and a great deal to learn.  I was on an incoming tide of returning members of the Latin American Diaspora.  One long overdue.  I spent over a decade as a university professor in Manizales, and my voice echoed all over Colombia as for some reason, the media, print, radio and television, found me interesting.  Or perhaps just strange.  Students taught me as much as I taught them, perhaps more, and I was able to perceive realties concerning the sort of foster homeland I’d left, that are not visible there, but need to be.  And I managed to make my voice heard there as well.

Life in Manizales has been a great deal better than just good.  Good and talented friends abound and hope fills the air.  Beautiful verdant mountains surround me with skies full of birds and, above them, snowcapped peaks from which flow volcano heated thermal springs.  Spring is perpetual and, half an hour away, so is summer, and an hour in the other direction, first fall and then winter await, whenever I need them.  And I’ve found family here as well.  Beautiful, intelligent and talented cousins, but also the kind of family that is formed with bonds of shared intimacy and love.  I’ve perhaps had too many intimate encounters here.  Too many which just didn’t work.  But most have mellowed into beautiful friendships.  And one has prevailed and perseveres.  Manizales is a city full of learning and culture, an oasis for students and artists and writers and actors, and a city filled with real civic awareness, with a citizenry dedicated to a future where equity and justice prevail, and where empathy trumps polarization, unlike what is happening in the beloved land I left.  Which perhaps explains why there are so many, many expats here.

Of course, it’s not perfect.  Or rather, my life in Manizales is not perfect.  My sons, now estranged (estranged as all too often happens in today’s impermanent world, one where dysfunction is the norm) are far away, in both time as well as space.  And I don’t know my grandchildren, or more accurately, I know them only from infrequent photographs.  And so many friends from my youth, brothers really, especially those with whom I shared Spartan moments that made us who we became, are only virtual images on social media, although always in my heart.  Too many of them are passing beyond the veil well before their time, or so, we their grieving survivors believe. 

I guess when one has lived and loved in so many places, as I have, no place ever seems wholly home.  More so when one has lived long and fully.  As have I.  But Manizales is as close as it can get, at least for me.  Although Charleston would not be bad, not bad at all.  Nor would Manhattan.  Nor Cold Spring Harbor.

But I’m not complaining. 

Unlike Elvis and Frank Sinatra, “regrets”, I have many.  And had I the chance, there are many, many things I’d change.  I’ve inadvertently hurt too many who deserved better, especially women who’ve loved me.  And although I tried my best, I was apparently not as good a father as I’d hoped I’d be, or as good a son as I should have been, or as good a brother.  And probably, life has been kinder to me than I deserve, for which I’m grateful.  But now I’m definitely doing my best to redress that imbalance so that when I’m no longer here, the world will be a better place than it would have been had I never been born.  And I think that time will be on my side.  My family is long lived, very long lived, at least a century is not improbable, so perhaps I have quite a while yet to not only make amends, but to leave a healthy credit balance on karma’s scales.

I wonder if more transcendent days await me? 

I hope not. 

It would be difficult for any of them to be more full of opportunity than those transcendent forty-eight hours that started right after the Ides of October, a bit less than fifteen-and-a-quarter years ago today.  On the other hand, that Columbus Day in 1952 was not so shabby either.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, February 4, 2023; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony.  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.