Parading Around in Our Uber-wear

Since that Larry Harlow post I've pretty much had my head buried in life. Let me re-state that. So much going on that I haven't had much time to reflect. What can I tell you about my (and La Laura's) farewell to Puerto Rico? It was much more intense than I would have imagined. It did of course take me a while to get over that slaughtered, fly-ridden cabra we found in the trails behind the edge of some sweet Pinones spot about halfway to Loiza Aldea. No doubt some s*****ia ritual (don't want to get in trouble in case that's not entirely accurate), but it was kind of purging in a way. Pulgante, anyone?

It was so hot. I did, however get to understand La L. a little better because after being in the soup for a couple of weeks I actually got "cold" when the temperature plummeted from the '90s to say 83 at night. It's a bizarre feeling. You're standing there in Condado and a breeze comes through and you get just the slightest chill. But technically it is a chill, and your body actually responds.

We saw a play called Vegigantes, ostensibly a vehicle for the Cepeda family bomba y plena (minstrel?) show, but there really isn't all that much music, just an interesting '50s soap opera about a young woman who becomes involved with a dorky Southerner/Anglo who is disturbed by La Isla's racial mixing. At home, she's got a gramma from Loiza who plays plenas on the old Victrola and a mom who's in denial, wearing a turban to cover up any evidence of her "kinky" locks. There was a lot of unintentional humor, and in the beginning we suspected that one of the (male) dancers may have been drinking before showtime.


But really it was such a blur. The afternoon at Titi Ampy's house in Las Piedras, which is an amazingly pleasant isla town. Prosperous, light-hearted, chill. I ate outdoor-grilled rabbit for the first time in a while, and downed endless Medallas in search of understanding Olga Tanon's new hit "Bandolera." That drive back across the middle of the island through Juncos and on to route 52 is soothing--particularly after the Las Piedras screening of Revenge of the Stiths or whatever that Star Wars movie was called. The first half of that movie was one of the strongest collections of unintentionally funny dialog since Valley of the Dolls, but it actually got good in the end. It was as if the strength of the original series of movies finaly took over from the cheesy miasma of the last two.

Here's what I thought about the parade: Just as the St. Patrick's Day Parade was once a unifying parade for the white European ethnic consensus (yes, it's true, darker folk like us were invited to the parade; in fact my sister once made the cover of the Daily News while marching in ti), the PR Day Parade has become its signifying sister for people o' color. La Laura is developing an interesting idea in her essay for Felix J.'s book that works on the tension in the Loiza parade between criollismo and afro-antillismo. Here in Nuyorico, all that is writ large, and it looks like our new identity here is tipping away from the Criollo. Although that rice and beans at La Fonda is still sitting quite comfortably in my expanding belly. (That's for all of you who think I'm looking so skinny lately.)

Que bonita bandera, my niggas.