July 5, 1987-San Antonio Express-News

What we need are hideways

Travel is educational, so it is stated and assumed. Travel broadens one's perspective about how other people look at the same phenomena. It is a marvelous learning strategy, one which has historically been at the disposal of the powerful and rich, and once in a great long while within the reach of the working class and poor. Sometimes a people has to travel in order to survive. They migrate from one end of the nation to the other, and in some cases these migrant workers even traverse international spans like Italian, Arabic and Spanish workers do throughout Europe. Such migrants seldom get to enjoy the benefits of travel for like most salespersons, migrant workers flit from one place to the other in the frenzy of seeking employment or responding to tight schedules.

Limited confines

They get to see a world from within the confines of migrant farm camps, ethnic ghettos and work slots in greasy-spoon cafes, while salespersons get to slump tiredly around in air-conditioned hotel rooms or to escape into hotel lounges while marking time until the next flight. The ennui can be devastating, for the only outlets are sometimes merely more of the same consumer mass cultural centers of changelessness.

There are so many ways in which Iowa replicates the other states. Our nation is a concatenation of fast-food and other sundry establishments which reflect our national penchant for assimilation, for sameness. The same kind of arches depict the same kind of chemical concoctions delivered in the same kind of plastic foam containers, with the same aromas of blandness as we frenetically strive to arrive at the same common denomination. Sameness affects everyone, for it has become an entrenched value. One does not have to go to Iowa or Illinois, nor to California or New Jersey. Every city has the same eateries, signs and displays.

Location unimportant

The same music plays on their radios, while the same actresses spout the same third-grade clichés on the soaps, and it seldoms matters where one is. In spite of our modem penchant for sameness - perhaps a malady which has always affected all empires - there is also a crying need for diversity, for the inherent power of celebration which new creations portend. There is a resilient chord in our humanity which speaks to our need for refreshment, for novelty.

It can. be found in out-of-the-way places which do not cater to franchised America; small businesses like Rendon's Ice House at Calaveras and Cincinnati Avenue, or Tacoland on Grayson Street. Like Ringo's on Blanco Road, or the Blanco Cafe and Cris Madrid's, as well as Rolando's on Hildebrand Avenue. There are hideaways everywhere in the world which continue seeking their own level without so much as caring to join the neoned world of franchises.

Another America

There are places on Alameda in El Paso which speak to another America, and there are also such havens in Albuquerque, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Newark, Richmond, Va., and Cattle. Montreal has its out-of-the-way bistros which reflect the joy of serenity, the means through which people can sit, drink coffee and while away time in timeless conversations about the state of our human condition. Mexico City has those places, as well as Amsterdam and San Franciso, and those kinds of places give us the means to rejuvenate ourselves as we relax and take time off from the time-consuming demands of our work. Art Solomon, a Native American elder, spoke eloquent reams about our human need to walk in balance. "Culture is power, it is the beauty and the sacredness of the Creation," Solomon said.

'Vessels of meaning'

We are given the opportunity as individuals to become vessels of meaning to return back to the spirit world. "Each of us, at our conception, was given the gift of realizing our meaning, so that all our differences could help us become better (human) beings. "There is enough on this sacred earth for everyone's need but not enough for everyone's greed, and we have the power to choose to live with the creation or against the creation," Solomon continued

The ideas expressed by Solomon can be heard in many places, for many do subscribe to notions which speak of culture being a venue through which we can hold dialogue about human sociocultural problems. Human beings are more interconnected with one another than is generally believed.

The arenas wherein people actuallv speak with one another are permeated with unspoken sentiments, as well as with the folk wisdom of a people's experience.

Those migrant workers do voice their concerns, for they do think and they do create culture. So do salespersons and others we tend to bunch together in the rhetoric of sameness.

The same target

Our modem impacted society is ever reeling from the urgency in peoples' voices, from the outbursts of anger and frenzy lashing back at the cookie-cutter factories which attempt to make all humanity function on cue.

The Solomons of the world are on target, and it is the same target of countless poets and activists from the multicultural cross-racial and ethnic enclaves of our nation, of all nations.

We need to take time to celebrate, and in celebrating we need to create liberating cultural spaces where we can marvel together with all life. We are all caretakers of Mother Earth, and we must somehow use our individual and community human empowerment creatively to reflect the richness of our diversity. It is a fine journey, in spite of our problems.