Friends,

I have come to understand the reason why no one believes in God anymore. It is an ancient reason, going way back to the days when nature was anthropomorphized, when nature was human and acting out of emotion. The reason no one in L.A. believes in God is because in L.A. nature is not powerful--it is weak. Nature, by God, is a sissy. Can all God do is come up with easy-going sunshine? And all year long? I mean, come on, Lord. Show us your chest hair. Give 'em something, anything. Stop making it seventy-two and partly cloudy. Throw 'em something to tremble at. As for out here in Pennsylvania--God is buff. He is humungous clouds and sky, angry thunder, pretty flowers and forests. Alli and I have been to the woods. For her birthday we stayed in a castle built many years ago (not feudalism-long ago, because there wasn't any feudalism here, except in the South, among the ancestors of trashy whites) by a man named Joseph Sibley. A friend of mine, Eddie's uncle Rich (perfect name, eh, for one who owns a castle) let us stay with him for a night in his castle. It is in beautiful and big woods where trees are trees and men are men and God is God. And God can really get things going out there, you know, he can show us his stuff. There is a tremendous feeling of force when the morning is cold, just-colder-than-your-sweatshirt-can-handle cold, and you have to put on your shoes and socks and hope for the best. That is prayer. That is veneration. We who love God out here in the East understand God as a generous God, a loving God; not safe, but good (as C.S. Lewis would have said). We see the proof of his power in the mornings and in the change of the seasons, and in the cold shivers of night time darkness. God is bigger than I am. God's big arm moves through my afternoons in wind and dark clouds and then, in an instant, here are sun and birds and the feeling of forgiveness. God is bigger than all I can see, and he proves it. Not like for you wussies out on the West Coast. Your god is puny. Your god, if you can even call him a god, is no greater than Dallas Raines. "But," you respond, "Carlos, your argument is full of holes. There are people out in the East who do not believe in God. You can't go around saying that the East is full of theists just waiting, at the first sign of rain or sound of thunder, to drop to their knees in worship." And, you're right. I can't say that. There are atheists out here, too. I have met many of them. "So, why," you may ask, "are they atheistic?" Here is your answer: the problem of evil. How can you believe in a good God when it gets so damn cold? God in winter is a tyrant. I hear that during the winters, our loving God--loving shmoving--is about as nice as Hitler when he's hungry. And we're in for it. I mean, I am afraid, very very afraid. I want to make sacrifices to him. I want to give him some things in order to get my California winter back. Too bad I don't know any virgins.

As I said, Alli and I went to a castle for her birthday. It was a nice trip up through Franklin, PA, a place where there is only one street and a river. It was pretty everywhere, rich and thorough. Some of the leaves were already changing, and while we were driving John Lennon's "Imagine" came on the radio and I felt like crying at all the beauty surrounding me. Then, to get to the castle, we had to drive into the woods for a couple of miles down a dirt road. There was a small creak next to the road and many things to look at. We pointed out for each other the birds and plants and things all over and around us. Then it happened: thumpthump! Alli looked in the rearview and hit the brakes. "Oh no! No! No! No!" she screamed. Then I turned around to look out the back window. I saw a poofy tail flailing back and forth, back and forth, getting slower and slower. Alli had run right over a squirrel's head. When I walked back to see what all had happened, I noticed that it was already dead, so I rolled it with my foot to the side of the road.

This was very sad, because I knew this was Alli's worst nightmare, to kill an animal. I walked slowly from the car to the squirrel, and took my time walking back from the squirrel to the car, because I knew she was crying in the car, and I wanted to give her some time. It is against her nature to take the life of an animal, and I knew she felt very guilty, but that she needed some time, just a little time. By the time I got back to the car her face was wet and she was very quiet. I was sad too, and we drove the rest of the way without talking, only holding hands and me rubbing her neck and back. This was a very sad and special moment.

Then we went hunting.

Actually, we had a great, easy time up in the woods, after, of course, the squirrel incident. This is a rare kind of experience for someone from California. Big Bear is all I know of the forest, and there there are all kinds of trees that you or make you sticky. Here, though, the trees and things were something else, tall and light green and friendly and peaceful. They wave with the breeze. They are almost as kind as Shel Silverstein's Giving Tree.

Here is some good news: Alli and I have finally met a friend, a real friend, someone we will talk about from now on in our phone conversations with you, and whom you may one day meet for yourself. He is kind. His name is Ian. He is a good listener and talker, and we have some classes together. He is good at drinking beers with me; he keeps up and then we get loud about our writing and we say to each other (in Ernest Hemingway's way, not in hip-hop's way) how "tight" we feel, and we buy each other a pitcher, and then only good things seem to happen. Also, to say something about his compassion, he gave Alli a birthday gift, a how-to book for decorating, for our new house. This is what I mean by kind. I was the only one out here who would be able to spend the day with her, and he gave her a present, to make her feel a little more at home. He also drove me around the night before Alli's birthday, to make sure all the plans and gifts were set up right. He was sick, but he agreed to do it, because he understands a man's need to seem like a good husband. This makes him double-good, for me and for Alli.

I hope you're all well out there. We both love you very much.

Carlos

Friends,

There are things in this world that are not things in this world, things that we do not miss, things that are not there. For example--the Mona Lisa's eyebrows. You would think that Leo DaVinci would have put them in, him being some kind of a so-called genius, but he did not put them in, and we never knew what how. It is still considered a masterpiece even though there essential parts of the face are missing. And, even though they probably should have been, our excpections were not disappointed. And there are other things we don't miss too: good ideas in the sermons of evangelical preachers is another good example. Somehow Christians and churches get along just fine without them. Where have they gone? Were they even ever there? Who knows. "Let's have a marketing campaign instead!" What else, what else? Oh yes. Jeans. For me, I never ever wore jeans. You probably haven't noticed. In the time you have known me, I have not worn jeans. It doesn't run through your mind to ask, "Why doesn't Carlos wear jeans? He should really look into buying a pair of Lee's." Now, my jeanlessness was not intentional. I never set out against wearing them. But I did not wear jeans, ever, for the past, oh, ten years or more years. And I do not know why. I can think of no good reason. But there was my wardrobe in all its jeanless glory. Now, though, I do. I wear them. In fact, I wear two pairs now. They were purchased for me by my mother at a garage sale, so they are even used jeans, cool looking rock n roll star call me Robert Plant I'm so damn hip in these Levi 501 blue jeans. It is a major step in my life, or at least it feels that way. I put them on when I received them in the mail (thanks, Mom), and I pranced around my apartment in them. Alli was at work when they arrived, so I had to ask Ray how they looked. He jumped up several times and then he went outside and peed. Not knowing how to discern this response, I hopped on a bus and went to the university to check my mailbox and walk around in my new hip jeans. I was very nervous getting on the bus. Would they notice? Would they stare at me? After all, these jeans do look kind of silly to me. I am not used to my body having anything to do with relaxed-fit anythings. I am used to old-man slacks, gray. I sat down in the bus and nobody said anything to me--I did not receive any compliment, or criticism. They took me as one of their own, which I thought was a good sign. Then, I ran into a friend named Josh. We walked along together and he did not say anything about my jeans either. Good news, I suspect. I began to wonder if jeans could be a part of my new Pittsburgh Persona. I can make like I've worn jeans my whole life. By the time I rode the bus back home, I had even forgotten about my jeans. But I will tell you an episode on the bus that knocked my socks off.

When you get on the bus, it's like everybody is having a bad day. No one says anything to you. It's even against the law to have a conversation with the driver. It smells like many humans, all their ten thousand smells combined into one, nasty, something-in-between-Ray's-pee-and-coffee-and-peppermint-candy kind of smell. This bus, by the way, was full. All of our smells mixed into one. I took a seat, one of the few remaining, next to a bald (shaved-bald, hip-hop-bald, Michael-Jordon-bald) man. I felt awkward because those seats are very close together. It's like peeing at the adjacent urinal, being that close to another individual. I reserve that space for people I want to cuddle with, not for people I want to hold my breath next to. Anyway, like I said, everyone was having a bad day. That's how buses are. Faces look straight ahead; people do not talk; everybody looks hungry, and late for something. It went on like this for twenty minutes. The young lady across the aisle, next to me, had her iPod in her ears. In this story, her name will be Hannah. The woman in front of Hannah (let's call her Stacy), was in green pants and running shoes. The man next to me, Duncan, was not saying anything. The bus rode along, stopping at certain pre-determined points, letting some people off and allowing some people to get on. Mostly, though, the bus kept filling up. I noticed that Stacy's face was full of frustration, and she was, by her body language, silently letting people know about her frustration. She put her hand to her mouth, cynically, and kept leaning into the space that filled the aisle. Then I noticed that Hannah was laughing. Then Duncan made a gesture, which made me look at the young man sitting next to Stacy, Gerald. Gerald had fallen asleep. This was sad, because sitting up while falling asleep, unless you are next to a loved-one, is a kind of tyrrany. It rules you and exploits you and objectifies you in ways contrary to human nature. Gerald had fallen asleep, and kept tipping over, onto Stacy. Stacy, in response, leaned away from him, like I said, into the space in the aisle. And Hannah and Duncan and I began to laugh, belly-laugh, at the situation. Eventually, the entire bus picked up on our little drama, and everybody's bad day had turned into a good day. Every time the bus stopped, or turned, we all holding our breath would watch, full of suspense, to see whether Gerald would fall onto Stacy. Stacy exclaimed, "This is the first time I've taken the bus, and I hate it!" And we all laughed. Gerald was unmoved by this, off in his world of dreams and fantasy, wavering between the window on his left and Stacy's shoulder on his right. Finally, someone offered Stacy another seat--people scootched together to make room for her, and she accepted. And now no one was sitting next to Gerald, poor guy. That seat had been abandoned, and for good reason. But then, at the next stop, some new folks got on the bus, and we all with great anticipation, in the way of a classroom making fun of a substitute teacher, watched to see who would sit next to Gerald. And then, a little girl, Teresa, took that seat. We all erupted in great laughter. But, composing ourselves, understanding that such innocence as Teresa's should not be exploited, she doesn't deserve the weight of all our attention and laughter (much less Gerald's entire body) upon her. We made sure she found the safety of another seat, explaining to her the drama she had so far missed. But the story is not over! No! Then at the next stop, a man, Fred, stepped on the bus. He was bigger, and he had hair not like Elvis Presley, but hair like the people who could say they knew him before he was famous, their hair these days. A helmet. He had a mustache. He had good posture, and a terrific belt buckle. And he took the seat next to Gerald. I don't know why we did this (we had just saved the little girl from certain Gerald-imposed doom), but not so with Fred: we all watched gaily while Gerald, still fast asleep, swayed back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, while Fred tried to understand the murmurs of laughter all around him. He was thinking, "Why all the laughter? Is there a booger in my nose? Is my back hair showing? Did I forget to polish my belt buckle?" He took out his comb and fixed his hair. But we kept laughing. His shuffled his feet. We kept laughing. He looked around. And we kept at it. This poor man was completely in the dark. No one ever told him. Then it hit me very hard: we are together now. This world is wonderful. The human race, acting together, laughing together, this is brilliance, this is a kind of love. All we need to get along are two people who don't understand what is going on (Bush and Blair?)--all we just need are two people to point at, and laugh at (yes, Bush and Blair. Definitely.). That's as close to world peace as we're gonna get.

As bus rides go, this was magnificence.

(Alli says that the political statement above is inappropriate, and I agree. The truth is, I have no idea about politics or our invasion of Vietnam or whereever we are right now. Pardon me, Republicans. I apologize to you, and to my Republican wife.)

Speaking of Republicans, Hope Moreland, that is my mother-in-law, sent Alli a birthday present. Alli's birthday is on 29 September. She turns a whopping 24 this time around. Included in the box of gifts (which Alli has not yet opened) was a present for Ray. Ray got a sweater. Now, as the manly half of this family, I thoroughly objected to his wearing some girly sweater. He's a dog. He has instincts in him to hunt, to kill. Not to wear frills and drink hot cocoa. He's a ferocious beast, not a GAP pansy. But then he put it on. He walked around a little. He looked really really cute. The sweater is, honest to God, to die for. I love our dog and his sweater. It's a little bit like a turtleneck and a little bit like a bonnet. I'm going to buy a matching set for Alli and me. We'll be the family walking together in the park all wearing green sweaters. The Delgado Family is an Each Other Family.

But we are not self-sufficient, something we are beginning to understand. Here is a truth: I really miss home. I mean, I really miss it these days. And so does Alli. We really miss where we came from. Ray doesn't give a shit because he is a dog. A small story: we were out last week. We went to a blue's bar where they have bands play everyday. The band when we were there was all old white guys who played the wanker blues. Beer is only a buck, and I had my fill. It made me miss home, though, very much. This was the first live band (with the exception of a couple of guys in Colby, Kansas, on our trip out here) I'd seen in a long time. It was loud and beautiful and I really missed home. I missed screaming at a good drum fill, or clapping when no one else does just because you know that the guitar solo was as badass as they come. "A beer in each hand and a smile in between," I missed my friends. I especially missed Gary and Mike and Bearden and Dave and Danny and Bob that night, my let's-go-out-and-watch-them-rock friends. I missed my home, my Fullerton. I missed my long conversations with many good people. Alli and I are making it, and loving each other, and we are here--fully here--in our new place, but we miss the faces of the people we love. We want to see you and talk to you and buy you a beer and watch you talk about any old thing that you want. We want to see your little mannerisms and the stupid jokes and the way we feel cared about around you, really really cared for.

Last thing: Buying a house is not dating a person. Although in some ways it is analogous, escrow is not the engagement. If you were to break up, there is no need to spend time alone, recovering, eating chocolates and calling your friends. So we didn't. We instead went straight for the rebound relationship. The first escrow fell through, because our shady sellers "found out" about a judgement against the house, one which made them owe a lot of money to some company, and they could not sell the house until it was paid. These are the same cheap-o's that were trying to pretend not to know what we were talking about when we told them about the leak in the plumbing. Jerks. But the day after it fell through, we found another house, a better house, a house closer to school and one with a basement and all hardwood floors and backyard and all the things, like kitchens and toilets and ceilings, that come with a house. We are in Escrow #2 now, and we think we just might get this one.

Thanks for putting up with all my rantings. It's good to feel like we're connecting with the people we love.

Carlos

Friends,

This alone deserves much attention: I received a letter yesterday cordially inviting Alli and me to the 14th annual Students of Color Dinner Series. Apparently, I am colored. And the Afro American Music Institute will be there to play jazz. Apparently, as a colored person, I like jazz. Our theme this year will be "The Graduate School Journey: Intersections and Boundaries." We will talk about our coloredness and how it feels to be colored. According to the year's calendar, in February I will find out who is "the real me": leader, scholar, or community member. Truly, this was a shock. I never thought of myself as colored, or not colored. And 'colored,' that's such a weird word, isn't it? Colored. I feel like I'm in a Mark Twain short story, or Buckwheat's little brother. Colored. Isn't that, like, an old word that doesn't get used anymore, one you'd have to explain to Gramma--after she makes a loud remark about "that colored boy down the block,"--that she's being way inappropriate? I mean, that word. That word, I hate that word. It makes me feel weird. I hate that word. And I don't want to go to the dinner, but maybe I do. I'd go because I was invited, and would like to see what this is about, and making judgements is not nice, but I wouldn't go because I hate that our culture even does this sort of thing, plus I grew up white, mostly. I'm as white as they come. I surf. I say 'totally.' My students in Lynwood called me 'Gringo.' They couldn't believe that my best friend's name was Chad. "Chad?" they said, laughing every time I said his name. They had never even met a 'Chad' before. "He WHITE, Mr. Delgado! YOU WHITE, Mr. Delgado!" Plus, my wife is of English descent. She's got green eyes and white skin. Would I be considered, I'd wonder, walking around the party, like, a some kind of Ecuadorean Tio Tom? Have I betrayed my heritage? My head sweats when I think about it--all of a sudden I feel the race question building up inside of me, something I don't think about ever, and am I treating it so poorly? Are these things things to think about for real? But, then again, this is a graduate school event, and somehow I'm not too sold on what's going on. Here is my issue: we are all in graduate school (I say "we" right now, assuming I am a part of this group). How can we go about reciting Langston Hughes, talking about what happens to a dream deferred, not inviting whitey to our dinner because he isn't colored like we are? We're in effing grad school! Two more years and we'll be in tweed coats smoking pipes and crossing our legs in front of the fire place discussing some big shot smart guy stuff with a group of students hanging on our every word. We'll have brick houses in a suburb. Dream deferred my black ass!

(If I just lost friends with that last paragraph, please forgive me. I am only joking around, even though the invitation is real, and my questions surrounding it are real...my jokes are jokes, only that.)

Alli drove Ray and me to Starbucks this morning. He loves the car, finally. He leans his head out the window and feels the cold air blow on his ears and face. His paws stick out the window. He is very cute to watch. He likes to sit in the driver's seat, I don't understand why. It was a pleasure this morning, watching Ray sit in Alli's lap while she drove, it's my family, these two are my family, Ray with his face out the window and Alli singing along to Wilson Phillips on the radio. Wait--what? Did I say? Yes. I did. I said Wilson Phillips. Plus, she knew the words. She was going crazy. She closed her eyes on the high notes. I don't know this woman anymore, I thought to myself. Who is she. Who is this woman.

My first couple of weeks of classes are over, as you might expect. I am in a kind of heaven out here, taking these classes. We read stuff and we talk about it, and somehow I am earning a degree for my time. I have three classes, two of which are really great. One, however--and I can't get around this in my head--is very scary. The professor speaks seven or nine languages fluently. One of them is Arabic. One is French. One is Spanish. He mouths off in Portuguese and berates us in German. We are studying power and power structures, ideology, or something, I have a hard time keeping up, because he reads to us a thirty-page lecture every week, properly pronouncing words from different languages, like Al-Quaida (is that how we spell it?). When he says it there is a pop in his tongue or in the bottom of his throat or maybe saying that word properly includes cracking your knuckles. I don't know. I don't understand him sixty to ninety percent of the time. The rest of the time (like during roll call and the fifteen-minute breaks), though, I'm having a good time.

Alli, Ray and I are making friends, here and there, which means soon we won't even feel like updating you on anything. We'll be too busy with our Pittsburgh friends doing Pittsburgh stuff, stuff you wouldn't get because we're in the 'Burgh. We hung out with a family on Labor Day, the Morrises, Greg & Laura and their kids Jillian & Hillary and the dog Sidney. We had very good corn, some of the best corn I've ever eaten. We had Turkey burgers. I talked to Jillian about her new dictionary and Alli took a lot of pictures of Hillary, who is only fourteen months old and very beautiful. And, Ray spent the better part of the six hours we were there trying to hump Sidney. It was an awkward afternoon, trying to talk around the birds & the bees question in front of a six-year-old, but she kept saying, "Eww, what's that red thing? Why is Ray smelling Sidney there? Is Ray trying to get a piggy back ride?" Alli and I had fun, and I KNOW Ray did, but I think we left Greg and Laura behind with a six-year-old with a ton of questions, so it was really good to get out of there when we did.

A few days ago Alli took Ray out for his morning poop. When she came back she said, "Guess what I found?" and I said, "What?" and she said that she thought she found a sandwich bag of marijuana in the parking lot, all tied up in twistie ties. Of course she and I could only guess as to what it was, only having heard about this maryjewanna in the past. We guessed because, after all, we do live in the ghetto, a place where these sorts of things get passed around and sold and ditched when the cops are on the move-in. Of course, we hadn't any real experience with the stuff before, so she brought it up to the apartment. We decided it probably wasn't weed, though, because no one would lose that much weed, would they? We thought not. We probably weren't holding weed. It was probably not weed. I mean, surely it wasn't. We looked at each other. We held it in our hands, and there was no way we were going to know by holding it. So we decided to smoke it, just to make sure. Just to make sure it wasn't weed. We wanted to be absolutely positive.

The above paragraph is a lie. Mostly. Alli did find the weed in a bag while walking Ray for his morning poop. That part is true. She did come up and tell me she found it. But come on, we're two responsible people We aren't going to go smoke weed--no. We're not kids anymore. We're grownups. We cooked it in brownies instead.

That was a lie too. It's just fun to talk about marijuana, isn't it? And that's all we did--talk about the marijuana. We figured it belonged to the stoners on the first floor whose windows are always given to what Jimi called purple haze. We didn't put it into our bodies. We wouldn't do that. So we put it in Ray's, and watched him laugh for three hours. It was awesome.

By the way, things look shaky with the house purchase at this point. We are hung up on the furnace issue. I have never before been a part of a furnace issue, but here I am, partaking in a furnace issue. I guess the furnace is broken--something our home inspector found--and they won't replace it because they don't have the money to, which I think is a crock of sh, so they had a 'furnace repairman' say that, yes, indeed, the furnace is cracked, but will be good for another couple of years. Of course, something I just learned this morning is that cracked furnaces leak carbon monoxide, something I don't want to live next to, because I would die. I'd rather not send a canary or parakeet or whatever ahead of me into my garage everytime I want to go out there.

By the way, if you're interested in a really great author to read, look up Charles Baxter's The Feast of Love. Effing amazing, my friends. It's a great book. He's got other books too, but that's the only one I've read of his that I can vouch for.

I hope you're all well. We still miss you very much.

Carlos