Tonto is Spanish for fool – am I lower class, or lower caste?
Read Time:3 Minute, 52 Second
“beginning with the most pitiful and primitive Indians found by explorers, the Digger Indians of Nevada and Utah, Mr.Farb shows that even they are much above the highest non human primate“.
Elman Service, professor of anthropology
You may recall my attempt at a FB dialog with you over the weekend, World Traveler. May I call you that?
I recognize Mr Farb in you, World Traveler. Like him, you view reality as a gestalt rather than a simple truth, as those of us less educated than you see it. Too oblique, possibly? More bluntly, an academic might consider Mr Farb’s study warranted. One less estimable such as myself might consider it racist and stupid.
World Traveler, you advised that my poor understanding of the world was due to my reading books rather than directly experiencing the world through travel and living in other countries, and I am better for the knowledge. Your willingness to point out my shallowness in supporting a leader thought by many in the intelligentsia to be inimical to US interests was a worthy act, so worthy you repeated it several times. One unfortunate note is that the contempt you expressed for one so unworthy as myself was so thick that I could not gauge your political leaning – are you liberal or conservative? The fault in perception entirely mine, of course. In line with my misconception that the multinationals are based more on greed than service to humanity.
My poor attempt at dialog was conducted almost entirely with my mask on. You’re aware of the mask we wear, of course? One so literate as yourself surely has read Octavio Paz? You would of course know that we servants and slaves and submerged races wear a mask when among our betters? I did let that mask slip a bit in my last comment to you, forgive me. The real me surfaced briefly.
Did your family travel domestically as well, World Traveler? Arizona, perhaps? If so, it’s possible they crossed paths with mine. Some of my family made rugs to sell to Americans, travelers passing through to delight in our primitive ways. They may have even purchased a rug from Lucy Osorio.
Alas, there were none of your selfless Multinationals around to benefit a fifteen year old girl with three children. Perhaps your grandparent tipped her? She was very pretty, although her prettiness was affected when she was dragged by a horse and she lost an ear – oh I see concern, World Traveler. No, there were no tax dollars wasted on Lucy Osorio. Indian Health Services did not yet exist.
I shudder to point out to you, World Traveler, that there are many more like me, right here in Oakland. Black, White and Brown making the same poor choices I make. Where you choose travel and immersion in a local lifestyle to truly understand a culture, we choose reading books. When you opt for Williams Sonoma and Sharper Image, we opt for WalMart and swap meets. When you select hang gliding and kayaking for exercise, we select basketball in the schoolyard. Derision is the only course available to you, and you do it quite well.
Against your wise counsel, World Traveler, I choose not to leave the country. Your suggestion no doubt has merit, arising from your deep concern for those beneath you. Nevertheless I shall pass.
Should this ultimately unworthy post be read by you, World Traveler, I am honored and humbled.
Oh before I forget, World Traveler. Your dictum that I would not know the leader who preceded the one we spoke of, without googling? Right again, although at almost sixty years of age neither do I recall what I had for breakfast yesterday.
A draw at best.
They say Mama Lucy has been dead many years, killed by a drunken American and identifiable only by her arm. It’s not true, what they say. She lives within me still. She teaches of brother owl, how he watches over my children. She teaches me to listen to the wind as it whispers words of my ancestors, through her I learn to see God in the plants and rocks in the desert, in all His creation. She walks in beauty.
I whisper in her remaining ear, hoping she will laugh at the joke. An American has told me I should leave our land to learn of the world. But there is no laughter, no smile. Mama Lucy directs her gaze at her apron until she finishes rolling her cigarette, then she looks up at me and shares her thoughts.
What did she tell me? That’s between the two of us.
I ain’t Tonto.
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I too know people like this. Great job O-man!
Oso,
This is another excellent and timeless piece. Literary, philosophical and I would say spiritual if I had such a concept. I read it several times today and I usually have trouble getting all the way through a piece once.
The spiritual stuff seems to just crop up more lately,John.
I’d like to think there’s an invisible hand guiding me, but it may be the same one Adam Smith saw guiding the marketplace, nesting here since the Fed took over its role.
So I’m tooling around these internet toobs today, since I am home alone till Thursday and guess what I found? Ok, you all give up so I suppose I should tell you. Kind of goes along with Oso’s pitch perfect article here. Bryan Fischer from one of the, Focus on everyone else’s family except your own, groups has a breaking news story. Yes, apparently Native Americans disqualified themselves from this here white man’s land because wait for it…wait for it… ready, they did not accept Jesus as savior.
I won’t link to his Fischer’s horrid website, but I will link to JoeMyGod where I found the beginning of the discussion. Only because I like Joe’s place better, than some intolerant bigot who takes douchebaggery to whole new heights.
http://joemygod.blogspot.com/2011/02/american-family-association-native.html
Whoever it was who told you to “go back where you came from”, which someone obviously did, they can go shove it, and haul their most-likely, although I can’t confirm it, obviously, but I think I’m making a good guesstimate here: pale ass back across the Atlantic if they want to play that game.
You actually put it much nicer than I would have 🙂
I also missed that conversation, Oso.
Truly sad when a person defines their personality and who they want to be in the world by their purchase decisions.
I have also run in to a few and actually appreciate when they start talking like that. Especially when I haven’t known them for very long.
I figure they are doing me a favor by letting me know the type of person they are so I won’t waste anymore of my time in their company.
yep they tip their hand without knowing it huh?
Missed the conversation with ‘World Traveler’ but I can tell you for sure, as a person who has traveled some, I met people like him/her when I was out adventuring. Obnoxious snobs who immediately want to know where you have been and are shocked that you didn’t go somewhere else instead, “Paris in August, is the wrong time to be there, you should have gone in Spring”. I would rather have a beer/cup of coffee with a brown guy from Oakland than some of the pricks I ran into. Arrogant bastards.
Both the beer and the coffee are on me man,as well as the shrimp tacos!
Wow, Oso, kudos to you for trying to reason with such an exalted meathead! There are folks who have what I call an overdeveloped entitlement gene…very tiresome. I’ve had to cut some people loose from my life because of theirs…
Some years ago, I created an art assemblage called “Didn’t They Know What Tonto Meant?”. After I moved to the bay area 30 years ago and learned some Spanish, I was shocked beyond words that Tonto was the name of the LR’s “Indian side-kick”…
I never understood it,Maureen.Inside joke maybe? Like naming your kid Glen Beck.
Mama Lucy is my grandma, not my mom. Both are still with me, though not walking on Mother Earth.
Uggh, I have friends like this person, think they are so much better than everyone because of what they have. People like this make me want to slap the taste right out of their mouths. Here’s the ‘rents talking through me to you Oso. There is not one person better than you on this earth and there is not one person lesser than you, learn that and live it, you will be fine in the days ahead Jess. Now granted, they wouldn’t call you Jess, but you know what I mean.
I wouldn’t worry about this world traveler, you know everyone on the internets doesn’t know you’re really a cat. Probably some moron sitting in his mom’s basement with cheeto stains on his holey drawers.
Thank you Jess,and thanks to the ‘rents within you!