Behind the Pages Interviews Sergio Troncoso

Diane Goshgarian of Behind the Pages interviews Sergio Troncoso at 22-CityView in Cambridge, Massachusetts on November of 26, 2019. They have an in depth discussion about A Peculiar Kind of Immigrant's Son, particularly the first three stories, "Rosary on the Border," "New Englander," and "A Living Museum of Love."

https://youtu.be/NFn6fTS8ncU

Mysterious Creatures

I have been reading a fabulous little book, The Mythical Creatures Bible, by Brenda Rosen, about dwarves, unicorns, Greek vs. Chinese vampires, Egypt’s Seth and Horus, Tibet’s wrathful protectors, Kachinas, Mayan Jaguars, and Quetzalcoatl. Perhaps I have done this intentionally, to get away from the idiocy of the healthcare debate, particularly on that paranoid cable channel, Fox News.

Yes, I tortured myself by watching a few hours of that alternate reality of mysterious and evil government plots, the grand wisdom and beneficence of big business, the machinations of the archenemy Obama, and blond, pithy talking-heads who know everything by knowing nothing. I wanted to see what the fuss was all about, but watching Fox News was indeed terrifying, while falling into the world of Child-eaters and Trolls was a delight. An ‘intentionally foxy, warped view of reality’ makes little sense, and is less fun, than a fantasy. The former attempts to fool me, while the latter edifies me about human nature.

As a child in El Paso, I loved the night. I imagined mysterious creatures lurking outside our doors, in the backyard chasing our German shepherds, Lobo and Prince, or perhaps on the roof emanating strange noises, afloat with the desert wind. I roamed the rooms of our house on San Lorenzo at ungodly hours, and my mother said I was a duende.

The darkest hours prompt the imagination of those ready to be prompted, and not already dead to the world of possibilities. I also think certain streets, houses, rooms, and corners elicit my impish as well as my wildest imaginations. It’s the darkness of a place, the absolute quiet that forebodes danger or the cryptic, and the remoteness of a situation, that you are alone and must rely on only your senses to escape if necessary. These characteristics transform places into fertile ground for the imagination.

Part of adulthood, the bad part, is when you stop looking for these places. Under a bunk bed with your child as you experience the magic of a good story. The reading light a small but steady beacon. The mind an unexplored country. The sore limbs of the street abandoned for a moment. This is one of the many things I cherish about my children, Aaron and Isaac: they have reminded me of being a duende, of seeing the world with unleashed curiosity and possibility, of wanting to learn about the struggle of heroes against demons.

After reading The Mythical Creatures Bible, in keeping with my current mood, I also reread Garcia Lorca’s lecture, “Theory and Play of the Duende.” Lorca talks about being possessed by an “authentic emotion,” within “dark sounds,” as when an artist or writer in a moment or a story ‘has duende.’ Different from a Muse or an Angel, ‘having duende or being with duende’ reaches into the artist’s blood, to take momentary possession of what calls you primordially. For Lorca: “The spirit of the earth.”

So I reread Lorca to think about the mysterious force he meant, even though he claims no philosopher can explain it. I believe him, but that doesn’t stop me from struggling with his words and possible meanings, from exercising my curiosity, and for a moment positing an answer I find worthwhile.

The process reaches deep within yourself, which I think Nietzsche advocated as well, to find a world, to experience your separation from the inanimate, to unleash the joy and heartache of being human, a place where skill and struggle meet ecstatically. I don’t know if that is where Lorca’s duende lives, but it is where I find I am alive.

A Cool February Night

Tonight inspires me. It is the first Monday in February, and the weather has turned suddenly mild. Winter, for a brief day, seems all so suddenly in the past in Manhattan, and spring whispers from this cool breeze off the Hudson River. I have been sheltered against the bitter cold for too long; I have drunk, like a magic elixir, this comely breeze on the sidewalk at night. I love the night. I love a night like tonight. I wish the world were made of only nights like these.

I was wondering how living in crazy, expensive Manhattan has affected me as a writer, as an investor, as a father, as a husband. I was wondering about John Updike, and how he really didn’t like New York City that much, even as he wrote hundreds of stories and essays and reviews for the New Yorker. Updike preferred rural Massachusetts, and I can understand why. It is difficult to keep the City at bay, to gather that peace, simply to stop all the business of the city, its pressures, and its people from dominating your psyche. A night like tonight, however, reminds you that it is possible to find that special time to work even in this City.

I remember when I lived in Ysleta, less than a mile from the Mexican-American border, that I would sneak out of the bed, as a child, to roam at night. I mean at night night, when it’s three in the morning, and not a car is on the street, not a whisper can be heard behind closed doors, not a single dog is awake to bark at the moon. Just like tonight, I would listen. I didn’t expect ghosts. I wasn’t afraid. I didn’t jump at odd sounds. I just listened, and my mind would feel a presence (this mirror of the self?), and I was enthralled.

The nature in front of me, known and not quite known in the dark, elicited my attention, invoked its mystery, and called me to it. In the harshness of the day, the rooms in Ysleta, just like in Manhattan, seemed all so boring. But at night, suddenly, the chairs, a river’s glimmer through a window, the sky darkly gray, with stars, all of it had life. What do we lose when everything is all too clear in our heads, all too understood? Where is imagination when we are seduced to think that all there is is only what can we can see?

I love the night, because it brings me back to my self. I love this Manhattan night, because it allows me to soar, and to work, and to try something I could never do during the day, something I might keep to myself as that which is unknown, yet still alluring. This night is full of wonder.

I almost feel as if I’m in another favorite place, the middle of the forest of the Litchfield hills. In another night night, amid hundreds of miles of maples and oaks and mountain laurel, with these breezes that slice like razors at your skin. We go there, too, to amble along country roads, but not nearly enough as I want, and perhaps Updike was right about living away from what is all-too-obvious, all-too-loud.

The night night brings me back to a recurrent dream, a dream I have not had for years, but which would rarely leave me in Ysleta. I am sitting on a beam, something that perhaps feels like a beam, yet I cannot see it. Clouds surround me. Clouds or a mist. And I am falling. First one way. Then the other. It is the falling, that thrills me. I am falling into the night, and I am there to feel the darkness as it touches my skin.