Boy, well, not all of us are here to see me.
I was coming into the doors and two
of the students who were late said
is this were Gary Soto's speaking?
I said Yes.
OK.
I feel a bit crowded up here.
Oh goodness.
OK.
Thank you all for inviting me.
I've had a great two days while I've been here,
and I want to read from this, which I read from last night.
And I think I was a young man here that I
promised I would give this to.
These are collector's items that were
bought for the [INAUDIBLE].
But I just wanted to read you something here
that I wrote about.
I used to work.
Yeah.
Is that good?
Yeah?
OK.
I used to work in the fields.
I used to I used to work in the fields,
and so here's what I wrote about that since they asked me
to read something on Mr Powell.
Thirst was on me from my first step
in the field, clenched it's fist in my stomach
and demanded water.
Thirst was a master of day and night.
It could make you wither.
The one necessity I had to have was water.
Sometimes working all day in 100 degree heat,
I hallucinated enough water for me to drink for a lifetime.
Waterfalls poured off the chili plants.
My perspiration spattered cropped leaves
that morphed into ladles glimmering with water.
My lungs and tongue lost their aches and time
seemed to get lost somewhere, to float around
over the fields like a bird that had nothing to do.
As sweat dripped down my brow and back and everything
seemed aloft on the air when the illusions came.
I couldn't hear anything, couldn't taste anything,
couldn't see anything, and I had no clue where I was at.
I was put in a place where no one else was.
I was all alone.
And I was happy and pleased, and I finally
thought I'd reach the paradise.
I've been working for all these days,
working all my life for this place,
and it finally came to me in this muddy field
with fleas and flies and wasps and all sorts of flying
bugs biting and itching at me.
Here it came landing on my drenched t-shirt
and shading my eyes for a moment, this eternal moment
whisking me off.
Every nerve had a calmness I never experienced, never even
realized such peace existed or was there
because no one ever told me about it.
There was no tent healer ever preached a place
like this that came to me when I was at my lowest,
and I couldn't take anymore.
I couldn't bend anymore.
I couldn't work anymore.
I couldn't believe in anything anymore.
I knew my illusions weren't real,
but I couldn't help but look and stare
and lick my lips at the image fading
into shimmering heat waves.
And I'd keep on bending, and I'd keep
on picking as thirst nested between my toes
flowing up my thighs and pelvis, clawing with a deep hunger
and dark that ground itself in my bones
and gave no rest, no mercy.
At first it made me believe I was the worst off human being
in the world, that no one in the world was worse than me.
It was that kind of thirst, that kind
of despair that came all over me and didn't let me go.
I was its prisoner, and I belonged to it
as if it was saying you're going to be thirsty
all your life, Jimmy.
It owned me completely, and that was how I lived.
I worked my life around it, made my dreams around it,
decided on plans around thirst, always
kept it in front of my eyes and in my mind.
I never once got up at dawn and didn't
have to think about thirst.
Never once did I look at the horizon
and not think about thirst, and no matter
how many glasses of water I gulped it
seemed to grow off each glass.
And it became bigger and larger always one wanting more,
but when I was busted along the border
and had my freedom taken from me,
I never had a thirst so fierce as my soul thirst.
I thirst for life as mine was being
drained when the handcuffs were put on in the bars were shut.
My inflamed mouth begged for a drop of freedom.
Thirst for liberty, burn in the air in my lungs,
inching it's way everywhere on me.
Shriveling in every pore, a rasp coughing in my soul,
stinging at my throat like scorpions maddened by a poker
as I remembered my free life and all the insignificant things
like just taking a walk, sipping coffee
in the morning on the porch, watching the Yuma sunrise,
crawling around in dirt as I designed people's gardens
and landscaped their yards.
It was all gone.
And I would miss my work boots.
My smelling leafy and dusty after a day's work.
I had yearned for the softness of my girlfriends kisses,
caressing the firm curves of her legs when we made love.
Her playfully slapping my hands when
I tried to snap her buttons.
Catching my hands under her blouse
or pulling her zipper down, she stopped me
and then she teased me to continue.
Lord, I miss all that.