So it's Monday January 13th, 522 PM. Let me test.
Alright, continue. It's Monday, January 13th, 5.22 pm. I'm heading north on the 101. And I'm just passing the, well, I'm about to pass the 37 exit. It goes to Napa. And I've been listening to an episode on the Braceros, the controversial guest worker program by the young farmers podcast. I found it on Spotify, found it I think yesterday or day before yesterday. And it's very interesting. And it's made me think about how conception, the, how she actually makes it to Texas. And let me say. That has to be, you know, she, I mean, I could say she's undocumented and described her story that way. Which to me is a straightforward path, you know, to the plot. There's no question about how, you know, she was able to cross legally or illegally for that matter. But if I describe her as someone who was incognito, I think it makes it much more interesting that she saw the opportunity to take her brother's place. And yeah, and there's the duality of her and her brother. The, I would almost argue that they conceptually represent to have some a whole two spirits. Her brother is a fighter while she is a pacifist and a nurturer. And one who consoles her brother is confrontational. One would argue, you know, a budding revolutionary. He got in trouble with, by not keeping his mouth shut. And, you know, kind of criticizing the right people at the wrong time. And somehow he is put on, well, he is held so that he can be put on the train to the border. He is signed up for the guest worker program. And that's it. He's, he'll go, the idea is that they will put him on the train without any other documentation other than the fact that he is so and so. And once on that path, he will have no path to get home. He will be enslaved. And so, however, either conception and visit him in his detainment, right before he leaves and tries to help him escape. But what I need to figure out is why would she take his place, or perhaps at that point, yes, she would take his place because either as a kind of retribution, or run the risk of her family getting killed. And so, you know, all they have is their mother who is old and can't take care of herself. And they threaten to basically detain and torture her mother if she doesn't get on. But then this throws off the whole incognito. Just a voluntarily go incognito. Her situation has to be worse than and what she would suffer by going to Texas. So, I'm not so sure the revolutionary brothers is a good thing. The drunken gambling brother who gets in debt. Now, that's another way of doing it. And so, she runs because she's raped. Then, why would she ever? Yeah, I don't know. This is a hard because I mean what would cause a woman to change her identity other than the fact? Do I go with the suggestion that she believes she should play a kind of macho gender role? Or do I go with the I mean, in one way I can say she assumed an identity out of desperation. And that became the norm after a while and she just got used to it. I mean, perhaps she was shocked in the beginning. But it was easier to live as a woman than it was as a man. She was afraid, no sorry, it was easier to live as a man than as a woman. That means she had to hide as a man. Were people looking for a woman? Possibly. Maybe there is no brother at all and maybe she killed the man who was going to rape her. Right now, there is no problem. Wow. possibilities. I could maybe just kind of not include this because conception story isn't a digression. This is a significant digression. The purpose of conception is that she is the consoling force to Florence's mother. I can't believe we have figured that out of name for her yet. Florence's mother is a one of those tough angry teachers that looks at you as if you're already in trouble. Already believes you're going to make mistakes. And speaks to you as if you're going to, you know, as that. And when you do make a mistake, she feels justified. When you don't make a mistake, you know, you're pretty, you got lucky. It's rare. Don't think that it won't ever happen. It will. Just you wait. And when she attempts to teach English to the children of the undocumented and the children of the women of the body or the farms, she has to to hold back from screaming and yelling at them because they to her they represent the ultimate mistake. They represent a mistake in skin color. They represent a mistake in nationality. They represent a mistake by the fact that they had to leave their country and come to Texas to even get a surviving chance, a breath of air. It's almost like there to her this is she is supporting the welfare state in her job. And feels disgusted by it. So she screams and yells at them all the time. And what she doesn't understand is that, you know, slowly inside her, she's changing, but not for the better, for the worse. She's grown more and more diabetic with each day. And the low blood sugar combined with the hormonal imbalance of her later years is turning the tides on her. And it's causing the anger to get out of control. She has horrible outbursts, extremely low bouts, extremely intense bouts of depression. She'll cry in the middle of and when everyone's gone to bed, she'll just cry at her pillow. She'll cry over her quilts as she's making them. She begins to think her life is worthless. She begins to think that nobody, nobody, she is helping no one. She is feeling unimportant. She is feeling constant pain. The pain, the psychological pain is overwhelming to the point where she begins to think of taking her own life. And that's when she decides to take her husband's cult 45, I don't know anything about guns. And wait till no one's in the house and end it all. And she sat in that chair. She took a dining room chair and she cropped it out in the backyard and just sat there and stared at the sky and held the gun in her hand. It had one bullet loaded and it was in position but uncocked. She was trying to think of a reason to not do it and she couldn't do it. And so she sat there. And before she knew it, she had the gun to her forehead. She didn't remember what willed her muscles to do it. She couldn't even remember the moments from which the gun sat on her lap to the point where it's was pointed right at her temple. I'm pausing now.