Literature, art, a good salad, a nice walk, the city view from my room, good conversations, the company of my family and friends, growth, learning from the past...
Antonin Artaud before he was institutionalized, my father as a young man, Paul Bowles, Nahui Olin, Jean Duval (Baudelaire's black mistress), Chavela Vargas, Simone Weil, Marguerite Duras, Jean Seaberg, Herman Melville, Flipper, Alejandra Pizarnik, Santa Teresa de Avila, San Juan de la Cruz, Federico Garcia Lorca and La Chilindrina.
Chabela Vargas, Caetano Veloso, Janis Joplin, Edith Piaf, La Lupe, Juliette Greco, Billie Holiday, Chet Baker, Miles Davis, Nina Simone, Julieta Venegas, Serge Gainsbourg, Jane Birkin, Dave Garza, Los Panchos.
La Dolce Vita; Sunset Boulevard; Double Indemnity; Hiroshima, Mon Amor; Perdida; Asphalt Jungle; Salon Mexico; Eyes Without a Face; Mama Roma; Touch of Evil; Viridiana;Belle de Jour; Bonnie and Clyde; The Piano Teacher; Dancer in the Dark.
I don't have a television.
Marguerite Duras' The Lover, Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary, Nabokov's Lolita, Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse, Alvaro Mutis' the Adventures and Misadentures of Maqroll, Short stoires by Julio Cortazar, Paul Bowles' The Sheltering Sky, Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, anything by Flannery O'Connor, Baudelaire's The Flowers of Evil, Rimbaud's Illuminations; The collected poems of Cesar Vallejo, Rosario Castellanos, Sylvia Plath, Alejandra Pizarnik, Jorge Luis Borges, Weldon Kees, Louise Bogan...OK, that's enough.
I'm not fond of this idea because I think it's often trivialized and turned into something corny, but if I had to name a few "heroes" the people who come to mind are my Mom and Dad, Subcomandante Marcos, Mexican writer Carlos Monsivais, Historian Rudy Acuna, Dolores Huerta, the writer Alicia Partnoy, Maxine Waters. Also, anyone who resists and works against the lies and arrogant stupidity of Bush and Co.