"We have no illusions. The children of the streets will not see Alegria. Laughter is still a luxury they cannot afford. Tonight, our cries of joy will become screams of rage that millions of young hearts will again freeze in the gutters of our goodwill. May Alegria become a rallying cry for those of us who have a voice." 1

Alegria (1)
Como la luz de la vida
Alegria
Como un payaso que grita
Alegria Del estupendo grito
De la tristeza loca Serena,
Como la rabia de amar
Alegria
Como un asalto de felicidad

Alegria (1) (Joy)
I see a spark of life shining
Alegria
I hear a young minstrel sing
Alegria
Beautiful roaring scream
Of joy and sorrow,
So extreme
There is a love in me raging
Alegria
A joyous magical feeling

I have always had difficulty with joy/alegria. Family members told me growing up that I was too serious and critical, that I took things to heart. I always felt that the inequities of the world as I saw them first- hand in my life were so unfair. From the time I was a child of about eight until becoming an adolescent of fourteen, I carried on talks with God as I looked at the stars and the expanse of the heavens in a beautiful South American evening. The stars looked like they were hanging from invisible threads. The moon would come into view as if it were painted on the night sky.

At that time, the only answer that came from the cosmos was a major emotional fracture, when my family emigrated to the Northern Hemisphere, specifically Toronto, three-and-a-half decades ago. In addition to the difficulty of learning a foreign language and other cultural challenges, the northern winters are an occurrence that people born in warmer latitudes never become accustomed to; our bones especially suffer many aches and pains in the colder climates.

My connection to praying to the night sky is ancestral. My paternal grandmother would sit outside in her garden late at night after chores were done for the day and pray to the night sky asking God to protect her children and family. She was the mother of twelve children (she lost two of her children when they were toddlers) and grandmother to many more. As they became of age (16-20 years old), some of her children moved away from the northern part of the country where they were born, to the capital city. Fifty-five years ago there were no phones available to the poor working class. My grandmother's connection with her children was a spiritual one that continued through the distance.

One of my parents' greatest attributes is that they know how to take pleasure from the everyday things that life has to offer. They met in the capital city as sixteen-year-olds, and they latched on to each other. My father was just new to city life, living with a terrible aunt and uncle who took his hard-earned money and fed their own children and not him. My mother was the youngest child of a loveless and jealous family of five siblings. My parents married when they turned twenty-one. As a young working-class couple, they both worked hard and had their share of difficulties. But on the weekends they ensured that they had some recreational pleasure, be it going to the movies, dancing or visiting relatives.

Their true passion, however, is music and dancing. They are fabulous tango dancers who perfected their
unique style over their fifty-year marriage. Music and dance have given them so much joy and pleasure that it has sustained them through the hardships and heartaches they experienced. Recently I was touched when watching the movie "Shall We Dance?" where a line from one of the songs is "In the book of love there is music." That line reminded me of my parents' fifty-year love story, because the Tango is the music that depicted the 'joys and the sorrows' of the working class in the two countries surrounded by the River Plate - Uruguay and Argentina - during the 1940s, '50s and mid-'60s. Even now, in their seventies and with no car, they manage to get their walks in the park during the summertime and go in the winter to their favourite mall for a walk and a coffee. I very much admire them in that they recognized joy as a fundamental part of their quotidian lives. They have known the importance of joy to make them fully alive. Their lives would seem to me to be a cocktail of 'Joy and Sorrow.'

The most wonderful and magical times of my growing-up years were the holidays: Christmas, New Year's, Epiphany (The Feast of Three Kings on January 6), and Carnival in February. Not because we got presents. The giving of presents was very modest, though my parents spent as much as they could on the children and also bought a present for each other. The holidays were so special to me because they fell in the summertime and the weather was beautiful and we could go to the beach. I loved going to the beach and so did my mother. She would prepare a picnic of sandwiches and fruit. My parents, my brothers and I would take the bus and off we went until evening time. It was great. I adored the white sands, the blue-green water and the salty waves of the Atlantic Ocean, as well as the rocks and the seashells. I was in the water most of the time, either floating on my back or swimming under water.

Our Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve celebrations were beautiful festivities where my parents and family barbecued meat and prepared wonderful desserts of fruit salad and fruitcakes. We dined outdoors. At midnight we got together with our neighbours and had a toast and then everyone would light fireworks and a beautiful display of colour, design and sound lit up the midnight sky.

My special connection with the opening piece from the "Cirque du Soleil" is that I loved "El Carnaval." Carnival is the festival that takes place just before the beginning of the Christian season of Lent. Lent is intended to be a period of preparation marked by fasting, sacrifice, meditation and sobriety. Following the thread through this time period, the culmination of Lent is the Resurrection, and in the Northern Hemisphere, it is a period when the earth is preparing to give birth to spring.

The bittersweet feeling of having been born in a working-class Catholic environment combined with celebrations such as carnival parades down the main streets brings me to the fullness of joy and gratefulness. The musical groups or "Murgas" would be all dressed up in fabulous costumes of beautiful, colourful fabrics. Their faces were painted. They sang parodies and satirized the latest government policies including whatever was happening at the White House at the time, fashion, TV, etc. Their lyrics were written and expressed in an impeccable and elegant fashion. I also loved "El Candombe," a type of musical group that took part in the carnival whose original music is "Afro-Latin." They created beautiful sounds with their drums, and their dancing movements were spectacularly accentuated by their marvellous glittery customs and accompanying black lights. I loved the heartbeat vibrations of their drums; their magical rhythms touched my soul and made my body want to dance.

The parades also had beautiful floats, some of which carried carnival princesses. There were lots of clowns and "cabezudos" - people with huge, 'made-up' heads that would come and bump their heads on the kids' heads. Being summer, we all had squirt bottles, and we sprayed water on each other and on passers-by. We also tossed bags of colourful paper confetti at the parade participants.

Those are the times I felt abundant joy as a child. I missed my extended family so much when we moved to Canada, as well as the profound holiday experiences. I missed the beach. I missed the carnival. I missed the fireworks. I missed the warm weather. I missed the ocean like a member of my close family. For so many years I lived in a box where work and griping about life became so important that I felt overwhelmed by it
all. My locked-in isolation impeded me from participating in the many gifts that the beautiful city of Toronto had to offer. For example, while wonderful festivals and caring people were in my life, my struggle through my intrinsic bitterness blinded me from taking them fully into my heart.

I am trying to write about this cocktail of joy and sorrow. I have been able to heal some of my centuries-old rage at the oppression and domination of the Patriarchy in my life. I have been able to move out of the isolation and into enriching new relationships and have continued developing and expanding existing ones. My parents have had their shares of sorrows in their life but always have allowed time for joy. I feel that one of their incredible strengths is that, instinctively, they know how to be alive with grace and dignity.

I have experienced the dark night of the soul where it seems that life is a never-ending tunnel of darkness and that, no matter how many life preservers were sent my way, it was something I needed to experience by myself alone. On the eve of my half-century of life, I am walking an ever-changing path where joy and sorrow run into one another.

Poet Maya Angelou once said, "A joyful spirit is evidence of a grateful heart." At this moment in time, I am remembering the young girl that enjoyed the carnival, the beautiful warm weather, the Atlantic Ocean. Let this feeling permeate my body, my sinews, my bones, my blood cells -to feel Alegria with all my heart and soul, that wherever I am on this sacred earth I may feel whole. For that I am very grateful.

1. Introduction to the Cirque du Soleil "Alegria" CD, Music composed by René Dupre, 1994, 2001 Cirque du Soleil Musique Inc. 1994 Creations Meandres Inc. (SOCAN).