Thank you for your time. My name is Jimmy Arturo Paiz [Fernandez de Mendoza] —an Honduran-American writer. Foremost, I am a Marine, an 18-year veteran of the United States Marine Corps. Now I write, professionally and prose-poetically about the human condition —about our species’ existence and the denial of our animal-self, and the consequence of denying this truth. For this alone, as we know, is a human decision. I also write and share other oddities and interests, and time to time, I make things …anything!

As a first-generation American, a north Virginian of Metro DC, I was born in a world of worlds, whose cultural-domains and subdomains collided to become me —all foreign from birth, now the heart of everything I stand on.

At 16-years, at the end of sophomore year, I left T.C. Williams High School (Home of the Titans) to work for my father as an apprentice upholster. He would let me go, and then charge rent, and I would go on to work for Mr. Kim, my Korean father, who also helped to inform who I am today.

Over time, my daydreams faded into feelings and resolve into action, so I called the Coast Guard recruiter. I was denied. I answered yes to the conscientious objector question not knowing what it was. I passed on the Air Force because when I arrived, I arrived to a locked door and a late recruiter with a coffee stain on his dress uniform; I was out, but not before the Army lured me in to hear their offer, knowing their tricks, because my brother was on active duty at the time. I passed on the Army too, after two weeks of their runaround. So I listened to my brother’s sage advice: “…if the Army and the Navy don’t want you, the Marines always will.”

Two weeks after calling the Marines, I had a GED, I enlisted, and was shipped away to Recruit Depot, Parris Island, South Carolina; and though many did, I did not die —and decades later, I am honored to be alive, homesteading in Savannah, Georgia.

I am truly honored to be the son of two Honduran-American migrants who fled Central America in the late-70’s, due to political crisis. After serving their own country, each in unique ways, they departed —expeditiously— to the United States …by way of my late father’s participation in Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA), Public Safety Program (International Police Academy) Georgetown, D.C.

My father was raised in the muddy montes of west, north-west Honduras, a heavily indio kind of place. The vegetation grew green and tall, and what corn and beans grew in small patches on the ground, accepted the rays of light falling between the towering canopy. My father grew up watching his father pray early each morning, watching through the planks that made up the wall between their ritual, anchored loosely in packed earth floors. He grew up brushing aside unsavory puddle-yuck, to sip agua along the trails he walked on; shooting arrows at monkeys for protein is the way it was, and yet somehow, in the time of black and white, my father entered military service and worked his way to become the type of man you reckon with, on behalf of the Honduran state security apparatus.

Carlos had flown to the states on several occasions to attend national-level training, that include bomb making at Fort Bliss, Texas; irregular warfare things at John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School, Fort Bragg, North Carolina; weapons training in Georgetown; and other senior advisor opportunities he took on. In my family we fight, kill, and will risk all for the freedom of democracy and the justice begot by it.

Carlos Arturo Paiz Fernandez, by trade, was a master upholster; by blood, he was a preacher’s son whose family migrated out of Guatemala in the days before black and white. My mother, Gloria, is the daughter of a wise and successful business type, Spanish-Semites of the Arab kind, and to include all the taboo —native fruit— that surely gets through. She is a woman I too often fail to find the right words to characterize; the only god I kneel before, my mother, you may call her dignity.

Formally, I am trained, educated, and experienced in ship to shore, ground, and air expeditionary warfare; utilities and engineering support; integrated (air and ground) defense weapons and systems; visual information operations, multimedia production; and quality assurance of institutional effectiveness in higher education. It’s quite the mouthful yes, but I assure you, I played no part.

I hold a BA in global studies and an MA in human behavior, from National University (NU), La Jolla, California. I hold a post-graduate certificate in creative writing and an MA in professional creative writing, from the University of Denver (DU), Denver, Colorado; I am a thesis away, inshallah, from an MA in English Rhetoric, having concentrated on antiquity and the Gothic —all of which has led to a life of rich words and full meaning, and the ability to read between the bullshit, both fact and fiction —despite the delivery.

I truly hope you find some time to spend with these words and with some words of your own, and likewise, that your own life’s interests may be piqued by the words find you here.

Again —thank you for your time,

Regards,

Jimmy Arturo Paiz