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| The idea we are asking you to entertain as you read is that this place, which the ancient Maya called Xibalba, the "place of awe" is real and palpable. It is real because millions of people over the millennia have believed it to be real, and have shaped their material environment to accomodate that reality. David Friedel, "Rainmaker," @ Maya Cosmos |
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| Tuesday 09/02/03 |
| by Charlotte Duston, Esquire |
| Tijuana Gringo Copy Editor |
| with html coding by Philip Relmond |
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| D#mn she-b#!ch and my softer side too |
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| TJ Poems : Mesopoemix : Archeology : |
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| Page Copyright 2003 for Charlotte Daniel Charles Thomas |
| email: tijuanagringo@yahoo.com |
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| San Diego, California. |
| Charlotte am the me-bitch. Her righteous indignation is character trait. Her softer side... is legion too legendary motherhood a dog will do anything to protect her puppies. I will have a child. It has been two weeks now since my last fertile days ended in blood. Once again, Karl and I, we -- pass through these days when I won't get pregnant unless something happens early -- He sharpens his tongue on me. It is hot and soft and then, just at the right moment ¿How Does He Know? he stiffens the muscle and... damn, boy, get in there with... you know.... It has also become the third and last week of my vacation. I stretched it a bit by Labor Day and some overtime flex hours from when I interviewed some of the [name deleted] victims last... no. Strike that. Big family picnic yesterday at Karl's parents' house -- the usual end-of-summer gathering celebrated all across America United States Labor Day time to get back to work, back to school, etc., etcet., etcetera.... Never mind that the real holiday for workers/labor is May Day oh no that would not do we (US) could never celebrate that communist day oh no no no nnooooooooo.... Heh after a few beers comments like that from my father-in-law became actually funny to hear in his exagerrated gaelic brogue. Then they would ask me or Gina what we thought.... Gina, my sorority sister from the late 80s, married Karl's sister five years ago so that has made us the new outside twin pillars of this clan I married into. She already has two children. Well, I am still only 36.... So now we are sisters-in-law pues cuñadas entonces and our earlier sisterhood de comadres pues has made us into the new outside young matriarchal pillars of this clan I married into -- after our mother-in-law, of course, but she's way inside the clan now, after almost forty years. But Gina and me, we are always asked our opinion as outside authorities, two sister tias -- aunties. There's too many boys in this family. If I don't have a child within a year maybe we will adopt one, or a brother/sister set who shouldn't be broken up. I will not give up this sweet labor of raising a child and then watching it go away into the big world.... Yeah I know better than anyone how hard it is... I prosecute the failures, remember? Yep. My father-in-law Hugh Duston (Rg.TM) is a local publisher -- owns a string of quick-print computer stores. His mother, actually, was Mexican, back when that was still a second class citizen below Okie and Arky and African and even though she was white and married a Scotch/Irish/Welsh/Italian descended from the gold rush and now she spoke excellent English, well, she refused to stomach the anti-pocho ugliness, got work during the Second World War with the bracero program, continued into the 1950s and 60s selling clothes here in the U.S. for seamstress women in Tijuana, and she always spoke both perfect Spanish and English with her children. She's ninety-eight, now, and starting to use it with us, now that she's heard me speak a few words of courtesy. Except now she's worried someone will subpoena her to testify in court about all the pension money paid to bracero workers that disappeared into Mexican political pockets somewhere somewhen.... What was the other word they used to say back then before I was born? Oh yes. I heard the reverend doctor Martin Luther King Jr. speak it once again on television Thursday night PBS news hour rebroadcast his whole speech, he said it: Negros. It's pronounced differently in Spanish and is more acceptable, it is just like saying "black" yes that is all it is. What did Rev.King say... oh yes. The negroes have been given a bounced check and we're here to collect on it under the words of American dream. Forty years ago he said it in Washington before the Lincoln temple assembled yes. My father-in-law is a classic late-middle-age liberal who has always refused to drown in the Republican swamp of San Diego. He was talking yesterday a lot about King and Cesar Chavez and California politics.... oy veh on the soul of my own sweet Jewish grandmother, I swear we are going crazy now with this governor thing... mm-mmm! I need an emoticon to express it... ;-b And of course, yes, we were all talking about it about Schwart&whatsit and his leading opponent Cruz Bustamove... heh heh my nieces and nephews were dancing around shouting Bust A Move! Seems they got into some of their grandfather's old tapes... that man still has an eight-track! How barbaric can you get? And "long-play" records... oy. Well, the grandkids were amused for a while, dancing for him.... I want my own. I want my own. I haven't told them about the Tijuana web pages because they know where I really work. My Karl is the only one who knows and he is sworn to secrecy under thou shalt have no others before me forsaking all others no testifying against the spice boy, spice girl, SPOUSE mouse stays in the house ay I am starting to get infected anyway from Danny's scatterbrain and Mike's meandering writing shortcircuiting my anger Anger. I should never have let Danny write that racehorse thing for me. Na-ankh not. Exagerations and cruel name baiting ripped out my heart in anger that he wouldn't believe me. It's deleted but the damage is done and the archived caché in every search engine gut will still cough it up. Ironically I did lose a lot of sleep that one night and the next trying to sharpen my axe to ugly perfection. Utter bullshit. Too bad it was all true. That only makes it worse. I have some anger issues, as my counselor says. Sometimes I feel like castrating some of the perpetrators I have to delicately expose to a jury and judge.... ** sigh ** |