diary.a.blog 29 inviernowinter 27 lunamoon 48 añoyear del space agedad 18 enerojanuary 2004 ------------------------------------ Pretending this is a typewriter:Morning awake with hazy skies and dogs barking woof woof woof. Ramón out in his parking lot chatting with I don't know who someone who came to early mass across the park and tried to park in his parking lot so they could enjoy a walk through the park on the way to church. I'm still not calling him by his "real" name. Just someone who parked here. Whatever that means. Some time back I read some things I'd written some dozens of years ago and I had no idea what I had meant by what I wrote then. Wonder if it will be the same with this except I probably won't live until
2034 or2043ratherAugust 12th when the spaceplane falls on my head on Washington offramp from 163 which I decided in 1988 would be nine years later, 2043 not 2034, after Lana Sharon threw me out (1988). Yes she gave me nine more years of life because I was finally free from her cursed Mighty Mouse infatuation dating from the 1950s when her parents named her for Lana Turner and she told me she knew Shirley Temple and I actually believed her. We went to Disneyland anyway, BUT NO, I'll probably die much sooner than that at least 20 years sooner, yes, like most of my male ancestors have, in their (our) sixties, or late 50s like my father yes, no I won't look back and read thiswhatnot ask what the heyk it meanz anywho?!
Still not calling his name although that was my resolution newyear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about him about myself and about my life in downtown Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico postalcodigo 22000 but well enough let the sleeping dog lie I lie because I am a flea and this is literature not reality even though I tell you the truth, yes, but I am a plague of fleas these letters and words telling the truth only the facts have been changed to protect the guilty and the innocent, just like the storms that God rains on the just and unjust alike, yes, una plaga pues a plague of fleas and he, my landlord Ramón, is already a bitch so persecuted by his own devils and his own history and his own furies that I am nothing but a shoulder to cry on, a pet gringo to whip and curse, thusly:
what the hell are you doing here in Mexico gringo are you a failure like all your other countrymen who run down here, run away run away throw your trash on Mexico like all the rest of you and don't you dare tell me you only come here for the language because I know you I know you I know you yes you are so hated here, gringo, always sucking up anything free anything anything anything you cheap bastard you think I need your rent no I don't need you and I don't want you but... yes, I do love you because you understand my own hell, my own personal torture and why I raise the whip hand high and weep & etcetera et cet etc.
...and he is so persecuted anyway I could never do or say anything to hurt him more than the world has already screwed him up and down, his mother penniless sixty years ago lying down with sailors and marines from San Diego, his father he doesn't know who his mother never found out whom it had been which one, and YET IN SPITE (I yell because he deserves this credit at least) IN SPITE OF SUCH $hItiy beginnings he has taken the land his mother left to him and his brother and the both of them have made real carreers for themselves as doctor and restauranteur and in spite of their origins they are respected for what they have done themselves, Ramón and Victor Huerta sometimes I wonder the brother looks like me could one of my uncles have been... no. Better not go there. Except that the old professor growled to me in his office in city hall that the whole town itself is nothing but the children of cantineros y putas and that is true he really did say that to me, in Spanish of course.
I have to confess that I also robaba una de estas joyas of that diatribe from Heriberto Yepez who wrote in his blog that he was the son of a... but then again a blog is a blog is a blog is a blog and you do not know WHAT to believe nor do I.
And nothing I could say would ever make a difference he, Ramón (whose name I will never say after that one time he yelled at me for two hours for God only knows why I have even erased his name from the poem that might have made him famous I am a horrible grudgebearing a$$h0le) and well nothing I could ever do would equal what he has already suffered all his life, not from his mother, no, she was blessed compared to the other, lying awake tortured at night by memories of how and when he was molested as a child, four and five and six years old only asking that THAT sonogabatch NOT touch his baby brother, only him and fifty years later weeping on my younger shoulder after my cousin Mike goes home and leaves us alone, he wept on my shoulder in his dark restaurant kitchen shut down for the night completely drunk
how could anyone do that to a child to a child to a child ay gringo can you even understand how awful how despicable how evil it was what he did to me and all I could do was tell him if he touched my brother I would bite him hard right there when he forced me to take him in my mouth and so he never did he never touched my brother and then he finally died the ba$taurd, but much later, years later, when my brother had children of his own, ay gringo it was awful I was so frightened I could never bring myself to hold them for fear for utter terror of what I might feel thinking about him... aaaAAAAAAAAAyyyyy gringo you don't know you don't understand why I am so angry so... why I have such anger, such coraje, yes, that is the word, coraje, anger, fury, rage against God how could God let someone touch a child like that how, why, Gringo, please don't give me any of your liberal apologistic $#it about free will I am sick to death of your stupid explanations God doesn't care he has no mind pays no never mind excuse me please why how what who no....
My cousin Mike and I and Ramón had been across the park to visit Ramón's friend Carlos H., a truly splendid chef who served us UNBELIEVABLY scrumptious chiles rellenos. I thought that would put Ramón into a better frame of mind, but no, he started drinking again, and then, after Mike left, hours later, here he was, breaking down, weeping, completely drunk, almost tender in his grief and terror, but then the next day forgotten back to insulting me as usual but at least not drinking so much to remind me of my own father dead now twenty some years too young too young like I said my ancestors and alcoholic yes who yes was also a hero, yes, and rocket scientist and frustrated artist and poet whose parents would not let him go away to sea until the war came and they lost him to a daughter in law whom they condemned for her divorced sister my aunt until surprise surprise their own daughter my other aunt yes that's right she got divorced too wham bam slam welcome to the modern world of 1945 and so my cousins grew up somewhere else in another alcoholic haze in an insane asylum in Greenwich where Broadway stars used to go to dry out under the care of a "doctor" su abuelo pues, más bien un charlatán, a quack who had only studied one year of VETERINARY school and with his wife set up a huge drunk farm in Connecticut... heh heh heh and we think Tijuana has a reputation no, New York is much Much MUCH worse yes there.
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Where was I? Oh yes, my father. He was, quite literally and truthfully, a hero, and then, after the war, a rocket scientist (see Mars) so of course with the little robot driving on the red planet I think of him like I always do damnit why did he have to die so young... burnt out and blown up on the pad like those spaceships he built to hurl nuclear warheads at enemies "we" us never dared hit because they would hit us and, incidentally, but much more consequently (no link, only underline for emphasis) to lift John Glenn into space and orbit and history on the back of his Atlas rocket holding up the heavens themselves hold up hands up word game your money or your life yes "we" us would send men to the moon and condemn thousands of Americans and Vietnamese and Cambodians and Laotians to die sucking up mud in Indochina like my highschool gymcoach Mr. Cherry (who looked just like Superman) once told us. Well "you'll soon be sucking up mud in Indochina" yes that was my wonderful life in high school getting ready for the war, always a war, always every generation another stinking war to keep the masses under control yes. Except he didn't say "Indochina" no he said "Vietnam" because in those days it was forbidden to say the war ALSO included Laos and Cambodia no. We were liberating Vietnam yes, just like we are liberating Iraq and turning our back on the REAL PROBLEM in Afghanistan YO MISTER BUSH GET A GRIP ON REALITY YOU ARE WASTING YOUR ONE TERM IN OFFICE CLEANING UP After your father's mess Well, to give the man credit, this time, we really HAVE been attacked and.... that, you know, DOES make all the difference. *sigh* |
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I suppose the world will always be such a playground for devils and angels, that
nothing I can ever write would make any difference at all. Take care of your children, my friends. They need your love and watchfulness, and then....
then you must let them go to be free and mind their own world, their own lives, their own, new, generation X, generation y, and z.
babble babble scribble scribble that is all I have to say today. Now I am going to walk over to the cemetery where a murderer was transformed into a saint and after that ride the bus up to the street market in the neighborhood named after Francisco Villa, who murdered his way to power and is, thus, a hero. Let us not mention (no, mention it, you foolish gringo poet) that he himself was later assassinated in a hail of machine gun bullets. Heh heh and we USamericans thought "we" (us) had all the gangsters and assassinations to ourselves. oh N O not QUITE.There will be some, are some, v e r y d i f f e r e n t "people" indeed"We" are just another people on this world. You wait, Henry Higgins, until we meet creatures from other worlds (although they might be already here, tagging us like strange endangered animals in the forest)... now there...
yes
who will make these words as nothing nothing nothing at all
gonna make it real compared to what
I thought you said we had nothing more to say?