tijuana.gringo
diary.a.blog.calendar : previous diaryablog : next diaryablogDetrás de esos lugares que permanecen silenciosos de día e histericos por la noche... Juan José Rodríguez Asesinato en un lavanderia china p. 8 Behind those places which stayed silent by day and hysterical by night...____________________________________________________________I will lose weight_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________The chilly night gives way to morning. I sleep in. Ah those many years of going to work now Satuday came to rest a week ago I met the seventh day adventist who insulted Daniel Ruanova's mother_____________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________I have so many marvelous books to read I should read some I was reading one last night one Luisa and I worked on for the institute it was it is it has been a year now since I have seen Tere a year ago I was in Papantla and Tajína year ago I was in Papantla and Tajín and coming home with the horrible flu I caught there almost killed me on the bus _____________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________last night met with our usual every two week group to talk about Baudelaire. Lucila, Olimpia, Pepe, Luisa and I; Ana couldn't come and Raul neither well we sat around for three hours talking and drinking coffee I listen listen listen occasionally speak we read Albatross and one or two Spleens and something about the old women and towards the end left Baudelaire to launch into a conversation about the LARVA show that opened a week ago yesterday at CECUT. Olimpia got there late and while we were waiting I shared my "...and then there is the old woman" poem written day before yesterday, and at the end gave the copy to Olimpia who actually seems interested in always astounds me when people are interested I often, so often, well practically always feel I am only a poet of second rank not first but what the hell does that matter anyway it doesn't erase or diminish my need, my obsession, my desire graphomania mmmm yes right HERE G.D.it a n y w a y even a verse like TIJUANIRAK or _________________ which I consider among my best seems only second rank to me and so it so often astounds me when anyone a c t u a l l y likes my verse even if he or she d i s a g r e e as did the reader who said I wrote like Steinbeck but that the "Indians gave us siphilis" vide Rey_____________________________________________________________________I have no more excuse to spend money every day in restaurants. Went to the supermarket day before yesterday and bought twenty some dollars wroth of food; tomatoes, squash, brocolli, avocados, pears, onions, potatoes, chili peppers, rice, meat, cheese, mezcal, raisins, milk, NO SUGAR, coffee, tortillas, are the things I remember off the top of my head old man begins to forget only a few more years and I won't even be able to walk any more if I don't lose weight and quit smoking every cigarette means I will die five minutes sooner and suffer ten more minutes of agony before dying I tell myself to smoke less, quit; aye no no no no no no more I will stop smoking I will lose weight I will save money and go south deep south to become a poet in residence at the city where the gods were made/born the original sacred curio holy city T E O T I H U A C A N no a lo mejor Oaxaca sí or I can just go by bus any time I want ah ya es hora it is time. I walk through the streets seeking everything fresh through new eyes looking as if I have never looked before have not spent four years 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003 reading and writing first in xanadu then in geocities yes from the border at Tijuana where we gringo gaze into ancient Mexico yes and write these pages by hand on paper and then m a c h i n e m a c h i nes that think where we you I can write and read each other Gabriel Trujillo published a pair of articles [date] and [date] in the Bitacora about what it "means" to blog or not to blog and I am still not at peace with that word but I suppose 'tis fait accompli fate accounting there's no accounting for ya t a s t e
you will please excuse me... I have to go to the
bathroom
B.Y.B.
Tijuaniraq
in corners of the bankrupt border mall
plywood sheets and concrete staircases
lift up terrace smells from urine trash
no girls wander hustling customers
past mountains of empty cardboard glass
sprawling stucco abandoned plaster
no ecstasy outside gay nightclub
no laughter no scorn no sailor cash
on forgotten transvestite benches
behind the borderline bus station
streets lead with insidious intent
toward trench wars of stolen poetry
luring clients safely home to drink
in corners of this broken plaza wall
where no girls hustle now few birds sing
EL REY DE TACOS - Prosepoem Journal/Diary
Pat pat pat goes the masa (corn dough) in the hand, in the hands. Creak squish the little tortilla press squeezes one flat between sheets of wax paper. Peel plop ssss gets laid on the grill. Pat pat squeek plop and a sister joins her ssss. After a moment, touch and turn.
Mamas and their daughters have been doing this for five thousand years. People were eating tortillas when the Spanish came to call the bread "tortilla." Aztecs called it "tlaxcalli" and also ate tamales and tomatl and chocolatl and aguacatl and guajalotl - all of which the conquerors from another world now "discovered" and ate and ate and ate and ate.
The tortilla press made from metal is new to this ancient civilization mixed into Spain. Mexico had no iron or steel or aluminum. Only gold and silver - yum yum Europe drool and kill. Some copper hatchets. Lots of pretty copper hatchets. No bronze. No steel. No guns. No cannons. No suits of shining metal armor with feathered helmets like only the gods wore, like Cortés wore. No smallpox. No measles. No syphilis.
No steel blades to stab, slash, cut, chop, slice, stab stab stab, let them feel the cut of our swords, disembowel, decapitate, chop chop, arm, leg, neck, ah pity all that waste of blood and death, holy blood of life, spilled without any sacred dance or prayer, which should feed the sun, feed the gods, feed the holy universe that all may live and breathe and live again another day, another world, another sun.
I went out for tacos last night after eleven o'clock on Second Street (Calle Benito Juárez) between F and G just next door to a liquor store, se llama esa taqueria El Rey (the King). The señor was grilling meat and chopping it with a shiny, sharp steel knife. The señora was making fresh tortillas at the moment I arrived. Of course they were speaking Spanish, but pat pat pat went the masa in her hand.
I suppose this all came about because (well because I had to go yes but more than that toilet paper literature because I remember in video workshop class with Lewis Hock twenty years ago at UCSD when he still had a studio in the old water tank where Kay and I had wandered twenty years before that, when the university was so new that no one knew anything at all and books were carved on sheets of stone and tablets of wax.... ahem ahem I remember what really happened was Lewis with his hairy ears everyone staring and buzzing (we still do) (hair-do) well he DID tell us once that he was watching TV in Africa or somewhere and the newscaster who was r e a d i n g t h e n e w s suddenly excused himself and got up to go take a pee and then for a few minutes he was gone and the screen was nothing more than his empty desk until he returned and resumed reading the news I suppose of course I have changed the story all around in my mind but it sits there [ h e r e ] like a big f a t word challenging me to see the difference between cultures and peoples but then we all have to go gotta go got to go to go some facts are organic, biological realities such as the one fact we all must obey t h a t we must live until we die _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________well I decided it it happens while I write maybe I will try to reflect it in on the page this page that begins on paper in my little house by the park and then opens from somewhere me into somewhere you c y b e r s p a c e------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -------------------------------------------------------
this page where I wipe my brain and hope it don't stink too bad I love it when the lines line up with exactly same number letters yes I do----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------and you must then imagine my consternation, dear reader when I realize I forgot to buy paper higenico but I still have enough on the last roll IF I HADE A LAPtop'puter I could even write while I... ahem but I still have enough on the last rock & roll forty years ago the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan show Michael doesn't remember it but he asked me if I did yes of course my brother was so excited only seven years old and already fanatic but I still have enough on the last roll thank my little lucky stars and streamers flowing down into the old river f l u s h to c h a n g e f r o m BLUE to BROWNnnnnnnnn u g h u g l yflush to change from blue to brown like the colors in this photo of the river David refriedgringo.com shot one day not too many years one or two long ago s s s s
YES IT'S TRUE, I do want to go live in Teotihuacan, either in the municipio de San Martin de las pyramides piramides, or San Juan Teotihuacan, the growing towns of urban stain (mancha urbana) that stretch and crowd around either side of the zona arqueologica - but "they" say there are still corn fields, too....
To sit myself down in a rented house or rented room or apartment within walking distance of the ruins and walk there every day through the zone and out of the zone into the hills around, comparing ex-convents and churches with the pyramids and rebuilt temples and crumbling palaces and ancient American Indians who built there city here two thousand years ago and
and write verses and prose about
It is almost two miles from one end of the zone to the other
what used to be just the monumental center of a city where 200,000 people lived making statues of the gods for all the world to burn incense and
then the city died 1300 some years ago
it appears the temples of the monumental core were burned
although people still lived there for another eighty or hundred years, perhaps, before they, too, left
and abandoned the place where gods were made