tijuana.gringo diary.a.blog.calendar : previous diaryablog : next diaryablog
| Teotihuacan, cont.
A cinquenta kilómetros al noreste de la ciudad de México... levántarse aún
las pirámides... Son los monumentos principales de las ruinas las dos pirámides, el Tonatiuhzacualli, que estaba dedicada al sol, y el
Meztlizacualli, á la luna.
Forty miles northeast of Mexico City... the pyramids still rise up...
The principal monuments of the ruins are the two pyramids, one called
Tonatiuhzacualli, which was dedicated to the sun, and the
Meztlizacualli, for the moon.
La ciudad misma muestra zonas bastante distintas... la antecesora directa de nuestras plazas con la combinación iglesia-palace and plaza-mercado.
what day is today... friday. night before last after I got home sat around not quite believing she was here until she finally called on Ramón's telephone and he was nice enough to come out and get me even though it was after ten p.m. Maybe I better take back all the mean things and names he calls me heh heh heh.... God but we love to fight two eagles battling on the border sky well so she called and we went out for breakfast yesterday she got there late of course well what do you expect what do I expect her first morning in town waking up sleeping on the floor in her ex-roomates' apartment (No, she is not sleeping in Mike's house, and maybe, maybe she will in mine, soon... stay tuned for another week or two oh YES THAT IS HER STORY I SCRIBBLED last night ON THE RIGHT COLUMN THERE while we ate tacos in Tacos Franc on Sanchez Taboada after we had gone to the CECUT to see another Tere and the larva art show mmmm ask Pepe what he thinks about it except he says that is Offf Theeeee Recorddddd I stood outside the store waiting for her yesterday morning and of course I wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote.... the Santa Ana breezes threatened warmth but actually blew cool - it was the sun that heated the afternoon while airplanes took off backwards, i.e. landing from the west, circling lazily over the town like big fat airships descending into the breeze, bending toward Otay, carefully carefully edging toward the border but watch out nervous antiterror border forces might lash out with surface to air pocketrockets and WHAM no no no that will NOT happen... but the planes crawled across downtown all day long, drifting down down down almost silently, instead of thundering away in racing noise up up up up One of the shoeshine stands on the corner of 3rd & B was still closed at ten a.m. So I stood there in the shade of his kiosk, writing writing writing until Tere arrived. The bright yellow orb blazed in late morning sky, making me think of Onyx City fantasies, reveries, realities, written, frictions and fictions to be. Being there on that corner took me back to all the time I used to wait for Tere there before she went back to Laredo over a year ago after she lost her job a year after nineeleven. There is still the big old table of candy and gum standing by the curb, and the cart where the man sells tape cassettes and two shoe shine stands and two newspaper stands and a juice table and the lady selling nopales nopales and the blind beggar in a wheel chair and the beggar with no legs in a wheel chair and the man with his bottles of honey fresh from the rancho somewhere in the hills and my grandfather was also a beekeeper and had his little ranch out in the hills and and and being there scribbling took me by the brain and sent me back and then brought me forward while I waited, waited, waited.... A lady walked by with a tray full of sweet gelatine treats balanced on her head... The fleets of beige and gold Otay taxis swept around the corner, one wave after another after another. The huge blue and white busses crawled by roaring and belching diesel smoke. The pedestrians swarmed across every minute or two as the lights all turned red and the little white men on the signal said now everyone can walk every which-way.... The one big change since she left is the explosion of TAXI LIBRE metered taxis that go everywhere now they began the month after Tere left and now there are 1200 of them, one driver told me when I asked later and and and the shoeshine man came to open his stand and I had to move away so I moved over into the shade of the one tree that is there or is there another? Ah, my dear reader, is there still a tree there in your world? Are there any trees at all where you are in the future, or have we killed them all before you? Did you move to Venus after all the water poured down there and the Earth dried up just like Mars once did to give us life and water, yes, water.... and then she got there. Then she got here, yes.... |
había una guerra entre jefes narcotraficantes hirieron a uno las autoridades le pusieron en hospital
cerraron todas las calles
y pusieron de guardia
a lo largo de la avenida Guerrero todo eso pasó hace un año esa lucha por dominar de esa territorio
no les importan llevarse
there was a war between narcotraffic bosses they wounded one the authorities put him in the hospital
they closed all the streets
and put trucks with
all along Guerrero avenue this all happened a year ago that struggle to dominate that territory
they did not care whether they
spanish by Tere.Sa.To. |
|
yeah she got there. we went to eat breakfast. they charged us extra for our extra cups of instant coffee. ooops. spent almost two hours just sitting, talking, eating and then drinking that extra coffee. we went over to my place and talked with Ramón about renting another apartment. He recommended we go over across the park to the other side and talk with his friend Carlos. Supposedly he and his brother have a couple vacancies in his building, upstairs above doctors offices. We also want to look nearby the nopal. Eventually we made our way down to CECUT and saw the Larva art show and visited with Tere T. upstairs in her little office and then went for tacos. sat around slowly eating tacos in one of the tastier spots to have a taco, on Sanchez Taboada by the corner of eighth... but with the cost of meat skyrocketing, the price of tacos has zoomed from ten to twelve pesos almost overnight... and the peso has fallen, to, to eleven to the dollar, so.... but these are good, full tacos, not your little cheap one-bite wonders you can sometimes find at twoforadollar dingaling ring the taco bell din don din dan and we made our way back into downtown in one of the route taxis that runs along Sanchez and then up along seventh to loop back to sixth and Constitution, and you know what, I realized, right there on the sidewalk, that we were right smack dab in front of gringo David's current favorite watering hole, and well, I looked in and there he was and so I dragged poor Tere in who I am sure was thinking what kind of a place is my little writer maybe lover draggging me into now? But then we settled in and spent a veryyyyy pleasant hour sipping brews mmmm Bohemia Tere's favorite and chatting with David and it had been a long time since I've seen him and well that was rather pleasant too for me You have to get together with my wife Rocio, David said, and so we have a date to eat Argentine steaks and drink Chilean wine next weekend....
AND THEN TODAY we ate breakfast near the park by 3rd & G
and then walked over to see the tomb of Juan Soldado
and then back over to Carlos' place to see the
apartment he has available
and then up the hill to the Casa de la Cultura
stopping first at a delicious smelling bakery
on the corner of 4th & H
then we climbed up
the steep old
staircase
that
climbs
up
up
up
from
the end of Fourth Street
just there, up past the house of Javier Batiz
who still rocks Tijuana alive
and kicking (more than Santana does
except for a flying visit
once once upon a big time)
up past the canyon where
the zebra-painted burros
now go sleep every night
and then to the right around the big old
school building that is now
the Casa de la Cultura
went in
looked at a few
photos and paintings
sat in the cafe and drank coffee and ate our sweet rolls
pan dulce carried up from the bakery below and finally
then back down the big old stair case all ruined
and smelling of urine
where you can look out over
the sprawling flat piece of downtown
toward the river
and the hills of Libertad and Otay beyond and
all the city spreading and stretching
jammed up against the border line
and so
just like
that the mass
of buildings, streets,
everything reaching out into the vast distance
of all this California border where Mexico
smashes into the land it once conquered
for S p a n i s h
and then
lost,
right over there
the
lost world of Pete Wilson
d i n o s a u r s
and Arnold Schwartzenegger groper-toothed cats
however you spell it
and the hills of San Diego
where Mikey and I grew up believing in the
bloody dreams of empire, liberty, freedom and the superman way
o h y e s
we
swallowed it all
hasta god Hollywood Marilyn
Monroe doctrine to conquer the new world
may Jesus forgive me
WE MUST CHOOSE WHOM WE WILL SERVE GOD OR MAMMON
THE WORLD OR HEAVEN THE DEVIL OR DIVINE
ahem
um where was I?
oh yes
Tere and I stood there staring at the city
and then
down into the canyon
where the zebra-burros "zeburros"
go to sleep at night
- we saw two burros being led home up 4th
into the canyon -
as we came back from the staircase toward the park
and then we walked around the park
watched the sunset all golden orange yellow
fading into salmon coral
then into charcoal grey
painting with light and water
on the fluffy clouds hanging over the hills around
this west end of downtown Tijuana
and went into the library for a few minutes and then went to eat chinese around the corner next door to the billiard hall and then back to my place where we sat and read a couple of my poems and then some of Aurely Monroy (spelling????) and Elizabeth Cazessus and finally walked over through downtown to where Tere got her taxi to farther Otay más allá and on the way she stopped into a bakery panederia where she used to know the owner and the owner's sister was there and said oh here, use my phone to call my sister and squeals of recognition echoed through the cellphone service on the border and the raptor bot AI was pleased because I remembered him/her outside, smoking a cigarette on the sidewalk and wondering if it/they know knows knew shall know that we here and there and now it is late and I am struggling just to catch up with my diary but it is hopeless I could never get down all the things I wrote on the trolley home two nights ago or scribbled on the corner waiting yesterday morning and well them's the breaks I guess so okie dokie bye tomorrow we're going to see my mother and father tijuana.gringo diary.a.blog.calendar : previous diaryablog : next diaryablog copyright 2004 daniel charles thomas | |