Tijuana Gringo     previous diary    next diary    calendar     fresh faust below

Reminder salt lick out on the edge
of nowhere

the lone deer          sentinel for
                       her family

tests the salt

                       a cowboy 
vaquero                rides

in the other valley where the herd
drives and             stops .

Night is a traditional time to make camp
on the frontier .  Automobiles revolved this
into                   motel

for the poets at court who heard
only another lovesong to our virgin

queen                  Elizabeth
500 years later in her multiple television appearances

lavender eyes          sweet words         bitter truth
for the                lady                tailor













                              [delayed by EdItIng]






that cliche lesson border reminder salt lick out on the edge of nowhere

the hunger to travel up into the hills has taken me by the back of the neck and SHAKE SHAKE SHAKE

so I rode yesterday up the ALTAMIRA VILLA blue & white bus into the neighborhood of Francisco Villa

la mera Villa the very Villa

where there is a sobreruedas to die for a hugeeeeeee swap meet street market that extends practically the entire length of the neighborhood, my God almost a mile long stretch of tents and booths and "puestos" they call 'em, posts, spots, places, translate it how you like it

I only went to stock up on fresh produce ha ha no of course I went to drool from my eyes at

and for his ordinary pays
what his eyes eat only
Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra

I looked at the map on the wall and laughed
Oh Columbus what an India you found!
Ellison, Invisible Man

Bought a mess of vegetables and fruits, apple, orange, pear, chiles, potatoes, onion, banana, brocolli, tomato, sweet potato, avocado

Fifty-eight pesos, say five and a half dollars, for two bags of veggies and fruit. Mmmm my big bowl in the window runneth over. Oh I got some little squash, too.

That's my new diet. Less meat and fats and bread and cheese. More vegetables and fruits.

Well.

It was a beautiful day. I very much enjoyed the walk and the produce prices are a little better than the supermarket and the selection just as good but the environment ah, there's the key. A street market, even such a swapmeet looking one, is veryyyyyyyy different THAN any supermercado sí ¿verdad?

oh yes sí verdad

You could feel the weather was going to change a couple nights ago

I saw the moon in the sky she looked younger than I'd expected

the rose red church wall next door hung its towers upon your first clouds

and one city bright star whispered in and out of night

it reminds me, like a good salt lick, that this be a handsome view

one must share it now

[PICTURE]          or not .

a gradual shift left or right indent
on a leap across columns to

far lacuna borders                      like this

is only another technique .
                                        They all
do it 
somewhere .
             The blocks
              of text .
                                        Check .

light the left and right
hands of day and night

over salt lick          lick salt over



           unity of diverse


     taste

          salt

                lick

there were little windows on the airplane
gramma flew to see us

I wanted to see her in those little windows

But then I saw her coming down the stairs.  She waved at the top and at the bottom.  Then they let me run out to meet her.  I remember that marriage of machine and woman - maybe that is what I am looking for when I invite any and all bots to write me.  It was everything all right, everything was all right alright, until I asked my parents why they had those coin operated flight insurance machines there, in the terminal lobby, the old Lindberg terminal on Pacific Highway, torn down ages ago...  And why did Daddy always want to go to the bar?  By then I had learned how to read.

I listened to the radio music and sang with my mother and father in the car.  They rented a piano.  We always had a piano in the house, from then on.  My mother played and sang and I sang.  My father smiled and drank his drinks.  We didn't always have a TV set and never got a good one because our reception was so poor there down in the canyon below the Mount Helix reservoir.  BUT WE HAD ONE FORTY YEARS AGO WHEN the Beatles came Ed Sullivan.  Yes.

And we always had the piano and the books and the books and I read into them like a vampire and into the local library and ESPECIALLY the new and magnificent library downtown which is now an ancient wreck with all its totally classic 1950s decor I used to try and reach around the giant tiled pillars downstairs I still cannot cannot cannot but they have a lot of books.

Then, two years after my sexual awakening and newspaper route (must have been allllll that pedaling up and down thoseeee bedroom hills, yes) I discovered why I write poetry: instead of talking out loud to myself all the time

and that I suppose is why acting remains my other career untouched rare and far between, except for occasional performances or readings out loud....

I was reading Bernardino de Sahagun prologue to myself yesterday in my back room and thinking about when we will be moving into the walls next door through the walls into another universe.

our mission is to look into ancient Mexico from Tijuana on the border.  And Sahagun's book certainly helps immensely (Immensely immensely) to see into the past.

But a second MISSION has been thrust upon us here, of living here, by living here, for living here we are every day set in the political role of Americano in Mexico, of foreigner who is from beyond the line.  Tell us why what who....

You will realize of course we are all Americans on this continent and on South America, too, they will tell you they will say they have said to me.

But still, the country.  And the other country.  And all countries in between.  KNow.   KNOW.     What IS and are americanos. 

An americano is a shot of espresso with hot water become a cup of coffeee yes?

Hmmmm.  So I am beginning my English lessons this week.  On Friday.  If all goes well.  And maybe I will move into a parallel universe.

I will sleep at the corner between four rooms next door behind the walls.

Here there behind the walls have I bored you yet?  Will you ever stop reading the drivvel I drool?     Endless type type Type Tyope TYPE TYPE STOP stop Stop already.

---

FAUST 1.1

They tell me it is almost time to let me go.  The second treatment appears to have been a success.  Never mind the no-guarantee.  No.  This is more, much more: a chance for me to live 200 years more, that was the point which sold me home, that first time in 1964 when I took the first treatment.  I was 89 then, when Doctor Espinadie invited me to visit his rejuvenation clinic in the hills outside Ensenada, south from Tijuana, Baja California.  You've maybe heard about it.  Some of the stars have come here.  Now I have had the first 40 years.  It is time for the second treatment.  And it looks okay, so far.  I am almost 45 again, instead of 130....

The countryside has changed a lot around here since I first came down.  Everywhere.  It used to all be open land practically the whole coast on both sides of the border you only found the carvings of this busy monster manunkind here and there in the cities or on the roads, few and far between.  But now, everywhere in both Californias, everything is chopped up and graded and built upon.  Oceans of boxes have swallowed the landscape.

When I was younger, a drive from Los Angeles to Mexico was a journey through open countryside and empty beaches.  The only real break on the road was in San Diego.  No more.  Now it is all city city city city all the way city except for the Marine base outside Oceanside.

Of course there is always Baja California if you want to see wilderness along the coast.  But even that is getting hacked at by bulldozers and people's homes.  Still, beyond here its twin huge states make a double-long shoreline....

What?  When did I first come to Tijuana and Baja California?  Oh well I was still pretty young compared to now, although I looked almost exactly the same as I do now, after old treatment one and now two, but still, it was almost a century ago, now, by your time.  I was already 35 in 1910 when the so-called rebels took over Tijuana and started taxing the cantinas and gambling halls in that little old west town that was, that brief collection of buildings over there, see....

Imagine that, that such a sleepy little town could make headlines suddenly when bunch of foreign filibusterers rallied around a flag of Mexican revolution and tried to make big news in the eyes of the world... until they were chased out of Tijuana by the local defenders and Mexican army soldiers....

It all made big headlines in the Los Angeles Times, who sent me down to the border to write, and I traveled with a small group of men shooting a silent film documentary about the border revolution....

I had only that year before (1909) moved out west from New York.  My cousin was one of the editors who asked me to come out and work with them.  I previously had about twelve years with the New York Times, and....

In fact, one of the reasons I came west was the new motion picture industry.  I had already made contacts back east writing theater blurbs and local culture business filler for the Times, and smelled a future in the new moving picture companies that were competing against Edison and those French brothers whatever their name was now I forget....

Yes, that's right.

Anyway, five years later I was back with my own camera and small crew, filming the opening of the new race track (destroyed by biblical floods that same year) and the Mexican Fair across the river, downtown... there, you see those little domes....

http://digthatcrazyfarout.com/oldtj/page2/

I ended up editing our film together into a little ten-minute documentary, or travelogue, I guess should call it, that ran in a lot of theaters before the main picture.  Heh.  One of the best tricks was when we shot a Model-A crossing over the old wooden trestle bridge across the river, the car rattling and rolling while the big theater organs played their percussion pipes, and a title on the silent screen said:

THump!  THUmp!!   THUMP!!!
They Call It -- LA MARIMBA ! !

But then.....

TO BE CONTINUED

.......

...........

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