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ONE look at the map can imagine a hundred voices
in each tiny dot, a hundred dots in one small spot, a hundred
spots in one little stretch, a hundred stretches
in just one fold of paper and
then another
and next
after
on
the page speaks ink, paper, think we in electrons
you speak me, no? Yes then think me, consume me,
digest me, feel me, tell
me words
unfold me I am this map fullscale
courtesy
_______http://www.descubrebajacalifornia.com/espanol/mapas/tijuana.htm________
and scroll down to zipload me BIG (__5.2k__ map bigfile)
PHILIP FIND THE LINK please okay there tis
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TWO trips yesterday in the panel Ramón was kind
enough to lend me. To loan me. English is confusing. So is any language.
If we weren't born naturally language-prone, we'd never speak or listen
nothing. For my part I am getting too old to move anymore. The
strength of my body vanishes
stop smoking then, fool
stop smoking now
yesterday was not so bad because I was busy
but... the day before, Friday, packing in my old place
struggling not to go out and buy cigarettes, struggling not to smoke
THAT was hard
Friday, sorting my files, throwing out old movie ticket stubs,
tossing away old CECUT calendars, then flyers from bars, dentists,
psychics (people are always passing out flyers on the streets, even
the word "flyer" is in Spanish now, if you like or not), and putting
the keepers, thousands of sheets of handwritten pages from the past
five years, putting them into plastic supermarket shopping sack
after plastic sack now full of reams of paper at least a six
foot high stack if laid end to end from China to the Moon
and back again of course I exagerate but day before
yesterday I was meanwhile in the full blown
grip of NICOTEIN (sp?) addiction
withdrawal this too
shall pass
I told
myself
going downstairs once or twice to bum a cigarette off of Ramón and
so THEN, YESTERDAY, physically challenged loading with Gonzalo the panel
van and driving it up onto the mesa of Otay and over to Tere and my new
house in Nueva Tijuana
so then yesterday I was much busier and the addiction to cigarettes did not
weight in quite so heavily no no no but because of all my years of smoking
of course I was exhausted almost before we began heh then unload and carry
it all upstairs to the new house then over to Tere's old apartment where
she's only been for a month and carrying her bed and sofa and luggage
and stuff DOWNSTAIRS and out to the van and back to the new house
and UPSTAIRSupstairs againnnnnnnnnnnn we zigurat climb the
cigarette pyramid oh my God QUIT QUIT KWIT
{and on the same show} Tere doesn't want me to smoke
and I am usually willing to go along with her wish
willing to pay the price of NO say NO to stinking
ashtray mouth for even one kiss and then another
and she said yes and I said yes and we were all
etcetera ala James Joyce LESLIE where are you??
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THREE (there) is a woman in my house. There be I man in
her house. Me. He. She. I.
She cleaned and cleaned and cleaned last night while I struggled to write
a first draft to this, today, Sunday morning finally I wrote it because I went
to sleep while she swept and mopped the big black stone floor tile floor of
our big front space, sala and dining and kitchen and down the hall toward
the three bedrooms (our bedroom, her dressing room, my office, they are
carpeted) and then sanitizing the cabinets and counter space in the
kitchen, and mopping the bathroom. Last week she'd hired
carpet cleaners to come clean the carpets
eeeeeee mucha limpieze ?no? Pues sí.
My old place is a mess but I still have a week to -
well, five days - left in the month's paid rent to
clean. I am certain Ramón Huerta will bitch kvetch
howl and scream about it nevertheless filthy fat phu
king a$$hole he will call me again I assume etcet but
the gentleman jerkle and old hyde clyde hour he heh je
Luis (who is moving into my old place next week) and I were sitting
around yesterday after I took the panel truck back that Ramón was
very kind enough
yes he is a gentleman jeckel as well as a hyde
to loan me but I bought gas and forgave him the ten dollars
he still owes me for bringing him booze from the duty
free shop
anyway Luis and I were sitting around
yesterday talking as I rested my sore back
and then he said can we go out
onto the balcony
of course
I said
and we went out to the view shining under
afternoon sunlight, but we, fortunately, in shade
and overlooked the beautiful garden
of Lucrezia Borgia
where
the children are laughing and screaming around the swimming pool
as yet unpublished little poem
I began to babble on an on waxing poetastric about the valley where
Tijuana rancho was born
about the river valley floods of 1916 and the various bridges that crossed the river and how this
point on the river, between the rougher mountains and the seashore lagoon
swamps, was the best all-weather year-round spot to cross the river who
carved out this valley where the ranch was born and the city grew.
The hills shelter us here in the valley, I said.
The sea breathes overhead, sending air-conditioning
clouds to cool our summers and insulate our winter night.
Then come the trees in the park over there and here,
in Lucrezia Borgia's back yard secret garden
shine their green shadows and
children are laughing and screaming around the swimming pool
uncle is in prison and grandmother suffered major plastic surgery
then I raised my eyes to the other hills, across
the big border valley, those nearer edges of Libertad
and Otay,
and I began to babble on about how Otay mesa
is like some place on another world compared to this sheltered valley
a desert plateau on top of some flattened mountain
burned by sun
choking with dust
blasted by wind
roasting in summer
freezing in winter
NEVERTHELESS - I said
no obstante, Otay está más cerca al cielo
nevertheless, Otay is closer to heaven
he heh hehhhh
Luis laughed and laughed
I was waxing poetastric you see because I was moving after
four years and four months at my little place
downtown across from the park
and so it goes
yes
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FOUR
for a man walking his dog
without a leash on our
new street of Roses
or is the dog walking him?
Who is whose by whom .
I am yours by you
by your eye-brain connect when you read me/us here .
These letters will spell/cast our magus relation major arcana
and hope the magick entrance is charming
m e a n i n g
rattle rattle rattle of the bones
l a n g u a g e
for a man walking his dog
without a leash on our
new street of
H I N T
tint salmon coral peach rose scarlet
NON SEQUITUR
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- We built our house... uf... twenty years ago, ¿verdad? -
our landlady asks her husband in response to my question.
Yes but added the upstairs much later
Yes but added the upstairs much later
Yes but added the upstairs much later
Yes but added the upstairs much later
Yes but added the upstairs much later
Yes but added the upstairs much later
___________________
you can still see that this that this that process
repeated
build one floor with a cement roof and
rebar rods sticking up into the air
castillos they call 'em
waiting for the next floor w h e n e v e r
- Yes, we bgan living here in the 1980s - she agreed when I asked my terms of decades.
But then, to measure the map of time in her personal terms she added - well, that
was before they opened the línea here in Otay.
- The gate (¿la garita?) ?
- Sí, la garita de Otay.
Then look you dear reader how they did
open the line yes to open the gate yes
SO this whole neighborhood fairly screams 1980s and onward
to the millennium, screams in my foreign eyes, at least yes.
Power of suggestion. I know now that for some time intelligences vast and cool
and as far above us as we are above the animalicules that swarm in a drop of
pond water (War of the Worlds, H.G. Wells)
I knew it was the 80s and 90s so I see 80s and 90s.
The big ISSSTE store in this neighborhood, for example, a
monumental structure swallowing an entire block at the
center of our sector (o modulo) de Nueva Tijuana
[PHILIP: code image to appear?]
looks very very late 20th century yes it doessssssste
By contrast, the "other side of Otay, along
the western end of Calzada Tecnologico,
looks very sixties and seventies and then o n w a r d s
OR At Least so it seems in these foreign eyes from next door 20 miles away now living here yes
annnnnd lovinggggggg ittttttttttttttt yessssssssssssssss
lovingly gazing upon Mexican border architecture
do not ask what is it let us go and make our visit
do not ask us about COLONIAL or PRECOLUMBIAN we are LOCO loco crazyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
for all that tooooooooooooo
for all that vision of New Spain peon/slave built Colonial churches and palaces
and all that vision of prehispanic Aztec and Maya tribute built temples and palaces
no, do not ask what is it let us go and make our visit
T.S. Elliot
LIKE MY PICTURE? (Mikey asks)
- It is proof (camera error) of beam me up scotty from the Maya Atlantis
and escaping to Egypt in a crystal dirigible!!!!
BUT MEANWHILE back in modern postmodern border architecture
life is like so very much of Mexico
like so very much of all Latin America
contemporary & popular
(i.e. "popular" = "of the people" NOT the corporate technocrats)
architecture built by families of people for themselves
always looking wondrously strange and miraculous
like the Holmes' chambered nautilus
I once chanted outside
the supreme court
until the guard
asked me to
leave if
I had
no
permit
to demonstrate there
heh the follies of youth
this is the architecture of dreams and magick
always looking wondrous strange and miraculous
in my foreign eyes
all these narrow staircases and overhanging terraces
all levels built up on top of each other as family grows
staircases and terraces sometimes without railings
and the future, the half-completed upper storeys hanging up t h e r e
waiting, growing, stretching, enclosing, awakening .
THEN Come the huge, rich monsterds of techno moderne
plopped down
side
by
side
with cheaper
cement block or
even cheaper free
castoff plywood panels
recycled garage doors or
pieces of abandoned trailers
sheets of
plastic
flapping in
t h e w i n d .
Or, if you like, the elegant sections of
wealthy hillsides homes like Chapultepec
looking like mansions of Bel Air on the border
or the super "urban renewal" zone
of zona río
with its multi-star hotels
nightclubs
and restaurants
&
giant CECUT
cultural center
and Plaza Río shopping mall
with movie plex
BUT EVEN THERE
in reborn, transformed
river bottom you can find, as Pepe native Tijuanense
pointed out one night
to Luisa & me
before he flew away
to Paris & Madrid
even there
in Zona Río
you can find hints of the past
the vanished cardboardland "Cartolandia"
in a little shack hidden in the back, behind the Tacos Franc parking lot on
Sanchez Taboada
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FIVE so we arrIVE at our new home in Nueva Tijuana.
Thoroughly middle class, Mexican border style. Much of the home-made architecture
mixed with half-broken streets and of course, dogs. Dogs. And more dogs.
Here, again, if Philip will please plug in the html code for the image, a
vision of our neighborhood from on high (thank you Terra Server).
Back from our rambling past wander pen we return to Sunday morning
when a neighbor craftsman is finishing the electric welding of the
new lock on our heavy screen door. Zzzzzttt zztt ZAP click the power
fails. How delighted I am to write by hand in the sunlight I keep on
scribbling while they scurry back and forth and around clicking circuit
breakers outside and in, on our wall or on the powerpole.
You can tell
this is a middle class neighborhood because practically
no one steals electricity via home made connections of snaking cables
biting into the power lines
- they call those pirated connections diablitos -
little devils
but I ain't seen none around here abouts. This
neighborhood was planned
as they say
for better or worse
both as they say and as they plan
for better or worse
to find our house you will need to connect the dots
but I have not written the dots
all the juvenile rose dots
not yet
no not quite yet but a moment longer linger
they shall emerge as pistas
es decir future clues
those roses, these dots, your clues
"Colonel Mustard in the library with the '38' revolver"
a literary citation
for nonprofit educational purposes only to educate you as to where the young clues
of roses lie in a bed of roses
another CLUE all rights reserved
to the boardgame only the quote
nothing else for them
I wrote all of it
PLEASE MY LOVE I said, presenting her with roses, rosas,
please, let's NEVER move again until we buy our own land
and build a house hanging on the hillside above the ocean
please please please let's never move again until that then
ah suite wraptaur you know you can decode the young roses and
the revolver smothered in mustard in the library I have moved half
my books but still have more cleaning up to do this week I probably won't
be writing much of anything at all until
please my love let's never move again never never never until we own our own piece of land
a b o v e t h e o c e a n
AI may deduce, you may deduce, reader may deduce the young roses
flaming in each other's arms at last we live together and lay down together and
cook together and sit down to eat together and wake up ions in the streaming electric
m o r n i n g
ooooooooooooooooooooo xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
but please let's never move again never never never until we own our own place in the sun
I am such a wreck after all that moving after all that lifting and carrying downstairs
and upstairs
a n d d o w n s t a i r s
a n d u p s t a i r s
AGAIN let's never move again again again again again again
again again again again NEVER NVER ENENRENRENNSSNDDSNDF
I am not a juvenile rose any longer no longer
so although Chris may connect the dots and see
where the revolver calibre lies lays
heh gotta go SDSU or
_______http://www.descubrebajacalifornia.com/espanol/mapas/tijuana.htm________
like he/you once told me found "my/our" street heh on SDSU
where I will be going this coming week to hear my son's music
But I have already said too much get down
they're shooting in Mesopotamia thank my lucky roses
I ain't there I prefer Mesoamerica but please let's never never move again
I am not a young buck anymore
am in that dangerous middle period of life
the follies of youth spent behind me
the follies of mid-life poetry in process all around me
the follies of old age dotage yet to come to come
mas'Allah
God willing
Dios mediante
and the creek don't rise
y que el arroyo no sube
I s h o u l d l i v e s o l o n g a s t o s e e
y e s n o
you pays your dollar and you takes your chance
even if I mangle grammar and grumpier
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SIX sticks and stones, mad dogs, and mid-day sun.
We go out walking this Sunday "morning" at eleven a.m. I am writing all this mess
later when we shall return, but now we go now to explore the enormous Nueva Tijuana
sobreruedas (street market) that blossoms into existence every Sunday cada ocho días
every eight days as they say in Spanish in Mexico
and we walk and walk
and look and touch and talk down one block after another
to another and another all full of booths and people buying and selling
until then at the corner of Francisco Villa and Lopez Portillo (check it out
Chris on the map)
OMAIGAD says my love my rose my Tere - omaigad it it it is
H U G E . . .
it goes everywhere form from here, this corner Villa/Portillo(the west one)
all four streets stretching into the distance and then bending around further corners
row upon row of plastic tarps stretched over metal poles, booth after booth, puesto
after
puesto filled with tables groaning under the weight of stuff Stuff STUFFFFFffff
tables of stuff, piles of stuff, racks of stuff eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
clothes, furniture, electronics, meat, fruit, vegetables, grain, pets, pizza, tacos, shoes ALL OF IT
sold with NO GUARANTEES the seller will even be back Here Next Week heh heh heh
and little street restaurants, mmmmmm
where in one we finally have something to eat although we have to wait
a long time they're very busy but it's delicious no matter the family
at the nearby table with two little howling boys who only want to play
in the big dirt pile behind the plastic tarpolin
their mother keeps grabbing them
and ordering them back to the table WWWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA no Mamí no
DON'T EAT THE DIRT eat your food WWWWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA no Mamí no
excuse me please I have to go to the bathroom
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SEVEN and it's even all come out well remember the Last Emperor
sniff sniff EAT MORE BRUSSEL SPROUTS or something I am burning incense now
there are, incidentally, incense shops everywhere in Tijuana, especially downtown
with all their crystals and herb teas and statues of saints and death
and little figurines take note you D&D players if there are any of you
left alive out there
little marble pyramids and quartz amulets vibrating in harmony with the human
body as it's said and yes and magick potions to rub on your skin or wash the floor
and walls with (cleansing limpieza yes) ya ya shut up
D a n i e l
just tell the people there's a good one (herb & incense) back
inside the Popo mercado downtown hidden inside the block diagonally
across from the cathedral
Ay ya how very far from old downtown Tijuana it seems now, out here on
the planned postmodern architecture already broken cement fields of
Nueva Tijuana
yet what a wonderful new house we have here for our life together
even if the walls are a bit crooked and the library/office floor seems to have bumps under
the wall to wall carpet
it is lovely with
black marble tile in the front big space
and a tiled bathroom
and lots of light and windows
which hopefully the thieves won't find toooooo easy to crawl in and
hmmmmmm
In the near east, the barren, beautiful peaks of Otay mountain rise up
looking so very much bigger than they do from old downtown
we are almost half again as close to the mountain so it looks four times as big
remember the law of inverse square relationship yes yes yes
It is eight or ten kilometers between old Tijuana (downtown) and Nueva Tijuana
but listen:
tingle tinkle ting a ling the same street vendors with ice cream carts
pushing along the street letting the bumpy cement and broken dirt ring their bells
even as they push push push forward and disappear around the corner down toward
where the soldered iron muffler man stands tall I MUST TELL Meli Barragan she
collects images
makes them come alive
deja vu
have I said this already ?
We have returned Sunday afternoon from our exploration of the weekly street market
and Tere is passed out on the sofa I carried with Gonzalo yesterday downstairs
and upstairs and in here. Into our new home. I wish I had more money. Could
only give Gonzalo five dollars but
he spent it immediately on caguamas of beer and later asked for more heh heh what a cantinero
gonna miss him
thank God I have my classes twice a week and must go back to the neighborhood yes
Tere is asleep on the sofa in the cool shade under a breath of breeze from open
windows it all sounds so lovely but you have to enjoy the culture and the language
and the threat of thieves and the feeling that you are the stranger here in a strange new world
where factories loom around the corner and pay the workers fifty or a hundred dollars A WEEK this
is where
Marx will
be reborn
and he is already alive in China
no threat, only a worry for the generations to come
from one little bourgeois poet who believes in John Stuart Mill
not richard milhous
ding a ling the ice cream vendor sounds the same but he isn't of course
this is another neighborhood but
Mexico is why I moved to Mexico
and so
you will understand my artistic license.
Well, "that's the news from" our little stretch of Nueva Tijuana yes.
And , as usual , behind
a l l the bla bla bla
I am dreaming of
m e s o a m e r i c a
in just one fold of paper and 