15.5.4
56 Spring - 26 Moon
48th year of the Space Age
Nueva Tijuana, Baja California
09:00 a.m.
Hours later awaken cup of instant coffee scribble in the side window morning sunshine on the little ratty plastic table I brought from the basement of Ramón, yes. So many diary drafts and poems I wrote on this very broken edged cheap piece of plastic shˇt table but at least it is Flat, upstairs across from the park and now I am upstairs across from the painted wall surrounded by neighbors' houses you'll know it when you see it, even in your dreams, yes, wraptaur, it is Saturndaeg across the line on the Mexican frontier and everyone is slowly awakening late and my love is going to go do her laundry while I finish this and then go type it into internet, 100% handwritten and computyped in Nueva Tijuana. No downtown today, no. Still no students at class but now I have the flyer and just need to xerox and cut and distribute, yes.
I have also gathered brown nose documents, kiss-the-hand besamanos letters and certificates of appreciation I'm going to take to the consulate to plead for a visa to work in Mexico as an artist writer giving tours, classes, translations, performances etcetera. Want to scan them and link them so readers and potential clients can see what a little goody-good witch I am, what a shining little bureaukrapt I used to be... heh heh these documents do Not give A Clue about the truth of my soul wounded surviving child of a frustrated alkie engineer who shoulda been an artist, who was, Nevertheless, (even flawed) more than I will ever be, a Hero and a Rocket Scientist yes he was, my first father who saved a man's life at risk of his own and then went on to help hurl John Glenn into orbit on the shouders of Atlas, and then died; so my second father is a genius inventor who seems to know everything and criticize it all with bush-beating metaphors; It Is Truly a Pity these two men, both rivals for the same woman, my mother, did Not know each other, they would have been the perfect team to built the eductor Who Shall Bring Fresh Water to Baja California and then the world....
I, meanwhile, am still a lunative inventor myself, only to design and engineer the appearance and disappearance of words logo-tipos Ja praising our Creator for another day of Jesus life yes.
02:14 a.m.
I awake from dreams and can't sleep for thinking of all the things I should be writing. My father was arrested for drunk driving again and I was warned for excess velocity on the canyon road to our house below the dam that always threatens to break. But this time is different because both Tere and refried David are here, too. As we clean up the garage my father tries not to stagger while the police helicopters circle overhead, spotlights beaming down onto the hillside of Grossmont Mt.Helix where I grew up thoroughly bourgeois etcetera mmmm the wild sage always smelled sweeter there and the eucalyptus was pungent, yes.This is the first time I remember Tere and David showing up in my dreams with my first, late, father; this is the first time I remember any friends from Tijuas in dreams with him, although Ramón hinted once or twice he knew him and knowing him hinted as usual probably promiscuously him ugh so I never told him what I already know that No, Not, waterfront motel vomiting in the toilet after all night binging in the bars and weeping about me, before he broke my nose.
Of course back in the dream I was as usual still pissed at him for being a drunk and not following his muse but of course we made up and I introduced them and remembered of course he died young so many years ago still living on the hillside out there, so young, my age, is why I worry now so much about death and cigarettes and don't like going to bars very much quite a little curse to carry here in Cantinaland with all the delicious beer and tequila and everything yes I suppose it is quite a little curse yes, oh pitiful gringo just pick up your cross and scribble. So yes anyway of course in the dream we eventually made up and tears turned from anger to joy at seeing him but why oh why did you have to die? And then I knew I was dreaming, as usual, lucidity strikes and struck again and I woke me up as usual lucidity does that to me whenever I dream of my father or grandmother once or twice a month.
He did say, however, once I stopped blaming him, he did say that it is a good thing I have moved in with Tere and he likes her, like my Momma likes her and my second father likes her, and that David can have that big TV tube from the garage but watch out for the spilling oil there... We were all cleaning up the garage after the cops left.
On the hillside where I grew up twenty miles due north of Mexico. 2:22 a.m. and counting.
IN THE REAL WORLD an airplane is thundering in the night before dawn from the Otay airport a couple miles away. That's how quiet the streets are, now. Back around nine p.m. before we went to sleep the streets around our new home were filled with neighbors talking, children playing, I stood outside with G. and his buddies drinking caguamas of Tecate beer and sort of followed what they were saying but you know... they slip so veryyyyy easily in and out of castillian perfection and then fast & fancy border street slang, half Los Angeles, half Guadalajara, a dash of Chilangolandia, all Tijuas can talk like that and I just cannot write or ever think man I have enough problems just with my English, see? I am sure you see that, but at least I can drive and I can dance in this blessed tongue my mother tongue yes.
Now I must go back to sleep. It is almost 03:00 already. Enough scribble scrabble. Thank God I have a room for my office so the three o'clock street wanderers won't call up at the light on in the front room eh? One just did, asking me where G. was and did I want to buy some paint? Or... maybe that's what he said. He might have been asking if I wanted to go "play hookey" heh heh the phrase in popular slang is "de pinta" mmmm I love love love language yes but I just want to write so I switched off the light and retreated to the bedroom we keep as my office. Gotta get a desk. Sitting on the floor cramps my legs. Kinda like the first days four-and-a-half years ago in front of the park before I had no furniture. "Any Furniture" - thank you, Mother grammar.
Ah yes but those days are over now. Go into our bedroom. Lay myself down beside my love. She is faintly snoring. The dogs are barking outside. Now it is really three o'clock and all's well. Someone laughs in the distance, a high, sweet Mexican laugh, jai-ayaiiiiii... a lo lejos. Lo lejos con Neruda y su poesia....
10:30 a.m.
Busses, minibusses, crowded route taxis, trucks and cars all turn and pass at the corner of Bellas Artes and Lopez Portillo. La lanzadera - the launching pad - Tere calls this corner where all roads meet at the growling, working heart of Nueva Tijuana. It all seems so very very busy busy busy
but never forget this is Mexico
and the little shops and street vendors still
yet
sell
however
with no adverbs to measure or accurately
portray; only
only conjunctions
point
if you want to see it
and the green taxis from 5th and Constitution downtown (old Tijuana), well, only the forward half of them, actually, slightly down the block, make sure you ask for "Modulos de Otay" come here. And Good Luck Knowing WHEN to get out of the TAXI!!! This ain't no tourist sight, no, like the U.S. soldier yelled at me ten years ago when I looked down at him with his automatic rifle guarding the automobile gate where people used to run through onto the freeway itself... that has changed, now. The soldiers are actually in danger, now. May they come home soon.
The residential lots in all these streets appear to be 8X24 meters don't ask me why I can only imagine they were seeking to create rectangular plots of land of 200 square meters before they went home to their own homes on the rolling hills where the ex-governor fifteen years before flew over in light airplane dropping bags of white powder lime, cement, plaster, to mark off the open lands he was taking for himself from the national reserve because he was the governor. NO NO No No no you Stupid Gringo THAT Was another dream of Land development, NOT this one surreal reality here. AND That one could have been president someday, with all the people who stood behind him, until his... no. No tell. Better I should concentrate on orange juice and powder the tourists into coming, except that such stories DO draw them forth, wondering what lies around the next corner of this legendary land, yes, because the Aztec emperor Tizoc was poisoned for an incompetent after all the books were burned, twenty years before, and history Does Repeat Itself, and....
Kuix amo te, ye te in ti?
Isn't it you, really you yourself?
No, master. Amo tecutli. It is I ca nehua soy yo, y el other, and the otro, who told ugly-angry-monster-devil Huerta-who-suffers knowing priests, too, are
corrupt, and no closer to God than you or I. That is the true message of Jesus, the true message of the border between heaven and earth: Objects In Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear. PLEASE DOn't tell me, my beloved sisters and brothers of God Bless aciremA, don't tell me the U.S. ain't (isn't) corrupt. Kiss Richard Nixon's Howard Hughes behind and all Teamsters Jimmy Hoffa and that is onlyyyyy the beginning, yessssssss
because then we move on to old Joe Kennedy
and
the bitter truth be known has nothing to do with nationality or national identity and every to do with
human nature power corrupts yes it does, and then destroys its own instruments arriving naked in a taxicab in Mexico City twenty years ago at Daddy's house with the dead lover
back home and the lady of white pianos would shake her head and smile, bitterly. This has all been brought to you by a delicious Mexican soap opera, es decir, telenovela
back home. My love wanted to watch her telenovelas and I drank beer with the boys outside. There. I told, after all. Lucky my father was only an alcoholic and none of those nightmares ever came true.
Except one where neighborhoods still carry his name. "They said he was holier than thou, watering all his little trees, gringo, but he would have stolen that land, too, except they all fell briefly from grace when blue conquered red, hereabouts. And THEN y entonces y entonces y entonces y entonces y entonces y entonces y entonces y entonces y entonces y entonces y entonces y entonces y entonces y entonces y entonces y entonces y entonces y entonces y entonces y entonces y entonces y entonces y entonces y entonces y entonces y entonces y entonces y entonces y entonces y entonces y entonces y entonces y entonces y entonces y entonces y entonces y entonces y entonces y entonces y entonces y entonces y entonces y entonces y entonces y entonces y entonces y entonces y entonces y entonces y entonces y entonces y entonces y entonces y entonces no.
Well, he's been rehabilitated, now, Gringo, like your Nixon, yes, or who was it you told me the professor told you never to say... Clark Kerr, or something...?"
But, Ramón, couldn't he have....
"Oh shut up, Daniel, no No NO NO! Shut up! You don't know nothing, NOTHING at all about us. All you want to do is throw trash like all the rest of your stupid american countrymen...."
*sigh* I shall deeply, deeply miss our battling eagle debates around his restaurant kitchen table when he was in his cups and the doors were closed and....
But now I have love and someone to sleep withal.
- from Nueva Tijuana, handwritten and computyped, 15 May 2004
Daniel Charles Thomas
not apo strophe remember
copyright 2004 Daniel Charles Thomas