The night is a precious blanket who wraps California in its ancient embrace.  We have orphaned it from darkness by all our luz, all our electricity.  Mexican California is no exception.  Here in Tijuana the city night is bright with all the twinkling, gleaming, glowing, glaring, shining, lights.  Only out in the splendid wildernesses (mountain, beach, desert) of Baja California can you see the stars and kiss that ancient oscuridad - darkness - of night.

I suppose this exile from dark began with fire.  Then, sometime long ago when Mesopotamia was new, lamps were already old, little clay things burning oil.  I remember how I used to admire their reproductions for sale in the Biblical Archeology Review which I would read for a few years at Ed's house.  By the days of old Sumer, of course, we creatures of city Babylon and Ur had already discovered wax, thank you, Mrs. Beehive.  Such curious monkeys, no wonder the dogs love us.  I gave my street shadow a cold hotdog last night when I went out to put my love's car inside the gate.  She smiled.  Why, both, of course.

Yesterday was payday so I was able to take a cab home from the gallery party.  Unfortunately Tere could not meet me there... she had her appointment with the massage therapist who burns incense etc.  The opening, of course, was another triumph for the ICBC in their gardens between the palaces (los palacios).  An amazing mix of artists and patrons flowed in and out of the building and mingled and talked and actually looked at the paintings.  I had the great delight of seeing that Oslyn has two paintings in the show - Tere and I know her from the days at CEHU when we first met.  She was delighted to hear we are living together, at last, after four years.

I also had the pleasure of seeing Elizabeth Cazessus and talking with her in the midst of the crowded gallery, she leaning close to let her words enter into my ear amidst ALL THAT NOISE OF PEOPLE.  She has recently returned from a poetry trip to Cuba, and is still glowing from her experience with a closed, blockaded, but still very artistic, people.  Of course, it is - and has always been - the people who suffer from the U.S. blockade, not old Castro.  E says that some of the writers don't even have paper to write on.  She is thinking of organizing a project to send paper there.  I said oh you know I never never involve myself with Mexican politics but if you were to ask me to criticize my own government, well... I certainly would carry reams of paper out of the country.  Wraptaur protect me back door eh?

Meanwhile this whole war against 1001 Arabian nights just makes me cringe.   I mean we are going to Make the people of those "other" countries suffer drop bombs on their markets and restaurants just to MAYBE kill one evil dictator ("we" missed, by the way, he is still alive and writing his novel) and then we cover up our bloody killing and violation of other countries' sovereignty with the word democracy and peurile pronouncements about not needing permission slips to go kill people in order to defend ourselves and THEY iraq NEVER ATTACKED US it was that blasphemer bunLewdN but noooooo we shall make them all free and then tell them oh by the way they don't have any rights under U.S. law and maybe the Geneva convention didn't apply to anyone who fought back if they weren't some kind of organized national army, etcetera and etcetera and etcetera and etcetera and yes war is hell and war is a bloody business but we are the champions of the world and God made us puritan missionaries to preach our system and drop bombs on markets and restaurants if the enemy is hiding there or maybe just to maybe kill an evil dictator and then of course we absolutely MUST make everyone into little carbon copies of us U.S. because they are ignorant savages and we are on a mission from GOD but but but ahem bismillah alramat alrahim Danny Danial Denial who is preaching now, eh?  Oh Lord grant me peace and patience with the stupid assholes we have elected, oh yes sweet Jesus I love America but we are free, not slaves, and I shall speak and tell you freely that under our oligarchy our quote-unquote leaders are condemned to repeat the mistakes of history.

By the way, once our troops are committed in any action, we MUST support them in every way, including bringing them ALL home safely ASAP.  There is a vast difference between the sins of our government and the struggle of our soldiers, men, women, animals and intelligent machines to survive and complete the mission.  Oh by the way wraptaur I saw your sweet touch yesterday thank you.  Or was I only imagining glitches again? 

   *sigh*

Meanwhile if you want a Cuban cigar you must come to Mexico.

Back on a more peaceful planet I asked E for her permission to place and translate some of her poems in the escritores tijuanenses pages, especially when we inaugurate the new site in October.  I worked a short while last night on my new diary intro page, before going to the gallery, also by Taxi Libre (**ah, the benefits of being a working man with a reasonably good job**).

Nebiolo wine - one of the better Baja California vintage/varieties - flowed freely at the inaugural fest, and later, at the buffet - which didn't open until almost nine, but was worth waiting for - a chocolate fountain poured down seductive brown warm liquid sweet with attendant strawberries and marshmallows for dipping.  Mimi X___ introduced herself, explaining she had brought the fountain from the U.S. and I must try it and that the chocolate was from Belgium.  Of course she knows Carlos, she said, when I mentioned that I used to live near him, across the downtown park in old Tijuana, before I moved to la Nueva de los Modulos etcet.

Tonight, last night, was also the night someone put a folded piece of white cheese into the chocolate fountain and discovered... mmm cheese and chocolate!

office  FACTORY  NEWS

I am almost used to working, now, after four weeks.  My backaches, physically, are much diminished, but the psychic backaches, I fear, have only begun.  The last two weeks I've been on my own as shipping manager at BOOKMAKERS, Inc., without Roberto, whom I replaced.  Latest Office Rumor has it that Popeye Gregorio wants to start sexual rumors running around the factory about the big boss and one of the young sales executives, but if so it has already backfired on him because the bookbinding seamstresses say he was looking up porn on "my" shipping computer last week, and I am tempted to make up other stories here just to give you something juicy to read hearye hear ye, but so far only intuition tells me nothing has happened, not yet.  Not Yet.  God help me I hope these rumors are not true because we need the guy to keep on working.  My intuition of impending events also prompted me to ask Eddie how he thinks I should handle anything like popeye's mouth and his porno surfing if and when they occurr but Eddie immediately flew off the handle and demanded I tell him WHAT HE DID WHAT HE DID and you, reader, already know about him and his temper tempus fugit weren't so long ago he tarred and feathered the neighbors' mop and meanwhile I was driving the truck and he riding telling me go here turn there do you know where you are going I don't know where it is what the heck beep at them beep at them (he actually TOLD me to honk the horn at people who had just had an accident! heh heh well, at the rubberneckers, actually, but EveryOne would Hear the Damn horn, Eddie...) ahem ahem ahem so well now I know how he will take it if this porno fiction ever comes true thank God he is my friend eh?  I mean I really do love the man but his temper is very very different than mine.  I imagine he is trying hard to tolerate me, too, you don't know HOW Such an arrogant knowitall snide Ahole I know I am but what are you.

But Popeye, meanwhile, definitely has a mouth, that good old boy does.  He proves to me, at least, that It IS Quite strange to find myself being a manager at a book factory in beautiful Chula Vista by the bay salt mines... without any MBA to wave around, only twenty years experience in offices (which gave me insight and the bare beginnings of computer savvy), and then six more years actually managing a physical office for the city manager's executive assistant project managers, buying all their supplies, services, etc., but now the little company where I work tells me I am head of shipping... well, it is radically different working for a small company, in the production, not a bureaucratic municipal palace administration.  I think I like it.  Maybe I won't apply for that diputado job at Docho Beach.  Diputado de putado de la ciudad imperial.

My feet still ache from being on them all day long, and yet, Greg laughs and says I will get bloodclots in my legs from sitting on the stool and processing all the UPS and FEDEX computerized freight data.  Said he would gladly spray me with the water spritz so it looked like I had broken a sweat.  I am tempted to ask him how the horses are making it with some babe.  That's what the girls say he was looking at.  In my dreams One of Them has binocular glasses (the ladies, I mean, who watch over our shoulders, Popeye, so watch out, I think, and then he goes and sits where she can see everything we do at the computer.  I am tempted to put in place a content blocker on my/our machine but that seems so infantile.  Still....

So it was a great relief to get home to Tijuana and go to the art opening.   What with being Friday and payday and all, and getting to see a lot of my new old (five years, now, some of them) friends and acquaintances, and of course the gardens and ICBC itself themselves, all drapped in trees and shadow and light under the gleaming night sky at the center of this megalopolis crushed against the border....

Ah, bendita Tijuana, tan lejos del gran Tenochtitlan y tan cerca a nuestra senora la reina de los angeles de porcienculos....

It is Saturday morning and my love is cooking breakfast.  It's only reheated leftovers but the hot delicious smell is filling our front room where I sit typing on the computer, looking out the window at the street, at the wall where grafitti is written WIKED.DARK.CASSINO.3.CON which has, I believe absolutely nothing to do with DEFCON 3 nor any number of bookie joints - los book which make so many dollars for the man who is now running for municipal president... wraptaur decode & understand.

I, meanwhile, am for eating.

OKEI bai okay BYE