wALK WITH ME, three or four blocks through my neighborhod, our neighborhood, este modulo de nueva Tijuana enseguida de la puerta Otay colonia, this module of New Tijuana next door to the Otay border gate neighborhood of typical narrow streets narrow sidewalks in front of front yards all gated and walled with cement block, metal bars, ornamental wrought iron

neighborhood of planned design, new city blocks nueva Tijuana modules all right angles, square corners, manzanas rectangulares rectangular city blocks pero unas calles some streets don't go through, only make the corner and stop at T-intersection, not X, and The Plan is thus like a slightly uneven stack of offskew dominoes here and there pedestrian passageways cutting through from one street

to another, old new sidewalks in gaps between graffiti painted walls C.A.S.I.N.O.3 and dusty trees still struggling twenty years after this New Tijuana was created out on the edge of town next door to the 1980s border gate declared & decreed out here on Otay Mesa

In Tijuana did government
a stately border gate decree
where long-range trucks and highways ran
from caverns measureless to man
unto the sea...

with apologies to Colleridge in the distance you can always hear the trucks growling somewhere

and sometimes, late at night, the sky is tinted by huge plumes of vapor that rise up from the cryogenic plant DON'T ASK what is it, Elliot visit

only walk with me in the morning, from home to the border gate

through these three, four blocks of our/my neighborhood after kissing my love goodbye until tonight, then the first step through this modulo of residential streets all tightly bound and constricted between rich and poor houses

and barking dogs

until we reach the boundary street of our neighborhood (sor Juana) and enter the actual border zone itself,

THERE IS IT there it is

all open fences and truck lots and the big BORDERGATE street itself full of honking cars lined up workday morning thousands upon hundreds waiting to enter the United States of America. On this side of that frozen boulevard, one long sidewalk leads toward "our" (u.s.) economic paradise behind new Berlin China wall of steel and fear and......

need workers please come but don't expect any God-given rights except to look out for number one and your

own family

friends

ahem

Otay gate is different than from San Ysidro (puerta Mexico). Here everything is not jammed up against the line, here everything was "planned" and so there are huge, spacious stretches of what looks like a wasteland full of trucks and cars and lots of lots of dirt and dust. And fences. Did I forget to mention fences and more fences? Yes. Fences. Broken sidewalks. Dirt.

We have left the houses now. There is no turning back. I am going to work on the other side. Good little Tijuana gringo. Go to work.

People are parking their cars in makeshift lots in front of & beside the last houses on the last corner of "my" neighborhood DON'T ASK me I JUST LIVE HERE and then they walk across, too....

At this last corner, between my neighborhood and no man's land tierra de nadie, here, next to where the lunch wagon parks, there, behind a fence and gate, exists a curiously beautiful apparently official Mexican building - a building almost done in seemingly Franklloydwright prairie style...

Passing by by and by I buy a cup of coffee from that Mexican lunch truck parked, waiting upon all the pedestrians who walk past and beyond all day long toward the legal door to the other side. Ten pesos - ninety cents - a bit steep price for a cup of coffee but we are almost a captive market of sorts, we pedestrians walking toward "America"
          ( we are already on the same continent, under the same California sky and bla bla bla political poooooooh pooh pooh on you there is no such thing as free access between NATIONS everything is ConTrolled with a big Big D as in Dellortnoc Pallindrome I am writing I have my own border inside my head, my heart, I mean I physically am able to say anything I want to but self-edit against slander and libel etc. yes, since this is More than writing, 'tis publishing and one can Never escape Responsibility, No. There is No Fire in this theater, Holmes. And there, friends, is the Yes Border Gate of My Mind, No. Those other words are deported into hell, like the three devils I once commanded to consume themselves from their tails right up into their heads and poof! Those bad little words ate themselves out of existence, went off into another dimension....

Ahem reading too much Vonnegut again, eh? Go ahead, get out of that no man's land, move along, move along....

) Yes. I stop to buy a cup of coffee buenos dias que le vaya bien gracias igualmente and then walk slowly slowly up the long sidewalk, sipping and scribbling only a note or two, only a word or two that will later expand like cancer cells into entire paragraphs of mutant language KILL IT quick CHEMO Radiation chyrugerie (cirujia) [surgery] no, no, no, I digress to just walk slowly through this storm of thought, slowly, up the long pedestrian Otay sidewalk toward the gate, sipping off my white styofoam cup instant coffee
you mix I mixed to your own desired strength, with hot water
i m p r e g n a t e d with the sweet savour of cinnamon ("canela")
t r a n q u i l o tranquilo don't want to go
into the border gate building
with a cup of
coffee
no

take my time, walk slowly, sipping

On your left, as you walk up the sidewalk, the lanes and lanes of backed up cars and vans and pickups all massed together in crowded crowded lanes of of of traffic traffic frozen stiff with hot motors crawling forward slowly slowly while we pedestrians walk much more quickly there are very few foot crossers at Otay gate it is the secret both hard to find and difficult to approach

(big commercial trucks enter by another gate next door behind the walls)

the vendors are already out in force, working their captive audience, wandering through the lanes of stopped cars, selling food, souvenirs, newspapers, etc.

Keep walking. A change in the pavement of the sidewalk, a corner of a fence, the last lady with her table of sweets and snacks and then, there it is, invisible, unmarked, yet signalled by change... you have crossed over and entered the entrance patio toward the glass doors. A huge sculpture of giants dancing el jarabe traditional dance, a set of flagpoles, and a stone tablet bearing the name of Ronald Reagan and the date 1985.

Walk up to the glass doors. Wait your turn. What is your citizenship? Where were you born? What are you bringing back from Mexico?

no apo strophe re member

okei bai         okay bye