on the bus again on the bus a gain on the bus, a gain of 2.00 a gain of 2.25 bought a pass free 2.25 saved I bought a pass fear not not fear not 2.25 save I bought fear not I bought a I bought a pass

a long forward pass from the TV echoed across the room. This page no more. No one thought to feed the dog, only the ghost cat smiled. She had been out of doors. Fleas had found her there and eaten her alive in punishment for swallowing the poisonous lizard.

The morning. The grey clouds of June. Endless discussions of California gloom. I used to have a photo of my grandmother she sent me. She and another old lady friend looking at flowers. I wonder who held the camera? It looked like she walked under cloudy skies on San Francisco Bay. Like they walked. She was the daughter of a mermaid, you know. Married a sailor with tatoos and a gold dragon ring from China. The picture was beautiful - partly because it appeared UNposed - here were just two old ladies looking at flowers in a garden and someone snapped their picture. I looked at it for years and years and then I lost it... or it is hidden behind another picture in my photo album Lana Sharon wanted to gut the months we lived together. But the album is in my storage unit near the new ballpark. Just two old ladies walking in a garden, nothing more, nothing less. Maybe it was in Oakland, maybe San Francisco, or closer to her home, in Alameda. She died two years later in the same hospital where I had been born. In those earlier years the water still came right up to the building on the shoreline. Then they built South Shore etcetera. She lived at 3100 Adams on the corner of Fountain. The house is still there. Or it was the last time I looked. In Alameda.

I often have to say that word "Alameda" when I cross the border here in Tijuana. Where were you born? I give it my best Kansas Aaaaaalameda accent y no digo nada de ningun parque de alamos, no, although rumor has it (or some book I cannot remember reading about Alameda history in the UCSD library twenty years ago when I should have been studying Spanish or sociological theories of communication and meaning) that they were oaks, not poplar trees ALAMOS=ALAMEDA that grew along the shores of Alameda island where the Spanish Mexican dons and donas used to go horseback riding before the yankees came and took it all away....

If you want to know more, read Bancroft. I did and do. I grew up near his Spring Valley country cabin twenty miles due north of Tijuana... "the professor is God" etc.

Or maybe I am confusing all these poplar ALAMOS trees and OAK encinos with the name of the big city the yankees built, "Oakland" aya there is no there there, the Oak Land of Gertrude Stein (who sensibly moved to Paris and stayed in France through both wars. Through both wars, mind you. Read her, too, except.... ...one does hear so many awful things that I do not know why that should have been so shocking but it was and there is no doubt about it one's country is one's country and that kind of harm seems to be so far away from our country. It is queer the world is so small and so knocked about. To-night we expected to have Germans come into the house again.... [- Gertrude Stein, Wars I Have Seen, 1944 -]

Her French and Alice B. Toklas' French was both so good that the boche never caught on heh heh heh... the pen Is mightier than the sword. Or, at least, HER (their) pen(s) was/were....

Where was I? Oh yes, the notes I scribbled this morning on the way to work.

When I stayed with my grandmother on San Francisco bay, she used to drive me and sometimes a neighborhood friend over to one park or another, Washington, or we would walk to Kruzi or Lincoln. There were always big trees and sometimes stories about when my father was a little boy. I and my friend loved the slides and swings and teeter-totters and merry-go-rounds and I used to always think of this when I walked in the park across the street from my apartment downtown for four years until I moved this spring. The park has a wonderful playground that is always full of screaming children on the weekends. I imagine it must be more so on weekdays now that it is summer... and the library....

Incidentally I called Ramon, and Carlos, last week. Both are doing well. Must go see them.

After the park we would always get home in time for Popeye. I loved Popeye cartoons. That's why it hurts me so much to call Greg at work "Popeye" - I don't think he deserves it, but there you are, I do. Well, here, at least. Not actually at work. I call him by his name. He calls me big boy and lazy dog etc.

We would always be home in time for Popeye while Gramma cooked dinner in her little kitchen that ran along one side of the house. It had the most wonderful grandmother smell. When she died it killed me that we had to empty and sell the house. But that was later. I have the Cogswell Cancer Curse, she wrote in a letter to my father. But, earlier, there was that series of lovely summers in the last years before she got sick.

Especially the three years when I flew up alone to spend three weeks with her. Nonstop growling propeller driven airliners of the middle 1950s, the last years before the jet age shattered all gentility of flight and the windows all got so damn small and the planes flew so gosh darn high you couldn't see the little people any more... I hate flying now. The seats are shrivveled up and the air horribly canned and... mmm Dani 'nuff sed now....

But that was then, and different to the child than the man. Non-stop airliner from San Diego to San Francisco. I was only six the first year, I think... and seven, then eight, the next two. My parents debated whether or not I should go or not, alone... I would be escorted to the gate and met at the gate, but on the flight... alone, growling across the heavens in those beautiful flaming four-engined metal beasts oh Lord how much I loved to fly back then when I was little and the seats still seemed so big and the windows were big and full of visions of heaven and earth.... It took four delicious hours to fly from San Diego to San Francisco, between the waters of the north where I was born and this southern coast where I grew up, next door to Mexico.

I have always like to be alone, bookended by society, but alone. Still struggle with it. It took me four years to finally decide to move in with Tere. I must have asked her a million questions about her mother and father and grandparents and... when I found out her grandfather Tovar had had a ranch on the mountain above Real de Catorce, well... I knew I was lost... but it still took three more years to... get to where we are now. But here we are and here I am type type type scribble scribble scribble....

no apo strophe re member

okei bai         okay bye