Yesterday at work my coworker Roderigo will tell me how his grandmother brought him to visit the tomb of Juan Soldado, and there were hundreds of people and musicians and candles and flowers. I will wonder if it was his unofficial "saint" day - sometime in June - and he was only nine years old then (also the same age I flew north to see my grandmother in San Francisco, the third, and last, year I did so alone) and his grandmother said look, here was where they told him to run, and there, that wall, that was where he tried to climb over and escape, but they shot him, and then he was buried here, right here, mijo, si....

But that will be later and I will type it up today. 

In the image of local forms, hills, valleys, canyons, water; they are all metaphors for a larger geography, or how the land is beyond those mountains you can see there. It is a lotus like land of easy winters and half-dry summers. Sometimes there be drought. Recent hundred years the busy monster manunkind has built aqueducts for cities on the edge of ocean desert.

I am crossing the gate again in the morning, scribbling.

The growing cities of Tijuana San Diego got together with their states and nations to build dams and aquaeducts for people to drink and make farms.  The evidence is clear: we are not drinking natural water : it's been bottled and piped and chemically treated for purity iron-ic a lee 4 sail .

ON the Bus, waiting:

The honeymoon is over.  Tere pretty much told me to choose her or choose the cigarette.  Actually, what she said was... no puedo soportarlo, ves? I can't take it any more, you see?  This pain of seeing you smoke and hurt yourself, it hurts me.

But that sounded like an ultimatum to me.  Well, I ain't gonna choose her, I am just that stubborn, but no, not exactly, because I Do choose not to hurt her.  So I don't choose the cigarette, either. Anyway she had gone off to drink tequila with a girl friend of hers and I smoked while she was gone and she came back all righteous and sticking her tongue out at me and telling me she hates me because I smoked and I gueesssss a little tipsy too after her tequilas with Andrea and after a few minutes of that I just went in the office where I have my old mattress on the floor and I closed the door and locked it and slept there until next morning.  Today.  Or wait a minute, that was really yesterday morning.  Yes.  Today I woke up with her again.  Last night she asked me why I had gone away.  As if you don't know, I said.  Yes but I want to hear you tell me why.  I want to hear what you say, not what I think.  Heh heh heh what a smart little woman she is.  So of course we ended up in the same bed again, because I hadn't smoked, eh?  What a smart little pussywhipped man heh heh heh.

So it was kiss and make up, yes, but the honeymoon is over.  But she is still DEFINITELY worth a whole hell of a lot more than a cigarette.  Than any number of cigarettes.  Yesterwhipped yes ma'am zas zas zas!

Sigh.  Time for the second honeymoon.  Heh.

No long lines at border gate today.  Much better than yesterday's late wait.  Early morning sun shining brilliant summer is here in Otay mesa yes. 

    STAYGA
      .ONY
SIDEWETA

says the big digital dot sign beside the driveway from Otay gate on U.S. side where pedestrians walk into the business district that Roque built semifictional this hard place yes.  It all looks so very millennial all sweet streets and offices and warehouses but it is surrounded by miles of open space OTAY MESA issss Huge big vast on both sides of the line in front of the jagged mountain where border patrol chases illegals who can no longer jump the wire here on the mesa and go up into the steep Steep STEEP hills right over there, yes....

And Otay Mesa is the picture perfect model of postmodern development except in Tijuana there has been much more development in mesa de Otay and there are lots more buildings and streets of houses and apartments and stores and hotels and restaurants and shopping centers and movie theaters etc.

Heh heh now they are talking about rebuilding the mighty Otay glorietta which is so huge you don't even realize you are going around a glorietta you can't even see the other side for the trees and park they put up in the middle but something like seven roads snarl into it and it is a major traffic headache.  (PHIL: put up a graphic, will you?)

Speaking of reconstruction, work continues at our new site www.tijuanagringo.com but watch out for holes and bumps in the road and besides it's got a dominance-mad address machine that won't let go of your direction window hmmmm it must be the redirect power of the redirection.  Our target inauguration is October on the coming 12th day of autumn new year's day for the era of the Space Age (Sputnik 4 October 1957) this year 2004 will see the beginning of the 48th year....

This is all thanks to a helping host from webnetarts, a web services site dedicated to artistic and socially progressive causes. They are involved with Voz Alta performance space in downtown San Diego... thanks Gary, again....

We hope to have the new site up and running by the twelfth day of autumn, but meanwhile you are certainly welcome to wander by and observe the construction in progress.  The address technically is webnetarts.com/tijuanagringo if you want to escape the redirect dictatorship heh heh heh.  We are applying the same directory structure so far, poemas diary histos escrits turinfo etc. - but they are still wide open you can even see the bones.  Maybe I will leave it like that if I can convince Phil and Charlotte.  Mikey already believes in open air directories for those who care to snoop and peek behind the scenes and if I join him, then P & C are outvoted.  Dealer wins the tie, you see.

It is payday again.  We shall see how long THIS check lasts, but no rent is due so I hope to save some for buying our new refrigerator or stove this summer.  Buenos dias I made the eight o'clock bus and ain't gonna be late to work today no.  Yesterday got there twelve minutes late.  Greg was sick.  Flu.  I hope the rest of us don't catch it.

I dreamed last night a bearded silverhaired man told me my boss at city hall in San Diego wanted me to come back to work for him, but I practically work up screaming no, no, no.  Wishful thinking I could ever go back there again, or that Warren Carstairs could ever actually want me back, although he has had plenty of problems with my replacement, and come to think of it he always had trouble with his personnel.  There was the one that screamed at the police that he worked for the mayor and was Warren's personnel love slave.  There was the executive secretary who left after a couple months and said Warren was a cold-hearted bitch of a man who didn't deserve the job he had.  And.... oh shut up Danial.  I actually liked the guy... maybe it was a class thing, seeing how he always gagged on that silver spoon.... (like Charles Foster Kane eh?).  Eh.

Speaking of which I still mean to scan some of my kissbrownnose references so you can wonder whether I made them up or not heh heh the wonders of computers and photo editing why I remember twenty years ago when my parents house almost burned down TIME magazine edited the photo of the fire-retardant bomber swooping down over the houses so that it looked so veryyyyy much more dramatic and if you follow that clue you will discover that my parents do not actually live in La Jolla but where the fire was then.  Or was it eighteen years ago.  They were out of town and my tia Juana - Aunt Jane - was still alive.

No I ain't going back to the city.  No more bureaucratic life for me although I could get twice what I am getting heading the shipping department at Bookmakers another slight fiction.  refried.David is holding up pretty well, by the way, Eddie reminds me to tell you that I know some of you know him and miss his writing... he's okay, don't worry, although he has changed his design for the dreamhouse at Popotla, since THAT was very near where the earthquake was last week or was it week before last my how time is fun when you're having flies.

Men and a woman on the morning bus are talking about the local elections and Jorge Hank and insecurity and the murder of the Zeta newspaper editor day before yesterday and the poor little rich boy Hank who owns Caliente and bathes himself in hundreds of millions of gambling dollars and white tigers smuggled across the international border he will never escape from under the shadow of his late father Hank senior R.I.P. or the guilt of his Hank junior Caliente bodyguards who murdered the founding Zeta ABC editor twenty some years ago Henry II and Becket will no one rid me of this obstinate priest wait a minute I thought we were friends after all the parties we went to together and lovers we argued over like the shoeshine man once told me? Well, filthy gossip, says one guy on the bus, compared with the PAN party always talks about how they have built new bridges and paved so many many streets in the city why even my business card is paved, now!  Heh heh they laugh and launch into a long discussion of when the river bridges were built and when did you come to Tijuana, ten years, twenty years and I scribble scribble on the page like on the sacred mountain where Jorge Hank has painted his name in gigantic white letters there politics is nothing sacred no not any thing at all and certainly not a mountain ugh never not no.  You can see it from all over town - el cerro colorado on the far side of big La Mesa valley.

Whew.  That was a big bite to chew.  Wonder how the heck I'll ever edit that one eh?  Well, there.

The laughing of seagulls somewhere in the sky over Palomar street trolley station announces that we are close to the bay.  I look for the birds - don't see them.  The puffy clouds floating overhead confirm the presence of marine layer.  I do not think we are in Otay Mesa any more, Toto, no.  "Down, definitely down" (Fellini, 8-&-1/2).  Down low, close to the water.  A smell of salt in the air puts a final mark of punctuation on this statement.

no apo strophe re member

okei bai         okay bye