22.7.4


The terror level vigilance among the border blackshirts
guarding the porous frontiers of our American homeland 
seems to have receded a bit like the tide after the
new moon.  Every evening this week Tijuana has seen her
crescent in the west.  Sunday morning last we saw
Venus high and bright in the east.  Or perhaps it's
just that after nine weeks I have now met all the
guards there are at Otay and they've met me, figured
me out, or my beloved bot Wraptauring has told them all
nothing I am Sam I am.  It has been nine weeks.  It 
has been.  It has.  Today is cloudy dawn no Venus Luzbel
Lucifer light of the morning star Tlalhuitztecantepuhtli
whatever.

Whatever, they just wave me through.  All this week.
With a pleasant good morning, sir.  I hardly think
it's my clothes alone who make them, man, for the cliché
honeymoon is definitely over more ways than one then &
now.  Big fight with la pareja over ironing my shirt when
I had to leave on time for work Tuesday I just gave up
and walked out without saying goodbye - I'LL NEVER IRON
YOUR CLOTHES AGAIN DANIEL NEVER TELL YOU WHAT TO WEAR, OH 
I HAD SUCH PLANS FOR YOU TO COLOR CODE YOUR ENTIRE EXISTENCE
UNTO PERFECTION you pitiful clueless stupid little stinking poet
what the hell do you know about getting yourself dressed anyway

Ahem.  Daniel.

We are going to break each other's hearts over and over again
and again my love, I said in the shower, together, this morning,
two days later, and the terror level went out we sent our
messenger to you and you did not believe cut off his head
ripped out his tongue

I had tacos de lengua and pastor and asada at the island
of tacos beside the sea of taxis last night and then I went,
then I came, to internet cafe on 2nd avenue via downtown bus 
over the river and through the streets to grandmother's
house we go I dreamt last night I went back to Kansas and
was interviewing old people something's gotta give something

BEHOLD THE NEW SITE IS OPEN under construction you can still
smell the sewage from the river page NOT AVAILABLE ooops oooopsss


remember Bill Cosby ooops ooops.  And Noah.  
Everyone laughed at John Huston's movie because of
him.  "Ting-a-ling" (Kurt Vonnegut, Jailbird)

if you can believe "autobiographical" prologues.  It is
getting harder for me to make things up.  The truth
is so much easier to remember.  Like lies don't work
either.  But memories are still Very SliPpeRy 
cOmmoDitieS    a n Y w A y y y y y 

We remember.  We forget.  We tell our story stories the
way we want to.  I dreamed I was in Kansas again,
interviewing old people from their life before.
None of them knew my grandmother permanently from 
there (born and raised), or my other grandmother 
briefly from there (only born and infant).

I often dream of Kansas.  It used to look like
Dulzura until I actually went to Kansas in my
thirties.  Now it looks like Kansas.

Or Otay Mesa.

There are several letters from readers outstanding
and yet to be answered.  One about economical hotels.
Another Rosarito.  Oh my God I just don't have time 
any more now that I am a good little working Gringo
capitalist wage slave crossing back and forth across
the border between the Mexico of 350 dollars rent and
the America of 1000 dollars rent, between Mexico of
fifty-cent bus fares and America of two dollars and 
twenty five cent bus fares (or more express long haul).

In the USA, however, there are transfers.  That reminds
me I have been meaning for a couple weeks now to tell
you about how we all had to change busses one evening
in Otay Mesa out on Calzada Tecnologica because one
driver lived in another part of town and asked his
friend to take all his passengers from here so he 
could go home more directly -- Es que él vive por
acá -- he said, "It's just that he lives out here."

Ah, only in Mexico.  True story.  True laissez-faire
capitalism em eh er yeh.  For your fare.  No, we did 
not have to pay for the second bus.

The bus fare is now 5 and a half pesos.  When we/I first
moved to Tijuana five years ago, it was 3 and a half.
Tacos were seven pesos at the island of tacos beside the
sea of taxis when I first began crossing every night the border 
gate puerta Mexico.  Now tacos are nine when I ate last night
near the border gate entrance into Mexico.  Puerta Mexico.

Other taco stands charge ten, sometimes.  Maybe the sheer
volume at the island keeps prices down.  Don't know.

That is only seven percent inflation per year since 1999.
Not too bad when you reflect that in the fifteen years from 
1975, the peso fell from twenty to the dollar, plummeted to
3,000 per dollar in 1990.  That was before they erased the zeros
to create the new peso at three to the dollar, which has since, 
in  ten years, fallen to eleven.  The last four years it has 
fluctuated up and down around nine to ten, and only recently
shot to eleven.

When Michael and I went to Mexico City in 1990, we were, 
briefly, millionaires.

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copyright 2004 Daniel Charles Thomas