1.

The urge to go south is getting stronger and stronger. Sometimes I feel it like I need to eat or breathe, other times it is only a gentle ache. This wanderlust. This desire to go south. It happens to me every year through this time of year, winter. It usually starts around my birthday on Octo Ocho, and lasts until June, when I start dreaming of going north. But especially in Winter from November to May because that is the best time to travel into Mexico. Unless you want to walk around in T-shirts in the mountains then that is for the birds

although there is one place where
they say it is summer in the ten thousand foot deep canyons while high above the pine forests freeze. Shangrila ala Raramuri deep in the canñon del cobre sí.

It will hit me – this feeling, this desire to go south toward the tropics – in the morning or in the night. Awake or asleep. But especially when I am thinking, nodding, nearly napping, over the keyboard, or paper and pen, trying to decide what to say and how to say it. Suddenly I will be flooded with the urge to just chuck all this art and go. Soon I will. It's been over a year now since I last gave in and went. We are overdue, Mikey and I. Yes.

A memory. A desire. The tropical south, or the more temperate highland plateau. Or the chill, high mountains.

Yes.

Mexico is huge. Three thousand miles from Tijuana to Yucatan. It holds many different elevations: la tierra caliente, la tierra templada, y la tierra fria: the low, hot lands; the middle, temperate lands; and the high, cool mountains. As a result of this vast geographical variety (often changing within just a few kilometer/miles of radical mountain slope) Mexico actually manifests something like ninety percent of all the biomes which exist on this precious planet, our home. Truly an ecological wonderland. And then there are the cultural marvels. And the ruins of ancient civilization so different it makes Spanish look like the kissing cousin to English. Well, it is, compared. Yes.

And here we are at the farthest corner, where that next door homeland begins. Tijuana is, in fact, the farthest place from Mexico City you can ever go and still be in Mexico.

Mexico used to be much bigger, of course, but the United States Americans swallowed half of it in 1846.

You will notice I don't say we. Just us. I.e. U.S. oh yes that's right. Far right.

Ain't language lovely?

2.

I heard on the radio last night on a program I regularly listen to on Thursday nights an architect and an organizer talking with the radio-host about a renovation program underway for the old Cine Zaragoza which is only a couple blocks from where I used to live in the Centro Downtown.

It reminded Mikey and me of how some friends here were laughing a couple years ago about how people were now calling downtown Tijuana the "centro historico" the historic center but you know that is what it is, not as historic or nowhere as old as the cities in the south, like the old center of Mexico City, or Oaxaca or San Luis Potosi or Guadalajara those mother cities who gave birth to San Diego (and Tijuana) 250 years ago, no, but still, downtown Tijuana is historic, in as much as there is a short 116 year history of this town, yes, and it is good to hear that an old movie house, shut down for so many years, is going to be recycled into a concert ballet theater space yes. And plus it is kind of interesting to be in a place where history is so short that people actually remember living much of it yes.

I remember how I used to wander around those downtown streets the first year after I moved there. Maybe what it is really time for is to move to a new neighborhood, a new experience. No. That is what this "page" is for. This walk in the woods of writing. Beyond paper into electronics. This is language and I am NOT inventing it, only playing the game. Others, much younger and vastly more experienced, are leading the way. I am still just what I have always been: a scribbler. At least now I have what I have always wanted: a little studio where I can be alone and work.

3.

speaking of work here's a bit of a rattlesnake

Icuac calaqui tonalli notecu, notecu, nechcocoa nechcocoa noyollo, noyollo. Miqui, anemi tonalli Tonalli tlatl. Mitznequi, ne nimitsnequi, Tonaltetl. Tonalli, ama x' yauh, ma x' yauh tletl. Yahqui ya tonalli. Noyollo choca.

I am chewing rather long and difficultly on that Aztec verse, even though it looks like prose. It is not enough just to translate the Spanish translation into English (although that will have to do for today), I want to get into the original. For, you see, behind the Spanish-speaking "other" of Mexico there is an entirely different other, the ancient American. Or Mesoamerican, as the anthro/archeo logists say.

When the sun sets, my lord, my lord, it hurts me, it hurts my heart, my heart. It has died, the sun is not alive, the fire of daytime. I love you, I want you, day fire. Sun, don't go. My heart, my heart weeps. Fire of day, don't go, fire, don't leave. The sun is gone.

(Translated from the Spanish translation of Angel María Garibay K.)

First, in taking on the original, one should be aware that modern Nahuatl spells its words differently than the "classical" Nahuatl which was written down by Latin-speaking Spanish priests of Rome. Using a contemporary diccionario nautl-español I am attempting to re-construct the poem in the present-day tongue, as I continue in my quest to understand both the classical Nahuatl and contemporary Nauatl. Something of a conceit, I confess, but I want it, so here I am. It is rather like a modern English student also knowing the language of Shakespeare, or present-day Spanish readers turning to Don Quijote for foundational reference on today's Castillian language as it exists in many forms around the world. (Chinese, Spanish, and English are the most-spoken tongues in our millennial world btw fyi.)

Ijuaak kalaki tonalli noteku noteku
noteku nechkoko nechkoko noyollo noyollo.

Miki anemi tonalli tonalli tlatl.
Mitsneki ne nimitsneki tonaltetl.

Tonalli ama xa yauj ma xa yauh tletl.
Yeeko ye tonalli.

Noyollo choka.

I really need to find a teacher. Maybe the guy who runs the little restaurant in the half-abandoned Modulos market hall can recommend someone. He and his wife both speak the language. They hail from the mountains of northern Puebla, near Cuetzatlan. A lot of people speak the old language there. Of course, even his Spanish is light-years better than mine. But I wonder if he knows someone who is trained in classical as well as contemporary Nauatl. God willing I will ask him one day soon. Maybe I'll even come back to this page and flash-forward through time to link the future. (Ah the pleasures and glories of hypertext.)

Uh-huh. And monkeys might fly out of....

4.

Gonna be crossing over this afternoon into the empire who is waging war in Babylon. Our gringo homeland, yes; Mikey and I are going to town, our home before we moved expat, our little old San Diego. Going to meet up with some family members and attend a concert of Mozart music at Saint Paul's cathedral church next to the western edge of Balboa Park. Oh yes the seat of Episcopal high church oh my there will be hundreds of WASPS there and a sprinkling of others. It will be rather shocking to have seen so many white White WHITE people all crowded together being so very cultural. Well. We may be cyincal but the music will be very VerY VERY Good. Verily yeah I swear 'tis so. Cause I added this note tomorrow after it was all over.

We will see that Momma and Poppa and my aunt and uncle (Mikey's parents) and all the cousins are quite well, thank you and bismallah praise God for his mercies unto this miserable bohemian sinner. Cousin Sue K. is singing tonight. My son sings in the cathdral choir but won't be tonight. It's a slightly different group, the choir that is joining with soloists and chamber orchestra in the high church sanctuary tonight to celebrate Mozart's 250th birthday.

I haven/t been to St. Paul's since Sue's mom's funeral ten years ago. It's also the church where the Queen went when she visited Diego twenty something years ago. Notice I don't have to say which queen, no. Capital or not she's the Anglo one yes.

No. I did not go then either. Not a member and all that security, oh no. No.

But tonight we will have gone. Yes.

And when I can manipulate tense and person in Spanish
like I do in English I will feel...

more accomplished, I guess.

Whatever.

X ⁵. Batopilas

is a place on the bottom of a canyon surrounded by mountains unbelievably wild and scenic and very difficult to get to a rattling little bus struggles over rough mountain roads past wild Indians who live in caves and then falls down into this impossibly deep deep deep gorge.

they say that it will be freezing up on top of the mountains but deep deep in the canyons it is warm and tropical, it's like a drop from 10,000 feet down to 1,000 well exagerate (a [only] little) but no lie they say pine forests freeze up on top while bananas and bouganvilleas grow riot down below.

oh, and it's like 107.45 West 27 North okay Mister Spock you have the coordinates.

you've probably heard of copper canyon next door it is the same branch thereof. the "Chepe" ( Ch.& P – [Chihuahua & Pacifico] okay)train climbs up onto the mountains. Juan Carlos went to those mountains last year and came back talking and talking about it and I well it is a good thing the weather is so cold there right now or I would go as it is I should wait for May or June or March or April yes.

oh, and yes that one other thing: truly one of the world's most excellently scenic railroads goes over those mountains. after that is when you have to take the rattletrap bus off the edge of the Earth.

Tellus.