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1.

My neighbors are moving. Suddenly. Since only two or three days ago. They haven't told the landlord yet. Or rather, he hasn't. She is out of town.

Yesterday he, E, came over and asked me if I had our landlord's telephone number. I looked on my lease, or rather, rental contract, as it's called. No phone number. No address. Made me realize I hardly even know how to contact him. He just shows up every month and that's that. It's been like that for almost two years now. Huh. Mexico. Very word of mouth. Face to face. That's one thing you gotta love here, or not. I do.

I like our landlord, in spite of all the little things that always go wrong with a house. My front neighbors do not. Always complaining and complaining about him. Have been talking about moving out ever since I moved in. Especially the Mrs., with an entertaining, volatile tongue. Oh my the words she has uttered! About him, about everyone, even about her people back home in Sonora, where she has been gone for the past two weeks now. She talks tart, bitter, sharp, and sweet, but always volatile, strong. That's the lady, Mrs. M. Her husband, mister E, is much more mellow. The long-suffering type. Or so I imagine.

Even after two years next door, can you really know how people are inside? I think only what little they may have shown you, and only if you have paid attention. Double if and when, and only a little then. How many of us even know ourselves, eh? Let alone others around us. Instead of true knowledge, we swim in a sea of social conventions and stereotypical scripts that keep the peace. Usually.

He shrugged as we inspected my contract. No address, no telephone number. "I want to call him, you know, so he can put up a sign and start showing the house. This other place happened so quickly – the new landlord wants me in right away to guard the property. He's giving me a deal, a hundred dollars less than we pay here."

He loaded up his little Toyota SUV wagon yesterday – and I guess now the day before, too – with all kinds of things in boxes. Today a couple friends of his came over, one with a pickup truck. I helped them load furniture and refrigerator. They took his wife's washing machine.

It's going to be lonely without them. They're good folk. Just colorful enough to be... loveable, but not so outrageous as to be a problem. Never have bothered me. M makes delicious tamales at Christmas. I am still a little surprised by how quickly they are moving. They've been talking about moving ever since I moved in, but... I never quite expected it to come true.

E says the opportunity came to him suddenly. But I am also wondering about the fact that his wife went on vacation week before last and he may have taken advantage of her absence to move without arguing with her.

She was talking for months about going back home to spend some time with her family in the mountains of Sonora. Finally she went. Two weeks ago.

Or...?

No. I am imagining things. It couldn't be.

Pure coincidence that he moves while she's gone. Yes. No. Or that I don't know where they're moving to. No.

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2.

I hear on the radio that there has been a shootout today here in Tijuana, between State cops and an SUV. This is the first time I have ever heard of any violence breaking out at the filters and revision checkpoints. If that's what it was. It might have been just another "routine" pullover stop. Not at a checkpoint at all. But the "stop" or "detention" in the radio report makes me think, makes me imagine, oh my how I imagine and create and make up stories in my head all about it read all about it oh no writing is make believe and the question of what is true and what is fact is very much a real worry, here.

Meanwhile the "operation" goes on and I hardly know anything except what I read in the newspapers and see from crowded route-taxi and bus windows every two or three days. The soldiers are still here. Only a few dozen hundred, one thousand, a little more, maybe, but they are still here.

It's almost like everyone is used to it. The thirteen hundred soldiers are, some say, only a drop in the bucket. But, on the other hand, isn't one form of water torture a slow drip drip drip on the head? Not just the famous half-drowning "waterboard" or...

Oh Danny you just want to rant and rave about Babylon again, and how we are all slowly, or quickly, marching toward...

...but there is a struggle going on, between "organized" crime and "disorganized" government, as one writer you read somewhere editorial put it earlier this week.

And the debate continues in the background, are these "operations" doing any good? What about the extradition of top criminals last month? The top secret operation that moved more than a dozen big criminals from Mexico to the United States, you remember? What effect did that have on the infamous "cartels" that rule drug traffic through Mexico? The newspapers all say over and over again that these big bosses were running their businesses even from Mexican prison cells. You wonder what kind of messenger lawyers will get in and out commands through the U.S. system. A big map with colored lines and dots in the newspaper you read last week, circles and arrows from the south to the north. Looking for the big, rich markets of American drug addicts.

The situation is so complex, and complicated, and com- and con- everything under the sun, that you, Danny, can only babble and sputter a few facts and imagined -ations no no no no one can every railly thunder stand teat not it changes the very spieling of words.

You will go look at a video in youtube. Someone is in a bar on Revolution Avenue having tequila poured down his throat. Now, THERE, that, is something much Much MUCH easier to understand.

Blow the whistle. Beat the drum. Get the gringo drunk.
Sell him lots of art and delicious food.

Except that now it is Lent.

And we remember Jesus.

Amen. Goodbye.

or well... goodbye for now at least

69. NO NOT YET not goodbye yet not yet

I come home from three hours 6 to 9 pm at the local internet cafe on the corner of Carrillo and Villanueva and set down to write and prepare the blank page for tomorrow and suddenly realize I cannot write tomorrow. It may be 9:23 PM 2/22/07 leaning toward ten o'clock, and it may be tomorrow in New York, in London, in Paris, Rome, Cairo, Jerusalem, Dubai, Babylon, Moscow, Nairobi, Delhi, Djakarta, Tokyo and Honolulu NO NOT THERE NOT YET okay only as far as the international date line from there to Arizona and Chicago it is still today and sufficient for the day is the evil thereof EVEN THOUGH I ALREADY uploaded today this evening if I want to write I have to still write in today, not tomorrow. Heh.

Pinche hija de la chingada resoluciones....

Well ain't that a suck. No, it ain't.

I wandered all over youtube tossing a few responses with my zeburrebra hand puppet. Gets to be okay this automatic upload but I still need to up the recording levels for the sound from the headset microphone yes.

The girl at the computer next door kept looking at me when I spoke. And then the hand puppet... heh hee I am sooooo weird. At least when I sneezed she said salud.

Asked me if I am unitedstatesian. She noted the accent. One never escapes. At least, I don't. I suppose I will always carry my accent.

Think I will work on my tour info essays for a while.

They are hopelessly out of date and babel babel babel.

Oh, and yes, it finally started raining. Don't know if we'll get as much as they forecast, however. Wait and see tomorrow.

Tomorrow.