---

1.

Tomorrow I go! The house is cold. I hope the ice melts on the road.

Are we still here?

Are we there yet?                          

Tomorrow and the day after, alone on the road to join up with others in that great gray smudge of humanity on the map. See. over there, just a little grey stain on the earth. On the NASA astronaut photo of the desert valley, taken from space shuttle mission high above I forget what maybe the file name still carries a clue... PHILIP?

No problem. Sabes que estamos para servirle thou knowest we exist to serve you.

Hey, d'you hear 'bout the big syndicate bust in the news? Over in the United States?

Yeah, all those drug smugglers the horns are blowing.

Yeh.

Just one thing, boss.

Eh?

They were all the competition to the Arrellano business.

Yeah? You don't think?

No. Not that. What I do think is they got too greedy, got sloppy. Rushing in where federal agents do NOT fear to tred and GOTCHA!

Ah. Not that someone talked?

Oh you know, boss, people be always talking with enough torture and bribery.

And one against another, eh?

Yeah. Or at least, that's what "they" want "us" to "think"...

But what's up with all the quote marks, Phil?

Nothing. Just playing with your mind, let you see the back side of the coin while it's still spinning in the air.

Oh, more games of meaning?

That's the code, boss.

Okay. Ready for the trip tomorrow?

Am if you are clothes are clean, Danny?

Enough.

Ah. Your usual "just enough" eh?

Hey. You been talking with Mikey again?

We all here together, Danial.

Yes, ain't we.

"semi-fictional self-indulgent authorial divertissement"

mais oui, patron

2.

I am going to Mexicali tomorrow. Not just passing through, but am going there for there's sake. There is a there there. Am going with several other poets from Tijuana. For the celebration of the 45th anniversary of the Casa de la Juventud de Mexicali, now called CREA, in the Teatro Benito Juarez de CREA Cultura, Avenida Salina Cruz 2050 Colonia Guajardo, tel:555.1230, a few blocks south of Independencia/Sonora (can't quite figure out exactly what is the name of that nearest main street), located like maybe a mile west from the city government complex and bus station. Our hotel is the other direction.

Eeeessh I am almost lost. Been reading google maps and yahoo maps and finally figured it out in my head, but... please don't ask me to explain in words. No.

But no matter. Am excited. This will be a first for me. The first time that Mexicali is my destination itself, capital of the state, the first time I am going to Mexicali just to be going to Mexicali. I am not merely passing through on the way to Mexico City or Yucatan or Ciudad Juarez or Morelia or Janitzio or Hermosillo, no, I am going to Mexicali tomorrow simply and wonderfully only to go to Mexicali and celebrate with them the culture and art of this world and region.

Every time I have passed through in recent years, when the bus stopped in that city, I would get off, walk into the terminal, visit the bathroom for two or three pesos, and then take a turn out the front door onto the sidewalk of the great circular driveway in front of the bus station and stare out at the city rumbling around me. I would wonder when I might be coming back just to come back here, and not just turn back into the terminal and get back onboard a bus for points beyond, no, but go out into those streets in front of me, walk or taxi or bus beyond this new zone of development where they built the bus terminal, find a hotel, and make my way toward the historic heart of the town almost four miles away from the bus depot, and

and

and tomorrow I am

going

t h e r e

I remember when I got there nine months ago was it only nine months ago yes it was I wrote this below I quote and more then

---

from 72 spring 49

Mexicali 117 km.

the sun sets
                        we climb onto the great
                        flat/rolling
plateau
                        covered with scrubby brush
                        on the roof of the world

we approach the edge

oxygen masks fall out of the ceiling in the movie
and the passengers start rioting on the plane. I am
so very glad I am on a bus, instead.    We
crawl around across the gently rumpled plateau.
I can feel the edge of the Earth coming closer.
The huge boulder-strewn cliffs of Rumorosa lie somewhere
up ahead beyond further miles of this mountain top plateau.
It always surprises me how wide it is up here, how long
it takes to get to the edge and fall off, down
into the deserts of Mexicali.

then we are here
        the     last
toll booth
                        above Rumorosa

Mexicali 64 km.
                        final blush of twilight
grey from the west
                        faintly illumines

huge
boulders
        piled
                        e v e r y w h e r e


out there in the eastern darkness
                                far, far below us
the shining lights
of Mexicali

_________

An hour later the first stoplight since Tijuana.
We are approaching the capital of the state.
Tacos Bxxxxxxx something out on the farthest
outskirts, miles to go before we really get
to Mexicali proper, but sprawl, you know, is
everything like William's Patterson, in prose and verse,
until we reach the second stoplight. Bits and pieces
of divided highway lit by rows of streetlamps.
Lines of words and buildings, poetry and paragraph.

A third stoplight. A division of boulevards
and air that smells of sewage. A fourth
stoplight. It's inevitable. We come back into
the cancer. The driver jerks the wheel to
avoid a couple potholes. We turn right but
I forget whether it's the fifth or sixth
stoplight now but we are here now in the
sprawl now. PLAZA VILLANOVA. KFC.
OXXO. COPPEL. LEY. Parking lots full
of cars. Scribble scribble scribble boulevards of
words yes yes cars yes trucks yes busses.
God I love riding on busses. Maybe I should
spend a whole vacation doing nothing but
riding around in busses.

Heh.

X-cept I gotta pee.

                        DOMINO'S PIZZA

oh yes we in

mmm it's hot outdoors
                        well, warm
and
it's nine-thirty at night

                        IMAGINE the hell of daytime temp

no, thank you
                        walk through the bus station
                        step out the front door

How do I call Tijuana? someone asks you
-- The code is 664, you say, and then the number --

yawning yawning yawning
you buy no coffee
smoke no cigarette

Soon you will be nodding as buildings run out of town
outside your righthand window. You will dream, you
imagine, of your stage fright while the driver jerks the
wheel all over the road. Another passenger gets on. You
wish you'd remembered to bring the food. Too late.
Far too late now. It's far far far away behind.

How can they run these busses practically empty
like this? They must make a ton of money when
they're full. And leave the motor running for
the twenty minutes in the station? Yes, that too,
this too. Security is not as tight here.

"You traveling?" the guard asked me. No frisking.
Hell, at TJ they felt briefly in my bags.

I know, however, that later tonight, out in the
desert, will come the midnight search. Oh
yes. I'll be glad then we only have seven,
no, eight on board.

The convenience outlet at the station is called

        Super Way

I smile that "way" sounds almost like "buey"

                        hey

_______________

Chris wrote today saying he might come down for
Juan Soldado day. If the wife approves, of
course.

Take a drink of water. The restroom cost three
pesos.

__________              AND NOW WE ARE MOVING
                        out the bus station gate
                        into
                                this

        megalopolis of cars
                                ramps, bridges, boulevards

stoplights
                flashing peso dollar exchange rates

                11.05                   11.25

red cross fried chicken beer
flowing streams of red taillights

green neon, red neon, Chinese food

Motel $280
                        CALIMAX BURGER KING

PEMEX
                                M E G A

29 degrees at 9:58
WALDOS 1 -- CALIMAX -- LEE'S

Dragon de China

green light flashes, turns yellow, then red
I see more Chinese food than taco stands

KFC PIZZAHUT TECATE

and the boulevard goes on and on
SMART & FINAL

                put down my pen
click off the light

                nod


...



wake up

3.

I told you I don't have hot water? The heater is all burnt out covered with charcoal ash inside and expells clouds of black smoke whenever you light it, AND THEN my ex-neighbors (the house sits empty now) took the gas tank with them (butane, not auto-gasoline) when they moved and I ain't about to pay hundreds upon hundreds of pesos (deposit plus fee) for a new one when the hot water heater doesn't even work, no, and I ain't got the kitchen with the stove (I want the kitchen, I WANT THE KITCHEN!!! easy boy, take it easyyyyy). WELL anyway, I think I kvetched and bitched about it already to you, yes.

So I ain't got any hot water to take a hot shower with and shampoo my hair with warm water no not at all, and since I don't want to go stinking foul on the bus tomorrow I went to take a REAL BATH today, in a bath-house down on the boulevard. I went with some trepidation and titilation of fantasy both good and bad, since I have heard semi-horror stories about seduction and hustlers prowling the bath-houses waiting to pounce on fat old men like me and tease us and steal all our money and clothes and leave us desperate, naked, and without a penny to our person. Just like in the United States. Or maybe that's my problem, I am thinking of "bath-house" in the U.S. definition, steamy gay anonymous hedonistic wet.

Well, this bath-house is not at all like the ones I heard about downtown, or, for that matter, have read about in Mexico city. No, this place is quite straightforward, no common steambath rooms, all are private showers with private dressing stalls and the steam comes to your shower stall separately and oh my how delicious I shampooed my hair and then just sat there on the bench in the hot steam and you know I could have sat there another half hour I didn't realize I had paid for a whole hour, not just thirty minutes, oh my.

It cost me five dollars. Huh. But I am ready now to go, all clean. And ready to pay for a tank of gas so I don't have to spend so much money just to take a clean, hot bath.

Except that the hot water heater is still a wreck. And I have no neighbors in the house in front of me, and haven't seen the landlord. I wonder if he even knows they moved out. Yuck. I have left him a note, since I'll be gone tomorrow and Saturday when I expect him to drop by as usual to pick up the rent. In the note I volunteered to show the house to people who stop by. But you know, dear reader, that what I really want is to have the house for myself. The kitchen and two bedrooms, the dining area and living room. One bedroom for an office, the other to sleep in. A real kitchen to cook in.

Except for the question of money.

And that, simply stated, I am perfectly content with my one little studio out in back.

Well, no, not perfectly. I DO WANT A KITCHEN!!!!!!!

And that house has such a sweet kitchen with lots of cabinets and drawers, and a window looking out across the front yard toward the street. The cabinets are just as excellent in detail as the cabinets in my studio out in back. And one of the bedrooms also has the good cabinet/closet work.

I don't know who did it, or when, but it looks like twenty or fifteen years ago, when this house and the studio in back were built, somebody did all the cabinets at once, yes, because they are all such a uniformly solid quality with dark, stained wood. Yes. Very nice work.

Until tomorrow, perhaps....