You get one free drink (soda, water, or yogurt drink) and one free cookie (or bran bar). One pair of earphones for two channels of music or that movie. Más allá que las fabricas empieza la pelicula. Some ridiculous piece of Stephen Siegal self-righteous good-vs-evil oh yes good thing you like his work in spite of the pitifully obvious formula and flat-as-cartoon character acting yes. But you don't watch most of it at all. Stare out the window at the passing earth. Remember what Eduardo Arrqepd wrote about Tecate earth in his last decades alive when he taught in Tijuana and touched so many people here you cannot count them all. I look out the window while everyone else is begining to sleep or look at the movie. Plastic tents huddle beyond the soldiers behind their sandbags at the edge of town. Almost all our curtains are drawn shut against the sun and the view but you, gringo, insist on staring out the whole trip, enjoying the face of our mother, earth. The stony monster boulders of Tecate, that chain of wondrous shapes that pierces here and there along the island mountains granite. These plutons of molten crust rose up millions of years ago before dinosaurs chewed off Sonora and California began to break loose and receive visitors. God commands us to take care of her, and look what a mess we are making of that on both sides of the border, yes. Wa ana mim al muslimin but I too am faithful, Lord, forgive me. Hear our prayer. Amen ahem etc.

In Mexicali you buy a taxi ticket to the hotel. Check in to typical California architecture, semi-plush postmodern lobby, several wings of comfortable rooms all only two floors (very little in Mexicali is any taller than two floors, a few, yes, but very little), outdoor hallways, railed balconies with stairs leading up to sunshine corridors of light and breeze. Parking spaces everywhere for the travelers who drive and stay. You're in Mexicali, you have your room, it's the first week of March and IT AINT HOT amen praise God it ain't hot thank you yes ahem.

Settle down. Go out for a walk. Enjoy strolling up the boulevard. The commercial boulevard of Justo Sierra. Buy this notebook your rough draft you wrote yesterday. No, it was today, then. Now it is tomorrow and you are home again. Go figure time is bent and twisted back upon itself, Moebius Strip don't tease me please no. No. Eat Chinese food at a place that caught your eye several blocks up the boulevard just past the One-Price-Everything store you bought the notebook and sit scribbling while you wait and then eat. It is 3:30 pm (yesterday yes). You have not eaten all day except for a piece of toast with coffee in the morning while you packed, and that fruit-bran bus cookie perq for travelling executive three dollars extra four maybe five compared to really cheap 2nd class no. Yes.

The food goes in now at first too quickly, slow down, Danny boy, slow down, enjoy. There's still two hours and more until the van will come to carry to carry you all across town to the Youth Center theater anniversary celebration and your show with the other poets. In all the two hours and more that remain all you have to do is shave and shampoo take a shower and get dressed. You are so glad you took that bath at the baths down on the boulevard yesterday (day-before yesterday).

Outside the curtained, shielded windows, Justo Sierra boulevard rumbles, quietly. Inside, the two sauces on your little combination plate are really rather good.

The two sauces. Oyster and almond? Mikey and Dano.
THEY ARE TALKING TO EACH OTHER:

The chicken and beef taste of reasonable quality, not tough, and the vegetables are crisp and the tea is hot and the mustard...

Oh yeah man it's so spicey yes it sets your nose on fire mmmm-mmmm yes it does yes ahhhh...

Yep. Chinese food in Mexicali is not bad at all.

And the people who work here look like real Chinese.

Even speak Chinese.

Except here they are all legal Mexicans working.

Legally.

Yes.

Legal?

Well duh dude this is Mexico.

Oh shut up your small immigration joke, Danny.

Okay. Goodbye. I'll tell you later how it goes tonight.

Oh look: almond cookie !

---

2.

A young Mexican hippi, dark
long hair bushy around his head

slowly walks along the boulevard
advancing outside Hotel restaurant

window in ragged T-shirt, old
jeans. Ancient grandmother

beside him, wrapped in threadbare
shawl, threads against desert

morning chill. Two cups 
of carryout coffee

grace his right hand. The other
lightly touches her shoulder.

---

We were crowded together in the theater vestibule last night as they prepared to inaugurate the art exhibit, and then all go into the theater for our show. Now I am eating breakfast endless hours later the next morning. The various five or six people gave their appropriate speeches. Attendant lords that will swell a scene stood five and six deep on either side of the microphone. There was some problem with occasional bursts of KNOCK KNOCK WHAM WHAM WHAM in the sound system. I heard muttering voices blaming it on cell-phone interference. The small crowd seemed to chuckle understandingly. All so happy to be there at the dedication of this art exhibit in the refurbished historic youth recreation center on the frontier province capital land.

Think it is tonight (last night) that I actually fall in love with another Mexican city. Mexicali. I am polygamous. Incestuous with all my sister cities. Ah, yes, am. Forgive me ladies but I love you all.

Valladolid. Catorce. Morelia. Gto. Gda. DF. Etc.

I don't know Oaxaca yet. Not yes.

We descended from our van from the hotel, slipped through a welcoming gauntlet of men, women, youths, and disappeared into the theater to check out the stage and dressing rooms. The boards creaked under our footsteps.

The little theater brought back such a flood of memories from ages gone by in another millennium when I was young and worked in theater, acting on a different planet orbitting a different star, Shakespeare (instead of Cervantes).

But this edifice was still here, even then. Three generations of Mexicalians have grown up with this center for art and sports. The artists and students of this capital have worked and learned here, decade after decade from 1962 unto the millennium. Tonight it is only reborn again into another show, a resurrection of constant reincarnation.

Tonight they are celebrating the traditional end-of-winter anniversary with a show of art, poetry, and music. Also, the buildings themselves have emerged from a long process of renovation. The theater is particularly sweet. But I am prejudiced, yes, as you already know who read me I am addicted to the spoken word and silent movement of space. Oh yes. Let your eyes move across these lines and then let your lips be unsealed, and speak.

Anniversary. Rebirth. Circle/cycle. It is thus reincarnation for many of us in many new and old ways at once and ever. For me a return to the boards of good-luck broken legs. For us born again transmigration from the coast I mean tonight the poets from Tijei come to congratulate and share our words with Chicali. Tonight I mean last night this page born and born again but that's why we came here, through the combined alliance of arts and culture institutions in both Tijuana and Mexicali, yes. For one brief shining moment I realize what is my personal age-old camelot dream: to become a poet working in Mexico.

So close to California and so very, very far from Madrid. Well, hell, this is California. The one where Spanish first was spoken, before the conquest of the north took it beyond Los Angeles unto San Francisco yes. Amen.

This is a sweet little theater. Curtains, steps, boards, small dressing rooms, lights, shadows. It has all brought back memories from ages gone by. This ain't no converted barn or stable in the hoakey movie, no. It's your typical little theater design of mid-20th century make. Tall drapes hanging 1, 2, 3 on left and right, big solid curtain hanging in back, all very tastefully and simply refurbished. Two dressing rooms and a small, double bathroom. Your standard "little theater" excellence of simplicity that be complete enough to create the illusion of life and art. That marvelous window the very proscenium, yes, that it is itself a box; but a good little box with maybe 200 seats out front.

I don't have a chance to study the light-and-sound panels, but except for one horrifying feed-back squeal at the very beginning, everything technical seems to work very well. From a little control room at the back of the house, a couple of one or three young men or woman control the illuminations and microphones with straightforward efficiency. The projected slides and videos follow what I assume are their script – some of them were especially good – we Tijuanacos slip out into the house after the poetry to watch the musical presentation by IYTR VM sort of middle-eastern variety "world music" which had very effective images moving above and behind them all the while they played and their dancer danced. And how their dancer danced.

The flute-player will introduce me to his mother later.

Liz's poem cycle Danza del tercer cielo also was accompanied by images. I did not see them from the audience, as I decided to wait backstage before my own cue, but it appeared from my vantage point in the wings that Franco Mendez's portraits of the drowned immigrants in the Rio Grande – los ahogados del Rio Bravo – were successfully projected in company with Liz's performance of the 18 poems.

As Rober and I sat, waiting, he whispered that we should get together with Poncho and go over the text-translations of Liz's work. Oh yes, I thought, to prepare it for a future North American (or European?) tour. She has changed the text since he completed his and Juan's first translation a year ago. The combination of Franco's paintings and Liz's verse strikes me something worth taking out on the culture/museum/cafe circuit/road.

As for the images, there were several large white panels upstage, allowing for projection from the back of the house into the stage. Various (3 or 4–?) panels caught almost all of the image, and their multiple nature allowed poets and musicians – and especially the dancer with the music – to enter, exit, and move around the stage in front of, and sometimes behind, the images and hanging panels. It also added a touch of character to the "black box" proscenium. A simple design, but it worked. In a more intense theatrical piece, where lighting of actors and scene becomes more important, there could be interference between the projections and the lights. Fortunately for our purposes, this did not matter much at all. It is, however, a production element which future projects at the theater will need to address.

Each of us had one poem read by a local (Mexicali) actor/actress, and then each entered to applause and to sit at a little table and read five minutes ourselves. Rather flattering, actually. The audience was extremely appreciative. The people who show up for poetry usually are. Takes a certain kind of dedication to find your way there.

I am very glad and grateful we found our way there, yes. Thank you Mexicali, for having such a good place to play in. Thank you for setting such a good show of others to play with. I hope you like what we did. We sure like what you did. This is so sickeningly sweet and flattering I think I'm going to throw up on Sharkeyfeet — our own TJ.Heronymous Bosch nemesis in the hell of loving friendship and "compa"-culpability. Excuse me I didn't mean that QUITE the way it sounds, but I do thank you.

Jorge Freyding read my Frontera Galactica poem, and then introduced me. I unfurled my pirate flag, draped it from the little table where I sat, and offered a brief selection from Poeta frontera linea, feeling my way through the scant five minutes, and, in the very deepest recesses at the back of my mind, processing the audience reaction and pondering the question of how I will frame and present the work in its entirety next month in Tijuana. I am actually toying with the idea of playing with the radio dial onstage in darkness, mixing stations and interference together for half an hour before I begin "reading" (reciting, acting, performing, speaking, moving).

Not sure yet how I will use, if at all, the pirate flag there. There is also the question of masking. Before, during, after? And my favorite: blindfold. Blindfold on top of mask, removing blindfold to reveal mask, then later stripping the mask.

I am also fairly certain I must costume myself as a gringo tourist in my jorongo with baseball cap, or... just let the hair go half loose like I do tonight (did last night)...?

As always, geography is like a foundation upon which I lay my meditations. I always want to know where and when and what and how a place is a place for a place. I bent for hours the past few weeks over google and yahoo maps zooming in and out on Mexicali, the bus station, the hotel, the boulevards, downtown, Chinatown, wikipediaing and searching the history of the city and people and at last, sweet, delicious last, entering directions for the colonia of Guajardo where Crea Cultura House of Youth theater, classrooms and sports fields have stood for 45 years.

The neighborhood was first developed and built up in the 1950s and 60s, during the post-war boom of Mexicali. In 1940, the territorial capital had 30,000 inhabitants and was primarily an agricultural center. By 1950, on the verge of the birth of the new state of Baja California, the population had more than tripled to 100,000, and the booming process of industrialization begun – although the agricultural base never quit. Mexicali now has maybe 600,000 or 800,000 residents.

As the city spread, the requirements for cultural and educational facilities equally grew. The arts and sports center, now called CREA Youth Center, opened forty-five years ago, in 1962. Last night at the anniversary show there were speeches touching your usual targets: the history of the city and neighborhood; the local figures in politics and business who got their start here on the playground and ball fields and in the halls and studios of the youth center; the problem of security that impacts every element of society these days at the end of the Earth (would you park your car just anywhere in New York or Los Angeles, I caught myself wondering); the difficult, long process of bringing this recreation-&-culture center back from near-abandonment, (as one of the speakers almost called it) and placing it once-again into the fore-front of local culture and life.

Hours later, outside, the kids of twenty even thirty something years, were all gathered around a cooler full of beer. I wondered how many of them had gathered right here, before, when the center was half abandoned, and if the gardens were a place to slip away and down a few with your buddies...

The future, as always, is in the hands of the people. Fighters, runners, sportswomen and men, neighbors, artists, teachers, and neighborhood kids.

In the distance, the mountains wait.

The next day, today,
Rober and Poncho and Roberta and Liz and me
all go off to downtown

after checking out of the hotel

and have a couple hours of chevelada beer
in el Norteño bar in Chinatown

with tacos and some peanuts and then
they drop me at the bus station.

I already told you that
back when we began this page.

Uh huh. I sure did.

The movie on the bus is the last samurai.

Another exotic, foreign land.
Almost next door.

It's only across the water.
Where the sun sets.

Until tomorrow, perhaps....