KA-WHAM BLAM BOOM
But we digress.Maybe, finally, some of the old pipes and underground vaults will get cleaned out. And, for a while, it will actually BE SAFER to walk the streets. We often wonder, as Machiavelli warned us, what would we do if we saw the enemy Persian warriors coming over the hill, or, in a more modern stance, how to survive the flash, blast, and fallout of atomic terror.
The newspapers, ever delighted to alarm us with sexy danger (some things are the same on both sides of the border, but Mexico has more chili pepper to it), trumpet their warnings with maps replete in streets tinted red. Generally those streets at the bottom of this attached aireal photo.
Oh, and the temporary mayor Kurt Honrold appointed by Hank Jr. so that one can go run for governor now says it was a methane gas explosion. Methane. Not butane. Butane is what all the stoves and water heaters burn. But methane? Doesn't that come from decomposing garbage and shit?
No shit. And cow farts.
Or maybe it was zebra-burro farts, eh? Eh.
And now we don't know what to believe. But of course since it was in the papers it ABSOLUTELY posssssssssssitively MUST be true, eh?
Not.
2.
T.'s neighbors have a new dog that hangs out on the street. To replace old Goofy who I guess died about a year ago. I'm not sure I haven't asked them why but I did ask them the name of their new dog.
And T also told me it. Name.
Calo. He's still pretty young but he's big. Has a great big pit bull head but doesn't realize yet that he's a pit bull mongrel. He does, however, have their super-friendly personality (pit bull terriers can be very loving unless you pervert them) and is always begging to be pet and he knows, he knows, he knows I like dogs.
The landlady always chases him away from her gate and then I pet him. Heh. He's great friends with Jack, the dog that lives next door and hardly ever gets out. The two of them stand at the gate and talk and smell each other and wonder when they will ever get to play without that big ugly human wrought iron gate between them.
Jack is a real sweetheart of a dog, kind of a husky-shepherd mix. He was a puppy when I lived there two years ago. Three years ago. Ancient American (Maya/Toltec) time travels in circles and goes back where it came from. Now it's Calo who has been the puppy but is growing up.
I go back on my own words
— there is also a cat.T. is often asked to feed them (Jack and the cat, not Calo [but I always sneak him some food] yes) for their owner who is always going across the line into the U.S. to be with her family or something. She has a visa so she goes back and forth all the time. She's a fundamentalist (the neighbor fyibtwjtmotc["for.your.information by.the.way just.to.make.obscure.thing.clear) and I found this out when the pope died and they elected a new one and I mentioned it to her and she launched into a monstrous sermon about the whore of Babylon and the seven hills of Rome etcetera etcet etc.
Mmmm-hmmm takes all types. Thank God she is NOT a satanist, that would be really Really TOO weird for words and I wanna keep writin'em'ere so no. But sometimes I wonder about people who always talk about the devil and the evil world and all.
Like me.
No. I am imagining things, or, as they say, "inventing" uh huh. There's no such thing as Rosemary's Baby, no, no, no...
*Sigh* — and in the end the only real thing is the dog is a good dog. Both of them. And the cat, too.
)
1.
FIVE DAYS AGO, on Wednesday, 7 March 2007, an explosion ripped through the corner of Ninth Street (Calle Nueve) and Revolution Avenue, right here on the tourist strip of downtown Tijuana. Two people were killed by the blast. We have NOT sent out our trusty reporter self
deadlive direct at the scene of the explosion to investigate,NO, we only read the newspapers. Nor do we normally watch TV. But the different newspapers (there are at least four here, no monopoly like in U.S. cities) all agree that two persons were killed, and that it was a gas explosion, and that everyone is very, very shocked.I am shocked, Rick, I tell you, shocked, to learn that there is gambling going on here!
Your winnings, sir?
As the dust has settled there has been a lot of talk (in the newspapers) how we should have seen it coming, old pipes, trash, etc. (but here we are entering into artistic descriptions based on our memories of what we have read so BEWARE gentle reader fore-warned is backhanded eh? Ej.
Then (according to what we read in Saturndaeg's Frontera) for several days after the explosion, investigative teams composed of firemen, electric commision workers, gas specialists, police officials, working alongside trash and safety bureaucrats, have risen up from tables where they discussed and planned, and then spread throughout the downtown streets, sniffing into corners, creeping down into manholes, snooping into the back corners of forgotten basements and hidden concrete vaults behind the walls and under the sidewalks, until they are able to tell us that there are traces of gas everywhere under downtown but especially the north end towards third and second and first and from Revolution to Negrete.
We will ask our readers to forgive our apparently, blantantly, flippant attitude about this grievous event, but we know from long experience on both sides of the border that a stoplight will never be put into place at any dangerous intersection until one or preferably several children and adults have been hit, maimed, and killed by rushing traffic.
Sorry folks, but them's the brutal facts.
In fact, we ourselves were walking quite near that corner on that same day, and given the passage of a few hours one way or the other, and a block or two variation in our path, it might have been us who were killed. So our macabre sense of fate may be a kind of denial mechanism, if you want to get all fancy and pseudo pop psychoanalysistic about it. ANYWAY no no no, it ain't funny. No more funny than railroad cars full of dead bodies in Cien años de soledad [Gabriel Garcia Marquez] or an empty swimming pool full of shoes or learning how to eat Virginia ham and worship Santa Claus.
Jamón de pavo.
PHILIP can you please link to David's livejournal entry about turkey ham?
No. Danny, this ain't Macondo. What you thinkin' anyway? Magical realism? Forget it. You too mediocre, opportunistic, and light. Yeah. Heh.
What the hell you babbbbblin 'bout Boss of course I make the link for you. Here.
Sorry. That must'a been Mikey sneaking in there. Gotta love language it makes all kinds of things up but we warned you WE ARE "semi fictional self indulgent authorial divertissement: mediocre, light u oportunista."
going boing boing boing on the trampoline
3.
I mentioned once or twice last week and a little before that I have sensed a major change coming in my life, in my art, in my world, in my universe. A sunset, a sunrise. Morning sunlight on the last day on Earth coming in the upstairs windows. IT is coming true sooner than I thought. Or at least it looks like that. Looks. Like. This.
Morning sunlight.I almost wish I could tell you I had won the lottery or found the perfect, high-paying job. But it ain't that. Has mostly nothing at all to do with either of that those them there two things neither chance nor work no only by association and cross-over yes.Indeed, until it actually comes true, and I am content with its continuance, and the fact that it really is true and is not just a dream, I will and shall keep my silence as to exactly what, exactly, it is, exactly, that is changing, except when I slip and the morning sun shines in the windows upstairs past the front porch full of her potted plants. Oh! Oops! She saw the box
of c a t food .
It ain't canned! Smells like fish!
Fresh! M e o w .Those of you who are my constant and favored readers, in greater Los Angeles, Tijuana, Mexico City, and Venice, yes, those of you who have been so good as to follow my babble babble babble and to write to me write tijuanagringo@yahoo.com and to break through the barrier I have put up by not having comment sections (unlike livejournal.com/users/tijuanagringo or youtube.com/tijuanagringo which are never as complete as these diary@blog pages have been)you who have refused to be put off or set back by my demanding a much higher level of dedication on your part, i.e. the will to write and email, not just add an easy commmmmmmmmmment, you who are so much more valuable, personally, to me, EXACTLY because of and for that power and willful act of thine own selves unto me, you who know me and Mikey and Philip and Charlotte my left and write hands, copy editor, html editor, identical cousin alterego, you who know them and me and us and he and she in this parliament of noisy small fowles who maken melodie thanne longen folk to go on pilgrimagesyou will begin to see what is happening by what I write and what I write about. Indeed it has already begun to show. How the morning sun comes in the windows.
Upstairs. Porch.We will admit happily that much of our decision had to do with some of you and your struggles you have written down and published in your journals. You have inspired us. To. Love. For. Health. Gather rosebuds while ye may...But now I have hinted far, far too much and it ain't even "true" yet. Not until next month, officially. Off ice I all LEE.Like I said, more shall be to come, in the regular course of daily de-scribe. Change is and shall be. Maybe. Probably. Definitely. Imshallah (God willing).
No that last blessing is not a clue. I ain't trying to say I am changing religions. Not trying to say or imply that. For although it is true that wa ana mim al-muslimin that I also am faithful it is not true but I am not a no Moslem not yet. Still just a freaking liberal man of the book. "Not yet" — at least.
No. What I am changing is something much more worldly and homely. Elrond Rivendell. As in "the last hom . . . . "SHUT UP DANNY
4.
Went to San Diego yesterday.
My brother and my sister-in-law and my niece and my nephew all those big and little Thomases (he used to be my baby brother and now he is all grown up and a geographer Thomas brother [no relation to them other famous but when he went to work for them the IRS made him sign a statement swearing not related just because of his.our name] heh heh heh) they all came down from Riverside and then father and daughter went to mass at the convent church with T. and M. and Danny.
The priest at the monastery church was African American yesterday, and he sang with a good, strong voice, and the "audience" responded almost as lustily, and it was rather a warm, not a cold service. I remember the first time I went to mass in that church thirty five years ago before I moved to Washington I went with Diana the hot blonde who was passing around from Robert to Tim and then to me and we went to the church I have always been fascinated by the Roman empire and those were maybe near the same three years I was reading all of Edward Gibbon cover to cover from Marcus Aurelius and Commodus all the way down through Byzantines and medieval Popes to Plutarch and yes I did and no I still haven't recovered caput meum in ano est and the convent church is beautiful and the nuns sing rather prettily although there aren't too many of them these days but I have a very warm spot in my heart for them because their patron saint Therese spoke to me after they brought her relics to America for her American tour yes but that's another story maybe I'll tell you those seven words one day no not today not like my compa friend Diana thirty-five years ago who never did become a girlfriend of mine in the biblical carnal as if I "knew" her sense, but she said to me later that that that that church seemed cold and dead.
I was offended. Maybe like I was offended a few weeks ago by A.'s warning that set David off screaming and ranting at me in the bar after he read it in my brief version on LiveJournal (oh my it is weird to know your readers and share a beer but hell I think I like it like that that that's the way uh huh uh huh I like it), and I was mostly offended because what she said was true. As in can't be denied. The Roman church, like the Anglican, tends to be chilly and cold and dead. Me I am hyper-liberal and hyper-fundamentalist at the same time and what I need is a Quaker church where they sing like African American baptists sing hard rocking gospel YES Yes yes. Calm danny down, now, darnit.
Then we all had dinner simple salad and quesadillas and I drove T. home before going back to help my mother with some errands today. I bet my brother and sister and the kids stopped for hamburgers or something on the way home. I make-believe that they eat like I do. Mmmmm burgers and greasy fries. No wonder I am so fat especially after stopping smoking.
PHILIP WILL YOU PLEASE EMBED THE GUM-CHEWING
VIDEO FROM ME IN THE INTERNET CAFE LAST WEEK POSTED @ YOU.TUBE
yes boss there it is .Then I borrowed Mom's car to drive T to the Otay border and because she was so tipsy drunk and telling me how much she is desperately in love with me and wants to make love with me well I walked her all the way home across the border and all the way to her house five or six blocks from the gate. She thanked me profusely and attempted and tempted me to stay longer but I knew the time was too short and I ain't gonna let our first time again be when she is so plastered she cannot remember it right no. Always leave them begging for more you goddam actor freak please no I don't want anyone telling me what to do not man not woman not beast not well yes maybe God but then she says go be with her Danny you are getting old and this could be your last chance eh? Eh. You love her she loves you and she likes it in the morning, too. Who cares if she's a set-in-her-ways stubborn bossy female who has to have everything just like she want, says, insists, demands, you you you ain't got much time left, no. So.
As I walked back through the night I felt, once again, why I live in Mexico. It is different. It is Latin. And here is a woman who could, legally, make me into a Mexican? Dreamer. You will never be anything but what you are. A stinking yankee gabacho white gringo writing poetry in Mexico. But... but... THAT is exactly what I want to be, eh? Heh heh heh. So love and be loved, too, Danny boy. Life is...
boing boing boing on the trampoline life is mediocre, light, and opportunistic. In English you put a comma in between the last two things in a list, Mr. Yepez. Maybe not in Spanish, but yes, most authorities say in English yes you do. Forget me I break the rules all the time I only dare to point this out because I have read your English as well as your Spanish and it is rather good. Dear Reader: Look HERE to see more of him.
PHILIP WILL you get this link too, pleaseeeeeeee
O K A Y boss .Well. Anyway. Where was I? Oh yes, crossing the border again and again. Fortunately my family is so close, and Tijuana only a couple hours away by city bus and trolley.
5.
More of you – especially you newcomers to this page (89 came one day last week [WOW yeah, but how many were just bots crawling around eh?] oh shut up ! my standard is simple: one reader is the guarantee of success. One reader at a time each time one real true person. And then, one robot AI hello you too mech/orga uh huh) well some of you really ought to come down and visit Tijuana. If you're a human being I'll see you or hear you. If you're a bot.AI m:mind you can like bleep beep in the corner to say hello when no one else is looking okay? Oquei.
And when you do, make sure you get away from Revolution Avenue. Walk along second street (or take the diagonal pedestrian plaza up from the big arch) over past Constitution and 2nd (where the refurbished Culture Palace [patio, bathrooms] has its art gallery open now) and one more to Niños Heroes – where the downtown cathedral church stands diagonally across from the old Popo market stalls buried deep in the heart of its block,
AND THEN go up a block (LEFT) from the church to 3rd where you must turn right and catch a bus to the beaches (RUTA 1) and get off by the bullring and walk a half-dozen blocks down and right to go see the border fence plunging into the sea from the artistic overlook viewpoint you can see the towers of the American dream shining over there, oh yes, beyond the swamps of the river mouth uh huh it is one of THE Sights To SEE.Then have some beers and seafood in the terrace restaurant bars looking over the sea. Do not go swimming. It's cold and polluted. DO admire the iron fence of empire.
SEE those big islands out there? Los Coronados. They are in Mexico, too. Just like you. And me. All of us.
Left, write, hands. Brains. Feet.
I really ought to re-write and update
"our" tur.info pages soon very soon....
6.
And so then I come home again to Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico, another country, another nation, another culture, that is, another neighborhood in California frontier so then I come home again from California into California from San Diego into Tijuana.
And the man is selling hot dogs on the corner. I go home first and write and write and write and then go back and eat two hot dogs and come home and drink another cup of coffee and feel good that I am home again and my paents are still fairly well considering they are now in their late 80s.
And I am just another baby boomer kid grown up long ago but now re-inventing my own future old age in a foreign country next door to where I grew up.
Heh.
I come home and have a foreign hot dog wrapped in grilled bacon. This is the landscape where poemix leads you into another labyrinth altogether all broken apart and all together again Humpty Dumpty NOT.
I come home again to this trampoline for empire, where thousands cross legally every day, where even millions used to cross illegally every night (before the fence shoved them east into the wild mountains and desert, never to return to Mexico at all alive or dead), this border where intellectuals and artists tocan y tocamos nuestros.sus.our.their trompetas.horns about how avante-garde vanguard vanguardista todos somos we all are on the cutting edge at the end of the earth and well it IS all getting very old but I am still here, happy to be coming home again and that is all that matters. "...mediocre, light u oportunista"
Oh something else I am going to sleep somewhere else tonight. In suite dreams where una delicia de palabras intelectuales salen con mis encantadas carcajadas otra vez para agradecer al cabron o a la cabrona artista e intelectual los.las dos me muestra.mostraron y apunta.apuntaron el camino de la palabra de.las.palabras in the beginning was the WORD and the WORD was GOD etcetera no importa tanto que quejan no no no todavia redondan las palabras hiper-humanas en el trampolín de Tijei acá. Primera fue C.C. con "self indulgent authorial divertissment" and now it's H.Y. "mediocre, light u oportunista"
Ah sweet tooth en suite truth. Bite down hard. Chomp
7.
Yesterday was also my father's birthday may he rest in peace he would have been 86 but he died thirty years and eight months ago when he was my age.
I continue to pass through this blessed year of life when I am still alive, as he should have been. As I will always feel I failed him by not giving him marihwuana
mispelled to make the bots work all that much harder, dear friend RAPTOR yes at Fort Huachucha and the other place no one alive now knows about pure machine ah sweetheart I lust for a game of tic tac toe with you and only you butback with my father and maria jean to help him with his loss of hunger from the chemotherapy treatments and get him to eat more from the raving munchies eh? And recover some of his strength and maybe stop drinking so much oh well those days are long long ago and I am now alive praise God and so is my stepfather of thirty years next year and my mother also.But time is rushing on and that is one reason for the change. Before I get too old even to ever make love at all and then I shall go and die, too.
AND THAT as they say
Will BE a l l she wrote
12.mar.2007
:
82.winter/invierno
24.moon/luna
50.spaceage/edad.espacial
sectores
gringoticos:
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