10 abril 7 : Tiwesdaeg/Martes =
DAY ALL DAY, YESTERDAY, I wrote all day long until I was so punch drunk from one text to another I had to stop and read for a while. Finished the point to point memoir of Gore Vidal and continued ahead adelante on the Lincoln book by Goodwin. As I read I keep thinking of Vidal's historical novel that I have read twice, now, in Spanish translation some guy in Spain I think.
Not just preparing and catching up on diary@blog oh no also working on the revised resume for that job in Los Angeles and then more poetry for a new chapbook I am going to publish to sell at the reading on the 27th this month at casa de la nueve on ninth street by pio pico avenue and also a collection of poems I can choose from to submit to magazines and competitions. I have poetry floating around everywhere in the last eight years I have written over a thousand poems about one thing on the border or another and maybe a hundred of them are good and ten or twenty really please me yes even though other people might not think them as good as some of the others.
Well anyway. This one today is not one of them, this is completely new I just write it today yes. First draft, slight revision. Some of the ideas I have thought about before. The spaceport, for example. I think about that every time I ride by the airport Brown Field on the U.S. side, or the Tijuana airport on this side.
Then back to thinking about last night my landlord came by and said he'd esuchado de los muchachos que mi mujer queria rentar la casa y entonces he told me that supuestamente ya la rentó pero piensa que los otros no van a quedar y otras tonterias I sometimes wonder if all the evil things my previous neighbors say about him are even one-one/thousandth or one/millionth true no I don't believe it no it can't be but well maybe we will have the house if he gets me a key and Maria likes it and then well then I will have my studio out back where I can run away when she can't stand me and I can't stand her and so forth and so on oh my two old loners I don't know how we can stand each other but then, sometimes, just walking by her side makes me happy, and holding her in my arms oh my some things I just don't know how to write nor do I feel like sharing them either but I will say only this: she likes it in the morning.
Calm down boys. What did I do to deserve such delicious good fortune. Nothing. I did absolutely nothing. She likes taking a shower together, too, and that is also a delight of good luck. Not to mention her nearly perfect Spanish and excellent education. I would have to look far and wide to find someone my age, who likes me and whom I like, let alone love love is nothing if you don't actually like each other but yes then she loves me and I love her. But there is this selfish loner streak in me which says watch out watch out not again you've already failed twice oh but hell close my eyes hold my nose and jump no, no, no, keep the eyes open, just take a breath, and then go. OH, did I mention she can cook? Yes. She made some pancakes the other morning that were to die for... no, let me put it another way, they were to LIVE for.
Sometimes I think we are fools to be so old and almost seniors already before we find each other but well we won't be having any children that I know, or at least believe. Hope.
So anyway the landlord finally came by to collect the rent and I began the process of negotiation he seems to think these people whom he said already gave him money are not going to come after all that is... strange I wonder if it is only a story he is telling me for bargaining ploy huh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive yes and so my negotiating strategy was simpler. The woman won't pay that much. No, not that much either. I did not tell him my sweetener: that we will take on all the bills, even pay for the new water heater (it will then be ours to keep or take). I am keeping that card in reserve if Maria wants him to come down even further in the rent. But he seemed eager to rent it to someone he already knows. I guess it's the devil you know philosophy. Eh.
TODAY ALL DAY TODAY when I walked through the sobreruedas streetmarket I saw my former neighbors who moved out a month ago and they seemed a lot mellower talking about him not like before when they lived here I am back in my little studio behind the empty house here still writing but only an hour or two ago I was out on the street walking and visiting and trying very very hard not to buy that pair of blade line roller skates in my size oh my gawd I would just fall down and break both arms and smash in my face against the filthy grimey mugroso apestoso stinking cement where dogs pee and drunken junior gangsters vomit or worse. Yeah I had to summon up thoughts like that to keep from buying the pair of line skates he only wanted fifty pesos less than five dollars wait he told me four I should have bought them for four dollars and then killed myself falling down in traffic in front of some monster truck heh heh heh cackling laughter bwa ha ha ha ha...
Speaking of monster truck and cackle cackle I heard a chicken crowing this morning as I was walking toward the street market and it set me off to thinking and writing I only wrote the first stanza on the street but then I went into the corner store on Lopez Portillo Occidente and Sor Juana de la Cruz where they have a little kitchen now and make breakfasts and lunches I don't think it will be very long before they start getting more factory workers eating there uh huh or at least those with money to spend the food aint half bad and it's convenient. I like sitting in the window I went there two weeks ago but only for a cup of coffee.
Passed out a few of my hand-printed little ticket-advertisements for the reading on the 27th. In the store and to people I know at the street market. Also did not buy a beautiful picture looks like a print in water-color style, date 1983 shows a young woman looking pensively out over the sea from somewhere in California I assume. I forget the name of the artist. No no no it was NOT David Hockney please forget that. It was just a pretty print of a beach and woman. I really should have bought it but no I cannot spare that kind of money she knew what she had there. Also tried to sell me a beautiful oriental tea set with cups and plates and pot and cream and sugar all done in dragons oh my she wanted 500 pesos holy shmuckerooo no I cannot not no. Sorry. But thank you for showing it to me. That's all right, señor I know you are interested in these oriental things, yes? Yes.
A L I E N I N V A S I O N The growl of a chicken is rooster against the sun — remember dinosaurs? In the window down the block they are making breakfast an omelette however you spell it twenty-five pesos (two dollar dot twenty-five cent) by the most recent rate eleven to one 2007 — or you remember dinosaurs? Trucks are shifting gears to rumble their challenge outside the corner store window across from factory 16-wheel monsters jockeying toward the swallowing gates of Japan, television, stereo crystal hummingbird of Mexican song colibri chupaflores huitzilohuitzil import export border movie fame home theater butcher to the world surround sound speakers digital high definition flat screams from beyond the s e a — or do you remember dinosaurs my meteor? Plunging through the stratosphere streams of sparks and liquid fire trailing behind us falling toward our landing strip next door a hundred years to future they will build it here we will come this enormous flat space beneath the mountain before the ocean Otay spaceport 2139 or do you not remember it, my dear — departed dinosaurs whom readers write ? 10 april 2007