11 abril 7 : Wotanesdaeg/Miercoles =
WELL WELL Well okay the process of moving or not moving continues. Maria and I are still waiting for my landlord to give us a copy of the key to the vacant house in front. I will believe it when I see it.
Yesterday, Maria said she will call him today from work. I'll go see her again early this evening, late afternoon, after she comes home, after I go to internet cafe and upload this. Hope to tell you tomorrow what she found out. Like today I am telling you how we talked yesterday.
She and I sat around her table late yesterday afternoon, seven o'clock and already daylight savings time has leapfrogged the sun forward into night. It was a beautiful late afternoon yesterday at last the clouds have mostly gone away and tomorrow, I MEAN TODAY, today is shining warm and sunny, almost hot. I am washing clothes and hanging them out to dry. Working more and more on my old poetry, and new. And the big show on the 27th.
But I was talking (writing) about last night when Maria and I were talking (speaking) about landlords and our plans to move in together next month or the month after. I don't feel good about leaving Blanche, she said. The names have been changed, dear reader. I don't want to leave her. She depends on my rent. She is always so good to me. I smiled, answered, "Well, you know, love, you won't get your deposit back for months. She cannot afford to give it to you. So we must not plan on your having that money." Pues, sabes, amor, no vas a recibir tu deposito por meses. No puede dartelo ella. No debemos planear que ibas a tener ese dinero. Instead of correcting my grammar, Maria thought about what I'd said.
I looked over at the big refrigerator and stove in the kitchen. Back at the table we sat at in the eating area. Thought about the couch behind me in the sitting area. The beds down the hall in their bedrooms. Came back to enjoy the fading glow of evening sunlight. Began to think maybe we should not move to my place, no. Just let me come back here where we lived together two years ago before she threw me out for snoring and being a bohemian.
You realize, I thought, but did not say, you realize that once I start working more I will have less time to give to you. I did not say it. What I said was, "We need to think about this. This apartment is perfect for filming. The light is wonderful up here on the second floor. You have your plants all out on the front porch gallery. We know the landlady and trust her. Moving from here will mean a huge amount of work. Maybe we should live here."
She smiled and saw right through me, partway, at least. Knew I was really worried about moving the heavy furniture. She had seen me looking. Still, cannot read my mind and how little time I will have for her once I start working more on the other side. Does not know that for me to go to work in California probably means I will not go to Texas with her in December. No. She only saw me looking at the refrigerator and knew that part of my mind. God help me if she reads this, apart from the fact she has already muttered it is wrong for "a person" to write "secrets" on the internet. OH, BUT I FICTIONALIZE EVERYTHING a little but that makes it even worse, her eyes said, weeks ago, when I told her I wrote about the night she was drunk and told me how much she wanted me and so I walked her home and and and oh oh no but I do not fictionalize that that that was then when I decided to move back and try again to be an old married couple. NO. But now, only: — Oh yes, Daniel, it was not easy getting that refrigerator in. It cost me almost a hundred dollars just for the men – two of them – to bring the table and refrigerator and stove and bed in their truck, and they wanted to leave the refrigerator down in the front yard, imagine that! No, I said, look, take your moving blankets and put them on the staircase rail, and slide the refrigerator up the railing. With a great deal of complaining and caution and, well yes, rough language, they got it up here.
And I am not so sure we want to get it down, I thought. Maybe I better move back here instead of her moving over to the house in front with me. Besides, the light...
There was something else I did not tell her. When we first agreed to get a home together, three years ago, we chose this place upstairs, in the light, yes a lot of our decision had to do with the light walk into the light and later I saw was just in back of the great big wall that says grafitti WIKED DARK CASINO yes a three-word poem. And then we failed. After a year she asked me to leave two years ago. Said if I did not leave, she would, and I decided I would not make her leave. So I moved two blocks away to my studio. And we gradually reconstructed our friendship, closer and closer and closer into love, again. Now the house in front of me is for rent. And... and I think that if we are going to get back together we need to return to where we failed and try and make it work here, right there, upstairs where the big heavy refrigerator and stove already live. Not run away to a magical new house that will make everything all right just by being different. No. No. No. You, now, see right through me. I just don't want to move the dam stove and fridge!!!!!! ROFL lol efg etc.
Besides, the light is so much better in her upstairs place. Forget how cold it is in Winter or how hot it is in Summer. That, my friends, is simply the reality of Otay Mesa. Hotter, colder, windier, higher up above the sea, and closer to heaven. And the light is so much better, here upstairs there in the house where we first tried, and failed. I think I want to go back there. Here. Even if the water pressure is not good. Upstairs. Light. Video. Film. Tijuana.
Modules of fine arts modulos de bellas artes oh yes.
from several years ago dreaming of literary success with deliberate meter and rhyme C A R E E R M O V E S Tijuana shock-box man walks by clicking steel electrodes attracting his customers in this bar turistico Mexico. Assume another night you'll be working a bluehaired crowd talking New York tuxedoes about their Cuban cigars and him so.
M E R M A I D S 2 4 . 4 . 2 . 0 5 : 0 5 a . m . at home in early madrugada darkness before dawn remembers yesterday at sunset working with Luisa in cafe latitud 32' power was out at her office so we walked along the oceanfront paseo malecon to the cafe where we drank and translated a poem 74 lines to Coatlicue serpent skirt the ocean moved and moved outside each living window picture frame endless rustle and hush of water shifting huge fluid like a vast beast of waves around the world I will never forget the year I first saw them there five o'clock in the morning five years ago now waking up to remember the day before
