Como describirlo?
My father is an idealist which in his time constituted the best kind of realist. My generation is more of an opportunistic factualist focused more on fixing potholes than building roads - if that makes sense.
Picture 3 circles dividing a 60 person group with a couple of people intersecting here and there.
In one lies a group of girls perfectly polished by make-up, careful natural tanning and hours on that spinning bike. They ask for nothing from the carefully styled women walking new york. Their fashion is copy pasted from the previous month's people or instyle and their hopes and aspirations are pleasantly asleep inside our large city. The groups of friends may have changed and the hair dye might be different but the nature of their beauty is essentially the same. Magazine cover and social pages in the sunday newspaper just like any other big city in the world. Except here we care.
Another if a group of indie's, alternatives, generally hippy'ish vibe (and yes, all three here are never mutually exclusive. Add a cardigan here, a knitted bag there and a whole lot of dark make up or where available, facial hair to find this other group that still rides tight from high school. We didn't have football heroes or local bad boys but this is a crowd that would often hang around the local (cheap) bar and recount the stories of this or that time when they were plastered and drove and got away with it.
Then there are those who have left and are comfortably outside and inside. Who wear stuff not meant to impress but simply to dress. Who tell the true stories of fantasies and cerebral drain.
Fresa Mexicano. Everyone smells of cleanliness and wealth. As the country falls apart around us.
bulletproof vest and metal and tires lock us in. :)
Monday, August 30, 2010
Friday, August 27, 2010
Hero
Of Heroic proportions.
Music blasting.
I had the idea of writing a whole story through dialogue alone but I'm sure someone has done that before. Then i thought of doing vignettes or something equally spastic but I've also done that before. i once suggested POV pieces to a friend who should now know that I wish I could call her from this god forsaken cornucopia of a country I've inherited.
So instead I'll adopt my stream of consciousness staple but avoid the half obscure, half inane references to things only my mind (and maybe just another one) might get in full and proceed.
There's a story in which I wish I were the protagonist but end up winning the oscar for supporting actor at this rate. Maybe I'd settle for the photography oscar if I could muster a meaning in a photograph that goes beyond "it's not only what's in the frame, but also, outside of it".
That's how I walk around home now. Affairs settled I leave my SLR at home and imprint the images in my mind instead. Take Tepic, Nayarit.
A town that hopes to be city with battles and bombs raging through it. It cover the face of a hill and nothing more and the circular road that is the height of city planning in mexico is really just a straight line to the side of the city. The transit police ride 4 cylinder cars that a moped could easily outpace and the water floods the bottom third of the city when it rains. Some streets are cobbled, some streets are paved and others look like the perfect set for a jarhead styled movie. Craters, not potholes, are filled with mud, and disease and bacteria.
Streets are known not by name but by shape and somewhere in the labyrinthine hedge of an urban spit that the city is, there is a restaurant called New Port...sometimes Armando's. Of modest origins the place serves shrimp about 400 different ways without falling into the commercial vomitous that some other "Mexican" chains within Mexico meant to offer a tourist experience. The jokes are insider Mexican but easily explained to outsiders. The waiters are two brothers and the cooks, the chefs really, are a mother and daughter team sometimes joined by the sister in law. Of course the streets outside are sometimes lined with soldiers bearing AKs protecting the commander in turn who loves the restaurant as well - all in an honest day's work.
Then there's the drive which should have been described before the meal but I suppose the drive back is equally significant. You pass valleys and ridges and a fragmented landscape capable of hiding a lost cow in the corner or a plantation of agave or something. Something. Get it? But there's a 5 minute period across a plain of sorts where there is green jutting out of sharp, black, jagged rocks. Volcanic rock to be precise and as you look around you realize that you've carelessly been driving through the wide open mouth of a volcano that's deep in its REM cycle. Such pretty contrast - bright living green and black dead rock.
Drive home and realize that it's the bicentennial of your independence and there's nothing to be proud of. That you wrote a thesis 6 years ago where you discovered that independence was an ill-fitting word for a movement better described as a failed insurgence. 200 years and nothing to be proud of. 200 years to crawl ahead as countries with far less independence or history have outstripped us in intellect and power. And the war rages on and 72 were murdered last night in a northern city. A grenade was thrown in a bar injuring 20 - at least I'm glad the grenades they are using, the military or otherwise are old enough to injure and not kill. Yet.
Just fyi.
Rock beats both paper and scissors.
Music blasting.
I had the idea of writing a whole story through dialogue alone but I'm sure someone has done that before. Then i thought of doing vignettes or something equally spastic but I've also done that before. i once suggested POV pieces to a friend who should now know that I wish I could call her from this god forsaken cornucopia of a country I've inherited.
So instead I'll adopt my stream of consciousness staple but avoid the half obscure, half inane references to things only my mind (and maybe just another one) might get in full and proceed.
There's a story in which I wish I were the protagonist but end up winning the oscar for supporting actor at this rate. Maybe I'd settle for the photography oscar if I could muster a meaning in a photograph that goes beyond "it's not only what's in the frame, but also, outside of it".
That's how I walk around home now. Affairs settled I leave my SLR at home and imprint the images in my mind instead. Take Tepic, Nayarit.
A town that hopes to be city with battles and bombs raging through it. It cover the face of a hill and nothing more and the circular road that is the height of city planning in mexico is really just a straight line to the side of the city. The transit police ride 4 cylinder cars that a moped could easily outpace and the water floods the bottom third of the city when it rains. Some streets are cobbled, some streets are paved and others look like the perfect set for a jarhead styled movie. Craters, not potholes, are filled with mud, and disease and bacteria.
Streets are known not by name but by shape and somewhere in the labyrinthine hedge of an urban spit that the city is, there is a restaurant called New Port...sometimes Armando's. Of modest origins the place serves shrimp about 400 different ways without falling into the commercial vomitous that some other "Mexican" chains within Mexico meant to offer a tourist experience. The jokes are insider Mexican but easily explained to outsiders. The waiters are two brothers and the cooks, the chefs really, are a mother and daughter team sometimes joined by the sister in law. Of course the streets outside are sometimes lined with soldiers bearing AKs protecting the commander in turn who loves the restaurant as well - all in an honest day's work.
Then there's the drive which should have been described before the meal but I suppose the drive back is equally significant. You pass valleys and ridges and a fragmented landscape capable of hiding a lost cow in the corner or a plantation of agave or something. Something. Get it? But there's a 5 minute period across a plain of sorts where there is green jutting out of sharp, black, jagged rocks. Volcanic rock to be precise and as you look around you realize that you've carelessly been driving through the wide open mouth of a volcano that's deep in its REM cycle. Such pretty contrast - bright living green and black dead rock.
Drive home and realize that it's the bicentennial of your independence and there's nothing to be proud of. That you wrote a thesis 6 years ago where you discovered that independence was an ill-fitting word for a movement better described as a failed insurgence. 200 years and nothing to be proud of. 200 years to crawl ahead as countries with far less independence or history have outstripped us in intellect and power. And the war rages on and 72 were murdered last night in a northern city. A grenade was thrown in a bar injuring 20 - at least I'm glad the grenades they are using, the military or otherwise are old enough to injure and not kill. Yet.
Just fyi.
Rock beats both paper and scissors.
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Indie Mexicano 2.0
Picture a crowd of thousands dressed in what people magazine tells us is indie. Better yet they picture indie pop artists in skinny jeans, v-necks and lots of polka dots and we all imitate.
I wear madras shorts and a tshirt.
The singer faces a particular challenge. A third wall that cant be broken where he sings for a crowd that in truth only half understands the semi mumbled subtext between the lyric lines. We speak spanish, he speaks english and the crowd frenzies when he says Mexico.
He raises both hands in the air, we mirror it.
Like zombies we follow. Then again, the same thing happens at church.
Heat is rising. My shirt is sweaty and his has changed color and though the observant eye is prone to believe that it's an Urban Outfitters thermo color change it really is just salt water.
People jumping up and down, the beer man is nowhere to be seen and we are all having the best of times.
That's mexican indie. When the mike points at us, the locale is at its quietest as we are put on the spot to enunciate the right lines. In that we are like our politicians.
Put them on the spot and they go quiet. Give them a mike and we all like what they say. We are swayed with th ekey words - mexico, gracias, you!
And look they even wear mexican hats.
It occurs to me that hydration might be of utmost importance right now however.
I wear madras shorts and a tshirt.
The singer faces a particular challenge. A third wall that cant be broken where he sings for a crowd that in truth only half understands the semi mumbled subtext between the lyric lines. We speak spanish, he speaks english and the crowd frenzies when he says Mexico.
He raises both hands in the air, we mirror it.
Like zombies we follow. Then again, the same thing happens at church.
Heat is rising. My shirt is sweaty and his has changed color and though the observant eye is prone to believe that it's an Urban Outfitters thermo color change it really is just salt water.
People jumping up and down, the beer man is nowhere to be seen and we are all having the best of times.
That's mexican indie. When the mike points at us, the locale is at its quietest as we are put on the spot to enunciate the right lines. In that we are like our politicians.
Put them on the spot and they go quiet. Give them a mike and we all like what they say. We are swayed with th ekey words - mexico, gracias, you!
And look they even wear mexican hats.
It occurs to me that hydration might be of utmost importance right now however.
Monday, August 23, 2010
Indie Mexicano
Today I knew I wanted to write.
See the thing is I enjoy writing because I enjoy story telling and I enjoy the latter because carrying a person slowly and gently to a story with no punchline but with a definite climax is a thrill ride.
I've been writing in schizophrenia for the past week and a half with a purpose but no string to tie it all together. I've been settling my affairs in Mexico like a person prepared to never come back. Mentally I think I've checked out - I hope. I've talked to a lawyer, a dentist and doctors (the beginning of a bad joke). They've told me, in order: youre good, youre cavity free and there's this and that and we'll do this and that and youll be ready for life.
I want to pick up the harmonica.
But paralegal busywork and secretary work aside - I've been telling one story.
More times in my mind than in person but the score is almost tied.
So I write in one liners in an attempt to be clever.
Or witty (wiry).
I'm visiting a prune's center with passion on Wednesday and the Monday blues were elevated by several bottles of veenoe and a michelada that reminded me of friends thousands of miles away. I'm missing my half orange (not the kind you have with breakfast).
There were tears at lunch, there was naughty talk and laughs. We scared the locals as we pretended to be above it all for a second only to fall back and note the sad lack of gallon bags of boxed wine (in memoriam Franzia's inventor). We ate argentinian and paired it with a teahouse screaming indy on the third floor of an old house with an awkward balcony overlooking an aged tree and an RC car wash. The man outfitted by what looked like the streets of LA was actually set up in Cd. Guzman and the owner kept massaging the clients as we saw a flower bloom in boiling water.
Tea will never be coffee.
But that is neither here nor there. I'm doing a new kind of praying now and it occurs to me that having a long lasting tv show in which the kids play a semi-significant role is fundamentally flawed as they have the annoying tendency to grow up. Then again, 4 women tend to grow old no matter how many Lawrence's they've met or hideous black tiaras they wear.
Sedaris and Fitzgerald have been an inspiration of sorts lately. The one thought me ocurrences and the interesting perspective of being naked. Not the hot and sweaty heavy naked that is features in sleazy paperbacks but the one in which you walk around the house and everything seems pointy and you relish the 20 second sprint when you're trying to answer the knock on your door. The other gave me some perspective on the 60s? and society and how little society changes despite individuals and bubbles moving ahead or behind as fast as they possibly can.It reminds me of minor things that make major impacts on the life's of thousands of those of us who are overly gifted in ways of values, intellect and materials.
Maybe I should hitch a ride to frisco.
See the thing is I enjoy writing because I enjoy story telling and I enjoy the latter because carrying a person slowly and gently to a story with no punchline but with a definite climax is a thrill ride.
I've been writing in schizophrenia for the past week and a half with a purpose but no string to tie it all together. I've been settling my affairs in Mexico like a person prepared to never come back. Mentally I think I've checked out - I hope. I've talked to a lawyer, a dentist and doctors (the beginning of a bad joke). They've told me, in order: youre good, youre cavity free and there's this and that and we'll do this and that and youll be ready for life.
I want to pick up the harmonica.
But paralegal busywork and secretary work aside - I've been telling one story.
More times in my mind than in person but the score is almost tied.
So I write in one liners in an attempt to be clever.
Or witty (wiry).
I'm visiting a prune's center with passion on Wednesday and the Monday blues were elevated by several bottles of veenoe and a michelada that reminded me of friends thousands of miles away. I'm missing my half orange (not the kind you have with breakfast).
There were tears at lunch, there was naughty talk and laughs. We scared the locals as we pretended to be above it all for a second only to fall back and note the sad lack of gallon bags of boxed wine (in memoriam Franzia's inventor). We ate argentinian and paired it with a teahouse screaming indy on the third floor of an old house with an awkward balcony overlooking an aged tree and an RC car wash. The man outfitted by what looked like the streets of LA was actually set up in Cd. Guzman and the owner kept massaging the clients as we saw a flower bloom in boiling water.
Tea will never be coffee.
But that is neither here nor there. I'm doing a new kind of praying now and it occurs to me that having a long lasting tv show in which the kids play a semi-significant role is fundamentally flawed as they have the annoying tendency to grow up. Then again, 4 women tend to grow old no matter how many Lawrence's they've met or hideous black tiaras they wear.
Sedaris and Fitzgerald have been an inspiration of sorts lately. The one thought me ocurrences and the interesting perspective of being naked. Not the hot and sweaty heavy naked that is features in sleazy paperbacks but the one in which you walk around the house and everything seems pointy and you relish the 20 second sprint when you're trying to answer the knock on your door. The other gave me some perspective on the 60s? and society and how little society changes despite individuals and bubbles moving ahead or behind as fast as they possibly can.It reminds me of minor things that make major impacts on the life's of thousands of those of us who are overly gifted in ways of values, intellect and materials.
Maybe I should hitch a ride to frisco.
Friday, August 13, 2010
123 or 456
Here’s the truth. I like subways.
Hurtling through a dank overheated and under ventilated channel like scurrying rats gives me a sense of thrill for no good reason. The person next to me is dressed in full suit – banker garb – that screams senses of power and influence.
I once talked about how I enjoyed walking around proper establishments blasting improper musical niceties from pre-packaged eccentricities called singers. Listening to the caramelized tones of Bocelli as il mare calmo starts rolling of his throat is soothing beyond believe. Brownian motion in my brain just calmly adapts to the pleasant acoustics and I let my arm loosely hang on to the ceiling bars. Cold-recycled air hitting the back of my neck and I’m trapped in an awkward embrace amidst strangers.
This is the end of a small beginning. 10 weeks were once my lifetime. Then they came to be an ever smaller fraction of my ever increasing life. I’m sitting at a desk feeling just as hungry as I felt 2 and half months ago and, I hope, infinitely more prepared to begin taking the world by storm.
Standing at the brink of an interesting new world I write more like a preacher today than I do most days. Memories of Mexican style swimming classes come to mind: a father, hopeful and ecstatic at having a child walks the 5 or 6 year old tike to the edge of the deep end. The tiny little hand grabs his fathers harder and harder as the ominous dark blue seems to grow infinite deeper (Jacuzzis tend to look like Mariana when you’re 3 feet tall). His father looks at his friends and family eating and drinking on the terrace. All the adults know exactly what’s happening, the child’s mom confuses her eyes as she tries to both lock her eyes on her child’s ability to breathe and divert her vision to avoid what is still seen by many as a rite of passage.
Dad kneels and whispers something (hopefully positive) and then, like a captain baptizing a new ship with a bottle of champagne – shoves the kid into the ocean (pool). Screams. Panic. White water. Instincts, survival, tears. Hugs all around and the beginnings of a deep distrust for his fathers ulterior motives for the next 2-3 weeks. I’m not worried, there’ll be ice cream in store tonight.
I’m here to say I love swimming and I’m ready to dive head first like the Amazonians. There’s still a lot to be said about where I will be in 10 years, or in the next 2 weeks for that matters but the yields are dropping and the spreads are tightening.
All I can say is that despite the ozone hole, the undoubtedly impending disaster stemming from economics, religion, politics, greed or general maximum capacity I’m more excited to be alive today for all the possibilities that these sources of friction represent. Here’s a toast to my generation based on those few around me that I call my friends and who I know have the capacity, drive and intellect to overturn a problem – big or small – if only because more so than any other generation before us, we have the most to lose and the most to gain.
Salud.
Hurtling through a dank overheated and under ventilated channel like scurrying rats gives me a sense of thrill for no good reason. The person next to me is dressed in full suit – banker garb – that screams senses of power and influence.
I once talked about how I enjoyed walking around proper establishments blasting improper musical niceties from pre-packaged eccentricities called singers. Listening to the caramelized tones of Bocelli as il mare calmo starts rolling of his throat is soothing beyond believe. Brownian motion in my brain just calmly adapts to the pleasant acoustics and I let my arm loosely hang on to the ceiling bars. Cold-recycled air hitting the back of my neck and I’m trapped in an awkward embrace amidst strangers.
This is the end of a small beginning. 10 weeks were once my lifetime. Then they came to be an ever smaller fraction of my ever increasing life. I’m sitting at a desk feeling just as hungry as I felt 2 and half months ago and, I hope, infinitely more prepared to begin taking the world by storm.
Standing at the brink of an interesting new world I write more like a preacher today than I do most days. Memories of Mexican style swimming classes come to mind: a father, hopeful and ecstatic at having a child walks the 5 or 6 year old tike to the edge of the deep end. The tiny little hand grabs his fathers harder and harder as the ominous dark blue seems to grow infinite deeper (Jacuzzis tend to look like Mariana when you’re 3 feet tall). His father looks at his friends and family eating and drinking on the terrace. All the adults know exactly what’s happening, the child’s mom confuses her eyes as she tries to both lock her eyes on her child’s ability to breathe and divert her vision to avoid what is still seen by many as a rite of passage.
Dad kneels and whispers something (hopefully positive) and then, like a captain baptizing a new ship with a bottle of champagne – shoves the kid into the ocean (pool). Screams. Panic. White water. Instincts, survival, tears. Hugs all around and the beginnings of a deep distrust for his fathers ulterior motives for the next 2-3 weeks. I’m not worried, there’ll be ice cream in store tonight.
I’m here to say I love swimming and I’m ready to dive head first like the Amazonians. There’s still a lot to be said about where I will be in 10 years, or in the next 2 weeks for that matters but the yields are dropping and the spreads are tightening.
All I can say is that despite the ozone hole, the undoubtedly impending disaster stemming from economics, religion, politics, greed or general maximum capacity I’m more excited to be alive today for all the possibilities that these sources of friction represent. Here’s a toast to my generation based on those few around me that I call my friends and who I know have the capacity, drive and intellect to overturn a problem – big or small – if only because more so than any other generation before us, we have the most to lose and the most to gain.
Salud.
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Ballet
Wake up. Lunch.
Uniform on – black pleated pants, white shirt and combat boots shined black to disguise them as dress shoes.
Check-in. It’s 12:30pm.
Open door, wave hand out – an invitation to step outside into the brave new world.
“Hello! Welcome to…”
“Don’t scratch the paint! I left it on park! It doesn’t like the sun! Let’s go babe!”
“Of course Sir! My pleasure (pee my pants with it actually)!
Tool.
Again.
“Hello! Welcome to…”
“Hi, just want to be sure. Tips are optional right?”
“Of course! (So is paying taxes and being a good human being!)
Cheap.
Again. Sell the smile this time.
“Hi, hello! Welcome to…”
“…the worst night of my life and would you believe it, she asked to come back?”
“Uh, sir?”
“Keep it here, I’m only running in”
Of course! I love blocking the entrance at my workplace.
Dinner service – here come the big bucks.
“Good evening! And Welcome to…”
“…”
“(Incomprehensible gurgle)”
Wow. She. Was. Beautiful.
Come on now, final ticket.
“Good evening! Welcome to…”
“Hey buddy, do you need reservations for this joint?”
“Yes!”(The owner likes to think of the place as more of a “tapas bar” but joint will work)
Aaaaaand here they come.
Quietly hands me the slip.
“Have a good night sir!”
Check out. 330am.
Dinner. Get in bed.
Uniform is still on.
Uniform on – black pleated pants, white shirt and combat boots shined black to disguise them as dress shoes.
Check-in. It’s 12:30pm.
Open door, wave hand out – an invitation to step outside into the brave new world.
“Hello! Welcome to…”
“Don’t scratch the paint! I left it on park! It doesn’t like the sun! Let’s go babe!”
“Of course Sir! My pleasure (pee my pants with it actually)!
Tool.
Again.
“Hello! Welcome to…”
“Hi, just want to be sure. Tips are optional right?”
“Of course! (So is paying taxes and being a good human being!)
Cheap.
Again. Sell the smile this time.
“Hi, hello! Welcome to…”
“…the worst night of my life and would you believe it, she asked to come back?”
“Uh, sir?”
“Keep it here, I’m only running in”
Of course! I love blocking the entrance at my workplace.
Dinner service – here come the big bucks.
“Good evening! And Welcome to…”
“…”
“(Incomprehensible gurgle)”
Wow. She. Was. Beautiful.
Come on now, final ticket.
“Good evening! Welcome to…”
“Hey buddy, do you need reservations for this joint?”
“Yes!”(The owner likes to think of the place as more of a “tapas bar” but joint will work)
Aaaaaand here they come.
Quietly hands me the slip.
“Have a good night sir!”
Check out. 330am.
Dinner. Get in bed.
Uniform is still on.
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