NASA photo location http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/imgcat/midres/gal_p37298.gif

tijuana gringo : diaryablog calendar : fresh diaryablog


21 enerojanuary 2004
31 winter NEW MOON 48 spaceage

Tijuana, Baja California, México

somewhat wet and drippy streets whisper outside the internet café

It was only a few days ago Ramón and I saw the ancient moon crescent, still a fat crescent but definitely menguante, definitivamente waning crescent, hanging over the eastern horizon, the dark city of gleaming three a.m. lights twinkling under the horns of yellow smog, yes.  We were stumbling upstairs from a long midnight of talk talk talk and of course he had been insulting me again but I already wrote all that so I won't say any more except it took me two days or was it three to work up the nerve to write down and even then it was fictionalized and edited and facts changed to protect shut up Danial denial as ever if any of your impossible team is captured the secretary will disavow any knowledge of your existence heh welcome to the world you knew it you know it and so.


Yesterday after writing and revising the diaryablog for yesterday I went surfing through the web looking for a writer Charles Bernstein I knew and took a class with once twenty almost years ago at UCSD well it was eighteen maybe this spring and frankly I have never been the same, although my writing is still rather boring and narrativisticallistica-ala-maximum cliché compared to his L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E but reading Heriberto Yepez blog put me in mind of Bernstein or I think it was he who mentions him on occasion.  And I found his page and a lot else and ended up joining some poetics forum mailing list or another where he posts on occasion including a letter from an Italian scholar who won't be coming (or from my perspective in Tijuana rather) going to New York to teach because he doesn't want the mark of the beast engraved on his forehead and on his wrist without which no one can buy or sell, I mean he objects to the new security rules everyone must be photographed etcetera and their information sent to some vast computer in the sky and well welcome to the empire, professor dude that's why I live in Tijuana and don't got no bank account mmm it aint easy but it is. 

Meanwhile I cannot remember how to spell professor and THAT believe it or not is More Important to me now than any frigging bank demanding ID and saying who the hell are you NOT to have any account anywhere what are you weird oh yes and Anglosaxon wyrd that's the word yes wired hardwired into poemics poetics whateverix.  Or what.  Gonna make it real compared to what.  And when you believe something you gotta stick for it no matter what to make it real.  Or it won't be, even the president knows that, it just won't.  So he did - the professor who won't give his class because of the mark of the beast by executive order and patriot act heh talk mythologically Danial and reality echo ripple into the distance even unto here.  *sigh*

Which security fear was slightly related to why, I suppose, the Democrats did not applaud very much last night as Mr. Arbusto warmonger gave his stateoftheunion speech yes no it was verrrryyyy curious to see how the one side of the house jumped up to applaud every ten seconds while the other sat there on their hands like they're trying to remember how to spell there three different ways bla bla bla

they're clapping their clapping there

or NOT

Where was I look back at the draft I wrote this morning by hand as usual at my little kitchen table with a cup of coffee at six a.m. still dark and awake I went to sleep right after the pundits finished polishing their aces I mean axes and slept all night dreaming of apartments and travels and automobiles and good things to eat and walking outside the house where I grew up in the hills thirty kilometers north of here....

Where was I... oh yes.

"The once all powerful leader of Iraq was found in a hole and now sits in a prison cell."

No, Virginia, there is no Satan Clause.  And when my more radical friends here on the frontier look at Mr.Arbusto as such, I can only shake my head.  No.  No human being is satan, not even my beloved Ramón el diablo... heh heh.  "The devil you know" etc. maybe so?  Mm hmm.

No, no, no matter how much I do not agree with my president nor with all those
neoconservative men and women who lead him by the nose from behind the 
throne prod prod No I do not agree but I must confess he is the 
man no matter what and we they you I are stuck with him
until next January whatever (or four years later)
and he is the one who is the one in that
place where the buck stops and
so I watched his speech
and noticed all
the bucks
that

stopped there and did not applaud or did applaud

oh yes I love'lection year it's silly season par excellence or however the siegheil you spiel it yes

I only wish he hadn't sent so many men and women into harm's way [un]just in order to find notSatan Husein in a hole and throw him in prison

or well I also wish "my" president had not thrown the balanced budget in the trash

nor
          nor
                                           nor .  there is absolutely nothing written here

as I was walking through the chill morning street to the internet café today I reflected into shop windows and thought oh my if we were Aztecs, ancient Aztecs, we would be cooking Sadam for dinner after we made him dance with warriors and cut his heart out hmmmm ahem

heh

I 'spose some things have changed, ever so slightly....


But to shift the subject to something more pleasant, but equallllllllly AZTEC... I bought a copy yesterday of the latest Arqueologia Mexicana (watch out that link looks dead right now but that's it I think) yessss the latest issue on el ser humano en el México antiguo - the human being in ancient Mexico well, things like gender, cult, appearance, adornment, etc.  This issue also features a guide to the excavated main temple - ueyi teocalli - templo mayor in the heart of Mexico City

You know, or at least, I know, that I actually care more about ancient America, Aztecs, Maya, etcetera, than I do about any election year.  Heh.  No accounting for tastes!  (Least of all mine....)


I can see the border from my house.  There was scattered drizzle in the morning today, hazing in front of the line of shining stadium lights that stretch from the ocean to the mountains, 20 miles east.  Used to be thousands waiting to walk across here every night, but now they must turn east, into the jagged peninsular mountains where Baja California is breaking away from the continent America.  Out there, in the mountains and desert, the immigrants struggle through thirst and heat and cold, even swimming down rivers of sewage just to get to the U.S.A.

Makes you think something is good in there, over there, just eight blocks north of my little apartment on the edge of the world....

Duh!  Power, wealth, what else do you want?

Oh, well, I just want to write a good poem, some day.... maybe I have, maybe I will, maybe it was that one or that one or that one or that one or that one or that one or oh shut up already.

Oh, well, I just want to write a good poem, some day.... maybe I have, maybe I will, shall

S=H=A=L=L

okei bai                                                             okay bye


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