Last Week in TJ

At the Dali Suites in Playas, Tijuana. I'm in the back, tired and hot. Oh well. Took a nap, read, then went out. As I walked up the hill, the sun was rising over the mountains. Pretty hot.

Around the Bend

Summer is hot for all of us, but it isn't

a combination of the heat, the flies, the hours upon hours of no electricity and the corpses which keep appearing everywhere.

...a perspective from the ground at Baghdad Burning blog.

Forgetting you're remembering

Feeling at home is all about the act of forgetting. When a place is strange to you, you must go through a process of forgetting, which begins when you actively remember its details so you don't get lost, so you can get your bearings. You *must* remember: The street will have tattoo parlors. You will take seven steps up the walk. The key will turn in the lock like this. The room will be painted an early morning sky blue. There will be little green vines on the windows. The back burner of the stove will not work.

You must remember enough so that you can begin to forget that you are remembering. The more you forget that you have remembered, the more familiar a place becomes, until you get to the point that you have totally forgotten because, in fact, you now know it.

This passage (from From longlonglongride.blogspot.com) helps me remember something about home and strange places that i always forget. Thanks to Chuck.

Desde la costa calurosa...

Ya siento calor... Creo que mi cuerpito ya se ha acostumbrado a estar aquí en Tijuana. Porque siento que me acaloro cuando sé que no hace ni el calor que hace en Houston a las siete de la mañana. Pero para mí, ya no lo aguanto. Pero como soy contradictorio, me gusta el calor también. Me recuerda de mi Jiuston.

I miss my airconditioning, watering my plants, drinking with friends on the porch, going to events where a lot of people recognize me and I recognize them. Home. In a week and a half, the best part of home comes to visit.

AMLO vs. Calderón


A few people have emailed me asking what the election and its resulting controversy feels like in Mexico right now. What my impressions are etc... This BBC quote seems to go to the point.

But, as the rally in Mexico City demonstrates, the electorate is deeply divided. Most of Mr Calderon's votes came from Mexico's industrialized north and its middle and upper classes. The poorer south of the country and urban neighbourhoods, where poverty or trade-unionism can be found, opted for Mr Lopez Obrador.

I am with children of the upper and middle classes mainly from northern Mexico, writers. It is PAN country without a doubt. López Obrador is not looked at kindly at all in these parts. Of course, there are very notable and important exceptions. But this is the feeling I have from people. Either they have 1) no opinion and are indifferent, 2) are mildly anti-political, 3) have real negative feelings about López Obrador (AMLO) and what they see as his rabblerousing or 4) are one of the few public vocal PRD, AMLO supporters (usually intellectual folk). Clearly, I think in Mexico City or in the South of Mexico the experience would be wholely different. Anyway, these are just my impressions. Partial and skewed.

I personally support a recount of the votes. I don't find AMLO's appeal for a recount to be dictatorial or anything like that, or anti-democratic as a lot of commentators have alleged. My two cents. What do y'all think? I'm open to being wrong on this. And only this point. (Joke.)

Los tejanos sólo cruzan el lunes.

Hoy en la línea, un oficial nos dijo en español después de revisar mi identificación, "Los tejanos sólo cruzan el lunes". Le dije que entonces me iba a ir a Matamoros para cruzarme allí. El oficial se río de carcajadas. El primer oficial de la patrulla fronterizo de buena onda. Creo que era tejano y le dio gusto ver a uno de sus paisanos en la línea.

Are you English?

Un paisano gringo de extracción asiatica me paró en la banqueta en Tijuana. Yo le dije que sí. I am English. As in, I am the English language. Not nationality. Not country. We are language. Looking for the Chicago Bar and the Adelitas. I pointed him in the right direction. Told him, when you sees the putas en la calle, you are in the right place.

One Face at the Border

Crossing with Jen Hofer last Wednesday. First, the sign on a vendor's cart working the fila:

LO ESCRIBO MAL PERO LO SIRVO "BIEN"

Except "BIEN" had quotation marks above and below, four in total. Then, the signs at the garita:

WE ARE THE FACE OF THE BORDER
ONE FACE AT THE BORDER

The Homeland Security slogan of the 2003 unification of border revision duties. At the plastic booth, the lady border patrol agent commands:

"Please don't talk on your cell phone.
We are recording all communication according to the provisions of the Patriot Act."

We were sent back to Mexico. Took two hours to cross in total on Wednesday.

Language Poetry Ruled by Jerks

Seems like Language Poetry is hot in TJ nowadays. Not quite sure about it. Was reading Ron Silliman's blog (which according to a Wikipedia entry (probably written by Silliman) is the most widely read blog on American poetry). Seems to be one of the LP biggies. He writes on his blog about being at the Naropa Summer Writers Program in Boulder, Colorado and meeting the students there:

Overall, my impression is that the quality of the students as writers has risen as well. The top-level students are about where they were then, but this time I didn’t come into contact with any folks who were there just because they were lost souls.

Sorry, but Language Poetry is Ruled by Jerks. I just can't be that cold. If somebody is lost, I'll still try to help.

La prueba / The Proof

Aquí va la prueba que estoy aquí en Tijuana. Here's the proof I'm in TJ...En el Bar Turístico.
En la playa de Rosarito con la crg en medio (Cristina Rivera Garza, nuestra directora).
Con el caballero que amablemente me está hospedando, Pepe Vázquez, y otro token gringo.
I'm not in this one. It's Carlos Monsiváis y la crg durante la conferencia la primera semana.
Dos fotos de nosotros los talleristas borrachísimos el sábado pasado, o domingo en la mañana de hecho a las 4am en el Hotel Nelson en la calle Revo. El pelolargo es uno de nuestros maestros, Reinaldo Jimenez.

El Laboratorio va muy bien. Everything goes very well.

Ran.

Haven't really been posting much at all on this blog in the last few weeks. It's been hard to fin reliable contact to the internet. But finally found a cafe with wireless and no pressure to buy more than one drink or to leave after a certain amount of time. Yeah! Have realized too that I have not shared the address for this blog with many people. Maybe it's time to not be so scurred. Que todo va a salir bien. Que, pues, como dice Amaranta, que se tiene que dejar fluir las palabras y no guardar tanto temor a lo que podría pasar. Estoy de acuerdo. Pues, me dí cuenta que me gusta quitar el pronombre en mis verbos en inglés. Y escribir oraciones enteras con una palabra. Walked here from far away. Came in from the cold. Yes. Así.

Estoy aquí en Tijuana, entre idiomas, entre mundos, aquí en California. La California baja pero norte. Al sur del sur de California en el norte de lo baja, pues. Super claro. In Lower California just south of Southern California in the North. Pues, creo que hay un poema aquí.

Todos aquí escriben poesía y me animo también a escribir poesía. (Aunque claro mi enfoque está en mis cuentos ahora.) Y a escribir en este idioma que no es mío y que quizás por este razón me podría ofrecer más. Aquel tejanito con gafas escribiendo desde el norte del norte de México, llamado Tejas. Aquel tejanillo, o ese texanito, escribiendo desde el suroeste que es nada más que el pinche norte, que no reconocemos pues.

But seriously...

We wait in line.

Since arriving to San Diego on Sunday morning, I have crossed the border six times. Crossed the San Ysidro/Tijuana garita four times by car and twice on foot. By foot, its two hours to cross most days from the place I’m staying in Colonia Chapu, first by car, then walking to cross the border, then trolley, then bus, then walking to the Lab Fronterizo. The organizers, especially Cristina Rivera Garza, want us to experience the daily crossing of the border. I see why.

La frontera - long lines of people, thousands of people, thousands of cars and trucks in line. Two systems of transportation, two languages, a crush of humanity. Mexico, Mexico world cup shirts for sale on every corner. My stomach tight with god-knows-what emotion. The crossing, the millions who cross this border every day to go to work on the other side.

The stories. The immigrant trafficker killed right there, right there where they closed down the entrance to Mexico when the guy tried to escape from Otay, escape back into Mexico. The cameras on each side of each lane mark that place where they Migra shut the border down. We drive by, the place we drive through, the place we walk by, where they shot him down as he tried to get back to his country. On that hill, that hill right there where the Border Patrol shot down a man as he tried to escape from them. He, steps away from la Patria, shot down before he could cross back over. A new Tijuanense friend tells me what he heard from the Border Patrol-employed husband of a mexicana friend of his...that in training the Border Patrol agents are taught to shoot to kill, because a maimed person, an injured person, una persona balaceada, will cost more to the US government than a dead person. Dead not alive, entonces.

I don’t know where to start with this border, I don’t know how to get my head around it. It is at the limits of what is understandable.

A small detail: in Houston, when we listen to the radio, we switch between Spanish stations, English stations, Vietnamese stations, Chinese, more and more. Here, when someone speaks English on the radio, the signal is literally coming from another country, from across the line, al otro lado de la frontera. Borders are physical here, national, backed by a whole state system and it makes the borders we cross every day more visible.

The rush of people, the rush of commerce, the stench of car exhaust, the mountain in the distance, one side covered with homes, with concrete block walls, and visible traffic, glistening cars and up and down the hill and across on roads that network all across the mountain through dense neighborhoods. This Tijuana pushed up against the border fence. And across it, on the other side, the same mountain, the exact same one with nothing but shrubs and Border Patrol dirt roads and tracks that make a spiders web of beige lines on the desolate, empty hill. One hundred years ago, there were a few hundred people living in Tijuana, now more than two million. A hazy, green-tinted sky that unites us.

En la fila peatonal, the pedestrian line, the people cram up on you, from behind and in front, everyone sweating, some talking and happy, some bored, some clearly angry and frustrated. A line of fifteen people with their hands behind their backs files down the other side of the long hallway, filing back to Mexico carrying zip lock baggies with their possessions. Los deportados. And you walk forward to cross.

Some people, los que abusan del sistema, cut corners and walk ahead of you in the line. The people that walk ahead are of no particular type. They are from every background: a young black boy, alone, sipping his McDonalds orange drink in a baggy white sweatshirt, a family of white tourists the blonde haired, overweight mom talking loudly about how expensive houses are in San Diego now, how they can’t afford $240K for 900 square feet, the old mexicano man, with his baseball cap, hunched over with his cane, the military guys visiting Tijuana for a blast, the daily Tijuanense commuter the one who is probably late for work and doesn’t wait in line today...all these people cutting to the front past you, rushing past you.

And what do you do? What do you do in any situation like this, where you are doing what the system says, you are in the right, you think, following orders, though mind numbing and horrible and boring, there is something that says, yes, you do this, you do what you should do, you get the reward in heaven, or if you don’t believe in heaven, you get no reward but you still wait. See, it’s not just the people passing you in line, it’s humanity, it’s humanity rushing forward and unless you scream, unless you yell at them to get back, to wait in line like the rest of us, unless you protest, well, maybe even if you do, they rush ahead to the front. Get back here with the rest of us. Do you skip the line too? Or do you stay in it? Save some time, cut some corners. I stayed in my place, the guy behind me said, “Es una falta de educación, de ética, pues”.

It’s a metaphor, see, or maybe a synecdoche. Just a small piece of the puzzle, how we are as humans. Rushing ahead, putting up borders, trained to want to be a winner no matter whose toes you have to step on, no matter the people waiting in line, patiently 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. It’s not just in the line, but at work, at school, en cualquier lugar pues.

We wait in line, careful, weary, cautious, watchful, we wait in line.

Contra todo lo buga


Estaba googleando "buga" para ver que había en el internet y encontré este blog hoy de un chavo en Quintana Roo. Me dió mucha risa su "About Me" en su blog. Dice:

Freak, Geek y Queer. Diferente entre los diferentes, único, lleno de imaginación, estilo, y con la sexualidad a más no poder. Adicto a conducir, adicto al sexo, adicto a la compañía humana. Incoherente, desvariante, incomprendido, convincente, entregado, y aunque usted no lo crea fiel. Siempre en la búsqueda de lo que no puede tener. Soy un buen amante, pero nunca podrá comprobarlo, eso es solo para él. Mi poder mutante: Saber los malos pensamientos, sentir las malas intenciones, conocer la verdad detras de las palabras. Mi debilidad: Ser pendejo para estacionarme.

It's so cute and sweet and tender and arrogant and cocky. Perfect. También la foto. The blogosphere is full of crazy people, full of hibiscus and rooster headdresses.

Zayrkawi


If you haven't read the blog Baghdad Burning yet, you really should. It is written by an Iraqi woman in Baghdad. I don't know much else about her besides that fact and that her writing consistently cuts through the media fog and speaks from the streets and the homes of occupation Iraq. She wrote this on Saturday about Zarkawi...

How do I feel? To hell with Zarqawi (or Zayrkawi as Bush calls him). He was an American creation- he came along with them- they don't need him anymore, apparently. His influence was greatly exaggerated but he was the justification for every single family they killed through military strikes and troops. It was WMD at first, then it was Saddam, then it was Zarqawi. Who will it be now? Who will be the new excuse for killing and detaining Iraqis? Or is it that an excuse is no longer needed- they have freedom to do what they want. The slaughter in Haditha months ago proved that. "They don't need him anymore," our elderly neighbor waved the news away like he was shooing flies, "They have fifty Zarqawis in government."

Read more here. If you have some disposable income and you like to buy books, you should also buy hers.

TravesChile


There is an interesting movie here on the PBS-Frontline site about Karina Parra, a transgender woman in Santiago, Chile and her struggles to live and grow. It also talks about the transgender rights group, TravesChile, which now has 13 branches across the country! I recommend checking it out. Here.

I have some issues with the filmmaker. I wonder why she did not go a little deeper into the subject. The woman in the film, injects silicone into her hips to try to feminize her body. This is something working class transgender women do around the world. I would like to have seen a little context in the film. I understand why people inject silicone, but it is a huge risk, a life or death kind of risk. The treatment seemed a little sensational and not educational.

In any case, I posted a comment on the site to try to help Karina out, donate some money or raise some funds to help her get the sex change surgery she wants and needs. We'll see if they respond and maybe we can try to help in some way. Start by watching the movie.

La llegada de la Clementina


A chicken (una gallina) arrived about a month ago and took up residence in the neighbor’s yard. The neighbors are two people, an elderly Italian lady and her twenty-something son. Their family has been in the neighborhood more than sixty years, much like mine, and they have stayed in the neighborhood all this time (much unlike mine). The chicken has lived in their yard, pecking around in the grass eating god-knows-what, slogging through five-inch deep May downpour puddles, sleeping in the hibiscus trees in the front of the one-story 1920’s brick bungalow.

Yesterday we awoke to sounds of thrashing, the neighbor boy was running around the yard chasing the chicken with the help of his little terrier, chasing the chicken with a stick. When asked what he was doing, he said: I’m at my wits end, that chicken is terrorizing my cats, the chicken eats all the cat food, it doesn’t let the cats eat the food, it is out of control —¡that wily chicken!— and I’ve had enough.

A step back: we had tried about a month ago when the chicken first arrived to take the it before and move it to our yard, but he flew over the fence and went back to the neighbor’s yard. Now we knew why: the cat food.

But now watching the neighbor boy chase the chicken, we decided that the chicken had to have a better home. We told the neighbor boy to stop chasing the chicken, that it was much easier to catch a chicken at night as they slept.

So last night we climbed up on a small ladder, step stool type thing and took that chicken. Pero, y aquí el gran pero, nuestro amigo tamaulipeco que vive en la casa con nosotros nos aconsejo que el mejor idea sería de atar un hilito a la patita de la gallina para que no se escapara en la noche. También otros dijeron que así se hacía en el rancho. Que se tenía que atar la gallina a un árbol o ligar sus dos patitas para que no caminara tanto. So on the advice of this friend we tied a string to the gallina’s patita and tied it to a tree.

In the morning, we found the chicken hanging from the tree. Se había enrededado por completo en el árbol. We got him loose. The chicken, we thought, must have a broken leg or a broken wing. It sat still in the dirt, didn’t move, didn’t try to escape, looked traumatized. We learned from our mistake. We wouldn’t tie any chicken, ever again, so we put it in a box with chickenwire across the top to keep the gallina inside. Later, today, the chicken seemed to be fine, it even escaped from the box and tried to get away. But I caught it, put it back in the box and secured the chickenwire top.

During my lunchbreak, I went to Hendrick’s Feed Supply, Founded 1923, an oldtime feedstore on Harrisburg in the middle of Magnolia. Who knows how this feedstore survives almost a century later despite all the changes? I bought the hen a mixture of normal feed (4lbs) and special pellets that help with egg laying (3lbs). Total $2.74.

We named the gallina-hen, Clementina, on the suggestion of a friend who always wanted to name a gallina, Clemenina. Y además, Clementina es naranja y así que tiene sentido llamarle Clementina.

Clementina is like Hendrick’s is like me. Reaching for the past. A legacy of rural life, a living breathing connection to the past. To the grandmother whether here in el East End or allá en el rancho norteño que siempre cuidaba sus gallinas. For the store that refuses to die despite it all, the Wal-Marts, the agrodecline, who finds a place for feedstore on a street now full of thrift stores, Las Palmas strip mall, El Charro taquería, La Marbella banquet hall, Fallas Paredes, Firestone, murals of Lidia Mendoza playing the accordeon, cholos and agringados, old Italian ladies, and who keeps chickens anymore? A lot of people, a lot of people, in the belly of the beast, in the glossy, flossy postmodern city, in this place where there is supposedly nothing natural, where the rain is chemicals and scorched hot by the firey burn-off from the smokestacks of the refinery.

Chickens escape. Las gallinas vagan por las calles, se asentan en los patios de los viejos residentes, se enredan en los arboles y cuelgan esperando hasta que alguien las salve. And somehow Clementina found her way to our backyard. Now we just have to learn how to take care of her, how to take care of our roots, what we’ve lost, how to recover it, how not to get broken and lost, killed by the neighbor in a fit of anxiety or rage, how not to get lost in the cracks.