El espejo

Bueno, me gustó mucho esta crónica sobre las escenas de protesta y de plantones en el D.F. de un compañero del Lab en Tijuana. Léenla. Está muy bien hecha y escrita - una manera literaria y inteligente de acercarse al conflicto tan complicado que se vive en México ahora - no de tomar un lado y defenderlo sino de tratar de entender la situación y representarla a un nivel profundo. Un espejo.

Traté de encontrar la palabra en inglés, "rant". Encontré "vociferar, despotricar" como verbo y "discurso rimbombante" como sustantivo. Esto es lo que no me convence en este momento. En algunos blogs del Norte, hay escritores que tienen como su misión ahorita militar en contra de AMLO. Aunque me ha gustado Las Alas del Alacrán antes, ahora me tiene frustrado por sus rants.

Disculpen los errores de ortografía y de gramática. Mi español es pésimo. Pero pues, ni modo.

Out of egotism

Susan Sontag on writing, from her journal (a part of which is on line here):

Writing. It’s corrupting to write with the intent to moralize, to elevate people’s moral standards.

Nothing prevents me from being a writer except laziness. A good writer.

Why is writing important? Mainly, out of egotism, I suppose. Because I want to be that persona, a writer, and not because there is something I must say. Yet why not that too? With a little ego-building — such as the fait accompli this journal provides — I shall win through to the confidence that I (I) have something to say, that should be said.

My “I” is puny, cautious, too sane. Good writers are roaring egotists, even to the point of fatuity. Sane men, critics, correct them — but their sanity is parasitic on the creative fatuity of genius.

And later:

Being queer makes me feel more vulnerable.

Or maybe:

The writer must be four people:

1) the nut, the obsédee
2) the moron
3) the stylist
4) the critic

1) supplies the material
2) lets it come out
3) is taste
4) is intelligence

a great writer has all 4 — but you can still be a good writer with only 1) and 2); they’re most important.

Or then, this one:

The fear of becoming old is born of the recognition that one is not living now the life that one wishes. It is equivalent to a sense
of abusing the present.

Ataque homofobico en nuestra contra

Agreden a jóvenes gays en Zona Rosa
La noche del sábado pasado, tres jóvenes gays fueron agredidos y uno de ellos golpeado en Zona Rosa por órdenes de un alto funcionario de la SSP del DF. Entre las víctimas, el director fundador de Anodis y el escritor Sergio Téllez-Pon.
por Redacción Anodis

Tres jóvenes gays fueron agredidos la noche del pasado sábado 2 de septiembre en la Zona Rosa de la Ciudad de México. Víctor Espíndola y Sergio Téllez-Pon, director-fundador y colaborador de la Agencia de Noticias sobre Diversidad Sexual ( Anodis.com), respectivamente, fueron víctimas de la violencia al ser "confundidos" con sexo servidores, durante un operativo que pretendía "terminar con la prostitución ejercida en los alrededores".

De acuerdo con declaraciones de Téllez-Pon, los hechos ocurrieron alrededor de las 11:30. Se encontraba caminando con Víctor Espíndola y Oscar Mendez sobre Paseo de la Reforma; a la altura de Río de la Plata cruzaron el plantón y llegaron a la calle de Hamburgo, en la que dieron vuelta ala izquierda. A en ese tramo escucharon "A ver pinches putos, deténganse ahí", palabras que como explican las víctimas, antecedieron el ataque.

Entre los presuntos agresores, quienes viajaban en dos automóviles —cuatro en cada vehículo—, uno oscuro y el otro de color rojo con las placas 765 TUU, se encuentra un alto funcionario de la Secretaría de Seguridad Pública del DF quien ordeno el ataque. Uno de los agresores empujó a Téllez-Pon y posteriormente pateó en espalda, torso y pecho.

Para leer el resto de este artículo en el blog de Sergio Téllez-Pon, haz click aquí

Cuz dialogue.

A tentative response to Batahola’s post on 8.29.06 ("You all want to come here.") that has me gripped, in the vice:

Trying not to do the same old tired. Not to fail. How to think: this that place, buying indigenous languages on the white white sand, why we cross this line (why cuts just north of your city instead of a few hundred miles north of mine), how to be open when we stepped on your collective foot, get off my foot you said. Looted the cigar store, robbed all the shells from the beach, stole the plastic bottles and the wrappers little ones dropped on the street. To purchase sand and lay trailers on cliff sides, ranches where tumbled weed, organic wine is sacred now. Bribed the police for minor infractions, buzzed through no customs agents, brought home to mantelpieces to museums toasting to your beauty, your pristineness. The escape alludes constantly still, we want more always.

Sold you for cheap, bottom dollar prices, unbelievable buys and investment opportunities. Websites dedicated to your sand, your low wages, your literary prowess. Used resorts beaches tequila las putas del sur a long line of frat boys to get into your living room. All of it, and so cheap, all our friends on planes to your parties jail cells street parades cemeteries peaceful horizons palms and limping graygreen dogs. Where’s the best beach but I don’t want any goddamn Wal-Mart. Don’t want to seem touristy. Gotta be different. And how.

Marxists say capitalist rapings will go on all the time. Invasion reverses Fox programming, Mike said. Anger is real. Yours. Frustration is understandable. Rage is rational. 500 years of. Just new again. The next: through Costco aisles, march across the sun-baked Sam’s Club parking lot, hasta llegar a la ciudad, hasta llegar al centro. Say, all those spring breakers, generations of gamblers and womanizers. Protect the kids, we’re coming. I repeat what you said as if no implication’s implied. Repito lo que dijiste como si no hubiera culpabilidad ninguna.

But. There is. Like what’s above: a prelude to a wider opening. Just guilt trips are not as much fun as the beach. And no more necessary. Elena told me guilt motivates her. Never knew the face could contort to smile and cringe at the same time. See, the same philosophical dilemmas. Knowing philosophy drives you. We could have had so much in common. But never it seems.

So over repeating the same old tired tirades. Balance evades capture.

Not buying it. Not buying: stay home all good. What I don’t know is what I am. And knowing there’s nothing to find there. To help, in the end, you can’t go home. Can’t go where you cried the first time, to the blocks around the hospital room. No fit there, more natural. Always eternally cast adrift. Unknown and unknowing. A sentence with no subject no verb no object. A lack. And always the movement around.

Not like erasing. Visits produce knowledge. What’s critical is what happens after. Maybe like spying is the only way we have to begin. Any of you or us that is.

3:15 Experiment

Participated in the 3:15 Experiment this past month of August. Woke up at 3:15am on about ten of the days of the month (even though I was supposed to wake up all the days) and wrote. Alarms going off at 3:15am, some days I dragged myself up to write, some days I just couldn't. But been real happy with the results, with the discipline. With how the shortstoetryprosepoemnotapoems worked out. Now that the month is over, I want to share. And I couldn't during the month (against the guidelines to re-read during the month). All the texts should be published on the 3:15 Experiment site sometime soon. And more info and texts from past years are there now. They're sposed to be raw, just so you know. So here goes.

8/12 - 3:15am

one has to learn to be naked, she said. laughing responded. this city has become my hacking. meander on all too well known pathways. turn left here or there. never make that light. never. always a shred too late. been here since darkness. since the parade. since clipboards and good intentions. since genealogy and midnight uproot. didn’t write poems then. don’t.

interrupt to break the map. new lines on an old chaos. a corner never seen, an old peeling two story with a cyclone fence. never saw you, never saw the sign. machine repair. newness invades. the well tread leads. the rest, lost to touch. always missing. one step off. forgot knowing everything about a place never happens. the city laughed. she.

hacking in dryness, inside space. outside damp heavy pots curbs balconies we all glisten. this body revolts. never knew hurt like this. can’t breathe here. no future, only past. no walking after 3am, no sunrises or mountains. just blinds curtains stoplights measured flow tupperware to be washed.

if only hacking cities were enough. if only naked again could.

A Matter of Words

Tried years back to read Faulkner. Never really worked for me. Now, going back to it, with a different mind at a different place in my life and the images flood around me, pushing my reading forward. His language moves with flooding streams and broke down wagons and rage and folly and destruction. La verdad, lo puedo leer sólo después de este verano en Tijuana. Como que me abrió de alguna manera muy suave. Bueno:

From As I Lay Dying:

On salvation:
People to whom sin is just a matter of words, to them salvation is just words too.

On the limits of words:
Sin and love and fear are just sounds that people who have never sinned nor loved nor feared have for what they never had and cannot have until they forget the words.

On the raveling out of our lives:
How do our lives ravel out into the no-wind, no-sound, the weary gestures wearily recapitulant: echoes of old compulsions with no-hand on no-strings: in sunset we fall into furious attitudes, dead gestures of dolls.

The Nullotaims discovers Tijuana...again.

So now Tijuana is in the Travel section of the Nullotaims. The city appears every few months with some new glamorous, postmodern look at the perpetually newly chic city. El Nullotaims tiene a Tijuana como una obsesión. Y sale también con Jenny Donovan como su guía turistica y artistica. ¡Qué cosa! She's so famous. Anyways, lo puedes leer aquí.

Se me hace raro ver la ciudad así retratada pero a lo mejor no debe de impactarme así. Tijuana es la ciudad más visitada en el mundo, right?

The responsibility to act on desire

Kathy Acker believed that desire is the only honest part of us, and she believed that art is authentic desire. She never expected that art itself could transform the world, but she knew art could awaken in us the authentic desire buried under the meaninglessness of modern life. The responsibility to act on that desire is up to us.

-- Jeanette Winterson, Intro to Essential Acker

one last feel

one last holler. bleed it out before the dogs come. what you had is now lost. unfindable. if it ever was at your blackened fingertips. rotten digits pieces of flesh that fell to the ground, became hackneyed and butterflied away on roads less traveled. um, right. don't kid self. in those moments, a million reasons to run away. hide. for only inside the sunburnt skin could an answer be found. between these plates of skull and bones. the real alteration remains ahead. unreachable always.

Deliver Me From Nowhere

Finished this book, Deliver Me From Nowhere by Tennessee Jones. I enjoyed its slow ploddingness, its colors, its desperation and lack of redemption. When I found it in an indy bookstore in LA, I had to buy it. And I don't buy books often. But ever since Tijuana (already the city has become a time and an occurence, something of the past), I have been on a book buying binge. Something about wanting to see the books physically, to have them, to be able to lend them to friends. To remember them spacially as mine.

Jones is trans and queer but largely in his stories writes around these facts, writes the space around our lives and thereby exposes what is at the core even more clearly. In my humble opinion. Also, he is from Eastern Tennessee, where he was raised, but now lives and writes from Brooklyn, where he works at Soft Skull Press. A rockin press, by the way. But the settings of the stories in this book are always Southern or Midwestern rural settings, steeped in country talk and walk. So, his literary moving around and going back compelled me to read them just from the cover. And the stories held me close to them—about poor white folk, about trouble and conflict, violence, hiding class and ridding yourself of heavy baggage. The stories moved me. They stay with me. Get a copy. Or email me (or leave a comment) and I can put you on the list of people to lend the book to. Since I own it now.

One last blowout before.

Sé que casi nadie en Houston lee este blog. Pero. This weekend. One last blowout before. Well, you know. Hopefully, good stories coming. Check it:

Julieta Venegas, Kumbia Kings, Quinta Estación, un chingo de otras bandas. Suave. Pero es gratis y All Ages. And at 1pm in Petroleumville Stinkydena Fairgrounds. Stinking hot. And then.

Miss Gay Texas US of A. At your favorite Houston Latino gay bar. Inergy. Rockin. Ay los watcho.

Afloat in the Petro Bayou Channel

Advertised as a 90 minute tour of the Port of Houston and the Ship Channel. What we signed up for, what we thought we were getting. Made a reservation in June before leaving to Tijuana. Wanted to do it for some time. Ever since.

A few months before tried to sneak into the Port with two friends visiting from Berkeley making a documentary. Bad idea. Tried to make friends with the security guard lady. Ham it up. Make her feel like we were long lost friends. Usta work there he said, usta. Put on his version of a Southern accent to try to sound more down home. Didn't work. Guard lady told us we could sign up for a tour, make a reservation and then we could come back.

I did. With two friends then, last Saturday.

Almost miss the tour boat. Have to run to make it. Actually the gangplank's drawn up and the crewman lowers it for us. Always the last ones. Damn. On board. Wood paneled walls, leather sofas pegged to the walls, freestanding ashtray tables harken back to days when the good ol' boys took rides out into the middle of the Gulf, pleasure trips on weekends. Fake plants, air-conditioning, bow to stern carpeting. Full of people, mainly gray haired baby boomer aged couples. Some in matching tropical print tops. Others sunburned. One woman catches my eye, tall, firm, with enhanced breasts popping out unnaturally. As soon as I see her, swear she's trans. Later second guess myself. Maybe not. One Asian family with two young daughters. Diversity. And us, more diversity. We head outside to the bow of the boat.

The air is soupy. You don't walk, you negotiate through the mess that is our air. The speakers blare out facts as the eye scans. The largest port in the country in foreign tonnage. Tankers tower up on all sides, Monrovia, Taijin, Hong Kong, Egersund, Kristiansand, Panama City. The patterns of repainting the hulls make a pastel patchwork, scratched lines make random etchings in the colors. Amazed. The concrete docks crumble into the port. We've seen better days, the picture says. But the speaker blares on, the center of production, the powerhouse of the economy. One quarter of the refining capacity of the U.S. is here, more than 20 refineries and chemical plants. Towers topped with fire and black smoke. Burn off. Public Grain Elevator #2. Grain towers, conveyor belts ship more in a few minutes than human hands in months. Round domes that guard natural gas. Ancient brick warehouses with Spanish tile. An egret. Committed to environmental efforts, to being a good corporate leader, to change. Plastic bags, the shore so full of trash in places as if there were no sand down there, no mud bottom, just plastic, just refuse. Gypsum shed, an architectural marvel with huge gaps in the warehouse, straight from Mexico all that stone. Huge bridges, architectural feats, God-knows how many feet high, had to build it after boats kept hitting the old one. Won prizes. Citgo refinery smells like rotten eggs and rotting carcasses. A mess of mainly Maya and Olmec oil. Pemex. What we get.

The boat turns around after 45 minutes at the old battleground, the exact place where Santa Ana capitulated to Sam Houston, freeing Texas from the Mexican yoke. Why didn’t he just swim away? A little boy asks. Cuz the water is too dirty from the Pemex refinery, the Mom says. Complimentary sodas for everyone on-board. Please recycle in the blue bins. Progress. Environmental progress. Historical daydreams sipping on a lemonade, the grass is cut well near the historical marker. Daughters of the Texas Revolution pay to keep it clean.

Again to reflect on the surgically enhanced woman in front of me. Blond hair pulled back, hip light green sunglasses cover a huge swath of her face. Her tiny top exposes the place where her breasts meet the sides of her body, her tanned skin is luminescent, her entire body shows not a bit of fat, hard vertical lines, striations where muscle meets bone, stilletto pumps. Entranced. A marvel.

Head back inside. Overwhelms me. Sweating I collapse on the cool leather, comfortable, safe. Later my dad tells me he has been on that very boat, on day trips for Chamber of Commerce types to the Gulf. Seasick on the tossing Gulf waves. Home.

PS Have to say for awadwa. Saw a sign. Caution with the Single Screw. Ha ha ha. I said: Must be an old seaman joke. (Puntastic)

Carnaval de atrocidades

Joaquín Hurtado me impresionó hoy con su Crónica Sero. Su carta a Felipe Calderón empieza así:

Aquí en mi muy norteño vecindario urgen a sellar tu dudosa victoria: el triunfo de la bufonada electoral. Siendo casi de la misma edad pertenecemos a una generación para quien robar, transar, arrebatar, picudear, chantajear, devastar es aceptable para alcanzar cualquier fin. Lo comprendo, no lo comparto.

Para leerlo todo, aquí está.

For the non-Spanish speakers: Joaquín Hurtado is a compelling writer from Monterrey, México, three hours south of Laredo; openly gay and HIV-positive, his writings merit more reading by us, his neighbors to the north. Just a little north.

What had been.

Failed conversations. Falling buildings. The space where that was. What had been. The median. Humid places. Gap opening between the brick wall and the driveway. The running toilet. Are the things. Weeds choking. Ants devour aloe vera plants packed in lowslung pot. The chinaberry litters. The elephant ears impossibilize door opening. Cyclone fence blues. Overgrowth. I wouldn't open the blinds. Heavy deep sweat. Closing doors. Dying tomato plants. Some prospered, some failed.

Makes me wanna be like Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in the Guardian today:

Yet as our car swerves to avoid the potholes on the road, I think how I love being home. I love this flawed place. I love that this is where my belonging is least contested; this is where I care the deepest.

Regresé

Estoy malito. Hace un calorazo aquí en Jiuston. Extraño Tijuana, las Californias. Releo este poema de Cavafis. (Desconozco el traductor.) Como dice Paloma, "Estoy triste, cansada, perdida. Pero yo siempre estoy triste y cansada y perdida." Y así.

La ciudad

Dices: "Iré a otra tierra, hacia otro mar
y una ciudad mejor con certeza hallaré.
Pues cada esfuerzo mío está aquí condenado,
Y muere mi corazón
lo mismo que mis pensamientos en esta desolada languidez.
Donde vuelvo los ojos sólo veo
las oscuras ruinas de mi vida
y los muchos años que aquí pasé o destruí".

No hallarás otra tierra ni otro mar.
La ciudad irá en ti siempre. Volverás
a las mismas calles. Y en los mismos suburbios llegará tu vejez;
en la misma casa encanecerás.
Pues la ciudad es siempre la misma. Otra no busques -no la hay-
ni caminos ni barco para ti.
La vida que aquí perdiste
la has destruido en toda la tierra.

Heartwarming

¿Cómo se dice heartwearming en español? Just know it heats up my heart. That is all one could know. Luego más sobre el Lab y los muy queridos y mi boda con una sonorense suavíssima. Por ahora, todavía de viaje.

Tom of Finland

Went to an exhibit in Culver City of the drawings of Tom of Finland. If you haven't seen them, you should. They are amazing. More info on the Western Project. La única cosa que faltó es un cuartito donde uno podría ir después de ver las fotos para quitar todo la energía que trasmite. Just a little room, that's all.

Moving North

Already the moving on hurts. Already what was so present past. The place, the time where we were is just me. And the dissappearing present evades.

When reading blogs becomes the. When describing the changes becomes the. When soon the memories will be just those and the reality escapes a little further.

But now, this view, this city of god's workhorses, these cactuses, these weeping willow trees and slants of light at mid. This chance to renew. This chance to reconvene. This moment of newness and wonder.

The past elided. The future rushes over. Writing perhaps the only.

Salgo

De viaje. Hasta luego Tijuas. Suave.

What I'm trying to learn

Over at the Guardian, Natasha Walter writes about the rash of new novels by writers trying to get in the heads of "the terrorist." Here is her piece. This quote sums up what I am trying to learn now:

We want something very different from a novel than what we get from the newspapers: we want imaginative understanding, not political positions; we want to get close to a fictional individual rather than stand in judgment over a real group; we want the challenge of speculation rather than the reassurance of certainty. We want art, not news, at a time when news seems to be drowning out art.

This quote goes perfectly with crg's comments yesterday. Here's my interpretation of what she said:

Show don't tell. Don't write from a place of anxiety or impatience. When you write, listen to the writing. Hear what the writing is telling you, don't tell the writing what to say. La importancia de fijarse menos en las grandes revelaciones que ya entiendes. No expliques. Find a place in the writing where you are finding something new. Write that.

Less control. The readers will uncover something new only if you do. If you already know the writing before you write it, the reader will not need to read it. After the first paragraph she will aready know. Refrain from a need to clarify. Don't be in a hurry to say something, to tell a certain story. Listen to the writing, don't force the writing. Don't just say what's on your mind, produce some new knowledge or intuition that you weren't aware of from the beginning.

We all know the injustices of the world very well. The problem is they don't move anyone. Preachiness is not very effective. Language isn't a tool for moralizing, rather a medium for exploring vulnerable (new) places.

Maybe it's helpful for the rest of yall too? It is for me. It moves me forward, feels like.