My suegro was my girlfriend’s father and one of the last things he said to me was that he couldn’t shake my hand, and later he asked my word that I wouldn’t call her or the house again. I’ve always remembered that Casillero del Diablo is a good wine because he approved the selection. Few Mexican people seem to love wine, but Victor was inspired by Spain. His daughter would comment in passing that she’d like to take him there one day and I am only able to picture him being happily lead through the streets by his small, adult daughter in a genuine stupor of joy. He did shake my hand again when we said so long, likely enough because it slipped his mind not to. We’d drink wine around the kitchen-sized table in the living room at their place. There were often friends or relatives around on Saturday evenings and my girl’s mom loved to gamble with poker chips. We ended up reliving those days when we returned to Mexico. One night, after much wine Victor said to me “¿sabes lo que me gusta de ti, Joseph?” and I thought he was going to say I was unafraid to criticize my country. That was the night he had me pick up the guitar, but not to play anything.
My girlfriend’s sister played the piano, for which her father had gladly sacrificed. He played the classical guitar like an over-excited child, tackling the notes quickly enough that memory couldn’t escape. One of the public TV stations would air an opera every Saturday afternoon. I saw The Magic Flute and recognized the melody in “una furtiva lágrima” from a Speilberg film. I must have slipped when I mentioned once that I mused about playing the guitar. Victor’s daughters heard me and, completely ignorant of the delicate reverence I possessed for such a prospect, set to firmly encouraging me into asking him for lessons. I had known many musicians. Only such a delightful obligation would have convinced me.
For the year I was away I had practiced. Victor wasn’t listening for the melody when he put the guitar in my hands, and he was pleased. I didn’t comprehend what he said he liked about me. I remember understanding all the words and being confused out of anticipation of a compliment. I think he said I wasn’t afraid to call something for what it was; such a thing just didn’t seem plausible to me. Maybe what he was trying to say was that he knew I chose to see what was real in the world. For him, it was never in question. Even the day he came to take away his daughter’s possessions was simple. He had no harsh words for me.
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Poema de Banqueta #4
Se quisieron suicidar las flores. Hasta el momento permanecen en una botella de Dos Equis, y sin agua.
Poema de Banqueta #3
Aquí viene el niño en el coche de plástico rojo, completo con linternas. Lo había visto en el círculo de parque en el momento del crepúsculo. Primero pensé que qué exagerado era un juquete eléctrico tan grande, y luego pensé que qué divertido tenía que ser manejar un chochecito ahí donde había gente y vida desconocida, más allá de los confines de la casa.
Sidewalk Poem #2
Now I'm calm enough to want to gather up the music I've been hearing with the frequent thoughts of recent days and bury my face in an armload of them, like a large load of clothes hot out of the dryer.
Poema de Banqueta #2
Ya estoy lo suficiente calmado para querer juntar a toda la música que he estado oyendo con los pensamientos frecuentes de los últimos días, y clavar la cara en ellos, como a dos brazadas de lavandería caliente, directa de la secadora.
Poema de Banqueta #2
Ya estoy lo suficiente calmado para querer juntar a toda la música que he estado oyendo con los pensamientos frecuentes de los últimos días, y clavar la cara en ellos, como a dos brazadas de lavandería caliente, directa de la secadora.
Poema de Banqueta #1
Colonia Roma es buen lugar donde andar solo. Se puede fumar en ciertas calles, y quedan mesitas libres en frente del café. Tal vez estaba libre por la lámpara de salón que han puesto aquí arriba en un mueble que da suficiente luz para escribir.
Sidewalk Poem #1
Roma's a good neighborhood for wandering around alone. You can smoke on some streets, and little tables remain unoccupied in front of cafés. Maybe this one was free because of the living room lamp they put here up on a stand that gives enough light to write by.
Sidewalk Poem #1
Roma's a good neighborhood for wandering around alone. You can smoke on some streets, and little tables remain unoccupied in front of cafés. Maybe this one was free because of the living room lamp they put here up on a stand that gives enough light to write by.
Friday, June 13, 2008
Relying upon the tiniest fractures in my mental health, I compare myself to born rock stars and insist that I, too can be an artist. My companions and their personalities loom over my memory. Drugs isn’t what makes a starbaby. However the ones I remember who did no drugs are the most frightening. I believe drugs helped me separate myself from them. Fucking superartists. Thinking about starbabies is tiring. Since the 70’s more children have been born with extra strands of DNA, and psychic abilities, so I heard. I’m the starbaby among starbabies who chose to go in as 100% human, so awareness of the truth is like a memory to me. I’m afraid to draw on the magic of the world around us, afraid my touch isn’t delicate enough, that when I try to reveal the painting of energies beneath the vision my eyes see before me, that it will only tear like plastic wrap. The fear of sobriety is the fear that my cherished insanity has burned down to the embers. Feelings of inadecquacy stem from the sensation that I have quite unfortunately found myself to be whole.
My friend seems broken within, harmed irrevocably, in one massive strike, early on in life, so by now she’s become a vertibable legend, and I have adored her. The energy that surges within her does so continuously because of an error. Cirucuits were burned long ago when her brilliant mind couldn’t compute the loss she suffered. As of now she is the incomprehensible incident that we in the world cannot compute.
I’m glad that nowadays I can at least envy my friends their glamor. Back when dance clubs were overwhelming and awe-inspriring I could stumble right by the stars and starbabies without believing we really coexisted. It took years to observe that indeed, it is the abused who rise to the top in these temporary worlds where the people make the laws. I used to believe everything about them. Two dudes talking in a bathroom mystified me to the point that I didn’t even overhear them as I pissed. One of them was rumored to be Belgian nobility, the other some kind of crystal meth general. A decade later it came as no surprise to me that they were both a couple of geeks just like me who understood all the same role-playing game references. The difference lies in the extra degrees to which their spines were twisted when they were young. We’re so similar in most every way you could probably extrapolate the exact nature of the derision each of us dealt with observing our posture in different social situations. Do I stand up straight at a club? Do I stand up straight at work? I have enjoyed a bit of proper mystique by this point. I know what had to happen, that is what I had to do to myself in order to gain access to the power within. There is an inner being of light that is protected within a shell that is ultimately vulnerable. Some of us have been sheltered. The egg is cracked, battered from the outside and light escapes. Pure, evolutionary drive is poured forth, of a nature meant to be contained, even if not indefinitely and people become superbings limited only and particularly by the state of their imagination.
The wise among the surviving starbabies have learned. It’s nothing less than the imagination that makes anything meaningful possible. Their lives have been determined by the wishes they managed to make in the distant past. Those among us who do not prefer bitterness may remember what our wishes were, the old ones, from when we wished hardest.
My friend seems broken within, harmed irrevocably, in one massive strike, early on in life, so by now she’s become a vertibable legend, and I have adored her. The energy that surges within her does so continuously because of an error. Cirucuits were burned long ago when her brilliant mind couldn’t compute the loss she suffered. As of now she is the incomprehensible incident that we in the world cannot compute.
I’m glad that nowadays I can at least envy my friends their glamor. Back when dance clubs were overwhelming and awe-inspriring I could stumble right by the stars and starbabies without believing we really coexisted. It took years to observe that indeed, it is the abused who rise to the top in these temporary worlds where the people make the laws. I used to believe everything about them. Two dudes talking in a bathroom mystified me to the point that I didn’t even overhear them as I pissed. One of them was rumored to be Belgian nobility, the other some kind of crystal meth general. A decade later it came as no surprise to me that they were both a couple of geeks just like me who understood all the same role-playing game references. The difference lies in the extra degrees to which their spines were twisted when they were young. We’re so similar in most every way you could probably extrapolate the exact nature of the derision each of us dealt with observing our posture in different social situations. Do I stand up straight at a club? Do I stand up straight at work? I have enjoyed a bit of proper mystique by this point. I know what had to happen, that is what I had to do to myself in order to gain access to the power within. There is an inner being of light that is protected within a shell that is ultimately vulnerable. Some of us have been sheltered. The egg is cracked, battered from the outside and light escapes. Pure, evolutionary drive is poured forth, of a nature meant to be contained, even if not indefinitely and people become superbings limited only and particularly by the state of their imagination.
The wise among the surviving starbabies have learned. It’s nothing less than the imagination that makes anything meaningful possible. Their lives have been determined by the wishes they managed to make in the distant past. Those among us who do not prefer bitterness may remember what our wishes were, the old ones, from when we wished hardest.
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Orpheus
I had something to prove in the first club I’d ever gone to. Swept up by the girl in philosophy class with the Mortisha hair and a cloak, I found myself there every Thursday, nervous and bored amongst the crunchy, spacey music and the lights and the whole full house freak show. The girl I was with was looking for a psychic connection, and had to take a break from me when Closer was played to dance with her other lover, slow and clutching to pumping gaskets in the middle of the crowd. We had, of course, discussed the potentially awkward nature of this arrangement. A friend of hers called me “lunch” underneath the sound of the din when we were introduced. The horror of embarrassment coincided with the occurrence of something resembling a lake of fire, a whole dance floor covered in flailing arms and heads. Wishing I were a slave to the rhythm, I stood by and watched her dance.
A few years went by and then I was dancing, off-acid, having learned in my apartment underneath the green, red and violet light bulbs in the ceiling fixture. For about a year I’d only been able to get so far with any woman I really wanted but tonight a woman I knew well enough to avoid let me kiss her and I was living possession. Saluting the DJ as one ought Haitian drummers, I courted the spirits every night I went dancing. I was there with a date. Thursdays could be a little dead, so we’d all come in together to liven the joint and flail ourselves about for a while. That was one place my date and her friends could enter without being twenty-one. My two brothers and I were two plus one. The girls came from Old Colonial Annapolis, where some of the most brilliant families in the region lived. I’d gone to one of their houses a few months before and drowned in the sticky, quicksilver vibe that seemed to emanate from places like Annapolis and D.C, from the places where the rulers of the world were fated to live in my future mind. Gary had called me from one house, in one of his rare groaning fits, happily complaining that he was finished, as in done for. What he really meant to say was that he’d met a girl he could have sex with. I went down there on a Tuesday night or something to a cute girl’s house where there were pictures of her parents dressed up as punks for her stepbrother’s birthday, and saw a film in an upstairs room in eclectic company that concerned people beyond the borders of sanity. It made the indelible impression that I’d stumbled into a whole community of geniuses. When we sat in a local diner and played “psychologist” I’d become acquainted with the girl with the 666 license plates. She was beautiful, and I was destined only to kiss her once on a wintry valentine’s night. Later that evening I proclaimed myself a “lord of silence and strength” to the girl who was my date tonight, even got into bed in my underwear as she kissed my skin helplessly and
I insisted I had to sleep. One of these Justin Case guys came up with her and the girls to the club tonight, and put the idea in her head to walk across the dance floor and slap me.
A few years went by and then I was dancing, off-acid, having learned in my apartment underneath the green, red and violet light bulbs in the ceiling fixture. For about a year I’d only been able to get so far with any woman I really wanted but tonight a woman I knew well enough to avoid let me kiss her and I was living possession. Saluting the DJ as one ought Haitian drummers, I courted the spirits every night I went dancing. I was there with a date. Thursdays could be a little dead, so we’d all come in together to liven the joint and flail ourselves about for a while. That was one place my date and her friends could enter without being twenty-one. My two brothers and I were two plus one. The girls came from Old Colonial Annapolis, where some of the most brilliant families in the region lived. I’d gone to one of their houses a few months before and drowned in the sticky, quicksilver vibe that seemed to emanate from places like Annapolis and D.C, from the places where the rulers of the world were fated to live in my future mind. Gary had called me from one house, in one of his rare groaning fits, happily complaining that he was finished, as in done for. What he really meant to say was that he’d met a girl he could have sex with. I went down there on a Tuesday night or something to a cute girl’s house where there were pictures of her parents dressed up as punks for her stepbrother’s birthday, and saw a film in an upstairs room in eclectic company that concerned people beyond the borders of sanity. It made the indelible impression that I’d stumbled into a whole community of geniuses. When we sat in a local diner and played “psychologist” I’d become acquainted with the girl with the 666 license plates. She was beautiful, and I was destined only to kiss her once on a wintry valentine’s night. Later that evening I proclaimed myself a “lord of silence and strength” to the girl who was my date tonight, even got into bed in my underwear as she kissed my skin helplessly and
I insisted I had to sleep. One of these Justin Case guys came up with her and the girls to the club tonight, and put the idea in her head to walk across the dance floor and slap me.
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