Sunday, March 28, 2010

Tonight @ 10:10 p.m. (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

When I met my husband, he tolde me this was one of his favorite cinematic scenes.

I'm going to ask him to dance with me.

Saturday, March 27, 2010

Friday, March 26, 2010

Two more days

I'm leaving you. Start a little band. Play a mean accordion. Carver on trumpet. Updike on drums.

And Mr. Cheever says do do do do do do do do.

Thursday, March 25, 2010

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

four more days

Soñabas con los patos de Salinger y yo con la estatua de Alicia.
Comíamos sandwiches de primavera fría con ella.



Sunday, March 21, 2010

Una silla para C.

No "carnet para conducir" is necessary to get to my house. Pull up a chair. Daniel Johnston is here today. He came to visit. He never brings Spring with him.




Tuesday, March 16, 2010

confession

The last time I went to confession was in 1989. I was still a Catholic. I told the kind priest that I had committed a plethora of sins and that I didn't regret 99% of them. He laughed and told me: Come here, my child.

(Mactans wrote my name on the confession list. I won't clip the "cute" mantelito.)

This is my confession:

1. I'm a Muslim in the mornings, but I don't pray to Allah. Walk with me at sunrise and you'll see what I mean.

2. I'm the "family Christmas asshole." My intolerance for hypocrisy gets me in trouble every year.

3. I wish philosophy were my porn and poetry my bread and butter.

4. In my next life I want to be the sound of a jarana and the zapateado on a tarima.

5. I suffer from panic attacks when I drive on those California highways. Strangely, I can drive around the city without problems. I refuse to take drugs for my panic attacks.

6. I stopped writing years ago because I had nothing to say, and when I did have something to say, I said it with my middle finger.

7. I was a homeless person in Los Angeles/Long Beach area many years ago. The strange voice of this singer (from Smithsonian Folkways) reminded of those nights without a bed.

I am Muslim in the morning, but I don't pray to Allah.

Saturday, March 13, 2010

Saturday afternoon.

It was a rough week. Lots of stress at work. My husband is getting over a cold. Cat was sick. Our house is a mess. Lots of laundry to do. Lots of dishes to wash. Car needs an oil change. Income taxes need to be filed.

But for now, we just sit. Read. Think. Feel. Eat avocado sandwiches. Kiss. Go back to an unmade bed. Dream. Play with my new camera. Admit to self that I'm just a kindergarten student and leave the real photographs to experts. This camera is my first box of crayons.

(gracias, todavia por la camara......es un regalo hermoso)

Sunday, March 7, 2010

So Bye-Bye Miss American Pie

The day before Jorge left El Salvador he exchanged his rifle for a guitar.

In the United States he washed dishes at the International House of Pancakes for $3. 35 hour. He played his guitar on his free time on the grassy area of the college where I worked as an assistant gardener.

The first time I saw Jorge he was playing Neil Young’s Out On The Weekend like a left over angel from the 1970’s. I fell in love with him immediately. When he finished playing the song, I went up to him and kissed him. This was my first rock and roll kiss. I still remember the Harvest album taste in his mouth.

I was 16. Jorge was 25.

We saw each other after work to talk, to hold hands, and to kiss. I searched long and hard under his tongue for Led Zeppelin’s Battle of Evermore . I never found it.

I was not much of a girlfriend. I was too ignorant to talk about the social and political situation of El Salvador or about Reaganomics. We mostly talked about music. He liked to hear my rock and roll dreams while he snorted cocaine. Jorge liked to hear how I, after graduating from high school, was going travel with the Grateful Dead or how I was going to buy a red pick-up truck and move to San Francisco. He smiled when I told him I was going to have a son and name him Mick Jagger. I told him my dream about playing guitar. I was going to play a slow version of Sultans of Swing. It was going to be so slow it was going to ache. Jorge didn’t share his dreams. He told me El Salvador had taken all his dreams away. However, he was going to accept a ride to Los Angeles one day on my very own red pick-up truck.

Jorge never invited me to his house. He rented a small room from a mormon family who did not allow renters to bring women to the house. I assured him over and over that I wasn’t looking for a room. I wanted to wait until I was 18. I wanted a big brass bed like in Bob Dylan’s Lay Lady Lay.

As time passed, my parents eventually found out Jorge’s age and prohibited me from seeing him. I didn’t fight their decision. At that time, Jorge’s cocaine use was becoming a problem and at 17 the levee was beginning to dry and the rock and roll bells were starting to break.

When I told Jorge I no longer wanted to see him, he asked me:

What about the red pick-up truck?
What about the big brass bed?


Three years later I saw Jorge at a park. He was playing his guitar. His body had taken a good beating from drugs. He sang The Battle Of Evermore.

I cried all the way home.

Saturday, March 6, 2010

A letter from Mexico

I received kind words in the mail. A pair of dangling earrings. A picture of Callejón De Cantaritos. A photograph of Frida Kahlo.

Thank you, Implicada.

It was a lovely surprise.

1. I love dangling earrings. I sometimes make them too. I think I'm a hippie in a universe where I wake up every morning and it is 1968.

2. In the 90's my cousin Dora and I visited Guanajuato. The callejones smelled like oranges and marihuana. We drank vino tinto and sang Maldita Vecindad and Café Tacuba songs in the street at 2 am. We danced with the dead.

3. I discovered Frida Kahlo in the university library where I was studying in the 1980's. The room was dark and cold. Students rarely visited that floor. When I saw her paintings, I felt Frida was mine. We shared dirty secrets.

Thank you for the lovely gifts.

Café Tacuba porque esta noche recordé que un dia bailé con los muertos de la Independencia de 1810.