But I digress, Holmes. Yes. Whazup? An iced mocha, seventeen pesos, a table outside in the shade, and a classy cafe beside a splendid-looking restaurant, only a few steps from THE MADNESS. La Locura. Actually it's not so bad around Seventh. The noisiest block in the world is down around Fifth and Revo. Up here it's a touch mellower. But still a mad place. But I don't care. The weather may be hot but the drink is cold. Iced. Mmm. I sit outside in the breeze and write. Three in the afternoon. Saturday. Tourist season in full swing, but I... I don't care.
Then a vagabond lunatic staggers by, shouting to himself, and I am reminded of how things are in downtown San Diego, oh yes. I imagine you've seen them in London and Paris, too, what? He sputters and cries out in anger, GENTE CHINGADA madre cabron! Stained pants and ragged t-shirt, hair mangled & tangled, coat & tails morning coat he AIN'T. Lurches down to the corner and leans on a tree, staring out from consciousness at Saturday afternoon tourists that come and go before his eyes like visions from plastic DisMexilandia. They ignore him, of course, the rule of society is IF YOU DON'T LIKE SOMETHING, ignore it, maybe it will go away.
He thrusts his hand out at a couple dressed in the height of elegant casual, their shining white shorts and embroidered soft shirts barely tainted with the hint of sweat, no, not even that, and well... they quickly brush past him, only another distraction on their way to upper Sanborns, you know the one at 8th with full store and parking and sugar and spice and everything so very, very nice. Class. Mucha clase. I like the plastic diner down between 3rd and 4th. But at both places you can get endless cups of coffee for $9.50 and I'm talking pesos, dude, not dolares. Want something to eat for three dollars more? I recommend a sundae or the molcalletes (oh Lord protect me from the sin of Miss-Spellings is yo hyar?).
ZZZzzzzzoooommmmmmmmmmm zip zap zoop buzzzzzz this coffee's STRONG & sweeeeet oh yes sugar mmmm and mocha mmmmmmmm chocolate chocolatl was an Aztec drink, yeah! Yes, Arabs and Aztecs, they would'a made a killing on the European markets if they'd only known....
But no. So now, como Sanborns', si hay dos de Revolucion.
I cut my hair last night before meeting Maria. Then I hid in the glass window passageways in front of the shoe store at Constitution and 3rd, across from DAX where we meet, where her busses from Otay come down into the center. When I saw her, I beckoned her into the labyrinth, (two windows deep, a veritable wonderland of shoes and glass reflections of shoes), leading her from one glass corner to another, hiding my head around another turn, she laughing, -- Ay Miguel, what are you doing?!
Then I revealed my hair chopped short after six months of stringy growing and growing. She purred and carressed my head, mumbling, -- Ay mi precioso, mi guapo, mi hermoso artista, como bello apareces a mi tu cabello....
Well, shucks, ma'am, I mean, Miss, I mean, Ms.
I guess she likes it.
We went to see a free movie in the patio of the ex-palacio, now the IMAC (municipal art & culture institute). Called "A Day Without Mexicans," it was made in 1997. Turns out I know some of the people who made it -- artists associated with UCSD. Chistoso pelicula, funny flick, with a pointed discourse -- What Would Happen To California If All The Mexicans Disappeared? Economic chaos. It's set up like a newscast covering the strange story of the disappearance of thousands and hundreds of thousands of people. One hilarious moment, a psychic guy propounds his theory they were all lifted off by UFOs shaped like giant sombreros.
The film was made right after that proposition 189 passed. Or was it 187? Whatever. It outlawed giving medical help, welfare, or education to illegal immigrants or their children. That's right, we got to keep'em stupid, sick and poor. Right where we want'em to stay -- slaves without rights. Hiding from the law. Hire'em cause we need'em but throw them away when we're done. This is only the political viewpoint of somebody we never meat. This website duzz not in any way endorze or xupport hiz opinionz.
The supreme court ruled 189 unconstitutional because it is unfair (I should not say any more, although I want to tell you what UNFAIR is). But the fact that IT WAS PASSED by the voters of the golden state speaks Volumes of Fear and Trembling (OMyGod THEY'RE GOING TO Take Our DAUGHTERS and give us little BROWN grandchildren AAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa whatever happened to good solid black and plain ordinary white....).
So now, much to the pleasure of Robber Hatchplot and Flush Limppaw and all their fearmongering ilk we have the New Berlin WALL ("Oh no, Miguel," my libertarian friend says, showing his wolf's teeth, "in Berlin they were trying to get out, here they're trying to get in.") Yeah, and so? Does it matter the difference direction? The lesson is the same either way. You CAN NOT hold back the tides of history, and if you don't learn that, then you will never stand on your feet when the dam breaks and you get drowned repeating the same mistakes. But it won't happen to you. To your children.
So now we have Operation Gatekeeper and the New Berlin Wall between San Diego and Tijuana, and the immigrants are forced east into the mountains and desert where they can starve and freeze and die of thirst after paying three thousand, five thousand dollars to a smuggler guide -- HEY WHY DON'T WE MAKE their IMMIGRATION legal and charge them those several thousand dollars just to cross the border and come to work?????!!!!!!!!!! Oh no, that would not be FAIR!) instead we let them take a smuggler guide who abandons them to the hard tit of mother nature....
More than five hundred have died crossing the border. Tell your fears to their mothers and wives and brothers and children. They have lost FOR real, for life and death. You, what? Don't want to wash dishes in a steaming restaurant but won't let them come in, either?! Sorry. Pooh, a hangnail! Brother, you don't know how good we have it here. Have to go thirty, forty miles to get to work? Try having to go TWO THOUSAND! And not see your family for months, YEARS! And they never knowing if you'll ever come home....
But still they come, and still WE-US (U.S.) hire them. Still we need them, and still we make them run the gauntlet of fire and ice to get into "America." WHAT's Wrong with this picture? The greatest, richest nation on earth, with work for more people than can be found to fill the jobs, and we... (I say "we" because Mexico, strangely enough, has made ME Proud to be an "americano"... no matter how ugly we are) and still we use them and deny them. And forget about heckling me, you will NEVER take away my pride and freedom of being born in the land of the free and defend to the death your right to say any crock of poo, too! Hee hee hee.
Well, Shakespeare said now and then we need a little comic relief when the going gets tough and the tough get going!
Or was that Nixon, whose name is still carved in stone on the border because the "new" gates were built in 1973...?
It is time that both our countries come to terms with the relationship of labor dependency which has existed between us for almost a hundred years. But I am dreaming. The world is not a just or fair place. We must make it be so. But I am dreaming. Yes, "I have a dream... that all God's children... black and white and brown...."
He said, -- My customers have believed the lies told about me in the newspapers and now they are afraid to come any more.
In case you don't know, Emilio's been a gay political activist here in Tijuana for almost twenty years. He's built up quite a few friends and enemies. Now, on a Friday night when normally he would be full of people drinking coffee and beer and wine and eating snacks, Emilio picked up his guitar and played alone, for us. No other customers were there. He's talking about going to Europe.
It's a strange moment in politics. People are twisting in the wind, not sure which way the body's going to fall when they cut the rope loose....
All across town the cultural budgets are frozen. The bureaucrats are shuffling behind the scenes. Tijuana and Baja California have been governed by PANistas for several elections now, but with PAN taking control of the federal presidency, well....
Personally, I think they're worrying for nothing.
Behold THE Triumph OF Democracy!
Presidents come and go, but bureaucrats last forever and ever....