The plaza packed with flag-wavers, the garden walkways filled with booths and crowds, the via rapida (where cars and trucks normally zoom) shut down and its lanes now the site of mechanical rides painted in English names: Tilt-o-Whirl, Hurricane, Worm, Orient, and carrousel, all spinning lights and flying cups that lift and turn and laugh and scream. They charge twice what they cost at the fair a couple weeks ago, and the lines tonight (last night) are/were ten times longer. I can still see it like now instead of fifteen hours ago....
We found a place to sit with a few dozen others, back in a corner behind the motherhood monument, behind the concession tents, in the fringes of the gardens and trees. Our secret spot. We'll be here again, yes, I think, but maybe then we will be kissing in the trees. Yes.
The moon rose beyond shadowed trees where large birds fluttered from one skeleton of branches to another, disturbed by this nocturnal invasion of fiesta. FIESTA!!
But the birds were only an omen, speaking to me, telling my own shock.
"Ay, my little boy, my precious, my love, you are frightened?" She's starting to talk to me more and more like that these days. I like it. And I like it the way she touches my face when she talks like that. Only wish I could drive the language as well as she does.
"Not frightened (miedoso), but... astounded, shocked (espantado)."
"Not frightened?"
"Stunned by this marvelous event," I said in English (remember she speaks it), "this... this moment of one people, one pueblo coming together...."
"So many people, no?" she asked me in Spanish.
Si.
Eventually we go back through the twisting and turning crowd, following along narrow lines of people, all worming our way through the mob, all arms and shoulders and legs, bodies, faces, smiles. We get into the back corner of the plaza. Stand there dancing with the music, hugging each other, pressed tight against others who laugh and shout and shine their video cameras, lift their children onto their shoulders, wave their flags....
"Kiko" Vega, president of the 16th city government of Tijuana, comes out onto the balcony to give the grito -- the shout of independence. A thousand flags wave over our heads. The crowd roars back VIVA to each shout from the balcony....
"VIVA los heroes de Independencia!"
VIVA!
"VIVA Hidalgo!"
VIVA!
"VIVA Morelos!"
VIVA!
Several more names, and then, "VIVA MEXICO!"
VIVA! VIVA!! VIVA!!!
The crowd went wild cheering while above the roar and crash came the steady clang clang clang clang of the metal bell, one stroke for each state in the republic, clang clang clang clang clang clang....
Then the fireworks began. With live music rocking from the stage behind us, the crowd as one body turned to stare upon traditional Mexican works: whirling pinwheels mounted one above another on four sides of a rotating tower, going off in perfect synchrony, one wheel after another after another: this was a castillo. Then a set of figures outlined in flame: Hildalgo with his burning blue eyes, the eagle, the flag; each in turn spitting sparks and gleaming in fiery beauty before crowds that ooo and ahh and applaud and cheer.
Last, skyrockets began to streak into the sky, launched from only a few dozen meters away, poom poom pum sssssss BLAM BLAM BLAM high overhead they burst in explosions of blossoming color, raining sparks down, down, down, while the crows gasps and sighs at each burst....
Afterwards, until dawn, the kids drive their cars through downtown waving flags and screaming. The police have shut down Revolution Avenue, but all the cross streets are open.... We make our way on crowded bus there from the palace plaza, and walk through the madness to Marie's taxi stand. She kisses me goodnight, briefly, but tenderly, and hugs me goodbye, then climbs into a crowded red & black route-taxi into the southeastern sections of town.
I walk the six blocks home and sleep until eight-thirty this morning when I get up to write these memories of last night... but it's still too long.
Internet readers want to read shorter things, right? Isn't that what "they" say? What do you say? Write me:-- thomas@masinternet.zzn.com