Tijuana Gringo |
Michael Thomas |
Wednesday, 3 January 2001 |
But I'm leaving today. About to eat breakfast in a little place on the way up to the highway intersection. I'm going to hitch-hike -- that's how desperate I am. Hell, it's only seven or eight hundred MILES (or is that kilometers) to Tijuana.........
*sigh*
Part of me wants to go further south. That old wanderlust, yearning, yearning... maybe one day I will go. But now, my woman and my work of writing on the border, they wait for me in Tijuana. Yes.
The town is back to work today. The waterman delivers. The trucks pass through the streets. The clouds and blue sky mix patches over our heads. The sun medio fuerte pero not much. It'll be a good day to be traveling. I've got lots of water, and some food, in case I get stranded out on the transpeninsular.
But I hope I don't. Hope I get a good ride. If not all the way to Tijuana, well, much of the way.
Oh yes, I am praying. You better believe it.
Have spent two nights in the guest house -- casa de huespedes. It is WAY better than that hotel where I stayed the 30th and 31st. Half the price, but... something even more valuable, perhaps, about staying in a family-run place, gives me a feeling of... almost of being in someone's home, yes?
The night of the First I went back to that cantina which had been so wild the new year's eve before. Now I found it mellow, well, except for that wild & crazy blonde from La Paz... heh heh. But yes, as I'd hoped, Miguel was playing and singing. There was a tight cluster of Mexican men in against the bar and the one next to me heard me singing along quietly with Miguel on Granada, and asked Miguel to have me sing a song.
I did Aburrido me voy (which I learned from Ana Gabriel's recording of Joyas...), and thank you God I sang it really well, and Miguel, oh man that man is a superb guitarist and accompanist, I tell you true... he just let me fly like a bird the way he both followed and led me with his eloquent strings and I tell you the applause they gave us was so sweet and all those people slapping me on the back and some of the looks of shock like Damn the Gringo can sing -- except the bigger looks of shock came from my americano paisanos like the dizzy blonde who just shook her head and said "Michael, you didn't tell me you can sing, too... what am I going to do with you..." and then she looked down at Maria's ring on my finger and sighed, while her escort grinned at me with delight that my only competition was for her mind, such as it is (oh shut up you pig-headed artist Michael arrogant s.o.b.)
So that was two nights ago.
Yeah I'm mad at myself that I have to leave. This is a magical place. I'm going to eat my breakfast. But I still have to tell you about last night.
Well, it all started yesterday when I walked out to the mission after sunset. I had spent hours and hours working on my long poem Oasis Mulegé and now I wanted to go back to the chief site of my inspiration, to sit and think for a while, even if it was dark, or maybe because of that, and so I ended up on the rock with its view listening to the coots muttering in their nests down below on the lagoon, and thinking and thinking and thinking about a thousand things in my life and how I ended up here trapped in Mulegé with all the busses full and deciding I was going to hitchhike out of here tomorrow, now that's today, you understand....
When I noticed that music was playing from somewhere in the town. Floating across the rooftops and over the palm trees and up the valley toward the mission, and it was pretty good music, at that, and I soon understood that it was live, not recorded, and it was better than pretty good, it was very good, but... but who? And where? And would they still be playing if I went there?
The more I listened the more I wanted to hear more, and closer. They were playing banda hits like Como ese loco, they were playing norteño hits like the Tucanes de Tijuana song: "voy en mi carro, por todos lados, voy manejando, siempre con cuidado," and they were playing rock hits both Mexican and U.S. and global Latin/Anglo, except that in truth everything they did was rockero arrangements, you know, with guitars, keyboard and drums. Who were they? Who Were They??!! It sounded very very much like some recordings I have heard, very very professional, you know. After a while I decided to walk back into town and find out where it came from.
I had a very good feeling that it was coming from the social hall, El Camino Real, where the wedding fiesta was several days ago, but then, when I came across the stream into town again, I lost the thread of the music, overpowered suddenly by the immediate surroundings, a car in the plaza with its radio blasting, and then the juke box from El Candil. It seemed to me that the narrow streets and walls of the town were not letting the music come down, but had sent it up and out and across the river where it had captured me and drawn me in. I went on up the street until I reached the almost hidden door that leads upstairs into the big social hall (I hadn't been up there before, but had spotted all the wedding traffic at the door -- one of my many talents is spotting doors and reading their habitus patterns -- thank you UCSD department of communication).
I hesitated. The taco stand woman across the street (by now I'd eaten there several times) gestured to me, go in, go in. So in went I and immediately the music was all around me and I climbed the stairs and found the vast room with bar at one end but only fifteen or so people in a hall that could hold several hundred. And there were a band that like they say could beat the band. Two guitars, lead and rhythm, and a bass guitar, and keyboard, and drums and damn they were good. I sat down and listened. A man asked me if I wanted a beer.
And I listened and listened to song after song and then listened while some of the audience responded to requests they get up and sing too, and... I did not volunteer.
Before I left after almost two hours I found out that the first two guitarists are brothers, one still lives here in Mulegé, the other now works in Sinaloa.
Music is the moody food of the gods....
And now I must leave this paradise. Finish my breakfast, walk up to the corner of the highway, the Y-intersection, and hitch-hike outa here.
*sigh* Who knows where I'll be tonight. God only knows. I hope it's all right. I dare to hope it be as magical as this little old town on its oasis....
...and I hope my ride or rides today are safe and sound....