"I tried to kill the pain,
I bought some wine and hopped a train
It seemed easier than just a-waitin' around to die"
Townes Van Zandt

I'm tired of Mexican cops.  They are seriously shady.  Nothing like a bunch of bloodthirsty Aztec warriors in Soviet battle dress to drain the sunshine from the day.  You're headed to the pollo rostizado joint on your way to the Oxxo and then the water machines, and a bunch of Jaguar warriors in a government dune buggy are placing orange cones on the highway in an attempt to divert traffic to the top of the jagged pyramid, where a high priest of the CJNG stands waiting to sacrifice your car to the Sacrilegious Heart of the Unholy Death with an AK and a knife, or a notebook and a pen, depending on their rank and uniform.  I had my license confiscated by the Mexican police once, because I'd been through the roadblock too many times, and they recognized my vehicle.  Turned out, I "needed a smog check," which is government cartel-speak for "roadside shakedown."  I didn't have a Mexican smog pass, so the cop confiscated my ID.  It wasn't hard to get back.  It was waiting for me in a little tray, in the office the next day, with all the other confiscated IDs from citizens of assorted subjugated tribes, scattered like confetti seeds around the region.

I'd bought my smog papers earlier, from another CJNG hitman, who did some moonlighting as a smog man on the side.  He went through the motions of checking my vehicle on the machine, and since it was understood that I was going to give him a $10 gratuity when I shook his hand at the end of the process, my van passed the test.  There are upsides to living in a lawless narco state.

Famous last words, perhaps.  Hey, we're all extras in a Townes Van Zandt song down here.  Waitin' to die is a lot better than waitin' around to die.

It's not the same thing, y'know.

"Sometimes, I don't know where this dirty road is taking me
Sometimes, I don't even know the reason why"
Townes Van Zandt

Why did the Federales let Pancho go?  Was it kindness, or was there a roadblock just down the way?  I believe the Federales were under instruction to "let the gringo go," so he could be shaken down by the smog priests of the Sinaloa cartel.  Pancho was lulled into a sense of false bravado and invincibility by the Federales "inability" to catch him, only to be ambushed later on the highway by Los Chapitos, when his guard was down.

"Los Chapitos" are El Chapo's kids, and are rumored to have been working for the U.S. government since the 16th century.  Most scholars agree that the ambush of Pancho was a "destabilization drill," a joint CIA-Chapitos operation intended to test the destabilization chops of the CIA.  Pancho was a nobody, so the CIA told the Federales to stand down, so the Chapitos could practice destabilizing him.  As reported by the BBC regarding the recent arrest of El Mayo Zambada, "Everything indicates that agents from U.S. agencies worked with 'The Chapitos.'  The arrest was not carried out by the Navy or the Army, but by 'The Chapitos.'  And that generates more violence."  There is simply no way they honed those skills out of nowhere, in a vacuum, without practice.  Pancho was their dress rehearsal.  The Chapitos generated enough violence on Pancho to supply enough power for a small Mexican village for a year.  They don't even build windmills in Mexico anymore.  Don Quixote has been buried in the air.  Mexico builds statues of him, but they don't rely on him to keep the lights on.  Not anymore.

Now, they just generate violence.

Don Quixote in Guanajuato

I re-watched 10 or 15 minutes of Be Here To Love Me tonight.  Townes Van Zandt was a tormented, dysfunctional soul, and listening to his ex-wife (or somebody) lament that he'd written "Waitin' Around To Die" instead of a love ballad for her was a story that resonated with me deeply.  Almost every song I've ever written was hated by the wife (or illicit wife equivalent) while I was writing it.  Apparently, a doctor told Van Zandt he needed to "roam around and find himself," and had made "minimal adjustments to life," or something to that effect.  I ripped pieces off the bird I procured from the sacrificial chicken joint, just beyond the orange, Russian-Aztec traffic cones, and listened to the TVZ documentarians describe my soul in excruciating detail.  And it occurred to me.

Waitin' to die, and waitin' around to die, are not the same thing.  I've been waiting to die for at least half my life, but I haven't been waiting "around" for it.  People who suffer from terminal optimism will tell you not to "waste your life" on "morbid thoughts," as though completely unaware that "morbid thoughts" THRIVE WHEN THEY ARE SUBJECTED TO DENIAL.  Denial is like sunshine to darkness.  The surest way to de-luminate a dark room, and make it darker, is to pretend it's full of light.  It's a bad idea.

It doesn't work.

We don't need no education.  We don't need no thought control.  No dark sarcasm in the classroom.  Karens, leave them kids alone. 

The laddie reckons himself a poet (cue shame-inducing peer-group laughter).  Get on with your work!

If the terminal, lies-based optimism doesn't resonate with you, take heart.  If the false, painted sunshine on the ceiling of your cage makes you want to die, it's alright.  It makes me want to die as well.  I hate it.  It's disheartening in the extreme.  I have been waiting to die for years.  But I haven't been waiting around for it.

I've been waiting on my feet.

I believe that it's the terminal optimists who are waiting around to die.  They are stagnant in their hearts and minds, and therefore believe "life" is lived most fully in a drunken, orgiastic state.  They are domesticated, self-medicating livestock, sedating themselves with things that make them happy.  It's tragic, really.  Life is not about stimulation of any kind (including intellectual), and it's not about finding the perfect balance of materialism and chemical enhancement.  I don't have kids, and am fully aware that there is a giant auditorium full of experience and obligations about which I know nothing.  I'm not speaking to that audience, unless they have derisive, dismissive thoughts toward the people who beg them for attention and validation when they walk into the street.  In which case, I say, "shame on you."  I'm speaking to the people lying in the gutter outside the auditorium, who have been robbed of their place in the auditorium, and whose unresolved trauma and dysfunction prevents them from ever finding a seat in civilized society.  People who wander the aisles of civilization, "waiting around to die."  All I'm saying is, don't wait around. 

Wait, but don't wait around.

Put the "around" part to work.  Write the poem that makes the social-engineering overlords rap your knuckles.  Sing the song that makes you weep when no one's looking.  Draw the picture that incites your classmates to derisive laughter.  Spoiler alert:  If you have something to say, and/or don't fit in to their conditioned social norms perfectly, they're going to laugh at you anyway.  Waiting for their approval is to wait around to die.  Not caring if you ever have their approval is to simply wait to die.

And who knows, maybe you'll survive.  Some people make it through.

Some people get to live.

It may very well be that life is most fully "lived" when standing at the gates of hell, wondering if the flames are going to consume you this time.  Will the Federales get me?  The smog man?  The Chapitos?  Will the CJNG Aztecs cite me for walking around to die, instead of waiting for it?  Will they find the diamond in my chest?  Will they traverse the singularity of infinite atomic and emotional mass and realize I'm more dangerous than they are, because I'm not hiding from death, while they mask it with their drugs, and greed, and weapons?  The Karens and Chapitos become death because they're afraid of it; I stare at death with curiosity, and loathing.  Not quite fearless, but more curious than anything.  Is this the day, you bastard?  Is the Lord finally calling me Home, where I belong?  It's freaky, to be sure, but I only have to die once. 

Don't you know you have to die forever?

But, y'know Townes, sometimes I wonder about it myself.  Where is this dirty road a-taking us?  Valhalla?  The inferno?  A sugar-coated slaveship?  An unmarked, poorly-overdubbed, foreign-language grave?  Who will subtitle my epitaph?  What's up with all these potholes on the dancefloor?  Who is going to enforce the mandatory 2-death minimum?  I came here for some action.  This party needs some artificial volume implants.  Are we here to celebrate life,

Or mourn it?

I demand to see the topless coroner!

Shall we sing and dance to celebrate life, or mourn it?

Why shouldn't we dance to mourn it?  If you think the funeral dirge sung by the sparrows is dark, be glad you've never heard the worms sing.  The worms are full of dark sarcasm.  Their voices may be high, but their songs are dark and heavy.  It takes patience to get through their songs, which can last for millennia, but once you realize the worms are singing ballroom music, you will find yourself dancing in the graveyard.  It is an exquisite song they sing, performed with both gravitas and grace.  When you finally hear it, you understand that all the best, most joyful celebrations are performed on the dancefloor of broken hearts and mourning.  The broken heart is the dead bird from which the joyful song can spring.  Without the broken heart, the happy song is little more than a drug for hedonistic pigs.  Optimists are hardcore abusers of happiness.  They are denialists at heart.  Their worldview is defined by fear and darkness.  They exist in a recreational blackout.  All their light is artificial.  They have no idea what they're messing with.

So dance to mourn your lot in life, why not.  Unless, of course, you feel like celebrating.  In which case, go do that. 

But mourn it, if you have to.