To Emily X, Malcolm Y, and Theodore Z,

There was rightness with the people at the other place.  It's about $100 cheaper.  Mexico City is at least 4x as expensive as the house I'm being overcharged to live in now.  My neighbor knew I was leaving, and actually went out of his way to make an appointment for me to look at this other place.  An apartment house thing made of stairs and walls and boulders down the street of dreams is open.  The people who own it actually want me to live there, based on the word of my neighbor.  The yard is shared, but only with a Chihuahua who never goes outside, so the cat would be happy.  The place is totally unlisted, of course.  You know how Mexicans are never more than one degree of separation from someone who has weed?  It's like that with houses.  Everything down here is word-of-mouth.  The musician section of Craigslist in Mexico City, one of the biggest cities in the world, has 4 or 5 posts.  They don't use it.

Though they are big on Whatsapp.

We're leaving tomorrow.  2 nights in Querétaro, then a week in Mexico City.  The week in Mexico City will cost what a month in this little town costs.  Maybe more.  I am still planning on printing out my CV and a basic-but-compelling synopsis for American Migrant, and pitching it to production companies.  But my lonely lobo soul, mi alma solitario, appreciated very much the way my non-English-speaking neighbor introduced me to the landlord people as "mi amigo" (which I am), and talking to Charlie/Carlos who is fluent in both of the main languages in this hemisphere, and meeting the family who shares the yard.  It takes a long time for them not to see you as just another gringo.  The gardener kid and me shared a heartfelt adios.  It was like Dances With Wolves.  Except at the end, when the guy says he's my friend, he's holding a weedeater instead of a spear.  "I trimmed the hedge and pruned the lemon tree.  Can't you see I am your friend?"  It was pretty dramatic.  Vaya con Dios, Bailando con Lobos.  Adios you go.  Way, way beyond the rainbow.

The path will make itself obvious.  A week in Mexico City will either drive me back into the arms of this town in a week (they're actually not showing the place for a week in case I decide to take it), or will light fires of inspiration under me to get this thing done.  Meaning the movie.  But I am very far away.  Far from whatever it is or was I used to be or walked away from.  Way, way over the rainbow.  Today is actually THANKSGIVING, but after the last 2 years, in near-constant and total isolation with the exception of a handful of Mexicans, it just feels like Thursday.  I'm not against Thanksgiving, and haven't "turned Injun;" I just observed the holiday through the wrong end of a telescope.  It seems very far away.  Which doesn't mean I'm going to start celebrating Mexican holidays.  That would be disingenuous and ingratiating.  I will never be Mexican.  Dances With Wolves never was an Indian.  He was a gringo who spoke Sioux.  But in time, he had more to say to the Indians than he did to his own people.  I have no white guilt.  No America guilt.  I can't count my gringo friends on one hand.  There are more of them than that.  I can count the people I talk to though, even sporadically, on one hand.  I have a lot of bad associations, and "my own people" have caused me a lot of pain.  I have been trained to disbelieve in them.  Entirely against my will.  Even now.  But the disenfranchisement is such that, well, who cares.  You've heard me say it before.

The next move will be obvious in the coming days.  I'm looking forward to hitting the road, even if every legal document you can think of is expired and has been for over a year, except my passport.  DL, license plates, the immigration paper that would have expired a year and a half ago if they'd given it to me when I crossed the border, which they didn't...  All of it expired.  Though, you can turn a 3 into an 8 with a Sharpie, so my plates look like they're good until 2028.  Mexico City has a "hoy no circula" green program, and I can't drive on Tuesday because my plates end with the number 8.  I'm not going to argue with it.  It's God's van anyway.  I thank Him every time I go to the water machines, a 6-mile round trip, for letting me use it.  It's His van.  If He wants it back, He will take it.

The plates may be expired, but the brake lights on the van consist of real light bulbs, and not cow skulls, a chain, and a porch lantern.  Look how the speakers stare at you through the window, daring you to steal them.

"Try it," say the speakers.

I dare you.

So who knows.  But if I come back to this little town, which Mexico City will make obvious, I can sit on the roof with the stars and the water tank and watch the bombs fall.  Which they won't, because Mexico is its own worst enemy and isn't at war with anybody but itself.  There will probably never be a reason to nuke Guanajuato, or Querétaro.  But it was so much more stressful and easier when I didn't have a choice.  Why did my neighbor have to give me an out?  It's such a relief.  So blissfully unbearable.  A possibility to stay.  A real one, with a bunch of Sioux Indians I've been living with for TWO YEARS, a personal record since I left home in 1991.  TWO YEARS!!!  It's like an Associate's Degree.  I have a degree from the community college of Mexican mechanics, street dogs, and motorcycle enthusiasts.  Those Latin American bikes, y'know.  NOT HARLEYS, but those dirtbike-looking things underage assassins use in movies.  I've seen mothers driving their kids around on them, holding everyone in place while approaching the roundabout, toddlers hanging from the handlebars like streamers.  Driving slow, taking no chances, except for the chances inherent in taking the kids to grandma's house on a dirtbike.  I love Mexico City, but spending 4x as much to watch my cat be sad in an apartment with no direct sunlight will never be anything but a temporary situation.  It may be what's in the cards.  Then again, it may not.

Good if it is.  Good if it isn't.  Either way.

Thanks again, Emily X, for the Thanksgiving well-wishes.  I saw the holiday from a great distance, and appreciated it, Malcolm Y.  The can of beans with corn chips and ham was actually delicious, mi amigo Alowicious.  I actually heated it up this time.  I've learned to hate the kitchen.  Hate isn't the word.  But it's almost the word.  No soy un amigo de la cocina, that's for sure.  But I was grateful for the food.  I'm just far away from the circumstances surrounding the holiday.  Way beyond the rainbow of circumstance, I was just grateful for the sunny day, the sight of my cat sitting in the sun, talking to Charlie/Carlos, Eduardo, Victor, David, the landlord people, weighing the options available to me at the end of the world, and a warm can of beans.  I would like to make the movie, or get the movie made.  I don't really want to teach English, but if someone else wrote the lesson plan (such as a school), I could.  I don't foresee hanging out in alcohol bunkers in a state of sobriety for hours on end anymore, especially at night, but if it was a scene in a movie, I could.  But I told Eduardo, the high-school kid who waters the grass, which I don't pay for but is part of the deal and has been for centuries, "si no te veo otra vez en la tierra, te veo en el Cielo."  If I don't see you again on earth, I'll see you in Heaven.  I think he and his dad are Christians.  Not sure if the Catholic trappings are holding them down, or are merely a slight impediment to their true faith.  I really can't tell.  They don't seem CATHOLIC, but of course, this is a Catholic country, and even though all the Jesuses in those churches are dead or in misery, even though Catholicism is proxy Satanism, it does presume to be Christian, and I'm sure there are SOME real believers scattered throughout the laity of the idolatrous death cult, somewhere.  I used to wear a T-shirt that said JUNKIES FOR JESUS on it to WORK, for pity's sake.  I actually thanked God for this heroin we just copped, because I thought that's what I was supposed to do.  So who knows.  I have a feeling Eduardo and his dad are true believers.  Will I see them in Heaven?  Or will I see them in a couple weeks?  After I get back from the other-other rainbow, the one beyond the rainbow that's already way behind me?

I dunno.  If God throws some gringo funds in your lap, Emily X, the kind of funds that could produce and promote a feature-length road musical across Mexico, Bocipherus O, let me know.  The movie is a great idea, Malcolm Zia.  Whatever happens, Thelonius Unrated, it's nice to not be hated.  I will be in touch this week.  By email at the latest.

Thanks for listening.  People aren't appreciated enough.  Hatred, lies, and manipulation are the currency of the world.  But I appreciate you all.

Happy Thanksgiving.

November 28, 2024
Thanksgiving