Godspeed

Published on June 29, 2008 in Musical. 2 Comments

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I felt like crap today after a late night out reacquainting myself with the Carrboro music scene. However, I promised myself I would record something this weekend, come hell or high water, so I pushed through the fog and pushed out the following piece of strangeness.

Green Desk Studios is back in business.

Godspeed.mp3
The question that eats you like cancer
I have the answer
Are you ready to hear it?

Godspeed through all your dreams
You’re such a lonely animal
So spread your seed
Godspeed through all your dreams
You’re crawling back from Mexico
On hands and knees
Godspeed through all your dreams
You’re finally on the radio
But no one’s listening

Clarity came like a storm to my brain
It blew in from the South and blew out of my mouth
in a long string of words never meant to be heard
Only seen in the sky like the Fourth of July
All the red and blue lights like the stars in the night
must all come to fade with the dawn of the day

Bang Bang Bob

Published on June 20, 2008 in Personal. 0 Comments

I woke this morning with these words echoing in my head: “Lackawanna High School, ball and chain.” Utter nonsense, random words that spilled from whatever meaningless dream I was falling in and out of. It occurred to me as I rolled out of bed that I was as far removed from the state of equanimity I enjoyed in Mexico as I possibly could be. My mind is filled with echoes of used car commercials and the theme to Family Guy. My body is stiff with tension and I shuffle across the bedroom floor like I’m wearing a suit of armor. I tell myself “Today I start to come back to life”, but by the time I reach the bathroom I’m thinking it again: “Lackawanna High School, ball and chain.”

What in holy hell does it mean?!?! I think it three or four more times before I finish my morning pee. When I look in the mirror I can’t help but think back to a conversation Eric and I had this past weekend while we moved my stuff from Kentucky to Carolina. We were catching up during the ride to Lexington, chatting about old friends and some of the familiar faces I’d be seeing around town now that I’m coming back to Carrboro. It’s been five years, long enough to notice how people have aged. Eric joked how so and so had lost a lot of hair, grown a gut, and now looks like “Old Bart.” My friends and I often communicate like this using Simpsons references, this one referring to an episode where Bart is shown as he might look in the future, if he became male stripper with the moniker “Bang Bang Bart.”

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It was hilarious when we were talking about so and so, but this morning it wasn’t so pretty standing in front of the mirror with Bang Bang Bob looking back at me.

So I’m tired, worn down by the move and anxious about being broke and jobless. But today the dust is starting to settle. I know this because I wouldn’t be writing if it weren’t so. Soon enough I’ll be working again, and I’ll lament that I didn’t enjoy being jobless while I had the chance. Soon my wife will return from Mexico and my heart can at long last settle into its joyful rhythm.

Right now though, today, it’s finally hitting me–I’m back in Carrboro, this town that I love. There are boxes to unpack, errands to run, resumes to send out, things to remember, and things to forget.

“Lackawanna High School, ball and chain.” Maybe it meant nothing to me an hour ago, but now it’s a fucking mantra. Nothing means nothing.

Voodoo Chile

Published on June 6, 2008 in Musical. 0 Comments

The ecstasy and abandon of sheer rock. The facial expressions alone are worth the watch. This is what it’s all about, as far as I’m concerned (and trust me, you don’t need LSD or virtuoso ability to tap in to it). What is it? Just watch:

La ultima semana

Published on May 25, 2008 in Personal and Waiting for the miracle. 2 Comments

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The following was written in Mexico on May 5th, ten days before I returned to the United States. It was about 105 degrees outside, probably 110 in my room (the “Belly of the Beast”) as the sun beat down relentlessly on the metal roof. I suppose this can be considered the final blog entry chronicling my nine months south of the border. For whatever reason, it’s taken me a while to post it. I never did like endings. Saying goodbye to the kids was like swallowing my own heart. In the rearview mirror I could see Pedro, the eldest son, standing in the doorway looking utterly lost and despondent as he watched us drive away. I stuck my arm out the window and gave one final “thumbs up,” that simple yet endlessly expressive sign language we shared from the first day we met. I pushed that thumb up with everything I had, as if I was ready for the weight of the world to bear down upon it. I held it up until we rounded the bend, until at last I saw Pedro’s face light up with recognition, his own thumb reaching out to meet mine….

La ultima semana:

I suppose it’s somewhat arbitrary where one begins or ends a story—especially if it’s the story of ones life. Shit, some of the most interesting parts aren’t even implied by the little dash on the tombstone that’s supposed to represent the whole of what happens to us. I mean, during the nine months leading up to my birth I transformed from a sperm omelet to a full-fledged Homosapien. Then, of course there’s death, which just might be the most interesting part of the whole trip. Presently, at this exact moment in time, raindrops are gently tapping on the metal roof of my room. A Zen master might leave it at that, but there are a few more details I feel compelled to explore. It hasn’t rained in weeks. I’m still in Mexico. La Ultima Semana—the last week. Ten days from now I’ll be touching down on U.S. soil, and eight days after that will make seven years my wife and I have been together. Seven years since she appeared on the porch steps of the Music House to join us in celebrating some great milestone the band had just reached, like our latest record, or our first show as headliners.

The woman who would later be my wife, she met me on a good day, when I was in fine fettle, free as a bird inside. But if this turns into a love story I could just as easily begin ten years before that, or twenty for that matter. So many points of entry, all leading in to the center, like eating an apple. Ten years earlier… I finally lost my virginity after years of shyness and acne-induced withdrawal. She was a Goddess, thought I, a Goddess who never even noticed me until I came to class one day with crutches and a braced knee. She was the teaching assistant for my Psychology Statistics class, and I had just had knee surgery for a torn ACL. Somehow I found the courage to ask for some “extra help” with the assignments, and before I knew what hit me she was calling me “just to talk,” because she was having a hard time with her boyfriend—the captain of the basketball team, no less. I played the only good card I had, the “nice guy card,” and soon she was dropping by the dorm room to say hi. One night, she didn’t feel like going home. I stepped out for a moment, to inform my roommate that he would have to clear out for the night, and when I returned, the Goddess was buttoning herself up in one of my shirts, a makeshift nightgown that meant, above all else, that she was not wearing much underneath. I can’t remember what led to what exactly, but at some point she whispered in my ear, “Do you want to feel what it’s like inside?” This was without a doubt the most interesting question put to me in all my years of education—and she was just a T.A. A simple yes or no answer was all that was required, and I didn’t even have to think about it. I could’ve just nodded I suppose, or said “Uh huh,” but no, I gave a clear and resounding “Yes,” as if I were answering on behalf of the entire human race for all time. So began two years of ecstatic adrenaline rushes, jealous rages, drunken arguments, and an underlying sense of insecurity that culminated in an hour-long session of convulsive weeping in the passenger seat of her Mercury Zephyr, as she drove around looking for a suitable place to set me free.

Maybe it was ten years before that when I finally confessed to David Prescott that I “liked” Hannalore Stanton. That bastard David, he made it seem like telling him was this big bonding thing, like we just became best buds or something, then he goes and tells Hanna the next day, tells her right out in the hallway as we’re all readying to go home. She wheels around, gives me a look of pure meanness and shouts, “Well, I don’t like HIM!” I never forgave David, that little fuck. Years later, when he was desperate for a friend, weeping at boy scout camp over being shunned by the cool kids, I coldly told him that I didn’t like him that way. The scoutmasters feared he was on the verge of suicide, and his parents had to come fetch him from camp.

Each year it was different Goddess, starting the year before Hanna, in fourth grade, with Pola Russo. Pola, with an “o.” She was quite the looker, and years later even got some work as a model. I never said a word to her, just stared all gaga from the next row over, several seats back, a perfect spot to gaze lingeringly and lovingly, undetected. After Hanna it was Amelia Lewis, then Michelle Wilson, then countless more, a string of unattainable, unapproachable vortexes of feminine energy, projection magnets that sucked out the best and the worst of me, and everything in between, down into the unfathomable darkness of their mysterious beings.

My wife was the first woman in all my life—and I was thirty when we got together—whom I related to as a human being, a person with her own flaws and her own beautiful attributes, her own soul apart from my needs and projections. And so she was the first to know me as an individual secure in my own being, confident, aware and awake, able to respond spontaneously, transparently, authentically.

It was really ten years ago that I technically met her, but then we were just introduced in passing. I was still with Brenda then, unknowingly approaching a deep, dark chasm in which I would wallow for the better part of two years. I remember thinking, upon that brief introduction, “She’s beautiful. There’s something about those eyes.” Three years later, she’s on the porch steps and I’m out of the chasm, free as bird, singing inside. Ten years have passed since I first saw those eyes, and now we return together to those same streets, to that same town, married, ready to enter a new phase, beginning a new chapter.

The rain has stopped now, the tropical sun burning up every trace so not a drop remains. The last week, la ultima semana, then we go home and it begins again. We’ll be in a familiar place, yes, yet it is something utterly new that awaits, something utterly unknown.

A blank page, and then another, and every day we can begin again, starting from anywhere, with any word, until the time is ripe for silence.

Home

Published on May 21, 2008 in Personal. 0 Comments

I can’t for the life of me find an adequate Spanish translation of the word “home.” Of course there are words for “house” and “people” and “country”, etc., but none of them convey what I mean when I say “home.” Anyway, I’m home, and you all know exactly what I mean.

I’ve very relieved to be back in the US, and only a few days into the readjustment period I’m already being swept along in that rushing stream of time we Americans so take for granted. Searching for jobs, insuring cars, reactivating cell phones, Google, CNN, climate control and clean water from the tap.

Home sweet home.

I hope to re-engage with my fellow bloggers, update my site, and get back in the habit of posting on a regular basis. I have no idea, really, what this next phase of my life has in store, but I have a feeling it will kick ass.

The way home

Published on April 30, 2008 in Personal. 0 Comments

Two weeks. Doesn’t seem like a long time, and I suppose it isn’t. Whatever the case, it’s all I have left of Mexico, the pueblo, el cuarto–the whole enchilada. The week vacation in San Miguel was nice. It gave me some time and a comfortable setting in which to contemplate the next big step, the one when I step off the airplane and back onto U.S. soil. With no job and no home, it doesn’t seem to me to be a step back into my old life, but rather into a promising unknown. One thing that became clear in San Miguel is that I can no longer claim a lack of vision when it comes to how I want to live my life. In the past I could always avoid a committed choice of this path or that because I didn’t seem to have a clue as to how I really wanted to spend my time on this earth. I channeled my energies in a haphazard fashion, allowing myself to be unnecessarily tied up in pursuits that did not line up with the deeper currents, currents which I’ve been resisting my whole life. When one taps into these currents one only has to let go in order to be carried along in that direction sensed unmistakably as “right,” “the right way,”—the way home.

We arrived back on the pueblo to a sweltering day. Heading down the long dusty road to our charming suburb we couldn’t help but notice the dug-up water pipe. The main thing to note was the absence of pipe. At the house we were greeted by a group of children who confirmed the lack of running water. Apparently it had been shut down for several days as the water company decided to play hardball with their delinquent customers. Most of the suburb has not paid their water bill for years. Until the bills are paid there will be no running water. The bills will not be paid. Fortunately, a couple of the neighbors have wells. To have access to water at all is a good thing, but the level of inconvenience certainly goes up several notches. It takes a full bucket of water just to flush down one of my turds. And I crap at least three times a day. So now much of what I do throughout the day—poop, bathe, wash dishes—must necessarily involve other people, as I have no choice but to ask to use the well several times each day. Of course, I’m the only one who seems to mind. No importa!

The neighborhood kids love to help us, to involve themselves in our lives in whatever way possible. Our host family was not around when we returned to town, and apparently they weren’t expecting us, as they had cleaned us out of our entire bottled water supply. We were dead tired and bone dry. The kids fetched us some well water and arranged for us to get some more jugs of drinking water. We were grateful for all the help, but it came with an unexpected price. In the days since, the kids have an unprecedented “comfort level” with us, as they find any excuse to hang out in or around our room. More than ever we are like a zoo attraction, as children often literally stand at our windows and watch us as we go about our lives. Yesterday alone this happened four or five times. I was lying on the floor stretching my leg and noticed I was being watched. I communicated that I was exercising and went about my business, but the child watched on, seemingly fascinated. Mary Alice and I ate our dinner last night to an audience as well. They just stared at us as we ate. More often than not, though, they try to get our attention, to engage us in conversation. Of course, the social cues we’ve grown accustomed to in America have little currency here. In fact, the more subtle ones like saying “Okay, well, we’re going to eat our dinner now” have no effect at all. Playing sick or pretending to sleep are the only ways I’ve found to create the illusion of privacy. You see, you can’t simply close up the windows and curtains during the day. It’s just too hot. If you lie in the bed and pretend to sleep, the kids will still try to get your attention, shouting your name four or five times, but eventually they wander off. But don’t get me wrong. The truth is I will miss them, these kids, most of all. No amount of dust and grime can hide their inner glow.

I don’t imagine these kids will ever forget me. Yesterday the soccer ball bounced up into my nads, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it gets talked about for the next two years. It was nothing, really, but I made a little joke of it, doubling over and saying “Mis Huevos!” (literally, “my eggs!”). Nothing could possibly have been funnier to the kids, except maybe if I topped the performance off with a loud fart. Once they caught their collective breath, they asked me how we referred to our “eggs” in English. When I pointed to the soccer ball, this set off another round of hysterical laughter, one that has yet to completely subside.

Two weeks from now I will be able to stand in the shower until my skin comes off. If I felt like it, I could drown myself in drinking water. But aside from a few scheduled visits with my nephews, I am not likely to have many spontaneous interactions with children.

My time here has been a strange mix of suffering and spiritual awakening, one that smells faintly of burning garbage and pig slop, and tastes like a layer of dusty grit licked from the teeth and forced down a parched throat. But it looks and sounds like a group of children laughing, starry-eyed and beautiful beyond words.

Blown away

Published on April 19, 2008 in Personal. 0 Comments

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Sometimes even when you expect the worst, even when you set yourself up for disappointment, a pleasant surprise can still break through. So it was last night when my wife and I were invited to see Doc Severinsen play at an Italian restaurant here in San Miguel de Allende. Doc Severinsen, for those who don’t know, is best known as the flamboyantly dressed, former Tonight Show bandleader (during Johnny Carson’s reign as host). When I was a teenager I would frequently stay up with my Dad to watch at least the first half-hour of the Tonight Show. That was more than twenty years ago, and Doc Severinsen looks today very much like he did then. He’s eighty years old, and to tell the truth, I was expecting a sort of Wayne Newton, Las Vegas, cheesy-washed-up-sympathy-applause type of affair. I mean, come on, the dude’s eighty for Christ’s sake.

What actually transpired was an incredibly inspiring virtuoso performance by Doc and his bandmates. The two featured musicians, aside from Doc, were Gil Gutierrez and Pedro Cartas, the former a guitarist and the latter a violinist. These guys were fucking incredible, just overflowing with soul and fire. I found out later that Doc had come here to San Miguel with retirement on his mind, but when he saw these two guys perform one night he knew he just had to play with them. They recorded a few tunes together and then Doc asked to join them. The chemistry these guys shared on stage was awesome to behold. They laughed, goofed around, played each other’s instruments, and just plain blew the roof off the place. I have never seen an eighty year-old man play music like that. I’ve never seen an eighty year-old man do anything like that. He was blowing that horn with such power, such a sense of soaring reach and surrender to the moment, I thought he might die then and there on the stage. What a way to go.

I think the whole experience hit me so forcefully because I’ve been pondering my return to North Carolina, the place where I discovered and enjoyed the wonders of playing music with others. I left the band over four years ago, and even before then I sometimes wondered whether or not I was too old for rock n’ roll. We were all four of us in our thirties when the band formed, and now I’m not too far from forty. I’ve seen so many washed up rock stars making the rounds, I’ve come to see rock n’ roll as a world better left to the young. But it cuts deeper than that. I realize more and more how I’ve come to see all things vital and hopeful and soulful as the province of youth, believing that once you hit a certain peak—at say thirty-five or so—it’s just a matter of how quickly or gradually the juice leaks out, drips away until we’re drained dry.

Thanks Doc, for blowing that horn, for blowing me away, and for blowing my self-limiting notions to smithereens.

Here we go

Published on April 18, 2008 in Personal. 0 Comments

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Last night’s dream:

I’m in an auditorium filled with adolescents. It’s a drug rehab center and I’m the counselor, just like at my last job. My shift partner is nowhere to be found. I’m on my own. It is my first day on the job and I don’t know any of the kids in the room. I make my way through the crowd toward the front of the auditorium, where a microphone is set up. It is time for me to address the crowd, to do some sort of group therapy or coping skills training with them. I walk passed an African-American kid and I stop to introduce myself to him. I ask him his name and he mumbles something unusual in response. I couldn’t quite make the name out, so I ask him to repeat is slowly, emphasizing each syllable. I shake his hand and continue on toward the front of the auditorium. It dawns on me that I’m utterly unprepared to lead a group session. It’s been a very long time since I’ve done this sort of thing, and I’m drawing a blank as I wrack my brain to recall my list of topics and the way I used to present them. I reach the microphone and face the crowd. I have no idea what to say or how to proceed. What’s more, I notice that I’m wearing only my underpants. The kids look at me expectantly. There’s nothing to do but wing it, I think to myself. I speak: “Wow. This is a little embarrassing, but I seem to have lost my shorts and shirt. It’s like one of those bad dreams. Can somebody hand me my shorts and shirt?” Some laughter ripples through the crowd as the kids look around for my clothes. Eventually, the articles are passed up to me. I pull up my shorts, pull on my shirt, then step up to the microphone, adrenaline pumping, butterflies fluttering, but my confidence growing. I can do this. I’ve done it before. Here we go.

Pigs N’ Zen

Published on April 16, 2008 in Personal. 0 Comments

[4-10-08]: It’s exactly five weeks until Quince de Mayo and there’s little doubt in my mind, at this point, that I will be getting on the plane heading northward, with or without Mary Alice. Of course, I hope she’ll be coming with me, and if she does need to stay here in Mexico longer, I will do everything in my power to make sure the situation is as safe and secure as possible before I go. Life here has been difficult lately, for the both of us, as the stifling heat bears down on the pueblo unrelentingly. Today is the first day in a while in which the air has moved, the blowing breeze allowing me to do a bit of writing. It’s a few minutes before 10am, the hour that typically marks the close of the “tolerable period” of the day, a few hours of relative comfort beginning at about 3am. I’m usually in bed by 10pm, mainly because my reading light has by this time drawn in a critical mass of annoying insects. There’s nothing else to do but get in bed and commence the five hours of tossing, turning, and sweating that lead up to the tolerable period. I get up at about 7am, since I’m awake anyway and I want to take advantage of the few relatively livable hours remaining in the day. Until very recently those hours were invariably spent doing rehab exercises, but now I’m on an every-other-day schedule with the bulk of my knee routine, leaving me a little time every other morning to do whatever else there is to do, like write or play some guitar or study some Spanish. From 11am on it’s all about survival, just making it through the day, and lately it’s been like what I imagine prison time to be, a tedious pulling of time in a constant state of restlessness and discomfort.

Despite the heat, I still play a little soccer with my hermanitos (“little brothers”) every evening as soon as the sun drops away. Of course, I can’t do much given the bum leg, but it’s still fun (and important for my rehab) to goof around for a while each day. Yesterday Pollo (the developmentally challenged boy) somehow threw himself into the mix, and his antics had me laughing so hard I was doubled over in tears. He was clearly having a ball and no one was mocking him or anything. It was simply impossible not to laugh hysterically as he responded to his teammates’ instructions with complete earnestness while producing the most ridiculous results. If the ball was coming down toward his head, his teammates would yell “cabeza,” and he would just close his eyes and allow the ball to bounce off his skull in whatever random direction. If was instructed to kick the ball, he would do so with no regard for where the goal was, at one point pegging some random passerby in the back of the head. At this I nearly shit my pants laughing and then, amused at my reaction, Pollo too began laughing, to the point of near hysteria. His laughter was so over-the-top and wildly animated that we all began to lose control, at one point every one of us on the ground, rolling in the dirt, carrying on like a pack of riled up orangutans.

A couple of mornings ago I took advantage of my tolerable time to do some movement meditation on the floor. Those who know me more intimately know that I’ve been doing these strange movement explorations for years—strange in the sense that I’ve found it nearly impossible to describe just what it is I’m doing. Basically, I just lie on the floor and wait for some subtle movement to happen, of it’s own accord. When something starts to happen, like a slight arching of my back or rolling of my head, I sort of follow it with my awareness, but in such a way that it carries forward and unfolds without any conscious exertion of will or effort. Again, the sensation is that the movement is “happening,” on an involuntary level, and my use of attention is to observe and allow the process to unfold without interference. So, I consciously exert no influence over what’s happening, except to identify and inhibit volitional or habitual responses that block the sense of flow and effortlessness. Over the years, I’ve developed the ability to allow the process to unfold, without interference, for stretches of an hour or more at time. The essential attitude is that whatever “happens” is fine and, moreover, is precisely what needs to happen so that the homeostatic processes of my body can optimally recalibrate themselves. If I fall asleep then great, I must need some sleep. More often than not, however, what “happens” is that the layers of muscular tension in my body seem to “unwind,” as a twisted rubber-band unwinds, in an unpredictable yet intelligently directed pattern, i.e. precisely the pattern which constitutes being “wound up” in a particular way or shape. Like I said, it’s hard to explain, but I can say without hesitation that this practice is as profound and powerful as any “spiritual” practice I’m familiar with. In fact, I would even go as far to say that the core processes involved, as well as the insights gained, are identical to those associated with Zen satori experiences (moments of intense clarity, insight, spiritual awakening, and inner freedom). This is just my opinion, of course, but it’s an opinion based on fifteen years worth of investigation and inquiry into such matters.

The process starts as a mind-body thing, but it typically unfolds into a classic “cosmic consciousness” vibe, and the other day was no exception. By the time I rolled up the mat, there seemed to be no fundamental difference between what was happening (of it’s own accord, spontaneously) and what I was doing (volitionally), these two modes of experience revealed in my awareness as two poles of a single process. I grabbed my voice recorder and began expressing the various insights that were sparking and sizzling through me. Suddenly, in mid-sentence, I noticed a little pig wandering around outside my window. “There’s a little fucking pig outside my window!” was all I could say. I stopped the recorder, grabbed the camera and ran outside to get a snapshot. Of course, I scared the slop off the little fellow and he quickly turned tail and ran into the cane field. Eventually he returned and I took a few photos. As it turned out, he was actually the property of our host family, as they had apparently acquired him the previous night, after Mary Alice and I had gone to bed. A new addition to the critter choir. Performances outside the window, daily (and nightly). Squeals like pig, he does—in perfect tune with the rhythm of the pueblo.

[4-12-08]: So it looks like Mary Alice is getting the grant extension. It’s not official, but she received an email from an administrator that made it seem like a done deal. After some thought, we’ve decided it makes sense for me to return on May 15th, even though Mary Alice will be in Mexico through July. The grant extension does not provide for a “dependent,” so my free ride ends in a few weeks. Of course, given the whole knee fiasco, my time here was anything but free, and my ever-worsening financial situation should probably be addressed sooner rather than later. There are a million solid reasons to return home, but we both realize the decision is mostly a matter of me wanting to get the bloody hell out of here. We’ve worked out a plan to do all the traveling around (to Mexico City, libraries, etc) while I’m here, so Mary Alice will be under my manly protection while in unfamiliar places (this plan also makes sense in terms of her research). Safety doesn’t seem to be much of a concern here on the pueblo, where Mary Alice has friends and acquaintances in all quarters. She made it through the three months I was away for surgery and rehab, as well as the two previous summers. In any case, I hate to leave her here, but there’s just no easy road ahead. We both seem more at ease, though, now that we’ve set a clear course.

[4-16-08]: Presently, we’re in Mexico City, and I can finally connect up and post this weeklong blog entry. The sweltering nights on the pueblo seem like a bad dream as I stretch out on this king size hotel bed, surfing the net in climate controlled comfort. Shit, I even had a cup of Starbucks coffee this morning. Tomorrow we head for San Miguel to take care of some business and enjoy a few more days away from the sweat lodge. By the time we return, I’ll have a mere three weeks left in Mexico. I can’t quite wrap my mind around it yet. Back to work, to paying bills, to coffee shops and late night television, to clean water, comfortable beds, telephones, electric guitars, chocolate. Chocolate. Dark chocolate with almonds, out of the freezer.

God bless America.

Fool´s day

Published on April 4, 2008 in Personal. 0 Comments

April Fools Day, 2008. I don’t think the tradition exists here in Mexico, although when I noticed we had no running water this morning I was hoping it was just a prank. It has been brutally hot for days now, and the locals say it’s only the beginning. I’ve been taking several cold showers each day in order to stay sane. In this kind of heat the fans offer very little relief, and our little dorm fridge fights a losing battle to keep things cold. It’s become clear to me why—up till now—this leg of the journey has been relatively angst-free, why I haven’t yet resumed my running bitch-fest about life on the pueblo. The weather has been tolerable. It’s as simple as that. Now that the two-week cool season has given way to the fifty-week tropical roast, I find myself desperately wanting to get the bloody hell out of here.

Despite the heat, the knee rehab must go on, and I’ve been literally mopping up pools of sweat after my workouts. The thing that keeps me hanging on is the light at the end of this long, sweltering tunnel. It’s a mere six and a half weeks until Quince de Mayo, the holiest of holy days, otherwise known as the May 15th return date stamped on my plane ticket. Of course, there’s still the dreaded possibility that Mary Alice will be awarded a last-minute grant extension, prolonging her stay an additional twelve weeks. I say “her” stay, because I don’t even want to contemplate another four months in this oven. My knee is coming along too slowly, I think, without my having access to proper exercise equipment, and it could take me at least twelve weeks to find a job and get our lives re-settled back in the States. Maybe I’m just being a wimp, but dude, it’s really, really hot.

Okay—Jesús just fixed the water pipe. That’s awesome—but I still want out. So does Jesús, but for different reasons. He’s back home for a few days before returning to the border for another crack at crossing. From what I can gather, his first attempt was a freakin’ nightmare, as law enforcement officials from both countries swarmed the border area after drug traffickers murdered someone. I had a long conversation with Jesús (via Mary Alice) yesterday about his situation, and about the plight of his fellow countrymen as they do whatever it takes to put food on the table for their families. Of course I feel for the guy and sure, my problems don’t seem quite so bad in comparison. Someone somewhere is always worse off, but that doesn’t mean I have to act like I’m cool with being hot, or feel fortunate to have two legs instead of one. I AM fortunate to have two legs, but I FEEL annoyed to be disabled. Shit, I don’t have to justify myself to you. Don’t make me jump out of this computer screen and open up a can of whoop-ass. Who are you, anyway? And why am I talking to you?

Anyway, as I was saying, things haven’t really unfolded here as I had hoped since the crippling. I feel like the only sane thing to do is work hard on my recovery every day, which under the present conditions leaves precious little energy for much else. Even if I had more time and energy, I’d still probably rarely leave the confines of this room. If it were just a matter of language, it would be simple enough bridge the cultural divide, but the sense of disconnect has more to do with values, education level, belief systems and common interests. This pueblo is to Mexico City what the hills of Kentucky are to New York City. Folks here speak a Spanish that bears little resemblance to what I’m learning in my computer course. A few years of grade school education is about the average, and the quality of instruction here is so inadequate that even those who finish high school have little to show for it. Basic psychological truths that I take for granted—like the value of emotional expression, or of transparency in relationships—seem to have little currency here, as all around me (and this is no different than my experiences in the United States) I see people propagating self-limiting beliefs and ass-backwards coping strategies that in the long term can only perpetuate unnecessary suffering and ignorance of healthy alternatives.

As a person interested in the spiritual dimension of life and the beauty of art, I find it nearly impossible to connect my personal preferences and understandings with anything I find here. From my perspective, the predominant spiritual vibe is a mix of crudely interpreted Christianity and belief in supernatural beings and forces. Fairies, pixies, gnomes, witches, ghosts and JesuChristo work together behind the scenes in ways I can’t even begin to comprehend. As far as art goes, I have yet to see a shred of evidence that the concept, as I understand it, exists here at all. Most people can’t read, so you won’t hear discussions of literature or new ideas, and the music and television I hear blaring all around me is, frankly, worse than the worst, most shallow garbage you could find in the US. From what I can gather, the most popular musical act around here is a Puerto Rican who calls himself Nigga (pronounced NEE-gah) while sounding about as gangsta as Bette Midler. You’re the wind beneath my wings, Bee-otch! The dude is touring with Enrique Iglesias—need I say more. And the Bumblebee Guy from The Simpsons is actually a dead-on accurate representation of what passes for humor on Mexican television. The most popular shows here are primetime soap operas. If you can imagine a Saturday Night Live spoof presenting the most ridiculous caricature of only the most cheesy elements of poorly produced drama, complete with swoop-in close-ups and slapstick musical sound effects, then you have some idea of how bad the tele-novellas are here. As you can tell, I’m not the anthropologist sitting in the room. But sometimes you have to call it like you see it, and while I fully recognize that people here might find my own way of life equally incomprehensible and/or inferior, that only reinforces the point: I don’t fit in.

Lately, I’ve been socializing more often, as Mary Alice’s research subjects invite us to share meals and whatnot, and to the extent I can connect, I do enjoy the people here, for the most part. I especially enjoy the children, whom I find far more grounded, bright-eyed, self-assured and powerful than their American counterparts. Children have more freedom here, it seems to me. Freedom to explore, to play, to discover, to make mistakes, to engage spontaneously with others. Their power comes from this freedom, I think, manifesting in a vibe of intense wonder and beauty. By comparison, American kids these days are boxed up and shuffled around by well-meaning but fearful parents. The beauty and wonder is still there, just relatively contained and stifled. However, once kids here are old enough to work and/or get married—at about age fourteen or so—the situation seems less rosy. Options are very limited, and perhaps belief systems here simply reflect that sober reality. Older people—and here I cannot think of a single exception—tend to have dismal, gloomy expressions chiseled into their faces, as if the remainder of their days were just more burdens to bear.

So, it’s not like my heart is devoid of compassion, or that I have no sense of appreciation for the way of life here, despite my calling a spade a spade. And while I have never before felt a more keen sense of membership with the human race as a whole, at the same time I have never felt more American, more inseparable from my own culture. In fact, having spent most of my adolescence and adult life struggling to extricate myself from what I viewed as the status quo shackles of tradition and the collective hypnotic trance known as the American Dream, I find myself accepting, even—dare I say—embracing it all now. I suppose it’s finally dawned on me that I can’t separate myself from what I am. And I AM an American.

“U S A! U S A! U S A! U S A! …”

*

You’re not going to believe this: We have HOT WATER! Here! On the pueblo! I knew this day would come. Funny thing is, now we don’t have cold water. That’s because it’s so goddamned motherfucking hot outside, the normally cool water coming up from the underground pipes is now, well, hot. Yay!

I just took a shower, hoping to cool down a bit and, truthfully, the water did eventually get somewhat cooler after a while, enough to make the shower worth taking. But then—as we must after all showers—I had to squeegee the entire bathroom. You see, the bathroom becomes a big lake after every shower. This is by design, as the gentlemen who tiled the floor decided—despite my suggestions to the contrary—that it would be better to slope the tile down from the drain, instead of down to the drain. It actually requires considerable effort to squeegee the water back to the drain, because it’s hard to get to the water behind and beside the toilet. While I’m doing this, I typically take a moment to officially nominate the tiles guys for “Biggest Douches in the Universe.” By the time you towel off, it’s mostly sweat glistening on your skin. Of course, you could take another shower, but then, well, you know.

In other news, last night I realized complete spiritual enlightenment. Oh yeah, and also Mary Alice and I decided to live in North Carolina for her “dissertation-writing year.” Elaborate on the enlightenment thing, you say? But Grasshopper, surely you understand that “The true Tao cannot be spoken, and what is spoken is not the true Tao.” All right, so maybe it’s not complete spiritual enlightenment, but goddamnit it was a pretty stark moment of clarity, another in a long line of peak experiences or moments of spiritual awakening which have cropped up over the years. I assume most people have had similar experiences, yet perhaps use different metaphors to convey the essence, but the best I can do is to say it was as if I suddenly stopped splitting myself off from my experience, realizing (yet again) the futility of such nonsense. It was like I put total faith and trust in the universe, recognizing with atypical clarity that the universe and I are inseparable, two aspects of the same process. You know, the same trite bullshit they’ve been printing on bumper stickers for years. But it’s true, and when you really feel it in your bones suddenly life makes perfect sense, the inevitable downsides become unproblematic, and there’s just this awesome sense of freedom. Freedom, dude!

Whatever. Fuck you. How’s that for a bumper sticker. Don’t make me use my newfound spiritual powers to go all Chi-Gung on your ass. I suppose my actions and overall feeling for life will provide the feedback necessary to gauge just how clear my understanding is this time around, how free I really am. Interestingly though, from my lofty point of view last night, even the periods of forgetfulness and ignorance seemed to have their place as perfect manifestations of the universal process/ground of being/wishful thinking/hallucination.

So much for that. The decision to re-settle in North Carolina—at least while Mary Alice completes her PhD—came after a brainstorm while riding the bus to town. It makes sense for so many reasons. First of all, it says “North Carolina” on the plane ticket, so why not keep it simple. Our car is there, along with a good chunk of our belongings. Also, Mary Alice has an opportunity to work with her mother on a non-profit, social service project, which is just the type of thing she wants to do once she finishes school. It’ll be a great way for her to test those waters and gain valuable experience. And shit, I just love North Carolina, having lived there for years, wed there, rocked out there, etc. And it’s only a few hours to Lexington, where Mary Alice will have to go every now and then to meet with her academic advisors and where the bulk of our belongings are, packed in a storage unit.

My best friends, Eric and Jeff, still live in Chapel Hill, and I can hardly contain my excitement when I think about reconnecting both personally and musically with my ex-bandmates. It’s hard to believe it’s been more than four years since I packed up my VW Bus and watched North Carolina fade away in the rearview mirror. It boggles the mind. Isaac Dust was just a baby then, always crying and shitting his pants, and since has learned to walk, talk, and occasionally shout from the depths of his heart. Then he went to Mexico, crippled himself, and had to relearn everything. I wonder what he’ll do next.