Tried years back to read Faulkner. Never really worked for me. Now, going back to it, with a different mind at a different place in my life and the images flood around me, pushing my reading forward. His language moves with flooding streams and broke down wagons and rage and folly and destruction. La verdad, lo puedo leer sólo después de este verano en Tijuana. Como que me abrió de alguna manera muy suave. Bueno:
From As I Lay Dying:
On salvation:
People to whom sin is just a matter of words, to them salvation is just words too.
On the limits of words:
Sin and love and fear are just sounds that people who have never sinned nor loved nor feared have for what they never had and cannot have until they forget the words.
On the raveling out of our lives:
How do our lives ravel out into the no-wind, no-sound, the weary gestures wearily recapitulant: echoes of old compulsions with no-hand on no-strings: in sunset we fall into furious attitudes, dead gestures of dolls.
The Nullotaims discovers Tijuana...again.
So now Tijuana is in the Travel section of the Nullotaims. The city appears every few months with some new glamorous, postmodern look at the perpetually newly chic city. El Nullotaims tiene a Tijuana como una obsesión. Y sale también con Jenny Donovan como su guía turistica y artistica. ¡Qué cosa! She's so famous. Anyways, lo puedes leer aquí.
Se me hace raro ver la ciudad así retratada pero a lo mejor no debe de impactarme así. Tijuana es la ciudad más visitada en el mundo, right?
Se me hace raro ver la ciudad así retratada pero a lo mejor no debe de impactarme así. Tijuana es la ciudad más visitada en el mundo, right?
The responsibility to act on desire
Kathy Acker believed that desire is the only honest part of us, and she believed that art is authentic desire. She never expected that art itself could transform the world, but she knew art could awaken in us the authentic desire buried under the meaninglessness of modern life. The responsibility to act on that desire is up to us.
-- Jeanette Winterson, Intro to Essential Acker
-- Jeanette Winterson, Intro to Essential Acker
one last feel
one last holler. bleed it out before the dogs come. what you had is now lost. unfindable. if it ever was at your blackened fingertips. rotten digits pieces of flesh that fell to the ground, became hackneyed and butterflied away on roads less traveled. um, right. don't kid self. in those moments, a million reasons to run away. hide. for only inside the sunburnt skin could an answer be found. between these plates of skull and bones. the real alteration remains ahead. unreachable always.
Deliver Me From Nowhere
Finished this book, Deliver Me From Nowhere by Tennessee Jones. I enjoyed its slow ploddingness, its colors, its desperation and lack of redemption. When I found it in an indy bookstore in LA, I had to buy it. And I don't buy books often. But ever since Tijuana (already the city has become a time and an occurence, something of the past), I have been on a book buying binge. Something about wanting to see the books physically, to have them, to be able to lend them to friends. To remember them spacially as mine.
Jones is trans and queer but largely in his stories writes around these facts, writes the space around our lives and thereby exposes what is at the core even more clearly. In my humble opinion. Also, he is from Eastern Tennessee, where he was raised, but now lives and writes from Brooklyn, where he works at Soft Skull Press. A rockin press, by the way. But the settings of the stories in this book are always Southern or Midwestern rural settings, steeped in country talk and walk. So, his literary moving around and going back compelled me to read them just from the cover. And the stories held me close to them—about poor white folk, about trouble and conflict, violence, hiding class and ridding yourself of heavy baggage. The stories moved me. They stay with me. Get a copy. Or email me (or leave a comment) and I can put you on the list of people to lend the book to. Since I own it now.
Jones is trans and queer but largely in his stories writes around these facts, writes the space around our lives and thereby exposes what is at the core even more clearly. In my humble opinion. Also, he is from Eastern Tennessee, where he was raised, but now lives and writes from Brooklyn, where he works at Soft Skull Press. A rockin press, by the way. But the settings of the stories in this book are always Southern or Midwestern rural settings, steeped in country talk and walk. So, his literary moving around and going back compelled me to read them just from the cover. And the stories held me close to them—about poor white folk, about trouble and conflict, violence, hiding class and ridding yourself of heavy baggage. The stories moved me. They stay with me. Get a copy. Or email me (or leave a comment) and I can put you on the list of people to lend the book to. Since I own it now.
One last blowout before.
Sé que casi nadie en Houston lee este blog. Pero. This weekend. One last blowout before. Well, you know. Hopefully, good stories coming. Check it:
Julieta Venegas, Kumbia Kings, Quinta Estación, un chingo de otras bandas. Suave. Pero es gratis y All Ages. And at 1pm in Petroleumville Stinkydena Fairgrounds. Stinking hot. And then.
Miss Gay Texas US of A. At your favorite Houston Latino gay bar. Inergy. Rockin. Ay los watcho.
Afloat in the Petro Bayou Channel
Advertised as a 90 minute tour of the Port of Houston and the Ship Channel. What we signed up for, what we thought we were getting. Made a reservation in June before leaving to Tijuana. Wanted to do it for some time. Ever since.
A few months before tried to sneak into the Port with two friends visiting from Berkeley making a documentary. Bad idea. Tried to make friends with the security guard lady. Ham it up. Make her feel like we were long lost friends. Usta work there he said, usta. Put on his version of a Southern accent to try to sound more down home. Didn't work. Guard lady told us we could sign up for a tour, make a reservation and then we could come back.
I did. With two friends then, last Saturday.
Almost miss the tour boat. Have to run to make it. Actually the gangplank's drawn up and the crewman lowers it for us. Always the last ones. Damn. On board. Wood paneled walls, leather sofas pegged to the walls, freestanding ashtray tables harken back to days when the good ol' boys took rides out into the middle of the Gulf, pleasure trips on weekends. Fake plants, air-conditioning, bow to stern carpeting. Full of people, mainly gray haired baby boomer aged couples. Some in matching tropical print tops. Others sunburned. One woman catches my eye, tall, firm, with enhanced breasts popping out unnaturally. As soon as I see her, swear she's trans. Later second guess myself. Maybe not. One Asian family with two young daughters. Diversity. And us, more diversity. We head outside to the bow of the boat.
The air is soupy. You don't walk, you negotiate through the mess that is our air. The speakers blare out facts as the eye scans. The largest port in the country in foreign tonnage. Tankers tower up on all sides, Monrovia, Taijin, Hong Kong, Egersund, Kristiansand, Panama City. The patterns of repainting the hulls make a pastel patchwork, scratched lines make random etchings in the colors. Amazed. The concrete docks crumble into the port. We've seen better days, the picture says. But the speaker blares on, the center of production, the powerhouse of the economy. One quarter of the refining capacity of the U.S. is here, more than 20 refineries and chemical plants. Towers topped with fire and black smoke. Burn off. Public Grain Elevator #2. Grain towers, conveyor belts ship more in a few minutes than human hands in months. Round domes that guard natural gas. Ancient brick warehouses with Spanish tile. An egret. Committed to environmental efforts, to being a good corporate leader, to change. Plastic bags, the shore so full of trash in places as if there were no sand down there, no mud bottom, just plastic, just refuse. Gypsum shed, an architectural marvel with huge gaps in the warehouse, straight from Mexico all that stone. Huge bridges, architectural feats, God-knows how many feet high, had to build it after boats kept hitting the old one. Won prizes. Citgo refinery smells like rotten eggs and rotting carcasses. A mess of mainly Maya and Olmec oil. Pemex. What we get.
The boat turns around after 45 minutes at the old battleground, the exact place where Santa Ana capitulated to Sam Houston, freeing Texas from the Mexican yoke. Why didn’t he just swim away? A little boy asks. Cuz the water is too dirty from the Pemex refinery, the Mom says. Complimentary sodas for everyone on-board. Please recycle in the blue bins. Progress. Environmental progress. Historical daydreams sipping on a lemonade, the grass is cut well near the historical marker. Daughters of the Texas Revolution pay to keep it clean.
Again to reflect on the surgically enhanced woman in front of me. Blond hair pulled back, hip light green sunglasses cover a huge swath of her face. Her tiny top exposes the place where her breasts meet the sides of her body, her tanned skin is luminescent, her entire body shows not a bit of fat, hard vertical lines, striations where muscle meets bone, stilletto pumps. Entranced. A marvel.
Head back inside. Overwhelms me. Sweating I collapse on the cool leather, comfortable, safe. Later my dad tells me he has been on that very boat, on day trips for Chamber of Commerce types to the Gulf. Seasick on the tossing Gulf waves. Home.
PS Have to say for awadwa. Saw a sign. Caution with the Single Screw. Ha ha ha. I said: Must be an old seaman joke. (Puntastic)
A few months before tried to sneak into the Port with two friends visiting from Berkeley making a documentary. Bad idea. Tried to make friends with the security guard lady. Ham it up. Make her feel like we were long lost friends. Usta work there he said, usta. Put on his version of a Southern accent to try to sound more down home. Didn't work. Guard lady told us we could sign up for a tour, make a reservation and then we could come back.
I did. With two friends then, last Saturday.
Almost miss the tour boat. Have to run to make it. Actually the gangplank's drawn up and the crewman lowers it for us. Always the last ones. Damn. On board. Wood paneled walls, leather sofas pegged to the walls, freestanding ashtray tables harken back to days when the good ol' boys took rides out into the middle of the Gulf, pleasure trips on weekends. Fake plants, air-conditioning, bow to stern carpeting. Full of people, mainly gray haired baby boomer aged couples. Some in matching tropical print tops. Others sunburned. One woman catches my eye, tall, firm, with enhanced breasts popping out unnaturally. As soon as I see her, swear she's trans. Later second guess myself. Maybe not. One Asian family with two young daughters. Diversity. And us, more diversity. We head outside to the bow of the boat.
The air is soupy. You don't walk, you negotiate through the mess that is our air. The speakers blare out facts as the eye scans. The largest port in the country in foreign tonnage. Tankers tower up on all sides, Monrovia, Taijin, Hong Kong, Egersund, Kristiansand, Panama City. The patterns of repainting the hulls make a pastel patchwork, scratched lines make random etchings in the colors. Amazed. The concrete docks crumble into the port. We've seen better days, the picture says. But the speaker blares on, the center of production, the powerhouse of the economy. One quarter of the refining capacity of the U.S. is here, more than 20 refineries and chemical plants. Towers topped with fire and black smoke. Burn off. Public Grain Elevator #2. Grain towers, conveyor belts ship more in a few minutes than human hands in months. Round domes that guard natural gas. Ancient brick warehouses with Spanish tile. An egret. Committed to environmental efforts, to being a good corporate leader, to change. Plastic bags, the shore so full of trash in places as if there were no sand down there, no mud bottom, just plastic, just refuse. Gypsum shed, an architectural marvel with huge gaps in the warehouse, straight from Mexico all that stone. Huge bridges, architectural feats, God-knows how many feet high, had to build it after boats kept hitting the old one. Won prizes. Citgo refinery smells like rotten eggs and rotting carcasses. A mess of mainly Maya and Olmec oil. Pemex. What we get.
The boat turns around after 45 minutes at the old battleground, the exact place where Santa Ana capitulated to Sam Houston, freeing Texas from the Mexican yoke. Why didn’t he just swim away? A little boy asks. Cuz the water is too dirty from the Pemex refinery, the Mom says. Complimentary sodas for everyone on-board. Please recycle in the blue bins. Progress. Environmental progress. Historical daydreams sipping on a lemonade, the grass is cut well near the historical marker. Daughters of the Texas Revolution pay to keep it clean.
Again to reflect on the surgically enhanced woman in front of me. Blond hair pulled back, hip light green sunglasses cover a huge swath of her face. Her tiny top exposes the place where her breasts meet the sides of her body, her tanned skin is luminescent, her entire body shows not a bit of fat, hard vertical lines, striations where muscle meets bone, stilletto pumps. Entranced. A marvel.
Head back inside. Overwhelms me. Sweating I collapse on the cool leather, comfortable, safe. Later my dad tells me he has been on that very boat, on day trips for Chamber of Commerce types to the Gulf. Seasick on the tossing Gulf waves. Home.
PS Have to say for awadwa. Saw a sign. Caution with the Single Screw. Ha ha ha. I said: Must be an old seaman joke. (Puntastic)
Carnaval de atrocidades
Joaquín Hurtado me impresionó hoy con su Crónica Sero. Su carta a Felipe Calderón empieza así:
Aquí en mi muy norteño vecindario urgen a sellar tu dudosa victoria: el triunfo de la bufonada electoral. Siendo casi de la misma edad pertenecemos a una generación para quien robar, transar, arrebatar, picudear, chantajear, devastar es aceptable para alcanzar cualquier fin. Lo comprendo, no lo comparto.
Para leerlo todo, aquí está.
For the non-Spanish speakers: Joaquín Hurtado is a compelling writer from Monterrey, México, three hours south of Laredo; openly gay and HIV-positive, his writings merit more reading by us, his neighbors to the north. Just a little north.
Aquí en mi muy norteño vecindario urgen a sellar tu dudosa victoria: el triunfo de la bufonada electoral. Siendo casi de la misma edad pertenecemos a una generación para quien robar, transar, arrebatar, picudear, chantajear, devastar es aceptable para alcanzar cualquier fin. Lo comprendo, no lo comparto.
Para leerlo todo, aquí está.
For the non-Spanish speakers: Joaquín Hurtado is a compelling writer from Monterrey, México, three hours south of Laredo; openly gay and HIV-positive, his writings merit more reading by us, his neighbors to the north. Just a little north.
What had been.
Failed conversations. Falling buildings. The space where that was. What had been. The median. Humid places. Gap opening between the brick wall and the driveway. The running toilet. Are the things. Weeds choking. Ants devour aloe vera plants packed in lowslung pot. The chinaberry litters. The elephant ears impossibilize door opening. Cyclone fence blues. Overgrowth. I wouldn't open the blinds. Heavy deep sweat. Closing doors. Dying tomato plants. Some prospered, some failed.
Makes me wanna be like Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in the Guardian today:
Yet as our car swerves to avoid the potholes on the road, I think how I love being home. I love this flawed place. I love that this is where my belonging is least contested; this is where I care the deepest.
Makes me wanna be like Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in the Guardian today:
Yet as our car swerves to avoid the potholes on the road, I think how I love being home. I love this flawed place. I love that this is where my belonging is least contested; this is where I care the deepest.
Regresé
Estoy malito. Hace un calorazo aquí en Jiuston. Extraño Tijuana, las Californias. Releo este poema de Cavafis. (Desconozco el traductor.) Como dice Paloma, "Estoy triste, cansada, perdida. Pero yo siempre estoy triste y cansada y perdida." Y así.
La ciudad
Dices: "Iré a otra tierra, hacia otro mar
y una ciudad mejor con certeza hallaré.
Pues cada esfuerzo mío está aquí condenado,
Y muere mi corazón
lo mismo que mis pensamientos en esta desolada languidez.
Donde vuelvo los ojos sólo veo
las oscuras ruinas de mi vida
y los muchos años que aquí pasé o destruí".
No hallarás otra tierra ni otro mar.
La ciudad irá en ti siempre. Volverás
a las mismas calles. Y en los mismos suburbios llegará tu vejez;
en la misma casa encanecerás.
Pues la ciudad es siempre la misma. Otra no busques -no la hay-
ni caminos ni barco para ti.
La vida que aquí perdiste
la has destruido en toda la tierra.
Heartwarming
¿Cómo se dice heartwearming en español? Just know it heats up my heart. That is all one could know. Luego más sobre el Lab y los muy queridos y mi boda con una sonorense suavíssima. Por ahora, todavía de viaje.
Tom of Finland
Went to an exhibit in Culver City of the drawings of Tom of Finland. If you haven't seen them, you should. They are amazing. More info on the Western Project. La única cosa que faltó es un cuartito donde uno podría ir después de ver las fotos para quitar todo la energía que trasmite. Just a little room, that's all.
Moving North
Already the moving on hurts. Already what was so present past. The place, the time where we were is just me. And the dissappearing present evades.When reading blogs becomes the. When describing the changes becomes the. When soon the memories will be just those and the reality escapes a little further.
But now, this view, this city of god's workhorses, these cactuses, these weeping willow trees and slants of light at mid. This chance to renew. This chance to reconvene. This moment of newness and wonder.
The past elided. The future rushes over. Writing perhaps the only.
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