Time lapse

January. February. March. April. Wait a minute, May? Really? Where? Could this all be because of Infinite Jest or is something else going on here? It was not for lack of material. I mean, did you see the Televisa-esk production, the one starring the ex-Playmate, and which pretended to be this country's Presidential debates? Bof. I won't even start. My blood pressure.

But I still have nothing to say. Or maybe I have the strength yet.

This is the longest period between entries since I began this experiment in August of 2008. At least I think so. So what happened? One might guess that I fell out of love with the city, that I am no longer curious and or inthralled by its idiosyncrasies, that I am bored, that I was killed by a narco shootout, which came to a tragic end in front of that bougie organic store in Condesa, the all-natural-living-lactobacteria-guaranteed-yogurt-tub splattering on the sidewalk as I freed my hand to grab what felt like a bee string but, you know, expecting to see nothing more than my hand upon further inspection, wait, blood? so I looked twice out of disbelief because I only checked in the first place as a formality, like when one stands up too quickly and bumps one's head on something sharp having miscalculated one's force + the objects distance but one's hand always comes back from the point of impact clean so I was probably pretty surprised by the color and the blossom on my shirt, that the story is already being adapted for the screen with (true) rumors that Michael Bay is bidding for the production and hopes for it to be out before Christmas 2013, that at Jose's suggestion I became an international prostitute and my pimp allows me a weekly 10 minutes (maximum) of interweb access, which I use to tell my parents that I joined a traveling circus as a trapeze artist, a long-held but dormant passion unmasked by a fascination with the pointed, pink and white striped tents that lay backdrop for the sequined elephants reflecting the morning light that I had passed on my way to work until the sparkles induced an insanity that beckoned me into the show.
                              

But all of those theories are lamentably wrong. I guess I became too comfortable here. Too confident that I had it all figured out. Opted to do little else with my little free time other than be with what seemed like perfect-fit-friends in this adult playground. Kind of lost myself in between the glamor and the ugliness of social scenes in a sprawling metropolis. Equal and opposite reactions in the world.

Time for Round 2 (more like Round 20). But who is really counting.

Musicophiliadosmilonce

What I listened to (in no particular order) in the year of our lord, 2011:



Cass McCombs - County Line
Grimes - Vanessa
John Maus - Believer
Stephen Malkmus and The Jicks - Senator
Sean Nicholas Savage - Someones Got a Secret
Widowspeak - Harsh Realm
Mateo De La Luna En Compañía Terrestrial - Absorbo Todos Los Tes De Todas Las Tardes
Smith Westerns - Still New
Pedro Piedra - Vacaciones En El Más Allá
Destroyer - Kaputt
Helado Negro - Regresa
Stephin Merritt - Rats in the Garbage of the Western World
Toro Y Moi - Still Sound
Juan Cirerol - Toque y Rol
Girls - Honey Bunny
M83 - Midnight City
María y José - Granada
Unknown Mortal Orchestra - How Can U Luv Me
Gillian Welch - Tennessee
James Blake - The Wilhelm Scream
Real Estate - It's Real
tUnE-yArDs - Gangsta
St. Vincent - Cruel
Jens Lekman - An Argument With Myself
Atlas Sound - Te Amo
Wilco - Born Alone
Fleet Foxes - The Shrine / An Argument
Kurt Vile - Jesus Fever
Davila 666 - Hanging On The Telephone
Summer Camp - Better Off Without You
Adrianigual - Arde Santiago
Bill Callahan - Riding For The Feeling
Kate Bush - Misty
Youth Lagoon - 17
Lido Pimienta - Luces
DeVotchKa - All The Sand In All The Sea
Pure X - Easy
Chiquita y Chatarra - Oh Cherry Cherry
Papercuts - Do What You Will
Afrodita - Flores Para Ti
AEIOU - King Luidwig II
The Antlers - French Exit
Daniel Maloso - No Doy Nada
Architecture In Helsinki - Contact High
Jessy Bulbo - La Cruda Moral
Junior Boys - Banana Ripple
Starfucker - Julius
The Features - Another One
Bam Bam - Ragatron
Is Tropical - South Pacific
The Black Keys - Dearest
Azari & III - Manic
Still Corners - Into The Trees
Astro - Ciervos
PJ Harvey - The Words That Maketh Murder
Mentira Mentira - My LSD
How To Dress Well - Ready For The World
White Fence - Sticky Fruitman Has Faith
EMA - Milkman
Alberto Acinas - A La Tierra
The Shoes - Investigator
Mamacita - No Eres Tú
Panda Bear - Afterburner
White Fence - Get That Heart
Beirut - Santa Fe
Cut Copy - Need You Now
TOPS - Turn Your Love Around
Marley Muerto - Señor Gobierno
Metronomy - The Bay
Danielson - Complimentary Dismemberment Insurance
Neon Walrus - Papiroflexia
Radiohead - Lotus Flower
Sonora - La Selva
Ólöf Arnalds - With Tomorrow / I'm On Fire
Keren Ann - My Name Is Trouble

"It"

Mexico City is strange. Sometimes I wonder if such odd things happen in all big cities or across small towns named for european capitals, conveniently pronounced according to local accents with complete disregard for the word's linguistic origins, and that counts double if it is french.

What I am trying to say is the last few months have been one fantastically bizarre event (where free liquor is never conspicuously absent) after the next; one coincidence too many; one degree of separation too close such that the indie film your friend made half-a-decade-ago features your boss's daughter, who you have always been told you would quite like, wearing a fedora in a dark car-seat, as well as the only mother in Texcoco to ever make you dinner, which you ate even though you had just come from a restaurant, as you listened to her rules for cutting avocados while embarrassing her son in a surprisingly similar fashion to that of the film; one too many baptisms with Yacht at a car release party in a warehouse where no one else danced and no one seemed to realize the band on stage played not two months prior to a sold-out crowd; just too much for me to not stop and think what the hell is happening? and I mean that in the best possible way.

So what the hell is happening here? Maybe I partially know. I will, at least, pretend to partially know. This city is huge but she is not a new megalopolis. In 1975, according to National Geographic, there were just three of them - New York, Tokyo, and Darling Mexico City. She has, thus, had time to develop and embrace her established territory while feeding an insatiable appetite with satellites. Today, she sits somewhere around the world's 3rd largest city (depending on how you measure) and purportedly holds the title of the 8th richest city in the world. Now, no city gets that big or that rich by being egalitarian. So I posit that the craziness I have and continue to witness is, in part, related to the extremes of wealth distribution.



On the one hand, you have the nearly impenetrable cliques of the upper class, whose structure survives in part via nepotism but also through the free will of emerging generations and their propensity to socialize with others of similar upbringing and status until they partner off and perhaps spawn more bourgeoisie babies. I should note that this is neither a judgment nor a criticism. It is simply an observation and in all likelihood the same observation I would make in many cities and countries if given the chance to immerse myself as I have in Mexico. But how do these people affect me and the beautiful chaos? They throw parties because they have the money and connections and friends and spaces. And they all know each other by a degree of separation so the coincidences grow and ripen the deeper you dig into the crowd.

On the other hand, you also have the have-nots. People who moved from other states or pueblos or who simply were born into a less glamorous class within the boundaries of the Federal District. The general periphery, physically and monetarily. These people have a much harder time getting ahead in a city where who-you-know dictates how far you can rise and what doors will open when you show up most likely uninvited. This is harder to define because it can range from the wanna-be fresas to the guy selling self-help books on the metro. Regardless of which flavor, there is a desperation sometimes associated with working hard and getting no returns and having little hope of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps to make a better life, the national ethos inculcated in Americans as not only possible but a right. The so called "American Dream." So for those who do not leave Mexico to chase the same dream my Granpapi stalked through hitchhiking, train hopping and urban scavenging, there is a chance they may feel anything from a pinch to a gash of hopelessness. This hopelessness can, in turn, breed anarchy, leading to some pretty fucked up events, from unprovoked violence on dark avenues to incredible squatter parties in abandoned buildings overlooking highways that would daunt even Philip K. Dick.

The real truth of the matter is that I am, at best, hypothesizing and if so, guess that someone else has captured similar ideas before but probably with more eloquence and definitely with more support. At worst, I am making crude generalizations. But neither is of consequence because the point is that the city has the "it factor" and one only describes someone or something in such a way because "it" is inherently inexplicable, unquantifiable, inimitable.

So whatever the hell "it" is, keep on coming.

Sharpened pencil

I sharpened my University of Washington School of Forest Resources, Creating Futures Since 1907, made from recycled newspaper! pencil. I left it all this time, kept the object as untouched and pristine as the day I removed it from the manila envelope that brought my acceptance letter, so crisply formal, now over a year long past. It sat on my desk, right underneath the computer screen, one of three, as a reminder of things to come.

It was there for grant proposal discussions with my advisor during my lunchtime, surreptitiously sneaking salty bites, when I read daily REDD newsletters about injustices in Indonesia, when I wrote my mentor for checkups, when I made ties to likeminded academics with similar research in Mexico, when I found exciting grants, when I invented funding possibilities, when I talked to friends about housing and rain, when I calculated my debt if the money didn't come, when my advisor told me the money might not come, that the economy is not smiling but that the research is desperately needed, when I remembered Atlantan porches and reading Davis' description of Mexico City's slums, not realizing then that I would soon traverse Neza twice-a-day, when I thought I wanted to be an academic, why I thought I wanted to be an academic, when I thought about the academics I knew and how the work keeps coming and how this deadline cannot wait so let's put it off but projects end to be replaced by an equally ephemeral deadline that defines the passing of time better than chess games on a wooden table chronically covered with petals from the week's flowers, mostly white or yellow, bought outside of a cemetery on the way home from work.



And when I realized that I love videos in every capacity. Even bad ones. Especially bad ones. But haven't you been working with videos, Mary? but that was different work, you see. Explaining the science is great and all but in comparison to the farmer using a more sustainable system, to see it working and to watch his blue eyes from underneath a sombrero say that he worries for his grandchildren because conventional agriculture is a scary thing to imagine as the dominant paradigm 50 years from today. No comparison. They are inherently different stories and processes in pre-/post-production & production.

So I thought again about why I wanted to be an academic. It was expected of me. Such promise.

Yet things have come and gone and I am here and not in Seattle and it is not as scary as I thought. As a matter of fact, I do not feel a modicum of anxiety about my decision or about opening a new chapter with Mexico as it is the first time in our 3 years together that I do not have an expiration date.

So I sharpened that pencil and now the pencil is just like all the others, scattered across my desks and in old marmalade jars stuffed with spoons and business cards. Everything about it except the pencil's graphite, which is as sharp as the apex of my sea change, and when moved against the paper in my notebook makes a noise, a naturally forced one, like baby fingernails on a wet chalkboard.

Insomnia

We could go out, he said. Do you know that new bar? My friend is playing there tonight.

Sure, she said twisting in the sheets towards his covered, prostrate figure, facing the other wall so that when he spoke his voice sounded muffled.

You are not sleepy, he said with an inflection at the end of his sentence that indicated his surprise.

No, she said aloud and meant it. Let's go.

I am sleepy. I am so tired but I cannot sleep. What is the word? Insomnia. I have been having problems with it. No, he said. We will not go.

You need a distraction, she told him. Something on which to concentrate. She rose quickly and moved the mix of shoes and pants blocking the door, unable to stay shut without a prop, and disappeared down the hallway. He heard her scuffle, fumbling for the unfamiliar light-switch and then in her bag, full of keys that she had recently decided to group by home and work but no longer together, before she returned with a book, half-read and marked with a folded piece of paper that she did not recognize until she opened it from the edges to expose the printed things she had the best intentions of doing but found herself intentionally avoiding.

I just started this story. I read the first part but no matter, she said as she discarded her paper obligations to the side and crossed the room to the light, controlled by a gauge that she carefully increased to the lowest glow possible for her to see.

You will hurt your eyes with that light, he told her.

How do you think they got the way they are today, she smiled.

He would have to excuse, she warned, her poor Russian accent for the characters' names.

If it is anything like your Spanish, he joked, and she laughed though she did not always find it funny.

She settled on the side of the bed farthest from the light and began.

"There lives in Russia a certain honored professor..." she read and found herself closer to the book with each sentence. It was much darker on page than she had imagined. He was right about the eyes but she continued stubbornly fumbling for the sentences based on logic. "My name is linked to the concept of a man who is famous." She changed positions, first to her belly with the book in her face and then to her normal hunch but with a larger inwards incline in hopes the familiar shape would increase her eyesight. “But I am as austere and ugly as my name is celebrated and beautiful." She stopped to cough deeply a cough that had plagued her for days and at her own hands that continued to find lighters to begin the next cigarette that burned her raw throat. As a consequence she read with guttural monotony to keep the fits at bay but it only worked for a paragraph at most before she found herself choking from the inside out. This cannot go on much longer, she thought but she loved reading and even more to people. She persevered. “With regards to my physical health, I must note insomnia, from which I have been suffering as of late."

In disbelief she looked to him but his eyes were shut; she wondered what he was thinking. How could she have forgotten about the character's insomnia, having just read the pages days before? She continued to read to him the protagonist's struggle with insomnia and she thought what if he will now be haunted by this story rather than comforted? Hearing his current state articulated with what struck her as precision and bitterness, will he be able to dissociate how he had previously viewed his condition from the book's character, whose despondence cut into her being, not because the story was spectacular but because she let herself get lost in the situation as if it were her sleeplessly wincing as mosquitoes buzzed in her ear. This was a mistake and this light is impossible, she thought as she rose to increase it a shade more.

What happened? he asked.

This light. Did you hear what the story was saying? she asked him, a trifle excited.

I was sleeping, he told her as he readjusted in the bed with his eyes still closed. She was at first pleased that her idea had worked, but soon she found herself sorry that he had not shared in the coincidence.

She started again. "You are conscious of every moment and every second you are not normal when you fail to sleep at night." Her throat hurt, the voice slowly weakening with each page, but wanting him to rest, gauging sleep by his breaths, rhythmic and delicate, she persevered in monotony but was unable to escape the world and how strange it had been (is it funny?) for longer than she cared to remember and even when she did remember, it all seemed so many lives away and further assisted her feeling both connected and severed from her past and present and future.

"'Lime . . . cream . . . pistachio . . .' but it is not the same. I am as cold as ice and feel ashamed." She looked at him and set the book down next to the mattress before putting out the light and returning to the bed, careful on the old wooden floors that creaked like ones from her childhood.

She lay next to him, trying not to cough, not to breathe, and pulled the white sheet over her side.

Missive

Though like this city, it is falling apart in places. Just this weekend, I was walking through a neighborhood looking for a Korean massage when part of a building, a big concrete slab, fell just behind me, smashing to pieces on the sidewalk where I had passed not 2 seconds before and would have most surely resulted in my untimely death. I stood stunned as my friend laughed uncontrollably and I thought of time and death and luck and you saying once, though you probably don't recall, more people die in this city from flower pots falling on their heads than because of swine flu. I think you to be right.

Liam's policy

"Atlanta lost part of its future last night. We lost a friend," was said about Liam Rattray, who passed away Monday night after being hit by a drunk driver. He dedicated his life to making communities and food systems more sustainable and had just received a $50,000 grant for a renewable-energy project at Truly Living Well, an Atlanta community garden with organic fruits and vegetables.



Hearing that a person like Liam, a person so motivated and intelligent, a person who not only dreamt of change but became the change he wanted to see, was killed by drunk driving is disgustingly unfair.

In the face of this tragedy (a word I use sparingly) and loss of all he would have done for Atlanta, I ask that policy makers take a hard look at this city’s transportation, one in which the car rules and sidewalks are optional and pedestrians account for about one in eight automobile-related fatalities. To take a look at 331 lost lives from our State alone to alcohol impaired driving.

I want them to know that MARTA is the largest transit agency in the US that does not receive any operational funds from the state. In Governor Perdue's Fiscal Year 2011 budget, he asks for 300 million dollars in General Obligation Bonds to fund transportation projects across the state. While the list includes numerous road projects and port improvements, rail enhancements are conspicuously absent.

Then I want them to know that a more extensive public transportation system, one in which MARTA moves beyond the cardinal directions, is widely accessible, and stays open later, and one where bus routes increase rather than disappear, could help.

According to a 2009 study from Cornell, each additional hour of late night public transportation reduces fatal accidents involving intoxicated drivers by 70%.

I ask you, Atlanta, to do something about this. I ask you, reader, to try to help too.

I will be working with Carly Queen to pressure policy makers to offer safer, more sustainable alternatives to drunk driving because it does not seem right to just stand by and say, what a shame. Liam would have done something and I always admired him for that.

Please visit the Facebook page for Liam and Remembering Liam, a site dedicated to his memory and works, and a site that we all hope "will transform into a living and breathing community dedicated to the ideals, priorities, and plans seeded by the late Liam Rattray." I also hope that in Liam's honor a number of campaigns grow, no matter if it is for sustainability or against drunk driving, because it will take everyone's effort to fill just one man's shoes.

Abrazos gratis

The past three months I have been involved in an epic war of good versus evil, right versus wrong, Mary versus Apple. Having just fought and lost the battle of Reforma 222 the previous day, I schlepped back to the site of my defeat for round two, armed with a CS code and belly full of tasty treat to encourage patience with the same Mexican tech support solider that I had but 24 hours prior verbally assaulted to no avail.

The battle continues to wage but I have faith it will one day end in my favor. At least it better.

I exited the three towered mall onto Reforma and into the street crowd of shoppers, suits and cyclists. Back to Insurgentes Metro for me with no detours, no stops, no mercy. But just before I reached the turn at Calle Génova I noticed the Cultural fair tents were open even though it was 7 p.m. on a Monday. Odd. I had biked over on Sunday at 2 p.m., the height of the Mexican lunch hour, to find the tents closed. I was hungry but no pay de queso or barbecue for me, I had thought. Not that the particular food mattered. I just liked the idea of treating Reforma, one of the biggest avenues in D.F., like your neighbor's backyard with the grill fired up spewing a charred smell from the burned black bits of marinated meat that inevitability fall between the grate and a stranger that looks like your great aunt offering you exotically named deserts or pasta salad (though no lettuce is ever involved) swimming in mayonnaise paste and does anyone need anything from the store? cause I have Jim on the phone and actually, could you tell him to bring some coleslaw if he could because we just ran out and the kids are fussing for more slaw dogs.

But the event lost its luster without the sun on my back and my bike at my will and my friends by my side. So back to the metro, I guessed. But I wanted, always want, a mental piece, a permanent photo map, of the avenue: its art and people and vendors hustling about the road that I am sure I do not go to nearly enough. People lingered around tents and crosswalks and as the light dimmed I should have turned back but was met by a 20-something-year-old-artistic-type-guy holding cardboard with sharpie scratchings that read: "Abrazos gratis" or "Free hugs." This is not the first time that I have seen such a sign but for one reason or another my heart swam through ice that melted when a woman from the crosswalk went shamelessly into his embrace.

Watching him, asking for nothing but, instead, offering kindness to strangers, a spot of happiness in all the dirty, disheartening events that may or may not be your day, well, it got me.

I wanted to tell him. I wanted a hug. But I turned away and walked pensively past the perpetual crowd on Calle Génova and towards Insurgentes metro.

I thought about how I had judged an author but a month ago for a similar act. He had told the story, given the background, done all the research but when the time came for him to act, he gave up halfway through. I had scoffed as I set the book down thinking, what is the point of telling this story with that kind of ending?

Good question.

Metro steps

Little is reliable in Mexico. Actually, scratch that. Loads of things are reliably unreliable, such as anything and everything relating to time, safety of food (whether served from the street, one with many lanes, on plastic that resembles a frisbee more than a plate or from a purportedly fancy restaurant that makes your mother sick when she orders a salad) and prices of anything from a taxi to a steak on a laminated menu with a picture of a steak and 120 pesos written adjacent in comic sans. But in a world of such obscurity and bargaining and dependence on independence I found a constant. It happens in the morning.

It happens when I descend the steps of metro Patriotismo. A man and a woman sit to the far left. She rests on the penultimate step just above the middle platform, where you can see the trains coming and going before your final descent down longer steps, most of them under a "No Pase" sign that no one acknowledges. He, on the other hand, sits one, maybe two, steps above her. They are average looking people, one with a mustache and the other with a mullet. They do not embrace. They do not appear to talk. They look at the metros, coming and going every minute or so to collect more sleepy-eyed commuters and leave a few behind.


I do not know who they are or why they sit at the metro above the trains or if they are lovers or if they are lovers but behind the backs of another. I do not know if they are good people or what would make them good or bad people in my eyes but I can rely on them between 7:44 a.m. and 7:52 a.m., Monday through Friday.

Be a doll and pass the sherbet and painkillers

I cried during the removal of my left-sided wisdom teeth (which side do you want?, he asked me and I said, surprise me, and he repeated the question) not because it hurt but because I imagined the spinnings and splashings and scratchings against my tooth. My eyes, big, betrayed my horror. I tried a pretty thought but thought about what my face should feel if it could.

Majo. Tell her she is going to here a crack, the dentist said in Spanish.
You are going to hear a crack, she told me.
I closed my eyes to avoid the two pairs of arms and hands, one set holding my jaw and the other pulling and breaking and pushing and saying, damn I hurt my finger!, and stopping to check his finger, yes it is fine, and discarding dentin and enamel on soon-to-be-red-imbued-gauze atop a stainless steel tray.

Take them as a souvenir, Majo said to me.

I did. They were in my pocket at the farmacy across the street, the one I frequent, and tried explaining but had to clamp my teeth together on cotton (for at least 30 minutes, Mary). They filled my prescriptions. I took the painkillers before I left the store.

And then I watched and watched and painted too but watched because between the pain and the numbness and occasional nausea I could not do anything but watch. I watched pirated cult classics and television shows from my past.

And I have to go back and do it again.
I can handle the thought of it for one reason: I loved the recovery.

It kind of made me feel like I had been person 12 in a 15 pit bar brawl, where broken chair and pool cue pieces were used as weapons. And I did it alone. Not the bar fight. That took 15 to tango. But the recovery was mine and that is good.