iSoul June 7, 2008
(photo by Gustavo Martinez)
iSoul
I want to be scrambled and encrypted
An HD pixel of a million being lifted.
I want to be ripped and burnt
And shared.
I just want to be spelled.
I want to be porn, I want to be leered
And unlike a post-orgasmic cache hastily being cleared
I want to be saved, I want to be stored,
I want to be clicked again on moments of bore.
I want a book where I’ll have a face
And you can read about my encoded little craze.
I want to go forward without reply
A little emoticon blushing so shy.
Oh god, do I want to be linked!
I want to be the server and the host
While being downloaded always the most
Your USB as a BFF
Where I can save what of life is left.
The FAQ of the inner you
The best of all the songs playing at its cue…
And yes, of course,
I want to be opened and browsed
To tantalize a mind always aroused.
But I have to admit that I want it all right here
In the rarity of the realm of real
Where my flesh might casually meet my reasoning with a beer.
Oh yes, I want it all here
Where the dust can dry my skin
And the wind may drift my mind clear
I want it all right here.
Ramon Alvarado
The power of curves…and lines. March 20, 2008
It’s the sign’s 50th birthday and the BBC talks about its history
Just a little something, more busking adventures tomorrow.
Nicelandia… March 13, 2008
*Photograph by dear friend Gustavo Martinez
Again, across the river, as a welcoming message, laid that smoggy hue. It was just there floating as if waving hello in slow motion, heavier than the power of the gentle breeze that felt too lazy to struggle with it.
I arrived to my area from the side street and discovered that a shop in the front, one of those predatory finance companies, had a PA system full blast with loud C music and an even louder DJ repeating over and over that they could get you out of debt…with a loan. So if I actually stood where I always do, at the left side of the main entrance to the museum, I would be straight across the speakers and would have had no voice by the end of the first song. I didn’t of course and opted to head towards the corner, probably one of the busiest corners in the whole 1.4.million people town. At first it was kind of difficult to hear myself but I then managed to modulate my voice and the guitar to get something out of it. I guess what usually helps me be louder just a hundred feet from there are the walls of the buildings facing me. At the corner my voice just goes everywhere without bouncing back.
I arranged mys guitar case with the essential anchor charm: a dollar bill and three coins holding it from flying out. The day was perfect and I played for a good hour, rested a little bit and then played a half more. As I have discussed in previous post, the mere fact of being there spraying my voice against the whole revolving chaos gives me sudden chuckles, outbursts of joy comparable to those expressed in a drunken state when surrounded by very good friends. I think its the nonsense of it all. I managed to gather a crowd that stayed for a whole song, that is always a pretty cool thing. It gave energy to continue playing after I had finished my first set. People even threw coins from cars which even though might be with the best of intentions it does not strike me as something I want hapening all the time.
Day 18
Wednesday
Amount of money made: $7.37
Time Played: 1h 25m
Exchange rate: 10.67 pesos/dollar
They don’t call it the Sun City for nothin’. February 11, 2008
This is just a little present for some of my friends and readers who are still somewhen (yes, I just made that up) in winter time, somewhere in winter land, while we Sun City dwellers have to annoyingly carry our jackets on our arms by noon. Whether it is good or bad, here’s a piece of home. I’ll start busking again this week, I have to admit that I am again somewhat nervous. Passports are now required and lines are said to be longer than usual. I am not taking my Goped across yet, I’ll assess the situation first and then decide upon the practicality of the matter. See you soon.
So you thought… February 9, 2008
So you thought I had made it big and forgotten all about the small time busking, right? Well, in case you don’t already know, I haven’t just yet and I haven’t forgotten about the busking thing either, how could I? Not long ago I told a painter friend of mine from Canada how the busking thing felt to me as if finally, after a long time, my soul was able to fit into that emotional suit it had been longing to fit into its entire life. I guess its not the busking thing in itself but rather the whole experience that has a certain element of Gipsyness and just playing out there brings my whole body to smile unexpectedly.
I know it has been a long time without a guitar but the past month has brought some good things. Two things specifically: A guitar of my own that arrived yesterday (I won’t say brands or anything like that because I frankly don’t care enough) and a Goped (a motorised standing scooter). So the busking thing just got a little easier. I have a case for the guitar and I can jump on that goped and head out full speed (20mph) towards the downtown crossing bridge. I’ll do that this coming week, so expect some more adventures being posted very very soon. Thanks for waiting!
We Had No Idea January 23, 2008
You must know that in addition to the trans-border bi-city complexity of this urban conglomerate we also have a separate little military city embedded within. It isn’t precisely located in what one could call the heart of the urban area but maybe in what might as well be the prostate of El Paso. The name of this military complex is Fort Bliss and according to the 2000 census it is home to something like 9,000 people. Now, the year 2000 is long gone and Fort Bliss is changing and growing really fast. It is said that the base is being prepared to receive as many as 40,000 people in the next 5 years. That being said without any particular commentary allow me to tell you a little anecdote that happened this weekend.
As I sat at work just staring at the mountain from afar waiting for a story to unfold a call came. It wasn’t for me but rather for the person with whom I share a tourist information booth, that happens to be inside Fort Bliss. The caller informed my working neighbor of something happening at one of the gates of the military complex, a protest of some sort. According to the caller it had to do with some anti war thing. Because I was so extremely busy giving out tourist information to soldiers that can’t even leave base, as soon as she informed me of such happening I grabbed my camera and said “I’ll be right back.” I started rapidly walking towards the indicated direction when I suddenly remembered that my bicycle had been parked at the bike rack for the past week and a half. So I walked back in the opposite direction, past by my booth again and towards the northern exit of the building. I grabbed my bike and started pedalling.
When I got to the indicated gate all I saw was a lot of military police vehicles and some sort of improvised barricade, I thought it was over but still decided to go a little further out of base. So I crossed the overpass that leads to base and when I was pedalling down I saw the protest: a group of 5 or 6 ladies and a teenager holding American flags and a bunch of banners surrounded by something like 20 bikers, all in full leather attire with more American flags counter-protesting the protesters. Some of the bikers were ridding annoyingly around the protesters drowning their voices with their exhaust. As I arrived nearer to the event, I parked my bicycle next to the cops safeguarding the whole ordeal. Three of the slogans written on the banners inevitably caught my attention. They said: “God is you enemy”, ”Pray for more dead soldiers” and, “God hates fag enablers.” From this I kind of deduced what the protesters were about, I’ve read about them and I know they had nothing to do with the antiwar movement, nevertheless I decided to let my inner journalist out and start asking questions. From the demographics of the event I decided that between extremely pissed off bikers, some weirdo haters and law enforcement officers my best bet for reliable, educated and updated information was an objective and knowledgeable cop. So I started with the questions, casually:
Me- “So…what is all this abut?”
Cop- “That’s what it is all about” He said pointing to the banners of the protesters.
Me- ”Yeah, yeah, but I mean, who are this people?”
Cop- “Liberals I guess…”
I guess I had tapped not just the wrong source of information but the I-don’t-care-about-anything-I-was-just-sent-here-and-all-I-know-is-that-liberals-suck source. So then I thought about my second best possible source: a biker lady with a cardboard sign.
Me- “So what is this all about?”
Biker lady-” They are protesting our troops.”
Me-” I understand, but who are they or how did you know that they were going to be here in order to mount your counter-protest?”
Biker Lady- “I don’t know, you should ask that guy over there…”
She pointed to a guy across the street who was holding an American flag, was dressed in leather, had the inevitable beard and was wearing a nice and friendly confederate army hat.
Me- “Hi, I was told that you could tell me what’s going on here, where are these people coming from?”
Biker dude- “They come from Fuckin’-Nuts-Land, Kansas”
Me-” Ooookay…And…uh… how did you know they were going to be here in order to counter-protest?”
Biker dude-” We have our ways…we have our ways.”
Me-”Oh, alright….well, thank you for your answers.”
I know I wasn’t being extremely objective here but I just didn’t feel like asking the actual protesters, it seemed to me that it all came to show you the amount of entropy that can permeate even such a small public gathering. I mean, I wonder who knew what was actually happening and what reasons if any existed for the happening. The protesters were protesting a funeral of a General that died in a motorcycle accident (whatever that has to do with homosexuals and how and what they enable just escapes my reasoning); the counter-protesters were protesting the fact that this group was protesting the troops and; the cops were just staring at the void like inanimate shields that only filtered the friction as a matter of some lunatic liberals rubbing against some hard-line patriots.
It kind of tells you how far is El Paso from anywhere. Far enough from Mexico to fear it, so outside of Texas that anybody running for office runs as a Democrat, further away from New Mexico than from Arizona defying geographical logic and just…well, you have no idea, and apparently neither do we.
Sorry about the no-busking thing…I swear it won’t be too long.
Subtleties January 16, 2008
Hundreds of people cross the border into El Paso every morning. There is a line at the bridge starting at 3am. The earliest birds are clearly crossing for labor, there is always a congregation right across the bridge where school buses pick up laborers to go to fields in the west edge of town or in new Mexico or construction sites in the far northeast and east of El Paso.
The later birds, the ones from 5 am to 8 am and even later are very often students that attend both the University of Texas at El Paso or any of the Community College’ campuses. These students are often citizens of the United States that live south of the border with their parents. Some rent flats because it is so much cheaper to live down there. But one of the interesting phenomena that arises with the transborder student and even with the El Paso’s regional student in general has to do with textbooks. I personally boycott textbooks in general, I don’t buy them or use them at all. It does take a toll I must say but it is a principle that I have kept for at least 4 semesters now. The reason I do this is because I regard the textbook industry with the same scorn as the pharmaceutical one, for taking advantage of the same people they are supposed to help and doing so in their most vulnerable of situations. So my choice is to boycott text books, but the majority’s choice in this region is to borrow them, take them across the border and xerox them for a fraction of the cost. This is sometimes even encouraged by sympathetic professors (fact which I admire, not because of the encouragement of the illegality but because they stand on the side of the student not the academic machine). So the interesting part is that if you ever get searched at the border for any particular reason and a xeroxed book is found on you they can confiscate it and you can be subject to fines, large ones too. It is specially during back to school season that this is enforced to a higher degree than normal, of course. So again, our dear border officials aren’t just there to prevent Saudi Arabian terrorist from passing as Mexicans though the border, they are also there to defend the principle of higher education at the highest cost in the western world. If you encounter long lines at the border during back to school season, don’t be annoyed, be thankful that all of those evil book smugglers are being targeted and our way of life safely kept.
Saludos
P.S. Picture taken by Gustavo Martinez from Fromex
It’s official. January 15, 2008
I didn’t have to wait, but was rather invited to a warm and casual get together…at the guitar owner’s apartment. It was a realy delightful evening, full of beautiful surprises and innovative conversations, in content and style. The invitees talked about all sorts of relevant issues like how ought cigars to be smoked, dwelling for a few minutes on the important matter of whether their smoke should be inhaled or just left there enveloping the gustatory receptors in the upper respiratory system. The nature of comedy, physical and oratory was emphasized throughout our enlivened tertulia in the living room but the height of the night, in many levels, was reached when the host and I climbed the emergency stairs in the back of the building to have a smoke. Here the host even told me, in the friendliest of manners, that she had saved a couple of guitar catalogs with some affordable guitars outlined by her for me. That really made me feel better about the whole deal, all I needed now was the money to buy one of those, as easy as that.
Anyway, while I get my act together (pun intended), I think we should refocus the content of this blog. I seem to have minimized the single most interesting element of the whole adventure: the border crossing. We live in a trans-border metroplex that hosts more than 2 million people and the dynamics of our lives are both extremely complex and extremely simple. We have a national media-based monologue, completely ill advised if you ask me, on the border and its security. Millions of dollars are being spent to upgrade, enhance, and tighten this ridiculous frontier and with the elections coming everybody is talking about how things should be over here, without any knowledge of how things really are. I am a fan of passports myself, I love the look on them and what they represent, I love to get them stamped and I use mine whenever I can to cross the border, but the reality is that even with the new laws taking place, a friend of mine just last week was able to cross the border with nothing but a check stub, another, just the same week, with just a Community College student ID. I like that, I have no problem with the idea that border officials are there not just to ridiculously obstaculize the entry of foreign travellers but mainly to facilitate entry to citizens. This frontier ideal of mine has even put me behind their little glass cells for hours more than a couple of times, once because of my lack of ID (even though the law until this past year allow me to state my citizenship orally and required nothing else) and a second time because of my accent. Yes, my accent. They didn’t buy my explanation: that I had learned my vocabulary from Big Bird and my enunciation from Antonio Banderas, because he was the hottest phonetic source around theat time. They said I was British and they had to question me.
This is just to show you part of the complexity of simple procedures here at the border and to refocus a little on the nature of crossing it as often as many people here do. Hopefully the busking will resume soon whether with a guitar or with a drum.
Saludos.
I rock, maybe. November 29, 2007
I don’t know about you, but to me a head-bang says a thousand words and it’s also worth a thousand coins. Today I got about two of them. You see, out in a passer-by style busking show, playing self-written folk tunes with an acoustic guitar, a series of head banging motions from an individual (s) within an otherwise totally unaknowledging transient crowd is very, very hard to come. So when I saw those two kids casually banging their heads it was a day of glory where I suddenly saw my leather hat turn gold and float above the sidewalk in a sort of lightness that can only be associated with the greatest of wealth. I couldn’t help but smile.
I also got a few air guitar motions which are also great, specially if they do them after they’ve walked pass you (because then you know they are not clownin’). The day might have aswell gone as it may have in terms of anything else, but it was those head-bangs that made it for me.
Day 6
Amount of money made: $7.76
Border crossing: .65c
Time played: 1h 50 min.
Actual gain: $7.11
Having someone in the streets rock to your very nerdy folky songs: absolutely priceless!
