Write It Down

     Writing "it" down fixes it in your memory. Writing does hove towards permanency,,,no?


      While walking to the hotel the other early dark morning I wandered through the "rides" set up for the yearly carnival-fair in Tenancingo. The entire center of town is devoted to this event,,,,as La Guera once said, "Just peanuts and cotton candy". I was alone winding my way through this maze of  brightly colored machines looming out of the darkness like distorted realities. Garbage was witness to last night's orgy of rockets, gluttony, and rides. Fiberglass cutsie dinosaurs dumbly stared at me. On the side of a caterpillar ride there were oversize cartooned faces of stars. Avatars of Shakira, Thalia, and Julio Iglesias were captured like latter day grotesque gargoyles. I noticed that the rivets that held the thin metal panels mottled their faces like pimples. The Disney caricatures fared better in their likenesses. No one has to interpret the face of Pluto or Mickey. The work is already done. It is no wonder directors have chosen the night time carnival setting for so many horror movies. The prescence of these oversized distortions so changed my usual path through the zocalo that I became lost. I could hear a man clearing his throat and spitting up a red bank oyster in the distance. Somehow this disgusting human action was a comfort. It was the same route I take each morning, but different dream-like,,everything out of place. Then I heard the steps of someone behind me,,just a scuffle at first and then the definition of someone walking at a faster pace than me.  Suddenly I was breathing more quickly. I am a teenager again covered in pimples, awash in self doubt waiting for Freddy Kruger and the piercing cold steel fingers. The person in a hurry passed me and so too with him sucked the doom from the moment.
      
     You know I try to find something beautiful about every person I meet. Call me naive,,it's true I am naive and many times naivete molests my life. It seems the cautious ones are placed less frequently in harm's way. But I have never wanted to evaluate every word from every single individual as if all conversation were no more than hidden agendas. 
     Human beauty is something taught. We seem to have an innate sense of appreciation for nature but for humans we often turn to a media for help. Icons of beauty abound. I have always found beauty in the far corners,,, in the people who have been rejected by the media. This is for you all you fattasses, and people whose faces are not in harmony with the iconic image. This, perhaps naive approach to the concept of beauty has also spawned in me a sense of recognition for the grotesque in the arts. The paintings of Soutine, Francis Bacon, and Otto Dix somehow move me more than those of Van Gogh. The grotesque is closer to tragic drama, closer to the true contradictory nature of the human soul,, which weilds great power to transport a person's soul more than other forms of creation. Eugene O'neil's Long Days Journey Into Night moves me more than Neil Simon's The Odd Couple.
     There is so much for which to be thankful. What a cliche but it holds some truth. To be repulsed or put off by someone different from the "standard",, or another culture,, another approach to life cheats the viewer. Real emotion is often found in the shadows.The other day I was standing in front of my wife's business and this older extremely skinny lady in her apron and braids unsteadily walked up to me and asked if I wanted to buy her bag of limones reales for cinco pesos. Her mouth was totally deformed from bad distorted teeth, her face wizened, a road map of her defeats. I have seen her walking all over town with her bags of lemons and she probably considers it a good day when in the evening she has 30 pesos. My wife bought the bag and gave her 50 pesos. This is the moment when my measly complaints seem like chicken shit. Mexico is great for this kind of situation. Can't take yourself too seriously unless you live in an ivory tower and travel by helicopter.


















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