the weekly mango? weakly? weally? or: the words of the prophets are written when the engine stalls

alright it's been a while. i'm not even sure i'm ready to write right now, even though i would like to commit to a more regular writing schedule. i guess i'm just figuring out where to put all of my thoughts. do they go here? do they go in my journal, that sits by my bed and allows me to record my dreams when i wake up? should i just be scribbling little notes in my miniature notepads throughout the day? sending detailed emails to friends and relations? all of the above!?

hm. i cleaned a pila the other day. never done that before. it's a tub of water next to a cement sink. people keep fish in them to eat mosquito larvae that would otherwise form in the water. two of the three fish died so after consulting with M, i decided to drain the filthy water and scrub the tub. it was gross, but not very. i mean, there are much filthier jobs in this world. the worst part was crawling underneath the cement basin where there is a 3x3x3-foot area that the fish usually hide out in. i just smelled like fish poo for a while after that, then took a shower. no big deal. the third fish stayed in a bucket while i cleaned and refilled the pila and went right back in when everything was finished. he/she is happily swimming in clear water now, with little bits of oats thrown in each day to satisfy fish hunger.

i also recently put no fewer than 5 tire patches on no fewer than 3 wheels of no fewer than 2 bikes. actually, those numbers are exact. now S and i have bikes again.

hurricane jimena (sp?) is passing by now. it's calm at the moment but it rained all day yesterday and this morning. it'll head north before it hits land though, probably fucking up a lot of people's vacations on baja california in spots like cabo san lucas. otherwise, the ocean will swell and the wind will blow and the clouds will drift on by.... maybe i'll have more exciting stuff to tell when the dark weather passes.

i suppose the appropriate tangential segue here is that today is the four-year anniversary of my trip to cuba to study abroad. i went with a dear friend and he and i are still buds to this day. the ultimate connection to this nerve is that he and i went jogging through a hurricane, rita, i believe, when it was a mere category 3, throwing all kinds of debris through the streets of havana. days were golden, my friends.

in conclusion, my summer vacation was the best ever, and i hope everyone who wants to gets the chance to run through the cuban capital during a category 3 hurricane. k bye!

boo. this post sucked! who is this guy, anyway?

along comes mister oysterhead, or: found in translation

my main chore yesterday was cleaning the house in anticipation of company. my friend from home, S, will be joining me for work & play over the next 3 & 1/2 weeks. i'm excited to have some human interaction around the house on a more regular basis. i mean, it's cool talking to a cat, but most responses end up like 'mrreow?' i know this could mean lots of things, bu i think it usually translates to, "yo, hook a sister up with some kibble, or what you oddly refer to as 'mushy num-nums.' " and at least once a day it means, "lemme inside, dude! i am preparing to sleep in the computer room for the next 10 hours. also, more kibble! and don't you dare skimp on the bits that look like little fishies!"



Mrreow?



as you can see, i could use some more healthy human interaction in my diet.



so after i cleaned up for a while and set up a room for S, i decided to ride to the beach. as soon as i get there this dude yells 'oye!' and waves me over to him and his group. when he waves he does that sort of mexican wave, which looks like he's airing out his armpits, as opposed to the american wave that i'm used to which has more of an allure of old school fisticuffs, Notre Dame Fighting Irish style. Wait, isn't "Notre Dame" "Our Lady" in French?



Mrreow?



with all of these cosmic reverse hand gesture shenanigans going about, it's a good thing we didn't try to hi-five, otherwise i fear we would've slapped each other on the knee caps.

anyway, what he and his buddies are up to is just chillin drinkin tequila and getting ready to scarf down some big oysters, or some other such creature that has an inverse relationship between its tender insides and rock hard outer body. like a forlorn bodybuilder. so naturally, after i said yes to the tequila offer, i figured i had to say yes to the oyster offer. in my travels, i've found it very rude to refuse an offer of a communal dish in other neighborhoods.

that said, i think i'll continue to let oysters to continue to do their own thing, which, from what i can tell, does not involve voluntarily jumping down my throat like a sandy squish ball of... mushy num-nums?



Mrreow?





I thanked the boys for sharing and as my oyster-loving friend started kicking The Cranberries' Dreams out of his car speakers, i knew it was time to jump into the ocean. so i hummed the lines to the song as i made my way to the waves and dove in. the waves were rolling and pleasant, so i let them wash me ashore and beach me like a whale. when i opened my eyes i saw two dogs barking around me, ostensibly warning somebody else that timmy had fallen down the well. but i got up and thanked them for their concern and they trotted off to go sniff something in the sand, ah! the sand! so beautiful it is, peppered with little flecks of gold. be they real gold or just pyrite matters not to me (though i assume the latter since no one is rushing this place like '49...1849, that is) - what i like is the aesthetic possibility of a gilded beach, and therefore, gilded sandcastles. i decided then to build a castle, since i wasn't dead, like the dogs had assumed, and was feeling rather alive instead.
so i gave my castle the obligatory flags (read: broken sticks and weird green beanpod), built up some walls, even placed a little plastic blue turtle i had found on the front of the castle to guard the place, and i sat. i sat and i waited for its utter destruction. i had also written in the sand with a stick: WORLD, THIS IS MY CASTLE, with an arrow pointing from the word castle to the actual castle-object for clarification.

while the first big wave immediately erased this declaration, along with the castle's main breakwall, a woman in her 30s, thin, dark hair, rolled up in a golf cart that was tricked out as a mobile ice cream dispensin shoppe.

she smiled at me and my castle and i said triumphantly, "behold! eso es mi castillo! mira: tengo banderas. y aqui, hay una tortuga quien lo cuida quando no estoy aqui."

she laughed and asked, "y el agua lo va a destruir?"

"si," i replied, "como todos."



Mrreow?

"i'm gonna get you with my DEATHBAG!"

Well, so much for the daily entry. I tried, believe me, I tried. But I ran into some technical dificulties that set me back a few days, then I just didn't feel like it. Besides, at the moment, I don't feel I have anything terribly interesting to report. Daily activities: feeding the cat, eating mangoes, going to the beach, figuring out what to eat for dinner, wahing the dishes, and so on and so forth, not necessarily ad nauseum, but ad infinitum, at least. At least to infinty? There's an odd statement.
One of the locals and I have been chatting a lot recently. I'll call him M. M tells me stories of local history and asks questions about the ol' US of A. We have good talks. We also trade mangoes for starfruit, yogurt recipes for limes & oranges, etc. I'm not sure what to offer up for his wife's chiles rellenos recipe. They probably don't need the cool shells I found at the beach today. Hm. Well, I'll keep those anyhow. One of them looks like a butterfly. The other could be put on a necklace.
Yesterday, M asked me about my tattoos, specifically about the little house I used to live in, which is sketched onto my inner thigh, just above my knee. I told him it's something of a tribute for a friend who passed away. He was sad to hear about it, but today I told him that the day before, I hadn't realized that that very day was the one-year anniversary of my friend's passing. M got a a kick out of this. He said that my friend was making sure that I remembered him on that day. As he said this he smiled and pointed to the heavens above. I laughed and told him he was probably right. I love how so many Mexicans Catholics appear far more strict in their beliefs than, say, the North American Catholics I know, yet they have a much more jovial approach to death. Perhaps this last example isn't the best illustration, but I can sense an underlying wave here, one that ripples out, year-round from the great fiesta-splash of the Day & Night of the Dead celebrations. It seems to say, "death ain't so bad, if you've lived a good life." As far as I'm concerned, the Chosen One lived a great life, with great friends, as tragically short as that life may have been.
There is still, of course, plenty to be written about my friend. Suffice it to say, that now, one year later, I still miss him, but the initial gutwrench has subsided a bit, and I can begin to recall my memories of him, to put them into words, without feeling like complete shit.

Though the hole still burns, may the ember always glow.




***AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT***
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I suppose a recent newsworthy adventure was an afternoon spent spearfishing. I had never been spearfishing until this past Saturday. I don't even fish with a fishing pole at a fishing hole back home, and I live next to a river and lake! The locals and I agree this is strange, and I couldn't quite put my finger on the reason I don't fish, but then today it struck me. I remembered that the waterways around my home are heavily polluted. That's why.
So anyway, I went to the beach expecting to play futbol, but instead was invited to go fishing. A friend lent me a mask & snorkel, he grabbed his three pronged spear, his hawaiana, we waded through some waves, then swam out to meet his friends. They were already busy fishing out by the coral and the purple rocks that jut out of the water and give the adjacent beach its name: playa mora.
When we got to our rendezvous point, the other two boys said they had two fish already speared down below in the coral. When I looked under, I could see their spears, about 6 feet long, each leading into a small crevice. They had trapped the fish in there and were now trying to pull them out. They dove down about 12 feet and stabbed a few times to make sure they had their targets, then went down a few more times with hooks on fishing line to pull them out. The boys asked my friend to give it a shot and he went down a few times to try and grab the fish out but it wasn't happening. He's a hefty dude, but surprisingly graceful underwater. Like a whale. He's also a good goalie...like a wall?
Anyway, the boys finally grabbed the fish out the holes and brought them up. They were called botas, I think, and can fit comfortably in both hands. I didn't actually spear any fish myself, but I held the bag o' fish for a while so I got to check them out. These fish were pretty dark, but there were others that were quite colorful. Just think 'tropical' and see what pops into your head. There were blowfish, trumpetfish (like old-school-medieval-hear-ye-hear-ye-style trumpets, i.e. long, not compact like armstrong's or davis's), rockfish (yes they look like local rocks, & coral), fish that looked like larger tetras, and flat dark blue fish with light blue highlights. We ran into a school of silvery-white fish that I can't name. Also, as we went along, we picked up caracoles, the conch shells, which have all manner of crusty and slippery business growing on them. I guess you can boil these to get the meat out. When we got back, the boys set the conch aside and got to slicing up the bounty they had wrested from the bosom of the Pacific that afternoon. It was a bloody, smelly affair. Very interesting to see because, as mentioned before, I never fish. Not that I wouldn't like to start at some point soon.


It's my fishing pole
my fishing pole
I don't know

My fishing hole
my fishing hole
I don't know

-WTD



(rip, rrs, 189)

today has been a good day

TODAY has been very pleasant, overall. my scalp has not fallen off, nor do i think it will anytime soon. keeping ice on the burn wound for about 10 hours really helped a lot. plus there are only a few wasps buzzing around now.
i awoke this morning as the sun was on its way, with negrita meowing at my door, as usual. in spanish it's written, "miau." she's a tri-lingual cat. i let her inside so she could sleep the day away after i gave her some food. i actually asked her if she wanted some "mushy num nums." i think i meant "food." yeah, i'll admit it. i say weird things to cats and dogs. don't you?
anyway, i caught two more hours of sleep and got up just in time to pick up my milk from martín and then go to the tortilleria before they closed for the day. i bought a 1/4 kilo of corn tortillas and ate them all today. some of them i dipped in honey. others i ate with potatoes, eggs, peppers, cheese, and onions. the rest soaked up the rest of my salad dressing. i think i ate pretty well today.
i picked up the milk this morning with the intention of making more yogurt. homemade yogurt is relatively quick and simple to produce. the whole thing actually takes about 8 and 1/2 hours, but you only have to pay attention to it the first 1/2 hour. the rest is a waiting game. so while i was waiting, i went to the beach and bodysurfed for a while. then i drank a coconut, at the meat inside, and sipped a corona as i read chapters 4 & 5 of Slaughter-House Five, by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. So far it's a good read. I like most of his stuff. I know, it's a thin critique of his work. Whatever, I'm not in a critical mood.
I also started weeding around the aloe plants today. There are quite a few of them buried amongst weeds and fallen mangos [sic]. That 'e' in mangoes always seems to overdo it. More and more every time I see it in there.
Anyway, the yogurt is almost done. So i'm going to go check on that and then read some more Vonnegut. This blog will get more interesting, I promise. For instance: stay tuned for Homemade Yogurt Recipe!!! Awesome! Home Star Goe! So it mangoes.

a cautionary tale

to answer the question i posed last post, one the mighty boosh might refer to as a "juicy dangler," i am in méxico ostensibly as a wwoofer. wwoof is a wonderful organization that allows interested parties to travel the world, volunteering at various organic farms, each with their own story, projects, mission, etc. (check it out at http://www.wwoof.org)
in the fall of 2007, after a cross-country trip of the US with a dear friend who, for legal purposes, i'll refer to as... catfish-face jenny, i took a bus from LA to the state of michoacan, where i stayed 2 weeks at one farm, then over to morelos for 4 weeks at another, and finally back towards the pacific coast to a small town in jalisco. things went well during my 2 week stay at this last farm and the dueña, DD, gave me an open invitation to return some future summer, when she would take her annual trip to visit her mother. so, 2 years later, i accepted the offer and agreed to look after her farm for about 5 weeks. this blog is intended to keep friends and family and the random passerby updated on the happenings of this journey, as well as any subsequent life activities i might continue to write about.
anyway, there are all sorts of fun things that come up around here. daily tasks, like watering new papaya trees, feeding the cat, negrita, and the fish... i haven't named them yet, but they are three in number. always good for naming. the daily tasks usually pass without incident. but recently i noticed something that had become a growing problem over the past couple of days. that problem, lads and lasses, is wasps. white, anglo-saxon, pro-- nah i'm kidding. the insect, of course. they were amassing in larger and larger quantities and beginning to build nest under the rafters above the patio dining table. now i'm not generally violent towards animals. i don't take pleasure in it and frown upon it when others do it. like this: meeuuuh, big frowny face. but i was told that a simple way to get rid of stinging pests that congregate in one key area is to throw boiling water at the desired target and voilá, they're gone. the keen reader will already see where this is going. fast-forward to me, with a pot of extremely hot water in my gloved hands, wearing nothing else but shorts and flip-flops, standing on a plastic chair and 1,2,3, hurling the water at the ceiling. yup, i'm an idiot. the water nailed the so-called 'desired target,' but also splashed off a rafter, rebounding back and falling squarely upon my head, one of many, 'undesired targets.'
needless to say, but i'll say it anyway, i went running around screaming like a lunatic and feeling my scalp to see if it was in fact, still attached. luckily, it was, and still is, but i've had to spend the day with as many different forms of icy coldness as i could find. 12 hours after the fact, i can look back and laugh.. or at least smile and shake my head as i write this down. apparently, you can also just throw some soap on the hive and that will work too. jeez.
anyway, as long as my head doesn't blister apart during the night, i'll be back tomorrow. even if my skull did dissolve into mush, i might want to keep things a little more upbeat, given my original decree of avoiding lameness, hypochondria, etc. however, i am pretty sure that this really happened, and that i am still wearing ice in my hat for a real reason.
i ask not for your sympathy - only for your attention. consider this merely some friendly advice, summed up thusly: don't try to juggle boiling water. 'tis foole-ish.

as the title would suggest...

IN HONOR of the inception of the daily mango, and at the behest of my appetite and curiosity, i went out into the backyard today carrying a plastic bucket and a 10-foot pole with a net attached to one end. i strolled around and surveyed the trees, and then proceeded to harvest 8 or 9 healthy-looking mangos, all at different stages of maturation, but none that were still stuck solely in that early green/lavender stage. right now they are all sitting covered in the bucket. tomorrow i'll select a few to have out for imminent eating pleasure, while the rest will go into the fridge. during my little harvest, i noticed a bunch of other creatures that dig a mango. fruit flies are an obvious notable mention. there were also these big black/orange beetles with sizeable antennae and little black pincers for chomping. there were also some sort of larvae or baby worms traveling in packs, squirmin along. butterflies are surprisingly fond of the mango as well. but only certain kinds. medium sized butterflies with swirling treebark-like patterns were all up in there, proboscis unfurled, mellow groovin for certain. the other main group of butterflies, the lemon-chiffon, pastel yellow type, are a little smaller, and they tend to stick with the pink obelisko (sp) flowers. i had these confused with hibiscus flowers for a while. did you know you can make tea out of hibiscus, otherwise known as flor de jamaica (ha-mike-ah)? mhm. it's true. and delicious. tastes kind of like cranberry juice. some folks add sugar. down here in méxico, if you find it at somebody's restaurant, they usually load it with sugar to offset the tart, not to mention to please the insatiable sweet tooth. oh man, twisted metal!? ahem, anyway... i usually just use honey instead of sugar or aspartame, and add some fresh lemon juice, maybe a few mint leaves. perhaps i'll sun-brew up some after sun-up mañana. then after that, perhaps i'll explain a little bit more about what i'm doing down here in méxico in the first place. buenas noches.

bang. no, bigger: BANG!

SO, here our story begins, or continues rather, in medias res, after 24 years, 1 month, 18 days, and 3 hours of life before blogging. as far as a blog and its contents are concerned, however, nothing exists before, nor need anything exist after. but how unfair 'tis to create a web log, with every intention of furthering a productive human dialogue, only to post a handful of drab non-events and rumblings of creeping hypochondria. such was my discovery while attempting to choose a nifty, distinct URL for this page: that we can appear very bored and boring at times. well i say nuts to that! boredom is a euphemism for lazy, unimpassioned, indecisive.
henceforth, i do so declare that if i ever stop writing this blog for an extended period, AND furthermore, if the content found herein should elicit hardly a spark of neural activity, i will eliminate the page and all of its postings.
in the meantime, however, i will write frequent updates of my life and times, allowing other literate creatures to stay abreast of said activities and interact as they see fit. otherwise and at least, this is a digital backup brain of sorts, just in case i get bonked on the noggin and forget what i've thinking about for these past 24 odd [sic] years.