Dispatches from The Mayan Empire

"When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? Perhaps to be too practical is madness. To surrender dreams — this may be madness. Too much sanity may be madness — and maddest of all: to see life as it is, and not as it should be!" - Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote  + + + I have been absent from this blog for a good long time now. Other things have occupied my time. My novel, basic survival, crippling depression, agonizing pain and the desperate search for some relief from it, and surely more than that. Do not think I have forgotten you, my dozens of readers. Oh no. Not a day goes by that I don't think upon this little collection of personal history and attempts at witty observations. There just never seems anything to say. Not worth putting down anyway. But here I am. Once again attempting to give my audience something to chew on while I myself go over what I write again and again hoping I'm not embarrassing myself any further....

“This original version of Coca-Cola contained a small amount of coca extract and therefore a trace of cocaine. (It was eliminated early in the twentieth century, though other extracts derived from coca leaves remain part of the drink to this day.) Its creation was not the accidental concoction of an amateur experimenting in his garden, but the deliberate and painstaking culmination of months of work by an experienced maker of quack remedies.” - Tom Standage, A History of the World in 6 Glasses + + + Today I saw a man sell cocaine in tiny bags from a bicycle. He has been around the block you might say. I've seen him with the other street level cartel dealers, the same ones who occasionally keep me awake by blasting their music from the shit car they sit in on cold nights. Not nearly as nice as the vehicles that deliver them their products and collect the cartels cut of the money, no sir, not at all that nice. Its a shit car, with a great sound system, and if they we...

"Tourists came around and looked into our tipis. That those were the homes we choose to live in didn`t bother them at all. They untied the door, opened the flap, and barged right in, touching our things, poking through our bedrolls, inspecting everything. It boggles my mind that tourists feel they have the god-given right to intrude everywhere." - Russell Means, Where White Men Fear to Tread: The Autobiography of Russell Means + + + I saw an old stray dog today on the corner. He was the spitting image of 'Dogmeat' from 'The Road Warrior', an Australian cattle dog. He had mismatched eyes, one was almost pure white save for the iris, that gave him the look of an unwashed, coked-out, canine David Bowie. I called to him in both English and Spanish, but all he did was spare a bit of a sideways glance as he trotted off to wherever he was heading. That dog is still more polite than most of the tourists that visit this city. At least the on...

"I dropped him off at a truck stop near Chester about two nights ago, said he planned on sleeping there. He told me 'All a man needs to sleep is a bench to lie on and a cold one to nurse him to bed.' I said it might be a little dangerous alone, but he said he was carrying his butterfly knife and had just got his green belt in Tae Kwan Do." - Rob Earle, Truck driver describing Former Vice President Joe Biden hitchhiking to the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, NC (Source: The Onion) + + +  It occurs to me that several of my posts have mentioned my somewhat unorthodox living situation here in Nuevo Progresso, but there has been little in the way of detail on the day-to-day practicality of living in the remains of a very nearly abandoned taqueria. A few of you, my tens of dozens of readers have had questions about our (Tessa, my beloved feline companion on this and many other adventures, and myself) living in a situation such as it is. [[The fi...

"There is a curse upon my every waking breath, and I cannot escape the darkness. It feels like every step is gonna be my last, and I cannot escape the darkness. Some have tried to lift me up, but I only dragged them down with me, for I cannot escape the darkness." - Those Poor Bastards, I Cannot Escape the Darkness + + + Caution: Pretentious melancholy writing ahead, but fuck, you should have expected that at some point. I'm a poor writer living in a country where you can get cheap booze and drugs more easily than you can get a permit to drive a car from another country. + + +  "Have you ever heard of exorcism? It's a stylized ritual in which rabbis or priests try to drive out the so-called invading spirit. It's pretty much discarded these days, except by the Catholics who keep it in the closet as a sort of embarrassment. It has worked, in fact, although not for the reason they think, of course. It was purely the force of sugge...

 "Great minds think alike. So do drunken carnies with corn dog sticks and the chance to shank you." - Frankerson Peterson + + + It truly amazes me the bizarre circles life moves in. Well, it is not really a circle, despite what the first season of 'True Detective' keeps telling me. Its more of a realistic orbital pathway, elliptical. You move away from things in a sort of arc, for better or worse, and then just as you realize life is changing you find yourself on the other side of whatever you are orbiting and heading round the long way again. So more of an eccentric orbit. [[Ah, home sweet home. Here there is only one way to do things, Carlito's Way.]] Hey, fuck you, I'm sick and even at my best I'm not Sir Isaac Newton. Orbital/gravitational mechanics were never my strong suit, I have always been much, much better at getting into the pants of girls who are excellent at orbital mechanics. There is nothing better in this world than a s...

"Did they look like psychos? Is that what they looked like? They were vampires. Psychos do not explode when sunlight hits them, I don't give a fuck how crazy they are!" - Seth Gecko, From Dusk till Dawn + + + Today I had a hastily scheduled audition at a vampire-themed strip club in Mexico. It is not, so far as I can tell, the upper level of an ancient Aztec temple. Nor is it teeming with bloodthisty undead. So far it seems to be teeming with money-thirsty strippers, which is exactly what one would expect, nay, hope for in a place such as that.   [[Even vampire strippers get into the holiday spirit! The ladies are very festive.]]  The audition consisted of the owner, a takes-exactly-zero-shit-and-gives-just-as-many-fucks woman who could easily pass as Santanico Pandemonium (though she is currently pregnant with her fourth child, you simply can not tell it isn't her first) telling me to go set up in the DJ booth once she arrived. Her husband,...

"If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross, but it's not for the timid." - Q, Star Trek: TNG (Ep: Q Who)  + + + After a little more than a week of living south of the border I can honestly say that this was indeed the right thing for me to do. While my financial situation has gone downhill much, much faster than anticipated due largely to getting fucked out of an apartment I had lined up in Quintana Roo and the seemingly endless frustrations of the bureaucracy of the Mexican immigration system. The language barrier has honestly been the least of my troubles. Its not that this is my first experience being on the razors edge of success and profound failure. [[If only I were an entire mariachi band, I'd be living like, well, a mariachi band.]] That being said I would not trade this particu...

"…The shocking thing about any stripper gathering, I discovered, was that you have never heard women talk so fast and so explicitly about money in all your life. They make the guys on the trading floor on Wall Street look like a bunch of pansies." - Susie Bright, Big Sex Little Death: A Memoir + + + It took me approximately four days to end up in a Mexican strip club. Keep in mind this was not at all my intention, I mean it, stop laughing. I had gone out to a local restaurant/bakery called Renee's for some of their divine pastries in anticipation of an evening figuring out how to get my car, laden with tons of shit as it is, from here to Rio Bravo and a proper bank branch. [[I confess that any poor choices made may... may have had something to do with this. The tequila, not the cat food.]] [[Seems legit.]] After leaving the bakery, with my nice leather satchel full of pastries, a gentleman accosted me offering me a free beer and a free lap da...