Dispatches from The Mayan Empire

"Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone."  - Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House + + +  It occurs to me that I have written extensively about the squat Tessa and I called home our first few weeks in Mexico. Despite its difficulties such a lack of shower, sleeping on essentially a cement floor, the lack of insulation, or windows that weren't just particle board haphazardly nailed to the window frames, the rodent issue (which Tessa dealt with in her typical brutally efficient manner quickly, she even left one of the rats dead and disemboweled in front of the hole the were entering through) or the frequently used Crack Shack in what would have been our backyard.  [[ "La Cabane à Crack", French makes it sound so much more respectable. ]] Despite all of those problems ...

"As if you were dismayed. Be cheerful, sir. Our revels now are ended. These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits and Are melted into air, into thin air." - Prospero, The Tempest (Act IV, Scene I)  + + + A young man with a thick Midwestern accent is smoking pot, crack, and who knows what other things, in the Crack Shack behind my squat at Carlito's Cafe. He is speaking loudly, via speakerphone, with his girlfriend who is somewhere cold and complaining, no shit, about how the tractor is broke and Old Man Rogers (again, no shit, she actually called her neighbor that) needs help and her daddy is just working himself to death. [[The first and last bit of art on the walls of Carlito's Cafe during my stay there.]] I wonder if this wholesome young white guys (I peeked, there is a hole at the top of my wall adjacent to the Crack Shack where an AC unit used to live) paramour knows he is in a back alley in Mexico smoking crack next to a strip ...

“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...

"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,...