Confessions of a Border Crosser

Postcards from the Dead

Sat, 2 Jul 2011 00:36:38 -0500

On Thursday, A and I went to watch Woody Allen’s latest Midnight in Paris. I can see how it has become his biggest box office hit in years. It touches upon that feeling that many of us feel: how wonderful it would be to live in another time. For the Woody Allen stand-in in this film, Owen Wilson, that time is Paris in the 1920’s, a city that seems to have lived best at night with its parties and bars filled with writers and painters and many expats drifting lost abroad.
It was funny hearing the audience —I was surprised to see the cine had a crowd, I’m not used to seeing so many people coming out to watch a Woody Allen film in the US—, the applauses and laughs when a major cultural character would pop up on the screen, look there’s Picasso! Hemingway! Stein! Dalí! Buñuel! Whereas in earlier films like Manhattan or Vicky Cristina Barcelona, the city —Manhattan, Barcelona— is the focal point, the establishing shots of the Manhattan skyline set to Gershwin, the shots of famous Barcelona landmarks —the city as postcard—here it is a particular time period. There are images of Paris of course, because sometimes his films sell really well a particular city (driving along the Hudson River parkway at night with the skyscrapers of midtown Manhattan to my side always made me feel like I was in Manhattan), primarily in an opening montage of the best sights of the city: there’s Seine, there’s the Pont Neuf, there’s Place de la Concorde, there’s the Eiffel Tower, there’s Sacre Couer, there’s Notre Dame, there’s the Louvre, etc. In this montage, and a few others throughout the film, Allen offers up the tourist postcards of a city that even if you have never been there, you already know.

Don’t get me wrong I like Paris a lot. But I was left wondering why Allen didn’t show the Centre Pompidou or the arch at Place de la Defense.

But again, aside from these postcards of the romantic Paris Allen offers up postcards of a specific time period. The characters who pop in and out of the scene are that, postcards from the dead, instead of establishing shots, establishing characters.

He is not the first to do this, of course, and what ultimately won me over about this movie was that he also made almost no attempts at telling the audience that these are Important People, living in an Important Time, unlike what happens in the film Frida, directed by Julie Taymor and starring Salma Hayek. There, in the recreation of the Mexico City intellectual scene of the 1930’s, the film fails even more than it does in other aspects. The characters —look there’s Trotsky! Look there’s André Breton! Look there’s David Alfaro Siquieros! Wait, why is Antonio Banderas playing Siqueiros?— all speak as if they know they are a part of History and given to grandiose declarations and larger than life emotions. They speak not to their peers, but to an audience, to posterity. It’s all very boring. And this is where Allen does well. His characters may have been aware of their own importance (Hemingway certainly does), but they are also people making a living in a city.

After watching Frida years ago I thought of my circle of friends and the times that we were living. Did we talk like that? Did we speak as if every one of our utterances was going to be painted in gold and set on a marble slab?
Fortunately we were more mundane than that. Back then only one of my friends had one a major literary award, another who would later win one of the most prestigious literary awards in Spanish and be compared with Vargas Llosa was a struggling writer living in a cheap flat in Madrid, with one of my friends who would go on to win a Pulitzer Prize I would wander around comic book shops with in New York City. With a group of friends, including a performance artist friend who won a MacArthur “Genius” Award I spent an evening wandering around the immigrant quarter of Barcelona. I remember going to a house party in Mexico City for a friend who had just received a Guggenheim. The party was filled with actors, writers and painters. Butt I don’t recall anyone acting out and making large statements. Rather, it was a gathering of friends hanging out and celebrating. We were a bunch of friends walking in New York, going out in Mexico City, drinking in bars and eating in restaurants in Madrid or in Barcelona.

This is what struck me about Midnight in Paris, the interactions of the characters as almost normal, though we may no longer view them in the light of history as that, normal people living in their time, doing things for their time.

The film also raises an interesting question. If you could go back to live in a prior time, what would it be and would you do it? I thought about it a while, tossed around the idea of Paris in the 1920’s or Mexico City in the ’30’s. But then I realized that no, I like the time in which I am living now.

My Year in Pics

Thu, 27 Jan 2011 13:13:11 -0600

After weeks of delay, I’ve begun to get organized about thinking about 2010. A difficult year. In the next couple of weeks I’ll be posting my usual fave albums from the past year list, a mix of songs, and now, a year in photos. The pics begin with a trip to Spain and end with a road trip to Mexicali. In between, photos from Spain, Morocco, Oman, Turkey, and drives across the US. There are others. Photos of loss, and communion. Photos of joy. Photos from 2010.
Here’s the link to the gallery:

Out of Our Minds

Thu, 2 Dec 2010 21:19:28 -0600

Sometimes stories begin this way; with a phone call.
LHC called me up one day in spring 2001. He needed to finish a novel and he needed to sell his car, a Nissan Tsuru (the Mexican version of the Sentra). He figured he could sell the car in Mexico City and hole up in an apartment in Cuernavaca to finish the book.
Easy.
He just needed a driving partner.
And that would be me.
I flew out to California in June of that year and a few days after arriving, we began our road trip. Him. Me. Another friend. An ice chest full of drinks. A boom box (the stereo didn’t work) with norteño music. A Nissan with Tijuana license plates.
It could’ve ended badly.
It was sort of a nerd odyssey: a nerd version of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas set to a narcocorrido beat.
This is the short version of the trip.
Our first big stop was going to be Hermosillo for a writer’s conference. 3 days in the 100+ degree desert heat, listening to writer’s read for 15 minutes. The first day out, we made it to Caborca. Heroica Caborca. The second day we rolled into Hermosillo for the conference. At the end of it, we left our friend who flew back to Tijuana.
From there to Mexico City, it was 1,216 miles (1,957 km) on the federal superhighway. Driven straight, it would take about 23 hours: we did it in 3 days.
To avoid the heat of the desert, and because the car had no air conditioner, we left Hermosillo in the late afternoon. Our first stop would be Los Mochis. What we had not counted on was that every 100 km there would be an inspection stop, mostly by the federal police. And because it was at a time when the Tijuana Cartel was especially violent, combined with the fact that ours was a car with Tijuana plates, a boombox full of narcocorridos and norteño music, and driven by two older dudes wearing cowboy hats (LH’s idea to get into the mood for the novel he was finishing) bought in Hermosillo; we stood out. So we were stopped. Often.
Upon entering the state of Sinaloa, we were pulled off the road at about 10 pm and the car was basically torn apart. When the agent opened the ice chest, he pointed out that the ice had melted. We nodded in agreement. He then repeated that the ice had melted. Then we got the hint. We drained the ice chest. The car was put back together and we were on our way.
The next day we drove from Los Mochis to Morelia. We stopped for dinner in Guadalajara and considered spending the night there. But as we were talking about the novel, we decided to continue the conversation on the road.
10 minutes out of Guadalajara, on the federal highway that had exits every 50 miles or so; our conversation stopped. From there to Morelia, it was a fight to stay awake.
From Morelia we made it to Mexico City. I spent a couple of days visiting friends, LHC went off to Cuernavaca to finish the book and I flew back to Tijuana.

The novel, Idos de la mente, has recently been republished by Tusquets Mexico. I have yet to see the new edition. In the original, published by Joaquín Mortiz, there are drawings by a noted Mexican cartoonist. I hear the drawings are gone. The novel recounts the lives and adventures of two famous norteño musicians, Ramón y Cornelio. It follows their long, strange trip as they go from struggling musicians trying to get a break, to fighting friends and eventual breakup of their band. God is a character, he loves ranchera and música norteña, and bestows upon Cornelio gifts that he had once given another of his favorites, José Alfredo. There’s another minor character by the name of Jimmy Vaquera, the manager of Ramón y Cornelio’s band, and who loves music so much he claims to have it literally in his blood. Secretly, I think when he’s not managing musicians, he’s keeping up a blog, and listening and talking about music.

I’m glad the book is back in print. It remains one of my favorite books by LHC. Cinco Puntos Press, out of El Paso, TX, is set to also publish the translation of the novel, Out of Their Minds. The Incredible and (Sometimes) Sad Story of Ramón and Cornelio.

A List

Wed, 1 Dec 2010 20:45:07 -0600

It has been quite a year. Understatement.
Four records from 2010:
The Walkmen, Lisbon.
Deerhunter, Halcyon Digest.
Beach House, Teen Dream.
The National, High Violet.
Two songs:
“Weight on my Shoulders.” The Walkmen.
“Wake Up Your Saints.” The National.
Miles flown from January to November 2010:
61,739 miles.
Cities visited (according to Tripit): 26.
Countries: 9.
Miles driven in the months of June + July (approximate):
5,526 (8,893 kilometers).
Funerals: 2.
Losses that have wounded me the most: 2.
Stories published or in press since September 2010: 3.
Moments:
Looking out the Qatar Air window while flying over the Middle East on a clear night and seeing the sky filled with stars.
My last conversation with my sister on the phone while waiting for a connecting flight in Chicago.
Driving with Jasper to Chicago on the night of a meteor shower while listening to Gorillaz.

Returning Again, Maybe.

Sat, 13 Nov 2010 11:26:43 -0600

This blog thing started back in 2006 when I moved to Madrid on a Fulbright. At first it was a way to keep my family updated with my life abroad. As it turns out, they weren't much interested. Later it became a space for the jotting of notes, observations about travel, ramblings on music and (occasionally) movies, and short story sketches. In a sense it became less a blog and more a writer's open notebook. And this was good, for me at least. It was a way to keep writing.
But sometimes that notebook must be closed.
And for the last seven months I have been away. Life. It's been a journey (as cliché as that sounds). I toyed with the idea of starting another blog, one that is more about confessing and atoning, but that project too lies in near abandonment.
But I think it's time to come back. At least tentatively.

We'll see.

Current projects:
#1 Finish book proposal for my scholarly book project.
#2 Update my photos online and consolidate website.

Three favorite albums from this past year (so far):
The Walkmen, Lisbon.
Deerhunter, Halcyon Digest.
The National, High Violet.

The Girl With the Stars in Her Eyes

Thu, 13 May 2010 22:58:53 -0500

Sunday, March 14.
Somewhere over the Middle East.
Qatar Airways. Flight 69. Doha - Madrid.
I am on the second leg of my flight from Oman to Madrid. In Doha I race to catch my connection. A couple of hours earlier I had been in a café in Muscat, catching up on news from home while men in long dishdasha’s smoked şişa while staring into laptop screens and Arabic dubbed Hollywood action films played on a large flatscreen tv hanging on the wall. My sister had successfully undergone open heart surgery a week and a half earlier in New York and I checked my email as often as I could for news on her recovery. Then later I was in a taxi to the airport and then a flight from Muscat to Doha.
Soon after getting on the flight from Doha to Madrid I fell asleep. Somewhere over the Middle East I woke up and looked out the window. There were millions of stars outside.
A week later I was on a flight from Madrid to Chicago, via Warsaw. Arriving into O’Hare I checked my email and found a message from my sister. Sad news about her surgery. But she was home and mom and Jasper, her son, were with her, as well as the rest of us on the email and phone chain. We were all out in support and like her, we believed that she was going to pull through this, just like she’d pulled through in the past. She and I talked, she was weak and tired, but she still laughed. I joked about her superpower: resiliency.
This was Monday, March 22. On Thursday morning of that week, she passed away.
As oldest brother, I was tasked with, among other things, the eulogy. It was a heavy task and I was fortunate to have my sister Nelly help out. In my state of shock and loss, the only thing I was able to write down was a list, “Some things about her.” At the top of the page I wrote, “The Girl With the Stars in Her Eyes.” When complete sentences fail, a list can help. As I’ve mentioned before, lists can help us create order out of the chaos of the everyday. They are, at their most basic, a narrative, a story, a saying to overcome the said.
The Girl With the Stars in Her Eyes
1. When we were teens and living out in the country, we would sometimes lie down on the ground and look up at the stars and talk and talk and talk.
2. When she laughed, her laughter could be heard across three, four, five states.
3. When I see photos us as kids, I often stare at her and think there is something about her. Then I realize: I don’t remember her with two legs.
4. Her eyes, bright with stars.
5. There were times in the middle of a phone conversation when she would say, “You know, I just realized that I have one leg.” And I would respond: “Really? What happened to the other one?” After a bit she would say, “I don’t know.”
6. When she smiled the room would lighten as her dimples grew deeper.
7. Her brutal honesty as a kid sometimes grated on me. When asked what had happened to her leg she would respond with the medical term for the type of cancer she had. I would often tell her to take advantage of the storytelling opportunities; shark attack, grisly lawnmower accident, aliens, el cucuy.
8. She gifted her community with many things, many gifts, many memories. Her greatest: her son.
9. At a literary reception in Manhattan she once met David Foster Wallace. When he asked her what had happened to her leg, she responded: Shark attack. His response: No! That same thing happened to my friend!
10. She taught us all how to live.

To hear my nephew tell it, his mommy was a Thursday. She was born on a Thursday. Her leg was amputated on a Thursday. She underwent open heart surgery on a Thursday. She passed away on a Thursday.
I remember her most on Thursdays.