(This was composed in the 20th century and only recently discovered in an old journal. I will add photographs and more stories from this special era -- the late 1970s -- when/if I find them. And, as usual, I apologize for the low-tech appearance and disorganization of this -- and any other -- website of mine, but I am intentionally keeping "it" simple.)
MEMORIES of MEXICO
San Miguel in the 70s
Billy Joel’s 52nd Street : I sing, and I can smell my apartment in San Miguel. There must be a word for that…
Is it a smell? A feeling?
Dancing. In the kitchen.
Cooking? What did I cook? Drinking brandy.
Oh, Havanna, I’ve been searching for you everywhere.
Dancing. Feeling ALIVE, home.
That apartment: SILENT.
I had to learn to live in it and to not fear entering a silent space. Choosing the music. 52nd Street. I loved going to bed, to sleep. Get a little high, look out over town, REVEL. Freedom. Bed was my friend, but not an escape; I’d crawl in a feel myself going to sleep. The temperature was perfect – no heat – with that light cotton spread, plaid Mexican colors, all of them. And the pink cotton “door” to the closet.
I remember.
I never ask you where you go…
We go our different ways to separate situations,
I’m just beginning to feel, to give. To feel, to live.
I have been waiting so long.
I want to be left alone for a while, what Mother disdained in her father, my inheritance, to do my own thing. To remember that time, how it felt, how I felt.
(I have the flux today. Maybe that brings Mexico back, that episode.)
Memories: walking up the hill in the rain, feeling a decision, a change of destiny. Climbing over the pig stall. Bernardo’s teeth. San José del Pacifico: the blind woman on a precipice. The woman with no legs, skirt in a circle on the dirt floor, making sierras of masa for a cooked egg, and coffee so sweet in big cups. Songs winding up from the shower down below.
Synesthesia.
I don’t need you to worry for me ‘cause I’m all right. Go ahead with your own life, and leave me alone.
