Memogate

Documents were presented as authentic on 60 Minutes Wednesday on September 8, 2004, less than two months before the Presidential Election, but it was later found that CBS had failed to authenticate the documents, and that they were produced by modern wordprocessing software, which led to widespread mistrust of the Internet.

Winding Down (and Out)

I feel as if the world is winding down for me. Mentally, I am in a lost place. Some awful things have happened long before I expected the time of final things.
My health is not so good. Many little details bother me.
Financially, I am sitting on the fence of going forward and trying to go home. But to what home?
On October 26th, I finally suffered for not making clear to everyone that the scumbag who has been charging purchases all over the place is not me. A collection agency put a hold on $8,000 of my savings because they think they have the thief. Because I was not in New York to protest, they won a judgment against me. It is not my debt, but I have been told there is very little I can do about clearing this up short of taking the matter to civil court, which I would have to be there to do.
In addition, I have not taken care of my taxes, so the IRS is deducting from the interest. I keep meaning to sit down and right this situation, but I find hours slipping by while I surf the Internet. Withdrawing into the safe place inside my memories, sometimes even there I feel the intrusion of an unfair world. I’ve lost whatever little conviction I was building and no longer feel capable of responding to inequity.
At times, I have projected and thought I would enjoy living to ninety and watching this changing world, but lately, I feel as if I am ready to die soon. There is very little that brings me joy these days.
I don’t say this because of the robbing of my money alone—it is a combination of things that puts me in this mood.
I am a man out of place in his surroundings. When I went to New York in July, I quickly realized how different it had become from the time I felt it was my world. Having awakened too late for my flight to Mexico City, everything, for me, went a little wrong after that. I felt as if I had become a zombie by the time I was sitting in my brother’s car. And now, three months later, I have not returned to life.
I lost my guiding spirit in April of 2000, and so long as I didn’t change the set, I was able to drift through the days, but I came to a fork in the road that December, and I think I may have chosen a path not meant for me. I was distracted by my heart’s yearning, and I made irrevocable choices. Now, I am once again in a place where it looks as if I must make choices and I am reluctant to do anything.

Yellow Light

The yellow light comes at around four o’clock every day. In the narrow passageway between the livingroom and the diningroom at the foot of the stairs leading up to the bedrooms, sunlight streaming through the windowed doors to the patio meets the light coming in from the kitchen window. The glorious color resulting from this concatenation lasts for about fifteen minutes. If I can arrange to be sitting in a chair having a cup of coffee and enjoying a cigarette, and observe this manifestation, all is right with the world for another day. I’m a simple man. It takes something as small as that to keep me happy.
However, if I’m busy or somewhere else at that time of the afternoon, and I miss my light fix, I feel lost and the day seems wrong, which implies that perhaps I am not such a simple man. If I put such store in this one poetic moment, maybe I need to get a life, as they say.
Day after tomorrow, I leave for New York, and although I can visualize the details of my apartment, I wonder what I will find there. My brother and Charlene have lived there now for more than two years, and they had made changes before I went home last time.
I have my present firmly fixed in my mind’s eye. Please let me recognize my past and keep it in perspective, and not let it interfere with my future.
Time plays a game with or without our sanction. We are the chess pieces. Whenever we stop to observe, we are on different squares from whence we began, never forgetting we are looking to mate to win.

Flying Home

It’s 10:00 pm Sunday, and I have lived alone here for a week. I have finished my summer course and this Thursday I will be flying to New York. I have spoken to A pretty much every day via Messenger (sometimes with webcam) and/or phone. He seems to have gotten through his first week of classes without too much ruckus and this weekend he went to visit his family in Ontario, near Los Angeles, I think. I haven’t had any difficulty being here by myself. During the week I had homework assignments to keep me busy, and I did a bit of house cleaning and washed some laundry.
I have done some work preparing for my upcoming classes, but no personal writing. I read Philip Larkin’s A Girl in Winter and think it will become one of my favorites. It was so appropriate for my time right now. I need to get some more of my books from New York because when I get in a melancholy mood some of them help me regain my perspective—my personal perspective, that is, which I know is kind of tepid and old-fashioned, but I don’t think that will change much at this point in my life.
Tomorrow night I’m supposed to meet Calvin for a drink and some conversation—looking forward to that.
I can’t believe I only have three more days here!

Alone

It is 6:30 on a Saturday. My first day completely alone here in Mexico. A has gone to San diego for a month-long course. I have Module 5 left next week of my Capacitación en Verano, and then on the 15th I am going to New York. Both of us should be returning to Tuxtla on August 4th. Without a friend here, I am bored already, and the 15th seems so far away.
I know I have complained quite a bit about the situation here, but this morning I was more upset to be facing this time alone. Of course, I can read or write without interruptions. I am sitting around too much lately. I have put on weight. My goal is to lose some of it during this novel adventure. I have vowed not to eat any red meat for a month, but now I’m longing for a burger. I have vowed many things over time and have found it difficult to follow through. This is something I kind of have to do, however, as very few articles of clothing fit properly. A month is not very much time to achieve a goal, but it could provide the spur I need to make some headway.
I need to keep busy to avoid feeling sorry for myself. I know many of my problems are of my own making. I just have to discover the way to unmake them. Easier said than done.

Cycles

It was Sunday night, actually Monday morning—nothing was open. I had one cigarette left in the last pack of a carton I’d picked up at City Club the previous Monday. I’d been at the computer all day, while A was at a soccer game, then watching Big Brother on his family’s big-screen TV.
When he came to the house, he told me to come with him in his car while he drove around looking for some smokes. The only option we discovered was one of the kangurus, who offered to sell us an overpriced pack in lieu of a couple of loosies. That’s when I decided to stop smoking.
My resolve lasted until the next morning when the tienda on the corner was open.
This is the kind of cycle we repeatedly go through, with A out of work and me on brief hiatus between semesters. He was going to use his treadmill to shake off some of the extra kilos. I was going to write more. We were going to gather a group of friends and travel to some of the less expensive sites I still haven’t visited after three years in Chiapas and he has not seen since he was a child.
Of course, he’ll get another job after he finishes his seminar in san Diego, and by then I’ll be teaching English again to teenagers who have little or no interest in learning it, but the coulda-woulda-shouldas will be didn’ts—likely or not.
The wading pool on the patio is murky. At least it’s not losing water anymore. I used it for an hour or so the other day. It wasn’t so much fun without the beers. Probably not too healthy either, as I could feel bits of grit under my feet. Still, it was refreshingly warm as I lay in it and watched the sky darken.
I think I wouldn’t smoke so much if I lived here alone without friends visiting, or if I had an interest in watching other people’s lives on a big-screen TV.
I really need to prepare my lessons for the electronic platform and stop futzing around with the paint program.
I should get dressed and go out to a bar and maybe hook up with a female companion.
I could clean out the pool and invite some people over—I would be a good host.
No, I wouldn’t—I never have been. I wasn’t at home, where I spoke the language, and here in Mexico, I sleep too much and smoke too many cigarettes.
Oh, god, it’s two-thirty! A won’t come by for at least another hour, and I just lit my last smoke.

Sappy New Year

I am sitting here alone, once again, through my own choice, but it is not a good way to begin a new year. I chose not to participate in the all-night drink fest yesterday, and today, when the prospect was to go and sit in the house at LaSalle for an hour or more feeling like a fifth wheel, I again said no. I am anti-social, and it is a problem in my current situation.
There are many things I don’t find amusing. I have been told I take things too seriously (by those who take almost nothing seriously, and often invade my private space), and this is unlikely to change. As the years go on, more and more situations seem pointless to me.
I do laugh occasionally, but at present those things that amuse me are not popular with the others around me. What can I make of that? I’m in need of a sea-change, I guess, if I am to remain here.
I have been looking forward to the changes in methodology to be used if I continue at the Tec for another semester, however, all else looks bleak. During this hiatus, I have been trying to decide if that implementation is enough to keep me here. There is little or nothing calling me back to New York, and thus, I feel like a man without a home. Unfortunately, I cannot afford to travel very widely for too long. I have already spent a great deal of money just to maintain this lately unsatisfying existence.
The only time I experience a modicum of happiness is when I am alone, and that too quickly fades. Am I in need of therapy, or am I simply fated to suffer ennui where others are satisfied?
Movies have provided escape. For two hours at a time, I have been drawn in and left my sullen, passionless life outside the theater. In the last three years, I have seen more films than I did in the previous ten, but now, even they are becoming predictable.
This place seems to have given me about all it has to give. I feel as if I want or need more, but am clueless as to what that might be. My friend went away for two days with his family. We both had a good time—he experiencing new social activities, and I, sitting here alone with no one intruding. I went to the cinema one evening by myself, and bought a book. At the end of that day, I experienced a feeling of satisfaction, but it was short-lived. The next day, the “vacation” ended, and all the familiar trappings fell back into place. I went with my friend to see the same film again, so even that experience was revised in my mind and placed in the category of familiar! I still have the book, of course, a collection of Jaime Sabines’s poetry, but I have not again delved into it as I did on the day of purchase. Many of the pieces I was already familiar with.
I have done quite a bit of work in preparation for the next semester, but there is so much more to do. As I sit pondering a decision in that regard, time is slipping away. Do I invest more effort in this, only to throw it up at the last minute? Or do I effectuate and prepare for something new?
Why, oh why, when busy and bored, do I see myself lounging in a hammock on a beach somewhere with even less to do?
I believe I was born too early for this life. If I were twenty years old now, I’d be in a perfect position to go through these head-trips, come to realizations, then go on with so much time ahead of me. Unfortunately, when I was twenty, I was too busy being distracted by the traumas of others to take care of my own.
Perhaps it is lost time for which I despair or perhaps it is the milieu in which I have settled. So many young people around me, too much of the time, reminding me of all my mistakes and lost opportunities. I need to reboot, but I’m working with old equipment.

The Human Genome

An essentially complete human genome was mapped in April of 2003, two years earlier than planned.

Another Fork

Well, here I am sitting alone once again, and why is that, because I am unsociable, hard-nosed, inflexible, or because I am in the wrong setting? Mostly, I think the latter. I don’t belong here with these people. I have decided to go home, and will do so as soon as I can tie up loose ends.
This was an adventure that turned out badly. I got away from drugs, and temptation, and sadness, only to land in alcohol, tobacco, and frustration. I was alone, but now am more alone than ever—disconnected by the language and the lack of interesting things to do. I feel so uncomfortable.
For an ill-paying job that has only moments of brightness, I exhaust myself trying to do my best, but because it is not my calling, I am spending hours in producing nothing. Sometimes I want to bang my head on a wall and lie down to die. The alternative is to travel, but I really cannot afford that and would soon be broke. I have painted myself into a corner.
The guilt is mine. I haven’t tried hard enough to overlook those things that bother me. But it must also be shared with one who met me with a sweet and enthusiastic disposition, who has now fallen back on old familiar ways through, I think, resentment and laziness—resentment due to my actions (or inactivity)—laziness because it is in one’s nature to resort to the familiar when frustrated. That is why I must go home. I am not close to the familiar here, and thus cannot resort to anything. The groundings of my life are far away.
I met a sad man in my travels who said I must learn acceptance, but in his eyes I saw disappointment. How can the teacher impart a wisdom in which he does not believe? How can one wear a smile over anger that shows through?
Today, at this moment, I hate it here, and I despise myself for weakly, resignedly, putting myself in this position. Once, I cried in sadness and thought my decision was inevitable. Now, I see it was only a fork in the road. Had I been prescient, I would have realized I had been given a sign which required more weighing, but I was tired and chose too quickly. In a strange church, I prayed for guidance and thought my prayers went unanswered. I didn’t realize the list of supplicants was long. Now the sign has been delivered. The road was a circle and I am back at the fork.
This time I must make the right choice. I hope those I left behind will have me back.

All Saints' Day

Yesterday was Omar’s birthday. Tomorrow, The Day of the Dead, is Álvaro’s. So today, later, the brothers will celebrate both at a big party in a rented salon with a palapa and alberca.
Yesterday, in the morning, a woman came to the house from Hacienda to advise me I owe a multa of $1243 pesos for paying my taxes late, and last night my laptop’s hard drive was making a lot of noise and acting erratically. I tried to save important files to another disk because it looks as if the computer is to be repaired or replaced imminently.
This afternoon, before the fiesta, Sra. Z. arrives home from Sinaloa, where her mother, a pleasantly sharp lady passed away during the week. Álvaro was very upset when he learned his grandmother had died, and it was very fortunate that he had gotten to spend some time with her when she visited recently. Her home is pretty far away. She impressed me because though she was in ill health, she was a great talker, and frequently laughed.
So overall, these recent days bring good things at the cost of bad.
I was advised yesterday by Marta at the school that I am on the schedule for next semester for a similar work load, which I guess I should look at positively. But lately I have felt very tired while trying to complete all the chores I must do at home.
The house is in need of a good cleaning because Á’s work schedule keeps him away most of the day and when I am here alone I spend hours in front of the computer. Perhaps this breakdown is a sign—a respite from one kind of work to take care of another, equally important, but recently neglected.
Things at Tec, on the surface, have been without incident, but I never trust still waters, especially with a personality such as Kate’s. I can’t help but feel, based on past experience, that I will soon misstep and be called on it. Still, as I told her, if she does leave after next semester, and if Paco is her replacement, I don’t think I will want to stay on.
Recently, there has been a connection being made among the English teachers from the various campuses in the Tec system, and that looks promising, but I don’t know yet what it will lead to, and this surely is not convenient to be without my computer at the moment.
As for my writing—this is one of those fallow periods (no ideas and no time) and it follows having submitted a story that was generously reviewed by the Zoetrope gang. I know it’s just temporary, but I feel an empty space when I am not working on something.
The other day I read and copied an article that said culture shock goes through four stages, and the last, when a person finally learns to feel comfortable in their new location, takes several years to achieve and some people never do. As I felt familiar with the first three stages, I’m thinking the article must be realistic, and it scares me to think I may never reach that ultimate level of assimilation. Not a total disaster for a young person who can start the process again or return home a little saddened but wiser, but I am aging rapidly. What will I do if this doesn’t work out for me?
I have been posting this while doing laundry and as I watch it starting to rain on my semi-dried clothes, I guess I have received some sort of answer to that last question. And here’s another: Why does my guiding spirit always have to be so obtuse?