Diario de un blogger intermitente

The Presence at the Center

2009-08-03T20:33:00.000-07:00

When we went to church last Sunday I thought I was going to be utterly bored... but at least I didn't have to "dress up": I thought shorts and a short sleeve shirt was a perfectly ok outfit for my appointment with God. My mother in law's husband was going to read Psalm 23 in English and another member of the congregation in Spanish. They really wanted us to go and be with them there. I was ready to snooze for an hour blanketed by Christian imagery and lulled by a zealous and predictable sermon. Instead I heard about the presence at the center.

After the psalm was read in English and Spanish, the pastor started reading the poem, line by line, paying special attention to what he saw as the center of the poem:
Even though I walk
through the valley of the shadow of death, [a]
I will fear no evil,
for you are with me;
Here the pastor pointed out the shift in grammatical person. At the beginning of the poem god is "He", in the stanza quoted above god is "You". What the pastor was trying to tell his congregation is that this grammatical shift pointed towards a more assertive presence, the presence of god. Topographically, this stanza describes a center as well: the "valley of the shadow of death". The valley that is in between the grassy sunny plains and the mountains.

As I listened, a number of questions came to my mind: what does the fixation for finding a center tell us about a society (or a particular segment of society)? What is so comforting about looking and creating a center? Is it the hope of the revelation of a presence in that center?

The pastor talked about how most people who stand in the "valley" feel sometimes that god has abandoned them: the suspicion of an absence. A strange paradoxical duality seems to lie at the heart (a metaphor revealing our center oriented language) of the concept of center: abscence and presence. It was funny to hear echoes of Derrida in a Sunday morning sermon, a great appetizer right before we left church to have Mexican lunch.

Ginger's Tarot

2009-06-18T07:16:00.000-07:00

My first reading with her was unsettingly accurate.

I see her ability to read tarot as another form of being talented with storytelling. A form of piecing together aspects of a situation that would otherwise be disparate, arbitrary, contingent. Hers is the talent of the writer who turns the contigent into something necessary.

We found our place on the rug that sits right in middle of the living room floor. Her hands spreading the cards over the floor resembled the hands of the lover who explores a body that is already familiar, but always new in each encounter as well. Her hands placing the cards in a Celtic Cross: laying down and exploring the secrets that are waiting to be unfolded and revealed, like the unbuttoning of a shirt or the parting of lips revealing a scentuous flower that fully blooms at the lightest touch of fingertips. Under her hands and gaze a story is unraveled just to be put together again.

As she reads the cards I see a weaver of a tapestry: putting the pieces of a story together to reveal an image that can be read. This is a twofold process embodied in two characters that are only apparently contradictory: reader and writer. A good reader is always a writer, and a good writer often operates at the level of reading. Her experience with tarot seems to always oscillate between these two functions, and it is in this ebb and flow where I see her blooming, reaching a realm that has always been here, in the middle of our living room, everywhere.

Tuesday, March 30th. (The Future)

2009-03-20T22:51:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, March 30th.

Then Hector would date some of his diary entries with the incorrect day and date (usually setting his entries a few days in advance), to see if he could predict the future. It never really worked, and when it did he had already forgotten all about his diary. He liked the image of seeing himself in the future writing about a future he already knew would happen, cheating himself like the fortune tellers sitting outside the subway station a block away from his school. He remembered seeing the same woman dressed like a gypsy on a Tuesday and a bandana and a hippie dress on Friday. Her name was Martha and she was ready to read his hand on Friday afternoon.

Martha's hippie dress revealed a pair of big tits and a cleavage to die for. When she took his hand he felt calluses and wounds that had barely healed. Her hands felt rough and shown him the signs of a life where work was hard and where money didn't come by easily: a job at factory, or perhaps a supermarket stocker.

"You're going to a place where people can't pronounce your name". Martha had a weird accent. Her grammar was impeccable but there was something strange about her pronunciation. Hector knew she was lying, her accent was as fake as some of the stories he had been writing in his diary.

"But you'll come back. And when you come back you'll have a different name..." she said. She also said other things he couldn't remember: he had been staring at her chest and down her dress. She wasn't wearing a bra. Her tits were starting to sag a bit, so they swayed side to side like his memory in time when, later, he'd try to remember the real date when the gypsy had read his hand.

When Martha finished reading his hand, she stood up and stretched. "I've been sitting all day" she said, visibly tired and sored. He was still hypnotized by her tits. He took out a crumpled bill from his pants pocket and put it in her hand. Without saying goodbye, she turned around and started walking away from the crowded commercial area surrounding the subway station.

"What's your name?!" asked Hector.

"Saraí" she whispered.

"what?!" he asked again, "I cant hear you".

But she had already dissapeared behind the pirated porn movies booth.

Blind Spots

2009-03-10T20:08:00.000-07:00

Faces: Our business card to the world, our face, is our only blind spot.

2009-03-07T04:19:00.000-08:00

The entries in his diary didn't have dates, titles or headings. One day, while they were listening to music in Hector's bedroom, Diego opened the diary and read that his friend had stolen a magazine from Sanborns, one of the few places in Mexico City, maybe the only one, that carried the magazines they liked.

"Did you really steal a RIP magazine from Sanborns? Do you still have it?" asked Diego, suddenly curious.

"I think so... but it was last year, and it wasn't a RIP magazine". Hector looked confused as he tried to remember. "It was Fangoria, or Gorezone, I can't remember...". Horror movies (this is the time when Hector started using the word film to refer to movies) magazines reminded him of his world at school. He had always felt like a spectator enjoying a gore show.

"You're stupid. Why do you write about things you can't remember?" Diego tossed the notebook on the bed and went to look for another record. They were listening to a shitty band they thought nobody else knew about: Dangerous Toys. They had played the A side of this record so many times in the last six months that now it skipped and wouldn't go past the third song.

Hector had written about the day he bought the Dangerous Toys record. "The cover's awesome A psychotic looking clown coming out of a box stored in an attic. The first three songs are great, the rest of the songs are pretty shitty and boring". Dangerous Toys made Hector and Diego think about their favorite writer.

"El juguete rabioso" ("The Mad Toy") was the only novel that Hector and Diego had read. They thought Roberto Arlt was a genius and they had always wanted to break into a library, recreating the famous scene in the book. They would steal all of the books they have always wanted to read, or write.

Love (fuck) Your Diary

2009-03-06T13:30:00.000-08:00

He started writing a diary during his last year in middle school: it started with a page ripped out of a notebook. He thought he was punk as fuck. The civics class had been so boring that day. Mr. Pestañasdevaca, the civics teacher, was talking about los niños héroes (the virgin suicides: the heroic cadets): their dedication, their patriotism... real heroes. The class was informed that Mexico was in desperate need of heroes like that:

-"All kids want to do these days is go to the mall and dress like 'gringos'. If there are no patriotic values in today's youth, what can we expect of our country twenty years from now?" Mr. Pestañasdevaca looked truly troubled and saddened, ready to jump off a cliff wrapped up in the mexican flag, unable to stop the cultural 'gringo' invasion.

The first page in Hector's diary boasted a ballpoint-pen drawing portraying Mr. Pestañasdevaca holding a gun to his head. Hector entitled his portrait "Live free or die", a phrase he had seen or heard on some magazine or TV show. He had just finished his drawing when a girl in the class offered an answer to Mr. Pestañasdevaca's accusation:

-"Please Mr. Pestañasdevaca! only indians, nacos and poor people join the army... those people don't even have an education. They can barely read or write. I'm sorry, but people like that can't be heroes." All of her friends nodded in agreement as they gave Mr. Pestañasdevaca dissaproving looks.

Mr. Pestañasdevaca and his patriotic speeches faced a tough crowd. Hector's private school was located in one of the most respectable middle-class neighborhoods in Mexico City. Most of the kids in this neighborhood had been raised in families with very conservative values. But they were also exposed and had consumed, since their early childhood, everything that American popular culture had to offer to the world: from Knight Rider to NFL televised games.

Hector ripped this page off his notebook during one of those classroom moments
dreaded by teenagers: a sudden silence when one becomes the unwanted center of attention, a clumsy and unprepared actor in the stage of life. Mr. Pestañasdevaca walked to the back left corner of the classroom, Hector's hideout from the world. The drawing was taken to the principal's office. Two hours later Hector and Mr. Pestañasdevaca were sitting in front of Mrs. Chaix desk: "As the principal of this school, I will not tolerate this kind of vulgar display of violence. Young man, you owe Mr. Pestañasdevaca an apology... and your parents will be immediately notified of your two day suspension". Hector tried to explain to his teacher that all he wanted to do was to write the first page of his diary."Explain that to your parents" was Mr. Pestañasdevaca's only reply.

Diego laughed his ass off when Hector told him what have happened in Mrs. Chaix office. Hector confided a secret to his friend: "I'm starting a diary".
"Look" said Diego, "I'm your best friend, but I don't give a fuck about your diary... It's Friday, let's go to the movies".

A Door or a Window?

2009-02-04T04:40:00.000-08:00

Now tell me...
would you rather be
a Window... or... a Door?

Dr. Seuss, writing as Theo Lesieg

During the winter one needs to get a little creative to have fun with the children. Too cold to be out and play, ride their bikes or just to take a walk --yes, they are sub tropical-southeners little wimps after all. We bought some board games (the Indiana Jones version of the LIFE game is awesome, and so is the newly acquired "HI-HO! CHERRY-O"), and have been playing with them constantly.

For the last two months or so, and while Ginger's teaching her uncc classes, the kids and I have been going to the coffeeshop for coffee and milks. We usually sit there for an hour making up stories, playing "real" or talking about school (and every now and then annoying the fuck out of other customers when the kids get into a fight). After getting intoxicated with our drinks we usually stop by Charlotte's only? and best comic bookstore (right next door from the coffeeshop, and they also have a blog) to see what's new and for the kids to admire their favorite real-size action figure: spider man.

IN case you haven't noticed or had got so used to it you didn't even remember, let me remind you that winter days have a tendency to exit early. These days show up late, shittily dressed in monochrome gray, wearing nothing but the rags left from a year already gone and half forgotten. And they leave you like the people you never really cared for: unsurprisingly and leaving only a cold air and a bad taste in the mouth.

So by the time we hit our last stop the temperature has gotten considerably colder and the sky's almost completely dark. The library in the corner of the plaza and central ave. seems like the perfect place to take shelter from another winter night. The children's section of the library is tucked into a corner with a big window that faces the sidewalk and the parking lot. How many times have other people seen us running from the van to the library...? Trying to stay warm and away from an uninvited darkness that has shown up earlier than expected.

In our last trip to the library, the kids got Dr. Suess' "Would you rather be a Bullfrog?" book out. One of the questions there is

...would you rather be a Window... or... a Door?

As we read the book last night at the coffeeshop we decided we rather be windows. Doors get on the way, they open and shut, keeping things in and out. Doors reveal and conceal, they block the flux of life. Windows create the illusion of a continuum of life: a window is a see through surface and a mirror.

Last night it got dark while we finished Dr. Seuss's book sitting by the window at Starbucks. The window and the night became one dark surface, a spectacle of life to the viewer or bystander on either side.

"Good Winter"

2009-01-03T04:27:00.000-08:00

So my winter break is over, I have to go back to work on Monday. But no worries, it's been a great year, and I have thoroughly enjoyed my break: got surprised on christmas day and spent new year's eve in the company of new friends and family. This morning is not very different from others. In fact, it reminds me that almost a year ago (in a morning like this) I put up a little post about Bon Iver. And today I can't stop listening to the songs in Bon Iver's new EP "Blood Bank". Have a good winter:

Blood Bank - Bon Iver

Crooked Fingers

2009-01-02T19:29:00.000-08:00

There's a lot of people who make fun of Christmas and the whole season mood/celebration (I do make fun of it sometimes too), but it is hard to deny that there is something about this season that makes you a bit more introspective. Maybe it's the longer periods of time spent indoors looking out through the window, the extra layers of clothes... or the winter stripped-down trees with its bare branches like crooked fingers pointing to the next season:

This morning from the living room window.

Evil: Barnes & Noble

2008-12-29T08:46:00.000-08:00

The Number Of The Beast - Iron Maiden

No, this is not a post about how the corporate super bookstore is eating up other small, usually better and more reader friendly, businesses.

Yesterday, before venturing into the children section of B & N we stopped by the coffeeshop to get some drinks and pastries. I almost forgot to tell the cashier that I had a discount membership card... after my super discount the total came down to, oh hell yeah!: 666. Needless to say, a super duper satanic ritual ensued.
(Someone told me we are in the empty days / dias vacios aztec calendar)of the aztec calendar)

Puentes

2008-11-27T06:08:00.000-08:00

"And in the morning comes/
You don't need to be so honest"

No one does it like you Department of Eagles.
What is a Department of Eagles?: Welcome to the Department of Eagles

Este es el primer puente largo que tengo desde que empecé a enseñar español a finales de agosto. La transición de enseñar en la universidad a la preparatoria ha sido difícil sobre todo por un simple hecho: aquí hay que enseñar todos los días, de lunes a viernes de las 6:45 hasta las 2:15. Estar sujeto a un horario así me parece ridículo, pero así es el mundo a veces: todo bien fijo y trabajando todo el tiempo para después descansar durante los días que han sido aprobados para que la gran mayoría haga lo mismo. Extraño los días entre semana en que se puede salir al mediodía y ver la ciudad casi vacía, caminar y fumarse un cigarro, después salir con los niños al parque y a tomarse un café, sintiendo un placer casi perverso de saber a todos trabajando mientras uno hace absolutamente nada. Los días pierden su contorno y sus nombres,haciendo que el mundo vuelva a una quietud placentera y efímera.

El último día de clases de esta semana fue ayer. El cuerpo se hace de hábitos molestos y me he levantado antes de las seis. Mientras hago el café, los pies se me enfrían de una manera que me recuerda que el invierno está casi aquí. Regreso a la recámara y busco los calcetines de lana. Esta es una casa vieja a la que le cuesta trabajo calentarse. Anoche me aseguré que la temperatura fuera constante durante la noche: 78o. F. Pero la noche y la oscuridad durante esta temporada son largas y en la mañana el termómetro que cuelga afuera de la venta de la cocina dice que en grados centígrados estamos a menos cuatro. Los calcetines de lana hacen que mi café sepa mejor. Puedo sentir una ligerísima corriente de aire frío debajo de puerta de la sala. Camino hacia donde esta el termostato y subo la temperatura a 88 grados. Espero.

_________________________________
Otras cosas que he estado escuchando: solo en la mañana, en compañía de Ginger, con los niños, en la escuela durante mi hora y media de planeamiento:

Department of Eagles, "In Ear Park". 4AD, 2008.

Okkervil River, "The Stand Ins". Jagjaguwar, 2008.

Deerhunter, "Microcastle". Kranky, 2008.

Anthrax, "Among the Living". Megaforce, Island, 1987.

A Place to Bury Strangers, A Place to Bury Strangers: ya hay un montón de información sobre ellos aquí mismo.

Hoy comemos pavo (que vamos a cocinar nosotros), vamos a pasear y a caminar y después al cine todos juntos.

PD. Dr. K: sigo esperando el disco quemado o los documentos por la compu para que pueda escuchar a los Uretra (!?).

How Not to Disappear Completely

2008-11-18T16:01:00.000-08:00

How To Disappear Completely - Radiohead

This isn't happening? Edwina, the dinosaur that brought a town's sense of reality into question.

_______________________________________
Otras noticias:
THIS IS HAPPENING!: Is good to know that Obama can think of people other than Clintonites for his transition team: Obama appoints Mario Molina to "spearhead a group looking at the nation's science and technology policies".

North Carolina Blues, but not that kind of Blues.

2008-11-09T13:24:00.000-08:00

The National, Fake Empire:

Fake Empire - The National

Also, North Carolina voted for a Democrat for the first time in 20 something years: How did Obama win North Carolina? for some interesting numbers and voting trends in one of the new blue states of the south.

Yay! Looking into the future with my diamond slippers on...

2008-11-07T00:54:00.000-08:00

Did anyone notice that right before President Elect Obama's acceptance speech on Tuesday night the organizers of the Grant Park Celebration in Chicago were playing The National's "Fake Empire"? I know that The National has been supporting Obama since the primary elections... but who decided to play "Fake Empire" that night? Is it supposed to be a joke? a comment on the current state of American politics? a coincidence?

'Turn the light out say goodnight
no thinking for a little while
lets not try to figure out everything at once'
from The National's "Fake Empire"

Education in "America": a Snapshot

2008-09-28T05:34:00.000-07:00

7:12 a.m. HHS

Crowded high school halls,
perfectly clean floors,
shiny and slippery.
Fluorescent bright white lights,
guiding,
blinding,
the faces of tomorrow (they say)
are angry today:
a perpetual stand off with authority,
but nobody's young forever(they say).

________________________________________________________

Dreaming: a Snapshot

Cuando en el verano fuimos a México después de ocho años de no haber estado allá fue como despertarme a mi pasado: o mejor, hundirme más profundamente en el sueño que es todo recuerdo. Desde hace mucho tiempo mis hermanos y yo nos hemos contado nuestros sueños detalladamente. Las pesadillas para compartir el horror y el espanto, para purgarlas de nuestra cama y de nuestra cabeza. Los más placenteros para revelar nuestros deseos, para reírnos de situaciones ridículas o para compartir imágenes insólitas (así).

Recuerdo una noche que mi hermana estaba de visita, habíamos estado viendo una película del canal once hasta tarde. Ella se había quedado dormida, yo seguía despierto, la televisión prendida. Después de moverse a un lado y al otro varias veces, Tania empezó a jadear,como si el aire se hubiera terminado en su sueño y le fuera necesario despertar para seguir respirando. Cómo siempre ha tenido pesadillas que le aterran, pensé que lo mejor sería despertarla... quién sabe, a lo mejor estaba teniendo uno de esos sueños de los no se puede despertar por más que uno lo intente.

Tomé a Tania de los hombros y primero la moví lentamente, hacia la derecha, hacia la izquierda: "Tania, despiértate". Ella seguía jadeando... entonces la sacudí violentamente, dos, tres veces, y de repente se despertó. Tenía los ojos desorbitados y me miraba directo a los ojos como preguntando: “¿Porqué me despiertas así? ¿Qué quieres?”. El interrogatorio duró apenas un segundo, tal vez menos, después gritó espantada como nunca la había escuchado gritar antes. Yo también grité espantado. Mirándonos uno al otro gritamos, con miedo, algunos segundos. Después, el terror terminó, me contó sueño y nos reímos.

No me acuerdo ya lo que Tania había estado soñando, pero me acuerdo de ese momento, de esa crospolinización del sueño y la vigilia: dos estados más que dos mundos separados. Nuestro verano en México fue para mí como esa mirada y ese grito, esa sacudida violenta que termina por derribar la barrera que le ponemos al pasado y al presente, al sueño y a la vigilia. Después, regresamos acá y lo mismo: me niego a erigir esas barreras otra vez, lo que pasó allá y lo que pasa aquí. Hay que vivir soñando y despierto, alerta y dormido. Así que ahora, con un nuevo trabajo, en un nuevo ambiente, me estoy despertando de nuevo para seguir soñando: el grito del que estoy saliendo para escribir más y más por aquí.

Cómo el alférez-escritor de “El casamiento engañoso” de Cervantes me voy a seguir durmiendo-soñando-viviendo-despierto: “Yo me recuesto –dijo el alférez- en esta silla en tanto que vuesa merced lee, si quiere, esos sueños o disparates, que no tienen otra cosa de bueno si no es el poderlos dejar cuando enfaden”.

Damn Right I'll Rise Again

2008-09-19T20:21:00.000-07:00

Desde que me puse la camiseta de maestro de prepa no he me he dado ni una vuelta por aquí, pero, es oficial, estoy de regreso. Así que para corroborar que no nada más he andado super cargado de trabajo unas fotos de la tocada de la que venimos regresando ahora mismo. El grupo del maestro de música de la escuela de Umberto, Camille y Kaleb (uno de sus mejores amigos) organizó un toquín en el estacionamiento de un deli de aquí nuestro nuevo vecindario:

Ginger, Kerri y su servidor llevaron a toda la tropa que estaba emocionada por ver a su maestro en acción.

Umberto y Kaleb: are they flashing gangsta signs?

El Sr. Artie (en la batería) preparando su ataque sónico.

Y después se pusieron a tocar, la gente se emocionó y nosotros todos bailando.

Kaleb y Piper: no pararon.

Y después de unas cervezas, refrescos y niños bailados y bien cansados nos fuimos. Con fines de semana así, la enseñada diaria de la semana se aguanta bien. Gracias a los que han comentado y siguen checando... esta vez regreso y me quedo, abrazos a tod@s.

Early Coffee Season

2008-08-19T03:59:00.000-07:00

"I wonder if one cup will be enough?"

New Zizek!

2008-07-30T06:07:00.000-07:00

About blogging, facebook?:

From all sides, Right and Left, complaints abound today about how, in our postmodern societies composed of hedonistic solipsists, social bonds are progressively disintegrating: we are increasingly reduced to social atoms, as exemplified by the lone individual hooked on the computer screen... However, this very example renders visible what is wrong with the diagnosis on suspended social ties: in order for an individual to immerse herself in the virtual space, the bigh Other has to be there, more powerful than ever in the guise of cyberspace itself, this directly universalized form of sociality which enables us to be connected with the entire world while sitting alone in front of a screen.
Zizek,In Defense of Lost Causes

* * *
Have you felt lately the presence (or the staged absence) of the "big Other" around here?
Or have you always felt it, everytime you are online?

Flying Back

2008-07-28T05:23:00.000-07:00

I remember the last time, I must have been twelve years old or so, that I boarded an airplane feeling no fear or anxiety: my parents had planned a trip to La Paz, Baja California Sur, I remember my mom telling me that this place was so far from México D.F. that we needed to take an airplane to get there fast, to have more time to enjoy the beach. The airplane ride meant nothing more than just the means to get to our destination.

After that vacation trip every time I have to fly the same gory images and ridiculously tragic scenarios run through my mind: dismembered body parts floating in a blue sky, the whitest clouds painted with blood and fire, the airplane fuselage coming off to finally explode in a bright and lonely spectacle. This is why I have always been hypnotized by the opening scene(s) of Rushdie's The Satanic Verses:

Out of thin air: a big bang, followed by falling stars. A universal beginning, a miniature echo of the birth of time, the jumbo jet Bostan, flight AI-420, blew apart without any warning high above... The aircraft cracked in half, a seed-pod giving up its spores, an egg yielding its mystery. Two actors, prancing Gibreel and buttony, pursed Mr. Saladin Chamcha, fell like titbits of tobacco from a broken old cigar. Above, behind, below them in the void there hung reclining seats, stereophonic headsets, drinks trolleys, motion discomfort receptacles, disembarkation cards, duty-free video games...

Flying back from Mexico last Tuesday wasn't this awful. It wasn't a pleasant flight: a bumpy ride with lots of turbulence as we were flying through a corner of hurricane Dolly. Flying is becoming a reminder of mortality. Living every day is a flight where things could explode at any moment: life, it seems at times, is as fragile as a man-made flying craft gliding in the vastness of the sky.

City Lost and Found

2008-07-23T09:08:00.000-07:00

Just back from Mexico... Parts of the city I remembered are gone (in just seven years), new places, stores, spaces have been created. My memory holds on to places that no longer exist but we have discovered new ones. The imaginary city of my past remains alive in the ever-changing face of Mexico D.F.

Quick, Stop! (3) (bringing cool back)

2008-05-25T09:13:00.000-07:00

I was starting to get cold but Jimmy was still talking. His frantic conversations seemed to keep us warm whenever we had to stock the cooler, as if his urgent stream of words had an insulating quality. We could see two or three people moving around the store through the cooler glass doors. I have never liked the taste of canned beer...

-"Hey, you two need to come out here, you have customers" -said a bearded face that had just popped around the main cooler door, it was the A/C repair man. He had put his ladder right in front of the canned soda cases, so I started moving them where people could reach them.

It was fifteen past five: rush hour: we were getting busier by the minute so I had to run to the other register to help Jimmy ring customers up. We had a long line of people waiting in each register. Things usually didn't slow down until well past seven. I had been working at the Quickstop for a month by now, so I knew most of the regular customers, people that on their way back from work would stop for gas, beer, cigarrettes or soda. As I rang them up they would try to start a conversation but I had to cut them short and move on to the next customer before someone would get impatient and started bitching.

Standing in line one could find people in fatigues coming from Fort Bragg, suburban moms and dads, handymen covered in paint or grease, or the local high-school kids enrolled in the gangsta after-school program, driving around in their suv's, coming back to pump more gas every ten minutes as they'd get more gas money from the friends they had just picked up. Customer faces moved in rapid succession. During our busiest time of the day these faces would all blur into one, creating a faceless all consuming monster demanding convenience, excellent quality service, and competitive prices. I couldn't move, I had to face the monster with a smile on my face, hypnotized by the ringing sound of the cash register keys and the muzak in the store's sound system.

After a while, a humming sound coming from the ceiling announced the first wave of cool air: the A/C was fixed and working again. We saw the repairman packing his stuff quickly, he waved and nodded on his way out without saying a word. Once he had put the ladder and his bag in the back of his truck, the repairman came back to unblock the store doors, removing the cinder blocks with his feet and leaving the bungee cord hanging from the handle as he closed the doors.

(to be continued...)

The Dirty South 2000-1

2008-05-21T06:19:00.000-07:00

2001 Fayeteville: everyone (almost?) in town wanted to be in Atlanta for the rise of the mighty rap of the dirty south. more Quick, Stop! soon:

Quick, Stop! (2) (listen)

2008-05-19T05:18:00.000-07:00

When I went back in the store I headed straight to the cooler. Jimmy was already in there: he had opened a tall boy of coors light and was talking to his wife on the phone. He moved and made some room for me on the top of a stack of soda crates. I grabbed a miller lite and started drinking. The scorching heat had slowed our day to a snail's pace. Sitting inside the cooler and drinking a beer was not only soothing, it brought the world around me to a complete stop. The fans in the cooling system had frozen, only the whir of the world's machinery was left intact: a sound that was intoxicating and sweet, invigorating and deadly, repulsive and beautiful all at once.

Jimmy hang up and started saying something about his wife and going to a club that night but I couldn't hear him. Everytime he opened his mouth it was nothing but spitting and sputtering, a cacophonic stream of white noise that have covered everything around me. This noise drowned out the sonic assault coming from Fort Bragg's artillery practice, the hip-hop blasting out of the speakers of every car drving by the store, the cheering crowds gathered around innumerable golf courses and the bustling of a city that is always open for business or war.

-"you getting a good beer buzz already?" asked Jimmy, stopping the noise.

-"yeah" I said, noticing the fans in the cooler slowly starting to spin again.

(to be continued)

The Hill-Williamson Gallery

2008-05-20T05:35:00.000-07:00

Our day at the Hill-Williamson Gallery ... well, most of us ended up in a Mexican restaurant with a margarita pitcher.

Quick, Stop! (1) Hope Mills/ Fayeteville NC 2001

2008-05-15T06:35:00.000-07:00

As soon as the heat gets up in the high eighties Jimmy starts saying that the store is going to get robbed. He repeats this with such insistence that it makes me think that he wishes that it’d really happen.

-"I read in the paper yesterday that crime’s a lot worse during the summer. People do the stupidest shit when it gets this fuckin’ hot".

It had also been a summer when Jimmy joined the army: he used to say the money wasn’t great but it was better than washing dishes. He was still working 20 hours a week at the QuickStop, gas station and convenience store, so the money he made in the army was definitely far from being great.

The summer of 2001 was one of Fayeteville’s hottest in the last hundred and fifty years. Fayeteville sits slightly west on the North Carolina coastal plains, it has a beach town feeling but without the relief of the sea breeze. From the middle of May until September it's so hot Jimmy refuses to wear boxers.

-"Try to wear boxers during the summer and you'll see what I'm talking about. I mean, do you wanna walk around all day with a sweaty ass? Somebody needs to come up with an ass deodorant, the antiperspirant kind, you know, the not one drop of sweat kind". He was bending over, stocking the cigarrette rack behind me. I was pretty sure all of the customers that I was ringing up could see Jimmy's ass crack, and confirming that, indeed, he did not wear boxers in the summer.

Two hours ago the air conditioner in the store had stopped working. As she was leaving for the day, the store manager told us that the repair man was on his way:

-"Don't worry boys, you'll have the AC running again soon". She smiled, lit a virginia slim menthol, and walked out of the store and into her airconditioned car. She hated us. Jimmy and I did nothing to stop the shoplifting that, according to the regional manager, was ruinning our store.

Mikey, a 19 year old kid, came into the store and asked us if he could buy beer. "No" I said, as I opened more cigarrette cartons that needed to be stocked. Jimmy turned around and shook his head.

-"Come on dog, I saw the manager leaving... why would you guys care?" Mikey was ready to start begigng.

-"Hey man" said Jimmy, "do you ever wonder why you girlfriend doesn't want to give you a blowjob?"

-"What the fuck you talking about?" Mikey was pissed.

-"Well, you know, Jenee's friends with my wife's little sister... we know about you". Jimmy's wife, Elsa, liked to gossip, a lot. "How do you expect your girl to go down on you if you're wearing them baggy pants and boxers when it's this hot?! She ain't getting close to your smelly crotch and sweaty balls... you need to do something about that man".

-"Fuck you!" Mikey flipped us off and walked out of the store, strutting as if nothing has happened.

It was almost 4.00 p.m. and the AC was still broken, no news from the repair man or our manager. We were keeping the swing doors wide open with a bungee cord and two cinder blocks. The smell of gasoline and sun-baked pavement filled the store. I told Jimmy I'd bring the parking lot and gas pumps trash to the dumpster: the perfect excuse for a cigarrette break. It was so hot outside that the cigarrette made me nauseous, I needed a cooler break.

(to be continued...)