V
I am an unrepentant enthusiast,
that's why my texts change courses constantly.
Themes, colors, styles and tones are imposed on me at times by reality,
at times not; but these details exist that were constructed inside me,
a specific world, true images, for example:
my first visit to the San Diego Zoo,
the rocky majesty of La Rumorosa,
a beautiful and vigilant woman in the plaza of Rosarito,
the sight of a leprous trash picker in a Narvarte slum,
the swaying boats one October night in La Paz,
the sudden appearance of hundreds of iguanas in Cancun,
a lovely sunset in the sea of Puerto Escondido,
the grandeur of the whales in Laguna Ojo de Liebre,
a carnivalesque hallucination at the port of Veracruz,
the murder of workers one spring afternoon in San Cosme,
the most beautiful girl walking down a dusty street in San Jose,
meeting with male and female friends in the hot spots of Hermosillo,
the death of my grandfathers and legendary grandmother,
the unexpected death of my brother Robert Jones on a lunar eclipsed night,
a blind hemiplegic playing a guitar in Balboa Park,
the unjust raid on my house in Playas de Tijuana,
the endless nights of madness on Avenida Revolución,
the massacre at McDonald's in the Summer of ‘84,
the luminous births of my four daughters: Gabriela, Carlota, Daniela, Trilce and of my
granddaughter Isabella,
the illegal who got ran over and died at the International Boundary,
the sensation of infinity in front of the seas and deserts of Baja California,
a huichol dawn opposite a water mirror at who knows where,
the sensual voice of Dirdreu O'Donohue four nights a week,
cheerful saturday mornings with the radio shows of Sancho Viejo,
a letter written on the road in 1950 addressed to Neruda,
suffocating steam from the wet earth after a summer rain,
a film by Robert Bresson entitled Mouchette,
certain lines of poetry that grant me clarity about the world,
the inescapable absence of Marilyn Monroe,
some bluish color that comes from infancy,
the repetitive and relentless adagio of Albinonni,
musical discoveries of the master Brian Eno,
certain male and female friends that are already difficult to forget,
family gatherings on certain weekends,
a few erotic fantasies on nights of involuntary wifelessness,
certain nights of pleasure and voluntary insomnia,
an afternoon when suicide was an inescapable shadow,
certain love pacts, a little kiss on peach-like skin,
little bites of passion on the neck of the night,
all the pieces of an enormous jigsaw puzzle that I'm always assembling,
which form my life, and at times appear in my texts,
and are suddenly difficult for me to read in fear of reopening wounds,
or else, because time has shown me that these texts
are no longer valid and yet, I keep writing
my testimonies because, as my friend Estela says,
I'm only a novice of humanity.
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