.:wanderlustmedia+dot+org:.

what is this ‘i don’t love you anymore’ crap?
i’ve never understood it, i don’t get it, i don’t buy it…
i can recognise how my attitudes may be related to problems w/ closure &
letting go-
whether informing each other as cause or effect i’m not ready to judge,
yet- but in
my experience, feelings & emotions grow into a life of their own, seemingly
enduring
autonomously of their ostensible source & causes…
maybe i’m a worse romantic than i can easily admit to, & a perverse sort of
philosophical nominalist @ that: my take is that whatever emotion we may have cherished that seems to suddenly- or grindingly- come to th end of its’ ’shelf-life’ was not ‘love’ in th first place, then, & one was self-deluded by th understandably intense human desire to loosen th boundaries of our individual self into a ‘meaningful’ connection to a recognising other: experiencing th very desire for love itself as a state, condition, sensation & mode of (self-?)awareness that carries & sustains an aura of transcendent authenticity… th little bit of buddhism i’ve absorbed has helpd me distinguish that ‘releasing’ is not synonymous to pushing away, nor ‘detaching’ to turning away: too easy for me -coming as i do from severely insecure, codependent childhood- to engage in mere reaction & denial under cover of acting to control th discomfort generated by situations where intimacy- experienced so often as exposure- leaves me feeling grossly, fatally vulnerable…
th crucial lesson of buddhism for my recovery is in learning to stop seeking to escape- running off or shrinking away- from th shortness of breath and racing heart of anger, fear, disappointment, betrayal & abandonment, somehow seeing myself thru th emotional state as it arises, peaks & subsides- as it eventually does…i cannot bask in th release of detachment without engaging th difficulties of full acceptance…
-d-(8{>

…speak of th devil, last night while my membership was being processed, th lady in red walkd into th vega baja blockbuster video near th midnight closing time & askd to use th restroom. it took forever- i mean, joining th teeming masses as a blockbuster video club member- because th young woman in charge took th process as an occasion to put a trainee through his paces. th lady in red had to wait, too: somebody had to get a key & escort her to th ladies’.
she lookd like i imagined a small-town streetwalker would: hard to get away from that fire-engine, candy-apple, dead-center target-bright red dress…her face was hard-featured w/out being harsh- th nose a little big, th brow a little heavy. she was thin w/out being slender, her calves well-turnd, tannd & fairly muscled. when she walkd out, i thought she gestured towards a little girl- her little girl- to come along, but i couldn’t swear to it… i wish i had had th gall, th pretext, th tact, th skill to make her feel comfortable telling me her story…

third time’s th charm- fourth…? a la tercera va la vencida, a la cuarta-la despedida…? here’s th northerly blowing a wet, grey front onshore & @ th very least it’s a cooling relief from th sticky humid dog days of tropical august… por fin, @ last, endlich, enfin i dove into th water en marchiquita: lately, every time i drive into manatí- to a little health food store & a new ‘wine gallery’ carrying some of frances oliver’s grreat imports (steele, bonny doon, de loach…) -i take th little coast road- a no-brainer, th alternative being th postindustrial car & fast-food worshipping strip la num.2 (‘la militar’, since it was built by th army corps of engineers during ww2) has become…
& i make a point of driving over th little ridge that comes right up to th shore @ that point in th coastline, to check how th waves are breaking… for those of you that don’t know mar chiquita- a perfect little scallop shell of a beach, where th ocean squeezes thru two mounds- tongues?- of jagged brown calcareous rock tall as a two-story house, a third peñón jutting out of th ocean & dividing th entrance channel in two…
th ocean swell has to be pumping in th exact northeasterly direction to throw a lip just inside th channel between th rocks & peel into a perfect tube as th wave opens like a fan… i remember one perfect morning in september of 1976, i believe…alan del castillo had borrowed his mom’s vw beetle for a last day @ th beach before going back to england & his premed studies- for a moment, i thought i was getting a ride to my classes for th day en la yU-Pi-R, before easily getting talkd into a day off…it was perfect. i needed no swimfins to catch up to th swell & be @ th peak to slide down th face of a wave that pitchd out far enough for me to have th most dramatic ‘tubed in’ experience of my life… yes, i useta be a bit of a bodysurfer…it’s broken bigger one or two times since- bigger & still ‘rideable’- but i’ve never managed to catch a seaswell throwing waves that break as clean & perfect as that day…
mahalo- d-(8{>

Message text written by Adriano Gonzalez
“hay una salida…amor, trabajo y esperanza…Be solo el critical”
market value for insurance purposes (what the insurance will pay if total loss, based on wholesale bluebook value) is $29.9 K…
* la pegué, ah?
…Ay bedito mijo, estoy tan trijte y confungio… no digijte na de mi mensajito (on prostitution and happiness)
* youwannit? yagottit!
“An inflated consciousness is always egocentric and conscious of nothing but its own existence. It is incapable of learning from the past, incapable of understanding contemporary events, and incapable of drawing right conclusions about the future. It is hypnotized by itself and therefore cannot be argued with. It inevitably dooms itself to calamities that must strike it dead.”
Carl Jung (1875-1961)
* is he talking about himself?? who can honestly, wholly escape this indictment?
“The whore is despised by the hypocritical world because she has made a realistic assessment of her assets and does not have to rely on fraud to make a living. In an area of human relations where fraud is regular practice between the sexes, her honesty is regarded with a mocking wonder.”
Angela Carter (1940-92)
* brilliant woman. writes th most elegant, terrifying short stories on intersections of myth, popular ‘archetype’ (see above) & gender identity…camille(paglia) is brilliant, but there’s something that strikes me as a little disingenious about her- too aware of her audience, a literary star out to tell basic truths in pithy, superficiallyly transgressive & shocking terms to grab attention…
“Prisons are built with stones of law, brothels with bricks of religion.”
William Blake (1757-1827)
* one of these days i’ll buy a gorgeous first edition of this man’s complete works & never even look @ any other book again…

well, as th late lamented walt kelly wd have churchy cry out to pogo, usually as he ran for safe cover- ‘watch out!! friday th 13th fall on a thursday this month!’
* & it did, but it pickd itself up/dusted itself off & started all over again… thursday i cross-traind, which always feels good- abs & delts wkout early afternoon, & a good, if scraping workout for my grip & callouses warming up for my evening run by doing 15- 20 minutes of fake bouldering- climbing along th seawall on th property…didn’t do my coconut tree climbing practice, tho… th prevailing nor’ easter has reasserted itself, except for th occasional nighttime landward gust bringing humid heat & predawn drizzle… one for th money- three to get ready- a la tercera va la vencida (third time’s th charm…?) struggling w/ writing 100% english…i want to jump in & out, up & down, here & there, de bilingual a trilateral soon- will be recommencing study of deustsche sprache- i believe klaus-heiner is joining jens-holger & family for their december visit & i’d like to be able to meet him halfway across his limited english…

th winds have shifted due to th transit of a tropical wave through th area,
bringing showers in
from th southeast…rolling over th hills, th rain spreads an intense
country smell that transports me to th summer i was two: alberto had come
into this world w/ no small trouble in april & he absorbed most, if not
all, of my parents’ attention. i remember wandering, seemingly alone, among
th shadows of dusk filling th musty country house my mother spent her own childhood summers in… then settling into a window seat where i cd lie down & just barely stretch out…there was a cafetín just across th road & i cd hear th jíbaros get loudly drunk while th jukebox played rancheras & corridos… th mental & emotional fog & accompanying fatigue lifted enough for me to run twice in as many days- th change was dramatic enough for my second espresso cup of sunday, after lunch @ oscar & marian’s, to trigger th occasional recurrent anxiety that i might be slipping into mania…but then again, tagging along w/ carlos agustín & his 18 month old son, & meeting up w/ eduardo, who cd not avoid his usual grilling & subsequent prescription for running my life, did not help matters much… what began as a light drizzle intensified into close shower by th end of my thirty minutes of pounding th pavement that evening…first run in th rain in a very long time…towards th end of it i caught a whiff of anothersmell that took me back to childhood & ‘la casa dl campo’- a fire or barbecue made w/ vegetable charcoal- maybe guayabo- guava tree? …in one corner of th couple of acres surrounding th house & planted to citrus, th caretaker of th farm-ramón lozano, still alive & kicking- would build his ‘chimba’: a mound of earth where a slow fire wd mysteriously turn green wood into charcoal chips…i tore up my face pretty badly when i was about five, trying to rub some of th soot into a blackface mask so i cd rehearse playing melchior- th moorish third of th three kings who paid homage to th infant jesus- in th upcoming christmas pageant @ school…

blablabla… i may be hitting some kind of bottom here…my caffeine tolerance is up so high three double espressos have faild to deliver th slightest mood-lightening or antidepressant effect…this is where i start to get a little scared, a little weirded out…read a few chapters from douglas coupland’s ‘generation x’ & felt somewhat comforted…like a glass of warm milk & cookies before being put to sleep so th body snatching pods can take you over… it’s bn a gorgeously bright afternoon in th loud, saturday beach party heart of darkest august…clouds roll in as th sun sets & th tide rises fast as i debate going for a run… i return obsessively to th idea that i need to steel myself to th notion of paying for sex as my final capitulation to th patriarchal double standard & thus become a conventionally, if not truly or fully, sexually functional adult male of th species… ironically & significantly enough, i’ve gotten stuck in my reading of james joyce’s ulysses, just as leopold bloom & stepen daealus wind their respective paths towards bella cohen’s brothel in th first pages of th ‘circe’ -or ‘nighttown’- chapter…
…so i make my run late enough to catch th glow of fireflies in courtship as i return from th deadend road to th yacht club on th edge of th dying cibuco rivermouth mangrove; scramble about for twenty minutes between landside & seagate on th property when i get back, finally clambering down th collapsed seawall in th dark, high tide breaking about me, to catch th full moon rising like a perfect roll of hay behind th shoreline silhouette of pines & palm trees…
d-(8{>