Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Wolves







I´m not totally sure about the truth that this was a Cherokee proverb. I recall a New Mexico tourist trap where a fake leather wallet had the saying, ¨March to the beat of your own drummer...¨ Ancient Apache Saying.
Well, Thoreau was the one who wrote that around the time the Apaches were being slaughtered by Land Hungry Expansionists.

Anyway, another wise ancient Indian saying (actually from a Justin Beiber Song) is, ¨The grass isn´t always greenest on the other side, it´s green where you water it.¨






Sunday, February 24, 2013

Consequences

Adam and I have had a chance to discuss many important issues. We agree that attitude is everything. He's convinced I've manifested my own ailments. He could be right. Basically, I've come several thousand miles across the desert and mountain and ocean to say goodbye to someone who wouldn't slow down for me if I was crossing in front of her car.
Oggy must walk in old man crouch due to spinal arthritis


Balandra Cove At Low Tide

"My vanity stretches from here to over there."

Saturday, February 23, 2013

hang on tight



Riding on the back of a motorcycle on the tropic of cancer.
Stones pelt the fragments of an obscured dream
the destiny of the asphalt civilization in a dual with paradise
cove of pirates fill with sand, the tides are ruled by distant moons

cachorros

what is the word for puppy? Perrito.

A Good Cause

I teamed up with global citizen Adam to promote his cause "No Kill No More" Sort of contradicts my bongo's mission of killing drug cartels but I think the general idea is compatible.
no kill no more
he has a promotion campaign on facebook if you care to look it up.

Friday, February 22, 2013

colorless

this is known as negative space photo

350 days of sunshine a year in la paz

Thursday, February 21, 2013

Photoblog



big pelicans

cormorants drying their wings

Confessions




Mexico is a Catholic country so I thought I would spend my Sunday at the church in Todos Santos confessing. These are normally anonymous but I have nothing to lose by sharing with the world.
The poet grieves so his words may be bitten and bleeding. Beer cans offer no solace to the wounded philosopher. The mountains protected certain Indian tribes from the conquering Spanish but an old gringo sucking in his gut and blowing his nose on his memories has no such bulwark. He is unshaven and haggard and at war with the mirror of his demise, vainly inspecting his chin for drooping fat. He liberates the words of his own delusion so that they might highlight the road to salvation, if not for him then for others who follow in his path. The human experiment is generations long and each family preserves their own traditions or, lacking traditions, builds their own illusions. Affection for the young and innocent is paramount as the roots of trust are planted early and are easily torn up. Throbbing music and pulsating hearts march us to a destiny we might  write down in our own history, painting on the crumbling walls of our emotional caves the hieroglyphs that tell our story or myth to the future. Where does the heart hide when the wounded wolf drags his bloody paws to our door.

comments disabled until russian spybots cease their attacks

the number of levitra and cock drugs attempting to get erections by advertising through my comments section has spiked beyond acceptable levels. I am spending valuable masturbation time deleting these useless ads and I'm tired of it. and no one ever comments anyway so I don't think it matters.

Monday, February 18, 2013

Canero

Cane Mill in Morning

Home
There was a mixup at the reservations of the Hilton and I ended up wrapped in Shrinkwrap sleeping with serpents and ghosts of dead sugar cane workers. Fortunately, they were friendly.


Thursday, February 14, 2013

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

spellbound no more

He stood a block from where he had seen her last and thought
¨This is where I saw her last.¨
The spell had lifted finally and his mind flowed with flighty dreams and a flood of language bound liberation. His suffering had borne fruit after all. Her charisma was no different than before, of course her heart had moved on and he vainly and selfishly wished only to bask in her charm for a moment, like a deep canyon flower that only sees the sun an hour a day. Her lips and voice should be declared a national treasure, her face representing all of Mexican lust. at first he was repulsed with how cosmopolitan she had become but as he was accustomed to realizing that his loathing was for himself, not her, and the way he was purchasing $300 ebony and rosewood guitar accessories with mother of pearl inlay. was that any different than Kipling bags and eyeliner applied with blatant casual indifference?
The flood of language he had waited for and dreamed about during the terrible term of his haunted love had finally arrived. He spun a mental tale like a Dennis Leary acid trip into magical circles of lunacy in front of him that made him laugh with delight. He was not Ashley to her Scarlett, like he´d initially thought, but he was Scarlett, independent and romantic and perhaps she was also Scarlett and they were both in love with their own ideas of love projected onto one another, her for a few days or hours, and he for  4 years...and this kind of mental recreation was the material he would need to dissect in order to move to the next level of creative production. Her heart had moved on, as he knew, but his poet´s core needed more convincing...and now he´d been convinced. His emotional shadow was no longer an orphan. She´d kissed him goodbye, off to high society Rome, and he to his destiny with immortal drama.
Men strode past in dirty trousers, women in new high heels, children in curious delight at the world, taking no notice of Oggy as he became reacquainted with the small corner, el rincon, of his heart that had been left behind, trapped behind her imaginary grasping designer jeans. ¨So, this is what it feels like to be complete.¨ The spell was lifted and he had reunited a portion of his consciousness with its other majority. Yes, one thing had been missing from his travels to Labrador and the distant corners of the continent, the darkness in the van, the scolding lights of the police, the drunks and degenerates decaying in a world of excess, but it wasn´t her, as he´d dreamed because her memory was worn to a high polish in his lazy brain, but it was him...his own unified heart and trust in the nature that had led him to the brink of continents and walking on crust of subducted grief. He had been incomplete and her presence was not the answer but it was the easiest excuse and the most romantically inclined to fulfill the desire of completion, the distant mother, the absent affection from his adult life, the cruelties of the world represented in the scolding glances and hurtful remarks of women who had stolen covers and snored and thrown his own humility in his face. He was a boxer with a long memory of low blows, resentment failing to protect him from the disgrace of his own futility and the invulnerable insecurity that had torn his soul asunder intentionally to provide and excuse to keep others at arm´s length.
The rich soil of his analysis would reveal the seeds of creativity and provide the nutrition his spirit needed. He was complete again....and was his education over? He wanted to believe that he had made the last of this genre of mistake...wasn´t it time to move on? He was a writer because he wrote and composed and lived as a writer would...and the trance needed to compose had been an oasis of serenity during his tortured years away from her. But now that the spell had been lifted he felt the dam of emotions he´d failed to transcribe already waiting overhead to be drawn in cement. Writing is described as duck hunting where you wait for the moment to shoot. Now all he saw were the multitude of ducks that had been there all along, but hidden by his grieving poet´s heart. A man couldn´t be more devoted and faithful to a woman than he had been to her ghost...and it had come to nothing...an empty wrapper...adios...so he´d felt the continent shift beneath his feet and incrementally his vision had been resurrected.
He now knew why the cowboys in the old songs never simply went back to Mexico to see the girl with the gardenia in her hair. Because the song would never be written. Romance is unrequited, longing from afar. Reality is the swift kick of denial that has no rhyming words.

He walked slowly by an old building and saw a poster about pianos...?
Que?
Pianos?
He went in and immediately recognized the pianos from the Triunfo museum where he and Nicolas had bonded in the desert as he fumbled through a Beethoven Sonata and Nicolas ripped through a Chopin Etude, near the abandoned gold mind...symbolic of the beginning and end of his own futile mining operations into her heart.
The pianos had been moved following the death of Nicolas.
Lo Siento
The man invited him in with courteous, Mexican hospitality.
He browsed and saw a single sheet of old music on a 100 year old Kimball piano...¨Las Cuatros Milpas¨ so he sat and played the simple Mexican cancion.
Pedestrians outside heard the music and smiled, holding hands tighter, but they didn´t see the tears on his face as he realized he wasn´t playing the song for Her anymore, no it was for life and the gift he´d been denied...but had pretended was his..but was now actually his again. The cycle had completed. Fortune had smiled on him. The spell was lifted. Goodbye to her, his love, may she have the time of her life with him, and hello to his heart that had been reunited, returning on a long journey, to where it belonged and in the uncertain soil of reality and not the virtual furrows he´d invented. He played the Mexican waltz and the song carried into the zocalo near the church. The carnival celebration was resounding outside but no one bothered the gringo at the old piano as he played the simple Mexican melody and cried.

Saturday, February 9, 2013

espinazo del diablo

never again that sierra occidental mountain road crossing. still weeping tears of fear. worst road on planet.
wouldn´t be so bad if I was driving but taking a bus was brutal. like a 6 hour roller coaster ride in a curving tunnel where you can´t see what you are about to hit. the floor was wet with vomit but I managed to hold  my lunch down.
the return trip will be los mochis to Chihauhau on the train.

Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Torreon

big  bandera on the south side of rio grande

tortas de lechon

jesus and jarritos belt buckle


the keyboardss are rough here so forgive
I have grown weary           of my own failures.
>Kerouac                      came to mexico to write. Cassady came for cheap drugs.
oggy  is learning about his world.
there  are more single cylinder motorcycles  here than    Vietnam.

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Bongo Tour



"Esta Machina Mata Drogistas"

I tried to thwart my destiny with piano fantasies but the river always leads to the source and I am undertaking a "Woody Guthrie Memorial Bongo Tour" of Mexico with the intention to sow the seeds of sobriety in the insane drug war. It has to end and like Booth thought he could take revenge for the humiliation of the south, Oggy is going to man up and meet the problem face to face. That can't be done in the van because it will seem presumptuous and haughty. No, I will travel with the people, I will drink their beer, but I will insist this insane cocaine trade must end. They have the power and maybe they are operating under some kind of sabotage theory that will destroy America from inside as we snort more and more cocaine but I don't care. It has to end. Yes, hydro fracturing is much worse overall than snorting cocaine but we have to start somewhere and maybe the cocaine is keeping our brains addled. I don't say I have the answer but I know what information I need to find the answer...and that's in Mexico as a bongosero disguised as an aging gypsy. If I die, then say I did it for love.

Monday, February 4, 2013

Don't Get Around Much





This song is too excellent. The descending melody followed by a stepwise ascension in the bass is so simple like the garden of Eden birds singing a contrapuntal melody of grief.
I don't get around much anymore...a confession and sad refrain from a broken man trying to keep his dignity. The song is from 1940 post- Cotton Club era Duke...it was republished in 1973 and that's the copyright.

Warfare

"Then you are a fool."

Kurt Vonnegut once asked the anthropologist Margaret Mead when men were most happy. I'm sure it had something to do with happiness eluding Vonnegut for most of his life. Mead not only studied many cultures I think she was predisposed to observe objectively, not buy into the Walmart sales bargain propaganda of the world. But some people are not hung up by the endless lies, they see patterns in the lies and truth in the horror...they see it all as destiny and humanity in an endless array of variations with some common traits. That's anthropology. Vonnegut (an anthropology major but not a very objective anthropologist) thought men should be motivated by reason. Mead probably saw this as totally naive. In general, men are not motivated by any one thing...but culturally we find meaning in completely different goals. But there is overlap and correlation. The trouble starts when the culture and the man do not match and Vonnegut is a good example. Another example is T.E. Lawrence. Oggy struggles but weakens in his scar tissue and flagging belly rolls.

End of Road


He'd lived with two Puerto Rican fags for 8 months. The Vicodin prescription had run out long before the pain. Cow Milk Blues had faded Polaroids of decks and stair bannisters he built when Reagan was president. He was grasping to dreams of pretty roadies in dirty bathrooms, panties pulled down to their knees, he was rock hard and could fuck all night. Now he had to hunt for his shriveled cock when he went to release the pressure on his cancerous prostate.
"62 years old, and working for a fucking nigger wage." he said with his head crooked to one side to relieve pressure on his spine.

He could play a song on the $10 plywood guitar, Milk Cow Blues and other songs he likes to say he wrote. "Jimmy Buffett stole this song from me when I was in Key West," he'd say before playing Margaritaville. The nut on his Korean plywood guitar was the wrong size so he shimmed it with a piece of plastic he found in the backyard. It didn't stay in tune but he could fake it. His hearing was so bad that intonation didn't matter. And then there were the screws in his leg. The damn titanium leg that he thought was funny when he mentioned it at first. He been beaten after trying to play the hero in an alley where a girl was getting raped.
"Hey, leave that girl alone," was all he had said and the hero's reward was a busted leg and a broken jaw. He woke up under a police horse. The police even tried to pin the rape on him. Why not? When it rains it pours. Like the time he was coming home from a day wrestling with locust thorn trees, bleeding, tired, looking pissed, trying to maneuver his bike to the liquor store. Three federal marshals lock their assault rifle sights on him.
"Get on the ground!"
He matched the description of a man running wild in the neighborhood with a gun.
He fell as ordered and in falling his chainsaw dropped with an awful sound to the pavement...never to work again.

Bunch of bullshit. $8 an hour at his age? Doing Mexican labor? For what? He was broken, working for pain pills.
"The doctors think I'm a junkie and I tell them, 'Hey, I'm not looking to get off. I hurt."

When it rains it pours and though the country was gasping in the middle of a deadly killing drought, Cow Milk was soaking wet with bad news. Couldn't catch a break. He could bet on the 1924 Yankees and they'd lose by a run in the bottom of the ninth.
"These fingers," he said showing the stubs on his right hand, were burned off by caustic acid...in the wrong bottle.
And the worst part was trying to sleep on the crooked mattress. If he didn't take an overdose of pain pills then he couldn't even fall asleep. He was tired but the pain of relaxation, the release of tension on his torn ligaments, took hours to subside.
"40 years of carpentry. I could build you a deck or a staircase. Now look. Fighting for dollars with the Mexicans. It's a race to the bottom."
He rubbed the protruding screws in his tibia and tried to lick a few more drops from his 16oz can of Natty Light beer.

Friday, February 1, 2013

Paper Doll



Maybe I can't record all my 1920 obscure tunes but I can definitely release my Standards Album.
Creative Commons License
Man in the Van by Oggy Bleacher is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.