Desperation

Now I have arrived at the edge of darkness, the lawless land. I met a toothless coyote bringing 4 Honduran teens north. they had only small backpacks...the coyote had nothing. they had no papers so could not drive so they walked and jumped the train and took the bus at night so they could pretend to be asleep at the checkpoints.
Ï ask who is in charge, and no one answers.
this is a desperation that wakes me up. it´s hot, I´m sweating and thirsty and many people are hungry. Lawyers, guns and money would solve all my problems.
 the resources in Chiapas are stressed to breaking. The coyote said,´once, this was Guatemala.¨and he´s speaking of Chiapas...so now Guatemalans recross the border that was once somewhere else as this story plays out repeatedly in history.
This is beyond changing, it is human nature. so is the part about villanizing people struggling to survive. the coyote was toothless and he was escorting teens to the northern promised land, but I had a nice conversation with him. I think he was an American citizen...somehow, spoke english, he seemed a bit of a philosopher and a student of life.
I need a quesedilla.

I will try to write a detailed essay of this particular scenario but it requires some time to digest. But for now I want to warn anyone approaching Guatemala and Central America in general that things are kind of desperate here. grown men ride bicycles far into the mountains to pick up wood, small branches and then bicycle back to town with the fuel for their Mezcal refineries. It´s good mezcal, espcially the jamaica flavored, but my point is the lengths we will go to survive. that´s the issue really. Only innocent Oggy would go to Guatemala to look for work while thousands flee because of lack of work. I am resourceful, but more than that I can´t tolerate the level of manipulation I´ve seen in the north. it´s pure poison, obviously debilitating to mankind, but because it produces sales it is allowed. I want a place that does not tolerate slimfast garbage and that makes me a fundamentalist, a pilgrim, a religious refugee...the exodus of one in a 45 year old mayflower.

do what you will do but when you approach Guatemala hide your valuables, don´t hand your paperwork to anyone without a visible gun....don´t believe anyone who is walking...only converse with individuals in an office in a uniform. be prepared for chaos.

Detour

Rough day of driving....like crossing a parking lot full of tire curbs and simply driving over all the curbs one after another for hours

Crubs? No problem, just drive over them...for hours.

I made one mistake after another, got so lost I didn´t even bother asking the people where I was...it would`ve been embarrancar. I had some musing that basically involved an outline of a person....and every day is a pencil line in filling the person´s outline up. and the pencil lines are richness...but not necessarily riches. There is a fine difference between the two. Richness is watching the sun set, smelling flowers, breathing mountain air. Riches is importing fish, drawing blueprints of a garage, programming an animated dog.

More on that later.

A Sign From Aztec Gods?

Tranquility

So, my last day in Atlixco, packed, even woke up before noon, a final picture of El Conquistador between the volcanoes and the cloudless sky, the Paso de Cortes right around the smoke stack.

And then about 40 seconds later...

A sign?

Moments after turning around to get out of town the volcano erupts. It´s active and usually puffs ash but not during the 30 seconds I happen to have my van in front of it. Even if you don´t believe in signs this will make wonder....a van called El Conquistador has about a 120 second window of opportunity in front of two volcanoes named by Aztecs...like 400 years after the Conquistadores existed...and the volcano erupts at that exact moment?

I took it as a sign to turn south...head toward unknown lands.

Atlixco Survived

I was curious so I cheated with this compilation

Futility

American news looks more and more like a soap opera that is going to get cancelled.

Screenshot Trivia #3

Screenshot #1

Too easy but kind of obscure. I think you can deduce the movie from this screenshot. But it will hopefully inspire some to revisit this fine movie.