La Rumorosa

Before I came down with a cold for my birthday, I took a day trip- no, this was  definitely a road trip- out to Mexicali. Why? I hadn’t been there! And I had a chance to go. Simple enough.

What I knew about this city was hearsay: the only thing you can do in Mexicali is be hot, drink beer to not be so hot, but end up just being drunk and hot. And eat famously good Chinese food.

Stopping at a Starbucks in the city to use the toilet and the wifi,

(my dudes, that is all Starbucks actually exist for in this dimention)

I did notice a distinct spike in the number Chinese/Chinese-Mexican people in the coffee shop.

There had better be amazing Chinese food around here then, right?

And did I even try any comida china? HA! Of course not! Why, would I EVER do that?!

I opted for a vegan place. (It was Asian fusion food, ok?!) The atmosphere was a little weird because they were in the middle of moving locations, but the food was pretty good!

Because there was no plan, there wasn’t so much to do in the city itself.

The ride, it turns out, was the primary reason to go. I could understand why people opt to drink for fun.

East of Tecate you leave the scrublands and enter the Sonoran desert.

And you can almost get the bends doing it! No, not really. But, dang, my head/ears felt funny.

The route you take goes through part of the the Sierra de Juarez mountain range. So you wend up and up from sea level to 4000 feet!

The landscape shifts from TJ city sprawl (chaos); to more pristine yet methane stinking ranches and farmland; to jumbled, rocky hills; to flat a expanse of desert, a dry lake bed.

La Rumorosa is the jumbled hills part, the winding road. It is also the name of the small town you blink-and-miss before hitting Mexicali.

It is surreal to see those mountains at first. Maybe it was just me a the time, but the land and rock formations didn’t register as real to my eyes. The giant wind turbines definitely didn’t help that situation.

Driving through, you get this feeling that the rubble around you would tumble down right on top of you at any moment.

Or a gust of wind would sneak up faster than most drivers dare to go and topple you over -land you all broken on uncomfortable looking rocks 300 feet below.

The wind doesn’t just whisper here.

And entering the desert doesn’t mean the weather is always hot. I’ve seen pictures online of the road blanketed in snow! I’ve love to see the hothead racers around here try the roads then!

This is a place of death.  I wondered just how many people had died out there.

How many were taken out there to be tortured, killed, and buried to never be found.

I spied enough car bits and tires to know that many an overly confident driver did not survive La Rumorosa.

Being still so close to the US, this desolate place is also an unsanctioned crossing point. I wonder how many people thought that going through this great trial of crossing over would bring them great reward.

I wondered how many died trying to make their delusions become reality.

Places to stop and take in the sights dot the roads.

You share the stops with work-minded truckers and photo-happy tourists alike.

Standing there feeling like you are looking out at Mos Eisley space port, you realize you can’t hear ANYTHING- when there is no traffic passing you by.

I live on a busy boulevard. I’d forgotten what quiet was like! We got reacquainted in betwixt the vehicle noises.

Oddly enough, I’ve actually been in this desert before. This one stretches up into Arizona where I’d lived for a short while.

The new experience for me was standing on the edge of that desert. I don’t think I’d ever stood at the very edges of any desert before.

One might not think it as ‘pleasant’ as standing on a beach. Nevertheless, there was something similarly dramatic, exciting and powerful in there.

It took me by surprise.

The place hums with its own kind of energy. I could feel why the boys would want to take their bikes and race the curves. Or why the truckers stop at the pull offs to pray near the shrines, and take a piss.

When I go out that way again, I want to visit the archeological site El Vallecito. This is a place were you are able view ancient petroglyphs. It’s nothing fancy or extensive, but it’s nice to be close to old things in a land where everything has been built up so recently.

Vehicles push through/
Vulture circles close


La Rumorosa, Motile/


Mutters/Grips hard/Bites down

 

Silence, grandeur, death

 

Originally posted on blogger. With images! Go see ’em!

Productivity, thy name is… Espresso

meh-ami

It happened!

Before I got all my stitches removed, I hauled my butt over to-

even more warm weather, sunshine, palm trees, ocean, and Spanish.

I took my DFSP adventure time all the way to Miami, Fla.

We time traveled twice over: moving three hours ahead plus an hour for daylight savings time.
So during that first week, I was simply feeling magical! -as said with a great amount of sarcasm.

I didn’t know how quickly I would feel ready for doing anything.
Before this trip, I was barely recovered of the vampiric drain on my life force from two weeks of- oh hey, I have an open hole in my chest!

(None of you are ready to see those pictures.)

It took so long to get closed up because I don’t live close to decent labs. They needed time to ship samples out and run detailed tests. And I had to get cut twice. In the first procedure they made a 6x7cm hole. In the second procedure they took out everything down to the muscle. Just to be certain there were no more defective cells left in the area.

 

FYI: We are all pretty certain I am free of this cancer.

When I got my graft installed, they also sewed something on to me.
They called it a cap.
I called it my reward for opening a puzzle box.

(Go watch a Hellraiser movie to learn more about this important pop culture reference.)

This cap took tension off the graft stitches and held it down/in place. A completely new realm of discomfort was opened up to me. As you can imagine, I was very happy to have that thing clipped off.

The cap experience still wasn’t as bad as the wound cleaning experience. That was the highest level of pain I think I’d ever experienced in my life.

 I wanted to do more than just convalesce on the trip. It was, after all, an artist residency wherein artists create new work and network. Technically, it wasn’t my residency, but I didn’t want to be a glum lump trailing behind.

Spurred by the adrenaline of being in new environments and meeting new people, I was able to keep up. Mostly.

Coffee. Espresso. Helped. A lot.

We were tickled to find a moka pot in our apartment’s kitchen. We used to have one in Williamsburg, you see.

Guess what souvenir came back to Rosarito with us?! No, no. We didn’t steal it. We bought our own! Because moka pots are not common out west for some reason?

(Now I can sit here for hours driving myself crazy tweaking this post while sipping a double espresso!)

Our apartment, a spartan, little place, perfect for an artist residency, was located in Wynwood.
It’s a neighborhood hiding under extensive (excessive?) amounts of graffiti murals and street art.
Everything hip is located in Wynwood. Like 16oz juice blends that cost 10+usd.

Above & Beyond: Common Grounds Miami electronic dance music festival was located in Wynwood.
Yes, we attended such a thing. Wearing ear plugs.
I was very disinclined to dance. After three dj stumbling through the same format of soundbites, enough was enough. The dude-bros’ sets really sucked rude objects.

Apparently, there is a prescribed mode of festival dress you must wear when you attend an edm festival. It looked like all the pictures of Burning Man with a sprinkle of Coachella except 200% less glamorous and/or inventive. I saw bandanas worn over faces. Were they expecting a sandstorm?

Yes, music festivals really happened just across the street. Yes, I lost a lot of sleep to two weekends of beats. There was also a loud, bright and early Sunday morning Christian youth event that added insult to injury after the previous night’s revelries cleared out in the wee hours.

One evening was truly unbearable. The concert was pretty good, but the sound systems in the cars that parked nearby almost killed us. The overlapping bass lines rattled the walls and our brains. Bros all wanted to hang out and show off their systems or whatever. Ugh.

Interestingly, a security detail was assigned to stand watch over the residency apartment building through those long, noisy nights.

Zak the Baker is located in Wynwood. I wanted to work there when I saw how much fun everyone was allowed to have. It was the happiest bakery I’d ever been in.
(EAT THE CARBS)

I could walk up a few blocks and see several large scale Anselm Kiefer installations in the Margulies Collection at The Warehouse. Because it’s located in Wynwood. I really, really enjoyed his work in that space.

The doctor told me that I would be able to take out my remaining stitches within the second week of the trip.
My stitches were left in Wynwood. Are they hip?

During my stay in Miami, my strength increased from not being able to carry my own bag to doing a little, silly improv movement at the studio space three weeks later. Here’s an edit of it.

this is the first edit of video i took of myself during my last night at the MANA Miami artist residency at 777 International Mall. audio provided by local artists. 
palm tree created out of junked fiberglass boats during the residency by Chicago based creative agency & production house, Ava Grey Designs.

 

Junk writing aside, much of the residency I spent the time sketching in a blank book that says SKETCH on the cover.
(Hey, I was just doing what it told me to do.)

It had been a while since I’d felt the freedom to just sketch. No pressure… Pencil… Everything erasable… My mind wandered in and around the healing process. A bit Frida-ish of me, but whatever. I came up with some kinda funny/poetic/quirky ideas.

The Human put more presentable, finished ideas all over the walls of his space on the second floor of this shopping mall turned artist studio spaces.

On the first floor there was a room set up to screen Tijuana Bible no.1 and then also a couple of In Memoriams. It was the first time we had seen the videos en large in a focused context. It gave us good ideas for a future project.

I met artists from Chicago also in the residency: Erin, Jan, and a couple of the guys from Ava Grey, Cesar (sp?) and Nick.

From the studio’s location we could walk to a Whole Foods where I ate as many purple fruits and veggies as I could find at the salad bar. Purple. Instinctively I went to the deep colored foods. To match the graft on my chest, I suppose. At the time it was a bruise colored patch.

That patch looks more like a blaster mark now.

I miss those purple salads.

Fueled with Cuban coffee, we walked as much as possible. The city is in building mode. Expansive empty lots dot the city scape. Tall buildings at every stage of construction loomed here and there. Modern’s the name of the game. Or rather, it’s just that other M word- money.

It might be quite the international hub,  but Miami isn’t my kind of vibe at the moment. For me to live there I’d need a good reason. A really good reason.

If you love people and people watching, I recommend paying a visit. Just don’t love the people too much. Posters are everywhere warning about the dangers of syphilis.