There she is again.
Crazy meth head lady.
Going car to car knocking on the driver’s window asking for money in an aggressive manner.
How she survives. I have no idea. She probably gets twenty pesos in an hour or two.
Then she is gone.
Probably for more meth.
She will appear again sometime. Do the same routine. Scare drivers. Some that pity her will give her money.
She looks like the crazy cat lady in the Simpsons but without cats. Eleanor Abernathy is her name. Thanks, Google.
Yesterday, I got a strange sense of euphoria.
I was higher than I have been for a while. And mind you, nothing really changed. I probably just drank way more coffee.
Or maybe it was the bacon. It had a wrong smell but tasted good.
I paced back and forth in my apartment thinking about what to write next. A big story. A feature. A cover. Something.
I haven’t really done that in a while.
It was supposed to be the Haitians. I’m glad I didn’t. That is scrapped or will go back to short. I’ll figure it out.
Nope.
I got inspired, after reading a Rafa Saavedra quote.
I need to write about Tijuana in general.
I’m not a writer. Tijuana just writes itself.
That’s where I am right now. I told my editor about this. I pitched it wrong.
I pitched it like a fluff story. I guess if he had okayed that, I would have gone the easy route. He said not interested.
My mind is fixated on what I must do. I know what I must do, I just need to do it. Need to write. And I know I will.
Probably be done by the end of this week. Definitely before the end of the year. I’ll get started right after I write right rite this.
I insisted to the editor that I wanted to write this even if it was a long shot. I’ll figure it out. I just know I need too.
So my mind was poisoned yesterday with my own ideas. I felt like I was going insane.
Just from drinking too much coffee.
From the pressure that I feel when I get emails from the editor. From still not understanding what a writer does or what a writer is. I have no idea what I do. But it works out somehow.
Tap Tuesday.
I was hungry but at the same time didn’t want to eat anything. I just wanted to decipher.
Decipher what was going on in my brain and in this city. About the future and the past.
And I was excited.
Went into the new Border Psycho. After all, this is the place where I found the new inspiration.
Took a picture of the quote that I wanted. It wasn’t what I really remember it was. I needed to know the context of the quote.
So I started reading more Rafa Saavedra.
And here I was.
Thinking Tijuana Makes Me Happy was a cheesy saying. A stereotype. A catchphrase.
It’s not.
I have no idea why it took me so long to read the great Rafa. And this is just the first text I’ve delved into. His most famous text written in 2004.
The parallels of that Tijuana with this Tijuana and the Tijuana that once was and the Tijuana that it could be.
It just repeats itself.
And it doesn’t.
Definitely, the most bizarre city I’ve ever been.
A city with everything and nothing.
With the crazy cat lady with no cats. Her meth-addled brain lives in another Tijuana.
Everyone lives a different Tijuana.
I live a different Tijuana than many others.
My hipster cozy Tijuana.
The Tijuana with no problems.
But Tijuana is what you want her to be.
Paradise and hell both coexist in the same space.
Tijuana is all. Tijuana es nada.
Oh yes.
After so half a decade here. I’m still obsessed.
That was yesterday.
I went to Norte and just stared at my phone. Got excited over the prospect of what I was going to write. Which I should be doing now. I still have no idea what it is. I just know it is. And I’m obsessed with that. I don’t want to do anything but this text.
Except that tomorrow I have a photo shoot.
I got some responses. Should be easy enough and straightforward. I got this. I have to go to two places with live music.
The third one will come later.
Hah.
I just remember. While I was at Norte high on my own ideas… a girl came up to me and said “you aren’t at Nelson?”
I have no idea who she was…
She looked familiar.
I felt bad.
It was a really awkward interaction. Was I supposed to say hi?
I was in the zone.
And I never had food.
Except for the pretzels that they give at Norte. Drank more beers than I should. It’s tap Tuesday.
Still obsessing over the idea.
Woke up.
Still obsessing over the idea.
And here I am now.
Still obsessing over the idea.
I should have gone to Public House to talk to Omar Pimienta. His sage advice would have helped.
Hopefully, tomorrow I get to get sage advice from Chad Deal.
For now.
I look for words in the bottom of my coffee mug while I try to decipher the ideas I have into text.
Ideas.
Ideas.
That comes after enjoying and breathing Tijuana.
Timeless.
I could do whatever the fuck I want whenever the fuck I want.
The “nightlife” could be now.
A new cover came out.
This time I had nothing to do with it.
I haven’t written dick yet. And I already feel like I have a cover. I have no idea how I wrote the other three. I had a similar feeling. Like I knew what I must do.
Can’t believe my first cover was about breweries back in April of 2016.
I talked to Carlos Macklis yesterday for a while about my obsession. I have no idea why I want to talk to people about my obsession.
I have no idea how I wrote this either.
It just happened. I wrote it back in December of 2016.
Reading Saavedra made me realize that I do the same as he does but by accident…
He wrote in Spanish and threw English into the mix.
I write in English and I do pocho shit when I feel like it.
The bilingual brain is a weird thing.
And then there was this one:
I wrote it in March of this year…
That one… that one was more about how crossing the border works.
Which is still an obsession.
Transferring yourself between countries likes its nothing.
Now. Now it’s an unhealthy obsession. To decipher the undecipherable. To download my brain into text. What loops in my mind just throw it out there. Organize it neatly. Make it readable.
For what?
I need the money.
But also… to get this monkey off my back. I just need to do it for my own health.
Just like I had to do this word vomit for my own health.
It’s coming to an end and I have no idea what is next. But for my own health… I’m going to keep on writing stupid shit.
Matingas 