Salsa! (kind of)

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The focus is about as sharp as my recollection of what transpired last Saturday. That said, I know there was a Metro “tour” (gracias Rifka), lion meat! at the downtown market, homemade pizzas, margaritas (the beginning of the end), many too many Indios, and a mining of my small but growing collection of salsa LPs! These photos reflect more, and less than that, but that’s what makes them interesting to me. Sometimes out-of-focus is the best depiction of reality, and how that reality becomes a memory.  (Photos courtesy of Tracy!)

Plaza Rio de Janeiro

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This is the view from my apartment, looking down. It rains, taxi cabs queue, sirens flash, and uniformed school kids cross. Umbrellas, soccer balls, and believe it or not, bagpipes are the norm. Bells echo from the around-the-corner church, boy scouts race in colored shorts, and ambulantes want everyone to buy everything, this is the view from my apartment, looking down. Horns sound, joggers stop, go, stop again, and dogs without leashes chase inca doves, this is the view from my apartment, looking down. Motos, bicis, buses, and everyday pedestrians pass, robins sing, hummingbirds hum, and Michoacán ice is sold within earshot, this is the view from my apartment, looking down. There is elote, baton twirling, and a dance troupe, there are tamales, blue corn quesadillas, crosswords, suits, naps, sleeping grandparents, lovers, sword fights (seriously), popsicles, skateboards, chicles, cactuses, stick brooms, teenagers, “tunas!” and there are always taxis. This is the view from my apartment after it rains, looking down.

Shortwave

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This was recorded a couple of weeks ago (does that make it disingenuous?). It was the early morning. I was alone and couldn’t sleep. I opened the doors overlooking the plaza and grabbed my old transistor radio, started with “SW1” and progressed through all of the short wave frequencies, was at 7000 feet plus and thought I could tune into the clouds, to the leftover thoughts of twenty million people, to the sunset of a day’s work, to the conversation of the rain’s most ardent supporters, to the daydreams of grandparents. I found myself immersed in the search, I was tuning the radio, not to a frequency, but to my own thoughts, to my desire to find meaning in a day’s work, to the rain that never came today, to the expectation of me that will never be realized, to the dreams of my dead grandparents, to all of those things that had me awake in the middle of the night in Mexico City. I couldn’t find any answers but before long I had a clear signal: Shortwave (click to listen).