Two Dogs South Tour, Mexico 2003-2004 ("The Rain Falls Down Amen On The Works of Last Year's Man" LC 1967)

Part I - Early Winter

(Hi Community, I'm feeling very uncertain as to who has interest in my traveling journal posts. My pref was to just give you the link to my site, but uploading from the I'Net cafˇ here proves to be a challenge for which I am simply incompetent. I encourage feedback and dialogue.

So, Swami & others who have requested these updates, enjoy. I've already sent links to graphics from Nov - to early Jan. I've more better but as explained above, they won't be immediately available on my site. E-mail me & I'll send you some mind-bending graphics inspired by my trip(s) uh um, here.)

Christmas Eve:

"Suzanne takes you down to her place by the river, you can hear the boats go by, you can spend the night beside her"

We arrive on the beach (it's a playa with ocean!) someplace a mite north of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico Christmas Eve and promptly get stuck in the sand - after five days of easy driving from Clearlake. Jesus is born in a desert manger and I arrive in sandy Mexican Paradise and get stuck. My world is perfect!

How strange to hear "Jingle Bells" in Spanish. What the fuck does a "one horse open sled" have to do with Mexican Christmas or any reality here for that matter? Mexico is very, very strange all by itself, a parallel universe unto its own being several times at once.

"And you know that she's half crazy but that's why you want to be there and she feeds you tea and oranges that come all the way from China"

As we approach the outskirts of each town, there are at least a dozen "topes" crossing the roadway that are not to be confused with "topas". Worse case scenario is they eat you if you don't slow down to a minus crawl; they are brain rattling axle shakers of the first degree and everything inside, bolted down or otherwise are threatened. It's best to slow way down and just take your time. Especially in a motor home. So, it wise to get into a rhythm whose bass AND rhythm line is the double rear axles, "ca thump ca thump rump rump ca thump ca thump rump rump ca thump ca thump rump rump". In one town, as we ca thump ca thumprump rump merrily along, a dog who's south bound progress causes wonder as he leads us on three legs hopping in rhythm to our ca thump ca thump rump rumps. Of course we are all in time with "Jingle Bells" in Spanish on the radio. I know this could not occur elsewhere on the planet with such precision and it's ample validation that we are indeed deep into the land of Atzlan magic.

""And just when you mean to tell her That you have no love to give her, Then she gets you on her wavelength and she lets the river answer"

" Crossing the border at Mexicali was a mistake in terms of road conditions and time. Should have gone via Nogales! Northbound on the way home, we shall! (retrospective 20/20 vision #1 OOOPS!)

Drivers here are decidedly crazier then north of the border - even those w/ U.S. plates. I'll not drive at night on two lane roads.

But I did score penicillin and Viagra at the first pharmacy after the first bar in Mexicali! Now I don't have to answer all that spam anymore.

What Mexicali Blues?

""That you've always been her lover And you want to travel with her And you want to travel blind And you know that she will trust you For you've touched her perfect body with your mind"

" Major Chord as been dosed each day of our trip with a mild sedative so he could relax more in our rattling motor home whose every reverberated noise makes the poor dog nervous and upset and he farts very strange odors. And you dog owners are aware (20/20 hindsight vision #2) that scared dogs fart. Bad farts! He stayed scared south of Mexicali for several hours until the roadway evened out. He'da been words without the doggie tranqs but mellows out considerably after several days. Phew!

We took our time leaving California, stocking up on water, soups, juices and spare generator parts. We have a 30-gallon clean water storage onboard to which I've supplemented seven and half gallons. I've no idea where I'll find water or empty the black and grey water storage tanks once we cross the border. Those tanks are the real issue; I can always funnel drinking and washing water into that holding tank.

""And Jesus was a sailor When he walked upon the water and he spent a long time watching From his lonely wooden tower,"

"

Other travelers are very helpful and courteous at Pemex (nationalized auto fuel) - eat your heart out poppa shrub and your sexually abused bastard son! Lots of families on the road for the holidays. Folks are in a rush to get where they want to be and I feel like I'm already there so just cruise along while Major Chord checks the maps for side roads. There are none for motor homes and I can't for the life of me figure out why are folks who live in dirt keep the space around their homes spotless, while the sides of the highways look like the Napa dump. Oh, wait, that must be the "middle class" on the road. For miles and miles and miles! I know people don't throw empty pop bottles on their kitchen floor.

The first half of the drive through Mexico before we got within sensing range of the coast was Sonora desert. If you've been around Tucson, well, it's just the same for another nine hundred miles south or so. Actually, one may begin way up there in Washington State and move south through nothing but desert!

But down here, magically incredible desert scenery and unparalleled sundown's and sunrises. On the surface, there is little life in a land ruled by cougars and rattlesnakes. We see owls and hawks the farther south we travel as the spirit of peyote eating Huichol Indians whose lands get closer by the hour assumes astrally incarnated space.

""And when he knew for certain Only drowning men could see him He said, "All men will be sailors then Until the sea shall free them."

"

We pull off the road each night just past dark, way off, to make dinner, smoke a thick one, sleep, wake just before sunrise, make breakfast, walk, smoke a thick one and drive. It's been like this for four days!

I'm having a blast!

""But he himself was broken Long before the sky would open, Forsaken, almost human, He sank beneath your wisdom like a stone."

"

There's nothing liked being camped on the beach. I quickly become acquainted with a "family" of eight Argentineans and one Uruguayan woman. The nine of them comprise a hippie circos. They are artisans, creating jewelry and vending to the daily tourists trucked in from Puerto Vallarta for two hours of beach lunch and swim. At night they hit the streets of Sayulita juggling fire. They never heard of Kesey, Ram Das, Beatniks, Burning Man, the Dead or Garcia but consider themselves "hippies." How weirdly refreshing. Parallel universe time always down here.

Argentinean women have the genetic code down for ass! French for lips, Brooklyn for attitude, but there ain't no ass in the world like Argentinean bottoms.

""And you want to travel with him And you want to travel blind And you think maybe you'll trust him For he's touched your perfect body with his mind."

"

Fresh fish are plentiful and inexpensive. Did I say cheap? My dinner one night, picked from fisher guy Luis' fresh line caught load, on his way up the beach to his house cost me a whopping buck and half U.S. Local folks are wonderful and very friendly, most unlike most other "quiet fishing villages" in relationship to tourists. There are quite a few American ex-pats who have bought land in and around this small town owned by seventeen families. This is the first place I've been since Isla Mujeres twenty-five years ago where I felt it safe for my very young daughters to be out alone on the street at night. There is no theft, violence, rape or aggression here at all.

Yes, it's a parallel universe where locals and tourists interact 24/7 in pleasant fashion with mutual respect. All the Gringos who live here are thoroughly bi-lingual, educated, hippie or not and living in splendid Mexican Abundance.

""Now Suzanne takes your hand And she leads you to the river And she is wearing rags and feathers from Salvation Army counters"

"

For instance, this self-described "pig farmer," from Illinois, "Just call me 'Porko', everyone else does," who, with his wife, lives here all year (trippple digit temp & humidity all summer) in his early fifties. So Retired! Sold his land to Wall Mart for millions. Said it took him six years to find this place. I first got here in a four-hour flight from SF finding friends who had bought here as well.

(At this point, my trusty laptop died - the second time on a trip & I am left with no ability to create art or write and am forced to lie around the beach all day and swim, read and chase balls that MC the Real Dog refuses to move a muscle to fetch, even after he's brought me the ball to throw.)

Two Dogs South Tour - Part II
Feb 20 2004

""And the sun pours down like honey On our lady of the harbor and she shows you where to look among the garbage and the flowers."

"

That decision to travel north through Arizona proved a BIG mistake, yet in proper Buddha parallel universe fashion was prolly perfect. The law had to reach me someplace and some time, after all these arrogant years smoking weed in my vehicle!

""There are heroes in the seaweed, There are children in the morning,"

"

I had stopped in Quartzsite, just twelve miles or so from the Cali state line. Oy! Know what occurs in Quartzsite for three weeks in Jan & Feb? It's the fuckin largest conglomeration of RV's & motor homes as the town of three thousand hosts well over two million visitors during those three weeks who have come to the "Largest Swap Meet In The World."

I mean acres of fifty-five gallon drums of stone from Brazil and Zimbabwe and the Ukraine. I saw fifteen-pound crystal phallus' for $150. The entire joint is "WHOLESALE!" a Jew's Paradise! And, no one of the thousands of vendors takes credit.

The demographics are heavily retired (60+) with a smattering of hippies and new age storeowner types. It's simple as one tries to maintain one's sense of perspective to remember Burning Man. Unless you've seen Quartzsite, you can't "imagine" what I'm talking about. It's on both sides of I 10 and most of the length of town. RV's are parked for MILES in every direction. If you don't need it, it ain't sold here! There are parts for chiseling stone, for RV plumbing, knife sharpening, and every imaginable gem, stone or mineral you've ever wanted to hold, touch or purchase.

The demographics of the vendors run the gamut from Christian at home-schoolers living as carnies to miners and dealers. I met a wonderful Ozark family selling bounty from "their mine," at tables presided over by their eldest daughter. Very pregnant at fifteen!

On my way out of Dodge I pulled off the side of the road to make yet one more purchase. As I began to pull back into traffic, about fifty meters from a stop sign, I failed to notice the local LEO behind the car that waved me in.

""They are leaning out for love And they will lean that way forever While Suzanne holds the mirror"

"

This vision challenged hippie hating other white meat eating gun toting white walled marine haircut asshole puts on his lights and motions me not to move. A moment later he has me out of the vehicle cause he "smelled something" which I "tried" to explain away as my "dogs farts mixed with incense" and he's got his hands in my pockets and finds rolling papers, an almost capital offense in Arizone and indelible reason for arrest, dig? And, my name is what? Huh? And before I know what's going on, cuffs are snapped and I'm tossed into the back of his squad car.

Well, to make a long story end cause it is just a story and it will be over in five years (probation) but it's over now cause I'm out of Arizona and back on the beach in Mexico, I had a date with a judge last week on my way back down here and got fined, enrolled in a sixteen hour alcohol/drugs class, convictions for DUI & possession and a date to return for twenty-four hours lock up in the, dig this, La Paz county jailhouse.

The really "funny" part is the "only" real reason I returned north was to see the work completed on my house. Nothing was accomplished in that regard so after my court date, what the hell. . .I heard it was rainy and cold a few days ago.

I've got two computers set up AND connected a midi keyboard, extra 80 KB disk space and my arthritis doesn't bother me here where my day goes something like this:

Sunrise: Awake make coffee, let MC out the door
7:00 yoga (YES), well, it's a stretch to call it that, but I'm stretching!
7:30 b'fast and beach walk, perhaps swim
7:45 Myla walks beach with her dog
8:00 cowboy + two extra horses come by on way to tourist hotel
8:45 Luis heads out to await fisherguys return, we smoke doobie together first
9:00 check email or write here
10:00 computer graphics and trying to figure out arKaos animation program
11:00 walk on beach, swim

This routine continues till an hour prior to sundown when I'm fuckin exhausted! Then it's up the beach for a beer and perhaps some ceviche as locals and Gringos out for sunset color stroll around in an orange purple foreground outlined by a blue sea.

""And you want to travel blind And you know that you can trust her For she's touched your perfect body with her mind."

"

As I sit here, almost a week back at the beach, a dragon lizard is poking it's head up from beneath the rock where it lives. One sunbathing snout up in the air proud motherfucker!

I kinda feel like that today.

Adios

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