The day after is a Wednesday. And today is like every day except it is eerily quiet. So quiet I become paranoid for a good five minutes that the silence is due to my neighbours converging on the streets deciding amongst themselves what the hell to do with me. How to punish me for being American and for having the audacity to show my face after that circus barker Trump became president of The United States. I feel ashamed today, as though I snuck into my new country, my new city, my new neighbourhood, my new home. Like I lied somehow when I came here almost six years ago.
Last night I entered a bar here to watch the election proceedings. I don't have cable TV and going to my local seemed the logical thing to do. Others were having parties at private homes. The parties seemed divided too: American parties, Canadian parties, etc. Parties meant to mock Americans, parties meant for Americans to learn who amongst their midst were Benedict Arnold's. Really just another reason to party.
Being a writer I wanted to observe in real time what the choreography might be between a predominately expat (white) environment, physically in Mexico, being served by Mexicans, during an election night that had a candidate that openly expressed racist, vulgar sentiments against Mexico and Mexicans. It wasn't a pretty sight. It was alarming.
(On a side note this is the first time I have ever seriously thought about the wealth of information being collected that is on digital film, recorded, and can be played back in order to get word for word dialogue. Future historians will have a wealth of information from which to cull information based upon what was actually said and done rather than what I want to, or can remember. For the category of people who 'stood by doing nothing' we will also have gobs of information available for psychiatrists reading body and face language as well as hearing what this group of people is saying).
There is a very powerful understanding amongst artists, in art, (I'm thinking literature and film), that what is being said out loud, (and loudly), is often what one wants you to see, believe or hear, but that what is actually being written about or artistically expressed is saying something quite different and that the artist, the writer, the painter, the intellectual, or sculptor is expressing at the subconscious level what can not be acknowledged at the conscious level. Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness…Many people believe this slogan to be what we are as a nation, but that is absolutely not what we write about. We struggle with race and difference, inclusion and exclusion, and inexhaustible (exhausting) fear - that is what we write about, and we have not figured it out yet as a nation. Saying it isn't so, insisting it doesn't exist, doesn't make it so. And the biggest denial might be: It's your problem, not mine.
I walk into the establishment and the place was packed in a way I'd never seen before. As well, it was packed with people I'd never seen before either except that is, the proprietors. The televisions were tuned to CNN and I wasn't there five minutes before a roar welled up when a particular state had registered in as having voted Trump. Honestly, I thought it was a lone asshole in the crowd who thought it might be funny to make people think he was happy Trump had won anything other than a one way ticket to floors lll, lV, Vll, or Vlll at The Hotel Alighieri.
I don't have an answer for this question but how does one eat, drink and behave in a restaurant when you are in a foreign country on the election night of your native country and that native country has it in for the foreign country you are now sitting in, ordering food? (That question was submitted by this writer to Slate's Dear Prudence columnist Mallory Ortberg's live chat on Monday November 14th, 2016. Let's hope my question gets picked as a worthwhile question. I'll be posting a followup, if indeed, I get an answer). I did receive an answer, and the reply can be found here.
Two white men in their twenties had gone outside to the indoor patio area, and while I could not hear what they were saying I understood well, when they thrust their hips violently forward, and speared their right arm up and forward with index finger outstretched, that they were ecstatically rooting for Trump. I was incredulous. Something vicious this way comes. When the night was over and it was clean up time only 10 people were left standing seven of whom where the wait staff. The other three people were me, one of the owners, looking like he was praying as he might have had he been practicing for a First Holy Communion, and the third man looked like the blackest of black storm cloud's had lodged over his head.
I return home and sleep only to waken at 3AM to violent vomiting and equally exaggerated diarrhea. I hadn't eaten anything out to get food poisoning so I wondered if the only drink I had ever received 'on the house' in six years of living in Mexico had actually been a cocktail of spit, bile, and an ice cube pickled with a fuck you. Mind you I wouldn't have blamed anyone on that night had suck a cocktail been mixed, but I then remembered I had twice daily been ingesting a neem tincture, the more likely culprit. I return to sleep and awaken, go on Facebook, and see that while I was sleeping the world around me had gone made.
A childhood friend who voted for Trump came out of the closet to tell me how much of a pain in the ass I was. I in return outed him on Facebook as a Trump voter and listed his place of business as a place folks might wish to reconsider patronizing. (It's always better when I am suffering, rather than when it's you, isn't it?)
I can hear the glass breaking all over the country. I can feel the rage. I can hear the fearful silence in Mexico; no one exhaled for 48 hours. I can smell the odor of fear that only the feral can smell. My loved ones are all so far flung to the wind that I can not collect them all to hold near. I feat that in time I may lose word of them.
The United States has been gearing up with military-like police forces for ages now. This continued and necessary outrage unleashing now will only result in an eventual curtailing of movement. It will be the only way The United States can control its citizens. and they will implement this confinement under the premise that it is for the good of all. Trump is the kid at the playground that while you are singing sweetly to yourself making sandcastles he comes around and kicks all your hard work over. He is a man itching to push the red button. His man spread is profound and wide. He likes to see things go boom. Look closely and I am sure his pants are riddled with the stains of pre-cum. He is the embodiment of the pre-ejaculalator.
Now is not the time to go gently into that good night and while Thomas wrote his great poem imagining his father, I imagine and update its meaning as a call to those who are witnessing the fall of democracy. We must rage against the dying of the light.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on that sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
-- Dylan Thomas
poemhunter.com
Last night I entered a bar here to watch the election proceedings. I don't have cable TV and going to my local seemed the logical thing to do. Others were having parties at private homes. The parties seemed divided too: American parties, Canadian parties, etc. Parties meant to mock Americans, parties meant for Americans to learn who amongst their midst were Benedict Arnold's. Really just another reason to party.
Being a writer I wanted to observe in real time what the choreography might be between a predominately expat (white) environment, physically in Mexico, being served by Mexicans, during an election night that had a candidate that openly expressed racist, vulgar sentiments against Mexico and Mexicans. It wasn't a pretty sight. It was alarming.
(On a side note this is the first time I have ever seriously thought about the wealth of information being collected that is on digital film, recorded, and can be played back in order to get word for word dialogue. Future historians will have a wealth of information from which to cull information based upon what was actually said and done rather than what I want to, or can remember. For the category of people who 'stood by doing nothing' we will also have gobs of information available for psychiatrists reading body and face language as well as hearing what this group of people is saying).
There is a very powerful understanding amongst artists, in art, (I'm thinking literature and film), that what is being said out loud, (and loudly), is often what one wants you to see, believe or hear, but that what is actually being written about or artistically expressed is saying something quite different and that the artist, the writer, the painter, the intellectual, or sculptor is expressing at the subconscious level what can not be acknowledged at the conscious level. Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness…Many people believe this slogan to be what we are as a nation, but that is absolutely not what we write about. We struggle with race and difference, inclusion and exclusion, and inexhaustible (exhausting) fear - that is what we write about, and we have not figured it out yet as a nation. Saying it isn't so, insisting it doesn't exist, doesn't make it so. And the biggest denial might be: It's your problem, not mine.
I walk into the establishment and the place was packed in a way I'd never seen before. As well, it was packed with people I'd never seen before either except that is, the proprietors. The televisions were tuned to CNN and I wasn't there five minutes before a roar welled up when a particular state had registered in as having voted Trump. Honestly, I thought it was a lone asshole in the crowd who thought it might be funny to make people think he was happy Trump had won anything other than a one way ticket to floors lll, lV, Vll, or Vlll at The Hotel Alighieri.
I don't have an answer for this question but how does one eat, drink and behave in a restaurant when you are in a foreign country on the election night of your native country and that native country has it in for the foreign country you are now sitting in, ordering food? (That question was submitted by this writer to Slate's Dear Prudence columnist Mallory Ortberg's live chat on Monday November 14th, 2016. Let's hope my question gets picked as a worthwhile question. I'll be posting a followup, if indeed, I get an answer). I did receive an answer, and the reply can be found here.
Two white men in their twenties had gone outside to the indoor patio area, and while I could not hear what they were saying I understood well, when they thrust their hips violently forward, and speared their right arm up and forward with index finger outstretched, that they were ecstatically rooting for Trump. I was incredulous. Something vicious this way comes. When the night was over and it was clean up time only 10 people were left standing seven of whom where the wait staff. The other three people were me, one of the owners, looking like he was praying as he might have had he been practicing for a First Holy Communion, and the third man looked like the blackest of black storm cloud's had lodged over his head.
I return home and sleep only to waken at 3AM to violent vomiting and equally exaggerated diarrhea. I hadn't eaten anything out to get food poisoning so I wondered if the only drink I had ever received 'on the house' in six years of living in Mexico had actually been a cocktail of spit, bile, and an ice cube pickled with a fuck you. Mind you I wouldn't have blamed anyone on that night had suck a cocktail been mixed, but I then remembered I had twice daily been ingesting a neem tincture, the more likely culprit. I return to sleep and awaken, go on Facebook, and see that while I was sleeping the world around me had gone made.
A childhood friend who voted for Trump came out of the closet to tell me how much of a pain in the ass I was. I in return outed him on Facebook as a Trump voter and listed his place of business as a place folks might wish to reconsider patronizing. (It's always better when I am suffering, rather than when it's you, isn't it?)
I can hear the glass breaking all over the country. I can feel the rage. I can hear the fearful silence in Mexico; no one exhaled for 48 hours. I can smell the odor of fear that only the feral can smell. My loved ones are all so far flung to the wind that I can not collect them all to hold near. I feat that in time I may lose word of them.
The United States has been gearing up with military-like police forces for ages now. This continued and necessary outrage unleashing now will only result in an eventual curtailing of movement. It will be the only way The United States can control its citizens. and they will implement this confinement under the premise that it is for the good of all. Trump is the kid at the playground that while you are singing sweetly to yourself making sandcastles he comes around and kicks all your hard work over. He is a man itching to push the red button. His man spread is profound and wide. He likes to see things go boom. Look closely and I am sure his pants are riddled with the stains of pre-cum. He is the embodiment of the pre-ejaculalator.
Now is not the time to go gently into that good night and while Thomas wrote his great poem imagining his father, I imagine and update its meaning as a call to those who are witnessing the fall of democracy. We must rage against the dying of the light.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on that sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
-- Dylan Thomas
poemhunter.com
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