volvervolvervolver

man...how do i even approach this kind of shit?

caught between nostalgia and a hard place, asked to channel chisme between the two—

don't you know that i am allergic to nostalgia, ésa? that i have developed multiple chemical sensitivities to the past?

all that old stuff is between the two of yous, nothing to do with me right here right now, 2006, new century/millennium, too busy moving through right now/here, that's a whole other language space time you are speaking, you need to work that shit out entre voz or just let it go, por fin. either way, leave me out of it, so i can be your friend.

(back home i have a fragment of a poster i found on a telephone pole on whittier blvd advertising some kind of healing seminar workshop. most of it had been torn away already, but you could still read some of it, and this was the part i'd taken home with me. it says: "what are you channeling? what are you asking me to channel here?")

XX: "...and i remember reaching a point when i realized that it's just, you know, important? to always remember? that you are still alive, right here, right now. that you are too alive and beautiful and dynamic for this sort of thing."

XX: "i know? i know that all of it is ephemeral? let it go, paint over it, find a new wall? time for a new conversation? it's just...you know..."

XX: "no, no, i know...we all carry deep wounds...but, i mean, the past can be a kind of poison? the present can wither in your palm when you haven't washed your hands and disinfected in several decades. the oils cake on after a while, congeal, conceal pigments, choke off scents. you gotta disinfect? scrape it off? open up your pores again, so that others can feel you, smell you, taste you."

(at this point, i find myself thinking about the other day. it was la virgen de guadalupe's day. i saw her riding, i only told you part of the story i saw her riding the orange line east west through the valley she was wearing headphones plugged into one of those oldschool sony walkman tape players, circa 198three. i wondered what she was listening to, what vibrations were there in the wires across the aisle visions of skinny boys in skinny ties with spiky hair and sleeves rolled up on sharkskin jackets young punk jetters trolling downtown chinatown east la tokyo and then at some point between sepulveda and reseda she starts talking as if the future were the past, that was her way of. i'm not—where do i fit in—you know—i'm not—

she starts talking as if the future. i'm not.

you.

were you were scraping the meat off an artichoke leaf with your teeth and i was watching the butter on your lips as you spoke and that was the moment, right there, tattooed wrist, buttered lips. etc. or something like that. close enough. eye witness accounts always vary dramatically anyways but anyways so anyways ironically we were right in the middle of talking about the difference between what you want and what you're looking for. one, you always find; the other, you always lose. which one are you?

tú?

me.

to—

you?

ahhh, this is dangerous.

stuff. this is dangerous stuff, this thing of tapas, and.

there is a memory that has already faded already let go but really it is/always was more just a projection into the future still, really, so it doesn't really count, really. yet? : your lips salty and bitter, tart with.

with mojitos. your lips salty and bitter and tart with mojitos on my.

tongue, between.

mine. and prince playing, kiss, fucking dj of all the songs in all the damn i thought i told you never to play that s—uddenly the virgen de guadalupe is there talking about something that happened to her in the midwest in the 1960s. or something. something like that, it's really loud, hard to hear, notre dame, where her brothers went to school, where she went too, giving me shit for ucla/usc, i don't even watch football! i say to her. she laughs, she's drunk, eyes big and magnified behind the thick lenses of her glasses, her graying hair in a short, hip, bob cut, and she's all alone on her day, drinking in a chic club on colorado street by herself at one end of the bar, about five feet tall—at the most—and hip-hop blaring, muted music videos on giant screens all around us, and she's telling us about her husband who recently died, heart trouble or something, and i wish her a happy virgen's day, and she grins her whole small round face lights up she high-fives me only her hand stops on mine shaking a little and she wraps her fingers into mine and hangs on and then she comes in for a drunken half-hug and she says, "aha! you're a catholic boy!" and i say, "no, señora tonantzin. i'm just a chicano." and she says, "ah, whatever, close enough. i'm irish!" only, she says it in nahuatl, and she winks when she says it, and i look over at you to see if you caught it, and i'm not really sure...i think you caught it. i think you caught it?

ahhh, man.

how do I even approach this kind of shit.)