Ando bien pedo

Coming out of the desert is usually thrilling. Air conditioning makes you feel halfway clean. A shower is an amazing luxury. Realizing that you have to pee and do not have to look for a bush is a delight. Your bed feels wonderful. I realized I wasn't feeling how I normally felt when returning to civilization. I liked my shower and the variety of food available, but struggled to shake the numbness that seemed to be broken only by crying fits. I had hoped that going to the desert would shake off the sadness I felt about leaving Tijuana, and left on vacation hoping to shake off the numbness that followed me back from the desert.

I wish I could tell you more about the desert, I really do. I want to. But we'd have to be somewhere private and you'd have to buy me a couple of beers.

So I flew to Chihuahua. Before leaving Mexico, I wanted to blow it out, have some pinche awesome trip and go to some places I haven't been before. I hunted around on line trying to find a cheap ticket, which painfully, does not exist. I found a ticket with just a short layover and bought it . Where the hell was that plane going? After the purchase, I hunted down the mysterious initials of the layover. Oh. Ciudad Juárez. No wonder they were so sneaky about it. Chihuahua suits my aesthetic in every way. Pretty, colonial buildings line a functioning, non-museum like city and there are rows and rows of cowboy boots and hats in every store window. Liked it, definitely would say I liked it.

I got to ride the Chepe. We hung around Chihuahua for a couple of days and then boarded Mexico's last passenger railway to Arepo. We hiked around the canyon and later even rode horses to see a different view. I have ridden both an elephant and a camel, but never a horse. I haven't been to Paris or Rome either, but I have been to Hanoi. A kid named Alfredo guided us. I liked him. He looked about sixteen, and wore a cowboy hat and boots and mirrored sunglasses. He seemed happy, but I couldn't help but wonder what his educational opportunities might be in a rural area like that. Telesecundaria? We rode our horses with a French / Spanish couple. As I watched the Spaniard actually control the horse as opposed to my freestyle, you can do whatever you want attitude with Macho, my horse, I wondered if it was in their blood to gallop around Mexico on horses.

Their faces were starting to disappear. When I would try to conjure the faces of Leo, Rogelio, even Alfredo after leaving Arepo, I would see Jesus, Roberto and Oscar, kids I taught in Tijuana. I couldn't see the real faces, only the faces I had come to know over the year. Everything was disappearing and becoming dream-like. The weird desert mountains that surround the school, the strange normalcy of walking in there everyday, not dream-like as in fantasy, dream-like as in not real.

Poor Sinaloa, such a strange place. We stopped in El Fuerte, a heavily touristed, colonial town. It's pretty, but hotter than hell. We got a really nice looking room that unfortunately had a sewage issue and reeked of cooking human shit, especially early in the morning after being contained in a closed off bathroom all night. We trotted around the hot, pretty town and were surprised to see outright suspicion and unsmiling stares on the faces of the locals. Odd. Even odder was to enter the OXXO and see not one, but two machine gun armed guards in a store the size of my bathroom. Yeah, I knew it was Sinaloa, but, um, is everything cool here? I still liked it. It's pretty. I saw rattlesnake skeletons sitting between watermelons and oranges in the market; the only local that would talk to me told me that the meat of the snakes tastes good. We got some burned Norteño CDs for the road and I saw a six inch plastic Malverde sitting next to a Jesus statue in the same market, all in a city that looked like a Spanish pueblo.

So we got to the shore and boarded a boat to La Paz. After letting the Mexican military off, they allowed folks to board their cars on the ferry. All I could see was a sea of white cowboy hats surrounding pick up trucks. Ah, Mexico. How I love you. Alec and I entered the nightclub to have some Modelos and watch a waitress engage the crowd with a karaoke machine. Three campo type guys caught my eye. They wore cowboy hats and had carried gallons of water into the bar and put them on the table while eyeing the waitress a little longer than they should have. I don't think they bought anything. I couldn't stop looking at the gallons, my eyes kept going over there, over to the gallons of water sitting on the table. "¡¡¡Ando, bien pedo!!!!" she screamed with the karaoke, I noticed multiple people sleeping on the floor of the bar, a kid walked through carrying a pillow in a Spiderman case. "Yo si, te necesitooooo!!!"

Have I mentioned that I love La Paz? I do. And on we went to Cabo Pulmo and Los Cabos and back to La Paz again. I carried a gallon of water out to a deserted beach by La Paz and realized I can't carry a gallon of anything anywhere without thinking about hauling it through the desert. We saw this kid, this crazy kid, standing on an island off of La Paz, next to three fisherman's shanties, throwing rocks into the ocean. "Does he go to school?" someone asked. "No! He learns to fish!" came the answer. He looked bored. Who wouldn't be. I thought of Alfredo and of that kid in the old mariachi costume that practiced his song in the school by a highway in the middle of nowhere and felt my head exploding and clouding over.

And back, back, back again to TJ and back at Lourdes' table, just like we were a year ago, having just arrived in Tijuana, but now we are leaving.

A huge, full moon hung in the sky tonight, just like it did a month ago when I drove to Arizona. It has been a fast month. Too fast.

Movement, furtive activity, all barely beneath the surface, I can feel it on those full moon nights.