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Mr. Peña Nieto’s Wonderous Energy Reform

Posted on by sterlingbennett

Alfonso Cuarón, director and co-producer of “Gravity,” a space disaster film I haven’t seen, won Best Director at the 86th Academy Awards. He was also chosen as “Most Creative” on Forbes’s Mexico List in 2013. With these credentials that separate him from being a ninguneo, a nobody, the good citizen asked a Mexican president traditionally endowed with near imperial powers—in this case Mr. Peña Nieto—to answer ten questions on the Mexican energy reform that has probably been decided upon already, with Cheney-like disinterest in the opinion of citizens—which is to say, of those who are not in the Club or the upper 1%. One could also mention that Mr. Nieto is a member of the PRI, the political party that ruled Mexico for seventy-one years with near dictatorial powers.

Here are Cuarón’s ten questions—with my subtexts.

One: When will the price of natural gas, gasoline, diesel and electricity begin to fall? What other benefits can we expect from the reform? When can we expect them to occur? Subtext in my words, not Cuarón’s. The prices of things generally climb when they are privatized.

Two: What will the effects be for the environment in the face of massive oil extraction? What measures will be put in place to protect the environment and who will take responsibility in case of spill and other disaster? Subtext: No measures will be put into place. It is part of the local culture that no one takes responsibility for disasters.

Three: Hydrocarbons are non-renewable resources. Their impact on the environment, meaning on the whole globe, is massive. What plans are there for alternate energy? Subtext: There are no plans.

Four: Huge amounts of profits will be generated by this reform—in the billions. In a country where the rule of law is so weak, who will regulate these funds and protect them from corruption? Subtext: No one will regulate these funds. They will not be protected from corruption. Additionally, there will be none of the transparency that is necessary for any kind of accountability.

Five: Transnational companies in the world often wield as much power as many governments. What measures will be taken to protect our democracy from financial pressures by powerful international interests? Subtext: There will be some protections—just enough to protect the interests of those in the Club.

Six: What regulatory measures does the government have at its disposal to protect the country from the predatory pressures that private companies can exert on the energy sector? Subtext: The Club has a maze of maneuvers that it can employ to protect its own financial interests.

Seven: How can you assure that Pemex will show an increase in production if the government does not confront corruption in that is within Pemex and its union? Subtext: There will be no assurances. The union corruption will continue. The higher-level corruption—the taking more of the people’s profits—will flourish.

Eight: If Pemex, in the last seventy years, contributed to more than half of the country’s federal budget, including education and free health care, and if now the earnings of Pemex no longer flow directly to the country’s coffers, what will replace that half of the federal budget? Subtext: Any diminution would probably be called in IMF-ese a “structural adjustment,” whereby the people will have less and the Club more.

Nine: How will you assure us that the profits from the reform will not be channeled into bureaucratic expansion rather than to the original owners of the resources: the people of Mexico? Subtext: There will be plenty of assurances, but they will be mostly smoke. Bureaucratic expansion is a euphemism for the Club. Profits from the reform will be channeled to the Club.

A friend of mine wrote the following in reaction to what I am writing here. Since I don’t have his permission, I will not mention his name. But it gives another point of view: “Incidentally, foreign investment and foreign management rules saved the mining industry here making work safe for the miners (before that life expectancy was about 10 years or less in the mines!), improved efficiency (the 80% silver going to the “people” today is much more than the 100% before; and 100% gold still going to the Mexican Treasury), and rooted out the most egregious excesses of corruption (of course, it is still Mexico, in a way). No, I would LOVE to see a shake-up in PEMEX and the whole rotten oil structure. I SUPPORT REFORM, because it is needed and it is helpful to Mexico and its people!”

Ten: Two disastrous experiences remain in the minds of Mexicans. 1) The crash of 1982 that followed the waste, ineptitude, corruption that characterized the management of oil in the Seventies; and 2) the arbitrary, opaque and privatizing reforms under President Salinas de Gortari, that were good for the private hands but of dubious value for consumers. What guarantees are there that the social misery created then will not be repeated now? You and your party  carry the responsibility for these reforms. Do you really believe that Mexico can carry out these reforms efficiently, for the social good and with transparency? Subtext: There will be guarantees of benefits, but they will mean nothing. None of the parties will assume responsibility for what turns out to not be good for the country. The last question is aimed right at the heart of the matter. Mr. Peña Nieto and others in the Club say things they do not believe, or worse, that they do believe (see below); any efficiency will appear mainly in the acquisition of private profit; acting for the social good will remain a distant possibility, given the Club’s lack of a sense of social responsibility; there is little transparency at any level of Mexican government—thus, offering little possibility of citizen accountability. Without a free press there would be no hope at all.

Los Pinos, the Mexican White House, has responded with some vague reassurances that there will be commissions to study this and that. It is probably a good thing that the government has bothered to respond. But words are not actions.

Other voices have asked how an “upstart” like Cuarón would have the gall to presume to talk directly to the President of Mexico, Mr. Nieto.

Jesús Silva-Herzog Márquez, writing for Reforma, quotes journalist and political analyst Ricardo Raphael as saying that the elite are the central problem in Mexico. Silva-Herzog writes, “(that) one of the problems of our democracy is precisely the depth of the authoritarian convictions of those small and satisfied circles that thumb their nose at the country while happily looking at themselves in magazines. Convinced they are more knowledgeable than others, they think they are the only ones that can argue and, especially, decide. The autocratic persuasion of the elite shows in this notion that public discussion belongs exclusively to experts. Only we have the elements to discuss the energy reform, they tell us. Others have to shut up and vote when the day comes; and that that, and that alone, is democracy. We will give you clear options so you are capable of making a sensible decision (they say).

Therein lies the immense service provided by Alfonso Cuarón’s questions. To show that the technician’s arrogance cannot suppress the people.”

La Contrefaçon

Posted on by sterlingbennett

(Another attempt at translating one of my short pieces into French, as a language learning exercise, with much help from my tutor, whose name I will not mention—to protect him from scandal if the translation is just too horrible, to the extent that, if exposed, French cows would fall over dead.)

 

La Contrefaçon (Forgery)

J’espère que je ne vous induirai pas en erreur sur le sujet de votre recherche. Êtes-vous prêt à enregistrer? Alors, j’essaie de me rappeler quand cela a commencé. Probablement avec les choses habituelles, comme d’imiter la voix et le style de mon père dans une note au directeur de l’école, un document qui m’a excusé de la classe de gym, puis de l’arithmétique à cause de ma tumeur au cerveau et puis de la période du déjeuner, pour que je puisse aller derrière le grillage de baseball et de là me glisser dans la forêt, où je fumerais des cigarrettes Philip Morris et rencontrerais des filles trop hanidcapées mentalement pour aller à l’école.

Comment les ai-je persuadées d’y aller? En imitant l’ecriture du directeur sur des invitations à se joindre à une équipe de softball qui serait de manière égal composée des élèves de l’école élémentaire, sans souci du dévelopment mental.

Plus tard, alors que j’étais à l’école secondaire, j’étudierais, puis présenterais—sans adresse d’expéditeur—des oeuvres inconnues par Hemingway, Emily Dickenson et les soeurs Brontë. Je les ai soumises à des éditeurs, pretendant qu’elles avaient été découvertes dans telle ou telle archive, coin ou bibliothèque de livres rares.

Au début, il n’y eut que des rejets. Puis, progressivement, des experts ont commencé à leur accorder de l’attention. Une fois un conte, une autre fois un poème, et même un mince roman resté jusqu’ici inconnu. Revues littéraires et bibliothèques n’ont pas pu résister au fait que des oeuvres de valeur inestimable aient été découvertes, et elles ont commencé à les publier et à les attribuer aux les Brontë, Emily Dickenson et autres Ernest Hemingway.

J’ai étudié d’autres langues et j’ai avec les années reussi à placer des essais écrits par Camus et Thomas Mann imprimés dans un poussièreux caractère Courier. Mêne une fois une pièce pornographique par Richard Wagner. Les soumissions étaient toujours anonymes mais écrites avec une telle habileté—sur des pages blanches, déchirées de vieux livres—que des revues académiques se sont battues les unes avec les autres sur aquelle qui présenterait les meilleurs arguments pour leur authenticité. En même temps je travaillais comme discret bibliothécaire à Orange, New Jersey.

Avec le temps, je me suis ennuyé de ces manigances et j’ai commencé à soumettre mes propres oeuvres, après quoi j’ai été accusé de plagier, c’est-à-dire d’emprunter le style et le vocabulaire des auteurs bien connus.

J’ai eu quelques succès avec de petites revues littéraires, dont les gardiens—généralement sévèrement mâles—ont été tellement éduqués dans le mimétisme et où tant de leurs contributions étaient juvénilement naïves, que ma propre tromperie persistante est passait inaperçue.

Je me suis marié et j’ai eu une fille—une enfant qui avait les mêmes généreuses proportions de l’intelligence et du coeur. Quand elle allait en campement, je lui écrivais des nouvelles et des histoires que j’inventais. Au collège, elle a commencé à se plaindre à sa mère—nous n’étions plus ensemble—qu’elle ne me connaissais plus et—plus perturbant—qu’il y avait quelque chose d’inauthentique en moi.

Quand mon ex-épouse m’a dit celà, avec une expression qui balançait entre jubilation malveillante et reprimande, j’ai passé le reste de la journée à boire assez de whisky pour tuer un éléphant.

Je ne savais pas quoi faire. Je suis allé consulter un psychiatre, qui m’a dit d’explorer ma relation avec mes parents, dont les deux avaient passé leur carrière à convaincre d’autres personnes de leur faire confiance. Mon père, un conseiller financier, avait été averti par son enterprise sur des irrégularités. Ma mère avait été une peintre aux modestes talents, qui peignait ouvertement des copies de Breughel, Rembrandt et des Impressionistes pour des clients à Santa Monica, California, qui avaient les cheveux bleus et des chambres à décorer.

Après quelques années de traitement, j’ai rejoint un ashram pour apprendre à méditer et pour abandonner les besoins du monde matériel. J’ai passé du temps avec un certain nombre de belles apôtres de la vie spirituelle promise, en pratiquant les arts de la défense et de l’abandon. Alors que ma fille, toujours polie, s’éloignait de plus en plus de moi.

Quand ma petite-fille est née, ma fille s’est radoucie et m’a autorisé à jouer mon rôle de grand-père. Elle a même permis que je raconte à celle-ci des histoires du soir. Au fil du temps quelque chose s’est passé et j’ai commencé à raconter des histoires qui étaient différentes des précédentes et qui adhéraient plus aux questions que ma petite-fille m’a posées—si les ours pouvaient parler avec les enfants, et si j’avais jamais parlé avec un ours ou avec un éléphant.

Je ne voulais pas lui mentir, alors je lui ai dit que non. Elle avait deux ou trois ans, alors elle a suggéré que nous allions au zoo essayer de parler avec un ours et peut-être avec un éléphant.

Et donc, nous sommes allés au zoo. Une fois, une fois encore. Nous avons essayé d’autres animaux aussi. Aucun d’entre eux n’a parlé avec nous, mais nous avons inventé des histoires sur ce qu’ils nous ont dit et nous avons ri, parce que certaines de ces histoires étaien drôles. Et d’ailleurs, nous étions contents l’un de l’autre.

J’ai commencé à y retourner seul; et quand d’autres personnes n’étaient pas là, j’ai parlé aux animaux tout seul; alors quelque chose a changé et j’ai appris celà qui semble banal à dire, mais que je vais vous dire: il n’y a jamais aucune raison de dissimuler qui vous êtes. Ma petite-fille et les éléphants étaient ce qu’ils étaient et ne prétendaient être rien de plus.

Mon heure de quitter la terre est venue, comme vous pouvez voir par vous-même. À la dernière visite, ma charmante épouse m’a pris par la main et m’a dit que c’était dommage que nous n’ayons pas passé—a tous égards—plus de temps ensemble au cours des 20 ou 30 dernières années. Ma fille pleure de façon incontrôlable pendant ses visites. Et ma petite-fille—aujourd’hui une merveilleuse écrivaine âgé de 25 ans—s’assoit à côté de mon lit et me parle sur tous les tons de quels animaux je dois visiter et ce que je dois leur dire quand je les rejoindrai. Bon, c’est mon histoire sur la contrefaçon. Ce n’est peut-être pas ce que vous vouliez. Mais c’est comme ça.

Two Michoacáns

Posted on by sterlingbennett

We went to Michoacán to see M, a dear old friend. And her daughter N, another dear old friend. Up here in Guanajuato, we think of Michoacán as a conflicted zone, a Mexican state ruled by narcos and other manifestations of organized crime—a state patrolled by Army, in green; Federal Police troops dressed in black with balaclavas hiding their identity; and Marines dressed in shades of tan and wearing a reputation as the only branch of law enforcement that actually captures anyone.

Everyone seems to have a heavy pickup truck with a shielded, mounted machine gun manned by a trooper of some kind. The Army has Hummers, and also brandishes machine guns, shielded or unshielded depending on the testosterone level of the commanding officer, I suppose, who would not actually be the one standing behind the weapon. I don’t know what the Marines drive, since I’ve never seen a Mexican combat Marine.

I went to Michoacán, expecting to see trouble, such as I saw in the Eighties in El Salvador: the countryside set ablaze to deny the guerrillas ambush cover; swaggering, semi-psychotic US-trained soldiers ready to kill anyone; and frightened (mostly death-squad annihilated) women health workers that had been trained to teach women’s rights and hygiene, and Liberation Theology-preaching priests, who were also menaced with extinction.

Just now, we stayed with our friends in the old idyllic compound in Erongarícuaro, where we lived for the year 1997–98, on a rise that looks out over Lake Pátzcuaro at the storm-blue volcanoes in the distance—an area we were told to avoid.

The Michoacán I found had some similarities with El Salvador in the Seventies and Eighties: women teaching women about health care and making it available—but without the violent repression. Instead, the activity here was taking place in a setting full of beauty, peace and security. Families (men supporting their wives) sat waiting for their appointments on benches in the shade of an overhang partially obscured by curtain reddish-orange Passion Flowers. They looked out over a lawn sprinkled with fallen light-blue Jacaranda blossoms. And beyond, over cattle grazing far out on the lake’s plane, where the water has receded, then farther across the lake toward the volcanoes in the distance.

The Eronga compound has found a new life, after various incarnations. Now it is a non-profit women’s clinic called Mujeres Aliadas: Organización pro Derechos Sexuales y Reproductivos de la Mujer—Allied Women: An organization for women’s sexual and reproductive rights. And our younger old friend N, who is not even thirty, is its director. You can Google them. You can look them up at http://www.mujeresaliadas.mx and talk to them at mujeresaliadas.ac@gmail.com. You can even see at least one YouTube clip on what they do.

Mujeres Aliadas is an impressive operation. The sixty-five foot living room (with a primitive kitchen at the far end), where we wrote and lived during our year there, is now the office and lecture hall for women’s workshops. The row of guest rooms—we stayed in one that year—that makes up another shed-like building is now a row of consulting and treatment rooms, all renovated, clean and staffed with two trained midwives and an all-woman staff. The bed my love and I slept on that year has since had at least fifty babies born on it.

The clinic has office hours three days a week, but a sign at the gate says there is care available 7/24 if you are in trouble—a notice I find extremely moving. Plus, you can receive consultation and treatment in Spanish or Purépecha. The little clinic has 1,500 regular clients and serves forty marginalized communities in the Lake Pátzcuaro basin. Here, clients can approach without fear of the centuries-old racism toward marginalized women, for being Indian, lacking education, being poor, being unmarried, being uncomfortable speaking Spanish, being different from the light-skinned Mexicans on TV and on billboards. For being a woman.

The clients, from adolescents to adults, receive instruction in anatomy, contraception, prenatal care, the politics of sexuality (how to say no) and in postpartum care—both physical and psychological. For forty pesos, a woman receives both treatment and the needed medicine—roughly three dollars. The center also offers training in midwifery and nursing. There are plans to gradually establish other centers, in order to reduce infant and female mortality, a condition that has risen something like 30% in the last ten years—probably keeping pace with Mexico’s rise in poverty.

At the present, funding comes from Finish Embassy, the MacArthur Foundation and DFW (Dining for Women). But these grants, like most grants, have time limits and will eventually dry up. I cannot think of a better place to send financial support. The link for donating is:
http://www.mujeresaliadas.org/donate/default.html

The center makes me think of the scene in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. In the midst of an a war-like hunt against a great swirling outer group of sperm whales, in the middle of the chaos and deep below, “There a sleek, pure calm reigns…(and) far beneath this wondrous world upon the surface, another and still stranger world met our eyes, as we gazed over the side. For, suspended in these watery vaults, floated the forms of the nursing mothers of the whales….”

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not comparing the women that visit the clinic to birthing whales, but I am saying that, for me, the clinic is sane, kind, luminescent center in a troubled sea. I had come to Michoacán hoping to see something of the autodefensas. What I mostly saw was the normal grinding poverty, the normal economic struggle, and the normal normal. In Uruapan, we did pass through a self-defense checkpoint, with two rows of rubber speed bumps laid across the road and a sandbag fort off to the right, with a tarp over it to keep off the sun. I was driving, so I could only glance. I could see that the men occupying the fort wore no uniforms, i.e. were not military, and I knew what that meant. I saw no AK-47’s, but those would have been held out of sight, so as not to provoke the police and military. My two companions—my love and my dear old friend—read the bed sheet banners hanging beside the fort and shouted, “Autodefensas!” That was what the banners were saying. But the clothing the men wore was too dark, the banner too much grafitti-like, I thought.

Since then, I have heard Dr. Mireles—the articulate and I think courageous spokesman for the self-defense groups— say Uruapan is yet to be liberated. I don’t know. There is a good chance the checkpoint was occupied by the Knights Templar or some other narco-criminal group.

None of which really interests me that much, now that I have seen Mujeres Aliadas—something positive and wonderful—something that serves as a metaphor for what Mexico can and does do in certain areas—behaving socially responsibly, meeting the people’s needs.

For more on the context in which the clinic exists and why it is so important in Mexico’s struggle for democracy, you can read two of my stories by writing their titles in the Search box in this blog’s front page. The two stories are “The Pátzcuaro Incision” and “Jorge and the Santa Muerte.” The Jorge of the latter story still stands at his place on the side of the road, not far from a church of Saint Death, up the road toward Pátzcuaro. He has grown up to be a quite handsome lad but is, like many parts of Mexico, still very much lost.

A Wealth of Photos of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera

Posted on by sterlingbennett

https://www.google.com.mx/search?q=photo+Diego+and+Frida+union+of+artists+and+sculptors&client=firefox-a&hs=fwa&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&channel=sb&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=9XZiU-D8F8KfyATk6ILADw&ved=0CDcQ7Ak&biw=993&bih=544#facrc=_&imgdii=_&imgrc=4Y5QkhhEhS4tdM%253A%3BAEKWjdDGiynMIM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fmedia-cache-ak0.pinimg.com%252F236x%252Fda%252F2f%252F4f%252Fda2f4f5e2791266cdf24359a733c6aa2.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.pinterest.com%252Fpalomalines%252Fhistorias-del-arte%252F%3B236%3B161

Swallowing Mexico’s Air Waves.

Posted on by sterlingbennett

A summary and expansion of an article that appeared in our local newspaper, by one of my favorite Mexican thinkers: Political Science Professor Denise Dresser—with a editorial dusting of changing and possibly gently mixed metaphors by me.

How do I put this? When the corporate world and its selected leader—President Peña Nieto of Mexico—talk about and push through a telecommunications reform, it means they’re not going to steal just one more pig, but rather all of them.

A few days ago, in Mexico City, protesters linked hands and created a human chain that reached from Los Pinos—the equivalent of the White House—all the way to the offices of Televisa, one the two communications monopolies in Mexico.

That corporate giant and TVAzteca are Mexico’s Charybdis and Scylla, out of Greek myth, the one a great whirlpool, the other a monster, each capable of swallowing up Mexico’s freedom of expression whole.

If you had watched the last presidential election, the PRI candidate Peña Nieto was everywhere and opposition candidate Lopez Obrador hardly seen at all; and when seen, always cleverly painted as a friend of Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, i.e. as a populist crazy that would destroy our treasured Mexican democracy.

The so-called reform is part of a pattern of cementing corporate control, in partnership with the PRI, the party that held dictatorial control for 71 years and is now in power again, thanks to the absence of independent agencies that can regulate the two media giants. The latter speak seamlessly in favor of the oligarchy and show little interest in the public’s right to a meaningful public debate.

Neither Televisa nor TVAzteca, for example, bothered to cover the human chain between Los Pinos and Televisa’s offices.

As in the United States, the major news media ignore, for the most part, dissenting and independent political and social voices. And those who appear as experts and pundits have long since been suborned by the subsidies available to the media monsters and their political and financial allies. The interests of investors and the ruling political class eclipse those of the vulnerable and unrepresented: Indians, women, children, farmers, the under-employed, under-fed and public needs like meaningful education, security reform and state support for the Rule of Law.

In a disturbing development in the telecommunications reform, the President and the Secretary of the Interior will have the power to censor Internet communications, including email, Twitter, Facebook messaging and others.

In this trend, censorship poses as modernization; and dictatorial control, as democracy.

The PRI and the two media monopolies Televisa and TVAzteca—Charybdis and Scylla.

Postscript: In the meantime, Denise Dresser has received threats for the article this summary is based on.

Seven Murdered Miners

Posted on by sterlingbennett

Yesterday, April 22, 2014, I watched as many as 600 men in their thirties and forties march down the middle of Hidalgo, Guanajuato’s one road in the bottom of the canyon that holds the small city. They were robust young men, and for that reason I guessed they were miners. I remarked to my partner that what we were seeing meant there must be something like a general strike in the surrounding mines—at least for that day. My partner read a banner and said, “They are commemorating seven miners, from seventy-seven years ago,” and then I knew what it was about.

To explain, I have summarized an article by Alfonso Ochoa in the Guanajuato newspaper Correo, from April 22, 2013.

Seventy-seven years ago, on April 22, 1937, seven labor organizers left the Cubo mine—an area I have visited several times—drove across the treeless ridges toward Guanajuato and were stopped by another car. Gunmen got out and shot the organizers down, finishing them off with a single bullet to the head, un tiro de gracia, a coup de grace. The names of the murdered men were: Reynaldo Ordaz, J. Jesús Fonseca, Juan Anguiano, Antonio Vargas, Simón Soto and Antonio García y Luis Chávez. The official story was that roving bandits had done it. The miners’ companions said the mine manager, a Mr. Quinn, had ordered it.

One source repeated what his grandmother Jovita Salazar had told him: that a certain “El Cojo” Severiano was in her store with a group of rough-looking men, watching for the departure of the labor organizers. When “El Cojo” saw the organizers leave, he told her something like “Ahora sí ya nos vamos, yo creo que ya va a estar el mole,” something like “Things are going just the way we want them.” And then they left, too, following the organizers’ car.

While the organizers were being murdered, a truck with men, women and children drove by, witnessing everything. The mine management wanted to crush efforts at organizing, an activity that was necessary because conditions in the mine was terribly dangerous because of unnecessary cave-ins and the lack of ventilation—which meant miners suffered terribly from silicosis by breathing particles hanging in the air.

Some time later, a miner by the name of Vicente Uribe managed to murder Mr. Quinn at the Dolores Mine. The union whisked Uribe off to Mexico City and hid him there, protecting him from the authorities—who, it was said, accepted the murder of union organizers but not of American mine managers. As the story goes, American President Roosevelt complained to Mexican President Lázaro Cárdenas that miners had murdered an American mine manager, and Lázaro Cárdenas had replied that the American-controlled mine had murdered seven Mexicans.

If you go to Cubo today, in the town’s modest plaza you can see the mounted seven bronze busts of the   murdered miners. Conditions have not changed a great deal in the intervening years. The new owners are Canadians, not Americans. Miners still work long hours with low pay. Ventilation has improved but miners still suffer from dust particle illnesses. They still wear soft-toed rubber boots that expose them to crushing injuries. The mine owners do not equip them with emergency breathing kits that should be hanging around their waists. One day a year, the Día de las Flores, the mine owners serve free ice cream to the miners’ children. And year after year, the miners march down Guanajuato’s main street, Hidalgo, refusing to forget what happened to their fathers and grandfathers seventy-seven years ago.

Update: My former Spanish teacher, the wonderful Carolina Rodriguez, told me yesterday what her cousin’s grandfather told her cousin: that the seventh man—who was not a miner—had hitched a ride in the doomed car and was murdered along with the rest of the men.

For more on Guanajuato’s mining culture, please read my short story “Underground Amphibians” on this blog. Simply go to the search box on the front page of the blog and write in that title.

Enrique, the Highway Bandit

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We had been walking around San Miguel de Allende on Good Friday. Cars had been excluded, and the streets were filled with happy strollers. When we got back to the car, on the north side, near Vía Orgánica—a good organic restaurant and produce market—and got in, the car’s engine did not catch, even though the battery was strong and the Honda CR-V had shown no sign of ailing.

Something had happened that I could not explain.

I got out of the car and headed to a car shop not a hundred feet kitty corner from where the car stood. A man intercepted me.

“Puedo ayudar?” he asked. Can I help?

He was unshaven, wearing a soiled shirt, dirty shorts and worn out running shoes. A simple canvas bag hung over one shoulder. I dismissed him with a curt, probably classist “No, gracias.”

I continued on to the workshop. I explained that my car that had mysteriously decided it couldn’t start. The man in charge pointed behind me. I turned to see the raggedly man that had offered to help me.

“He’s a car electrician.”

I apologized to the man in the dirty shorts, and accepted his help and the mechanic’s implicit recommendation. We also have our own saying about Mexico: when you’re in trouble, especially with cars, help seems to materialize out of thin air.

I remembered the electrician had been sitting on the curb with his back against the corner building, when we returned to the car. Strange things happen in Mexico, so I accepted his position as within the range of normal or different.

I lifted the car’s hood. He took tools out of his satchel. He took the lid off the black casing that held all the Honda’s relay switches. He touched each relay with a current tester and the tester’s light lit up, except for one. He announced that there was a sensor problem. I had no idea what that was, but he seemed to be experienced, plus the shop had said he was a car electrician.

I asked whether he could fix the problem. He said he could, but he would need three hours. I asked whether he could get parts. He said he could. I said it was the first of three days of holiday. Would the parts store be open? He said it would. I accepted that, as well.

He had certain irregularities, limbs a little out of line. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. A neighbor came out of a door ten paces away to offer any advice that might be needed. Sotto voce I asked whether he knew Enrique. “Very reliable,” he said.

After poking at this and that, Enrique mumbled something about a sensor that impulsaba something. That was already too technical for me. Three hours is what he needed. We exchanged cell phone numbers and tested them, getting a reassuring ring out of his. We said our goodbyes. He assured us everything would be fine. We withdrew to Vía Orgánica, went up onto their azotea, their roof, and ordered soup and salad. Then it was the siesta hour and, in the shade of nearby trees, two of us stretched out on wooden benches and slept a wink or two.

Sitting up again, I remarked that we were conducting an experiment in trust. A complete stranger had our car keys and our phone number. We began to compare observations, and the questions that arose from them. Why, for example, had Enrique been sitting on the curb at the corner? I began to remember that he had already been sitting there before we set off on our stroll hours earlier. Why this satchel of tools? Worry began to override trust. I gave my mouth a final wipe for signs of soup and said I was going to go check.

The Mexican owner of Vía Orgánica was sitting at one of the tables downstairs with—I learned later—the store’s accountant. I said I was sorry to bother them but did they know a certain Enrique that appeared where cars mysteriously refused to start. They didn’t know Enrique, but they knew about other incidents. The owner got up and said she would go back to Enrique with me. He was sitting on the curb again, across from the car, enjoying the shadow cast by an east-facing wall. He saw us coming and got up and went to attend to the car again, as if there were still much to do.

The owner of the store asked him what was wrong with the car. She said there had been other incidents. She asked him whether it might be a good idea to call the police. I asked him where the new part was. He said it was coming.

“But why is it taking so long?” my new supporter asked.

He replied that the store was some distance away. Five blocks, she said. She brought up the topic of the police again.

I asked to see the old part. He showed it to me. It was a metal plug with a plastic hat that had broken off. He handed it to me in two pieces. Maybe a rock had done it, he said, because it came from an area under the engine supposedly exposed to the road.

There were three connector holes in it. The piece meant nothing to me, except for the fact that it could be plugged and unplugged into the car’s electrical system.

My supporter went off.

A couple and their two Swedish visitors came out of a door that was nine paces away. The woman in the couple was also Swedish. She and her American husband had lived there forever and swore by Enrique’s dependability. They had never heard anything negative about him. A representative from the car shop—that was now serving mainly as a parking area for the Easter weekend—approached. A short interrogation ensued. Enrique explained the problem. I watched the representative’s face. I could not read it.

The Swedes left, showering me with reassurances.

Enrique walked off and turned a corner, perhaps to meet the person that was bringing the new part.

I stayed and chatted with Jovani, who said he was Enrique’s son. He was a likeable kid of eighteen or twenty. He had turned up about when I began asking doubting questions. I wasn’t sure what his purpose was. My partner and a writer friend from California came to check on me. They had been talking with the owner of Vía Orgánica. They asked a few questions. I caught them up on what appeared to be happening or not happening. They went on a few doors and began talking with an American friend that runs a fine boutique for women’s clothing. I went to join them. For a moment of two I was out of sight of the car. When I emerged from that woman’s courtyard door, I saw movement around the car. I approached. Enrique was already under the car, clanking with a small wrench.

“I want to see the part before you put it in,” I said.

He continued clanking.

I repeated my request. “I have to see the new part first,” I said.

“Okay, just a moment,” he said.

I was looking down through the engine. He was bolting something to the engine. I repeated my request. This time it was more like a demand. I told him I couldn’t confide in him if he wasn’t going to show me the clean part. I may have mentioned the idea of calling the police, if that was the way it was going to be.

“Okay, you want to put it in yourself?” he said

“No,” I said. We needed to get home. There seemed to be no one else that was going to get the car going again at the beginning of a three-day holiday.

Again I said I needed to see the part. He started unbolting the same part—the one I wanted to see in its pristine state. It had a metal plug and a cap with wire leads. The metal plug was covered in oil, so that I could not tell whether it was new or not. I told him so. He tossed a small box out from under the car—presumably the box the part had come in. It box was dirty and battered, as if it had kicked around in his satchel for a year or two. The broken part he had given me earlier would not fit in it. I said as much. He said the plastic hat came off. I could not detach the plastic hat.

He asked Jovani to start the car. It sprang to life, as good as new. He crawled out from underneath. He asked Jovani to test the headlights and the turn signals—as if they might have been affected by the defective part. Inside, Enrique clipped the plastic cover back over the wiring behind the steering wheel, as if he had been trying to trace the problem there with his current meter.

He removed an old t-shirt he had been sitting on to protect the driver’s seat while he worked there. Just the way the dealership removes the paper protectors from the front seat of your car when they pass it over to you after servicing.

I asked him how much he wanted. He said one thousand one hundred pesos for the new part, four hundred pesos for his labor. I handed him fifteen hundred pesos, or roughly $120. He said I should call him if I had any problems in the future; that he was there for us if we needed him. I even shook his hand. His hand and arm were deformed by large swollen bumps, possibly from gout. He gripped my hand awkwardly.

He and Jovani left quickly. The owners of Vía Orgánica approached. They asked me how much Enrique had charged me. I told them. I also told them he had refused to show me the new part, the box hadn’t fit the broken part he had originally given me, the box was dirty and there was no receipt. I said I thought he had disconnected something and then simply reconnected it. They said I should come back to the store, they were going to reimburse me for the 1,500 and that we were good customers and that we shouldn’t have pay this kind of penalty for parking and shopping at Vía Orgánica. I said they weren’t responsible. They said, okay, how about we pay half. I said okay. They said they were going to do something about Enrique. They said they had learned that Enrique had been dismissed from the nearby automobile shop four months earlier—for irregularities.

There are three reasons a modern car doesn’t start, I have since found out through the world of Google.

First, if there is no spark. Enrique had had no access to the under-the hood part of the engine, hence to the spark plugs.

Second, no fuel is getting to the engine. The fuel pump has to be functioning. What I saw Enrique moving his wrench around was not a fuel pump.

Third, if the timing has been disabled. Enrique had had access underneath the engine to the Camshaft Position Sensor.

When he showed me the loosened the Camshaft Position Sensor, it was fairly dripping with dark engine oil. If the broken part he had originally given me had come from my engine, then there would have been at least the smell of fresh oil on it and perhaps traces of oil on the ground underneath the engine. There was neither. He had unbolted the real Camshaft Position Sensor probably for the first time when I asked to see the new part.

There had never been a new part, and the old part he handed me, I realized later, could not have come from my car, because it was badly damaged, with broken wire connections. The engine would have stopped running long before we arrived in San Miguel de Allende. Rather, what he had done was simply unplug Camshaft Position Sensor’s electrical connectors, a condition impossible to ascertain without a technical knowledge of cars and a clear view of what happens underneath the engine. It had never occurred to me to crawl under the car and get as soiled as Enrique.

Enrique had diagnosed the problem from the very start. He had said it was a sensor before even getting under the car. He had also correctly diagnosed me as the unwary traveler and technical idiot. Also as a man more privileged than he was. He had chosen the beginning of a three-day holiday when there would be no other recourse for getting the Honda going again, and had profited nicely. What is remarkable is how hard I had tried to believe that he was not lying to us, how hard I had tried to behave in a non-classist way and be respectful of his knowledge—and not as the suspicious type my partner sometimes accuses me of being.

Enrique is part of a long tradition of Mexican banditry and shows the bandit’s sense of entitlement to share some of what those with more money have. He had correctly chosen us as the people with more—people who were going to shop at an organic food market and restaurant where things are not cheap—and he had played me well the whole way. I had gotten away at half price, thanks to the impressive responsibility assumed by the owners of Vía Orgánica. In the end, I still felt grateful to be the victim of a bandit in Mexico, rather than, for example, in the U.S., because it seemed more culturally interesting and comprehensible to me here south of the border.

Well done, Enrique, but beware, my friend. The concerned people at the store are on to you—even if the rest of the street retains their unshakable faith in you.

Chaos in Michoacán—but why?

Posted on by sterlingbennett

A Mexican friend of mine argues that there will be nothing but social chaos if the self-defense groups of the Mexican state of Michoacán are allowed to retain their weapons—now symbolized by the plentiful and much photographed AK-47s. In many regards, he is right. After all, how would the U.S. government react if armed citizen militias began to form and openly patrol towns and neighborhoods they considered insecure?

I asked him why the State was not equally as worried before, when the drug mafias ruled freely in Michoacán, and in many other parts of the country, with their extortions, kidnappings and killings—certainly definitions of social chaos.

He returned to his point. The self-defense groups have to be disarmed.

I replied, “Won’t the cartels just sweep in a kill every single one of them, in revenge and to reestablish their reign of terror, and their control?”

“They are breaking the law, the self-defense groups. There have to be laws to prevent social chaos.”

I replied that Mexico has very good laws, exemplary laws—but that the State has failed to enforce them, failed to protect the citizens of Michoacán.

I drew diagrams, I brought in my thin knowledge of Hobbes and Locke, I asked whom the laws were for and where laws came from. I said there was another category, in addition to la ley, the law. There was also el derecho, a person’s rights.

My friend said you had to have laws and they had to be followed in order to have a stable society. I said, in the case where the State does not enforce the laws, then rights had to supersede laws—as in the case of the right to self-defense, not to mention the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

My friend said the laws were there to prevent social violence and, again, chaos.

I argued that chaos already reigned, the moment the State failed in its responsibility to enforce the laws, especially those conceived for the protection of the citizens.

My friend had calmed down. He asked how I would solve the problem. I said I had no solution. The problem, I said, had to do with cultura, the culture of considering the law as something that applies to the other fellow, but not to oneself. Culture, I said, could only change through education. And that that was my position.

In the meantime, if Mexico is to prosper, so investment comes and there are jobs and education, the government must decide who is the enemy in Michoacán: the drug cartels or the self-defense groups? And apply the law equally. And if it can’t do that, then it needs to examine itself and see why it is not enforcing existing law equally.

Some things seem to have changed. It is likely the federal government wants to change the topic away from admission of past failed policies. And so, they say, the mafias are not the real problem; the self-defense groups are.  At the same time, to its credit, the government has begun to make arrests of some mayors and some politicians who in fact appear to have been aiding the criminal cartels. It is too early to tell whether this is show or not.

They have also arrested a few self-defense leaders and some of their self-defense foot soldiers, accusing them of murder and putting them in jail. There are complaints that some of the latter have been mistreated and abused by federal police: for example (Proceso): “…evidence of injury around the neck, air pipes,  and the inner ear…” of a leader of the self-defense forces in Yurécuaro. Defense lawyers claim the men are being framed, as a way of removing self-defense leadership.

It is also not entirely clear to what extent government is thinking about and making distinctions between the three elements in the triad: the law, individual rights and the underlying culture of impunity. What is needed, of course, is years of education on the merits of social responsibility.

In the midst of all this, ninety percent of the self-defense groups say they have no intention of disarming or being disarmed. At a recent meeting of CAM, the General Council for Self-Defense of Michoacán, self-defense leaders have given the federal government the same deadline the government had given them. Federal Commission Alfredo Castillo had given them May 10 to respond to disarmament demands. CAM has now given him May 10 to respond to their counter-proposals: 1) Legalization of the self-defense groups; 2) Release of self-defense forces imprisoned by the government; and 3) Putting an end to the entire Knights Templar structure in Michoacán.

Un Conte de Noël, A Christmas Story

Posted on by sterlingbennett

(My second attempt at translating one of my short pieces into French, as a language learning exercise, with much help from my tutor, whose name I will not mention—to protect him from scandal if the translation is just too horrible, to the extent that it would make French cows fall over dead.)

~

Dans un conte de Noël, il s’agit parfois d’un respect pour la neige, de joues froides jusqu’à une sensation de brûlure, de chausettes mouillées, de l’odeur de punch à la goyave, avec aussi des pommes et de la cannelle, de la chaleur du poêle à bois qui se mêle à l’odeur de pain d’epice qui cuit dans le four, des poignées en tissu à moitié brûlées, avec des corbeaux imprimés, pour protéger les doigts, d’une tante qui joue des chansons françaises au phonographe et, se pâmant à moitié, qui se couche ses mains écartées juste au-dessus sa poitrine semblable à celle d’une colombe, poitrine qui sent un tant soit peu la poudre de talc et la naphtaline.

Elle était catholique, moi protestant dilué, et c’était à cause de l’Eglise qu’elle restait seule, disait-t-elle, parce que les hommes d’Irlande n’avaient jamais appris à aimer les femmes, seulement la Vierge, et avaient tendance à s’abuser d’elles, et d’eux memes aussi, à cause de la mise en garde des religieuses de ne toucher personne, même pas avec le coeur.

Je n’avais aucune idée de ce dont elle parlait, sauf que je me demandais comment cela serait de la toucher, peut-être quand elle dormirait et ne serait pas si triste. J’avais 15 ans et j’étais curieux des corps, pas le moins du monde du mien. Dans un moment de confiance discutable, j’ai dit à mon père que je me interrogeais sur le corps des femmes. Il ôta sa pipe de sa bouche y me dit que c’était bien et assez naturel comme ça, et puis il grommela que je ne devrait pas mettre personne enceinte.

Cette remarque m’a causé un certain embaras et je crois que je rougis beaucoup—ce qui faisait qu’il était plus difficile de me voir comme l’homme qu’était mon père, ce que je voulais être. Il avait percé sans effort mon secret le plus profound, qui avait massivement à voir avec la conspiration de la nature pour susciter des bébés.

Le nom de ma tante était Georgina, et je suppose qu’elle n’avait pas plus de 25 ans à ce moment. Elle avait déjà une réputation dans notre famillie de ne pas être responsable de soi-même ou de toute autre chose. Avec régularité, elle oubliait de retirer des choses du poêle, ou de reserrer les couvercles des pots. On devait veiller à ce que le contenu—des flocons d’avoine, par example, ou du pop-corn—maintenu par son couvercle, ne glisse ni ne s’écrase sur le plancher de la cuisine, un sol en pin douglas à grain droit, créant ainsi deux gâchis au lieu d’un.

Georgina aimait le punch à la goyave de ma mère—un fruit qui était expédié de Floride chaque hiver par son frère Antonio et qui arrivait à moitié pourri. Georgina aportait sa tasse vers notre salon non chauffé et la-bàs y ajoutait du Sherry. Elle me laissait le goûter et je pensais qu’il avait un goût horrible, sauf qu’il la rendrait moins préoccupée pour les jeunes hommes d’Irlande qui à leurs 40 ans vivaient encore avec leurs mères et passaient trop de temps dans les pubs en buvant de la Guinness et en écoutant les violoneux torturer leurs cordes avec des gigues et des reels pleins de colère, se plaignant tout le temps que l’Irlande devrait se battre aux côtes les Allemands.

Un soir, vers Noël, à travers la neige qui tombait, mes parents ont conduit leur Ford break 1943 à un cocktail à la fin d’une route sombre de Nouvelle-Angleterre, où vivaient deux célibataires allemands, Herbie et Hans Wanders, qui ne parlaient jamais allemand en public à cause de la guerre. Cela nous laissa, Georgina et moi, seuls dans la maison. Un pot de punch à la goyave était posé, pensif, au borde du poêle. Georgina le poussa avec une poignée aux corbeaux brûlés là où il se réchaufferait, pendant que je la regardais. Puis elle se versa une tasse et se dirigea vers la salle de séjour. Je la suivis, parce que à bien des égards elle était mon guide. Elle cliqua le phonographe, dont l’oeil d’orange s’illumina, le bras plastique prit vie et laissa tomber l’aiguille sur “C’est lui que mon Coeur a choisi” d’Edith Piaf.

Je ne comprenais pas un seul mot de cela et j‘en suis assez sûr, elle non plus. Nous étions assis à côté l’un de l’autre, à la lumière d’un réverbère lointain, sur un petit canapé couvert de fleurs pâles, si proches que nos hanches se touchaient presque et la tasse faisait le va-et-vient entre nous, maintenant enrichis avec le Sherry bon marché de ma mère et j’essayais de ne pas regarder les genoux de ma tante, qui d’une certaine manière s’étaient glissés vers l’avant à partir du bord de la jupe et je pense que je me souviens qu’ils brillaient comme touchés par le clair de lune.

Plus je buvais le breuvage terrible, plus je pensais à des choses—que moi aussi je vivais encore avec ma mère, ainsi qu’ avec mon père, et qu’il était en quelque sorte mal d’être attiré par les genoux exposés de ma tante. Le punch m’avait donné chaud partout, en même temps je me sentais perché sur le bord de la nausée. La chanson était une valse et très sentimental, et juste à ce moment elle m’a pris par le menton, m’a tourné vers elle et m’a donné ce qui a dû être un baiser très anti-catholique directement sur les lèvres.

Sous le choc, je l’ai regardée dans les yeux qui à ce moment ont été illuminés par les phares de la Ford de mes parents, leur voiture qui, revenant plus tôt, faisait crisser la neige et s’arrêta devant la maison. Le pont sur Prospect Creek vers chez les Wanders s’était effondré et mes parents avaient vu le trou béant juste à temps et ils étaient restés assez longtemps pour trainer des branches sur la rue, pour mettre en garde les autres automobilistes qui viendraient. De retour dans la cuisine, tandis que ma mére nous a étudiait, soupçonnant possiblement des couvercles desserrés, mon père a marché vers le téléphone accroché au mur, a dit aux voisines indiscrètes de racrocher leur putain de téléphone et a appelé la police a propos du pont écroulé.

Il s’est fait, que Georgina est partie à New York par le train du matin et est retournée en Irlande par bateau, qui a zigzagué tout le chemin, écrivit-elle, afin d’éviter les torpilles des sous-marins allemands. Et je suis allé vers une vie seulement de temps en temps attirée vers le Sherry et plus souvent vers les goyaves sous toutes les formes à cause de leur odeur enivrante. Je ne vis plus avec ma mère et j’ai souvent pensé à Georgina et à ses genoux, jusqu’au moment où j’ai rencontré mon premier amour et puis, comme les hommes de l’Irlande, je l’ai oubliée.

L’achèvement de Moi et Mon Chien

Posted on by sterlingbennett

(My first attempt at translating one of my short pieces into French, as a language learning exercise, with much help from my tutor, whose name I will not mention—to protect him from scandal if the translation is just too horrible, to the extent that it would make French cows fall over dead.)

 

Quand mon chien est mort—combien d’histoires commencent comme ça?—j’ai renouncé à essayer de trouver des nouvelles façons de vendre mon roman. Je pleurais par vagues, tandis que je creusais le trou, un endroit où un oranger avait vécu pour autant d’années que mes fils. J’enveloppai le vieux dans ma veste Harris préférée et je le glissai dans sa tombe.

J’ai pensé que j’aurais appris quelque chose de lui sur la mort, mais c’est plus difficile en n’étant pas le chien qui meurt. Je caressais sa tête et je lui disais, combien il me manquerait. Je tenais sa tête au moment où le vétérinaire s’est approché par derrière, en le touchant sur son épaule vers le haut, cherchant la place pour l’aiguille. Les yeux de mon ami étaient chaleureux et pleins de confiance, même lorsque l’aiguille entrait, et pendant encore quelques secondes après.

Son regard se reposa sur moi, même s’il m’avait déjà quitté.

L’homme qui est assis en face de moi, mon partenaire d’écriture, est en train de bricoler avec les sons que son téléphon peut faire, quand des appels et messages arrivent. Mon défunt ami ne m’appelle pas. Ni ma mère ou mon père le font. C’est l’âge et pas l’aiguille qui les a interrompus. Mais je peux voir l’avantage de la chose pointue. Ton amour te caresse le front avec une main qui n’est plus jeune, mais encore chaude et lisse, comme quand elle avait 34 ans.

“Es-tu prêt?” demande-t-elle.

“Non,” dis’je, avec un gémissement gâté et irrité, à la pensée d’être éteint pour toujours.

Ses yeux sont humides. J’ai accéleré ma respiration, j’ai durçi mon ventre pour l’effort qui venait.

“Es-tu sûr que c’est ce que tu veux?” dit-elle.

“Non,” lui dis-je avec, le meme ton désagréable. “C’est une decision impossible.”

Je sanglotai une fois, ensuite j’essayai de sourire. Je l’aime et la vie aussi. Je suis trop intelligent pour ne pas savoir ce qui va se passer.

“Alors, restes, si tu veux,” dit-elle.

“Combien de temps?” je demande.

“Tant que tu veux.”

Son sourire est chaleureux, ses yeux bruns, aussi profonds que ceux de mon chien.

“Quelques jours, une semaine tout au plus. L’aiguille marquera le moment,” dis-je.

Elle me regarde.

“Les deux aiguilles marqueront,” dis-je.

Nous avons toujours eu nos blagues. Un ami médecin a apporté l’aiguille et la potion fatale. Il s’approchera par derrière, en me touchant sur mon épaule supérieure. Je n’ai qu’à donner le signal.

Nous avons déjà deux fois atteint ce point. J’ai chaque fois choisi le sursis, incapable de tout quitter, d’entrer dans l’oblitération.

Mon vieil ami remuait la queue et il m’a fait confiance, sachant peut-être ce qui se passait, peut-être pas. Il ne pouvait pas me dire comment faire. Si l’acceptation est une sorte d’intelligence, je ne l’ai pas. Je pense que c’est Karl Gustav Jung qui a dit que l’inconscient ne peut pas imaginer sa propre extinction. Il a peut-être eu raison pour mon chien. Peut-être que c’est une bonne raison pour attendre jusqu’à ce que l’inconscient—la mer dont nous venons—se soit glissé plus près. Ou que nous soyons descendus vers lui.

Comme je l’écrivais: Peut-être que c’est une bonne raison pour attendre, mon amour aux yeux bruns, elle que j’ai déjà mencionnée, apparut sur les marches du deuxième étage de ce café deglingué où nous écrivons—chose qu’elle n’a jamais faite dans les dix années dans lesquelles j’ai rèncontré mon partenaire d’écriture, à qui je vais lire prochainement ce freewrite, selon notre coutume.

Je suis quelqu’un qui croit—plus ou moins—en la synchronicité, la théorie que les choses se passent en coordination les unes avec les autres, c’est à dire, pas tout à fait par hasard.

“J’ai besoin d’argent,” dit-elle.

Je sortis mon porte-monnaie.

“Je n’ai pas beaucoup,” dis-je, en observant qu’il se pouvait en fait qu’aucun de nous n’ait assez.

“J’ai juste besoin d’assez d’argent pour Donna,” dit-elle.

Donna es notre personal trainer. Nous disons chaque fois ces mots-là avec ironie, conscients de leur sonorité prétentieuse. Au lieu de rétrécir et nous ratatiner, mon amour et moi nous avons décidé de nous remuscler et pratiquer l’équilibre.

“Et pour le gymnase,” dit-elle. “Trente pesos.”

Je lui passai mon argent. Mon partenaire d’écriture tend la main, il veut sa part. L’ambiance a changé. L’océan s’est éloigné. Il ne faut plus pleurer mon chien imaginaire—au moins pas maintenant. Il est parti au trot par le champ de mes pensées d’automne. Et je suis assez heureux s’il ne revient pas tout de suite. Mon amour marche vers la salle de gym, un endroit aussi branlant que le café ou j’écris. Je suis encore la, tout seul.

Pas encore prêt.