Intersections

A postmodern pyramid

Paging Ruben Ortiz-Torres. What would he say about this?

Above, a nighttime shot of a pyramid in the tiny village of Ixcateopan, high in the sierra of Guerrero state, Mexico. As you can see from the people sitting on the steps, the pyramid is about 50 or 60 feet high. Atop is a dramatic statue of Cuauhtemoc, the last Aztec emperor.

This pyramid is not an archeological site. It is not more than 500 years old. It was built between 1985 or 1986, by a local artist, in honor of Cuauhtemoc. The last tlatonai's bones are said to rest on the "Altar de la Patria" inside the Ex-parroquia de Santa María de la Asunción, in town.

I visited Ixcateopan this week for the annual celebration of Cuauhtemoc's birthday, Feb. 23, c. 1495. More on that later.

For now, let me just say that this postmodern pyramid high in the Guerrero mountains messed with my head. It is hollow. Concheros visiting for the festival had set up sleeping tents inside, a sight I never thought I'd see: men and women in full neo-Aztec dress, in the bowels of a pyramid. Directly under the apex, a bandita of small boys approached; one wanted to sell me on a huge block of unrefined quartz for just 25 pesos -- a precious stone a good two kilos heavy and probably worth several hundred dollars in the U.S.

We climbed the pyramid's steps and sat on top and contemplated the cosmos. I was half-expecting a UFO to appear, or an earthquake to strike. I contemplated the pyramid. Why was it built? What are its uses? What meaning can we make of it in this future-context?

* More soon.

A book in a sea of books

The day before I traveled back from Southern California to Mexico City, I went to a Barnes & Noble store at one of those new suburban malls that still sprout up on the outskirts of cities. My mom and I hit up Otay Ranch Town Center, kinda east of Eastlake, east of Chula Vista, southeast of metropolitan San Diego. We wanted to see the book in its natural habitat.

With Borders going bankrupt, Barnes & Nobles is the only big bookstore chain carrying "Down & Delirious in Mexico City." We searched the long aisles of self-help books, books on celebrities in Spanish, study guides, books on crafts or pets, romance novels. I finally found two copies of my book on a low shelf in the travel section, wedged between a couple of bestsellers on ex-pat life in Mexico and some travelogues by Brits or Australians on India or the Pacific Islands. One of them had the word "savages" in the title.

The experience neither pleased nor disappointed me.

As I wrote and worked on the thing, I knew that one day I would walk into a big bookstore and see it on a shelf, an anonymous mass-produced product like any other. In Otay, it looked just as I had envisioned it. One book in a sea of books, each one waiting to be bought, each one worried that it might not happen. Its placement as a travel title also seemed a bit imprecise. But ... whatever?

It hit me. This book is no longer mine. The thing has its own life now. The process was my reward, my prize. After trying daily news reporting, weekly feature-writing, magazine work, blogging, radio, and video, I wanted to try another form to tell stories. Writing this book was that experiment, an opportunity to seize.

The process was long, hard, and often drove me crazy. I learned and grew and suffered plenty of doubt and setbacks. But I won't feign modesty. I'm proud of the work and the way the project turned out. Now I want to share it with people, and I'll keep doing so as long as you want me to. But in my mind I've already released myself of it.

That said, watching the book make its own life is exciting. I have to keep in mind that my collaborators and I might know the book intimately, but every other reader is getting to know it for the first time. That's exciting. Yes, I'm reading the reviews.

Tepache in Southern California *

This is imported tepache, a natural drink made from fermented pineapple. I spotted this bottle last week while on a beer run at the liquor store on Sunset and Alvarado in Echo Park, Los Angeles. Could be nasty but could be good, I thought.

Tepache is sold all over D.F. from carts on the streets (usually in plastic baggies) or at many taco or quesadilla stands. It's refreshing, tart, cool, and is fermented so well in some cases, as in Oaxaca, it sometimes acquires an alcohol content. Beer is added sometimes.

This version of tepache is made by a company named Frumex, which calls it "pineapple cider." It's the first I've seen this traditional drink from central Mexico in bottled form or in the United States. Popped it open and took a swig. Besides being carbonated, the Frumex product is 'authentic' and damn good, in the quality ginger or root beer category of good.

So later on, back out in Riverside 50 miles east from L.A. in Southern California's suburban country, I saw the bottled tepache again at a Mexican supermarket. Bought two bottles this time, one for me and one to share with my hosts.

More on tepache here, from Rachel Laudan. A mouth-watering recipe with photos is there, by Pati's Mexican Table.

(Now, knowing how these things work, let me know when you spot some bottled tepache at your neighborhood Trader Joe's. Only a matter of time, watch.)

* Edited.

In memory of Cesar Arellano

Cesar Arellano, the original street-fashion-party photoblogger in Mexico City, has died. Cesar was a crucial founding component of the scene. He was hard-working, generous, and supported emerging talents and faces on his website, Diario de Fiestas.

There's a lot of sadness and shock in the community in D.F. right now. The scene has lost its most respected and committed indie chronicler. The loss is enormous.

Last year Cesar redesigned and upgraded his site. It had started out three years earlier on the blogspot platform and immediately made an impact on the fashion community in Mexico, how it saw itself, and how it read in other parts of the world.

To honor Cesar's life and work, I'm re-publishing below the section of a chapter in the book where he is interviewed. Cesar will be missed.

Trying drugs and writing about it is OK, people

Here's an audio interview I did with Turnstyle News, a new outlet based out of Youth Radio in Oakland, Calif. We talk about the emo riots, the cosmopolitan nature of D.F., and a topic I knew would be coming up: Why did you feel it was OK to address your own dabbling in drug use in some sections of the book?

As I tell interviewer Nishat Kurwa, in more words, of course ... Why not? Not like it's never been done before. In the interest of transparency, I showed those sections to my parents before I showed them to anyone else. Without any misgivings. Think about it: Bet a good majority of your editors and media execs -- to say nothing of your president -- went through exactly what I did when I first hit D.F., my "impossible city" in a world of many.

Listen to the Turnstyle News interview here.

I'm stopping this afternoon at UC Irvine to speak to the students of Erika Hayasaki, a former colleague at the L.A. Times and now an assistant professor of literary journalism at Irvine. This evening, Stories in Echo Park. Wednesday, I'll (still) be talking about the book to the students of Ruben Martinez, journalist, author, and professor at Loyola Marymount University in West L.A. Here's that flier.

Thursday's the party.

'The day is new' *

Previously, a post on a 1940s video on "modern" Mexico City sparked some good ideas. Here's another. At the Prelinger Archive in New York, this is a World War II-era video by the U.S. Office of Inter-American Affairs on a day in the life of Mexico City.

The video is said to be a reflection of Roosevelt's "Good Neighbor" policy. "Mexico is an old country which is new, a poor country which is rich, a country with more freedom than it has ever known," the narrator says.

More background here. At YouTube, here.

* Thanks, Josh K.

Riverside, motherf**ker!

An MTY 3BALL remix of this, via Lengua. It's a friendly town.

The trip

It's always such a strange trip returning to the United States. Even to some place like California, where most people are aware of Mexico and attuned to its beat, and a good many are part Mexican themselves or culturally Mesoamerican in some fashion. It's still not the same.

Mexico is an engulfing maelstrom, a non-stop party, the journey down the cave. The U.S.A. is this orderly appointment on freeways, where everything is watched, guarded, measured, and mediated. The one true religion is buying things. The crucial point, of course, the question, is where the two merge successfully or not, and how that happens.

Each time I come home to the border, I'm happy, but I am also almost immediately freaked out. I stand in line with the transnational workforce, come near the customs agents, take a deep breath, and tell myself, 'OK, get ready, this is going to be weird ...'

* Above, sunset over San Ysidro and the Tijuana river. 5 Feb. 2011.

Let's have a reading and a party in Los Angeles **

Above, a video created by Sister Mantos, an L.A.-based musician and performance artist who will be sharing the bill at the Slake magazine release party for "Down & Delirious in Mexico City." This is precisely the energy that I think is present in many of the book's pages.

Here's the Slake release sheet on the event. The party is Feb. 17 at 8 p.m. at the Echoplex -- ** UPDATE: The venue has been changed to the Echo upstairs. ** The idea is to organize a music party in the spirit of the book. So, also playing next Thursday and also right up our alley, DJ Total Freedom, Crazy Band (who belong to that anti-Internet presence movement), and DJ Lengua. I'll also read a little. Thanks, guys, for agreeing to play!

First, though, on Tuesday, we're doing a reading at Stories bookstore upstairs on Sunset Boulevard. Here's the Facebook event page.

Thank you Liz Garo, Joe Donnelly, Laurie Ochoa, Anne McCaddon, and Craig Gaines for putting the Echoplex party together. Thank you Pilar Perez and Marcus Kuiland-Nazario for organizing the Stories reading.

We'll have books and also issues of Slake for sale. Slake is now in its second issue. Honored to be a part of a venture in new literary journalism and creative writing in a sometimes bleak landscape for new writing. There's an excerpt from the book in Issue 2, "Mexican Gringo."

Yesterday's reading at UC Riverside went really well. Really engaging questions from students and community members. Was fun to hang out a bit with Michael Jaime-Becerra and Jazmin Ortega, former La Opinion reporter and press official for the L.A. mayor, and a UCR alum. We checked out the campus paper The Highlander and the Tomas Rivera library, which has a great collection of children's literature.

I'm excited to share this project three years in the making with my friends and former neighbors, and to share the energy of Mexico City with its close cuz, Los Angeles, always home.

* Edited

Arrancando con los book readings *

First post in Author News, so here we go.

On Tuesday, Feb. 8, the day "Down & Delirious in Mexico City" goes on sale, I'm doing my first reading from the book at Writers Week at UC Riverside. Here's the release from the UCR newsroom and from the Deparment of Creative Writing.

Writers Week is an annual event at one of the nation's premier creative writing programs, and I'm honored to receive the invitation from Professor Michael Jayme, the El Monte native and author of "Every Night Is Ladies' Night." On the bill this year is Pulitzer Prize-winning food critic (and FIL homie) Jonathan Gold, and my friend Ben Ehrenreich, author of "The Suitors," among many other great writers.

I'm proud to start the roll-out of this book at the University of California, my struggling alma mater, and especially happy to do it at UCR. Riverside has the highest rates of underrepresented minority and low-income students in the University of California system, making it one of the most ethnically and economically diverse university campuses in the world. The campus's central library is named after Tomas Rivera, the trailblazing author of "... y no se lo trago la tierra," a life-long educator and the first minority chancellor in the UC system.

Also, on Thursday, Feb. 10, I'm presenting the book at Calacas in downtown Santa Ana, hosted by author and journalist Gustavo Arellano. Here's the announcement at the OC Weekly. Santa Ana, of course, is the oh-so Mexican county seat of Orange County and the first front, Gustavo might say, in the "reconquista."

Excited for this event, too. While I know I gotta technically read from the book this week, what I'm most looking forward to with this process are the discussions. I wanna hear what people are thinking these days about Mexico, migration, transnationality, books and publishing, Southern California, the drug war, subcultures, megacities, chilango-isms, the border, whatever comes up.

So please come out and say hi if you're in the area.

And here's something else I just noticed. Simon & Schuster has posted an excerpt from the book online. It's Chapter 6, "The Lake of Fire."

* Reading dates and locations for Los Angeles and San Diego coming soon! I can tell you right now, though, the big L.A. event is gonna be the bomb.

** Photo above, the carillon bell tower on the UC Riverside campus, via Flickr.

Brothers and aliens

This is a photo a Twitter user in Cairo uploaded on Wednesday. Nevine Zaki writes: "A pic I took yesterday of Christians protecting Muslims during their prayers."

It makes my heart warm. All the implications, all the faith present, in God and in fellow man. Then, also this week, over in the Holy Land, this happened.

And it makes the heart stop.

Why they don't ever stay longer? Give us a clue? Ask us a couple questions? Join in prayers?

Rihanna's corrido: 'Man Down'

I wanna see a hot video for this jam.

It's "Man Down" by Rihanna, with lyrics on screen above. The song is essentially a corrido telling the story of a woman confessing to just shooting a man to death and needing to escape. It's an homage to Bob Marley's "I Shot the Sheriff," and almost as good as a song, I think. "Man Down" is co-written by Rock City and Shontelle, songwriters who are also from the Caribe.

As a native of Barbados, Rihanna inhabits her vocal Caribbeanness in the song so well. When she inches up an octave in the verse, it displays the wonderful and sometimes under-appreciated range and quality of her voice. Leaves you wanting more of it.

The "Sak Pasé" at the beginning is a Haitian Creole "what's up" collolquialism, and one that gained emotional meaning after the January 2010 earthquake. "Man Down" is off Rihanna's November 2010 release "Loud."