Is there anyone can think what to do with rocks?

BOOK OF ROCKS
A Mexico Journal
By David Joseph

BOOK OF ROCKS
A Mexico Journal


LAND OF ROCKS--4
IMPRESSIONS OF FIELDS OF PERCEPTIONS--5
THE HITCHHIKER--8

BOOK OF ROCKS

IN LOVING MEMORY
JACK JOSEPH
DAD
1932-2006

EX LIBRIS, JACK
LAND OF ROCKS

(After John Berger)


Road of rocks
Field of rocks
Garden of rocks
Rocks upon rocks

Is there anyone can think what to do with rocks?
Rocks upon rocks in the road
Signifying construction meaning detour
Rocks saying cuidado saying take care

Rocks holding everything down
Rocks at the foot of the door
Rocks at the end of the mantel
Rocks holding everything in place

Rocks to hold down the newspapers
Rocks in the masonry Rocks on the roof
Rocks filling up the base of the vase
Rocks piling up on your rocky grave

Rocks upon rocks
Garden of rocks
Field of rocks
Road of rocks

--David Joseph
Bahia de S.C., Sonora

IMPRESSIONS OF FIELDS OF PERCEPTIONS


The sloping driveway
The dirt road
The field of bright orange flowers
The houses The greenery The palm trees
The sea
The ringing mountains
The sky

The late afternoon light

The driveway arranged like a wall to roll up
The road with long shadows of cactus running across
The field the dogs amble through
The chattering conversation of houses and trees
The sea bright and vibratingly blue
The mountains with three dimensional features of mountains
They sky in blue backdrop for the playa

The sloping driveway
The dirt road
The field of bright orange flowers
The houses The greenery The palm trees
The sea
The ringing mountains
The sky

The light of the dusk

The driveway with stones embedded between flagstones
The road full of rocks growing fuller of darkness
The bright orange flowers that turn brown
The houses overlit by a streetlight among them
The sea draining from blue to blue gray
The mountains of silhouettes with distinct outlines
The sky of purple to deep purple from horizon to zenith

The night
Driveway of shadows
Road of headlamps
No field No flowers
What houses What palm trees
No sea No mountains
Black sky full of pinwheeling stars
The crickets take up where the automobiles leave off

The sloping driveway
The dirt road
The field of bright orange flowers
The houses The greenery The palm trees
The sea
The ringing mountains
The sky


The early morning light

The cement with colors of fires
The road paved with dust and rocks
The brown flowers going ablaze into orange
The houses waking up at dawn
The sea of condensed milk in a bone white bowl
The mountains of purple and green
The sky of red into blue

The playa to the west
The driveway curves a little
The road at a slight angle
The field houses mountain sky
Directly in front to my view

The sloping driveway
The dirt road
The field of bright orange flowers
The houses The greenery The palm trees
The sea
The ringing mountains
The sky
The midday light

The driveway arranged like the grill of her cocina
The road paved with flames of air
The field busy with grasshoppers and birds
The houses lying down to siesta after comida
The sea of blue ripples of hot winds
The mountains of snakes and scorpions
The sky of omnipresent beating sunlight

I'll stay here forever, I'll never leave
Goodbye I'm gone

--David Joseph
Bahia de San Carlos, Sonora 15 Marzo 92



THE HITCHHIKER

By David Joseph



The bus jolted slowly through the rough, rolling terrain of cactus and sage. That combination of slow motion and jerkiness is what strikes me about the ride now, that and the heat and the omnipresent, beating sunlight. The engine's roar filled up the bus even before there were any more riders, then the driver changing the gears produced a physical sensation somewhat akin to an earthquake as we slowly picked up a little only to slowly slow down to a stop in what looked like it could be the middle of nowhere but really was somebody's neighborhood. Luckily I'd sat in a seat with a window that opened, so I had my face turned to get any of the small amount of apparent wind we stirred up.

Guys on their horses rode off the road through the countryside alongside us. It seemed as if they'd been doing that since before the beginning and probably would go on doing the same forever. They certainly didn't need any damned road to get somewhere.

As we came to another stop and somebody's maid got on with somebody's yard hand with two children in tow, they gave me a look as if they thought maybe I didn't belong there on the bus. I thought they were thinking, why do these rich North Americans ride the bus? I imagined that to them rich and North American were synonymous. I wanted to jump up into the middle of the aisle and blurt out, "We are all North Americans! I am only a worker too just like you! Besides this is the only way I've got to get from San Carlos into Guaymas!" But I didn't. Instead I turned back to my window.

Slowly we jolted down the road, cars passing in a version of the tortoise and the hare. A car passed, a late German model with a middleclass Mexican family stowed inside. We gazed at its quickly receding tail disappearing in front of us over the horizon. They were in such a hurry and getting there fast. The bus slowly rolled along and slowly filled up with people. We slowly passed the Policia parked beside the road and writing up a ticket beside the German car with the family still inside. We never saw them again that day.

We passed the cutoff to the aeropuerto. We passed through town. When we stopped at the statue of the fisherman I knew I had to get out. The driver had pulled in at the Pemex station and was filling up the tank. If he'd wanted me to get out he'd probably told me so.

Anyway I hopped off, crossed the street to the fisherman and had a girl take my picture with him. She was with her boyfriend or husband and obligingly snapped the camera for me. I thanked her and she went on with her life with him, not the fisherman. In the picture he's the big fellow with the net, I'm the one in shorts, tee and baseball cap.

I explored the downtown zocalos and catedral, checked out the Plaza of the Tres Presidentes, then briskly walked off down the playita in the direction of the naval yard and ferry building, asking several fellows in Spanish how to get there, and they were very helpful. I passed the fish packing plant and got to the railroad station. In front of the station a man and his family were busily carving up some fish. From the station I took the tracks to the ferry building pausing only to piss between railroad cars. A squirrel ran between my feet in the ties. Sunflowers were springing up yellowish-brown and dusty all over the unused tracks. The sun was beating down. I could feel it, the way it takes it right out of your head.

Off in the distance around the bend in the tracks, I could see it, the ferry building. I felt excited. I left the tracks behind, got on the driveway and crossed the fence through the gateway and across an interminably large and empty parking lot toward the building. It was imposing, two-storied, modern, painted blue, with lots of glass doors and windows in front. I went inside. Nobody was about.

Suddenly someone appeared, a young, official-looking man in a well-pressed short-sleeve shirt and slacks, and I was about to ask him something, but he didn't seem to want to speak to me, not then anyway. He scurried into the oficina and behind the glass of the ticket window, and as I approached I asked him if he had any tickets to sell me to take the ferry to Santa Rosalia. He said no, he couldn't sell me a ticket. Come back manana, he said.

I took a brochure, which only described accomodations, but not schedules and prices. After some more interrogations in this connection with the man behind the counter and panel of glass, he came out and pointed out the prices and schedule to me on the wall. Sunday and Wednesday at 1600 hours. Friday at 0800 hours. Salon, $34,500. Tourist (two-person stateroom), $69,000, or so. Reservations are required approximately three days in advance.

Since I was very thirsty and weakened by the sun, I asked a young fellow who I had suddenly noticed across the floor seated at a chair against the wall whether he knew of any machinas de refrescas en edificio. He responded in excellent English that there were none, gave me his jug of orange juice to drink, I finished the whole thing off and threw it away. While all this was going on I asked if he was waiting for the ferry and if he had a ticket. "Yes, I am waiting; no, I do not have a ticket," he said.

I looked at him. He was young, dark, with distinctive features of the face, and black, curly long hair clasped in the back with a colorful band of elastic material. He looked half Mexican and half gringo. He had a large cloth bracelet on his wrist.

I told him what the clerk had told me, during which time the employee went outside and joined what appeared to be a member of the janitorial staff in sitting in some chairs they'd moved out in the shade on the sidewalk and quietly talking. He walked out and asked the clerk for the same information, but in different words. The clerk excused himself from the company of his fellow worker and came back inside followed by the one who'd given me the orange juice. The clerk gesticulated at the sign on the wall, then reentered the oficina situating himself again behind the plate glass and counter. In this more official manner he was able to tell his interlocutor the same he'd told me.

We left the ferry building together, the clerk still encased behind his glass, I with my map, brochure and auto-focus camera, and he with his enormous pack and professional camera. He said he'd tried sleeping down by the statue of the fisherman the night before, but the rats were about a foot or more long. He went on about seeing some kids burning a scorpion alive in the zocalo, which evidently had unnerved him.

He'd stayed the night in the Hotel America. He said it was better than sleeping with the rats and scorpions. He had neglected to shower in the morning. The shower was a pipe, and the girl had said if he wanted to to ask her to turn the hot water on.

He was a U of A student on Spring Break. He was taking photography courses and liked to come to Mexico to take photographs of the land and people. He especially liked taking pictures of children in unstaged situations. He described a series he'd shot recently in Mexico of three brothers fighting in the bus station. I asked him if he was Mexican or American. "Half Mexican, half gringo," he replied. "I sure feel like a gringo down here."

As soon as he found out I was staying in San Carlos, he wanted to take the bus back there. Evidently he knew San Carlos and that there was a beach there he might be able to sleep on. A lot of students gravitate to San Carlos. So we made our way back up the Avenida Serdan asking along the way about the bus.

He seemed dehydrated, and I knew I was. So I suggested stopping in the tienda de refrescas. We both got frescas con crema, and I paid.

I wasn't sure I was ready to take the bus back to San Carlos. I thought I might want to see more of the sights. I decided to go back with him as I had had enough of the sun.

Anyway he seemed to want my company to talk to me, so we hopped the bus. We passed the circus and the baseball diamonds. He told me about Tucson's passion for the rodeo. "The rodeo has somehow passed me by in my life," I said. He said he hated it. He was a city boy.

"I don't like country music either," he said.

"Country is about the only kind of music I can't stand," I replied.

He told me that his father had died when he was five from a heart attack from alcoholism. "I think he listened to country." I felt kind of sad for him, his father dying when he was five listening to country music. I didn't mention that I knew what it was like, that my mother had died in a car accident when I was fourteen, that it's something you never really get over, losing a parent like that. "That's probably where you had your earliest memories of hearing country," was all I managed.

His mother was Mexican. They spoke Spanish only at home. He was going to Mexico to find out about that other half of his ancestry. He seemed very naive, or at least unknowledgeable, about Mexican history, but claimed to have been as far down as Mexico City.

We got off the bus beyond our stop, walked back, and I asked him if he wanted to come over to our place, because I thought he needed water. He said, "OK, if it's all right with you."

I was unsure whether he was just being polite. Hesitant, not knowing where this was leading, I said, "Sure."

When we got there we were locked out. The old folks had gone out briefly. I had explained that I had flown down with my dad. We were staying with my conservative Republican Aunt and Uncle from rural Indiana, although I may have left out the adjectives.

He had ridden down by himself on the bus. He had asked several people, but their cars were all filled up.

He had an exhibition of his photographs in Tucson beginning the following week and had to get back the day before to oversee and set up the exhibit. So he would not be able to go to Santa Rosalia. He would probably return to Tucson in the morning. He was raised in Phoenix, but had now gone away to school in Tucson, about an hour's drive away from home.

He asked me what I did. I told him I did clerical work for UCSF in a media department, that I was not a photographer, but that many of the people in my department were photographers. I told him that I write a little bit of everything, mostly poetry, that I edit a magazine called Working Classics and had developed somewhat of a name for myself doing it. Was I trying to impress him? What for?

"One works on a body of work and becomes known for doing what one does," I said.

"I've got a long way to go," he replied.

"Like we all do."

"I take my photographs of Mexico and write what happens to me in my journal, and I hope someday to get a book out of it."

"You just might too."

I explained that my magazine featured creative work by people who might not necessarily see themselves as artists as their primary identification. He wanted to know if I'd been published in any big books, so I told him how I had finally been anthologized just the last year in Homeless Not Helpless.

"I had a poem in there in a nursery rhyme form about losing one's home from the point-of-view of a child."

"Why did you choose the child's point-of-view?"

"I think it must have been because the child experiences things unmediated. Things just happen to him. They don't have any reasons. But he's asking why, constructing the reasons."

Our phrasing was a little clumsy as we talked. I think we were both overexposed to the sun. We talked in the covered patio in the shade.

"That's why I take pictures of children, because they experience everything directly and only later build the artifices of adulthood." He said he had a headache. "I need an aspirin and a beer." He invited me for a beer, but I said I was trying not to drink so much. "I only drink until I fall asleep," he told me.

"You sound like a moderate drinker, and that, I'm sure, must be a good thing." I didn't mention that a dear friend had died recently of cirrhosis. We stashed his pack behind the house.

We walked down to the farmacia. Cerrado. The mercado. Cerrado. Some of the local kids directed us in Spanish to the abierto farmacia. Just then some girls came along driving up, parking and getting out. They were cute like most of them.

"Should I ask the girls?" he asked me.

"Why not?" I said.

He asked them if they had any aspirin. Sorry, they did not. They were getting ready to go into the closed store to get some beer. We told them the store was closed. "Oh no," one of the girls said. "Where can we get our beer? Are all the stores closed on Sundays?"

He offered to talk to the guys in Spanish for them. They didn't know a word of Spanish. They were glad to accept. A cervezeria was open by the farmacia.

"Will you take us there?" he asked the girls.

"Oh, we can't do that," one said. "This isn't our car."

"I help you find out where to find your beer, and we can't get a ride with you?" He said, "We're going to the same place, and we have to walk there."

They said, "OK, get in."

He said, "Why were you hesitant to take us there?"

The one who was driving replied, "Our mothers told us not to pick up strangers."

They were U of A sorority girls. "Classmates of yours," I teased him.

"Not classmates of mine. Did you see how nervous they were, how unsure of themselves they were?" he asked me. They must have been pretty new to Mexico. This was probably their first day.

The driver managed to keep us some conversation. "We're staying at Condo Pilar. Where are you staying?"

"At La Pasada across the street from the Country Club," I said.

She pulled into the parking lot. "Where should I park?"

"Right here," I said.

They went into the cervezeria and started ordering their beers. We went into the mercado. He asked if they had any aspirin. "No, not here. At the farmacia," the girl behind the counter said. He went over to the cervezeria. The girls were getting their cases, and the woman behind the counter was scooping up a big sack of ice for them. I guess he wanted to check on them to make sure they were still there to get the ride back.

"Do they have the aspirin here?" he asked me for some reason.

"No, en farmacia," I said.

I went with him next door to the farmacia. The aspirin was sitting on the shelf just waiting to be picked out. He got them from the farmacera, and I got a Coke. He took the aspirin. I finished the Coke.

We went back to the cervezeria, and the girls were having the young man carry their cases out for them. They were doing pretty well for having been in the country for a day and never having been here before. One of them opened the trunk, empty until the cases filled it up. The other came out lugging the bag of ice. They closed the trunk. Our driver told us they had to go into the market too. We could wait.

As we watched them heading into the mercado, I told him, "I think we've gotten ourselves into a dependant situation here."

"But they need us to translate everything into Spanish for them," he said. We must have been trying to console ourselves.

"Yes," I said, "I had thought to suggest to them that they learn a few basic phrases, but then had thought better of it."

The girls were doing quite well without any help from us. He went into the store to check on them and get a bottle of water.

"Do you want to come along?"

"If only to get into the shade."

I waited in the shade. He came out with his bottle of water. They came out. "OK, we're ready to go," they said.

"Does anybody have a bottle opener," he asked.

"Sorry, no, we don't," they said.

"I do, here," I said, taking mine out of my pocket and opening it up.

They drove us back and let us out. He asked them if they had seen The Twilight Zone about the hitchhiker as he got out. They giggled and were off.

We went back to the house. The family was home. He picked up his pack and was off. He said he had used me enough already. I suppose he had. But he said he was going to go swimming. I hesitated and ended up not joining him. I was tired of the sun. He said maybe he'd see me in San Carlos or Guaymas. "Or on the beach," I said. Maybe I would see him swimming, I said. Maybe I will see him swimming, although I kind of doubt it.

"Maybe I'll see the girls again," he said. "I'd say, 'Hi, remember me? The hitchhiker." They would cover their faces and try to pretend they didn't see him. He would ask them, "Can I come over to take a shower?"

"You're the guy who keeps appearing over and over again."

"Sure," he said as he walked off to go swimming.

I went in and showered the dirt off. He either found a place on the beach or one of those nice rooms in one of the motels with vacancies I suppose. Either way he'll be all right, won't he? So what have I got to feel guilty about?



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END