The dream that woke me up after the Trump election

The  first night trump was elected, I didn’t sleep at all and then I was in shock for two days. That 3rd night, I stayed at a friends house, Jim Hornsby.  He's a close left wing liberal friend and poet who lets me stay at his house in City Heights when I need it.  He was the first American I talked to about the election.  It was a relief to vent everything I was feeling and listen to someone with similar feelings.  I crashed sound asleep and woke up with back pain after a while like I often do.  I stretched and moved around for a bit and laid back down.  I closed my eyes and assimilated some of the days events that began to mix with symbols of my subconscious, the conversation with Jim, the election, street protests... riding my bicycle to a bar and having to fish something out from a space in the wall behind the bartender.  I met a girl and was just going along with whatever she wanted.  She was showing me up to her room on the ninth floor and as we turned off the stairs on the seventh floor for some kind of detour, I saw an old and well-known activist friend who I haven’t been able to communicate with lately round the stairs with two others helping him.  He turned his head and his face was pale, sickly, yellow-green and his eyes were unfocused.

The people rushed him up the stairs so fast I couldn’t say anything to him but I gasped, “What’s wrong with him?!?”  I chased after him but couldn’t find him.  I saw some of the people who were with him who said he had been driven away so I caught some type of public transportation van to follow him.  The van turned into a transport to take me and a young man to a particular destination.  We got there and it was exactly like somewhere I’d been before in Baja on the ocean but we were in California on the same ocean, standing on a brick balcony.  I looked out at the ocean and noticed it was quite tumultuous and a big black wave splashed up about 7 or 800 feet  off shore.  “What a weird storm.”  I commented to my young friend who was also starting notice and as I finished my sentence we both noticed these white clumsy mechanical boxes with tentacles flying around… “DRONES!” we both shouted as we realized they were dropping bombs and ran to opposite sides of the porch deck to take cover.  I was crouched down in an opening in the brick floor that had cover around it but not on top thinking I wasn't quite doing it right but strangely not caring too much.  I was thinking, not scared at all, ‘this is normal for a lot of people in countries that we bomb.’  After a long while the bombing stopped and we both came out unscathed and a group of young people walked up.  They were all people of color in their upper twenties early thirties.  They were as american as me or anyone in their speech and mannerisms but none were white.  They were asking each other what the bombing was about, why it happened and one of them asked, “Do you think it was because Trump just got elected?”
“Of course it was,” I butted in, “The world is reacting.”  
We walked over to a docking ramp made of the same brick the patio in general was made of and a very white man in camouflage military garb drove up the ramp from a cargo ship and started to speak to us in a language that sounded like Russian but was just a little different.  One of the youngsters knew the language and translated.  The soldier was nice and courteous and said we needed to follow him.  We walked along the brick board walk until we got to this really nice place.  It was like a resort but nicer and it seemed like people lived there, like they never left.  There was a young girl talking with some others standing by an olympic size pool, putting on her goggles and behind them was a huge sectioned off by glass walls dance club where people around the same age were having a great time.  I remember a guy who seemed kind of separated and a little nervous asking a girl to dance and her accepting and them having fun and thanking each other at the end.  I didn’t have much feeling or judgement about the place and was just kind of hanging out.  Some Asian women came up to me and one of them started massaging my foot where I have an old injury that bugs me sometimes.  It felt really good and after a few minutes she stopped and showed me a piece of paper with a list of time periods how much each costs and then it hit me, this is a scam.  “No I don’t want this…” I told her in an almost offended tone.  I walked away and leaned over to grab something from a couch and felt this sharp needle in my butt.  I stood and turned and saw a guy with the needle in his hand.  I started to feel woozy and thought I was about to pass out but still had my wits about me somewhat.  
I can’t remember what I said or if I just gave him an annoyed look.
“Here is the list of what each dosis costs,” showing me a list similar to the one the foot masseuse showed me.
“Get out of here, what the hell are you doing?”  my adrenaline overpowering the drowsiness, my tone, my attitude, and even my accent going back to my New York roots.
“Well, you don’t have to buy any if you don’t want to.”
I got the same feeling I get when I deal with Border Patrol how they manipulate the situation to try to paint me as the aggressor.
“What do you mean I don’t have to, you just shot me in the ass…” I turned my back and waved him away, “Get the fuck outta here.”  

Light came in the window and woke me from the dream.

My Aunt B - Home is where your hat is from

Aunt B with her traditional Colombian sombrero vueltiao

“I think it's possible, why not?! Todos dicen que estoy loca pero yo digo que es cierto.” she continues to insist the mountains surrounding us on the patio of her home in Southern California are some how the same mountain range where she grew up in Bucaramanga, Colombia.

Beatriz Bedoya, or Aunt B, was born the youngest of six siblings. Her father was probably 1/2 black but none of the children knew how much African blood they had in them because it was shunned on to be black and common to make racist jokes about black people at the house. These days, my Aunt B is proud of the fact that she's black and often boasts about it. She doesn't bother to specify how much black blood she has in her, just makes sure to let everyone know she's black and how ridiculous it is for anyone to deny it, raising her forearm to show you her skin color or pointing at her face widening her eyes while looking straight at you.

She met Kevin McCarten, my uncle, an intelligent business man, great father, and one of the most generous people I know through her sister in 1969 who worked in the local Peace Corps offices in a nearby town to Bucaramanga. Uncle Kevin had been recruited from the business school at San José State University in a new Peace Corps recruitment campaign to diversify the peace corp mixing in some finance oriented majors with the liberal arts/peace-nic types. She was 21 years old and vaguely aware of anything outside of Bucaramanga. In 1971, they were married and moved to the states. She tells me she made this decision with out really deciding. It didn't completely sink in what she had done until she was here. For the first time in her life, she was surrounded by people speaking fluently in English, the first time she had seen snow and the first time her black heritage was surrounded by all white faces that embodied what her father had been ashamed of and tried to hide while she grew up. Even after living in the states several years, when she walked outside with her kids, people in the neighborhood would ask her if she was the maid which really ticked her off. She returned home at least once a year up until her first child was born at which point her father stopped telling her “I told you so” about her decision to leave her homeland and, more accepting and supporting of her decision, started saying, “No turning back now.”

I didn't know my Aunt too well growing up, just vague memories of her seemingly very happy and always showing off her “Latina” side. She livened up one of our traditional big Thanks Giving family get togethers (my Mom has 7 brothers and sisters including Uncle Kevin plus all their kids) by singing “La Bamba” and banging together some salt shakers.

When my Aunt B first came to the US, instead of going to the English class Uncle Kevin thought she was taking during the day, she took Esperanto, an artificial language that was a failed attempt at creating a universal second language for the world to communicate across cultural and language barriers. “Kiel vi fartas?” she greeted when he came home from work one day. They both tell this story and laugh about it now. She also told my uncle that “Yak Jerk called” once because she confuses her ys and js and one time called “gun shot” in order to get the front seat in the car. Despite these and other funny English mistake anecdotes, Aunt B has been fully bilingual for many years and has a masters degree in education from the states.

Her two kids, my cousins Ian and Alex, who have a blue-eyed blond haired Irish father, and grew up in their later childhood years in a predominately white middle-upper class lifestyle in Orange County, estimate that they are about 1/8 black and call themselves Octaroons (a real word they learned in the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy).

After living on the East Coast for a few years, My Uncle Kevin, followed several jobs in the airline business in different cities in California until buying a house in Fresno in 1976 and then settling in San Clemente in the early eighties when he started a shipping business.

When Alex was 2 yrs old she only spoke Spanish. I remember, when I was about 10 years old taking a trip with her, my Mom, my baby sitter, and my sister. Alex's favorite word was popó. My Aunt B told me recently that her and Uncle Kevin only spoke Spanish to her as a toddler and how she regrets that they listened to her kindergarten teacher who told them she was speaking too much Spanish and it would get in the way of her learning English. Alex grew up speaking English and later relearned Spanish as a second language.

I became very interested in the Spanish language in my young adult years too, which led me to being active in and working in Tijuana and Ensenada to learn. By the time I finished my masters in Spanish linguistics at San Diego State and started a career as a Spanish teacher in San Diego, my cousin Ian (Alex's younger brother) was now a teenage skater and living in their beautiful home on the cliffs of San Clemente. I would often go up and visit. Aunt B is a retired middle school math teacher. She loved teaching and always tried to help latino immigrant children in any way she could. She's always been athletic and liked the outdoors and her and I would hit the beach with a local body surfing club once a week. I would drive up from home in Tijuana where I was doing my final socio-linguistic thesis study. Aunt B and I would talk about the comforting chaos of Latino countries and compare and contrast how a Mexican says something and how a Colombian says something. I was as passionate as someone could be about the Spanish language or anything and Aunt B ate up the opportunity to speak Spanish with me and started to claim me as her Latino son.

I remember a conversation with her and my Uncle Kev about how she missed the fact that in Colombia you could walk outside at 10p and there would be a neighbor to talk to and how that's how it was in Tijuana, but here it's super quiet, and you can't hear or see anyone outside after dark. My Uncle Kev actually enjoys this peace and quiet. Aunt B and I saw eye to eye on a lot of things and started to become good friends.

I remember at my Grandpa's funeral her saying to me, not trying to give grand advice but just as a general comment between good friends and to express how we were both feeling, “Nunca sabes cuándo se van a acabar las cosas. La vida es más corta de lo que uno piensa.”

For some reason my visits kind of dwindled down to mainly only visiting during family get togethers. At one point during this time, I heard that Aunt B wasn't very happy. My cousins Alex and Ian had both grown up and moved out. I went up on New Year's eve one year and hung out with Uncle Kevin. Aunt B had gone to Colombia for a while. “I hope she feels better after getting the chance to go home after so many years” Uncle Kevin told me on our way down to the local pub to ring in the new year.

“Yeah, I sometimes feel like a part of her never left Colombia.”

My visits dwindled even more which I regret. I feel like I gained a real confidant in my Aunt B. We were buds and I wasn't able to share some of the new things happening in my life. I did continue to go up for the annual Super Bowl Party which my uncle calls his “Favorite holiday“ and always makes sure it's a great party. It's recently become the McCarten family get together to the point where even relatives from the East Coast came out for it last year and I've taken friends from San Diego and Tijuana including my professional guitar friend Delfino from Tijuana, who would put on a show after the game for those who wanted to keep partying.  "I love this fucking gringo", I remember her saying one time after a few drinks, jumping into a conversation with her arm around Uncle Kev kind of showing him off to me and a couple of friends I had brought one year.

A few years after the News Year’s eve visit, I did go up just to visit and Aunt B and I took a walk on the beach. I noticed her asking me a question and then sometimes as little as 10 min later asking me the same question. We had dinner a little later with Uncle Kev and when she wasn't there he told me she's been having some memory problems.

My Mom has recently come down to visit on a couple occasions and both times we went to visit Aunt B and Uncle Kev so I've been able to visit and talk with them in the last year more often than the past few years. I live in Tijuana still and despite my attachment there, I have to admit that it feels good to stay in the US sometimes and sleep in a nice quiet suburban neighborhood like the one I grew up in.

“Mira, mira...” my Aunt B kept saying to urge me over again to the sliding glass door to see the little sparrows eating some bread crumbs she left out on the patio. I arrive and see the last one catching a morsel as they fly over the horizon, the trail of bread crumbs leads toward the hills.

“Yo no soy tan loca. Yo digo que sí es posible...” she repeats to me later as we sit together on the back porch, pointing to the mountain range surrounding their new home in San Juan Capistrano insisting once again that it is connected to the range that runs around her home town on the Mesita de Bucaramanga, Colombia.

Advice from a Jojoba

"Just wait" says the Jojoba plant, a 6 inch tall baby with sprouting roots. I see her recently planted inside the cactus garden in a circle with the white sage trickling through the other patient souls clumped together crowding around the towering 20 ft high border wall. "Just wait. Don't plant freeways and "cubre suelos" used to cover the earth at their medians. I only ask your patience. I don't need you to pipe out treated water through a rubber hose as I get my water from the skies. I don't need you to create any conditions as I am native to this land and it is my home. All I need is your breath and your patience. If you give me this, I promise we will not be estranged. I promise to become one with the earth swaping nutrients with the soil. If you just exhale the anxiety to build isolation chambers on to me, I will convert it into your oxygen and we will heal. If you just exhale the soot of SUVs and the black plague of war that is made to protect it, we will grow and my roots will reach deeper than the height of this wall and hold our common ground firm when the first torrential downpour comes and the white sage trickling through becomes a river that washes away the freeways and divisions made by the decorative cubre suelos that smother us.

Chatting on the trolley

“How much that cost for you?”, the lady sitting across from me asked in an obvious Mexican accent looking at my ipad.

“400”, I said underexagerating $50 even though I know in Mexico this question is a common way to start small talk and not necessarily looked at as inappropriate like it is in English/US.

“I have a friend tell me he get laptops that people are giving away and sells them fro $50. He tell me he get as many as I want...”

"I'm interested in one!"

"Write here your phone number. I call him and tell him and tell him to call you." She stretched out her notepad with a pen and after, while we sat quiet diagonally across from each other on the vinal seats with no one else in our “booth”, I had this fleeting thought that maybe she had some type of business or something she was trying to promote. She broke the thin ice with a little more small talk about the computer that led into a little more personal conversation... "I 53 and I do different things because I'm curious and interested. I was curious how is that a ship that weigh tons floats so I read books and got a job working on a ship yard at NASSCO. Is an interesting job cause you see in two years how ship go from nothing to a big ship. It takes 2 years with 5,000 people working day and night."

"5,000 people! Wow!

How was the job? Did they pay fair?"

"They pay 15-20/hr. time and half over time and triple pay on Sunday and holiday. At the end when the ship was done they have party with you and your family and champagne."

“That's cool. How long did you work there?”

“Five years”

“Oh so you got to see at least one ship made from beginning to end.”

"Yea... I do different things.“, she said starting a new subject. I was more than ok with it. We had a pretty long trolley ride and I was in listening mode... ”...my sister tell me I should focus on only one thing, get an education. But I just learn different things and get different certifications." Somewhere in there I told her I was 43, felt open to tell her my age cause she told me hers. She went into great detail about her sister who was a chemical engineer, very sharp and traveled all over the world attending prestigious schools and working for different companies. It occurred to me that it might appear to some or that at another time or with a different person, I would've been getting bored of her going on so, but I was for some reason in a mood where I really wanted to listen to someone. That, in combination with the fact that there was something about the way she told stories, kind of speckled with out of the ordinary occurrences and confidence in her speech contrasting her kind of humble appearance that kept me listening to every word. "My sister went to a very prestigious training in Japan where she sat next to the prince of Kuwait."

"The prince of Kuwait?! Your sister went to school with the prince of Kuwait?!"

"Yes." she smiled just a twinge to acknowledge my amazement but I could tell it was old news to her and something not that surprising considering her sister's life in general. "She has pictures and whatever. She live her life like a princess. She grew up in a very difficult situation. She had polio when she was young and had trouble walking. She had to get up at 3a to be ready by 5a for the bus to school every day because she had to get her legs ready with her.." (here she gestured a crutch I guess she couldn't think of the word in English and I just nodded knowing what she meant). "She struggle for a year until she got a car but soon got a high paying job and bought the car of the year." (translating literally 'al año' which actually means a new car that was made the same year you bought it). "She had offers for jobs in the US but didn't want to leave Mexico and was doing fine there. She never got married she just dedicate herself to her career."

After a short silence and wanting to keep listening, I asked, “Where do you live?”

“I live in San Diego but I go to San Ysidro to buy something.”

“Where do you live?”

“I live in Tijuana, but I'm getting off at the Iris station to meet a friend.”. The Iris station is the second to last on the blue line that goes down to the San Diego/Tijuana border where she was going and still a good 15–20 minutes away.

“Where do you work?”

“I'm a Spanish teacher.”

She asked me my background and we slowly switched to Spanish. I told her my Dad's side and told her my Mom and Dad aren't Latino. She told me her Dad was half Chinese and half Italian and her Mom was 1/2 mexican and 1/2 black.


"Wow. Usted sí es una mezcla interesante."


She continued talking about her sister and how it was smart for her to never get married and how people think kids are wonderful when you see people with them in the movies but the truth is unless you have a million dollars for each kid you're going to have, it's not a good idea because they are going to have a hard life and go through a lot.  She asked if I'd been married.


“No, nunca.”


“Por eso eres tan tranquilo.”


“Sí, cuando estoy en una relación, no estoy tan tranquilo.”


“Es que no has encontrado a alguien compatible...” I identified with some of the things she was saying about relationships and thought how sometimes relationships mess me up even if I am compatible with the person, but didn't want to get into my stuff. I was enjoying getting out of my head and my issues. She continued about how important it is that someone find someone who likes the same things and that she was with someone and they had totally different interests,  "No está bien si estás con alguien y vives por el otro en vez de vivir tu propia vida.  Si haces todo lo que él quiere digamos 90% de tu vida pertenece a él y solamente estás viviendo 10% de tu propia vida. No creces como persona." That I definitely identified with, “Yo estuve con alguien, éramos muy diferentes. Nos gustaban diferentes cosas...”, She went on to give examples of how she liked the ocean and the indoors and how he liked the mountains and camping and how he always offered to cook but she didn't like the way he cooked, when he cooked meat, he'd serve it in a pool of blood which was disgusting to her for example...
”Uno debe de ser inteligente y no estar en relaciones, no tener hijos. como mi hermana hasta que la mataron en su casa." [People should be smarter and not be in relationships, not have kids, like my sister until she was murdered at her home]


"¡¿Qué!?" I said whipping my gaze directly into her eyes. ”¡¿Qué dijo de su hermana?!"  I was almost sure I heard the word matar, to kill, but I was thinking I must not've heard right.


"Ella tenía una criada,“ she said in a calm voice that kept me wondering still if I heard correctly.


”Confió en ella.  Le ayudaba en todo y vivió con ella por 5 años y después le evenenó y le robó todo."


With my mouth half open and still staring directly at her eyes that met mine at an angle and darted strait ahead and back to join mine again and back again as I repeated what she said in a question, "¿Mató a su hermana?!"


"Si la evenenó.  Le ganó la confianza primero y luego aprovechó y se quedó con todo.  La manipuló y le cambió el testamento para que ella se quedara con todo." She repeated adding a few more details about the sinister maid to the story.


"Y no le pasó nada?"


"No, todos saben que lo hizo pero no tenemos dinero, no podemos demanadarla." I was still flabberghasted by the shocking plot twist in the story and wasn't sure what to say and she asked another question that got us off the subject.


We chatted a little bit more until I heard, "Next stop Iris Ave.." which caught me by surprise even though I've ridden the route hundreds (thousands?) of times and usually almost instinctually know when to start gathering my stuff. "O, ya estamos!  Pues, mucho gusto Cristina.  Llámeme por favor me interesa..." not able to finish the sentence distracted as I quickly gathered my book and ipad which were sitting on my lap closed for the past 25 minutes, and stuffed them in my back pack.


"Sí.. te llamo sobre... (she said “la compu” and I said “la laptop“ simulataneously)


"Gusto platicar con usted." I said as I stood up to go and shook her hand goodbye and the automatic door opened behind me.

Normal Day on the Trolley

"Can I pay on the train or do I have to pay before I get on?"  Said the blond haired blue eyed innocent face. 
The officer looked away in disgust and turned to me just giving me an "and you??"  nod.
"I didn't pay."
"Why didn't you pay?"
"I was trying to save money."
The muscular, uniformed, chubby-cheeked man looked straight down the aisle with both of us looking at him sitting on either side as he wiped his face and sighed in disgust as we pulled up to the next stop.
"Do you want me to get off he..."  I started to ask hoping to avoid a ticket.
"Both of you just get off here and..."  the rest was mumbled but he might've said something about buying a ticket.
I quickly got off and felt the blond guy get off after me.  I ran up to the next boxcar in hopes to get on before the train took off, but it was too late.   The door didn't open.
I turned and the blond guy with a blue V-neck sweater and a smirk said, "I never pay for the tram."
"What?," the word tram throwing me off.
"I never pay for the tram.  I like how you tried to get on to the next box car."  Bigger and definitely drunk smirk.
"I was hoping to not have to wait another 30 min for the next one," I said liking his validation of my deceptive acts.  "Might as well buy a ticket now,"  I said as I put my credit card in the machine.
"Hey, I know what we can do!" as if we had been pondering our options for hours,  "We can go to the bar right here and get a beer!"
"Nah, I'm ok."  I said as I straight, narrow, and boringly bought my ticket and started pulling out my book to read on the bench.
"Ok." and he took off behind the building.
As I started to sit down to read my book on the declassification of CIA documents in the Chilean coup in the 70s and saw there was 27 min til the next train, I thought, "How boring, that wasn't very spontaneous of me.  Would've been fun to accept."  I was just about to sit my regretful self down when only a minute later he came running back.
"I don't know about that bar it was kind of..."  I couldn't make out what else he said in part because his words were slightly jumbled and, in part because I interrupted him.
"I was kind of regretting not taking you up on going."
"Ok!  Let's go."
We started walking side by side and he steps slightly in front of me and sticks his hand out at me chest level with the other fist on top.  "Let's Ro Sham Bo to see who buys."
"Ok."
"You know how to play?"
"Yeah, I know."  Acting like no big deal but knowing I had 100s of hrs of experience.
Three unison fist pounds into two paper hands.  3 more, him scissors me rock.  "You win!"  a little surprised but not really caring, "I'm buying!"
We walked into the sort of yuppy hippy bar.
"Do you think they'll let me take my bicycle in?"
"Just bring it in and see what happens."
I parked it inside by the front door and the tattooed waitress/bartender with the low cut tank top comes up to us at the bar.  A long list of beers written in high lighter white on glass caught my eye on the wall behind her.
"I like straight up ale." said Eric, my new Navy friend.
"I like light beer."
We both ended up getting the same beer.  "Pretty good."
"Yeah, not bad." I said thinking except for the bitter taste.
"God damn!  Now that's American.  Loosing a Ro Sham Bo game and buying a beer."
"Yeah, I guess so." I said thinking that it's true, Americans don't typically haggle much.  "No negotiation."
"So where do you live?" 
"Tijuana"
"What?"
"Tijuana?" as a question thinking he may not have heard of it.
"What?"
"Tia Juana."
"Oh. Tia Juana.  I've heard of it."  In an of course voice.  "How do you like it?"
"I like it a lot.  Interesting place."
"That's great man!  So what brings you up to SD today?"
Hesitating a bit, "I actually came to San Ysidro for a protest against Border Patrol abuses."
"That's terrible man.  What did they do?"
"There have been around 20 or so people killed by Border Patrol over the last couple years so some of the families were there because there hasn't been any investigation into what actually happened."
"That's terrible man.  They shouldn't be doing that.  They need to be shooting bad guys.  Stopping criminals from getting into this country."
"I don't know.  I feel a little like the border enforcement in general is doing more harm than good.  Like there are criminal rings that don't have borders and the idea of having a wall and enforcement in the middle of them really seems sort of silly when I'm sure they don't even need to cross to commit a crime on either side."
"I don't know maybe to stop certain people?" he said not really wanting to argue but not being able to hold back that he didn't agree with me.  "I see what you mean.  We're kind of beyond walls."
"Yeah.  I imagine if there are terrorists or drug cartels they have cells in the US already.  I'm thinking you might know more about that than me, being in the Navy."
"Yeah there definitely are.  You'd be surprised.  There are definitely terrorist in the US.  Religion is the motive to do all kinds of bad stuff, muslim, christian.  I'm an atheist."
"So you're not really routing for any of those, huh?"  I said, trying to lighten the heavy conversation I started.
"Yeah.  Ha!  That's right." 

"Yeah, anyway, I crossed over also cause I'm going up to see my friend in Mission Valley."
"I live in Mission Valley!"  He said much more excited about a topic we had in common. 
We kind of slammed the beers and got back to the trolley about 10 min ahead of time.   "That's American"  he said again.  "Playing Ro Sham Bo for beer and then talking through different viewpoints!"  Looking back at me as we walked down the stairs to the station.
"Yeah, I was a little hesitant to bringing up my viewpoints right away but you seemed pretty open to it."
"Oh yeah.  I'm open."  Standing back at the station he looked at me,  "So you must think that's weird a blond haired blue-eyed guy being from El Centro."  He said as we waited for the trolley.
"Well, I didn't really think about it, but now that you mention it, I guess you would be kind of a minority there.  You must've had a lot of Mexican friends growing up there, right?"
"Well, my parents are divorced.  And I spent time in Alaska with my Dad.  I joined the Navy in San Diego to be closer to my Mom."
"How do you like the Navy?"
"I don't really like it.  We don't do much.  The good thing is I've gotten to travel around and see different parts of the US for training.  With so much training, you kind of would like to see more action."
"Aaa. Ok."
"I'm going to be deployed to the Pacific next month."
"The pacific?  Where in the Pacific?"
"Well... the Philipines for sure and probably Guam.  I'm not looking forward to it.  I hear you just kind of sit around.  I'm disappointed cause I feel like I wanted to do something for my country.  I guess I'm there just in case.   Kind of makes sense.  Kind of.  I told my friend who works at, ah... one of those places where teenagers are in jail...  what do you call it?"
"Juvenile Hall?"
"Yeah, he's a correctional officer helping those kids and I tell him all the time, 'man you're actually doing more for this country than I am.  You're helping on a small level every day and I'm supposedly helping on a big level but I'm not doing anything... like YOU." pointing at me, "You're doing more for this country showing your point of view about the border than me."
"Yeah.  I'm pretty satisfied to be honest about where I've focused my energy to help society."  subtly changing America to society.
Just then, two more drunk Navy guys come up.  But they were more drunk.   They pulled out 5ths of Rum and whisky and asked us if we wanted a shot.
"Eric turned to me.  Hey, we should take a shot."
"Alright."
As Eric was drinking the shaved headed short guy said, "Careful there's cameras right there... I don't really know how things work around here. I'm from the South."
"Who are you guys?" said the other taller brown haired guy with acne scars kind of pointing back and forth between us with a puzzled look on his face.  The three of them started bonding over Navy stuff, "What ship?" etc. And generally agreeing that it totally sucked. The short bald guy had been deployed in several places and said the Navy really screwed him over.  The questioning taller guy looked at me with a face of disregard and even waived me off and went back to talking to Eric.  Me and Eric both started laughing at his gesture. 
"You don't know anything about the Navy!"  I said guessing what he was thinking and we all started laughing as the trolley pulled up.
The two new friends stayed and me and Eric got on.    "What a great way to spend 30 min waiting for a trolley."  I said.
"Yeah.  I hope the security doesn't get back on."
"I think you're alright.  They hardly ever give tickets on this line.  They do on the blue and orange lines though."  We were kind of quiet, knowing that we were pretty satisfied with our short interlude.  We shook hands a couple times.  "I'll buy next time."  I said. 
"If we ever see each other again, you can buy."  as the door opened and we fist bumped before he got off.

My Border (patrol) day

“¿¡QUE HORA TIENEN!?”, I yelled through my open helmet visor while waiting first in line at unsuspecting pedestrians passing a few feet in front of me.

As an instinctual reaction they kept looking straight ahead until they realized how non-threatening the question was, “Las 9”

“Gracias!” I said as a robotic reacion as the words 'Las 9...', passed my brain like a cloud while the two men passed by through the cross walk in front of me.  The light turned green and the grip on my right hand twisted up, 'las 9, las 9...'  I repeated as the cloud the words were trapped in started disipating into a thin fog as my scooter accelerated through streets of downtown Tijuana already starting to fill with people, with long pants, long sleeve shirts, and smiles emerging walking most with coffee in hand through the light fog, "oh! las 9, I'm totally gonna make it by 9:30a to the bicycle locker Rendevue spot just across the border to ride through the Tijuana estuary to the Bi-national garden with my friend Alex."

I sat on my little 50cc border mobile 3 cars from the front of the line at the border crossing after zooming through downtown, up the open lane and in between the cars with poor souls who had been sitting there for hours. Made eye contact with one of them near the front and he gave me the normal non-resentful, "no it's cool" nod that motorcycles get as an unspoken pass. As I waited, a Customs and Border Patrol agent was led by a drug dog jerking her this way and that as its snout launched from bumper to bumper while another female agent followed behind them. My mind drifted with the hmm of the hundreds of idling engines, 'How do they know when the dog finds something? if anyone has anything, they must be shitting their pants right now, how humiliating it would be if you got caught and everybody was looking at you. The beautiful long haired german shepherd suddenly pulled the agent over to my giant red duffle bag lying on the floor of my scooter. He dug his snout into my bag for a longer time then he spent on the bumpers and kept going back in for more, “look mommy I think I found it”, he said through his smile every time he looked back at the Agent staring intently at the bag. She turned toward the other agent and blushed a little and then to me, “You smoke weed?”

“No, never put weed in that bag.” I said, just a hair nervous.

They had me open up all the different compartments on my scooter including the gas tank lid and the 2 agents and the German Shepard checked everything out.

At this point, the cars ahead had passed through and I started wondering if the guy who gave me permission was rethinking the whole motorcycle exception pass. “Should we pull over to the side?”, I offered to the agents.

“No, you're going up here” she motioned to the booth that vehicles normally go to for their first inspection crossing, “to get sent to secondary inspection.” The blue uniforms now matching the sky triggered an annoyance that instantly focused my thoughts uniterrupted by even the slightes morning fog, 'why am I going there if it's already been decided I'm going to secondary?'

They walked up to the booth and gave the agent my ID wrapped in the orange slip as I walked the scooter up behind them up to the stout male agent, “You got to inspect me as well...?”, I asked watching the other dog-agents walking ahead already and hoping to skip at least one step knowing that secondary was going to make me late.

“Yeah,” he said in an 'of course what are you stupid?' tone, “Where's your passport?”

“I lost it. It's still valid, though.”

“If you lost it, it's not valid.”

Oh man, an asshole, I thought and knowing some just decide that's the best way to do their job and I shouldn't take it personally, but still getting a little upset.

“Actually, it is still valid. I never reported it lost.”

“Bad idea. It's not lost, then.”

“Well, I can't find it, so it's lost.” Now on the brink of arguing.

“Where are you going?”

I stopped myself from arguing, “I'm going to a couple places. I'm the coordinator for the bi-national garden...”

“I asked, where are you going?”

“Well, I was getting to that, but you cut me off.”

“Just a simple question.”

“Well, it's part of the story. I'm going to the Beyer Trolley station first.”

“I don't want a story, I just want to know where you're going.”

“Ok.” I said holding back the deep seeded resentment.

Once in secondary, the ladies told another Agent about my case, “Oh something interesting!”, he said raising his eyebrows with his hands in his pockets. I was thinking, 'I think you're going to be disappointed.'. But didn't say anything.

After they did a thorough search of everything in my pockets, my bags, and my scooter and shuffled me around to a couple different agents to do paperwork and scribbled on my orange note, they stuck it to my headlight and showed me the way out.

There are two exits when you don't get sent to secondary, one of which I can't take on a scooter cause it forceably connects onto the freeway and this is the only one available coming out of secondary. As I passed a CHP car parked under a bridge, my thoughts of hoping it was a scrare crow type plant mixed with trying to drive safe on the freeway at 40 mph up to the first exit and thoughts about wether I could sue CBP for wasting my time and how stupid it was for them to stop me because I might have had marijuana. So what if I did? Is that worth all those tax dollars for you guys to find out that I'm bringing marijuana to San Diego? Like it's some type of dangerous substance that hundreds in the city aren't enjoying right now on a Saturday morning.' By the time I got to my bike locker, I had gotten over it or at least able to put the resentment aside rationalizing to myself that I could sue them later.

I pulled out my tablet to see that it was 9:45a. Not bad, I think all that ridiculousness probably added 20–25 min. I didn't see Alex and wondered if he had come and left or if he never made it. After locking up the scooter to the fence, breaking out the bicicleta and stuffing my big suspicious duffle bag into the locker, I rode around the parking lot thinking he might be sittng in his car somewhere. No such luck.

Well, I should be able to make the 6 mile ride out to the garden by 10:30a as I had promised on Facebook, in case there was anyone wanting to check out the Bi-national Friendship Garden of Native Plants during the restricted hours that Border Patrol allows people to come to the primary border wall inside Friendship Park.

Once on the windy road with hills, farms, and native brush climbing up the cliffs, I started to forget I was only a couple miles from a freeway and thant only a quarter mile on either side of me were two conjoined metropolis.

I passed by a white pick up truck backed into a clearing at the end of a trail next to the road. It looked like a govern't vehicle but didn't have government plates and had a green cap with a patriotic symbol of Calfornia and an American flag on the dashboard.

“Vigilante minutman type?”, was the first thought that came to mind. I stopped to take a picture. After, my thoughts changed to it was probably just some patriotic dude going for a hike.

Even though I was running late and I had rode by a lot of tourists that were potentially interested in seeing the garden, I decided to go to the shed and get everything set up in the garden first before I started promoting. On the brink of dropping something or falling, I carried two big hoses and a bag of trowels, gloves, and such along with my backpack up the steep hill while walking my bicyle to the spigot to drop off the hoses. Then walked around the 17 ft high tubes that made up the secondary barrier with the bags and left the bike at the entrance to the Friendship Park area inside the enforcement zone. “Good morning Agent Stricklin.”

He nodded and continued chatting with a group of tourists. I got out to the garden about a hundred feet away where I dropped off the bags, weeded the hose through the secondary wall out to the biggest of the the three garden circles with the first barrier marking the border of San Diego/Tijuana running through the middle of them. As I came back out and rounded the entrance door again to go back to the spigot, I noticed a couple gentlemen with brown sun-worked faces kind of looking at me while talking in Spanish to each other. “Buenos días” I said. “¿Ya conocen el jardín binacional?”

“No. ¿Qué es?”. They were very interested in the whole deal mainly since they saw me round the corner and go out to an area where the agent had been telling people they weren't allowed to go. “Ese sí tiene palancas \[that guys got some leverage/inside influence\]”, they said they were saying to each other when they saw me. I explained how anyone can go over there, you just have to ask the Agent cause he won't bring it up and that I come every Sat to give people tours and the Agent will let me take up to 5 at a time over to the garden. They asked about the rules for ID and I explained that they normally don't check for ID inside the Friendship/Enforcement area but can where we are now and all around the state park area.  I've seen and heard of instances when they do. I told them I was headed back to connect the hose, but would be glad to give them a tour of the garden.

“When? How do we go about signing up for that?“

“We can go right now. We just have to check in with Agent Stricklin and he'll let us over.”

They were full of questions about how I got access over there and I explained the history of the garden how there used to be access to the public in general after we planted it in 2007 when the park was wide open and there was no secondary wall.  Once the wall came in, in 2009 access was completely prohibited but little by little with a great deal of insistence a coaltion of orgnaizations called the Friends of Friendship Park, Border Patrol now allows this limited access.

Agapo and Luis took me up on doing the 15 min tour and were very interested in coming back some day to help. They were landscapers in Escondido and had some useful tips about how to recognize plague on the leaves of plants and what to do about it.

We were hanging out and my friend Carlos Foo Kong, a biologist and director of the butterfly sanctuary in Tijuana showed up on the Mexican side.  While we were all chatting and getting to know each other through the fence and talking about plants, Agent striklins familiar booming “Mr Watman!” from a 100 yds away interrupted.  Everyone was silent, even Carlos safely on the other side of the fence.

“O no, parece que me está regañando.... o tal vez solamente me quiere decir algo. Ahorita vengo..”.

Even though that yell often means I've broken another Border Patrol rule without knowing, this time it was simply to let me know that there was someone interested in seeing the garden.

Jessica was a young lady from New York doing her thesis on poetry at the border and was thoroughly enthrawled with the garden. She ended up helping out with watering and taking pictures and video, and wrote some beautiful messages on the rocks in our “wish garden.”

I asked Agent Stricklin, if Jessica could stay longer than he normally allows for tours as an impromptu volunteer in the garden.

“That's fine as long she doesn't reach through the fence, I have no problem with that.”

“You can stay longer” I told her as I walked back up to the garden.

At one point, I was watering a plant through the fence. “Can I do that?” Jessica asked.

“Sure. Just let me do this one, and you can do the next.”. I felt a little like I should've just handed her the hose and let her finish that one and not sure why I said that.

“MA'AM!!” in the same authoritative voice as the “MR. WATMAN!” yell I'd heard earlier and so many times since Agent Stricklin was hired for this new Frienship Circle PR/vigilence post created by Border Patrol a couple years ago.

'Uh, oh.' I thought. 'Jessica's in trouble.'

I kept watering while they were chatting a hundred yards away at his white SUV window.

I waited until they were done and went and chatted with her, “I stuck my fingers through and he asked me why I did that after he had already told me that I wasn't allowed to pass my hand through.”

I felt bad and tried to convince Stricklin a little to let her back in but she was restricted to the Monument area only, 50 yds away from the garden.

It started raining a little and everybody left so I figured Agent Stricklin wouldn't be too busy and decided to chat with him a bit. We were both kind of laughing how just a small amount of rain turned everybody away. We were both pretty relaxed and being open about things and it felt appropriate to merge into the conversation a beef I had with his report from last year to his higher ups about my acitivity in the garden and Friendship Park.

“My report this year won't reflect what last year's did.”

I went on to tell him, that I had honestly tried my best to work with him and BP's rules in general and the report stated that I was trying on purpose to break rules which in turn caused everyone at the meeting with the higher up officers to come down on me.

“Well, from an enforcement point of view, if something is repeated, it's considered purposeful.” He said, not argumentative at all just kind of letting me know tone of voice keeping up with our very friendly conversation. Aferwards, I realized he contradicted himself when telling me he was ok with letting more than normal 5 people at a time over to the garden if there's a group that has 6 or 7. I remembered him turning down a sixth member of a cyclist group that wanted to see the garden a few weeks ago which split up a husband and wife so the spouse didn't go in either and only 4 could go over. I realized this riding my bicycle out of the estuary and it really bugged me because he seemed so sincere in wanting to work with me in general as much as possible within the rules. It really seemed like we had built a trust in the conversation and now I was starting to wonder how sincere it was or if it just kind of depended on what type of mood he was in. While going through all this in my head, a border patrol jeep drove past and stopped in front of me with the his lights going.

“Where did you come from?”

“Friendship Park.”, thinking if this guy gives me a hard time, I'm not going to be able to contain myself from giving him a hard time back. I think the days vigilance had accumulated.

“Where are you going?”

Before I could answer another Agent drove up behind us, “No, he's not the one I thought.”

“You're free to go sir.”

Don't go in the water

Going to a foreign country as a tourist is like going to a beach on another planet and looking at the beautiful ocean not knowing or feeling the world inside it and only being able to make intellectual guesses at best based on what you've read or meer past possibly completely unrelated experience and just standing there not even getting your feet wet.