I crossed into Cuidad Juárez for the first time two weeks ago.
The concrete and barbed wire on our side contrasts with the no-one-gives-a-shit-that-there-is-a-border on that side.
Graffiti in Spanish (that I could read): "Bush la terrorista eres tu", "U.S. border patrol: ¡Asesinos!", "La globalización mata". Those were my favorites :)
More bustling and vibrant than any other city I’ve been to in a long, long time. Smells. People asking for money I couldn’t give. Places accepting dollars, listing what you can take into the U.S.
The border caters to its crossers on both sides.
El Segundo Barrio, one of El Paso’s oldest border communities for Mexicans and Mexican-Americans, in danger of being demolished--and it has been demolished over the years but built itself back up--by urban planners.
Their plan?
Another endless American mall, of Starbucks, fast food chains.
Prefab pretty houses. Cold concrete apartments rising up from wet black asphalt.
Not a chance.
Smells of food, smells of shit. Silence of the cathedral, where the bustle of city life loses sound. People. Everywhere. Beauty and filth all at once. Echoes of the downtown bars of Ankara, Turkey. Of the shops of Asunción, Paraguay, lined up with no doors, wares hawked.
Che Guevara necklace.
American football team sarapes.
And out of it all, what struck me the most?
What stands out in the border experience to me?
The Mexican emo girl exiting the border crossing to to El Paso from Juárez, decked out in tight, form-fitting plaid pants, a skimpy black top, studded belt, showing skin, showing curves, brown skin, mascara-ed eyes...
Monday, April 21, 2008
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Negativity
Massively-delayed first post of the year 2008 commence:
I don't know where life is taking me. I don't know how much longer I have in school.
My life consists of scholastic assignments or duties to give me meaning and a reason to exist. Without those, my life would fall apart.
I'm confused, confused. Don't wanna be confused.
Wrong in what you write. You don't feel shit.
I just wrote a paper comparing the Zionist movement from 1880-1948 to Frederick Jackson Turner's "Frontier Thesis." See, Frederick Turner had an interesting idea--the soul, character, and institutions of a nation and nation-state forged on the frontier which existed "on the hither edge of free land"--but his idea was mired in American exceptionalism. To Turner, only the American had his character based on a "restless, nervous" energy which caused him to expand into the frontier, to civilize it. To me, the Zionist movement perfectly captures this "restless, nervous" energy and the Israeli character, to me, was definitely forged on the Palestinian frontier... on the "hither edge of (NOT)free land."
All right, I'll confront my bias. I'm not Palestinian, and I'm not even Arab except through distant, distant family ties that probably can't even be traced anymore. But I think Israel was a tragedy. The Palestinians got the shaft up the ass for just being a native people. Today people out there will still try to convince you otherwise; that they have no right whatsoever to national autonomy or national self-determination.
To all of you who think like that: fuck you up the ass. I'll slit your fucking throat, you worthless wastes of sperm.
Maybe the entire "Holy Land" would be better off destroyed in nuclear fire. Disinfecting atomic fire. Death and destruction. Radiation. Let there be light:
Blinding Light
Roaring Light
The Eye of God Ripping Through the Night
Now I Know
Now I See
The Fire of Faith is Consuming Me
Would God permit it? My friend, let me tell you of God:
God is Great
God is Great
He is the Wind that Roars,
The Ground that Shakes
The Earth's a Filthy, Lying Whore
God is Love
God is WAR
You will all kill each other before you reach a solution. You would kill each other before you realize how much you have in common. The Warsaw Ghetto uprising.. the First and Second Intifada... do you fools realize how much you have in common?
Do you realize the blunder that is Israel and Palestine? Do you realize that only killing each other will end it for good?
Your world is too gone to resurrect it.
You need the warheads to disinfect it.
Disinfect it.
This is all that these eyes see. History as the trash produced by humanity. Junk that we bury ourselves in until it suffocates us. There is no such thing as progress. Urbanization. Gentrification. Globalization. Islamization. American Republican Party-fication. Militarization.
...I'm so sorry.
I don't know where life is taking me. I don't know how much longer I have in school.
My life consists of scholastic assignments or duties to give me meaning and a reason to exist. Without those, my life would fall apart.
I'm confused, confused. Don't wanna be confused.
Wrong in what you write. You don't feel shit.
I just wrote a paper comparing the Zionist movement from 1880-1948 to Frederick Jackson Turner's "Frontier Thesis." See, Frederick Turner had an interesting idea--the soul, character, and institutions of a nation and nation-state forged on the frontier which existed "on the hither edge of free land"--but his idea was mired in American exceptionalism. To Turner, only the American had his character based on a "restless, nervous" energy which caused him to expand into the frontier, to civilize it. To me, the Zionist movement perfectly captures this "restless, nervous" energy and the Israeli character, to me, was definitely forged on the Palestinian frontier... on the "hither edge of (NOT)free land."
All right, I'll confront my bias. I'm not Palestinian, and I'm not even Arab except through distant, distant family ties that probably can't even be traced anymore. But I think Israel was a tragedy. The Palestinians got the shaft up the ass for just being a native people. Today people out there will still try to convince you otherwise; that they have no right whatsoever to national autonomy or national self-determination.
To all of you who think like that: fuck you up the ass. I'll slit your fucking throat, you worthless wastes of sperm.
Maybe the entire "Holy Land" would be better off destroyed in nuclear fire. Disinfecting atomic fire. Death and destruction. Radiation. Let there be light:
Blinding Light
Roaring Light
The Eye of God Ripping Through the Night
Now I Know
Now I See
The Fire of Faith is Consuming Me
Would God permit it? My friend, let me tell you of God:
God is Great
God is Great
He is the Wind that Roars,
The Ground that Shakes
The Earth's a Filthy, Lying Whore
God is Love
God is WAR
You will all kill each other before you reach a solution. You would kill each other before you realize how much you have in common. The Warsaw Ghetto uprising.. the First and Second Intifada... do you fools realize how much you have in common?
Do you realize the blunder that is Israel and Palestine? Do you realize that only killing each other will end it for good?
Your world is too gone to resurrect it.
You need the warheads to disinfect it.
Disinfect it.
This is all that these eyes see. History as the trash produced by humanity. Junk that we bury ourselves in until it suffocates us. There is no such thing as progress. Urbanization. Gentrification. Globalization. Islamization. American Republican Party-fication. Militarization.
...I'm so sorry.
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