Introspection Through Chicharrones

The noticeable stench of tequila and stale beer permeates through the cool ocean air.  At least I think it is the ocean.  Things are a little hazy.  I pull of a blood stained sheet covering my torso.  Would it be better if that blood was mine or someone else's?  Cannot process that right now.   Now the daunting task of piecing a night together.  Wallet still in pocket, thank God, although significantly thinner than the day before.  One sandal under my t-shirt the other I find under the bed after some mediocre searching.  Now time for the tricky part.  I search the pockets of my jeans and notice another blood smear on the knee.  A few pesos, a receipt from a taqueria and a number scribbled on a piece of faded yellow paper.  I descend the stairs and exit the dark confines of the building to the dirt ridden street.  As I walk to the nearest convenience store I cannot help but notice the mosaic of garbage strewn about.  All colors of the spectrum and all shapes and consistencies of plastic imaginable.  Possesses almost an artistic quality as if someone enacted the random dispersion of this rubbish in a calculated manner.  Kind of the recurring theme I find in these lovely cultural centers south of those states that are supposedly united.  Back to the reality of the jackhammer inside my skull.  I snag a bag of chicharrones and a gatorade, the prescribed hangover cure for my recurring predicaments I find myself in down here.  The love hate relationship of smiles at night and sorrows in the late morning.  I plant myself under an umbrella and spend the remaining loot in my pocket on some of the almost pornographically fresh ceviche that is famous here.  The night filters through my mind in bursts of bright lights, mezcal shots and countless attempts at shaking my hips.  I am in need of some Hemingway and some beer to rid myself of this funk.  I settle back into the rhythm of my surroundings and get inundated in a story of a lonely fisherman and the fight of his life.  With the sand between my toes, a semi cold cerveza in my hands and the short, terse sentences of my literary hero, my life comes back to the karmic balance I came down here to achieve.

McQueen

Life is racing.  Everything else is just waiting.

~ Steve McQueen

South By Unrest

Eyes open.  Goosebumps prominent.  A feeling of panic.  Where am I?  I take stock of my situation and take in all that is around me with the sensory perception of an ocular patdown.  Somewhere in the desert, next to a major highway.  The Mexico/US border lies 3 miles to my right.  Maybe this wasn't the best place to pull over and spend the wee hours of the morning to catch a little shut eye and avoid a similar accident to what took place in 2005.  My senes settle down and I regain composure.  Back on the road, back to dedicate my time to the wanderlust that has taken hold in these 26 almost 27 odd years.  The love for adventure, for danger, for the feeling of weightlessness associated with so many movements participated in.  This is the cocktail, infused with a personal ineptitude to settle on anything, which drives my every day existence.  I have given up the need to search for meaning in everything, but have not given up on the hope of simplification.  Thoreau's mantra permeates deep within my psyche.  Simplify, Simplify.  Those two words written on the wall of my high school english hall have lived with me since I was a snot nosed teen trying to rationalize the irrational.  Volume.  I need volume.  Tunes cranked, wind in my hair, hips ready to gyrate.  This is going to be a phenomenal South by Southwest adventure.