12 Trips to Mexico: Leaving Out Details

12 13 Trips to Mexico: Leaving Out Details (Trying to Recover them)

Looking for vestiges and trails of that place and realm.

The two biggest trips that I have spent in Mexico I have not written about very much. (Nogales to Jalisco and back (2004), and Zihuatenejo to Mexico City and back (2000-01)).

Hmmm...

Writer's block, cramp, negligence, laziness, sublimation, transference, subconscious prejudice, ignorance. Waywardness, sloth, untrained wanton, lack of discipline, poor concentration, other distracting and tiring pursuits...

Mexico: my itinerant journey.  The book that began earlier in the century, (the 21st) traipsing back to the early 1980s, with conjecture on the centuries before...

Going on two decades now in to 2019. My book was not up to date even back to when I was living it, in 2004, 2005. I went back last summer, for only a few hours.

I had yearned for it and feared it. Dreams and nightmares. The whole assortment of surreality mixed with real outcomes. I got a job that dealt with, receiving daily reports... I have done this more than once, in 2010-2012 and now again since 2017.

I keep meeting Americans who are workers for the State Department in Mexico, subject matter experts. Others who work our side of the border, all with their combined experiences of dope and smuggling.

One could argue or think that my avoidance of writing about those trips, and postponing the most robust chapters of which I spent in Mexico is indicative of something.

Perhaps like the (going on) hundreds of books that I own that I have still not read, even those by some of my favorite authors, like Orwell, Allende, Michener, Connelly, Shaara, Lewis, Tollkien, on and on... Others by important masters, Dickens and others that I need to read. Tolstoy...

Pretending that life is forever and there will be time to read after the next slew of games on television, or other games and distractions.

Putting off this lifelong goal in a psychological game of procrastination.

My book can wait. Mexico can wait. Death can wait.

Life is less planned and organic. Work awaits, but more so play.

Mexico and writing about it can be work. Yeah, work. But work is good.

Keep writing. Do what they all do: Annie Dillard, Russell Scott Sanders, Orson Scott Card, James Alexander Thom, John Steineck, Lee Child.

Keep it up. Be consistent.

Remember, write, and compose. Organize.

Take the time.

Here it is.

Maria and Rene and James and other co-workers inspire me. All the ones that have worked there, that I see and talk to now.

Trip One: 10 hours (1982)
Trip Two: 6 hours (1983)
Trip Three: 4 hours (1993)
Trip Four:  4 hours (1995)
Trip Five: two days (1999)
Trip Six: ten days (2000)
Trip Seven: 8 days (2000-01)
Trip Eight: 2 days (2002)
Trip Nine: 3 days (2003)
Trip Ten: 7 days (2004)
Trip Eleven/Twelve: 10 hours (2005)
Trip Thirteen: 5 hours (2018) (Ahhh! 13, not just twelve trips)
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Summed up total days from 1983 to 2018: 37 days, or parts thereof, more or less

Less than I thought. I had believed it was closer to two months. Nevertheless, there were many days of the major trips that I have not chronicled.

Stupor and delay.

One might argue that there was not enough valuable to recount, not enough significant. Perhaps I did not see enough, feel enough, encounter enough to share, to recall, to analyze...

I buck that notion. All thirty seven days have had their impressions, strong and weak.