I. Sunstruck
II. Severance
III. Fading
IV. Thanks, but
V. Music for Everything
VI. Fluffy stucco
VII. Tools & Smoke
I. Sunstruck
Tuesday, second day, back at camp. Roasting. Baking. Sunstruck. Gummy bear cover band melted in the sun. But some of what I had in there made it through. It was supposed to, and it did. Pectin, not gelatin.
It was never this hot here, not even last year. I guess I’ll go and shower. Then find some shade. The tent is not shade. Not unless all the window flaps are zipped up. Then it’s an oven.
The breeze would be great, if I could cleave it from the sun. 4:45p.
And my cell coverage is still spotty. In & out. Today, mostly out. I don’t have the patience to fiddle with it in the sun.
Showered. Will walk to baño. Then do a dry-off walkabout. 17:16.
II. Severance
At the mess tent. Gave Frank a piece of paper.
Still never been in the Amor Store. We moved one of the tables, into the shade. The far end. Full sun, otherwise.
Temperature shutdown. Cooper also has a notebook. Caroline got the last three bottles of vanilla. $8/bottle.
New wave music from Eugenio’s radio. I guess that’s Bowie. Good song. We can dance, we can dance, we can ___ ____. And everybody’s taking their (time?)
The pigeons. Someone borrowing my pen. Most of me in the shade but the sun wrapping ’round my bottom legs.
Towel dried in the tent all on its own, no magnets necessary, no slabs of cars, no sun, no wind. I’m getting lots of Severance vibes, a TV show B & I watched in the weeks before this trip. The show evokes a corporate dream world, severed lives. After an advanced brain procedure, their memory of the time they spend at work is severed from their life at home, and vice versa. Leaving a sort of mindlessness in both worlds. At work in the show, there is the nominal reward of a waffle party for noteworthy performance. Here, we have the Amor Store, where you can get cheap vanilla, Mexican Coke, t-shirts, and ponchos. Charge your phone. Vie for churros.
There are other groups here, doing the same thing, but there’s not much mingling. Just like in the tv show, where there are other employees working in other parts of the building, but there’s no fraternization between the two. If anything, it’s a rivalry, a competition, quips from afar, the unknown, the unaccessible. Why do they not leave at the same time as we do, why do they get back so late, why do their tents fail in the wind, how many days are they here for? That many, that few?
Then we have the camp rules, or we have what are touted as rules. It’s frowned upon for anyone to leave camp without an Amor rep with them. Graham did that once. He said he caught flack for it. There are posted quiet hours, ten to six. They’re mostly followed. What happens if you don’t? What happens in Severance if you wander into another part of the sprawling, labyrinthine office complex? Is anyone brave enough to find out?
We’re not supposed to bring in drugs or alcohol. No tobacco. Each group has a bank of bathrooms that are considered “theirs.” No one would ever try to use one of the stalls designated for a rival group, would they? Some of the water is potable, some of it is not to be consumed. We have tamale night, then spaghetti night. For a little reward we get churros. Kind of like how in the show Severance there are perks for employees who meet certain levels of performance. Complete enough tasks and you get the Waffle Party. Treats include kitschy gifts like finger traps.
While I’m making comparisons, I must also note how much Peter reminds me of Adam, a friend of mine from college. It’s uncanny. Not just in appearance and stature but in demeanor. Peter is congenial, amicable, easy to be around. He’s like an older Adam. Imagine a show where you arrive at a camp like this and all around you are people you knew before you arrived but they’re a wide array of ages. Some are younger than you remembered, some are older. Maybe some people are younger versions of people you haven’t even met yet, but will.
Uh-oh. The Ball Game is about to start up again. They’re using a beach ball. They’re outside the tent, at least. I’ve got my tent flap open; now there’s a fly in here.
We go out and build houses for families, the same house every time. You meet the family but who knows what happens when the house is done and you go back home. We get the family’s bio and we are excited to talk about the family and the work we do; we talk about how much good our work is doing the family. No one asks us to do this, of course.
We’re all in tents, more or less the same abode. There are daily water limits. Supposedly. There’s a sign referring to a limit, but I’ve never seen it enforced. So much happens just by way of suggestion. If anything unusual occurs, it’s a big deal. Like the guitar-playing security guard. Or the security guards in general. They don’t seem like the most formidable security force. There is a fence around the Amor campground, but it’s not an imposing obstacle. It’s short; it sags; it could easily be sidled over. But no one ever tries to get in; and no one ever tries to get out because who would do that; it’s not done.
We rent our vans from a place called Car Rental Help Center. Quintessential post-modern genericism. I’m dreading going back to that place, even now. We turn our camp keys in when we leave and then we head back across the border. And once we get back to San Diego we are “home.” It’s like we were never even gone.
III. Fading
A couple of loose roofing nails have fallen out of my pants pocket and onto the floor of the tent. Pitter, patter. Nails falling in headlamp light. The only rain in Tijuana.
There is no troubadour tonight. If he’s here, he doesn’t have his guitar. If guitar is here, he must be somewhere else.
I had a long talk and catch-up with Cheryl after small groups. The night gets away. Time flies and there ain’t enough of it. Chase the sun around the earth.
Except for the outlet enticements of the Amor Store, there is no electricity in camp so everyone’s cell phones and head lamps are always really low or totally out of battery. The only time to charge is in your van on the way to work. But there’s only one working port in our van and the trip to the worksite is actually not that long so hardly anyone gets to charge. Which is why everyone’s phone is almost always so low on battery that we reach a point in the week when no one even bothers to try and turn them on. Severed.
I’m yawning but I don’t want to go to sleep. 10:36. Peter likes the poetry of Robert Service. Long ballads. Rhyming, sing-songy. Peter says his poems are mostly about love for his wife and family.
I might run out for Thursday. Force a zero. Oh well. I can pull it. I’ve been however many days now without smoking any of my myriad mostly delicious strains of reefer. I was pretty much every day there for almost a year. Really into it, with the marketplace opening up. I’d smoke a cigarette here at the right time. Either right before or right after dinner, but after the sun loses its edge. The thought of a cigarette in the searing sun makes me retch. And the tamale I had for dinner is sitting heavy, so not now either. Heartburn City, here I come.
Those beans, though. And the rice. A man can live on rice and beans alone. The beans are mashed up. Twice-baked beans? The aim is to cook them slowly until they are like a porridge. Maybe the beans wouldn’t be good on their own but they don’t have to be. Add some melted cheese, a few corn chips, some shredded lettuce, guacamole, sautéed onion, and cooked tomato. Then a generous scoop of rice. Done.
Amy had a different kind of tamale at the table. I was eyeing it. What was it? Vegetarian, I presume, but I didn’t want to ask her about what she was eating while she was eating it. I thought that would be kind of awkward. But I wanted one. The cheese was gooey, and there was plenty of it. Were those ancho chiles in there? Serranos? Something green. Who was that Roman Emperor? What lives where I don’t, in the night?
I knew I smelled cigar smoke. It’s not easy to hide. The cut sun. Dogs or coyotes. Slice of lemon moon citrus in the haze.
I’m calling it here. Stopping the fight. 22:58. Still what’s left of Tuesday. Looking out, it’s that line from the great poet Charles Wright, “Haze like a nesting bird in the trees.” They do have to move a little bit. They don’t have to move. They always do. Fading hard, fighting—
IV. Thanks, but
Wednesday. Up and at ’em. 5:06.
Another phrase one of the roosters seems to cry is, “Go commando!”
My skin is dry. I should’ve bought some aloe in San Diego. It’s worth having; but I don’t necessarily need to bring it all the way from St. Louis. Perhaps I needed merely to have grabbed the body lotion sample that was on offer at the motel in Ocean Beach. Aloe would be better. I’ll ask around to see if anyone has any.
My ‘Secret Pal’ is leaving after breakfast. Five of the group are heading back, all in the same vehicle, and one of them has “misplaced” his passport. The stowaway we didn’t know we were bringing to Mexico. I’d be sweating that return. Or it will go smoothly and this is the last thing anyone will hear or say about it.
Just checked my email to find a rejection letter waiting for me. Ugh. I now have very little writing work out for consideration. Rejected were a slate of drinking poems I sent to Stanford’s literary magazine for an issue they were going to run with a drinking theme. All the time I spend drinking and writing about drinking and I can’t even get that work accepted. Crikey. This year has been an absolute disaster for my writing career. Even to call it a career is a stretch and an embarrassment. I have gotten something like seventy consecutive rejection letters, spanning something like 300 poems I’ve sent in only to have them read (or unread) and sent right back to me. I’ve got the bumps and bruises. I reel.
Roof work today. I need to hydrate. I slept pretty well. I’ll try to put more sunblock on my face and wipe down to dry before I reapply. My face is red and don’t I know it. 5:35.
V. Music for Everything
You can dance, but only inside your own tent. You are allowed to go into another tent if they are a member of your family but I’m not related to anyone here. I dance alone to what I now know is “The Safety Dance” by Men Without Hats. Not Bowie.
This wind is a savior. How can wind and sun be the same?
Dan taking down Doug’s tent. Doug is one of the ones who went back this morning. He reminded me a bit of an older version of the Doug I know from Farm Party. The heat got to be too much for him. He would try to get out of the heat and wanted to lie down in the van with all the doors open. I wasn’t wild about that; we all still had personal items in the van; he’d be asleep and it wasn’t like we could keep an eye out. How much cooler could it have been in the van anyway, even with all the doors flung open?
It’s Wednesday evening back at camp. Not quite dinnertime. I lost to Christopher in chess. He’s twelve years old. I had an opportunity; I had him on the run. But I’ve never been very good at chess and my current game is far from sharp. I couldn’t finish it.
5:31. Still not cool. Still very sunny and hot but breezy. I showered then saw the chess game. I wanted in. The mess tent is the perfect setting for it.
“Music is like so common here,” says Cooper, another one of the youngsters. “There’s music for everything, you know?”
Chris, Cooper, and Griffin are all grandsons of Mike. Cooper and Griffin are brothers; Chris is their cousin. Cooper and Griffin were on the trip last year, too.
Eugenio rings the bell. Time to eat.
/\\.
There is a new couple living in the lot next to us. This neighboring lot has always been curious to me; it’s not clear whether Amor owns it or has any association with it at all. The first time I was here, in 2018, there were cattle grazing in that lot. Now there is this young couple clearing some of the low-lying grassy brush with shovels. Are they making a garden? They have a baby girl with them. She is making sounds. Not too far away a helicopter is chopping at the air.
“Did it get warmer,” Dr. Tom asks, perhaps rhetorically.
Yes, Tom, I was just thinking that. If it hasn’t gotten warmer it has become more humid. It never has cooled down much this evening. Inside my tent, I have turned my cot 180 degrees. It now faces north, where a wildfire has broken out. Someone in the van noticed it as we drove back to camp from the worksite this afternoon.
We watched from the mess tent as a plane began to drop red, rusty-looking flame-retardant powder on the fire. Then helicopters began dropping large bursts of water from casks attached underneath. The water fell in a fizzing arc, streaming like a comet until it disappeared on the ground below.
The fires smoked and belched, barely stunted by the powder and water. The smoke would begin to get thick again and then orange flames would return, visible to us from these miles away even before nightfall.
Now, in the dark, it looks like a lava flow, a river of fire flowing down from the crest of the mountain. Ascending, cutting left, rising quickly before cutting back right in the given way to the top, crawling along in wrinkles carved by water, enough vegetation where rare rain runs to feed now a sudden fire.
Or it’s a streaming, blinking line of headlights, cars returning home after a sold-out show. Leaving a packed stadium at the peak, just like they left that cornfield in Iowa, the Field of Dreams.
VI. Fluffy stucco
The house is nearly finished after today, our third day of work. All we need to do is put a second coat of stucco on tomorrow, Thursday. The second coat is more cement-rich than the first.
Ah, my sore throat. Not sore because I am coming down with something but because I inhaled some dry cement today. It’s hard to avoid when we’re mixing stucco. I was cutting bags in half, dropping a half into the mixing trough at a time. Our stucco felt fluffy and light. It oozed. We had double-sifted the sand and you could tell the difference; it was worth the extra sifting.
I spent the fresh part of the workday on the roof. First, we were laying down rolls of tar paper, using a staple-puncher to fasten the tar paper to the plywood roof. Then I took a break. It’s hot up there on that roof, and we had plenty of people interested in the job.
I went back up there just toward the end of the roofing work, helping to lay down the last of four strips of shingle paper, the final layer. I didn’t have too much to do with tar. Ella did most of that, same as she did last year. We use tar to caulk the seams between strips of gravel paper. Then all the nail heads get a dab of tar on them as well.
As I write about the day’s work in my tent back at camp, I can smell smoke. Maybe it’s smoke from the wildfire. Or maybe it’s just the usual Tijuana smokiness. It is still very windy here, even after dark. That’s a little unusual.
After roof work, I cut and nailed up some of the one-by roof trim with Peter. Then I mixed stucco for a while until someone told me to take a break. Which I did. Then I helped run stucco from the mixing bins to the house. I picked spots higher up to apply stucco, where most other people can’t reach without standing on a bucket, or using a ladder. In some cases I used a trowel to apply a big smear of wet stucco to the chicken wire substrate. Sometimes I just used my bare hand, when I needed to add just a little bit to a bare spot.
Air brakes from the road. That chugga-chugga popping sound trucks make when they use their engine brakes. Screams from one of the other groups in camp. Some game they’ve got going. Not our style. The truck from the main road hangs a right and makes its way toward the gas plant, popping along noisily, the engine grinding away.
The family and their friends and neighbors are serving us lunch tomorrow, the last day of work, the last full day in Tijuana. Tamales. I haven’t yet had to take a heartburn pill on this trip but that’s probably because I have been quite strict about what I am eating. Not a lot. I had some seconds of spaghetti the first night here. I have been a little hungry at times. But really, if there aren’t moments when I find myself hungry, it probably means I’m eating too much. The nut mix I bought at Target in Ocean Beach has been a great, salty boost at the work site when I need to refuel.
I didn’t touch the chorizo this morning but I did put hot sauce on my scrambled eggs. I ate a large bread bun with dinner tonight, filled with shredded meat. Pork? Mashed potatoes on the side. The mashers had that instant look to them, which is a turnoff because my mom has always made exceptional mashed potatoes. But Eugenio’s mashers were better than they looked. If they are instant, they’re as good as instant can be. And salad. I am happy to have it. Tonight’s wasn’t as good as the spaghetti night salad but, then again, spaghetti night is a special night. It’s my waffle party.
VII. Tools & Smoke
Before I forget I need to make some notes about the Amor toolbox vis-a-vis which tools I really need to bring next year.
Is that smoke coming from the lot next door? Are they burning some of what they were clearing? I really liked when there were cows in that field. When it felt like a neighboring pasture. In addition to the young couple, the migrant shantytown grows by the year; there are a few shacks in the corner of that lot where it meets the main road.
I might have lost track of the square I brought with me. It’s around here somewhere but where I can’t say. I did lose track of my small tape measure. I like having a 12-foot tape measure. If all I’m trying to measure out is a two- or a three-foot cut, I don’t need a fat, heavy tape measure.
There is definitely smoke coming our way from next door.
“I don’t like it,” says Tim.
I agree. That fire is about twenty feet away from our wash station and it is dry as a bone out here. If it isn’t brush they’re burning, it’s trash. Either way, we’ll be breathing it.
Meanwhile, the wildfire on the hillside has dissipated a bit. For the record, I appear to have lost track of: my square, my saw, and that tape measure. I was going to give away the hammer I bought in San Diego. I don’t need to take it back. I also plan to give away a pair of pliers I brought but haven’t used. I have used my utility knife; that I’ll probably take back. It’s basic but I’ve had it for years and it’s served me well.
“Yeah, it’s a trash fire,” someone says.”
“I’ll burn before you all do, don’t worry,” says a voice from inside the tent closest to the neighboring lot.
“Goodnight, y’all,” says Dan.
“Goodnight, Dan,” say several people.
I did use the square; they’re great for marking cut lines. And I did use the saw and the smooth-faced, 16″ hammer. There’s nothing wrong with it but I have two at home.
I could leave these tools with Gustavo, the neighbor. I haven’t said much to him the past two days. No real reason. This morning I went to use his baño. I knocked but didn’t hear anything. Then I opened the door on his wife. Eeeeek. I felt really stupid. Cringe, cringe. She was standing up, fully clothed. I’m an idiot.
The Amor toolbox had a few hammers, multiple squares, and various tape measures. I’m trying to decide whether I want to rely on those same tools being in there next year. It’s hard to know. Frank has extras of all of these items, too. And an extra cat’s paw or two. I could bring almost nothing next year. I did use the cat’s paw I brought this year, just once.
At Home Depot I’d buy a new saw, and maybe a small tape measure. I’d bring a few, good pencils. Forget the goofy, rectangular ‘carpenter’s pencils.’ They’re all bad. I just need to bring some dependable, basic pencils. Like those Ticonderogas Tim brought.
A fresh marker is also a good idea. To mark our nail line on the roof, we used a long 2 x 4, a spotter on the ground who pointed up at the corresponding rafter, and a Sharpie to mark a line along the length of the board. The idea is to mark exactly where the rafter is under the roof, so we nail the shingle paper down into the meat of the rafter instead of nailing solely through the thin skin of the plywood. It makes a difference.
I didn’t bring a tool belt this year and I didn’t really need it. All I really need is a good couple of pockets, for storing nails. I was wearing painter’s pants, which are replete with pockets. I did alright that way.
Car chargers are popular but the portable battery packs are much more useful. I have two but I only brought one. They are kind of heavy, and you’re not supposed to pack them in checked luggage, so I have to carry it around in my carry-on as I walk around the airport. My alternative is, what? To buy one in San Diego, charge it in the hotel, then leave it with someone? I’m not sure I want to do that, either.
The group in the campground next to us is still horsing around and now I’m hearing stereo music from somewhere. From the guard station? From one of the shanties? It’s R & B music with English words! Terrible! The last thing I came to Mexico to hear is English-language rap. I’ll listen to mariachi music as I try to sleep, gladly. I call that ambiance. This is noise.
Sunscreen, aloe, rags, bath towels. All worth bringing. My skin is still really dry. I do have a little bottle of Aquaphor that I brought along as a type of lip balm, but it’s going on my skin instead. I knew I had something with me I could use; it just took me two days to realize what it was.
That rap music seems to be coming from migrant row. It’s kind of loud. Could be an earplugs kind of a night. Damn that music. Goodnight—
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