sometimes it’s heaven, sometimes it’s hell

blog title comes from a willie nelson song on his 1974 concept album Phases & Stages – side one (back when they had 2 sided vinyl) was the breakup of a relationship from the woman’s point of view, side two from the man’s. willie had lots of practice in broken love. one of his early wives got so mad she waited until he passed out drunk, then sewed him up in a sheet and proceeded to beat the crap out of him with a broom handle. “Well sometimes it’s heaven and sometimes it’s hell, sometimes I don’t even know.” that’s from the man side… a great line from the woman side is “Walkin’ is better than runnin’ away and crawlin’ ain’t no good at all.”

writing these blogs requires thinking, and my mind is tired. overloaded. in ways overwhelmed. me no know words no more.

this is our 9th night here, and our fourth live loud concert a block or less away. this one’s 2 houses over in a side street and is so loud it’s vibrating things like our metal door, our bed, our bodies. oaxacans celebrate xmas december through february. they certainly know how to foster a party atmosphere. there’s frequent brass bands playing in the Zocalo town square where kids toss 10 to 15 foot long cylindrical balloons 20 feet up in the air where they soft sidewise sashay glide slow slide down to the ground to be tossed up again… up fast, down slow. there’s 20-30 balloons being tossed about, and tonight they cast shadows on the well-lit stone church wall as they fell. kids playing, couples courting, shoe shiners shining, balloons falling, families walking, vendors hawking in a people watching paradise.

of course it isn’t paradise. nowhere is. if a classified ad says “good appearance required,” it means only light-skinned people need apply, no indigenous accepted. when folk approach each other on a narrow sidewalk, the darker-skinned people are supposed to step off into the street to let the light-skins pass. the closer to white you are, the higher up the food chain you be. the darker you be, the poorer and shorter you are, and the worse the land you live on.

the government kills teachers and other protesters. there’s still a couple hundred disappeared teachers from last years protest. as the internet points out, “Governor Ulises Ruíz Ortíz has been busy using the usual array of tactics available to Mexican cops, with disappearances, beatings and torture being used against so called ‘subversive elements’ for some time.”

the richest 10% of Mexicans own 60% of the wealth, a gap that continues to rise, along with the number of poor and hungry. Oaxaca is one of the poorest states in Mexico

the sidewalks here are a soap opera unto themselves. they vary in size from entire streets closed to cars, to walkways anywhere from 6 feet wide down to 1 foot on down to disappeared non-existence. they very often have irregular shaped holes of unknown depths, crags, tectonic shelf plates rising and/or sinking, telephone pole guy-wires, unfinished jackhammer deconstruction, piles of rubble, iron bars rising out of the concrete, dog shit, canyons, fissures, hills, valleys – our ex-pat friend Ranger says if you’re walking along and want to look at something, stop and then look, otherwise you just might be seeing sidewalk in more detail than desired.

due to the oaxacan water shortage, the rule here is don’t flush the toilet unless you have to. our first flush of the day, the rotten egg smell of sulfur blurp plops up through the toilet water and fills the bathroom with a horrible gagging stench. i’ve learned to open the window, flush, and dash out, closing the door behind me. sulfur symbolizes hell, so maybe we’re closer to hell here. told that to lady, and she said “no, we’re closer to heaven.

sometimes it’s heaven, sometimes it’s hell, and sometimes we don’t even know.