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15 June 2011

In the Garage, Where I Feel Safe on the Eve of Bloomsday Whilst Channelling Enid Coleslaw

Rudolfo Carrillo
By Rudolfo Carrillo


There's a song by the american pop-punk flavoured rocanrol band named weezer that has lyrics that speak in plaintive tones of the journey of the mystical or mythical, if you will, outcast. The song is cast in a form built from the irony inherent in proclaiming one's triumph over the establishment, over the defining and restraining nature of the universe. You know, what that fellow up above pronounced as the ineluctable modality of the visible.

in case you are wondering, the song lyrics of the Weezer song include the line, "I write these stupid words and I love every one". One refering to the word, I presume, for purposes related to the nature of this post, I reckon. You know, the word and all that, right?

The musical content on In the Garage isn't jazz, but rather, a relatively simple form of rocanrol. rather than relying on musical complexity, the short tune focuses on rhythm, dynamics, and repetition. Melody seems reserved and awkward, a consequential effect.

But besides all that textual and literary hocus-pocus, I am listening to the song I talked about because of how I feel tonight. I can relate to the embedded narrative. In case you haven't heard it, take a listen here:



Now that you are done with that, you may be wondering why I am so inclined toward sentimental ruminations of what was and what was imagined to be, how i survived all that, into the middle of the twenty-first century.

Well, it's been thirty years since i've been in high school at the City of Gold. of course some of the kids, sharing,as they do, that commonality, are planning a thirty year reunion.

in retrospect, the City of Gold was a special place back when I was there. Top flight instructors balanced delicately with advanced students that had sprouted from nuclear scientists, managers of vast defense industries, business people and entrepreneurs with the acumen of laser light and the full funding and intricate interest of the department of defense, and so on and so forth.

Anywho, I went to my twenty year reunion and it sucked. My friends and I felt more like outsiders than ever, even though we were, by that time, teachers and writers and artists and doctors.

Thereafter, through the magic medium we refer reverently to as facebook - which by the way, really is like instant digitized and engergized relational database about anything you want to know, one way or another, even if just a footnoted hyperlink somewhere near the bottom of the pages and it's on all the time. too - i wrote about all that disillusion, to the guy who is organizing the whole thirty year affair.

It was kinda awkward, but as a freak, I had to do it. there was always a sense of marginalization for some of my contemporaries, for my self, while we dwelt at the golden city. And for some of us, high school was a way to get to college, to grad school, to the centers of our shared culture. That contributed to our sense that our tenure at the school was just another vague image, lost across the wide span of years.

Of course I mentioned the twelve-sided die and the dungeon master's guide, because all of that was true. I also implied that an analogy could be drawn between certain characters in Ghost World and my experience in high school.

One of my favorite parts of the filmic version is the Mohammed Rafi tune that Enid listens to at the beginning of the film. Here it is, if you would like to listen to it, before reading on:



I don't know if I will be there, at that gathering which is still a year away and like a distant ship mast from a slow moving boat on the very edge of the horizon. While i think about it, I am going to listen to a couple of the songs we were listening to back in Burque, at the City of Gold in the year commonly refered to as nineteen hundred and eighty-two.

















Be seeing you.

04 June 2011

Rudolfo Carrillo's 116th Dream: Burque Beyond Quirky

Rudolfo Carrillo

by Rudolfo Carrillo

Of course, there is a place called Albuquerque in the other world.

Crickets chirp in the summertime, just like they do here in Ridgecrest. Upon closer inspection, however, they are coloured a deep, bluish violet and resemble our pet dog, Schrödinger. Also, a wide and rushing river separates the Sandia Mountains into two craggy ranges. On one side of the river are homes of considerable wealth made from the smooth white stones of eternity, while on the southern banks, immense tunnels guarded by mangy coyotes and dead rattlesnakes lead into a world populated by old-timey pioneers, gamblers and forlorn cattle thieves.

At the edge of the Manzano Mountains, nestled in pines and aspens made lofty by constant exposure to the sentient radioactive weapons dwelling beneath the blanket of smoke that drifts and hums across the plains and upwards to the peaks, there is a ramshackle amusement park with a large ferris wheel and a famous restaurant. They make the best tortillas in the world there. The enchilada plate is not too shabby, either.

I won't tell you much about the tin and adobe skyscraper next door, except to say that it is abandoned and that all the walls inside are painted the same color they used in the tuberculosis sanitoriums of the early twentieth century. I think that young people use the parking lot for automobile races, now.

All sorts of humans drift through the town in hot-air balloons or else ride in busses back and forth from the foothills to the southern edge of the settlement, where a leaden and tranquil sea provides a natural barrier to the immense military outpost on the far shore. The base is only accessible by hovercraft. The guards there wear crisp blue uniforms in honor of the sky.

At the corner of Louisiana and Montgomery, a complex and chaotically engaged mechanical behemoth rises from the asphalt, giving birth to a plethora of transportation devices, ranging from covered wagons to new, swift locomotives and custom lowriders. Taking one of these vehicular contrivances downtown has been designed by the city fathers to be a pleasant experience, with ample views of the heavy wooden Masonic temple on Coal Avenue available from any perspex viewscreen.

At the center of all this, in the midst of the urban otherness that I can only dream about, a vast, winged and curiously amused cephalopod holds court while fixed gear bicyclists rush arrogantly away from the old one's admonitions, fleeing into alleyways and hotel rooms filled with faceless visitors from Mars, Venus, Los Lunas, and Bernalillo.

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