futurama (1939)

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shots, df

womb

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i'm back in mex city. each time i land here i need a re-insertment period of a couple of days, when i only stay locked-up inside my parents' house and buy magazines and newspapers and read them and have take out and go through my old books i forgot i had and drink café americano and try to block out everything. it's like a f*ckd-up functional jet lag thing or something, i leave mex city and become so chicken and civilized that i can't deal at first when i come back. but today i go out.

fear

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jordan wolfson, nostalgia is fear (2004)

ditto

habana, d.f.

reading fantastic journal and seeing wax commando statues of el che made me homesick (again). café la habana, c. 2001. alone under the half space-age, half tropicomodernista ceiling. the whole place rumbled when the big trucks drove by on bucareli. i loved bucareli before i read bolaño. i loved it because it was wide and empty and dirty and regal, unlike any other street in mexico city. i loved the ywca nearby when it was closed and its pink déco facade was all rotten. i loved how all the buildings and sidewalks where so covered in soot and muck they were soft.

i would cut class to walk around there. just walk and stare at everything. i don't do that anymore.

méxico lindo

paul outerbridge, travel agent, mazatlán, mexico, c.1950
via loudpaper

xxx

we've hit tropical mode in barcelona. people are half-naked on the street. men wear mustaches and nylon shortshorts. protoqueer emotions of my childhood in southern california c.1984 all over again. i am sweaty and dizzy. i miss the cool rainy summer nights in mexico city.

rosy

"nostalgia (in architecture) convinces the viewer because the actual events of the past have been forgotten. in fact, the past is not the issue at all; it serves merely as a 'rosy' container for the anxieties of the present."

norman m. klein, the history of forgetting

nycorbusier

le corb sailed towards manhattan and:

"saw a fantastic, almost mystic city rising up in the mist. there is the temple of the new world. but the ship moves forward and the apparition is transformed into an image of incredible brutality and savagery. here is certainly the most prominent manifestation of the power of modern times."

he named nyc the catastrophe féerique, the great enchanted catastrophe.

ask the dust

this is the l.a. building where john fante wrote ask the dust. apparently it is slated for demolition. read more / see more

(star)dust

when my grandmother died i scavenged her closet for a piece of her i could keep. as a kid i loved digging in the hat boxes and the dust-covered fur coats, finding all sorts of little treasures: ancient portable kodak cameras and polaroids from the sixties, silver-framed tinted blue bug-eye sunglasses, fake jewelry, bottles of fermented sparkling wine, unopened decks of playing cards, cigarette holders and the most incredible collection of hotel souvenir ashtrays and matchboxes you could imagine. hawaii, fort worth, veracruz, needles, rio de janeiro, ottawa, monterrey, nice… i was always amazed at how my grandma had managed to put together this wacky world itinerary for herself.

the one i kept was a sober black ashtray with white lettering that read : stardust las vegas. i didn’t smoke back then, but i was well on my way to developing my groping addiction to 50s and 60s americana. i still had to discover doowop and douglas sirk and duckass and develop a crush on james dean, but even at this tender age i was drawn to the dirty delight of this useless piece and the careless age it encapsuled. or so i thought.

i somehow missed the stardust’s implosion. watching the little youtube screen has sent shivers down my everything. i still have to connect tons of dots accumulated in my personal history and my personal tastes and my personal fantasies and wakings. finding this is just another reminder of how everything is tied, how we’re happy little victims of things that stand for nothing and mean everything.

the melody haunts my reverie