Jorge of the Jungle

As I mentioned six months ago, my neighborhood has a nightwatchman (Petit, 2008). He was not hired to protect Casa de Gringos. He was hired to protect our neighbors, who are either the Montagues or Capulets of Zamora. The nightwatchman's shift starts at sundown and concludes at sunrise the next morning. He keeps his possessions in a small cardboard box that he lodges in the branches of a tree and every so often, he fetches the box down with a large stick that he keeps for that purpose. His possessions include a blue denim jacket, a half-full bottle of tequila, and the aforementioned stick that he uses to fetch his possessions down from the tree. He occupies his night hours pacing back and forth between stacks of milkcrates that he has stationed at intervals along the sidewalk, taking long sits on those stacks of milkcrates, drinking from the half-full bottle of tequila until it is half-empty, and whistling the same descending glissando once every fifteen minutes until the sun comes up. Every so often when I go out at night, I find him asleep, seated amongst the roots of a tree, or sleeping upright, half-tangled in the tree's lower branches. Because of his affinity for trees, and because 73.6% of the males I have met in this town are named Jorge, I have taken to calling him Jorge of the Jungle. During the afternoon, he works as a security guard at Plaza las Palomas (Plaza of the Pigeons), so I suspect he might work 24 hours a day. He is the only security guard I have seen who has not been entrusted with a weapon of some sort. Considering that all other Mexican security guards wield a billy club and even petty mall cops are equipped with pistols, this must be something of a slight to his manhood. I pass by Jorge at least five times a day and he has been watching my neighborhood for as long as I have been here. During those six months, the only things he has ever said to me are as follows: "Hello!" "Aren't you cold?" and "Are you going jogging?" Either he is completely dense or he thinks that I am completely dense. At night, through my bedroom window, I can see him sitting on his milkcrates in the driveway across the street, and he can probably see me. Last night around 12 AM, I was sitting out on the balcony and he shouted up at me, asking if I was cold. I had to shoosh him long-distance. He has only missed one night shift as far as I'm aware. His replacement was a teenager in a plaid hunter's cap. I tossed and turned all night in the absence of Jorge's whistled glissando. But Jorge returned the next night, said hello, asked me if I wasn't cold. He once scared the bejeezus out of me by suddenly manifesting himself at the foot of a tree while I was walking home with the groceries. Hello, he said, and my bowels nearly dropped out, a box of granola bars fell to the sidewalk. Aren't you cold? he asked.

Writer's Strike

We at Expatriate Act would like to apologize for the prolonged dearth of content on this blog, spanning from the afternoon of Friday, September 5th, 2008 to the morning of Monday, January 19th, 2009. This four-month blogo-lacuna was the fallout of an unforeseen breakdown of negotiations between the author, one Keith Petit, and his Handlers. What transpired might be termed a writer's strike, although it is unclear exactly against whom the author was striking, seeing how he is chronically unemployed and does not earn an income from any of his various and assorted (and sordid) vocations.

In addition to the usual gripes about wages, union representation, pseudointellectual property rights, and placement of inflatable mattress, Petit's bimonthly writing routine was disrupted by mechanical setbacks. There were difficulties uploading the data from his analog typewriter to the World Wide Web, likely stemming from a failure in the 2400 baud modem he had welded onto the back of the ink cartridge. Petit also expressed frustration with the blog-eat-blog world of the Blogosphere, disillusionment with his blogceleb status, and an undisguised loathing of the word "blog." It was also apparent that the US presidential election was having some adverse effects on his psychology, as he was unable to articulate himself for much of the fall of 2008 in anything but the frothiest of incredulous coughs and gags.

The author is doing much better now. He is drinking lots of store brand V-8. He is growing his hair out to prodigious lengths and heights. He spends long hours watching videos about microbiology. He is also nursing a stray cat in the backyard. One can only speculate as to why Petit is on the rebound. Doubtless a change in political administration along with the collapse of international trade have had some salubrious effect on him. One might even suspect that he is getting laid, but one look at the chalk-streaked corduroy suitcoat he sleeps in will rule out that possibility. Perhaps his Nordic physiology has finally come to grips with the fact that winter does not occur in Mexico. Or perhaps it is simply a technical issue: we have upgraded his analog typewriter to a 1986 Apple IIe computing machine, complete with lower- and uppercase letters, a floppy drive, and Oregon Trail. Whatever the case may be, there can be little doubt that Petit's muse is back. We look forward to reading his next entry.

See you in two months,
-The Handlers

Mañana in México

The mañana in Mexico is a veritable breakfast burrito of aesthetic delights. I imagine the scene unfolding to the tune of Bolero, but perhaps some off-key mariachi would be more apropos. There's an abuelita sweeping fallen branches off the sidewalk with a tree limb. The dueño of the carnicería is hosing off the front of his crumbling establishment and a pack of chihuahuas are lined up along the curb, lapping up the soapy water. The morning's first narcotráfico detail cruises by at five miles an hour, the truck bed full of soldiers flashing silver smiles at the gringo as he walks to work, automatic weapons dangling from their hips like some oversized genitalia they've lost interest in. A yellow dog of indeterminate breed trots down the sidewalk with a prickly pear fruit in its mouth. The hospital morgue incinerator fires up and shrills, emitting a ghastly gray steam, and somehow it's neither out of place nor unpleasant at 7:30 AM. A hungover mariachi band swaggers down the middle of the road, the accordion wheezes. The horse-clopping of the taco vendor chopping chorizo, the low flatulence of cheap motorbikes, the chik-chik-chik of the girl at the tienda stacking coins. I'm not sure whether it's the morning in Mexico or if it's mornings in general that do it for me. Prior to Mexico, I never got up before noon.