El Bueno y El Malo, Writing Exercises, Mesquite Memories.

It’s a cold Sunday morning, and I’m sitting on the floor in front of my record player. There is a persistent tightness in my throat nagging at me alongside a wavering in my body like my limbs are trying to not become lost at sea.

Some mic’d up influencer’s video I came across recently stated that continuing to procrastinate reinforces an idea that you are incapable of doing the action you’re procrastinating from. So, you create your own mental block by continually putting that action off, and the more you do that, the more that mental block materializes and becomes real. A new term for a self-fulfilling prophecy. 

I can feel that block in my body right now. The record I put on now is Hermanos Gutierrez’s El Bueno y El Malo, an atmospheric album whose sound is the feeling of a late afternoon drive through a small, Hollywood-imagined western town. The guitar strumming and dusty twang reminds me of my own desert hometown, and the comforting sound makes me want to write.

I close my eyes and try to recall the advice I read in a book I checked out at the library last year during another one of my creative ruts on exercises to try out when you’re struggling to focus. One of the chapters had said to start with the phrase “I remember…” and see where your mind takes you. I typed out the words, swayed a little bit to the sound of the music, and something began to materialize almost instantly. 

I remember… corn and bean flowers wrapped around each other outside the co-op. That’s what the sound of this record reminds me of right now. I took a photo of it, the bean plant’s tendrils wrapped tightly around a dried-up corn husk like a snake climbing a tree. There was squash somewhere nearby, I was sure, two thirds of the three sisters sitting sleepily in the aluminum garden bed. I’m standing in a small garden plot in front of the co-op, and my partner and I had stopped to sit on the shaded patio behind it to rest. It was hot, even though it was December and the same week as Christmas. I bought a bottle of jasmine tea inside the store and we took refuge on the brightly colored metal chairs while we took a breath and waited for the day and the sun to carry on a little more before we had to keep going. 

The guitar strums on this record remind me of heat and dust. I remember being a young adult walking on the hot sidewalk and stopping inside the little shops in my favorite neighborhood because it’s one of the most colorful streets in the city, and I’m always looking for places full of color and texture and life. It feels safe and familiar to me, even though a lot of people will say that it’s dirty and old and there’s too many suspicious characters around.

At the time that we sat to rest on the patio outside the co-op it’s been several years since I left and this neighborhood is now a more popular area with more desirable places popping up and a few new high-rises that weren’t there when I left. It’s still colorful and dingy in places, but the internet has turned this neighborhood into a cultural hub, somewhere to attract visitors and to now be proud of. 

I’m proud of it, of course, and I like some of the new additions because I enjoy the excitement of trying something new, but in the back of my head, I’m worried that all the color and the faded old stucco storefronts will be replaced with new facades that won’t share a good story. New facades that are more than a fresh coat of paint, but ones that remove the spirit of the community to commodify it, rather than to honor it. Or perhaps it is to honor it, because it will then be dead. I’m thinking in horror of Main Street in Disneyland, how the colorful storefronts with their decorative plaster and faux Americana architectural elements are pretending to be reminiscent of nondescript old-timey buildings meant to elicit a nostalgic feeling in their visitors while they shop. Never a real neighborhood, just an animatronic one. 

Back in front of the record player, I remind myself that in this moment the role I play is one of a documentarian, not a problem solver. I keep my eyes closed, and I’m now picturing myself walking alone on the hot sidewalk in my old neighborhood. It’s late afternoon, and quiet. My shoulders are exposed to the sun and my feet are slipping inside the cheap sandals from the sweat that has pooled during the long walk and will turn into blisters in the morning. 

I see myself walk past the restaurant that became my first discovery in this city that I was proud of. When I was 19, I brought the boy I was in love with here when he came to visit me. I felt so sophisticated because I had finally found a place that was impressive and felt like an important part of the community after a year of moving back here, to the city I was born in but left, trying to rebuild a life. During that first year back, I had been so isolated, living far away in the desert brush miles away from everyone else in the small apartment I shared with someone who hated me. 

That day we sat at the bar table facing the windows, watching the sunset and people walking past, taking photos of ourselves laughing and I wore my nicest shirt. I remember the sense of relief I felt: finally, I’m living life normally and correctly like everyone else is certainly doing. We went back to my apartment, had sex, drank whisky and laid naked in the bathtub and talked late into the night. The next weekend, he broke up with me. I had asked if he was thinking about leaving me during that night, and he had said yes.

I keep walking down the sidewalk. On the right, I see the outdoor patio that we sat across from each other, months later, broken up. It was an awkward day with me rolling on my back to show my belly like a dog, submissive and hoping for pity if not love on the last day we ever spoke. 

Both these restaurants are shuttered now, my memories inside of them now relics gone to time, their buildings painted and repainted, but nothing has stayed open for very long. 

On the other side of the street is a parallel universe. Behind me is one version of myself, and further up is the best pizza joint in town. I ordered from there so many times that their system eventually saved my number and knew my order when I called it in. The outer-space themed bar next door once served dollar shots at midnight and on my birthday, every girl in the bathroom screamed adoring chants at me, strangers hugged me and joined in our drunken photoshoots in front of the bathroom stalls. In this version of myself, I’m galaxies changed.

I keep walking and passing other haunts. Some are shuttered or have paper signs taped to the cracked window panes and nestled between sun-faded concert posters that something new is coming soon. I pass the eclectic gift shops, Mexican pottery and rugs. Candles, a whole shop dedicated to just candles that was almost completely dark inside with years of perfumed wax coating the walls and ceiling and dripping down like stalactites.

There’s the cafe on the right where we came one summer to watch the World Cup matches. The yellow stucco was faded and cracking, but still gave off a feeling of European pretension; the wooden chairs and floors were so very Parisian, but the back patio had old mesquite trees spilling over the fence holding them in. 

It’s been a little while since I started writing, and I’ve turned the record over several times before I even notice that my face is wet and I’m waking up from this trance that overtook me during this writing exercise. I feel my eyes full of color and imagination and I’m unraveling a little bit of the tight cord wrapped around my neck.