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Sunday 26 February 2017

El Cielo (Tears of the angel of chance) / The sun shines for everybody

.
IMG_3034 | by rastamaniaco
Tijuana, Mexico, Octubre 2016: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres, 20 October 2016

IMG_3034 | by rastamaniaco

Tijuana, Mexico, Octubre 2016: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres, 20 October 2016

IMG_3034 | by rastamaniaco

Tijuana, Mexico, Octubre 2016: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres, 20 October 2016

trump at table



I will not be attending the White House Correspondents' Association dinner this year. Please wish everyone well and have a great evening.: image via Hamfisted Bun Vendor @MetalOllie, 25 February 2017

    Donald J. TrumpVerified account@realDonaldTrump
    Hamfisted Bun Vendor Retweeted Donald J. Trump
    Hamfisted Bun Vendor added,
    Whose turn is it to burp the tangerine toddler, and pop him back in his cradle?
    image via Hamfisted Bun Vendor @MetalOllie, 25 February 2017

Nobody better than @dougmillsnyt: image via Glenn Thrush @GlennThrush, 25 February 2017

is making an unscheduled stop somewhere in DC, his motorcade is just leaving the White House: tweet via Jeff Mason @jeffmason1, 25 February 2017
  
Jeff MasonVerified account@jeffmason1
tweet via Jeff Mason @jeffmason1, 25 February 2017

At Trump hotel. Secret Service swarms the place. Trump walks in, sits down next to me w/ Gov. Rick Scott, Nigel Farage, Ivanka and Kuchner: image via Benny @BennyJohnson, 25 February 2017

Two things: 1. Farage was not invited to this dinner. Squeezed in at last second 2. Sec. State Tillerson is dining w/wife alone across room.: tweet via Benny @BennyJohnson, 25 February 2017


Fascinating: image via Mike Memoli @mikememoli, 25 February 2017

Tears of the angel of chance

Untitled | by Tonasupo

[Untitled]: photo by Tonatiuh Cabello, 28 August 2016


Untitled | by Tonasupo

[Untitled]: photo by Tonatiuh Cabello, 3 November 2016

Untitled | by Tonasupo

[Untitled]: photo by Tonatiuh Cabello, 3 November 2016

Untitled | by Tonasupo
[Untitled]: photo by Tonatiuh Cabello, 6 December 2016

Untitled | by Tonasupo

[Untitled]: photo by Tonatiuh Cabello, 24 March 2016

Untitled | by Tonasupo

Por aquí no pasó Dios: photo by Tonatiuh Cabello, 5 August 2016

Untitled | by Tonasupo

[Untitled]: photo by Tonatiuh Cabello, 22 November 2016

Flor de desierto | by Alexis Landin
Flor de desierto: photo by Alexis Landin, 7 February 2017

Untitled | by Alexis Landin

[Untitled]: photo by Alexis Landin, 24 February 2017

Untitled | by Alexis Landin

[Untitled]: photo by Alexis Landin, 16 February 2017

Encuentros | by Alexis Landin
Encuentros: photo by Alexis Landin, 7 February 2017

. | by b/w 2:10

[Untitled]: photo by avenida once, 30 January 2017

. | by b/w 2:10
[Untitled, Coatzacoalcos, Mexico]: photo by avenida once, 2015

Chimalhuacán | by la ciudad de las sombras

[Untitled, Chimalcuacán, Mexico]: photo by la ciudad de las sombras, 22 May 2016
 . | by b/w 2:10

[Untitled]: photo by avenida once, c. 2015
waves of humanity
Untitled | by Tonasupo
[Untitled]: photo by Tonatiuh Cabello, 9 January 2016

Untitled | by Tonasupo
[Untitled]: photo by Tonatiuh Cabello, 9 January 2016

Untitled | by Tonasupo
[Untitled]: photo by Tonatiuh Cabello, 9 January 2016


Waves of humanity. Sprawling Mexico City rolls across the landscape, displacing every scrap of natural habitat: photo by Pablo Lopez Luz via The Guardian, 1 April 2015


 

Waves of humanity. Sprawling Mexico City rolls across the landscape, displacing every scrap of natural habitat: photo by Pablo Lopez Luz via The Guardian, 1 April 2015

‘If our species had started with just two people at the time of the earliest agricultural practices some 10,000 years ago, and increased by one percent per year, today humanity would be a solid ball of flesh many thousand light years in diameter, and expanding with a radial velocity that, neglecting relativity, would be many times faster than the speed of light.’ Gabor Zobanyi

. | by b/w 2:10

[Untitled, Mexico City]: photo by avenida once, January 2016

El Cielo

Untitled | by Tonasupo

The heaven: photo by Tonatiuh Cabello, 24 March 2016

Untitled | by Tonasupo

[Untitled]: photo by Tonatiuh Cabello, 31 January 2017

Untitled | by Tonasupo

[Untitled]: photo by Tonatiuh Cabello, 22 March 2016

Untitled | by Tonasupo

[Untitled]: photo by Tonatiuh Cabello, 16 November 2016

Untitled | by Tonasupo

[Untitled]: photo by Tonatiuh Cabello, 21 November 2016

Untitled | by Tonasupo

La vida no es para llevar, es para comer aquí: photo by Tonatiuh Cabello, 14 April 2014

Untitled | by Tonasupo

[Untitled]: photo by Tonatiuh Cabello, 24 November 2016

Untitled | by Tonasupo

[Untitled]: photo by Tonatiuh Cabello, 11 December 2016

Ecstatic Self-Mortification Practices of the Rifa'i Fakirs | by Leonid Plotkin

Ecstatic Self-Mortification Practices of the Rifa'l Fakirs. Ajmer, India.: photo by Leonid Plotkin, 15 June 2011

Untitled | by Tonasupo

[Untitled]: photo by Tonatiuh Cabello, 5 September 2016

Untitled | by Tonasupo

[Untitled]: photo by Tonatiuh Cabello, 20 November 2014

Untitled | by Tonasupo

[Untitled]: photo by Tonatiuh Cabello, 20 November 2014

Untitled | by Tonasupo

[Untitled]: photo by Tonatiuh Cabello, 20 November 2014

Un enfrentamiento entre policias y granaderos contra estudiantes y anarquistas después de una manifestación por los 43 desaparecidos de la Normal de Ayotzinapan en Guerrero.

Untitled | by 20zool

[Untitled]: photo by Sylvain Biard, 28 May 2016

Untitled | by Barry Talis

[Untitled]: photo by Barry Talis, 7 April 2016

Heavenly City (Life is amazing)



Accident scene, Mexico City: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres, 20 January 2014

When did it all begin? he thought. When did I go under? A dark, vaguely familiar Aztec lake. The nightmare. How do I get away? How do I take control? And the questions kept coming. Was getting away what he really wanted? Did he really want to leave it all behind? And he also thought: the pain doesn't matter anymore. And also: maybe it all began with my mother's death. And also the pain doesn't matter, as long as it doesn't get any worse, as long as it isn't unbearable. And also: fuck, it hurts, fuck, it hurts. Pay it no mind, pay it no mind. And all around him, ghosts.
.

He could see hills on the horizon. The hills were dark yellow and black. Past the hills, he guessed, was the desert. He felt the urge to leave and drive into the hills, but when he got back to his table the woman had brought him a beer and a very thick kind of sandwich. He took a bite and it was good. The taste was strange, spicy. Out of curiosity, he lifted the piece of bread on top: the sandwich was full of all kinds of things. He took a long drink of beer and stretched in his chair. Through the vine leaves he saw a bee, perched motionless. Two slender rays of sun fell vertically on the dirt floor. When the man came back he asked how to get to the hills. The man laughed. He spoke a few words Fate didn’t understand and then he said not pretty, several times.

“Not pretty?”

“Not pretty,” said the man, and he laughed again.

Then he took Fate by the arm and dragged him into a room that served as a kitchen and that looked very tidy to Fate, each thing in its place, not a spot of grease on the white-tiled wall, and he pointed to the garbage can.

“Hills not pretty?” asked Fate.

The man laughed again.

“Hills are garbage?”

The man couldn’t stop laughing. He had a bird tattooed on his left forearm. Not a bird in flight, like most tattoos of birds, but a bird perched on a branch, a little bird, possibly a swallow.

“Hills a garbage dump?”

The man laughed even more and nodded his head.
 
One day, for reasons that are beside the point, I went with a doctor friend of mine to the university morgue. I doubt you’ve ever been there. The morgue is underground and it’s a long room with white-tiled walls and a wooden ceiling. In the middle there’s a stage where autopsies, dissections, and other scientific atrocities are performed. Then there are two small offices, one for the dean of forensic studies and the other for another professor. At each end are the refrigerated rooms where the corpses are stored, the bodies of the destitute or people without papers visited by death in cheap hotel rooms.

“In those days I showed a doubtless morbid interest in these facilities and my doctor friend kindly took it upon himself to give me a detailed tour. We even attended the last autopsy of the day. Then my friend went into the dean’s office and I was left alone outside in the corridor, waiting for him, as the students left and a kind of crepuscular lethargy crept from under the doors like poison gas. After ten minutes of waiting I was startled by a noise from one of the refrigerated rooms. In those days, I promise you, that was enough to frighten anyone, but I’ve never been particularly cowardly and I went to see what it was.

“When I opened the door a gust of cold air hit me in the face. At the back of the room, by a stretcher, a man was trying to open one of the lockers to stow away a corpse, but no matter how hard he struggled, the door to the locker or cell wouldn’t budge. Without moving from the threshold, I asked whether he needed help. The man straightened up, he was very tall, and gave me what seemed to me a despairing look. Perhaps it was because I sensed despair in his gaze that I was emboldened to approach him. As I did, flanked by corpses, I lit a cigarette to calm my nerves and when I reached him the first thing I did was offer him another cigarette, perhaps forcing a false camaraderie.

“Only then did the morgue worker look at me and it was as if I had gone back in time. His eyes were exactly like the eyes of the great writer whose Cologne lectures I had devoutly attended. I confess that just then, for a few seconds, I even thought I was going mad. It was the morgue worker’s voice, nothing like the warm voice of the great writer, that rescued me from my panic. He said: smoking isn’t allowed here.

“I didn’t know what to answer. He added: smoke is harmful to the dead. I laughed. He supplied an explanatory note: smoke interferes with the process of preservation. I made a noncommittal gesture. He tried a last time: he spoke about filters, he spoke about moisture levels, he uttered the word purity. I offered him a cigarette again and he announced with resignation that he didn’t smoke. I asked whether he had worked there for a long time. In an impersonal and somewhat shrill voice, he said he had worked at the university since long before the 1914 war.

“‘Always at the morgue?’ I asked.

“‘Here and nowhere else,’ he answered.

“‘It’s funny,’ I said, ‘but your face, and especially your eyes, remind me of a great German writer.’ At this point I mentioned the writer’s name.

“‘I’ve never heard of him,’ was his response.

“In earlier days this reply would have outraged me, but thanks God I was living a new life. I remarked that working at the morgue must surely prompt wise or at least original reflections on human fate. He looked at me as if I were mocking him or speaking French. I insisted. These surroundings, I said, with a gesture that encompassed the whole morgue, are in a certain way the ideal place to contemplate the brevity of life, the unfathomable fate of mankind, the futility of earthly strife.

“With a shudder of horror, I was suddenly aware that I was talking to him as if he were the great German writer and this was the conversation we’d never had. I don’t have much time, he said. I looked him in the eye again. There could be no doubt about it: he had the eyes of my idol. And his reply: I don’t have much time. How many doors it opened! How many paths were suddenly cleared, revealed to me!

“I don’t have much time, I have to haul corpses. I don’t have much time, I have to breathe, eat, drink, sleep. I don’t have much time, I have to keep the gears meshing. I don’t have much time, I’m busy living. I don’t have much time, I’m busy dying. As you can imagine, there were no more questions. I helped him open the locker. I wanted to help him slide the corpse in, but my clumsiness was such that the sheet slipped and then I saw the face of the corpse and I closed my eyes and bowed my head and let him work in peace.

“When my friend came out he watched me from the door in silence. Everything all right? he asked. I couldn’t answer, or didn’t know how to answer. Maybe I said: everything’s wrong. But that wasn’t what I meant to say.”

Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003): from The Part About Fate and The Part About Archimboldi, in 2666, published posthumously 2004, English version by Natasha Wimmer, 2008




Police helicopter, Mexico City: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres, 30 June 2009



Monterrey, Nuevo Leon: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres, 22 January 2014
 
 

Execution, Mexico City: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres, 8 March 2014



Life is amazing (Mexico City): photo by Jair Cabrera Torres, 7 March 2014


Street, Mexico City: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres, 18 March 2014

 


Murder victim, Mexico City: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres, 26 March 2014


 

 Execution victim, Valle de Chalco: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres, 10 March 2014


Execution victim, Tlalnepantla: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres, 6 March 2014



Motorcyclists, Nezahualcoyotl: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres, 2 March 2014



The world's most wanted drug kingpin, Joaquin Loera Guzman, known as El Chapo, is captured, Mexico City: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres, 22 February 2014


Street, Nezahualcoyotl: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres, 2 February 2014


Accident scene, Mexico City: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres, 25 December 2013


Accident scene, Iztapalapa: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres, 26 December 2013



Accident scene, Mexico City: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres, 15 July 2013


Accident scene, Mexico City: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres, 25 November 2013


Hurricane, Acapulco, Guerrero: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres, 20 September 2013


Slide area, Cuajimalpa: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres, 26 September 2013


 Accident scene, Iztapalapa: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres, 26 September 2013


Murder victim, Iztapalapa: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres, 18 July 2013


Accident scene, Mexico City: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres, 17 July 2013


Tlalpan, Mexico City: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres, 24 November 2013


x Fatal accident scene, Mexico City
: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres, 11 October 2013



Mexico City: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres, 31 October 2013


Woman, Ciudad Neza
: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres, 13 September 2012

 

Iztapalapa, Mexico City: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres, 15 September 2012




Mexico City: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres, 20 January 2013


St. Jude the Protector, Mexico City: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres, 28 July 2012


St. Jude the Protector, Iztapalapa: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres, 17 March 2012



  Santa Anita, Iztacalco: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres, 1 June 2013


Durango: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres, 9 May 2012


Exit, Gomez Palacio, Durango: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres, 1 June 2012


 Durango: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres, 26 April 2012


Durango: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres, 1 May 2013


Durango: photo by Jair Cabrera Torres, 27 April 2012

Roberto Bolaño: Godzilla in Mexico, from Romantic Dogs


   
IMG_0190 (Julian, azotea, laundry): photo by locaburg, 6 May 2006

Listen carefully, my son: bombs were falling
over Mexico City
but no one even noticed.
The air carried poison through
the streets and open windows.
You'd just finished eating and were watching
cartoons on TV.
I was reading in the bedroom next door
when I realized we were going to die.
Despite the dizziness and nausea I dragged myself
to the kitchen and found you on the floor.
We hugged. You asked what was happening
and I didn't tell you we were on death's program
but instead that we were going on a journey,
one more, together, and that you shouldn't be afraid.
When it left, death didn't even
close our eyes.
What are we? you asked a week or year later,
ants, bees, wrong numbers
in the big rotten soup of chance?
We're human beings, my son, almost birds,
public heroes and secrets.


Roberto Bolaño (1953-2002): Godzilla in Mexico, from The Romantic Dogs (Los Perros romanticos), poems 1980-1988, published posthumously, 2006, English version by Laura Healy, 2008



DSCF8927 (Playa Trocones)
: photo by locaburg, 22 December 2013



IMG_0848 (dog, ice cream)
: photo by locaburg, 16 October 2013



IMG_8746
: photo by locaburg, 16 October 2013



DSCF3123
: photo by locaburg, 25 September 2012



DSCF
8730 (Great Dane, Mexico City)
: photo by locaburg, 25 September 2012



IMG_8
848 (dog)
: photo by locaburg, 16 September 2010



IMG_9833
(dog, Mexico)
: photo by locaburg, 23 August 2007




IMG_
9782 (three white dogs)
: photo by locaburg, 8 June 2010



IMG_
8676 (walking dog, red panuelo)
: photo by locaburg, 4 June 2009



IMG_8
807 (dogs, Xoloscuintle)
: photo by locaburg, 7 December 2005



IMG_0845
(muzzled dog)
: photo by locaburg, 11 September 2009



IMG_
4737 (dog)
: photo by locaburg, 15 February 2008



IMG_6
617 (pot, dinner, dog)
: photo by locaburg, 31 March 2006



IMG_
1482 (dog, skull, Xoloscuintle, iztapalapa)
: photo by locaburg, 16 February 2011



IMG_
7684 (dog, car, brick)
: photo by locaburg, 22 December 2009



IMG_
6051 (dog, hatchback)
: photo by locaburg, 28 November 2008



IMG_
0025 (bridge, dog, pozos)
: photo by locaburg, 5 December 2007



IMG_8746
: photo by locaburg, 6 October 2010



IMG_
1024 (dog, man. sidewalk, root): photo by locaburg, 26 June 2010



IMG_
2002 (dog, Monte Escobedo, Zacatecas): photo by locaburg, 10 January 2008



DSCF6782 (roadside, Malinalco)
: photo by locaburg, 11 April 2013



DSCF6782 (turtle, Malinalco)
: photo by locaburg, 11 April 2013



IMG_8914 (duck)
: photo by locaburg, 24 November 2010



DSCF7787 (cat)
: photo by locaburg, 11 June 201

3

DSCF5143
: photo by locaburg, 14 December 2012



IMG_
9030
: photo by locaburg, 3 July 2013



IMG_
9136
: photo by locaburg, 3 July 2013



IMG_
1963
: photo by locaburg, 27 February 2014




IMG_
2095 (Bosque de Aragón)
: photo by locaburg, 6 October 2013



IMG_
8109 (boy, hammer, Narvarte)
: photo by locaburg, 2 March 2013



DSCF3034 (couch, Mexico City)
: photo by locaburg, 15 September 2012



IMG_
8128 (ladder)
: photo by locaburg, 9 November 2010



DSCF4443 (bamboo sticks): photo by locaburg, 29 January 2012



DSCF6749 (Arena Mexico): photo by locaburg, 23 April 2012



IMG_2455: photo by locaburg, 3 March 2014



DSCF2457 (Hummer, Detroit): photo by locaburg, 27 August 2012

3 comments:

Sandra said...

"Hoy no paso nada. Y si pasó algo es mejor callarlo, pues no lo entendí».R.Bolaño...

Unknown said...

Tom-
Chasing the tides and fish with a few friends on one of the least populated out islands in the Bahamas. I ran into Jake, a stubby legged, elongated mutt, and was playing with him when a smiling woman waked by saying, "He's the most playful dog." I agreed and recalled your comment on the culture of community for pets in such places. There it is. A world's happening. Ironically, in a round about way, I stopped in a gas station, convenience store, place of worship and barber shop. Somehow, in the middle of Clark, Shacochis, and Bolaño.
Tom.

TC said...

"Todo el realismo visceral era una carta de amor, el pavoneo demencial de un pájaro idiota a la luz de la luna, algo bastante vulgar y sin importancia."

What is it they used to call it -- "a dog's world?" (Mondo Cane)

In daydream night thought now, to fly without wings to the least populated out-out island...