roadside bomb kills five in iraq. flash flood drowns dozens again in california after heavy rain.
upstairs, my mexican neighbors get their fiesta groove back just as the weather gets milder, milder by five degrees up.
my newspaper wilts from the blare of mariachis and corridos thud-thudding over my ceiling.
rio de dolor, oh-oh-oh, adios mi rio de dolor, oh-oh-oh-oh.
I trek upstairs hoping to convince them to pipe down their music. my raps on their door get drowned out by the disquieting norteno ballad, the raucous laughter and clamor of the chatter of the winter party people.
back at my apartment, I realize the tv was on all the time. a woman, rail thin and really pale, keeps hounding with questions- about what, I don't know-this contrite looking man wearing a clergy man's collar .
after I pour myself a bowl of cereal, I find out I ran out of milk. I hear faintly the clang of silver and china from above as I munch on my cereals, hoping they were mushy and soggy.
I begin to read what's on the cereal box and the last thing i remember is being on a boat-a caribbean cruise or just for an afternoon paddle in a park lake, i could not recall.
when I wake up, the music upstairs is all gone and all I could hear are two voices, drunk but never slurring, droning from above.
I pick up my newspaper again but all I can think of is wishing I should have learned spanish by now, enough to understand what the two guys are probably talking about.
about the certainty of tomorrow's work? things they would be writing to their families back home in dusty chiapas, in equatorial tegucigalpa, perhaps?
will they regale them with stories of roads here fenced with dirty week old snow or of rivers choking and groaning with ice? or will they, like pimply smitten school boys, eagerly tell their mothers of who they met in wintry gatherings they've been to?
I put away my newspaper and turn off the tv feeling inadequate from just hanging around sockless in my overly heated apartment and not in the thick of things warmer and necessary, something more essential, like the babbling of those two inebriated men upstairs.