Bayto. Besandote para siempre.

Death.

It leaves me exactly where I am. Sitting in my room, staring at my wall, trying to think of something profound to say about someone who had nothing short of a profound effect on my life.

How is it that I have nothing to say?

It seems like nothing is good enough. No words encompass or begin to do any amount of service. It makes me mad that I can't explain her. Every time I write a word it feels like it's nothing. Even worse than nothing, it feels like it takes away from the memory of her that exists in my mind.

5 feet tall. 100 years old. Born and raised in Mexico City. Educated in France. A mother. A wife. A grandmother. A lover. A fighter. A listener. A dancer. An actress. A doctor (that's what she said she would have been if she had it to to over-- she told me). A spanish speaker. A truth teller. A story teller. A friend.

Larger than life she was. The only grandmother I ever knew. Her hands and hair immaculately kept. High heels. Even her bedroom slippers. Colors. Nude paintings and drawings. Grace and Humor.

'Da me un beso.' That's what she would tell her children and grandchildren every time she saw them. That's spanish for 'Give me a kiss.' Who knows exactly when or where the transition happened, but the word 'beso' grew a capital letter, lost an 's', grew a 't' and became a name. Bayto. Kiss. Love. That was her.

She was friends with the squirrel and the bird who visited her stoop. And the thugs who knocked at her door begging to buy her lowrider. And the Orthodox Jews who were her neighbors. And the waitors at the Acapulco restaurant (her favorite) who reminded her of home.

Left. Right. Left. Right. Left my wife and forty eight kids in a starving condition without any gingerbread, did I do Right? Right. Right. Right by my country, by jingle, I had a good job when I left. I left. I left.

You left, but you're not gone. I love you Bayto.

Strangers on a Plane. Or Waiting for One.

I love the airport. I LOVE it. It's like a museum somehow. A billion walking works of art, all asking questions. Questions to each other, questions about each other, and most importantly questions within themselves.

Everything a person wears is a part of their story, telling a little piece of who they are.

I look down at the jeans I am wearing right now, and instantly memories pop into my head. Memories I never would have recalled if I hadn't worn these today.

I recall the Winter's day in college. Sitting in my 'Bible as Literature' class. I was depressed. I was going through a horrendous breakup. Freezing snow and ice outside. The crotch had ripped and my leg fat seeped out of the hole. I sat in the class obsessing over my inadequacies, trying to shift my position so the fat would go away. How is that for a divine moment? I was supposed to be learning the history of the Old Testament and all I could think about was my leg fat. How sad is that?

So interesting to track one's own thoughts. Where our mind drifts and wanders. The messages we miss out on because we are so lost in a resentment or wound or question from the past.

I look around me and think about the stories of the people that surround me. I listen to my thoughts. Many of them are not so nice this morning. I wonder why. I have a lot to be grateful for today, and there really isn't anything for me to be angry about. But when the curly haired lady next to me sits down and rocks the whole row of seats off balance, the thought that runs through my head is, 'This is my corner sport bitch! Find somewhere else to sit!'

I'm mean.

But then my distaste for her grows to an affection because I am constantly launching people off of chairs when I sit down, and I realize that it is my own lack of self acceptance that I am angry at in her.

There's a man in front of me. I wonder what he does. He has a carry on suitcase, but it's hardly packed. It's one of those business ones. He's either going somewhere overnight or he doesn't change clothes very often. He's long and skinny and his 1990 nikes, (the white, nerdy kind) are laced very tightly and are dirty. He's reading. his legs are crossed. He seems like a colorless intellectual. Very frugal. He's wearing a wedding ring. I wonder what his marriage is like. What are his sentiments towards his wife at this very moment? Not the answer he would give to an inquisitive stranger. His real feelings. He's watching the people while he reads. Maybe he's a writer.

Who are all these people going to see?

I feel like the airport is a waiting ground of life changing experience. Every trip I have ever taken changes me. Even if I just go or come home. I feel like I discover something every time.

Someone is whistling a Christmas Carol. It's a little haunting. I love how he has the courage to share so shamelessly.

And then there is the fat mother with her daughter. I hate describing them that way. Probably because I am sensitive to defining terms. Once you put a label on someone, vision narrows, and although certain things are brought into focus, a general beauty is lost. That first sight beauty that is the closest thing we ever get to a clean slate when we meet people.

It's just the two of them, the mother and the daughter. The mother's jeans are tight and she wears comfortable shoes with white tube socks. Her daughter has a matching sweatsuit and a pink plastic princess backpack. She doesn't seem divorced or widowed. I wonder if they are flying to go see the dad. Maybe he works in a different city. The little girl seems sweet, but she has been silenced with food. Not because her mother doesn't love her, but because her mother learned how to deal with her own feelings by quieting herself with sandwiches. So when her over sized six-year-old begins to wail, the easiest remedy is a bag of chips or a candy bar. 'Shes' just a kid. She'll lose the weight.' She tells herself. 'It's just baby fat.'

I wonder about parents who pass their issues down to their children. When they see that their child shares their same ailment, does that comfort the parent or does that cause self hatred that manifests itself into hatred towards the child? I hope it's neither. I hope I'm just ignorant and imaginative and none of these problems exist.

The sports bar around the corner just turned on their John Mellencamp to start the day. Why do sports bars always play classic rock? Does it make men feel more like men? Only in sports bars is it possible for music to actually smell like beer.

So back to the mother and the child. I imagine the little girl's future and I feel pain for what she will have to endure. She will experience a loving, yet addictive home. She will feel alienated and ostracized by a world who sees her first and foremost as FAT. Great wisdom will come to her as a result, if she allows it. But if her anger gets the best of her, it will cloud her clarity.

Why does it always feel so much easier to tell someone else's tale instead of our own? Sometimes it's easier to make someone into who we want them to be instead of facing who we are.

A red head sits on my right. She looks about 35... She's petite and fashionable and from LA. A black and white tweed coat, tights and boots, and a short black skirt. Only her hands and the circles under her hungover eyes reveal her age. Her voice is a little jaded. She's slept with one too many a discarding man. Sophisticated and tough. She's traveled all over as a lone wolf. She started out as an actress, maybe? She reads 'The Atlantic.' She's a business woman now. She works in Burbank, probably at a studio. She's going to Tokyo in a few months to visit her brother who is getting his PhD in South Asian Studies. She's going to run a marathon. It's her third. She's a fighter.

All these lonely, fighting women. Another one sitting to my left. She looks like a designer. Cowboy boots folded over with different colored bracelets or straps or something covering the boot. Black skinny jeans with a hole in the knee. An army coat. An Ipad in her lap, big Indian Silver earrings and an African safari print bag. She's rich. All of her items immaculately kept. Trust Fund. I don't know why my instinct says that. Maybe it's because she's comfortable in her wealth. It's all she's ever known, and she feels no shame about it. She views herself as a treasure.

I wonder what she is reading on the Ipad. Maybe the New York Times so that she has good conversation prepared for the dinner table at home. She is single too. She is a woman of many men. She is the free spirited, alcoholic, gypsy, ex- dancer who let's them fuck her any way they want and then complains to her friends the next day about the residual back pain. She's been better though, recently.

All of these women are beautiful. Holding on to something in some way. The mother, her security. her protective layer that keeps her removed and unable to fully engage in all that she desires. No roller coasters. No swimsuits. No cocktail dresses. No beautiful hikes. No putting herself out there.

The one to my right, the business woman, is afraid of her vulnerability. She runs the show and doesn't let people in. Deciding what goes and what doesn't.

And the designer. She's afraid to stop the craziness. What if she wasn't wild? Would people still love her? What would she have to do? Now she can write all that mindless babble off as networking, but what if she really gave herself a chance to find true love instead of settling for every slight attraction that comes along.

I hear the loudspeaker announce my flight and I am jostled out of the concocted personal lives of my neighbors. And I realize, of course, all of these people are a reflection of me. As is always the case. Everything we see is a manifestation of our own existence.

That's why I love airports. So many different people rattling through, it's just enough to rattle me into waking up and realizing how I really feel.

Nayarit Neon Rain

It's been raining here. For about 4 days straight. I love the rain. I used to hate it, but now I love it. I love the gloominess and the excuse to be bundled up. And there's something about it that brings people together. Growing up in Colorado, I hated winter. I dreamed of the day I would move to California and never have to trudge another snowy step. So strange how things change and the most hated moments become some of the most precious, in retrospect.

It was Saturday night, two days ago. Today is Monday. I went to work in the pouring rain and was mesmerized by the haunted and somehow mystical nature of Hollywood boulevard. A good friend of mine once told me that LA is full of ghosts. On every street corner. (He was speaking figuratively, of course.) Memories. Experiences. Past friendships. Lives lived and then gone. Only the afterglow of the neon signs can verify their existence. It's funny though that the rain doesn't wash away any of those memories. Somehow it just makes them a little more present, at least for me, that is.

Anyway, there I stood in the doorway of the huge, empty sports bar. All 50 big screens, silently illuminating the dimly lit space. No big games were on this particular eve, so instead of the usual blaring fanfare soundtrack, Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland Christmas Carols softly hummed in the background. I, the only server on, had one table. 2 drenched, gossiping girls who were disappointed at the sell out of the movie they wanted to see. I'm fairly sure they were servers too. I don't know how I knew that, but I did.

I watched the drops of rain spill down over the restaurant logo and looked across the street, taking comfort in the fact that the neon sign was witness to the memory I was recalling in my mind. A dinner I once had with an old friend on this very street corner. An old friend who changed my life forever. But that's a different story.

All of a sudden, I turned around and there stood Edgar. Edgar is from Nayarit, Mexico (Zacatecas to the northeast and Jalisco to the south and the great Pacific to the west). Sinewy and handsome, he is. He appears to be more of a Spanish descent than Mexican and if he were to play a character in a movie, it would be a mysterious, but kind vampire.

"Te gustas la lluvia." (Do you like the rain?) He asked me.
"Por su puesto." (Of course.) I responded.

He, unlike me, then told me he only likes the rain if he has a girl to sit and talk with, on the couch, while watching movies.
I laughed.
"Te gustas peliculas?" Was his next question.
And what seemed like a flirtatious comment, turned into a conversation I never would have expected.

"Yes," I told him. "I like movies."
"What Kind?" He asked.
"Movies about love."
He laughed.
"It's because I'm always thinking about love." I told him. "I want to understand it."
"What about you?" I asked him.
"Me gusta pelicuas del terror..." He said with a look in his eye.

I always think the things people like are somehow a reflection of their souls, or at least the questions they are asking within their souls. The images or feelings that constantly resurface and are in search of some sort of meaning and need an outlet. So why then, did Edgar love horror movies? I had to know.

"Have you seen a lot of scary things?" I asked him.
"No... not really..." He responded.
"But..." His face changed. "There was one thing that happened..."
He didn't want to tell me. He was afraid I wouldn't believe him. The glow of the neon lights reflected off of his eyes and I could tell what he was about to reveal to me was a moment that changed his life forever.

It was winter in Mexico and Edgar and his cousins ran around like wild, playing, anticipating the rain. The clouds were heavy and the air was wet and a little cold. He said he was about 10 or 11. It was his girl cousin he was standing next to when the thunder started. The one who he had coffee with two months ago when she came to LA for a visit and they verified with each other that this experience was most definitely not a dream. Only for a moment did they touch on the subject though, both too perplexed and awestruck, still to this very day, to try and make any sense of it, beyond the acknowledgement it's actual occurrence.

Isn't that how all magical experiences go? Isn't there little to nothing you can ever say that will actually encompass what it was that happened? In fact, sometimes it fees like the more you try to explain it, the less magical and synchronistically real it becomes.

What happened you ask?

They saw something.

A something that Edgar can not describe. The closest word he could come up with was a 'Dracula' of some sort. He was hovering there in front of them, with a cape and a chain and his head was down. He was suffering. And that was it. He didn't hurt them. He didn't say anything. He just existed. And it was the shared experience that changed the two cousins forever. The thought: 'Maybe we're not alone?' changed instantaneously to the knowledge that 'We most definitely are not alone.'

"Maybe he was a lost soul." Edgar said. "Maybe he had been laid to rest in the wrong town and he was looking for his family." Who knows what the spirit was doing there that night. But that moment was the birth of his quest for understanding of a great beyond the physical, tangible world that many accept as the only reality.

An experience like that changes a person. It gives them a heightened awareness to a reality that many others ignore or even scoff at. But, I would be lying if I said that I don't wonder if I hear footsteps every once in a while in my apartment when no one is home. I would be lying if I said that every once in a while I don't wonder if I just saw something strange...

What if I have just trained myself to not believe in my instincts and experiences because the world I grew up in was not open or spiritual enough to allow for such occurrences. What if Edgar really saw what all of us are capable of seeing, but just deny ourselves?

I looked out at the neon light's dizzying reflection on the wet street and thought about my own spirit. There is a part of me that is out there walking on that street reliving a moment. A moment that has not been laid to rest. I wonder if anyone has encountered my ghost. Maybe our unanswered questions trail behind us in the form of spirits, appearing before others to awaken them into their own existence.

Or maybe it was just a rainy night, and Edgar felt bored and wanted to tell a ghost story to a gullible girl. Either way, it made me think. And his forever life changing experience, suddenly became mine.