This won't be a long entry. I am tired, I am depressed, and I just don't feel as if I have the ability to organize my thoughts.
It is almost 10:00 p.m. and the Midnight gunshots are about to start in another two hours. I can hearing booming already, but those are the preliminaries, the fireworks. At midnight, or actually, about 15 minutes before midnight and for about 30 minutes afterwards, the people here in the barrio where I live will start shooting real gunshots. It is a time-honored Mexican custom, which doesn't excuse it, it just explains the near impossibility of rooting it out. Mexican men like to step out of their houses, huts, shacks, apartments, etc, and start shooting wildly up in the air to usher in the new year. It is their custom, and no matter of publicity campaigns or laws or earnest requests for them to desist will make them change their minds. The police just ignore them. Who wants to confront inebriated men with guns who would feel as if you were dishonoring them by telling them to stop shooting guns?
Tomorrow, hopefully, I will go attend the Rose Parade once again. Yes, I have to go, it is my ritual. It does not involve shooting bullets into the air and hoping they don't land and kill or maim someone. It is an innocent ritual. I have my list of entries. Mostly, I want to see the marching bands, but if I can make it once again, I will try to photograph everything.
As you can see, it is much of the usual. I am especially interested in seeing the Rose Bowl university bands, these being the University of Michigan and the University of Alabama. The university groups always tend to bring the most energy, and of course, they are placed relatively early in the lineup.
Once again, I will stake a spot next to Sierra Madre Blvd. It will involve parking a few blocks away, but fortunately, there is usually free street parking. At least there has been these last two years. As we recall, the parade was cancelled in 2021 because of Covid, and in 2022, I remember that the attendance was much lower than it had been before. I had no difficulty finding parking, nor finding seating. It was a little more crowded in 2023, but for this year, they (a local news report) said that the authorities anticipate a return to the big crowds. So be it. I'll do the best I can. Usually I post next to the East Pasadena Post of the American Legion #280. I have to get off on San Gabriel Blvd in order to get there.
From here, it is a short jaunt to Sierra Madre Blvd. I take a chair, a small step-stool that I stand on, my jacket, my backpack with cameras and a small bag with munchies and drinks. Of course, the raza will be selling "barrio/ghetto" dogs in carts, but I have never bought them. These are hot dog with the weiners cooked with bacon wrapped around them. I just am fearful of catching some disease, or getting food poisoning.
The last two times I left rather late. Usually, it would be at 7:00 p.m. or, last year, I really pushed it and left at 8:00 a.m., when the parade had already started on television. Also last year I noticed that the parking was almost full when I arrived, I was worried I would have to "shell out" to pay the private entrepeneurs who charge attendees by selling space in parking lots for buildings and apartments. I just managed to find a spot. Thus, tomorrow, I will have to leave at about 6:30 to hopefully get there by 7:30 (it should only take 45 minutes to drive, traffic will not be heavy tomorrow because, even though it is a Monday, most employees will be given the day off). And if I have to pay for parking, well, so be it, I will. I don't need the stress of circling round and round and taking risks.
What can I say about this year? It was difficult. I was cut back at work, and my paycheck suffered. Instead of teaching my regular four classes, I was cut down to three, and I was earning $1,000 less per month. Ouch, that hurt quite a bit. Also, there is the matter of labor strife. Our union has been fighting the administration for all of this year, trying to obtain better benefits. The administration and management pay themselves lavishly, and they have given themselves big pay raises to keep pace (more than what is necessary) with the ravaging inflation we had this year. But we are being asked to settle for a measly 5%. We are asking for 12% just to keep afloat, they offer us scraps. That is why we are so demoralized.
There was not trip for me this summer. In the past, when I still had my two parents and my pancreatic illness had not progressed so far, I used to take trips to the interior of Mexico. It is so much different from the border, and I felt it was a new world. Tijuana and Mexicali are one thing, but I have to say it, and this is my opinion, but the border towns are ersatz constructions, not authentic, not independent, not autonomous, they have no rich (and painful) history. They are the makeshift urban centers for Mexicans who peer like poor cousins across the border, wishing to go live in San Diego. They are dirty, raucous, vulgar places, and the people have their eye firmly fixated north, not south.
I didn't go because I had hernia surgery. It wasn't so bad, and I don't even know if it was successful. My stomach still bulges out like a basketball, but at least, it doesn't hang down the way it used to, making me look like Jabba the Hut (from Star Wars, for that 1% who might not have been cursed by being exposed to that media empire). It took me several weeks to recover, but all in all, they said not to do any heavy lifting. My neighbor, and old man, says that I should be very, very careful for an entire year. He has had many friends (he is of my dad's generation) who have had similar operations and they ran into trouble when they stupidly resumed their physical exertions after the operation.
So, no trip to Mexico, because of surgery, because of labor uncertainty, because of depression. I really sank into depression, and I don't even engage in film photography anymore. I still buy film, though, which is perverse. Film is not inexpensive, it costs way too much money, and I did buy a few film cameras, but I hardly practice any photography. I have not been to most of the public gardens I used to frequent (Descanso, the LA Aboretum, the San Diego Public Garden, the California Botanic Garden). I just have no urge to do so, I want to leave them all behind. The one exception is the Huntington Garden, but that is almost a fairyland. Usually, and I hate to confess this, but I go to the Chinese Garden to see the same things over and over again. I don't even photograph very much there. I just love seeing the attractive 40 something Chinese ladies who are never obese and who are so stylish as they take endless selfies. It can hardly even be counted as a garden trip.
(Fireworks going off. In about an hour and a half things are going to become scary.)
We have no rituals in my household to celebrated the New Year. Not even when my dad was alive did we have them. Other families supposedly get together and have this policy of enforced glee, but none of us is in the mood for this. We are all depressed and lonely, and we just can't go through the motion. Let other Hispanic families eat grapes on the eve and get drunk and blast loud Mexican music. That is not anything we have ever done in my household. We just go to bed and await being awoken by the flurries of gunshots, loud, pounding high-caliber guns, at midnight.
In politics, the less said, the better. We can't get rid of the monster of Trump. He just takes up all the space on social media, him ranting and raving all the time, and the MAGA accolytes celebrating his stupidity. They aren't interested in governance for the public good. They just want to fulfill an emotional desire for revenge.
Well, that should be it. I have to go to bed. I'll play another round of sudoku before I try to go to sleep. Maybe if I wear earplugs I won't be woken up, but I am afraid to do so in case I miss my alarm. I need to get up at 6:00 a.m. tomorrow for the drive to Pasadena. It is cold now, we are in the 40s, but still not so bad. We had some slight rain these past few days, mainly, on Saturday, but it was more along the lines of drizzle. The news reports say the rain was much heavier in other places in California. When I took my morning walk I was expecting to see a cap of snow on the San Gabriel mountains but no such luck. The storm apparently left us no snow. May we at least hope for a measure of peace, though.
Here is hoping for a better 2024.
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