Journal All Nighter

Does she stay w Ori at this point? Do David and Machi get back to encampment and fall asleep in Machi's sleeping bag?
09 28 10 10 28 10
Why does reading my journals embarrass me? I barely remember the person who wrote them and can't believe my own old thoughts, and yet they are the same thoughts I have now, the same confusion and vagueness. Life in the bubble. What is happening? I never seem to know. What am I doing? Where is the person who does know? I am not real and the others are real, that is the abiding thought.
Date

01 28 11

Present time: what's going on at the encampment now?

Since the day I found Machi and his crew at the Bar (which he told me later is called La Llorona) I've begun to expand my sphere. Today I walked to Coral. The Encampment feels far removed from everyplace but Coral is only a 20 minute walk away. There is one fonda, Migajas (what a sad name, really.) But they like me sitting here for hours, sipping cafe con leche and then having their rice, beans, meat meal, and then sipping another cafe, black for after lunch. They're letting me plug in my laptop, so this has been a double find.
On the way here I walked past the Justice Works storefront. I didn't walk in. I am not a woman of action. I don't want to hope or expect. People can hurt me, or I can hurt them, those are the only two things that can happen between people. Groups will do onto you or they will stand by and allow it to be done...
Dulce just refilled my cafe negro. Her coffee is thin and very sweet, like the coffee I would get in La Casa Feliz, where the Morenos used to love me. Mami y Papi barely let me taste their cafe, much as I loved it and asked to taste it. The Morenos made watery coffee just for me by running hot water through the grounds after the grown up coffee was done. Dulce does it to stretch the grounds. Isla Caiman is a barren land. On one of my early morning excursions to Migajas I saw Franz again, the Green Fatigue Guardia from the ferry. He comes here for breakfast on his leave days. I saw him in the kitchen giving Dulce a huge sack of coffee from the base. I waved hello and tried to look like I hadn't seen the handover. Franz didn't sitt with me. He sat at the table closest to the door and I could tell from how he smiled and almost blushed (he was an Islander but could pass for a City boy, maybe mixed heritage? His light hair, and light skin reddish from the sun) when Dulce's 18 year old daughter Rita came around with his eggs and rice and beans, that giving Dulce coffee was part of courting Rita.
“Mira, mira, Doug, la procesion...” Rita and Franz ran to the door and Dulce and I joined them. Coming toward us was the priest in brown, followed by a group of mostly women. I recognized some of the Senoras de los Frijoles, and realized that Julia was among them. They carried posters with lists of names on sticks. Julia had said nothing to me about this. Orestes Mercado was on Julia's sign. Why didn't she tell me this was happening? Mi marido's name was on the sign. These people were the disappeared, swallowed by the Camp.
Even Julia was leaving me behind, gone into the world of action and left me in the world of dusty words.
There was no date on the Christian calendar that I could think of. I asked Dulce and she shrugged. I asked Rita and she shrugged. Franz rolled his eyes. "Sera el dia de San Fulano." I assumed that the procession was an excuse for a demonstration. The banner the Priest, along with several young people wearing orange jumpers,said: We demand prisoners in the Camp be acknowledged, released outright, or finally tried.
I sat back down to my eggs and rice and beans. I forced myself to look at documents on my cruzer. (Little did I know it was the beginning of a rapture of the cruzer and I would stay up half the night reading my past life.
03-09-11

01 31 11
CRUZER:ORI LEAVES
transition, present time

Dulce's taking a break, drinking cafe con leche at the table closest to the door, reading today's La Voz de Coral. From here I can see the cover photograph, a photograph of the thin middle aged City man in a dress uniform speaking at a lectern. I recognize Capitan Jodeda (Ojeda). La Voz is more the Camp's than it is Coral's. I'm restless. My laptop is charged. Gotta go.....

I had no idea I'd decided to look for the Priest who headed the procession until I stood at the door of Migajas and saw the crumbling adobe church straight across the square at the center of Coral. I cut across the square, walked around the glorieta, crossed the street, and stepped inside the cool, dark church. Several of the women from the procession were inside, sitting on the front rows and I could see the Priest in his brown robes talking to them. I found Julia sitting close to the aisle on the second row and sat beside her. They were figuring out what to do next. The Priest, I heard one of the Senoras call him Padre Ezequiel, said they should go as a contingent to the action on Grito Day. Julia gave me a look and then grinned. I squeezed her hand. Grito Day was in our karma, it seemed.

03-10-11

In the dim light of the church it took me a while to notice that all over the dusty whitewash over the interior adobe walls there was graffiti, rows and designs made up of what I at first thought were swastickas, then crosses, but at last saw were Ts. The letter T, over and over. After seeing a mural made up of Ts inside the church I realized I had been seeing Ts, lone Ts all over the Encampment. What is that? The meeting is breaking up, the women are leaving. I've come to try and meet the Priest.

The Priest is one of those charming ones who must suffer celibacy. I couldn't (or maybe he couldn't) tell whether he was being warm and loving because I'm human, or flirting and soliciting because I'm woman. He can help me find Ori, that's the main thing. Julia and I stayed behind to talk with him, but it was clear that I was the one he was flirting with. I am to meet him tomorrow in the Church office.

When does this happen? Does it make sense the outing would be happening after the move to the 92 floor?

BUROCRACY YEAR 2 OUTING

Lucha my office mate is already in, on the phone.