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Gringo

H I S T O R I A S -- true tales told to the gringo

C.D., another gringo writer, remembers @

MOSAIC

The old Tijuana bus station still stands on the corner of First and Madero, a block downhill from Revolution Avenue, downtown. That was where Federico Campbell -- you heard of him? One of this city's -- and Mexico's -- finest writers? Yeah. Well, he wrote in his story Insurgentes Big Sur that he left Tijuana as a young man in the early 1960s, departing from that First Street bus station bound for Mexico City, via Tres Estrellas de Oro bus lines.

In those early days, I was only a child. Tijuana was a magical place of toys and food possessed by a strange, lyrical language.

Thirteen years later, a young man myself, having learned a few words and begun to fall in love with the other, I went with my friend Macdonald to Ensenada for New Years. We caught our short bus from that same old station. While waiting, we watched a group of young women kissing each other's cheeks and hugging goodbye. I felt a sudden twinge of desire to be going with them, in their bus that said MEXICO D.F. on its sign above the windshield.

I imagined they were bound for the great Tenochtitlan, two thousand and more miles away; while my friend and I were only going sixty miles down the nearer coast for a holiday. I dreamed of the day when I, too, could climb onboard a long-distance bus and ride for days into another world. Their world.

In the 1980s, the government built a new and much larger "central" bus station far upriver from downtown, out in what were then the outskirts of town -- an area across from "5 & 10" -- that has been since swallowed up by advancing sprawl. The old bus station, meanwhile, still stands at the foot of downtown (on the pedestrian tourist path from the border gate to Revolution) although now it only sends busses to nearby places like Tecate and Rosarito.

More importantly, that old station still sports, on an inside lobby wall, a beautiful map of the west and northwest of Mexico, executed in mosaic tile. This work of commercial art illustrates, in various colors, the deserts, the mountains, the seas, the peninsula of Baja California and the mainland states, with -- of course -- the Tres Estrellas de Oro route and all its major stops marked and named, from this Tijuana frontier to the capital city.

I believe that on that 30th of December, 1973, I "discovered" that map, and called Michael over to see it (or maybe he showed it to me?). Then, "Look here," I pointed to one particular place on the route.

He laughed. There, to the left of Guadalajara, in black letters created from flecks of stone, was written "Ixtlan del Rio."

(You can still see it today, this first year of the millennium.)

"Bro," Macdonald asked me then, "do you suppose that this bus station is where Carlos Castaneda really began his Journey to Ixtlan?"

"Yes," I smiled. He made it all up while waiting for a bus. No jumping off of mountain cliffs, no dragging your friend to the bottom of the precipice and bouncing back up again. No. That night at our cheap hotel in Ensenada I would lie down beside Macdonald in our shared bed, lay my hand on his shoulder and simply say, "Good night, Michael."

Every year, every month, almost every day, I still regret not asking him if he wanted to... but no. I didn't.

Why do I tell you this? Because just the other night my girlfriend and I saw that new Mexican movie, Y tu mama tambien, where two young men lose their friendship because they kiss while making love with the same woman.

Sometimes the pieces of tile simply don't fit together, you know? And some journeys are better never begun. Some, yes. But not all.

Go figure. Or not. Whatever you choose, Danial, do go see that map in mosaic. That you won't regret.