Mnemosyne Memoir's

Acapulco

 

By Dr. Jules Nyquist

 

On Easter Sunday we take a VW taxi from the airport, straight to the market. The price is $12 because you speak Spanish, instead of the standard $25 for American tourists. You used to drive here in a van with your tools, taking days. We arrive in hours with only our suitcases. You search for a guitar—haggling, and two blankets, amarillo, rojo, negro, blanco. Pello, sea bass, everything hanging by its neck. Cash machine, 1,000 pesos = $100 USD.  No hardware stores should you need to fix something.

 

Here, the rebar rusts, the unfinished construction from the salt air spikes into the sky, the earthquakes disrupt, and everything is unfinished. Language slithers off loose tongues of more and more people, and the few words I understand are caught in a net. More haggling, 1,500 pesos for all: guitar, blankets, towels, two glasses, two plates, and we haul it all up to the hill and hail another taxi to our hacienda in the non-tourist part of town. The place is that of a friend you’ve been renting with for years; we have a section to ourselves, along with the host family.  It needs repairs, but has a locked gate. They put fresh bedspreads on the mattresses; the balcony overlooks the pool and the endless Pacific. There is a lovely bathroom, but no toilets with seats. Mexican squat.

 

I struggle with the rhythm of unfamiliar dialogue as it rolls in and out with the waves. I will draw and photograph instead. I am so close to the edge of words. You call this your Hotel of Miracles. The wind will blow our pasts away. No more pain of past lovers, no more heartache. What is broken is now healed. You play your new guitar by the pool. I write a poem about George Harrison without mentioning George Harrison. The moon comes out in daylight, a half-saucer of milk in a blue bowl. We are freebooters, buccaneers, corsairs, pirates. We chant !Muera el mal gobierno! (death to the bad government). These are the Bush years in America.

 

Later, we take the bus to the beach. Beers, salsa, fish, tacos. Dear Pacific, I dip my hands into your mouth, you kiss me, salty, on the mouth back. I am still hesitant to dive face-first into your waters. Am I ready to lose things? In the waist-deep water, I find half a doll’s head, a baby face made of porcelain. Doll/muñeco. I lost my Spanish dictionary on the beach. You teach me. Metaphysical/metafisico. Metaphor/metafora. Plata/silver. Plato/plate.  Shells are taken from the water, and puppies are taken from their mothers. All is quiet on the beach except for a damn dog barking. 

 

One night, we started writing an epic poem, “Losing Things.”  Remember the rhythm of the words:

 

Donde—where—is our shelter?

            refugio

            abrigo

 

I dream I was at the border in my convertible and had only pesos—no American money. They won’t let me pass through, even with “American Girl” on my t-shirt. Now I will have a voice, with waves and wind to roar over a mountain and the ocean, my two mothers. I sleep like a baby between their breasts.

 

At Los Flamingos for dinner, it’s red snapper, vino blanco, and a beer—very 1950s Rat Pack place with a great view of the cliffs. We tip the guitar player in American dollars to keep him playing; we’re the only Americans here now. Since our hotel kitchen needs repairs, this has become our regular dinner place. Maybe we’re a couple. We walk under a mango tree, the fruit hangs too high to reach. A coconut shell with a hole is home for a scorpion or a tarantula. Watch for snakes, they bite and you’re dead. Dead versus death. Sentenced to dead. All that is certain is death. I will grow old, most likely. I will see the faded mountain underneath the haze, and when I reach it, there will be another.

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Dr. Jules Nyquist is the founder of Jules’ Poetry Playhouse in Placitas, NM. Her recent award-winning books are Atomic Paradise, Homesick, then, and The Sestina Playbook (Poetry Playhouse Publications). She took her PhD in Post-Secondary Adult Education from Capella University and her MFA in Writing and Literature from Bennington College. Jules poems have been featured in print, online, audio, radio or in-person at various readings and events including the NM History Conference, the American Psychological Association Conference in Denver, the Jonquil Motel in Bisbee, AZ, the Rattlesnake Museum in Albuquerque, NM, a kind of a small array gallery in Magdalena, NM, the Briar in Minneapolis, MN, the Black Dog Café in St. Paul, MN, a Masonic Lodge in Bemidji, MN, the New Mexico Humanities Council, Unquarked in Los Alamos, NM, and featured at the International Women’s Day at the Santa Fe Capitol Rotunda, and many other bookstores, bars, galleries, and elsewhere. More at www.poetryplayhouse.com

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