Of Course It Wasn't Judgment Day....

We got the judges in agreement. They sent their decision to the prosecutor. A warrant for our maid's arrest was to have been issued Monday, January 23. Today our lawyer, whom I consider lazy and worthless like all Mexican lawyers I've encountered--OK, maybe not lazy but still worthless--imagine an American lawyer taking over a month's vacation, leaving no substitute, and not even informing us of the first decision that went against us! To be fair, because he hurried the case to a civil judge, who may also hear criminal cases if the criminal court is overloaded, he tried to expedite matters. I think it was a stategic mistake causing over a month's delay, because what I understood of their conversation made me suspect the judge resented the extra work load, especially since it was requested by our connected, red-haired and whiter-than-I lawyer, so the judge may have responded in a passive-aggressive fashion.

There are always Kafka and incompetence to consider, not to mention the Voodoo curses we think our maid has inflicted on us, and though we are sometimes tempted to enlist the dark side as well, our religion prevents us, though to be fair, our religion also forgives our sins. I still believe in the power of light over darkness, so just as God has suspended our man's judgment all these centuries so likewise I ought to accept the mercy of the Mexican system. This is specious reasoning if ever I heard it, though the parallel pleases me.

We are so bored!

I work on my Eliot essay and the new and last issue of The Melic Review, Kathleen edits, works crossword puzzles, reads innumerable books, while I watch more TV. We relax at night in the gas chamber of our rooms, hope the buses aren't spewing Xylon B. Or sometimes that they will.

Yes, we have friends, but though they pretend concern, I'm sure they're as thoroughly borerd with our story as we are with telling it. And Kathleen keeps saying, "I think Kenyon's dead," which always lifts my spirits without fail.

We do lift spirits at night to make boredom tolerable, as it increases our ability to enjoy television, and we've also rented a lot of bad movies, like "A Beautiful Mind" and "Mr. and Mrs. Smith," though "The Motorcycle Diaries" were OK. Can't believe "A Beautiful Mind," so terribly uneven, and arguing against Nash ever being truly schizophrenic--I don't know what he had--got good reviews. I did not like Jennifer Connelly that skinny in any event. She's a fine-figured lady!

For boredom perhaps President Morales will send us coca leaves to chew as a goodwill gesture, though I'd love to have our portrait done in them as he did for Hugo Chaves.

Back to business. (My birdwalks in thought, I learned, can also be called by the quaint English term "false hares," so I now have two cliche's for my associative brain patterns, necessary for a poet but terrible for locating misplaced keys.)

Today I think I understood, through a bad cell phone connection with Inaki, our main lawyer (his secretary afterwards informed me that she has had trouble understanding him as well, so it's not just the language barrier), that the prosecutor had not issued a warrant because the lesser judge had not completely signed off on it.

The ping-pong game of Napoleonic law goes on. I can't imagine a country now where they would actually arrest someone for a crime not directly witnessed by police and actually jail or bail them. As Kathleen's dentist said today (I'm bringing Kathleen's pearlies up to date, though she fears dentists, which I can't understand--while I hold her hand), "Although the Mexican justice system is supposed to help the victim, it actually works against them, especially if they have light skin and are thus perceived to be rich."

Us, we got $5,000 American to our names, and our former maid is now worth $500,OOO based on a recent inheritance, but she looks like an Indian, and I learned how important appearances were sometime in my mid-thirties, whereas my socially brighter siblings realized it in their teens. My mom used to make me go to a dermatologist when I didn't care how many blackheads were in my ears.

Hell, I had to find the truth about everything before I thought about appearances. Thank God electroshock helped temper my Faustian delusions when I was 30!

Enough about me. How are you? What can you do for us? Well, money's always nice, but we can wait until we get back to the States to beg when we'll need a bit to get a rental up in NorCal, where they are cheaper for CA but not nearly as cheap as those to be had in Mexico. Out of solidarity you can also read Kafka and Finnegan's Wake; knowing that you are struggling with them will give us a certain mutual Schadenfreude.

The plot thickens in February when my six-month check-up with my pain specialist in San Diego is due, though Principal Lifeless won't commit to telling me if six months is adequate for sustaining my pension, as I proved to them that "being under a physician's care" was not specified as to frequency in my original policy.

Tomorrow we plan to quit smoking again, as we did for four months before our final blow-out with our son which left us both emotionally devastated and uncaring about our health or lives. Having recovered, it's back on the horse, absent the Marlboro Man (who I understand died of lung cancer near Smokestack Mountain).

If my health permits (I've been under for a week with amebiasis again, competing with Bolivia's natural gas preserves), I will update our saga as soon as anything equally unsubstantive and seductively promising occurs.

Until then.


Thine as ever,

CE