At times we do believe that there is, in fact, a collective unconscious  at work in the deep background of the universe.

We can’t be sure, but it seems that things around the world are getting weird. Have you felt it? Have you woken up in any of the recent days wondering if all hell is about to break loose in your little corner of the sphere? We have. And for the past few months, we’ve mentioned it to one another over a bottle of mezcal. But it wasn’t until we started receiving submissions from our writers that it became so crystal clear.

People have disaster on the brain.

Maybe it’s the earthquakes cropping up in the most unusual of places. Shit-poor Haiti expects to receive its daily quanta of boots to the head, but a terremoto that levels fucking everything, including the presidential mansion? That’s just not right.

Then, with far less drama or destruction, even the East Coast of the United States took a ride on the planetary rollercoaster. No one was killed, but you can be sure that several million heads peered out of high-rise windows over the horizon and wondered what hell is slouching towards Washington to be born.

Add to that the biblical floods and the brain-boggling hurricanes putting this hemisphere into the spin cycle. Mix in a measure of political irrationality not seen since Nero noodled his lute, and you get a very nervous, very dark Cogitatio Populi.

And don’t even get us started on the asshats running for high office in both Guatemala and parts further north, other than to say that we hope the cosmic wisdom sees fit to flatten their sorry egos long before it does ours. Or yours, for that matter!

It seems that we here at La Cuadra are just going to surf that wave. This issue starts with a thoughtful, possibly even profound, reflection on the tragedies of September 11, 2001  ten years later. That piece is followed up by some crack (and decidedly not crazy) reporting on a recent spate of violent crimes in our humble town of La Antigua. We then give you a brief break of pure beauty with an extended spread of our featured artist, Brielle DuFlon, before plunging you back into the belly of the beast with Joe Bageant’s last lonely ride into the misery of the permanent American underclass. Después de, there is a tale of misguided decisions in an attempt to help a friend drive a boat to El Salvador that almost ended with an extended stay in prison by the inimitable Logan Clark.

We round out the issue with some poetry from World War I, and (we are so happy to announce) the RETURN OF KEVIN PETRIE who once again takes readers on one of his stoned adventures — this time through civil-war- and tsunami- wracked Sri Lanka with his (possibly mythical) traveling partner, Uncle Money.

So, with all this shit coming down upon the world at once, we can think of nothing better to do than to invite you all down to Café No Sé where we might toast the beginning of the end the way any God or Goddess worth their salt would have intended: Half in the bag, and with one another. Frost opined that “Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice.” We don’t bother with any of that kind of prognostication, and who knows, maybe we’re plain wrong. Maybe the world just has a bad case of gas. Whatever, we will still light your smoke and keep your drink chilly as we toast whatever the hell is coming down the pike.

Join us.

MJT and JPR

A number of attacks in Antigua on the night of August 18 sparked a CNN iReport post entitled “Bloodbath in Antigua,” a stern warning from the US Embassy, and the spreading of alarming rumors on origins of the violence and its possible connection to narcotraffickers, gang violence, political corruption or a mixture of all three.

“On August 18, I met a friend for drinks at [a local bar]. We were ready to leave by midnight and called a taxi,” P. recalls. “The taxi never came, so we decided to walk.”

They were headed to a friend’s business to wait for a ride only three blocks away.

“We had walked one block when a black pickup truck with a camper flew past us and suddenly stopped. Two guys jumped out, and I instantly knew they were coming for us,” P. remembers. She was mugged last July, so she had a gut feeling. The first time she was attacked, she fought with the mugger who struck her forcefully on the head before fleeing with her bag.

“This time I took off my bag, flung it to the guy, and turned to run when I felt him stick a knife in the back of my leg.”

P.’s friend was also attacked. “She kept saying, ‘No tengo nada! No tengo nada!’ but the other man cut her arm twice,” P. said. “The guys looked as if they were crazed on drugs.”

The men returned to the pickup and fled. P. felt confused and disoriented. She could not find her way. Her leg was bleeding badly. “I was wearing a long skirt and it was completely drenched; I was dragging it on the ground while trying to walk when a cab stopped. The driver realized what happened and gave us a ride.” Once they arrived at her friend’s business, someone called the paramedics, and the Bomberos Municipales arrived shortly thereafter.

P. and her friend climbed into the ambulance only to find another stabbing victim already inside. His name is Jake Blanco, from Canada. He was stabbed after he stepped out of a bar to smoke a cigarette and was one of ten victims that P. met or heard about. Not all of them appeared in police reports.

The CNN iReport posted on August 21 listed eight victims (six Americans, one Australian, and one Guatemalan). The Bomberos Municipales only recorded four emergencies. The victims were taken to the public hospital, Hermano Pedro, in the early hours of August 19. At 6:00 a.m. the Bomberos Municipales also picked up a Guatemalan woman with a bad cut on her left ear. She was wearing corte and güipil, traditional dress, and had no ID. This information appears on records from the Bomberos Municipales Antigua station, according to paramedic José Juan García.

The Bomberos Voluntarios did not cover any emergencies in Antigua that evening, according to their spokesperson Hugo Galindo. However, the National Civilian Police (PNC) recorded four people attacked with a knife. The PNC’s spokesperson, Donald González, revealed that all four reported being attacked by men traveling in a brown pickup truck and a motorcycle.

The police reported one case in addition to the Bomberos Municipales: a Guatemalan, Francisco Monroy, who suffered minor knife wounds and was found on Alameda Santa Lucía around 1:30 a.m. on August 19, according to Officer Erick Tórtola, deputy chief of the PNC Sacatepéquez precinct.

The director of the state hospital Hermano Pedro, Dr. Miriam López, released records which show that three foreigners and one Guatemalan with stab wounds were admitted in the first hours of Friday, August 19. When considering these numbers, however, it should be noted that P’s friend was not listed on any official reports. Further, Blanco, Monroy and P. all reported that there were more victims.

“I met a couple from New Zealand at the hospital who had been mugged near La Merced by men on a yellow bike around 8:30 p.m.,” P. recalls. “They took their money and credit cards, and slashed the man’s face,” P. makes a cutting gesture, to show that the cut went from the right eyebrow to his jaw’s left side. “I also know of a gay couple who was attacked and went to a private hospital,” added P.

It is possible that the hospital records are incomplete due to some of the victims not being treated promptly, opting for a private clinic or not seeking medical help at all. Still, P. is certain that some who were at the state hospital do not appear in the official records.

Scarce Information, Heightened Alarm:

Local authorities and paramedics dub the attacks as “very unusual” for Antigua. Renato Melgar, from the Bomberos Voluntarios, says they cover — on average — one stabbing incident per month in Antigua. “Most of the cases are from the villages surrounding Antigua, or from other areas in Sacatepéquez,” says Melgar, who has worked at the Antigua station for ten years. Officer Tórtola agrees. He says that the only stabbing victims in Antigua between January and September 6, this year, are the five cases from August 18. The officer was assigned to Antigua last February.

Dr. López says the hospital treated only two other stabbing victims this year from Antigua. One on August 28, the other on September 5. These numbers strike a contrast with those for the entirety of Sacatepéquez. López revealed that the hospital treated 63 people with knife wounds, and 45 with gunshot wounds between January and August 2011.

The events of August 18 caused great alarm in the community, particularly as reports of an increase in criminal activity could drain an already compromised year for tourism, and a public meeting was called to address the issue. The meeting provided a forum for mutual accusations between the police, municipal and tourism authorities, and the local chamber of commerce. During the meeting a flurry of security measures was proposed, including an increase of police presence on the streets. It remains unclear what measures will be taken.

The fear of business owners who depend on tourism is real and fueled by crime elsewhere in the country. Some hotels in Antigua had large group cancellations after the May 14 massacre of 27 peasants several hundred miles away in Petén.

Misinformation and Solutions:

The PNC still knows little about the assailants who acted on August 18. P. only remembers that they were short and dark-skinned. But there is also no explanation as to how the “Plan Cuadrante” did not prevent the attacks. This plan involves two police officers assigned to patrol each cuadrante (a square with sides of two blocks each) by foot or car.

P. says the attack was quick, and Tórtola explains that “the assault could have happened when the police were two blocks away” However, this explanation would have to fit the other cases, as well. And the attacks took place over a four hour period, between 8:30 p.m. to 12:30 a.m. How this could have happened was not addressed.

Yet, Tórtola complains that the police alone cannot provide security. “It would help to have surveillance cameras and a joint command center with the traffic and tourism police,” he says. “There are smaller towns like Pachalum, Quiché, where the mayor installed cameras, or Mixco, [close to the capital, and much larger], where the municipality works together with the PNC.” In Antigua there are cameras, but they are not functioning, the blame being placed on insufficient funding from the municipality or business owners — some of whom scramble to make ends meet. Still, cooperation between the PNC and the municipality is showing some signs of progress.

“This month we began a combined patrolling program involving the PNC, the Municipal Police [PMT] and the Army,” says Tórtola, as a result of the August attacks. Yet, the PNC doesn’t have an answer for the reluctance some individuals feel towards reporting crime.

This reluctance had some effect on the night of the eighteenth. P. admits that she didn’t feel comfortable talking to the PNC. “I am not sure what my rights are as a US citizen in Guatemala,” she says.

Tórtola wishes more foreigners would trust the police. “The police is not what it used to be; we are different now,” he offers, perhaps alluding to a history of corruption which, while it still exists, does not involve all officers. “I have even given tourists a ride,” he says, genuinely surprised that there is a lack of trust. “Sometimes we get the information two or three hours later by a third party, when it’s too late to catch anyone,” the officer says.

Speaking of ways that the public could be more mindful of its own security, Tórtola mentioned the consumption of alcohol. “If [people are] drinking, and it’s late at night, they become a target,” he said. Further, he noted again the lack of technological sophistication in Antigua. “If we had cameras in key locations, we could monitor most of the town and act faster on suspicious vehicles and situations.” When asked whether the police would stop a pickup truck if spotted speeding at midnight, Tórtola says “yes” without hesitation.

Due to the attacks, which the authorities took pains to point out were highly unusual for Antigua, some foreigners have chosen to leave town. Others, however, have decided to stay. Even after being mugged twice in the last three months, P. is philosophical.  “I learned a lot, but this raises the question of what will happen next time.” As she speaks she is stroking a small bump on the side of her forehead, a scar she bears from the first attack. “This whole thing has made me think of ways to better protect myself. I feel that if I leave [the criminals] win. I don’t want to die, but I don’t want to leave either. I like it here.”

P. is still coming to terms with the attack and its aftermath. In many ways, Antigua is trying to do the same.

In a night of passion and wild abandon that doesn’t bear thinking about, something happened.

The Folks: They conceived you, nurtured you and cut your toast into soldiers. They know about the time that you drew on Aunty Jeanie’s bathroom wall with purple crayon and they dried your tears when you buried Silvie the Goldfish in a matchbox in the garden. They filmed you when you played the third-sheep-from-the-left in the Christmas nativity play, and congratulated you on how it was, undoubtedly, the most convincing and moving portrayal of a farmyard animal they had ever seen.

And now, they are coming.

The preparations begin months before the actual arrival date. Hotels must be contacted and reservations must be made. Logistics and supply lines must be arranged and maintained. Paypal accounts must be initiated and lovingly watered. Monetary considerations must be discussed. Security issues must be prepared for. Questions that never once before breezed against the sides of your consciousness become conundrums of epic proportion as the details of Operation: Parental Unit are finalized. It is a seemingly endless series of headaches and banalities that makes one wonder how wars are ever engaged or adventures embarked upon. Then, all of a sudden the planning is over. They arrive.

Speeding through the darkness towards the terminal, a sense of anticipation mounted. After all the talk, it was happening. The parents had landed. Yet, despite the many hours spent designing their trip to the n^th degree our reunion was not quite as I had imagined it. It turned out that somewhere amongst the leaf-pile of emails which preceded their arrival there was a cataclysmic, catastrophic communication breakdown. Somewhere, someone somehow buggered-up the flight details. I’m quite sure that it wasn’t me. They are quite certain it wasn’t them. Some mysteries of the universe simply were never meant to be known. (Psssst . . . It was them.)

Still unawares of the bugger-up, I leaped from the taxi with my most enthusiastic I’m-so-happy-and-aren’t-you-so-proud-and-pleased-to-see-your-eldest-daughter-on-this-side-of-the-planet hop, skip and jump. I was greeted with the sight of a semi-abandoned terminal building and my mother advancing through the sliding glass doors with tears streaming down her face. Been there for hours, apparently! Thought I was dead, apparently! The man at the desk had been very helpful, actually! But really, all alone in Guatemala City for hours, Hannah? Really?

Eventually the hysterics subsided and father quietly emerged from where he had been observing the outburst in the relative safety of the lobby. It was firmly established that, in retrospect, contact numbers should have been exchanged and that having to call Granny to say that I had been killed in a car accident or a drive-by shooting wouldn’t have been an ideal start to the trip. Then, following the appropriate amount of time spent hugging according to the amount of time apart (which, it turns out, equates to approximately 4.5 seconds for each month separated, i.e. a long time) we began the journey back to Antigua.

It’s strange how a road traveled so often can become new adventure when experiencing it with people who are taking that camino for the first time. The world flashing past the window became foreign once again as I tried to imagine how it must appear to the company sitting on either side of me. What must driving through this new land have felt like to dear old mum and dad as they peered out into the fluorescent night of downtown Guatemala City? Something strange was happening: two parts of my life which, heretofore, had been held separately were colliding.

With their arrival they brought the ghosts of my existence somewhere else: equally a part of me, equally important, but an existence of a different space and time. Driving through the darkness, I realized that I was hearing about how Robert and Caroline Kerr have just pulled down their old shed. Until that moment, Robert, Caroline (and certainly Robert and Caroline’s shed) would never have featured in my thoughts as I whizzed past Hiper Paiz on the Roosevelt. Yet, now my parents’ neighbors might as well have been sitting here in the car with me, the presence of The Kerrs’ shed a sudden and disconcerting intrusion of that other life into my little Central American bubble.

“Well, it always was an eyesore . . .” I found myself thinking.

I went to bed feeling discombobulated only to fall into a fretful sleep; a forest of childhood neighbors wearing Guatemala traje performing household modifications to the rhythm of a traditional wooden flute, dancing through my dreams.

The next morning I joined my parents in their painstakingly selected lodgings for a spot of breakfast and a conversational catch-me-up. “Darling, you look so well!” exclaimed mum.

My heart sank. As far I’m concerned, this phrase can generally be translated into “you’ve put on weight!” which is something that always seems to please both mother and father immensely. This is also something which, absolutely and categorically, does not please me at all. Comments such as this (and I do not think I am alone here) are similar to the way in which our collective parents most enjoy photos where their children appear young, chubby and rounded at the edges. Childlike and roundy is directly in contrast to the kind of look I’m trying to cultivate in my 20s. As such, I far prefer questions wondering if I’m eating properly and getting enough sleep. When received, I’m put at ease as it indicates that I am in excellent and suitably edgy shape.

A few days into their trip, I became aware of a bizarre sort of role-reversal which happens when one is responsible for, as my granny would say, “The Aged P’s.” Formerly benign expeditions immediately became logistically complex and potentially threatening. I became more aware of the potential pits and foibles that Guatemalan living presents. I anxiously hoped they wouldn’t notice the homeless, alcoholic gent spread-eagled on the pavement, or the fact the lancha driver had just tripled the price and then made us wait for 45 minutes in the scorching sun before heading across the water. I started analyzing, for the first time, the relative safety criteria of shuttle companies, opting for road security over buen precio. After I’d popped them in a taxi after a quiet dinner and (despite the fact you could throw a stone at the front door of their hotel from the restaurant) requested that they text me upon safe arrival. Ridiculous, really: they are both intelligent and well-traveled individuals, but still, that didn’t stop me calling reception to check that they were actually safely home in bed with the lights out.

They were.

During the two-and-a-half-week visit, we did the usual things one does with guests: The Lake, Rio Dulce, all that jazz. Mum took endless photos of flowers and different types of tropical foliage; we drank Brahva, swam, went to markets, took tuk tuks and talked about NGO’s, malaria and the Royal Wedding. There was, of course, the novelty of eating out in restaurants, which provided an exciting alternative to the diet of avocados, tomato, granola, onion and spinach (or as we voluntarios pobrecitos like to refer to them: The Big Five) which the members of our financially challenged household subsist upon. There was even an impressive canoe capsizing incident which was, apparently, a spectacular first according to the people who hired my parents the special capsize-proof canoe.

Meanwhile, the “pay-you-back-soon” tab was extended dramatically with inappropriate and unnecessary purchases from various artisan markets. Indeed, I spent over 45 minutes selecting a pair of jaunty slippers which are like little floppy colored bags for your feet. A frugal buy when you’re living on thruppence halfpenny a week? I think not. Yet with mum and dad standing in the wings wielding their crisp and plentiful quetzales, the little foot sacks suddenly seemed like a brilliant choice and a way to improve my quality of life overall.

During the trip, dad took at least a stab at getting by with español, maneuvering his excellent Italian into mediocre Spanish with an Italian accent, while mother resorted to her usual all-purpose, speaking-to-people-who-aren’t-from-England language. It is a phenomenon that has to be heard to be believed, and something which haunted me throughout my childhood, providing many many hours of entertainment to both myself and my younger sister. Basically, what happens is this: she adopts the most bizarre hybrid of a conceptual accent as soon as she steps out of the plane / off the boat / or is faced with anyone who doesn’t have English as the first arrow in their linguistic quiver —  no matter how fluently they might speak the Queen’s tongue. The untrained ear would be forgiven for thinking that they were listing to a Congolese immigrant who had grown up in Wales after having been adopted by a family with roots in Northern Pakistan. I think she thinks it makes her easier to understand (which it utterly does not), and that by contorting the tone and flow of her words (still in English) to somehow mimic the form of the local vernacular, she is doing everyone a favor. She is, however, sadly and completely mistaken. She is indecipherable. Still, she cannot be swayed from her intense conviction that this is the appropriate way to communicate with the natives. Further, she claims to be absolutely unaware that this is something she does, and thus makes no attempt to stop doing it.

I have stopped, however, trying to find rhyme or reason to my parents and their thought processes. Something happens when people pass on their genes, which alters the way they understand the world around them.  Mother, for example, was über-chilled during one of the most death-defying camioneta journeys of my life, only to emerge from a benign minibus jaunt days later with a look of gaping terror and a demand for strong drink. Dad, for his part, successfully shattered the enjoyment of a breathtaking mountaintop view by refusing to relinquish his fascination with an old-fashioned water heater we had spotted on the hike up: “Was that a . . . no, it couldn’t have been . . . ! Was that a Whittington? Hannah, I really think that was a Whittington!”

Fabulous, dad. No, really. But can you just shut up and look at the lovely butterflies? Jeeesus.

The evidence to support the theory that parents operate in a slightly (but fundamentally) different universe is endless.

Alternative galaxies aside, however, all too soon their departure date dawned. Last-minute take-home purchases were made, and there was a flurry of retail activity at which point bag-sales in Antigua quadrupled and anybody who has ever made a fleeting acquaintance with my mother (with special reference to The Kerrs, of course) has now been made the lucky recipient of at least one bolsa woven by an “authentic Mayan weaver” (forward slash: a machine round the back of Pollo Campero).

Yes, the Wallace-Bowman Guate party was over. A sad moment indeed. Sadder, in fact, than I’d anticipated. It was an incredibly difficult goodbye. All parties pretended to be pretty cool about the situation until the mirage was unceremoniously exposed by mum sobbing into her morning fruit medley. The awareness of the two separate existences, one here and one there, which having been forced to acknowledge each other and discovering they got on pretty well, were being pulled apart once more. Home was becoming home again, a life here was becoming a life here.

As I cycled away from them, off into another Antigua morning, I didn’t mind admitting that the parting brought tears to my eyes. I’m not sure it’s true for others reading this, but for me the ‘rents aren’t just a biological propinquity, they’re my mates. I mean, who could not have infinite respect for people from whom you receive an email with the subject heading: “breaking news: just made a rather dramatic mushroom pâté”?

Sure, they piss me off sometimes. They often wear inappropriate or embarrassing items of clothing and ask too many questions about bollocks to which no one would ever know the answer, nor care, but I wouldn’t have them any other way.

Thanks for procreating at just the right time, folks. I owe you one.*

*Dad, I also know I actually owe you a lot of money. I haven’t forgotten. Lova ya.

Hannah Wallace Bowman is heading off for greater adventures, likely in Africa. Save her work, she’ll be famous someday. Promise.

I’d met Brielle DuFlon a few times before sitting down to interview her for La Cuadra.

“Well, that makes sense,” she said. “So am I.”

DuFlon noticed my hesitation and said, “And, yes, that’s the look I normally get when I tell people I’m from here. Then they ask me how.”

She laughs.

“I explain to them that my impeccable American accent comes from having spent the last six years living in the United States and speaking English at home. I have roots in both North and Central America. But Guatemala is my home.”

She continued, “Growing up, the people around me usually had darker skin than mine. Physically, I was very different. I am a minority in this country, and sometimes I feel like an impostor. Or, rather, I feel as though I might not be welcome to share all of the parts of the culture. But I consider myself a Latin-American artist more than an American artist. I find myself wanting to paint many of the same images as they do — the colors, the fruits, the figures, the angels, the devils, the textiles and the communal spaces. I hope others see me that way, or get to see me that way, eventually.”

Brielle DuFlon, whose parents are also Caucasian-Latin-American artist, has long lived in between any number of worlds. And it is to her great credit that she has developed a visual language which allows her free range of expression in them all.

Selected here are images from two distinct periods in DuFlon’s career. The woodcuts and stone lithographs were completed while working in the United States. The woodcuts, specifically, were exhibited in a show entitled, “Running Back,” which DuFlon describes as a “celebration of memory.”

“I tried to confront and explore childhood memories that remained so firmly in mind while others had disappeared completely. I only made six woodcuts, and an edition of six prints for each. I wanted to work in a traditional style, monochromatic and heavily detailed, with every corner as intricate as the center.

“The show was meant to be the sort of thing a child would find interesting, but that could also resonate for an adult. And it did. Adults who came to the gallery shared with me stories of their own, wherein they’d lived similar experiences in some other part of the world. It made me realize how similar we all are, and how much I enjoy provoking that ‘I know exactly what you mean’ feeling in the audience: an image that harkens to some deep emotion that they are convinced is complex and unique, but that has resonance in all of us.”

Speaking further about the earlier work, DuFlon coins an elegant phrase. “Printmaking,” she says, “is a perfect venue for the uncanny.”

“I enjoy making images that are lightly disturbing or dark. They make people think. Also, they are excellent in conveying complexity and thought. Why do you think Goya, Escher and Munch chose this medium so often? Also, I like working in greyscale. It requires you to play in volume, space and shadow. In relief printing, there are few colors, therefore texture and perspective have to make up for the lack of a more varied palette.”

Drawing the conversation to her more recent work, I noted that the newer paintings (absolute explosions of color) are, in some ways, the polar opposite of the monochromatic woodcuts and lithographs.

She corrected me, noting that, while they are more chromatically vibrant, the paintings also are finely detailed from border to border. “There’s a lot going on outside the center of the paintings.”

“But you’re right,” she continued. “I love color. I love mixing colors. At present I’m using oils because of the depth and the softness, the velvety texture of the paints. But I’ve carried over much of the graphic sense from the printmaking.”

Speaking of her upcoming show at La Galería de Panza Verde (5th Avenida Sur, #19, La Antigua), DuFlon becomes engagingly buoyant.

“The show is called, La Equación del Ser (The Equation of Being). There are constants and variables in the construction of the self. There are things  we can’t escape, things we choose to hold on to, things we let go, things we make bigger, things we make smaller. And what we choose to identify, to focus upon, brings us closer with others that choose the same traits.”

“I’ve chosen a surrealist path lately. In surrealism I’m trying to explore the conscious and the subconscious. The idea of the self is abstract, when not explicitly anatomical. It needs to be placed in space to be visually comprehensible. I’m aiming to represent feelings and thoughts as shapes, compartments, absences, colors, skies, symbolic objects and the body itself. We exist in this world both internally and externally. Our dreams, our desires, our physicality, our subconscious, our thoughts, our sexuality are all integral to understanding our relationship with the world and with one another.”

And Brielle DuFlon, who has brilliantly balanced between, and existed within, such different worlds is an excellent guide.

Do not miss this show.

La Equación del Ser is opening at La Galería de Panza Verde on Wednesday October 12, 2011 at 5 p.m. Mesón Panza Verde is located on 5^ta Avenida Sur, #19

Earlier this spring news reached out from a mountain city in Pakistan

I put aside an essay I was writing and sat quietly on the couch, staring at my laptop, watching the news spread virally through the pages of my former students from Brooklyn, many of whom I’d been with on September 11, 2001. From most of them, now in their late 20s and still living in New York City, the news was perfunctorily given: a link to the New York Times or the Daily News websites, a one sentence observation of good riddance, a profile picture changed out for an image of Lower Manhattan or one of a cousin who was with Ladder 12 and never took a step backwards once he hit the doors of the South Tower.

It was a half an hour before the first, “Fuck, Yeah!” startled me off the Facebook news feed. It was then that I finally set the computer on the couch and turned on the television to see what it had to offer. Not much, as it happened. The information was the standard 24-hour-news-cycle of inaccurate conjecture and pauses for commercials as we awaited more of the same.

With no substantive information beyond the headline, the channel moved to their secondary default: a hastily organized panel discussion that tossed back and forth precious little insight about “to what audience” the president most had to speak that night.

Then a report broke from the site of the World Trade Center that the streets were filling with thousands of people, mostly young, mostly students, who began chanting “USA!, USA!” and breaking into song and celebration.

I found myself whispering to the television, “Please, stop.” The on-scene reporter was beaming as he waded into the crowd. My head fell into my hands as I remembered collapsing into the driver’s seat of my car after work on September 11, 2001. The windshield was covered in ash and I absentmindedly turned on the wipers. Then, like I’d been shot, I realized I was mechanically brushing away human remains. For the thousandth time that day, I felt my soul fall out of my body.

I looked up from the couch and the kids on my television screen were still gathering, chanting. I picked up the phone to call my two best friends in Guatemala, both expatriated New Yorkers. As it happens, one was in Honduras on a holiday; the other was in Mexico on business. I left messages that said, “I thought I’d call you just in case you didn’t know . . .” It seemed somehow more right for one of us to share that news with the others.

Then I turned back to the television as the reporter inveighed his audience to “remember the rage we felt” on September 11, 2001. And to now look at these young people singing and dancing. With two memes he’d created his own circular narrative that neatly packaged both beginning and ending — a story he had the honor of sharing with the audience from Ground Zero. He tossed back to the newsroom where the panel picked up his thread and speculated that, politically, “this was a great day for Obama,” and then countered itself by offering the more generous observation that this was a “great day for America.”

But I cannot see it as such. It was an ending. Maybe a coda. But it wasn’t a great day. Nothing associated with that much cruelty, not even the death of its proximate architect, could be considered great in the way it was being presented on television. Not by me. The narrative being sold on televisions and computer monitors around the world was an artifice, and I see a danger in allowing that first draft of history to harden into canon.

My memory of September 11, 2001 does not begin with rage; it is not how we responded.

For the great majority of us, rage came later and in the company of a confused host of other emotions. On September 11, New York City was defined by a dark, subterranean sadness: a rolling basso profundo suffusing the city. Above that, in the schools and offices of the five boroughs an impassioned fugue of shock, horror and fear passed between pairs and small gatherings.  All day long we spoke to one another, listened to one another and cared for one another. Around the city the names we used were specific to our clans, but we all participated in the same grand conversation — and in the same desperate cadence.

If you had listened in at the window of the FDR High School social studies office at some random moment during the day, you would have heard something very much like this:

“Fanny, how’s Victor? Did his unit get called in?”

“Calm down, baby. They’ll be fine. They’ll be fine.”

“Have you seen Brendan? How’s Mallory?”

“Where’s Richie? Are his people okay?”

“Sue, can I use your phone? My father’s office is in the Empire State Building.”

“No. I haven’t heard anything from him, yet.”

“Danny’s office was where?!! Tell me when you reach him. I’ll use the phone later.”

“Alisa, did Sue get word from Danny?”

“How are Herb’s kids? Are they home from school?”

“Thank God.”

“Any word from Danny?”

Change the names and you would have heard that same conversation at windowsills from Gun Hill to Gramercy to Gravesend.

My first thought for this Letter From the Editors was go gather the five contributors to La Cuadra who have written the most for us over the years and take a group picture of them all holding up their middle fingers.

The headline was going to be: “Yayyyy! We’re This Many!”

But Anne Seymour is in Zambia and out in the bush. Kevin Petrie is out of rehab, but back in Seattle. Joe Bageant is on the wrong side of the grass. And Hannah Wallace Bowman is too busy to be bothered with us lunkheads most of the time, though we don’t hold that against her at all. It shows good judgment.

So that just left the two of us (lovingly, and with a sense of anti-establishment solidarity) to flip the bird to the world. Yet, even using both hands we’d still be one finger short because La Cuadra is now officially five years old! To the right, is a reproduction of the first page of Volume I, Issue One from June / July of 2006.

At that time, La Cuadra (or, The Block, as it was known for its first two issues) was 16 pages of smartassedness, published on newsprint and almost entirely satirical or scatological in content. And though we’ve grown into a full-on glossy, we’re proud of our editorial consistency over the years.

The idea to put out an English language magazine (that spoke more to our mindset than the other excellent publication in this burgh) arose después muchos mezcales at ass-o’clock in the morning, nearly 7 years ago. For both the image and the record: the conversation took place at an early-opening bar just past dawn in the market.

One of us was wearing a full-length black dress.

Aside from being drunk, we were frustrated trying to get well-written English language periodicals in Guatemala. And then, the more we drank about it, the more we realized that most of the magazines we’d once liked up north had gone all flabby around the editorial board, anyway. So one of us raised a glass to the other and with all due sincerity said, “Fuck it! Let’s make this baby!”

The bartender, noting the dress, and knowing just enough English to be concerned, made his way to the far end of the bar.

But, at the time we were also busy with other projects, including taking care of our hangovers the following afternoon, trying to design ever-smarter ways of bringing booze across the border from Mexico and how one might drive business to the then hinterlands of 1^st Avenue in Antigua.

So, the idea would fall through the cracks until we’d get drunk enough again to swear we were gonna “get that damned thing done tomorrow.”

Nothing happened until the summer of 2006 when your current Editor-in-Chief was half-way around the world — literally half-way around — in Darjeeling, India. With his bad influence removed, the copublisher and founder of La Cuadra finally pushed this baby out into the world. God bless his black, little heart.

Loads of things have changed in our lives over those years, as we’re sure they have for you, too. But where we’re extra fortunate is that we’ve had a forum to chronicle all that jazz in these pages. All the deaths, the loves, the passions, the arrests, the paroles and the stories that seem to grow in this odd little town like nuclear-radiated mutant raspberries, have made up much of this rag’s content. Just as it’s good to have a local bar — a metaphorical campfire if you will — to which one can retire at the end of the day and share what’s on your mind with friends, having this outlet has been great for our stress levels and our overall mental health. And we can’t tell you how good it feels to have loyal readers who actually give a damn about all of our ramblings.

But we can, humbly, say thanks.

One never has any idea, really, how the world is going to progress from a starting point. Some of the longest and best relationships in our lives have begun with the most awkward of mornings. And some of the best ideas we’ve ever had have come crashing down around us like so many paternity suits (it’s metaphorical, moms, don’t worry) from ideas we found auspicious only hours before. That’s all part of the game. New shit can wildly succeed or it can completely suck. You never really know.

But, every once in a while it just makes sense to abandon ship, dive into the darkness and swim in the direction of some imagined shore. One arm pulling against the current, one finger raised in salute to this beautiful, horribly confused world.

And so, we say again, we’re proud to be “this @@@@@ many.” And we hope to be many more still.

We couldn’t have done it without help from a league of friends and contributors and editors whom we love and thank very, very, very much . . . and we hope you’ll help us stick around for at least a few more years.

MJT / JPR

Presidential candidate Herman Cain, at the Family Leader Presidential Lecture Series in Pella, Iowa, promised that in his Administration no congressional bill longer than three pages would be signed into law

The comment led to a recent campaign kerfuffle between Jon Stewart and Fox News. Stewart, mocking Cain’s lack of interest in reading with a mildly black inflection in his delivery, opened the door for a twenty-four hour Fox assault against the “racism” inherent in Comedy Central’s treatment of Cain, an African-American, Republican Presidential candidate, talk show host, and former CEO of Godfather’s Pizza chain.

In one sense, this was just another blip in the seemingly endless, twenty-four hour news cycles which will guide America to the 2012 Presidential election. Lost in the haze of commentary, the Cain / Stewart / Fox imbroglio disappeared just days later when MSNBC commentator Mark Halperin referred to Barack Obama as a “dick.”

And thus passed another week in America.

But wait a minute. Stop the torrent of emptiness. Herman Cain said that bills, indeed laws, should be only three pages long. Cain may be trapped in the Tim Pawlenty range of public opinion polling among Republican candidates, but he’s there on the debate stage. If the presidential campaign were like the NCAA Basketball Tournament, then in political bracketology, Cain is past the sweet sixteen, heading for the elite eight; he’s a businessman with a flair for language; he once famously challenged Bill Clinton on health care during a 1994 town hall meeting; and he represents a legitimate constituency within the orbit of his party.

And he said that bills should only be three pages long.

Consider this: What if, at this stage in our democratic experiment, this really is the debate that matters?

One of Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s attacks on health care reform (the Affordable Care Act or ACA) was its length. To express this he carried around the 2700-page bill to various televised committee meetings and press conferences and repeatedly referred to it as “this behemoth 2700-page bill.” So, is Cain exercising extreme hyperbole, or is he merely extending the “wisdom is inversely related to volume” logic of policy debate? At what point do clips from the campaign trail begin to actually shape the substance of policy discussion? Are we at risk of ever more examples of “death panel digressions” defining real decisions?

That should be a sobering thought.

Our enormous challenges today are to escape the depths of the sinkhole into which the American economy has fallen — to create real jobs, to teach the kids the skills for a new century, and, as has been my professional focus, to assure affordable health care for our people. All of this proceeds within the context of an intensely competitive world economy and physical threats to safety and security. You can build your own list of the big issues. But we can agree: there’s heavy lifting ahead.

This series of commentaries in La Cuadra has provided a contemporaneous account of, now, almost three years of health care reform debate — an important but discrete corner of the big picture. In this summer of 2011, a number of states are taking the initial steps to prepare for the coverage expansions scheduled for 2014 under the ACA, and an even larger group of states have joined in judicial challenges to the law, which will likely be resolved by the Supreme Court during the 2012 election season. Further, health care policy plays prominently in the continuing struggle between the President and the Congress to reach agreement on raising the national debt ceiling.

As described in our most recent commentary (La Cuadra, Vol. V, Issue 3, May / June, 2011), House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) recently proposed a repeal of the Affordable Care Act and a series of reforms which would include the creation of block grants to pay for a reduced Medicaid program, and, in 2022, a full redesign of Medicare into a voucher support system. His proposal gave vitality to both parties. Ryan earned accolades for his courage from the right, and he enabled Democrats to unify in opposition, especially to the long term restructuring of Medicare.

Now in the heat of summer, the Republicans argue for no new taxes, no way, never again. The White House focuses on eliminating tax breaks for corporate jets, tax preferences for the oil and gas companies, the rich in general, and, borrowing a theme from Harry Truman 1948, Congressional indolence. President Obama’s centrist instincts offer up a hundred billion, here or there, in health care cuts obscured in a maze of formula changes.

Meanwhile, the nation lurches forward toward an early August deadline to increase the debt ceiling or, if the politicians are unsuccessful, an end to the world economy as we know it. Just another day in Politics, USA.

Which brings us back to Herman Cain.

At what point does the caricature of debate take control of the nation’s destiny?

Tallons Pub, County Wicklow, Ireland

Some 15 years ago, my parents took a trip to the old familial sod in Ireland. They were traveling with my father’s cousin Barbara and her husband Joe. For as near as we can tell, it was the first time a Tallon from our clutch had returned across the pond since arriving in New York City sometime in the mid 1800s.

They were there for a holiday: to see with their own eyes the forty shades of green, to visit the Mother of all Pubs at the St. James Gate Brewery in Dublin and sample a pint of Guinness crafted from the dark waters of the Liffy. And if the opportunity arose, they were prepared to dance with leprechauns or lift a few bob from a pot-o-gold, should they find one.

Tied into the trip, however, were also the stirrings of a genealogical quest to find out who The Tallons were, and from whom we had descended. After emigrating to the United States, my father’s family made homes in various neighborhoods and tenement hells around New York City for generations — exactly how many generations we are still not sure. But when my Da was just an infant, his parents moved their family upstate to Binghamton, NY and away from the Brooklyn brood. My Da rarely visited his extended family back in the borough; and growing up, my brothers and I had only the faintest of contact with the Ebbets-Field-adjacent part of the clan. Yet, somewhere along the way, Da wanted a better understanding of our place in the scope of time.

That probably happened when he looked around at his three boys and realized that in the grandest scheme of things, once we have children, we’re all just middle men.

So after decades of short weekend vacations, often to Washington, DC or the Saratoga Race Track, my mother and father headed off to Ireland.

A year before that holiday the New York Times ran a story about The Wicklow Way, an old post road (and current hiking trail) that runs from Dublin City to Clonegal in County Carlow, a region — according to family lore — to which we’d been chased by a band of angry Frenchmen sometime in the late 13^th Century.

According to the article in The Times, along the Wicklow Way there sits an establishment called Tallon’s Pub, better known locally by a different name altogether; that name intrigued the group and they decided it was worth a look.

My folks and Da’s cousins knocked around Wicklow for a day, asking questions about the pub and any Tallons that might still be in the area. There are many of us still there, and, as it happens, the pub has been firmly held in Talloned hands since it opened in the late 1780s.

Upon arrival at the establishment (a stone hovel, just large enough for four stools and a few tables in the corner) the publican, a short and scantily-toothed woman in her 50s, greeted them warmly. They were the only customers she’d had in a few days.

She herself was a Tallon, and they got to talking about the mutual family name. Over the course of a few pints, she was kind enough to pull the leather-bound record book from under the cash box in the till. It was replete with royal charters on parchment and 18^th-century dispensations to sell booze under the authority of the Crown. That crown, of course, was foreign and it weighed sorely upon the proud Fenian heads of the Wicklow Mountain men. The governess noted that plans for The Rising of the Moon in 1798 were said to have been discussed in this very pub, likely with pro-generative Tallons on either side of the bar, ready to stir up a mess of trouble for the Brits.

Those Brits, as occupiers, knew that they had to allow for a certain amount of drinking amongst the indigenous population, but they also feared booze-and-romantic-gesture-fueled rebellion, and as such there were a number of blue laws established to regulate the publican’s affairs. One of those laws was the provision that on Sundays no Irishman could drink within three miles of his own home. This, effectively, shut down local pubs like Tallon’s one day of the week and the sheer mean-spiritedness of the decree might have drawn an earlier me to the field of battle, pint in one hand, pike in the other.

But on a Sunday, sometime when the great powers were fretting over the fate of Napoleon’s Army and Wellington’s fleet, a member of the Carlow constabulary wandered down the Wicklow Way and noted that the craic was overly good at Tallon’s Pub. He entered the doorway, saw it was jammed to the rafters with locals and was ready to shut the place down permanently, as they were in blatant violation of an order from the Crown.

Fortunately, the family has long been blessed with a silvery tongue and current publican Tallon was able to talk the officer down by explaining that, just hours before, his heifer was with calf, the calf was breech, and that without immediate intervention, both calf and cow would surely have died. Sweet Jesus, you should’a heard her wail! Sweet Jesus, the gathering storm! Sweet Jesus, the troubles it would’a caused come the winter!

He’d sent the boys running through the fields and over the stones to fetch help from near and far. God bless the neighbors. They were the finest neighbors in the entirety of the world and when they heard that it was the Tallons in need, they came on the fly and were able — through strong rope, joint action and the grace of a loving God — to save both heifer and calf, and now wouldn’t it a been both a shame and a sin to turn them away from the bottles after such excitement and decency? And did not the Lord Jesus Himself turn water to wine? Sure, He did. Sure, He did. And what day do ya’ tink that happened? ’Twas fer a wedding, it ’twas. The Wedding at Canna, it ’twas . . .  and on a Sunday, fer sure, it ’twas!

That explanation and the proffer of free drink turned the officer’s mind, and a legendary session was held under the consent of the Crown. From that day forward, for several hundred years now, those along the Wicklow Way have called the bar The Dying Cow.

Most of the locals are still farmers, and many of them are my blood relations. To them I raise my glass.

Just under a year ago Alex, a former student and close friend, called me with the news that Anna Parachkevova had been murdered by her husband while she slept in their apartment in Brussels.

I never visited Anna in Brussels. And, of course, I never witnessed the scene of the crime, but I’ve been haunted by a bewildering desire to know how the room appeared when the police arrived — as if understanding exactly what happened would allow me to fix it, to track it all backwards. As if I could categorize the scene with precision, then I could play the tape in reverse. Protect her somehow. That such a thing is irrational doesn’t matter. I want to bring her back home, and so I’m drawn there. But when I picture the scene, Anna always slips away. In my imagination I can walk into the room, see the pool of blood on the floor, the gory linens, the bathroom door ajar. If I’d like, I could sample the bottle of wine, half empty, that I imagine is on her kitchen table next to her laptop and ashtray. I can see the murder weapon thrown in the corner. I can browse her bookshelf and wonder what poetry she’s been reading most recently — but try as I will I cannot bring the image of Anna into that room. I’m always alone seeing a nameless tragedy. I cycle my vision from walls to bed to floor to window several times, but the scene is red and black — and there is no body.

Yet, every time I leave that room and go back into the hallway, there she is, leaning against the wall: her smile, her hazel eyes, her black hair, her fair skin. I can hear her voice clearly with its liquid Eastern European accent as she takes my arm and says, “Lit’s get out ov here, T.” I can hear her laugh, an unusually abrupt shotgun blast of both joy and derision. I can feel her leading me away from that abyss.

She won’t allow me to see her as she appeared in that room. And as I try to fight my way in to find her, I’m thankful for her vigilance, even as it carries with it an infinite sadness. It’s part of how I know she’s still here. I push at the edges, Anna pushes back.

You may not see it, but there is grace in that dance.

A few months back I started spending time with a Spanish woman from Extremadura, a province near the Portuguese border. On our first date we talked well past dessert and a second bottle of wine — one hell of a feat, given my limited proficiency in Spanish and her equally suspect skills in English, but we found a way. It took concentration and creativity and patience, but we were able to feel our way towards one another. The heart of the night came when I asked about her arrival in Guatemala a year before. A look came to her face that was both indefinable and self-evident. It was the look of someone who, just for a flash, left herself for somewhere far away.

She sat quietly for a moment, and then told me the story. Two days before she left Extremadura, Victoria was with her best friend, her non-biological sister Yoyita. There was singing, drinking, dancing and toasting the coming year of Victoria’s adventure on the other side of the world. Two days later Victoria was on a plane, the next night she was in Antigua. The following morning she checked her email and discovered that Yoyita had died, having somehow contracted an exceptionally aggressive form of cerebral meningitis that spiked her fever and killed her within 24 hours. She was 27 years old. Victoria didn’t have the money to turn around and go home. She never saw the body, never attended the funeral. On the inside of her wrist was a tattoo of both of their names.

Victoria’s hands turned upwards, her fingers flowered outward and then fell to the table. She looked at her wrist and touched the names.

“Gone, but not all gone,” she said in English.

I took her hands and we sat quietly for a while. I then told Victoria about Anna. It was the first time I’d unearthed the story since the previous summer sitting around a table at an Italian café in Greenwich Village with Alex, Anna’s brother and a few other central members of the tribe. Even then I’d never told anyone about my picturing of the crime scene. I tried to express to Victoria how not being able to see Anna in the room, but always meeting her in the hallway, meant that she was “gone, but not all gone.” I told her how two distinct worlds exist on either side of Anna’s apartment door, and how that leaves an uncertainty, a lack of finality and a nagging, yet reassuring faith that there is still something of her left in this world. I told her how trying to picture Anna dead is exquisitely painful, and yet how not being able to see her as dead is achingly beautiful. She nodded her head.

“Eso es saudade,” she said.

Saudade, she explained, is a Portuguese word that has no direct translation to any other language. It is a deep and resonant idea that a non-native speaker will likely never fully comprehend, but it is giving even at the edges. As Victoria explained that night, one manifestation of saudade is a longing for someone who is lost with the absolute assurance that that person is gone forever. Yet living in the heart of that finality is the smallest seed of hope for a return. Saudade is a keyhole in the door down a long, dark hallway through which you can see a small, distant light. Saudade is what the captain’s wife feels as she looks at the sea years after her husband was to return. Saudade is the hope that makes hopelessness so unbearable and yet so galvanic, so alive. “It is the most real feeling, the most real thing I know, but it can’t be touched,” she said.

I have saudade for Anna. Victoria has saudade for Yoyita. The last glass of wine was shared silently, her right hand resting in my left.

Dried Papaya seeds, Secnidal, Flagyl, perricone tea, cloves of raw garlic,

I have become au fait with such terms as “host” and “incubation period.” I seem to spend a substantial percentage of my time boiling herbs. I discuss my bowel movements with people I’ve met only moments before. I have become one of the stricken, one of the damned, one of the people you see despondently propping up the end of the bar with a fizzy water and a sachet of re-hydration salts, glaring enviously at “The Healthys.”

Amoebas: they aren’t funny, they aren’t clever and they certainly aren’t sexy, but they have become a large part of my life for the past three months and it’s time to write about it. Before I share my experience with you, however, I will say this: please forgive me for any vulgarity. These observations  are written in the spirit of honesty and openness, and in the hope that by expressing the intense frustration which comes from seeking a curative silver bullet (which continues to elude) I have a better chance of preventing myself from completely losing my marbles. I tell this tale in full understanding that upon publication it is likely I will lose any residual street-cred which still lingers from the days before I become one who perpetually wailed about abdominal cramping. I hereby knowingly relinquish any future hope of any romantic or intimate relationships within the radius of this magazine’s catchment zone.

I’ll begin by saying that I’ve almost forgotten what life was like pre-parasites. These days I seem to exist in some kind of godforsaken, low budget, Alien sequel. They have resiliently resisted all extermination attempts — coaxing me into a false sense of security as they lay low for a period of weeks — only to sally forth with renewed gusto after a false reprieve. I am in fact currently knocking on the door of my four-month anniversary in my role as the mother ship; evidently I’m somewhat of a catch in the world of single-celled organisms. Week upon week my innards provide this potent breed of flesh-eating buggers with a rollicking good time as they merrily chow down on my intestinal tract with apparently no regard for traditional (and not so traditional) medicine. Who knows, maybe Sigourney Weaver had it right all along and the only solution is to shave my head and throw myself into a ravine of boiling lava; Pacaya is only 45 minutes and $10 dollars away, after all.

In all honestly, I am a little worried that they might be devouring me towards an early grave. If you look them up on the net (which I did, and categorically do not advise if you are similarly afflicted) you will discover a disturbing number of gruesome images, page after page of terrifying statistics, and detailed stories about the slow and painful deaths suffered by fellow members of the human species when the amoebas moved from their intestinal tracts to their brains. Yes! Left untreated, your amoebic dysentery can morph, over time, into BRAIN WORMS.  Here’s a brief quote from one of the more sardonic sites:   “. . . parasites infect us all the time. They live in our bodies, even in our cells, and most of the time we do not even know that they are there. The brain can provide a pleasant, nurturing environment for parasites, because it has structures that prevent many of the immune system’s cells from entering, at least in the early stages of infection. Add to that plenty of oxygen and nutrients, and the brain seems like a rather nice place to live.”

Heartwarming stuff, eh?

Living with amoebas not only tests your patience and your immune system, but it examines the limits of friendships. Where do those relationship boundaries lie? How far would you go for a mate? I am pleased to say that my friends fared pretty well on this count. An example: one day, unable to get back from the city in time to make it to the laboratory with my “sample,” I gave it to a gal pal of mine to deliver on my behalf.

(I pause at this point with a side note: the editor suggested that I remove the following paragraph in the interests of propriety. I decided to leave it in, partly because now that I have decided to make my infectious little beings available for public scrutiny, I might as well tell the whole story. Nevertheless, he is a wiser man than I and I ignore him at my peril. So, as a compromise, I issue the following warning: more sensitive readers may wish to skip ahead a paragraph.)