5cense

536> Purging ego while bridging the archival gap: 1980-83 south of the border to Pebble Beach

3 AUG 2017 | DC> Just when we declared ourselves Anon I'm Us (to the extent that we also announced Calamari Archive would only publish anonymous/pseudonymous works going forward, starting w/ This Thing...), i'm gonna return to being myself for a post, in order to fill in some gaps in the 5cense archives + facilitate the ego-purging process by putting my life online... tho we still feel more comfortable writing in 1° person plural as we consider this a collective of guises—me, Cal A. Mari, Rem+Rom, Chaulky + our bedder-½ (who we've travelled most of our life with). As regular readers may know, we use 5cense as a way to essentially archive our "dadastream," in order to further our writing methodology. We've kept this webbed journal since 2003, but the past few projects we've worked on mine material from before this time, so we've retroactively back-filled the archives based on written journals (that we've kept fairly consistently starting in the late 80s). Some of this material (including our brother's journals) was mined for 'SSES" 'SSES" "SSESY' (vol 0-1), which roughly covers the '80s, digging back some into the 70s, under the guise of Chaulky White. A Raft Manifest covers the years 1966—1981, at least in our mind (channeled from our collective unconscious), under the guise of Rem+Rom (yes, in theory (if you believe the promo swag) it's about feral twins born from a rogue member of the Lewis + Clark expedition, so should take place in the early 1800s, but as we also said in the last post, we are incapable of lying, so have to project our personal childhood experiences metaphorically into this framework (+ also embed the schemata of "Huck Finnegan's Wake")).

We didn't keep a diary in the 70s, or if we did, don't have it in our possession, or much else in the way of written records. From whatever photos/letters/etc. we could find, we already posted an entry spanning the 60-70s. And we've started to flesh out the 90s some, tho there are still lots of gaps that we'll fill in maybe when we get back to putting together 'SSES" 'SSES" "SSEY' vol II (which will roughly span 1990-1997). It's the 80s we feel a need to fill in now... not that we'll necessarily base any work on this era (perhaps vol 3 of the West of Kingdom Come quadrilogy), but just for our own sake we need to get a grip on this pivotal "coming-of-age" era to bridge continuity. We don't have much to go off from the early 80s except memory, photos + misc. ephemera... not that we took a lot of photos during this time (we took some photography classes after 1982-83) + if we did they usually weren't of other people. We should also give the standard disclaimer that to protect the privacy of those living, we try to only show/talk about dead people + ourselves here.

We showed a recent passport a few posts ago, but here are pages from our first 1 covering 1980—85... the 1° we have in our possession anyway, not sure what we did before that.

w/ middle name + some of the #s blurred out just in case... but left the rest cuz of how cool it was when they hole-punched #s back then... think they stopped doing that in the 80s

 

student visas

 

Panama 1985 + another student visa for 1981

 

 

gets a bit sparse after that... the only other pages with stamps on them

1980. As we probly mentioned in the 60s-70s post, before 1980 is foggy, we rely on what our parents told us + they got divorced right when we were born + had different sides of the story. During these years we got kidnapped back + forth between Mexico (where our mother lived) + Oregon (where our father lived). In 1979, we (3 out of us 4 brothers) got taken to Mexico, that much we're sure off so we'll start there, 1980, living in Mexico. Our mother had a house in Axixic, a quaint old gringo haven on the shores of lake Chapala, but we went to school in Guadalajara (about an hour away) so rented an apartment there as well. Me in 7° grade, Chaulky in 8°.

Our grandmother was quite the archivist/genealogist so letters we sent to our grandparents (on our mother's side, in California, collectively referred to as "granmar" in A Raft Manifest) she kept + we got them all back after she died. Chaulky wrote to + confided in them far more than i did, some of those letters we included in 'SSES" 'SSES" "SSESY' (w/ embellishments) but will repost here:

pg 122 of 'SSES" 'SSES" "SSEY'

 

2 more letters from Chaulky to Grandpa Cal

As evidenced by the letters, Chaulky wasn't so crazy about living in Mexico, nor did he "want to move to a hippie community in the mountains" (i think he's referring to Chico, where our eldest brother lived). I also complained about immigration problems, how we couldn't stay in Mexico cuz we didnt have the right papers. In my letters i usually bragged about my grades, complained about water outages (some over a month long) + budget cuts at school so we didn't have a Spanish teacher (tho we did take French), or talked about sports + specifically requested they send detailed stats cuz all they showed in the Mexican news were overall standings.

 

pg 2 of another letter, this 1 to our stepmother, dated Jan 1978 but i think we meant 1980 as we didnt move to Mexico until th fall of 79

In another letter (April 7, 1980) I wrote: "All the places in Ajijic and around (like Chapala) are crowded with tourists and rich Guadalajarans (known as "popeys"), so there is not that much stuff to do, if you go swimming you can hardly fit in the pool there are so many people. At night when they have fiestas you can barely walk there is so many people and you have to wait in line to play games, etc."... some things never change, same rants we go on here on 5cense 30+ years later.

We were pretty behind the times culturally, we got movies/music etc. a year or two after they came out in the states. Disco was still popular (Axixic even had a discoteque) + the "popey" girls wore tight Jordache jeans + all the popey boys wanted to do was pick fights, especially with gringos. But I did have a friend from Philly that spent summers in Axixic + I think it was around this time he turned me on to punk music + skateboarding.

skateboard park in Guadalajara (before we had braces so had buck teeth)

We distinctly remember waking up at the bottom of that rimmed bowl behind us w/ a concussion—don't even remember falling. Pretty much gave up skateboarding after that. Ditto surfing—we had a cheap surfboard waterlogged in front so the nose would dip under at inopportune moments + it didnt have a leash either, so every time we wiped out we had to swim back to shore to fetch it. Reagan was elected president in 1980, but we were probly completely oblivious. The Circe story from 'SSES" 'SSES" is an accurate portrayal of those times, pretty much happened as Chaulky says:

 

1981. Still in Mexico, our 2° oldest brother graduated + in the fall Chaulky decided he wanted to go live w/ our uncle in Oregon. So then it was just me + my mom living in Mexico, but she was usually at the beach or stayed in Axixic while we went to Guadalajara. For a while I commuted back + forth from Axixic to Guad on busses, so we must've given up our rental there, but also remember that after my brothers left she subletted the rooms out so we lived with random people. We were in 9° grade at this point, but not really a freshman, cuz Mexican schools got divided into 7°—9° ("secundaria") + 10°—12° ("prepatoria").

yearbook photos, 1981

Some wise-ass drew the joint in my mouth. Do they still make yearbooks? After 1982 i didnt take photos for yearbooks + never attended a prom nor graduation.

we're in the back row, 2° from the left

The guy next to us in the green shirt is the artist Jorge Rojas, known for doing things like living on display in a box 24x7 for weeks at a time, while live-streaming his every action, so dont think he'd mind that we posted this (+ he's the one who sent us the above photo).

 

at our favorite beach (El Tecuan)

(The scene in A Raft Manifest where we woke up next to a hole where a turtle had laid her eggs happened on this beach. The presidents brother flying overhead saw the tracks next to where we were sleeping + after they landed (airstrip just beyond) had his bodyguard dig them up to eat.)

 

casting our net in a lagoon at El Tecuan

 

 

shores of Lake Chapala

 

seems they had parades + fiestas all the time in Axixic

 

small-town bullfight/rodeo

 

w/ Chaulky (left) on the big pyramid in Mexico D.F.

 

Palenque (sometime around this time we drove from Guadalajara to Yucatan, stopping at all the sites)

 

 

What we don't mention in the letters is the drug-taking and how we lost our virginity (nothing worth writing home about), or how we got bullied (where we learned to run rather than fight back).

1982. Still in Mexico, solo. At the very start of 1982 is when our dad died. And then our grandpa Cal in April of 1982... yes, 1 of the Cals that Cal A. Mari derived our named from... our father also went by Cal. When grandpa Cal died we were skiing in Mammoth, CA with our mom + some creepy asshole guy (we already told the story in this post ... maybe this episode will get worked into WoKC vol 3). We were sort of an ambitious kid (in Algebra II in 9° grade) + concerned that the Mexican school wouldn't be good enough to get into a decent college back in the states. And we also had some creepy step-uncle (the subject of a different book entirely .. put it this way, his inappropriate sexual advances spanned both genders + 3 generations, from son-in-law to grandmother), this creepy step-uncle happened to be a teacher at a snooty boarding school near Pebble Beach + pulled strings to get us in on scholarship, along w/ Chaulky, so we were reunited. Chapter 11 of 'SSES" 'SSES" "SSEY' covers this time period from his perspective. While Chaulky sort of thrived here, we hated the place... full of rich brats whose parents didn't want to deal with them. I guess you could call this our Catcher in the Rye year, where we slipped into cynical depression. When the other kids were trying to figure out how to sneak off and do drugs, we stayed in friday + saturday nights reading + studying.

grandpa Cal in Axixic

 

our 1° roommate at boarding school (that took horse tranquilizers + got expelled)

 

our next roommate, from Singapore, always messing around w/ numb-chucks which was a bit unnerving

 

jumping off a cliff in Carmel Valley (must be a metaphor there?)

 

on a typewriter at RLS (X'ed out days on calendar pretty much sums it up)

 

got our first electric guitar around this time + oh yah, guess we also went to the US Festival in 1982

[9/1/2019 addendum: after discovering negatives + photos we'd never scanned in... here's a few more shots from this time period, mostly in Axixic, Mexico (except the 1st at RLS:

tapehead

 

at the corridas

 

lake Chapala

 

 

 

w/ dyed mod hair + a Duran Duran shirt

 

a retroactive 1 for our Goat Rodeo site

 

 

+ sum additional art shots here. Chronological continuation—1984-85 in California + Panama.]

 535 <( )> 537 > Unkel Fester's idol-killing family album from the Bay Area down to Panama 1984-85

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