So please, roaming writers of these city blocks, share your wit and let’s make this representation of Miami personal and accurate.

Your ideas are wanted.

So. Art Basel – Free booze. Free art. How can one go wrong?

I miss Miami. Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad to be home jumping in canals and climbing skyscrapers of haystacks to the sounds of friend’s banjos but I cannot deny the excitement our traffic-ridden, corrupted government, mojito, bling-bling South beach, Cuban coffee, Shaquille O’ Neil, real-estate boomed, construction site, hurricane hang-out of a city gives me. I miss my little apartment located right on the border of Little Haiti and the Design District where I am a direct product of gentrification (check out Design Place). I miss going for walks on Sunday mornings down 2nd Ave in Little Haiti to buy a stick of sugar cane to masticate. I miss the transparent Atlantic where my soul dives among statues of coral.

And Miami, you have changed my Spanish. I am in the southern California desert in a border town and when I speak Spanish, the locals ask if I’m Italian. Orale vato…soy Mexicana, huey! Chicharrones, tamarindo, agua de jamaica, y menudo! Huaraches, saltillo, charros, chile y limon con todo, y tortillas para tenedores.

Silence defines where I am now: Holtville, California. Miami is full of crayon-like people constantly coloring the city. I will be a part of that canvas again in Fall.

This could have been me. This could have been you.

I am standing in front of a dirt grave that is sloppily marked with a brick-sized piece of cement with the engravings “John Doe 15-20.” These are the plots of the anonymous. The first number marks the row and the second number marks the column where the brick belongs. The only thing known about them is that they came across daunting desert terrain from Mexico, Central, and South America in hopes of some better life with an adequate amount of food, shelter, and clothing for their family and that they didn’t make it. I look to my left then I look to my right and I see these rows and columns of soft dirt marked only with the blocks that any punk kid could kick over to the next grave in a nonchalant act of boredom.

This is the resting ground of the unsuccessful immigrant. The name: Potter’s Field.

The setting is in a simple graveyard, naked of any afterthought of the dead. The border of the place is un-kept desert land filled with tumbleweeds and un-kept farmland filled with broken down farm equipment. Down the dirt pathway outside of the graveyard, you come across a wall of poisonous oleanders. Just beyond this wall is a quaint, small-town cemetery filled with ornate headstones and freshly placed flowers. A well-manicured lawn and a large American flag justly decorate the place. As you walk out you see the sign “Terrace Park Cemetery.” Then it is a desert agricultural paradise all around you.

The town is called Holtville, CA. It is located 120 miles east of San Diego in the Imperial County. It was once dubbed the “Carrot Capital of the World” and celebrates the orange vegetable each year with a Carrot festival that is complete with a fair, carrot recipe competitions, and a parade highlighting the year’s adorned Carrot Queen. The population is a hefty 6,000 of which mostly comprise of Mexicans and Farmers. The distinct line between the two is now slowly becoming analogous. I’ve spent 15 of my 22 years of life in this small town. Every week headlines in the local paper keep track of the dead bodies of immigrants found in the desert. From the driveway of my house I can be in Mexico within 15 minutes. Once you cross that borderline into the border town of Mexicali, the capitol of Baja California, you notice not only that there are different letters on the stop signs, but a distinct difference in lifestyle. The impoverished flee to this city from all over Mexico, Central, and South America to get the next chance to cross the barbed wire fence, the men with uniforms and guns, and the vicious extremity of the desert.

I will not discuss how the militarization of the U.S. Mexico border became during the Prohibition era to reduce the smuggling of alcohol or of the Texas Revolution in 1836 and the Mexican War of 1846 to 1848. I will not discuss the importance of population control or the need for cheap labor in the United States. No. I am simply telling you a story from a basic human point of view. A point of view without borders or economic systems. A point of view that stems from knowing the importance of life and the will to strive to make things better for those closest to us and to not succeed. Something we can all understand and relate to. A point of view from a twenty-two year old woman, myself, reflecting upon these fallen and forgotten. This topic strikes close to home.

My internal dialogue is in English. I am of the first generation of my family to experience such a thing.

As Americans, we are mostly immigrants or our family had immigrated here generations ago that many can keep track of. Somewhere someone in our family has or had a story of their quest for the American Dream of opportunities.

Both of my parents were born in Mexico. My mother came in a melon truck and my father remembers joining the masses in immigration from Mexico to the U.S. in the 1940’s and jumping on a train to Northern California. Both came through Mexicali.

I remember my father speaking before of the evolution of families. Each generation must do their part to step up in the ladder of life to give the next generation a boost. That is how real revolutions in history become, he says. Each person must build a rung on the ladder. His mother brought him and his brothers to the United States and he has given himself an education and created a stable life for his children so that we may build even higher from that point. And we must go on…

We all must go on. The immigrants south of the border dare to go on to cross a bold line where the terrain is the same on both sides. They don’t come because they want to leave their home, their family, and their friends. They come because they have to…as a matter of survival. And they know they will probably live a hard life here even if they are lucky enough to find a job raising somebody’s kids or doing the dishes where the swankiest dine.

The desert is a land of extremes. On the stinging cold still nights of winter an ice tray filled with water will freeze. The searing, blinding, ruthless, and omnipotent heat of the summer days allows for great sidewalk fried eggs. At night, coyote’s howls breaks perfect silence – almost like a tear in the universe. Daytime creatures blend with the landscape so that their movements seem like mirages in the corner of your eyes. When you gaze up at the skies you’re entranced by the feeling of infinity and the lights of possibilities that make you think of days so long past and what could possibly be.
Here, the San Andreas Fault is a bold erratic line on topographical maps. Igneous rocks create a dark contrast to the beige sands of the desert. Plutonic rocks slowly emerge over decades to create mountains with boulders the size of Bel-Air mansions. It is as if giants played Legos with rocks, the Imperial Valley their playground.

The immigrants cross those lines in hope. Many do not make it. In 2005 the official number of immigrants found dead in the desert was 464. That’s 464 people missing in the lives of their friends and family back home. Most of the time these individuals do not carry any form of identification with them to make it harder for the border patrol to identify them as illegal. When they cross into the United States through the arid desert they face dramatic environmental challenges. Sometimes the migrants will cross the border through the New River which starts in Mexico and dumps into the Salton Sea in California. The New River has been dubbed by many to be the “the most polluted river in North America.” It bolsters about one hundred biological contaminants like PCBs, pesticides, and heavy metals such as selenium and mercury.

The pioneers place foot in front of foot and do not look back on the print they’ve made on the sands. Walking in the desert heat one needs to consume about 1 liter of water per hour. And although we can learn to adapt to life in the desert and survive very well, most people are not informed about the skills required and do not have the equipment they need. Dehydration begins with an extreme thirst, a dry mouth, and thick saliva followed by cramps in the arms and legs. In misery, the person might try to cry but there will be no tears. The skin and lips begin to crack as the tongue swells. Blood begins dripping out of the nose as the mucous membranes dry out and break down. Hands and feet become cold as the remaining fluids go to the vital organs in the body’s attempt to stay alive. The brain shrinks from lack of fluids and sometimes one will experience hallucinations and seizures as their body chemistry becomes more and more imbalanced. Then the body becomes comatose and as the blood pressure becomes almost undetectable a major heart arrhythmia occurs and the heart stops.

And they end up right where I am standing. John Doe “34-16″. I wonder why they don’t at least put “Juan Doe” instead.

There are over 400 graves here. Obviously not all found are buried. Furthermore, it’s a long process before the bodies are able to be properly buried. They are the forgotten. They are the cast aside. It is obvious as I walk around this unkept cemetery. We humans normally have a great deal of respect for the dead. We’ve built temples and pyramids and go through elaborate ceremonies to give respects to those passed. Even elephants have been known to bow down before a fallen family member or friend and cover the body with dirt and large tree leaves.

I repine at the thought of dying in complete anonymity. What does it really mean to die alone? To not have even one friend to bury me. To have friends and family never know of my fate. To never know whether I had made it across the border and made anything of myself…..or had fallen to the sands that I am made of.

I slowly walk around the maze of graves and wonder what their names were and what kinds of lives they lead in Mexico or wherever they might have been from. “John Doe 12-13.” I wonder if any of them could be family members I’ve never met. “John Doe 11-27.” I wonder if somewhere down the line their family knew my family. “John Doe 3-19.” Who’s sons or daughters were these? “John Doe 12-36.” How many of these individuals were called Mama or Papa? “John Doe 9-8″ Would some of them have made me laugh? “John Doe “1-9″ Could I have fallen in love with one of the young men? “John Doe 9-20″ The reality of how likely a John Doe could have been placed on my own mother’s or father’s grave and left here uncared for and separated from the nicer part of the cemetery angers me.

As I sit down in an empty lot in the cemetery where someone laughing or crying at this instant might one day lay, I look to the dirt and see a group of ants scurrying in pandemonium and as I lean down to take a closer look I watch two ants grab a motionless ant, obviously dead, and begin to carry it down the pre-ordained trail of ants while the others follow.

It is lonely out here.

These forgotten people dared to venture into what most of us could never imagine cooped up in our apartments and office buildings.

Growing up in the Imperial Valley and now living in Miami I have always been around immigrants and have heard their stories. When I travel and speak of such things I’m surprised at how much people are unaware of the immigration situation. It is one thing to turn on the television or the radio and hear of a new immigration bill or debates on immigration reform but it is another thing to have those immigrants be the people that become your most trusted friends and to know them as living, breathing, beings just like you and I. Like my mother and my father.

I bend down to replace a moved “John Doe” brick to its appropriate place.

Yes. It really could have easily been you or I in one of these plots.

I kneel down to mourn for a particular “John Doe.” “John Doe 4-12.” I feel guilty being on the side of the fence that is responsible for such misfortunes. Holtville is my home and now it is their home too. The sands they are buried in are the sands my brown-bared feet have imprinted with childish play. These sands have no borders. These are the same sands that create grounds for lives of different passports.

I once drew a line in the middle of the room my brother and I shared. I didn’t want him to touch my Candyland board game or to enjoy my rock and shell collection. It was a matter of resources. We grew out of it eventually.

I wish the maturity of a whole world of conflicts was just as easy.

It’s finally humid in Miami. Two days ago was the first rain I remember in over a month. And then even the rainfall a month ago was sparse, quick, and light.

It’s that time of the year when tourists are becoming more scarce after the painful entourage of middle America university students on spring break. Also gone, or leaving soon, are the snowbirds and those lucky few who spend part of the year in San Diego or New York and part of it here.

It’s that time of the year that women’s mascara runs down their face as if they were a character in Stanley Kubrick’s Clockwork Orange.

It’s that time of the year when walking outside means stepping into an au natural gratis spa.

It’s that time of the year when an indulgence means turning on the air conditioner.

It’s that time of the year when finding your roommate doing the dishes in a bikini or boxers (or perhaps even naked) is perceived an apt behavior as a result of problem-solving.

It’s the time of the year when it will start raining in sporadic places incessantly.

People will congregate and lay like lazy sea lions on the imported Miami Beach sands and scurry like ants underneath sea oats for shelter when the dark clouds encroach upon the shore.

I love this time of year.

Every Monday I go to Church. Not just any church. A Church where the regulars know the characters of crack heads and homeless with their yellow fingernails, missing teeth, and always a new set of cds or a new bike, by name. The homeless, mute, woman on the streets can read every word coming from your mouth. She survives on the roads where I would never walk through at night…through the dark lanes of warehouses from 53rd St. to 60 something St. It’s a land of shadows and a wanton supply of every drug imaginable.

Oh Churchill’s Pub. How many nights I’ve spent giving you my quarters to wash my clothes in your smelly Laundromat and playing pool with large biker men and punk rock sub-culturites.

Every Monday I forgive myself of my filthy sins in the filthiest bar in town as my thoughts scat with the blues and jazz scales. Churchill’s on a Monday night is a crashing of the parallel universes of Ginsberg, Gillespie, and Picasso in a modern day Miami better known for our plastic world of South Beach. It is a place where people sit like flies at the Miami River on bar stools around the island of spunky bartenders and their concoctions of drinks that you can drown in until even the smelly 40-year-old drunk has conversation that is stimulating.

You can sit for hours at the candlelit tables and imagine yourself in the Beat Era as brass horns slow dance to the soft singing of the guitar and the stand-up bass sounds like the prancing of elephants in the Everglades. Mike Gerber’s fingers frolic on the black and white canvas of the piano as he sways his body back and forth, his mouth hung open, shades falling off of the tip of his nose as his inutile eyes, glazed over, stare at some imagined point in the ceiling and a hearing aid droops from both ears. Blind and almost completely deaf he inherits your soul while the music lasts. The drummer with his brushes and mallets gives groovy beats as he pangs his pieces of metals and stretched material like raindrops hitting asphalt.

If you walk outside, pass the person dealing with the sound system and pass the bathrooms with pee puddles and freshly written graffiti, you will find another world of interaction between artists and the admirers of the creators (a.k.a. supporters?). This is where the open-mic of Theatre De Underground is held and anyone with loose lips, the desire to perform, and a creative itch can entertain a backyard full of open-minded bohemians. This place is more of like a support group of artists. It’s a comfortable place to just let go and test your performance skills. Mind you, there are some brilliant poets, musicians, actors, etc. that come here, but with them come the not-so-talented poets, musicians, and actors. As both a compliment and a critique to Theatre De Underground, I’ve observed that the crowd is too forgiving to the excruciatingly painful pieces that we’re forced to sit and listen to out of courtesy. They will clap and cheer and tell the performer that they were fabulous. If they had the ability they would throw confetti and roll out a red carpet for each of them. Where is the honesty?! If I finished a performance that had people searching their pockets for things to throw me off the stage with I would appreciate at least one, “God, you suck!” or “Pardon me, but I would like to point out an observation I’ve made that listening to your work that you’ve kindly exhibited to us this lovely, lovely evening was like sitting in a patch of thorns while a flock of ibis incessantly dropped feces on my face from the infinite, azure sky.” Maybe supplying whipped cream pies to the audience would inspire such honesty.

Churchill’s, Churchill’s, Churchill’s…it’s like my dirty living room. I can kick my feet up, sit on the tables, but never do I sit on the toilet seats. Strange characters conglomerate on Monday nights from 40 year-old single moms, to supermodels, to electrical engineers, to your favorite Miami-Made maniacal bus driver, to a 3rd grade teacher or Univ. of Miami Professor. I feel like I fit in quite nicely. You probably would too.

Hello fellow bloggers and blog readers (there should be a term coined for them/us),

Glad to be at your service where you will be subjected to stories of my adventures and misadventures in this sprawling city of Miami. My name is Bianca and I am a transplanted Californian of about 3 years. I am an Americanized Mexican who’s mole enchiladas will make friends salivate like Pavlov’s dog and Pablo Neruda’s poems place expressions of perplexity on my face. I hear that Spanish is a much more passionate language…I wonder if sex is better in Spanish (Do Spanish pornos sell better than English pornos?).

Above is a photo of me in Mexicali with a good friend of mine, Tschetan, so that you may print it out in full color on picture paper and throw darts or blow kisses at my tiny head. Or to simply put a face to the voice.

Cheers!