Hidalgo Valley, the Other Texas, the Other Border

I had never been to McAllen, Texas, Hiladgo County, or Starr County, but I knew about it from all the book and writers that come from there.

I was happy to have the opportunity to visit when I invited by South Texas College to read from my new book Hotel Juárez, Stories, Rooms, and Loops.
During my free time, my hosts showed me around, Juan Ochoa, Joseph Daniel Haske, Esther Garcia, and Maritza Taylor.

Mary seems to be missing her face.

This is in an old mission, empty, quiet. The door is kind of creepy.

This is Juan Ochoa, in front of a church hundreds of years old. His new book has just come out, Mariguano, about a family in the drug trade. Good stuff.

A Mexican. presumably Pepe, sleeping against a cactus. Is this how Maggie and Jeff see Mexicans?

Police everywhere, even overlooking the Walgreen's parking lot with their fancy machines.

Under the bloody feel of Jesus someone left a note for his love.

On one street, most of the shops were Yerbarías

Demon in the Tree

One day at the Grand Canyon, when I snapped this picture of Benjamin Alire Sáenz, I imagined we were being visited by aliens from another planet.

Who knows why, but that's why the image struck me. I saw their space ships coming over the canyon and imagined Ben was contemplating his last days on earth.
Were they really there?
Well, they are now.

Photography for me is not representing an image that exists, but the digital means to share what I see. In this sense, I am not a photographer, at least not in the documentary sense. 

Often, I’ll see a face in something, even if it’s not really there, and I want to share what I see, not a material representation of matter interacting with light filtered through our retinas.

If I feel the presence of spirits when I look at something, I want to represent that image as I feel it.

Years ago, when I lived in Sunset Heights on El Paso Street, I looked out the window of my second story apartment and saw a basketball next to a brick wall. The image struck me, but to represent what I felt, I had to alter the image.  Here’s what I did.

In other words, what I saw was not the THING, the material object.

What I saw was a NO-THING, a spirit evoked.

Splitting the image like a mirror helped me represent what I felt.

I will not, nor will I ever be a photojournalist.

Evelyn Underhill writes, “Reality is sharing the illusions of our neighborhoods.”

What is true is not material and cannot accurately be represented in two dimensions, no matter how HD it may be.

When you're walking alone in a strange landscape and a tree looks like a demon reaching out to grab you, there might very well be a demon in that tree. 

At the very least, your imagination, which has a power to appear in substance, has helped create the demon in the tree.

But you can also create an angel.

It's up to you.

Why I Love Sawtelle.

I can't help but sing that Randy Newman song every time I get to Sawtelle Avenue in West LA.

 Only I change  the words to, "I Love Sawtelle!"

And as I pass the Thought Convergence building, which  kind of describes  the neighborhood  pretty well, a  convergence of culture, time, and values....

 ....I imagine my backup  singers in the backseat, singing,

"We love Sawtelle!"

 (Spam rice and Kobe beef in the same neighborhood store.)

 And people on the streets sing as I pass, "We love it!"

 I love Sawtelle!

Perhaps there are a lot of them in your part of town, but this is the only Korean Sausage Co. I've ever been to. Simple menu, too.

I'm grateful its West of the 405, otherwise, my friend Augie, who's lived in West LA for many years and rarely goes east of the 405 may not have ever told me about it :))