The Return of Alma Grande (Big Soul)

A quick shout out to my buddy Vince for reminding me that I had a blog... Life is like driving an old pick-up truck on an dusty country road while you listen to George Jones...

Things change, people change, we change, you change, I change, pocket change and exact change or something like that, is how the old adage goes. I resist change as much as I can, I like the grooves that I have worn in and the comfort of the routine and the familiar, but life isn't like that, I learned. Life is like that shady card dealer at the casino that deals you a hand you didn't want but you have to play regardless. Sometimes the hand you have is a winner, a real peach, but most times the hand is what you play and how you play it. You gotta play the hand you're dealt, so I'm trying really hard to play that hand (maybe even double down) and at the same time look for my own deck of cards. Ok so I'm getting carried away with the gambling analogies but who cares, its my blog anyways. So in the midst of all this change, I turn to the familiar and that is my memories and experiences and sometimes the memories and experiences of others. One such memory comes to mind of change and how it creeps up on you. I have this friend I have known for a long time, his name is Vince and there this one time, that the moment of self awareness and conscious growth played itself out in all its grandeur. You have to realize that Vince was the city slicker fresh from the gritty streets of Carson, California back in the early 90s when I met him. As a college student I joined the friendly neighborhood chapter of MEChA at Pima Community College, mainly to socialize with other like minded individuals who obsessed with Aztec and Mexica antiquities and the Chicano Movement. His expertise was spinning the vinyl and he had that LA attitude that is a common characteristic among his ilk. Through the years, I would counter his big city ideas with my hillbilly philosophy and desert barrio notions.

His idea of culture was graffiti art, raves, techno music (and what eventually would become EDM). His idea of progress was skyscrapers, highways, and creating maps with highways and surface streets. My idea of culture was the rustic nature of the old pueblo with its adobe heritage and the bygone era of the ranchos of Tucson and surrounding areas. At the time, all I listened to were Tejano and Oldies along with classic rock. How we were friends, eludes me...to this day, even...I jest of course. Until one day about 8 years later, I was in my late 20s and I was room-mates with some friends I met in college in an awesome house that my friend Salomon owned in the Tucson Mountain foothills. Vince was one of the room-mates. At the time I didn't have a car, so I was able to catch a ride with him from time to time. The house was just out of the city limits and the road leading to the subdivision was a beautiful cactus lined two lane road that seemed to disappear into the golden, purple sunset that sank into the mountains ahead. Well it just so happened that the sun was setting and I was riding shotgun in his truck. We were talking about work or something to that effect. Then it slowly dawned on me, the surroundings that were taking place and how Change and Impermanence truly works in its ironic clockwork regularity. My senses were picking up on all the stimuli that were present in that truck. First I noticed that he was listening to the soundtrack of Swingers, “ok that made sense”,I thought to myself. He knew just about every line from that movie featuring twentysomethings and the single scene in LA., but it was the specific song that was playing...George Jones' “She Thinks I Still Care”

… Aha! I thought to myself...I quickly made some more observations. Wait a minute, he was driving a truck, he usually drove cars (a Lebaron convertible, and a blue japanese deal I think it was a toyota), but the truck he had recently purchased for his fledgling DJ business for loading his speakers and equipment. Still, he was driving a Pickup truck... so I began building my case...The road, a desert country backroad with cactus silhouetted by the stereotypical southwestern sunset! Change had truly come to Vince and his cityslicker ways, had George Jones replaced Morrisey and Depeche Mode? Was the LA skyline gobbled up by the quaint Tucson mountains and those pesky saguaros? There was no escaping now... So as he was singing the last bars the George Jones song about heartache and sorrow, I turned to him and asked him, “Hey Vince, did you ever see yourself here, 8 years ago?” He looked straight ahead at the road, and replied, “What do you mean,man?” and so I proceeded,

“Well, did you ever picture yourself driving a pickup truck, on a desert country road into the sunset while you were listening and singing to George Jones?”

His face went pale, a bead of sweat ran down his forehead and he looked into rearview mirror, could this be? Had this truly come to pass?

He turned around at me and with a look like that of seeing la llorona and in a gutteral tone he yelled, “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!”

Evenings in the desert are enchanting moments of natural beauty, the coyotes are looking for their dinner, the bats usually come to fly in the night sky and the saguaro blossoms open up to pollinate. But that night, the howl that came from my friend Vince was emitted and broadcast into the outer regions of the galaxy, the realization that one can't control to any certain degree, the circumstances in our lives. That was powerful lesson as well a good laugh. To this day I don't think he's totally recovered from his moment of self awareness. But its all good, Change is good, I guess...