Recurring Dream: Canto El Segundo

Location: US & Mexico, both at run-down latino neighborhoods.
City: unknown
Participants: various (unnamed) and me

The houses are old and need paint and general repairs—the kind of care people who care can give. But the families here care about other things, it seems. They are warm and friendly, welcoming and sweet, and though they will at whim add a room to a house, they have the hardest time maintaining the houses; they’d rather spend that energy on the fruit gardens they have planted on what once were large front yards. They speak loudly, their voices mixing into a melody of Mexican songs, and jokes, and conversations all at once, easily followed in the many ways they go. They keep chickens and dogs, both loud and neither caged nor chained—and song birds to keep them company, and they play their radios way too loud. They work on their cars in front of their houses, taking half the street. Most back yards have hardly any divisions at all—and never anything that might be called a fence. It is messy; it is loud; totally different from anything I have ever really known, it is home.

I am a child of five or seven, running wild like the many other creatures God has wrought, making friends and playing games, and only coming home when the sun sets.

Time goes by.

Now I am older and I help one of the neighbors who fixes broken cars in his garage. He works late into the night, and because my parents know him, it’s ok that I stay late with him and help him. I am learning. He cooks, too—after a fashion. He makes tacos and burritos and whatever else he feels like making and I really like his cooking. He shares with his customers, too, when they come to get their cars. After some time, word has spread that his cooking is better than his car-fixing and people just come by to buy his food. Eventually, he stops working on cars altogether and now just cooks, selling tacos out of his garage.

About a hundred steps towards the sunset, there is a bar. It’s a small, neighborhood bar. The kind where everyone knows everybody’s name—the first place wives send their kids to find their missing husbands. People there have heard about the tacos. Soon, there’s a constant line of traffic between the bar and the garage. Some eat and then go drink; some drink and then go eat. Most go back and forth, walking one off and then rewarding their hard work with the other. I still help the neighbor, but now I help him make his tacos. Everybody says hello.

More time goes by.

Now I am eleven and I can make tacos myself. And I can fix a car, just not as well. Often, I take shifts for the neighbor, for he too takes his nights out at the bar. He has no wife, no children, no dog and no garden. He had his cars and now has his tacos. And he had me. And I had him. But never did I do more than help him. We do not chat.

One evening, late in the day but not so late the sun had yet set, I got ready and walked over to his house, to help—just like always. But this time was different. As I got closer to his house, I noticed smoke. I ran to the house as fast as I could, but there was nothing I could do. The flames were twice as high as the roof. Not knowing what to do, I ran over to the bar and asked them to help. They called the fire fighters. A group of men ran with me to the house. We all started trying to put the fire out. By now, the neighbors were out, too, and they had their water hoses and buckets and everybody helped. But it was too late. Soon, the house burnt to the ground. The man whom I had helped for many years was not there. I never knew where he went. As we all finally gave up—when there was nothing more to burn and it seemed safe the fire would put itself out anyway, the firefighters and the police showed up.

Just as they arrive, the dream ends and I am awake again—oddly at peace but a little sad.

My neighbor, my teacher, my friend is gone. Not dead—not for sure. He’s simply gone.

I never knew his name.

I’ve had this dream once per month every month for the last year. Unlike my other recurring dream, this one varies in details. It happens sometimes in English, sometimes in Spanish. It happens in the US or sometimes in Mexico—though I am not Mexican.

What does it all mean?