Last weekend I went, along with 70 or so other Tucson gringos, to a stop on the Zapatista Other Campaign's tour, the closest point to Tucson that they will be, just outside of Magdalena, Sonora, Mexico, about an hour south of the border. It was an amazing time. It felt like a historic moment, and also a bit like a Beatles concert. The photo on the right is the car that Subcommandante Marcos rides in. When he got out, he was immediately surrounded by a cloud of photographers and videographers and other media people.

I don't have the energy to write a whole lot about it. But there is plenty of journalism out there about it.

I met a really cool woman from Australia who's travelling with La Otra and who does pirate radio with Radio Pacheco in D.F. I saw them selling pirated activist DVDs and I gave them a copy of my DVD and told her she could copy and burn and sell it at will. I hope my label doesn't get mad about that. hah... I also gave her another copy to give to Marcos, along with a note that I wrote in completely crappy spanish (I realized later). oh well. Anyway she gave me a copy of her zine and it's an amazing piece of writing, relating her experiences being a white anglo woman radical activist in Mexico. It's called Fire with Fire.

Life has been personally very trying again but definite progress is being made by me, and I'm handling stuff a lot better than before because the response to the badness is something chosen mutually by me and her. I feel like things are going to work out. When I think about it I realise over and over that my life has been so much better, so deliriously better than I ever dreamed previously, over the last 7 months, only punctuated by a few days or a week here and there of sadness, but mostly just so awesome, that to be bummed and expect stuff is just stupid and arrogant and spoiled. How can one demand more when you've been given a gift like that? If it all goes away this second i'm still so much richer for the last 7 months.

I'm in the tiny ex-mining town of Bisbee tonite, because this stuff going on had me feeling the need to do something different and semi-impulsive and just get out of Tucson, even if for just a night and even if just alone. And there's a totally suitable cafe with wireless where i can work from just as well as if i was in Tucson. It's a cool little town. I've been here twice before. Kind of this weird bohemian pocket in the midst of desert mountains, tucked into a little canyon, the remnants of copper mining riches decorating the place - glorious old hotels and mansions and other public displays of wealth, now reduced to tourist attractions.

Tonite in my room I plan to do one more session of DJing practice, preparing for a dance party at Dry River I'm "spinning" for tommorrow night (I put that in quotes because i'll be all on laptop, nothing is spinning but the harddrives, i guess). It should be pretty fun. I'm going by the moniker of DJ Altermundista - literally "DJ Otherworlder"....

Why doesn't anyone know how to make a freaking cappuccino around here? Godammit. Even more annoying is nobody seems to think there's any difference between one and a latte around here. they give you the same thing, a substandard latte, whether you order a latte or a cappuccino. WTF?

Okay, on that note, I need to stop. good night.