I would like to take this opportunity to focus my rambles on Conception, the green felt fidero meister of Earth and Nature. He is a Castilian Mexican version of Tom Brown, the New Jersey Indian who runs a tracking and survival school that I have written about before.
I can ask this mustache man virtually any question and he has an answer, a story to back it up , and a fable around it that would make Aesop cry in humility.
I will offer up a guide to his rather verbose communication of jumble word communication and translation a little later, but for now I would like to talk about the cacti fruit that I have referred to time and time again since I watched him devour them and had one myself - providing me the energy and mood change of Thor’s Hammer or a gnarly B-12 shot directly into my aorta.
Conception’s mustache is one of those bottom lip hiding, top lip devils of curled around nature that handle bars out at the ends and makes you wonder how he can consume a damn bite of anything without making a complete mess, if not an ass, of himself, while he dines. He IS the Fedarale that you would run North to the border from as he casually pulled his nickel plated pistol form it’s holster. You would brow sweat and drown in panic as you fled, but the bullet would hit you the same way - exactly where he meant to hit you with it. Charles Bronson, Clint Eastwood, Sam Peckinpah, and Sergio Leone would all run from this man and hope that he did not haunt them in their dreams of death. Kris Kristofferson has surely written a song about him with Vassar Clements.
He is one bad ass mother fucker.
I can’t even see through his green hued, right eye contusion blood clot glazing protectorate, glasses when he turns his head in a peripheral manner that invites me to see as if I contained his gaze as mine. How foolish of a convict.
He is Conception. THE man. Once again I will convey the name asking exchange I had with him initially. I said, “My name is Richard. Your name is Conception?” He responded with desert serpent tongue of undecided alignment, “Yes. It will be until I die.”
Who the fuck says that? No one!
No one says that unless they are one bad ass mother fucker. Samuel L. Jackson in 'Pulp Fiction' bad ass mother fucker!
To be that bad-ass: you have to be so full of control and power, and the knowledge that you can take down the great wall of China like the big bad wolf blowing over a shack of hay, that you strut your stuff - you strut it better than a coked up fag hag at Studio 54 while discoing under the silver spoon of inviting bi-sexuality. You ARE the flared out red feathered, blue ribbon cock of five star feed. Everyone wants your semen if your are Conception, the ultimate breeding bird of basked, birthed, and never banal breeding bask, bane, and balance.
He claims to have three wives. They give him beans in the morning, the afternoon, the night; times dusk licking moon trails of darkness foreboding. He still says, regardless of his caring misconception and contradiction, that he brings them home the greaseless meals of such places as Boston Market. He likes ‘vigables’ and says that most meals are, “too grissy, you like, but too grissy”
He does not understand how a Man can be with one woman his whole life. "Tha sim ligs, tha sim fice, tha sim heh, heh, heh." I think he was talking about body parts and sex. He is a real Ladie's man with that fidero.
His Castilian accent is almost Italian and not as Mexican as you would think; very Spanish ifluenced and the dichotomy and contrast between Rogelio's accent and his is staggering. Both of them have dual citizenship and have been in this country for over 40 years.
Yames calls him the 'Immaculate' Conception. You can take that from there. You can call him, as I do, Miss Conception. Pretty much any 'eption' ending word that suits the demeanor and over all stigmata of the day and it's birthed activities.
To gain back the blue walking man of crosswalk man go, I will return to the cacti.
Ahhhhh ... kk.
The formal Latin name of the fruit that I sought was something that escaped produce grocers and aficionados of Mexican culture. Most confused the delicacy with cacti pears, or prickle pears. They thought them to be something that they were not entirely.
I am referring to ‘Cereus peruvianus’, also known as the Peruvian Apple but not to be mistaken for the ‘Trichocereus peruvianus’ which is completely different.
Many have been confused by it’s wonder. No one actually knows what I am talking about.
I tried posting a picture of the fruit to see if anyone would be able to rejoice with me in it's consumptive wonders, but alas I could not get it into the post. I am still a tech-tard.
That is ok.
When Conception asks us to get ready to leave, he says, “Ahhhhhh….kk. Prrrrepere Lev.”
Who is ‘Lev’?
I thought we had a Russian convict. We did not. I was wondering how to prepare a Russian (and what was I to prepare him for anyway?). I am no guidance counselor, although the county plumber is. We continued to ask the same question through the stagnation of the convict list and sign in sheets. We began to call Conception by his secret code name of Orthodox nature, "Lev".
He always wants to contradict Rogelio. He thinks he is in charge. He is not. He disdains the inadequacies of his co-workers.
I am not his co-worker. I am his container of control, his convict.
He has not given me a fruit of cacti power since.
I hit a golf ball with my Hula Ho the other day and knocked a spigot off some PVC pipe as it ricocheted off a chain link fence behind the water fountain to be. Tiger Woods or John Daley could not have hit it finer if it was intended. The water shot from the top like a gusher in a Korean porno. Italian fun with slanted eyes. We all played dumb.
Needless to say, I won’t get anymore fruit from the spined armed green goblin of gala in the Sun.Conception keeps speaking in his mustached tongues. He is not making any sense to any of us.
He drove 80 miles an hour and stood on brake pads as he attempted to stop in his angry footing of broken water pipe when we drove home that afternoon.
Yames and I thought we would die. We laughed as a defense to impending death.
It is all ok. That day he had cacti leaves, flaps, broad circles of water chestnut quality once they are peeled. He assured us they would be good with chorizo and egg.
He also told me they were good raw in a salad. You, of course, must peel them of the spikes and rind.
I am over it.
I received some cacti pears today. They are not the same.
I could now survive in the desert.
What is worse?
Surviving in the desert sucking down the delicacies of Conception, or dying without a thought of him?
I will take a bed death, wishing I could reach the computer to write ...
