Lost and Blind

[Jimbaux has been running blind.]

Somebody Help Me See, I’m Running Blind

The song for today’s post, which you should be hearing since you should have clicked on the “running blind” link below the title, is quite appropriate, as it was the first track off of Godsmack’s The Other Side, the album that served as the soundtrack for my summer in Mexico in 2004, which started almost exactly seven years ago today.  The lyrics to “Running Blind” are here.  They are quite appropriate, and although the song is pensive and reflects some sense of being lost, it’s not as brooding as many of the other songs I’ve recently posted here.

Searching For Nothing

While my life may at times seem like a futile search for nothing, such was not the case for my activities early one June afternoon in 2004 in and west of Monterrey, Nuevo León.  It was after class, and as I often did on sunny days after class, being the total nerd that I am, or the Marlboro Man, as a female friend recently related her perception of me to me, instead of going to the bar or hanging out at the pool, I went about west of town to chase trains on the TFM.  (That’s the Transportación Ferroviaria Mexicana, the no-longer existent  railroad that was jointly owned by the Kansas City Southern Railway and Grupo TMM and is now the KCS de México.)

Promises . . .

So, I got on the highway leading out of town to the west and caught up with the Monterrey-Saltillo local with a pair of Deuces still in FNM-two-tone-blue paint.  That deserves a chase, of course.  I crossed the road crossing you see in the in the picture, got ahead of the train, and got on top of my truck in the nick of time to get this picture, taken somewhere in the Santa Catarina vicinity.

Nice, eh?  This train serves plenty of the cement industries between Monterrey and Saltillo, and the hoppers are mostly for cement as well as the boxcars being for bagged cement.

Can’t Even Be Honest Inside

This was the best I could do afterward.  I caught up with the train around the PEMEX facility out in the rural openness.

After that, I guess I gave up chase and went back home, probably very hungry and sweaty too.

Still Running Blind

The experience in northern Mexico in the summer of 2004 opened my eyes to a great many things, but it’s amazing how blind I still remained about a great many things too, like myself.  The places you see in the above pictures are places I would not go today, due to the escalating violence of the drug war in Mexico.  That’s something else to which I’ve opened my eyes in the last year, as I’ve been forced to think about why that violence even happens; my conscience no longer permits me to say that someone is a bad person for choosing to use a substance on his body.  This article really speaks volumes to my newfound worldview on the matter.

Nice song, right?  This is also the first post on Jimbaux’s Journal that shows scanned 35mm film slides from my slide collection.  I hope that you’ve enjoyed it.

I guess I’ll get back to my guitar.  Adios.

Jimbaux