É. Urcades

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My Grandmothers Operating System

I revisit a memory

The old bakery, the empty lot, every street named a state.

No landscaping, the cheapest gravel.

Can I recall his face? I remember the smell of his cigarettes on his clothing, in the air of the house.

I wonder what the yard looks like now?

I see the colors and know deeply my own associations: My grandmother’s operating system remembers the strange iron lamp better than I do.

As far as I can remember, it was a perennial ground fixture.

Linked: The shed with whitetail deer skulls.

I remember the heavy iron tools, I remember the gun on the highest shelf, I remember being told to ever go in without permission.

Linked: The open air fire pit, the clothing on the line, the dogs lined up against the fence, looking at us.

I wonder how my cousin’s landscaping business is doing?

I wonder how his brother is handling addiction?

I wonder if the graffiti is still there in the underpass?

I wonder if the desert is as vast as I remember?

Suggestion: Retrace where you grew up. Arrange travel infrastructure to your liking.

I remember the paved stone

I remember the sheet metal bender

The mailbox was made there

Linked: Sheet metal CAD tutorials watched over the last 20 years

Another video of my uncles

Another video of my cousins

Another photo of a Christmas

Another dataset: A collection of Homies

A collection of old magazines

A collection of old novellas

Highlighted in green:

anoche te añoré aunque no te he conocido aún

I see it in Spanish but I hear it in English:

last night I yearned for you even though I have not met you yet

Linked: When I think of the yard I see green

When I think of the tree I see green

When I think of the old plastic pool I see green

When I think of the smell of the carpet, I see green

When I think of my grandmother, I see green

Four years ago my grandfather died

When I think of my grandfather, I see red

Linked: The ash tray in the shape of a paisley pattern, or maybe an ear?

I can feel the way the smell of the cigarettes tasted, an index displays particulates in the air over the span of seventy years.

Do I love cigarettes because my grandfather loved them?

When I think of peak visits year-by-year, I see blue

When I think of visiting the nearest ocean, I see nothing

The sounds though, I can hear those

I hear us splashing in the shallows, chasing a blue crab

I hear someone selling us beads and mangos

I hear the sand when we all stop talking

I smell the gasoline from the dune buggy I cling onto

Linked: Vehicular Accident Law in Mexico

I revisit a memory

Linked: Another photo of my grandmother

Linked: Another photo of my dad

Linked: The feeling of being in my home city

A listing of my favorite places to eat

When I think of the desert I see green

Linked: My grandfather’s grave, a photograph I took four years ago

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