It’s a few minutes shy of midnight, just barely hanging on to Friday night. I’ve had a few tasitas de Don Julio and feel like rambling so bear with me.

Four of the past six books I’ve read have been by Don DeLillo. A constant theme through them all is the limit of human capability. How much we can remember, learn, achieve, act, stay awake, be efficient. His characters seem to loose touch with reality in their quest for total knowledge and accomplishment.

This idea of the limits of human ability has been in my head a lot lately. I am so thirsty. I want to know everything, to speak every language, to have lived the histories of the Aztecs and the French Revolution. I want to fish for three years in Tierra del Fuego, build an igloo in Alaska, read Anna Karenina in Russian. And … this is going to get me in big trouble with my wonderful girlfriend who I achingly miss right now, but I want to have sex with every single woman in the world. Not for the hedonism or the pleasure, but out of sheer curiosity … the curiosity to see every body naked, to see who’s shy naked and who is not, who does what unexpectedly in the act. This isn’t just a checklist homies, not something to be read off at my funeral, this is spirtuality. It’s wanting to understand where every single person in this world is coming from. It’s compassion, it’s the ultimate compassion. It’s realizing that I have only really loved music as long as I’ve understood how to make it.

I certainly don’t want to sleep. Not now. There’s so much to do, so many beautiful ideas worth pursuing, so much music to make, Don Julio to be dranken, drunk, they’ve both always sounded wrong to me.

But I know I will sleep, I’ll probably sleep in. And then I’ll drink my coffee and I’ll start reading the New York Times and the LA Times and the Christian Science Monitor and the San Diego Union Tribune, and trust me I don’t want to stop there – there’s still the Washington Post and La Jornada, and the World Press Review. There are the podcasts to catch up on and NPR shows I don’t want to miss and emails in my inbox from friends and from message boards and comments to respond to on my blog and comments I want to leave on other blogs and constantly thinking about my girlfriend and my friends and fishing for three years in Tierra del Fuego.

But it’s not only the limits of the mind, but of the body. I’ve been riding my new road bike a lot lately and each time I go up the coast it’s slightly faster than the last. I feel the burning in my legs, the sweat pouring off my face. It’s euphoric. Sometimes I start smiling out of no where like a bumbling idiot just because the song on my iPod seems to go well with the fucking scenery around me.

The other day I was going fast down a hill with a breeze blowing against me and my eyes started to water. They started to water un chingo – tears this way and that streaming off my face and I realized that this was evolution. That my body was being tricked. My genome thought I was in the middle of fucking Africa and that there was a sand storm and that it needed to generate more tears to wash out the sand. But instead on my yuppie road bike with my iPod I looked like some prick crying while listening to classical music.

Speaking of which, as Elena points out, Monday is Dia de los Muertos, and in anticipated celebration, Mario, Jessica, and I all went to the Institute of the Americas last night to check out the Cuarteto Latinoamericano perform their new composition by Gabriela Ortiz called La Calaca. If you’re into contemporary classical music, you can listen to a stream and interview of the Cuarteto Latinoamericano here.

I actually didn’t even know they’d be playing. Mario and Jessica said let’s go to some party for Dia de los Muertos on campus and I figured it would be a lot of young people showing off amatuerish photography and a cheesy altar, but this was pura fresa. So we go in and we see this quarted playing some pretty sick contemporary pieces – obviously influenced by Mexican folk music (as it turns out the composers parents were the founders of Las Folkloristas – a well known group in Mexico). But then they started playing this one movement and I was really starting to get into it – the celloist was plucking his string to make this dope ass bassline and the violinists and violist accompanied him with a melody that became more and more familiar. Finally it struck – holy shit – is this the Kronos Quartet?

I found out tonight, listening to the interview, that the movement was the namepiece of the entire composition, called La Calaca. I can’t find an mp3 of it (I don’t know if it’s even recorded yet), but I pulled out an old album of the Kronos Quartet and sure enough, the theme was almost exactly the same. Call it inspiration if not appropriation. (the Kronos Quartet by the way is best known – at least among our generation – for the soundtrack to Requiem for a Dream)

After the concert, some dancers from Michoacan performed Los Viejitos and then Mario, Jessica, and I stole as many tamales, atole, and pan de muerto as we could while los ricos bought overpriced crafts and artwork.

The three of us in our fleeces and jeans and flip-flops where certainly outta place surrounded by all la gente fresa de Tijuana y La Jolla. Same with tonight when Mario and I were the only ones at USD’s The History of Tequila not in formal black. Once again, flip-flops, jeans, t-shirts. The talk was interesting though. I learned a lot about tequila. About the difference between pulque, mezcal, and tequila. The difference between tequila blanco, ajeno, and reposado. Believe it or not, there is actually a surplus of the plant agave where tequila comes from which is worrying a lot of tequileros that they’re going to see the Charles-Shawization of tequila. Especially now that places like South Africa are starting to produce it.

Tonight I got an email from Friendster telling me how the site is so much better and how come I haven’t visited in so long and look at these three fine people: Mei, Elena, and Neil who have all updated their profiles this past week. And look at these recent bulletins that Mei just posted. Look, she’s on her way to New York City, bet you didn’t know that. It tells me how many friends I have, how I can talk to them for free, how I can find old friends, how I can meet new friends. All sitting in my email inbox on a friday night: friends, friends, friends.

Mei, when you go to New York City, you should check out Moreno because his songs are beautiful even if he is not. I know because he just sent me two tracks, newly recorded and you our devoted reader will soon be lucky enough to hear at least one of them yourself. Lyrics, info about the song, even the opportunity to buy our malnourished friend a can of frijoles with the help of paypal.

Tomorrow? Tomorrow will bring me another sunrise, another two cups of joe, helping my sister with homework, reading the papers, fixing up the site, and cruising up to LA on the train with my boy Eli while wearing a skirt. This year for Haloween I am going to be a more beautiful woman than I ever have been before. And if at least 10 people drop Moreno una propina chiquita (let’s say a buck, or roughly one third a latte) for the song I’ll soon be putting up tomorrow, then I will post pictures of how god damned sexy I am in a skirt and spaghetti strap tank top.

And maybe I’ll learn Russian.

For all you kind people who managed to get all the way down here with me (and without the tequila) I have a small gift for you. This here, is the mp3 of a Kronos Quartet song called Mai Nozipo which I was so reminded of when listening to La Calaca by el Cuarteto Latinoamericano. Right click it, save it to your computer. This one should definitely be listened to with headphones on.