(Collage and photo by: Han Vance)

Grievances, Epiphanies from My California Summer Road Trip:

(full-length memoir/travel narrative/quest book)

Golden State Genius chronicles the amusing and ultimately life-altering misadventures of a soon-to-be-divorced father traveling turn of the millennium California and immersing himself in the urban grittiness of the Bay Area, the glitzy yet morally ambiguous quirkiness of Hollywood, and the reclusiveness of Humboldt County.  

*Golden State Genius is a 90,000-word completed book by Atlanta-based writer Han Vance. Story Editor: Chuck Sambuchino (of Writer’s Digest). Prospective literary agents may contact the author directly via email at hanvance@yahoo.com.

“Managing Editor” By Han Vance, Copyright (C) 2011 (Photo by: Michael Santini)

*www.an-mag.com to purchase a back copy of the New Art, New Money issue of Art Nouveau magazine with Han Vance’s cover feature on Atlanta artist PaperFrank.

VANCE (Photo by: Jami-Buck Vance)

(Photo by: Jami Buck-Vance)

A day removed from a pit of Mexican fire in my stomach – it had burned bright with tequila and salt – I comfortably reflect on Zona Polanco in Distrito Federal Mexico.

Polanco, in effect the Beverly Hills of Mexico, from Burberry to Gucci to my favorite: the eclectic Common People, where we bought beautiful soaps and bath salts and a bright magnet of the Lady of Guadalupe, radiant against a red background. That’s Mexico for you these days – radiant and resilient, yet against a red background of worsening drug violence. We didn’t see many other American tourists but felt safe.

Mexico City has more density than NYC and is vaster than LA, with a total population roughly equal to both combined. Thirty million people hived around us there, yet the affluence of Polanco was most striking. The pedigreed pooches in sweaters and bows, with well-coiffed and attired owners in tow, themselves with expensive sweaters tied around their necks. The rolling tree-canopied park and the fine shopping, and the restaurants where I found so many friendly tables.

Past the biggest flag I’ve ever seen, one Zona over is the giant park, the lake where families and couples cruise on peddled boats, the museums and street food vendors. On a Sunday afternoon, we strolled amongst thousands. One street vendor saying, “Wow,” at the beauty of my lady, as the sugar of the churros stuck to our hands. We stopped in for a margarita at a swank spot and then were given a free ride back to our hotel in their courtesy van. The night still awaiting us.

Fitting that I’d just bought a souvenir folk art miniature Mexican Cantina in Cuernavaca, I thought, as we explored the nightlife in Mexico City, with somewhat mixed results.

Before all this, was the mansion once-owned by the lovely Hollywood actress named Bardot in Cuernavaca, Land of Eternal Spring. Cuernavaca is a city of around one million, a city behind gated walls that opened to reveal large homes with gardens and outdoor space. The place we stayed, cobalt and white and flowing and as majestic in taste and decoration as any I’ve seen. The guest house alone was a shrine to all that is good about Mexico, and there’s so much.

The smell of steaming tamales removed from foil and banana leaves, for breakfast. The memory of Texas relatives that loved the culture. The feel of being seated outside under a temperate sky and consuming cold Mexican beer with limes sliced sideways, with the woman I love. The thronging Zocalo and the reverence and spectacle of ornate churches. The taste of piquant salsa verde and handmade tortillas. The art and color – yellow, cobalt blue, galaxy blue, Aztec blue, pink, hot pink, red, orange, all pop against the browns and tans.

To-and-fro Cuernavaca, we traveled by luxury bus, from the airport in D.F., where we shared our first mexican meal, a delicious bistec torta (sandwich). The city is mammoth from the air and feels enormous while navigated by auto. Housing packed on top of shallow stores and restaurants selling food and goods to the multitudinous masses. Soccer facilities and parks along the graffitied Metro train line, as we bounced in the bus through the crush of traffic.

Followed by the rurality of mountains and fields of hay that is most of the land in the nation of Mexico. Coming into Cuernavaca, we felt the energy rise again. And life did pulse there, with the same Mexican fire that we felt of the biggest city in the world, 100 years after the revolution, 200 years after declaring independence from Spain.

Students flock to Cuernavaca to study Spanish; while Capitalinos (as residents of D.F. are known) retreat the short distance to Cuernavaca for cleaner air and relative calm. Mariachi players wait near the Zocalo in full uniform ready to be rented to play. And a raucous mid-day celebration once swept us up, a tipsy local painted as an Indian for the festivities putting his arm around me and introducing himself and his less than pleased date, as we charged down the street with them. He told me I should have been out there at 10 a.m.

The silver town of Taxco that we visited on a day trip was brimming with humanity – flooding narrow city streets, full of pedestrians and vehicles and thousands of shops, every structure white with only black-lettered signage. There, I prayed in the most ornate church I’ve ever seen and then had a drink at the rooftop bar across the plaza. Next, dinner included chicken enchiladas and a hilltop view of the entire village from a large restaurant/hotel.

Our last night in Cuernavaca, fireworks bombastically filled the air from the club next door, as we finished with fine dining in a gorgeous open air restaurant. The Mexican night felt so perfect to us, under the candle and lamplight. And we anticipated the frenetic energy of the megalopolis of D.F., which was again on our agenda.

Back inside the mansion that night, we settled in to fall asleep and then were at one point suddenly awakened to noises on the tiled ceiling. We moved to the kitchen, and two curious Coatis glanced at us through a window from atop the property’s wall, before one bounded over the other as they exited our view. The magic of Mexico evident to us.

(Hanish inside Anish Kapoor piece at High Museum of Art in Atlanta)

Atop The 17th Bridge

Facing South On

A Rush Hour Friday

Urbanism-Urbanism

And I Just Counted

Twenty Lanes Of Traffic

Below Me

I’m Up Above It

Walking In Rockports

With Sneaker Inserts

Never Tell Me This

City Can’t Or Ain’t

Because I Will And Do

And So Does This

Butterfly Becoming

More Than A Rap Song

About Getting Money

More Than A Punchline

For Soft-Thought Yankees

To Spew

This Town Has As Much

Energy, Almost As Much

Energy…As Me

(Photo by: Han Vance)

My hair was overgrown, so I took out my peanut and shaved the sides up – way up. I looked a bit like Crispin Glover as I made a deposit in my bank and quickly walked the rest of the way down Ponce to get my haircut. I wanted to make sure the sides were right, and the line was perfect. I trusted only myself. I had the rest done relatively short and usually left it product-mussed. I broke out my dad’s old cover sunglasses, as huge as any they wore in Manchester and Miami. I started wearing bright tight shirts everyday, which almost fit me, as I’d recently lost ten pounds. I longboarded as much as I could and strutted to the transit station or took cabs everywhere else, except on the weekend mornings when my curvy fiancee’ drove me to work at the Euro-cafe’ in Midtown. Those mornings, I would finish a can of Coors Light in the bath to rally. Then we would sit in her car and make out while I swayed about to the space age Athens weirdness of Of Montreal. Then I would walk inside and make myself a double espresso. I was drunk in bars with thirty-somethings, with twenty-somethings to the point of belligerent incoherence and laughed and talked too loudly. I proudly peacocked amongst fellow urbanists whom would never have my flair for extravagantly varied fashions or my honed way with words. I worked a final lunch shift, had a huge late lunch, walked back to the cafe’ and had my free birthday shot, a Strega. Shared a toast with the definitely-old-enough-to-know-how-to-live-way-better-but-still-clinging-to-it-for-some-reason bartender, had a drink with the actor Paul Walker as we discussed Hawaii and my California book and my afternoon pool party planned for the next day. Walked away and had a few drinks in various haunts with a career student. Met my love in our suite. Went out by taxi for sushi and for wine by candlelight. The city glowed around and for me, as we stumbled to the disco lounge without panic or pretense. An off night in the Southern sprawl of summer ATL, but an on one for me, I suppose. My last as a hipster. As she and I had done so many times in the old loft where we deeply fell, we sat perched atop our city as midnight neared. I counted it down like it was New Year’s Eve. Five-four-three-two-one. Suddenly, I was 40. And I went to bed.

(Photo by: Wizard Smoke)

I slightly sprained my ankle before the game while practicing a running behind the back pass. Notes to self: showboating is bad. Sportsmanship and the sporting life are good. Speaking of that: I saw the great poet Jon B. Goode today. Ever since UGA had a good season and made the NCAA Tourney and I went to the Hawks playoff win with my lady, I’ve been on geek for playing ball, and then my season finally started. I wanted to play again today, so I backpacked and biked it over to the park and shot a few, a few like hundred jumpers, free throws, hook shots.

I was set to leave and then decided to clean all the trash from the park. As I did, a car rolled up full of some of the top poets in the ATL – making them some of the top American poets, period. Jon and Xpj and Tommy Bottoms from the hot scene at Urban Grind and then some other good folks I believed I was meeting for the first time. I may have met that gorgeous Tasha before, or just wished I had. Anyway, Jon is getting married. I’m getting married. Life is moving forward. Pay it forward today, y’all.