Chicanonautica: 2025: Another Year, Another Odyssey

 

by Ernest Hogan

I’m back from another annual family road trip through parts of Aztlán and Sasquatchlandia in search of America, States . . . United? Altered? And I’m still Chicano AF, as the kids (gimme a break, I’m almost 70, everyone under 40 looks like a child, and most of my friends are dying) say these days.

It’s great to be back, and yeah, it was an odyssey. Homer’s Odyssey was about a guy coming home. So, in 2001: A Space Odyssey, just who is going home to where, Mr. Kubrick? 

Anyway, I’m back, and the world is different, again.

Alvin Toffler was right, future shock is the new normal . . .

So, what’s a Chicanonaut to do?

I carried my virgin passport sandwiched between my wallet and phone, but nobody asked for proof of my citizenship, ICE, National Guard, Border Patrol, whomeverlachingada . . .

Though the country (the world, actually) was ablaze with political turmoil, it was a rather calm trip. There were the occasional Charlie Kirk posters and pro-Trump manifestations, but they seemed more like desperate acts of defiance rather than the cresting of a successful movement. There were No Kings protests, but no violence. I watched it on TV screens in hotel breakfast rooms.

Is politics really the entertainment divisions of the military industrial complex, Mr. Zappa?

What I saw was a number of different cultures. Southern Arizona is different from Northern. Utah–Mormonlandia, and the possible historic location of an historic Aztlán, is undergoing changes as the Mexica return. Nevada is more like a post-Apocalyptic Mars colony every day. California is still another country–going from futuristic, multicultural Mexicoid to Pacific Northwest Hobbiton. Oregon is even more Hobbitish. Washington gets a little more subdued, but cannabis is everywhere. Idaho and Wyoming are more conservative, cowboy, but once you get to Colorado it’s getting artsy-fartsy again . . .

Sort of a continuum, no definite borders, blending into one another. What language do they speak here? Is that legal here? Where are we? What is this, a geopolitical Heisenberg Uncertainty Principal? Dare I be Chicano and say there’s some kinda rasquache going on here? Or should I say Xicanxfuturism?

How can they say if I belong if they don’t know who they are?

My notes tell a strange story with overtones of sci-fi and gonzo. I’ve got some transcribing to do. Did all it all really happen? I do have photos, but they’re a bit surreal.

So, watch for my travelogue, over at Mondo Ernesto and here, depending on how it all sorts itself out.

At least the Mexican restaurants I keep finding everywhere are getting better. I’m gonna need some tacos, beans and rice to get me through this.

Ernest Hogan’s new story “Doula” is in the Center for Science and the Imagination’s Sound Systems: The Future of the Orchestra, which is available as a free ebook. His new Paco Cohen, Mariachi of Mars story will be in Codex II of Xicanxfuturism: Gritios for Tomorrow, meanwhile buy and read Codex I.