salinas te corazon (amo)

Police German shepherds first, camo, balaclavas, the state apparatus arranged in a darq and straggling march, like a Leni photo op gone farce. The audience blamed en absentia: cartels, mensajes en the language of fuerza, dogs straining, identities covered still demanded. It's a performance. And none of the extras are looking at the wooden heart mere meters away, a postcard nobody sends anymore.

In its frame, festooned by lights, backed into palms, built for exactly any moment ... some father holds his daughter. The most well behaved childhood ADHD I ever witnessed, frozen in foto, chins up, cameras glow up her stage for her half-second.

Then she is gone ... running into traffic, for a sharp intake of breath the real danger on the malecon is not theater. No dogs. Not cartels. A kid versus a curb.

and she pirouettes. Mimics a perfectly pretend foto of her impossibly young parents. The camera reverses, the subject becomes mama y papa? framed how a four-year-old mind snaps them into the past. Every threat still looms stage left, uniformed and armed. But the real terror is a cygnet's ballet, over and salvation before I could flinch.

Salinas, is there such a thing as too many parades? Clearly you think no. Cheers for a borrowed Cup, I mean, it's Spain's now, no reward for the improbable run that packed our bleachers for underdogs on the cusp. Salinas of the faithful blind, mestizo youth bearing marks of conquistadores, tall, proud, bedecked in yellow, the occasional Argentina jersey cutting across the colonial, cuz Messi eterni. Loyalty to a single star, no flag.

We even have a surf shop, off the drag itself, same as everyone who actually lives here, no whales-and-buggies signage, no come-hither energy; those who need it know where to find it. Confidence of a town that does not try hard, all at ease dropping in where the swells break, always an afterthought.

Maybe that is my attraction. This place bruised by salt

Dark towers by night tell you who owns us, unlit yet on the ledgers, each anchored to a slice of crescent sand, new hyphenates stamped onto old surnames, and the sea? After-party yachts, improbably white by blackened waves, mast lights pulsing, staring down the locals borrowing the tide for one perfect foto of one perfect day. Who owns what on shore, who owns what on our bay?

No pertenece a nadie? No one, maybe, except me, outlasting a tourist card nobody's asked to see again.

Salinas te corazon (amo).