Corazón abierto en la cama, sangre derramada.
El reloj marca la hora, el campaneo da vida a la vida,
los segundos no existen sin el tiempo.
El llanto descubre la llaga, encuentra el tiempo perdido por el reloj.
Subimos el pensamiento a lo más alto de la montaña nuestra,
inalcanzable por el miedo de caer de nuevo.

June grows closer, the thought of warmth. But here,
ashes burn our cold San Francisco
memories in the wind. Only
imagination fueled our fantasy to the
end

Useless venture,
redemption lost.
Find solace only twice a week,
and I venture out less than that.
You are now only kindle to my failure,
and I find solace with less than that.

I had a date, I was drunk.
I had a date, a woman stood
on the street corner, a bookstore
behind her.
Her eyes, blue.
Dark jacket, dark hair, light skin.
I composed my thoughts, I was late.
10:04 p.m.
I’m sitting at a table, she orders tea
I order tea.
I contemplate her,
her teacup in her hand, her hand
to her mouth.
My heart,
in my hand.

An uneven fence of sea cast wood zigzagged the sandy front yard. My father, similarly castaway from New York, typed furiously on his multifunctional computer with integrated printer, a 1980’s technological marvel. A deadline loomed, either for Playboy or maybe a book deal, but most probably for the local seafood restaurant’s menu. My mother, cooked over an open fire. The ocean lulled me, separated only by a few dusty unpaved roads and a long sandy beach with lazy seaweed and the occasional tourist or fisherman.

Puerto Morelos, a seaside town on the Mexican Caribbean, in which I spent my early years. To think about my interest in art, is to think about Puerto Morelos, because it is largely devoid of premeditated art. You never would have found exquisite Dutch or German typography, but you would have lived in a Corona ad without the logo, with the reminders of untouched Mayan ancestry and the expressions and idiosyncrasies of the locals, friendly and rude, always honest.

Honesty is perhaps what I value the most in life, be it artistic honesty or in friendship and love. But can I really bring honesty to my design or are we collectively handicapped by the greater constraint of capitalistic need for design, furthermore, can we design for the good of our communities?

To me, being a vehicle to express the diverse angles that I received in my formative years has been a true calling to design, trying to bring together the typographic excellence of a New York designer and the raw beauty of my Caribbean upbringing is the duality that inspires my creativity.

We then moved to Cancun. It is hard to explain the difference between Puerto Morelos and Cancun. Puerto Morelos was organic, in some ways a moldy growth at the foot of the jungle, while Cancun was engineered from out of the jungle, a gleaming marvel of Mexican creative and economic thinking, a Disney World for sea loving tourists mixed with a truly modern society. Oversimplifications of Cancun are rampant and it’s time-consuming to debunk all of them. Cancun is Mexican modernity, and I was a part of it and I am a product of it.

When I was 17 years old and not very interested in High School, I was working as my father’s design assistant for Armando Pezzotti, owner of La Habichuela, an upscale restaurant that had by far outgrown its rustic Palapa in downtown Cancun. After a year, they had a falling-out, and I took over all design duties for both La Habichuela, and his new Mayan themed Restaurant, Labna. My concepts have evolved and improved from that point on, that is, to design using simple and elegant typography, with beautiful photography and no distracting gimmicks.