[” Rompe – Cabeza ” (ROM-pe ca -BAY-sa, literally “head breaker”), is a term that Mexicans apply to all puzzles, from crosswords to mazes.] As you stroll through the Alameda, the vest-pocket park in front of the Cathedral plaza in Oaxaca, around 7:00 in the evening, keep an eye out for Ignacio Cervantes. He’s the elderly, white-goatee’d […]
Continue ReadingThis little story of life along Lake Chapala probably belongs in a movie or a museum dedicated to strange and unusual happenings. You can believe it or not. Our kind and gentle friend, Grace Contrades, in her 70s, managed to involve herself, her aging Cadillac and a muscular young man named Miguel in a January […]
Continue ReadingJuan Mata Ortíz is a small village of potters, farmers and cowboys in Northern Chihuahua. About 30 years ago, an unschooled artistic genius, Juan Quezada, taught himself how to make earthenware jars in a method used hundreds of years ago by the prehistoric inhabitants. Now, his works are known worldwide and over 300 men, women […]
Continue ReadingMexico Notes There is the most yellow of yellow butterflies stuck under our windshield wiper. A piece of the sun, moving with us towards the border, flapping in the wind. Journal, June 16 Xilitla exit, on our way home. Niñas dressed in pleated skirts and white blouses emerge from the jungle on their way to school. […]
Continue ReadingMexico Notes It is like a scene from a Fellini movie. Shrieking laughter of women. French music from a boom box. Chop chop chop of a machete. And we, hunkered down in our sleeping bags. Journal, June 13 We exit San Miguel de Allende, travel up and out of town past movie complexes, shopping […]
Continue ReadingMexico Notes The Anglos of San Miguel remind me of the frog that happily swims round and round in a pot of cold water, brought so slowly to a boil, that he doesn’t recognize his demise until it’s too late. They still live in “cool” San Miguel, and fail to register the rising destruction of […]
Continue ReadingMexico Notes– part 6 But to me, a dreamer of dreams, to whom what is and what seems are often one and the same, the bells of San Blas to me have a strange wild melody, and are something more than a name. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow The Bells of San Blas San Blas squats at […]
Continue ReadingMexico Notes – part 4 This morning the church bell rang at 5:15. One lonely ring. A pause. And all hell broke loose. Clang, clang, clang-edy clang. Clang. Clang-edy. Clang. Pause. One ring. No obvious rhyme or reason in this place at the end of the road. Journal, Mayo 25 I sit and watch. Under the […]
Continue ReadingMexico Notes – part 5 Breathless foam Starfish-laden scaly crest of wave Balloons of stinging jellyfish The crush of birth called beach. Journal, Mayo 27, 2003 We headed southwest, towards the ocean, through gargantuan agri-business fields and tractors to rival my Iowa birthplace. As boring as this was, I was glad to be gone from […]
Continue ReadingMexico Notes Across the unforgiving Sierra Madres. There is nothing soft about these mountains, unless you happen upon a view in low light that carries the eye across a widened vista. Journal, Mayo 23 Tom fills up the car with one last tank of American gas in Douglas, Arizona as Susan bids a cell phone […]
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