Life and death in the state of Veracruz

We´ve decided to stay in Xalapa for the weekend waiting to see the dentist in Oaxaca (pronounced: wahaka) on Tuesday. It´s cheaper and cleaner here. After that we head to the Yucatan to camp and explore the Mayan ruins. That should be interesting. A entirely new million acre archaeological site was recently discovered and it will be nice to get there before the tours busses put it on their route and Starbucks sets up coffee houses there. Plus, I´ve never see monkeys or Tucans in the wild. I´m really looking forward to it. Now on with the photos.



Xalapa has an excellent museum of archaeology so we spent the morning there yesterday. Among its feature pieces are the giant stone heads of the Olmecs, which are over 3000 years old. It´s speculation but some scholars have deduced that the Olmecs believe they decended from a human who mated with a jaguar. At any rate, they were pretty fierce guys. The museum contains some incredible ritual artifacts including burial bowls with the skeltons still in them and this headless sculpture holding a flat top block with a grim face carved on its front. It is thought that the still beating heart of the sacrificial victim was placed on the top of the block and offered to the gods.

Then there´s this lovely piece depicting a fertility priest wearing his offering, the skin of a sacrificed human. That´s why the figure has two sets of arms and feet. From the front, the priest is also sporting a giant erection. I guess I´ll have to post that photo as well. I just don´t happen to have it on the flash drive today.



Mexico is a strange blend of childish fantasy and grim reality. For example, when we were driving through the mountains, on our way to Xalapa, we turned into a gas station to ask for directions. We hadn´t seen a roadsign for a couple of hours. I noticed a half starved street dog standing on the sidewalk in the rain. One of Mexico´s great shames is the terrible condition of its many homeless domestic animals but don´t get me started on that. There was a car ahead of us also turning into the Pemex and a slick, wet, bloated dead dog lying right in the entrance. It looked nearly identical to the dog on the side of the road. The left front tire of the car drove directly over the dog´s head and its body bounced and shuddered from the impact. The gas station attendents hadn´t even bothered to move the body to the side of the road. It makes me crazy to see the neglect but I have to say we have seen almost no stray dogs in Victoria or Xalapa. It was so bad in Oaxaca last year, we dreaded returning to the country. For this reason alone, I´m glad we´re staying in Xalapa a few more days. It´s way easier on the emotions plus it has a terrific vegeterian resturant below a yoga studio that offers a fantastic three course lunch for 3 bucks. To us it has become the center of the city.

Veracruz mountain drive

We took the mountain road from the gulf coast to the Veracruz city of Xalapa, pronounced "Halapa", birthplace of the Halapena pepper. Sorry I probably misspelled Halapena but I don´t have time to look it up at the moment. We´re about ready to leave the internet cafe.


Bamboo along the highway. Oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico



It was a mistake, or at least we managed to find the longest way through them. It was beautiful just too long, a 12 hour drive, on winding roads, through fog, minor flooding and typical Mexican mazes that have no roadsigns leading to a seemingly endless succession of forks in the road that require flying blind. At these times we always rely on the wisdom of Yogi Berra who said, "When you come to a fork in the road, take it."




Hurricane Stanley recently passed this way and there was still a little flooding in the mountains. People didn´t seem too concerned though. They were just standing in front of their houses watching the water rush by. It ended well however, inspite of the confusion. We got into Zalapa and didn´t have too much trouble finding our favorite hotel, the good old Alcapulco.

Hotel and publishing notification

So, on with the photos. Here´s a few of the hotel in Victoria where we stayed last night. We´re leaving in the morning. Great place. I highly recommend it. It will probably be all down hill from here.





It was a relief being in such a nice, clean town, especially after the border crossing. The corrupt cops tried shaking us down for a bribe not ten minutes after we were in the country but dropped the charges when they realized we were willing to go to the police headquarters instead of panicking and trying to buy our way out of the phony charge.






I forgot to mention, a couple of poems I submitted recently have been accepted for publication. Poetry Harbor published in Kona accepted my poem "Pele" and ByLine Magazine will be publishing ¨Writing Instructions" at some point in the near future. Seems ByLine also pays ten or twenty dollars a poem, something like that. Who said poetry doesn´t pay?

Border crossing

After 2500 miles...Mexico

Countdown

Snakessekans

Tomorrow I take Delicata over to Mike's house. She's staying with him while we're gone. At the moment I'm feeling pretty detached from my life here but I did put out a big spread in the bird park today.

Puj is ready to go. Swami is ready to go. He loves Mexico. I am not ready to go. I won't get to sleep until 2 and will be up at 6. No matter. We leave Monday. It's a long drive.


Hawk dining on a pigeon in Reno today.


All this reminds me of one of my favorite poems by Apollinaire

Come to the edge, he said.
"We are afraid", they said.
Come to the edge, he said.
"We are afraid", they said.
They came.
He pushed them.
They flew.

The wind and the wall

Some of the graffiti in Oaxaca is wonderful. This is a photo I took on our last trip south. I've got better versions of this collage but I just don't have the energy to hunt for them tonight.

The second line of the poem is the toast my brother made one wintery Seattle night over a candle lit spaghetti dinner we cooked. We sat down to eat with my three children and, raising his wine glass, he turned to my daughter and said, "Tell them about us". That was a long time ago. Funny how life twists and turns. These days my daughter doesn't speak to me and my oldest son and I have been estranged for years. I can't even begin to describe how painful this is.

I'm leaving for Mexico in just over a week. There's so much yet to do. And more than can never be undone. And so much more that will be left undone forever.

Mexico

I don't want to jinx the plans, but we're scheduled to leave for Mexico on October 1st for six weeks. I have to start planning and packing and that means first I come here and grumble. I dread packing for these trips. There's not a lot of room in the jeep to start with and I only get a small section for my necessities, all which must be stuffed into the tiny area behind the passenger seat. The rest of the available space is crammed with camping gear, tools and there's a small area for Don Jefe's things. He travels light and I travel heavy and never hear the end of it. Anyway, the trip is looming so I'm creaking into gear. This time we're headed for the Yucatan to poke around some newly discovered Mayan ruins. Of course it will be wonderful but I resist everything. Don Jefe considers it his personal mission to channel me in the new direction and that is when the fun begins.

Slow motion adventures

One morning, we drove to a tiny village



on Mexico's west coast. Just behind us


a mother pig and her baby came sauntering down the hill.


It was a good day for a walk, a little snooze


and some exploring


but not too much.

Zacatacas, MX

hostel

view of the street

along the street

Photos from Mexico

Church on the beach

I took thousands of photographs in Mexico and have been planning to post some but haven't gotten around to it yet but here's one of a village church near the beach.

Tropic of Cancer and Calf

Mexico to Montana

We're back in Nevada but only temporarily. We're leaving for Montana next week to see my son off. His National Guard unit has been deployed to Iraq. Damn this government! Because of these neo-conservative republicans (read: Corporate/Nazi Scum) we are already in the tar pit up to our tits and these bastards keep sending more people and more money...to clean up the mess they made. This election, Bush and his cronies have GOT to go!!!

This is my son's second tour of duty over seas as it is for many of the others. In all, forty-five hundred people are going from the Oregon/Idaho/Montana area, an event which is being conveniently ignored by the media whores. If you supported the war in the beginning, okay. The Washington War Lords got one over on you. They are experts in provoking and manipulating fear and confusion. And they are very scientific about they way they present their ideas and so-called facts. One thing I find amusing about them is their compulsive use of "patriotic" backdrops for media appearances but then what do I know? And hell, it doesn't hurt their cause that they are cold-blooded liars. But as the old saying goes, "The first time, shame on you. The second time, shame on me." The Bush Machine hijacked the first election. Don't let it happen again. Even if you're not a democrat, vote democrat this time. We can sort the rest out later.

Fuzzy Day and Romance - Oaxaca City

Today was Fuzzy Day at Gigante. A fuzzy purple muff surrounded the monitor in the bag check stand and a matching fuzzy, purple sleeve covered the long neck of the microphone used to broadcast shopping specials. In spite of the heat, all the cashiers were wearing fuzzy, red vests. I probably missed other fuzzy delights but we weren’t in the supermarket very long. The only reason we were there at all was that we went to the open-air market with Lolita. She goes every Tuesday and Friday. We also went with her last Friday. You have to get there early because things are picked over pretty fast. Lolita always throws in the Gigante for good measure and we just follow along. It’s a good system. In a mere hour and a half and a few pesos, she gets days worth of fruit and vegetables plus takes advantage of the store specials and is back home before it gets too hot. And again, the bus ride was delightful. Last week a blind, off-key musician passionately serenaded the bus for a block then took up a collection and disembarked. I think most people paid just happy to be rid of him. This week’s entertainment was a fat, middle-aged woman in high heals and white stretch pants that revealed the dimples in her meaty backside. Her blouse was the best part of the ensemble. It was a brilliant pink little number made of a flimsy, cheesecloth type material. It had a gathered scooped neck so its thin, soft folds lay obediently in the ravine between her very round, large breasts, frothed gaily around the rest of her but was sensibly anchored on the bottom by pink satin ribbon. It defined creamy romance.

I realize I risk being accused of racial stereotyping here but I'm going to say it anyway. As far as I can tell Mexicans love (among other things) martyrs, revolutions, holidays, parades, fireworks, clowns, glitz, glamour, food, drink and noise. But most of all, it seems they love romance. Or at least the teenagers do. That’s no surprise of course, but this is a Catholic country with old world values. Courtship is supposed to be governed by strict rules. The result is whenever they get away from scrutiny they nuzzle; to and from school, church and work, on every street, in every park, on bridges, benches, propped against trees, cars and walls, down alleys, at bus stops, on busses and highway dividers, in stores, restaurants and parking lots they are layered and twisted together, melted in their combined heat. I left out a lot of locations but you’d safe imagining them just about anywhere, entwined like creepers, cooing like doves, picking through each other eyebrows like monkeys. Sometimes I feel like chuckling lewdly and muttering, “Hey, get a room, for Christ’s sake and ours” but I don´t know Spanish well enough to sound cool and besides, I’m trying to act more mature these days. However, if you think mine is a heartless overreaction, come and see for yourself.

According to The Church, marriage is the only proper place for expression of such passion and consequently, wedding shops abound in Mexico. Some streets have several in a row. Mannequins wearing formal white, lace and bejeweled gowns, surrounded by their inert little bridesmaids, crowd the store windows, a testimony to The State of Holy Matrimony. Everyone knows that even The Virgin herself reveres The Bride. If a girl can’t be a saint or a nun, the next best thing is being a wife. In this light, the pink blouse is both promise and proof that, one way or another, you can have it all.

Sunday night

Still in Oaxaca. I´m in the process of getting some dental work done that I can´t afford in the states. Ever since we crossed the border, I´ve been working on a new poem called the Book of Images. It´s not done and will undoubtedly change ten thousand times more but tomorrow night I´m going to read a couple of excerpts from it at a write´s group that meets here once a month. I hear things differently when other people are listening.

Rainy Season in Mexico and other rants

Seems the rainy season has arrived a month early but you won't hear any complaints from me. The temperature is still perfect. The rain is a relief. It cleans the air, which is really bad in Mexico. I love Mexico and am furious at it in the same breath. If you're from Mexico, what's up the all the trash E*V*E*R*Y*W*H*E*R*E? Don't you guys even see it? It blows my mind. Do you think good, old Mother Nature can just wave a wand and it will magically disappear? And the air pollution. I mean, what's up with that? Your country is a paradise and you shit all over it. And Mexico City? Holy god!

But don't get me wrong. I love Mexico. It's an exotic, fragile place and the people I've met are friendly, direct and real. I'm sorry for you the US is so near by, the Big Polluters, the World Stink Pot. Our government is run by a bunch of war craven bullies with the world's largest cache of weapons of mass destruction at their disposal. Some neighbors!

So, the internet cafe is closing now. G'night.

Oaxaca City

We've been in Oaxaca about a week now and Mexico for a month over all. We have a small apartment on the balcony overlooking a community courtyard stuffed with hundreds of potted plants and two huge, old fruit trees that grow far above the building. Mexico is truly an exotic place, a must visit. We drove down through the colonial, mountain route because it was Samana Santa (Easter week), a national holiday which runs a week then turns into spring break for another week. Don't travel during Samana Santa unless you already have reservations and plan to stay in one place. It was a mad house. We would have driven down the pacific coast but didn't want to deal with the crowds. The mountain cities were crowded as well but not as bad as the coast. We just weren't up for sharing the beaches with mariachi bands and little kids selling Chicklets. It gave us a chance to see internal Mexico though and I'm glad we did it this way now. I feel like I've seen a lot of the country for the short time I've been here.

We came into Oaxaca via the mountain route from Veracruz. It's an incredibly lovely, steep road over peaks up to about 9000 feet at their highest. The only problem is the Mexican drivers are insanely dangerous, even on nice, wide highways. On narrow, mountain roads it's anybodies guess what will happen. Busses pass busses on uphill curves and it's all uphill curves to Oaxaca. The worst part was over the sea level farm lands outside of Veracruz. It's a short distance but pure madness. The road is choked with sugar cane trucks which aren't merely trucks, they are trucks pulling sometimes 4 or 5 trailers with ten foot high racks which are stuffed twenty, maybe thirty foot high piles of sugar cane. The road has two lanes and is muddy and narrow but at any point, there were 2 to 6 lanes of traffic made up of cane trucks, busses, taxi cabs, pedestrians, bicycles, burro carts, hand carts, and us.

So far I've taken over 3000 pictures so will be posting a few on my website when I get the chance. We're still settling in here. We found the cool internet cafe a couple of days ago and they're letting us bring our laptop here and plug into their connection for half the cost of using one of their computers... .50 an hour. Great deal. Eventually, I'll try uploading to my website.

Yesterday we visited 4 ruins in the valley, some whose origins date back about 3000 years. This place is full of pyramids. I photographed one site right along the road in a plowed field, part of it had a damn telephone pole sticking out of the middle of it. Currently I have pyramid fever and suspect that every mound is a possible pyramid.

Tuxtepec

We´ve been in Mexico about 3 weeks now and are currently in the city of Tuxtepec which is in the state of Oaxaca.
We´re leaving for Oaxaca City in the morning. I´d write more but I'm on a funky connection and it´s taking too much time. In brief, our big adventure yesterday was getting two traffic tickets. One was fair. We did run the red light leaving Veracruz, even though we were completely in the flow of traffic I figure we got tagged as the rich gringos, which is a real drag. The second ticket was completely bogus. We were simply pulled out of traffic and given a ticket. It was all for the bribe, very friendly, very everyday in Mexico. The cops stood around chatting and laughing during the "negoiation".

Yahoo maps

North 0.1 miles > east 0.1 miles > north 0.2 miles > west 1.1 > south 809.78 miles through the briefly green California spring. The animals lazing on the velvet green knolls and grassy ravines north of San Francisco look like citizens of forever. We creep through the beginnings of LA's rush hour and, although Yahoo's a bit off on the mileage, we reach San Diego about 12 hours after starting out and found our way to the night's motel. Tomorrow we're getting some last minute work done on the Jeep then taking off again. Next stop, Tuscon Arizona en route to Mexico.

Oregon, ready or not

We finally launched, at least partially. We're in Oregon saying hi and good-bye to family and getting some last minute trip related things done. I can't begin to go over the hubbub since my last post here but it was, in a word, frenzy. Not that I spent the entire time preparing for the road. Knowing forced withdrawal was immanent, I was busy cramming in as much computer time as possibe. We leave for San Diego on Monday, 5 am. Then Mexico.

Leaving Reno

Leaving Reno in the sun's long rays. To our left, the western range still harbors remnants of snow. Above its peaks, an armada of wedge shaped clouds is sailing east. To our right, our shadow flails in the roadside sage . Soon it will be dark and the thing will be absorbed. A phantom beginning, only the ahead will tell the story. Mexico. Sometimes you have to go north to get south.