Monthly Archives: January 2006

Correos in the morning to mail postcards and a tube of posters.   Cathedral Restaurant for big dinner.  Highlight here was Va’s dessert of rosewater ice—something she had been talking about since having it two summers ago when we were here.  I had mango and blackberry ices.   Nap for Va and walk for me.  Really hot today—maybe even 85 or so?   Tried to see the Teatro Macedonia Alcala but it was closed.  Snack on the Zocalo, Marimba band playing.  Said hello to two young Slovenians (asked them what they were speaking and gave the guy a hi-five when we almost simultaneously remember the named of Slovenia’s most famous contemporary poet—Tomas Salamun!    Good article in New Yorker by Louis Menand on Lit’s global economy—sent an email copy so hope I can remember it for the fall.  Started Paul Auster’s novel, The Book of Illusions.

Virginia set a personal record today—walked 17,679 steps by her pedometer count–8.09 miles.  Even included a bit of dancing tonight on the Zocalo where a dance band was playing and Oxaqueñans our age were dancing the danson while a good crowd watched.  The danson she says is their classic ballroom dance—looks a bit like a rhumba to my eyes.  Some guests from Cuba were applauded for their style. 
While we listened to the music we had a chocolate malt and a cheese cake from the sidelines in place of dinner. 

We went for lunch at a place new to us today, El Tasajo.  Virginia said the owner, a young man of forty with short hair, glasses, and a five-day beard trimmed neatly, has to be Spanish, probably even Basque, from Bilbao.  Look at the way he carries himself, his posture as he is talking to that other Mexican over at the bar there.  He has to be from Galicia or Euskadi—the Basque country.  Delicious meal and the proof of her speculation was that on the dessert tray for the first time here in Oaxaca was a tart of Santiago–a specialty from northwestern Spain.  The owner came over to our table as we were finishing to see how we liked everything.  We asked him if he was Spanish and he said, no but his mother, who baked the tarta was from the Basque country.  From Bilbao we asked, Yes, how did you know? Well we just wondered.  Later I gave Virginia the high five on her astute observations and she chuckled and said I haven’t been studying those types for thirty-five years for nothing. 

Earlier we had gone to the pawn shop, the Monte de Piedad, the Mountain of Pity (or Piety) to try to find some old gold earrings.  (Such a great old name—in Spain it is now the name of a large banking concern.)  None to be had but Friday and Saturday there will be a new sale.  Also checked out a small shop and returned to the Cooperative to buy some more placemats for Dave and Cecile.  Also bought an old piece of amber in The Palace of Gems, on the corner opposite the pawn shop.  Browsed in the folk arts shop of Indigo art gallery, gorgeous stuff, high priced.  Indigo is one of the biggest Mexico City art galleries.  But one of the hottest painters right now is a Oaxaquenan named Sergio Hernandez and he owns a big house here and two big galleries.  He is behind the show at the contemporary museum now–the work of his teacher Gilberto Aceves Navaro, who has never made it quite as much as has his student.  I learned all of this yesterday at one of Hernandez’s galleries from a young Irishman there who has been in Oaxaca for three years and now oversees Hernandez’s whole business. 

Our man in England, Canadian (by way of Texas somehow) David Thomson, reports on latest developments in the Essex landscape.  Being surrounded here in Mexico by striking mountains, does not make use yearn for coastal mud flats, but they should exist in total perfection somewhere–

Essex is the end of the world. It’s out past Elizabeth, New Jersey. It’s the Patagonia of landscape verité. They say that Africa’s doing a long slow crash north into Europe, which passes the energy on to Kent and Essex, curling Essex up into a valley, where the crash-test dummies live. This valley is visible on the special machines scientists have. The Thames, the Chelmer, the Colne, and the Stour pour sewerage out into the North Sea, and twice a day the moon pulls it back for a second look. You just have to think about it, and you can see that, too. Daily revisions to the shitscape. Palimpseptic possibilities. The Essex sublime. Yesterday a whale, dazed by the Essex coastline, followed it and ended up in downtown London. The first one since 1913. I know the feeling. This is the flattest county, but looking out along the vastness I can get breathless, as in a dream of cliffs.

No one visits Essex. People just live here. It’s a nice enough place to live, but you wouldn’t want to visit. Certainly no one ever does. The land is mud, organized provisionally, in lieu of a stronger organizational instinct. If mud is water plus land, then the proportions are in flux. Essex“,1]
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//–>Essex up into a valley, where the crash-test dummies live. This valley is visible on the special machines scientists have. The Thames, the Chelmer, the Colne, and the Stour pour sewerage out into the North Sea, and twice a day the moon pulls it back for a second look. You just have to think about it, and you can see that, too. Daily revisions to the shitscape. Palimpseptic possibilities. The Essex sublime. Yesterday a whale, dazed by the Essex coastline, followed it and ended up in downtown London. The first one since 1913. I know the feeling. This is the flattest county, but looking out along the vastness I can get breathless, as in a dream of cliffs.

 

 

 

No one visits Essex. People just live here. It’s a nice enough place to live, but you wouldn’t want to visit. Certainly no one ever does. The land is mud, organized provisionally, in lieu of a stronger organizational instinct. If mud is water plus land, then the proportions are in flux. Essex Supposing we make it sixty-forty, where will people live? Forty-sixty? And living is just the beginning.

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//–> is a hypothesis. Supposing we make it sixty-forty, where will people live? Forty-sixty? And living is just the beginning.