Thursday, March 01, 2007


On those Friday evenings of long ago we could smell the humidity and hear the insects as our VW went down from Mexico City's 2250 meters to Xalapa's (in the state of Veracruz) near sea level. In the darkness, our VW's ancient 6 volt headlamps could not show us the spectacular gamut of greenness of the jungle vegitation that defines for me what Xalapa was and is. But we had passed through Xalapa enough times during the day to remember the green of this city of coffee and the famous Olmec heads of its anthropolgy museum. It was a green that may have eluded a young woman that I spied staring at shot glass of creme the menthe at a Jefferson Airplane concert I had attended in San Francisco in 1967. No drugs could have revealed for her the greenness that Rosemary and I could imagine, and, at the same time smell in Xalapa on our way to Veraruz and my mother. We would look forward to the unmuffled sounds of sea level and the smell of salt and the Gulf of Mexico.

If a blog has a limitation it is here where it is obvious. You cannot smell nor in its present configuration hear any sounds. Worse of all there is no room for the space of a panoramic that will show the scope of Mexico's landscapes or the wonder of its ruins. Forunately in Andrew at Paricutin (above left), Rebecca was there when I took my friend's picture last year.



Maybe this year, if we go to Oaxaca, she will also understand the scope of the ruins of Montealbán. Jorge, Andrew's friend and mine can be seen here leaning on a stella at the bottom left.