Viva Mexico

MEHICO HAAS BEEEN VERRY VERRY GOUD TO MEE

My cousin Alleigh decided to get married in Tulum, on the Yucatan peninsula. At first, I thought it was kind of crazy to be going to Mexico in July, but it ended up being fabulous. The weather was temperate - just a little hotter and a little more humid than NYC, and the beaches were deserted. My friend Deborah, who we learned is the long lost daughter of my parents (we were switched at birth) and I flew to Cancun, rented a minivan, and drove 1.5 hours to the tropical paradise of Tulum beach.

View From Our Hotel Room:




The Great Pick Up Line
Deb and I arrived late in the afternoon and b-lined for the ocean. There was another couple lounging around that we didn't pay any attention to. After 20 minutes or so we decided to go up to the restaurant for a drink. We got a window seat. A few minutes later this guy hacks his way thru the jungle garden outside our window and says to us; "Did you see my flipflop?" Deb and I looked at each other. "We were sitting right next to you guys down by the water" he continued, "and my flipflop is missing". I looked at Deb, agast; "Did you take his flipflop?" She shook her head no. "Maybe a dog took it" I said. "Yeah, maybe" he said. He waited for more, but we honestly had no idea what happened to it, so he disappeared back into the jungle. We just couldn't figure out how he knew that we were in the restaurant, sitting in that exact spot that he had to hack his way to.

Tranquility



We arrived in Cancun around 10PM so we spent the night before heading down south.

Deborah's Mexican low carb breakfast:


And then we decided to explore a Mexican Walmart and discovered a mystery fruit:


Tried to figure out exactly what you're supposed to do with them:


We did a little souvenir shopping before we left, but we were highly suspicious of the prices. Cancun is extremely overpriced and a far cry from the economical Mexico we all know and love.


We had a day to ourselves before my family came down to meet us, so we drove a little bit into the interior of the Yucatan to the colonial town of Valladolid, where prices were supposed to be a little more reasonable. They weren't.

Lost in the Yucatan:


The church of Valladolid:




The shopping hustle - EVERYONE needs one of these for their living room:




Mayan culture is alive and well in the Yucatan.

Oy!

So all I had to do was make sure popups are OK on blogger.com, clear my cache and cookies, and I'm back in business. Here are the rest of the photos...











Me and Mom:

Chihuly, Well, Sort Of...

Sorry it took so long to post. I've been plagued with Cookie and firewall problems and I can't figure out how to upload any more photos.

Last month I took my mom and my friend Emily to the NY Botanical Garden in the Bronx to see an exhibit of the glass artist, Dale Chiluly. You may have seen his work in the hotel lobby of the Bellagio, or perhaps when you went to see the Utah Symphony. As much as I enjoyed the exhibit, which was spread across the entire park, I was distracted by blossoming lotus.






We went on a hot, sticky Saturday and did our best not to get heat exhaustion. The exhibit was sprawled out among the far reaches of the garden and was very beautiful, but I got a little sidetracked by the lotus flowers which were glorious in full bloom.

Cherry Blossoms

I thought Brooklyn was an island. I’m sure that it’s an island of sorts, but I didn’t realize that it was just south of Queens until I looked at a subway map to figure out how to get there. I went with my friend Emily a few weeks ago to visit the Cherry Blossom festival at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Entering the park, which was only $5, was like visiting a new planet, full of peonies, jasmine, wisteria and, of course, cherry blossoms. I could easily have moved there. I’d set up my little cottage right next to the rose garden and I’d sit at my writing desk all day getting inspiration from my flowery friends. Let me introduce them to you;

The Blossoms

Miss Peony

Ms Jasmine

Pansie and Her Friends

The Tulip Sisters

Wissy & Pinky

Mrs Wisteria

This is my shy friend who didn't want to say her name, but I know it's Penelope

Reading Lolita in Tehran

I just finished this book. It is mind and soul-altering. It is a work of art – a tapestry created before your eyes. It is fine and detailed, created with love and thoughtfulness about a time and place that was so brutal, one needed to try to block it out of ones’ soul. Outside reality was as harsh as a small cement cell with only a small hole up high to let in light, the hole being too high to look out of. The story is the wild rose bush growing up and over the outside of the cell. It is the bird singing on its roof, the rainbow’s light piercing the small hole. These two layers; the harsh brutality on the bottom and the roses, birds and rainbows on top, are woven together into this beautiful story of survival, passion, resilient spirit, and hope. It is a book about books – many that I shamefully have not read, but will now spend the rest of my life catching up on, so that I can know this inner literary world that Azar Nafasi, the author, opens up to us. It is the story of a teacher and a small group of her students who get together informally, in her apartment, where they can take off their veils and discuss fiction, freely.

Here are some of my favorite quotes, although the book is full of beautiful and provoking thoughts and prose.

“It had become a habit with us, a permanent aspect of our relationship, to exchange stories. I told them that listening to their stories, and through living some of my own, I had a feeling that we were living a series of fairy tales in which all the good fairies had gone on strike, leaving us stranded in the middle of a forest not far from the wicked witch’s candy house.”

“Life had acquired the texture of fiction written by a bad writer who cannot impose order and logic on his characters as they run amok.”

“Remember all that talk of yours about how the first lesson in fighting tyranny is to do your own thing and satisfy your own conscience?”

This is just the first half of the story, however. The other half involves reading this book as a layer over our own bizarre fairy tale reality and our need to create The Enemy.

I highly recommend this book.