on this date

She tells me that once, I called her an asshole. I think back. Maybe. Don’t be such an asshole! An uncontrolled moment. She can needle me with that memory, sure, but she knows better. I love her more than roses.





It’s the birthday of my younger one – she’s a quarter of a century old and it’s been a long long time since I have had the pleasure of being near enough to at least have a birthday moment with her. She has to make do with a phone call and my blog notes.

And they’re hasty at that. My semester starts today, her intersession is nearing an end – it’s the usual winter mix of stuff that comes down at this time of the year.

But she’s no wintry personality, no ice princess, no, not at all! So much love in that young little girl! (Oh! -- not so young today...)

I miss her.

Happy Birthday, you, with the delicate fabric of art and beauty and intellect. The commonplace things I share with you. The best parts are your own.


In other news:

Yes -- the Spring Semester begins today. The skies are blue, I noted that on my coffee break...





...and on my walk to the bus stop.

For me, it hardly matters. On that first day of a semester, regardless of what's outside, the Law School feels like the richest and most abundant of marketplaces, pulsating with energy. The time of year when no one can possibly feel tired. Yet.





Of course, it is nice to walk home in sunshine. To unzip the jacket and unwrap the scarf because it's just so warm in the sunny spaces. Yes, in Madison, in January. Twenty-five years ago on this day, when my daughter was born, the winds kicked in a blast of sub-zero weather.

Not today. No, not at all.

finally

Well it’s about time! Morning mist burns away, the skies clear, my oh my, it is one gorgeous day!

Ed, we need to get out and go!
Where to?
No matter. Pick a destination! It’s winter’s best! The day you hope for on all other miserable days up here! We’re out!
Where to?
Let’s rent skis and do a long spin around Blue Mounds! Or let’s drive up to Bayfield and hike along Lake Superior! Let’s go!
Really?

Maybe not. I have more than a fair share of work to do. We stay home.


In the afternoon, I can’t take it anymore. Ed, look at that sky – it’s deep blue! It’s been such a long time!

We do what I have done over the years when there has been no time to do much of anything: we head for Owen Woods. It’s a fine park just a quarter mile from here, and it has hiking trails and I know it inside out, and on a day like this, you can take a photo or two that really highlight how brilliant a Madison day can be, come January.










Except – the park is sort of small.





We hike every bit of trail, every loop, and I look at the time and note that only 45 minutes have come and gone since we set out.





Do you want to do it all over again, only in reverse? -- This from Ed. Things look different from the other side...

No.

We climb into his rusty Geo with the pink stripes on the side and head back home. To work.

and so it continues

I am pretty adept at recognizing when something is killing me (my work habits right now) even as I am less adept at understanding how best to survive the circumstances.

The skies remain gray. I suggest to Ed that we get some outdoor movement going while the temps remain above insane levels. At the same time, I understand that I have no time to do anything right now. It is the way things are.

We go to Picnic Point because it’s close and it’s really quite the wonderful retreat: you walk to the tip of the point and back, and you never feel guilty for walking too little because that’s all there, is - take it or leave it: there and back.

A few dogs, walkers, fishermen.





But no sunshine. No brilliantly clear skies, no crisp air – none of that. Just a frozen scape.





And a familiar skyline. With the capitol there, if you know to look for it.





In the evening I am with my corner shop associates, at our store manager’s home for a celebration of the year gone by and, I suppose more importantly, of the one ahead.










These things stand out for me. Colors on a gray day. Everything else is a blur.

missing blue

Mood dictates color preference. Such an obvious thing, so easily forgotten. In Mexico, aqua blues last week were a delight. Then, when we went inland, I could not get enough of crimson. A commenter noted after one Valladolid post that all my photos that day were yellow-themed. I never noticed! I was ablaze!

There are times and places where black and white feel poignant and just right. Sharp with contrast or muted in dreamy tones of gray. You can pick up the sultry romance of it -- the Parisian insinuations, the scorched Badlands of South Dakota...

But I have to say this: I have not seen any color since I stepped off the plane from Atlanta on Wednesday; my overall appreciation for black & white is waning.

It has to do with the mindset, of course.I get up at 5, hit the books and pause only to go with Ed to Woodman’s (Woodman’s!). I noticed that some of the trees have a delicate white coating of frozen mist. At another time I might regard that as actually quite pretty. Today, I see it for what it is: bare branches, failing to hide the strip mall (and another) behind.

Finally, around the bend, I see something worth pausing for: a tree, two trees actually, coated in white delicateness, with nothing but sky behind.





You’d think I’d find it just too perfect. Hell no! I think instead -- how dreary. Not a spot of color. Almost like Warsaw in December.





In that kind of a mood, you may as well retreat inside and resume working. Which I did.

words

There have been times when I have worried that I am without skills. I mean the kind of skills that allow you to build houses and make wheels that can propel something forward. Yes, I can cook and sew – real womanly tasks, aren’t they – but mostly, my life’s work has always been in moving words around on a piece of paper. (Or teaching others to do so.)

At no time am I more reminded of this than at the beginning of a new semester when I stay up late arranging new syllabi (there you have it – moving words around), leafing through texts, poring over sentences and then, in that final preparation, going to my office to purge scores of sheets of useless words – exams from past years, syllabi without a purpose.





But there’s the flip side to this: my training in word play makes me, like everyone with training in anything, anxious to use what I can to help those who might benefit from it. I’ve heard that doctors are feeling a need to be in Haiti to mend limbs and save lives right now. I cannot do that. But, believe it or not, I feel the same pull, even if all that I can even imagine providing are words. To describe, to help with the ordering of chaos, anything! Words can help, no?

No. Words are for the long haul. For governance, for art. They don’t replace limbs and stop infection. They don’t even provide water.

Sigh...

leaving Mexico

Return travel is like clicking the switch on a measuring tape and watching it all roll back to its original position, except that it happens very very slowly.

And so yesterday’s return journey was a rerun of steps taken, except now we were going backwards. Slowly. The walk on Cozumel Island back to the ferry station, past the waterfront (am I truly leaving behind sunshine?)...









Then, boarding the ferry, hoping for calmer waters (and sun; come on, lay on the sun -- I need to staockpile).

The ferry ride to Playa del Carmen: first sunny (thanks!), lovely, warm, then, halfway through – windy, with sprinkles (oh well) and rougher waters...





From there, a bus ride to the airport, a flight to Atlanta (oh! one last look at the Mexican coast, just one more!)...





...a flight to Milwaukee (working all the hours of all the flying time and downtime and actually all the time now) and a bus ride to the distant parking lot, where we find Ed’s car. Dead as any battery would be, if subjected to neglect in the bitter cold.

He gives it a jolt with the help of the shuttle driver (does this happen often? yes...) and we make our way to Madison.

...where today the skies are gray, and I know that I should put a good spin on things – after all, it is in the thirties, which actually is not that far off from the Mexican sixties if you think about it, but still, I miss the sunshine, or even clouds that promise that any minute they will part and show me a smidgen of blue.

But, I live in Wisconsin and it is far far too early in the season to gripe about the weather.

Especially on a January day when the temperatures are, well, in heat wave range, by our standards.

Insert

Do please give, even in very small amounts, to help with relief efforts in Haiti. My link at the sidebar (or here) will direct you to an organizational effort to provide health services for the people of this Caribbean nation. Now, more than ever, Partners in Health is in need of our dollars.

(If you’re not familiar with PIH, note this article by Tracy Kidder in today’s NYT.)

Cozumel notes

The last day in Mexico. It’s unusual in any number of ways. I notice myself, for example, increasingly thinking about work. It's clear that I’m transitioning into that northern continental mindset where you cannot easily shake off pressure.

But there are other twists to this day as well. The weather still gives us blustery winds and various levels of cloudiness. The kind where you first over-dress then under-dress, never getting it quite right. Of course, it is positively tropical compared to what awaits back home.

Our lunch cook tells us – I would die if I had to live where you live.





We’re eating a late midday meal at a house a block up from our hotel. (Our hotel proprietor is a regular here.) It’s a small place – literally someone’s front room and back yard. A standard dish will be maybe $4.





We make good chicken mole, the lady of the house tells us.




It is indeed quite excellent. And the flan is in the best ever range.




Food in Mexico has been a delight for us. We’ve not had trouble finding small, fresh and honest places. Most of our dinners have been in neighborhoods where we were living. Very local.

Okay. The food is good on this day as well. How else might I describe our brief fling with Cozumel? Well, varied.

We want to explore the island, but it’s a large island (maybe 50 kilometers by 15) and it has no public transportation. Your option is to walk along the roads, take taxis, or hire something that moves. We rent a motorbike. We’ve listened to scare stories about how many people die here on the roads in biking accidents, but I'm okay with this mode of transport – Ed is a genius on a motorbike.

(Except when he misses a red light and gets pulled over by the police. I want to pipe up from the back seat that maybe clearing the tree branches around the light would help future motorists notice that there is a light, but I stay silent and after some hesitation, we’re waved on.)

We cross the island to the Caribbean east shore, where the waves are pretty and the coast stretches in either direction with strips of fine white sand.





The sea and landscape are a study in blues and greens.





We walk along a path that more or less hugs the shore and it is so empty that Ed can dunk in for a swim and not be noticed.

The path is fragrant from the essence of a plant that flowers and attracts bees and the sun comes out occasionally to mark this day as only cool at the edges.





Later, as we motor to the southern tip, I note how pretty and serene this part of the island is. You could learn to love Cozumel if you only make your way here and keep away from the ferry landing.





The only noise comes from the waves. And the hiss of the spray from the blowholes in the rocks jutting out over the water.






But returning up the western shore, the perception changes. The coast here is cut off in most places by hotels that stake out turf and turn away visitors with gates worthy of palatial grounds. The traffic is heavier and we soon understand why. As we drive closer to Cozumel (the town), we see the cruise ships. Three in one port, two in another. I'm smiling, but it's a forced smile.





Monster boats. And if Playa del Carmen was a zoo, the place where the people disembark at Cozumel is a riot of pop music, margarita bars and souvenir stores. With Starbucks, for the truly addicted. [I am not a Starbucks dretractor and I like margaritas, but not like this – not with whistles and bells and circus noises.] Truly, this side of the island has nothing in common with the other.


I do have to admit though that I also have a higher tolerance for shopping than Ed does. So it does not surprise him nor me that I find myself later in the day admiring yet again the embroidered garments that are so ubiquitous in this country. The ones that catch my eye now are from Oaxaca. The woman who sells them tells me that’s a hefty 24 hour drive by truck from here.

Outside the store, her little girl is playing with the daughter of the neighboring shopkeeper. I buy one small flowered shirt thinking all the time how there isn’t a place on earth where combining work with childcare doesn’t present a challenge.





Okay. Predictable. I love children, I love the colors of women’s dresses and shirts.

Less predictable is our last Mexican vacation moment. The WiFi at the hotel can be spotty in the afternoons. I decide to stroll over to the Internet shop a few blocks down. But on the way there, I take note of the restaurant/café just at the corner. With working WiFi. And one of the best coffees that I have had this past week. And breezes moving from one door to the next. It feels not unlike the café on the Isla Mujeres. How symmetrical is that! Our first stop of this trip and our last are at island café-restaurants with open spaces, good coffee, promoting a sense of well being that comes when you are not in a hurry, when you're not forced to think ahead to the next minute or even the next hour.




Sipping a coffee, then, later, a margarita, I suspend myself in the airy calm. I catch up on email, check headlines and, taking my cues from the cat, sit back and engage in the serious business of looking out at the world.

en Cozumel

We must return the car today: noon, bus station, Playa del Carmen. Two hours away from where we are. Some say three hours, depending on how you take the bumps on the road.

One last morning walk to the center of Valladolid. One last respectfully admiring glance at the women, who bring such beautiful hues to a town that’s already rich in color.




[Men, with vaquero (cowboy) hats are here as well; but the women catch my eye with their splash of pink, blue, purple.]









Moving solo, sometimes in groups, sometimes with an infant slung over the shoulder. Not so much with the entire family. That was yesterday. Today is a workday, a school day.












Last poke into a store for that last purchase: vanilla beans, cocoa, a belt... Reminders of the Yucatan.

One last look at the courtyard of our b&b...




We are on the road toward the coast. A modern, new road to Tulum. It was built to draw the coastal crowds inland. It’s almost empty today.

There are so many places where it’s tempting to leave the road. Side trips that could be taken. Things missed. Cenotes (underground watering holes), other Mayan ruins, other villages.

Next time.

As we approach Tulum – toward the southern end of the “Mayan Caribbean,” we readjust ourselves to this different world of mega-resorts, eco adventure parks and big signs advertising everything that’s glossy and contrived.

We enter Playa del Carmen. Ed draws a deep breath. He’d been here some decades back, when it was just one quiet main street with a ferry dock at the end. Today, it is an outdoor mall with a traffic jam and a Sam’s Club and a Pizza Hut and a million souvenir stalls. And four persons dressed in some form of nothing, dancing at the ferry landing in the hope of a few pesos.

None of this is photographable to me. I focus instead on the beach separating commercial chaos from the sea.





We hand over the automobile (the odometer indication is that it’s a newer car, but we know better: the seats are threadbare, the clutch malfunctions and it reeks of gas when you roll down the window; on the upside, it was very very cheap!) and set out toward the ferry. The goal is to get to the largest of all Mexican islands – Cozumel.

The ferry schedule on the Internet does not match the ferry schedule that’s here today and so we have a couple of hours in town. We search for that café away from noise and we do find it. I get Ed to shed the scowl. At least for the photo. The (wooden) parrot looks on.





And now I have to remind myself why exactly we are going to Cozumel. It is said to be a diver’s paradise, but I don’t dive. So why?

I want a taste of this corner of Mexico (with the exception of Cancun). Cazumel has its fans. And, its possible to get to the airport from here on Wednesday morning without a car. And so now, there we are, on a ferry to the island.

And what a ride it is! The waters are choppy enough to make a sailor belch. (Ed would, of course, call this only moderately rough seas.) The boat is fast, but from my perch, it appears to mainly heave from one side to the next. I count the seconds, reminding myself that at the end of this half hour journey, there will be ground.


On the island, the first impressions continue to make Ed recoil. So many stores, so many vendors beseeching us to buy! I am less bothered. It is how tourism develops. And, of course, there are places where aggressive selling far surpasses what we see here, on the coast of Mexico. You need only travel in China to know this.

As we walk to our b&b and move into the more residential blocks of Cozumel’s port town, Ed relaxes. Once you leave the shore, the neighborhood becomes the familiar mix of small houses and corner mini markets. It’s a place of barking dogs and yes, crowing roosters.

The b&b (Mi Casa en Cozumel) has nine rooms, stacked in a modernistic way, one almost on top of the next, making it, at four levels, by far the tallest building in the neighborhood.





From our top of the heap perch, you have the view of the area.





It is a lovely place! Our room has no window panes, just wooden slat doors leading to patios and wooden slat windows on all sides. By opening them, you get all the island breezes careening through your room.





Again, the price ($72 with breakfast and taxes) is a fraction of what you would expect across the border or at the beachfront properties.

Ed needs to “decompress” on the hammock. I take a brief stroll.










We are hungry early. Somewhere in the day, we lost our breakfast and lunch. Bakery rolls have been keeping us satisfied, but I am ready for a warm meal. (The shifting weather patterns are still messing with the Yucatan peninsula; the skies are blue or gray, depending on where you look, and the winds gust up a coolness that is unnatural to the area.)

We walk back to the square, look at one place, then another. Too big, too impersonal. We stop at a bakery off to the side, buy more sweet rolls...









...and ask the man at the counter where he likes to eat. Denis. Go to Casa Denis.

We do and it’s a lovely recommendation. The tables are outside, but in this quiet alley, the air is calm, warm even.

I order a Margarita and I laugh (not without pleasure) at the size.




The waiter tells me – that’s the small one. You want to see our large version? Here’s the glass for that one!





Next time.

I am still one foot in the Mayan world and without much hesitation, I order the fresh fish of the day (grouper) in a Mayan spinach sauce. It is absolutely delicious.





At Mi Casa, I open the slats and throw a warm blanket over the bed. The wind sweeps through the room, a dog barks.

In the morning, I wake up to the rooster. And a rainbow somewhere over the sea, off the coast of Cozumel.