Chapter 11-Dress Her in Indigo

"After a hotel lunch, a few miles out of the city on the Mitla road we came upon El Tule, and Meyer said that he wanted to be a tourist for a few minutes, and look at the biggest tree in the world.
It was not far from the highway, a hundred yards perhaps. It dwarfed the old church nearby. I was astonished to see how rich and vital and green it was. Seemed to be of the banyan family. Elephant-gray bark. Glossy dark leaves. There was a low iron fence all the way around it. The trunk was maybe a hundred feet in circumference. It made better than an acre of shade.
Meyer stood absolutely still, staring up into the cool green shadowy places beyond the giant lower limbs. When he turned smling toward me, I knew that the tree had restored his nerves and composure.
'At the time of Christ,' he said, 'nobody was giving this tree a second look. It was just an ordinary little tree.'
'It looks as if it has decided to stay around awhile.'
'And I am going to come back here,' he said, 'and I am going to paint myself blue, and I am going to live up there in the top of that tree forever.'" (Dress Her in Indigo, John D. MacDonald, 1969 p. 131)

Which is by way of announcing that I am going to Oaxaca next week. Dress Her in Indigo is one of my very favorites in the Travis McGee series, and the majority of the action takes place in and around Oaxaca. I am going to take the book with me and do a little travelogue documenting the places mentioned in the story. That's not the only reason to go, of course, but I always benefit with a little framework to brace me.

I'm a little nervous since my spanish is abysmal. (We had spanish lessons in elementary school, but we'd invariably have different teachers every year. The new teacher would be shocked, shocked! at the previous teacher's approach to teaching us the language and start us over again from the beginning. Therefore, I can usually recite the spanish alphabet, and I used to know all the words to "De Colores". )

Alex is blessed with fluency in spanish, so I usually end up looking like his mute, retarded companion in Mexico. Fortunately I can draw real good. If all else fails I can do "Pictionary".

We are staying in the Hotel Francia near the Zocalo. It is rumored to be a bit noisy, but I'm hoping that mid to late November is not a big party month. We leave on the 14th (in the middle of the freaking night) and arrive at around 9 am Tuesday. I'm sure I'll get into it when I'm there. It's just the getting there that makes me crazy.

Hopefully I will be able to do some posting down there. Al thinks the hotel will have internet access but I'm pretty sure he's wrong. In our guidebook there's some listings for Internet Cafes, though. I will be taking my trusty little camera, of course.

In other news, tonight at Cricket Engine is the opening reception for "Pink Week". Yours truly has a piece in there.
If I was on the other computer I would post a pic, but I am not, so you'll just have to go see the show.

MPK