And I’ve added another room to the mansion here. There used to be a room halfway up the patio stairs that doubled as a storeroom/ cockroach graveyard. I’ve just tidied it, swept it and painted the walls and once I’ve done the ceiling I’ll have a decent little office and should free up some room around the place. What did people do before wireless internet? Just have to get a cordless phone and away we go. Again.

Have another misty photo from yesterday of Tonalá’s latest craze- Follow-you-round-the-room-Jesus . I reckon he’s looking at Daniel to my left, mind. Just as unsettling as one of my favourite YouTube videos.

I cleaned the lens on me camera today before heading off to Tonala, but by the time I got there the lense had steamed up on the inside with the special cleaning fluid. I’ve been googling ways to get rid of it but all the results come up as “DON’T put drops of cleaning fluid directly onto the lens as it can cause condensation inside”, well, I worked that out for myself. How do I get rid of it is the question… I’m hoping that leaving it to bake in the car for a while will sort it out. In the meantime, I’ve got some interesting pix of Tonala with a hazy frame effect… Just hope it won’t be a permanent feature of my photography…

Also, M & D got their wardrobe. Here’s Monica in the back of their car with it:

It’s bean a weird couple of days in the office. Like a bad episode of Terry and June whereupon we have to hide certain clients from other clients, because they’re in different political parties. Making sure the computer doesn’t show one party’s logo when someone from the other party comes bursting through the door. Talking in code and making wild gesticulations, still it’s all part of the fun of the 2006 elections. Anyroad, suffice to say blogging’s going to be a bit sparse these next few days.

For the rest of the Zacatecas/ Aguascalientes trip it’s going to be a stream of consciousness: Tour, town center, La Bufa, Teleferico, Mines!, dinner at a french place, power nap, bullring-cum-hotel, aqueduct, cantina II, new drunks, scale model of how mines work produced at the bar, v. rare meat, hotel… then next day: quick recce, breakfast, Rene’s here too!, Aguascalientes, Posada museum, murals, Tonala, glasses, home.

Personal highlight: the friendly locals with their scale models.

A quick pause as Ed (who’s done a grand job of blogging the last couple of weeks’ travels) left for Guanajuato and Daniel and Monica head for the land of stringent planning permission. It was grand to have everyone around, quite a start to 2005 and the fun doesn’t stop there, we’re counting down to Ms Duffy’s arrival…
So the year so far in summary, comment if you’d like elucidation on the following:
Monday: Mexican locksmiths, Breakneck speeds and Ian, Adriana, Jose, Sita, Daniel & Monica restaurant antics.
Tuesday: Breakfast in Cafe D’Val, Tonala for arts and crafts and monica and daniel’s ever expanding small bowl collection. Downtown Gwod and La Fuente cantina… 2 buck chuck
Wednesday: Intro to Flash MX 2004, Slow Food and Fast Times. 2 buck chuck
Thursday: Chapala, Mariachi, Ajijic, no Mexican Hat Dances. 2 buck chuck
Friday: Lie in, San Juan de Dios (mio que comi?), La I Latina (best restaurant evah), El Pull-Bar, Virtual bowling. 2 buck chuck
Saturday: Central camionera nueva, Adieus, The Perfect Client, Skype and Lemon Chicken. 2 buck chuck (if there’s any left…)

Shall return to complete sentences in the near future. But as I say, it’s been a fantastic couple of weeks, thanks to all concerned. Viva Calle Garibaldi!
2 buck chuck

PS. Only 2 games of scrabble in 10 days… shall get my fix in tomorrow and say hello to my old friends xu, xi, qi and qat

The visual cue from it’s French origin “dame jeanne”, a wide hipped lady is delightfully sensual… apparently. So that sort of makes sense, although Lady Jane must have had a very odd looking head. With big ears maybe.

Click on “More” or “Comment” below and you’ll see some of the transcription I’m working on about Mayahuel, the Aztec goddess of the Agave. Ocelots, humming birds and human sacrifice aplenty.

So I’ll show you how Mayahuel was born. It’s a personal class, just for you!

OK

They say that the Kingdoms of Heaven used to include Earth too. Gods used to walk the Earth and the heavens, and they changed into strange beings. They were very… If they wanted to be wind, they’d be wind, or fire, or gods or humans, or trees or plants. They could pass through all these states. At the very beginning there’s this woman, who gives birth to Gods. She is Cuacuitle, the one with the skirt of serpents. Here she’s alive, but then she has to die and merge with the soil of mother Earth, decapitated and dismembered, a sacrifice which allowed humanity to survive, but which has to be repaid as shown by her collar of hands and hearts. So here, she’s dead, but before, when she was alive she was like this… Her daughter, xixlales, the stars and this woman was called coloachowski (?).

[I arrive…]

We’re talking about Mayahuel, the goddess of agaves, of fecundity and fertility. This is Coatquitle, She’s the mother of all the gods, she’s a cuatl, Coatlquinque, she has daughters, stars and this woman colaochowski. So one day she was dusting her palace and she found some hummingbird feathers so she picked them up and put them in the back of her skirt, and so she got pregnant. Coloachowski realised that her mother had got pregnant and so she wants to kill her so she doesn’t have this child. But in her womb, the son hears her, and her sister and (his name is huitislospostre, which means the left-handed hummingbird, because his dad is a humming bird). Later Huitizlapostre is going to be the King/God of the Aztecs, god of War, spiritual guide and representative of the sun. But in the meantime, he hears his sister saying she wants to kill them so he comes out of his mothers womb as a warrior and kills her sister. And you may think what a terrible thing, but didn’t Cain kill Abel? Well, they go off, and the sister is killed, he cuts of her hands, legs and head, they bury her and she turns to stone. This stone exists- it’s in the Templo Mayor in Mexico City.

She turns to stone and her spirit rises to the heavens and forms the moon. Moon is mixti o metl. Metl, which is Mezcal. So we have the starts and the moon. So then after creating man, there was only darkness. So the Gods get together and decide to create a star which will give light and warmth to all the humans. So they make a sun of water, which in Nauhatl is atl. And sun is totnatu, so the sun made of water is atltonato.

Like Tonala is the ciudad del Sol? (Gwyn)
No, [pendejo], Tonala is where the sun rises…

So this sun, when its rays are emitted, they’re water, so the humans have to become fish to survive because there’s a flood. You see how this is like the jewish tradition, with fratricide, a flood… So that’s water. Like with Mayahuel

They got rid of this sun, and made a new one so called the Sun of the Ocelot, the nahuat name for tiger. It’s a sun that stays there in the sky without moving. So the humans born under this sun are born giants, and they have to eat the vegetables, but when they fall to the earth that’s so hot, that it eats them up. They all end up being eaten up by the tigers.

Then comes quiagua, the brother or Tlaloq (water of rain), and quiagua (water of fire, water from volcanoes). So now we have oceans, and marine life, and deserts, now we need volcanoes. So humans to save themselves from the volcanoes have to become birds and fly away. So that’s how they explain the existence of birds.

Then comes the 4th sun, acatl, wind. Strong winds blow and all the human disperse throughout the world and turn into monkeys. So it’s all explained, there’s sea, mountains, desert, all kinds of animals. And they’re seeing that the sun’s still not how they want it, so each time all the humans all die they keep their bones and spread them like seeds and this god defecated on their bones. They were all pissed off at him for having dirtied the humans’ bones, and that’s why we humans get ill. He’s called Nanahuatzin, he says what humanity needs is a sun that moves, which makes night and day. So he goes into the fire and becomes the man of fire and goes to heaven. You’ll see El Hombre de Fuego in el centro Cabanas. He is nahuatzin, who goes to heaven in the form of the sun. But look, si if you cover this part of his name, what does it say? Nahuat. The tribe who look after the sun. This is represented here in the Stone of Sun. Here, the 1st sun, of water, 2nd of the tiger, 3rd of quiagua (representation of a crocodile) and 4th of wind. This is the 5th sun. It has its blond hair and a tongue in the shape of an obsidian knife because it’s asking for sacrifice of human beings. Why? Because he needs the strength, because in the (Mixlan) night there’s a bad star who wants to kill the sun. We’ll talk about him later.

So that’s why they wanted to kill humans.

Yes it was to give the sun strength to attack the star that wanted to kill the sun. So this sun, so it doesn’t fall out of the firmament, has claws and holds on tight to the universe. And here are the symbols of the numbers, 2, 0, 1, 2. 2012 which is the year when the 5th sun is supposed to end. Right now we’re in the 5th sun’s reign. So they had to remove the hearts to battle against the stars that were devourers of light. This is xiximitl,

Mayahuel’s grandmother?

Yes, here she is.
END OF SIDE 1

Last night Sita, Jose and I went to an Argentinean restaurant, La Matera I think it’s called named after the gourd thing you drink mate out of. Mate wasn’t on the menu however, probably because it’s illegal in most countries. Jose chose the place after a recommendation from his sister about the food there and a colleague at work who recommended the meseras. Anyroad after 30 minutes wait or so, we ordered lomo, medium rare and bugger me if it wasn’t the most delicious piece of meat I’ve ever sunk my teeth into. Melts-in-your-mouth good, on a par with the filet mignon we had in Buenos Aires, and the filete in ‘La I Latina’, Guadalajara. Not only was it delicious, but plentiful too and there’s still some left in the doggy bag in the fridge. This place is only 5 or 6 blocks from the house, whenever I land another job I know where we’re going to celebrate.

Their chips weren’t bad neither…

So plans for day… AgaveWeb, possibly Tonala/Tlaquepaque (It’s market day), and a quiet evening, for tomorrow it’s round some mates’ house for Thanksgiving. Talking of which, happy TG to my american readers. William Burroughs wasn’t a fan, mind. Never was the cheeriest of folks though…

Another hiccup. Today we were due to meet and sign contracts for our lovely house. Fortunately or unfortunately on our way to Tonala, I picked up the paper and on the front page was: All traffic from Lopez Mateos (huge main thoroughfare in Guad) to be diverted by Your New House while they build a tunnel (!) on LM. So fearing another Seville scenario (where the week after Sita moved in with a year contract they started to demolish the hotel 1 metre away for 6 months, then rebuild it, at 6:30 am each and every morning) we phoned to say we’re not going to take this house. Which is a shame, but it just goes to show that the 7 pesos (35p / 65 cents) I spend on El Informador each day are justified.

The weather’s lovely though, for what it’s worth. And I’m enjoying constant emails/ comments/ guestmapping from my folks who are on ‘oliday in Tenerife right now, becoming more and more fluent in the old Español each day.