The Bell

And at last he reached the bell.  The bell with the iron or steel or some metal frame made from an old ship.  The bell with a strong double cord hanging from its clapper.  And when he pulled very lightly on the cord, so as not to ring the bell, but just to see what it felt like, what the weight was like of the cord in his hand, he heard the sound the clapper made when it was just activated ever so slightly, just swinging a bit up there on its own, for once independent of the bell.  And that sound it made it sounded to him like the violins from Bernard Herrmann's score to Psycho turned down very quietly (not just any violins but those and those only).  And he stood here tugging lightly on the strong cord listening to those two sounds, the only two sounds there were---the desert wind with the violins, just about to explode.

The Caves

LOOKING OUT AT SIERRA DEL SAN FRANCISCO

FROM EL PALMARITO CAVE

EL PALMARITO CAVE

SIERRA DEL SAN FRANCISCO

La Sierra

UN VAQUERO

SIERRA DE SAN FRANCISCO MOUNTAIN RANGE

El Panteón de San Ignacio

TWO FROM THE SAN IGNACIO CEMETERY

In San Ignacio Pueblo

 CLEMENTE ARCE VILLAVICENCIO

ARTIST

SAN IGNACIO PUEBLO

I am now in the desert oasis pueblo of San Ignacio.  It's very different from the Lagoon.  At the Lagoon, everything is open, you can see for miles and miles and miles.  Here in the town of San Ignacio, it's exactly the opposite.  We are in a valley, a river runs through it, and everywhere you look there are trees and roofs and things to cover you.  Even the horizons are covered in every direction by mesas which overlook the town, and hovering above them the ever present vultures.

Before you leave the lagoon

JUAN MARIA AGUILAR

LAGUNA SAN IGNACIO

Before you leave the lagoon, visit the old man at the entrance who they call Shema.  He wears a knife on his belt, has a sign in his front yard that says "Wilkommen," and a dog named Diamond...

STINGS

I am sorry I am deliquent in posting my daily pictures.  Internet problems, and I've been stung by a stingray.  First, here are the pictures.

ANA RAQUEL FRANCO   YARENY MONTOYA   ARECELI MONTOYA

EL CARDÓN   LAGUNA SAN IGNACIO

LEONARDO RAMIREZ MORALES    SOFIA HIALI RAMIREZ MORALES

LA ESCUELITA    LAGUNA SAN IGNACIO

GERARDO "JERRY" FREER AND FRIEND

LA FREIDERA   LAGUNA SAN IGNACIO

A FEW EASY STEPS TO TREAT YOUR FOOT AFTER YOU HAVE BEEN STUNG BY A STINGRAY IN MEXICO WITHOUT DOCTORS OR NURSES, IF YOU ARE FORTUNATE TO BE ONLY BLEEDING AND NOT EXPERIENCING CHILLS, VOMITING, SUDDEN FAINTNESS, OR HAVING LOTS OF TROUBLE BREATHING (THEN YOU SHOULD GO TO THE EMERGENCY ROOM)

1a)   Know that if you have been walking (rather than shuffling, which is what you are supposed to do, Jerry calls it the "Stingray Shuffle") through shallow warm waters you have almost definitely been stung by a stingray, though it may have felt like a shark just bit you very hard and though you may be bleeding profusely.  If you weren't in so much pain and wondering who to go to, if it's major or minor or whether you will ever walk or run again, you would see that the actual cut bleeding place where the barbed stinger went in is very small and could definitely not be a shark bite.

1b) Tell someone or you yourself heat up enough boiling hot water to fill a bucket or tub that will cover your cut and foot.  It is important to do this now, as opposed to later.  I will tell you why in twenty minutes.

2) Run or squeeze or have someone else squeeze as much blood out of the sting as possible, as soon as possible, until it seems like there is no blood left.  Though this may hurt and feel a bit contrary to the task at hand, it is GOOD if you are bleeding, because the blood is getting venom out, and you must capitalize by squeeze squeeze squeezing that blood out because the venom can rocket throughout your whole body and go to your head and elsewhere, and you need to get as much of the stingray's venom out as possible.  The venom won't mess you up if you squeeze that shiznit out!
 
 3a) Heat some limes/ roast some limes close to an open flame, when they are very hot, cut them, and for twenty minutes or so squeeze a bit of lime juice over the cut, and then rub the cut with the piping hot lime until the lime is not so hot anymore.  This disinfects, continues to suck out venom, and actually feels good mostly.

3b) While the lime action is happening, take the water off the heater/boiler, put it in the bucket and let it start to cool.

4)  After you're done with your limes, your foot is probably still going to hurt like hell, you may have cried, you may have not cried, you may have almost cried just because the sight of another young man, a fisherman named Octaviano, heating limes and rubbing them confidently on your foot combined with the sound of another young man, Jerry an ex- bullfighter, saying things like "That's what killed Steve Irwin, man," is just too overwhelmingly everything for words.  Any which way you slice it, it's all good.  You are probably going to be nearly pain free in about an hour or so.  What you need to do now is put your foot into that hot water.  And here is the thing, you need to put your foot in water that is as hot as you can possibly stand, which is why at the beginning I said to start heating it, because hopefully by now it's cooled enough so you can put your foot in it.  Now of course you don't want to give your foot a third degree burn, but the hotter the water is, the better it is going to feel I am telling you.

5) Keep your foot in that water for about 45 minutes or so and witness a sudden change in life pain weather you never thought possible.  Here is why...

"Because stingray venoms are composed of heat-labile proteins, doing this will alter the tertiary structure of the polypetide protein molecule by denaturing and thereby deactivating the poison. "

-from WikiHow, How To Treat A Stingray Sting, Multiple Authors

Damn.  In the States I'd say that is pretty fucking cool.  In Baja, CHINGADERA.  You will most likely be nearly pain free after you take your foot out of that water.  BOOM.

FRYING PAN

MARIA LUISA CAMACHO SALINAS

LA MAESTRA DE LA FREIDERA

Everyone calls her "Jacqui," because that was her grandmother's name.  No one thus far has been more instrumental in my explorations of Laguna San Ignacio than this woman.  She is the matron presiding over the whale camp where I've been staying for the last week.  This area of the lagoon is called La Freidera, which means "frying pan."  One hundred years ago when they were harvesting whales from the lagoon by the hundreds, this small beach was where they had the big machines they used to fry the whales and extract their blubber.

The Full Gamut in San Ignacio

 

CEMETERY DE LA LAGUNA

   

FRIDAY NIGHT AT THE LAGOON

If you look back there on the upper left hand side of the picture of the cemetery, there's the edge of a black building.  That's one of the two very small chapels built in the name of one of the lagoon's deceased.  That particular one honors a young 15 year old boy who died of leukemia after a doctor misdiagnosed his throat problem and gave him four unsuccessful doses of anti-biotics.  His "casita" has a wooden door that swings open and closed with the wind.  I opened the door yesterday to find a small diamond- back rattlesnake just inside, stretched against the wall, its tongue flitting away. I returned today to the cemetery at midday, opened the door, and there the snake was, in the exact same place, curled up sleeping.

Nests

OSPREY NEST   LA ISLA GARZA

LAGUNA SAN IGNACIO

MIRIAM, JONI, ISAEL    LA BASE

LAGUNA SAN IGNACIO

Meeting Las Abuelitas

DONYA SILVIA, HER DAUGHTER ARLENE, AND ARLENE'S SON DIEGO

 EL CARDÓN    LAGUNA SAN IGNACIO

Today I walked around with my wonderful guide Jackie, talking to all different kinds of Grandmothers (and daughters and grandchildren).  We visited two out of three of the little outposts where people live on the lagoon, El Cardón (loosely, "thistle"), and Escuelita ("little school," where they have the elementary school and kindergarten). 

The first grandmother, Donya Maria, was about seventy.  Her boyfriend is 37.  She has 27 grandchildren by nine children and if her tenth child hadn't died it would probably be more.  Another grandmother, Donya Olivia, used to see lots of ghosts about twenty or thirty years ago, but she doesn't see them anymore and she doesn't know why. 

On my first day in San Ignacio Lagoon

BEGINNING TO PREPARE THE GUITAR FISH CATCH 

TO SHIP TO THE MARKET

RESTING IN THE MIDDLE

Having traveled upward through Mexico, northwest to San Ignacio

14:36 ON HIGHWAY ONE         SEA OF CORTEZ

GREY WHALE      ENTRANCE TO SAN IGNACIO

I've got to give a pound of respect to my serious black attitude. Yes that's right. My black Dodge Attitude that nobly and unfailingly negotiated 45 kilometers of a dirt, salt, clay, rock, shell, sand riveted road today and successfully landed me in five shifts of an American gear in San Ignacio Lagoon, a place I have been writing about for days and days, and have just now seen for the first time.

Yes STILL in Loreto, learning how to drive a stick shift...

SIDE OF THE ROAD    LORETO, MEXICO

Day 2, Still in Loreto

     GRAVE SLAB, LORETO CEMETERY    LORETO,  MEXICO     

   

My First Day in Mexico

JOSE EMILIO TAYLOR COTA    LORETO, MEXICO

I'm traveling through Baja California doing the final on site research for the narrative feature I am writing, about a journalist who travels to San Ignacio Lagoon to write about the whales there.  I'm taking pictures with a Diana 120mm camera with an Insta-Back, which enables me to take mini-polaroid pictures.  I'm scanning one polaroid a day onto the web so you can get a feeling of my adventures.  I hope you enjoy this first one, of a dyed in the wool Loretano who is cementing (in more ways than one no doubt) the walls of La fabulous Damiana Inn, where I am staying.  Stay with us, there will be one picture a day for the next three weeks.  Por favor no cambie el canál!

Nelito's Ball

On Thursday The New York Times published an article about a Belgian photographer named Jessica Hilltout who traveled throughout Africa examining "the continent's love for the game."  She took one picture of a boy named Nelito, in Mozambique, cradling in his arms a soccer ball he had made out of a light blue garbage bag and brown twine.  If you look at the ball, you notice the weaving of the rope, how it's looped and tied and tightened, the ball is netted, shaped and sized with striking accuracy to a real, factory-made soccer ball.  And though we can’t see his face in the picture (the frame spans from his neck to his hips), the details we can make out in this luminous photograph, the ball and the way his hands embrace it, the roughness of his fingernails, even the shiny orange lining of his rolled up sleeves, all paint Nelito as an expert craftsman.  One imagines him laboring on a bench somewhere for hours, the official World Cup Jabulani ball rotating slowly like a planet in his imagination, as he threads and tightens and weighs, so that when he finishes, the player/artist's masterpiece has just the right bounce, just the right lift, just the right glide. 

For the last month or so since the World Cup began, on days like Tuesday and Wednesday, even Monday, I've woken up with an "it's-my-birthday-and-I'm-going-to-get-presents" feeling.  As I've worked and played, but mostly worked (thanks to the fact that the Latin American television station Univisión has been streaming the games live on their website), my apartment has been filled with the drone of vuvuzelas, pounded by the incessant melodrama of broadcaster Jesus Bracamontes, my cats basking on the floors in the summer heat, ears perked at the constant presence of a hoard of Mexican bees, buzzing in formation somewhere just beyond their line of sight.  It has been sad and frustrating, a bit all-consuming, but mostly downright incredible to fall madly in love with international soccer in the last month. 

I started playing soccer three years ago, because I was having dreams about it, and then I found a pair of cheap cleats, and then I continued having dreams about it.  And I remember back then I thought a lot about how different it was from all the other sports, how ready anyone on earth was at any moment to play soccer.  You don’t need a mitt or pads or a basket or a puck or even a stick.  All you really need is about two legs in basic condition to run (I've seen amputees playing with one and a crutch), and something round and light with a diameter somewhere in the realm of eight and a half inches, and you're ready to go.

It’s going to be tough tomorrow when the game is over.  And it'll be a little bit strange to wake up on Monday morning and not have another mesmerizing 90 minutes to look forward to.  Hard to walk down my hall and not hear those African bee-horns droning urgently from the living room.  I'm even going to miss Jesus a little bit.  And then of course those moments riding down the street anywhere in this city, feeling the electricity of the game radiating from bars and restaurants and bodegas, on screens large, medium, and miniscule.

Now, though, I’m going to focus on this one last game, less than 12 hours away.  Spain versus Netherlands.  For best in the world.  I’m going to wake up tomorrow morning and open my eyes one more time, ready for the big present.  God bless the beautiful game, no?  Let us watch it at all costs, play it however we can, and wherever they are in this wide world, Mozambique, Munich, Manchester, Madrid, let the game's elegant, impeccable artists teach us how to kick some ass with just a bit more grace.

Since 1930 and 90 minutes

"But there is a particular spirit about this American team, a persistence and resilience that compel it to play on, a belief that unyielding commitment will bring a deserved reward even at times when skill and technique may not."

-Jeré Longman, in an article from the new york times 6.23.10

Today the United States advanced to the next round of the World Cup, after Landon Donovan scored a goal in the 91st minute.  It was the first time since 1930 that the US had won their round.  Right before Landon Donovan scored, a dog barked loudly amongst the crowd of people in the café where I was watching.  It was the only time the entire game the dog had barked.  Today is also Peck The Town Crier's 30th birthday, and French soccer magician Zinedine Zidane's 38th.

Here is the rest of Jeré Longman's nice article...

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/24/sports/soccer/24usgame.html?hp

Like Video Stores

I was walking past the out of business Hollywood Video on 5th Avenue in Park Slope (I think there are only one or two video stores left in my neighborhood).  As far as I could tell, there was only one video left inside, sitting on a dusty black cabinet, next to a white face mask.  I looked in to see what it was--- a DVD of the television show "Dead Like Me."

Vitamins

This morning, while the soccer game was just beginning and I was taking my fish oil, I realized that my mother, my sister, and I all put our vitamins into our mouth the same way.

UNDERWEAR

The Loneliness of Eating in America

Last Thursday night, I came upon this man eating in the Bank of America ATM near 18th street and Broadway, struck by how expressive everything about him was, though you could barely see his face. Then, a few doors down, I saw this young woman eating something in Jamba Juice, surrounded by flourescence and plastic chairs and fruit glistening in bright colored frames. It was interesting to see these people so close together, looking so lonely and isolated, doing the exact same thing. I thought why can't we just get them together to share a meal? Two Americans, like so many of us, eating dinner alone.