Oregon in the winter

My mother is in Hawaii and my kids are packing for Mexico. Here the winter sky is gray almost every day. It's gray and bleak and we live like people buried beneath plastic, like someone has stretched a plastic tarp over our heads and all we can do is wait for it to stop. My kids don’t mind the weather, but they are packing for Mexico. They are buying shorts and swim suits.

internalizing repression

Today I posted the first page of my new manuscript, Watching Rhonda Honey, on my website. The first page is about being raised Catholic. I'm glad I was raised Catholic, let me say that right now. It did three things that I like. It made me psychologically complicated, which is useful for a writer. It gave me a sense of shame, which is not a bad thing, I realize now as I've gotten older. And, best of all, the Catholic church taught me that, when you strip everything else away, at heart it's all a big mystery.
Along with the first page of the novel, I posted a photograph I took in a Catholic Church in Mexico. It's a picture of Jesus' bloody, nailed feet. I think it's a sign of the repressive times we live in, and the way in which we've internalized that repression, that I hesitated: would someone be offended? Was it in bad taste? Was I being disrespectful? ---I hesitated, even though I knew that it it was right image, that if I could take a picture of what it felt like to be a little Catholic girl, it would be that picture.

no witches, but food

We went to a town near the volcano called Fuego, which means fire. People say that there are witches in the town. We didn't find any, but we did find a good restaurant.

who would have guessed

I thought I couldn't write here. I thought maybe my writing required a cynical state of mind and I can't feel cynical here, on the Jalisco Coast of Mexico, but today I wrote three pages of my novel, Finding Rhonda Honey.
Last night we went to a drag show here in this little town. The guy from the taco stand was a beautiful woman. Who would have guessed. People brought their children and the kids danced, too.

not a secret

I'm on the Jalisco coast, in a town called La Manzanilla. I used to keep the name a secret, but the town isn't a secret really, so there it is. La Manzanilla.
It's December and I am wearing my flip flops. If I look up, I can see the ocean.

mexico

In the morning, a thousand roosters crow.