MEXICO
Artist Credit: Watercolor by Sue Siskin: Zocalo, Oaxaca, Mexico
Something happens to me when I am in Mexico. I relax. My mind seems sharper. Most of all, I’m happy. The people and ambiance of this beautiful country have inspired the stories and other posts in this section.
Adriana Diaz Enciso: Doleful City of God
This life's dim windows of the soulDistorts the heavens from pole to poleAnd leads you to believe a lieWhen you see with, not through, the eye. William Blake, The Everlasting Gospel Adriana Díaz Enciso is a Mexican poet, essayist, translator and writer. I came...
Mezcalifornia
The State of California used to be the state of Alta California as part of Nueva España and later Mexico. Many Mexicans stayed here – as the saying goes, ‘the border moved, not me’ – and as we’re all very aware it’s a space of intersecting and overlapping,...
Crossing Borders: Paul Theroux and Stephanie Elizondo Griest
The border means more than a customs house, a passport officer, a man with a gun. Over there everything is going to be different; life is never going to be quite the same again after your passport has been stamped and you find yourself speechless among the...
Persimmons and Mezcal
The cold, the winter, the holidays—lazy. What better time to honor others in the blogosphere than when you are too lazy to write your own blog. This blog was inspired by an Instagram post from my friends at Mezcalistas, Baking with Mezcal. Today’s experiment in...
Bacalao, Christmas, Zhuatanejo and Behind the Locked Door
In the acknowledgements to my novel Behind the Locked Door I write: This book had a long gestation period. The idea first occurred to me in 1972, and I began to research in earnest in December of 2010. I first put pen to paper in Zihuatanejo, Mexico, in January...
Think in the Morning Oaxaca Journal
[Click on BLUE links for sources and information] Oaxaca is one of the most beautiful places on earth in our opinion. We have visited every year for the past twelve years. Because we write so much about Oaxaca, we are often asked how to travel there, what to do,...
Oaxacan Wood Carvings: Folk Art or Fine Art?
[Click on BLUE links for sources and information] If you've read our past blogs you may be aware that Think in the Morning has long been fascinated by Oaxacan Wood Carvings also known as Alebrijes (although this name originated with the papier-mâché animals created...
Serendipity
[Click on BLUE links for sources and information] You may have noticed that Think in the Morning has been absent for a few weeks. We’ve been in Mexico, one of our favorite places to visit, working on another project I hope to share with you at some not too distant...
Don Chava Taqueria Cantina
[click on BLUE links for sources and information] Huila was irked. A tortilla, made of holy corn, corn made of rain and soil and sun, that tortilla, round as the sun itself! Was God not in the rain? Did the corn not come from God? What of the sun? Was...
Poem by Think in the Morning: The Barranca (for Philip Larkin, Tomas Tranströmer, Malcolm Lowry)
... wherever you turned the abyss was waiting for you round the corner ... Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano He was drunk. Just like he had been for weeks. Months. How long he didn't know. He had journeyed well beyond sanity. It wasn’t just the booze...
It’s All About The Corn
[Click on BLUE links for sources and more information] sin maíz no hay país—without corn, there is no country Americans love Mexican food. We consume nachos, tacos, burritos, tortas, enchiladas, tamales and anything resembling Mexican in enormous...
Oaxaca’s Amazing Graphic Arts Studios
[Click BLUE links for sources and more information] I started to make graffiti when I was 15. Later, I went to a college of art where I combined fine arts with street art. In 2006, there was a strong social and political movement in my state (Oaxaca) and...