Hey, my friend Cortīs site is up and lovely, go read about nasty political things at Cortīs site.

iīm not making this up

The Bush admin has decided to fine Ry Cooder one hundred thousand dollars for doing business with Cuba, in his making of the masterpiece, Buena Vista Social Club. And Clinton said we should all get in line behind Bush and support the war. ĄŋWhat the hell?!

Wow. So it was big, nifty, generally safer and nicer-smelling than Puebla. If you're just tuning in, I'm talking about my trip, Tuesday thru Friday, to Mexico City, or Day Effay (short for Districto Federal) as the locals call it.

Ironically, sickly, loyally, the first thing I did was go get my tax forms at the American Consulate, then a carmel macciato at the Starbucks across the street. I took pics, out of dumb amusement, of Starbucks mugs that have local monuments on them and read ''Mexico City.'' I figure somebody back in Tacoma will get a kick out of that.

Iīd never been in a consulate before. It was laid out in a big borg-cube with a fountained cortyard in the middle. I realize this is not just to make the rooms cooler, but to keep the high-muckedymuck's housing less distinguishable and thus safer. I was only allowed onto the first floor, once I made it past, let me see, six guards who all wanted to individually know what business I had in the consulate, one who took my backpack, one who took my passport, and one who made me take off my fashionable rainbow web belt in order to pass through the metal detector. And I was wearing enormously large pants. I had to hoist 'em up to walk through. I suppose as a security guard, these kind of things make your day. At least I wasn't wearing my leopard-print panties. After everything was appropriately re-lashed, re-hashed and re-adjusted, I proceeded, trying to look dignified and official to the IRS office, wherein I got my forms and wished everybody a happy April fifteenth.

Most of you reading know Seattle, methinks. Zona Rosa (yes, the pink zone), in which the consulate and Starbucks are located, is a lot like the Queen Anne area. Very tony in a faux-old kind of way. Pedestrian-only streets with lots of theme restaurants and cafes decorated with more money than imagination. I stopped in at an internet cafe, and finally made my way down Avenida Juarez, the monument-bestrewn megahighway that acts as the axel of D.F., past the Palacio de Belles Artes (palace of the pretty arts--well kinda) which contains the re-do of the mural that Rockefeller comissioned for Radio City Music Hall from Diego Rivera, (seen the movie Cradle Will Rock? You should.) and then tore down because the mural quite clearly implied that capitalism was evil and the beautiful future will be wrought by communist upheaveal. Heh heh. It was way cool, and until visiting, I didn't know that it had been repainted. Does the ol' ticker good.

I proceeded on to the zocalo, which contained about 50 shops that sell nothing but gold jewelry; (why?? donīt these people know how badly I need intertesting cafes? and what an excellent place to put one!) the national cathedral, where Friday morning I would watch a very indian-looking Jesus be crucified; Arturo, a sixty-some year-old man who was told by his doctors to slow down and spent his newfound time and enourmous energy into learning about his city, and once he finished, became almost creepily hell-bent on sharing it with a lot of tourists, including me; my 200-room mega-hostel replete with Madeline and Martina, German sisters whom I'd go climb the pyramids at Teotihuacan with. Not bad for a city block.

Arturo, hostels, German Sisters, food, cathedrals and Palacio Bellas Artes managed to occupy me well until bedtime. And that was my first day.

Wednesday was my pilgramage day to Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera sites. I spent enough money on this day to stay in DF for at least two more days. But we'll get there. First, the metro trip to Coyoacan. Coyoacan means place of the coyotes in Nauhatl, language of the Aztecs. Over a million people still speak Nauhatl, and all the archeological sites have panels explaining what you're seeing in Spanish, Nauhatl, and English. What's great about Nauhatl is that, kinda like German, itīs aglutinative. That is, the words are made out of lots of smaller words smushed together, so you can often guess at least part of the meaning of places. So Teohuacan is place of the Teohuas. Ok. Sometimes it isnīt terribly enlightnening. But the metro. Same system as the one in Paris, quick, fairly clean, dazzlingly efficient, and 20 cents to get from one end of town to another, make a mistake, realize it, double back and get on the right line. Good stuff. Coyoacan was at the other end of town, in fact it was a separate city uptil about 30 yrs ago when urbane sprawl subsumed it. Gulp. The place is placid and suburban. Change the Spanish for English and replace the street corn vendors with drive-thru coffee shacks, and Iīd swear I was in Lakewood or something. I had about a two to three KM hike either direction to the house/es that Frida and Diego shared, or to Frida's birth and death house.

Recalling adages of birds and stones, I went to the former first. It was billed in my out-of-date guidebook as Museo Diego Rivera y Frida Kahlo. The house was (as seen in the movie!!) way cool. I was sad they wouldn't let me take pictures inside the postpile-cactus fence, there were so many cool possible camera angles. Oh, but the anguish was just beginning. The museum had been renamed Museo Casa Diego Rivera, on Diego Rivera Avenue, and the exhibit in progress was ĻDiego Rivera, the women: modles and lovers.Ļ Where did Frida go? The blue house used to be hers. I dropped my camera (sniff) and backpack at the front counter and was managed into Diegoīs house first. The first floor was a gallery, of, yep, lots of women drawn and painted by Diego. There was a portrait of Frida about 4 inches square, drawn for her solo show just before her death. The rest, women, girls, starlets, friends, in various states of dress or un. I was a little worried.

Ushered up the next floor, I got my (free entry for teachers!) money's worth. Diegoīs (and sometimes Fridaīs) studio. Jars of colored powder waiting for the master to mix them into paint. Light, space, cool turn-of-century wooden mechanical apparatus adjustable tables and easles. Filing cabinets painted a darkened grass green. I fell in love with that green. Story-high paper-mache devils and skeletons. The whole room needed expiertencing item by item, then as a complete ensemble. Sweet and powerful. Man, I want a room like that. Then I got to poke my head into his tiny bedroom, look at his enourmous wollen slippers. Up to the mezzanine overlooking the studio, into his office space complete with ancient bakelite telephone, then onto the roof, across the tenuous bridge to Frida's house. No entry. Must go back down.

As I walked up the stairwell alone, I did a bow to the Bodhisattva whose space I was entering. I prepared myself for an important emotional experience. Well, I had one, but not what I expected. All her things had been removed to make room for more women, girls, starlets, friends, in various states of dress or un. Frida's torrid self-awareness had been removed from her own place to make room for Diegoīs picadillos. I was upset to the point of tears. I left a bitter message in the gallery guest book and left to collect my wits, and march my ass the five km to Frida's house.

There, some justice was done, even if their shared house had been made totally Diego, and Frida's house was being shared by the works of many other painters, many of whom she didn't know. But I canīt expect feminist deconstruction to fly in a country where job ads still specify whether the help wanted is male or female. Sigh. Well, Fridaīs house was much bigger. It had some of her clothes, her jewelry, some of which you could find in her paintings or in famous photographs of her. It had her diary, opened to a page of a dark, red-orange-black self-portrait as an egyptian fertilty God. It had her chest cast. It had her wheelchair. I was broken. The calm cool green of the place was insane counterpoint to the ravages of intimacy the place contained. I spent four-hundred fifty pesos (about 50 USD) on a careful, scholarly, annotated, full-color copy of her diary. And that, my friends, is a lot of money here. But I'm out of culture. Every time I go back to the states, I load up with as many unread books and magazines as I can manage. I get desperate for new ideas. My Christmas supply has been exhausted. This diary, intense, manic, handwritten in old-timey spanish, should hold me off a while. Plus, it would be so impossible to get something like this in the states. I left poorer, richer. I swore off buying restaurant food or any more tourist trinkets for the rest of the trip. I went back to the hostel because after that I was dehydrated and nothing else could have been important anyway.

The next day was Teotihuacan, with Martina and Madeline. You canīt write about pyramids. You go up them, you take a picture, you go down them. You take another picture. They were impressive. There was some nice stonework, some nice murals. I missed the temple of Quetzalcuotal, and Iīm sure somebody will bonk me on the head for that when I go home. But I was pretty ok with that. Iīm becoming a little cynical about traveling, watching myself spend a lot of effort and scarce money to parade a bunch of new things in front of my eyes. Am I growing from this? Sometimes. Sometimes not. Depends on how much research I can put in beforehand. I didn't put much into this. I've been too busy with Buddha and Frida and comics and guitar. So the rocks were really cool, and that was Thursday. Oh, and there was this 40-ish, fat Aussie woman with bright-red, super-short hair. She looked so kiss-my-ass self-assured that I knew I needed red hair too. Saturday I bought dye with Brenna and am typing as a kinda-purpeley redhead. I like it.

Friday morning I packed my Jansport to seam-straining, and went back to Coyoacan to look up the world-famous bookstore, Ghandi. I wrote in the upstairs cafe, just to say I had, and picked up a copy of Women Who Rock magazine, in English.(See starved for culture above. I think Iīve read the entire magazine already, and practiced a lot of guitar.)It was reasuring to be surrounded by books again.

I had left that morning to find an artists cafe, or die trying. My antiquated Lonely Planet guidebook proclaimed the best-decorated restaurant in all D.F. was the Modern Art Cafe in this San Angel mall. Hells bells, if another 5k walk was what it took to find a good cafe in this art-forsaken country, I was up for it. The mall could have been out of Lakewood, or some place cutesier and more monied. I asked a guy at a resturant if the Modern Art Cafe was still around. He pointed me to another part of the mall complex. I went there. Didnīt see it. I asked a security guard. He pointed me to another part of the mall. I spent about half an hour wandering around this fairly small mall area, and finally asked this guy handing out postcards advertizing for Fever, this travolta-esque disco musical. Emilio said that the Modern Art Cafe had been out of existance for Three Years. Three years. What the hell. Emilio asked why Iīd wanted to find it, and I explained I was a writer looking for a funky place to work on my stuff, because I lived in Puebla and no such place existed there. He concurred. Turns out heīs an actor, world traveler (India, Turkey) and damn interesting to talk to. Which I did for two and a half hours. Never found my artists cafe, but got a conversation better than the one I was hoping to find there. We exchanged emails. I gave him this URL too. (HOLA EMILIO!!) Weīll hang out. I went home.

This morning, walking to the ATM to get 100 pesos to pay the maid, I found this hidden, interesting art school, "Bauhaus." I peeked in and saw that the door to a cafe-gallery. Itīs four blocks from my apartment. I have been disappointed too often to get my hopes too high up, but Iīm piqued. Wouldnīt it be funny? Ay this universe of ours, the ways in which it provides us with what we need at the last moment.

Ok, my dears. My headīs about to explode quite messily from all this writing, and the internet cafe dude is rockin out to Aaronīs Dance Party. FLEEE! Heather, still your tiny bubble.