Sand in my shoes

Welcome to my virtual scrapbook!

This would have been a fun hotel to stay at—or perhaps too spooky? Those ghosts certainly look like they're having a good time.

On vacation, I read some more of Jonathan Strange, finished Muriel Spark's The Girls of Slender Means, and imbibed relevant chunks of Daniel Pinchbeck's 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl. I also started Scott Smith's The Ruins once I returned, but it's freaking me out and I have to put it away. I also read some of the interviews in the new Believer—Dizzyhead Brandon's interview with Stephen O'Malley is not to be missed, nor is the Greil Marcus/Don DeLillo conversation (talking about Dylan—fascinating!). Unfortunately, the rental car's radio/CD player didn't work at all, so I had to just imagine what this year's Believer CD sounded like.


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I randomly stumbled on this quote: "Do not mistake the scaffolding for the building." —Freud

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Bugs devoured my legs.

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On TV: Alexander Payne's Election, or as it's called in Mexico, La Trampa. We watched about half an hour of the Nicholas Cage/Téa Leoni movie The Family Man, trying to figure out what was going on. Did he have amnesia or something?

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Driving in Mexico is interesting. One becomes intimately familiar with speed bumps, known as topes. There are four varieties:

1. A wide, rubberized reddish ramplet–yellow platform–reddish ramplet
2. Two rows of half-buried metal bocce balls, aligned so that the wheels can't pass through the gaps
3. A raised mound of pavement, extending across the road like a big baguette
4. A thick rope

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I didn't take any pictures of topes, but I took some pictures of various Mayan ruins. At Tulum, located on the coast, some red handprints were visible on one structure. This brought to mind The Blair Witch Project.









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At Coba we started to climb the most impressive of the pyramids but the steps were too narrow, the structure too high. Even the non-dizzy-prone couldn't help but feel dizzy. Here's what it looked like from a very low angle:















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Back in Playa del Carmen: Was I paranoid, or did the locals not like me? Alas, the evidence became all too clear:


(Someone call Georges Perec!)

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I also visited the nation's capital for a day, where I spent some time with friend James, who's running for office this fall—very exciting. (More information here.) Relevant Marylandic Dizzyheads, you know what to do!

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Final photograph—get ready for it . . .