Ok, okay. I have been very very bad. I haven't written since June, I know. I was travelling, back in Berkeley for 2 weeks finding a new place to live, and now I'm in Oaxaca (Mex) after giving a talk at a conference.

Not much time to write, but a few things I've been meaning to note:

1- I went to the Contemporary Art Museum here on Saturday, where there was a traveling exhibit of French artists using thread to do portraits, graphic art, maps, diagrams of the human body, vertebrae, the circulatory system, etc. It was all quite otherworldly, but I really lost it when I saw the kafiyah (traditional Arab scarf) with the black stitching all done in human hair. I still haven't gotten to the bottom of what was so unsettling...

2- Today at the pre-hispanic art museum, I saw an ornately carved human mandible. With the teeth still mostly intact. You know, think delicate ivory carvings, with arabesques and flourishes. Except on a jaw bone.

3- Yesterday, driving through the countryside, there was an enormous field of maize with the beginnings of a nice new house literally in the middle of the field. All that existed of the house were the walls, door arches, and rebar swaying like broken cobwebs in the wind. No floor -- the field of maize continued uninterupted inside the house....

More on my return to CA on Thursday.