Posted in Mexico on Apr 14th, 2008
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Structure
One
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Living in the moment. The jungle claims Calakmul. The past is forgotten. (Map this!)
For several days, I have been thinking on and off, about the comment Jan made about living in the moment. I was first introduced to this theme when I was studying Sartre several years ago, about our relationship to the past and to the future. What are these places, the past and the future? The future is a fictitious place that can never be reached because it always lies just beyond our realm, our event horizon. The past is an even stranger place, crudely drawn from our very imperfect ability to remember it. It may not even exist at all, as a perfectly consistent world view can follow from the proposition that the world is only five minutes old, brilliantly constructed to appear as if it is billions of years old. Or, for some, 6,000 years old.
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Posted in Mexico on Apr 9th, 2008
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How
Relaxing!
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Curious geological formations. The betrayal of the Cocom’s. Learning swimming.
In the Yucatan one finds the curious geological formations known as Cenotes which are formed by a collapse in the limestone to reveal the water table contained within. The most interesting and scientifically romantic cause of Cenotes is the Chixhulub meteor which exterminated the dinosaurs and as a small side effect caused a collapse in the limestone to create cenotes.
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Posted in Mexico on Apr 5th, 2008
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Cool guy
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April 3rd, 1965 – April 3rd, 2008 – Shreesh completes 43 years.
The Mexican way of saying “Happy Birthday” is to sing “La Mañanita“. In Oaxaca, staying as we were in an affluent neighborhood, we would hear mariachis at dawn singing exactly this song, filling the first waking moments of the birthday boy or girl with it. Well I couldn’t really hire mariachis for Shreesh, but he did get his Mañanita sung for him by a really nice Mexican couple at Tulum, in one of the few precious shady spots at the site.
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Posted in Mexico, Reflections on Apr 1st, 2008
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Hot but happy
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The role of fortune in our daily lives. A meeting with a nuclear engineer and a WW II vet.
“You are so fortunate to be able to take the time off for this trip” is one of the most frequent comments we get. We are fortunate, yes, for being born in relatively well-to-do families, for having trained in an area that is in high demand, for getting the lucky breaks that enabled us to hold well paying jobs and most importantly, for being so well matched that we enjoy taking long vacations together without stress or compromise.
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Posted in Mexico on Mar 29th, 2008
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Bloody
Ritual
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Incorrect assumptions about dangerous roads. Incorrect assumptions about the peaceful Maya. A visit to Yaxchilan and Bonampak. (Map this!)
The road to Yaxchilan and Bonampak winds through territory heavily controlled by the Zapatistas. Our host recommended that we take the 6:00AM convoy for the sake of security and the Rough Guide mentioned that armed robberies occur on this stretch of road. Since it was next to impossible for us to leave at the wholly uncivilized hour of 6:00AM and we decided to drive unescorted.
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