I HEART LA PAZ

making do: 2day altar

November 2007 I moved to La Paz, and I have loved the place since I was there in a drunken haze with Jamie Bell in 1975. So it was with great pleasure that I accepted the latest surprise gift -- a supposed-to-be-60-hour-turned-to-74-hour jaunt from Bahia Asuncion and back (27 of those hours in the back of a pickup on Carretera Una).

Celso, mi chaufer

And you think there's no legroom on a plane! Oh well, at least I had the back to myself (if you don't count the food bag and 3 very large stuffed toys).

How often have you heard me say "In the Baja, we expect problems, and we expect help"? Celso stopped three times on our drive, altho he could only help twice, and one of those was probably, we all agreed, a scam. But he gave them money just in case we were wrong. And here, they needed only that thing that you loosen/tighten the tire bolts with. And advice/commentary from every male within sight, of course.

I stayed at a friend's b&b, and it was a joy to deepen my connections with her and her son, Arturo Enrique, who was born shortly after I got to La Paz. He does not speak (yet? remains to be seen), but he has fewer communication issues than most people I know! And while ordinarily these sad days I would not post a foto of naked children on the internet, in this case it's integral to the story. When Arturo wandered into the bathroom, he found 3-year-old David in a small washtub. But not too small for new friends, yes? So both mamas, all unphased, simply let the boys be boys and dry off on the bed in front of Jesus! Do you know what it means to me to know Christians not uptight about nudity???

Probably because I dont actually know how to make things go where I want them to with this blogging thing, think of this sentence as "on-hold" music -- it justs fills the space...

Any of you who know the book and/or The One and Only Jeff Chang will be as surprised as he will be when I send him a link to this post. I stopped dead in my tracks when this fella walked in the door of this very large restaurant in a very tiny town on the way to la paz. i asked him if he knew what his shirt said, and then told him it was the name of a famous book about hiphop music, and that I KNOW the very cool guy who wrote it. I was instantly adored by the lad. I promised to bring him the book my next drive down the Baja.

I leave you today with a teaser for two upcoming posts, titled jointly "The Lord Giveth and the Lord Taketh Away", which will relate how I have been given a new church home that I didnt even realize I was longing for, and have lost LaRoVReV to her own new future as a second honeymoon cottage...Plus, here is a fairly gorgeous moon over Campo Serena, Bahia Asuncion, Baja California Sur, Mexico. Peace out, my dears.