Unfamiliar quarters, distant cities

"Marco Polo imagined answering...
that the more one was lost
in the unfamiliar quarters of distant cities,
the more one understood the other cities
he had crossed to arrive there;
and he traced the stages of his journeys,
and he came to know the port from which he had set sail,
and the familiar places of his youth,
and the surroundings of home,
and a little square of Venice where he gamboled as a child."

- Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

C

Be monsters

At the ruined cities of Tulum, Coba, Uxmal: monsters with a taste for insects and talons indicating otherwise.

The trees are too young and the relics beneath glass -
but the iguanas were here when the pyramids were just fresh-built and Mayans walked the Yucatan.

C (the Yucatan's more than pretty haciendas)

The homesickness

For a vacation passed
Is not made better
When yesterday I had mango in my cereal,
And today I run past frozen fields,
and contemplate
my leaking
boiler.

C

Hacienda Uayamon

My family likes other hotels. We declared our Puerta Campeche stunning, then drove east to its brother Hacienda of Uayamon.

To our contained and ordered Puerta Campeche, Hacienda Uayamon was drama and tantrums, flaunting angles good and bad.

The Hacienda's aristocratic facade devolved backwards into the jungle yucatan-i angkor-esque (oy). Its signature attraction: 2 columns risen from a perfect rectangle of blue pool. Point made.

(The hacienda waited, beds made, towels rolled on the chaises at the pool.)



We inspected, cocktailed on the balcony, ate - an island of action amidst a sea of empty place-settings - attended by a skeleton staff.



Evidence of one guest in a room of large chairs and chess edged up to the jungle: a desk, a computer, and an ashtray filled.

Here be writers (stalked off).

The place breaths drama after all.


C

And with its much handled pages, another sign

Many months with absorbtion.
Outside the C train, freshdirect, the post.
Out loud.
With pen.
Holidaying done.

C - thanks to R, whose subscription almost overwhelms, but which sometimes we tumble through.