fat mountains
Sierra Gorda in the north of Querètaro state. Last weekend turned out to be something like a g-rated version of "Y tu mamá también". So I went on this trip to the sierra with a group of freshmen students in the foreign language department...and it was seriously like being on a road trip with Tenoch and Julio. Except in my case it was Morel and Agustín. Who said "güey" almost as many times as the kids in that movie. I played the remote, mysterious older foreign woman. And that's where the similarity ends, honest injun. Instead of the beach we had this:
I swam in this river! In the moonlight! The air smelled like orange blossoms! Yop yop yop!
The following day we went to this place called Las Pozas, built by this guy who wanted to be a surrealist but the other surrealists didn't want to play with him so he ran away to Mexico and built some of the weirdest stuff I've ever seen. I am so impressed by anyone who uses both halves of their brain like this: on the one side, he was so creative and artistic that he had these bizarre, hallucinogenic designs in mind, and on the other he had the analytical know-how to build them and make them structurally sound. He's like the Frank Lloyd Wright of the jungle. Or the Gaudi of the Americas. And to build structures that integrate organically into their natural environment, in the jungle you have to be a surrealist.
Seriously, it was like being inside an Escher drawing. Just when you thought you'd figured the place out, there'd be a staircase to nowhere or the path you were following would completely disappear. Every time you tried to reason your way out you'd become even more stuck, and it was like he was telling you, nope, everything you thought you knew does not hold here, so stop trying to think.
Brilliant. Then I dove in one of his cold springs fully dressed and Morel and Agustín helped me out like I was their river nymph du jour.
This, of course, got my own creativity on a roll, and because I am a dork, I started taking b & w photos that then looked too severe, so I took them again in sepia. Here are a couple I actually really liked:
Did it finally happen? Have I hit my cubist phase? How embarrassing.
I swam in this river! In the moonlight! The air smelled like orange blossoms! Yop yop yop!
The following day we went to this place called Las Pozas, built by this guy who wanted to be a surrealist but the other surrealists didn't want to play with him so he ran away to Mexico and built some of the weirdest stuff I've ever seen. I am so impressed by anyone who uses both halves of their brain like this: on the one side, he was so creative and artistic that he had these bizarre, hallucinogenic designs in mind, and on the other he had the analytical know-how to build them and make them structurally sound. He's like the Frank Lloyd Wright of the jungle. Or the Gaudi of the Americas. And to build structures that integrate organically into their natural environment, in the jungle you have to be a surrealist.
Seriously, it was like being inside an Escher drawing. Just when you thought you'd figured the place out, there'd be a staircase to nowhere or the path you were following would completely disappear. Every time you tried to reason your way out you'd become even more stuck, and it was like he was telling you, nope, everything you thought you knew does not hold here, so stop trying to think.
Brilliant. Then I dove in one of his cold springs fully dressed and Morel and Agustín helped me out like I was their river nymph du jour.
This, of course, got my own creativity on a roll, and because I am a dork, I started taking b & w photos that then looked too severe, so I took them again in sepia. Here are a couple I actually really liked:
Did it finally happen? Have I hit my cubist phase? How embarrassing.