You are standing in the large open space of the textile factory. You are standing with the etchings on blue. Luna and constellations. It is blue. And across the wide-open space of the warehouse, it is green, like tall stained glass and there are large wooden planked floors. Outside there is a shape of stained glass water smooth, boxed in by its frame, copper, and when rain lands, the perfect surface moves. Water runs outside and below. Always it is running. We are on running water. It is how the factory was fueled.

 

You are sitting on your bed in your cabin on the slope of the valley called San José. Wide valley, you can hear music from next door or maybe way across the valley. Tubas and trombones. It must be a funeral. Below is the river. Running water. Always running.

 

You are sitting in the back seat of the car watching the rosary cross swing from the rear view mirror. Behind the swinging cross is the cross of a church getting larger in the night, lit up by the church behind it. At the church cross is a fork and you go left. You will climb the curvy roads through the thick fog, where there will be moments when the car will simply feel its way through the blanket of blindness. And you will arrive high in the mountains at a little posada tucked into the mystery of the forest. It will be cold and raining with a fire to keep you warm in your little cabin room. You will sleep well. This is San Mateo del Rio Hondo.

 

You are walking just out of the plaza after dancing in ceremony with people. It is the call of the drum and the scent of the copal off the busiest street in El Centro. A day at Monte Alban and you are going home. But you hear the drum and want to dance. A man talks to you and invites you to his mezcalaria.

 

You are standing in a mezcalaria. It is hot and humid with mosquitos just after rains and the bar is partially open aired. You look at the masks on the wall and wonder about the imaginations of the ones who made them. You have just returned home after visiting a distillery where you meet the maestro de mezcal and drink a mezcalito and enjoy the fiesta for his daughter’s confirmation. There is a rockola, and dancing, and tripa, and sugary pink cake.

 

You are asking the construction workers if you can roll in their pile of gravel in front of a grey wall. What seems to be grey on grey comes alive in Jessica’s Hasselblad. You are rolling on a red rooftop. You are stroking the sunlight of a little road wrapping down into a vista of the city valley. You are walking for what seems like forever in the sun and the dry dust to arrive at Abastos, the largest, busiest market in all of Oaxaca. You are sitting next to your friend in the front seat who is sitting next to the driver, who has to bump her leg every time he shifts, and you are relieved to finally be sitting down.

 

You are walking barefoot in the water in front of the San Agustín Church against regulations. You are falling on the wooden floor put together for dancers, inside the large warehouse on the large wooden planks made of pine and windows made to look like stain glass.

 

You are falling into a Francisco Toledo vision, stepping into his imagination, but it’s your imagination. When do your dreams collide? Will you be asleep for them? How do you jerk yourself awake into the dance that you are the maker of?

 

You are sitting upon a bed that is not your own. It is large and there are layers of blankets. You don’t want to be here with the strange wrestling figurines on the shelves. Here there is sleep paralysis and astral-travel. Here you could cut your arm open and tendons will become the roots of the magic forest in the mountains and the donkey’s braying will be the mariachi band heard throughout the San Agustín, San Jose valley. And the painter will ignore your text about painting the masks and instead he will take a sip of some very good mezcal, perhaps it has a smoky beginning with a light floral finish.

 

And the Hummingbird, the Colibri, will take her rest from pollinating the Maguey because the sun has gone down. Now it has become the job of the Bat.

 

And the rain will gently fall upon the plexiglass window of the loft in your cabin. And the water will run in the river below. Always running.

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