 maybe mimosa – foto by smith My last Mexican full moon casts cactus shadows on our roof. Mountains rise in suggestive mass off in the night. Our time in Oaxaca is running out. Less than three weeks left of 15 months here. The longest we stayed any other place in our three year journey was three months on the Istrian tip of Croatia in a small fishing village. The shortest stop was one night in Lodz, Poland. We’re bucking logic and trend moving from southern Mexico to Cleveland, Ohio – most folk go the other way. Good timing too – ABC News just picked Cleveland Ohio as the 4th worse American city to live in, with only Stockton California, Memphis Tennessee, and Chicago Illinois as worse. “No. 4 Cleveland, Ohio – Only Denver gets socked with more snow than Cleveland’s 52-inch annual average among the 50 largest metros. Clevelanders wait in fear for July 1, 2010, when hoops star LeBron James can switch teams as a free agent.” Moving to Cleveland means going from a mile in the sky to sea level, from temperatures in the upper 80s to freezing, from 311 sunshine days a year to 66, from 50% humidity to 80%, from poverty to poverty, from color to gray, from butterflies to bugs, from dirty water to clean, from water shortage to abundance, from good people to good people, from Spanish to English, from police state to police state. A good thing about Cleveland is the type of data these worst lists never consider: it has the most dynamic edgy poetry reading scene I’ve seen in any city, including London England (London poets were just too tame, polite and genteel).  ya ya – foto by smith |