The Kitchen Redux

Here's a short run down on the kitchen remodel I've finally finished. Yes, finished. It only took me two and a half months.

Starting with the kitchen and the house when we moved in:

The first step in the process was probably the most enjoyable. Yes, I am still a little boy in that there is never enough destruction of stuff.



Once I got the old countertop and wall yanked out, the next step required me to tear up the flooring. This was challenging in that you had to cut away each piece of flooring from the glue that cinched it to the floor individually and in as gentle a way as you could not to damage the one next to it. Admittedly it is fun to use a Skil saw to cut directly into the floor. The next step was to cut each plank to fit into the spaces I opened up and then ultimately thread them in one at a time. This was my first fail. Always use more glue that you think you need to get the flooring to completely seal onto the floor. I've got the smallest pockets that mean a light depression every time you step. So...lesson learned.



The flooring actually blended fairly well once it was laid down.


The next step was to move the peninsula into place and secure it to the floor a piece at a time. This is what it looked like stripped down but secure.



Once secured into place the process shifted to building the outer part of the peninsula. For this we decided on a product called American Clay but in order to finish the outside of the peninsula we had to first build the guts to support the clay. I settled on using a 3/8" wettable plywood secured to the back of the cabinets as the foundation.




To create a foundation on top of the plywood I used 1/2" hardware cloth secured with staples. This gave a substantial lip to put the first scratch coat on that I mixed up using 2 parts medium grain sand to 1 part cement. To build the curve of the countertop I had to frame out a separate piece that had a gentle curve, with gaps filled in by cloth adobe tape (it holds the best under moist conditions).



After this framework was built I began the process of mixing then applying the scratch coat using hand held trowels. I let the consistency of this coat be a little thick and sludgy so that I didn't have as much slump on the vertical surface. After applying this first coat to a generally smooth surface profile, I took a piece of hardware cloth and snipped it off so that I had a six inch long piece with little ends poking out every half inch. I used that to make the scratch coat. The scratch coat is the surface that the second coat of clay adheres to, so you "scratch" the coat to make it rough so that the texture gives more to hold onto.




Once that was finished we topped the peninsula with a three-quarter inch plywood as a base, followed by a 3/8" cement backer board secured down with screws.



Once the scratch coat was set, we began the process of applying the clay. American Clay is actually recycled marble and clay that is pulverized and turned into a wall coating. You can actually use it for regular walls, but in our case we decided to apply it thicker and give the appearance of a larger clay surface.


The mixing is easy with a paddle mixer for your drill.



And the mixed product is smooth like a milkshake.



Then the application is just a slow process of using an adobe hawk and trowel to slowly smooth it onto the wall. We ultimately used two coats to get the best surface.








During this whole period we had been going back and forth about what countertop to use. We actively considered using recycled douglas fir that had been finished with a blackened ebony finish, but ultimately the price scared us away. We settled on tile. We got the tile and I worked my way through laying them all out and slowly but surely cutting every single piece and laying them out on the countertop.




After they get laid out, then they are affixed with mastik using 3/8" spacers to maintain appropriate grout lines. This process is really time consuming but there's no replacement for that... Ultimately the curve proved to be problematic but in the end fewer pieces was better. I think and approximate curve is just fine rather than a perfect one.




Another angle on the tile work prior to grouting.



Finally, we picked the grout we wanted and after cleaning up, we had a beautiful new kitchen. At one point, I spent a day repainting the kitchen and the color we chose actually helped to bring all the colors and textures together and have made the whole look really beautiful.

Open Letter to Gov. Jan Brewer

Dear Governor Brewer,
I am writing to you today because I feel you are not being very representative of the reality of the border. I just watched your ad spot on the border (6.30.2010) and am writing to tell you that your political ideology is flawed in several ways.

First, I think that you are representative of a significant nativist ideology that does not like immigrants and seeks to vilify them at any cost. Second, if you are so concerned about the safety of the border region, why do you insist on suggesting such stupid falsehoods as "all immigrants are smuggling drugs". You know that is a lie. It does nothing but vilify the poorest among us: the majority of immigrants that seek their only hope in the United States. Have you not seen the lure of billions in remittances back home in estado de Veracruz or in DF? What person in this world does not wish to build a home for their family or lift them from poverty? Is that the person you wish to lump together with all the genuinely bad and evil motherf--kers that are smuggling drugs and people? The poor migrant, the migrant we have always embraced as a nation? Will you go pick lettuce in their stead?

Governor Brewer, I am certain you are an honorable person. Everyone around me is my countryman and woman, I seek not to tell you that I do not like you so. But I feel that you are wrong in your assessment of the what's at issue with the border. Governor Brewer, the real process of securing the border is about learning to recognize and build a healthy relationship between the immigrant community and the nation that needs them. Governor Brewer, the idea that all immigrants regardless of those that seek a better life in this country are to be referred to as "drug smugglers"? This is nothing but an effort to divert attention from the reality of your budding police state (for certain races) here in Arizona. It is also disrespectful to all those genuine people who come to the United States seeking only a part of the life that you and I are privileged to enjoy.

I can hear your reply that they are indeed doing just that, smuggling drugs. My reply to you is this: you know very well that the people who are smuggling drugs are the drug smugglers. And they are the people you have to deal with. You create humane and sensible immigration policies and the flow of immigrants drops–immigrants want the same humanity and prosperity that we all enjoy. This is the only way you can separate out the people who genuinely want to work in the United States and those who are bringing the violence of drug war culture in Mexico to our land.

Securing the border under the terms of your vision will only serve to increase violence. It is imperative that you set aside your narrow nativistic ideology toward immigrants and deal with an appropriate immigration system first and foremost. Only then you will be able to 'secure' the border in any meaningful way.

Sincerely,
Steve Buckley

The Lesson of the Fox.

The paw prints appeared suddenly, as though the fox suddenly decided to move up the trail through the snow. It might have been running, whether from Chris and I, or after another animal, only the icy wind and the snowflakes that drifted by, knew. The clouds shifted across the sky, obscuring the sun. The prints raced ahead of us up the trail, following the path with an uncanny sense of ease. From cairn to cairn, the prints dashed along the trail, deviating only as the fox darted across the boulders with ease, where we huffed and struggled to step over to cross the icy rocks with our big packs. A small step here, a stretch, an angling over and bending to grasp the rock, stepping around and tenderly on a rock slanting down perilously toward the open canyon, over and over again we moved quietly through the morning. The diffused sun warmed the snow, pocking the white landscape with the vivid hematite red of the Coconino sandstone mud. Chris stopped ahead of me to kick his boots against a rock, a clump of mud and snow fell from his boot, and the fox prints kept darting up the trail. We hiked on, until the prints suddenly swerved and as quickly as they were there, vanished.

The idea of a long walk is nothing new. The pilgrimage humans have made through time, walking the long road, stepping away from the habits we accumulate to embark on a journey we hope transformative, if only in some small measure. So it began for Chris and I, four days prior. We dropped off the rim of the Grand Canyon in knee deep snow, descending swiftly through hundreds of millions of years of geologic time in the span of several hours. Four days we had walking, the constancy of rock crunching under boot, of the tense skin that soon bubbled my heels in blisters, of the ever present muscular pain, the sore back, the rest that finally came in a wave each night. The long night of the silent expanse, the jets that continually passed back and forth with only a murmur above the vast darkness. We walked to the bottom of the Canyon with the end always lurking there in the uncertain future, but the present moment crunched away underfoot. I trained my attention on every step as best I could, trying to squeeze out the drops of mindfulness from the chattering that went on and on in my skull.

The prints appeared again. As quickly as they had disappeared, the fox prints materialized and dashed on up the trail. We picked our way down and across another rock fall, the boulders covered by just enough snow to hide the crevices waiting for a sliding foot. Slowly we made our way along the narrow trail, down one arm of a side canyon, up another. The prints dashed out ahead of us, following the trail far more faithfully then we were able. As the trail seemed to be disappearing the prints dashed on ahead with a lightness, an almost playful quality of follow me if you can. We crested a hill and the prints swerved under a tree and up the hill. "The fox went that way," I said to Chris. We walked around the boulder to the right instead of the left, following what we thought was the trail. My eyes trained on Chris as we walked ahead twenty steps, stopping under a huge juniper where the trail vanished. Looking up slope I could see a small break in the low shrubs that poked out of the snow. I walked up to the trail to see the fox prints, racing away up the trail. They danced away except for a small rock that sat right above the juniper, where the fox had darted out, appearing for only a moment to pause and point out our flaw. On up the trail the prints darted. The fox kept on the trail for another twenty feet, then as before, were suddenly gone.

The blisters had begun on the second day, growing quickly from quarters, to Susan B. Anthony's, to the Kennedy fifty-cent piece by the third day. Blister on top of blister in my new untested boots. My attention swung quickly from the immediate anxiety of being in the canyon to the burning that came with every step, renewing attention on every step. Subtle adjustments that came with each step, as we went up and down, then slowly up and up. Along slopes that crossed above steep cliff faces, not so much trail, but instead a six inch wide track that sloped toward the cliff. Then down steep drops of streams deeper into the rock that shelved out twenty feet above the stream bed. Off came the packs, slowly shimmying them down cliff edge to the one below, until they rested at the bottom. Still, the heels burned as the blister patches wore off and shifted with the heat of my boots, opening new frontiers. Still the attention was on the immediate step, the attention paid to a boot shifting on my foot.

The prints reappeared as we picked our way across another difficult section of trail, curving around the final arm of the canyon that led to the head of the canyon that terminated the Redwall limestone. The fox kept on the trail, faithful as always. Growing tired as we trudged ever upward, the fox was leading us on, drawing us nearer and nearer the goal, the end. The question of the goal had never left me since we dropped in four days earlier. The tension between wanting to survive, to get out alive, always tightly competed with the reality of the place. With the Canyon, the question of impermanence, of cliffs falling apart in the darkness and freezing air as the night came on and the temperature dropped, was a constant presence. The only constant was the walk, as each step went deeper and further and yet closer to the end. That dynamic tension was playing out in each little two inch print that led us up and up. Fox assisted ascent, we playfully called it.

The fox left us finally at a point immediately above the Redwall limestone. The fox led us directly to the precipice, directly to the base of what proved to be our true climb. For as the fox prints swerved off one final time, we took the opportunity to pause and eat and drink, to keep our energy strong for what was yet to come. As we started up the hill, the snow grew deeper and deeper, and for the next five hours we struggled to keep not only the trail in sight, but the larger goal. The difficulty of walking straight up a sixty degree incline in hip deep snow is difficult to convey, but exhausting it is. In the crux of our climb, at what proved to be a critical juncture at which we retreated back to where we lost the trail, my anxiety grew too strong to ignore. I was saturated, from sweat on the inside and from snow on the outside. At times my fingers were numb, at others I was shivering and getting progressively worried as the day wore on and the temperature began to drop. One step, another, another, another. We would get out.

The lightness of the fox reminded me of floating, as though it was not real, but instead a figment of my imagination. The reality of my aching legs, of the weight of my backpack, of struggling as I slid deeper into yet another drift, these moments were not the lightness of the fox. These were the unbearable lightness, as Kundera called it, of having momentarily touched the void, of having tapped into the elation that came with simply walking. The fox led us precisely to what we were expected to see, what we were expected to experience. No matter how prepared we were, no matter our physical shape, no matter our gear, or hydration, it was simply a measure of luck that brought us back. After all the time and energy, what happened to us in reality hinged on sheer chance.

Of seeds and non-attachment

There is apparently a universal feeling of dread that accompanies the crashing of computers. The experience is certainly not universal, in as much as some peoples' digital life can be retained, some cannot. You lose the accumulation of your whole digital life, wiped away as though it is simply drops of water on glass. So it was with me, my digital life wiped away with a short clunk. I had been paging through photos on the internet, when the computer froze. I restarted it to nothing. Macs have this lovely little feature of the folder with a blinking question mark on it. It signifies the loss of connection to the drive, the loss of startup instructions. In my case it was definitive.

Losing my digital life has been hard. With each hour I tally yet more that had gotten onto that little platter and nowhere else. I have learned a wicked lesson in multiple sources of data, of backing up my data. Eased by thoughts of not having a dissertation on that disk, of no pressing deadlines, of having gotten two of four field guides off to others before the end. Counting small victories in the face of overwhelming loss. I imagine what the last speaker of a rare indigenous language feels. Only it is not a matter of life and death for me, nor my heritage, it is a hiccup at best, a long drawn out reconstruction. In the language of my life, it is the most personal restoration I've ever engaged in.

Our minds store so much information, yet they too have this fickle recall capacity, so unlike the computer with its tidy folders and exacting replication. I struggle with facts of disappearing field guides, of lost designs, photos, music, endless files of organized research, and all my writings from the last two years. It was as simple as snapping your fingers and it was over. The process of compiling the vestiges of our lives, of bringing our knowledge into a single drive, into a single location. As though the process of bringing all that knowledge brought it all to a vanishing point.

Part of me feels like I am grieving at the loss, part of me is just mad at my stupid complacency. Macs are as fallible as any other machine. No matter how much we humans engineer our machines, they fail. Like plane crashes and dam breaks, unfortunately they tend to fail catastrophically. It is the idea of failure that has captivated me in the last two weeks. Where I work at home, in our little back office I look out on my garden, and specifically the little nursery where I am continually trying to grow plant starts. When my computer first failed, my reaction was one of such shock that I ultimately came home after doing all I could to get it on the road to being fixed and could do nothing. All I found that I could do was endlessly fill two by two inch pots for seed starts. I ultimately filled eight trays before I snapped out of it. My computer failing had brought me back to the ground and to my seeds.

A few days later, sitting under the falling leaves of my hackberry trees, I slowly put seeds into every one of those pots. I planted grasses, jojoba, chard, broccoli raab, beets, agave, sotol, and even kale. As I did, I began to think about knowledge, mainly about all the knowledge that I had lost. It was certainly in my head to a degree, but it was not a replicable knowledge. Sitting under the trees that grew from seeds, the thought of the knowledge that was in each of the seeds in my hands was suddenly real and speaking to me. When you compare the knowledge that is encoded in a seed, to germinate and grow and provide seed and food, it really changes the way you see knowledge. Human knowledge is like us, fleeting. Seeds are enduring and ancient. I planted another row of grass seed as I thought about my loss. In the broader scheme of things, it is meaningless. In my life it is devastating, but temporary, fleeting. Data is not always knowledge.

The earth always surprises.

Steam rose delicately from the summit of Popocatepetl, the smoking mountain, Don Goyo. The snow level from the afternoon's thunderstorms had pushed all the way down to the treeline, about 3500m and the whole top of the mountain up to the 5452m summit. Lightning flashes across the sky to the south, the deep gray clouds streaked in cracked lightning. The clouds rumble. The steam from the top of Popo curls down, pushed by the downdrafts into the cloud rimmed summit. Curtains of gray, alternating shades of rain falling, drift in to obscure the summit.

Mountains have a serenity about them, a measure of silence, patience. The way clouds move about their distant heights, slowly, deliberately. But the puff of steam rising from Popo changes quickly, mounded one instant, pushing back into the sky against the clouds in the next. From the top of the apartment building in Cholula, surrounded by the impatience and clutter of civilization, of dogs barking, cars roaring by, families laughing in apartments, the hum of the city. In the distance to the north and east, the rim of clouds ended and further in the distance the thunderheads climbed high into the reddening sky of sunset and at that distance motion began to cease.

The earth is in as much constant motion as us humans in our ant-like cities. Plates are moving, subducting, building up pressure, forcing up magma. Images from Chaiten in Chile this week remind me of the immediate fury, and looking at the silent Popo I know it will change. All around me in this city of angles, of rooflines, treelines, water tanks, doors slamming, horns blaring, tvs squawking all would cease and turn to flight if Popo truly came alive. I study the mountain for a quiet moment, the church in the foreground coming alive with light as night falls. The city begins to settle into night rhythms, but there quiet in the distance stands Popo, smoking in the dying light.

The earth always seems to surprise us. Earthquakes spring from only general assessments of threats and hazards of the plates moving, as only volcanic eruptions rise from swarms of earthquakes, subducting plates, and building lava domes. There are those surprises, like Mount Saint Helens in 1980, or Paricutin in Michoacan in 1943. Paricutin began as a fissure in a farmer's corn field that grew over nine years into a 424 m cinder cone. The farmer was said to have kept plowing his field as the rift widened and grew worse on the 20th of February. Mount Saint Helens had only the old man Harry Truman left at Spirit Lake by the time it blew, but when it did, it blew. Where were you when the mountain blew, ran the line on the t-shirt I got visiting my grandparents in Portland that summer.

The earth always surprises us. I read today in the LA Times an editorial by Bill McKibben, quoting James Hansen the climate scientist "if humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm." The feedback loops the climate scientists said existed, do. McKibben quotes Hansen again, "if there's no action before 2012, that's too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment." Silent, there stands the mountain, the snow creeping slowly up the slopes until the snow and the water that sustains this valley are gone. Will it be the rapid thunder of the earth's fire, or the slow build up of our ignorance?

A few errant raindrops scatter across the roof. More lightning runs through the underside of the clouds in the south, toward Atlixco. Popo stands silent as the gray rain clouds drift across the ghostly white slopes. I look at the church that rises in the night framed against Popo, built on the aspirations of religious feeling for the assumption of a better world. Built to worship all that is around and in us. In the darkness outside the window as I write, I hear the sounds of singing, of a congregation in worship. There in the night with the sound of crickets, the voices of a people united in song. The wind ruffles the trees, but the mountain is silent. Fast or slow, the world is changing.

Patzcuaro haze.

Like the swallows that twist and float around our house every evening, I feel like I’m still looking for something elusive. Like everyone who travels, it is partly something inside us that keeps us out, looking for something beautiful, remarkable, or meaningful. The tasty morsel of the small fly that the swallow snatches out of the air, but like the swallow I’m still out looking even with all I see. The struggle I have is being the tourist, the one with money, amidst so much poverty and genuine struggle. It is difficult to be the tourist, the consumer of cultures and places, when the cultures and the places are in such clear danger of being used up; and what then when they are?

For a bit of context, we have moved on out of DF and are now in a town called Patzcuaro, in the state of Michoacan. Patzcuaro is known for its day of the dead celebrations at the beginning of November every year. It is a town that reminds me of Flagstaff in many ways, not the least of which are the pine trees and the seven fires burning around the city. Fires here are under radically different set of conditions: they have not been wholly interrupted by the fear of fire, so there is not an accumulation of a hundred year fuel load. Instead they are lit on purpose in most cases and they burn slowly and deliberately across huge areas of the landscape. Those areas recently burned are obvious when the rains start because they are the first to green up, the vivid green bunchgrasses against the burnt landscape. The smoke that fills the town and hazes the sky into a golden light still burns my throat.

Patzcuaro is also known for the massive Lago de Patzcuaro about 3km north of the town. The lake is a massive shallow lake that is known for the island of Janitzio, the town crowed by the 40m statue to the independence hero Jose Maria Morelos y Pavon. It is an odd middle-class Mexican retreat in the early summer. Ferries take you out to the island for 35 pesos, and the 50 person launch putters along across the oddly brown water. On a clear day the landscape of dozens of cinder cones that ring the lake must be stunning with the green mountains and red clay-tiled roofs of every town. But not today, as the haze from the smoke all but keeps your attention on the egrets that are balanced and strikingly white in the shallows of the brown water. A mariachi combo cracks out some Norteño tunes for the tourists from Sonora who ride over to the island with us, the drummer is clearly annoyed at me, the gringo who plugs his ear right next to the drum. They play a few songs and then pass the hat.

As we near the island the famous butterfly fisherman (known for their huge butterfly nets) paddle out in their canoes and sort of do a performance, showing off their nets and how they would fish if it were not for the lack of fish in the lake. Two of the men paddle up and hang on to the boat to ask for tips. Everyone obliges. Part of the show, part of the cost. It is especially sad given that the famous whitefish that the butterfly fisherman have perfected their skills on are now endangered, further threatening to make their display into more of an act. Given the number of boats that are beside the water as we circle the island, small flat bottom canoes in dozens of bright colors, the reality of overfishing is not much of a stretch. The island is covered in dingy brick and concrete houses built into every conceivable angle on the slopes of the island. Several young girls play in front of an empty restaurant.

Once we dock on the far side of the island from the little girls, the climb to the top of the island can begin. The streets are a narrow jumble of haphazard buildings built on top of and over each other, with the twisting and turning stairs leading in multiple directions at once, but always upward to the monument. The crafts are cheap and not authentic by any stretch. Their repetition draws us to conclude an Asian origin, the trinkets of mass production with only the name of the town different on them. It is the second sad display of our day. We venture that some racket must control the trade, as the trinkets do not change as we get higher and higher on the island. The paintings are the same, the keychains, the cheap boats of wood and colored string. All the same to the very top of the island. The monument at the top costs 6 pesos to even enter the gates, and is a statue of Morelos y Pavon, right arm raised, surrounded by more stands with more of the same trinkets. Given the line to enter the statue, we pass on climbing up to peer out of the narrow windows at the top of his fist.

On a clear day, the view of Patzcuaro must be stunning. The pine-covered hills ring the lake, rising in every direction to the rolling tops of mountains all around. Through the haze I count seven fires. The largest is to the southwest of Patzcuaro and looks to be making its way down toward the lake. The others are small and dot the landscape. There may be more, but they are not visible with the haze. Disappointed by the whole experience, we wind our way back down through the town, passing restaurants and bars and trinket stands in their endless repetition of the same. At times the dress of the women and the small fried fish and the man we pass knitting a real fishing net suggest a deeper authenticity of the town. The man’s hands dart around and back, around and back, knowingly knitting the net at a speed that remind us of a deeper unseen cultural memory. Besides, who am I to comment on the presence or absence of that which I’ve never seen?

On the boat ride back I wonder about the island, the center of the day of the dead for Mexico. After having seen so much beautiful and remarkable folk art in Patzcuaro it was a challenge to see so little on Janitzio. Was it simply the case that the classes were represented so clearly? The rich having province over Patzcuaro with its ornate artistry, the middle classes having only the cheap replications of that ornate quality? To be a tourist in a foreign land does confer a measure of objectivity, but it also does not always allow for intimacy except in rare cases. At the end of the day, I could see the cheapness of the popular art, the cheapness of the Asian replications of what in Patzxuaro had finally come to be so genuine. Was it simply a function of the conditions forced on Mexico, to be as Porfirio Diaz said, “so far from God, so near the United States”? To be now struggling with the free market as it cheapened and degraded what was once magical quality, with the very basic reality of survival at stake.

The challenge of Mexico seems so clearly to be its humanity. From the perspective of the United States we are apt to be grossly racist, or blame it on corrupt politics, or simply on our ignorance. The Mexico I am discovering is one that smiles even when begging on the street, who clearly appreciates being treated like a human, even if the act is as simply as saying, no gracias señora. The humanity of Mexico is in the artistry and beauty of its people, its culture, and land. For me, the struggle of being a tourist and of having so much amid so many who do not have anything, is in not objectifying. I am an outsider and will forever be outside the magical history of Mexico, but as I learn more about this country and its history I cannot but feel a sense of kinship. No longer do I feel we are so far apart. But I am careful not to suggest this in a paternalistic fashion, for paternalism has brought all the great problems to Mexico. Instead it is in the humanism of concern for a people I wish well, that I wish a good life to—in that is the first step toward a kinship and a recognition we are not so far apart.

Teasing Mayahuel.

I was the lone customer in the bar, the sound of the rain that had driven me in still pounding at the door. The walls of the Bar Reforma were covered in the paraphernalia of a life spent gathering Coke and Pepsi advertising, beer posters, Marilyn Monroe and Pancho Villa posters, posters promoting tours to Grecia, and still more Marilyn Monroe posters. From the ceiling hung an array of plastic hibiscus flowers in every color, oddly faded in the fluorescent light. The rain kept up at the door as the sound of passing cars and trucks whizzed and splashed by.
“Hola, buenas tardes.”
The bartender paused in his cleaning ashtrays to acknowledge me. I order a glass of mexcal, Milagro de San Diego. The object of my search, of my fruitless journey to Atlixco, to my getting soaked and to my eventual return to the only bar I knew carried it. The bartender and I talked with my stilted Spanish, he correcting my bad pronunciation of every Nahuatl town name I tried to spit out. “No one I know sells it here.” “Sorry, but we get it directly from the producer.” “This is the last bottle we have, or I’d sell you one.”
“Quien sabes?” Who knows. He’s right, who knows.

With the pace of the world, with the fact that I can hop on a computer and call my family anytime, it seemed such an anomaly that I couldn’t find a bottle of Milagro de San Diego anywhere in Mexico. With the globalization of everything, it seemed odd to have every liquor store owner look at me with such an uncomprehending look, with a “what the hell is this gringo talking about” written on their face. Still, nothing worked and nobody had it. Eventually, I chased the company down on the internet, trolling Google until I finally cross referenced it to a small town about an hour from Cholula, site of the Bar Reforma and where I was staying. On Google Earth it was easy, a short 30km bus ride to Atlixco, then out to Tochimiltzingo. Easy.

The bartender leaves me with orange slices and chili-salt along with a small bowl of peanuts. He moves off to continue cleaning ashtrays. The owner of the bar, obviously the father of the current bartender sits behind me at a table writing letters long hand with a black marker on lined paper. We sit in utter silence. The rain falls outside. The mexcal is smooth, so unlike any other mexcal I’ve had. It finishes with nutty overtones, the scent of smoke, not the raw burst of most mexcals, but delicate. I am alone in a bar in Mexico staring at the bottle of mexcal I cannot have and cannot find.

Part of me wanted desperately to see the farm, the neat rows of agave lined out with the stacked stone walls, to see the fields in some recognizable pattern of pastoral perfection. Part of me was calculating in wanting to talk with the farmers, the distillers, to know their secrets and then divulge them to an audience, so that in my own greed to keep on traveling through Mexico I could share this beautiful mexcal. But when I got on the bus finally in Puebla, after already sitting on a bus for an hour to go from Cholula to Puebla, then rode another hour to Atlixco, my prospects were dimming with the sunlight. As we dropped into Atlixco, the reality of 80,000 people, of an unknown city began dawning.

Why do we get attached to things, memories, or mexcals? They linger on and give some measure of meaning, but they also serve as touchstones, points in time when we experienced life to some greater degree. To a degree outside the bounds of normality, outside of our habits, the usual measure of days. I took another sip, savoring its burning warmth and the twitch that went right to my head. I smiled at the pleasure of Mayahuel, the goddess of the Maguey, the mexcal.

It is unquestionably odd to step off a bus in a totally foreign town, totally alone: the odd sensation of being a lone gringo. Atlixco is a busy, dirty town with narrow streets and crowded narrow sidewalks. I emerged from central bus station, quickly assessing my location by memorizing the cross streets: Independencia and Avila Camacho. I turn and walk quickly up Independencia toward the zocalo in the distance. There is an unnerving amount of police, especially as a loaded truck of police is followed down the street by a Humvee filled with army soldiers, replete with machine gun on top. I look away into a store filled with plastic crap, it interests me all of a sudden. The low rumble of the diesel engine passes on, I walk toward the zocalo.

Try awkward: sitting in a bar in Mexico alone. No one will talk to you, especially once you whip out the pen to write. I finish the short glass as the bartender puts on soft piano music that collides with the rain. The bass of an errant vehicle rattles the bar. I am alone and staring at my empty glass. I ask for another glass but the bartender laughs. He pours me a third of a glass. I have finished the bottle. He leaves me the bottle to study what might have been.

School as just let out in Atlixco and I am moving back and forth among the swarms of kids in the array of school uniforms. I step to the edge of the zocalo and pause, there are several more soldiers, these ones now recruiters. The banners extol service to La Patria, the fatherland. No one is anywhere near the tent except the army. Near the soldiers is another gaggle of police dressed in their black fatigues. Their automatic weapons always creep me out. I cross the street and walk on into the square and don’t stop until I have found a seat, so discomfiting is it to have all eyes on the güero. From my seat in the zocalo, I get my bearings before starting out to find a collectivo (small bus) that might take me to Tochimiltzingo.

I turn the bottle in my hands, happy even to examine it. It seems utterly silly to have come to covet a bottle of something. United Agave Producers of Tochimiltzingo. More than 200 years of tradition, this is a completely organic mexcal. It is glass and a pretty label, just like all of the twenty or thirty other brands of mescal or tequila on the glass shelves. But like the ancient cash register that dominates the center of the bar, stuck on 9 pesos 40 centavos, it is from another age. An age when you couldn’t order it on-line or find it in every store, or any store for that matter. Pride in artesianal production.

Each of the four directions I went from the zocalo proved fruitless. There were small combis (even smaller buses) and even a few collectivos, but nothing to Tochimiltzingo. I was stuck in Atlixco. I began to go in and out of every liquor store, asking for Milagro de San Diego. In every store my ability ask got better and the story elaborated. Still, no one had heard of it. I began to loop back around toward the bus station. Looking, looking, into one store, sent to another, sent back. Then on to the next, the next. No one had heard of the brand, the makers and yet there fifteen kilometers away it was, unknown.

I finish the last sip, cluttered amid the remnants of peanut flavor. The bar mirrors and neon and lights are reflected in the last sip. All the moments of my day distilled down to this multi-layered reality, all the pieces the feelings, memories, ideas, here. Now. Message in a Bottle comes on the stereo. I laugh as I pack up my bags, the rain now stopped. “I hope that someone gets my message in a bottle.” Mayahuel toys with me, teasing.