Monday, August 04, 2008

Walls

Alice said the ground where she was this past weekend was 128F. Ouch! Why would any creature want to go there? Just "Mad dogs and Englishmen", said Alice. She took a photo for me. A thin brown wall, canals, huge fields with alfalfa, carrots on one side, smaller fields on the south. The smaller fields get less water than the ones on the north side of the wall. Alice said one day the people on the south side will start thinking Nanking. Unequal treaties. Mr. Diaz and his money in exile in Paris, France.
She was thinking about another wall - which did no good in the long run but become a tourist attraction long after people decided it was a waste of time to maintain it... She pointed an umbrella up to a tower where she walked on a misty and smoggy day. She only went up as far as the cloud floor.
Months beforehand, when the sky was clear on a cold Winter day, some other people had fun there singing.
Alice and I can't see people wanting to travel half way around the world to sing at the thin brown wall. If only 100's of mariachi bands could play at once, like Jericho's horn, that wall might come tumbling down. Yes, that is what I will dream about for that place.