7:30 on a Sunday evening. The church bells are ringing in paradise. We arrived in San Miguel about 1 o'clock today… about 15 hours behind schedule. Seven inches of rain and mechanical difficulties stalled us out in Dallas.

Whoops… time slips by… now it's 7:30 on Monday morning. I stopped writing last night not because I'd had so much to drink that I was all muffled and unfocused, but because we wanted to go to dinner. The restaurant across the way was also a taste of paradise (I'm going to have to stop using that word). We were inside but on the edge of a lush garden… organized but mature enough to look like it grew up there naturally. I drank margaritas, ate salad with jicama, oranges, and watercress and crepes filled with I forget what, but they were creamy and sumptuous.

I need to back up. San Miguel is one of those "colonial gems" in the Central Valley of Mexico, north of Mexico City. It has become an art center and haven for expatriates, but the colonial buildings have been maintained or restored. I keep thinking we'll turn a corner and the "old city" will give way to the modern one, like Paris or New Orleans. But no. The narrow, cobblestone streets go one and on, lined with weathered stucco walls broken only by ancient doors. No glass and steel bank buildings, no McDonald's. There are cars, of course — people live and work here, it's not a "colonial Williamsburg" theme park — but it's not a car-friendly place.

We're staying at a "bed & breakfast," where the owner (Liza) has restored a 17^th century in-town estate according to her own wonderful artistic sensibilities…

Oh, hell, I'm too impatient to describe. What I see are textures and colors. New and old, San Miguel is about texture and color. The textures and colors of deteriorating stucco and rotting wood are captured in modern work. It's 5 P.M. now and we spent the morning exploring every shop along only a few streets. A feast for the eyes but not for the feet. It's even hard for me to write much because I am so overstimulated and can't process anything fast enough to produce output that is more than gibberish. I keep jumping around. Time to eat? Time to stroll? Time to read? Time to take pictures? The birds make a constant din outside and draw me to the window. I can't see the boat-tail grackle families who are responsible for all the cackling and complaining, but I do see the white birds filling the trees in the distance. They take flight… massive egrets of some sort… can't take my eyes off of them.

It's been overcast and rainy, but right now the sun is out and J. is wandering around taking pictures with his Elf.

I made goals for this trip, but already I'm wondering if I can possibly be very goal-directed here. I feel like sleeping and drinking wine and wandering… just absorbing, not having to make sense of anything. The wine (or margaritas) make me feel wonderful and give rise to fascinating conversations with Jim about the whole aesthetic sensibility of this place, but then I don't write it down… can a person be too relaxed?