Friday, April 22, 2011

Jeff

I well remember studying Mexican history and hearing the story of how the Mexican people wandered through the wilderness looking for a place to call home. One day they came to a lake and in the lake was a small island and on the island was a cactus and on the cactus was an eagle killing a snake which it would eat for dinner. This was taken as a sign that this was the place and, of course, everyone knows that this lake no longer exists because it was filled in to build Mexico City. Yes, snakes are not something that I would eat for dinner but I do remember that my friend Jeff kept the skin of a dead snake in his sock drawer there in the house where he and his family lived in Guadalajara. Snakes commonly inhabit such areas of Mexico, as we all know. I also remember that during a picnic near a volcano we found a beautiful piece of obsidian, which is a volcanic rock turned to glass, as well as pumice. That is probably when I started collecting rocks. Obsidian and pumice can also be found in El Salvador which has many volcanoes. One learns about these things when one lives there for a long time.