Exhaustion and the Anthropology

I came home from work today after a grueling day at the clinic and slept for 2.5 hours -- wasting away the rest of the sunshine (who doesn't show it's golden head near oft enough these days) before the snow and rain and cold, cold temperatures introduce themselves tomorrow.

As I continue "The Anthropology of Turquoise," by Ellen Meloy, I am thrown into a new book everytime I finish a chapter and progress to the next. I'm held captive by Meloy's wit, not unlike my own but much more complete and amazingly worded. I have just passed the halfway mark.

Here are a few more fun tidbits from Meloy's pages to ponder over:

1. Meloy on the Bellagio: "Some carnivorous globule of technotopia has re-created an Italianesque thermae fantasy in the cusp of a Las Vegas high-rise known as the Bellagio Hotel.

2. She's been to the Yucatan to Chichen Itza. I've been to the Yucatan to Chichen Itza. I don't think I got as much out of it as she did. It was HOT, dusty and a long trip in an un-airconditioned bus. And I was bored.

3. I love the chapter "Azul Maya" where Ellen and Mark go and live in Mexico for about a month. It's riddled with wonderful imagery of the sea and the natives. And the mangroves. I love the mangroves. Listen to this paragraph:

"It occurs to me that the entire reef is one giant digestive tract made of millions of intricate parts. Pores, polyps, and tentacles, stomachs and spicules and spines. Tubes, valves, feet, fins, filaments, filters. Creatures that squeeze, squish, or squirt,...others floating all the way to Belize, still others fixed and going nowhere, all of it vastly carnivorous and omnivorous, pulsing with the unceasing motion of the sea."

Isn't that divine?

4. I learned that for reasons unclear, barracuda like orange swimsuits.

5.The tales of El pescador!

6. And then I'm thrown into the chapter, Tilano's Jeans. And Ellen stapled her hair to the roof. It's so unpredictable. So random, like me. I'm seriously leaning toward reading Meloy's, "Eating Stone," about the bond between wild creatures and the human imagination in Utah's canyon lands.