The End: 2014 A Year In Stories

After twenty-one months, the 2014 A Year In Stories project has finally wrapped up. The last three volumes (October, November, and December) are available for purchase and/or download. All twelve volumes--a volume per month, a story a day, 31 novellas--are now out.

Yay!

The Meaning of Cuernavaca

The city of memory, the city of nostalgia, of everything that's been lost, and found, forgotten, remembered.

We--my father, my mother, and I--moved from Mexico City to Cuernavaca in December 1975, when I was two months shy of three years old. I have fragmented memories of that December. For instance, walking around the pool wearing corduroy pants and a woolen sweater (yes, winters in the central altiplano of México can be cold), but my parents were wearing swimming suits, and I remember remarking on that, briefly, internally.

View of the house I grew up in, from the carport. The deep end of the pool is just off-frame to the right.
In the back you can see half of the sandbox I played in for hours, the tree where I had my treehouse
(long gone, rotted or something, before this photo was made), and a corner of the tennis court
(you have to look hard).
My father made this photo five months before he died.

A brief intro to my life in #Mexico

Visitors to this blog might wonder why Derain's "Bathers" get place of honor on the header of this blog. What do three nude women have to do with Quiet Laughter? For those familiar with fauvism, the connection might seem even more bizarre--or, maybe, not.

Neither the nude women, or fauvism--or even Derain--is the connection. This is a photo of the living room in the house where I grew up in. I just took it today. That painting--a copy, obviously--has been hanging in that spot for as long as I can remember--and we moved into this house when I was three. That painting--not even the original, but the copy--symbolizes this house for me, and everything in it: the memories, the drama, the fun times, the losses, the safe haven, the letting go. That painting is, at a profoundly personal level, my history.

One day, it--like me--will have to leave Cuernavaca (Mexico) behind and move to Curaçao.

We'll have to build it a special wall, though.