sick today. Incessant trash fires and heat left me up all night with a sore throat and a bit of a cough. Today it's worse out there. Hellfire and brimstone. I'm staying inside, closing all the windows and being thankful that the power is on and the A/C works. Mariko and I were ruminating yesterday that all of the elements that we humans weave into our hell mythologies actually exist in some reflection of our collective experience. The one about being stuck in a burning iron box? My neighbors live in a little tin shack that must be a similitude. I had a little taste lying in our room a few nights back with no power, no air moving and sweltering heat, dripping sweat, being eaten by mosquitos, unable to sleep and breathing in the foul plastic stench of garbage fires. Being human isn't always fully humane. And we've got it lucky you and I.

So today, just some pictures for you to enjoy. I'm going to meditate a bit and go back to bed.

 Our trash burning heap. Even the rich burn their trash, plastic and all. I did see a garbage truck of sorts the other day. The funny part was that the garbage men were lighting little trash fires in the street as they went along.

I had a dream, where the whole world was turning into gated communities and shopping malls. Here, this is the dream, to live in your own little ubiquitous streets of identical middle class houses. This one is surrounded by guards and next to a mall. A little bubble amidst shanty towns.

This is the other part of that nightmare, the part with the mall. Yes, there is a shopping mall about 20 minutes from us. I do have nightmares about being stuck in one never ending all encompassing mall. This place scares me a little. The tower of Babel is happening in reverse. All human cultures are being replaced by this and slums that could be Calcutta or Sao Paolo or Beijing. Yet in reality a mall is just the fate of the lucky upper class. One of these days soon I will try and snap some photos of the surrounding neighborhoods, so far I've been over protective of my only camera and haven't taken it out much yet.

Luckily this is not all of reality here. I will nap for now, and hopefully dream of the mountains and those little wild places where mal-developed city hasn't yet invaded.