30 August 2010. Beautiful morning, cool air, sun... Otoño...
Chance meeting in the copy store with Flor, from thirty years ago--at a seder, in Oakland, by Noach and Rivka... Her two sons, then just young boys--and the extremely tender way she spoke to them... "Mi corazón...," pronounced with a lilt of endearment that could come only from a culture where love transcends idea...
I play for her (on the iPod) a bit of Cuco Sanchez--Cama de Piedra, with the question-- "Flor, how can this song, which is at once so personal, become the very emblem of something as broad as the Mexican Revolution?" She considers for a time, continuing with her xeroxes (long division problems for a mathematics class?)... "You know, there's never been a day that I haven't thought about just how personal an encounter can be there--people tell you what comes from the inside--while here there's often a certain distance..."
Later, just before leaving, smiling slightly-- "Maybe it's that in Mexico (where Flor was born) it's honorable for a man to die for a woman--much more so than to die for a political cause..."
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