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Just back from a trip to Mexico City trip, spending time at a home for elderly sex workers. Went with a friend George, and met there Claudia, co-directors of an extraordinary documentary about these women: The Ugly Doll / La Muñeca Fea https://www.amazon.com/Ugly-Doll-Muñeca-Fea/dp/B07FCSKR5F.

Mexico City was amazing – a kind of paradise: green and sprawling and full of boulevards and garden walkways, buildings collapsed in successive earthquakes, but a city rebuilt on top of itself. Downtown, in what used to be an island on a lake, a 14^th century temple built to the gods of war and rain and agriculture, then destroyed by the Spanish in the 16^thcentury to build a cathedral, the temple lost and rediscovered 100 years ago, its ruins living among the city and cathedrals.

Then the women – I know some of their stories: brutal rape and abuse, many went into sex work to support their children, some pimped out by their husbands. Now their families (and society) mostly abandon them, but they’ve reclaimed an abandoned building and created a home together – a band of women bonded and brutal, all the complexities of a family. They are an inspiration: survivors like I’ve never seen, tough beyond measure. George and Claudia say if aliens came down looking for the best humanity had to offer, it would be these women. I agree.

The new show TV I just co-developed and head wrote working with the amazing Nicole Bailey Mostert and Gerhard Mostert. We had a most amazing team of writers including Abena Ayivor Nonzi Bogatsu Jacqueline Trimble Carolyn Cooke Jennifer Hsu and all helped out by Charlie Sapadin. We have an incredible cast including Nico Panagio, Rolanda Marias, Andahr Cotton, Amrain Ismail-Essop, and the inimitable Sandra Prinsloo.

We broke new ground in so many ways
– first Afrikaans five minute drama to be watched on mobile devices
– first class director, producer, crew and cast including the greats of Afrikaans TV and film
– and probably the first Afrikaans drama primarily written by a team of mostly black women! :-).

Been a magical experience.

Most of my adult life I’ve loved Jars. Wrote a poem about them at my lowest points in my twenties: “I’m putting my life in jars / jars of dried tomatoes in olive oil / jars of green pickles / . . . lonely afternoons a half gallon jar / a quick look crossing Prospect street in a jar near the back / anguish jars / fearful jars / don’t you dare speak to me again jars . . .”

Late 2018, year end I bought new spice jars: magnets on my wall. I peer at them each day, admiring potency captured in glass . . .

Until I realize this is a different phase of my life, I may not need jars like I used to.. “Spill all the spices, let them bleed” a trusted friend says. Hell yeah . . .

Back in Mongolia, I visit the Gandantegchinlen buddhist monestary. The great statue  of  Megjid-Janraiseg (the lord who watches in every direction) was built in 1809.  In the 1930s, the communist government of Mongolia destroyed most monasteries, killed 15,000 lamas, and by 1938 Russian troupes dismantled the statue and used it for scrap metal.

The statue was rebuilt in 1992, 87 feet high, covered in gold, with more than 200 pounds of silk, 2286 precious stones, and filled with 27 tons of medicinal plants, 334 sutras and 2 millions mantras.  Megjid-Janraiseg surrounded by one thousand statuettes of God Amitabha, like dolls in a case I say, but told to be quiet.