Hollywood’s “evolution” – a dampening of its long-lasting combination of fame, glamour, glitter and magnetism – was not uncheerfully announced by The New York Times August 21.

Recently in these pages a brief discussion appeared (Reporter June 27, July 4, August 1) regarding Mexico’s Huichol Indians.  Inevitably, this meant references to ill-fated American journalist Philip True.  As many long-stretch foreign visitors and residents may recall, True wrote for the San Antonio (Texas) Express-News, headquartered in Mexico City.  He was murdered in Huichol territory December 16, 1998, aged 50.

Something pushed against my pillow of denim jacket and pants rolled around my boots.  I slept near Lea Rosser’s VW station-wagon.  It was parked beside a drying river bed.  Stealthily, I reached for the intruding hand just as it clasped a near-empty tequila bottle rolled in my pillow. 

A gentelman in an old fashioned slant-crowned sobrero and field-darkened huaraches stopped me in the middle of downtown Guadalajara the other day.

“Oye señor,” he said, “can you tell me how to get to the Palacio Federal, por favor?”

The two of us stood in the middle of the crowded sidewalk, people pushing around us in both directions, some detouring into the street. Mexican faces. This wasn’t normal tourist territory and there wasn’t a gringo to be seen.

My wife and I landed in a small pueblo that, on the drive down, no one beyond Jalisco seemed to know of.  We quickly moved into a recently renovated house in Ajijic ... and found home.  This was the early 1960s. 

Putting aside a recent dip into life’s and the electronic world’s bumpy lessons (illusive wifi presence) that mauled a useful column into unintelligible mush, ventures into new territory are exciting, metamorphosing experiences.  But such change demands both unwavering and lively attention.  Thus the Zen Master Ikkyu’s brusk command when asked by a student for “a maxim of highest wisdom.”  Ikkyu slashed his brush across his tablet:  “Attention. attention, attention!”