The Turquoise Serpent Club

To you, opening the turquoise door,

In autumn 1920 marigolds have just appeared on the streets of Mexico City, and the smoke of Day of the Dead candles and burning copal drifts around the corners. The envelope is handmade turquoise. Magnificent woodcut lettering spells the English title, each letter interlocking with the next like a vine. A small portrait of a woman is built from ocher and cobalt facets, with terracotta brush bands like drafts for walls not yet painted, all enclosed in a serpentine frame. In one corner is a cream print-shop docket.

A seventeenth-century nun-poet of Mexico City wrote a sonnet that includes these lines: "to put beauties in my understanding, and not my understanding in beauties." — Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, sonnet "En perseguirme, Mundo, ¿qué interesas?" (late 17th century)

A club may be no more than a few people willing to put beauty into the mind first. Welcome; come in. The paint is still being mixed and the letter not yet written, and we are in no hurry.

The serpent waits above the door

Storm Post Office

Autumn 1920 · Mexico City