The cold and the damp make one unnecessarily tired and Lima is starting to push my nerves. My Spanish is one step forward, two steps back... and the city I'm too used to by now to appreciate. Interesting discoveries are still there--yesterday's Rafael Larco Herrera museum, with its unique pre-Inca erotic pottery collection, and today's stately Franciscan monastery and chilling catacombs. On the city streets it is always a glimpse of a beautiful courtyard that catches my attention, like an oasis in the desert that in many ways is Lima. Sometimes the building surrounding the courtyard is so dilapidated that the garden is a little like a burial place for the edifice. The literature I'm reading, by Cesar Vallejo and Peter Mathiessen, are influencing my view of Lima for the worse.