imagenes

There is no possible way to recount, summarize, or (much less) offer commentary on my last few days travelling.  There is only here - Mexico D.F., centro del universo...only Now - this day and this moment, whatever those things blessedly return to when we lose the clocks...and only sense - color, noise, light, smells, and motion.  Here then are just a few images from this feast for the imagination.

Music on the Metro: Everybody with a different way to make a peso.  A young man playing accordion welcomes me in from the airport, at the end of 14 hours´ travel.  One blind man after another paces the length of the cars with disc-player backpack and a fistful of bootleg CD´s.  A tiny, wrinkled, grey-haired woman in tank top, skirt and flip-flops boards the last car at a stop and begins singing, with no musical accompaniment, in a clear, confident soprano that sounds just like a girl of 10 years old.

Walking El Centro:  every shop and vendor competes for decibels, and everyone wins. Except perhaps the pedestrians.  Car horns blare and engines rev and jackhammers rattle the concrete.  A book shop broadcasts an English-learning cassette.  A slow, patient woman´s voice exhorts, "Keep repeating the names of the fruits: ´Strawberry´. ´Fresa´."  Squeezing down a precipitously narrow sidewalk, I pass a 50ish man who extends his arm over my head, as if giving me a blessing.  No, I think, surely he´s just waving at somebody across the street.  But a couple feet past him I hear a friendly, almost teasing voice remark, "Cabello Verde". Green Hair.

Food:  Caldo de pollo that defies description with squash, brocolli, cauliflower, chipotle, melon and epazote.  The grandmother with the tiny grocery market down the block from the Casa sells me a kilo of rice, two onions, two limes and a large chayote squash for $1.80.  The most extravagant meal so far is also found around the corner here in the neighborhood.  The recommendation for this place is that, for unknown reasons, the comida corrida includes a daily Iranian special.  Yesterday that was "couscous", but on arrival it looked exactly like two rounds of grilled polenta.  Excellent, though, golden-tasting and accompanied by soup, salad, fresh tortillas, guava juice, cappucino and a tiny square of jello for dessert.  All for just under $6.  A little more for the man who came through with a guitar and played a song, and extra-good tip for the young server who the manager sent out, after greeting me, accompanied by an 11-year-old boy to server as translator, just in case I didn´t make it through ordering in Spanish. Maybe they´ll share it.

Zocalo, sunset: the drums of the danzantes sweep you up out of your Metro cave and you feel like a flower pulled irresistibly out of earth by sun.  A 70-year-old woman calls out nonstop, hey hey looky here, nice cotton socks just 10 pesos.  A young woman from Chiapas welcomes me to kneel at her tarp on the concrete.  "Go on and look, without any obligation."  The embroidered huipil I pick up is a flower-mindtrip the likes of which I´ve never seen anywhere.  Practically three-dimensional representations of blooms in every shade, with shadows and texture stitched in.  $66, she tells me.  I´m sure it´s worth that, I reply, laying it very carefully down.  The English-lesson woman continues, from another square of the sidewalk, "Now try saying the months of the year.  January.  February."  A comedian has roped off a cobblestoned area, with mic and spotlight and a little backstage tent where he apparently does costume changes.  He´s quite the professional and has a big crowd laughing.  I only get there for his last couple of jokes. I don´t know the verb he uses, but he says something like, "And now my brother, a great romantic, is going to grace you with a poem."  Another man walks out, dressed dramatically all in black, carefully grasping a single sheet of paper, wearing an extremely somber expression and a red clown nose.  Tragically earnest mariachi music begins to play.  The man gazes at the audience, and then slowly waves the paper over the heads of this side, then the middle, then the other side of the group.  Then he bows deeply, and disappears backstage.

Xochimilco:  Today´s Life Class has been, Using Public Transportation.  Actually, the class is a continuation of the ongoing "Learn to Ask for What You Need", and public trans is just this week´s homework.  The normal mode of Metro travel is nearly flawless.  Today also included the Tren Ligera, the light rail that picks up where the Metro ends and takes you another half hour or so toward the outer reaches.  But from there, you´re in combi territory: little green busses that seat about 12 people, spew exhaust, stop when you wave at them, and announce their destinations via a card in the windshield with a list of 4-5 place names that you won´t recognize if you´re not from around here.  Or, if you left your guesthouse thinking you could go with only a cursory glance at the map.  The third one I try, looping north and south again to spiral in on my goal, has a driver kind enough to advise me of the stop I want, and give me two options where he can let me off.  Late enough in the day that I don´t go into Parque Ecologico de Xochimilco, but the view from the pedestrian bridge across the Periferico (the freeway looping around at least half the city) is the Visa-commercial´s conclusion of "PRICELESS".  Well worth the last several hours of trudging and mis-judging, to stand there in the late light above the rush-hour exhaust and take in grass, trees and ancient waterways, pretty much as far as the eye can see in three directions.  Flocks of white wide-winged birds wheel over cattails and sun-reflections.  Popocatepetl and Ixtacihuatl, the magnificent pair of snow-topped volcanoes named for Prince and Sleeping Princess, tower over the southern skyline.  Deep green hills dwarf Reforma´s near-invisible skyscrapers to the north and west.  I carry two lovely purple and white African daisies bought at the greenhouse-city of Cuemanco, at the bridge´s other end.  They´re gifts for friends I will be visiting, but back on the Metro, these flowers will open up friendly and curious conversations with 5 people.

Bus and Metro back to city center:  a chaos of cars attempts to exit the greenhouse and adjoining park.  A lone man in a baseball cap stands precariously at the intersection of four directions of traffic.  He wears no uniform, but clenches a whistle between his teeth and gestures grandly, like an umpire would, waving first this line and then the other of cars forward seamlessly.  One or two drivers reach out their windows as they pass, and hand him coins.  A spray-painted sign at the park`s entrance reads, inexplicably, "VIVA VILLA CABRONES".  The micro I catch this time takes me on a straight sweep north, all the way to the Metro´s southern end.  En route is 45 minutes of tree-lined neighborhoods, tiny shops, disturbing flashes of U.S. stores like Starbucks and Home Depot.  Sun slants lusciously through those tall trees whose hairy grey-brown trunks and tossing branches remind me of horses.  At a stop, a good-looking young man with a newsboy cap and gypsy features boards with a guitar.  He plants his feet in the back of the center aisle and sings two or three familiar pop songs in a fine mellow tenor.  We all give him coins as he exits several stops later.  I arrive back at the Casa just before sunset, to the sound of drumbeats and trumpets from up the street at the Monument of the Revolution.  A drum-and-bugle corps is practicing their synchronized moves at the gigantic arch´s base.  They are boys and girls, and they all look 16 years old.  And they´re really good.  There is no end to the diversity and no imagining how it may express itself around the next corner, and the next, and the next...