^^^^^^^

gracias a mi compadre Roberto


at the end of a torrent of words
just before the quiet opens between us again
I ask him one more question

if we reject then what we remember
in favor of forward looking
and forgiving
if we cease to give our stories
the right to tell us anymore
in what ground
if not in the rot of memory
do we stretch deep roots
and thrive?

one atoning
and astonishing word
he offers

ceremony

life-giver ever free of grievance
time-keeper reinventing cycles
timeless space where we begin
and live again and again
antidote of beauty for memory's wounds
new story-weaver living only now

circles that embrace, defend, uphold
say all this work was not in vain
your labor springs up future past who knows
your offerings received into a greater whole
the beauty that you love in the world feeds you
and the love you give to beauty
in every sacred re-membering
feeds the world

out

I feel like an inmate who gets out of prison tomorrow. Some part of my brain had started to think I was trapped in this claustrophobic trip forever.  But it keeps coming back to me, unexpected, here on a gear-grinding bus and there on the grungy, filthy street:  I got another life out there!  One where I'm free to move.  I've got a truck.  And music, and books, and more than these few changes of worn-out clothes.  Friends who care.  Who live open-eyed, awake in heart and conscience, caring for the Earth. Who work with creativity and humor and subversive resourcefulness.  No sheep, these friends. Who don't make me labor and exhaust myself to have a simple conversation. Who know I'm articulate, who know where my heart's at, and who don't judge me by appearances or by some unfair stereotype they got here with on their own, here in beautiful but exhausting Mexico, before I ever came along.  I've got more freedom than many of these sleepwalkers all around me have ever dreamed of in all their lives. I've got work, community, ideas, possibilities, places to go, places to stay, no dependents, no judgments, few obligations, no outer-imposed belief systems weighing me down. What in the world am I possibly gonna do with all this freedom?

Gonna hit the ground running, for one thing. Gonna laugh myself silly with gratitude, for another. 

further (Feb. 6)

Breakfast this morning at the Casa de los Amigos: the table seats 12, and it's a completely different dozen every time I join them. Today there is a curious division -- on the left, three white people talk in English about activist work. On the right, three black men eat silently, two of them gazing at cellphones. The first conversation sounds out of my reach already, so I turn to my right and ask the usual question at this table of travellers, "Español o ingles?" One of the men replies, "Frances". It's quite possible these men are newly arrived refugees making a start in Mexico, for which the Casa reserves several private rooms. On another visit I talked with some guys recently arrived from Africa, who said they liked Mexico City, only it was way too cold. I'd love to hear something of these men's story, so I offer half the French I know, "Bon jour". "Bon jour!" all three repond immediately. And then no more. I try one more time, with the guy on my near right, "De donde es?" He smiles, and repeats, "Frances". If they're actually starting their entire world over from scratch here, I surely wish them well. Puts my current alienation in perspective. Always somebody further from their homeground than I am.

Taxco (Feb. 4)

Taxco, Guerrero has got to be the most fantastically dreamlike town I've met. First, the moment I get off the bus there is an information desk with a friendly man asking me, oracle-like, "What are you looking for?" When I reply, cheap lodging, he directs me to a guesthouse that is straight uphill (the entire town is straight uphill, really), and _inside_ a market. I have to climb a few flights of stairs, weave between stalls of clothing and fruit, and ask directions several times just to find the entrance.  The place is some crazy cross between medieval keep and post-apocalyptic colony. Everybody's here on top of everybody. Somehow it works. Somehow, it weirdly feels like home.

Second item of business is a laundromat. Which here, of course, normally means dropping off your clothes at a tiny storefront to be washed, dried, and carefully folded. But today it means asking literally 9 people for directions, having a man call down from a balcony, "It's in here!" and finally scooting between the tables of a small taqueria and up a narrow flight of stairs into someone's living room, where a kind woman tells me to please come back tomorrow after 6.

The very steep streets of the city center would be seen as one-lane in the U.S., but here they accomodate two directions of traffic with pedestrians on both sides -- no sidewalks -- with only a couple inches to spare. Just as I'm wondering how the V.W. Bug taxis pull it off, down one of the narrowest comes a hearse, almost scraping stucco walls, followed by six men walking with a casket on their shoulders, and about a hundred people dressed in black. All traffic calmly stops as they cross the sunny plaza without a sound and enter the church.

Finally, I'm admiring the designs painted in white on many of the stone streets, from a simple line to mark the center to flowers, bees and geometric figures. Then I walk down another alley-street where a repair crew is working, and weaving between careful piles of black and shiny white stone I realize that it's not painted. It's all hand inlay work. If this strangeness is just the first afternoon, I can't wait to see what strange dreams I have tonight...

(two days later, energy shift)

Four days left in Mexico. Exhausted. Claustrophobic. The constant noise has me about to snap, and the piles of trash everywhere are making me cry. Deeply missing my precious Earth-connection in Taos. Made 5 different plans yesterday and gave them all up. Nothing seems worth the effort at this point. Getting anywhere means either walking hours in traffic where emissions testing is unheard of and pedestrians have no rights, or riding hours on a bus playing one violent, soulless movie after another. The small towns are no quieter than the City, and the country least of all. I went back last night to a restaurant that had offered peace and unusually tranquil music the first time, only to find that they were playing the radio AND the TV, both at once. 

Only clear thought this morning, in Taxco, was to get a coffee and sit on the plaza for 20 minutes before heading out. This is a very difficult action for me, sitting still. But I did it. It was early, and workers of all kinds were putting the city together a piece at a time. A young man set down a bundle of brush, carefully shaped and tied it together in several places, and stood up with a broom, which he used to begin sweeping leaves off the plaza. Right next to me, another guy set up a straight-backed wooden chair with a metal platform attached, for shining shoes. He set out brushes and polish, checked the change in a small drawer underneath, went for a stack of newspapers from a nearby vendor, and then carefully buffed and polished his own shoes (might as well be your own advertising). A woman at one side of the church set down a large plastic bucket topped with an embroidered cloth. I thought she was waiting for a bus, but after several combis passed her by and she stood patiently, it looked more likely that she was selling tamales. In the middle ground, a guy crossed repeatedly, each time carrying a plastic crate full of bottles of Coke on one shoulder. The driver of a Nissan truck with a bed full of 5-gallon water bottles parked in front of a nice restaurant. A handsome grandfatherly man with silvery mustache, cowboy hat and boots stopped next to the woman with tamales, gazed attentively across the square, and then crossed the plaza and did the same at its opposite corner. Mothers and fathers walked little kids in red and white jogging-suit uniforms to school. 

I watched them all and added another major item to the list of things deeply missed: work. A role and a task to fill the days. I've never liked being a tourist. I'm terrible at it, really. Can't wait til spring offers earth to turn, chance to labor and sweat and be useful for something.

quote (Feb. 2)

"How can we contrive to be at once astonished at the world and yet at home in it?

...we need this life of practical romance: the combination of something that is strange with something that is secure. We so need to view the world as to combine an idea of wonder and an idea of welcome. We need to be happy in this wonderland without once being merely comfortable."

-- G.K. Chesterton, _Orthodoxy_

goodbyes (Jan. 31)

Wow. Goodbyes are hard enough with people you care about. How much more so, when you have no idea when you'll see them again. Or in what state their lives will be. 

Yesterday I took advantage of my status as Wealthy Aunt from the States (which still makes me laugh, but I guess comparatively speaking it's the truth), and gave my nephew Raul a fine day in Xalapa. We spent a few hours at the Museo Interactivo -- an educational kids' museum a lot like Explora in Albuquerque -- which included dinosaurs, old cars, experiments with gravity and electricity, a film in the planetarium, and a sculpture garden in the forest reserve surrounding the place. He seemed to enjoy the sculptures just as much as the science exhibits. I have such joy at this kid's openness to life; such hope for his potential. We took a taxi back downtown, ate tacos al pastor, watched some guys painting a new mural, and talked a lot. I did my best with the double challenge of language and inner voices (which still say I have no right to advise anyone on their lives, even a 9-year-old kid) and offered what wisdom I could scrape together for him, on living through the very possible separation of his parents. At about the same age I was when it happened to me. I said all the things I needed somebody to say to me then, but didn't get: that none of it is his fault, that both his parents love him, that he's got a wonderful heart and a brilliant intelligence and is stronger inside than he may know. That it won't be perfect but it will probably be alright. That it's beautiful that he's such a sensitive soul that he cries at the tears of others, and I really hope he doesn't forget how to cry as the world needs more guys with that ability. That if he just studies well and reads a lot and stays healthy, he can do pretty much anything he wants in the world.

Which, by the way, I asked him about. What do you want to do when you grow up?  He smiled. He had an answer ready. He said he'd like to be mayor of a town so he could get people to take better care of their land and water. And maybe to work with solar energy. And also to travel the world. And could I please check in with him when he gets old enough to travel, and take him along if I'm going somewhere interesting.

In the interest of objectivity: it might or might not be entirely fair to tell a kid who lives without plumbing, in a decidedly anti-progressive town with mud streets, where I wonder if anyone, seriously, ever goes to college instead of getting pregnant at 15, that he can do anything he wants. But history does validate this possibility in equally unlikely places. I'm gonna hold out what hope I can for this one.

Veracruz (Jan. 28)

Veracruz, Veracruz is as close as I've been to Havana, or how I imagine Havana. This city would be the perfect setting for a 40's film noir, or maybe a modern crime flic requiring the word "gritty" in every review. Palm trees, potholed streets, moldy 4-story buildings peeling off their paint in salt air (pink, white, and lime green), street lamps, rusty wrought-iron balconies. Central plaza tiled in white marble and surrounded by the portales of bars and cafes with little tables and strolling musicians. Ocean view blocked mid-town by sky-scraping cranes and massive cargo ships from all over the planet. Malecon further south with historic statues and battered rowboats tied to the piers. And in the heart of the city, one of the kindest welcomes I've found yet on this trip. 

I met Jack and Emily (and their cute 3-year-old son) on my last trip here, and they've offered me an open door since then. Which came as a particular relief after the last few days in Mazatepec, where all mi hermana's friends and neighbors have decided to talk _about_ me instead of to me, using her as an interpreter. Yeah. When we're all speaking Spanish. "Where is your friend from?" "How long is she staying here?" "Is she cold?" No, my Spanish isn't perfect. Sometimes I miss a beat, or have to ask for a repeat of a question. And I remembered belatedly what I've heard all along, that Veracruzanos are known for talking way faster than everybody else, but it's more than that. Some have changed their mind about my linguistic abilities AFTER a few friendly exchanges. Others have refused to try at all, sometimes saying no right in front of me even as mi hermana assures them we speak the same language. This is so dumbfounding to me that yes, I've at times remained without words to contradict them (or the interest in trying). 

When I related one of these conversations to the friends here in Veracruz, they both responded immediately with, "Wow, that's rude! What a lack of respect!" Me being always the too-kind and too-diplomatic, I replied "Well, I know something about small towns, and people who just aren't into trying anything new..." "No" they replied. "That's just rude." Well thank you, friends. I can use the affirmation. Especially when it comes with wonderfully open, animated talk about the world, travel, economics, family stories, as well as world-class cooking by two people who went to culinary school. This is the kind of hospitality that gives a weary traveller the hope to keep going.