rumiquote (Jan. 2)

Lovers think they're looking for each other,

but there's only one search: wandering
this world is wandering that, both inside one
transparent sky. In here
there is no dogma and no heresy.

The miracle of Jesus is himself, not what he said or did
about the future. Forget the future.
I'd worship someone who could do that.

On the way you may want to look back, or not,
but if you can say, There's nothing ahead,
there will be nothing more.

Stretch your arms and take hold the cloth of your clothes
with both hands. The cure for the pain is in the pain.
Good and bad are mixed. If you don't have both,
you don't belong with us.

When one of us gets lost, is not here, he must be inside us.
There's no place like that anywhere in the world.

-- Rumi

lesson (Dec. 29)

This afternoon, in an empty parking lot on a temporarily closed university campus, a blind man gave me a tango lesson. Music included, thanks to a tiny ipod of which we each shared an earpiece. If that isn´t the perfect metaphor for my life at the moment, I don't know what is.

quotes (Dec. 31)

From the introduction to a borrowed book, an anthology of writings about daily life in Mexico City, a couple quotes that left me feeling I got it right so far (since walking the streets here is what I spend about half of every day doing):

"Strolling through the streets remains the best strategy for understanding the cultural complexities of Mexico City:  its delirious nature, its endless contradictions (it is a place of extreme poverty and extreme wealth), its surreal images (André Breton famously called it the most surreal place on earth), and its jumbling of historical periods (modernist high-rises next to eighteenth-century palaces are a common sight)...Aside from lively downtown streets, relentless crowds, and anarchic energy, there is one aspect of life in Mexico City that sets it apart from generic cities:  the strange penchant its inhabitants show for weaving elaborate narratives out of everything that happens to them..." 

"We'll never know exactly how many we are, for this city is, in the strict sense, incalculable...The landscape overwhelms us, and the only way to make it cohere, to give it meaning, is to travel through it. The city works because it can be traversed.
...The megalopolis is built for internal navigation, like a sea without a port.

...Large cities lack a structured language; they can only aspire to a broken language, a mosaic fragmented by limitless growth and exuberant chaos.
...Postmodern cities - oceans, infinite zones of passage - signal a shift from verticality to horizontality...less an edifiable space than a setting for movement."

ed. Rubén Gallo,  _The Mexico City Reader_

quote (Dec. 24)

"...but loneliness is not living alone, loneliness is the ability to keep someone or something within us company, it is not a tree that stands alone in the middle of a plain but the distance between the deep sap and the bark, between the leaves and the roots." 

-- Jose Saramago, _The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis_

la familia (12-22/26)

To all my friends, planning to spend whatever holidays we spend with whoever we call family, I wish much joy and peace. Particularly to those who, like me, spend these days among family of heart and of choice. 

Today I finally made it out to the village of my adopted family, Mazatepec Veracruz.  Where, just as hoped, I was welcomed back as if no time had passed. Except it has: in place of the cute baby girl I met two and a half years ago, I now have for a niece one of the loveliest three-year-olds I have ever met, with huge dark eyes and a way with animals. And I guess I should have expected that my nephew who, last time, was a fun and slightly silly seven-year-old, is now a scary-smart nine-year old with whom I can barely keep up with in conversation. I explained to him that I might have to ask him to slow down, as sometimes my understanding of Spanish (especially Veracruzano Spanish) doesn´t keep pace. He thought a minute, then asked me to repeat everything I had just said, in English. He listened to me, thought about it. "Yeah, I didn`t understand anything you just said either...alright." Then he spent the next hour teaching me to play marbles. Okay. I`ll start wherever I can. With the language I lack, and with all the memories of family and kindness I missed, my whole life. If they`ll let me -- and they will -- I`ll take my place here among the children, and let them teach me both.

This trip, as with the last, I carried a third suitcase 1,500 miles -- in addition to my own two backpacks -- full of gifts for the family.  Since they live even more simply and carefully than I do (a lot more simply, really), they're fine with used clothing and shoes.  Though I look for the best of Empire's leftovers to share with them:  Guess jeans, Adidas tennies, Gap shirts. Books for my niece and nephew from a last-minute used-book fair in the Capital.  My Christmas gifts were:  a paleta (lollipop) and a drawing from my nephew. A most amazing dinner of tamales de frijol, spicy red-chile-roasted chicken, tortillas handmade on a comal (the small wood-fired stove everyone uses in the village), and a hot drink made of apple, plum, and guayaba.  And the extravagant privilege of sitting on the floor in my pajamas first thing in the morning, surrounded by sweet family exclaiming over their gifts, all of us laughing and full of gratitude.  Really, I'm not sure if I remember doing that presents-in-pajamas thing even as a kid.  The family I grew up with was more formal than that, more attached to appearances.  The family in Veracruz lives without indoor plumbing.  Baths happen with a bucket of water in the kitchen.  The tin roof leaks when it rains.  I wouldn't say they stand on ceremony.  And I wouldn't call them poor, either, since they live with such awareness and generosity.

In the late afternoon we went back to mi hermana's mother's house, for leftover tamales.  Then she and I walked up the mountain, on the quiet road that climbs to the next town.  We crossed a tiny stream and a cow pasture, and hiked up into the cloud forest. Out of reach of the noise, of the people, of everything, we sat under mossy trees populated with ferns, orchids and bromeliads, watching fog roll up the ridge until darkness turned green magic into shadow, and dry corn fields, barking dogs and crowing roosters showed us where home was again.

Cuicuilco (Dec. 4)

Today: Cuicuilco archeological zone, in the south of Mexico City. Cuicuilco was a city and ceremonial center first inhabited a little over 3000 years ago. Presently, it's a lovely patch of wildness in the center of a ring of freeways and skyscrapers. The settlement was partly covered with lava in a volcanic eruption around 400 BC/CE, which led to it being abandoned but also helped preserve its several structures. The pyramid at its center, made of large, rough volcanic stones, is about 75 feet high, and maybe that wide again across its flat, grassy top. A sign at the site speculates that this place, fairly uniquely, was built so that many people could gather and participate in the sacred ceremonies on the summit.  Which idea I like, a lot. Inclusivity, room for all at the top.

I met only one other person while walking the narrow paths among giant cactus, bee balm growing 6 to12 feet tall, mesquite trees and others that looked like gigantic jade plants. There were psychedelic succulents with flowers that somehow combined salmon and turquoise.  In place of carbon monoxide, the predominant smell in this city, was a sweet live green aroma that rivalled the Bosque in Albuquerque. It was a needed respite after a few days in the City's overload.

Approaching the pyramid, the quiet disappeared as I caught up with a large group of elementary kids on a noisy field trip. They were coming down as I was going up. As we met, a boy called out "Welcome!" A bit further on, a man who looked around 60 smiled and asked me - in English - "Where are you from?" When I told him, he turned to the group of kids he was accompanying, who looked like 3rd graders, and announced (still in English), "Everybody, say ´Welcome to Mexico!´" "WELCOME TO MEXICO!" they all called out in a perfect chorus. 

Oh my other country, los Estados Unidos, how I wish you could take an example from this one on how to be truly human. You´ve got a difficult contest with this country, so far, when it comes to stealing my heart.

Southbound (Dec. 1)

39 hours on the bus gets you from Albuquerque to Mexico City. Or a little less, if you´re capable of sitting and being enclosed nonstop for such a stretch. I´m not, and had to get off in a couple towns and breathe real air for a bit. But I had promised (Life, myself) that next trip to Mexico, I would honor the Earth by flying less, and take a bus to see how the people travel.  

I did the trip in three stages:  Albuquerque to Chihuahua, Chihuahua to Zacatecas, and from there to Mexico City.  All the busses had seasonal workers returning home to Mexico for the winter, from all points north: Idaho, Chicago, Colorado. One guy had been riding for three days straight. We had to sit for two hours at the border, while the workers got off and negotiated with authorities inside. After they finally boarded again, an official got on and asked a couple of them for money. I don´t know if it was fees or fines or something else.  Wanted to ask but didn´t want to pry. There's really only so far my good intentions can go:  much of the people's trip, I'll never be able to understand.  My point of view is trapped within my privilege to move freely.

All the busses also carried that beautiful kindness to the stranger that´s always met me in Mexico. At one point an official took an extra section of my ticket for some reason. The bus driver called my name to give it back to me, but I didn´t hear him.  Six people around me let me know right away that I needed to go up front. A 20-something worker included me when he passes around a bag of Doritos - "No, take more!". Two women in their 60`s traded friendly conversation, and when we all got off in Zacatecas, their home, one gave me her address and phone number, inviting me to come to their house if I needed to rest a few hours.  Or to come back later if I want to visit their city. At the end of the line, very kind friends had offered to pick me up at the terminal, and take me to their house.  I arrived exhausted and smelly and having barely eaten for two days, realizing belatedly that I should have gotten a cell phone to call them.  I looked around to find there´s not even internet at the bus station. Carrying three packs around a room full of a few hundred people, I can only ask for a small miracle, that we somehow run into each other..and we do.  They wave at me from across the room, and suddenly all's well. I took that as a clear YES, on which to open this journey.