3rd (Jan. 25)

Third birthdays. Of all the subjects my cultural education has yet to encompass, I had no idea that this was one of them. My niece Zoe turned 3 on Saturday. Her mom spent the last couple months working herself to exhaustion, to give her a proper celebration. I thought she meant good food, a cake, some presents. This after all is a household that lives without running water. I was wrong. 

Arriving in Mazatepec on Saturday afternoon, I found the old schoolbus (only transport from Xalapa) didn't turn up their part of the road as usual. When I backtracked and walked in, I found the road was blocked - with special advance permission from the transport office in the next town - with tables and chairs, potted plants, and shaded by a giant tarp with a Corona logo. DJs were stacking amps on the sidewalk and playing music from old laptops. Balloons framed a banner with photos of Zoe, behind a table draped in purple bearing FIVE tres leches cakes, each topped with a different fruit, boxes of marshmallow bouquets, and gelatinas of every color. Neighbors already arriving were served plates heaped with rich mole and chicken or pork (they had bought a pig from a neighbor, and had it butchered), rice, tamales, and tortillas handmade on the comal. 

Zoe was a princess right out of a fairy tale, shimmery purple floor-length dress, hair intricately styled, and a tiara. After the first round of guests ate, the DJs played "Las Mañanitas" as her father brought out FOUR piñatas, one after the other. When cake was served, the parents toasted Zoe and all the guests in matching glasses bought new for the occasion. Her father borrowed the mic from the DJs, whispered in her ear, and handed it to her so she could say "Thank you all for coming to my party". 

All afternoon, more guests arrived and ate. I'm pretty sure the whole town came through at some point.  Many brought nice gifts, which they must have had to go to Xalapa to buy, as there are no real stores in Mazatepec. When it got dark the DJs packed up and made way for a local cumbia band featuring Zoe's uncle on keyboards.  People danced (and kept eating) til 1 a.m. The food didn't begin to run out, either, and the next day bags were packed up and distributed among friends and neighbors til it was all gone. 

When I asked her mom, why the third birthday , she only said, "It means we're grateful for her having life so far..and that she's changing from a baby to a little girl." That's some kind of gratitude. I've never seen any celebration in the states that holds a candle to this. I didn't dance, other than one song with mi hermana. Spent a fine evening upstairs with my nephew and a dozen cousins, playing tag, blind man's bluff, and a terrific stuffed-animal battle. I won't mention either how I dealt with the noise levels - ha - but I was grateful all the same that Life, somehow, connected me with a family that sure enough knows how to celebrate.

list (Jan. 17)

Things I miss about New Mexico: Turquoise skies, unpolluted, unobstructed. Rivers that flow clean and clear, with no trash in them. Our sacred Mountain, constant presence with Her ever-changing light over Taos. Empty sidewalks. Silence. The sound of wind in trees. Coyotes' crazy laughter at night. Stars. The company of animals in general - deer, elk, rabbits, bears - which I had come to take for granted, and they are not seen here, or not here at all, so very strange. Real (dark) beer. Green chile. Hundred-mile vistas.

I'm sure that, as soon as I get back there, a list of things missed in Mexico will also appear. Blessing and curse (challenge) of the traveller, to be always and never content where we are.

Favorite quote heard on this trip: "The new traveller who spends a week in a new country, and then returns home, writes a book. The traveller who spends month and then returns, writes an article. The traveller who spends a year or more returns, and says nothing."

Obviously I'm not quite to that point yet. But I find less to say about here than a month and a half ago.  And I've mostly stopped taking pictures. Which seems like a small advancement: Or maybe it's just that my $40-a-week closet/room has no outlets, so I can't charge my phone this week. I've also accepted that the goal/wish/daily work here, like it or not, is for the most part exactly the same as it is in New Mexico.  Or anywhere, for that matter.  Learn. Listen. Heal. Help or serve, if possible. Honor Earth.  Acknowledge Mystery.  Praise Beauty. All goals quite often misunderstood by others, if not totally invisible or incomprehensible to them. And that often (except maybe for the one about Beauty) don't involve words.

freedom (Jan. 4)

Understanding, ready or not, often kindles transcendence. 
Transcendence, at least a leaving, often a kind of death. 
Death, likely as not, delivers freedom. 
Freedom, clearly, essential to Life. 
It's not exactly the road that I wanted, but it is most certainly the one that I asked for. 
And have been gifted, time and again.

lesson, 2 (Jan. 3)

Been feeling like the Bad Tourist this week. For reasons within and without, too many repeated misunderstandings, possibly "cultural differences", are starting to get to me. Sorry, inner judges, but I just don't know how to accept being constantly cut in front of in lines, or talked ABOUT instead of TO, or being assured that, don't worry, a dish doesn't have any chile in it when that's actually what I want. But as always, have to try to shine the light on the beauty and the understanding, though it be small. Last couple days have brought the very clear and valuable message, "Don't assume". It happened when a woman at the next hotel down seemed to be listening in as I inquired about prices, and then made me a better offer than her neighbor. With the clerk at the bus station, who told me busses started running at 6:30 a.m. and then wasn't there at 7:30 -- but just as I got annoyed the bus pulled up to the empty station, right on time... 

And then (in case I wasn't getting it yet), the message came again today in a really sweet style. Stopping at a "tourist information" office, I said "Buenos dias" to the older man inside. He replied in kind, and then turned away and began writing on a chalkboard. I watched, nonplussed, as he ignored me and began to write -- in English.  "Sometimes I feel afraid...be not ready". Finally I said, politely I hoped, "Is there someone here who can give tourist information?" He turned immediately and said, "Oh, excuse me! You probably thought I was ignoring you, but you see, I am blind. Since I didn't hear you, I thought you had passed on by." We proceeded to have a lovely conversation in which I not only learned all I needed to know about the area, but also that he had lived in Seattle for 5 years ("Of _course_ I went there to work"), and in that time had become pretty fluent in English, which helped to give him a job in this small town. He made absolutely sure I had understood all his directions, and then asked if I would mind coming back by the next day, to tell him how my outings went and so he could have the feedback on his information. I would not mind that at all. Been overdue for a little of that kind of understanding.

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_