I slept late, I knew I had a late mass I could assist at, and so in my decadence I laid in bed until about noon, and then got up and farted around for a while. In the early afternoon someone started crying hysterically in the courtyard just below my room in the hotel I am staying at. I was a bit disconcerted, didn't know how or whether to react to it.. It wasn't just a question of my lack of Spanish. I was uncertain whether I should try to interject myself into a stranger's misery and hysteria or not. A hubbub of voices quickly arose, though, and the crying subsided.
Then, a group of girls and women began praying the rosary, interspacing the decades with hymns. After a couple of decades, I found my chaplet and began praying along with them.
They finished about ten or so minutes before the "last chance mass" (which these last twenty years or so has nearly always been mine, slug that I am) began at 6 p.m. I made it, rosary in hand.
On the way home from mass, I stopped at a taco stall and picked up two hotdogs and a hamburger dressed with red and green peppers ("picante") and got myself a six pack of Modelo and a liter of Indio Negro. I ran into this Mexican Hippie Rafael whose acquaintance I'd made the day before on the central plaza. He'd been quite drunk. He'd kept asking me my name (me llamas Carlos, Charlie, I kept telling him, but it never penetrated his haze..) This afternoon he introduced me to a bunch of other Mexican hippies who where hanging out drinking beer on the plaza. I gave them my liter, and then bought them another one in the spirit of the eucharistic feast. They wanted me to hang out with them, but I left.
Rafael kept telling them that I looked like a soldier, because I was so big and fierce looking. I protested, telling them that I was un hombre de paz and no violento. I never confessed to having been a soldier. They had my number, anyway, though. That's what you get for being an American abroad these days. It's almost as bad as being German. A few steps away from having the SS in our patrimony..
When I came to my hotel at about eight or so in the evening, there was a station wagon hearse pulled up to the main entrance. There was a crowd of people about, and a few women were crying.
I got back to my room, and ate and drank.
The crowd outside grew, and they began singing throughout the whole evening. Hundreds of people have been coming into the hotel's central courtyard into a side room where the casket is.
That's the view from my the balcony just outside my room. There are easily two hundred people here, filing in and out of the room (the lit window opposite in the photo) where the casket is. It's 11:45 and they are still singing.
I am very impressed. These people humble me. All these little Indians, so compelling strange, so odd.. I like them all very much.
Quite the opposite of decadent. Not the slightest bit of cynicism or apathy here. The difference both undoes and draws me. So unlike us, but so much like what I desire to be..
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