Upon My Past Week of Discontent: In Which I Bitch Fulsomely about Mexico City

I wrote most of this when I was in Mexico City as a therapeutic act.  That place really got to me, and I wanted to purge..

I've since arrived here,

Playa Principal, Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca, Mexico.

however, in Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca.  This has radically altered my frame of mind for the better.

Still, I thought I'd share this anyway.  I've blogged much less than I could, and I'll try to put a bit of the backlog of pictures (at least, if not a few stories) up this coming few days or so.  I'll definitely post more about this place I'm at now, here..


Which will make very clear that I do in fact (and for the record) that I really do love this country.  Immensely.


But there are minor irritants and discontents.  This past week in Mexico City they intensified and proliferated, attacking me all at once.


Mexico City is Mexico on steroids, and the greater part of the things I dislike here are both more common, and usually more acute. It's over-stimulating, and so everything is felt more harshly.  Like I say, it reminded me of Cairo, which is even more of a Third World megalopolis hell-hole, only one overrun by fellahin..  Who, while fascinating to encounter, are far more "retrograde" and alien to us than Mexican campesinos, who really are great people on the whole, just difficult to handle when nine million of them attempt to simultaneously jam themselves into a valley over a mile high in the mountains, and you happen to be stuck in the scrum with them..

Which is merely to note that while not quite as chaotic or grubby as border towns like Tiajuana, Mexico City is still a great sprawling urban morass. The streets are generally narrow, traffic is bad, and there are hoardes of people everywhere.  It also has several apparent centers, and so seemed to lack coherence to me.  Admittedly, one week is not anywhere near enough to learn such a vast place, but most cities seem to make more sense too me, at once. Cairo, for example, while a great jumble, is a great jumble around the Nile.  Guadalajara has much more focus, a well defined center with almost everything of consequence there, and a few suburbs with things of interest clustered about it..  Easy, no stress navigation there.  Not so Ciudad Mexico: there are several centers, and many things are scattered about it in a cloud.. Furthermore, the streets in Mexico City are also much narrower on average than say Guadalajara, and there were few obvious landmarks that can be widely seen and orientate oneself by, making it feel like a great chaotic maze.

And though the smog was no where near as bad as I bet it was in the past, it was still bad.  Mexico City is in a great valley surrounded by mountains, and like in L.A. the mountains trap the pollution.  The buildings are all begrimed with soot from decades of smog and exhaust, indeed everything's besmirched and blackened on account of this ambient pollution.. And while I was able to see the mountains when I got above the buildings (a sight I've heard was rare until very recently. Things are improving - government regulations and the catalytic converter are working wonders), there was still quite a lot of haze, and you can smell and feel the pollution in the air.

This is a view across the Valley of Mexico City from the hill of the apparition at the Shrine of Guadalupe.  From the north of the city facing south.  It was the only time the week that I was there that I was able to see anything beyond the buildings immediately about me.  Notice that you can see the far mountains indistinctly through the haze of smog..

hazy sunset over Valle de Mexico..

One minor saving grace of Cd. Mexico is that there is an extensive, well run subway system.  It's a bit aesthetically muddled, in the lines are designated dull pastel institutional colors that I thought ugly, and then numbered or lettered by whether the train ran on rubber tires or rails (I think.. It was a bit unclear why both letters and numbers are used..)  It was all a bit indistinct and understated, anyway.  

I like urban transport that makes clear, bold statements, designating lines by (say) primary colors "Red Line" "Green Line" "Blue Line" and such, not "pastel rose line known by a number" then "puke institutional green line known by a letter, just to confuse things."

I will credit them this: one nifty aspect of Cd. Mexico's metro is that it has a icon system where each station is assigned it's own unique iconic image.  The images are ugly and crude, but they all correspond in some way to the stations' names.  Probably devised due to high illiteracy, I'd guess.  It worked pretty well for me when I was trying to keep track of where I was going.  It was one of the few things other than the Shrine at Guadalupe that I liked about the city.


Anyway, herewith a bulleted list of things that I dislike in Mexico, made more annoying by being strained and overwhelmed by Mexico City:


1.) There are very few free public bathrooms in Mexico.  You usually have to pay three or four pesos (20 cents or so) for the pleasure of using an uncouth toilet, usually without soap at the wash basin, which is one more reason why I always carry a small bottle of sanitizer.  This public toilet situation is very, very annoying, especially since most restrooms in places like bus or metro stations have turnstiles where you have to deposit coins.  There's often an attendant inside (cheap Mexican labor) who dispenses (rations) a few sheets of toilet paper.  Again, I carry more with me, either a pack of tissues or small roll of my own.

If you are traveling alone with bags turnstiles at the bathroom entrance makes going to the restroom at the station into a strategic logistical endeavor. I'm at the bus station now, waiting  a few hours for my bus to Oaxaca, and I needed to go.  I had to ask a shoe shine guy to watch my two larger bags (which would definitely not fit past the turnstile).  I carried my camera and laptop with me, and the bag got stuck in the turnstile, and I was caught there for a few seconds.  The shoeshine guy (coincidentally?) let loose a huge yapping guffaw at that very instant.


2.) Which leads me to my second major annoyance:  Mexicans tend to stare.  They meet your gaze, and do not look away.  Walking through a crowd, you turn your head, and there's often a few people there just gawking at you.

Now, I used to like this on past visits to this country, if I remember rightly.  I felt that it gave me license to stare right back.  Something that was especially fun if the person staring at you happened to be female and cute, as was often then the case.  Now, I guess I've become jaded.  I no longer enjoy being starred at by anyone.   I don't care if you are beautiful and like me, keep your eyes to yourself.

Well, alright.  Maybe if you are female and pretty and really want to.  I guess I could put up with it..

The staring issue was getting to me before I got to Mexico City.. But because there seems to be an inordinate number of crazy crippled bums, people dressed in disturbing costumes (due to this last week being the Feast of All Souls - la Dia de Los Muertos, Halloween - such were very commonly encountered on the streets) and "developmentally diabled"  people (read retards, occasionally spasmodic and drooling) and - I'm not exaggerating here - an unusually large number of midgets, often dressed in bizarre costumes such as Mexican Professional Wrestling masks..

That always seemed to single me out for attention.. Sometimes they smiled, smirked or laughed.. I returned and met their gaze, but they rarely looked away...

Things began to seem a bit uncanny..

I ran into one guy looked like that guy who played the midget sidekick Tatto on Fantasy Island and Nick Nack in the James Bond flick The Man with the Golden Gun (which I just caught on cable here last week, reminding me of him), Hervé Villechaize.. A dead ringer for him, actually, except he wasn't ringing a bell and yelling "zee plane, zee plane," but was instead sitting on the hood of a car murmuring to himself while waving his hands through the air like they were airplanes, and staring straight at me as I passed him in the street..

As I say, I began to have a lingering, inescapable feeling that I was stuck in a surrealist nightmare.  I became a bit paranoid.  Mexico City: a great Fellini-esque performance art production designed just for me.  A gigantic contemporary flash-mob like Satyricon, that I couldn't escape.  Since I hate Fellini, and have learnt to hate hallucinating, this sensation was extremely unpleasant.

Some of this attention seems to me to smack of xenophobia, even racism..  I don't take it all too personally, tit for tat (1836, 1848, and all that) after all. Most especially seeing how I am 6' 2" and very obviously a gringo.  It just becomes exhausting after a while.  Being the focus of objectification and innate impersonal dislike is no fun, and while it's only occasionally openly felt here, I notice it far more often and intensely than anywhere else I've ever been.  Even the Middle East..


3.) Mexicans tend to blare their music with a lot of bass.  From store fronts, cars, taco stands.. Very early in the morning, very late at night.  Techno, Banda..  It can be an assault, one I guess I've grown less tolerant of noise pollution in my old age.  There's a lot of this in the city, and I really hated it.


4.) There are a lot of strong smells, too.  Good and bad.  Frying meat, sewage being very common and two of my least favorite.  You get rotting garbage, fried food and sewage in the same moment, sometimes.  Not cool.   While Mexican street food can be awesome,

10 pesos: that's less than a buck for one big, fat, yummy taco..

it can also be pretty disgusting.  Mexicans eat the entire animal, so you see everything from intestines to brain frying away at stands on the street.  I used not to be annoyed by the smells and sight of stuff like that, but I've become more sensitive..  Something that used to amuse me when I noticed it (look at them eating brain! cool!) now tends to make me queasy.


5.) Public display of affection.. This should be higher on the list. I only just remembered.   This is on par with the staring issue, in that  it's both disturbing and surreal.  And like with staring, I used to enjoy such displays.  Mexico is like Italy, in that when you go to a park or anywhere where people are making "la vuelta," which is to say walking around in public together, you get some serious PDA.  And - I don't know if it's me, or what - but unlike Italians (if my memory serves me) they really don't kiss all that well. They muckle onto one another like lampreys, and just eat one each other's faces.  It  (if you are close enough to hear) sounds like they are slapping one another's faces with raw slabs of  steak or something.

I imagine cartoon bubbles above them making the Cookie Monster sound, "om nom nom nom" because that is what they'd sound like if they were muppets:

Cookies!

As you can see, it's not just teenagers who do it.  The last meal I ate in the city I sat behind a forty-something couple seated facing away at the table opposite mine.  Like they were across from me at my table, but back to me at the table opposite.  Throughout the meal, between courses, they would periodically attack one another, "french" kissing, smacking loudly..  I sat there astonished, and had to look off to the corners and ceiling to avoid watching.  Not out of politeness (anyone who does anything so vulgar forfeits their right not to be gaped at in astonishment) but because it was utterly revolting.


6.) I dislike baroque architecture, and most churches here are baroque.  I'll blog more on this point, later.  I'll just note here that it's an issue, and a good one for me to wrestle with.  I need to make my peace with  the Inquisition, campesinos, and all the church ladies of the world.. Church Ladies like kitsch, and hence so should I..  Herewith resolved, I will force myself to dig rococo..

7.) Mexicans make absolutely terrible coffee.  You might as well just drink hot water, that's how awful it is. I've tried it probably a dozen times so far, and it's always awful.  I ate at a place owned by a German woman, and I thought for sure that she'd guarantee a decent cup, and it was merely mediocre...  Tea sucks here, too.   This isn't a big deal, really, but I've been wanting to finish my meals with a good cup lately, and I keep getting frustrated..


Another reason to get back to Italy someday soon, it seems..


Except that this place may be home.  I like it so much here that I have to give it some time.. We'll see..


So there's the list of my piddling discontents.  Enough with being a gringo feo, I'm off to shower the salt and sand off..  Buenas Noches, todos.



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My Afternoon in Teotihuacan

A week so far in Mexico City. The first four days were spent in the Centro Historico, which was a mistake. I'm not much of a fan of this city. I really enjoyed Guadalajara, but this place is..

Well, I don't feel like writing much tonight, so I may treat the topic of what I don't like this place in a later post. I'll just say now that it reminds me a lot of Cairo, and that is not a good thing.

I decided to switch hotels to be right next to the Villa de Guadalupe in the north of the city, which is the shrine I came here primarily to visit. I've been here three days, and have been enjoying the shrine very much. The shrine itself is beautiful, and I'll write about it and post images tomorrow or the next day. I've decided that I'm leaving here and heading south to Oaxaca and the Ocean tomorrow, because I want away from this city.

I briefly got out of the city today to visit the pre-Aztec ruins at Teotihuacan, Aztec (the successor civilization that came after the one that built this place) for "birthplace of the gods," which is just to the north about an hour or so by bus. It's one of the most important pre-Columbian ruins in all Mexico, and has two of the largest pyramid structures in the world, a close second to Giza, I think. I felt it would be stupid not to make the effort to see them even though I am not really that interested in all that Lamanite stuff. Just not that compelling to me - in fact, I have to say that in it's rawest forms it rather repulses me, to think about. I'll probably write about all that too, when I write my post where I hold forth on what I dislike here..

Tonight, I'll simply give you pictures of the excavated city and its pyramids. These are very impressive, even beautiful. On par with the ruins at Ephesus, probably, in terms of their majesty.. It all just  lacks cultural relevance to me, that ruins in Europe and the Mediterranean always have.

Still, a good day overall. Here are a few choice images to prove it.

First, a self portrait before the great Pyramid of the Sun, where prisoners were sacrificed to the sun, to keep it revolving in it's orbit..

This main pyramid is 222 meters square, and has 248 steps to the top. There's some impressive numerology, astrological and calendar work associated with this site, and it's a big hit with the New Age crowd around solstices and stuff.. Which is yet another reason for me to be ambivalent about it. 

Anyhow, this is a view of the smaller, but more elegant 3rd Century AD Pyramid of the Moon from the side of the Pyramid of the Sun:

The main drag of the very impressive city ruins (of which there are apparently 20 square kilometers) facing away from the Pyramids:

Both the pyramids together, viewed from the south:

There you have it. A break from all those churches. Branching out down here, broadening my horizons..



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Just a Bum..

My Themesong for Today..



I saw a man, he's a well-dressed man
He had a tan from the Yucatan
He had a car, he looked like a star
I said, Hey, don't I know who you are
But when he glanced into my eyes
I saw yes I saw was such a big surprise
He was afraid that he's just a bum
Someday when all his stuff is gone and he's left without a dime
Time ain't money when all ya got is time
And you can see him standin on the corner with a nine-day beard and bright red eyes

I know a guy, he's a pal of mine
I say, hey. He say, I'm doin fine
I'm movin up the ladder, rung rung rung
I'm gonna get my million while I am still young
But at night when he's had a few
His eyes say different than his tongue
They say I'm afraid that I'm just a bum
Someday when all my stuff is gone and I'm left without a dime
Time ain't money when all ya got is time
And I can see me standin on the corner with my nine-day beard and my bright red eyes
Goin hey, hey hey hey hey, come on and listen to my story, hey, hey hey hey hey, ah hey

Some people live to work, work to live
Any little tremble and the earth might give
Ya can't hide it in a Volvo or a London Fog
Can't hide it in a mansion with an imported dog
No matter how we plan and rehearse, we're at pink slip's mercy in a paper universe
And we're afraid that we're just a bum
Someday when all our stuff is gone and we're left without a dime
Time ain't money when all ya got is time
And we can see us standin on the corner with our nine-day beards and our bright red eyes
Goin, hey hey hey hey hey hey hey
Hey hey hey hey, come on and listen to my story man hey, hey hey hey hey, ah hey

The man of sorrow's acquainted with grief
Stands in line waiting for relief
He will tell ya it wasn't always this way
One bad little thing happened one bad little day
Heartbreak has bad teeth and a sour smell and lives when he can in a cheap hotel
And he's afraid that he's just a bum
Someday when all his stuff is gone and he's left without a dime
Time ain't money when all ya got is time
And you can see him standin on the corner with a nine-day beard and bright red eyes
Goin, hey hey hey hey hey hey hey
Hey hey hey hey, come on and listen to my story man hey, hey hey hey hey, ah hey



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Mexican Still Life

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Recuerdo..

(this poem has been flitting in and about the verges of my mind today.. images of Matt, Rich, Sedef and that 7' American dude from Harlem who was playing Turkish professional basketball for Izmir and lived in Bostanli.. We met him on the crossbay one night, he carrying his basketball.. )


We were very tired, we were very merry—
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable—
But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table,
We lay on a hill-top underneath the moon;
And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon.

We were very tired, we were very merry—
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry;
And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear,
From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere;
And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold,
And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold.

We were very tired, we were very merry,
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
We hailed "Good morrow, mother!" to a shawl-covered head,
And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read;
And she wept, "God bless you!" for the apples and pears,
And we gave her all our money but our subway fares..


- Edna Saint Vincent Millay



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The Templo Expiatorio del Santísimo Sacramento, Guadalajara

One last post for today (ach, it's well gone and yesterday now, I need to go to bed...) I have a backlog of things I want to post, I need to put some stuff up if I am ever going to write it all out..

And besides, I forgot to publish the very good news concerning my camera.

First, I am in Guadlajara. Which is itself great news.

Here's a map, zoom in and out as usual if you want. The marker is my hotel, the Expatorio, that I am posting pictures of here, is three blocks to the west, or left of my hotel:


View Larger Map

I've been here once before, back in 1997, when I flew down from Obregon (where I was then teaching) to spend the weekend with my father who was there to interview for the headmastership at the American school here. I remember it was grey, and grubby, but still more cosmopolitan and various than provincial Sonora.

I liked it then. I like it even more, now.

It's a great place. Vibrant, and more prosperous than I remember. These last ten years or so have been good for Mexico, it seems. The grubbiness I remember is mostly gone, and the old PRI stagnation (stale one party corruption that tainted everything, you could feel it, a certain monotonous lethargy, everywhere..) has mostly evaporated.


It must have been NAFTA that did it. Viva the ascendent neoliberal world order!


Right. Anyway, I came here hoping to replace my camera battery recharger that I'd lost in San Antonio. I was concerned, because I had been looking everywhere I'd hitherto been in Mexico, and even stores dedicated to photography do not carry the newest Nikon accessories (an EN-EL14 battery recharger, specifically) and I was a little concerned that my camera would be out of action until I got home, or that I would have to order it online from the States and wait at some hotel for it to arrive.. Not a happy prospect.

The first three or four places I went to were all void - Best Buy had a charger for older Nikon models. Could not order the newer ones. Other camera stores told me it would take 4 to 5 weeks to order. I'd given up hope after being told that three times. I noticed one more store (they group stores together here by speciality, like a Middle Eastern Bazaar or Medieval marketplace..)

I walked in, and asked just for the heck of it. And they had it. For 30 some dollars more than I'd pay at home, but I wasn't going to complain. I had my re-charger, and I was content.

Quel grand bonheur..

So, you shall all be also blest. I've been taking a lot more pictures. Which I will post forthwith.


I've rented a room for the coming week at a very groovy hotel. 30$ a night, which is less than Motel 6 at home. An American establishment in a major city like this would start at least 120$ - at the very freaking least.

It makes me very happy to be here. I am going to stay in this country. Maybe for a very, very long while.


And let me show you one of the proliferating reasons why. One only three blocks from my hotel. I did not even know it was there when I rented the room, I only discovered it when I began wandering around:

The Templo Expiatorio del Santísimo Sacramento.

It's one of the things that makes me happiest: a great gorgeous church that is always open, with frequent masses and an open confessional. There is perpetual - and I mean perpetual - adoration, and there are always a few dozen people at least in the nave praying.

This is why it is so great being Catholic. God found amongst us in the bustling midst of the polis, here attended by the people who clearly love him. It makes me cut from up deep inside with gladness, to be so privileged as to be one of them.


Here is the church, a very beautiful neo-gothic place built by the people of Guadalajara in the last century. The place is charged with warmth, the pillars' and arches' feminine lines pull your eyes and heart up and light and color flows from the great panes of stained glass, enveloping you. The melded scents of incense and candles and flowers charge the air, you can feel electricity of air pregnant with ions hit your skin as you walk through the great wooden doors..


And, of course, the symphonic wave of the presence of the Blessed Sacrament waiting silently for us, there.


Without any further comment, here are some of the pictures I've taken. There are a couple sets of near duplicates. I couldn't choose, I liked too many of them to decide:

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Conjunto Norteño: Somos Juntos Todos Nortes Americanos.. Somos Todos Juntos Humanos.

Tonight, before I go out, I want to bless you all with one of my very favorite songs ever. It's a song that I first heard fifteen years ago in Sonora. I was new to Mexico, and it was all so odd and fresh.. This music - Norteño - is Mexican country. Back then, Norteño - like country tends to - all sounded the same to me. It's takes some work to understand it, as a genre.

Except this song. This leapt out at me, and caught me right away.

I loved it immediately, and love it still.

It's meaning - like so many things in Spanish, which is nothing but a dialect of English, sabes - was understood from the moment I heard it.


Quiero saciarme en ti nada mas..


It doesn't get any more explicit and passionate than that. You don't need no damn dictionary to get that, ¿me equivoco?

No. I'm not. Enjoy:





The Lyrics:

tu me robaste el alma,
tu me robaste el amor,
tu esa vez que te fuiste tambien
me dejaste sin mi corazon...
hoy que de nuevo te encuentro
quiero sentir otra vez tus manos sobre mi cuerpo,
tu alineto y tus labios quemando mi piel...
porque no pude enamorarme mas tu te adueñaste de mi voluntad...
en todo ese tiempo he guardado desceos
y quiero saciarme en ti nadamas...
ven a mis brazos vuelveme a querer escucha
lo que tengo para ti,
mi cuerpo te espera te quiero
deveras si tu no regresas me voy a morir...

Hoy que de nuevo te encuentro quiero
sentir otravez tus manos sobre mi cuerpo,
tu aliento y tus labios quemando mi piel...
porque no pude enamorarme mas
tu te adueñaste de mi voluntadad
en todo ese tiempo he guardado desceos
y quiero saciarme en ti nada mas...
ven a misbrazos vuelveme aquerer escucha lo que tengo para ti,
mi cuerpo te espera te quiero deveras
si tu no regresas me voy a morir..
porque no pude enamorarme
mas tu te adueñaste de mi voluntadad
en todo ese tiempo he guardado desceos
y quiero saciarme en ti nada mas...



Rough Translation:

You stole my soul,
You stole my love,
Then, with that you left me too.
You left me without my heart..
Today I'm still feeling you anew,
I need to feel your hands over my body once more,
Your breathe, your lips still burning my skin..
For I couldn't love you more, you own my will..
All this time I've kept wanting you,
I want to consummate myself in you, nothing more..
Come into my arms, encompass me, I need you to hear
All I have for you.
My body awaits you, I truly want you.
If you don't come back I'm going to die.



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Travel Notes: A Few Afternoon Sagacities from Guadalajara..

I've been traveling now throughout the world for twenty years. Tack on my three years of high school weekend trips up to Quebec City that we made say a dozen of back in those days

(we'd drive four or five hours up, three or four of us in the car, inevitably get harassed and have the car searched by Canadian customs ( we were straight edged hippies with long hair: so we *deserved* it. Canada: by far the worst migra in the world for US Citizens in my experience, and I've been to Bulgaria when it was still communist - Anyway, we then would spend the weekend in Quebec City on thirty or forty dollars apiece, including gas money. Slept in car, snuck into le Chateau Frontenac, where we'd wander the halls and steal uneaten food of from abandoned room service carts outside of rooms - then we'd go out to Chez Dagobert - the discotheque by the walls of the old city and get the ritual Fuzzy Navel - I was a near teetotaler back then, and did not get drunk, but every time I went to Quebec in those days I'd get a fuzzy navel, which is orange juice mixed with a couple ounces of peach schnapps, something I would never think of drinking now, but that back then seemed to me to be exotic and hopelessly romantic - there's simple pleasure in youth and idiocy.. Inexperience makes for revelation in everything. It's really one of the few good reasons to be young.. So.. In Quebec we'd go to the mall and try to meet girls - we'd meet them, speak excrebable French - back in those days I could barely deploy a sentence - and make awkward - and I think mildly charming fools out of ourselves.. )

and I can say that I've been tramping about the planet now for over two decades.

I've learned in my time some things. I've got my travel down to a near science.. albeit a science that I nearly always violate on one principle, that of parsimony in almost all things, knowing that I'll regret it mildly, but never truly repenting:

I almost always bring too many books with me. More than two books is alway too many. You need (maybe) a guidebook, and one good novel that you can read while on the bus or whatever. No more. That's all you need, but I rarely have the discipline to keep myself to that. This trip I am carrying three bags- a 46 liter main bag (carry-on size, but cavernous and very well built Osprey Porter 46 - 5 stars, tough, humble, pure in it's simplicity. If you need luggage, and want functionality and do not care about making a fashion statement, get this bag), a camera/laptop carrier made of tough canvas (carries both 13" mac and my Nikon, a bit tight, but adequately), and a daypack for my books and computer peripherals. That's it. I carry a convenient cloth sack to throw my book of the moment in, and snacks and drinks for long bus rides and things like that.

I'm slightly overpacked, but I can still walk-on to a flight and not have to check anything if I really wanted to.

It's a minor pain in the ass to carry everything, but not much of one. I can, and have, walked with my stuff for miles on several occasions on this trip.


Here is a list of things that I've decided that I will always travel with, that many people might consider extraneous.. But that I have been using over and over again with great pleasure here in Mexico profundo:


1.) a small spray bottle of alcohol. Cleans everything, and keeps my hands clean after touching uncouth things.

2.) several packs (when you plan on being gone for months like I am) unscented baby wipes. These are utterly crucial. Used to keep clean on buses, in nasty bathrooms, anywhere.

3.) a 6' extension cord with a 3 plug end. This makes it possible to plug everything in at once (in Mexico the current and plugs are the same as at home) - I have a converter plug that I attach on it that makes a three pronged plug on my long mac cord (with the third round grounding prong) into a normal double pronged plug, as well. I can easily plug everything I need to in (battery rechargers, computer, clippers, whatever) simultaneously, even when (as is often the case in cheap Mexican hotel rooms) there is only one or two double pronged plugs in odd, inconvenient places in the room..

4.) a compass. This is useful everywhere, but especially in strange cities. I have decent sense of direction, but still can make mistakes. A compass orientates a map every time, with no confusion, which can save you time and many senseless walked blocks of frustration..

5.) a small stack of plastic cups. A small luxury in cheap hotel rooms without glassware, when you want to drink soda or tequila or wine or whatever. Very pleasant addition.

6.) A compact Swiss Army knife with only six things: a 2" blade, a bottle opener, a can opener, a corkscrew, an awl, and a short 1" blade. I also have a toothpick and slight tweezers in mine. This is the essential picnic tool. You can open anything, anywhere, and cut food to size. Essential. Just be careful to put it in your stown luggage if you fly, or they will confiscate it (Go Homeland Security!) .. It sucks having to pay a 20-30$ idiot tax every time you fly like I've done a few times.. I don't forget putting it in checked luggage, anymore. I carry a spoon and serrated steak knife with me, too. Eat anything, anywhere.

7.) your marine band harmonica, key of C. The best instrument in the world.

8.) your iPod with many books on tape on it, and the essential road mix.

9.) earplugs and eye cover for sleeping. I'm also carrying a 20$ compactly stuff able pillow (attached to the outside of my bag with a quality carabiner) and a sleeping bag liner, which acts as a convenient blanket on buses. Makes any uncomfortable situation much more pleasant.

10.) a half dozen good carabiners. Attach anything, anywhere, fast.

11.) packing cubes. I organize everything in a set of multi colored see through waterproof mesh bags when I pack. You find things much easier, and everything in you luggage is always in order by type.

12.) a good travel alarm clock that gives to the time in multiple timezones, illuminates, etc.

13.) I believe in fiber. I carry a small thing of metamucil, and take a teaspoon or two every day or so. Keeps the innards in order, no matter where or what you are eating.

14.) that's not it, but that's all I'm going to type this afternoon.

I have a sleeping bag stuffed in a compression sack (carabined to the outside of my large bag) as well as a 5 x 10' tarp with four stakes and lines, as well (and this was a big splurge in packing, one that I have yet to use, but know I will eventually) a small packed hammock. The sleeping bag has been key, and the tarp may be, if I need to sleep out. I debated bringing all of these, but am glad I have, especially the sleeping bag.

There. The hard distilled agave of many years experience. I'm going to look for some tacos, now.. Salud.



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From Catorce to Plateros: Wherein I Sketch My Grand Itinerary & Make a Few Final Notes on Catorce

Yesterday, I left Catorce after a week there.   I took a bus south to Cuidad San Luis Potosi and then north to Zacatecas, and from there to Fresnillo.  Early this afternoon I took a cab to the shrine of El Santo Nino de Atoches, which I will post separately on after this.

This a map showing the geographical relationships relevant to my wanderings in this part of central Mexico:

 (This is a Google maps link - I hope I've figured the technicalities of linking, if I have you should be able to zoom in and out to get the whole context of what I am about..  The bus route is a more circuitous route than that of the blue line here.  The bus goes further south to San Luis then north to Zecatecas, which is 63 km from Fresnillo.  But the blue line makes the relationship between the shrines of Catorce and Plateros clear:)


View Larger Map

I've decided to commit to visiting all the major shrines of Mexico, as I understand them.   Seeing as they are all basically grouped in this north central part of the country around Guadlajara and Mexico City, it's an easy itinerary to make sense.

These are the shrines:

Catorce (the statue of San Francisco), the statue of the Christ Child here in Plateros, the Shrine of San Juan de los Lagos just north of Guadalajara, the Shrines of the Mexican Martyrs and that of Our Lady of Zapopan in Guadalajara,, and (of course) the most visited Catholic shrine in the entire world, that of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City.

There may be one or two other sites that I'll add to that list along the way, if it makes any sense.. I may try to visit all nine of the World Heritage churches in Mexico, as well as the shrines of Puebla, the Shrine of Our Lady of Ocotlan and the Shrine of Saint Michael the Archangel there.  

After I complete my great Mexican pilgrimage, which (as is justo y neccesario) must finally end in Guadalupe, I will go down the Pacific coast and then cut inland to Oaxaca and then the Yucatan.  I may go even farther, but I will go at least that far.  

Now, as for my leaving Catorce yesterday morning:

The wake I told you about in the last post was still on when I left.  I wrote that post just before midnight the evening before.   There where dozens of people in the courtyard below my room singing and praying well past 1 a.m. when I finally fell asleep.  I had to use my handy earplugs to block the noise (the little foam plugs you use when operating loud machinery) which have come in handy over and over again on this trip.   I'll never travel without them, again.  When I left the next morning there were still people praying the rosary and dozens more filing through the side room off the courtyard where the body was displayed in a glass box, as is typical at Mexican wakes.  Many people were crying, even men, which I find interesting because it seems to run counter to what you'd expect given Mexican machismo. 

This was not my first experience of a Mexican funeral.  I'd been to another one back in 1997 when I was teaching English in Sonora.  A girl, in her mid- twenties, who was working as a secretary at the school fell off a galloping horse and was killed.  I'd had a passing acquaintance with the girl, who'd had quite a spunky personality.  That funeral, held in the small village cossetted by great irrigation canals and miles of agricultural fields, near Obregon where she'd lived, was an experience I've often thought of writing about.   It was like something out of Camus crossed with Octavio Paz..

This funeral in Catorce made me recall that one, as well as my recent experience at my friend Geoff's wake in Cleveland.  At that wake the only person who shed any tears that I saw was Geoff's mother.   Everyone else was at turns somber and convivial.  I was not at the "official" wake, and left before the internment, but spent a day and a half with the family, and saw no one pray.  I prayed for him when I saw his body the next day (a privilege that his family wanted me to have, and one I gratefully accepted), but silently.  His friends actually all commented on how the presence of a Lutheran pastor at the funeral home during the official visiting hours leading prayers and preaching a sermon was a false note, in that Geoff was not at all religious himself, and was in fact almost always skeptical and teasing or even mocking when it came to religion.  He had no qualms teasing and making fun of me about it.

The contrast with the wake in Catorce couldn't have been starker, in that sense.   There was no sense of celebration or  lightheartedness.   It was all sorrow for the loss, and intercessory prayer in the old school Catholic tradition.  No professional weepers like at a traditional Southern European funeral, but plenty of open sobbing, even a times hysteria, all the same.

This is the Ogarrio tunnel, that 2.3 km I walked through the night I arrived.  I took the bus out, this last  time.

Anyway, I'm still trying to figure out how to replace my Nikon's battery recharger.  Something that would be relatively simple in the Sates, here is going to require some logistical effort.  Since my battery is almost dead, I've been taking few pictures, and not spending a lot of time composing the ones I do take.   I'm still learning how to use an SLR, and don't have the luxury of trying many things each subject I shoot, like I usually do. 

So, my pictures will be crap - or more crap than usual - until I get a new charger.. Which I hope to find in Guadalajara this coming week..

I took some mediocre shots of the Shrine in Plateros this afternoon that I'll post this evening..

I'm composing my blog posts with the same care as I have been my pictures, see.  Crap, crap, all around.  If you've read this entire post it is true proof you love me.  There could be no other reason sufficient to wade through such a waft of indifferent prose..

You deserve a prize, an assurance of my undying regard and affection..



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A Funeral in Catorce

Today is Sunday.  I awoke this morning to the sound of singing.  Hymns.  Some of which I recognized by melody - very very old time religion, they were singing classic Catholic hymns composed by the likes of Saints Bernard of Clairvaux and Thomas Aquinas amongst others.  I laid in bed listening to them sing, glad for it.

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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Real de Catorce: Magic in the Midst of Mexico

Last week - four days ago now - I hopped a bus from Ciudad San Luis Potosi to this place, Real de Catorce:

It's an old silver mining boom town founded in 1779 that used to be one of the larger and more prosperous towns in central Mexico, reaching a high population of 40,000 in the 19th Century.   The name supposedly comes from the fact that 14 Spanish troops ("Royals" hence "Real") met their end here fighting the local Indians.  I also read that the name came from 14 poplar trees that once grew here..  Whatever, it's an evocative name.   

In the early 20th Century, before the commencement of the Mexican Revolution and World War I, the price of silver cratered, and the population of the town fell precipitously, and the population fell to 250 and then became a ghost town.

Since the 1970's the place has been experiencing a revival.  It's no longer a ghost town, but rather a bustling little village  with a few dozen cratered out old buildings still at the edges of the place. 


I decided to come here because the church is one of the great shrines of Mexico.  It's dedicated to the "Purisma Concepcion" or as we usually say in English the the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary.  That is to say that it is dedicated to the grace that preserved Mary from all sin (as an incorrupt vessel, the Ark of the Universal Covenant) from the moment of her conception.   There's also a very famous (amongst Mexicans) early 18th Century statue of Saint Francis of Assisi here that attracts pilgrims.  The month surrounding the Feast of Saint Francis on October 4th is a huge carnival here, where some 150,000 people come from all over Mexico to camp out and venerate the icon and celebrate.  They eat and party, and have processions every day where they carry the statue about and fire of cannons, sing songs, play mariachi music and other groovy fun things like that.  


I've stolen this image (because I've been sparing my camera battery, I didn't take any pictures of the fiesta myself) and some of the information here from this site, the official website of the village.

I showed up the very end of this carnival on October 12th.  The place was still crammed with those sort of trailers and mobile homes that we'd associate with a State Fair carnies in the States, or gypsies in Europe.  A bunch of old 1970's and 80's vehicles in every corner and along every street of the place that looked like they've been wrapped together with twine and tinfoil.   But things were definitely winding down, which was fine by me.   I got to see the end of the festivities, but now have a much more tranquil and attractive (the street vendors really junked the place up and cluttered things) village to enjoy.

The bus climbs up in the mountains following 24 km of cobblestone road - that's right, 24 km of cobblestone, that's a lot of cobbled stone folks - shuttering and shimmying the entire way.  The bus feels like it's going to shake itself apart.  Most of the bus windows have hairline cracks in them, the windshield is shot all through with them.  They probably don't bother to replace it because if they did the new one wouldn't be free of cracks for long. 


When I got here, the bus dropped me off in a parking lot with only a few houses about.  I was confused, and tried to ask the driver in my broken Spanish "like where the heck's the pueblo?"   I was really confused.  At first I thought I'd missed my stop, and been taken to some little village in the middle of nowhere.  I asked the bus driver where Real de Catorce was and he waved his hand and spewed a bunch of unintelligible Spanish and laughed at me.  He said he was driving back to Matahuela (the place you switch buses for anywhere of significance from here) at 8 am the next morning.


It's one of the great privileges of being in Mexico, playing el Gringo Estupido.  It makes everyone laugh, including me.  


There was a little American busybody voice in my head that was goading me to lose my temper at him.  I told that asshole to shut up, and just laughed too.  In the middle of nowhere, and no hotel or restaurant or stores were immediately evident.  I felt a little insecure, too, because the stupid gringo voice in my head was spouting paranoia.. 

Great.  This is where I congratulated myself for my having packed my sleeping bag, sleeping bag liner, 5' x 10' green tarp and Army issue camo gortex bivy sack.   I'd been on the fence on all that stuff, but as soon as I got here I was glad for the sleeping bag and liner, because they are great adjuncts to hotel bedding.  They keep me all nice and toasty warm..

Now, though, that bivy and tarp were going to truly save my sorry silly chilly ass.  I'd been accusing myself of over-packing.  Not so, not so.  The bivy sack is never a bad idea, not when you're tramping like I am..  You never know when you'll need or want to sleep rough.


I walked 100 meters out along the road away from the houses and the noise of the people.  It had been dug out of the mountainside, rock wall uphill, and the hillside dropped away precipitously downhill.  I found a little place where there was a little flat ground not far (maybe 10') from the road hidden on the hillside in the shrubbery and darkness, put down my bags and made myself snug.  


I pulled my Lonely Planet Mexico Guide.  This is the first time I've gone traveling with a travel guide in about 15 years, because I've always preferred to go off the beaten path, and flee the Baedeker bearing masses.  Just snobbery, really.  I've decided that I'd stop acting such a twit, and bought a guide my last night in San Antonio.

I found the three pages about Real de Catorce (which I had not yet read) and bending over it with my reading glasses and flashes I read..


That the bus drops you off in a parking lot on the east side of a 2.3 km long tunnel that had been dug through the mountain in 1903.  There you need to take a mini-bus to the town on the western side of the tunnel.  The town is on the other side of that tunnel, which I had not seen on the other side of the houses.


There.  25 $ (U.S.) spent on the Lonely Planet Guide there and then justified in spades.  


I'd missed the mini-bus.   Har.  Har.  Good times.   I ended up having to hoof it with my bags through the tunnel.



Real de Catorce, and the 2,300 meters of tunnel to it, are 2,750 meters (9,000 feet, 1.7 miles) above sea level in the Sierra Madres.   

Long time readers of my blog will remember that  when I was in Switzerland I discovered that even relatively low high altitudes (like that experienced ski randonee'ing up San Gotthard's and Bernard's Passes which are only 2,000 and 2,500 meters above sea level) make me sick..  


I kicked that tunnel out anyway folks.  I impressed myself.   The tunnel is flat, and well lit.  Twenty minutes and one brief break later,  I was in the village. 


I again used my guidebook to find a cheap - 150 peso, which is roughly 12 US$ - room.  Clean. With wireless internet.   No hot water, but for 12 bucks, I'm not complaining.  It's more comfortable than sleeping on the mountainside.


Besides, it has a terrace.  This is the view:

 

This is the extremely impressive and (for the village as it is today, less thousands of pilgrims) large and very baroque parish church:

I also took a tighter more detailed shot of the sanctuary.

This is during Thursday afternoon adoration.  The famous statue of Saint Francis is in the glass case on the left of the sanctuary.  There's a cool statue of the Immaculate (Most Pure (Purisima) Conception - which is to say the Blessed Virgin) directly above the tabernacle behind the altar.  The monstrance containing the Blessed Sacrament is on the altar, but it's a small one, and in this shot it's hard to see.  I didn't want to take too many pictures while we were all at prayer, because it's rude, so this is all I've got:

This is the view from my hotel balcony looking away from  the church and tunnel toward the West (note sunset behind the hills) from the balcony of my hotel:

You see that the town is nestled in a cusp at the top of these mountains.  The mine shafts are all about in the hills here, and there are a large cock fighting and bullfighting rings.

The upshot is that I've been hanging about here, eating at the couple good restaurants in town, and relishing the place quite a bit.  Now that all the Mexican campesino pilgrims and their trucks, stalls and campers have gone, the locals, some European residents (there are Swiss and French who have bought property here, and own some of the businesses in town) a few dozen Mexican hippies and at least one couple of Italian hippies with a dog, and a few older - and obviously prosperous and retired - American tourists are left.

The hippies are here for the peyote, which this place is famous for.   The evening I arrived I was propositioned by a local just as I got through the tunnel and had thrown down my bags to rest and celebrate, asking me if I wanted to buy some.  Right, Ese.  The last thing I need is to take a peyote trip here, in the middle of the desert, alone.  I thanked him, and told him I'll stick to the cerveza. 

Which like the food, is pretty good here in the middle of Mexico.  God Bless Mexico and her people.  it's good to be here among them..


San Francisco y la Purisima Concepcion, Rosa Mystica, Ruegue por Nosotros.



And so with that, I think I've typed on too long.  Time to stop.


Goodnight everyone:  Buenas Noches, todos.



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And We Have All These Questions to Make Us Go Roam..

And we’ve got all this distance to make us come home.
As the sun burns, a child learns, the tide churns, the world turns.


When I was in Chicago the week before last I was taught a new singer and a great new song by my two and half year old niece, Shunie: Antje Duvekot, Merry-Go-Round.

When we would be riding about the city in the Honda mini-van Shatay and Matt would always have groovy folk inflected kids music playing. No Wiggles like crap amongst us, thank God. That stuff is simply obnoxious. I firmly believe that music should be shared across generations. All this "generation gap" crap is mostly nonsense now anyhow, especially now that the great technological revolutions (in film, video and recorded sound) are essentially complete. We all own Elvis these days, and the interim is all in color. The past 40 years is more intimate to us now than the 50's where to me when I was ten (that's in 1981, 20 something years before). When you've lived through everything from Black Sabbath, the Clash to Nirvana, the power of music to shock and divide is pretty much null, anyway.

That's just to say that I have the same stance toward the Wiggles as I do Lady Gaga: they both suck because their aural and visual (and hence spiritual) aesthetics are ugly.

Anyhow, I was really pleased to hear the music that Matt and Shatay have been playing for the girls. A lot of old folk songs and children's classics, but done in a groovy modern folk style that really impressed me.


Shunie's a precocious 2 year old in that she's talking in full, complex sentences. One of the most loquacious two-year olds of my limited acquaintance. She also really likes music. She's like a little general, too, in that she's not afraid to tell you when she likes, dislikes, or wants something. When a song she likes ends, you'll immediately hear her pipe up from the back seat "Again!" And Shatay, Matt or I (if I was the only one there) would be expected to hit the repeat button, and play that particular song again.


This song is one of her particular favorites. I'd never heard it before, and when I heard it immediately fell in love with it. It has apparently been used as the soundtrack to a Bank of America commercial. The singer and composer, Antje Duvekot, needs cash on the barrel head just like the rest of us, and isn't above selling her poetry to scummy usurers, or performing on cruise ships to the delectation of the besotted petit bourgeois, as the video clip I'm posting here proves.

It's a great song, in any case, even if one or two of the lines are false. The truth is never worthless. No one should ever lie. Notice how she loses her breath at that very line in the performance here? Just so. That line's crap.

Those few quibbles aside, I have say that this song is great, and that like my very discerning niece Shunie, I can't get enough of it. I keep hitting play, over and over again.

Hope you like it, too:

Lyrics:

Someone is tossing petals in a stream,
Somewhere someone is standing at the foothills of their dreams.
Someone got a paintbrush, is painting over doubts,
Someone opened up his eyes and saw the sun coming out.
Someone was captive and found the courage to get off,
Throw a boulder in the well, somewhere the rain has stopped.
Someone is finding the place where they belong..

Well, everyday is summer somewhere in the world,
And the summer boys are headed for the falls to kiss the girls.
With their impatient hands groping honey breasts and curls,
They are filled with desire.
And high in the hills there's a baby being born,
As forgiveness and peace wash over bruises and sores,
People bridging the distance over nettles and thorns.

Everyone aboard on the merry-go-round,
Some things will rise up so that others come down.
If the devil don't dance, heaven won't shine.
It's a mighty thick haze and it's a pretty thin line.
If the facuet is tightened up the love won't flow,
If the love isn't bright enough the corn won't grow.
If the night isn't dark enough the moon won't glow..

A rich man counting money, a tired man counting sheep,
While the safe man counts his blessings, the hungry man has beans.
There's a million people praying, raising up their eyes,
To what turns out to be the same god, the same sky.
We are slightly scared of death, a little bit afraid,
So we celebrate everything we can think to celebrate.
We shall sing out loud to keep the hounds away..

Everyone aboard on the merry-go-round,
Some things will rise up so that others come down.
If the devil don't dance, heaven won't shine.
It's a mighty thick haze and it's a pretty thin line.
If the facuet is tightened up the love won't flow,
If the love isn't bright enough the corn won't grow.
If the night isn't dark enough the moon won't glow..

Prisons will crumble and governments will fall,
It's the order of freedom to be preceded by walls.
'Cause the truth would be worthless if no one ever lied,
So we carry our shame in the interest of pride.
And we have all these questions to make us go roam,
And we’ve got all this distance to make us come home.
As the sun burns, a child learns, the tide churns, the world turns..

Everyone aboard on the merry-go-round,
Some things will rise up so that others come down.
If the devil don't dance, heaven won't shine.
It's a mighty thick haze and it's a pretty thin line.
If the facuet is tightened up the love won't flow,
If the love isn't bright enough the corn won't grow.
If the night isn't dark enough the moon won't glow..


[As a note and aside,  Antje kinda looks like Shatay.  Similar personal vibe, too, like in this clip especially: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eji97jgOgFw  ]



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