It is appropriate that I'm starting this post with Marifer's explanation of time -- a human invention -- because on Sunday most of Mexico "gained" an hour during the switch to the winter schedule. This means that, while last week it got dark shortly before eight, now it gets dark shortly before seven, and my poor body is so confused that I conked out at 8:30 last night. That doesn't make too much sense, because my usual bedtime is not 9:30 (I do suffer from Old Grannie Syndrome, but my case isn't that severe) -- but I can at least say that I find it amazing that everyone in this country, and most people in other countries, have such trust in clocks that they will alter their biological rhythms to fit them (dinner in the dark?). Also, I fully understand the riots that the switch from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar caused in Britain and its colonies in the mid-18th century -- 11 days "lost"! If I were told that tomorrow was going to be the 28th of November instead of the 28th of October, I probably wouldn't feel a month older, but I would feel that the year was a month shorter. How strange that we listen more to calendars and clocks than to the universe! We try to make uniform and constant something that varies in nature depending on location and season (I'm not saying that time itself varies -- maybe it does! -- but that natural cycles do).
Now back to my interview victims at El Bosque Village: I left off with Marifer, who said that time doesn't exist, but rather was invented by humans. What do exist are events and processes, like the different stages of life, which are different for every person. All cycles of life are relative to each other -- there is no single basis for comparison. So, we measure not time, but changes and differences, without which time makes no sense. She said that we can experience "timeless" states, such as dreams, in which you can be thrown out of your life cycle, which reinforces the idea that time is mere perception and not a tangible reality.
Marifer also told me about something that I found fascinating, prefacing it with the disclaimer that I would think she was crazy. (I don't think she's crazy at all.) When she was young, she discovered that, whenever she imagined something, it didn't happen. If, for example, she imagined going on a walk with her father after swimming at the beach, she'd come home from the beach to find that her father had left the house and wouldn't be back until after dark. She said that she can "manipulate the future by creating it in her imagination," but in a negative way, and for this reason she tries not to imagine good things in the future and live only in the moment. Oof! Not only is that the most interesting reason I've heard for living in the moment, but what a way to live, no? To be scared of imagining good things because you know that, as soon as they pop into your head, they won't happen? I think that I'd go crazy. Marifer is a toughie!
Margret, with whom I went to the bread class, told us that she thought that time was an experience, and one very much linked to our bodies. When her body is moving quickly, time seems to pass quickly, and when her body is moving slowly, time seems to pass slowly (so, if she is sitting and thinking, time drags). For this reason, people are able to manipulate time by controlling their bodies. We can choose to live slowly or quickly, for time to linger or rush. Like Brian, Margret said that age affects our perception of time; she babysat back home, and she found it amusing that the children were always rushing, trying not to lose time by filling every moment with activity. Margret, older than the children, was capable of sitting and doing nothing -- she knew better than they how much time they "had". Margret also drew a distinction between different scales of time. Humans can understand time as a lifespan -- we have a sense of what that means -- and also as a day-to-day experience. Some people around the table thought that animals were capable of the latter but not the former, and we wondered what it would be like to live for several centuries rather than just one. Desirable or tragic? (Basically: Would we want to be bitten by a vampire?)
Finally (actually, this was the first thing that she mentioned), Margret brought up the coil or spiral theory of time. This is the idea that our lives are spiral-ish in nature, that we go through cycles but each time at a higher level of understanding -- a combination of repetition and progression. Those are the two things that I have the most trouble reconciling in my head, and I liked hearing about them in the context of our lives (much easier than in the context of, e.g., the universe). Before moving onto Forest, Margret's boyfriend, here is a snippet of the conversation with Margret that I appreciated enough to write down verbatim:
Margret: "Words are so . . ."
Irene: "Limiting."
Margret: "Well, you just have to pick the right ones sometimes."
Yes! Exactly the issue!
Forest was quieter than the other three, but, to my pleasure, based many of his ideas on observations of outer space. He said that he did believe in a universal time, because we could witness the birth and death of stars (whose lifespans are more or less predictable), but that our time, on our planet, was cyclical. The Earth spins around its axis and orbits around the Sun, giving us the days and the seasons. When I asked if there was a universal point of reference for time -- something against which to measure our cycles -- he said no, but then mentioned lightyears. (It's funny: the phrase "speed of light" sounds so spacey and sciencey to me that I fail to connect it to the light that my computer screen is emitting, or the light coming in from the open kitchen door. But it's the same deal!)
The observation that I found most interesting didn't actually have to do with outer space. When I asked Forest how his perception of time had changed since coming to El Bosque Village, he said that time was the same, but how he used it was different. He's slowed down, in large part because he is confined to a smaller space. When he lived in the city, he had to get places, and those places were far away; he spent two hours a day biking to and from work. In El Bosque Village, everything is within walking distance. It sounds obvious, but I hadn't made this connection with my own experience here. I spend most of my time in or between Ocampo and Angangueo, which are only fifteen minutes apart by bus; my functional world is much smaller here than it is in Washington, D.C. And the people who live in Ocampo spend most of their time there. They never have to rush to work, and (ha ha) nobody worries about arriving late, because they know that the person they have to meet is somewhere in town (maybe even looking for them already). The pace of life here is anything but frenetic -- because life is confined to a small volume! (Well, now it sounds even more obvious. I often wonder if I am really stupid. Oh, I am, I am! What a bummer.)
Also, I finally spoke with somebody about butterflies (after all, the point of my stay here)! On a walk to the outskirts of Angangueo, high up in the mountains, I met a man named Salomon and his father, Vicente. They have lived in Angangueo all of their lives, and, after Salomon showed me a book about the monarch butterflies, Vicente shared some of his memories of the butterflies when he was little. They were nothing special then -- the migration pattern hadn't been discovered, and no tourists came -- so he and his friends thought nothing of killing them for sport. Over the course of the winter, many would die on their own and cover the forest floor with a carpet of orange and black; farmers would bring their cows to the forests to eat them. Since those days, and even after the two sanctuaries were created and tourists started coming, the forest has been diminishing in size (due to legal, and a lot of illegal, logging), and the resting place of the butterflies has been shifting. Before, they could be seen in many parts, but now they go almost only to the sanctuaries, and there are fewer of them. Salomon expressed anger at the government for not doing anything about this -- it's bad for the people, too, because the tourist industry suffers -- and predicted that things would only get worse this year, with H1N1 influenza hysteria and the economic crisis. I am curious to see how many tourists do end up coming -- and from what countries. I bet a chocolate bar that there won't be many Americans.
I'll wrap up this post now. I think that I've more than made up for not writing in my blog for three weeks, no? Now I wish that I could show you the pictures that people have drawn in my little blue book! Someday I will scan them all and put them in my photo blog, which has sunk into an even deeper coma than this one. Someday, someday . . .
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Monday, October 26, 2009
A great deal to report (Ocampo and Angangueo, Mexico)
WELL. It's been a while. In fact, it's been so long that this blog post is intimidating -- I want to write about so many things that my fingers are cringing in apprehension. Don't worry, fingers! The suffering will end by 11:30, when I'll leave for Ocampo for my now daily English class with Karina -- we are learning the present progressive (just like that!) and I have to walk and hop and run and stand around town, asking her, "What am I doing, Karina?" ("You are walking, hopping, running, standing," I hope she will say.) These exercises are good for me, because -- oh pain and suffering! -- it is getting colder and colder every day, and if I'm not walking and hopping and running around town, I'm blowing on my hands to warm them up. Who knew that I was such a weather wimp? California spoiled me.
The classes are also good for me because Karina and I usually go to visit Anaisa, her niece, afterwards, and we do things like go on walks to Las Cruces (Ocampo's lookout point) (also its makeout point for those romantic young couples with nowhere else to go) or relax in Anaisa's house. We've also gone on a longer afternoon trip to San Jose del Rincon, a town in the state of Mexico, where we visited Anaisa's aunt and uncle and cousins. The highlight of that day was an unexpected rainstorm that caught us on the drive back to Ocampo -- we were riding in the back of Anaisa's parents' pickup truck and were soaked to the bones by the time we got home. We giggled hysterically between shivers.
A while later, Adriana and I were standing at the kitchen door, watching the backyard river flood. Oof! We renamed it the Rio Bravo -- before it was the Rio Miranda -- and lamented the fact that our backyard would be full of garbage again by the time the flood ended. It is amazing how much trash accumulates by the riverside, and sad to think that, after we pick it up, it is just going to end up accumulating somewhere else. What will future archaeologists say when they find our giant piles of plastic bottles and bags? ("Pigs!") Plastic bags are the worst. I have done some planting in the backyard, and, everywhere I dig, a few inches down, I find a layer of plastic bags that I have to pull out with my herculean strength (they are ornery! and I'm sure that I can hear them laughing when I slip and fall on my butt). Now when I look at a pretty green field, I think, "Plastic bags!" They are probably there, beneath the grass, snickering, not decomposing as well-behaved things do. Readers: avoid them! Or reuse them a thousand times before throwing them away. Also avoid products with lots of packaging, and give away your old things instead of throwing them away, and . . . well, you know, the three R's. LOVE THEM.
On to other things: Adriana and I have continued to live in harmony together with Nina the Lopsided Kitten (who is now so bold that she stalks and chases the sheep that graze in the neighbors' backyard and also their large dog, to whom she is snack-sized). We sit and talk and watch movies -- I am now acquainted with world-famous Mexican actor Cantinflas, who is hilarious -- and look at the stars when the sky is clear and cook (she does) and eat (both of us do) (I do the dishes, though, so as not to mooch shamelessly) and drive to Angangueo or Ocampo to do social rounds or eat tacos. When we're feeling more ambitious, we go to Zitacuaro, where we shop at the market or at a giant grocery store, and I have started to frequent the Thursday tianguis (weekly market). Adriana's friends drop by occasionally for an evening visit, meal, or smoke, and also to help us with things around the house. We call it "the perfect house (with defects)," but there are so few defects now that it may soon be upgraded to "the perfect house (defectless)." We have a constant water supply, electricity where we want it, a fridge (!), a mirror in the bathroom, doors that mostly close, plenty of kitchen utensils . . . all that's missing is a jacuzzi, and someday we plan to fill up the concrete water tank in the backyard to serve that purpose. Then even rich celebrities will be jealous of us!
In addition to cohabitating our perfect house harmoniously, Adriana and I have discovered that we are excellent travel mates. A few weeks ago we drove with a friend, Brian, to a "balneario" near a town called San Jose Purua, where we spent the day swimming in the green, murky waters of what used to be a luxury swimming pool in an abandoned private club. Well, almost abandoned -- it is now run by a staff of about three, one of whom charges a minimal entry fee at the gate and two of whom sell potato chips and instant noodles at the bar. Adriana and I spent some time exploring the decaying buildings, some of which already had plant-covered floors, and walking along a road in the surrounding forest. We gaped at the Mother of All Trees (enormous, old, beautiful), oohed and aahed at interesting flowers, and speedwalked back to the main facility when we heard suspicious whistles and hushed men's voices coming from the nearby vegetation. Later, Brian and I went along another path that overlooked a great green canyon and had been taken over by a stream, so that our feet were always wet. We realized at some point that the wall above us was full of eroded stalactites and rock curtains -- we were walking in what used to be a cave! We thought about how many other caves we had walked over unknowingly and bounced in excitement.
This past weekend, Adriana and I went to Los Azufres, a forest with natural hot springs. I laughed at Adriana for bringing what I thought were the entire contents of our perfect house (including the stereo) on a camping trip, but insisted that she share her blanket that night when my extremities were numb and I couldn't sleep from the cold -- then she laughed at me. We walked, read, lounged in the warm pools, built a fire with Gabriel and Ricardo, two friends who visited, admired the stars, and came home smelling like rotten eggs. The smell lingers; even after scrubbing away at my clothes like a madwoman, using detergents and softeners that smell like "roses and jasmine," "fresh spring," and "fiesta" (?), I catch a faint whiff of sulfur every time I walk past the clotheslines where they are drying. I consider it a souvenir -- essence of Los Azufres.
Adriana also invited me to attend her school's anniversary celebration last Wednesday. We arrived late to the footrace from Ocampo to the school (about three kilometers, I think), so Adriana had to cheer on her students from the car instead of from her assigned spot by the side of the road, but she made up for her tardiness when we got to the school. Her job was to organize the students welcoming the visitors -- mostly members of the municipal government and students from primary schools -- and they were very welcoming indeed. Even I got to wear a little badge, and I was introduced around by Adriana's friend Luis as "a fellow English teacher." The morning ceremony was predictably boring; I don't understand why people think that speeches have to be humorless and dry, especially ones directed at junior high school students. There should be jokes! There should be music and dancing! There were, in fact, music and dancing, but they came after the speeches. The school's drama club, dressed to the nines in long colorful skirts and suits, the boys with black mustaches painted on their upper lips, danced a little routine, which I applauded wildly. I also watched Mexico's important historical figures (well, small and adorable impersonators of them) march by; I was the most enthusiastic spectator for this part of the show, too.
My absolute favorite event, though, was the hot air balloon competition. Several groups of students constructed big balloons out of crepe paper, and, after filling them up with gas, lit the wick at the bottom opening and let them fly! Most burned instead of flying, which was tragic, because they were so beautiful -- a red heart, a multicolored star with tassels on the points, a multicolored cube, among other works of art. And sometimes the flaming pieces of balloon fell in the midst of the students, and I'd think, "Well, that's it. Somebody's hair will light on fire and things will turn gruesome." But nobody's hair lit on fire, nobody died, and, if someday I work at a school, I will try to convince the higher-ups to let our students play with gas and fire and highly flammable materials.
And, finally, I have to write about something that I did alone, but which was certainly a highlight of these past three weeks: I spent four nights and three days at El Bosque Village, a planet-loving community in a forest near Patzcuaro (if you Google-image "Patzcuaro", you will see that the people living at El Bosque Village are lucky ducks). It is run by Brian and Marie, who are from Washington and Wisconsin, respectively, and several volunteers from all over the place who live there for periods lasting from several weeks to several months. I spent the first morning helping to build a chicken coop out of cob (a thick mixture of dirt, sawdust, pine needles and water) with Judith from Germany and Margret from Oregon, and that afternoon played legos with Gonzalito (the son of Soco, a woman from the nearby town of Zarzamora, who comes every Saturday to help cook) and Brenda from Mexico. In the evening I sat in a sauna with Brenda, Trevor from England, and Marie. The next day I walked in the forest and read, played volleyball, failed miserably at archery, and learned basic trapeze tricks with Judith, who has done trapeze for ten years! And on the last day of my visit, I spent most of the afternoon in Zarzamora, learning how to make and bake bread in a wood-fired stove with Soco's mother, Alicia. My fellow pupil, Margret, and I were exhausted by the time we got back to El Bosque Village -- making bread is not for the weak of spirit! We kneaded like it was our number one purpose in life, and, when our empanadas turned out deformed and bleeding apple butter, we did not despair but rather rejoiced, because we could eat them (the good ones were sold). Poor Alicia. She is patience and tolerance embodied.
All of that sounds decadent in a hippie-dippie way -- and it was -- but it was also an invaluable learning experience. In addition to working on an eco-friendly building with my own hands, I read about eco-friendly architecture in El Bosque Village's relatively extensive library (it rivals Angangueo's public library), and was inspired by all of the neato things people have come up with. As a result, I have revised my Future Fantasy: I'm not only going to live in New Mexico, the state of states, geographic apple of my eye, but I'm also going to build a house there out of bags of dirt. Yes, dirt! Bags of it! You can come visit. (If you are intrigued, look up "earthbag building" and be amazed.)
I also learned from the people there, and this was the best part of all. Brian, Marie, Margret, Forest, Marifer, Brenda, Judith, and Trevor were all interesting and open and friendly, and we talked about a variety of things that made me happy. We also talked about . . . time! And finally, after all those paragraphs about happenings, I come to my project.
After writing about my Watson project anxiety in the last post, I was possessed by Watson project fire and started "interviewing" people with a vengeance. I informed Anaisa and Karina that every time I saw them, they had to draw a different picture in my little blue book (they took this well), and talked with several Ocampo friends and acquaintances at length about my project. The most interesting conversations were the ones I had with Gabriel and Jacob, who had vastly different opinions about humans' interaction with time. Gabriel mentioned linear time (we age), cyclical time (we eat at around the same times every day), and then said that, now that technology allows us to "control" time, we are the ones losing control. We are lost without our cell phones and watches, and we think little of hopping on a plane and emerging in a different world a few hours later -- travel is losing its meaning. We are getting used to being able to be wherever we want to be whenever, and think that we are "wasting time" when we're not there (e.g. when we're in the car). That time wasn't "wasted" before.
Jacob had a very set view: the world is governed by cycles, but humans are exempt from these cycles. We are different from animals and other living things because we can control our activities, and even our lifespans, while they are the slaves of instinct. I asked if this was true of evolution -- if humans weren't a part of that, either -- and he said that he believed in evolution, but that humans weren't a part of it. Humans were made in God's image, and we were not subject to the same rules that govern other things in the universe. This was fascinating to me: a mixture of science and religion, with humans set apart from the rest of the universe. I discovered how close-minded I am when I kept having to bite my tongue to keep from arguing with him -- I am so convinced that some things are true (like the Big Bang, even though it is such a wacky theory, and evolution, and our un-special status) that I completely discount other possibilities (humans created by God, not part of evolution). I don't think that I should believe everything -- I'd explode -- but I should at least be able to listen to everything.
At El Bosque Village, I spent the last evening interrogating Brian, Margret, Forest and Marifer, with whom I practiced my goal of listening to everything. It was the first time I talked with a group of people, as opposed to an individual or two people, and it was great! Brian said that time was like the third dimension to beings in Flatland -- we can't point to it. My questions (like, "How would you explain time to an alien?") invite BS, because they encourage people to wax philosophical and say things that don't make sense, but, in a real, down-to-earth sense, time is simple: we are born, we get older, we go through a number of biological phases, and we die. As we age, we discover the ratio theory of time -- the older one is, the shorter a day (or a month or a year) seems because it is a smaller part of the whole. When he did wax philosophical, Brian said that he did believe in a universal time, and that he thought of it as a bunch of vectors -- the present is the intersection of the past now and the now-now and the soon-to-be-now. The past doesn't exist the way the present moment does, but rather as a remnant; the remnants of the past are the now. And the future doesn't exist, either, until it becomes the now. Brian was convinced that all humans had to believe in the past and the future. How could people make plans, or think about their lives, without placing them in that framework?
Marifer, in contrast, said that time doesn't exist, but rather was invented by humans. And -- shoot! -- my watch tells me that it is 11:39 in the morning and I should be heading out the door to my English class with Karina. In fact, I'm probably going to be late. What an anxiety-causing invention! I will finish writing this entry in the afternoon and post it the next time I am online. It is long enough already, no?
The classes are also good for me because Karina and I usually go to visit Anaisa, her niece, afterwards, and we do things like go on walks to Las Cruces (Ocampo's lookout point) (also its makeout point for those romantic young couples with nowhere else to go) or relax in Anaisa's house. We've also gone on a longer afternoon trip to San Jose del Rincon, a town in the state of Mexico, where we visited Anaisa's aunt and uncle and cousins. The highlight of that day was an unexpected rainstorm that caught us on the drive back to Ocampo -- we were riding in the back of Anaisa's parents' pickup truck and were soaked to the bones by the time we got home. We giggled hysterically between shivers.
A while later, Adriana and I were standing at the kitchen door, watching the backyard river flood. Oof! We renamed it the Rio Bravo -- before it was the Rio Miranda -- and lamented the fact that our backyard would be full of garbage again by the time the flood ended. It is amazing how much trash accumulates by the riverside, and sad to think that, after we pick it up, it is just going to end up accumulating somewhere else. What will future archaeologists say when they find our giant piles of plastic bottles and bags? ("Pigs!") Plastic bags are the worst. I have done some planting in the backyard, and, everywhere I dig, a few inches down, I find a layer of plastic bags that I have to pull out with my herculean strength (they are ornery! and I'm sure that I can hear them laughing when I slip and fall on my butt). Now when I look at a pretty green field, I think, "Plastic bags!" They are probably there, beneath the grass, snickering, not decomposing as well-behaved things do. Readers: avoid them! Or reuse them a thousand times before throwing them away. Also avoid products with lots of packaging, and give away your old things instead of throwing them away, and . . . well, you know, the three R's. LOVE THEM.
On to other things: Adriana and I have continued to live in harmony together with Nina the Lopsided Kitten (who is now so bold that she stalks and chases the sheep that graze in the neighbors' backyard and also their large dog, to whom she is snack-sized). We sit and talk and watch movies -- I am now acquainted with world-famous Mexican actor Cantinflas, who is hilarious -- and look at the stars when the sky is clear and cook (she does) and eat (both of us do) (I do the dishes, though, so as not to mooch shamelessly) and drive to Angangueo or Ocampo to do social rounds or eat tacos. When we're feeling more ambitious, we go to Zitacuaro, where we shop at the market or at a giant grocery store, and I have started to frequent the Thursday tianguis (weekly market). Adriana's friends drop by occasionally for an evening visit, meal, or smoke, and also to help us with things around the house. We call it "the perfect house (with defects)," but there are so few defects now that it may soon be upgraded to "the perfect house (defectless)." We have a constant water supply, electricity where we want it, a fridge (!), a mirror in the bathroom, doors that mostly close, plenty of kitchen utensils . . . all that's missing is a jacuzzi, and someday we plan to fill up the concrete water tank in the backyard to serve that purpose. Then even rich celebrities will be jealous of us!
In addition to cohabitating our perfect house harmoniously, Adriana and I have discovered that we are excellent travel mates. A few weeks ago we drove with a friend, Brian, to a "balneario" near a town called San Jose Purua, where we spent the day swimming in the green, murky waters of what used to be a luxury swimming pool in an abandoned private club. Well, almost abandoned -- it is now run by a staff of about three, one of whom charges a minimal entry fee at the gate and two of whom sell potato chips and instant noodles at the bar. Adriana and I spent some time exploring the decaying buildings, some of which already had plant-covered floors, and walking along a road in the surrounding forest. We gaped at the Mother of All Trees (enormous, old, beautiful), oohed and aahed at interesting flowers, and speedwalked back to the main facility when we heard suspicious whistles and hushed men's voices coming from the nearby vegetation. Later, Brian and I went along another path that overlooked a great green canyon and had been taken over by a stream, so that our feet were always wet. We realized at some point that the wall above us was full of eroded stalactites and rock curtains -- we were walking in what used to be a cave! We thought about how many other caves we had walked over unknowingly and bounced in excitement.
This past weekend, Adriana and I went to Los Azufres, a forest with natural hot springs. I laughed at Adriana for bringing what I thought were the entire contents of our perfect house (including the stereo) on a camping trip, but insisted that she share her blanket that night when my extremities were numb and I couldn't sleep from the cold -- then she laughed at me. We walked, read, lounged in the warm pools, built a fire with Gabriel and Ricardo, two friends who visited, admired the stars, and came home smelling like rotten eggs. The smell lingers; even after scrubbing away at my clothes like a madwoman, using detergents and softeners that smell like "roses and jasmine," "fresh spring," and "fiesta" (?), I catch a faint whiff of sulfur every time I walk past the clotheslines where they are drying. I consider it a souvenir -- essence of Los Azufres.
Adriana also invited me to attend her school's anniversary celebration last Wednesday. We arrived late to the footrace from Ocampo to the school (about three kilometers, I think), so Adriana had to cheer on her students from the car instead of from her assigned spot by the side of the road, but she made up for her tardiness when we got to the school. Her job was to organize the students welcoming the visitors -- mostly members of the municipal government and students from primary schools -- and they were very welcoming indeed. Even I got to wear a little badge, and I was introduced around by Adriana's friend Luis as "a fellow English teacher." The morning ceremony was predictably boring; I don't understand why people think that speeches have to be humorless and dry, especially ones directed at junior high school students. There should be jokes! There should be music and dancing! There were, in fact, music and dancing, but they came after the speeches. The school's drama club, dressed to the nines in long colorful skirts and suits, the boys with black mustaches painted on their upper lips, danced a little routine, which I applauded wildly. I also watched Mexico's important historical figures (well, small and adorable impersonators of them) march by; I was the most enthusiastic spectator for this part of the show, too.
My absolute favorite event, though, was the hot air balloon competition. Several groups of students constructed big balloons out of crepe paper, and, after filling them up with gas, lit the wick at the bottom opening and let them fly! Most burned instead of flying, which was tragic, because they were so beautiful -- a red heart, a multicolored star with tassels on the points, a multicolored cube, among other works of art. And sometimes the flaming pieces of balloon fell in the midst of the students, and I'd think, "Well, that's it. Somebody's hair will light on fire and things will turn gruesome." But nobody's hair lit on fire, nobody died, and, if someday I work at a school, I will try to convince the higher-ups to let our students play with gas and fire and highly flammable materials.
And, finally, I have to write about something that I did alone, but which was certainly a highlight of these past three weeks: I spent four nights and three days at El Bosque Village, a planet-loving community in a forest near Patzcuaro (if you Google-image "Patzcuaro", you will see that the people living at El Bosque Village are lucky ducks). It is run by Brian and Marie, who are from Washington and Wisconsin, respectively, and several volunteers from all over the place who live there for periods lasting from several weeks to several months. I spent the first morning helping to build a chicken coop out of cob (a thick mixture of dirt, sawdust, pine needles and water) with Judith from Germany and Margret from Oregon, and that afternoon played legos with Gonzalito (the son of Soco, a woman from the nearby town of Zarzamora, who comes every Saturday to help cook) and Brenda from Mexico. In the evening I sat in a sauna with Brenda, Trevor from England, and Marie. The next day I walked in the forest and read, played volleyball, failed miserably at archery, and learned basic trapeze tricks with Judith, who has done trapeze for ten years! And on the last day of my visit, I spent most of the afternoon in Zarzamora, learning how to make and bake bread in a wood-fired stove with Soco's mother, Alicia. My fellow pupil, Margret, and I were exhausted by the time we got back to El Bosque Village -- making bread is not for the weak of spirit! We kneaded like it was our number one purpose in life, and, when our empanadas turned out deformed and bleeding apple butter, we did not despair but rather rejoiced, because we could eat them (the good ones were sold). Poor Alicia. She is patience and tolerance embodied.
All of that sounds decadent in a hippie-dippie way -- and it was -- but it was also an invaluable learning experience. In addition to working on an eco-friendly building with my own hands, I read about eco-friendly architecture in El Bosque Village's relatively extensive library (it rivals Angangueo's public library), and was inspired by all of the neato things people have come up with. As a result, I have revised my Future Fantasy: I'm not only going to live in New Mexico, the state of states, geographic apple of my eye, but I'm also going to build a house there out of bags of dirt. Yes, dirt! Bags of it! You can come visit. (If you are intrigued, look up "earthbag building" and be amazed.)
I also learned from the people there, and this was the best part of all. Brian, Marie, Margret, Forest, Marifer, Brenda, Judith, and Trevor were all interesting and open and friendly, and we talked about a variety of things that made me happy. We also talked about . . . time! And finally, after all those paragraphs about happenings, I come to my project.
After writing about my Watson project anxiety in the last post, I was possessed by Watson project fire and started "interviewing" people with a vengeance. I informed Anaisa and Karina that every time I saw them, they had to draw a different picture in my little blue book (they took this well), and talked with several Ocampo friends and acquaintances at length about my project. The most interesting conversations were the ones I had with Gabriel and Jacob, who had vastly different opinions about humans' interaction with time. Gabriel mentioned linear time (we age), cyclical time (we eat at around the same times every day), and then said that, now that technology allows us to "control" time, we are the ones losing control. We are lost without our cell phones and watches, and we think little of hopping on a plane and emerging in a different world a few hours later -- travel is losing its meaning. We are getting used to being able to be wherever we want to be whenever, and think that we are "wasting time" when we're not there (e.g. when we're in the car). That time wasn't "wasted" before.
Jacob had a very set view: the world is governed by cycles, but humans are exempt from these cycles. We are different from animals and other living things because we can control our activities, and even our lifespans, while they are the slaves of instinct. I asked if this was true of evolution -- if humans weren't a part of that, either -- and he said that he believed in evolution, but that humans weren't a part of it. Humans were made in God's image, and we were not subject to the same rules that govern other things in the universe. This was fascinating to me: a mixture of science and religion, with humans set apart from the rest of the universe. I discovered how close-minded I am when I kept having to bite my tongue to keep from arguing with him -- I am so convinced that some things are true (like the Big Bang, even though it is such a wacky theory, and evolution, and our un-special status) that I completely discount other possibilities (humans created by God, not part of evolution). I don't think that I should believe everything -- I'd explode -- but I should at least be able to listen to everything.
At El Bosque Village, I spent the last evening interrogating Brian, Margret, Forest and Marifer, with whom I practiced my goal of listening to everything. It was the first time I talked with a group of people, as opposed to an individual or two people, and it was great! Brian said that time was like the third dimension to beings in Flatland -- we can't point to it. My questions (like, "How would you explain time to an alien?") invite BS, because they encourage people to wax philosophical and say things that don't make sense, but, in a real, down-to-earth sense, time is simple: we are born, we get older, we go through a number of biological phases, and we die. As we age, we discover the ratio theory of time -- the older one is, the shorter a day (or a month or a year) seems because it is a smaller part of the whole. When he did wax philosophical, Brian said that he did believe in a universal time, and that he thought of it as a bunch of vectors -- the present is the intersection of the past now and the now-now and the soon-to-be-now. The past doesn't exist the way the present moment does, but rather as a remnant; the remnants of the past are the now. And the future doesn't exist, either, until it becomes the now. Brian was convinced that all humans had to believe in the past and the future. How could people make plans, or think about their lives, without placing them in that framework?
Marifer, in contrast, said that time doesn't exist, but rather was invented by humans. And -- shoot! -- my watch tells me that it is 11:39 in the morning and I should be heading out the door to my English class with Karina. In fact, I'm probably going to be late. What an anxiety-causing invention! I will finish writing this entry in the afternoon and post it the next time I am online. It is long enough already, no?
Sunday, October 25, 2009
A guilty feeling (Ocampo, Mexico)
My poor blog has sunk into a coma. But fear not -- I have high hopes for its recovery. In fact, tomorrow morning, after planting some green things in the backyard, I plan to write a long post about everything that has happened in the past three weeks -- in Too Much Detail! Our favorite! I am ensuring the success of this plan by announcing it online, here in my blog. If I don´t write tomorrow after promising to today, I will suffer from guilty feelings, and nobody likes those. My plan is foolproof!
Hasta bananas, then, amoebos. I hope that you are doing well!
Hasta bananas, then, amoebos. I hope that you are doing well!
Monday, October 5, 2009
A successful settling-in (Angangueo and Ocampo, Mexico)
I'm sitting on the floor of the kitchen with my legs sticking out the back door onto the spiral staircase that leads into our yard. Nina the Lopsided Kitten (she has hurt her left hind leg twice already in her five months of life, so it sticks out when she sits down, and she is slightly cross-eyed -- but don't be deceived! she is a fierce huntress, the bane of all insects in the Diaz Villanueva-Toro Martinez household) is sunning herself lopsidedly on the third step down, and a black and white sheep is staring at me from the neighbor's yard. Hello, sheep. The sky is blue, and the hills beyond the little river that runs behind the back yard are covered with patches of magenta and orange-yellow flowers, pine trees, and other green beings that are just thrilled to be living in this most hydrated part of the state of Michoacan. Behind me I can hear cars and vans and buses and trucks whizzing (or crawling, if it is a truck) along the road connecting Angangueo and Ocampo; soon I will be in one of the buses on my way to Ocampo to give an English lesson to Karina, whom I met last week with her cousin Anaisa and who took me on a ride in her dugout canoe in the Laguna Verde. We did not drown -- one of my successes du jour that day. My success du jour today might be forcing some unwilling victim to draw his or her conception of time in my little blue notebook.
Now that I am settled in, I'm starting to suffer from Watson project anxiety. "Am I doing this right?!" I think to myself in the wee hours of the night, sweating, eyes rolling wildly, gripping the sheets in my white-knuckled fists and wringing them like wet towels. That's a lie. But I am a bit worried, because, to my dismay and great amusement, nobody with whom I have spoken about the butterflies thinks about them! That is, almost everyone I have asked about them says something along the lines of: "Oh, the butterflies. Yeah, they come every year. You'll see them in your yard. No, I've never been to the reserves. It's only the tourists who do that. Stories or legends? I don't think there are any. They're nothing special to me; I grew up with them." One man has told me a sketch of a story that has to do with the butterflies -- they are drawn to the gold in the hills near Angangueo, which were mined intensively until the early 20th century -- but I have yet to hear about the souls of orange-and-black-clad warriors returning for the Day of the Dead or harvest time markers I read about online. The most important things that the butterflies bring with them are not dead souls but living ones -- tourists like yours truly. Several people have told me that, in the past ten years, more tourists have been coming than used to, and the towns' economies clearly depend on the tourist dollar, which rolls in between November and March each year. There are empty hotels waiting to be filled, monarch butterflies painted on many public walls, and the names of businesses in Angangueo, the more touristy of the two towns, are even decorated with a common butterfly motif. This is also interesting, and I hope to meet more people who were around before the reserves were reserves and the tourists came in flocks. Watson project anxiety, begone! (Right?)
I am living, as I wrote before, with Adriana, whom I like more each day (and I liked her to begin with, so this is a great thing!). We cook and eat together, and often have people over for late lunch or dinner -- I am still getting used to socializing every waking moment of the day and night, which is the norm here. Actually, I crack sometimes and retreat to the bedroom or backyard staircase to look at the sky, which is always doing something exciting. Among the things we have cooked (to say "we" is somewhat dishonest -- I generally chop and follow the directions that Adriana, Master Chef, gives me) are: tamales, pozole, pork with pumpkin (this was all her), quesadillas, soup, and . . . and . . . shoot. So many more delicious glutton-satisfying dishes. And I am such a glutton. We eat a lot of fresh fruit and vegetables, including some that I had never seen before, like sapotes, which look like shiny deflated green rubber balls (i.e. unappetizing) but taste like capuccino when blended with milk. That, at least, is my opinion. 10/10 stars. I plan to weigh at least ten more pounds when I leave Mexico than I did when I arrived.
When we're not cooking or eating, we are usually doing things around the house. I'm acquiring practical skills, like learning how to make a water pump start, and washing the water tanks, and setting up a water boiler (I didn't set it up! I watched and cringed when Jacob, who did set it up, was fiddling with the gas tank; tanks make me think pressure makes me think explosion, and loud noises are one of my weak points -- take note, enemies). A lot of plumbing knowledge, it would seem. We have set up clothes lines in the backyard, and picked up more garbage, and will soon plant more green beings that will be just thrilled to be living in this most hydrated part of the state of Michoacan. The house is very homey now, thanks in large part to Adriana, who is a stickler for detail and whose adoring friends -- the many young men I listed in the last post -- happen to be handymen who all want to contribute to the effort by fixing doors that don't close properly or awkwardly placed electrical cords.
We have also gone on excursions! Last last Saturday, Adriana, Edwin, Ricardo, Jacob and I drove four hours to Uruapan for a wedding. Luis, another teacher who lives in the hotel where Adriana and Edwin used to live and I almost lived, was married for the second time, a Christian-style ceremony which, to our disappointment, lacked happy music and dance (also funny was toasting with grape juice instead of wine). It was lovely to see proud families and little kiddies throwing rose petals on the ground before the bride, though -- especially lucky for me because I had met Luis exactly once before attending this most important and holy event in his life. Adriana, Edwin and I have also gone to Zitacuaro several times. Zitacuaro is the city closest to Ocampo, and where we do our major shopping in a giant grocery store and in the markets. This past Saturday we stayed until the early evening to eat at the booths along the Calle del Hambre, inaptly named because it is really the Calle de la Gula -- we booth-hopped and stuffed ourselves until another bite would have meant a sudden and tragic explosion. I also went to Zitacuaro's enormous Thursday tianguis, the weekly market, and finally bought clothes for cold weather. Bring it on, Father Winter. Irene the Finally Appropriately Clad can withstand your frosty mornings and snows-upon-the-mountain. (Actually, since I bought the sweaters and coat it has been gloriously sunny and warm, and I am sunburnt. Go figure.)
I have to stop writing now to stand outside and wait for the next bus to Ocampo, but there is much more that I want to mention! I didn't write about how "punctual" here means showing up, and "very punctual" means showing up within an hour of the prearranged time, and I haven't described the people I see most often, and I haven't raved about the backyard fauna, which includes cows and sheep and lizards and butterflies and all sorts of interesting insects and spiders and caterpillars and worms and grubs, and I haven't said anything about Angangueo, which I finally explored thoroughly. It will have to be next time if I want to be "very punctual" -- and I do, because that part of my upbringing is too deeply ingrained for a few weeks in Mexico to vanquish it. I hope that somebody draws in my little blue notebook today! Maybe Karina will do it in exchange for the English lesson.
Now that I am settled in, I'm starting to suffer from Watson project anxiety. "Am I doing this right?!" I think to myself in the wee hours of the night, sweating, eyes rolling wildly, gripping the sheets in my white-knuckled fists and wringing them like wet towels. That's a lie. But I am a bit worried, because, to my dismay and great amusement, nobody with whom I have spoken about the butterflies thinks about them! That is, almost everyone I have asked about them says something along the lines of: "Oh, the butterflies. Yeah, they come every year. You'll see them in your yard. No, I've never been to the reserves. It's only the tourists who do that. Stories or legends? I don't think there are any. They're nothing special to me; I grew up with them." One man has told me a sketch of a story that has to do with the butterflies -- they are drawn to the gold in the hills near Angangueo, which were mined intensively until the early 20th century -- but I have yet to hear about the souls of orange-and-black-clad warriors returning for the Day of the Dead or harvest time markers I read about online. The most important things that the butterflies bring with them are not dead souls but living ones -- tourists like yours truly. Several people have told me that, in the past ten years, more tourists have been coming than used to, and the towns' economies clearly depend on the tourist dollar, which rolls in between November and March each year. There are empty hotels waiting to be filled, monarch butterflies painted on many public walls, and the names of businesses in Angangueo, the more touristy of the two towns, are even decorated with a common butterfly motif. This is also interesting, and I hope to meet more people who were around before the reserves were reserves and the tourists came in flocks. Watson project anxiety, begone! (Right?)
I am living, as I wrote before, with Adriana, whom I like more each day (and I liked her to begin with, so this is a great thing!). We cook and eat together, and often have people over for late lunch or dinner -- I am still getting used to socializing every waking moment of the day and night, which is the norm here. Actually, I crack sometimes and retreat to the bedroom or backyard staircase to look at the sky, which is always doing something exciting. Among the things we have cooked (to say "we" is somewhat dishonest -- I generally chop and follow the directions that Adriana, Master Chef, gives me) are: tamales, pozole, pork with pumpkin (this was all her), quesadillas, soup, and . . . and . . . shoot. So many more delicious glutton-satisfying dishes. And I am such a glutton. We eat a lot of fresh fruit and vegetables, including some that I had never seen before, like sapotes, which look like shiny deflated green rubber balls (i.e. unappetizing) but taste like capuccino when blended with milk. That, at least, is my opinion. 10/10 stars. I plan to weigh at least ten more pounds when I leave Mexico than I did when I arrived.
When we're not cooking or eating, we are usually doing things around the house. I'm acquiring practical skills, like learning how to make a water pump start, and washing the water tanks, and setting up a water boiler (I didn't set it up! I watched and cringed when Jacob, who did set it up, was fiddling with the gas tank; tanks make me think pressure makes me think explosion, and loud noises are one of my weak points -- take note, enemies). A lot of plumbing knowledge, it would seem. We have set up clothes lines in the backyard, and picked up more garbage, and will soon plant more green beings that will be just thrilled to be living in this most hydrated part of the state of Michoacan. The house is very homey now, thanks in large part to Adriana, who is a stickler for detail and whose adoring friends -- the many young men I listed in the last post -- happen to be handymen who all want to contribute to the effort by fixing doors that don't close properly or awkwardly placed electrical cords.
We have also gone on excursions! Last last Saturday, Adriana, Edwin, Ricardo, Jacob and I drove four hours to Uruapan for a wedding. Luis, another teacher who lives in the hotel where Adriana and Edwin used to live and I almost lived, was married for the second time, a Christian-style ceremony which, to our disappointment, lacked happy music and dance (also funny was toasting with grape juice instead of wine). It was lovely to see proud families and little kiddies throwing rose petals on the ground before the bride, though -- especially lucky for me because I had met Luis exactly once before attending this most important and holy event in his life. Adriana, Edwin and I have also gone to Zitacuaro several times. Zitacuaro is the city closest to Ocampo, and where we do our major shopping in a giant grocery store and in the markets. This past Saturday we stayed until the early evening to eat at the booths along the Calle del Hambre, inaptly named because it is really the Calle de la Gula -- we booth-hopped and stuffed ourselves until another bite would have meant a sudden and tragic explosion. I also went to Zitacuaro's enormous Thursday tianguis, the weekly market, and finally bought clothes for cold weather. Bring it on, Father Winter. Irene the Finally Appropriately Clad can withstand your frosty mornings and snows-upon-the-mountain. (Actually, since I bought the sweaters and coat it has been gloriously sunny and warm, and I am sunburnt. Go figure.)
I have to stop writing now to stand outside and wait for the next bus to Ocampo, but there is much more that I want to mention! I didn't write about how "punctual" here means showing up, and "very punctual" means showing up within an hour of the prearranged time, and I haven't described the people I see most often, and I haven't raved about the backyard fauna, which includes cows and sheep and lizards and butterflies and all sorts of interesting insects and spiders and caterpillars and worms and grubs, and I haven't said anything about Angangueo, which I finally explored thoroughly. It will have to be next time if I want to be "very punctual" -- and I do, because that part of my upbringing is too deeply ingrained for a few weeks in Mexico to vanquish it. I hope that somebody draws in my little blue notebook today! Maybe Karina will do it in exchange for the English lesson.
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