A little over three weeks ago, I was walking with Adriana along the streets of Morelia, the capital of Michoacan and Adriana's home city, crying my little heart out. "It's so beautiful!" I kept saying. Adriana, who has a heart of stone and, I suspect, faulty tear ducts, rolled her eyes at me, as she does every time I cry at a movie or song or, in this case, the Day of the Dead altars that lined the stone pedestrian avenue and filled the yard of a nearby junior high school. She does not understand what it is to have feelings. But it was so beautiful! The altars were being set up during our walk the night before Halloween, and they would stay until at least November 2, the Day of the Dead.
Each one is made in honor of a person who has died, whose picture sits on a table at the center of the altar, and whose achievements, personality and tastes are reflected in the altar's elements. An altar in honor of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, for example, featured a life-sized figure sitting at a desk, pen in hand. There is also an offering of food -- in the cases of people who are being remembered by their families, this consists of all of the favorite foods of the deceased: tamales, corundas, chocolate, pan de muertos, and, often, tequila, among other tasty edibles and relaxing drinkables. Behind the food, and all around the altar, hang flowers and colorful sheets of tissue paper that have been stenciled and cut with death motifs, and there is usually a clay skull, skeleton, or Catrina (elegant and gaunt female death figure) on display. The floors of the altars are the most impressive part. They are made of corn, seeds, colored sawdust, orange and purple flower petals, sand, salt, and other grainy things that can be turned into elaborate designs. I noticed that many of the altars showed salt footsteps leading to a grave, and Adriana explained that this was so that the dead could find their way back to wherever they had come from after visiting the world of the living. See?! So much love and caring. Doesn't it make you want to cry, too?
I cried again on November 2, when Sergio, Adriana's father, took me to the main city cemetery. No place for a claustrophobe. It was packed with people bringing bouquets to graves, or decorating tombstones with marigolds, or setting up crowns of plastic blossoms, or simply sitting together holding hands. My eyes had trouble focusing on any one thing -- there was so much color, so much activity. Just outside of the cemetery was an enormous food market, equally overwhelming and bustling, and as soon as we went out to buy coconut water, I felt silly for crying. This was a celebration! A day of remembrance, not a day of grief. Of course, the dead are missed, but, more than anything, their lives are celebrated.
I wish that Americans did this! It seems to me that most Americans are terrified of death. We do everything in our power to avoid it, to postpone it, to distance ourselves from it -- we even put old people in nursing homes so that other people can deal with their medical problems. We should be learning from our grandparents, who have decades' worth of stories to tell and wisdom to impart, but instead we discount them because they are no longer young and immortal. The Day of the Dead brings the idea of death into every mind in Mexico, at least for a few days, and does so with colorful tissue paper and comical skeletons and fond memories. It embraces death instead of denying it -- surely this is a healthier approach to the inevitable? (It is also so beautiful!)
A few days after we returned to Ocampo from Morelia, I came back home from my daily English classes with Karina and Marcelo, and Adriana, who had been fiddling with the water tank on the roof, said, "Irene, have you seen the butterflies?" I said, "NO!!" We expertly climbed our rickety ladder, La Roña, and stood on the roof looking up with our mouths hanging open. There were butterflies everywhere! They were flapping their little wings in the wind, blowing thither and yon, but all going in the same general direction -- as they had been doing since late August, when they started their journey in Canada and the northern United States. These insects had flown 4500 kilometers! And here they were, arriving to their winter resting place. I kept thinking, "Welcome, little buddy! Hello there! Welcome! Oh hi hi hi!" Very exciting.
I went up to El Rosario, the biggest butterfly sanctuary, on November 7, expecting to see little. It was a cold and cloudy day, and after my guide, Rosalio, led me up the mountain to the four trees where the butterflies were clustered, I thought, "But this is not little!" They weren't flying around, as they do when the sun is shining, but the brownish-orange masses of insect wings bending the branches with their weight were impressive. (I keep thinking how different a phenomenon this would be if it weren't butterflies that migrated and hibernated in the forest but rather, e.g., cockroaches. Surely they would have been exterminated by now, no? Monarchs are lucky that we think they're so goshdarn pretty and delicate.) Rosalio told me a few stories about the butterflies -- the most interesting one was that they were drawn to gold and other metals in the mountain, which, he said, had been detected by satellite but never found on the ground. I had heard before the link between the butterflies' orange wings and the color of gold, but never in the context of science. (And I must confess that I'm highly skeptical, although: who am I, short-term visitor with little knowledge of biology and history, to doubt the word of a man who has lived here all of his life? Everything is a form of understanding, after all. We just explain things the best way we can.)
Yesterday I went up to the same sanctuary with Alma, a friend who stayed with us this weekend while her husband was away on business, and oof! wowee! oh man! it was spectacular! I can't do the experience justice in writing -- nor in talking, nor in pictures and videos -- but I'll try. It was a warm, sunny day, and, as soon as we arrived to the entrance of the sanctuary (two hours after leaving the house -- the transportation gods were not pleased with us), we knew that we were in luck. There were butterflies fluttering about over the fields and in the parking lot outside the hut where we had lunch, and, a few minutes into our walk up the mountain with our guide, Maria, we passed a big, wing-flapping group of them drinking from a puddle of water. A bit higher up, we stopped and gaped in awe -- there were streams of butterflies coming at us from all directions. They glided down the wooded slope, and flew around our heads to impress us with their gentle flapping sounds ("Bravo!" I thought, "What a powerful wingbeat!").
It got better. A few minutes later, we looked up and, holy shamoley! there was a whole river of butterflies in the treeless part of the canopy that mirrored the path. So many butterflies! You cannot imagine. It was like a two-level highway, with ugly, loud, clumsy humans on the ground and delicate, silent, unassuming monarchs passing above. We reached a field, where they were flying around like snowflakes, and finally made it to the trees where they had chosen to cluster. There were now more than four trees almost entirely covered with butterflies, and, all around the trees, thousands of them were swarming. Again, if they had been cockroaches, I would probably have feared for my life or, at least, my hygiene. (Why do cockroaches have such a terrible reputation? And I consider myself open-minded when it comes to insects!) They were monarchs, though, and Alma and I both sat on the ground and smiled like little kiddies. Even though our fellow visitors were shamelessly ignoring the sign that said, "Silence, please!", we could hear the flapping of wings like rustling leaves.
How amazing that the people living near these forests have seen this year after year for generations! And the people in Ocampo and Angangueo have watched the butterflies drifting in the sky every November, nearing the end of their long journey. Interestingly, though, very few people from Ocampo have ever gone up to the sanctuaries, and the children in Adriana's classes don't know the first thing about the monarch's life cycle. The monarch butterflies are Michoacan's claim to fame -- every tourist brochure features at least one photograph of a butterfly resting on a leaf -- and the people living closest to the action don't feel a strong connection to it (except for the tourist dollars it brings in). This is partly due to the lifestyle and resources of most of the residents -- Adriana tells me that the farthest away from Ocampo most of her students have been is Zitacuaro, which takes about half an hour to reach and is a relatively small city -- but also has to do with education. The goverment could decide to get people pumped up about the monarch butterfly, to teach them about its history and why it is important to protect it, from an early age, so that the sanctuary guest lists featured visitors from nearby as well as people from Canada and Germany. The butterfly reserves are currently a rich person attraction, even though the entrance fee is minimal; I wish that they were an everyone attraction.
The last thing I promised to write about was the celebration on November 20, when, in 1910, Francisco I. Madero declared that he intended to take the presidency, which had been held by the dictator Porfirio Diaz for decades. The start of the Mexican Revolution! This is, I was told, the most important political holiday in Mexico, and Ocampo partied appropriately hardy. Alma and I watched the two-hour long parade, in which red-, green-, and white-clad schoolchildren of all ages danced (the very youngest just wiggled with spirit), made impressive human pyramids, performed acrobatic tricks, and chanted, "¡Viva Mexico! ¡Viva Madero!". After the parade there was a Mexican dance competition in the main (and only) square, and at night there was a dance at the worst locale in town, which has a dirt floor and only half a roof. It was splendid. We stayed until the wee hours, and I felt bold enough towards the end to dance to every song with either Freddy, Ricardo, Jacob or Cesar, patient young men endowed with remarkable hopping abilities. Duranguense -- my new favorite kind of dance -- is not much more complicated than bouncing from one leg to the other with bent knees, either alone, in a loose embrace with a partner, or plastered onto a partner like another article of clothing. It's ideal for cold climes (aerobics + body heat), and also highly entertaining when the whole crowd is doing it: it looks like a sea of bobbing heads. Last night Adriana and I spontaneously decided to attend another dance, in our very own neighborhood of La Junta, and we danced with Eduardo, Fierros and Freddy.
I am so fond of all of these people! I am so fortunate to have met them! I often wonder what my life would be like right now if I had decided not to live with Adriana, or if the good-hearted people who showed me around during my first few weeks hadn't introduced me to their friends. All of my present happiness is due to the kindness and generosity of strangers -- strangers who are now friends. Gush gush gush.
As I've been writing, the clouds have been doing all sorts of wacky things. Right now they look like seaweed, or hair in water. In another part of the sky they look like cotton balls that have been pulled apart. And Nina the Lopsided Kitten just jumped through the window and rubbed up against my legs. It's a glorious day! I'm going to get dressed and venture forth into it aiiiiiiiie!
Monday, November 23, 2009
Friday, November 20, 2009
A guilty feeling -- part two (Ocampo, Mexico)
I haven´t written in almost a month! And this is not a real post, either -- just an acknowledgement of my failure. I get last place in the Blogger Olympics. I´ll write within one week about: the Day of the Dead, the arrival of the butterflies, and today, November 20, Mexico´s most important holiday (the beginning of the Mexican revolution). Until then, be well, amoebos!
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
A continuation of the last post (Ocampo and Angangueo, Mexico)
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 . . .
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 . . .
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.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
A cold and colorful place (Ocampo and Angangueo, Mexico)
Well, I am already behind in my weekly Mexico updates! Not too much of a shocker. And this one will be a shortie -- I started a longer post in a document on my computer, Toby, but he had a bout of grouchiness (my ability to break computers just by touching them has not diminished) and I couldn´t finish it.
Now I am writing on a nameless computer in Ocampo, where I arrived a week and a day ago to a parade with music and colorful banners -- not welcoming me, but celebrating Mexico´s 199th year of independence. It was lovely. I got to see most of the town´s adult residents lining the streets, proudly sprinkling confetti on the heads of most of the town´s schoolchildren, who were marching in step, looking proud or confused. Since that auspicious beginning to my stay here, so much has happened that I can hardly keep it straight in my head. Here is a list:
- I decided to move in with Adriana, an English teacher at a nearby school, instead of spending three months in a dark hotel room. Excellent decision. Adriana is wonderful, and we have spent the past few days cleaning and organizing the house (she more than I, since she moved to the house about a week before I arrived). Among our successes are: a garbage-free yard and river (at least the part of the river that we can see), a mostly functional kitchen full of food, a fixed ladder, and a compost bin with some fruit peels in it, which we plan to use on what will soon be our splendid garden.
- I met Adriana´s friend Edwin, who is the leader-type of a group of about ten young men (sometimes a few more, sometimes a few fewer) (a few fewer?), with whom I have gone to a dance, played soccer (´played´ is perhaps misleading -- I jogged around and dodged the ball), and hung out on several nights in Edwin´s room and in Adriana´s house. The young men -- Isaac Fernando, Javier, Gabriel, Eduardo, Chafai, Brian Alexis, Ricardo, Fierros, Freddy, and others -- are friendly and funny, and I´m glad to have been adopted by the group, even if I am still quiet and awkward around them.
- I met, went on walks with and/or had meals with several other people (a woman named Carla, her father Don Manuel, and her mother Dona Remedios; a girl named Anaisa who works at a taco stand; a man named Jacob who works at a telephone store; a woman named Angelica who is the director of a kindergarten) in Ocampo.
- I saw 1200-to-800-year-old pyramids with Adriana in Zirahuato de los Bernal. !!! We then went to Zitacuaro, the nearest city, to go grocery shopping and drink fruit nectars.
- Now that I´ve mentioned fruit nectars, I should also say that I´ve eaten: tacos with beef and pork and nopales, mole, rice, Michoacan mushrooms, chicken, enchiladas, pumpkin seeds, atole (a hot soupy sweet corn beverage), pan vaso (bread dipped in chili sauce, fried, and stuffed with your choice of meat), a lot of tropical fruits, and . . . well, chocolate, of course, but that´s not nearly as exciting. I´ve only gotten sick to my stomach once. Made of steel (I am). Adriana is going to show me how to cook other delicious things, among them tamales. The thought makes me salivate.
- Learned the Mexican names for many words! I hadn´t realized how different the vocabulary was.
That´s it for the list, I think. Now I should describe the places! I`ve spent the most time in Ocampo, which is flat and surrounded by tall forested hills (where the butterflies gather starting in November). It is a tiny town, with one main plaza, one main street and not too many others, and a river. There are always people in the streets, and there are always food vendors selling tacos, so some parts of town smell delicious. There are several wood processing shops, which turn wood (legally or illegally logged) into crates and sticks for mops and other such things. There are a lot of arcade game rooms. There are a lot of homeless dogs. There are corn fields and farm animals at the outer edges of town and beyond. There is a lot of rain, and there is visible breath in the mornings (it is cold! and humid) (the first few days I felt like I was in the rainy period of ´100 Years of Solitude´). There is a big market on Saturdays.
That description doesn´t do the town justice, and I think that I achieved my goal of sounding like a third-grader who doesn´t want to put much effort into her English homework. Yes!! I´m actually living much closer to Angangueo now, which is quite different from Ocampo. It, too, has one main plaza, but this plaza has two churches and they are taller and grander than the one in Ocampo. Angangueo is much more colorful and much more vertical than Ocampo, since it is located higher up in the hills; walking around is good exercise (for legs and eyes). In general, it seems better cared for than Ocampo, and has more hotels and nice-looking food businesses (the ones in Ocampo are nice, but not nice-looking) -- it is the more touristy of the two monarch butterfly reserve gateway towns. I have yet to meet people in Angangueo. Next week I will wander around looking friendly and eager to make the acquaintance of anyone who is nearby (but only if that person looks at least half as eager as me -- I don´t want to scare anyone).
´This one will be a shortie.´ I am so funny! I will write another update within the next, oh, ten days -- one better organized and more informative -- and send best wishes to you, kind reader.
Now I am writing on a nameless computer in Ocampo, where I arrived a week and a day ago to a parade with music and colorful banners -- not welcoming me, but celebrating Mexico´s 199th year of independence. It was lovely. I got to see most of the town´s adult residents lining the streets, proudly sprinkling confetti on the heads of most of the town´s schoolchildren, who were marching in step, looking proud or confused. Since that auspicious beginning to my stay here, so much has happened that I can hardly keep it straight in my head. Here is a list:
- I decided to move in with Adriana, an English teacher at a nearby school, instead of spending three months in a dark hotel room. Excellent decision. Adriana is wonderful, and we have spent the past few days cleaning and organizing the house (she more than I, since she moved to the house about a week before I arrived). Among our successes are: a garbage-free yard and river (at least the part of the river that we can see), a mostly functional kitchen full of food, a fixed ladder, and a compost bin with some fruit peels in it, which we plan to use on what will soon be our splendid garden.
- I met Adriana´s friend Edwin, who is the leader-type of a group of about ten young men (sometimes a few more, sometimes a few fewer) (a few fewer?), with whom I have gone to a dance, played soccer (´played´ is perhaps misleading -- I jogged around and dodged the ball), and hung out on several nights in Edwin´s room and in Adriana´s house. The young men -- Isaac Fernando, Javier, Gabriel, Eduardo, Chafai, Brian Alexis, Ricardo, Fierros, Freddy, and others -- are friendly and funny, and I´m glad to have been adopted by the group, even if I am still quiet and awkward around them.
- I met, went on walks with and/or had meals with several other people (a woman named Carla, her father Don Manuel, and her mother Dona Remedios; a girl named Anaisa who works at a taco stand; a man named Jacob who works at a telephone store; a woman named Angelica who is the director of a kindergarten) in Ocampo.
- I saw 1200-to-800-year-old pyramids with Adriana in Zirahuato de los Bernal. !!! We then went to Zitacuaro, the nearest city, to go grocery shopping and drink fruit nectars.
- Now that I´ve mentioned fruit nectars, I should also say that I´ve eaten: tacos with beef and pork and nopales, mole, rice, Michoacan mushrooms, chicken, enchiladas, pumpkin seeds, atole (a hot soupy sweet corn beverage), pan vaso (bread dipped in chili sauce, fried, and stuffed with your choice of meat), a lot of tropical fruits, and . . . well, chocolate, of course, but that´s not nearly as exciting. I´ve only gotten sick to my stomach once. Made of steel (I am). Adriana is going to show me how to cook other delicious things, among them tamales. The thought makes me salivate.
- Learned the Mexican names for many words! I hadn´t realized how different the vocabulary was.
That´s it for the list, I think. Now I should describe the places! I`ve spent the most time in Ocampo, which is flat and surrounded by tall forested hills (where the butterflies gather starting in November). It is a tiny town, with one main plaza, one main street and not too many others, and a river. There are always people in the streets, and there are always food vendors selling tacos, so some parts of town smell delicious. There are several wood processing shops, which turn wood (legally or illegally logged) into crates and sticks for mops and other such things. There are a lot of arcade game rooms. There are a lot of homeless dogs. There are corn fields and farm animals at the outer edges of town and beyond. There is a lot of rain, and there is visible breath in the mornings (it is cold! and humid) (the first few days I felt like I was in the rainy period of ´100 Years of Solitude´). There is a big market on Saturdays.
That description doesn´t do the town justice, and I think that I achieved my goal of sounding like a third-grader who doesn´t want to put much effort into her English homework. Yes!! I´m actually living much closer to Angangueo now, which is quite different from Ocampo. It, too, has one main plaza, but this plaza has two churches and they are taller and grander than the one in Ocampo. Angangueo is much more colorful and much more vertical than Ocampo, since it is located higher up in the hills; walking around is good exercise (for legs and eyes). In general, it seems better cared for than Ocampo, and has more hotels and nice-looking food businesses (the ones in Ocampo are nice, but not nice-looking) -- it is the more touristy of the two monarch butterfly reserve gateway towns. I have yet to meet people in Angangueo. Next week I will wander around looking friendly and eager to make the acquaintance of anyone who is nearby (but only if that person looks at least half as eager as me -- I don´t want to scare anyone).
´This one will be a shortie.´ I am so funny! I will write another update within the next, oh, ten days -- one better organized and more informative -- and send best wishes to you, kind reader.
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