More of Mexico (Images take two)

7 wishes for a rainy evening

Not in order of importance

1) I wish I weren't so damn impulsive

2) I wish that good, sexy shoes weren't so expensive everywhere in the world

3) I wish that I could have an extensive full body massage

4) I wish that I didn't feel compelled to give so much away

5) I wish that I weren't in love with the butterflies

6) I wish that I were at home, snuggling with my baby girl and kissing her cheeks

7) I wish that I were on the beach, lolling in the sun, with a lotion-slathering other handy

pozole de pollo (or a big pot of soup)

Ok, I'll admit, I have been remiss in my writerly duties. In fact, so remiss, that I have yet to write the story I have been promising myself for weeks, much less the periodic insistence on this silly thing. Nonetheless.

Friday we took a trip to one of three state run battered women's shelters here in Mexico city. It's address is a secret and there are no markings that show it to be an institutional building of any sort. I won't even say what part of the city it is in, because, as is often the case, the batterer goes looking for his target. I was highly impressed by their comprehensive feminist approach to receiving women who are desperately trying to break a cycle of abuse, usually, as it turns out, for their children's sake more than for their own. There is a net for them to fall back on, and as they are channeled via other government agencies, they immediately have a social worker, a psychologist, a child psychologist for the children, legal aid, medical care, a nutritionist and accompaniment for all the bureaucratic paperwork that they need to do. Women and their children get only a maximum of 90 days, but as the director pointed out, many go home much sooner, thinking that "they taught him a lesson". Some who go home because they escaped without their documents, and say they are coming right back, never return, often murdered by their spouse. Despite what it sounds like, the installations, though simple, were quite welcoming, and there was plenty of light. One woman arrived with her three boys, for intake, as our group was touring. You could see the mix of terror and relief in her eyes. They sat nervously in the kitchen, because the first thing is to feed them, before any paper procedures take place. The little boys all looked around wide-eyed, their little shaved heads bobbing in unison. "You see?" she convinced herself, "we're going to be better, here, just wait, we're going to be fine, you'll see."

Before that one of my classmates asked , "how abused do you have to be?" She wanted to know why you didn't need to come in with broken bones and bruises. The response was unanimous, and forceful... "what is more damaging? fists or words?" We all know that continued verbal abuse (often coupled with physical abuse or the threat of it, which is perhaps more painful because it forces the victim to self-inflict pain, and to constantly self-censor) causes much greater lasting damage. Your body can forget pain, but your mind... I had been fine, up until then, had asked questions about the management, the functioning of the system. There were only 12 women at this shelter, with their children, it was not at capacity because vacations had only just begun and they expected the detonators to come after about a week or two of school vacations, because the women often hold on until they have met with the requirements of their children's school, and then after the rhythm changes, things explode.) In a city of roughly 25 million, this being the largest shelter of its kind, and there only being 12 women... well, needless to say it is mind-boggling to think of how many women are so entrenched in their cycles that they never make it out alive. That was when I started to cry. I didn't want to. I bit my lip and wiped at the bottom of my eyes. I twisted my face into strange contortions, but I couldn't stop myself from hurting for everyone and everything, and for myself, of course. I brushed more tears away, like a week ago at the movies watching I giorni dell abbandono (Roberto Faenza) and trying to keep my weeping in the realm of silent heaving, as the little girl asks her mother desperately to get up out of bed while she takes care of her little brother, hoping no one would notice quite how pathetically tragic I am. I know it is foolish, to be moved so easily to tears, but I try not to beat myself up about it too much either.

So Friday I met Julia, professor, film historian and friend to see Jodorowsky's Fando y Lis (1968) I tried to come at it with an open mind, I know he is supposed to be one of Mexico's film geniuses. I detested the film with such vehemence that my words can do no justice to the sentiment. It was billed as a man and a women who go on an interior journey to the mythical land of Tar to exorcise their childhood demons. It was a disjointed, masculine nightmare replete with comandeering women, forced humiliating homosexuality and an insipid, paralytic woman, that was marched around on his back, and tormented, mentally tortured, abused, left behind in a seething pile of mud teeming with naked bodies, dragged naked down the rocky mountainside, and offered up as a sexual entree to wandering men...and all she could do, throughout the entire film was whine meekly, "no me dejes, no me dejes, Fando.... Fando..." Please, you always trick me, don't use the handcuffs, please... Don't leave me, I love you. Her plaintive little voice alternately enraged, inspired lust and remorse in the male protagonist, and when he finally propitiated her (symbolic?) death, he lay down beside her grave, having promised not to forget her when she was gone, and let the detritus of the seasons, dead leaves and grass cover him. Nevertheless, in the end, he was still alive, and she was dead.

It was too much for me to take, too much hideous deformed reality to stomach for one day. I came home to rest. Especially after the films the day before, a short, a friend's thesis project and exam (will refrain from comment here), and an excellent, excellent tragic film from Mexico El violín (Francisco Vargas) which claims to be set in the 60's but is as valid for that era as it is for this. The most powerful moment is the closing scene, after the grandfather has defiantly confronted his impending death, "Se acabó la música" denying the milico his ultimate submission and humiliation, when the grandson, with the dead father's guitar sings a corrido about the Hidalgo men, who resisted and never came back. The music never ended, it wanted to say, the resistance never will either.


Saturday was slow, in the morning I went to the outdoor market that is around the corner, only on Saturdays, and dropped off my clothing at the laundromat. In the afternoon I went to see Perlita (Perla's daughter), and we talked and drank sangría in the sun for hours. Then finally, I made it to Marimé's only mildly lost (they came and rescued me... I would have found it after all, but they came out for beers). It was good to be with the girls, and we had wonderful Yucatecan food. Sunday was a lost cause. I did little but cleaning, schoolwork and of course, my daily walk. I made it all the way to the center of Coyoacán to realize that the throngs of people were the opposite of what I wanted, or needed, so I just kept walking, all the way through, up Carrillo Puerto, past the Yucatecan antojitos where Nina and Beto and I had a late dinner on Thursday, stopping at Tepoznieves for a nieve de limón, and continuing back up Miguel Angel de Quevedo, with a brief stop at the Superama. Now this may seem like no big feat, but given that my heel ailment has reincribed itself in my body, long walks must necessarily be coupled with stretching or else crippling pain wracks my body. I meandered through the supermarket, bought myself a bottle of Mexican wine (LA Cetto - we'll see how it is, a Petite Sirah) came home, and spent the afternoon doing what most relaxes me. Cooked.

Now I must say, the mole rojo I made last week was fabulous, and while our kitchen is tiny and has only two burners, I have managed alright. I made a large pot of chicken broth, and boiled carrots for later in the week, set aside half the chicken for salad, and pulled the other half for the pozole, then I boiled the hominy grains in the broth (now minus the onion and garlic) or a good hour or so until they softened. Meanwhile I had foreseen my need for American (or at least my brand of American) food, so I chopped up onion, chicken, pecans, apple and apricot, and mixed it with a bit of mayonaise. Meanwhile I was disinfecting the lettuce, copiously. I made myself a salad (having finished the last of the couscous that morning for breakfast with the bean, corn, tomato and bell pepper salad that we had planned for Marimé's, but that got left behind accidentally at the last minute.) using some more of the mix. Ah, lettuce, who knew one would miss it quite so much. I then chopped up onion, garlic, three serrano chiles and a quarter pound or more of (disinfected) mushrooms and set them aside to wait. There was fruit to be dealt with, and I made a marvelously exotic (to me) salad with Mamey (think dark red, texture of an avocado and with an almost syrupy sweet flavor), tuna (prickly pear, the fruit of a nopal) guayaba (guava - not the horrible pink Hawaiian kind, but the yellow, wonderful, aromatic Mexican kind), multiple Manila mangoes (the smaller, sweeter, yellow-skinned, flat-sided ones), halved green grapes, a pear, and fresh squeezed lemon juice over the top. Of course the benefit of cooking all afternoon is that you have no desire to eat. I then sauteed the mushrooms and set them aside for a topping for the morning quesadilla, and yes, it was wonderfully piquant, a kick start to the day. What I forgot to do, as I shredded some lettuce for the pozole, and let the pulled chicken soak in the flavor, was radish. Sigh. There is always something.

(non)mating habits of the avis raris

Now I am not saying that one doesn't enjoy a certain degree of attention, in fact, every now and then it is nice to have one's charm and grace appreciated, and yet...

I guess I should not complain, except, well, I will, because here I get to make the rules, and out there, my little acts of defiance may not go unnoticed, but they certainly don't do much to change the status quo.

Where to begin my rant, I wonder? Perhaps with my walk home, four blocks on Thursday night, after finally meeting Agustín (and his equally charming friend Andrea) and spending an evening of engaging conversation and literary activity. I am left on the corner, and feel quite safe on a wide avenue. I am wearing a long black skirt, and yes, I do have bare shoulders, though I am not, by any means wearing skimpy clothing. I walk briskly because it is midnight, and I am tired, and because I am trying to decide whether to go to class the next day or not. And it isn't so much that I don't notice the heads turning, or the catcalls from buses, but rather that I choose to ignore them.

The other day, when our entire class was out, and listening to an endless monologue on the architecture of female oppression (I say this when we were looking at spaces originally destined for the education-albeit limited- of single women that were in present day usurped by men, almost in their entirety, for self-aggrandizing purposes). Whistles rang out but the men had no balls to show themselves, and Susana, finally spots them across the street and starts yelling. We make jokes amongst ourselves about the fact that they would probably run the other day if we turned their aggression back in on them, and suggest they perform. I had not reached my limit, just yet.

But it might be a juicy little tidbit, to see this systematic attempt at... domination? control? corruption? perversion? I don't know that there is anything one can say that can make it ok for a man to be sitting in his car in the via pública jerking off and looking up defiantly at two women who really are only trying to take a walk around the park. That was Wednesday, I think, but Friday night, on our way over to Susana's there was a man lurking in a tree, right in front of a store with his pants halfway down. Kik made a little yelp, and her insults in Spanish were not loose enough to spill out in disgust, and I, fortunately, saw nothing. But I digress.

It isn't that I feel unsafe, in fact, I have never felt safer in the city than I do these days, and yet...
I am constantly asking myself what the deep-rooted meaning of this behavior is. I am back again, walking alone at midnight, I cast my glance around, always ready to bolt into the middle of the street, or a store, always looking for the escape hatch, always knowing if there is someone on my back. And then. A car pulls by in slow motion, three men with bullet-proof "seguridad pública" jackets don't quite leer, but their heads turn in tandem and I lift my chin in defiance and walk at a faster clip. The car is unmarked, my heart is racing. Three blocks, I search for a way out, and the car starts to slowly reverse, it is following me, in the wrong direction, 2 blocks, they are getting close, but I zip across a cross street and the oncoming traffic acts as a buffer, I know they can pull a U-turn so I almost run the last block home, but I don't, I won't, because then they win.

That would be nice if that were all, but it isn't, how could it be? I spent the day walking, walking, walking around my old haunts, rediscovering undercurrents, paths that my feet had forgotten, homes that were mine, before, pieces of who I was, but I walk confidently, happily, the miles stretch out, and I am alone in the city, except, I am not. One notices, of course, that each microbus has a battery of differentiated sounds, greetings to friends, warnings to other cars and buses, attention-drawing tactics to encourage travelers to pack themselves in like sardines in a movable feast, of sweaty, jerking motion. I was alone, walking against traffic, Río Churubusco is abandoned. Kids just got out of school and the city is half-empty, there are no signs of life but the continual flow of traffic that fills the veins of the city like a medicinal drip, steady, constant, unending. And I hear it, the sound of a whistle, not from the mouth of the lascivious, but emanating from the bus itself, as if the machine were one giant pulsing phallus poring over the city in search of unsuspecting flesh to sink itself into. I am now more than a little irritated, after the parking lot attendants at the Superama called out, "mamita sexi" and myriad taxis and unmarked vehicles flashed lights at me, as if I might suddenly decide to join them for a ride? I can't imagine that that is the real intention. So it builds, because mostly I am at peace and enjoying my walk, and I am angry, really, that I have to be expecting attacks from all sides. So I walk past the Alberca olímpica, and I keep going at a steady pace even though I subbed my toe, and I pass two men, not much older than me, I would guess, talking, smoking a butt, leaning in to one's car. I brace myself, and they don't even have the decency to wait until I am out of arms reach to whistle, and I surprise myself and turn angrily on my heel, with a challenging shrug of my shoulders, "what the hell do you want from me?" my gestural language asks, and I shake my head haughtily and continue, but after a minute I look over my shoulder and one is following me up this lonely path, so I stare, harsh, quick, and he slinks away down a side-street, all the while my eyes are simultaneously searching for a way to get away if I have to. I have a bag, I will use it as a weapon if needs be, I can run up to the main road, I can get away.

And I wonder if it is pleasure that they seek, or if it is simply so ingrained that it doesn't seem like there is anything wrong with making a woman feel like she should not be alone. This enactment of hyper-masculinity is so powerful, so pervasive that it even becomes the lingua franca in certain lesbian representations. How do I know this? Because Friday night we went out to a club in La Roma, hopeful of having a good time, being surrounded by women, just dancing, dancing, forgetting, alone. But no.

Of course one does have to laugh that the drink that was sent over to Kik (she was the hit of the club) was a bottled water. The insistence with which certain women latched on, their practical blocking our exit, don't go so soon.... it was too reminiscent of the male behavior that we had hoped to escape--to not leave with a profound sense of depression.

I don't know what to say. If I were to challenge every single man that mutters under his breath, or whistles, or asks to accompany me a) I would be exhausted and b)I would change little if anything in terms of social behaviors. There has to be a better answer. And as I read up on the feminization of poverty in the world, and the opportunities for education, I am struck with this recurring thought, that education for women is not enough. It is a start, but it is simply one part of the whole, and if men are not asked to reflect on this, if this sort of aggression based masculinity is fomented at worst (or merely tolerated at best), then all the education in the world directed at women will not solve the problem of women's (upward) mobility being limited.

A few select images

A Sunday in the Alameda Central

It is storming out. And I am feeling somehow lonely. I can't really explain it, perhaps just the typical melancholy that hangs over me on Sunday afternoons. The sky ripped open with a chorus of thunder and lighting bolts to light up the night. Just like every other day at the Cineteca, but this time the storm wasn't over by the time I emerged from the film.

I spent the day alone, but in that good way, were the city streets glide beneath your feet, I took to the historic center armed with nothing but my camera. That, and a nectarine, dried apricots and almonds, oh, and a bottle of water, of course. I sometimes feel like my eyes are the only part of my body that exists, like I am a specter floating through the air, invisible. Today I wanted to be invisible, and mostly I was. I wanted to be so non-descript that no one would say anything at all to me. Almost. I listened to Argentine rock from the 80's turned up way too high. I wore sneakers, and just kept moving to the pulsing beat. The city is so full of life, and I am so far removed from it all, in any real way.

I didn't feel so lonely, not until I stepped out of the theater into the wet night, reminding myself that I am going home to a lonely bed. That isn't so bad, but there was something. What could it be? I don't know that I can name it now, ergo we'll just ignore that feeling for the moment. So the last two films prior were interesting, but neither moved me to tears: Jodorowsky's remastered El topo (Mexico, 1970) a surreal, grotesque view of border relations and gender relations, though I am quite sure that it didn't conceive itself as the latter. I can't say I loved it, though I know it was part of my filmic education, there was a good deal of eroticized violence, but in that strange early 70's way that was innovative then, but seems hackneyed now, and Las caras de la luna (Mexico, 2002) directed by Guita Schyfter, which was a metafictional look at feminist filmmaking. I think that what it should be lauded for is the way that feminism was treated not as a univocal movement but a beehive of contradiction in and among its practitioners, all with a good sense of humor. Nevertheless, today's film Godard's Notre Musique (France, 2004) actually made my bones ache and my heart feel like it was being compressed into a tiny metal box. It was set in Sarajevo but the woman about who it was loosely assembled was a Franco-jew of Russian descent who lived in NY. Goytisolo declaimed poetry about the decadence of modern times, and Godard himself appeared, giving a treatise on the two sides of every image - like the two sides of every truth. She manages to kill herself, by carrying a bag of books on her back, and saying that anyone who wanted to die with her for peace as opposed to war was welcome to stay. She dies alone. Perhaps what most hurt was the way in which everyone is implicated, our hands are all bloodied, which is true. And yet, I still love life more than my curiosity to uncover its alternative, and it turns out, I might in fact be something of an optimist, because I still have hope, and I still believe that art's function is to give us that hope, to take it away, to twist our insides out, and to make us act.