End of summer blues

What shall we listen to?
Mmmm, I don't know.
Well do you want to listen to Ella Fitzgerald? (I offer one of two options).
Who's that?
You know, (I start singing) "I've got you... under my skin... I try so not to give in... I say to myself this affair never will go so well, but why do I try to resist when darling I know so well... I've got you, under my skin..."
Yeah, Ella, she says.
I flick a switch and the New Hampshire scenery is whizzing by at breakneck speeds, it is Ella and Louis Armstrong in their famous duet, "I won't dance, why should I, I won't dance, how could I, I won't dance, merci beaucoup ..."
Is he African American? she wants to know.
Yeah, so's she.
She is? She sounds white.
Nah, you're just used to hearing mommy, and I tend not to sound exactly white.
She makes a face, well, at least I have been told I got soul...
She laughs at her mama, and I laugh at myself, and my little brown baby is smiling again. We had fun at the ocean, spent over 4 hours riding the waves in the frigid waters of the Atlantic. We went to see Joe and Abby and the boys, and of course she spent the evening swimming in their great grandparents' pool, even when the boys abandoned her for their bicycles she was diving around, a queen in her realm. Wanna race? she challenges, and they do, but they never win, "don't you know little fool, you never can win... use your mentality, wake up to reality... but each time I do, just the thought of you makes me stop! before I begin, 'cause I've got you..."
And my mind is wandering, out across the ocean, a thousand miles away, or more.
April in Paris. Why does it sound so easy when she sings it? Where exactly does the change come from being bewitched bothered and bewildered to being so no more?
Abby tells me the next day, at the lake, that on the way home C. said, "mommy, I'm not as smart as I." And she told him it was ok. There is some healthy sense of reality, when does it stop being ok to recognize talent in others that we don't have and to not feel somehow deficient. I ponder this, as the Sudanese boys race onto the scene, dirt flying from their bicycle tires.
Last week a little refugee boy drowned in the river by the Queen City Bridge. I sat at the kitchen table and read the newspaper, an act of self-affliction of which I rarely partake, and my chest grew tight with grief. But we nod, because there is no supervision. Carey points out later to me, when we are out drinking beers at Martín's restaurant (again-or at least again for me) that their parents are probably sleeping because they worked the night shift, and I am faced again with the double bind of poverty.

Hey guys! I call over in an authoritative teacherly voice, a firm but kind one, Guys! I get up, and walk towards them, Hey, you can't throw rocks here. There are little kids, and someone is going to get hurt. They are sweet and respectful, the ringleader calls to the others, ok, guys no rocks! and they recommence, this time whipping sand at each other. There is another guy who starts screaming at them to stay away from him, and I watch, not wanting to get in the middle of a violent and unnecessary altercation. When the sand throwing goes on for too long, I wade out to them, gently point out that it would be safer for them to move beyond the area where small children are playing, all the while I. is telling me, "I'm not a small child" and I am shooting her "callate" looks but she is just caught up on my use of language. They again oblige, and are later riding their brand new shiny bikes into the water, but I bite my tongue because it is none of my business if they rust their new bikes... but there it is, the cops have been called, not one, not two, but three police cruisers show up to deal with this innocuous band of 11-year-olds who are not even truant as school hadn't yet started, and I am struck once more with a deep rejection of my country and everything that it supposedly stands for, and at the same time a longing for something, something better.

Why do they come, I wonder, is it purely economic? Is loosing your culture worth the safety afforded by the uptight anal money-grubbing, I'm-only-in-it-for-myself, American form of laissez-faire capitalism? Is it worth the schizophrenia of no-longer ever being an entire being, eternally dancing on the hyphen? Is the hyphen so bad? I find myself less and less American each day, but I am also less and less anything else. Is it possible, I wonder, to erase one's own "identity" without entirely disappearing?

Mommy? Are we almost there? she asks.
Yeah, five more minutes. I pull into Carey's mom's driveway, in Milford. Noah answers the door. He is so tall and proud and beautiful. I can't believe that they were just babies when they met! She is on the floor with Riley, her nephew, tiny, not growing, but not failing to thrive. How lucky I feel, and guilty for feeling that way, that my child was born healthy, has continued to grow so. She and Noah catch frogs after we climb the falls, they splash around, she is suddenly too shy to take off her clothing. These transformations happen in a heartbeat. Weren't we all together, out on the lawn at their beach house just a few days ago? The sun beating down, and the century-old floorboards creaking to the sound of children shuffling around?
And the years pass, and we go to her new school today, she is so tall, and brown, my little girl. The sun changes her in an instant, she doesn't look like me at all, I see her and think this, but then she does, unfortunately seem to have inherited all of my bad physical features. But I try to remember that she doesn't have to be perfect because she is already happy and healthy and I should just be satisfied with that because I don't even realize what a blessing I have. And the summer is ending but there is no marker, no snap of cold air to tell me of its passing, and I am getting ready to get on a plane again, and then soon after, another, and the smell of Eucalyptus will be upon me, the trees spitting out their essence. But it will mean something different, I think, something entirely different. I want to believe this, like an old jazz standard, that can simplify the most complicated emotions down to a couple of well juxtaposed ascending and descending notes.

It could all be new, but for now, I'll just stick with the blues.

Raining on my parade

It rained for the last two hours of the drive. Really, the two hours and a half, but what should have only taken about one, except for the traffic jam getting off of I-95 and onto the Triborough bridge - 278. Of course, I nearly panicked when I passed 287, you see I am not necessarily dyslexic, or in this case, disnumeric, but I have the tendency to transpose numbers, and as I generally take the Tappan Zee bridge, and when I say generally, I mean all those trips all those years ago up and down the eastern seaboard from my parents house to Bryn Mawr and back. Huh. What love makes one do, and then pregnancy, and then visits to family and friends... It hasn't been so long, really. Only three years living out on the west coast, and already things seem strange.

It is like putting on clothing that you used to wear, years ago, and it isn't precisely that it doesn't fit, or even that it is unflattering, but just that you have forgotten how to wear it, or that it was waiting in a closet, in someone else's house, for your inevitable return. And it just doesn't feel right. I had that same experience in Manchester, driving around, it was all so familiar, like in a dream, only I had to keep turning around, and backtracking, and pulling onto side streets to take the long way around because I had forgotten which crazy lane shift I had to make in time.

I.'s visit to the hospital, however, was uncannily the same. The day we left NH, M.'s Rav4 packed to the brim with stuff, and the u-haul neatly hinged behind, she had a bit of a freak accident too, slamming her 4 year-old eyebrow into the corner of the free-standing stairway and bleeding profusely, though the ultimate injury was minor. This time there was far less blood, none, in fact, just an earring back that magically worked its way inside her earlobe, and sealed itself inside, like some medieval barbed weapon that enters smoothly, but eviscerates upon removal. The only blood came after the shot of anesthesia, the wait was much longer than it had to be, but that, I am afraid, is also par for the course when one goes to the emergency room for lesser troubles.

The rain was just another case of Murphy's law. Spectacular weather all week prior, and indeed after, but the two days we choose, I choose, let's be fair, I. had very little say in the matter and I just had to get away from my mother (who I adore, but who drives me mad. I mean, really, one is never truly allowed to grow up in their parents' eyes, and therefore is doomed upon return to eternally be treated as a child, no matter how many grey hairs, or white, in my case, they are sprouting -and there are quite a few, only from one spot, but there is an unsurmountable terror in this, I won't go into details.)

Jeff is waiting for us, and the computer-generated directions are perfect, and my execution of them is flawless, and it is still raining, but we don't mind. He lives a few blocks from Astoria park, in Queens, and we hug for a minute, and then let go, and then hug for another minute, because, in all honesty, although we read each other's blogs, we haven't actually talked since, oh God, since... has it really been that long? I feel like a terrible friend, but then, there are friendships that have weathered the storm of years and are just as comfortable picking up where the left off if it is a week, a month or a year. Jeff and I have this sort of friendship. Incidentally so do Laura and I, whose wedding was beautiful, and who made me all weepy and proud because she and Andy really are in love in that really sane way, the way that makes you think that the vows that they made, to respect one another and to accompany one another and to pick each other up when the other is down are things that aren't abstract ideas, but modes of behaving, ones that will be carried off with ease and style. I couldn't even be cynical because if two people were ever right for each other, they seem to be. But I digress, if there ever was a point to this rambling story.

So, we head for Indian food, but the place is divy and we decide against it, stop at a Morrocan café that is far over-priced, and finally settle for... a ham, egg and cheese sandwich, on a deli roll. This is NY after all. The apartment is really the first floor and basement of a large house, there are five guys living there, no more women in the house, and it is immediately apparent that a) they cleaned up because they knew we were coming, and b) it was a house inhabited by five (relatively) single guys teetering on the edge of their thirties. There were boy books by hip male writers: Murakami, Eggers et. al. There were books on gaming, and wii's (motion sensitive nintendo joysticker thingies for playing video games on a large TV), movies, movies, movies... many that I have seen, and like, but oozing with testosterone in a pleasantly familiar way. The kitchen was large and mostly empty, though in their defense they had quite an arsenal of cooking utensils and such. Not too many dishes, some weird brown sludge caked on the the stove top, but otherwise mostly clean. At closer inspection of course, and here I am ashamed of just how motherly I am, the counter top had a sort of sticky film that needed addressing, and so, when we awoke the next morning, in the spare bed in the basement, amid the multitude of musical instruments (they have a band, they have fun... makes me nostalgic for the days when I hung around houses like this, before I became... what have I become? Well, someone with matching sheets and bath towels, for examples, and a place to put musical instruments away when not in active use, for starters.) I took it upon myself to put away all dry dishes, wash up all the dirty ones in the sink, and give the stove and counter a peremptory (if not entirely thorough - there were no cleaning products readily available, or at least not obviously so) cleaning.

Andy, one of Jeff's roomates was especially warm, and good to talk to, and it made me happy to see that he is living with good people. We ate pizza and drank wine, and watched the third film in the Lord of the Rings trilogy- extended version- despite the fact that Jeff and I. and I had just been to the cinema to see Stardust based on a Neil Gaiman book that was, conveniently, available for perusal and comparison. But again, I meander through these thoughts as if they had some purpose, when in fact, there is no point.

I had wanted to share NYC with Isabella, to show her something new, something special, something that we could do together, alone, that is, just the two of us, as opposed to with the entire family, or boyfriends or husbands or what have you. My plan was destined to fail. No, not to fail, to fizzle. She whined quite a bit. Now, I must remind myself, as I reminded Jeff, this is an age of self-involvement, and no matter how smart and with it she may be, and she is - making more connections between films and actors than many of us-- she is an attention hound, unfortunately, singing "Dr. Worm" by They Might Be Giants, and mocking me when I ask her to settle by sitting in the middle of the porch in a lotus position and loudly ommmmmmming. So the grey gloomy day nixes our plans to see the Statue of liberty, but we do go, by ourselves, to the Central Park Zoo, or rather, Jeff drops us at the gate and runs an errand regarding his filming in Ohio this weekend, and I am left to feed my child a hotdog from a street vendor (we are in NY after all). There are no benches. We are on the edge of the Park, fifth avenue and 64th, at the entrance to the zoo. There are some muck covered and smiling construction workers, they sound Caribbean to me, chatting it up with a white lady in a suit, who seems to know them. I ask if I. can steal a corner of the bench, and one jumps up, obsequiously to offer us half the bench. I stand, in a dress and high heels. I have taken to dressing like a grown-up, too. I asks me why I look so "fancy" and I laugh because I don't look any more fancy than any other day, or than most other days, but these are new shoes, and oh my feet hurt, what was I thinking? But I am mistaken, they hadn't started hurting yet, not really, that was just vestigial pain from the wearing of other new shoes a few days prior at the wedding. Nothing hurts, nothing much, that would be later when we walked the twenty blocks up to Times Square to go to the movies again, this time to see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. For now, it is I. and I, and a hot dog, and a bottle of water that I slipped in my purse before stuffing the parking ticket which was too rain-drenched to read properly, or to even know if it was for me (though it must have been, right, as it was stuck between the body and the hood of the car, but I still couldn't read it, except the part that said $115 bucks and I didn't even flinch, or get angry, and this is a change, I mean, it must be... there is something to be said for travelling alone: when things go wrong, there is no one to blame but me, and since it is always my fault, there is no point in berating myself now, publicly, wouldn't you agree?). So I say to the man, who is smiling and friendly-looking, "you can sit, we don't need that much space" and he bounces a bit, and says, "oh, no, I'm cold..." and I should just have left it at that, but I have this irritating habit of making small talk with strangers, God I am turning into my mother, and so I say, "Oh, not me, I'm hot" which, of course, is true as I just walked the five blocks from the Subway at a brisk New Yorker's pace (following Jeff, obviously. When I am left to my own devices I wander more slowly and stare up at the cornices and glass, or at the throngs of people that throb in and out of side streets and thoroughfares.). "Don't I know it!" he exclaims, and I blush because he just made me seem like I was saying that I was "hot" as in "sexy" which was the last thing on my mind at that moment and wait a minute, I thought having I. with me was supposed to shield me from passersby and their appraisal of my (dubious) feminine mystique. I manage a smirking "touché" and he laughs, and I laugh, and it is ok, because he just wanted to make me feel good, which, in the end, he did. I. and I, hand in hand, enter the zoo, and wander around. I negotiate with her, and make her speak Spanish to me, mostly because it makes me feel like I am cloaked in more anonymity than I am, and of course, half of NY speaks Spanish, but I had forgotten that, and anyway, if I am going to be a tourist, I might as well seem as if I am exotic and foreign instead of pedestrian and practically local, but just country bumpkin from up north, or down south, or from wherever it is that I actually come. It doesn't even occur to me, until later that the Italian father that was asking what the name of the cotton-topped Tamarins didn't flinch when I gestured to the name placard, moving to the side to show him it. That must have been strange, speaking Italian on the street probably doesn't have the same expected rate of eavesdropping interlopers as Spanish, I would imagine, but there I was, listening in on other people's lives.

I like the zoo. I'll admit it, though some part of me, some deep down revolutionary, left-wing radical part of me knows that it is little more than a hopped up jail for the animals, but I don't care right now, not too much, though I do launch into a discussion about the ethics of zoos, and animal poaching and conditions, but as little I.'s face crinkles into its look of perplexity I quickly remedy my diatribe by saying that I was sure that this zoo employed ethical practices. The animals did look happy, and what is happiness, ultimately? Getting fed regularly seems like the closest to happiness I get on a regular basis, to an animal maybe it is bliss?

When we are back in NH, after an eventless carride, listening to... I don't know if I should say this, but hell, we all know I have totally eclectic tastes, and I am only feeling self-censuring because of the book I was reading, High Fidelity by Nick Hornby, that was making me laugh out loud, and that I had borrowed from one of the roommates, not sure who, but was forced to leave behind unfinished and then make a stop at Barnes and Noble and buy myself a copy in order to finish where I left off at page 209. So I was listening to Judy Collins and yes, literally welling up with nostalgic tears for an era that I never lived! and singing to Paul Simon, "me and Julio down by the schoolyard..." and I. is wailing away, "goodbye Rosie.... Queen of Corona" only she says Verona, because she has been obsessed with Romeo and Juliet ever since last summer and even made me buy a copy of Zeffirelli's version for our house, despite the fact that there is one here at my parents' house, and I'll admit, I have a soft spot for the film myself, especially, and this is where she and I differ, because I actually like the sex scene, have liked it ever since I was 13 and we watched it in my 9th grade English class, where Sara and I had those giggling fits that lasted far past the appropriate, and perhaps propitiated the only public chastisement that I received, ever, in my high school career and which amounted to a semi-sarcastic interrogation, of, "are you quite finished?" and we would sneak looks at each other, and the laughter would boil up from some unknowable source of hilarity and we would turn away in an almost anguished pain, biting lips, and squeezing bladders to keep from spurting forth in laughter. Ah, but...

I was saying. Back in NH we went out to dinner at Consuelo's, the Mexican restaurant that Martín and Marigen, friends and family of ex-lovers, and intricate relationships too numerous and complex to describe here, and Jenn, a dear, old friend, also related to this family in similarly complex ways was working, and she tells me that when I. came busting in, a few months back, she was floored because there was a miniature Ilana, in dark, straight hair, and smooth cinnamon skin, but my replica nonetheless... and I cringe because it is true, down to the histrionics and everything, and Jeff is right, I am too indulgent, but I don't know how to be any other way, and hell, if I can't be indulgent, as I am with her and with countless others, then how can I be me? But that is a topic for another day, and perhaps one for when I am back in California, with my therapist, if I still have a therapist when I get back, and I can answer all sorts of questions for myself like why I can't say no and just walk away from people I love. But there it is, a bit of stumbling block, I'll admit, but I never claimed perfection, or even self-discipline... but maybe that, too, is part of being a grown up? I think, frankly, that it is more about learning how to lie to ourselves, squelch our creativity and condemn ourselves to boring mundane lives, jobs that reek of stability and houses that ooze responsibility and I am not so sure I want to be a part of it. Nomadic isn't so bad, when it comes down to it, though I must confess, I feel tired, tired, tired, and I still don't get to go home, but rather back to Mexico, to yet another house, and I was looking at pictures of Lulú's apartment, our apartment, mine and Kik's, with a sort of nostalgia generally reserved to things long past, and not just three weeks ago...

I. didn't want to take a carriage ride in Central Park because after having a minor tantrum, albeit a self-contained, whispered one, whereby I was the bad guy because I took her to FAO Schwartz to look, but not with the specific intention to buy and she shouldn't stay because it was only going to tempt her and I wasn't going to get her anything after all, was I? So what was the point? This reverse, perverse logic sounds terribly familiar to me, and I suddenly (only now, really, that I am writing this, and thwarting another minor melt-down around going to be alone, her not me, well both of us, but in this instance, at least, I am the one who wants to go to bed alone, and she does not) realize that I operate under these same perversities and maybe, just maybe, everything really is all my fault after all. But this, too, will have to await further examination. She didn't want to take a carriage ride because she is still mourning Buddy.

Buddy is a horse that drew our carriage in Montreal exactly 5 summers ago. She has missed him ever since. Now I don't know about you, and well, certainly there are people that I have met and missed ever since our fateful encounter, but they are not horses, now are they? (though they may indeed be asses). But she deeply regrets the loss of Buddy, not that he was ever more than a rented beast of burden, but she fed him sugar cubes and when we asked, two weeks ago, in Montreal if Buddy was still around, and the man, quite kindly told us that Buddy had gone, but which I. understood immediately to mean that he was DEAD, she was morose for over a half hour, and once again, her loss of Buddy made her never want to take another carriage ride in her life. They aren't cheap, so I really shouldn't complain, but I am a bit concerned about this obsessive compulsion to fixate on an unfixable loss with such resonating zeal. I don't know. This parenting thing is a bit stickier than originally contemplated, plus having a kid that is sharper than a whip and doesn't let go of things, which may in fact be a genetically inherited trait, is an added complication.

And so I close with no real opening, but there is a croaking that sounds a bit like "Mommmeeeee" wafting down the stairs, two hours past when it should be, and my arms, and breasts are required for a tender push into temporary oblivion. So I take my leave, for now.

sueños sucubinos

Érase una lengua muy larga,
una lengua que no sabía callar
se metía en todos rincones
deleitaba al punto de estallar.

Érase una lengua muy larga
unos dedos, una mente, el mar,
que de nada servían sus olas
y mejor no se deja humillar.

bella

bella
Originally uploaded by lunita.

(In honor of Sole and Costa Rican Mother's Day)

Back with my bella... home again or traveling, however you want to look at it. I have done nothing but cook, clean, and read several thousand pages of Harry Potter, oh and visit Montreal, Vermont, an old friends' new restaurant and tomorrow Boston to see KK of Portugal fame (ok, not fame, exactly). Sigh. There will be multiple plays, a lovely wedding, and a visit to Walden Pond, too. Why do I feel like I need a vacation from this vacation?

8 1/2

Liliana tagged me

1. No suelo participar en encuestas o juegos de esta índole, no porque no me parezcan dignos (o tal vez un poco así, seamos honestos) sino porque en el fondo, desde muy niña, estoy esperando que al aceptar, saldrán todos los demás de sus escóndites para burlarse de mí.

(I don't tend to participate in surveys or games of this type, not because I think they are beneath me (or maybe a little, let's be honest) but because deep down, ever since I was a child, I have expected that upon accepting, everyone will come pouring out of their hideaways to make fun of me.

2. Estoy aprendiendo a controlar ciertos impulsos obsesivos, pero hay otros que de plano, no puedo domar, como el de buscarme en la piel imperfectos y arrancarme las costras, o palpar hasta el cansancio los moretones de los golpes que me da la vida.

(I am learning to control certain obsessive impulses, but there are others that I simply cannot conquer, like searching my skin for imperfections and ripping off scabs, or poking bruises that life has given me until I can touch them no more.)

3. Me avergüenzo de que lo primero que hago, casi, antes de levantarme de la cama es abrir la computadora.

(I am ashamed that the first thing I do, almost, before getting out of bed is to open up my computer.)

4. Aunque no me crea nadie, en el fondo soy una persona terriblemente tímida.

(Though no one believes me, I am really a terribly shy person.)

5. Confieso que he visto más películas de los libros que he leído este verano (y me causa un extraño sentimiento de culpa)

(I confess that I have seen more movies than books that I have read this summer (and it causes me a strange sense of guilt). )

6. Me enamoro con facilidad y amo intensa y tercamente. Sólo no entiendo eso de la exclusividad, por eso, creo mejor vivir en la soledad.

I fall in love easily, and I love intensely and stubbornly. I just don't understand the idea of exclusivity, and so, I think it better to live in solitude.

7. Detesto hacer ejercicio repetitivo que carecen de sentido aunque me encanta vagar por las calles horas y horas sin ningún propósito más que mirar.

(I detest doing repetitive exercises that lack meaning even though I adore wandering the street for hours and hours with no more purpose than to stare.)

8. Más que un miedo de alturas, me aterran los bordes porque no confío en mí de no tirarme al vacío en un momento dado.

(More than a fear of heights, I am terrified of edges because I don't trust myself not to throw myself over at any given moment.)

8 1/2. Y me apena el todavía no haber visto la película de Fellini.

(And I am embarrassed about not having seen the Fellini film yet.)


Aunque no creo en presionar a nadie,
I tag:
Sole
Yuré
Agustín

Aventurera?

“Have you ever traveled in Mexico alone?” Nacho asks me over breakfast. His mother, despite my protests and best attempts to be helpful, is making eggs, to accompany the fresh papaya and melon, toast, coffee, cheese and tortillas that are already laid out before us. Really, I try to insist, but I am the guest, and I am made to feel welcome, cared for and pampered. I can’t complain.

I see everything, Nacho, comments, as I am ruffled by the abundance of sexist beer adds (she knows how to swim, but she always has “floaties” how ironic – bastards), sexualized earth mothers, and embedded racism (Jennifer Aniston plastered on a wall, advertising a neighborhood hair salon in San Cristobal de las Casas). But we go back to this idea of traveling alone.

I think. I always travel alone. Except I don’t. In fact, I never travel alone. No that can’t possibly be. He says that he loves traveling alone, I muse that I in fact like to travel to people. The hours in busses, planes, automobiles and boats don’t phase me in the least, in fact, I like to lose myself in abstractions, fantastic stories, wonderment. I ask myself how people live, how they love, how they feel. I wonder if a thousand years ago people had the mental energy after all the physical labor that they needed to complete to have such trivial existential crises as those I have on a regular basis. But I always have someone waiting for me at the other end. Always. We discuss this as a metaphor for our differing poetic style. He is visual, adjectival, conceptual. I eschew adjectives. I am direct, verbal, sensory. We are in a combi, 35 pesos, from Tuxtla to San Cristobal, he gives me a present, his most recent book, not the one that is coming out shortly, but the last one published. There are snatches that catch my attention. I like his writing, I like translating it, perhaps precisely because his style is so different from mine. He closes his eyes and I watch the landscape out the window as we climb steadily, or not so steadily, wobbling from side to side, up the mountain. The vegetation shifts from caducifolios (deciduous trees) to evergreens. There are women squatting by the side of the road, with bright rebosos slung around them, carting babies and I squint, but I don’t ask, what they are doing, as the smoke rises, whipping past, I realize that they are collecting firewood, and constructing square stacks about which to cook. And on we climb. A thick layer of clouds cools the atmosphere, cars come towards us with headlights cutting through the white. I look over and Nacho has his eyes closed. Why do I never travel alone, I ask myself again. I have been all over the world, launched myself off into the unknown, but I always end up with someone. There is always something waiting. When will I learn to be alone?

San Cristobal is beautiful, colonial churches sprout out of unsuspecting plazas, there are street merchants lining long strings of makeshift tents, tianguis, but without the bright blue plastic tarps of other cities. These are white cloth, other than that, they are mostly the same. We bargain. I walk away. We bargain some more. I buy colorful cloths and wedding gifts, adornments for hair and shoulders that have yet to be named. I am attracted to the texture of the cloth as much as the color. I breathe in the smell of wood burning. I feel at peace. The air is cool up here, not nearly as beastly hot as yesterday, on the water with the wind whipping my hair around my face, smiling like a pup with his head out the window. I like to feel the pressure of the wind on my skin, like the pressure of the cool glass against my cheeks as I watch silently, miles passing before my wide eyes. El cañón del sumidero, I am told, is a naturally occurring fault. The embarcadero houses competing rackets, marimbas on one side and a cacophonous drum set on the other. The man who had sold us the tickets, acted like a radio show host, making shouts out to the tourists from different places through a crackly microphone. I made some snide remark about noise pollution and job hazards. Really, Ilana, he laughed, you do come up with some funny things. No, seriously, I insisted, imagine what kind of emotional stress it would cause to have to work with this kind of noise all day long, every day. He nodded in agreement, still laughing at me. I feel sorry for the children who come up with their huge hungry eyes, begging us to buy bracelets, or clay figures, or little comandante Marcos dolls. They have the same hungry eyes as the little boys in Janitzio, “regalame un peso, Seño…” You promised you’d buy something on the way back….

It is a bit disquieting to be surrounded by such rampant poverty, to feel the weight of one’s belongings. It is strange to feel so different, so blatantly devoid of color, of essence, of past. Later in the day a little girl tells me I am lying when I tell her I have no change, another woman, in a market stall tells me I am lying when I tell her I have only 500 pesos, and that I like her merchandise but I simply have no more. “Mentira,” she insists, and I hold up my hands in a shrug, “Los dios sí sabe…” God is watching, he knows…I shrug again, “then he knows that I have no more money with me…” and I walk away. I guiltily buy one boy a packet of ritz crackers and give the other 5 pesos to two little girls, willing to sell their chulel (soul), stolen in a photograph while their mothers hide their faces from the invading white woman. I don’t take their picture. The discrepancies are painful, the raging internalized racists discourse, at once meant to please, and to manipulate. Days before, returning to D.F. from Morelia, drunk on little sleep, I stumbled dazed out of the Observatorio bus station towards the Metro. The taxi drivers stare me down in some sort of mix between pity, amusement and dismay. “A dónde vas?” one asks, “Al metro” I reply, trying hard not to stumble and fall, again… “No… he replies… the metro?” incredulous, “but that doesn’t go with your personality!” My personality, huh? My personality? What can he possibly know about my personality… I buy my two peso ticket, feed it into the metal maw of the turnstiles and limp my way down the stairs: dirección Pantitlán. My ipod is plugged snugly into my ears and I listen to, of all unlikely things, Gloria Estefan’s Mi tierra, wobbling with the melodramatic scenery of common places.

I feel tired. And alone. But alone in that way that you know will end, that will have to end. Alone in myself. There is no self-loathing these days, or very little, though my body rejects the blatant heat, rebelling in little patches of itchy skin that refuse to calm themselves. Here in Tuxtla, I have been treated so well it will be hard to leave. I have been sleeping, finally, after so many months, sleeping despite the heat, with the fan blowing calmly over me. I turn it off in the early hours of the morning if I awaken, because in those hours it is cool, before the suns rays raise waves of heat in rhythmic pulses from the ground. From San Cristóbal, we took a small colectivo to a town with no equal. You want syncretism? He asked, wait until you see this. We step out of the taxi, and I look out across the trash strewn central square, in the late afternoon, there are still stands speckling the plaza, still merchants, mostly women, hopeful of selling their perishable wares. We stop at the municipal building and Ignacio pays the 30$ (pesos) for us to gain access to the church. Since when do you have to pay up front to get into the Catholic church? I ask. Aguanta… this town has its own government and it is relatively independent from the federal and state powers. I smile wanly, make some joke about us being in the middle of another Canoa, and he looks at me seriously. It could be a second Canoa, he states, if you take a picture inside the church. I gulp, look up to see it sparkling white with bright toy-like colors decorating the front entrance. I do not expect what I see when I walk through the doors, reminded in over 15 languages not to take pictures. It has to do with their cosmovision, he reminds me, the believe that the photo captures their chulel, it robs them of their soul and their place of worship of its sacredness. I make sure my camera is neatly stowed in my purse. I have no desire to be lynched, nor to rob anyone of their soul. In fact, later in Palenque, alone, or rather at Agua Azul, I sit eating my filete de mojarra al ajo calmly, willing my massive headache to ease itself, sipping from the black waters of imperialism (coca-cola, what can I say, when it comes in the recycled thick bottles it tastes different, and I needed to try something to combat the migraine and nausea) I watched a young blond man, one that I had seen at each of the varying tourist attractions, the archaeological site, the first falls at Misol-Ha, talking to an amiable young Italian couple. He talks about his travels as if they were conquests, he is tackling the world, taking it on, one important city at a time. I shudder inwardly. I don’t want to be like that. I don’t want to barge through doors, and culturally pillage, I prefer to be invited in. I tell this to Nacho today as we are driving up into the ecological reserve to see the Canyon from above. I thank him again for being so obsequious with me, for his family’s hospitality. I think that may be it, after all, sometimes it seems that we couch our hunger to know the world in terms of the imperative sites, the patrimony of humanity… but I think it is in the smaller places, the less grandiose that I prefer to see. When I travel, what I hunger for is a different sort of knowledge. What are the preoccupations, how are people’s houses decorated, what is a typical day. I hurt a little when the Italian woman asks the little girl if she goes to school, she seems not to understand, which may have more to do with the woman’s poor Spanish than the little girl’s lack of schooling, but I think about such an existence, one that requires you to constantly insinuate yourself, to interrupt meals, to insist that your merchandise be purchased, all day long, every day. That, however, wasn’t my thought then. My thought then was, how can I pretend that I am not as vulgarly consuming of other cultures as this poor kid, who doesn’t even see it? And how do I avoid being a part of that. I send back the wonder bread and ask for tortillas, do I really look that American? I cringe and my headache slowly eases, for a while, and later in the cool water of the river, the falls neatly captured for my Japanese camera’s memory, I forgive myself, just a little, and let the cool water rush over my body, blue water, ancient water, non-potable water, to be sure. I can feel the vibrations, the dull hum, I am back in San Juan Chamula.

In the church, which is much less a church than a wide-open nave with no pews, and evergreen needles spread over the white tile floor. Lining the outer limits of the space of worship are statues in glass cases, saints, like those in any other church, but in an abundance that I have not had the privilege of seeing before. Inside that and all around the perimeter there are candles burning, pulsing, there is a glow that rises, and falls, the mirage of aqueous air that the flames give off. There are small groups of people, clans, huddling in spaces on the floor that have been cleared of pine needles. There are rows of candles lit or being lit, and bottles of aguardiente, coca-cola and other sodas. The coca-cola, I am told, is an integral part of the ritual. Every ofrenda has three small bottles, I see, and there are soda bottles among them, always. Syncretic practices indeed, I smile, or cringe, or feel sad and sorry and at the same time amused, though I know this is a highly inappropriate feeling that I try to squelch. I couldn’t help giggling with Joel either, just a few days before in the tiny, kitschy church on Janitzio with its gold colored aluminum fishes, and tinsel, Christmas lights flashing along the pulpit. There was only one Saint in glass there, and he was covered with American dollars. Migration, we both got serious, of course, the almighty dollar, splitting up families, dragging people off their islands, out of their communities over the border to work for pittances. It can’t be all bad, I think, but I can’t seem to find any good in it, and we are serious for a few minutes, walking up the hill, around the far side of the island, avoiding the loud thumping bass and the imploring calls to buy pseudo-Mexican Taiwanese merchandise, mixed with local goods and color.


But here, there is a low hum that rises, like steam off of water. It is not a chanting in language, though there are prayers being said in a language so unintelligible to me as to be foreign even in its cadence. It is like an ohm, like Buddhist prayer, and I know that it may sound the same but its meaning must be entirely other. Or perhaps not. Is there any basic meaning in prayer that differs fundamentally from one faith to another? I am astounded by such acts of faith in and of themselves, and I am conscious that we are being merely tolerated. There is, at the end of the church the typical retablo, but the strange thing, the astonishing thing is that instead of Christ in the center, he has been shrunken, and pushed to the side, and in his place there is a huge figure of San Juan Baptist, from whom the town derives its name, and, it would seem, its power.

So, I decide to travel alone, if for only a day, to Palenque. It is one of the places that I have long been meaning to visit, to see its friezes, to the jungle. I arrive at 6:24 in the morning, in a stupor of back pain and vague nausea. The bus stopped in San Cristóbal and Ocosingo (which houses the Toniná ruins which I will have to see on another journey), bright lights for 10 minutes at a time, and the highway was nothing more than a long series of sharp curves cutting swaths back and forth through the mountains. I found myself paying for a collective tour because it seemed much more efficient and cost effective than private transport, or combi. I used my national student id card, despite its date of validity having passed, once again for both bus discounts and free entrance into the INAH site. Being the intrepid traveler that I am, I climbed every temple step available, followed trails deeper into the jungle, circled around the ancient edifices. I tried to take pictures that avoided the majority of people, and in spite of the early hour, there were many. Sweat poured off of me, soaking my shirt, behind a massive tree, I stripped my pants from my sticky skin, and put on shorts, later I removed the shirt, only to wear a sports bra, albeit a relatively modest one that covered almost all of my belly as well. Here it was a normal sight. Mostly Italians, French and Germans, with some Americans, there are always Americans, interspersed among the European travelers. I smiled at the children, thought of my own as my muscles wavered with each descending step. If I die, I thought, at least I talked to her this morning. Fleeting thoughts, I have no intention of dying, though one never knows when zipping around slower-moving traffic on mountainous jungle roads. When I had seen all my little head could take, and stretch my body in yogic precision, I started my march down to the museo de sitio, the rendezvous point. “Pero güerita, es un kilómetro y medio,” says the man who I ask, very earnestly. “You need a taxi, or a bus…” “It’s just a kilometer, 10 minutes, tops,” I smile, and it is downhill, I think to myself, which is only mostly true, I later find out. “Te acompaño güerita?” his buddy asks hopefully, and I wave my hand in a gesture of gratitude and rejection, the same gesture used to say no more food, or no I don’t want to buy a comandante Marcos model clay pen. I march happily in my difference, under the sun, through the jungle. I hear the screams of monkeys that I do not see. I am alive.
At the first waterfall, I scramble up over rocks, hopping up hundreds of feet above the lagoon, I turn down the offer of a guide into the gruta, and feel my way through the darkness to the interior. The guide shows everyone, including me, the bats, and the interior waterfall, coursing in the darkness. I am transported momentarily to the caves outside of San Miguel de Allende, filled with steaming thermal waters that jump from cracks in the earth’s crust. This water is cold though, and once I scramble back down, I quickly peel the colored pareo from my waist, the shoes from my feet, and I submerge myself, desperate to relinquish the heat that seems to emanate from within my body.

By night I am exhausted and my head hurts again, but I have taken several pills and drunk various liters of water to no avail, the nausea-provoking ride out of the jungle was more than my over-taxed body could take. I sit quietly in the central plaza. It is different than others, there is only one side of Portales, and on the other side there is another plaza, filled with artisan stands and fried-food (ok, that part is typical). I suddenly feel like I am the only gringa ever to dare sit there alone, with no protection. There are eyes on me, and I feel self-conscious, but I am still too hot to put pants back on. Walking I see the looks, the whistles, the sucking in of breath that sounds like sizzling meat. The only ones who really dare say anything seem to be the younger boys, “Hello Baybeee… don’t go, baybeee…” I want to burst out laughing because the boy sounds like the big bopper but is young enough to be my charge, if not my child. I take refuge, yes, of course, in an air-condition internet café, and only there, talking to people halfway across the world, do I finally find myself at home. Plugged in, cooled-off. Quite depressing really, but safely familiar nonetheless. For 8 pesos an hour, I kill some time, in the quiet cool. A little boy comes in, asks for money, tells me I am “mala” when I refuse. “Sí,” I tell him, a little boy of 7, maybe, “soy lo peor” and for him, at that moment, this white woman who can afford to sit in front of a glowing screen for 8 pesos an hour can certainly afford to give him 5, and isn’t there some moral imperative? This chantaje moral, I think, as he grumbles out the door, is it a learned characteristic? Globalization in its finest glory.

But I am too tired to get my head around it, and I am not as bad as all that either, I think back to the movie we saw at the Muestra Internacional de Cine (there are benefits to being a big fish in a small town, Nacho has free passes to all the films in the muestra that started at the Cineteca but rolls around the country, spreading film culture – hallelujah) the other night. Vers le sud. (Bienvendios al paraíso, France-Canada, Dir. Laurent Cantet) It had its problems, mostly regarding incoherencies in costume and social spaces, and an annoying interlocution with the camera that had no raison-d’être, but we will not enumerate them here as this is not my film diary, but a travelogue (though incidentally another really good film that I saw a few weeks back in DF Play (Chile-Argentina, Dir. Alicia Scherson was also in the muestra and i, in my opinion, an excellent, coherent film, well worth the 25 pesos to get into the Cineteca, to say the least, and really much more)- it was about reverse sex tourism in Haiti in the late 70’s, unquestioned racism that is wrapped up in the veneration of the exotic, and in our analysis, it touched on some of the threads that Ignacio and I had been unraveling as we walked through Tuxtla’s botanical garden earlier that day, after we had visited the paleontology museum, and the pre-Colombian collection in the central museum where the “cuidador” dumped the contents of my bag, including Lucy, my lovely little computer, onto the floor. She has a few more dents and curves than before, but otherwise doesn’t seem much the worse for wear. As we walk out, grumbling about idiots and misshapen metal, I point out that the “cultural corridor” is peopled only by busts of illustrious men, not a single woman (although, come to think of it, with women like the national teacher’s union’s avaricious head, Esther Gordillo, biological sex has very little to do with one’s commitment to social justice and equality)

Under the thick foliage we ask ourselves: Is there such a thing as female writing? Film-making? I still can’t decide, but there is certainly, if not an aesthetic, an ethical commitment I find myself upholding. He has had this argument with his fiancée, Alicia, also a dear friend of mine, many a time. We come to no conclusion, but I insist on pointing out instances of soft sexism, naming cultural institutions after men and women, but principally the primary schools are women and the universities and higher prestige institutions are men. It is a never-ending battle, so we end this tale with micro-tourism, walking along the forest trail to look out over the water of the Río Grijalva that courses through the canyon, we find a proliferation of insects which I choose to examine and capture on film. I lose my sunglasses, but insist on being the one to climb down over the wall to retrieve them, and climb back up. I apologize for teasing him about being macho for wanting to do me the favor, he helps me back up over the ledge because I can’t find a finger hold in the rock face. We reconcile. After all, he did come pick me up at the bus station at 5 in the morning, after another night of interrupted sleep.

Now it is off to the movies again, to see Nuovomondo (Italy-France, Dir. Emanuele Crialese) after an afternoon of Japanese food (not bad at all) and a late nap. Globalization indeed. Tomorrow morning, back to San Cristóbal, of I can drag myself out of bed, to see about indulging myself in a present of amber jewelry (I mention to Nacho that what I need, really, regarding relationship material, is someone who knows how to buy me presents. I say this only half joking because I think that if there were someone that could a) discern my highly contradictory and stringent tastes, and b) thought of me fondly and often enough to spontaneously buy them, and c) was self-sufficient enough to do so, then they would meet my basic criteria anyway). Then, at night, another 12 hour bus ride back to reality, in order to do not one, but two interviews. I don’t relish the thought.