Mexico Journal: July 15, 2010

Jenny, the curandera, said that San Cristobal was magical and that if it had kept us there longer than we had expected, it would give back what was needed. I thought about it for a good long while, making my attitude fertile land for adventure, or whatever it was that I might need. My conversation with Palermo followed, and it was just what I needed. He reminded me of the "Little Prince" and it was, incidentally, his favorite book. It was if we knew each other from before. He listened lovingly, and he talked: about wanting a different world. We realize, he said, that we're never really alone. And he was right, there we were sitting in the dirt - he and his friends making macramé jewelry, me watching the rhythmic motions of their hands - smoking a little with these young men, exiled from their own upbringings, searching for something else, maybe not so different from what I am seeking.

I pulled myself away eventually, high on our conversation, and mostly just in need of a continuation to my own personal cleansing journey. And then I stumbled into Santiago's clutches. I had seen him the night before, I thin, and he had tried to pull me into a conversation but I was accompanied then, and I didn't need the energy then. In fact, I was walking past the cathedral steps with every intention of checking my email, happily thinking of home, and how I wanted to tell someone about my walk along the city's periphery. It didn't happen. Santiago roped me in with his cocky swagger and warm caramel eyes.

"It's my birthday!" he declared, "Come sit with me for a while." And I did. I mean, I didn't have anywhere else to go, not really, and I had a set of keys, and well, it was what I needed, after all. He convinced me to walk with him to buy a liter of liquor (of which I did not partake!) and we sat and talked and shared stories. He had twin girls in Norway (or was it Switzerland?) and another set of children in Quebec. It was his 30th birthday, he said.

He listened and made me feel beautiful, not superficially, but deeply. He had quite hypnotizing eyes when they trained upon my own, pools of onyx and brass. We walked back towards the Zócalo, he tied a bracelet around my ankle that he made. He told me tales of his life and I told him about mine. We held hands, swinging them playfully as we passed the marimberos in the Central Kiosk. We stopped to dance a few songs in the glittering rainless night. Then we sat on the Cathedral steps. He wanted to hold me, to possess me, to make me his, for a night, perhaps, but that was not in my plans. He traced the lines of my face with his fingers, ran his hands through my hair, made his deals, shot the breeze. I could feel the pull of a palpitating life of informal economy and stolen pleasures. I played along, but I didn't want to return the kisses that he attempted to steal from my mouth. And then, just as it began, it ended. I told him I had to go home, and that while under other circumstances a passionate adventure might be really appealing, I was in a different place. I was "cleansed" and I need to simply protect my little heart.

He walked me to the edge of the andador and while his deep pools of eyes were tempting, my decision was immutable. "Tienes un corazón tan grande..." he said, and I believe he could really see me. "Eres muy fuerte, mujer," were his last words to me as he kissed me goodbye and I walked away, never looking back.

Boundaries, limits. I needed that, and to feel the love of a complete stranger, whatever his ulterior motives might have been.

When I got back to the house in a taxi (I didn't think it safe to walk home alone in the dark after 11), I found myself quite alone. Jorge had left me a note that made me smile, and feel loved. I cleaned the kitchen once more, in gratitude and packed up my few belonging into my backpack for an early departure the next morning for Veracruz, again.

In the morning, of course, we didn't make the 7 am bus that we had planned on, rather we caught a 10 am bus to Tuxtla Gutiérrez and from there a 1 pm bus - third class- to Coatzacoalcos.

I must admit that I was very grateful for home remedies because the night before, when my stomach was still not all that one could hope for (to say the least) and my cough still hadn't completely abated, I made a special menjurge, not sure if the various effects that I hoped to acheive wouldn't contradict one another. I chopped up a few ripe guavas and boiled them with cinnamon, a pinch of gordolobo and a eucalyptus leaf. Thankfully it worked and I managed the six-hour bathroomless bus bouncing along the free Mexican highways without incident. I slept in a hot sweaty stupor as we crossed great swaths of the Republic. The mountainous cold, mistly climate of San Cristobal ceded to a hot sub-tropical explosion of verdor. I awoke just around Malpaso and we crossed violent turquoise waters on a suspension bridge of dubious provenance.

People came on and filled in our empty seats - I shared my space with a woman and her 5-year-old daughter (with my pack beneath my legs, elevated by the wheel well no less!) She was a güera de botella with plucked-off and painted-on eyebrows, and tacky jewelry of the nouveau riche - enormous silver teddy bear "hoops" studded with diamonds (or rhinestones?) and sporting acrylic nails with blue 3-D flowers. Still, she was pleasant enough. From Morelia, Michoacán. Her older son, she told me, had been kidnapped, her whole family, in fact. That's why she wasn't living in Michoacán anymore. It was strange. She wasn't the only person to talk about such violent eruptions into daily life with such a matter-of-fact way. (I was thinking back to my bus ride to Xalapa from DF and the story my seat-mate told me of her neighbor, whose family was literally extorted into the street).

And yet... the sheer, unfettered beauty of the changing forest landscape, giving way to red earth, tezontle hills, animals out to pasture, fertile lands that are rich with varied fruits, lakes, rivers, palm fronds, coconuts cut with large machetes by the side of the road, women making tortillas, standing over a hot comal, in straw-roofed palapas.

When we got to Coatzacoalcos Pedro steered us onto an immediate transfer to Cosoleacaque, the town where they had already been visiting a pair of jaraneros: Fico and Ricky. They received us in their comfortable and unfinished house, and we stayed up late talking and playing music. Well, I mostly listened.

The next morning we set out after a "breakfast" of shrimp cocktail and seafood broth to the beach. It was probably only 30 miles away, but it took 2 hours and much negotiating to get there. We travelled in the open-aired back of a truck, with a blue vinyl tarp covering an iron structure that arched above our heads. The wind felt divine, as if I were becoming the dog, with his head out the window, like their Siberian husky - Keyser, that earlier I had played with and who had lovingly given me a full body bath with his tongue.

The beack, Peña Hermosa, was so vast and completely virgin that it almost felt like an invasion. But sadly, the marine algae was strewn with litter - an unfortunate reality in many places, where trash collection is irregular at best and the collective consciousness has not agreed to repudiate the poisoning of the earth. Still, the water itself was sheer glory, warm and wonderful, there was a reasonably large sand shelf. I waded out, not trusting fully the seemingly peaceful waves. Then Jorge and Pedro swam out father than I and I let my guard down a bit, confident in their navigation.

All of a sudden I realized that the sand was no longer beneath my feet and that I was on the far side of the breaking waves. I tried to contain my panic. Fighting the ocean is a futile task anyway. With my first hard kick the slight pull in my right quadricep seared with pain and I remembered how Jenny related that to my relationship with masculine authority. I pulled hard with my arms instead, joining the crest of the breaking waves and letting them push me back to safety and sure-footing. Jorge and Pedro, it seems, had their own drama of a similar kind, and Jorge was pulling at Pedro's long curls, nearly drowning them both.

We cured ourselves of the scare with a large mojarra frita each accompanied by black beans, pico de gallo and handmade tortillas... And cold beer, at the enramada. I can't think of a simpler or more perfect meal. We talked and laughed all together and Fico, Pedor and Manuel took turns playing and singing. We took the hired transport back to the nearest town (Jujapan??) and then waited to take a shocks-free bus, the last of the night, back to Cosolea. When we arrived we were met with the sky splitting open (like the night before) and pouring hot, thick rain drops on our heads as we walked up the street "Emiliano Zapata" back to the house.

I rinsed in the rain and threw a few bowls of water over my body to wash off the salt and sand. Everyone crashed out to sleep early, except me, because I started to read (after forcing myself to wade through the slightly pedantic, over-informative prose) La mujer habitada. I have suddenly been ensnared by the idea of being a warrior in the armed resistance despite ones own upbringing. It's just, well, I still can't get my head or heart around the part where violence, even justified violence, is the acceptable choice. I just don't know, but maybe that is simply my privilege, a bourgeois choice of a philosophical question rather than a real, urgently lived present.

In any case, we had a lovingly prepared meal in the morning, of enchiladas de mole, and Fico and Ricky's mother told us about her life, her experience working for the government of Tabasco, of leaving an abusive husband, of her years in alcoholics anonymous. And all with aplomb, and a warm smile. She insisted that I take a book of recipes because her mole was delicious, that way, I'll have to come back to return the book one day. Fue un mandato.

We left Cosolea without Pedro (he stayed behind with a girl he met before and seems to be romancing) and took a bus to Isla (after Acayucan). When we got there, a kind man, a school superintendent/ inspector, gave us a free ride to Playa Vicente. He and I sat in the cabin of his truck and talked education, liberation pedagogy (Paulo Freire and bel hooks) and politics on our 30 km ride.

Now, after a dinner of albondigas with the guys (25 pesos only!) I came back up to the hotel room to rest a little. Our room is comfortable and costs less than $8 a night) and opens out onto the plaza where the music festival is playing.

Earlier I was distracted by a seemingly pained man singing verses angrily about dignity beneath my window. I've been growing quite fond of the Son Jarocho and begin to recognize some of the songs. It is a music whose richness and complexity don't come from individuals but rather from collectivity. My thoughts on revolution have listed recently in that direction - education - liberation pedagogy as the only viable route to profound and permanent change. The unteaching of individual progress in favor of a collective understanding of mutual responsibility to one another. That's what the music inspires in me.

It must be midnight now because the official event has ended and the invitation to the fandango has been invoked. I wonder if the guys will come for their instruments or if they will simply stay out. In the meantime this brief parenthesis must end so I can get back to my book.