Through the Looking Glass

Before Tunick, Sans Tunics

Patricio and I already had sentimental attachments to the Zócalo--the main plaza here in Mexico City, and once the very center of the Mexica world. It was often our nexus of special trips into the Centro, and became the glittering backdrop to our first New Year's Eve together, celebrated with good friends on the top floor of the Majestic, just a couple of days after our wedding. This past Sunday, though, with almost 20,000 other people in the pre-dawn chill, it became both the focus of Spencer Tunick's lens and a central part of our own new ties to the square. We literally left our footprints there, and down a stretch of 20 de Noviembre Street too. And then we left with the more intangible memory imprinted in ourselves, as well.

It wasn't the first time for me to sign up and strip down for a Tunick installation; I also know what the floor of New York's Grand Central Terminal feels like to the touch of bare skin. We were a mere few hundred women, including two fantastic friends, calmly followning instructions under the turquoise arch and golden constellations. I remember it as slightly dream-like, and not only because it happened in the sleep hours of the morning.

Mexico, as is almost always the case, was almost incomparably different.

They say we were 18,000. We had no idea at the time. What we did know was that we filed in en masse, packing continuously into the streets below Tunick's setup in the Majestic, a roiling mass full of expectant and boisterous participants at five o'clock in the morning. In spite of the assistants' pleas that the crowd calmly sit and wait and be patient, hundreds of benign but restless rabble-rousers maintained the crowd in high, noisy spirits. Some did the wave. Some shouted the UNAM's cheer. Some yelled "Slackers!" to the latecomers of the crowd. And some cried "Get naked! Get naked!"up to the press reporters and curious onlookers, hanging out the windows and balconies of the hotel. Chants of "Mexico! Mexico!" burst out too many times to count. The city was just about to turn the stereotype of conservative Mexico on its head.

The temperature dropped further before the sky began to turn light; it was the only thing that finally subdued the masses before Tunick got the show on the road. But then his translator told everyone to make sure that we "filled up the back part" of the plaza, a hilariously sexual insinuation that caused even the quietest of us to laugh hard. Less than ten minutes later, our clothes lay in piles and our bare feet lay claim to the gray Zócalo stone slabs. Indeed, we filled the whole thing up.

Most of us hugged ourselves against the typically cold Mexico City morning, and then the loud- speakered directions rolled over our heads and moved us into place. We faced the hotel, and in a race against the sun's appearance over the Presidential Palace behind us, we stood, we saluted, we then lay on our backs, and later curled up into "Aztec Stones." Rubbing our knees, sore from minutes of waiting in that fetal position while those in the back kneeled into position and a joke or two about stray farts made the rounds, we stood and began funelling our way down the south-bound street, slow and jovial and full of solidarity--not unlike many of the politically-minded marches that often dominate the center of Mexico City. Only this time, no one wore clothes.

One last photo of the women was then taken--thousands lying on their sides, wrapped around a subway entrance on the southeast corner of the square. And when it was over, Tunick remained perched atop his ladder, surrounded by outstretched hands thanking him for his work and for what would be, for many, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

I wondered what he thought of this chance to make his art here in Mexico. Of his enthusiastic subjects, sometimes so verbally rambunctious that they interfered with quick cooperation. But I don't wonder at all about what Patricio and I thought. For us, it was an unforgettably joyful experience, surrounded by thousands and thousands of of fellow humans, exposed in all our infinite differences, and yet for just over a naked hour, so very much the same.

A Word to Paint a Thousand Pictures

The conundrum of writing when multitudes of special things happen;

This is where I stand, making haiku to gather up image and thoughts.

***

Madcap high-schooler, mooning traffic-slowed cars from his school bus window:

What more, besides a timely cellphone call, can make Saturdays such fun?

***

Applying for my Mexican driver's license was easy as pie.

A visa and a payment, a sitting before the camera. Done.

***

A postponed tour of an art patron's frenzied world bore a small world tale:

The kind woman to my right knows a good friend of mine down New Zealand way.

***

Dear friend, Rachel, lands in the City for a week of adventuring.

Next day, my Matrix is towed from Condesa's streets (parking anarchy).

Two rescuing souls in button-up shirts and ties banish fear with help.

***

Taking a taxi to Bellas Artes palace, our thoughts leaned toward dance.

Shen Wei's company left us breathless after their second performance.

***

Matrix, freed from the lot, rolls us up into green, mountainous glory:

Temoaya, where we watched the clouds and listened to clear water running,

And voices speaking Otomi carried themselves across stone and town.

***

Bar Chon: where ant eggs and chrysanthemum petals are served up for lunch.

Simply a good start, for the evening held promise of lucha libre:

A universe of masks, sparks, raised fists and popcorn--nothing, if not fun.

***

Slow, coffee morning preceded night, and my face smeared with birthday cake.

Tradition let me plant a frosting kiss on the cheek of the culprit.

***

A gorgeous day through canals in Xochimilco meant celebration.

I had turned 30, with a thriving sense of wonder still intact.

***

Palm Sunday having passed, we walked through the streets of Villa del Carbón.

Buying fine leather boots, I hoped for miles to go before I should sleep.

Network for Good

"Oh, my big mouth."

"He sure did stick his foot in his mouth."

"I'm eating my words."

Sometimes expression can come at a price. Mostly, it's benign--a social faux pas that becomes water under the bridge. But expression is still risky, in whatever form it may take. There's a chance that one might offend, and then what will the offended do? Navigating formal and informal conjugations in Spanish-speaking cultures is a familiar expressive minefield for anyone deciding on how to address a person. Tú or Usted? What is the price if I slip? Again, those social situations can be readily smoothed out and rectified. Expression may have its pitfalls, but they often turn out rather insignificant.

But expression can come at a much bigger price, especially for those whose statements reach an important audience, with a message carrying controversy's potential. In Mexico alone, nine journalists paid the price of their lives in 2006 for speaking out about drug-trafficking and social violence. Others are missing. Some are burdened by accusations and threats. Lydia Cacho, having published Devils in Eden and subsequently exposing the involvement of powerful social and governmental figures in a ring of child pornography and prostitution, was arrested without a subpoena, sued for defamation, and threatened to be thrown in jail to be beaten and silenced by some of the very people about whom she had written.

Fortunately for artists, the risks in this country are much less severe, or perhaps they are only less documented. Freedom of expression has flourished considerably since Fox took office in 2000, but the dangers of freely speaking will likely never disappear.

And so it is in too many other countries, to much more worrisome degrees. Fortunately, organizations exist and continue to form with the determination to foster both free speech and safe lives for the speakers. And I'm speaking out for them, directing you over to this page's left-hand column. Beneath the quotes is a heading entitled "Network for Good," and a link to "My Charity Badge." By clicking that link, you'll be directed to freeDimensional's badge, a vehicle for donating to four charities that work toward expression at less-costly price. The opportunity for supporting these organizations is priceless, however, and I encourage you to investigate and choose to donate to their cause. Being connected more personally to freeDimensional Inc., it would be fantastic to see it's support grow.

And the badges that raise the most funds before the end of March will receive matching funds of up to $10,000 from Six Degrees.

It seems that Network for Good is allowing better freedom of expression to come at a monetary price, too. It's worth it. And pass the word on--it can do a world of good.

Raise it High

Don't we just love symbols? Something easily identified, standing in for a different entity, one that is larger and unwieldy when put into words. They can sum up the familiar, and with them, we can construct a world of reflected identity. They can remind us of who we are, and they may inform others about us, too.

It might be a logo. Maybe a cross. A letter, perhaps. Often, too, it is a flag, and this past Saturday, Mexico celebrated its own. That green, white and red banner with the country's coat of arms in the center, the flag we know today is one of the most recognizable symbols of Mexico. Some might say that the Virgin of Guadalupe finds herself as a deeper, more visceral symbol of the country, and she herself even found herself on early Mexican flags--a symbol of those who fought for independence from Spain.

But for me, the flag seen these days over landmarks and city plazas--reaching dimensions of monumental size--and sometimes found in miniature, suction-cupped to windshields, carries a symbol that holds meaning even for me; someone not born to pledge allegiance to what it means.

It's that eagle in the center, wings outspread, the serpent in its teeth and talons, atop the cactus in a small, lacustrine island. It is a symbol not only of Mexico, or of the Mexica (Aztec) people, who upon seeing it as a completion of prophecy, knew where they were to call home. It can also mean something for so many; a symbol of destiny connected with a sense of place.

Other symbols of Mexico were present on Saturday for us, even if Patricio and I don't have a Mexican flag to our name. The morning was spent preparing for a slow afternoon of paella, shrimp stew, opened bottles and sunshine, and the welcoming into our home of the most indisputable of Mexican symbols that I know--the cherished togetherness of family.

Flag day held its own meaning for me on Saturday, having nothing to do with military marches or a particular affinity with red, white or green. Now part of a family, I'm a part of Mexico, too. And that eagle in the coat of arms sure does speak to me of an identity somehow Mexican, of a destiny all my own, connected with a sense of place.

Carving

We all sculpt. Shaping, molding, fashioning our worlds, we may even learn to let a masterpiece take form. Our lives depend on it; the decisions made and the dealing with what happens next. Patricio and I carved out another detail of our own this weekend, hopping into Pedro's blue Mustang and going north toward Irapuato with the convertible top down and the stereo's volume turned most of the way up. I kept my hair from tangling with my gray, cat-eared hat, and we were all kept from boredom by thoughts beat out of wind and unfettered views.

We stopped along the way for gas, then barbacoa brunch, and finally took off on the free highway from Querétaro, driving past cow and goat herders in their fields to a town called Apaseo del Alto. Along the main street, outside the storefront doors, is evidence that residents do more than metaphorically sculpt out a life of their own. Workshop tables are covered with dust and angel wings, wax and tools of a trade. Wood carving defines the town by a common craft, fathers and sons turning roots, trunks and branches into Quijotes, holy Virgins, headboards and sacred hearts.

Leonardo Cardenas made me rethink the word 'workshop,' seeing that the individual elements in the compound word really coexist. Pedro remembered him from many years back, when he and his wife traveled up to buy furniture after reading about an international prize being granted to Leonardo for a carving he entitled "Diosa de la Primavera" (Goddess of the Spring). Pedro mentioned their meeting years ago, and the small, wooden statue that had impressed him and Laura so much. Disappearing into an alcove of a workshop of a room, Cardenas appeared again with the very statue in his hands. Sitting unnoticed on a shelf for anyone to touch, he simply said, "I just don't have the heart to sell it."

Never mind his uncanny resemblance to Caetano Veloso, the man still makes an impression. Unassuming but quietly sure, he talks about his work without either pushing it on a customer or feigning false humility. He has shaped, molded and fashioned a world of folk and traditional religious art. His life has depended on it. A masterpiece has come of it. In a way, being with him for a little while sculpted us, too.

We climbed into the Mustang with new thoughts for the wind to whip and fashion.

Double-Edged Shard

Dilemmas have their day in December. Another slice of pie or another size of jeans? A mediocre gift or heart-felt good wishes? Clay pot piñata or rock-hard paper mâché? As if the existential burden of ceaseless basic decision were not enough. It really isn't enough, because this kind of choice can give us more power, more guilt, more gratification, more gastronomic delight. And heightened anxiety, trivial as it may ultimately be, sure does a bang-up job of making us feel more alive. What sums up December more than intensity of life, in awe, criticism, flavor and nascent hopes? Gifts are opened, a year comes to a close. Baby Jesus dolls are lifted out of their February cribs, and salt cod recipes are guarded once again in the kitchen. Looking inward and then trying to live it out.

While my brother was here with us, an unexpected dilemma arose, testing more than just will in the face of Christmas dinner's spread. We went to Tenayuca, the larger if less exquisite of Tlalnepantla's two excavated pyramids, and slowly walked our way around the serpent-lined base, eyes open to the remnants of colored paint and the ragged, map-like traces of stone-smoothing stucco. It was an archaeological Christmas gift of sorts, the unwrapping having already been done.

Yet it was hard to imagine life there, stone steps and altar bases leaving too much space in between sight and understanding. And then we came across a considerable pile of disintegrating sugar bags, the open seams revealing its terra cotta contents: thousands of ceramic shards, numbered by meticulous archaeologist hands, and left in a corner to dilemma us nearly out of our minds. Because when plumed-serpent worship eludes our grasp of the human scope, we still understand dishes, and the fragile handles of an old pot. Their era came to an end, but these small windows into a world had been brought to the surface again, and then discarded, gifts with no place of their own.

It was so tempting to take one, to reach out and pocket the work of a Chichimecan hand. They'd been left to the elements, further crushing each other under their own weight, and the weight of the dilemma bore itself down hard. Wouldn't a little pilfering be doing an actual favor? Is not a pot shard's place of honor on a shelf more noble than a neglected, moldering pile? Wouldn't having a small piece of history at home make our daily lives, somehow, better? If the ground beneath this whole swath of the city is one enormous, unexcavated site, what would really be lost to research if, with a sliver in our pockets, we had a large slice of wonder in personal gain? Wouldn't the possession of past, mysterious life make us feel, as we like, more alive?

In the end, we couldn't do it. We turned and left the dilemma and the fragments' siren singing behind. The fellow on duty said the shards, after much puzzle-piecing, weren't found to be parts of any recoverable whole, and plans to re-bury them near the pyramid were all he'd been told. They'd be put away again like Christmas recipes, waiting for a different day or circumstance to be brought out at another time. They, like the artifacts found daily across this historically wealthy country, will become someone else's dilemma, well past every December, as long as archaeology exists. I'll be thinking of them, glad to settle back in to much simpler choices, involving things like piñatas and their own brittle pots of clay.

   

The Truth about Talavera

Misconceptions are often born so quietly that, like assumptions, I don't notice them around until the truth loudly clamors to prove them wrong. I'll go to the grave with an abundance of misconceptions, I'm sure, but where pottery is concerned, at least I can count one less. I held a certain misconception for a number of years, and it wasn't cleared up until this past summer. It had cuddled up in a corner of my love for Talavera, indifferent to it's existence as a mistake.

It late June, Camilla jostled it around so it kindly made a swift exit, wrapped up in its cloak of belief that Mexico's Talavera tradition was born in Guanajuato, in the town of Dolores Hidalgo. I'd visited the town once before, weaving in and back out of plaza-side shops with my eyes full of color and filigree design. Taking for granted that such visual delights were original to the country's cradle of independence, I bought up a set of bowls that are the jewel of my kitchen cabinets still today.

Learning that Northern New Mexico's ceramic traditions were influenced by Spain's majolica ware brought my misconception to a happy end. Honed to sophistication in cities like Talavera de la Reina, the tin glaze technique was then brought to New Spain, where the craft flourished in one of the oldest of colonial cities, marked by its excellent location and abundance of regional clays. Puebla was the place where the Americas first saw works fired in colorful glaze, and this past weekend, I saw for myself why that little misconception of mine was, indeed, unfounded.

The streets of the historic center are lined by eye-candy buildings, many still adorned with Talavera tiles. Our hotel, on the city maps since 1668, boasted pieces that predate the American Revolution.Workshops and storefronts throughout the city carry pieces of all shapes, sizes, functions and degrees of exquisiteness, not to mention El Parián, the small craft market where I found my new favorite bowl.

Saying goodbye to my little misconception may have opened the door for another, but it's a pleasure to have a world of new truth to enjoy. And the truth is that I adore Talavera.

Art of the Weave

I've wondered for a long time why, when talking about easy courses, often elective, one would say with a mischievous smirk that they were "underwater basket weaving." Looking to entertain myself one sunny afternoon while spending time at my grandparents' wheat farm in Kansas, I pulled out a worse-for-the-wear cardboard box that had probably belonged to my mom. On the front, a picture of a lovely, dun-colored basket of long, round plastic reeds practically called out my name and said, "Come on, you can make me. I mean, it's only basket weaving, right?" So I pulled out the perforated base and the yards of plastic spaghetti, and promptly sat down to work, sitting on the floor by a window.

It certainly was basket weaving, and it was infinitely harder to manage than what I'd originally thought to be the most difficult challenge on the farm: getting Snookie, the Shetland pony, to start walking again after taking what seemed like an hours-long poo. That was the day my confusion began, the confusion that would give me pause when the term "basket weaving" was equated with an easy, fluffy class.

Walking through the market today, down a tarp-covered aisle where stands boasted herbs and eggs and Day of the Dead candles, a woman sat on a thin, space-claiming blanket and worked plastic strips into a black and white basket. She had half a dozen in various hues displayed on the floor around her slight figure, and the basket-to-be was well along the way. It seemed almost miraculous, the nimbleness of her fingers, working as she chatted with the woman at the adjacent stand.

I, myself, bought a number of baskets last Friday, from a woman who runs a shop just over the mountains in Toluca. Her husband was the weaver, along with other family members, and the shop has opened its doors to customers for 62 years and counting. He passed away two years ago, but his wife still keeps its shelves piled high. Not a little overwhelmed by the thousands from which to choose, I held and turned and lifted through dozens, filling up a table with the ones I decided should be mine, my brother's, my mom's and my mother-in-law's. It was a feast for the eyes, the hands and even the nose; the heady, grassy scent of the tule rushes used in the weaving gave immediate cause to breath deeply and savor.

My admiration for basket weavers runs deeply, as well, especially when it seems that fewer around Toluca are continuing to learn the art. Industrialization, pollution, and urban sprawl have diminished the tule's marshes, and the furniture trade has become a more lucrative artisan endeavor. Underwater basket weaving isn't offered at the university there, but I hope it still is in a number of old family homes.

In my case, basket weaving began and ended at the farmhouse all those years back. And I've chosen to practice weaving with words instead. Someone's paying me to do it now (read: job!), translating texts from Spanish into English, typing little baskets of interesting knowledge on the computer screen page. It may draw me away from blogging a bit, but certainly not entirely. Blogging is such a treat for me, just like those visits were to my grandparents' farm in Kansas.

In Public, As In Private

Rachel and I stepped up out of the metro station into the hurry of people beneath the presidential palace on Friday afternoon. Hedging our way around the Zócalo on the always busy cathedral side, our view of the square almost belied its existence; walls of PRD protest tents lined the space on every side. The heavy, gray stone of the surrounding colonial buildings became a muted, neutral background to the chaos of color it enclosed. The yellows, blacks and whites of the protester's tents, the reds, golds and greens of September's Independence Day, and the shifting stream of vendors and workers and people like us, walking our way to somewhere.

The PRD's protest of the presidential election manifested itself in our sightseeing for most of the day, but the quiet, ghost town feeling of the tents along Reforma avenue, where we walked toward the Museo de Antropología, seemed a world away from the hum of constant activity in the streets branching off from the Zócalo. The maze of tarps and forums and talks were a testament to a freedom that the protesters blessedly enjoy.

The going was slow toward the Palacio de Bellas Artes, where we were soon to meet up with Patricio. The road-blocking plantones are an onslaught to the senses, a bombardment of ideas and slogans and catch phrases being voiced for past two months. The issues seem blurry, the arguments, too. Sympathizing on both sides can trip a person up. But in spite of it all, there's an element of fun, of excitement in the mess, of reveling in the uncertainty of history in the making.

And its metaphor awaited out from under all the tents, right in front of the entrance to the Palacio itself. A public art installation made with thousands of suspended tubes, yellow and light and rubbery and smooth, held an attraction for everyone there. Moving into the mix, a type of malleable labyrinth, was the source of many smiles, no matter what the person's age.

There seems to be something about us that welcomes that experience, whether metaphorical or very real in our lives. Wandering through obstacles that are difficult to define, shaping the boundaries to fit our personal whims, and figuring out how to share all that space with the rest who are thick in it, too. It's strange and it's new, perhaps a source of anxiety but also of exhilaration, and no one can resist its allure.

For all the frustrations that this time in our country is causing, I was glad for a reminder that chaos can be okay. That it's possible to delight in the indefinable maze. That we all have the capacity to explore and to wonder, when given the freedom to see where it may lead.

like an aztec stone in a discotheque

showering last friday morning wasn't accompanied, for once, by music streaming out of the ipod. a five a.m. serenade for the benefit of a neighbor filled the front of our house, too, with the sounds of strings and voices crooning out mariachi melodies. we were up early for a trip to the bus terminal, where allison would be arriving on an overnight ride from guadalajara. at that streetlamp-glowing, wee little hour, we were pleasantly surprised to open our ears and rise with a little bit of that mexican art for everyone.

allison and i were destined to be friends when we spied each other's ribbon-edged, million-yards-of-fabric skirts taking up inordinate amounts of dorm room closet space in the year 2000. we were in vermont, pledged to speaking spanish, with an affinity for mexico that reached all the way to our wardrobes. it was only a matter of time before those skirts would be a small part of art for everyone, too--whorls of ribbon coupled with the staccato sounds of heels and the music of "la negra."

we spent this past weekend with allison and made friends with some folks that she knew, patricio and i delighting in the fact that nary a translation was needed, grateful for the spanish fluency in our crew of a native english majority.

and we saw more art meant for everyone. though admission was paid for my favorite places, it was minimal, and worth every peso for the art's preservation. the halls of both the mexica and the maya at the museum of anthropology were, for me, palaces of fascination; images carved in stone and images baked into exquisite pieces of clay, rife with symbols that speak of times we conjecture about, but on some level, managed to understand. 

we walked past things perhaps seen or even touched by cuauhtémoc himself, and then saw him, bigger than life, on an upper-level wall inside the palacio de bellas artes.  tortured in an attempt to reveal a great treasure's location, his image and those of the entire composition held us captive and somehow tortured, too--until patricio's joke-telling prowess saved us from any danger of overwhelming angst. david alfaro siqueiros, a 20th century creator and advocate of what i now call art for everyone, realized this work--it's content and, to a degree, it's style reminding me of the lost empire whose ruins we saw the day before.

that night, in a club whose centuries-old, exposed-stone walls betrayed the presence of old aztec pyramid stones within, some of us stood on chairs and shook our things to a group whose songs have been circulating on the radio. 

it was a weekend of friends, and a weekend of all kinds of public art. i think everyone would do good to have at least a little bit of both; their powers can connect us to the past, the present, and the future. that seems like a kind of salvation.