Through the Looking Glass

From T to V, Sans Screen

Checking into international flights, I've often wondered what fills the suitcase of a traveler. Is the cart of over-stuffed, trunk-sized cases full of gifts for the family in Mumbai? Is that duffel carrying candy, not found on the market in someone's new home base in Hong Kong? What is it that people value enough, so much that they deem it a worthy souvenir or a flavor craved far overseas? What will they sacrifice space for another sweater for?

If the TSA folks in Amarillo wondered at all about my just-under-fifty pound bag, they soon discovered the Celestial Seasonings tea is part of my return-trip equation. Lemon Zinger isn't something I can pick off the supermarket shelf here in San Pedro, and boy, I'd be willing to pack a whole Samsonite with the stuff to grace my teapot back here at home.

But as heavily illustrated and quote-laden those colorful tea boxes are, heavy they aren't. It's another coveted something that puts the pounds into my bag: books. Sometimes illustrated, but most often not, fiction and non is what I most look forward to bringing back from the States.

Good book stores are few here, the likes of Gandhi and Porrúa offering the widest selection of available titles. But books are expensive here, often double the price that the same work will cost in the U.S.--the price one pays when demand is down. Amazon now ships, it seems, through Casa del Libro MX, but our address makes package delivery a dubious enterprise, at best, and the shipping costs almost as much as the books themselves. In Spanish or in English, the right book rarely comes cheaply.

And the right books make keep the world recognizable, familiar, and full of both story and surprise. My suitcase came back with me with books I've read, and many I haven't. Books for friends, books for Patricio, and books for myself--for my groups that I love. Books' magic is that of taking us somewhere new. I'm now taking my own to a new place, to shelves that mean an adventure for them, too. The best part, though, is the places these books have taken me, literally: to homes of generous Mexico City friends, one in a place like paradise.

Before going north to the comforts of my family in Texas last month, I packed a bag full of overnight things to join the book club group in a mid-week escape to Valle de Bravo. A dear, delight of a member, generous to the nth degree, invited us into a world like a recipe for perfect. Women, walks, buoyed by conversation--one about a book--we lightened our figurative baggage's load, leaving everyday life in suspension.

Some travels take people home, some take us to visit family. Trips might be to someplace "real," or to a fantasy created to paint the world in colors of ease. Valle de Bravo might lean toward the latter, yet it still feels like a spot that's in between; a balance of light and heavy, like a suitcase of good books and some Colorado tea.

(Take a look at the photo album--if not up now, up soon in the right-hand column)

Found

Written across the center of her website and catching one's attention immediately, Robin Pascoe invites the reader to "Find yourself in my books." Available on amazon.com, I ordered a copy of A Moveable Marriage earlier this afternoon, because on Tuesday I discovered that her invitation doesn't disappoint. She spoke in Polanco to a room full of women, astonishing me as I recognized myself in her words. Not only did I find myself, I found myself validated, realizing I may be somewhat isolated, but I have never even once been alone.

Her audience was the expat woman, and in particular the woman who follows her husband to the country where he'll work, leaving her own career behind, along with the comfort of an established identity. Whether the woman is from the same country as her husband or not makes hardly a difference; she will suffer a great loss, and will often be blindsided by the grief.

I understand exactly the experience she described. It is the most difficult thing I've ever had to wrestle with. To hear that it is so common and so natural, and from someone who has lived it herself, was nothing less than a balm. In that hour, I was able to let go of the ideas I held that I have been a wimp, not adaptable enough, an ungrateful and ugly American whose troubles don't merit the tempestuous inner monologues they've provoked.

A year ago, writing to friends and family to let them know about my new life in Mexico, I talked of wedding plans and my favorite sugared figs, my in-laws and Day of the Dead. And I said that culture shock was something I hadn't expected. "It's an identity crisis," I wrote, and in a large part, I still believe it is.

Arriving in Mexico, I suddenly found myself without success at work to define me, or my friends, or my good income and the freedom it had lent me, not to mention the freedom that comes from a safe city. I missed all those things because I love them, but also because they helped buoy an identity that I liked a great deal, and without them, I felt desperately lost. In spite of the happiness that finally being with my husband brought, I grieved, often alone and confused and unsure what I should do. And it soon became clear that the financial side of life we'd both expected was not going to materialize any time soon, obligating a past sense of financial control to disappear in the wake of professional Mexico's reality.

In her website, Robin says that, "Family therapists who counsel expatriates agree that grief is an overlooked dimension of the culture shock cycle...Ask accompanying expatriate spouses anywhere in the world to identify the most overwhelming loss they feel after moving abroad and identity will likely be the near-unanimous reply," and "the sense that something is missing from their lives—possibly forever—doesn’t altogether disappear with their culture shock."

Had I known from the beginning that this would happen to me, too, along with the advice given to alleviate the situation, I may not have begun dealing with digestive problems that continue to bother me every day. “When emotions associated with grief or trauma are shoved onto the back burner, they will eventually rear their ugly head in some manner,” believes family therapist Lois Bushong, and I know she is right. But advice taken late is still better than never, and I now stand by its helpfulness to the end. Connecting to expat communities is invaluable, no matter how important it is to also try integrating into a new culture. It has helped me feel like I am reinventing my own life, for myself, releasing me from the complete dependence on my husband and his world to define who the new me would be. But not living near to other expats has been both difficult and a likely blessing. For too long, I desperately needed contact with others who shared not only a common expat denominator, but also similar interests and backgrounds. On the other hand, though, I have seen, learned about and understood so much more of Mexican life--and spent so much more meaningful time alone with Patricio--than I might have if I'd lived close to the safety net that an expat community provides. My circumstances, though still not easy, have helped to slowly work on reinventing myself into someone I'm beginning to like a great deal, too.

And I agree with Robin when she says that reinventing oneself is one of the greatest gifts an expat life can offer. Finding myself in her talk encouraged me to continue remaking myself. I'll keep taking more control, and it feels unbelievably good.   

Seeing Things Clearly, Part II

True friendship comes when silence between two people is comfortable. So said the slip of translucent paper, wrapped around a Bacci chocolate that a true friend bought for me in New York. I believe in the quote, and I suppose it means that my blog and I are now very faithful friends. It's true that Through the Looking Glass isn't exactly a flesh and bone person, but it's close enough for me to let such a saying fit the bill; we've been maintaining a rather comfortable silence for over a month. I hope that you, reader friends, buy into my excuse for not writing as well.

I walked a lot in New York, something I don't enjoy as much in most other places, where I'm not as anonymous, free to walk in straight avenue lines for miles, or satiated by the constant eye candy of brownstones, shops and shady Central Park paths. I crossed many of the same intersections more than once while I was there. Two weeks lends a good stretch of days for retracing steps and seeing a familiar spot again for the first time, and for stepping and observing in silence, and for seeing oneself for the first time again, too. That is what happened, and it was a mostly happy thing.

Distance from my Mexico routine and the comfortable ease of my old city-walking one shed some light on a subject I'd soon be reading about: happiness. Orhan Pamuk, who I later learned was walking the same city streets, teaching at Columbia and only weeks away from winning the Nobel prize, is the author of my subway-read, "Snow," where "happy," among others, was a very key word. His characters found it to be a very fleeting thing, tainted by a reluctant apprehension of its imminent disappearance.

I know what he's talking about. The volcanoes here are often like happiness for me. I would like nothing better than to see them clearly on any given day, there on the southern edge of the valley. Almost always hidden behind a bank of thickish smog, I can't help but think that we do so much to thwart our own efforts in the realization of joy. When an extraordinary day of clarity comes, and the city's buildings take on sharp relief underneath those volcanoes, an acute yet heavy happiness settles up in my throat. I can't get enough of that view. Literally. I know it will be gone again within a matter of hours.

But I also know it will happen again, sometime, when heading down into the city. It seems that retracing the same, familiar roads--of habit, of commute, of revisiting the places one loves and where loved-ones live--affords a certain offer of happiness, if we're patient enough to let it happen.

I'm silently going to let it. I won't let go of the idea that full happiness can be a true friend.

Time Travel

I could be in Abilene right now, or in New York, or even in Oxford--in any of those evenings like this, because I feel so incredibly the same. It's an evening that stretches out ahead with me and the place to myself, easy and almost lazy, with all the things I love to savor in alone time. I'm re-reading and re-loving Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife, with a tingle of identification, enjoying the luxury of an evening of my own just as if it were two, seven, nine years ago. Simply reading the book again is a transport in itself, to the mornings and afternoons on the subway, pulling it out of my black leather purse to live moments with Henry and Clare. 

Nights like this are almost the only ones when I know just what to expect--nothing too surprising, to make me alter my limited vision of the world. Lamp light, an ill-fated, already half-eaten bar of dark chocolate, and the music I like most settling into the corners of the house. And the book Patricio's reading, left partly-hidden under a blanket on the living room couch. He's not traveling far tonight, just as far as the pool hall to wield a cue and nurse a beer with some of his best college friends. But he's also been time-traveling a good deal recently, through that book he rarely dares to leave behind.

And unlike tonight, that tome of his that he guards with his life has rendered a number of expectations completely null. He's marching through Bernal Díaz del Castillo's The Conquest of New Spain, which has proved to be a fail-safe volume of recipes for tearing down pre-conceived ideas as effectively as the Spanish dismantled Tenochtitlán's temples. Read immediately after Cortés' Letters from Mexico, what it reveals is astounding. We knew Tenochtitlán and it's sister, Tlaltelolco, would be incomprehensibly beautiful, though now we can say, "And how!" We'd also heard of cannibalism, and perhaps know more than we'd care to after the fact. But the most unexpected discovery in these relations of Hernán and Bernal has shifted our idea of Cortés into a very different incarnation. In the context of his times he was, above all, noble. Indeed, he was greedy for gold, and religiously intolerant beyond doubt. But he and his soldiers wept when Moctezuma died; had it not been for circumstances he couldn't quite control, Tenochtitlán might not be limited to an archaeological dig.

If your interest is piqued by Mexico in the least, or you're jonesing for journey through the sixteenth century's younger years--or looking for a pretext for enjoying a bar of dark chocolate--I'd recommend it. Bernal and his crew are anything but ho-hum company, even if they are five hundred years old.

the intangible elixir

there is a certain alchemy that i think is real, because somehow, something i'd dare call akin to panacea comes about. it's more than scientific, and the only base metals involved in the process might be found in an earring, a button, or a shoe. it's an alchemy of women, together, to talk.

yesterday morning, with a view of close-cropped greens and sand and heavy green branches, a little alchemy was practiced in a haven of atizapán. a book club, a golf course, and a constant stream of coffee. i left three hours later with a gift more valuable than gold: the generosity of mind and spirit, a nascent sense of community.

five years in new york meant five years of crowing over ethnic enclaves and their close-knit communities. little greece in astoria. little poland in greenpoint. little odessa out on brighton beach. the dominican republic up in washington heights. but until this book talk of vargas llosa's trujillo and his dominican domination, i'd been holding myself to a strange double standard; though less about ethnicity and more broadly about being foreign born, i'd spent a good year with no enclave at all. how silly, i realize, to isolate myself. i was ready for some alchemy.

i'm still sipping on the panacea.

stone soup

leftovers are alright. sometimes, like with my mom's mennonite borscht, the dish tastes even better on the next day's reheating. most people would probably agree, though, that's it's good to vary what appears on the table. catering to cravings or an interest in healthy balance, the pot on the stove turns chicken into broth one day and potatoes into mashable softness the next. and in the democratic kitchen of the u.s., i'd say the melting pot is being put to excellent use, set over the fire, making stone soup.

the united states is, to its credit, a country of readers. books, magazines and newspapers are published with relative ease, available for reasonable prices, delivered even to a person's mailbox if they so choose. librarians will rarely have a hard time finding a job. the new york times' best seller list is a veritable river of bubble and change, new titles constantly appearing. and almost everyone i know harbors fond memories of being read to as a child.

books are valued, and with good reason. at their best, i think they're the finest looking glasses on the market. take, for example, the story of stone soup. it's core is the same, the details malleable, the questions it raises about the human condition eternally relevant. a quick search for the title in amazon.com alone yields 280 results; a tale poking around at faith, mistrust, community, trickiness and epiphany is, doubtless, a recipe for a classic.

and it's a classic that merits another telling:  ****

once upon a time, there was a famine in which people jealously hoarded whatever food they could find, hiding it even from their friends and neighbors. one day a wandering soldier came into a village and began asking questions as if he planned to stay for the night.

"there's not a bite to eat in the whole province," he was told. "better keep moving on."

"oh, i have everything i need," he said. "in fact, i was thinking of making some stone soup to share with all of you." he pulled an iron cauldron from his wagon, filled it with water, and built a fire under it. then, with great ceremony, he drew an ordinary-looking stone from a velvet bag and dropped it into the water.

by not, hearing the rumor of food, most of the villagers had come to the square or watched from their windows. as the soldier sniffed the "broth" and licked his lips in anticipation, hunger began to overcome their skepticism.

"ahh," the soldier said to himself rather loudly, "i do like a tasty stone soup. of course, stone soup with cabbage--that's hard to beat."

soon a villager approached hesitantly, holding a cabbage he'd retrieved from its hiding place, and added it to the pot. "capital!" cried the soldier. "you know, i once had stone soup with cabbage and a bit of salt beef as well, and it was fit for a king."

the village butcher managed to find some salt beef...and so it went, through potatoes, onions, carrots, mushrooms and so on, until there was indeed a delicious meal for all. the villagers offered the soldier a great deal of money for the magic stone, but he refused to sell and traveled on the next day.   ****

the immigration reform bill may not have passed this time around, but outside the storybook, soup soup commands a much longer prep time.

in the meantime, i'll admit it's not easy to wait. it's also difficult to listen to the skeptical villagers' comments. i had a terrible time keeping my cool when hearing that fox news anchor brit hume described marchers carrying mexican flags as "a repellent spectacle." it requires some painful struggle, resisting the adoption of his mentality which appears to be rooted in fear. by calling him a repellent spectacle, which is still an almost overwhelmingly temptation, i'd be surrendering to my own fear that people really believe him. in the end, i'd prefer to have more faith in the u.s. than that. 

and faith is the most fantastic part of this stone soup story, unfolding in fits and starts in communities all over the country. a republic works best if people really believe in it, and i think it would be hard to find more fervent believers in the ideal than the immigrants who sacrifice so much to be a part of it. a considerable part of patriotism, it seems to me, lies in a deep trust that the system of government and what it stands for will continue to work in the interests of the people who call it home. if that's the case, i wonder if immigrants, legal and otherwise, have a greater capacity for patriotism than the fearful citizens who want them to leave. i find the immigrants' faith in congress, in spite of decisions that continue to directly and negatively affect them, both astonishing and fundamentally admirable. as with the soldier/stranger in the story above, there exists an understanding that, with patience, the skeptical might still discover the value in working with the outsider who arrived uninvited.

i'm optimistic. this isn't the first time an immigrant wave has brought conflicting feelings to the national surface. it's hard to believe, now, that the irish also once arrived with incredible controversy in their wake. the current situation, then, is a new variation on the old recipe, keeping the country's political kitchen healthy and interesting in the slow preparation of a one-day delicious, more spicy stone soup.

signals

love-hate relationships. i think we all have at least one. in my case, the word "radio" comes to mind. i've drifted between loving and hating radio for at least fifteen years, beginning with love and my little blue tape deck stereo, dutifully helping me record casey kasem's sunday broadcast of american top 40. the parade of pop songs, played and rewound and played again and again, and again, showcased the voices along the spectrum of divas to darker thinkers; mary j. blige, janet jackson, michael stipe and kurt cobain were a few of those vocal companions whose dependable company i counted on. i hadn't yet succumbed to snobby attitudes shadowed with guilty pleasures--radio-listening was all about equal opportunity for the mainstream. a few years later, growing another inch and growing tired of mariah carey, classical radio arrived on the scene, somehow managing to win my loyalty, leaving poor casey to lose another listener. it was the beginning of my descent down the slippery slope into aforesaid snootiness.

not long after, leaving home to accrue college credits, the wider selection of stations was a wonder to me for the first year. but as semesters started settling into the past, resignation settled into my radio-directed attitude. the little blossom of interesting internet radio was the only thing casting color in the midst of gray, blah, local college radio and the monopolized city stations. classic rock was still okay for the car, but clearchannel's clinch on play lists was downright depressing.

living in new york served only to solidify the then-nascent opinion. college stations with freedom, neighborhood broadcasts and npr aside, big apple radio is in a bad way--the most diverse city in the world has the most homogeneous radio scene in the universe. i take a lot of pleasure in being petty and slathering blame on the clearchannel company. it's not a very classy way to complain, but i don't feel too much remorse about it, either.

this isn't a simple hate story, though, so let's get back to the love. in mexico, i've found it comes easily. i'm smitten with IMER. the instituto mexicano de la radio is both clever and correct when playing with its initials, transforming them into inteligente manera de escuchar radio, or "intelligent way of listening to radio." with a number of stations in the capital and satellites in the states, the group has developed niches for different listening tastes, incorporating news, music and conversations into their daily offerings. each station is guaranteed play list independence. they also sponsor a slough of great concerts. the programs of horizonte, reactor and opus didn't have a hard time consoling me over the loss of my ipod library. its not npr, but it makes up for it with a lot more music. and free books.

patricio and had the radio tuned to horizonte last week, deciding to email the station in an attempt to win a story collection, the subject of the show's discussion. the stars were aligned just for us. we went to coyoacán to pick up our prize yesterday afternoon. a slim volume of comical stories, fact mixed with fiction, playfully illustrated, and taking place in the state of chiapas, i finished reading it by the time we got home. short and sweet. i guess i'll have to dig around the shelves for something more to read on the plane tomorrow.

we're flying together for the first time, leaving mexico city behind for ten days of a self-determined spring break with stateside family. time in front of a computer occupies very little of the agenda; i'll have to beg your pardon for the dead airtime here.

interim suggestion: david byrne radio

 

tenniel turns 186

a happy birthday wish goes out today to the spirit of sir john tenniel, illustrator of the british magazine, punch, and the man who engraved alice into lewis carroll's stories and alisa cooper's imagination. i remember spending as much time taking in the illustrations of those books as i did reading the adventures of alice in her looking glass world.

one of the engravings in through the looking glass illustrates the chess board valley. standing next to the queen at the top of the hill, alice sweeps her gaze across the landscape below and excitedly comments, "It's a great huge game of chess that's being played-all over the world-if this is the world at all, you know..."

the sentence now strikes a chord in me that didn't exist when i read the the book as a child. how sound a description it is of our life this side of the looking glass. my experience yesterday, waiting in line to pay the phone bill, highlighted the fact that in many cases, i am a pawn; though i can make my own moves in my chessboard valley of mexico, there are kings and knights who also make strategic decisions, affecting the rest of us in a way that spells loss. i cannot simply mail in a payment because the game of chess here doesn't allow me to do so. beyond blame, though, i still create my life by thinking about my next move and how it will hopefully allow me to end up on top. and everyone does this, from george w. bush to the toddler in the highchair next to us at lunch.

but it is the last part of alice's exclamation that really leaves me thoughtful. is this really the world at all? i'm chronically afflicted with doubting thomas symptoms, but i still wonder if this world is really the real reality.

whatever the case, i'm glad tenniel made the decision to pour out some of his artistry into carroll's works. what a winning move it was.