Through the Looking Glass

Pedro Infante, Que Cante, Que Cante

Just like Patricio and I are prone to spontaneous bursts of dance, the cat and the car's interior are also often witness to our impulsive bits of song. And the top three melodies, with lyrics we'll sometimes change, would be recognized by almost any Mexican citizen who happened to hear us through an open window. When the skies are overcast and the clouds look heavy, one of us is bound to take on an exaggerated tenor and deliver the prediction that "Parece que va a llover" (It looks like it's going to rain). Or when the mood strikes us, or to better call the other in from a different room, the register runs higher and out comes a vocal shower of "Amorcito corazón" (My little lovey heart). And sometimes, an almost pouty "Pero te quiero más que a mis ojos" (But I love you more than my own eyes) will find its way into the air between us. They're all perfect for our purposes, and they're all cultural references with one thing in common: an icon whose death happened fifty years ago yesterday.

Pedro Infante sang each of those lyrics in movies still so popular that they're played in rotation (along with around 60 others) each weekend on major network television. A toda máquina, the Pepe el Toro trilogy, and Tizoc are the ones we pull our own top three from, but I'd also be telling the truth if I said that Patricio knew about a dozen other Infante songs in their entirety, by heart.

Just say the name "Pedro Infante" to someone here, and lyrics, images and sentimental ties will come to the listener's mind. Everyone has a favorite movie to name, or three, and though some love his memory a great deal more than others, it would be a rare and astonishing thing to find a person who frowned at the invocation. Actor and singer, with a voice that still wields the power of swoon, he's the one person an aunt of ours said would have made her consider acts of adultery. My mother-in-law can go glassy-eyed when she hears him, my father-in-law will belt out "Efigenio El Sombrerudo" at a party with his best imitation. Patricio's daughter, even as a little girl, couldn't have been a more rapt audience when watching his films.

He's something much more than anyone I can think of in American culture; it's a delicious coincidence that his last name literally means "prince." He's like a bigger-than-life soup of Frank Sinatra, Elvis and Robert Redford well-simmered together. And unlike Elvis, whose life also ended too soon, Infante hasn't become an icon of kitch. He's as classic as a Redford, or a Humphrey Bogart, perhaps. But for many, like Elvis, Infante continues to live. He was even said to have moved right here to Nicolás Romero, spending the rest of his days in peace. Our friend, Laura, knew the rumor all to well--she and her father made nothing less than a pilgrimage here when she was a girl, only to find an old man to dash their hopes and disappoint them both.

His lyrics and lines, not to mention his charisma and his rags-to-riches story of fame, continue to maintain thick, solid roots throughout popular Mexican culture, fifty whole years after the ill-fated flight he was piloting in the Yucatán. Only a few years back, supporters of López Obrador claimed that "¡Peje el Toro es inocente!"--a reference to one of Infante's most famous characters, Pepe el Toro, framed for a crime he didn't commit.

And much like Pepe, Infante's record has been washed virtually clean by his fans. His machismo may have been enormous, some illicit connections may have been true, too. But he's become a legend here, and the legendarily good find their faults falling away, far in the background.

And what's left is the stuff of spontaneous, joyful song.

Tremble

Patricio and I were stretched out on the couch, me with my feet pressed against his calves to keep the toes from cold, and we were drifting while a late-night Chilean war movie played on Channel 11. Friday morning had just begun only half an hour before. This is why, when sinuous electronic sirens sounded out beneath a voice repeating "seismic warning," we mused and then sleepily figured it a strange twist to the film. But the warning kept playing over the actors' voices, and we realized the earthquake was about to happen right here. Well, there, really. In the capital, where the shifting lake bed of a city rocks with the tremors sent in from the Pacific.

Up here, some twenty miles away on the foothills, in our sturdy brick one-story house, we sat up and waited, wondering if the shake would make it as far as our place. And it did, when we felt the room slip into an almost imperceptible dizzying sway. We'd have thought it was only imagined--a hoped-for effect--if our light bulbs and towels and other dangling things weren't left swinging back and forth until the momentum was finally lost. It was so quiet and brief. If we'd been fast asleep, it wouldn't have woken us.

And I thought to myself, "The wise man didn't build his house upon the rock in a strictly metaphorical sense."

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.

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.

   

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.   

Metal Matters

It's true, I haven't been punished in a long time. I've suffered consequences, of course, like those suffered after telling the woman with the scissors to "go even shorter," or those that happen after deciding that devouring a third, thick disc of cinnamoned chocolate is, really, a good idea. But I haven't done much to merit castigation--or its Spanish equivalent, castigo--since I parked my car on Spring street in a dubiously-marked no-parking zone. One hundred and five dollars later, I've tried keeping to the general straight and narrow.

But like most of us, even if it doesn't mean hair shirts, flagellum or a cilice--or even a string of rosary beads, for that matter--I've certainly been known to be hard on myself. Like the day two weeks ago when half of our zaguán, or tall metal gate, gave a slump to the center and would no longer close. Patricio flexed his biceps and got to work with the welder to fix it, but dropped the tiny, steel hinge ball in the tangle of green grass. Working his hands through through the blades nearest the ground, like searching for a lone tick on a wily gorilla's forehead, he was lambasting himself for a split-second fault of the hand.

Eventually, he found it, but not before my own personal reproof could put me in a figurative corner. "With a magnet, we could find that thing in a matter of seconds," Patricio said, and my mental Rolodex flipped back twelve months ago to the days I packed his belongings and we moved into our own little house. Clinging fast to his old wallet chain, curled around a collection of keys in the back of a dressing table niche, was a pair of huge magnets, perfect for finding steel balls in the grass.

I marched inside the house and took the key/chain box down from the closet, sure I'd find those thick, metal discs and sure to relieve Patricio of his grass-combing. But they weren't there. I even checked twice. And I realized that those magnets had probably gone into the black, plastic bags that went out to the curb. I walked back out into the yard, dragging my feet with and with a face full of compunction.

"I think I threw them away," I said.

"Oh, I doubt that," he said, "I know you'd never throw anything of mine away without asking."

Um, right. Of course I didn't inherit the habit of throwing things out from my dad. I remembered the day we returned from a Wyoming vacation to find that he'd had enough of our five cats and had taken them all to the pound. (We got four back). I'm not sure it made it any easier for me to see that Patricio chose gracious denial in the face of what was likely the case: that I'd thrown his good magnets out, and who knows what else that he might ask about someday. Contrition was certainly the word for the afternoon, though it did end happily with the zaguán returned to working order.

I managed to punish myself mentally over some metal, and soon discovered that metal can also by punished. In the world of penitence through prayed rosaries, bells rise up to a quasi-human status, names, potential for punishment, and all.

The Catedral Metropolitana that presides over the north end of Mexico City's Zócalo boast 30 different bells. Symbols of God's voice, the oldest, Doña María, left the foundry in 1578. The largest, Santa María de Guadalupe--a youngster at 215 years--weighs in at 13 tons. Not all the bells are rung every day, marking the hours of services or calls to prayer. And some, the punished, might not ring for years.

One of the bells, an esquila that rings with the centrifugal force of its turning, pushed on by human hands, is known as la castigada. She was punished with silence for fifty years after knocking her pusher in the head and sending his soul heavenward. It wasn't until the next jubilee year that she was allowed to ring again, though always with her scarlet cross. Perhaps being la castigada made her really seem more human, but she was certainly the bell that evoked the most tenderness from me. The tour of the cathedral's belfries is well worth it--to see the city from a bell's eye view and hear the angelus rung midday. But it was the penitent bell that made the trip unforgettable, to see that the voice of God had suffered in silence, too.

(More silence from this blog, as well, until next week. We'll be in the mountains of New Mexico, and thankful. A happy Thanksgiving to you, too!)

It's Just...I Don't Know

jus-tice: n. 1. The quality of being just; fairness.

2.a. The principle of moral rightness; equity.

2.b. Conformity to moral rightness in action or attitude; righteousness.

3. The upholding of what is just, especially fair treatment and due reward in accordance with honor, standards, or law.

Tagging along with Patricio yesterday morning, I accompanied him to work so we could later descend on the American Embassy with a pocket full of pesos and the spirit of shopping at its artisan bazaar. We drove into Naucalpan and inched through traffic to the courthouse, parking the Jetta with its nose to the railroad tracks. Patricio crossed the narrow street and started his lawyerly morning inside marble-floored offices of the Palacio de Justicia, literally translated as the Palace of Justice.

I slipped the bookmark up the pages of my book and opened it for a morning of reading, but eventually gave in to the distraction of roosters prancing around the front of the car. Looking straight ahead, not ten yards from the municipal/state court was an extensive settlement of squatters. The railroad tracks being federal land, no longer in use and overgrown with grass, it's not hard to set up "home" along its length, the likelihood of getting thrown out fairly slim.

Justice, the word that then kept me from focusing on the ones in my book. A considerable lack of it seemed to be right in front of my face, in large part on the the government's side, but also on the part of the squatters. Taking advantage of a political loophole to stick it to the government that's handed them a raw deal makes the idea of "moral rightness" suddenly become extremely slippery.

Because playing with scraps along the railroad tracks, two brothers passed the time together. Then one after another came scuffling out of the same house, a little girl with her sweater on crooked and her older brother, naked as the day he was born. A baby, crawling toward the light, made it halfway out the door before his mother took him inside, swinging him up by a single, tiny arm. Perhaps his older brothers would go to school in the afternoon session. And maybe they wouldn't. I could hope.

Lawyers came and went, pulling on the jackets of their suits as they did their job for the day. A few feet from their cars, the roosters and chickens and baby chicks came and went. So did those kids. And justice? It's just...I don't know.

Sticks and Stones

It can be great fun to dress up or disguise ourselves as someone else. Putting ourselves in their shoes and catching others off guard, for a moment or perhaps much longer. Being Jackie O for a night was a high time for me; standing on a busy subway platform with ivory-gloved hands and a pearl-draped neck is a fine way to reap some double takes. This morning I won one from myself, which was both a little disconcerting and amusing all at once.

I went for a haircut yesterday afternoon, and in a fit of zealous instruction asked that the woman cut those unwieldy locks down to well-humbled lengths. Twice I asked her to snip more off the back. I was determined to win the silent battle waged daily between my vanity and my wayward hair, but I slid down from the old barber shop chair feeling only halfway triumphant. She had blown dry the new cut into a meringue of fluff on top, so I couldn't be sure if I liked what she'd done or not. It felt good to be shorn, but Patricio's sideways glance let me know that I wasn't radiating "glamorous" from the head. I tried taming the poof as soon as we climbed into the car, smoothing my hands over hair while squinting into the sun visor's tiny mirror. There wasn't much to be done, though. That hair dryer had frozen the pastry topping look into an stubborn, unyielding position.

And then this morning, the bathroom mirror revealed that I had become someone else. My bed hair can achieve astounding results, and this morning, staring back at me was none other than Morrissey, come back from his fame-rocket days with The Smiths. While living in England for a semester, I would fantasize about running into him on a London street, back for a visit from his home in L.A. It never happened, but today my dream was oh, so belatedly fulfilled. I had become the Pope of Mope myself. I took advantage of the opportunity to croon a beautiful rendition of "Girlfriend in a Coma" for the bookshelf. I think it might go down as a great moment in indie rock history.

I've since worked the hair into a more Audry Hepburny look, but I confess that the Morrissey me was a good bit of fun. And fun seems to be the keyword, too, in another big disguise. I've spent considerable blocks of time over the last two days watching Borat videos on YouTube, laughing out loud and doing a successful job of convincing myself that spending three hours clicking on "Borat Dating Service," "Borat About Britain," and "Borat Hunting" was not at all a waste of time. Satire can be like candy, as luscious as Morrissey's lyrics, and I'm often a sucker for its taste. People like Sacha Baron Cohen--who can make us look in the metaphorical mirror to our own disconcertion and amusement--are good to have around. We're fallible, and it's refreshingly nice to laugh about it and then turn around and think twice.

There's a show that airs on Thursday nights here on Televisa's channel 5, and I think of it as Borat's Mexican spirit. Facundo is the host of Incógnito, a variety show that highlights satire in spots like "Que lo hagan ellas" (Let the Girls Do It), "Mi papá es un duende" (My Dad is an Elf), and "Untranseunte" (A Passer-by).

He shares much with Borat in the "Untranseunte" sketches, when he disguises himself and lets his antics loose to gauge the public's reaction; as an Italian, he trashes Mexico to the folks he runs into; as an abusive father, he smacks his kid around the street; as a human trafficker, he tries to sell a woman as household help. Most who react are noble, but for some of the more weaselly, the jig is hilariously up.

In the "Mi papá es un duende" spots, Facundo becomes Jaime Duende, an alcoholic malacopa elf with a prostate problem, letting loose the full range of machista absurdity on whomever he comes into contact. And then he pees on himself. It's over the top, supremely offensive, and often terribly funny. I can assure you that not a single person in Mexico doesn't know at least a few people who harbor some of Duende's characteristics within themselves. Sometimes it might even be us.

Fun is poked at machismo in "Que lo hagan ellas," too. Facundo transforms into a pompous, skeevy rich guy in a robe, holding a brandy snifter within inches of his face, and taking self-important, contemplative sips as he stoops to solve the problems of the common world. He assures us all that he can take care of the issue, but "wouldn't it be better," he contends huskily, "if we let the girls do it." Whether it's to help a woman go shopping with her husband or repairing a poor schmo's car, the two hotties in question work their woman-as-object magic to the tune of Gorillaz's "Feel Good Inc." After the whipped cream has flown and the girls are down to utter bikini-ness, Facundo accepts the thanks with a reminder that the schmo is still a schmo. And then we realize that, in the end, we're all kind of schmoes. We laugh at it, but deep down, we know we still buy into it. That Facundo is one sharp piece of work.

He may have a slowly receding hairline, making it less and less likely (oh, my, I really do hope) that I'll wake up one morning and have my reflection staring back at me as a dead ringer for Facundo, but his candid extroversion and unfailing aplomb make his work a Thursday evening treat. Sacha Baron Cohen and he would become fast friends, I'm sure, and the human foibles they cleverly fish out are raw ingredients for Morrissey's next hit.

Grace Glides on Blistered Feet

It can take on an infinity of forms, but when one sees it, no matter the context, it's hard not to know what it is. The idea of dance appears inherent in most everyone's varied concept of life. Whether they actually do it or not seems irrelevant.

I realized yesterday that Patricio and I have somehow managed to shake our things on a daily basis. It's a rare moment that we don't have music playing in the house or in the car, and eventually, one of us gives in to the bass line and the impulse to move a shoulder, a hip or a head. Sometimes that's it. But sometimes we end up doing our adapted form of the running man as a finale to a good song's-worth of wild abandon and heavenward looks, our fists pumping around in the air. I was awfully pleased to notice that we're still so dancy, even if we did let those salsa lessons dwindle to the status of "er, well, not anymore."

It's just that I think dance is a world of languages, and though we can make our own up and not have others stare back at us with faces molded into expressions of non-comprehension, when it's official, it takes a good deal of practice to learn. Patricio and I have both gone that route before, rehearsing what we've been taught, mimicking footwork as best we can and hoping that, if we're not fully learning the language, we're at least memorizing some poems of classic fame. And in the case of Mexico, moving poetry could fill a hundred tomes. The country's wealth of regional dances, or baile folklórico, is as varied as Scheherazade's tales.

Having learned a jarabe and a good son jarocho, Patricio and I have barely covered a single page. We know just enough poems--or pieces of them--to appreciate the whole language in that humble and slightly terrified way most do after a few weeks of French. Patricio started in elementary school, signing himself up for the after-school, traveling, white-clad Jarocho group. He negotiated the outfit out of his mom's purchasing power, and began pounding the raised, wooden tarima dance floors with all the measured rhythm he could muster. There he is, pictured to the left. If you can guess which one he is, you'll be the lucky recipient of a prize. Just ask Lori, and you'll know I'm true to my word. Click on the image for more detail; you have a one in six chance, so the odds are good. Go for it.

Meanwhile, I went for the baile folklórico bit just after graduating from college. Five years of a conservative school's no dancing policy--and the consequent clandestine busting it at home--had left me craving creative history like nobody's business. A heavy skirt with yards of folds and the Jarabe tapatío later, I was in love. And then Allison taught me the Son de la Negra, letting me try the skirt-swirling faldeo once with her authentic, arm-melting garment of ribbon-lined magic. And then she gave us Oaxaca's jewel of the Guelaguetza: the Flor de piña, with it's eternal-regal introduction and fabulously mind-warping counts. Who was I, then, to resist the allure of a week-long workshop in Acapulco four years later? I wasn't. I signed up. And after five days drowning in the music of Campeche, Guerrero and Chihuahua, I knew I was in over my head. Those who dance, who speak this language, are some of the finest linguists on earth. Alice Abrams hit on the truth; grace truly glides on blistered feet.

Which is why, high up in the Majestic Hotel, we were wide-eyed with happy surprise to know that we'd be watching some of those linguists on-stage. Amalia Hernández dedicated her life to fluency, and her legacy of a troupe danced their way through jarabes and sones jarochos like the best of all medieval bards. For two rump shakers who know just how hard that easy-seeming choreography really was, it was a night worth commemorating with our own, homegrown jig. Grace can also glide on blissful feet.

Remember

Michael Bywater, in the prologue to his book Lost Worlds, said that "damned or not, memory is stronger than oblivion." Día de los Muertos--really the two whole days it spans--seems one of memory's best seasons. Memorial days in the most intimate vein, invoking the essence--literally or figuratively--of those we love and can no longer touch, it's a chance to remember them and the small things they loved.

A visit to the cemetery isn't always a possibility, where hours can be spent making grave sites lovely with flowers, candles, a good sweeping and the family's shared company. And it's the altars at home, the ofrendas or offerings, that pay the closest tribute to those gone. The purpose and symbolism of elements in the ofrenda is well-described here, and I highly suggest taking the time to have a look.*

Patricio and I began last week to assemble our own little altar, collecting our calaveras--skulls made of sugar, chocolate or amaranth grain--representing the relatives we most miss: His grandmother, mother of twelve and strong as a tower steel. His uncle Lupe, who called him mi vida, and who left a large hole in his heart. Mimi and Papa, those grandparents of mine whose lives were a gift to the world. And Denny, mom's brother, who I know would have been an exceptional uncle Lupe of our own.

We left them a small dish with water and salt. Mona's peach pie and chocolate. Sweet pan de muerto, and amaranth just in case. As the clouds of copal fill the house with heavy scent, Patricio is bubbling up cola de res, a sort of oxtail soup stewed in adobo deliciously thick . And if the need arises, there's a shot of strong mezcal to keep a chilly spirit warm. The figure of a sheep, fanciful and sugar-sweet, stands watch over the spread, accompanied by a quiet, cowled monk and a swanked-out Catrina--company for memories, good souls, and even ourselves.

Memory may eventually be damned, but never these well-loved souls. Remembering them and their place in our worlds makes the root sense of 'holiday' real. These are holy days, for sure. This remembrance is sacred. A happy Dia de Muertos to you all.

*Out and about in the Centro tomorrow, I won't be blogging for the day. If you're interested in digging a little deeper, consider it time to take a look at all the links.