Through the Looking Glass

Que Milagro

¡Qué milagro!

I hear this every now and then, especially if I'm making a phone call. A lot of you know I'm not much one for dialed-up conversations, preferring the slow time of playing with words that an email often allows. So when I do press the call button, I can see how it might be deemed a miracle.

Milagro equals miracle in most senses of the word: Water into wine, Life after death, D.F. without traffic. But in a country where gods once lived among men, and the Virgin Mother descends with signs of roses for the people, the miracle of apparition rings an almost daily note. Or doorbell. Or dial tone.

"¡Qué milagro!", friends and relatives say here when they haven't seen or heard from someone in awhile. On the surface, it isn't much more than the phrase one instinctively says, letting the caller or visitor know that their presence--physical or vocal--is a welcome and pleasant surprise. But I like to think of it as something more awesome, something that gets the circumstance right--that everyday miracle of a friend's visit or a relative's call, the apparition of something truly mysterious: human connection. 

Qué milagro.

Black Is the New Red

At least two sides: they are there for a coin, a driver's license, a story. Even a point of view can be plural. Such is the case at home since Saint Valentine's Day, or the Día del Amor y la Amistad here in México. The holiday itself gives lip service to two things, similar as they may be, the lines between love and friendship an almost laughable sort of thing to draw.

Patricio loves dogs. Alisa loves cats. Patricio loves Alisa to be happy at home. She is. But now even more so. Because Patricio's love has more than two million sides. And now Alisa will no longer talk of figurative black kittens, the kind blamed for stepping through a mirror into a looking-glass house.

In this story, it was the red Jetta's fault entirely. Parking for awhile at one of the ubiquitous, guilty pleasures of a restaurant, Vips, the bumper slid silently over the blocky, cement wheel-stop. Backing out later ripped the bumper right off; red Jetta was in need of an immediate fix. So we drove it down to what we often call Canutoland, a small triangle of a Tlalnepantla neighborhood, where nine out of ten people are Patricio's cousins of some first or second stripe. Ermenegildo, or Mere, runs a small mechanic shop on one side. He soon had the Jetta jacked up and drills buzzing, busily putting our Valentine-colored car back together again.

Lifting an old tire off to the trash, an employee dumped a dusty and unsuspecting kitten out, blinking into the sun and running fast back into the shop. Patricio saw it happen. Mere told him to take it. Looking up from a book, Patricio lifted the little thing into my lap. He was filthy as a grease-pump. I already knew he was mine. His side of the story might be different, but the ending was the same. He made passenger number three when the Jetta was set free.

We've named him Balam (pronounced like bah-láhm), which can't escape singularity, either. In Mayan, it means "jaguar," a black cat with a job that wasn't dark like its coat. The Balam were Mayan deities who protected people in their daily lives. The jaguars themselves would also protect a community from external threats. My little Balam serves as protection of a different sort, from too much solitude at home, from that need to hold and love another creature unlike myself.

But for some, Balam is also a three-headed demon, a duke of the underworld with all-knowing prescience. In the mornings, with little Balam waking us up by crawling around on our heads, I wonder if this is true, too. At the very least, though, he's as Alice said to Kitty, "A little mischievous darling."

I'm happy as a clam about him, and there are certainly no two ways about that. 

Laugh-In

It's terribly hard not to appreciate a well-told joke. I'm pretty terrible at telling them, myself, which makes it even easier for me to laugh, belly-clutching and eye-wrinkling in appreciation for the ones Patricio tells. He remembers them by random association, often when we're chatting in the car and a comment sets him off giggling about a joke he can't help but tell me. And now, almost two and a half years after we decided that dating would be a good idea, and then made that good-idea decision to spend a life together, most of his jokes have made a number of telling rounds. I'm partly terrible at telling jokes because I inevitably forget how they go, which makes it fun to hear them again. And then again. Still, both of us retrospectively agreed it was high time for what happened on Friday night, in the company of other lawyers with repertoires full of funny.

Some friends of ours take it upon themselves come December to fill a table with deep bowls of beans, rice, mole, chorizo, tinga and beef, and a basket impossibly full of tortillas. It becomes the sun around which the party-going planets orbit, with a refrigerator full of seasonal Noche Buena beer nearby, there in the back annex of their offices.

After homemade flan, the gift of the secretary's mom, the room settled into pockets of conversation about movies and work, and eventually the inevitable debate about politics. The topic is like a candle flame for moth-winged Mexico talk, and soon enough, it had everyone in within its reach. The entire room became a small circus of mental gymnastics and oratory tightrope walking, and just as suspensefully fun.

But the fire-eating can only go on so long, long enough for someone to say, "Why don't we just tell ribald jokes!"  And the hilarity proceeded for hours. One after another, joke after laugh, a tag-team effect took place. Patricio delighted in the ones he'd never heard, laughing them back into a place where they became his own, waiting for a car ride when he'll giggle them back out.

Instead of jokes about Pollocks or Aggies, their targets were Galicians, and sometimes Argentinians. Poking fun at the Spanish was especially relished, copping a lisping accent and rolling off names like Venancio, Manolo and la Pilarica. Like the time when Manolo, back from his first trip to Las Vegas, started telling his friends about his luck in the casinos. "It was incredible," he boasted, "My luck simply never ran out!" His friends, wide-eyed with awe and envy, begged for a play-by-play account. "I was the king of those slot machines," he said. "Every time I dropped in a coin, I won. Coin, win, coin, win, another coin, another win! The only problem was that I couldn't fit all those cans of Coke in my suitcase for the flight back home. What a pity."

And Argentinians didn't escape a smiling mockery of that Italian lilt and a stereotype of arrogance. Because you heard why folks from Buenos Aires all hit the streets in a lightning storm, didn't you? Apparently, they think God's out to take their picture.

But interesting, too, was that a third target lay close to home: Mexicans joke about themselves with as much gusto as the rest. Like the time when a Russian, an American and a Mexican officer arrived at a ranch on a hunting vacation, and to prove their prowess, they decided to place a bet. Whoever could come back with the largest rabbit would be rewarded like a king, not to mention earning bragging rights that were worth a good deal, too. The fellow from the KGB went first, out into the brush, and in a brief half-hour returned with a rabbit the size of a skunk. The others were impressed. The FBI agent went next. He swaggered out into the brush, sure as he could be that the ante would be upped when he returned. And it was; he marched on back after an hour or two with a rabbit the size of a dog. The AFI man looked shocked, but his spirit didn't flag. He strode out into the wild, determined not to lose. An hour went by. Then four. And when he came back into view a good six hours later, the American and the Russian simply couldn't believe their eyes. The man was coming back to camp with an elephant. "That isn't a rabbit!" they cried in dismay. The AFI agent started whipping the heck out of the elephant and said, "Tell them!" The elephant looked at them earnestly and shouted "But of course I'm a rabbit! I am! I really am!"

Now, I won't include any ribaldry for you, since I'd like to think of this blog as friendly to the finer sensibilities. I assure you, though, those jokes were spirit-lifting gifts in the best of holiday season cheer, bawdy and funny and ingenious--the kind I'm sure C.S. Lewis would have used for a laugh. Friday night was full proof that humor here in Mexico enjoys a seemingly infinite wealth of jokes kept alive and well in the oral tradition, allowing for laughter about others, but primarily about ourselves. And that's something I think anyone can appreciate.

Signs, Signs

Walking uptown to the main market street here in San Pedro, pedestrians must cross an intersection or two where one's life lies in the hands of the bus drivers, barreling ahead in their transportational rumble. Private cars often take liberties with right-of-way, too, so crossing the street can leave a person in a brief and hesitating limbo of decision about when to step out toward the other side. Those who stop to let us go first, whether we find ourselves on foot or also behind the wheel, can easily give rise to gratitude, if not a little surprise as well.

And fortunately, gratitude amidst the hustle of the street need not be reduced to a mouthed-out "gracias," the sound drowned to nothing in the omnipresent din. Sign language comes to the communicative rescue, furnishing the grateful with a fail-safe way of saying thank you for allowing safe steps across the street. Thanks comes in the form of a raised forearm, the back of the hand facing the one being thanked. I raised my arm in silent, spoken appreciation more than once this afternoon, glad for the men's patience in their Volkswagen cars.

The "gracias" sign can be so much like the spoken word, taking on various inflections, so to speak. Depending on the place or the situation, it can range from a hearty and magnanimous gesture, the arm raised high to recognize the kindness of a crowd, to a slight turn of the wrist accompanied by a sideways nod of the head, a subtle "thank you, but no" to a street vendor's invitation to buy.

And one can say "no" in a more emphatic way, too, similar to wagging an index-fingered hand in the United States. The finger-wagging here, though, requires less of the wrist and more of the finger, moving it back and forth with the hand as stock-still as one's negative will.

The finger-wag is funny, especially, for some reason, when used by children under the age of three. But my favorite hand signal, next to that of thanks, is what some refer to as the "ahorita" hand. Also often seen in busy street locations, its slight space between outstretched thumb and forefinger signaling another to wait just a little bit, either for backed-up traffic to wait for a driver's return, or for someone nearby to wait for a question about directions to a place nearby. The ahorita signal is often used at home, too, when it's easier for one to say "wait" without having to say it out loud.

With all the noise we make in a day, it's nice to have options of meaningful silence. I'll raise my hand in thanks to it, too.

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.

It's a Gas!

Sometimes I think that words are like cloves. That secret ingredient that spices up an evening dinner, one can also linger over them, like a clove cigarette. Words can sweeten the air--a clove-like incense--or they can incense, too, infuriating the person who listens. And they alleviate our aches, like clove-oil on a tooth.  Versatile, if anything, especially in lexical usage: A clove of garlic. A cloven hoof. An evergreen clove tree on the island of Zanzibar.

Words are so protean, so flexible--so like cloves--but some enjoy an extra dash of multifunctional fun. One of them has a particularly rambunctious time here in Spanish. Pedo is its name, and raising the roof is often it's game. It's a clove of a word if I ever heard one pronounced. Yet I cannot say it would smell just as sweet, or improve on the recipe for a polite exchange of thoughts; in it's very first definition, a pedo is a fart.

And yet it doesn't stop there, like a lonely, singular toot. Here's a scenario of it's many-faceted forms: If your tequila-sipping buddy finds himself three sheets to the wind, he's as pedo as they come, drunk as a skunk, if you will. And on the feminine side of the word, that party you just threw would be a peda to remember, a booze-fest with your friends.

A fellow you invited who got lost along the way, clueless and obtuse, no sabe ni que pedo, doesn't even know what's up. Three hours later, when he shows up at your door, he's frazzled and positively ready to agarrar el pedo, catching up with the libations that were flowing hours before. You pat him on the back and then you ask him how's he's doing. "¿Qué pedo?" you query, hoping things in his life are just fine. But he shoots you a look, a death-stare of blame for his car-ride gone awry, and your tone of voice changes to an aggressive and accusatory note, asking "¿Qué pedo?" again and now implying, "What's your problem?" He shakes himself from his foul-mood stupor, wanting to slide into your good graces. "No hay pedo," he meekly states. There's no problem in the least.

And that's the good old pedo for you. True to it's crudeness, it nevertheless has no problem at all in morphing its meaning, in adjusting its use when it's needed. A little linguistic hilarity sure makes a language a lot more fun. Like a few extra cloves in the peda's punch of spiced rum.

All's fair in Love and...Blogging

On Sunday morning, at breakfast with brothers and cousins and their kids in Cahuacán, talk of Fox's blocked annual address circulated around the kitchen. Having the PRD party as the subject of conversation inevitably meant opining about López Obrador and his plantón--the organized protest occupying the city center and along Reforma avenue. Blanca said, "¡Hay que ir!" We've got to go!, even though she confessed her suspicions that he's crazy. "He's paying almost twenty bucks a person! And with kiddie rides, shade, and entertainment, it'd be like getting paid to let the kids get babysat. Hay que ir, I tell you," she laughed.

As I work on forming my own opinions, I've done a lot of listening, reading and borrowing other people's words. It's impossible not to; it's the talk of the nation. And like Don Quixote's fat and faithful Sancho Panza, or Sheriff Montoya's wife in The Milagro Beanfield War, I've started using refranes--Spanish proverbs or aphorisms--for lack of my own words to say. Blanca may have been joking about the opportunistic opportunity to join the ranks of plantones, but hundreds of others sure aren't. I couldn't help but think to myself, "Un peso vale más que cien consejos," One peso is worth more than a hundred words of advice. Money talks, so to speak, and quite clearly.

Refranes, or dichos, are far from falling out of everyday speech--the spirit of Sancho Panza lives on. Hardly a day goes by in my Spanish-speaking world that one or maybe two don't come up. These commonly held truths and beliefs are everyone's heritage and a frequent verbal support. In my bedtime novel by lamplight last night, "A grandes males, grandes remedios" came up. "For big evils, big antidotes" it said. It began to think of misguided leaders, apart from the ones inhabiting the book.

One of those big evils happens to be Andres Manuel López Obrador's calling cause. It's the one that, when he's confronted by it, will also cause my father-in-law to say "Al perro más flaco se le cargan las pulgas," It's to the skinniest of dogs that all the fleas begin to flock. It's poverty, and by subsidizing through government programs like a beneficent father, AMLO claims claims to have the "big antidote" we'd all love to see.

But as I know all too well, it's so much easier said than done. "Del dicho al hecho hay gran trecho," indeed--there lies a great distance between what's said and what's done.

By touting a government in that "beneficent father" vein, AMLO sounds uncannily close to taking a PRI-ist point of view. And though his rants have been lately directed at the PAN, that old PRI party takes its share of his critique. Like the old refrán goes, "El comal le dijo a la olla, mira qué tiznado estás." In many respects, he seems no better than who he's deemed his foes; the griddle said to the pot, look how sullied with soot you are.

All that Jazz

Patricio and I drove up to the city of Querétaro late in the afternoon yesterday. Mitote Jazz, headed by our friends, Cipriano and Isabel, were scheduled to play at La Biznaga (the barrel cactus) downtown, and we didn't have any good reason to miss it; though 130 miles north of our place, in the same time span we often make it down to Coyoacán, well inside Mexico City itself.

And we adore Querétaro. Not only does Patricio feel a connection to the city--his grandmother having lived there for a year--it's also many things we miss here in Nicolás Romero: it's clean, safe, chill, lovely, easily navigable, cosmopolitan.

Stepping out of an Irish Pub where we asked for Biznaga directions, Patricio laughed at how difficult it was for him to pronounce that little word, "Irish." That funky diphthong of a long 'i'--with it's 'a,e' sounds squished tight together--make wrapping one's mouth around the next full, rounded 'r' a formidable acrobatic trick of the tongue. But knowing that I've got a share of sunburning-skinned, strong-willed, party-loving Irish genes frolicking inside, he persevered in practicing as we held hands together and walked up the street.

Ducking into La Biznaga, full of cactus, service as if they already knew us, and it's particular bohemian assemblage of stuff, we both began to savor a tingle of something most everyone takes pleasure in feeling. It's not even hard for Patricio to pronounce; up north in Querétaro, with friends and their music and plate full of spicy potatoes, we somehow felt like we were home.

Viene, Viene

Somehow, I wasn't asked to parallel park when taking that very first driving test. I'd just turned fifteen, and as easy as that, I was allowed to begin accessorizing my roll-barred ford ranger with a driver's license and my collection of dearly loved mixed tapes. That little omission was likely due to the average number of times a lifetime resident of raton will have to employ that particular skill while parking any place downtown, which I think is three.

But I turned out not to be a lifetime resident, and have since had to parallel park more times than a lucky three. I'm not all that stellar, despite two whole years of wedging between bumpers and fenders on the streets of New York. How convenient it would have been to have the help of a viene viene--it would have markedly reduced my gazillion point parks, wearing out the cars gears between drive and reverse.

Though no longer legal in a number of streets, the work of viene vienes is still happening here, with a whistle or a rag, in any busy parking area where they one get away with some work. Keeping some change in the Jetta is essential, for all the viene viene tips we eventually hand out.  They'll wave our eyes to an available spot, and then help work the car into place. Yelling, whistling, and bopping a hand around the taillights often works like a driver's test charm. "Viene, viene..." or "Come on, come on," they chant monk-like from behind the car's trunk. And some just might keep the ride burglar-safe as they manage all the spaces in their domains.

Driving to the grocery store for chiles last night, I pulled up in a diagonal in the small parking lot. The viene viene, in his khaki uniform, was twittering his whistle at a car down the row. With those set parking spaces, there's really not a lot for the viene viene to do. But that doesn't stop him. He whistles and waves just the same. He's really just more like surveillance security, on his feet and his figurative toes for the all those tips he might receive. Often helping to load bags into trunks, I know that he deserves them; it's the only pay he gets on the tiring job.

His name's job comes with a bit of a break, though, when it isn't busy working as that familiar command. Viene, viene can also mean 'she's coming, she's coming,' and I'm the one who's saying it now. My wonderful friend is coming tomorrow, on a plane that someone else has to park. I'll be taking a break, too, signing off until next week. Much like I felt when I just turned fifteen, the most important thing is hanging out.

I Don't Know Why You Say Goodbye, I Say Hello

When I was told that saying aloha could allow for such versatility, for a greeting or a goodbye--like a hug or, like here, a kiss on the cheek--I was astonished. What a novel thing, to level the linguistic playing field, to bookend an encounter with the same tide-like sounds. And then I learned that aloha is "hello, goodbye, love, compassion, welcome, and good wishes. It means belonging to others with a common humanity. It's defined better as a feeling in the heart than by words." Hawaiians are surely heirs to a wordsmithing magic. Who else can charge a single word with so much meaning and goodwill?

Italian comes close with ciao, though the competition is formidable, and Dutch might enter a bid with dag. But Spanish has its trump card, too, even if it only grants a lowlier second--or even third--place. María pulled it when she greeted me on the street, passing at a distance the in the other direction, when neither of us stopped to chat. Calling out over her high and waving hand, she said, "¡Adios!" and i voiced the same word back.

It took some getting used to, being greeted with 'goodbye.' In my lack of aloha-style thinking, it felt like a tiny affront. But it isn't like shouting only "See ya!" to a friend busily headed down the the street. In the context of familiars without the usual time to talk, adios becomes a greeting and goodbye wrapped up in one. it may not carry as much significance as aloha, but in its etymological ancestry, it boasts a beautiful phrase: a Dios vos encomiendo, I entrust you to God.

It's enough to make a person want to say goodbye more often, even when hola's instinct holds its ground. In that, it's my new aloha, defined more closely by attitude and affection than by the syllables themselves.