Through the Looking Glass

Road: Like Willie Nelson and Canned Heat

I made a comment yesterday that came from taking stock of my activities over the last couple of weeks: I haven't devised, made, revised and crossed items off so many lists since Patricio and I planned our first big odyssey, namely, our big, fat, Mexican wedding. What is going on? What has happened to the Mexican Alisa who has become so comfortable with mañana? I'll tell you. What's happened is vacation.

Yet this is no ordinary trip, no traditional and easy jaunt with minimal plans. We didn't accompany my in-laws to Acapulco last week. Nor are we heading to Cancún with Patricio's brother, Beto, and his family later this month. No long weekend in Vallarta, or even a leisurely trip up north. This year, it's not a matter of throwing a swimsuit, sunscreen and flip-flops into a bag with a few changes of clothes and a book.

This year, Alisa and Patricio are going to be groupies.

The sound of that word may bring to mind, among other things, road trips by day and dance-filled concerts by night, and that's exactly what our vacation promises, as we travel through southern Mexico and Central America with the members of Mitote Jazz.

Veterans in the art of music tours, Cipriano and Isabel--the ensemble's master duumverate--have lined up a series of concerts along the Pan-American Highway, culminating in Nicaragua for the celebration of Isabel's 60 magnificent years. And on the off chance that you're itching to buy a plane ticket to Central America within the next few weeks, you can easily coordinate your trip with a ours by taking a look at the tour schedule here.

It's the road trip Patricio and I have dreamed of since the idea was a baby one, way back in 2006. But road trip, for Alisa, equals a whole world of imagined contingencies. And Alisa doesn't want to find herself without those flip-flops, an extension cord, or Cipro, you know, on a quiet stretch of road in Guatemala. So planning and planning has been the order of these days, and in a few hours, that planning will happily end. Because at eight in the morning, our vacation begins.

We groupies even have our own name. We're Mitoteros. On the road. Again.

Been Back

This past Monday, two orange-clad, barefoot and rough-toed Buddhist monks from Thailand elaborated on the finer points of basic meditation. We were a motley group of interested people, already considerably more relaxed after spending the last fifteen minutes releasing muscle tension and trying to focus as best we could on an imagined bright, lunar-like sphere glowing two finger-widths above our belly buttons. For the host, an Asian woman with years of meditating in her body's memory, the older monk had a bit of advice: Keep going further in. If focusing on the sphere comes naturally, go inside of it, and inside and inside again.

As far as meditation goes, I'll have to store that bit of helpfulness for a time ahead when I have more and better experience under my invisible belt. But I think that those words apply perfectly to travels around Copper Canyon. I may have returned over a month ago, but the sensory recollection is still very present. And I'm sure that I wouldn't have left loving it so much if we hadn't, unknowingly, taken the monk's advice to go further in.

The small town of Creel, celebrating a century of incorporation this year, is easily the best place to call home base when exploring the Sierra Tarahumara. Arriving on a crowded bus--banda  music streaming over the speaker system, most boarding along the way for the ride, a few to sell burritos or "soda" as they call them up north, candy, stickers and chips, the Tarahumara woman next to me patting me on the leg before getting up to leave--the main square is right across the dusty street. And that square was crowded for the next few days with participants and onlookers in the centennial celebrations, programmed with dance, song, salutes and speeches that included performers from our very own Tlalnepantla and a visit from the governor of the state of Chihuahua. 

From there, I made day trips to a waterfall, cave dwelling, lake, small villages and incredible rock formations in the soft volcanic tuff. The area around Creel is much drier before the rainy season begins, but it looks so much like the terrain in northern New Mexico that it wasn't hard not to feel at home. The main difference being, of course, that I didn't  grow up in a region named for an indigenous people who still live there, conserving traditions most easily observed in speech and in dress. Creel was also where I boarded the Chepe train to Los Mochis, winding slowly through the Tarahumara landscape of Copper Canyon, afforded breathtaking views and conversations in the windy spaces in between cars with friendly, flirty locals from towns like Temoris, rural and far removed from roads that are even paved.

Los Mochis, in the coastal state of Sinaloa, offered a warm and humid dusk to walk through its old, colonial streets. The place seems forgotten by tourists in spite of its popularity as a stopping place; the pace of life seemed slow, like the deep mosquito breeding river that ripples wide behind the plaza, with families under street lamps watching children play and eat popsicles, the man who ran the small hotel playing cards with friends on a round table near the kitchen--the same table where he would ask if I could take a cooler full of trout back to a fellow hotelier friend in Creel the next day.

And the next day was when the plans were fixed to go farther in. Squeezing into a mercifully air- conditioned van, an intrepid Martín drove us five hours down into the canyon, on a virtually one-lane dirt road, winding past views that the train necessarily missed, showing a lacy pattern of unguessably old trails that crisscross the steep hills. The Tarahumara have their homes perched in high, often hidden places, walking from there to water or to town, like the one to which we were headed, Batopilas, in the bottom of the Canyon where miners once worked.

So far from anyplace, where junior high girls still want to grow up to be actresses, where beer is only sold in bars and bootleg liquor sold in plastic soda bottles, where swimming in the river below the gorgeous hotel is the perfect antidote to a sunbaked six kilometer walk toward a mysterious and acoustic marvel of a mission church, where the food tastes better because our own folks prepared it, where delivery boys will gladly give a ride back to town in the back of their truck, where the night shows a moon between the high canyon walls. Batopilas was more than a cherry on top. It was where going further in meant finding a state as beautiful as meditation. Which is why I'm writing so little about it all. The heart of the trip is something beyond words, except for a mantra, perhaps, like "See it. See everything."

Eagle and Sun

Either, or. This, that. Here, there. Yes, no?

Sometimes, a decision just needs help. A push toward one or the other, all responsibility placed outside--though technically on--the hands of those who want to decide. Let a little random chance to the work. And how?

Heads or tails.

Or at least that's how it used to be done, like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern who flipped a metal coin stamped with the head of a monarch. But now here in Mexico, it's águila o sol--eagle or sun--a phrase  quite appropriately decided by a coin, as well. Born into use when the old, copper, 20 centavo coins began to circulate, those three words have long outlived the very coin itself. Patricio and I have one hoarded away here at home, though. It used to belong to my grandmother, a souvenir likely kept from a late sixties Mexican road trip when the final destination was Acámbaro. One side shows the symbolic, coat of arms eagle. On the other appears Teotihuacán's pyramid of the sun, with solar rays crowning the image at the top. Águila o sol. Coins like this, along with any coin at all, still work hard for bets and the choice between disparate desires.

But when copper came up a few weeks ago for me, I didn't need to flip any coins of the stuff to help me make a decision. A visit to Copper Canyon has been on my wish list for a long time, and once I found out that my sister-in-law would be teaching a two-week summer course there through her university, the proverbial light bulb came on above my head. What better pretext could I possibly find for finally making the trip? And yet, that versatile, copper, 20 centavo coin still played a part in the beginnings of those plans. In English, I speak of light bulbs, but in Spanish, me cayó el veinte.

Realizing something--when the idea finally clicks--can be described through the metaphor of a pay phone. Those veintes, the coins, were once the fee for making a phone call, with everything coming together when the veinte dropped into the box. Me cayó el veinte--putting myself in the pay phone's position, the change fell right into place, and I knew just what I should do. Beyond congratulating Trini on the classes she would offer, I also realized her work spelled a chance I shouldn't pass up.

So I'll be up around Copper Canyon for week now, with hopes for catching glimpses of lonely águilas, and soaking up plenty of Chihuahuan sol.

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.

Two Things

I was reminded of two things over the last two weeks, as Patricio and I road-tripped through three American states and six Mexican ones. We went to buy a car for me: a very gently used Toyota Matrix at an even more generous father-to-daughter discount. After a year and a half of internal struggle where environmental ethics battled with a need for personal freedom and safer mobility, Patricio and I took a flight up north to drive back with a car that would call the Mexican roads its new playground.

I remembered all the times driving south on Interstate 25, after shopping trips to Colorado with mom and dad when we'd pass caravans of used cars--some hitched one behind the other--destined for El Paso and the country across the border. Legalizing American cars in Mexico, until recently, was much more inexpensive than buying the same thing within Mexico itself. I wondered at the hoops these traveling car dealers must have had to jump through to make the process work. And wondered even more if it was really worth it.

Now I understand that it was, and often still is. There is a widespread fascination in Mexico with owning American cars, not only for the caché that might come with it, but a more pressing delight in getting a set of wheels for a price more commensurate with the low salaries most people have to settle for. Exactly why we drove south ourselves.

And as we drove, passing through the long, dry, menacingly beautiful state of San Luís Potosí, I remembered the trips my family would take to Kansas, visiting my grandparents on their farm. With wheat fields flanking the road on either side, both growing toward harvest or fallow with wild grass, the stalks and leaves always seemed to bow and wave toward the car. I let myself anthropomorphise, imagining that the wheat was welcoming us there, to a place that wasn't home, but still a place where we belonged.

as humanish beings, like desert Ents who, if one was patient enough to watch, might begin to move around wherever they pleased. As if frozen in some sort of exultant dance, their outstretched arms seemed to welcome us back. The Joshua tree had become the new wheat. Though highway-side plants contain levels of lead that only the constant traffic could contribute, I still stifled the chiding voice of "yet another car destined for a city with far too many." I reminded myself that freedom can be a welcome thing, too.

In San Luís, it was hard not to see the Joshua Trees near the highway

Attuned to Tlatelolco

I mean, really. If walls could talk. And if I had the chance to listen to those surrounding just one place here in Mexico, I now know where it would be. I see it as Patricio and I drive home from the historic Centro, I see it misspelled occasionally on posters, I see its photographs on the covers of historical books--I see it in one of the very dearest movies in recent years. And I saw it up close recently, something I think few people in Mexico City do, whether they're here for a weekend or here the better portion of their lives.

The place is Tlatelolco, easily missed if traffic is flowing nicely up Eje Central, and easily one of the places that impressed the Spanish conquistadores the most. Once a sister city to the Mexica (Aztec) capital of Tenochtitlan, it later fell under the Tenoch rule--becoming the city's crown jewel of commerce and, ultimately, the place of its empire's defeat. It is now also known as the Plaza de las Tres Culturas, or Square of the Three Cultures, for the juxtaposition of walls in what remains of that ancient, island city. The archaeological site of Tlatelolco's ceremonial center sits in front of the church of Santiago Tlatelolco, built of stones taken from the pyramids themselves. Rising above and surrounding the two is an expanse of a 1960's housing complex, also flanked on one side by what used to be the foreign ministry building.

In such a relatively small space, the press of historic juggernaut reveals a chronology's glimpse--three culture's represented by their walls: those of the pre-Columbian, the Viceregal, and the modern independent Mexico that still often holds on to vestiges of the former two. This is where Cuauhtémoc, the last of the Aztec tlatoani, or rulers, was taken captive. It happened after tens of thousands of unsurrendering Aztecs died, here in the last holdout against Cortés and his troops. This is also where a number (likely far greater than the government has chosen to maintain) of political protesters were killed in 1968, shot by military and police forces ten days before the Olympic games began. And then in 1985, many of the housing buildings were severely damaged or destroyed, when that morning earthquake rocked the city and left Tlatelolco's walls to witness huge loss one more time.

And so much of what was documented--or could have been--no longer exists. A few buildings are left. The details are gone. And walking through the plaza on a sunny Friday, with traffic running north and school groups milling in the church, makes it difficult to imagine a market close by that rivaled anything in Europe at the time of the Spanish arrival. Or the fear of being under attack, or under the rubble of what once was a ceiling. The church--one of the oldest in the country--remains bare of its altar since the years of often bloody struggle between religion and the state. Its starkly beautiful chancel of high-reaching volcanic stones speaks not only of the most religious of mysteries, but historical mysteries as well; tragedy has been an irreversible part of Tlatelolco's past, but so have an infinity of the smaller miracles of every day life. Juan Diego's baptismal font rests in a corner of the church as well, a symbol of the area's continual rebirth, the continual resurrection of both archaeological treasures and the residents' quotidian dreams. 

Tlatelolco is, I'd argue, one of Mexico City's most interesting treasures. Come see for yourself, with ears--or at least the eyes--attuned to the walls.

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.

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)

Sweet, Sweet Morelia

I am my mother's daughter. She who possesses the power to leave a box of french chocolate mints empty over the course of a conversation begot she who has a tooth so sweet that a bag of Oreos will beg for its last rights under her mischievous gaze. I'm a unyielding sucker for sweets. I even love suckers themselves, especially the fittingly-named, strokes of Catalán genius that are Chupa Chups. Sugar is surely one of living's best perks.

And living in Mexico can be a sweet-lover's dream; the merengue vendor just passed by our house, his basket balanced on his head as he called out the word like a cello-voiced tropical bird. The variety of sweets savored in this country poses a particularly delicious challenge, since trying them all could be a life-long endeavor. Capitalizing on a remarkable wealth of fruits, nuts, milks, chocolates, grains, chiles, spices and sugars, Mexican confectioners bless taste buds with the likes of ates and alegrías, cajetas and cocadas, palanquetas and pan dulce, and tamarindo and turrones. No list can possibly be exhaustive. Trying to create such a list would be exhausting.

But trying new sweets certainly isn't, which is why Patricio and I made a pilgrimage of sorts to the colonial city of Morelia, known for its architectural eye-candy as well as a tradition of homemade sweets, passed into the community centuries ago by Dominica nuns whose kitchen fires turned a profusion of recipes into fruit-infused delights. Walking the criss-cross of the centro's streets on Saturday night, we stepped into the entryway of an old colonial house, the place where families have set up shop to sell their sweets for so many generations. The soft-spoken, silver-haired woman behind the counter bagged up a half kilo of crystallized figs for us. And then convinced us that the bricks of guava ate, the happy combination of fruits cooked down with sugar, were as fresh as could be and worth every peso we spent.

Her simple shop was one of countless that the city has seen, and we wanted to know more about them. That's why, sitting snugly between stone buildings along what some still call the Calle Real, the Museo del Dulce, or Sweets Museum, was our weekend's principal destination. Entering the small museum means walking through the front building's sweet shop, covered floor to ceiling with--among books and traditional crafts--beautifully-packaged candies and flavored varieties of the egg-based liqueur, ronpope.

The museum itself is a series of rooms surrounding a lovely courtyard, recreating a colonial kitchen and offering models and photographs of Morelia's sweet-making trajectory. Incorporating ingredients used in indigenous recipes, such as native fruits, nuts and honeys, the nuns arriving from Spain brought and expanded upon traditional Spanish recipes. Initially prepared for the reception of dignitaries in the region, the popularity of the sweets grew to proportions that prompted the nuns to develop their business skills, too, selling the sweets through a lazy-susan like torno, allowing the nuns to take and fulfill an order without showing their faces to the outside world.

Bubbling in the kitchen in an earthenware pot was the makings of quince ate (now the term for any fruit paste prepared by cooking it with sugar, it is really a suffix as it is in English, meaning "a derivative of"--think "aluminate"--and was applied to any fruit, hence a quince ate, or ate de membrillo, was once simply called a membrillate). Spooned into small cups for us to try, it became terribly tempting to spirit away one of the ates setting in wax-lined molds on the windowsill.

We left the museum and Morelia on Sunday, with a back seat taken by a healthy mound of sweets and the front seats taken by the two of us, wiser in the ways and stories of our sugary fascinations, and the suspicion that we'd make my mom's mouth water with the news.

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.