It is actually quiet in here for a change so I think I'll be able to write a little better. Usually there is a happy hour in the evenings here at the Red Tree House after seven with wine served on the house, and last night we were also treated to gourmet chocolates. Can't say we are not well taken care of here. We were all quite a combination. There were two sisters from Canada, they live in Saskatoon and Kenora, as well as a fellow from Holland, another guy from Spain, who is a friend of the owners, and another one of their friends who lives here. After a while it was the Canadian sisters and the Dutchman, and then just the sisters and I. Really nice ladies. one is a dental hygienist and the other is an artist and teacher of fine arts. She has seven cats, each adopted as strays. We got into an unusually deep and resonating sort of conversation, the kind that is easy to have with compatible strangers whom you might never see again and we soon got onto the subject of death and dying. I shared with them some of my experiences in giving palliative care and also coping with the loss of loved ones, including my own parents. I mentioned that one thing that has helped get me through those dark nights was by choosing one quality in the person now dead that I have always admired, and then to work at incarnating that quality in my own life, thus giving me a sense that that person will always live inside me. For example, my mother had a deep and direct honesty that I chose to adopt after she died and this connects me meaningfully to her. Likewise my father who had a very simple and unpretentious manner. It was an altogether lovely visit.
I want to mention a couple of forgotten details about yesterday. That place I visited at the university is called El Pedregal de San Angel. The name indicated yesterday was not correctly spelled. I also wanted to mention the anti cigarette posters I saw on the huge chain link fence that runs alongside El Pedregal. There must have been over thirty of them but here are three of my faves: One is a cigarette burning scorch marks onto a red hibiscus and it is titled "Marchita" or all dried up. Another features a beautiful woman smoking a cigarette, the bones of her skull and teeth showing through half her lovely face. Another features a graveyard but I unfortunately cannot remember the title but maybe you could all try to figure one out and I will print the best entries!
When I was in that small disheveled barrio by the university I was struck by an ad in the window of a bar for a waitress and that she must be good looking.
Today has gone a bit quieter. I wandered into another neighborhood but it was not at all interesting, resembling stretches of Kingsway but worse, so I made my way back into la Condesa and explored parts of the area still unknown to me. Every city, no matter how famous for its beauty has its ugly parts. In Vancouver we have Kingsway and much of South Van. Yet when people think of Vancouver they usually imagine the mountains or the ocean or the forests or the beautiful parks and gardens. We really are sustained by our illusions it seems, or at least by our selective tuning.
Then I went into Chapultepic Park where I came across a hidden garden called El Auditorio. It's in a grotto full of beautiful plants with reclining benches. They have a sound system which today was playing Enya's The Memory of Trees. Everyone is asked to be quiet while they are in there and there is a table covered with books that anyone can read while they are in the garden. It was a very inspiring and deeply tranquilizing experience being there and I would like to go back again. From there I wandered for a while in the quiet zone, and this is a huge park, then climbed up the hill to visit the castle again also known as the National History Museum. The castle was built in the nineteenth century on top of a hill that commands a spectacular view of Mexico City and the tops of the trees in the park look full and rich and green and sweep like a green ocean across the area. The castle used to be the home of the kings and presidents of Spain and its opulence and grandeur match many of the more splendid palaces of Europe. There are incredible examples of decorative and illustrative stain glass throughout, including an entire wall of panels depicting five goddesses. One of my favourite chambers features three ornamental pedestals made of malachite. They are about five feet high. The middle pedestal has a huge ornate urn, also malachite on top, The first and third pedestal each have a huge malachite disk or dish on top. Throughout the malachite is decorated in gold leaf. The green of this stone is very intense, clearer and more brilliant than jade, suggesting emerald. That's all for now.
I got lost today finding the post office since one of my friends still refuses to get e mail. It turned into a pleasant walk after I got away from the idiot truck driver driving very slowly while making the same megaphone announcement over and over advertising his rubbish removal services. I saw an ambulance with siren wailing stuck in the traffic and just prayed that whoever they were coming for would survive okay. I have never in my life seen so much traffic and so many bad drivers. I wandered through the Centro Historico trying to admire the beautiful old palaces and other buildings without tripping over anyone, then took the Metro out to a neighborhood where a friend of mine used to live. It's in the south part of Mexico City and kind of suggests Marpole, a working class neighbourhood in Vancouver. Or a poor man's Condesa, the area where I'm staying which suggests Yaletown with palm trees and even more pretentious looking people. What makes the traffic stressful is no matter how carefully you cross at a busy intersection you are still risking your life.
Put a Chilango behind a steering wheel and what do you get?
Instant moron!
I stopped in a local chocolateur on the way back from dinner and when I asked the price the fellow there said the equivalent of one dollar Canadian per small piece. Ummm...I think I'll eat M and M's instead and give the money I save to a beggar.
Thursday, February 23, 2012, 8:46 PM
Nothing too unusual occurred today except that I actually saw a driver here make a turn signal before he turned. Shocking. And on the metro train a young man, if somewhat reluctantly, gave up his seat for an elderly woman after I asked him, politely of course. The constant barrage of people, both on the street and in the hotel is beginning to overwhelm me a bit. I'm being less social for a while. So I'm spending more evening time in my room watching TV, for the language practice. I watched two telenovelas last night, or Mexican soap operas. I'm also painting a bit more, nothing special.
Yesterday was Ash Wednesday and I stopped in one of the churches where there was someone in front of the altar to anoint people's foreheads with ashes in the form of a cross.
I came forward to be anointed with ashes then after I stepped outside a beggar woman asked for money. I asked her how she was doing as I gave her something but she thought that I wanted to know her name. I asked again how her day was going and she asked me again if I wanted to know her name. So I asked her her name and she told me her name is Juana. I told her my name and that I'm visiting from Canada. I feel once again that God was speaking to me through one of the many beggars in this city. This is for me a reminder that each person here has a name, dignity, an identity, a soul, and great capacity for both beauty and suffering. So, those of you who pray, please pray for Juana, a poor, elderly indigenous woman in Mexico City with a lovely smile and an inner beauty I found almost astounding.
Friday, February 24, 2012, 5:57 PM
Today I went to La Plaza de Tres Culturas. It is part archeological zone, part colonial and part contemporary, hence, tres culturas or three cultures. The Aztec ruins are quite impressive, covering an area bigger than a football field with ruins of pyramids and palaces and other buildings. Unfortunately you cannot go inside. Nearby is the plaza and a huge church that appears to have been built by stone scavenged from the Aztec buildings. The burrough is called Tlatelolco, try saying that three times fast, and was also the name of the Aztec city of which the ruins are all that remains. What particularly moved me about this place was the huge memorial plaque erected to commemorate the two hundred or so students who were massacred on this site in 1968 ten days before the Olympics while peacefully protesting against government repression and corruption. On the plaque are inscribed the names and ages of twenty of the victims of the massacre, which makes it all the more poignant. Underneath is a quote from Mexican author Rosario Castellanas which I will translate here for you:
"Who? Who are they? No one. The next day they are no one. By sunrise the plaza was cleaned. The headlines in the newspapers were about the weather. And on television, on the radio, in the movie house, nothing was changed. No announcement was inserted in the regular programming. Not one single moment of silence at the banquet, and yes they did proceed with the banquet."
One thing that I seem to be learning during this trip. Yes, in Canada, we are much better off, than many people in Mexico. We have never, at least not since Louis Riel, seen innocent protestors gunned down by government goons. However, things are beginning to change. We have a prime minister with fascist leanings, a beefed-up military, and the recent memory of abuses of police power during the 2010 G 20 riots in Toronto. It wouldn't take much for them to enforce against legal protest through the barrel of a gun and I say we have to be vigilant. We are slowly losing some of the many gains of the past two generations and our rights and freedoms are fragile.
I went for a long walk in the area, walking through a rather hardscrabble but friendly feeling area, kind of what I think of as the real Mexico. From a distance I saw the Sears Tower in the Centro Historico and used that as a landmark as I walked nearly to the Centro Historico. I passed a park with squatters' shelters and tents and very poor looking indigenous people. I was soon on Paseo de la Reforma, from where I walked more miles than I care to count back to la Condesa where I stopped in a cafe for a cold chocolate drink then found my way back to the hotel.
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