Mexico City, 2009, 10

Tue., Nov. 10, 2009 at 2:39 p.m.

Well, that´s what I saw in the zoo today.  They have quite a large zoo in Mexico City, and it seems every time I visit I come across something new.  They have two giant pandas, in separate enclosures (it turns out that giant pandas are notoriously grumpy animals).  On my way into the park today at the entrance one of the soldiers doing guard duty was playing bugle tunes on a kazoo.  I wonder if sentry duty at the park entrance is considered a form of punishment.  He looked awfully bored.  In the zoo I noticed that several of the big cats were very restless, the black jaguar, the leopard and the black panther.  Sublimely beautiful animals but the way they were restlessly pacing I could only wonder about the psychological effects of confinement.  Now that they are finally figuring out that animals have rich and complex emotional lives we can only hope that this will have a positive impact on people´s attitudes towards them, including those that many of us like to eat. From the zoo I made my way to the Museum of Modern Art.  I had incorrectly presumed that it was closed.  It is not.  Simply there are no signs that direct people to the entrance on  Paseo de la Reforma (the museum is also in Chapultepec Park).  So after walking one way around the spike-tipped metal fence to a dead end, then having to retrace my steps I finally got in there.  It is a very good musem, and its content reminds me a lot of our own Vancouver Art Gallery.  That´s right, a lot of the featured artists look like they haven´t been out of art school for very long! I will just mention three pieces I found particularly interesting: featured below is ¨The Two Fridas¨, Frida Kahlo´s famous self portrait.  It is huge by the way.  If it doesn´t show in  this e-mail  simply google Frida Kahlo, the Two Fridas and you will see it. Tue., Nov. 10, 2009 at 2:39 p.m. Another piece, an installation that piqued my interest is called ¨Guia de campo¨or ¨Field Guide¨.  It covers two perpendicular walls painted chartreuse, and you have covering these walls the tiny images of birds that have been cut out from a Field Guide to Birds of Costa Rica and fastened in various arrangements all over the two bright green walls.  On a small shelf  is the book from which the bird images were cut out.  All of them have been neatly cut out of the pages.  It is quite interesting for me anyway (Go figure!) The third piece really betrays the Mexican sense of humour.    It is against a wall painted in bright shocking pink with the painted letters in a slightly darker pink ¨Pink Not Dead¨. There are two display bins against the wall with a selection of several paperback books with pink covers (various shades).  Here are some of the titles: ´´Unspoken Desires´´, ´´Literatura Eros´´, ´´Viginity (prenuptial rites and rituals)´´, ´´Xaviera!´´ by Xaviera Hollander, author of ´´The Happy Hooker´´, ´´Rasputin and the Fall of the Romanovs´´, ´´Valley of the Dolls, ´´How to  keep a Japanese Mistress (and how not to!)´´, ´´El Chiste y su relacion con lo  inconsciente (the joke and its relationship with the unconscious) by Sigmund Freud,´´Flowers of Evil´´, by Baudelaire, French poet of the nineteenth century, ´´The Hindu Art of Love´´, a Spanish translation of ´´The Communist Manifesto´´ by Marx  and Engels, ´´Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance´´ and ´´The Dionne Quintuplets Story.´´ I wandered from there down la Reforma as far as the Angel of Independencia, stopped in a cafe in Zona Rosa, then walked through Plaza  Rio de Janeiro which contains a fountain with a huge scale  size bronze replica of Michelangelo´s David.  From  there I went over to Plaza de Obreros, which I mistakenly thought before was the Plaza Rio de Janeiro, and stopped in the cafe there.  Today I am actually feeling at peace with this city, and might even want to visit again sometime (maybe in a couple of years.  Time will tell.) Yesterday I came across a homeless man sleeping on the sidewalk right in front  of my bed and breakfast.  Just like Vancouver.  Also a potent  reminder that we still have a lot of work to do  in advocating and working on behalf of the homeless  and economically and socially marginalized  in  our own city.