Mexico City, 2013, 11

 Sat., Mar. 23, 2013 at 6:47 p.m.

I spent the afternoon in Coyoacan with a friend.  I ended up showing him areas he didn´t know which is ironic given that I don´t live here, but I understand why this can happen in a place like Mexico City. This place is so vast and sprawling that one can spend one´s entire life here and still kow less than one-tenth of this place.  While we were sitting in the Frida Khalo Park a teen-age girl in a salmon pink strapless evening gown with vuluminous skirt and silver gloves that went past her elbows was being photographed in front of the statue of Frida with her young consorts, likely brothers or cousins dressed in matching grey tuxedos and salmon pink ties.Whe was celebrating her Quinciera or her fifteenth birthday which is a huge thing in Mexico and I believe in other parts of Latin America.  It´s kind of like a fertility ritual sanatized by tradition and family values.

Later after my friend went home I wandered into another corner that I´d like to show him where there is a large green plaza with benches and a fountain.  After sitting for a while I resumed my walk along calle Francisco Sosa and heard a couple behind me speaking English.  Quite a rarity here so we chatted for a while.  They are visiting from Ohio.  I was helping them find their way to the Metro but when I warned them that they are going to have quite an education there about life in Mexico City they thought that maybe they might take a cab instead.

Sun., Mar. 24, 2013 at 6:27 p.m.

The hotel was packed this morning which made breakfast noisy and very unpleasant so I bolted down my food and bolted out of here.   I have to admit I´m getting bored with the food here and kind of anxous to get home though I still feel entranced by the haunting beauty and sheer scale of Mexico City.  I didn´t go far, just did a coffee shop hop throughout the day working on drawing number eight.  Much of Reforma was closed for bikes and pedestrians today and the book fair was incredibly busy.  Everyone reads in this city, it seems, and I don´t mean Kindle.  In the parks in Condesa all the yuppies were out with their little and big dogs (all pure bred of course).  In the two parks there are dog training schools with as many as sixty or seventy pooches lying around ready to be taught to behave.  For me, not being a dog-lover, it´s hard to understand why people would pour out so much fuss and love (not to mention money which I think could be better spent) over an animal, especially given the absolute inconvenience of having a dog in a densely populated city.  It reminds me of Vancouver where there is this constant tension between dog people and no-dog people and I try to stay neutral except when it comes to vicious animals and dog shit on the sidewalk.But I still like friendly dogs and I will always stop to pet a dog that wants to be petted. There were bagpipe players in Parque Mexico today.  Two men with bagpipes and a woman and two men with drums.  No mariachi or merengue rhythms here and not even cumbia (hmmm..bagpipe cumbia, now there is a concept), just pure Scottish Highlands.  They were not wearing kilts.

Monday, March 25, 2013 6:33 PM
Subject: various observations

 

I really feel ready to go home now.  More than ready.  The noise, the traffic, the overcrowding, the rudeness of people are really staining my experience these days and the food, water, and thin polluted air as well as living in a hotel and eating in restaurants all the time are taking a toll on my health, but I think I´m done with Mexico City and maybe with travel itself for a while, though time alone will tell.  It seems I made this resolution last year and look where I ended up again.  On la Reforma, around the Angel de la Independencia (google Angel de la Independencia, Mexico City and you´ll see what I´m referring to) there was a huge demonstration with people waving big black and red flags. I have not been able to obtain any more information, neither from the crowd nor Google but the cause seemed decidedly left-wing progressive.  There is a lot more freedom of speech in this country than in years past and although nothing is really changing here at least people are allowed to publicly protest, which I think can also begin the slow process of change.  Later, while working on drawing number nine I viewed the protesters as they marched, thousands of them and the red and black flags were quite a spectacle as they walked in the direction of the Zocalo.

I sometimes see people living on the street here.  They are in much worse shape than our own street people in Vancouver , often filthy and reeking of urine and feces.  I´m sure they are all mentally ill and I wonder what they must do to survive and what kind of human contact they might have, if any.  It is frightening to see that the most vulnerable here are so at risk with no one to care for them. I also think that some of my clients that I work with might have ended up in the same kind of condition had they lived in Mexico and not in Canada .

There is a young man who works as a doorman in front of the cafe where I was sitting today.  I always see him there, standing.  I asked him how many hours he works per shift.  Twelve! Six days a week for a very low wage, likely and probably has a family to support to.  This is very typical here in Mexico City .  Yet almost everyone seems well dressed, well groomed and generally happy but this might be partly because their families for better or worse are so tight, which they of course have to be if they are going to survive.

I was thinking today what a tragedy that in this the world´s largest city, capital and administrative centre of one of the major emerging world economies that there is no access to clean potable water.  If Carlos Slim would part with even one billion doolars of his wealth to fix and make drinkable the public water in Mexico City he would still have around seventy billion to hoard and play with but it seems that greed knows no bounds with some people.