Mexico City, 2009, 9

Sat., Nov. 7, 2009 at 5:32 a.m.

: Saturday, November 7, 2009, 4:19 PM

Today I started in a cafe three blocks from the Red Tree House where I wrote in my journal while sipping very weak hot chocolate.  It was a lovely place to sit, overlooking the park.  An old man playing harmonica came inside asking for donations, and shortly after an old beggar followed in his footsteps.  From there I went walking into Roma Sur, a neighbourhood next door to Condesa, somewhat seedy but full of ambience, as far as a large park full of trees, paths, playgrounds and fountains but also with a rather sinister and menacing ambience.  I did not feel comfortable there and over the years I have learned the hard way to trust these intuitions.  In fact, whenever I haven´t it has been at my peril. I stopped at Plaza Rio de Janeiro where there is a lovely fountain in the middle, surrounded by trees.  Have I mentioned that this city is full of fountains?  I sat on a bench to contemplate the beautiful spray of water, then I stopped in another cafe by the plaza.  For a decaf americano I had to pay the equivalant of nearly three bucks Canadian.  Ouch!  But it turns out that in a number of cafes here in DF you are charged an extra forty pesos or so for decaf.  I guess for them it´s kind of pain-in-the-ass-tax.  I walked further onto a street with a huge, broad landscaped meridian and a very broad walkway down the middle where for three or four blocks different artists and vendors of antiques, books and cd´s etc. have set up a market.   Then I wandered through the Zona Rosa, through a couple of more parks and crossed the Paseo de la Reforma where I again came across el Monumento de la Revolucion, that humongous brownstone eyesore I have already mentioned.  Regardless of what it looks like it is a very useful landmark in case I get lost.  I very soon ended up in a poorer neighbourhood, very crowded and active with markets everywhere, including a large open air food market taking up an entire street.  I found myself back in the well-to-do area that flanks la Reforma like a thin membrane.  I was particularly intrigued by a very graceful neoclassical building looking rather like our own Vancouver Art Gallery.  There was security everywhere.  One of the guards informed me that it was a public library.  I thought of going in but, frankly, I am security fatigued in this city, and it just didn´t feel worth  the hassle, so I don´t think I´ll bother.  I stopped in another park, then ended up at the Angel de Independencia, on the other side this time.  There is a statue of a golden hippopotamus with a bench molded into each side where I sat to rest my sore feet and contemplate the Angel de Independencia.  This is when I realized that after three weeks I still feel no sense of connection, bonding or fondness for this city.  In many ways this is a very beautiful city, but there is nothing here that inspires my love.  Awe perhaps.  Maybe respect, since things are on such a grand scale here.  But affection?  No.  I think in order to love a city such as Mexico City one would have to allow it to overwhelm and engulf one, to take possession of and enslave one and this is something I will not permit.   This city reminds me of a beautiful high class and very expensive courtesan with a severe and nasty pelvic infection. I stopped again at the Cafe on Florencia near the Angel, then I returned on a roundabout route to the bed and breakfast.  I have just been informed by Ernesto that they are going to be fixing the bathroom that I share with another guest over the next few days so they are moving me to a quieter room with a private bathroom.  (there IS a God!) Mon., Nov. 9, 2009 at 2:02 p.m. Got through breakfast okay.  This young guy from New York city who does lighting for theatres is here.  He is a friend of the owners and has been here many times and says that he loves Mexico City.  He is most welcome to it!  Likely what he means is that he loves his version of Mexico City, given that his circle of friends and associates here is made up primarily of other people involved in the arts (generally the ¨whiter¨ Mexicans)  A question I would like to ask him some time, though my sense of good manners probably wouldn´t permit me, is just how many people he knows as friends in this city who have to hawk chicklets or cd´s on the subway in order to survive, or when is the last time he had a beer with one of the local organ grinders or beggars?  Would he still love Mexico City?  Of course, this argument would work anywhere.  Hear a visitor to Vancouver crow about how much she loves the place, but what is her version of Vancouver?  Was she snowboarding on Grouse?  Was she homeless and begging on Granville Street?  Bar hopping on Main?  Did she get shot at in South Van? Anyway he wouldn´t shut up and ended up boring everyone yapping on and on about himself, which appears to be his favourite subject, so I diverted the attention to this nice young couple from New  Zealand, since they hadn´t got a word  in edgwise and were likely way too polite to ask him  to please shut up or talk about something else besides his little me me me performance.  So, I simply asked them what they do for a living (they just got out of banking, it turns out).  Mr. New York glamour boy could no longer hog the spotlight and he left the table very quickly. I went back to my room for a long nap then went to Coyoacan, where I went for a long walk among the trees in los Viveros.  I saw more of the town this time.  I sat inside the cathedral for a while.  It is very ornate, with gold-plated everything, murals and paintings of scenes from  the Gospels on the ceilings.  Evidently, it was so easy for the Spanish to get gold from the Aztecs because they didn´t really value it outside of its decorative value.  What they really prized was cocoa beans.  I sat for a while inside a small cafe that would fit very nicely on Commercial Drive.  Each round table top is an original painting, as are the seats on the chairs.  I hope I have a chance to return before I leave for Vancouver. On one of my walk I was beseiged by this huge mob of high school  kids all wearing the same hideous beige uniforms.  On my way back  to the subway I noticed two youths playing drums on the crosswalk for donations, one with a snare drum, the other with a hand drum.  They were quite good actually, and this is another example of the chutzpah (or downright brazenness) that I often encounter here.

Spending a month in a noisy bed and breakfast can be a bit challenging for my nerves.  But before I go on about this let me cut this establishment a little slack.  Everything that has been written in the eighty odd glowing Tripadvisor reviews about the Red Tree House is true.  The owners and staff here are wonderful, helpful, kind, courteous, nice, great to talk to and fun.  The dog is nice, if you are a dog person (I´m not, really, though right now I am petting her while writing this thing, because, well, she is a sweet-natured creature), but she is a compulsive mooch and I really wish they would banish her from the breakfast table because here she can be a real pest.  What you will note about the reviews by the way is almost no one who has written has stayed here longer than a week.  When you are here for longer you feel like you are living here and you begin to notice irritations more (in my case, noise and second-hand smoke from the courtyard, which sometimes can ruin it for me.) Last night as I was winding down to go to bed around ten there were some very loud guests sipping wine in the livingroom downstairs and not even the earplugs could block  their voices.  I went downstairs and mentioned to Tessy and Ernesto that I will be going to bed at around 10:30 but there is an awful lot of noise.  They said they could not do anything about it because they didn´t want to offend the guests (I guess that makes me  chopped liver) and that I should tell them, so I did. This went over okay because even though Mexicans don´t do assertiveness (they tend to equate it with aggression, which it is not, and are very good at putting up and shutting up)  the noisy guests are almost  all Americans (surprise! Surprise!).  It´s a good reminder that  I am the one who has to fight my battles.  Well, eight more nights and I´m home.  Yay!