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.

Masiosare

The neighborhood had been quieter since last Thursday, since school was out to bridge the long  weekend between Mother's Day on the 10th and Teacher's Day, yesterday, on the 15th. Today sounded more like a Monday than a Wednesday, with snare drums rattling in accompaniment to discordant bugle blasts, not too long after eight in the morning from the Margarita Maza de Juárez elementary school across the street.

The first day of the school week always begins with a woman's voice over a loudspeaker directing a patio full of uniformed children. To those of us on the other side of the high walls--that line of cinder block around the complex of two-story green and white buildings, emblazoned with the unintentionally-rendered but nevertheless menacing face of President Benito Juárez's wife--the muffled, monotonous, and yet undeniably commanding voice drapes itself over our homes. I sometimes liken it to the sound of a muezzin's call to morning prayer, only that this voice is calling the kids to begin their rendition of the Mexican national anthem.

It's always an earnest, endearing and slightly comic performance, with the loudspeakered voice all but drowning out those of the children, and the haphazard sounds of drums and bugles played by the few remaining students doing their best to approximate the anthem's official rhythm and notes. A tune that couldn't possibly be more classic in its embodiment of the march tradition, it sounds both weary and hopeful coming from the school's little ritual of ceremony and practice.

We hear it at midnight, too, on those nights driving home after a late movie, the radio tuned to Horizonte or Reactor. Every television or radio station must play it at the beginning and end of their broadcasts, turning the minutes and the airwaves after twelve into a choral interlude. Click here to hear it, and go ahead: imagine being in the car with us on those windy roads home. And if you like, you can read along to the lyrics here, too.

I think you'll agree that it's not the type of anthem (or as it's actually called here, a hymn) that would easily prompt soccer stadiums to invite musical superstars in for a Beyoncé-style, roof-raising, lax-tempoed, improvised-vocal-flourished rendition. And so, the pregame performance usually goes like this. It might be more rigid, but it's certainly still regal. The salute even seems more formal, the right hand placed not with the palm flat over the heart, but rather with the palm facing the floor and the thumb-side to the chest.

Almost any song collectively known and sung, especially about one's country and its autonomy in particular, tends to rally up emotions in just about any citizen. Mexico's anthem is not exception. And yet still it gives pause to think about the nature of the lyrics: imagery of war, cannon-fire, soldiers and blood that become a necessary means to certain ends: the ideas of victory, glory, honor, union--and liberty. It's all nothing if not sobering. Violence and peace are virtually, paradoxically inseparable.

But not many of us think about that in too much depth when it comes right down to the singing. In fact, it's no secret that many children and even adults--those who have likely never seen the lyrics in writing, who haven't worked out the full meaning of the sometimes archaic wording--can misunderstand what they've learned to sing. Perhaps it's an urban legend, but plenty of people have heard of birth certificates boasting the name 'Masiosare.' It sounds pleasant enough, doesn't it? But it comes from the middle of the anthem's first verse: "Mas si osare..." is the phrase, meaning "But if [someone] should dare...". I can understand hearing that and then thinking it might name a certain 'Masiosare,' but I'm doubtful of the claim that anyone would name their child after the [someone] in that line, who in the second half is revealed to be an "enemy outlander."

And yet, who knows? All things are possible. A popular sushi chain here even serves up a delicious Masiosare Roll...If anything, it's proof that the national anthem holds a firm place in the national consciousness--something also confirmed almost every week of the academic year, right across the street from our house.

Before Tunick, Sans Tunics

Patricio and I already had sentimental attachments to the Zócalo--the main plaza here in Mexico City, and once the very center of the Mexica world. It was often our nexus of special trips into the Centro, and became the glittering backdrop to our first New Year's Eve together, celebrated with good friends on the top floor of the Majestic, just a couple of days after our wedding. This past Sunday, though, with almost 20,000 other people in the pre-dawn chill, it became both the focus of Spencer Tunick's lens and a central part of our own new ties to the square. We literally left our footprints there, and down a stretch of 20 de Noviembre Street too. And then we left with the more intangible memory imprinted in ourselves, as well.

It wasn't the first time for me to sign up and strip down for a Tunick installation; I also know what the floor of New York's Grand Central Terminal feels like to the touch of bare skin. We were a mere few hundred women, including two fantastic friends, calmly followning instructions under the turquoise arch and golden constellations. I remember it as slightly dream-like, and not only because it happened in the sleep hours of the morning.

Mexico, as is almost always the case, was almost incomparably different.

They say we were 18,000. We had no idea at the time. What we did know was that we filed in en masse, packing continuously into the streets below Tunick's setup in the Majestic, a roiling mass full of expectant and boisterous participants at five o'clock in the morning. In spite of the assistants' pleas that the crowd calmly sit and wait and be patient, hundreds of benign but restless rabble-rousers maintained the crowd in high, noisy spirits. Some did the wave. Some shouted the UNAM's cheer. Some yelled "Slackers!" to the latecomers of the crowd. And some cried "Get naked! Get naked!"up to the press reporters and curious onlookers, hanging out the windows and balconies of the hotel. Chants of "Mexico! Mexico!" burst out too many times to count. The city was just about to turn the stereotype of conservative Mexico on its head.

The temperature dropped further before the sky began to turn light; it was the only thing that finally subdued the masses before Tunick got the show on the road. But then his translator told everyone to make sure that we "filled up the back part" of the plaza, a hilariously sexual insinuation that caused even the quietest of us to laugh hard. Less than ten minutes later, our clothes lay in piles and our bare feet lay claim to the gray Zócalo stone slabs. Indeed, we filled the whole thing up.

Most of us hugged ourselves against the typically cold Mexico City morning, and then the loud- speakered directions rolled over our heads and moved us into place. We faced the hotel, and in a race against the sun's appearance over the Presidential Palace behind us, we stood, we saluted, we then lay on our backs, and later curled up into "Aztec Stones." Rubbing our knees, sore from minutes of waiting in that fetal position while those in the back kneeled into position and a joke or two about stray farts made the rounds, we stood and began funelling our way down the south-bound street, slow and jovial and full of solidarity--not unlike many of the politically-minded marches that often dominate the center of Mexico City. Only this time, no one wore clothes.

One last photo of the women was then taken--thousands lying on their sides, wrapped around a subway entrance on the southeast corner of the square. And when it was over, Tunick remained perched atop his ladder, surrounded by outstretched hands thanking him for his work and for what would be, for many, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

I wondered what he thought of this chance to make his art here in Mexico. Of his enthusiastic subjects, sometimes so verbally rambunctious that they interfered with quick cooperation. But I don't wonder at all about what Patricio and I thought. For us, it was an unforgettably joyful experience, surrounded by thousands and thousands of of fellow humans, exposed in all our infinite differences, and yet for just over a naked hour, so very much the same.

Blessed Wood

The sounds of hammers and mallets coming from the catty-corner house-in-progress have been replaced today by the boom of fireworks overhead. The albañiles (often translated as "masons," the word really encompasses a much broader range of construction work and its varied specializations), aren't taking advantage of the view toward our patio's potted mint, rosemary and cat grass. They're taking advantage of their 24 hours to celebrate. Being the 3rd of May, it's the Día del Albañil, when construction workers across the country set down their tools in exchange for a cup of something refreshing, soaking in the day set aside in their honor: those millions of laborers who--many as likely to send out a cat call as any construction worker in the states--put the roofs over millions of Mexico's heads.

This is serious business, as the continuous bursts of the cohetes can attest. Copious drinks are poured and lifted with toasts of "¡salud!" while plates are piled high from the various offerings on the table. Most often celebrated at the site of their current work, the day may also celebrate at home, and a good many will eventually fill the bars, cantinas and pulquerías close by. It's a delicious way to be grateful for a break, grateful for paid work and safety on the job, and grateful for the satisfaction of a finished product that may either loom near or remain far in the hopeful distance.

This gratefulness has other roots spreading both through the day and through the history of the country and Catholicism. May 3 is also the Día de la Santa Cruz--the day once appearing on the liturgical calendar to commemorate Saint Helen's discovery of Christ's cross in the city of Jerusalem. By 1970, the day was no longer an official religious feast, but it's connection in Mexico with the albañiles was already far too deep, and the Vatican made a concession to the country that allowed Holy Cross Day to continue.

The ties between Cross Day and Mexico's albañiles is said to be this: "Since in the early years of the Spanish colonial period in Mexico, most churches were still under construction, on May 3 the priests asked the masons to make crosses and put them on the highest point of the building." Decorated crosses had formed a much older part of Spanish tradition in the day's observance, and whether or not the albañiles began celebrating the day as their own as a result of this story, the truth is that today, the cross and construction are inextricably tied.

Those grouped together at their construction sites, hosted by the lead engineers and architects, still fashion a cross together, often from wood coming from their own materials, and sometimes decorated with flowers and colored paper. The head albañil is then asked to place it prominently over the work, an offering and a talisman from and for those who are linked to its construction. Patricio's good friend, Enrique, has engineered a large addition to a school not far up San Pedro's main street. I'm sure that at least a few of the fireworks are coming from that direction, shooting up past the cross that's already been nailed to the facade.

In the school's case, the construction spells prosperity both economically and intellectually for a number of people. But prosperity also fits in strangely with the wee, starry hours of May 3, as well. Over a late plate of quesadillas last night, Patricio remembered that buried coins or treasure are rumored to emanate a luminous, gaseous light above their hidden spots during the hours before the sun comes up. Uncovering such a find--from caches of Spanish gold to riches secreted away during the Revolution--would certainly make anyone, whether Catholic or albañil or both or neither, most grateful indeed.

Lion and Lamb

Moctezuma doesn't often take revenge on his own people, but every now and then, I suppose his spirit does come back to haunt the European genes in the mix. Patricio himself, who boasts a stomach of steel, is only now recovering from that old Aztec's wrath, after a week of frequent visits to the powder room. Originally placing the blame on a bad batch of chilaquiles he'd brunched on at a hole in the wall place, he discovered the truth a few days later. Stopping by to see his brother, Alberto, his laments turned out to be shared. And having shared the same meal the previous Sunday, their suspicions were corroborated by the words of our little nephew, spoken with innocent foreshadowing before we gathered around his family's table for the hours-in-preparation barbacoa.

"What's the occasion we're celebrating?" Patricio asked little Eder, knowing that we're usually invited out to the small ranch in Tenopalco to celebrate a birthday or the town's Saint Day in October.

"Nothing," he replied. "It's just that one of grandma's sheep died. So we're going to eat it."

We laughed, heedlessly trooping out into the patio surrounded by the extended family's homes, where the tables were set and the salsa laid out.

Perhaps it wasn't Moctezuma after all. Only a sad little sheep, gone before its time. Note to selves, we later said, though: don't be too quick to celebrate the death of grandma's livestock. Even stomachs of steel may become lions defeated by the lamb.

Que Milagro

¡Qué milagro!

I hear this every now and then, especially if I'm making a phone call. A lot of you know I'm not much one for dialed-up conversations, preferring the slow time of playing with words that an email often allows. So when I do press the call button, I can see how it might be deemed a miracle.

Milagro equals miracle in most senses of the word: Water into wine, Life after death, D.F. without traffic. But in a country where gods once lived among men, and the Virgin Mother descends with signs of roses for the people, the miracle of apparition rings an almost daily note. Or doorbell. Or dial tone.

"¡Qué milagro!", friends and relatives say here when they haven't seen or heard from someone in awhile. On the surface, it isn't much more than the phrase one instinctively says, letting the caller or visitor know that their presence--physical or vocal--is a welcome and pleasant surprise. But I like to think of it as something more awesome, something that gets the circumstance right--that everyday miracle of a friend's visit or a relative's call, the apparition of something truly mysterious: human connection. 

Qué milagro.

Pedro Infante, Que Cante, Que Cante

Just like Patricio and I are prone to spontaneous bursts of dance, the cat and the car's interior are also often witness to our impulsive bits of song. And the top three melodies, with lyrics we'll sometimes change, would be recognized by almost any Mexican citizen who happened to hear us through an open window. When the skies are overcast and the clouds look heavy, one of us is bound to take on an exaggerated tenor and deliver the prediction that "Parece que va a llover" (It looks like it's going to rain). Or when the mood strikes us, or to better call the other in from a different room, the register runs higher and out comes a vocal shower of "Amorcito corazón" (My little lovey heart). And sometimes, an almost pouty "Pero te quiero más que a mis ojos" (But I love you more than my own eyes) will find its way into the air between us. They're all perfect for our purposes, and they're all cultural references with one thing in common: an icon whose death happened fifty years ago yesterday.

Pedro Infante sang each of those lyrics in movies still so popular that they're played in rotation (along with around 60 others) each weekend on major network television. A toda máquina, the Pepe el Toro trilogy, and Tizoc are the ones we pull our own top three from, but I'd also be telling the truth if I said that Patricio knew about a dozen other Infante songs in their entirety, by heart.

Just say the name "Pedro Infante" to someone here, and lyrics, images and sentimental ties will come to the listener's mind. Everyone has a favorite movie to name, or three, and though some love his memory a great deal more than others, it would be a rare and astonishing thing to find a person who frowned at the invocation. Actor and singer, with a voice that still wields the power of swoon, he's the one person an aunt of ours said would have made her consider acts of adultery. My mother-in-law can go glassy-eyed when she hears him, my father-in-law will belt out "Efigenio El Sombrerudo" at a party with his best imitation. Patricio's daughter, even as a little girl, couldn't have been a more rapt audience when watching his films.

He's something much more than anyone I can think of in American culture; it's a delicious coincidence that his last name literally means "prince." He's like a bigger-than-life soup of Frank Sinatra, Elvis and Robert Redford well-simmered together. And unlike Elvis, whose life also ended too soon, Infante hasn't become an icon of kitch. He's as classic as a Redford, or a Humphrey Bogart, perhaps. But for many, like Elvis, Infante continues to live. He was even said to have moved right here to Nicolás Romero, spending the rest of his days in peace. Our friend, Laura, knew the rumor all to well--she and her father made nothing less than a pilgrimage here when she was a girl, only to find an old man to dash their hopes and disappoint them both.

His lyrics and lines, not to mention his charisma and his rags-to-riches story of fame, continue to maintain thick, solid roots throughout popular Mexican culture, fifty whole years after the ill-fated flight he was piloting in the Yucatán. Only a few years back, supporters of López Obrador claimed that "¡Peje el Toro es inocente!"--a reference to one of Infante's most famous characters, Pepe el Toro, framed for a crime he didn't commit.

And much like Pepe, Infante's record has been washed virtually clean by his fans. His machismo may have been enormous, some illicit connections may have been true, too. But he's become a legend here, and the legendarily good find their faults falling away, far in the background.

And what's left is the stuff of spontaneous, joyful song.

Tremble

Patricio and I were stretched out on the couch, me with my feet pressed against his calves to keep the toes from cold, and we were drifting while a late-night Chilean war movie played on Channel 11. Friday morning had just begun only half an hour before. This is why, when sinuous electronic sirens sounded out beneath a voice repeating "seismic warning," we mused and then sleepily figured it a strange twist to the film. But the warning kept playing over the actors' voices, and we realized the earthquake was about to happen right here. Well, there, really. In the capital, where the shifting lake bed of a city rocks with the tremors sent in from the Pacific.

Up here, some twenty miles away on the foothills, in our sturdy brick one-story house, we sat up and waited, wondering if the shake would make it as far as our place. And it did, when we felt the room slip into an almost imperceptible dizzying sway. We'd have thought it was only imagined--a hoped-for effect--if our light bulbs and towels and other dangling things weren't left swinging back and forth until the momentum was finally lost. It was so quiet and brief. If we'd been fast asleep, it wouldn't have woken us.

And I thought to myself, "The wise man didn't build his house upon the rock in a strictly metaphorical sense."