My last dizzy morning in Guanajuato.
Last night was goodbye with Alex and Maggie Mindy and Miguel. One bottle of tequilla dissapeared before our very eyes...and the lively conversation was conducted in two languages.

Maggie has been one of my favorites. Her boyfriend, Alex is a charmer and a hopeless infidel. Here I understand how these problems are really issues between women. The men are reckless neanderthals when it comes to the delicate art of intimacy and fidelity...all heart but somehow no soul.

Miguel paced back and forth most of the night trying to figure out how to get back to his wife and 2 kids in San Marcos. He was turned around at the border last week, but he'll try again at the Nuevo Leon crossing again today. His son's birthday is in just 2 weeks, and he's anxious to be there. There's nothing to say to him to make him cool down...just make eye contact and good luck guay.
Maybe eventually after this free trade new world order stuff settles down, we can trade our labor freely too and live whereever we want. Him in San Marcos, me in Mexico. Until then, the papers will always distract us from really enjoying ourselves.

And today Mindy had to wake up early and patch the bags under her eyes for to pose at the house of Diego Rivera for the sketch artists. We poured over the art books in Maggie and Alex's studio last night, trying to figure out what would work, and what wouldn't...gigling at the truely more advanced reclining positions.

It feels good to get out of Guanajuato and to be in Leon for the day. I've visited two shopping malls, ate a burger at McDonnalds and had a good talk about mexican transexuals with my friendly taxi driver (formerly of Houston Texas). Apparently, they have doctors to do the surgeries in Mexico... will inflate your breasts and everything, but the real classy specialists are in California. Also, he points out a place where I can start my training for La Lucha Libre tomorrow if I like. I shake off the temptation with a laugh (and thus my career as a mexican wrestler has ended before had ever begun.)

Guanajuato has been lovely, but it has a dark haunted element, and after a week here, I feel my face muscles gravitating toward my feet. (However, because of all the walking, my ass is gravitating toward the heavens). Guanajuato is home to the death lottery in which the Spanish military chose persons at random to pay for their previous victories over the invasion. It's a city filled with ghosts, dark corners, mines, and tiny streets no wider than your arm. The mountains churn the city's occupants all day long, and they randomly collide with eachother twice a day whether they like it or not.

When I look up at the sky, it is only six inches wide. Remember how Ryan first told me that he misses the horizon? I have fallen into a hole in the earth, and the people are friendly, the food is nice, and everything is well organized, but it is a hole in the earth. Remember Fraggle Rock?

Thankfully, the bus ride out to Leon made me remember the real Mexico again. Open, sweaty, breathing at it's own pace and no one elses. The business man beside me from Aguas Calientes wants to know what I'm reading...it's a book on Mexican culture I explain to him. He frowns when I tell him it is written by a gringo. Then a man with a mustache, a stain on his bulging belly, and an old patched up guitar boards the bus and quiets our conversation. He is singing passionately beside me, and the woman that is seated behind him rolls her eyes a bit and shrugs her shoulders to me.
'This is so Mexico' the business man explains.
When the man finishes singing, the business man asks if I understand what it was he has sung. I can't provide him with a direct translation, but it's what all the songs here are about; a woman, a kiss, the arms of a lover, a good bye and lots of crying. He nods his head in agreement.

The woman who shrugged to me points out the airport that we are passing on the right. Every bus I climb onto seems to know my whole story before I climb off. I've never missed a destination on any of my bus rides, because someone always knows better than I do where I am going and cares for me the way they would any of the other children playing in the street.

The film started at 10, and we killed time in the cafe de Lleyes-a bohemian international cafe-bar that plays Coldplay and the Doors. I watched a hairdresser put braids in the hair of a bartender that my next door neighbor Ryan is totally crushing on, and then learned to play a conch shell much to Mindy's humiliation.
The film had been Sam's idea (the BarOcho bartender), but Mindy and I had overruled his vote for the Passion of Christ with our two votes for Dogville although we had no idea what to expect of it.
We three tromped over to the theater and into the foyer to buy our tickets at a little ticket booth labed 'Taquilla' and waited. I couldn't resist making a loud gringa joke for the mexican audience 'Tequilla! All right!!!!' It was a huge hit, and I saw people nudging the dates beside them with pointed elbows and sideways glances. That's right, I'm the coolest. Again, Mindy's face flushes red like my mom's sometimes will.
But the film was a buzz kill. A vulnerable woman in the 20's escapes her father's mafia seeks refuge in small town america. She must at first earn their trust in order to gain their acceptance and protection. She does this by volunteering hard work...something that her alabaster hands have never known. The town eventually accepts her help and her presence, but eventually opens their dark horrible natures by exploiting her vulnerability and by the end of the film, she's a prisoner and a slave, and still condoning her exploitation. She believes these people respond from the necessity and ignorance they have, and she is so desperate to seperate herself from her father's oppressive mob rule in the city that she will accept the burden at all cost.
The message is a slap in the face of liberal thought.
How arrogant a person is who will not hold another person accountable to the same standards one has for oneself.
Mario says they have a saying in Mexico.
A 17 year old who is not a socialist, does not have a heart.
A 25 year old who is a socialist is an idiot.
Charles Bauldaire had it...although I can't find the poem I'm looking for right now.

And we sat together and talked a lot about home.

We remembered that they stop teaching history after WWII.
That the history of america is the history of the european discovery of it.
How half the names of cities in the southwest are mispronounced.
How country music ain't so bad.
That people aren't elected for the quality of their character, but for their fiscal savy.
That some people make money to afford the things they want,
and some people make money to afford the experiences they want to have.

Tell me am I right to think that there could be nothing better...?
And sometimes, you hear crazy stories about people that came upon a city in the midst of their travels and then never left.
Just when I took in a deep breath to celebrate my private homecomming...I found an unanticpated familiar face.

This is the sign I thought to myself.
Fifteen minutes later, I'd made a friend and found an apartment for 50 dollars a month.
Viva Mexico!!!!
Not to rub it in.

On the rode to Zaachila; the penitent and the late...
The bus station for rides to Zaachila is not a bus station per say, but more a bus yard of feather weight dust and white rocks and the ever popular blue tarp for shade. It is exactly as you have imagined it. When I ask the attendant where to find my bus amongst the two, he jumps up and points which tells me that it must be leaving soon because nobody should embarass themselves to move so fast.
I walk to the designated bus, with Zaachila written in white shoe polish on the cracked windsheild and climb up the powdered steps. When I reach the top, I must second guess the advise I've been given for there is a man sitting in the driver's seat with the console cover beside him and every electrical circuit pulled out of the dash and resting on his lap. He is intensly cranking a screwdriver into it when he looks up to make eye contact with me.
'I'm sorry' I say, 'I am on the wrong bus.'
'No, what's up?' he asks.
'Oh...well, I'm looking for the bus to Zaachila.'
''THIS is the bus to Zaachila.' he says.
A woman with a magazine looks up from the first seat and nods.
'Well, do I need to pay?'
'No, just have a seat.'
Shortly after I pick out a seat a few rows back, the bus starts filling up with poor old farm natives like the ones I've seen in the communist protests here. The women in full skirts carry plastic market bags, and one man even wears a poncho like in the movies. Once we have pulled out of the station and are away from the city traveling beside the small hand planted crops, it finally occurs to me that I am alone. I am alone and in Mexico and far from my health insurance policy, my mother's milky scent, and anyone who could pick me out in a morgue. I take a deep breath distract myself with the smokey visions of weathered men with mules and carts carrying dry grass and soft round ladies with long braids that meet in the back.
The bus makes many stops and I keep asking if this is the stop to Zachilla, and the woman in the front seat keeps saying no until I have bothered her so much that she promises to tell me when it comes. She walks around and collects 40 pesos from all of us for the thirty minute ride. She slipps back into her seat and begins stacking the coins in her hands to count up the money.
When Zaachila comes, it couldn't be more obvious. The markets, the people, the bicycle taxis and horses...the most civilization we've seen in thirty minutes. I climb out and head for Eder's house along the cobble stoned path, past the junk shops the chocolate grinders, and the rooster yells.
He gives me the grand tour--his room with the bright white lightbulb and pictures of his family in New York, the dying old dog in the cool dirt and the hyper puppy bought to replace him, the goat in the back yard, the pig pen that his sister feeds so religiously, the outhouse and the secret hidden toilet paper stash, the make shift shower from a garden hose, and the three or four washing stations with big bowls of stagnant water. 'Why do you have three or four stations?' I ask him, and he says that the women have a washing machine, but it just collects dust in the corner because they like to do the laundry all at the same time and together but he doesn't know why.
Eder hates Zaachila after 8 years in New York and a month in Guadalajara and just 21 years of screaming hormones under his belt. He's a little embarassed at the simplicity of his life here, and I concur with him, that I'm having a lovely time visiting, but I don't think I could stay.
We go to sooth ourselves by buying painfully pure mescal at the corner store, and since we don't want a full bottle the woman behind the counter empties out a water bottle from the shelf and takes it to the back where she fills it half way up from a vat of gut twisting wonder. And my throat has stopped hurting for the first time in three weeks.
We step out of the shop and into a funeral procession that we decide to keep up with. I have an announcement to make that a decision has been reached, and I myself am enjoying this funeral procession too much. I that too wish die in Mexico. Eder says his grandfather dead 7 years is burried into the cemetary we're we're walking to. What did he die of I ask. Of course this mescal is what did him in.
The puebla's women rush ahead in front of the casket with arms full of flowers, anxious to arrive at the cemetary and put this man into the ground. But Eder and I walk with the men in the back. All of us are dressed for everyday and have plastic bottles filled half way up with mescal, and the men here in the back keep wanting me to take some of theirs, and if I don't take some of theirs then I should take some of their mixer or chaser or something. I'm sad too, because I can't understand a word of the stories they are telling about the man in the box no matter how close I get to eavesdrop. Eder distracts me to point out the tired widow ahead being held up on each side.
We arrive at the cemetary to a lively five peice band greeting us. The horns sound like that of a marching band, and the drum beat stops up all of the tears we had on the tips of our tounges. The band is silenced in mid tune and the sacerdote reads alound from a book beside a little girl with a bowl of incese. While the pallberrers begin the hard work of lowering the man into the ground with ropes, muscles, and steady hands, the rest of us are all leaning in and standing on top of dirt mounds and headstones and holding our breath.

The musicians have played their set and I write this from a zocolo in the park. Two boys on the bench next to me say that they don't have school today because of the exposition and because their teacher is a drunk with a bad hangover. They are serious.
And a group of 6 middle school kids in red uniforms-boys and girls-approach us with outstretched masking tape covered bowls and a picture of a sweet looking girl apparenly named Esmerelda on the front. I imagine she is a friend diagnosed with cancer or m.s. or something too expenseive to afford here. My spanish is pathetic, but I have to ask for the sad truth.
'Who is Esmerelda?' I put to them collectively.
'She is. ' one replies with a pointed finger to another amongst them.
Esmerelda smiles sweetly with a dozen barrettes framing her face.
'She is our queen.'
'Queen of the exposition here?' I ask.
'No, of our class at school.'

Already the more grown boys next to me are slipping down the bench and sliding their hands in their pockets. Apparently, this explanation makes perfect sense.

'And what will you buy with the money?' I ask Queen Esmerelda.
'Clothes and candy and things' she says.

I drop my 2 pesos into the bowl, they thank me and move on through the park.

To my right a little girl of about 6 and her mother have just sat down, and I love this little girl right away. She is and has been working quite hard to secure at least twenty peices of scotch tape to her mouth. She unravels strip after strip, locking her mouth up completely. She stares at me expressionless, refusing to match my smile even with just her eyes. Her mom thinks she's a nut job and shakes her frown over the newspaper she lays across her lap.

The little girl keeps at her project. I imagine she has suffered some prick to her consience. Maybe she has said a bad word, or told a secret that she'd sworn to keep. She stops taping her face, and peels off the mask. Now she jots down some notes in a notebook with a pen that looks like the one I write with now.

Her mother just decides to pull out a package of markers. She is asking her the names of the colors.
She points to a blue one and nothing but a garbled mess comes out of her daughter's mouth.

But as I said, the tape isn't there anymore.

'Azul' the mother says
'Grabbale!' the daughter replies
The mother points to another
'Rojo'
'Rrrrrabell' is the mess that comes out.
The mother puts the markers away. They are already tired of these games. No miracle has happened over night. The big bellied little girl goes back to her notebook, and mama goes back to her paper.

Behind us a school of three year olds have just finished an incredibly important soccer match in their blue and orange smocks. They have decided to chant in unison 'HELADOR! HELADOR! HELEDOR'
And the icecream man comes running to service all twenty five of them in the jackpot sale of the day.

And we three look back at them and the mother and I look back at eachother and laugh,
but the little girl can't tear herself away.
she thinks it's the ice cream she is wanting,
and she holds out her hand to her mother for the pesos.

California Llorada

'California llorada!!!!!!'
'Callete guay!'
--smack!

I'm wearing my favorite faded black t-shirt, the one that I've loved since I first found it shopping in a second hand store with my mother in Grapevine Texas almost five years ago. The font is distinctively 80's and the white letters spell out C-A-L-I-F-O-R-N-I-A with a big palm tree at the end. Some of the boys back home in Dallas once said they would tell the seasons by this t-shirt...when they would see this shirt they would say it was 'California' weather again.
But I am at Llano park on Avenida Juarez today for a festival that celebrates a prep school here in Oaxaca. The sun is making the birds and kids go nuts, and the next performance of ten or twelve guitar boys are restless along the back side of the white tents. Four or five charge suddenly away from the group and across the gardens with intent. They swerve to avoid a troop of preteen girls in long navy polyester jumpers and cool white blouses, one of which is carrying a goldfish in a plastic bag.
But the musicians push through to a teenage couple on the sidewalk, and her hair is red and her hands are filled up with flowers...and he...he doesn't even look up at the 5 guitarists and the romantic crowd including me who has surrounded them. He just stares at her. She doesn't sweat at serenades; like a star.

Then I start crying.
I start crying and the teenage boys around me start heckling me and screaming into the park that 'California is crying'. I am laughing too with them.

And the music stops.

And we all just stare for a long time at the couple, not knowing what to say, until someone starts shouting Be-so! Be-so! and we all start shouting Be-so! BE-SO! BE-SO! Because we here in Mexico we love to incite a good public make-out session...but no such luck. A kiss on the cheek, and suddenly they part ways. The boy goes back to his friends talking soccer, the girl back to her father's house for lunch, and the musicians to the stage beyond the bleached canvas where they proceed to play 'Llarona'.

Before, the buxom woman even belts out the first word of this song, the crowd is applauding on their feet.
And everyone here is thinking about how they miss Peter Stevens.
Including me.

Teirnan tells Sheryl and I about her time spent in Japan. I myself always been suspicious of the orient, and I don't think I'd ever have the balls to visit on account of living everyday without language or a phonetic alphabet. I think I'd commit seppuku in two days of such isolation.

In Tokyo, she explained, there are many religious types: shinto, and christian sects mainly, that approach people on bustling street corners at random with a deepset desire to pray for their peace and happiness. They approach the subject and ask outright 'Would you mind if I pray for your peace and happiness?' As Tiernan says, they are so genuine, how can you say no?

What happens next is they ask you to hold your hands like so (a buddhist meditative position that prevents prana from trickling out your fingertips) or folded as in christian prayer. Next they ask you to close your eyes for three minutes while they hold an outstretched hand above your hand and pray.

Do you know how long three minutes is? Tiernan asks us. Three minutes in one of the biggest most populated cities in the world, a million miles from home, with your passport, credit cards, ID, and cash money hanging from a little strap around your shoulder. Three minutes of complete vulnerability while you anticipate good wishes from a stranger. Three minutes where you shut down the city in your head for a total leap of faith. And as a tourist you naturally are at some risks, and naturally you become a well-wisher magnet. Naturally, most of the time- it works.

INTER-CAMBIO...y el sabor de mis primeros chapulinas
In the surrounding parts of the zocolo, there is a special sort of pick up line that happens between the native and the tourist. It derived from the spanish schools attended by young rebellious adventure seekers, strange hippies, and rich widows. The word 'inter-cambio' means a conversational exchange between two people of differing mother touges but desireable target languages.
The day before yesterday a man approached me first for the time, and then asked if I would be interested in finding a bar and having an 'intercambio´. Giggling, I accepted the invitation and sat down with the little zapapan man over several beers, snacks, and a lengthy conversation in spanish about Juan Gabriel (the michael jackson of mexico), oaxacan tourists, and how to get a teaching position at the prepatoria. Amidst the styrofoam plates of spicy peanuts, limes, and tacos that come complimentary in all bars here, I pulled out my bag of chapulinas that I had just purchased in the market. (I have since found out that they are not raised in farms or anything, that children collect them in the parks in plastic bags and their mother's prepare them for the markets to sell.) He picked up the little lime and chile coated grasshoppers by the handful and tossed them into his mouth smiling and crunching away. I was grateful for the encouragement and the cervezas which helped me finally to muster up the courage to eat four or five of them myself. They have a very distinct taste and smell that is bitter. I kept belching afterward...but that might have been psychological
After about four beers, I told the guy that I needed to head back to the hotel to meet my friend. He suggested he buy some mota/yerba from the guy behind the bar. I told him I really wasn't interested... Esta mas tranquila aqui he kept repeating over and over again upon my refusals.
Eventually the check arrived. I asked him for his half of the money for the beers, which he tapdanced around. Understanding that I'd been tricked into buying the guy some beers in exhange for the language lessons, I accepted the bill with a little chuckle. No wonder the northamerican tourist had such a warm place in his heart I thought.

Working in the tortillaria is not easy work. It is not women's work at all like the tacorias or fruterias in the mercado. It takes muscles, strength, and courage when facing temperatures that rival hell or else mean-ass abuelitas (yo grandmother!).
Lines in the streets of Mexico mean one of three things: 1.)it is lunchtime near a bank 2.)a tortillaria is backed up 3.)Ricky Martin is taking his clothes off again on the corner(least common).
The stacked up people that wait for tortillas can be anybody. Most of them carry plastic bags, newspaper, or hand embroidered tea towels because when the tortillaria must wrap your tortillas for you they charge 5 pesos extra (that's 50 cents where you and I come from).
From the front of these lines come the shrieking sound of the tortilla press. It squeals above the soft mug of the motor that feeds it.
Today I saw the whole process start to finish...
The corn comes in strong white plastic sacks piled high in the corner. The kernels are removed from their bags, and left t