Two in one day!!!

So much writing you say! Yes, it is true. I had to do two separate blog entries in one day to have a logical break from the swine flu (although there is so much more to write on that subject!) and other recent novelties in Mexico. Such as:

A twelve hour cross-country excursion in a small pickup truck with a flatbed, where my three couches, kitchen table and miscellaneous suitcases, boxes and bags were loaded under a plastic tarp. Oscar and I were scrunched in next to the driver, without a radio, no air conditioning and enjoying the view of the states of Jalisco, Michoacan, Queretaro, Mexico state, Hidalgo, and finally Puebla. We stopped and shared a family special of grilled chicken at mid-day and all ordered Sangria sodas.

A visit to the Home Depot (really, the superstore, here in Puebla), where two grown men (one nearly elderly) duked it out in one of the checkout lines, causing people to gasp and stare and women to scream when knocked down. Who the hell knows what motivates humans to behave like beasts, especially when we are talking about electrical wiring, prefabricated kitchens and shades of paint.

A Wednesday evening adventure, selling our polo shirts with the Puebla FC patch embroidered on the front and screen-printing on the back (you can see the model here> www.stampa-t.blogspot.com) at the Puebla soccer stadium in the quarter finals of the semi-annual Mexican soccer league championship. Only Charlie wasn't reluctant at first, because he has worked as a mechanic, a valet parker, a car detailer, in a tailor's shop, etc. and is passionate about anything. Miriam is quiet anyway, so she never did make too much noise. Oscar made several deals, because he is a social guy. Arturo used a lot of street slang to get the job done. My personal style was to accentuate the shirt's features by giving a little twirl while explaining it, and follow-up with the girls who hestitated when they walked by. I told one girl that it would match her earrings, and motivated the boyfriends of three girls to buy them for their girlfriends. There were other randoms sales and a lot of silly responses from people who don't expect a foreign woman to be peddling t-shirts in the parking lot. We sold over 30 shirts that night though, and more than 50 to date!

People doing the following:

One foot out, quick piroutte, heel click to finish the 360 degree movement. (His khaki vest fluttered out gracefully during the motion.) Again he is facing the traffic, standing on a street corner at an interection where our bus is stopped next to a car blaring banda music. Could that be his motivation? A girl in pressed gray dress pants is singing along, passionately, to the same song, nevermind the rest of the passengers. And the other day, and older man was singing acapello on the bus from his seat, and this time not to earn money, but evidently because the spirit so moved him.

A gent in a suit, standing in a short alleyway with a friend, flying a remote control helicoptor at 1 p.m. on a Tuesday. The helicoptor was reluctant to take flight.

A mother with her daughter, inquiring about one of our shirts, who grabs her daughter's arm and whips her back towards the sidewalk when Lola, lounging in the workshop on a late afternoon, stands up and wags her tail briskly, saying "Stay away! That dog will chew you up!"

And since I love observing people, there will be more to come.

The Lost Poem and Lola the Saint Bernard

I promised a poem about cubre-bocas weeks ago, back when they were more fashionable and in-demand, put I put it on hold while trying to leave my job, move across the country and radically modify the rhythm of my days. Without further ado, however, here is the poem.

But first, I will tell that Lola, my lone comapanion as I write this, just situated herself quite comfortably on our newly uncovered couch (previously covered in boxes, suitcases and other inappropriate living room decor). At least we bathed her two days ago!

Ahem. The poem:

A drop of sweat slides down my calf.
I am clutching a cloth bag with
six bottles of spirits and wine
hoping no one claims this
yellow special needs seat
because there are no others left.
A couple boards, wearing matching
face masks. They cannot kiss like that.
A young woman holds a scarf to her
mouth, nearly the same electric
blue as the surgical mouth covers.
She is improvising. Still, she is not safe.
She is behind the woman who withdrew
her hand before actually touching
the man who didn't respond
to her request to move over.
Someone else got his attention.
I am rolling and folding the thin
bus ticket between my fingers,
the same one that the driver touched.
The bus finally stops for me.
Perhaps there was a collective,
albeit shallow, sigh of relief:
she has taken her potential germs.
She was not wearing a cubrebocas.

Cubre-bocas

The outbreak of swine flu continues. I think I am supposed to be wearing a face mask by now too, but I am resisting. Last night I wrote a poem about face masks, but I forgot to bring it to work to share with you. I will do that tomorrow.

In the office, it is particularly interesting to watch people. Some people have some humor, and to make light of the recommendations not to touch other people by sticking their hand out and shaking the air. Other people are not amused, and refrain from getting more than two meters close to anyone. And they religiously wear their face masks.

One of my female coworkers asked a question in an interesting way yesterday: "Do we become immune to this type of flu if we get it and survive, or will everyone get sick like a bunch of lit matches, and although I am well like a burned out match, will it ignite me again?" She is trying hard not to be ignited to begin with.

I just want to finish my job and be done, so I can decide if I want to wear a face mask or not. No work on Friday, and then the following Friday I am free. I sold my bed, but I have not yet surrendered it to the buyer (because then, where would I sleep?). I am giving away many things and packing many others. Last call from Mexico if you want anything.

Swine Flu, Earthshakes and other calamities

Whoa... Mexico has gone crazy recently. Today, after a fairly normal weekend, I had to talk to people about real-life dangers. For example, this morning there was an earthquake in Mexico City, that measured 5.7 on the Richter scale. Although they survived it without incident, our employees there had to be evacuated so that a team of engineers could evaluate the building to make sure there was no structural damage. The fact that the earth beneath us can shake is unfathomable for me, and I would prefer not to have to find out what it feels like.

Then, we had to send out special communications today to let the employees know what is going on with the now infamous swine flu that is ravaging Mexico City and rapidly spreading to other states of the Republic. AHHH. The government decided to close all schools and day-cares in the country, along with lots of museums, a major fair in Aguascalientes, and lots of other things like movie theaters and other gathering places. The recommendations are that people not kiss each other on the cheek or shake hands in greeting, that they wash their hands excessively, that they avoid close quarters, and basically that they shun sick people as if they had the plague (which technically, they have a sort-of modern day version). I am a little bothered because I recently read the book Blindness which talks about contagious blindness and how people reacted so terribly to it, and people are starting to get a little crazy here too, but what can you say? Lots of my coworkers starting wearing those hospital nose/mouth masks and several are ready to lock themselves in their homes and not emerge until things calm down. Mexico is getting the worst of it with lots of deaths, possibly because people don't go to doctors when they are sick for many reasons, money being a big one. And now, if you go to a health clinic, you are likely to walk away sicker. The U.S. government is sending out information to citizens who live in Mexico to let us know what they recommend, and I guess if they start saying that they are going to limit travel to the US from Mexico I will have to take heed and go home while things are calm. My original plan was to stay in Puebla and then fly out of Mexico City, but with the chaos, that may change drastically. Ay, who knows.

The other calamity is not a natural-disaster, but a man-made one. Several of my coworkers have been laid off in the last several days, so that just makes everything all the more depressing. It's bad enough to see people with blue masks on, but when you see them crying too, it's a whole new story.

Suffering, please dissipate.

Enough about time already

So even though I was sort of invited to ruminate about the future on someone's blog, I am going to scrap the time talk and move onto something else. You might have checked some photos I put up recently about life in Mexico, so I will do a little parallel to those.

I am about to leave for a while again, and there is so much that I have been thinking about, about how here I have learned to do several interesting things (including some that I may not be able to put on my resume) and have been swept away by the excitement and occasional misery of being a foreigner. In all of the pictures I am smiling, though, and not just because I am about to be caught on film (or, better yet, a memory card), but because I am happy most of the time. And who wouldn't be, when all these funny and random things happen every day?

For example, today is now Sunday, and this is how it has shaped itself:
First, I woke up after nearly 14 hours of sleep. Late, you say? De ningún modo... I fell asleep around 6:30 p.m., so that means that I woke up at 8:08 a.m. Wild Saturday night, huh? If only you knew what I dreamt about... I immediately started loading my reusable bags with dirty clothes, and headed out on my bike with the whites on the right handlebar and the darks on the left. At the end of my street, I joined up with Recreactiva, the route that the city sponsors every Sunday for walkers, bikers, skaters, or any other kind of non-car riders. Needless to say, I was was the only one who actually uses my bike for a utilitarian purpose, and who actually dares to sport a skirt (knee-length) while doing so. At the laundromat, I used the wireless internet while my clothes were soaked, soaped, spun and dried.

At this point, I am in a Plaza that I have been to twice today. Why? Well, after leaving my clothes at the apartment, I also left my my bike chain. I didn't realize that until I arrived here for breakfast, and I had to choose somewhere that I could leave my bike outside in plain sight. The best option was precisely what I wanted, a place with tortas (or, if you are from Guadalajara or the North, lonches) of all kinds, but I had a licuado with oatmeal and bananas and a plate of fruit with everything except cantaloupe and papaya. Some kids touched my bike, but other than that, everything was calm.

Since tonight I have a dinner invitation from one of the company's directors and I understand it is correct etiquette to take his family something, I had no choice but to return home for my bike lock so that I could come back and find something. The book stores had dismal options for both interesting and intelligent children's books and also for traditional Mexican cooking books both with pictures and good recipes. So, I opted for soaps made out of essential oils and extracts from Michoacán (alright, I am obsessed with the store and always end up buying something there no matter what).

Now I am drinking a mint tea at Starbucks to make sure that I actually finish a blog post today, and I just saw a young woman who was turned away from the store Zara for trying to enter with a dog. Yes, it was pretty small, but what the heck? She was dragging it along, literally, because the outdoor plaza is tiled and it just skid along after her. She was determined to enter anyway, so she gave some woman sitting at a booth the leash. Hopefully she either knows her or is going to pay her, or that the woman will decide to run off with the dog so it no longer has to endure shopping excursions.

Otherwise, a clown on stilts passed by and imitated me typing on my computer, and some of his co-entertainers were walking around with glass paperweights on their heads. Is that a new trick? Clowns are in demand in Mexico always, but I think that they are here specifically today to entertain children (as opposed to clowns who entertain adults with dirty jokes and double entendres) because April 30 is Día de los Niños. I think we don't celebrate that in the US because the children already get a lot of stuff. Or something.

In front of me there is a mother with her hearing-impaired daughter. They are chatting, and I realize that this is only the second time since I have been here that I have seen people signing. I love it. Did you know that I used to know sign language, and that I volunteered at the Kentucky School for the Deaf? And that I have always thought about adopting a hearing-impaired child. In India, at the home where Vivian was adopted from, the only male child was blind, and I know that those children more than any others will rarely get a chance to have a family (although, thankfully, he did).

And now I am going to tell you about biking in Guadalajara, because since I started doing it, it has become the highlight of my life. Biking in the morning is a breeze, because it tends to be a bit cooler, I am freshly showered and my wet hair lays on my neck and upper back, and it is downhill nearly all the way. There is nothing much of particular interest in the morning, other than the waking city with occasional wiffs of bread baking and buses running behind schedule doing their best to mow me down. There is a particular right hand turn where I have to slow down to not hit taxis that come to sharp halts, the juice man who doesn't always park his cart in the same place, and the young, entreprenuerial men who stand just off the corner waving propaganda to people going to the American consulate there, trying to convince them that their services are required. Also, the other day a renegade car next to me came to an exaggeratedly screeching halt, and then peeled out when the light changed. Unfortunately, precisely there the street veers significantly to the left and the car didn't quite make up, so he jumped the curb and had to swerve to keep from heading directly towards a line of trees and service posts.

In the afternoon (meaning after 6:30 p.m.), things are much more interesting. There are about 160 people in my office, not counting the frequent visitors from the US, who have not yet all asked me about my affition for impending danger, so I spend the first few minutes prior to my departure patiently repeating the same thing while putting on my helmet, adjusting things, securing my bags to my handlebars, wasting time, etc. Then I hop on and go uphill, and stopping at nearly every other stoplight (although I confess, if no one is coming, I go on through, reasoning that half the cars do it anyway, and they don't have to do half the work that I do). At one corner there used to be a gay man selling gum and other candies. During the day he was always disheveled, with dirty, unmatching clothes and a sloppy ponytail. At night, though, I imagine that he is a diva. He always looked tired. One day, I was stopped at the light next to a car driven by a man in a suit, and the street vendor was peddling his goods to little avail. He then turned to me, called me "sister" and asked what I wanted, that the man in the car would buy it for me. Although I declined to "order" anything, the man in the car felt obliged to buy some gum. The light changed then, and the man on the street ordered the man in the car to yield to me, that couldn't he see that the "lady on the bicycle deserves some respect." Ha.

Further ahead, there are bongo bands, silver-painted men who juggle fire-lit batons on the shoulders of their friends, and children selling flowers, candy and other goods at stoplights. The same waitors are outside their restaurants daily, waiting bored for the dinner crowd that won't arrive for another hour or more. Others are closing up shop, and the traffic is dense from large streams of workers abandoning their offices for the day. I have twice had a car-door opening scare, one that so nearly sent me flying off my bike that a man in a truck next to me commented at the next intersection that they almost did me in. Other times, people in cars have whistled, cajoled, commented, etc., but most of the time they have been my coworkers who like to see what it takes to get me to turn around (the most prudent response is always to ignore that type of behavior). One time, however, three guys packed into a pick-up truck yelled "Güera hermosa" (beautiful white-girl being the closest translation), although I wondered how they could make that statement if its hard to find me beneath the helmet, sportswear, backpack, red checks, and, of course, sweat.

I love biking, and rebutting all the falsehoods related to it: that it is too slow, too difficult, too dangerous, etc. Clearly, they won't argue whether it is cheaper, because I was relieved that I had irreparably wrecked my car, because the insurance, the gasoline, the oil changes, etc. adds up to a LOT of money. And of course, it is easy to tell that biking has been good for me. For some reason, everyone here likes to talk about my legs, especially the girls. Many Mexican girls bemoan the fact that they have "chicken legs", and I happen to have the opposite. Actually, I have been embarrassed forever that genetics, soccer-playing and horse-back riding gave me big calves, but it has made me a veritable star here. Who would have known???

I'm already thinking about the next theme I want to cover, so I won't wait so long to write the next blog entry. Hasta pronto.

Too much time has passed, again

I feel like Guadalajara has been a time warp for me. I will be quitting my job two weeks before my two-year "anniversary", which really delights me for no rational reason.

I just visited two new (for me) Mexican states-- Quintana Roo and the Yucatan-- and I am fighting tears that have probably been longing to well up in my eyes for months. As much as living in Mexico can be exasperating and disheartening frequently, I love it. I feel like before Mexico I wasn't quite myself. But I also need Kentucky, and change and a bit more grass and to stroke a horse's neck whenever I feel like it.

I am sure that I am not going to quit the struggle... nothing has come too easily since I left college, but it all seems worth the work, frustration and final glory (figuratively speaking, of course). Now, though, the goal is to find something else that I really like to do... can anyone help me find a job???

Time, and Another Place

Hi there. I'm very aware that it has been a long time, and I have no excuse other than work-related exhaustion, depression and longing. Fear not, though, I'm not going to let that ruin my life.

So what has been going on?

First, to give some continuity to this blog, the gas station remains half-finished. Worse than tearing down the house and starting the blasted project is that it remains lost in time, neither a gas station nor a house, although it does have good landscaping. I can only be glad that there is not a steady stream of traffic passing through, and that it is still safe to pass by on bicycle.

Speaking of time continuums, I have recently been pondering the fact that I have no earthly idea where the time has gone. I have been trying to count because I am regularly quizzed on how long I have lived and worked here (the subtle way of asking how long it took this gringa to respond well in Spanish), and I officially have been here for one year and three and a half months. However, that means about as much to me as turning 25 did a few weeks ago, and the fact that my Mom is now 60 (good thing she doesn't read the blog, I might be lynched for that). It was much easier when my life was ordered by the passing school years, with a small accomplishment at the end of one when I advanced to a higher level and therefore, greater status in life (or so I thought). Now I feel lost, unorganized, without direction. Who can tell me what accomplishments I have marked out in these recent years?

Today I came up with my closest estimation of how I have progressed:

1. My agaves are growing. The hijuelo that I was given last year about a month after I arrived that would fit in with any of our developing agaves that will later be harvested to make "the best Tequila in the world." And, the little agaves that I rescued from the quiote Christmas tree (the "tree" that grows up in the middle of some agave plants and sprouts tiny baby agaves) were all about two inches tall when I took them home and planted them in rows in a box planter, and today I repotted them all since some are now close to eight inches tall and growing sharper pencas (leaves) everyday.

2. Lola now stands 63 centimeters, or 2 feet, tall and eats about a kilo (2.2 pounds) of food a day (although we have been exercising her too much, I think, because she looks skinny). Recently Oscar and I were looking at some really old photos of her, and I couldn't believe that in December she was a little fluffy teddy bear-looking animal, small enough to lift in one hand. Now, when she is in a playful mood and jumps on the bed just to drive us crazy, I have trouble pushing her off.

3. My nieces and nephew sound different every time I speak to them on the phone. Race and Vivi are 5 years old, and can tell me all about what they are doing. Bonnie and Addie were headed to a workshop on Friday to learn to be comfortable in public-speaking situations. I bought the girls all purses recently because I have no clue how big they are, cannot even imagine, because I still remember them best how they were in Singapore, but that was two years ago.

4. Oscar and I have known each other for nearly three years, and there is a date to mark that occasion that we will commemorate with some kind of activity, although it is very difficult for me to discern when I knew people and when I didn't. If you are reading this, it is because you know me, but I feel like I have known you forever, even if there was a specific period of time in which we were more closely linked. Maybe with certain people, it is inevitable that we know each other and can and should feel that we have always been acquaintances, friends, family, lovers. Hmmm.

5. Perhaps the number one indicator of the time that has passed since landing in Guadalajara: my desire to do something different, to relocate, to dedicate myself to something else entirely, to discover a new side of me in adventure, loneliness, excitement, disappointment, discovery. It's not only the job, but also the internal response to the day-to-day, the routine, the repitition. It's not that the grass is alwasys greener somewhere else, but that my mind is clearer when I move on once I have decided that it is appropriate. I think that time is rapidly approaching.

Wendell Berry expresses it well, so I will leave you with him:

The Thought of Something Else

1.
A spring wind blowing
the smell of the ground
through the intersections of traffic,
the mind turns, seeks a new
nativity-- another place,
simpler, less weighted
by what has already been.

Another place!
it's enough to grieve me--
that old dream of going;
of becoming a better man
just by getting up and going
to a better place.

2.
The mystery. The old
unaccountable unfolding.
The iron trees in the park
suddenly remember forests.
It becomes possible to think of going

3.
--a place where thought
can take its shape
as quietly in the mind
as water in a pitcher,
or a man can be
safely without thought
--see the day begin
and lean back,
a simple wakefulness filling
perfectly
the spaces among the leaves.