It's Been a Long Journey

Yes, I know I set my intention to stay put in Oaxaca. And I know that once I settled into my life I stopped posting to this blog. And when I moved to Chiang Mai, Thailand, last March I was embarrassed (after all, I was going to finally stay put), so I didn't post. And before I was able to decide whether or not to start a new blog, I moved back to Oaxaca!
WHEW!

So here I am, a month to the day back home in this beautiful city. I know better than to say I will be here permanently. My new intention is to make Oaxaca my home base and if -- not when -- my feet start itching again, to take trips and return home.

Oaxaca is human scale, walkable, a treat for my eyes. My friends here are a treat for my heart. The sounds here are only sometimes a treat for my ears: the birds singing, the brass bands. But Mexico is very noisy. The fiestas accompanied by firecracker bombs are something I don't think I'll ever adjust to, yet when I hear the bands and see the colorful costumed marchers I still think to myself how hard it is for me to be depressed here.

Semana Santa - Holy Week

Saturday, April 23^rd

Today I walked around Llano Park. I am in love with this park. It is so well and happily and energetically (as in physically using energy) used. Used by children, teenagers, lovers, parents, grandparents, venders of ice cream and renters of little electric cars and trucks for children, by musicians and dancers and doctors checking blood pressure for free. It is a healthy park. Jane Jacobs would have loved Oaxaca and Llano Park. New Yorkers from the 1960’s, do you remember Jane Jacobs? Here is a blurb about her vision of healthy urban spaces:

“Cities, she believed, should be untidy, complex and full of surprises. Good cities encourage social interaction at the street level. They are pedestrian friendly. They favor walking, biking and public transit over cars. They get people talking to each other. Residential buildings should be low-rise and should have stoops and porches. Sidewalks and parks should have benches. Streets should be short and wind around neighborhoods. Livable neighborhoods require mixed-use buildings – especially first-floor retail and housing above. She saw how “eyes on the street” could make neighborhoods safe as well as supportive, prefiguring an idea that later got the name  “social capital.” She favored corner stores over big chains. She liked newsstands and pocket parks where people can meet casually. Cities, she believed, should foster a mosaic of architectural styles and heights. And they should allow people from different income, ethnic, and racial groups to live in close proximity.” From: http://www.nhi.org/online/issues/146/janejacobslegacy.html

Oaxaceños, does this sound like your city? A lot of this is true of Oaxaca, and is one of the reasons I love the city.

In the center of the park, small boys (where were the little girls, I wondered) drove little electric cars around a lovely cascading fountain. In the grassy area by where I sat, lovers embraced and small children rolled down the grassy incline. Vendors sold ice-cream, candy apples, tamales.

Candy vendor resting at fountain

At the north end of the park I found a wonderful fountain, a series of jets of water spouted up 1 to 3 meters (six or eight feet) or higher from the cement ground. The fountain is in two sections, in one, for smaller children, the jets are farther apart and seem gentler. In the other the water jets are more dense and stronger.  Wonderfully, the jets were set to pulsate to the pop music that was playing loudly and to cease spouting for a moment between songs.

Family playing board game Llano Park

Hot Cakes vendor Llano Park

Musical Fountain

Musical Fountain

Father and son bicycling by Llano Park fountain

April 24th — Easter Sunday Morning

Where have I been this week? In Oaxaca of course, and doing the things that I do here: getting up in the morning, taking out the garbage before 8 AM and then going to the market across the street for a liter of fresh-squeezed orange juice or a mango; coming back home and making my special oatmeal with fresh ginger, cinnamon, almonds with fresh mango on top; mixing Mexican heavy cream and milk for my coffee, and having a leisurely breakfast outside on the patio with my favorite book of the moment. Then spending too much time at the computer, checking my e-mail, the news, Facebook. Then packing my backpack with camera, Kindle, umbrella if it looks like rain, notebook and water bottle, and setting out to do errands, or simply explore the city and take photographs. If it's Wednesday, I walk (or taxi if I’m late) over to the Lending Library where I volunteer at the front desk which, at this time of year, is very slow because the snowbirds have flown home for a few months.

This is where I’ve been externally, but where have I been? Internally, I mean. I haven’t been up in my head, my usual favorite place to be: Thinking /worrying about the future or the past, thinking about what I’m feeling or not feeling; being self-critical of one thing or another that I’m doing or thinking or not doing or not feeling or feeling. I also haven’t been in the depths of emotion, which is my other familiar hang-out. The inner voices have been quiet. So where have all those vocal parts of me been? Even the SoulCollage® cards that I’ve drawn haven’t spoken to me or made sense to me. Or maybe they have made sense. I’ve drawn the animal cards, the Companion suit; cards honoring the animals or my animal guides. I drew Elephant, my third chakra animal and Horse, my 6^th chakra animal. Neither had anything to say to me. But living animals don’t speak our verbal language. And it is their silence, their direct connection to Life and Being that teaches us so much. (The Companion suit in SoulCollage® combines the Eastern Chakra system of describing a person’s natural physical energies with animal energies / allies / guides, based on the work of Stephen Gallegos, author of The Personal Totem Pole Process.)

Easter Sunday Afternoon

So much for just “being.” I had an acute attack of la solidad, loneliness again after the gathering of our little meditation group this morning which made it difficult for me to get myself out with my camera, have a meal by myself, and see what was happening on Easter evening. I drew a card, asking what I need to help me move through this mood. I pulled my “Curious Child with her Guardians” card, which immediately spoke to me: “I am reminding you to be curious and brave in exploring the new and unfamiliar and I am reminding you that your guardians are always with you and you are never alone.” My mood lifted immediately and off I went.

Curious Child with Horse Guardians

I walked up Garcia Vigil and ate at a new place, then walked north. Just before Carmen Alto church, workers were putting up what at first looked like a carnival ride for children but on closer look was clearly too fragile for that and I realized that it was a structure for lights, with moving, even spinning parts.

All Santa Semana week, food stands have been set up all along the outside wall of the church and surrounding the entrance to the walled in courtyard. I’ve always liked the feeling in this church yard perhaps because the church is said to have been constructed on the site of a temple dedicated to the goddess Centéotl, goddess of corn and fertility. A brass band started up as I approached and I went into the courtyard to see what was happening. A large group of musicians was warming up, and soon two grandmas got up and started dancing to the music. Totally straight-faced. Small boys, dressed in feathered costumes sucked lollypops and waited for their time to perform. A group of young women in costumes that included tall leafy wired headdresses entered and began dancing. All very informal and enjoyable, with small children running up to performing parents now and then.

Food stall outside Carmen Alto

Band practice in Carmen Alto courtyard

Band practice

Dancing to band practice

Boys waiting their turn to dance

Dancing to welcome Spring

Flu - Gratitude - Musings

April 14

Flu

Down with the flu – stomach flu. Thought I’d drunk some water (purified) that wasn’t right, from the garaphon (5 gal water bottle) at the Lending Library, but by the time I came home I had aches and fever as well as nausea. No fun! Drank water but ate nothing all day yesterday besides my morning oatmeal. “Feed a cold and starve a fever…” Maybe I’ll lose a couple of pounds.

Fell asleep at 8:30pm and got up about 7am feeling more human but still with a low fever. My gata Molly/Mole/Molita depending on my mood (or maybe hers), curled up with me quietly the whole time. They know. Usually, she will paw at my face or pounce on my hand or feet under the sheet to wake me but last night she was sweet and quiet and purry as can be the entire time. Every time I woke in the night, she was there, curled by my side or my neck. Thank you Molly!

More to be Grateful for /Musing about Moving and Homing

I put a deposit down on the apartment in Xochimilco this week and will be able to move in there to the just fixed up front apartment in May. In June, however, when the rear apartment is available, I’ll move there. I know, I know, it’s a lot of moving. But this is more like changing hotel rooms. They are all furnished apartments, and my stuff hasn’t been shipped from Tucson yet. It’s a matter of moving me, Molly, 3 suitcases, and the cat stuff and kitchen stuff I’ve accumulated. I’ll be glad to be there.

This feels right to me. And the universe seems to agree with me. I potentially had to pay May’s rent in the casita I’m living in now, but someone is moving here in May for a year, so I don’t have that expense. And the owner of the act-my-age-apartment emailed me and said “don’t worry, she will return my deposit.” So my craziness about finding a home isn’t going to cost me any extra money this time. Thank you!

And I just got a Tucson, AZ phone number through Skype that has voicemail and everything, so my Tucson and other US friends and family can call me without paying international rates.

Little by little, I’m starting to feel like I really live here.

April 15

This is the beginning of Semana Santa (Holy week). I wish I felt better, I’d wander the city, enjoy the festivities, and take photographs. But my energy is still low and my throat now is getting scratchy.

I walked down to the mercado to buy juice and fruit a little while ago, and music was pouring out of the building. A lovely altar, sprouting with grasses and flowers, was in the center of the space, just as altars are set up all over the city for La Dolorosa, the sad Virgin, Our Lady of Sorrows – in homage both to the Virgin and to Spring. On the altars and all over, chia seeds sprout out of clay animals and grasses sprout in small flower pots, symbolizing the Resurrection of Christ and the coming of Spring.   

La Dolorosa Photo by Rudolfo de Guadalupe

As I waited for my juice and fruit to be made, I watched young children moving to the music. Life is so much more sensual here – as in engaged with the senses. Sounds of music, birds, fireworks, the recorded announcements of the trucks delivering gas, colors! Smells both good and bad… tastes… and always bands and dancing. 

Basilica de Solidad April 11 Dance Competition

Life here is more intense on all levels – more openly joyous, closer to grief, more opening adoring of children, more irresponsible fathers: close to the light and close to shadow. Walking back from the Mercado and the music and the dancing children I pass the pile of garbage on the corner waiting to be picked up and see the paws of a dead cat poking out from between the bags

Trip to Ocatlan March 28

Went to see Rudolfo Morales Museum and House in Ocatlan with friends Lorena & Sharon. It was the last day of a week-long Morales celebration and there was also a concert in the Museum courtyard in the evening. Morales is well-known and was very much loved in his community, opening his heart and house to the people of Ocatlan. I love his work, the Mexican surrealist, magic-realism. Here are pictures from the day:

Catarina and Sharon in Ocatlan

Monsoon Sky in Ocatlan

Entryway to Morales Museum

Very Large Tapestry by Morales

Morales Painting: Women with Guns

Christ with Real Hair in Ocatlan Church

Aguilar Sisters Ceramic Angel

FINAL HOUSE DECISION! ... Well, I thought it was…

Photos from my temporary digs on Callejon de los Reyes, a sweet bungalow in a lovely garden. Molly aka Mole aka Molita, once allowed outside, is happy here. There are lovely twinkly lights on the mountains at night.

LET ME OUT OF HERE!

A much happier Molita Gata

Twinkly Lights from my Window

April 4^th

I did it. Put a deposit on a clean, comfortable, practical apartment instead of artsy funky charming. Urban instead of semi-rural in feeling. Funny reaction I’m having. A heart-sinking taking my medicine feeling. At the same time, my rational self is saying I did the right thing. I won’t have to spend energy on figuring out the water system, paying for the gas and electric. All that is included in the rent and the owner lives next door if I need something.

Sigh. The outside of my home has always been more important to me than the inside. This new place has a pleasant shared patio with fruit tree and plants, but there’s no private space right outside my doorway and it’s on a busy street. Buses. Trucks. No place for a hammock and not peaceful enough anyway. Bus traffic until 9pm. At least it stops at 9pm.

I’ve opted for a clean bright indoors this time. Nice stove and frig, big kitchen sink. Nice dishes and new pots and pans. I’m acting my age. Plus it’s available May 1^st instead of June 1^st and if I want I can even move in sooner. Sigh.

I have a old ingrained habit of booby-trapping myself in little ways. Moving to a place where I have to spend a lot of energy fixing it up before I can just decorate it and live in it. Putting cans of paint on the floor in front of my painting wall so I have to spend energy not knocking them over while I’m doing art. Moving from place to place, too often. All to relieve the anxiety of simply living or doing art.

Moving to this apartment allows me to more easily simply live here in Oaxaca.  AAAAAHHHHHHH!

April 6^th

I can’t do it. My heart won’t let me. The bohemian artist part of me that owns my heart is simply having a temper tantrum. I’ve never been good at making rational decisions that bypass some essential part of who I am, even if that essential part’s wishes may give me more tsouris (Yiddish for trouble, distress, heartburn). And this has usually been a good thing, and worth the tsouris.

April 7^th

I’m going to put a deposit on the funky-charming place in Xochimilco on Monday. These battles between my head and my heart have been expensive lately, when it comes to housing. One part of me makes a commitment to a place and pays for it. The other part has a hissy fit and I change my mind. I’ll probably lose my deposit on the nice, clean, practical place. But better to be happy and poorer.

Elizabeth Taylor, Shopping, and Homesickness

Elizabeth Taylor Died

I woke up on Wednesday to learn that Elizabeth Taylor had died. Felt strangely upset, sad, angry. Pulled a SoulCollage® card to better help me understand my feelings. The card is one I call:  “I am the one who is aging and afraid to die and forgets there is nothing to be afraid of.” 

Really Nothing to be Afraid Of

I made this card when my mother was dying. Realized that my sadness now was about the loss of my mother, of the same generation as Elizabeth Taylor and who shared her style of seduction.  And also about my own aging and resistance to acknowledging, accepting, and preparing myself for old age and death. Preparing myself psychologically, physically and practically. Physically means to me to continue to eat well and to be more serious about keeping my body strong through exercise. The practical I have been putting off: the necessary details of Living Will, Health Care Proxy, Will and health insurance here in Mexico.

Shopping for Sheets

This week I also decided to search for 100% cotton sheets, and found them at a fancy department store called Fabrica de Francia. The store was much like Bloomingdale’s or other more upscale US department stores. Discovered I could buy good cookware, and ceramic water spigot jugs, too, if I need them. The store is in a mega-mall which also has Office Depot and a multi-plex cinema and nearby there’s even a Sam’s Club. Good to know they’re there and I’ll rarely use them.

A Little Homesickness Creeps in

With my housing pretty much resolved, along with relief, I’ve been feeling a little unfocused and more lonely for good friends. This tone probably set by feeling the loss of my mother.

I drew another SoulCollage® card – “I am the one who stays always connected to Self and Spirit despite the sadness and shadows of life.” 

Always Connected Self

 This process of drawing SoulCollage® cards, like that of throwing the I Ching, using the Tarot, meditating, or any other method that taps into the collective unconscious and other streams of conscsiousness running beneath our rational minds, often gives me chills of recognition of the perfection and truth available to us all when we don’t think too much and try too hard and are able to access those deeper places. This reminder comforts me.

I’m also finally remembering fragments of dreams and have started reading a book I found in the Lending Library called, “Art is a Way of Knowing,” by an art therapist whose process of connecting to herself through imagery is very similar to mine.  The roots of connection to my inner world that is so necessary, exciting, inspiring, and sometimes frightening to me, are growing new shoots in Oaxaca. I see from the art all around me here that people in Mexico are also attuned to dreamlife.

Housing Update and Other News

I met new friends at the Pochote organic market in Xochimilco, on Saturday, which is across the street from a funky but charming apartment I saw last week. I wanted to show them the apartment and get a second opinion on acceptable degrees of funk. They both liked it! Validation is reassuring. The things we all like about it: it’s a compound, so there will be other hopefully sympatico people living there and sharing the huge, wonderful, wild tree-full (even a purple blooming jacaranda) yard. And views of the mountains. And a space for an organic garden. And a Temazcal, which is to the prehispanic cultures here what the sweat lodge is to the Native American culture. And the apartment has a large covered private patio and high brick arched ceilings and glass bricks in a couple of places to let in light, though not enough opening windows. But it feels good and I will move in there in stages. First to the apartment in the front for a month, until the rear apartment is available. This will also give me a chance to see if I am comfortable there before I sign a year’s lease.

In the meantime, I’m treating myself to a very comfortable bungalow, too expensive and too small for long-term, for the month of April.

I will be very glad to get finally settled somewhere and thinking about something else besides these details.

The next day, Sunday was Lorena’s birthday and several of her friends and I went to a Chinese restaurant for lunch. Good food and good company, but not very Chinese. Wonder what Liya, the Chinese student and great cook who lived with me last year, would think. Later on the same day, I went to hear a Jazz concert in the garden of a lovely B&B. Good music, and a very beautiful garden and buildings. They hold these concerts once a month and it is a treat to be there. www.casa-colonial.com/_our_garden

Monday I went on a tour of an organic permaculture farm, Tierra del Sol, about a half hour south of Oaxaca. Very inspiring and also a beautiful place. We learned a lot about permaculture, had a delicious lunch, and saw several of their buildings, which are all built in natural materials. Cob, straw bale, bamboo… learned about their water-collection and filtering methods.

Lush Countryside at Tierra del Sol

Bamboo and Mud Building

 Tuesday.  I had a Spanish conversation class and was introduced to IAGO, a graphic arts library. WOW! Completely open to the public, free. Has a gorgeous courtyard with Bougainvilla vines overhead and long tables to read at, study at, use a laptop at, and a little cafe AND every art book you can possibly imagine!  A room for books on painting, a room for sculpture books, another room for architecture, another for graphic arts and design. And a bookstore where they sell the beautiful handmade paper made in San Augustine Etla. Heaven!

The next class Clarissa, my teacher, introduced me to the 2^nd branch of this library, which is for literature and music. It is equally as beautiful with amazing collections of fiction, non-fiction, poetry and a music room with a huge collection of world music and sets of earphones for listening. The floors are tiled with beautifully geometric patterned tiles of different colors. The bathroom is tiled walls and floor with frijole (bean)-patterned brown, black and white tiles. Very simple, very elegant, very peaceful space. Unfortunately, though open to the public daily, it is not used enough by people in Oaxaca. The art library is busier.