Oaxaca Dream Seeker: May 2011

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

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.