cities and desire

In the measuring of my laundered bones





In the brisk and sweeping valley of Jovel, nestled between the mountains of southernmost Mexico, huddles a beguiling little town with harlequin haciendas that are skintight and snug among the cobbled streets and sloping hills. In every bend and crook there resounds echoes and vestiges of the modern Maya, lavishly implanted not only in the slopes of mountains where the Maya villages thrive thick with tradition, but in the bustling colonial city center brimming with animation and a luscious vibrance. This borough, made famous in 1994 by a brief Zapatista takeover, stays chilly year round at 2100m; and when the scent of burning timber & trash invades nostrils, or the echoes of far off drilling and the collective singing of the townfolk at the Cerro de Guadalupe fill the crisp air,
I begin to sense the form and structure of my soul: a line of laundered sheets not nearly as far in the distance as they look, patterning an idiosyncratic rainbow, all identical and hanging symmetrically in a row: grey, slate blue, light blue, canary yellow, pale navy, mossy teal, pale orange, dark red, fluttering in the whips of breeze.

Yes, I would have to commit with decisiveness to the following as being my favorites about this town:
*The vibrance and radiance of its smorgasbord of colors, a simple and delicious gaudiness that invades every fragment...every fingerbreadth of the calles and the striped woven goods, the plushy shawls and hand-sewn sweaters of the vendors.
*The rooftop laundry.

In 1528 it was founded as San Cristóbal, and took on the honorable surname de Las Casas after Bartolomé de Las Casas, a man appointed bishop of Chiapas 17 years after the town's establishment; Bart de Las Casas became a candid defender of the indigenous, thus the city dons its full name proudly like a hand-sewn and slaved over wedding dress.
The natives are in the habit of living simply, but with a vigor and verve that rivals children on the playground during recess after weeks of continuous rain.

Here, the jazzy street candy/gum/cigarette vendors wear their shops strapped across their chests, or their embroidered blankets and beaded belts piled high across their arms. Men, women, and children alike, they walk the busy side alleys and main belts in the belly of the town, adding to the brilliance of its multicolored allure (the dwellings with lavender, or violet, or forest, or saffron trims). There are corn-still hot-on-the-cob eaters and small local boys that sell little unfamiliar handmade animals in bars...you think at first they are wooden, but at closer inspection are revealed as clay so hardened, its nearly metallic. The bands play loudly, from the hearts of family quarters and neighborhoods into the heart of the night (no need to fret over curfews, the cops are too busy enjoying themselves at the very same party). The faded chroma of blue and white banner flags criss-cross the squatty building tops and the women of vernacular suck the ripe peach remnants off their fingertips as they walk. At times in the cafe region there are whiffs of perfumes and sewage reminiscent of France, or the heady redolence of primitive incense.

And for over a week, I awaken every morning to the chiming of the belltower, the echoes of squuezebox music comically cheerful, and Paco the parrot's warbling demands of loud screeches for his breakfast of sunflower seeds. There is clattering downstairs in the kitchen as our Mexican grandmother,Celsa (the woman we stayed with for a weeks time while we went to Spanish immersion classes), starts the morning's breakfast: yogurt with fruit, or eggs with elojes and salsa and tortillas, or tostadas, always with juices of mango or pineapple or watermelon, every ingredient fresh and homemade. The house we have called home for a week is settled into a cozy nook in the long lines of connected buildings along the streets, only separable by the change in their polychromatic tones; all similarly possess an internal beauty and intimacy hidden within themselves and shrouded by the black-iron barred windows and doors I have come to (surprisingly) adore so much. The haciendas themselves are vivid but modest chunks of rainbow accommodations that are really much larger than they fool you to believe, and the homey charm that resides in each seems to stem from the fact that each, although humbly furnished, is designed to comfortably fit an entire (not so humble) family within. This aura of comfy nostalgia in Celsa's home, specifically, seems to emanate from the divine splashes of knickknacks and mail ordered ornaments-gold edged ceramics, lace endtable cloths, ornate mirrors, copper novelties and glass angels-that seem to fill our vision and hearts just like the exact reminiscences of our grandma's abodes.

Our lovely host herself was a gracefully aging woman with short maroon hair and slightly wizened face, in which her kindly knowledgeable eyes seem to be set just right. With a huge family, mostly all still nearby, and children already grown and out of the house, as well as an international bus-driver husband- (plus, she's Mexican) its a given that the woman knows how to cook...and I can already tell that I will, from this point on, be spoiled when it comes to (real) Mexican food. Everything she put in front of us was more delicious than any TxMx cuisine I have experienced...flautas, tostadas, baked pescada wrapped in saffron and chard, tortas, soups (such as sweet maiz) and all kinds of pollo-shredded or fresh, "en jugo" (for Michael)....fresh blended salsas with coriander and rice with chopped vegetables and beans of every style and oven-burner warmed tortillas. Celsa, who was in the process of teaching herself to read and write (with so many kids, she never had time or money) knew just what to whip up for our ailments- for infections, she blended a juice of piña, apio, perejil, and nopal:pineapple/celery/parsley/cactus.

The outside facade of her habitation is painted bright orange, similar to her living room wall-trims (throw in some garish yellows, however)...and the impressive array of hanging plants and potted flowers strung along her terrace mimic the open entryway of her double-storied halls. All the floors, and the narrow wind of staircase (you have to duck your head) are smooth lines of ecru tiles that get icy in the early hours when you pad rapidly to the bathroom, which is done in marine colors Italia style with the shower built into the wall and non-separated from the toilet, as well as a tiny, dirty skylight in just the right place. Our designated room is simple and sweet, with a flat bed with flatter pillows and peach sateen sheets.

For tea in Celsa's house, an old tin open-topped kettle is used, and i only snuck one box of apple nectar from her in-home shop, all the rest i paid for (ok, other than maybe one roll of crackers). She often made us a tea seeped straight from the long blades of lemongrass, and our first morning she brewed a delicately honeyed homemade coffee with canela, or cinnamon. The best part of her homestead in whole was the miniature upstairs altar, glorious in all its proletarian grace.

And during Spanish class (only after irregular verbs and "presente progressivo" of course) we share insights in separate languages on existence...on the prospect of phantasms, or astrology, or the brutality and primal propensities of the indigenous (the sad reality of the "negro mercada" in Mexico), on drugs, on sex, on love, on racism and prejudice, on cooking, traditions, and customs. We matriculate the local idioms, digest the dialect, and adopt the slang- this is best done through playing a rowdy fútbol game with the native chavos, learning how to better gulp and process the thinner mountain air.

Some of the town's inhabitants, whether civic or foreign, are nearly tribal in appearance...
subversive tendrils are woven throughout the fibers of the people, with their contemporarily ornamented bodies and dreadlocks (guess I fit right in) and head wraps and rat tails and shoulder bags and scarves. There are grown men that play with paper airplanes in the street, short women of Mayan descent with armloads of prismatic wooden beads, street vendors with cotton candy the shades of the plastic of Barbie's dream mansion, shelves of voodoo dolls; there are carts of neoteric fruits and veggies and gummies and nuts, wide-eyed children whose gazes never seem to lose your step, unpretentiously proud restaurants with basket lights and paper lanterns where the Zapatista hope evidently still thrives, pretentious Spanish tapas bars, and a favorite bar by the name of Revolución with gypsy jazz of cello, accordion, and beautifully cacophonous voices. On a regular old Tuesday evening, there is a pint-sized zipline set up in the town center, where the little ones can feed their pint-sized hunger for adventure and attention, the beginning of their simultaneous thirst for and fear of vertigo.

There are coolers stocked full of local popsicles in the family owned shops speckled among the streets- made by hand with fresh ingredients, chunks of fruits, bits of nut, creamy leche and sometimes sprinkles, if you're lucky...flavors of all breeds and tastes: coconut, pistachio, watermelon, cherry, neapolitan, hazelnut. There are showy colors of undistinguishable flavors, and because i long to try them all, we formed a daily ritual (substituted only occasionally for gelato) of grabbing one as we roam the alleys and shop the international music store and toasty bookshops. As we walk and sink deeper into the exotic pigments of Chiapas, little girls in uniforms run past us covered in chalk, or proudly carrying miniscule silver windmills that shine in the sunbeams and spin circles; we watch a small boy pee on the side of La Catedral (The Cathedral). At dusk the muchachos lean against the doorways to their plain domiciles or the cramped shops and watch the sway of hips, (regardless of whether one is clearly taken) emanating friendly but fairly impervious lust. Back in the backroads in our temporary home, we feast our ears on the lush, nubile beats and notes of African or Cuban music and voices, but only after lunch with Celsa and telenovellas in the afternoon. Our first afternoon in town, I experienced my first viewing of a young Mexican child walking alongside his grandmother, proudly carrying a slain chicken by its limp legs. Proud vegetarian or not, it filled me with a glee I couldn't possibly comprehend or describe.

There is a myriad of trade-crafts spread upon the coverlets and wreaths hand-threaded and wreathed by the locals in their black sheep skirts and vests, with their prevailing tenacity and loyalty to antiquity. Their conjoint energy,often quite fearless in nature,
plunges the town in its own past, which it once tried in vain to refuse (interweaving with the past of neighboring cities, not fully pure yet pristine). There are balloon men and flower shops a plenty, and children leaning against the tiny balustrades of window cages, clamoring happily.

There rumbles in the cool shades a deeply rooted, smudged sense of justice, emanating from the resplendently shaded skins of the locals, the history blended into the budding moment-by-moment; the proof that drums hope into veins, and then of course, there are the nights:
the nights are poignantly sultry.
Mexico after dark possesses a dirty sexuality that seems to reside in all things, even the trash in the sidewalk cracks. There is a dense and mystic sensuality, a lighthearted mystery, in the Spanish scrawlings on the back of the wooden bathroom doors in the bars, in the pastelerias:the cakeshops, in the old women with missing teeth, in the communal video game shops where the boys sit for hours submersed in the flickering violence.

I began to anticipate our daily route, with the old woman and her sidewalk spread of painfully fresh nuts and ripened fruits, tender vegetables on the crux of vitality- she greets you in passing: "Buenos Diiiiiaaaaaasss!!" The gas and water trucks with their loudly abrasive advertisements of dragging chains and metal widgets behind precede the smell of homemade pyrotechnics in the morning and burning wood at night (everything on fire). After the sun has made its descent and the tierra burns deep blue, your eyes widen and glisten with the far-off sparkles of lights along the slants of mountain land, or the strings of small Navidad bulbs in the palm trees edging the square.
At times the winds off the peaks bring a music of marimbas, low drums, tubas and polka;
there almost constantly can be heard the pop of firecrackers of daily festivals, like the rattle of the gunshots of revolution and Zapatista spirits, celebrating this Saint or that liberation or some ubiquitous revelation...take one of each or pick and choose; I may just, for the first time, allow myself to pray to on the bus ride-but only once, just to be safe.

San Cristóbal's dogs, drunks, unsanctioned lovers scamper along the backbones, the persistent familiarity of gravel roads with sporadic patchy grasses of routine, waiting with patience for the golden moment when the solidity of meat slides off the bone and hits the rock of bottom; voracious curse of yearning sustained or gratified only when the pulp of pity, or desperation, or (com)passion has mercy.

I found a safe haven on Celsa's roof, but it was not a safeness that was founded on the complacency of someone kept free of disturbance or uncertainty or pain. It was a place I could be at peace being alone with my thoughts, and face my doubts and aversions without driving myself (or anyone else) crazy. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that, on that rooftop, I could sit for however long I felt the need or desire, not plagued with any concept of time or right or wrong, and be just fine with being crazy. There, there was no such thing as definitions or adequacy or understanding or or cowardice or knowledge or struggle. I simply fought my way through the labyrinth of fluttering laundry dancing on the maze of wire-lines, sat in the tiny, shiny wood chair I found in a clutter pile, and listened to the world.

The rooftop did not consist of much, but perhaps that is exactly where it derived its endless charm and hypnotism: there were half-dead plants in pots and wooden barrels and crates; a decrepit, sandy sink, once mauve but now just the color of caulk splatters; stacks and craters of loose terra cotta tiles; lines of arcane piping...but most importantly, a splendidly breathtaking view of the surrounding neighborhood and thickset houses embedded in the hills, and the cathedral on the top swell of the crests, perhaps the highest point in the city minus the distant peaks of mountain tops. The gold of the cathedral twinkles mustard in the fading light of day, alongside the proud and ethereal white of time, spire pointing up as a reminder (you can always look up). I'm plenty happy to look down and see my bare, dirty feet; I'm happy to be up here, flawlessly alone. Alone with the mountain winds, simple and simply content to soak up the easy beauty and sounds suddenly growing familiar and comforting: the children laughing and clattering, the oddly strident and cartoonish music of the gas and water men in the rumbling trucks, the flap of the Mexican laundry behind me, the rooster crowing, the dogs hollering and birds trilling (Alive Alive Alive). I can hear the thump of a soccer ball being kicked and walloped around as the sun breathes in the exhales out upon my warming piel. What I am experiencing up here in my retreat is similar to what I felt invade my senses and fill my being in Germany; a sense of nostalgia, only for a place I have never before been. A faculty of ease and serenity,a piece of nativity and joyful solitude. I reveled in the brick stacks, and the invigoration of air rubbing against my body, and the melodies in the rustling leaves and the rich indigo house in the distance, and the gentle modesty of the virile dwellings in the hills, and the quiet of merely the land and I and nothing else, and the incomplete completion of the milieu, and the vitality in the climate and atmosphere.

Here, I even revel in the fact that the natives like to play dumb and pretend they have not the slightest of ideas where a certain place of inquiry is, or how they seem to purposely point you in the wrong direction so you get turned around and frustrated and perplexed. The disregard of the people along Guadalupe and the families linking arms, forming nearly impassable walls, creates a certain anonymity that I have learned to savor: it creates a sudden realization that perhaps it is my turn to feel this way, feel like an outsider even for the briefest of moments (mostly everyone here is beyond friendly, though)- because now, I can view things from the perspective of those alien to my place of birth and origination, those who are treated poorly and misjudged merely for their extrinsic properties, or the difference of their inception, or colors of skin. (We all have the same blood.) I suppose the outside looking in feels right sometimes, I can't explain it.
Even if it is frustrating being purposely being pointed in the wrong direction, I suppose it is not an uncommon game, acquiring a laugh at the expense of the supposedly mentally challenged tourists. It's worth getting lost anyway because I savor the bulbous lights in the sidewalks and the hills in the streets like home, and the view of the church standing illustriously on the hill with a halo something like idealism (the same quality i fell and fall in love with another place, another time, and repeatedly).
-Him. Him, and then suddenly, a hope unlike anything ever imagined.

Here, the people always clatter-knock on the black bars of doors and shop-entrance grates with keys, and the Mexican women and teenage boys can be so loud that you decide it's okay for sleep and peace of mind to not always be a necessity.
In fact, one of the most distinguishing characteristics of this town is its noise, its sound- the sierra of pitch is either obscenely loud, or gorgeously and restfully silent.
There is constantly the clink of the same dishes and forks, seeping from household doors open to the peek of a stranger's wandering inquiry or a neighbor's watchful and common solidarity.

One of my favorite memories was coming home from class one day to find a house full of Mexican women, all helping make a huge vat of tamales and drinking spectacularly large jugs of Sol- the beer of choice here.

The string of Mexican men that reside along the hill across the street from the neon tangerine hacienda like to spend most the day perched along the concrete curb, making cheerful chatter with the passerby in the hopes of pitying out a peso or two. Referred to by us as "los barrachos," they were easier to avoid and chuckle at from a distance than to get involved with...once they get you laughing, it's game over, digging in your pocket for spare change. One of the men seemed to thoroughly enjoy sleeping (incoherently and consistently) beneath Celsa's den window, soaking up the afternoon heat in his dusty and stained week-old clothes.
Sometimes the streets branching out along the hill brow beneath the stairs of the Guadalupe cathedral would be speckled with taxis, all with matching balloons tied sporadically to their windows and mirrors and back-seats full of random nameless plants. Sometimes, I have discovered, it is perfectly acceptable not to have a reason to have a parade; in Mexico, the celebrations do not establish their fraternity (nor their consistency) through justification.

There seems to be a penchant for bare lightbulbs, and the market near Santo domingo is sheltered by the awnings of tents and is flush with jewelry fashioned by every imaginable stone, mineral, bauble and ore.
The deafeningly boisterous kickball games right outside Celsa's front door remind me of a time when there was no necessity or place for worry, when the jovial innocence of childhood desires promoted simplicity and jubilance at their best. It isn't until later that felicity evolves and you realize how much more rewarding and kosher happiness is when it is attained post-struggle.
Tonight, Michael said, after getting stabbed in the ass with an inch and a half long needle: "No pain, no gain...and with no gain, you lose your (beloved) sense of capitalism." Ha.

One of our last weekend nights in Celsa's, we snacked on a smidgeon of South American wine like tongue blood and cheap tequila in a packed bar,internationally flavored and overflowing with local reggae (the locals sang along to a song about their hometown). Afterwards we walked home slowly savoring the emptying streets, the breeze was tender and rapidly cooling as the clouds tiptoed closer to the ground- such high altitudes and sooner or later the elements lock limbs (and occasionally you swear your heart stops for one breath.) Back in the once sparse room we had grown contentedly accustomed to, and had equally contentedly and messily made a nest of, I laid on the bed and listened to it all come in;
the calm of the wet pieces of earth beginning to surround, every inch in motion.
The rain on the roof sounded like the planes of (my small) world shifting, an earthquake in each bone, a city of earthquakes. Its only natural you see...
Like the flowers in the room on the stool, the ones he walked all the way across the square and center of town to get me, acquired at one of few open shops: four orange and maroon birds with dirty faces and long necks, with feathered heads and leaf ribbons. On a night after the discord that tends to arise during long travels in close quarters, he disappeared for an hour...and returned with them, residing in a basket and surrounded with yellow baby's breath and false snowy leaves that are identical to the ones on the tippy-top of Mommy's mantel at home. Now slightly less fresh, but just as breathtaking:dying flowers, that should be an incense scent, i would buy it.

Yes, there are the fishbones...small and meaningless it seems, picking them out of the seams of the meat of things. We take things as they come in their natural forms, savoring the rawness of the provisions, relishing the work it takes to receive. It is easier to get discouraged and break things into bits, separating the parts from the whole and deeming them worthwhile or unsubstantial; to push away the rest, discard what becomes simply carcass. However, i know I am not the first to find that is essential to get dirty in order to find the essence.
The best part is, even if you don't find the gist, the much-revered "core"- you come out hot and bothered and sweaty and smudged with the stains of freedom: the freedom of knowing there is a joy to not having answers, to not having a method to madness, or a course, or a reason, or a organized vision.

When I am in the mountains, (or perhaps just more so when I am traveling) my soul rises to the surface and I feel as though I understand myself better in and through my dreams- in them, I am more in tune with the desires I deny, the thoughts I excuse and write off, the subconscious I refer to in abstract instead of prodding. [It's scary, prodding unidentifiable, obscure creatures and objects, you never know where they derive their texture, if their movements or genus will be a threat to you...it is an accepted fact that we are terrified of the unknown, and therefore often entranced by it. I suppose this journey has been the first one where I have gone beyond recognition and scrutiny of what truly scares me, and realized that there is absolutely no reason to allow fear(s) to govern your life.]
When I awake from my dreams, I awake feeling as though I have never really been asleep to begin with, but am merely stepping out of one skin and sliding into another.
And I dreamed of life, growing inside of me, and death, right before my eyes with no escape and no sympathy, and sickness, the kind that shoots pains throughout your abdomen, your sides, and slides out of you through detox...so thick and clinging that you imagine it is pulling with it all your vital tools of living. Once, I dreamed in all Spanish, and woke up feeling for the first time truly at home.
Sometimes we wake up with cramps, sometimes crass, or nauseous, sometimes we wake with plans or dirty feet and a bloated sense of overwhelming fullness; but always we find ourselves beyond the borders of the sort of complacency that blinds. We are learning to be okay the kind of joy that comes through struggle and through viewing and experiencing struggle with an open mind, and coming out clutching hope even if we don't understand fully its source or grain.


I am ok with not being consistent. And maybe even unimpressive, yes, perhaps. Adaptation at its finest: at some point you have to learn to be okay with what you love, and stop focusing on what loves you.
[Of course, if you are like me, you don't always accept things or admit to them with ease; my archaic side starts to show from time to time.
I can't quite explain why, but sometimes I like to grab my lover's beard and cradle it in one clenched palm like it is a small, trapped animal...slowly ceasing movement and struggle as it realizes its imminent demise.
Seriously, you should see the thing, its beastly- and beautiful, a rightful source of pride.]

When I climbed between the thin and gaudy covers (with their pastel geometric patterns) the last night at Celsa's, before we move on to a hostel in another part of town...the gangs of dogs were incessantly nonsense-barking as usual, the shower head (regardless of water pressure lack) was still dripping, the in-home altar still lit and creepy with its strangely shadowed dollfaces and framed photos of religious symbolism and a crucified Christ with black skin and long curly locks a lot like my own matted knots. And I have no better way to explain my saying,
I have never been this content in all my life.