Mexico is abstract (Toronto is concrete). My heart is occupied always by both the abstract and the concrete. The abstract lives mostly in my mind: a collection of specific details I hold in my memory the way we hold precious objects and photographs in a box. When I go to Mexico all I do is collect moments for the box: The silhouette of my dad in front of me as we walk into the forest, under the stars, at 5 in the morning. He wears a baseball cap backwards and in the dark his silhouette makes me think of a very tall kid. In the small, contained wilderness of our walk, away from the city and without the sun, the night sky is really the sky. There’s a constellation I can’t name, next to a crescent moon. And Venus right before sunrise, very bright. The hoot of an owl, soft, like the trill of a cat. The branches of trees taking shape against the morning. The first sun rays touching only the top of the trees. The birds waking up. The side of the mountain covered with encinos (tall, sprawling, generous and crooked trees laden with air plants and lichen). The side of the mountain covered with pine trees. The side of the mountain covered with eucalyptus trees (conqueror kind imported from Australia by some beaurocrat; a relentless species that makes the soil toxic and won't let anything else grow, with trees so tall and skinny the ladscape looks empty, or wrong). The cows, always mellow and sleepy, moving next to us between the trees, or sometimes standing on an opposite hill like figurines you could pick in between your fingers and put inside your pocket. The mountain changing the scale of the world. The cathedral towers looking like toys from the top of the mountain. The towers as they look from the street, in the old part of the city. The Plaza de Armas next to the Cathedral, the Jardin de las Rosas next to the Music School. Pink stone gardens and plazas next to pink stone buildings, filled with age, and beauty, and my dad sitting next to me in these places on a bench or a chair, with the legs stretched out, both of us in silence under the shadow and comfort of the jacaranda trees, watching the city breathe and move around us. People sitting quietly (I scan them and count how many are not looking at their cell phone and look instead at the piece of morning or afternoon as it unfolds in front of them, which is how everyone used to sit when we had only books or newspapers to distract us). Little kids chaising slightly older siblings. Young men and women selling home-made brownies or cookies, candies, hand-crafts, aproaching people gently, acceping their refusals with a smile.
The vitality and good humor of the vendors in street markets: a loud group in the early morning, whistling or singing or announcing their avocados or bothering the guy in the next stall. A group of good mathematicians: keeping the count of the half of a kilo and quarter of a kilo and the bunch of parsley and two heads of garlic as they grab the produce and weight it and drop it inside my dad’s shopping bag skillfully and with enormous speed, to give without pause an exact total to pay in the end. My dad buying a precise number of lemons or mangos and smiling behind the mask. My dad arranging the vegetables and fruits inside his satchel and climbing on his bike for the ride back home.
The way my dad moves around the world, powered by his own legs, walking into the forest or biking through the city, without a car.
My dad talking about the universe while we eat huchepos sitting in the kitchen. The way my dad listens more than he talks, but can spend long stretches of conversation talking about big misteries and the human attempts to come up with an answer. My dad’s wicked smile after making a very dark joke. My dad saying goodnight with a kiss on the cheek, the same as when I was little.
Patzcuaro’s lake from the top of the Estribo Grande. The lake constantly shrinking while the Estribo Grande, the mountain, stays mostly the same. Walking to the top with my mom and seeing a small fire on the fields at the bottom. The watchman explaining, worried: “the fire is going through a nursery of young trees, older trees can survive the fire, but all the young trees will die”. The way my mom worries about the young trees too, and about the stray dogs we pass on the street. The way people leave little buckets with water tied to a poll or a tree, so the stray dogs can drink (the many ways this country is brutal and yet, the way everyday life is filled with innumerable little kindnesses like that). The feel of my mom and my sister’s hands, which are tiny and kind of square and full of warmth and perfect to hold in one’s hands. Our eagerness to give each other something while we are together, so the other one may think of us later and may have a way to hold us through the distance. My mom knitting a hat for Jason until late at night. My sister rummaging through her earrings to give me a pair (two ceramic birds, painted blue). My sister exploding in laughter. The way my sister and I look at each other for a split moment of recognition, before we both burst in cackles. The way she always leans her whole body forward when she laughs. The dark humor she got from my dad. The way we both laugh backwards, a kind of inverse laughter which makes us sound as if we were gasping for air. Both my mom and sister’s faces full of empathy, suffering for the troubles of the characters in a movie. My mom’s chicken soup, and sopa de fideos, and home made salsas, and chiles rellenos. The way my mom will stay awake until late at night cooking labor intensive dishes like chiles rellenos, for the people she loves.
I know I get to be there only a little. The last week I start counting the days I have left, and I start feeling sad. So I look and listen and feel intently, cutting the outline of the good moments with precision so I may save them in the box. I do this lovingly, careful to leave out the violence, absorbing only partially the enormous injustice, the brutality of our inequalities, romanticizing or filtering out the depth of our darkness. Mexicans are a sunny, wonderfully loud people, I say to myself, look at us sing and joke and whistle and paint our houses in bright miss-matching colours. Strangers look at you in the eye and smile, I say to myself, we are a people full of warmth. There’s a sign hanging in a neighborhood in Patzcuaro announcing if you’re caught committing a crime, no matter how petty (the list includes graffiti or vandalizing cars) you won’t be surrendered to the authorities but lynched on the spot. People don’t seem to know what to do with the violence any longer: the men that turn up as bodies in the canal, the women that simply disappear. I leave this out of the box, but I know I'm lying to myself. A man walks in front of me on the street very early in the morning, wearing long sleeves and a wide hat and a cape tucked into his shirt, and all the surfaces of his skin except for the face and hands are covered in fabric, as in a makeshift diver's suit, or a very humble version of a fencing uniform. This is how you dress when you work very long hours under the sun. In Mexico, everywhere, all the time, you see people fighting a hard fight for survival. This man and his clothes don’t make the cut for preciousness or beauty but still, in all their weight, have a place inside the box.
James Baldwin said: “As long as space and time divide you from anyone you love… love will simply have no choice but to go into battle with space and time and, furthermore, to win.” No ounce of beauty is wasted for me in Mexico: I register and collect it thoroughly, in great detail. I love Mexico and my family through the distance, through those details. That’s one way I fight against space and time.
