music feels

I borrowed A Travis CD from a friend. I had not heard the songs since the album came out in 2001. As the distorted bell gave way to a sweet banjo riff, a rush of memories and feelings flooded over me: the smell of cigarettes while riding in the backseat of a car through the labyrinth of North Chattanooga; the slim, sinuous road aside Lookout that should be a one way in the States but in Mexico would pass for a decent two lane; a foggy mountain and forcing my sister to listen to my newly acquired music during early morning drives to school. I still listen to music everyday, gladly so. It is just that music does not usually erect such forgotten, vivid memories.

I know music - depending on what you listen to - can easily cause you to become upbeat or feel wonderfully terrible, but my emotional reaction is usually tepid. That is not to say I have not enjoyed music as of late (for the past couple months have seen me getting lost in Grizzly Bear in a wonderful way); this particular album, however, broke some musical memory floodgate. Now I find myself overly sensitive to music e.g. listening to Beirut while working, I realized tears were forming in my eyes.

It is not that this Travis album is fantastic. Actually, it reminds me of Chuck Klosterman's quote: "[Coldplay] sound like a mediocre photocopy of Travis (who sound like a mediocre photocopy of Radiohead)." It is my personal association with the music, which like other songs or artists can carry meaning, that strikes an internal heart chord. In another seven years, I wonder what music will blow me off my feet, make me think of my banana desk, croquet and the mountains of Mexico.

Como como?

Ahh language and laziness. If only the two did not go hand-in-hand. Sure, I go through days, even weeks or months, completely devoted to learning bombastic words in English and/or basic Spanish vocabulary. But it fizzles. Instead of slow and steady learning I attempt to make up for my lack thereof by burning myself out with short spurts. Well, admitting you have a problem is the first step to recovery.

The other associated and, in my opinion, more difficult problem is pronunciation. I have on a many occasion confidently asked questions to the gente of Texcoco and La Puri and received blank stares. In one particularly embarrassing situation, a cashier asked me write down my question rather than continue what had been a five minute struggle. I do not have a southern accent to mask my mediocre Spanish, and I have fooled myself more than once into thinking that I have halfway decent pronunciation skills. This quickly passes as my morning bus driver can hardly understand my stop request, not even a Spanish word but an acronym.

Flickering lights

The electricity ceasing almost gave me an excuse to forgo yet another chance to write. The truth, however, is that I am not feeling particularly inspired. This is because I am tired. Very tired. The kind of tired where you find yourself walking into a stranger's shoulder without acknowledging, let alone apologizing, to the innocent bystanders. The people of Texcoco are lucky I was not armed with a bicycle: not once, not thrice, but five times tech students have jumped out to avoid certain death by tired girl on bike named Shela (though I attribute this to my careless cycling in conjunction with the undeniable nature of the overly intelligent - Tech students are gifted but are quite awkward in conversation (notably with the opposite sex), sports and even walking (I blame Tech students' undeniable penchant, even of the least geeky students, to fiddle with expensive, newly released how-the-hell-did-you-get-THAT gadgets). I never came that close to any of them and one in particular theatrically dived off the path and into a ball when I was humorously far away).



But no sane biker will hit a pedestrian because of physics: each action has an equal and opposite reaction, meaning bike-human collision results in an accompanying fall of the cyclist and contact with the morning pavement. Therefore, Newton's third law of motion (which Tech students learn in either physics or chemistry) offers a guarantee that I will hit the breaks before you.

I am too tired to sleep. I wanted to curl up in bed around five but remembered my obligation to write a campy skit and made good on my word. For this, I had to wake up and hit a certain threshold. You know, when it is just as well you keep going in the surreal state that is sleep deprivation rather than collapse. My current one is strange as it is caused by physical exhaustion compounded by unexplained, sporadic insomnia. Still, there is no doubt in my mind that when my head hits the pillow I will sleep like a new born puppy.

Change is hard

I am currently living through a huge change is my life. Leaving home for college to find a shoe box living quarter and a roommate; losing my childhood home and all accompanying paraphernalia to flames; coming to live in Mexico: none of these changes can ever compare to this moment.

Mistakes

Researchers have shown that many seemingly mindless mistakes result from a cascade of neurological shifts. In the half-minute preceding an error, activity increases in the brain's at-rest areas (red) and decreases in the brain's focus-maintaining regions (blue).
Courtesy National Academy of Sciences

No one likes making mistakes, but not all mistakes are created equally. There is a difference between regular mistakes, like bringing someone decaffeinated coffee when they asked for regular or wrongly positing that so-and-so definitely wrote the playing song in rehab when in fact the lyrics are lines from a Chinese poem and said singer merely composed the accompanying instrumentation on a Tahitian beach, margarita in hand, and a real mistake. "What is a real mistake?," you may be asking yourself aloud. This class of mistakes is further divided into subcategories: one that costs you people and one that costs you money. I have had my fair share of both, but wish to concentrate on the latter, with a fresh wound stabbing my heart and pocket.

Monetary mistakes always result in the "what if" game. What if I had not gone out Saturday night? What if I had become violently ill halfway through my first beer? What if I had been born before the era of expensive gadgets that break when you splash liquids into their electronic wiring? What if, indeed. But this game gets you nowhere and usually results in a longing for an alternate reality in which you are a rich duchess, or at least not financially liable.

Before my current miscue, my worst financial mistakes had been:

1. Parking in a tow zone.
2. Parking in a super-center that turned into a tow zone when it closed for the night.

I had previously thought there was absolutely no way I could top my parking faux pas (for they emptied my wallet and created a time-sucking vacuum of impossible, flaming bureaucratic hoops, resulting in my loss of dignity and respect for some heartless city of Atlanta employees.) But I have managed to make the most feared mistake of the technological era: spilling beer on my friend's laptop. If I survive this so called "experience" I will not take away some deep life lesson, other than shunning technology to become a bitter Luddite.

Biking alongside a Mexican Highway

...is as wonderful and terrifying as it sounds.

I started cycling in college but was, admittedly, too afraid to ride on the streets (that were not safely nested inside campus) until my junior year. In Atlanta, I learned firsthand the truth behind th bumper sticker "share the road." Nameless faces in cars, at the least, would aggressively speed past me, passenger-door nearly touching my handle bars, just to be stopped by a red light (that I would usually glide through.) At the worst there were the ignoramuses yelling, "get off the road, you maniac!" not realizing that it is actually illegal to ride on the sidewalk. Atlanta taught me patience and to hold back the undeniable urge to key the cars of southern fools.

Mexico is different. Sure, part of it is me mourning the absence of my beloved bike, as I am now at the mercy of my German roommate's generosity, seeing how the bike is her possession. It is not, however, that the bike is not mine -- she never uses it anyhow. It is just that I twinge thinking of the now lonely, striped cycle and biking to work in a place where it never rains (which is only convenient if your ride to work with a laptop on your back.)

My morning ride to work is actually rather amazing -- that is, now that I have a hat, scarf, and what the Germans call "hand shoes." Coming down the steep and sinuous road, I can see mountains and Mexico City's sprawl. Aside from the occasional wolf-like dog darting in front of my path, the trek is as heartwarming as a box of kittens. That's, of course, until I reach the highway.

The gate to the highway consists of approximately twelve construction workers. Before I began my bike rides I was taking delightfully shady buses to work, now detoured by these workers' construction. It is for the best, really, for prior to the construction, the buses and the cars and the people trying to get to the other side of the highway had to traverse the oncoming traffic. The fiery crashes every other week (with a particularly deadly one just before the work began) prompted the local government to logically build a bridge.

The evolution of my relationship with these men is almost stagy. The first couple weeks the men whistled and hollered. The following weeks I was met with complete silence. And this week, amazingly, I have been met with daily buenos días: all I had to do was stay indifferent and deal with whatever the day's detour had install, which was usually ruining my new boots.

Having survived the dogs and charmed the construction workers, I am finally on the side of the highway heading towards oncoming traffic. Sure, there are parts that are not so near the many-wheeled trucks, but there also exist the moments where I am uncomfortably close to the death wagons, reminiscent of Atlanta's streets, only in the city the cars were forced to stop every block by stoplights. Desperately peddling, the thought creeps up that the driver behind that big truck might be just like that guy from one of the many b-rate horror films, deciding to veer into the American girl on the bike for the hell of it. I am not comforted by the overturned traffic cone.

The side of the highway, my so-called "bike-lane," is always littered with parked semis or trucks, making it impossible for me to pass. This usually results in my route intersecting the lot of a PEMEX station, where unlike my cultivated ties with the construction worker, the acquaintances last for mere seconds, meaning hoots and hollers. I finally reach my work's open gate. The cycle in is flat and the fields are now brown with fall. Soon, the wheat and maize will be harvested and I will have only the mountains or the cheap fireworks that seem to explode all day.

The day comes and goes and I am on the highway with the traffic to my back and a mountain to climb.

Aproximadamente dos meses

It is strange how immediately comfortable Mexico was. I do not miss the life in the States, per se. Instead, I miss pieces: more than three cheeses in the grocery store; strange gadgets and outdated belts from second-hand stores; cheap concerts on inconvenient days; spending hours in a good record store.

Mexico has its own perks and memories that I will suck dry in later years, remembering only the positives. And living here during this "financial meltdown" has its own set of special benefits. Firstly, I follow it from a distance rather than feeling the volatile market's backlashes. In the States I would, no doubt, be spending half my salary on increasing gasoline prices and a heating bill unreasonably high. But in Texcoco, the market's biggest impact on my life has been the 10 cent increase in a fare for a bus I rarely take. Secondly, this, "The Greatest Depression," means that I am granted unlimited complaining and exaggeration rights in my old-age, forcing young whippersnappers to sit through countless tales about walking 15 miles through the snow, bloody and barefoot, just to get a gallon of milk.

I further ignore this economic maelstrom because of four birds, one kitten, and 30+ plants. I am house-sitting for my boss and enjoy the self-imposed isolation. This is not to say I dislike my current living situation in La Puri, but I have always wanted to get a taste of solitary living; it tastes like exotic tea in the sun. I wish I could say that there have been no expected speed-bumps, but then again in Mexico there are unmarked topes that come at you in the night; my tope was a dead bird in Petr's kitchen. Sweeping feathers is as futile as it sounds and even more so with a kitten attacking your broom, practicing for its next kill (which turned out to be a rather large lizard).

The stay has given me time to practice my new melodica and my semi-new harmonica without driving my dear roommates insane. I have learned only a little for both, but enough to have kept a crowd of two entertained in a narrow hallway at Matthew's party. I mastered "Friend of the Devil," knowing it was present in Mike's repertoire, but I had to improvise for other songs and quickly reverted to singing when the crowd looked mutinous.

The beginning

It is beautiful. Mountains seem to be in every direction; large fields of wheat and maize are green but promise to turn brown; and most importantly, it is a welcomed change in humidity, as I no longer feel that I can swim through the air. Granted, Texcoco de Mora is not the cultural capital of the world but it has its own crappy charm. Plus, my house in the mountains has squirrel-shaped bushes and apple trees.

And there are loads of international folk. Soon-to-be-roomies are from Germany and Belgium and the Czech Republic (with my boss sharing the latter nationality). The head of my department is Australian, and he was the first person in Mexico with whom I had a real conversation. Like one I would have had with my professors. Oh, the thrill of throwing around environmental concepts and jargon until all the morning quesadillas are gone and you realize you must go back to work with a half-empty cup of coffee but a new stack of publications.

Later that day I met El Rincon, the bar of the community-college-like work grounds. I learned it is hard to say no when asked to dance. I stepped on many short men's feet that night while spinning and offering smiles in response to rapidly spoken Spanish

.

I did not work this week: it was, instead, filled with unexpected travel and lectures intended for and with agriculture students from Wisconsin. I did not understand everything told to me in broken English (plant pathology, breeding, and such are, admittedly, not my forte), and I spent time in open, sunny fields.

Aside I climbed pyramids, ranging from large and bulky to small and intricate, explored Mexico City a couple times, and ate local cuisine; it was a good week. Now all I need is my melodica.