Quality of life

I was siting at 100%. I woke to take a tea on my balcony and marveled at the view. Directly below I could see into secret courtyards scattered with caged parrots and little white dogs, popular despite the fact they always look dirty.
I let my eyes wander the miles of sprawl, where colors melt into one another and stretch to the mountains that take away my breath and not only because they suffocate Mexico City by hoarding the pollution, battling to escape.

I sat and began to read but my 100% standing led to reflection and one conclusion: the fabric of my life is quilted with friends and strangers. The laundry lady who has always known my name and the water man who refuses a tip for carrying 20 liters to my apartment and the woman who starts making my carrot and orange juice concoction before I can say "buenos dias" and the friendly man from the tienda de abarrotes on my walk to a house that should be the plot of a sitcom who sells me random vegetables and caguama refills. Each has his or her greeting and each imbues my life with a sense of community.

Then there are the idiosyncrasies of those closest to me that makes me chuckle during live showings and after the fact. The way a friend talks differently to certain types of people or a love and extensive knowledge of domesticated animals or fake animosity that turns to support as ghosts materialize. These side stories are not peripheral at all. It seems people tend to gauge their life by the big moments, big changes, good or bad, but these, the little everyday bits and pieces, are the wherefore of life and embracing them is the key to joy with pleasure. And joy without pleasure ain't no fun, ain't no fun, ain't no fun.

Boing!

I left my apartment to greet Mexico, cloudless and cold, on this November morning. Near a corner taco stand, a disheveled man walked up to me, grabbed an empty Boing bottle from the establishment's stash of returnables and hurled it in the street.

"Va Mariana!," he yelled as the bottle splattered into glass shards, no doubt destined for neighborhood tires.




I continued undeterred but slightly alarmed. I am reminded of a decade old memory:

I was running the loop of my neighborhood on Lookout Mountain; I pushed through an epic hill to find a copperhead, the width of a grapefruit, sunbathing in the middle of my path. Now, any child of the Appalachian Mountains should be able to tell you that the fatter the snake, the older and, consequently, the more venomous. With few options and little reaction time, I acted as if nothing had changed. Just kept going.

Technology

I vacillate wildly as to the benefits and or woes of technology. "What did people do before the Internet," a friend asked her elder roommate. Without much thought he named human activities: read, draw, write, paint, listen to/make music, socialize in person...

So why the obsession with the internet? I mean, what has the internet ever done for me or you other than make us less interesting, less sociable, less attentive and less self sufficient? I am sure that a reader may make quite convincing arguments that I am indeed wrong; that technology does just the opposite: makes us smarter, better, faster, more efficient and able to tap into an endless fountain of information, from debates about Norwegian funds for REDD to sustainable rural cities in Mexico. True. But do you use the Internet for that? Even if you do, can you really argue that the majority of people, especially younger generations, are really using the Internet to read Focault rather than faffing about on Facebook?



If I am so against technology then why opt to write on my neglected blog rather than inside my antiquated, tangible journal? Because the internet is useful but rarely utilized.

Shock appeal

Living in Mexico has conditioned me to see things once thought dangerous or odd (but mostly the former) as normal. Traversing a 10 lane busy streets. Normal. Ability to buy candy covered in bees. Totally normal. But I am genuinely surprised that I can now place an attempted mugging in this category.

Walking the extra couple blocks from where I bid my friends and the greedy cab driver, the bastard, adieu, the thought did cross my mind that I should be careful. It was, after all, 1:30 on a Saturday night (better said Sunday morning) in Mexico City. I spotted a drunk guy, stumbling back and forth, and cleverly evaded his sight. He had looked like trouble, and I congratulated myself on a job well done. "Just walk in the road," a friend advised me once. So I did.

I moved to the sidewalk even as a second male approached. He looked legit with his clean clothes, lack of hair gel and piercings and years beyond (but not too far) the teens. Just an ordinary, middle-class guy walking home from a party, I thought. I mean, there is always a chance but there is a bush between me and the road now. Oh, and many cars. But he is not going to...my thought process was interrupted as he jumped for me, putting his arms around my waist and slightly lifting me off the ground. Going for the pockets, I must assume? Why not just grab my bag, not even securely attached, demonstrated by its slow plunge to the ground and subsequent vomiting of my mp3 player onto the side walk through the broken zipper that I have the best intentions to fix?

I saw the change, the adoption of a squatting position not seen since high school gym class, all happening in my mind in slow motion, and I was screaming like a maniac long before he made contact. But this reaction surprised him, nay, even took him off guard, and before I knew it, he was running as I was falling (my classic and effective robber deterrent). I examined my broken nail; then my fallen bag and mp3 player, accidentally activated by the drop and glowing blue on the sidewalk. Had I really made it through that without losing anything? Again? Do not get me wrong - I am very happy about this, but jeez. What an amateur. I do not wish he had taken anything but the whole thing just seems absurd.



I ran to my apartment and, oh technology, wrote a short sentence or two about my adventure on Facebook. Within five minutes an old friend rang me up from L.A. He wanted to know if I was okay.

"You know, Mary," he said, "I remember Mexico City and I know a way to decrease crime by 5%. Today. Install more street lights. That place is fucking ridiculously dark."

So he went on to tell me about how a man in Mexico City he had met in a cantina casually suggested they go for "hookers and cocaine" and that when my friend declined, he called him a "flan." He then spoke of California life and how a bar in L.A. has a swimming pool on the roof accompanied by a vending machine offering $80 bathing suits to unprepared guests.

I do not mean to sound flippant about this, you know. It is just that I was not injured or successfully mugged. I was barely even surprised. So who cares? I would like to say I expect the best in people but maybe having already seen the really nasty side (and I am not even speaking about Mexicans or Americans or Germans or other -ans but the greater pool of humanity) I expect people to act, well, human. A harmless, weaponless, obviously desperate guy tried his luck with some white, very well dressed (so modest), uneven haired and unaccompanied young woman on a dark street. So it goes.

Other people's despedidas

I have watched so many people, some quite good friends, leave and, honestly, each time it gets easier. Though the method of cutting cakes in Mexico will always fascinate me (the center part is cut into a circle, which shall remain untouched until all square shaped extremities are consumed), these cakes all start to taste the same and the speeches overlap in my mind. Sure, the locations change from the labs to offices to once mysterious meeting rooms behind doors usually closed. Those attending the event fluctuate too based on departments and differing friend circles. Tears are rare (at least publicly). Each person, speaking in Spanish or English or both, talks about work and how his or her time has helped foster professional and or personal growth. Bosses are always thanked.



It is not until that last moment, the moment when you realize you will more likely than not never again see this person, whoever he or she may have been to you during a period ranging from weeks to months to years, does the bit of panic set in. Should you give them a hug? A kiss on the cheek? Do you say the obligatory "see you" in denial of geography's injustice to your relationship? I always, always talk about how it is not goodbye. Jokingly, naturally.

Now, I go back to my office. I keep working. Nothing is really different because I am not leaving and my work reality is not so closely intertwined with my life. I have not changed with the other person's departure save one aspect: my realization of time passing. I have been here over two years? Is that really true? Time creeps away faster and faster in Mexico and it is at these despididas that I reflect on my own experiences, be them positive or negative, with a Styrofoam cup in hand and a half-eaten piece of cake dripping milk from its plastic fork puncture wound on my lap.

As I write this from my room, emptied into boxes, and overlook D.F.'s Centro from, what is now, my old flat, I am reminded that each despedida is also a bienvenido.

Stems

Wheat after week after wheat
following accents through rust that must be cleaned before departure
I scrape my shoes on concrete
before the stench of the garbage desert
and the offers of melted chocolates for diez pesos
and the tiptoeing around ambitious puddles striving to unite
and crash onto sidewalks
Wet shoes, I meet you plant to plant
rust dripping
and explain take all disease lingers
even after I leave the soil

Sinatra. Forget New York.

Dear Mexico City,

When I walk through your streets I feel like I will never have enough time with you. You are lovely and interesting and perfect in your imperfection. Your street vendors tempt chilangos with a plethora of tacos, tortas, juices, sliced fruits, chiclets, magazines, child leashes, flower balloons inside larger balloons, unheard of chocolates, lollies, healdos, elotes, hot dogs wrapped in bacon, flashlights, everything, everything.

I poke my head into your courtyards, dingy and dangled with flowers, hoping to elude the ex-military man in sweatpants and a barrette telling me that I must leave. Now.

When I moved into my apartment I could not stare out the window without the distinct desire to stop time. I would sleep with my curtains open (except on weekends, of course, when the sun assaulted my windows and turned my room into a tropical oven). Weekday wakings at 7 am allowed for the best viewings anyhoo. I would roll towards the window to the city's moods. The clouds or sunrises or smog or (acid) rain. Orange usually. Best when the sky is orange pink swirls saturating and spreading. At night I would look up from my desk, beavering away, to see fireworks exploding over the Zocalo. Unexpected treats with minimal movement.



Ambling about with a heavy film camera I run into parades or protests.

Your buildings, your erratic city planning make my eyes wide. Art deco stands next to dry wash. Fountains that belong in Europe intersect busy streets. Sidewalks turn into swimming pools when it rains. Nearly every building closes with a metal door, you know, the kind they have in storage-units and/or mob movies. A Mexican once asked me the name for these in English; I told him I did not think they had a special name because they do not normally line the streets, at least in the States. He shrugged.

Walking past tilted churches damaged by earthquakes and subsidence and time I cannot breath. Is it ridiculous that I cannot breath more often than not when I walk around these streets? It is not sadness. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Darling, dear Mexico City. You are never stale. You may have made me harder and less trusting and angry or frustrated sometimes. But I am never bored.

I have never felt more alive or more at home or more likely to spontaneously burst into a billion bits than with I am with you.

Te quiero mucho,

Mary

No comment, dear travel

So much has happened to me in the last month. It has made me lazy. Too much to recount. I went to the Yucatan, to Belize and a 500 year-old coral reef, to Guatemala to swim in a lake and back to Mexico via river.

The epicness of it all is inenarrable but I will write more. I must. If I have ever had anything to write about, it must be these travels. Right? I just need to give them a talking to.

Soils and toils

Tuesday, I woke at 5 am and was on my way to farmers' fields by 5:30. I was to film a course on conservation agriculture (CA).

Conservation agriculture is based on the three principles of residue retention, crop rotation and reduced tillage. While it is easy for me to understand the importance of protecting soils, farmers are not as quickly convinced. A deeply ingrained vision of what farming practices should entail and what gives yields, which is generally tearing the soil to pieces by tilling the hell out of it, is firmly in place making a paradigm shift both necessary but challenging. One avenue the CA program uses to increase adoption of said practices is by working directly with farmers. I have heard different representatives say time and time again, " Do not believe me. Try it for yourself."

The idea is to support a number of farmers that can then support other local farmers in a "hub" like system. Everyone has seen those delta maps, right? Same principle. It is not easy goings at the start because the first few years it does not always yield as well and everyone is laughing at you and telling you are crazy for not doing things the conventional way. It turns around, though, and then the joke is on them, who are investing more money in practices that deplete rather than restore soil quality while giving similar if not worse yields in comparison to CA plots.

So Tuesday we set off to do a massive circle around Mexico City and visit 7 farmer hubs.

Mexican countryside is gorgeous: mountains and savanna-like scenery scattered with cacti. But when you add to this set Mexican farmers, with their straw hats and loyal dogs and horses and walking sticks, one can start to forget the 21st century and the reality that one is not, despite current surroundings, a character in a novel Willa Cather should have written about Mexico.



A bit afraid of filming, eyes darted from the mix of scientists to nearby children to the camera lens. It must not have been too traumatic for the farmers gave us fresh cheese and enchiladas, which looked more like quesadillas as all of the yummy goo had evaporated in the heat of Valles Altos. Families watched, grandchildren with bunny rabbits in their arms.

They all said the method is helping; that it is cheaper, pests are dying, and they value our work. One was cynical and spoke about trying all of the techniques just to "see how many lies we tell him" and then laughed. He is my favorite.

Another stop sported two cows licking each-other next to a broken-down truck in a maize field.

All were concerned about water.

Farmers in and around the Estado de Mexico irrigate their crops with black water. That means sewage. That also means the water is dirt cheap and packed with nutrients, so for poor farmers this is an absolute steal. Mexico City, however, with its 22 + million inhabitants needs this water to stay in the city and is currently constructing a treatment plant. Good news for the city but bad news for the farmers. Not only will water prices skyrocket in 2012, the anticipated date of completion, but farmers will have to purchase fertilizers as the water will no longer be laden with urea and other goodies.

From the farmer's perspective this is bad news. I am no farmer, however, and see the event as a potential wake up call for many. Agriculture has a well-earned reputation for inefficient use of water. Perhaps adding a higher price to chronically under-priced natural resources, such as water, is one way to encourage responsible use of available technologies, such as drip irrigation in the case of water.

The farmers practicing CA are confident the CA method is saving them money. Money they say to purchase water when the time comes.

Epic day. I did not make it back to the city until midnight with the empty bag of chips that was my dinner. Driving towards Queretero, skeptical it would actually take us to Mexico City (and with directions consisting of "you take a turn but not really a turn and then just keep going..." who can blame us?) my co-worker and I talked about how much we love Mexico City but because it is, as the Belgians apparently say, "missing a corner." It is its imperfection that makes it perfect. He dropped me off on the corner in my neighborhood and I walked home through the city, purportedly too dangerous to go out in the dark. I crawled into bed at midnight and was content with the day so much so that I did not even dread my soon-to-be-active alarm clock.

Sayings

From the English:
as the actress said to the bishop = that's what she said
fairy cakes = cupcakes
queen cakes = muffins
muffins = English muffins
Gordon Bennett = dammit
hundreds and thousands = sprinkles
flat = apartment
waistcoat = vest
vest = shirt with no sleeves
pants = underwear
rucksack = backpack
fiddle sticks = polite cursing
suss = figure out
trousered = to pocket some money
taking the mickey/taking the piss = pulling my leg
cheap as chips = cheap as shit
crumpet = woman

From the Belgians:
work through the children diseases = working out the kinks
missing a corner = imperfect

From the Mexicans:
hablando del rey de Roma y por aquí asoma = speak of the devil and he appears
Chin = short for chingar
Nel = no
Güey = dude
Híjole! = surprise
Ahuevo = cool
Fresas = rich, preppy Mexicans
Nacos = rednecks, vulgar, common
Barrio = similar to Naco but means more provincial and less kitsch
No manches = no way! Not to be used in formal situations but maybe in front of your grandmother?
No mames = no way! Not to be used in front of your grandmother
Orale = hell yes but also used to indicate surprise or confirmation
Chela = beer
Chido = cool
Que pedo? / No hay pedo = pedo literally means fart but people say que pedo as what is up or what is the problem, among other things
Chilango = D.F. inhabitant
Chaqueta = while it literally means jacket, in Mexico it means masturbation. Say Chamarra instead
El invento del hombre blanco = I cannot believe they say this
Vale madre = I don't give a fuck
Me vale verga = same as above but worse
Verga = damn
Poca madre = cool
Chale = whoops
La neta = the truth

From the Newfie:
inhale while saying "yeah"
on the go = dating/let's go/drunk

From the Germans:
Handshoes = gloves
Apparently, the English wake up early to put their towels on chairs at the beach though the English claim just the opposite...

From the Australians:
grog = beer
heaps = lots

From the American?:
You couldn't hit the broad side of a barn with a bass guitar
It is raining like a cow pissing on a flat rock