Postales del Paraíso: Hacienda Piña

After seemingly endless planning and countless delays we’ve finally arrived at our new home in the village of Ajijic, just outside Guadalajara, Mexico, and we love it! 70 - 80 degrees year-round, the name on the door is “Hacienda Piña”

This is not your typical Mexican vacation home. For one thing it is nowhere near the ocean. It is not even anywhere near sea level. Ajijic (Ah-He-HEEK) is a small hill town (elevation 5,500’) located on Lake Chapala (CHA-pa-la) Mexico’s largest lake, warm during the day and cool at night.  Our house is in the heart of the old village, about 7 blocks from the small ‘zocalo’ or town square. Some of life here is familiar, much is not.  This is in no small measure, why we like it so much. If the big concepts, (civic, cultural, economic, religious, etc) are relatively easy to grasp at least in theory, daily life is much more of a challenge.

The most important merchant in the town ‘Abarrotes Vinos y Licores’ is just three blocks away. The abarrotes are kept at a minimum with the focus on the Vinos y Licores, which is just fine with us. Although not the purveyor of the finest spirits we’ve ever encountered, it is nonetheless the most entertaining and reliable place to find out what’s going on in the village. Although we are still unsure whether we will ever develop a taste for the local mezcal (MOO-n-shine), we are committed (purely from the perspective of cultural immersion of course) to consuming as many margaritas as is necessary to make an informed judgment.

From here it is just another few steps to the set of bright red doors announcing ‘Pollo Fresco’. The proprietor seems to have perfected the ‘fresco’ aspect of the business, most of the inventory is still walking around on two legs and apparently refuses to be shrink-wrapped to the styrofoam trays to which we’ve grown accustomed. The selection process therefore requires a greater knowledge of chickens than I currently possess. One must assess the age, health, portion, and quality of the chicken not by poking at the pale goose-bumped flesh beneath the cellophane wrap, but by a quick glance at it’s feathered exterior as it attempts to elude your studied gaze by dashing out the back door of the shop!

It is just a few steps further to the very best tortilleria we have ever found. Lionel Poilâne on the rue du Cherche-Midi in Paris, recipient of the Legion of Honor for his magnificent miche du pain does not have such a loyal following. Hand formed and lovingly patted to irregular perfection, these tortillas are the stuff of legend and song and cause long lines to form in early morning in pursuit of a daily taste of happiness.

The butcher comes to the zocalo each Friday. The neighborhood dogs begin to gather at the sight of his battered blue pickup truck and soon begin their weekly impatient ballet, nudging each other for position at center stage, leaping high and snatching the scraps tossed from the shop’s dark, crowded and noisy interior into the brilliant sunlight of the plaza. Whether its time to cash in your own pet pigs and chickens, or watch with smug approval as your neighbor’s rooster that used to awaken you at 4:30 each morning greets its final sunrise, this is the place to be on Friday mornings.

The rag man and the strawberry man, long departed from the streets of Boston, have apparently also retired here. Their sing-song invitations echo down the narrow cobblestone streets along with those of the tamale lady, the coffee grower and the knife sharpener. It sometimes seems like living in a Gene Autry singing cowboy movie or a Broadway musical where we should fling open our doors and burst into song; “Yes! Yes!! We’d love some strawberries! But alas we are but poor American retirees living on a fixed income and we have no money!”

San Patricio’s Day (March 17th) is almost as big a holiday here as it is in Boston, the difference is that here it is actually sort of a religious celebration (only with beer). The Irish, recruited by the US Government in the 1840‘s during the war with Mexico, quickly decided that they could not fight against yet another group of oppressed Catholics, and quickly changed sides. The Irish have been revered here ever since. Most of the locals believe that with the ever increasing proportion of Mexicans and Latinos in the Catholic Church, it is just a matter of time before a new pope is elected and mariachi music will echo through the halls of the Vatican!

The furniture that we packed and shipped from Seattle on the same day that we left has still not arrived. If getting our furniture through Customs is anything like we experienced with our car, our house may be furnished by Christmas, which is fine because the work on the house that was supposed to have been complete by our arrival is not.

Anyway, if you and your family would like to spend a week or two in paradise, you are of course always welcome. If you’d like to immerse yourself in Spanish, or hone your culinary skills in the perfection of the ultimate in locavore cuisine, experience extraordinary baroque cathedrals in turn-of-the-century Spanish colonial hill towns, explore millennium old Mayan and Aztec ruins, or just ride a horse on the beach in the glow of a vibrant sunset, mi casa es su casa.

While the distance may seem significant, it is not intuitive. Consider that the distance from Boston to Seattle is approximately 3,074 miles while the distance from Boston to Guadalajara is only 4,492 kilometers! When converted to something understandable what this really means is that you now have no excuse but to come and visit since we’re now several miles (and two time-zones) closer than we were when we lived in Seattle. For those of you living in New York and Ohio, we’re practically living in your back yard!

The sun is warm here and Cathy’s long and bone wearying struggle with arthritis will find at least temporary respite from the cold and damp of the Pacific Northwest.  For our son, Aaron this decision is just final proof of what he has suspected for many years... that his parents are simply out of their minds. We have not yet convinced him to move here with us, but we’re working on it.

The Irish-Mexican-Mariachi-Bagpipe Band is still in the planning stages. We’ll keep you informed of our progress.

Postales del Paraiso: A Crack in the Teacup

Postcard from Paradise

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A Crack in The Teacup

“When you’re old and gray and full of sleep

and nodding by the fire take down this book... and gaze

at the soft look your eyes had once and of their shadows deep...”

~ William Butler Yates

One of these days, I’ve promised my son Aaron, I’ll reduce the length of my life to the equivalent of a single breath; I’ll collect all of my data (once quaintly referred to as “records”, “experiences” or “memories”), and compress them onto a single chip. I’ll scan all my photos and documents, my medical records, and my grocery lists, I’ll digitize my rolodex, my books, my cassettes and CDs, audio file all my thoughts and remembrances, and of course ensure that everything is sync’d, searchable, and geo-tagged. And then in an oxymoronic gesture of our time, and much to Aaron’s chagrin, I’ll drop it into a cardboard box and stuff it in the attic next to all the other boxes of my life that I don’t know what to do with, but cannot bear to be without.

It is these boxes that have recently been the focus of our lives as we rummage through the accumulation of memories, hopes, and dreams from the past 40 years in anticipation of our move to Mexico, vainly struggling with what to keep and what to throw away. Aaron of course views these things as the quaint but useless artifacts of an era whose time has past and, fearful perhaps that all this may get left on his doorstep, continues his exhaustive efforts to prod and poke me into the digital world of the twenty first century; a place where efficiency triumphs over sentimentality, economics over excessive accumulation, and your entire life takes up no more space than that tiny photograph of your high school sweetheart that lies safely tucked away somewhere in one of these many boxes.

I will at some point keep my promise to Aaron to digitize my life, but I will never bring myself to part with the birthday card he gave to me when he turned five, the now cracked teacup from my mother’s china collection, the tie clip that my grandfather wore but I don’t, the campaign buttons from a latent political awakening in Clarksdale, Mississippi... the list, and the boxes, goes on and on. All these things mark a place in time in my life and the thought of parting with them evokes a visceral fear of somehow becoming untethered from this world and floating away along with my past. It is all this that I will some day bequeath to Aaron and, along with my ashes, will become my everlasting burden to him. Look for a bewildered e-mail from him at some point in the future; “What am I to do with my father’s life?”

 I realize that I cannot continue to stagger through life burdened by the weight of all these things. This has been the luxury of having a storage unit; for a monthly fee memories are maintained and momentarily revived at will, hopes and dreams are kept on life support until we’re ready to pull the plug and face the inevitable reality, and yet I can’t seem to let go.

As we rummage through the appalling number of boxes it is surprisingly difficult to look at some of these things and realize that much of it does in fact belong to a world whose time has past. The photographs of Cathy at 18,000 ft. in the Cordillera Blanca in Peru, or on the Haute Route through the French Alps capture the essence of youth and exuberance, stamina and strength, but the boxes of climbing ropes, ice axes and snow anchors will not be used again. When we put them away the last time of course, we didn’t realize it would be for the last time.

The ‘good to 20 below’ down-filled sleeping bags once so essential in Tibet, and seemingly incongruous with Mexico, we’ve now convinced ourselves will be indispensable in the off-chance that we decide to attempt the Paine Circuit at the southernmost tip of Argentina as part of our much fantasized journey through South America, even though for the last 5 years we’ve never even considered getting closer to the ground than the 16” high, down-filled, pillow top mattresses on the 25th floor of the Chicago Marriott. The ensuing decisions seem to follow this pattern, each rationalization more outrageous than the last. It seems I cannot let go of my past.

Despite their prominent and easily accessible perch on the living room bookshelves for nearly half a century the still half-read, leather bound volumes of Boccachio, Descartes, and Francis Bacon are confidently repacked in the certainty that one rainy day they will be dutifully devoured and our lives will be the richer for it.

The piano, dragged 3,000 miles and man-handled for 40 years up and down 2 and 3 story walk ups from Washington DC, through St Louis, and on to Seattle will, with the luxury of time afforded us by retirement, surely now fill our lives with Chopin and Rachmaninov rather than the current limits of Chopsticks. The list goes on and the carefully re-wrapped objects of our affection are a reminder of how much is yet to be accomplished.

When I attempt to assure my own immortality by presenting my most cherished possessions to Aaron I’m sure he’ll look at me as if I’m just another one of the many homeless people on the streets tethered to enormous caravans of shopping carts filled with black plastic bags bursting with stuff they do not need and cannot use. He’ll look at me sadly, shake his head, then turn and walk away. Much as I would like to think otherwise, immortality is apparently not measured by the trails of cardboard boxes we leave in our wake.

However, despite family protests to the contrary, I’m convinced that these things are the thread that guides us back thru the labyrinth. They reconcile past and present, loss and continuity, or perhaps they are simply an attempt to keep the past a part of the present. These things are all cherished pieces of our lives, but at this point we can neither embrace them all, nor throw them out. Lives and families; promises made, dreams imagined, burdens carried, love embraced and sadness endured, its all here. 40 years worth.

Why the attachment? There is not a danger of forgetting, although I suspect that will reverse itself in the coming years. The difficulty, as with most things we love of course, is in letting go. There is a good deal here of what Joan Dideon describes in her astonishingly insightful book ‘The Year of Magical Thinking’ where she relates the process of coming to terms with the sudden and unexpected death of her husband, John Gregory Dunne. The things he left behind create a connection to him and to their life together. These things seem to be imbued with a kind of magical quality; as long as they are safely kept, the connection to him remains. She describes not being able to bring herself to throw away his shoes because if she does she somehow also casts out the spell, and with it her husband, and this is something that she cannot bear to do. There is a finality to it. A past that cannot be retrieved. A life that cannot be put back together.

At once utterly priceless and completely worthless, does the fact that Mom’s teacup is now cracked make it less valuable, more valuable, or simply a more poignant reminder of what our relationship was or perhaps might have been?

Attachments are a good thing, but as we move through life sometimes letting go, whether it be of your mother’s hand, the handlebars, the side of the pool, or the side of an airplane, - free fall - is much more exhilarating. In the end I guess this is why we chose Mexico; one more adventure, one more time, but now with a trailer load of cardboard boxes many times the size of what we had anticipated.

Reminiscing while cuddled up next to the fireplace, jabbing my finger irritatedly at my cold, aluminum-shelled iPad in an attempt to retrieve our digitized family photos is not the sentimental journey I had once envisioned for some distant winter’s evening.... still, as I insist on telling Aaron, there’s the possibility that all this new electronics stuff will turn out to have been just a passing phase, and my thought of living out William Butler Yate’s poem while slowly turning the worn and dog-eared pages of our family photo album splayed open across my blanket-covered lap, may yet come to pass.

Songs of My Father: A Travelogue

Songs of My Father

A Travelogue

 A church for 1,000 years, a mosque for 600 years, a museum now for nearly 100 years, the Hagia Sophia seemed to embody the impersonal nature of Truth; an individual standing in this vast space in the flickering glow of oil lamps was both paramount and inconsequential. As I stood spellbound in the dimly lit interior, I found myself increasingly aware of the cold draft of the vastness of time, the vulnerability of being a tiny speck in the universe.

As I looked up at the face of Christ Pantocrator I realized that the Byzantine image in the shimmering gold mosaics was the same image that had admonished me for so many years from the golden dome of Holy Name Church in Boston. Istanbul is of course famous for such collisions of worlds; east and west, religious and secular, old and new, but I was surprised that it now seemed so personal.

But the most surprising thing about being here was that I found myself almost constantly being reminded of my father, and the realization that in just two years he would have been one hundred years old.

           

Why this should come as such a startling revelation, I’m not sure, but somehow this thought seemed to make the years between Justinian’s conception of this remarkable structure and my standing in the middle of it seem not so distant, perhaps because fewer lifetimes spanned the centuries than I’d previously imagined or maybe now my thoughts, my appreciation of history, or my sense of place seemed closer to what I thought my father’s to be. A classics scholar and student of history, my father would often spontaneously quote from Homer, Dante, or Cicero, and launch into elaborately embroidered stories of Greek and Roman mythology. Whatever the reason, the entire trip I could not shake this sense of Dad looking over my shoulder.

Awakened each morning by the call to prayers, the voices reverberating from the minarets first from one mosque then another until the entire city echoed with the chanting of the Qur’an, I was surprised to realize what an extraordinary sense of comfort this daily rhythm provides; a serene sense of permanence, stability, and community. There is a common purpose and meaning to life here, it is different from our own, it is affirmed five times each day, and it impacts every aspect of life every day. These centuries’ old bonds to the community and a shared sense of values and beliefs seem somehow at odds with our focus on the individual, but there is a great strength in this unity.

Istanbul is today, as it has been for millennia, at the intersection of many worlds, and the economic and political tensions with Europe and the West, the cultural divides with Asia and the East, and the secular and  fundamentalist tensions with Islam and the Arab world are palpable. This is still a city of legends that conjures images and echos memories that are both distant and exotic.

We sailed one morning up the Bosporus; crossing the Golden Horn, then sailing past the caravan crossings of the old Silk Roads, past the old yahlis and palaces, past the fortress where Mehmed II and the Ottoman Empire lay siege to Constantinople and conquered an empire that had flourished for a thousand years, past the place where Prometheus guided Io across the waters as she fled Hera’s jealous wrath, to a tiny fishing village where the Black Sea emerges from the fog and the memories of Jason and the Argonauts trail to the horizon. It is a long day’s journey through five thousand years of western history, philosophy and mythology.

Exiting the Sea of Marmara in the opposite direction, the Dardanelle Straits lead south, narrowing to where Xerxes led the Persians to victory over the Greeks crossing from East to West on their fated journey toward Thermopylie, and where Alexander the Great extracted his revenge a century later, crossing in the same place but from West to East, and of course lead still farther south to the plains of Troy and the never too distant voice of Homer. This place seemed the embodiment of the stories and narratives, the history and mythology that so greatly influenced my father’s perception of life and the world, and of course my perception of him.

But there is another church in Istanbul that was built in what was at the time a sheep pasture just outside the Theodosian walls of the city, that has somehow survived the onslaught of the tremendous upheavals of the next sixteen hundred years; the great plagues, the crusades, the Ottoman invasion, the fall of the Eastern Roman Empire and the Byzantine world, the Crimean War, and two World Wars.

The Church of the Chora, its astonishing mosaics and frescoes still largely intact, is everything that the Hagia Sophia is not. If the monumental scale and astonishing space and light of the Hagia Sophia draws men to heaven, the intimate Church of the Chora brings heaven to earth.  This is a place conceived and built in the extraordinary struggles and tumult of the years following Emperor Constantine’s great council at Nicea; that first ecumenical council that cast out the false prophets and the gnostic gospels of Thomas, Mary Magdalene and others, defined the one and true faith of Christianity, and proclaimed what would become known as the Nicene Creed; “I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth...”.  It is again from this place, a thousand years later, in a final moment of panic and despair as the city of Constantinople fell to the invading Ottoman Empire, that a sacred icon was rushed to the place where the city walls had been breeched in a failed attempt to turn back the invading armies. This is still a place of extraordinary faith.

Every inch of the vaulted vestibules, walls and domes are embellished with frescoes and bejeweled with shimmering mosaics. The painted figures are life size. They stand next to me, staring stern faced, passing judgment as I pass down the narrow halls. Hosts of golden Seraphim swarm like starlings high along the ribs of the narthex, keeping constant vigil on all who enter. There are no barriers here. I could pick the thousand year old golden tiles from the mosaics of Mary’s cloak if I chose, as many have done for centuries before me. I could reach up and grasp the keys to the Kingdom from the hand of St. Peter.  I could stand face to face, eye to eye, with the austere ascetic, John the Baptist, and I do. This place is a personal communion with God, an intimate camaraderie with angels and saints, a house of prayer in its most profound sense; it brings the awful vulnerability of mortality into stark and immediate focus. My father told me once that when he went to church he didn’t go to participate in the mass, he went to have a conversation with God. This is such a place.

My father died when I was in my twenties, a year before my own son was born and I struggle at times to understand who he truly was, apart from being a father, to somehow fathom his hopes and dreams, to understand who he was as a scholar, educator, mathematician, historian, a Major in the US Army Corp of Engineers. I find my father in my thoughts more and more with each passing year.  I never had those occasional long philosophical discussions that I sometimes find myself having with my own son, the ones I imagine Dad had with his father on those long, lazy Sunday afternoons in my grandfather’s kitchen in Dorchester. This trip makes me feel a connection somehow, a sense that I have come to appreciate some of what he valued, and realize that maybe we were not so far apart after all.

There is a wonderful poem written nearly eight centuries ago by Rumi; mystic, poet, founder of the Sufi order of Islam, the whirling dervishes known as the Mevlani, as he searched for meaning in his life:

            “Cross and Christians, end to end, I examined.

            He was not on the cross.

            I went to the Hindu temple, to the ancient pagoda.

            In neither was there any sign.

            To the heights of Herat I went, and Kandahar.

            I looked. He was not on height or lowland.

            Resolutely I went to the Mountain of Kaf.

            There only was the place of the ‘Anqa bird.

            I went to the Kaaba. He was not there...

            I looked then into my own heart. In that place I saw him.

            He was in no other place.”

If I sometimes feel as though I never knew my father well, I also sometimes look at myself, and I look at my son, and I see him there.

There is an age-old axiom that says that a person dies three times: first at the time of their demise, second upon their disposition (burial, cremation...), and third the last time their name is spoken. I talked a lot about my father on this trip, more than I have in many years. I hope that my son will find inspiration and great strength in his thoughts of his grandfather and that he speaks his name fondly, and often.

Istanbul is a city of extraordinary monuments, some designed to rival the temples of Solomon, others simple, even austere, but all are preserved with the same purpose. Here in this ancient city and Muslim world, remembrance is paramount and there is great respect for history, and for age, and all that it brings.

Or perhaps it’s just that ancestor worship seems more appropriate the older I get. I’ll have to remember to tell my son.

Postales del Paraíso: Celebrating San Francisco

Postcard from Paradise

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Celebrating San Francisco

We’re celebrating the life of San Francisco, the patron saint of Chapala here this week so don’t try calling me this weekend, I’m completely booked.

Better known to most gringos as the statue of the guy standing in the concrete bird feeder, the feast of Saint Francis of Assisi, brings out all the faithful, along with troupes of costumed dancers, marching bands, necromancers, parade floats, and most of the farm animals for miles around, for nine straight days of eccentricities, festivities, and questionable behavior.

The skyrockets start blasting you from your bed at 5:00 AM each morning so that you’re sure to be on time for the 6:00 AM departure of the procession carrying the statue of San Francisco through town for the 7:00 AM rosary at the church. While this is believed by some to be an inexpensive method of providing annual early- morning coronary screening for an entire neighborhood, rather than being followed by the sound of ambulance sirens, the next sound you hear is the cacophony of what seems like dozens of marching brass bands banging up and down every street in the village, sort of like a snooze alarm for those who missed the first wakeup call.

The big event is tomorrow, beginning of course with the procession and rosary, but continuing all day with endless celebrations, blessings and prayers. All the streets in town are closed to traffic and parking, booths hawking traditional foods, trinkets, prayer candles, and Milagros line the boulevards and alleyways, Mariachis roam the streets and play a kind of call and response that echoes back and forth across the neighborhood. Balloon vendors, veterinarians, organic pet food sellers and taco stands set up shop next to games of chance and mechanical rides for the kids. There’s a ride that’s sort of like a carousel or merry-go-round, but the horses have all been replaced with goats, perhaps because in this culture riding a horse is not a novelty, or perhaps it’s a nod to this frequent symbol of Saint Francis.

At noon is the traditional Blessing of the Animals and in addition to the armloads of lapdogs and petrified cats the streets are knee deep in goats, pigs, donkeys, and sheep. After blessing the personal pets presented to him at the top of the church steps, the priest wades out into this urban barnyard and with prayers, laughter, and roars of approval from the crowd, sprinkles holy water on all the animals in sight. Only the cats seem to be ignoring the festivities, or perhaps plotting their revenge. There is of course the traditional evening mass and devotions followed by a massive glittering Castillo fireworks display on the plaza just outside the church.

I don’t remember religious celebrations being like this in the Catholic parish where I grew up in Boston. I don’t ever remember saying a rosary on St Francis Day, much less going to church. I do remember Monsignor Finn lecturing from his perch above the congregation each Sunday about Saint Jerome or some other obscure saint while everyone in the congregation snored back at him, but the only other saints I remember are Saint Patrick, and St Nicholas. Memory is of course a selective and faulty thing, but I’m sure I’d have remembered the part where everyone carried their pet goats up to the altar to be blessed, or the part where the Monsignor rolled up his sleeves (and his pant legs) and led the procession of goats through the city of Boston sprinkling holy water on all the beasts he could find; but I don’t. Going to church as I recall was a penance, not a celebration. 

In contrast to what’s happening here, slaughtering animals as surrogates for the rest of us seems to be a time honored tradition in many of the world’s religious celebrations this weekend. In Pakistan alone 7.5 million goats, according to the Washington Post, will be slaughtered tomorrow on Eid al-Adha marking the end of the Hajj and in remembrance of Abraham’s sacrifice of a ram in place of his son. In other communities around the world, Yom Kippur, a Day of Atonement and repentance begins at sundown tonight. In ancient times Jewish communities, according to tradition, selected a goat from the herd and ritually made it the bearer of all their sins and then cast it into the wilderness, chasing after it and taking the obvious measures necessary to ensure that it would never return to the herd. In Christian communities tomorrow, on the feast of San Francisco whose pastoral image is inevitably pictured with an adoring goat curled up at his feet, no goats will be slaughtered, eaten, or cast away; a small step perhaps for the Catholic church, but one welcomed and celebrated here.

I wonder none-the-less just exactly what they’re serving in all those empanadas and tamales at all these taco stands that have blossomed here this weekend. Is San Francisco also the patron saint of vegans?