Sundays are family days. We meet at Patty’s parents’ house at 10 in the morning, eat carnitas and decide where to spend the afternoon. Always, the decision involves a lake or bodies of water where we eat and nap under the shade of the trees and watch the little ones frolic. This includes the youngest, Alex, also known as The Mexican Denise the Menace, habitually stripping clothes off at inopportune times and running naked through groups of other picnickers. I tire quickly of sitting around so I wander off to explore and daydream. This Sunday, Martín decided to join me, pointing to a small hill in the center of the valley as a good destination. And so we were off.
We marched for miles in terrible conditions alongside an irrigation canal that cut through the endless patchwork of fields in the lowlands. This time of year is the height of the dry season and in March and April the heat arrives along with the winds that create the perfect conditions in the valley for remolinos. (It turns out the mini-tornado I drove through has hundreds and hundreds of cousins, much like the families of México). At any time during the day there are as many as a dozen remolinos spotting the level plain nestled between the mountains. Hundreds evolve and disintegrate every hour and they are as plentiful as they are weak; usually born, alive and dead within a five minute span. Half of these never develop; others remain nearly invisible, stranded over an area of grass, never picking up soil. Some, however, grow to huge proportions and pick up the earth from the fields, blackening and appearing as monsters. These, too, vanish but not before throwing copious amounts of dust and soil high and far into the air, permeating the lower atmosphere and darkening the skies.
Martín explained to me that the entire depression was once a vast expanse of water. Indigenous peoples, the P’urhépecha, once looked down from the mountains onto a field of blue. We were walking on a field of brown with spots of green. It was hard to fathom how crops were successful in this valley, fighting for air as the small tornados choked the wheat, alfalfa and maíz with their swarms of dirt. Yet, often what lies beneath our feet bears answers. México is infamous for its underground rivers. Even where I was walking, sinking calf-deep into the loose, top soil, water was flowing silently below, feeding the irrigation canals and small streams that zig-zag through the fields.
Three medium-sized remolinos cut through us on the way to the hill, stealing from beneath our feet the very ground that we walked on. Soil and dirt were sucked from behind us, beneath us and around us. It felt as though the baby twisters were pulling the earth straight through my body. The farther from us they departed the more their appetite to feed their spirals seemed to pull. You might ask, “Well, why didn’t you just avoid them?” Good question. Thankfully, these things never grow destructive because you cannot outrun them. As they crossed our path all we could do was shield our eyes and bend our heads and push forward, carefully marking each step as the earth disappeared from under our feet. We knew that no harm could be brought by the dust swirls, no havoc wreaked – they only served to dirty us further. The proof of their innocence lies with what they cannot disturb. The incalculable amount of stone fences constructed hundreds upon hundreds of years ago by the indigenous still stand today, structural integrity intact.
Distances are always deceiving. We thought the hill was a mile away from the lake when we started but it quickly turned into a 4 mile dirt hike. Finally arriving at the bottom of the mound, we bent to wash our faces in a newly-born spring head. It was the equivalent of an upside down faucet. The water was pouring up through the ground, snaking its path through the grass until it spilled into the stream nearby. Further proof the crops would continue to thrive and the stone fences stand for at least another generation could not have been more obvious.
On the top of the hill was a concrete block which anchored a single vertical, wood pole. At first I was confused, until I located the second pole lying on the ground which was split in two from a past fire. The burnt cross once had the best view of the valley below. I stepped up onto the concrete platform, holding onto the pole as another tornado passed through the hill. I lost track of Martín again who was standing no more than ten feet away. It was then I heard that unmistakeable sound of flying predators buzzing around my head. I hopped down and saw a nest five feet from me under an odd-shaped rock like a lean-to with hundreds of wasps huddled together. Time to leave. We made our exit and as Martín began to descend I stopped to take a leak. I was already unzipped with meat-in-hand when the wasps started their blitzkrieg. I was completely helpless. I took off running, one hand still holding my Johnson while my free hand was swatting aimlessly, screaming, “Avispas! Avispas!”
I realized I was running in circles and still being stung so I made a sprint for the declension, all the while fumbling feverishly to put it back in my pants. In the midst of the chaos, I thought, “But if I get stung, it swells, right?” Might not necessarily be a bad thing, right ladies?
I let it hang. I didn’t have time for both the descent and the zip-up. I ran straight down that mountain like a billy goat. Martín was waiting for me at the bottom, laughing. I zipped up and was explaining the terror from above when the second attack fell upon me. The fucking wasps were inside of my bandana and my shirt, waiting to strike again.
Needles all over my head and back!
I screamed, “Wasps!” and Martín took off on a fade rout toward the nearest field, making a graceful semicircle toward the sea of brown. I already had my bandana and shirt off and so I shot straight for the stream – fly pattern – I knew I was faster than those bastards so I wanted to test their defense. At least this time I had my “D” in my pantalones. What fools we must of looked like! I was screaming, running, waving my shirt around my head like a helicopter like Petey Pablo used to tell me at Baja Beach Club every Thursday College Night. Martín looked like Pig-Pen from Peanuts as he was running through the field kicking up a massive cloud of dirt behind him. I was stung but the mutual embarrassment was well-worth it for the both of us.
Now that I am a father, watching my son has taught me how to see things anew I seemed to have forgotten over the years. I find myself participating in the minute details of life with much more concentration now. A new pair of eyes can stare at a pair of curtains for an hour and be content. Exactly what is going on inside that head? I will never know; but it is fascinating to witness a young life fully take in a new experience and process it. When I watch this, the details of life I took for granted start to flood into my brain. I look at the bubbles now after I take David out of his bath and give him to his mother to dry him off. The shapes form and disintegrate as if they were morphing clouds and I was 4 years old, lying on my back in the grass on a summer’s day. These days, I can’t remember the passing childish ideas that flew fleetingly through my head or the grand plans I made for my life while watching those clouds slip by and fade away. What is important is that I am capturing that way of seeing the world again; the way that says life is in the details, the way that opens up the imagination.
There is a pure joy in carrying this mindset through life but we lose it as we age. It’s here, though. I still see glimpses of it. A few weeks ago in Cantabria there was a rumbling in the sky. It took the cry of, “Avion! Avion! Avion!” from one astute youngster and a stampede ensued. Children quickly converged from every doorway, side street and alley, screaming like wild chimpanzees, chasing the flying object down the street that followed its southwestern path. It was a fruitless attempt to catch it and they knew it. They just wanted to keep it in their sight for as long as possible. That they have never been on a plane only pushed them to run faster and scream louder. That a plane rarely flies over this area only excited their imaginations further. These are the children that grow old here in this part of México and a spirit lives within them. As their time on Earth whittles away, they guard that inner youth (those times they, too, chased down a plane) and refuse to trade it for something new. I’ve seen it in the ranchitos; how the old world still lives. The further you move away from Mexican cities, the richer they hang on to all their different traditions and culture. There are 62 recognized indigenous groups within México and each one of their languages is an official language of this country. This is the México you need to dig.
One tradition all Mexicans agree on is that any social or religious event should somehow be made into a procession. A procession simply qualifies as any number of people walking through the streets trailing a newly wed couple, a coffin, a religious flag or an alter. Funerals, weddings, holidays and tributes to The Virgin are all fair game. One key element is the presence of a band, which takes up the rear of the line. Let’s take the occasion of a funeral, for instance. When someone’s time has run out, there is a wake in their house for one to three days. This is called the deathwatch. The community comes to pay their respects to the family and friends of the loved one while sitting around the perimeter of the living room walls, mourning. Rosaries are echoed and prayers recited. The coffin is then followed by the crowd of mourners to the church. For this, a walk through town is required. As the procession winds its way through the streets, hammers stop, hats are removed and conversations cease. After a service at the church the final walk commences toward the cemetery. Once again, movement and excess noise halt. Regard for those who have passed on is not just shown during funerals, however. A respect for the dead is one of the fibers of the Mexicans’ cultural cloth. It is prevalent in their ceremonies and traditions, El Día de los Muertos, and how they remember their loved ones who have passed. A normal grieving period for a family is nine days, during which rosaries may be called for to be performed in different houses and masses requested. In México, a person is always honored and remembered, they are never really gone, for death is only a transition to another existence.
I am under the assumption that those who have passed on still hear all the noise from their earthly town of residency. Perhaps it even comforts them to hear the kids playing in the streets wherever they might be. Not only is it the loud bands that the people here adore, it is noise in general. Every vendor has a distinct sound as he rides through town. The boys selling “tepache” by bicycle have a high-pitched whistle which is made through a bicycle air-pump with a horn attached to it. Two quick pumps and a long third moan that draws the rest of the air out of the device. The trash men peruse the streets ringing a bell, the gas trucks each have their own catchy and annoying jingles playing on repeat through the megaphones attached to the roofs. If that’s not enough, one company attaches metal loops to an after-market bar at the back of the truck that bounce off of and scrape the streets as they make their rounds. Another air horn of sorts is wielded by the “camote” vendor. Men selling “garbanzos” utter the same sentences as they did yesterday. The same goes for the fruit merchants. Go to the market and it is an orchestra of offers and sales just for you. Try walking through the cacophony of fifty assorted auctioneers stuffed into a half-block without forgetting why you came to the market in the first place.
The sound of all sounds here is the whistle. It could possibly be one of the 62 recognized languages of México. I have heard that Mandarin and Cantonese have up to five different tones of the speaker’s voice to pair with every word, making that already baffling dialect all the more challenging to decipher. Such is life with the whistle, the default form of communication in México. If you cannot whistle loudly without using your fingers then it is safe to say you are not Mexican. The boys at work back the truck up with it. They alert their presence at a new job site with it. Any familiar person that is passed on the street while you are driving gets the whistle, too. It is ubiquitous. Close your eyes and picture yourself in a bird sanctuary. There is a Mexican there, standing at the base of the tree imitating perfectly any species of bird. He has mastered the whistle as a form of communication just like his winged friend.
