Wrapping it up...for now?

It takes a good 24 hours to acclimatize to the energy of Mexico City. At first when I pass people on the street it feels as if prickly cactus pears are brushing up against me along with other unpleasant energies which I won't name. So for a day I just wander around like a homeless person and sit in coffee shops and use my computer. Then at one point it's as if a switch is clicked and I don't notice the dense energy anymore. In fact I even start to notice some good energy in the city.

The first night in DF (short for District Federale, the Mexican name for Mexico City) I get the idea to email someone on a message board that I used to frequent. So I do this in the internet cafe when I post my blog. I feel a little strange because I don't know her but she texts me back on my phone before I get home and to my delight we set up a meeting for the next day. Yes, here I am texting like a teenager, because phone calls are so expensive.

Meanwhile I'm still wandering about in my unacclimated daze, speaking to the shopkeepers with my best diction and still being asked to repeat myself. But at least I know what words to say! I try a diner next door to the Detroit-style one only to sit down and find out it has the same menu. But I stay to try a breakfast called "Huevos Nortero" and am treated to a jumble of sausages and scrambled eggs and this reminds me that finding good sausage in Mexico is as rare as finding a sober cowboy at a rodeo. Ukranians beware! Still I realize I'm beginning to like this diner.

My new friend Meli shows up a little early and texts me at the hotel I go downstairs to find a beautiful young latina on the sidewalk who gives me a big hug. We go to a nearby parking garage to get her car and have to wait in a crowded line for about fifteen minutes while the valets run off to get cars from families, cars from tradesworkers, cars from old ladies, every car except ours. Finally the valet brings a shiny red SUV and we drive down a large boulevard with palm trees and lots of green to a Mexican restaurant which is quite a far away. I tell Meli about how much trouble I had adjusting to the energy and she says it's the same for her after she leaves for a few days, but of course she is a high energy person and is a treat to hang out with. Inside the restaurant we talk about many things and laugh a lot and have margaritas. She even drives me back to the hotel.

One reason I wanted some time in DF was to see the pyramids. But hanging out in low-end Mexican hotels and staying off the tour beat doesn't make it easy. There is s a poster for a tour by the hotel counter so I ask the clerk about it. She tries to tell me about it but talks very fast and I don't get much data. Luckily a staff member walks by who speaks English and he tells me simply to take a bus and gives directions.

The next day I'm a little worried and wonder if I should have taken the tour after all instead of attempting a dyslexic navigation around a strange large city where no one understands my speech. I consult my hand-drawn map carefully and find the city bus and ask the driver to give a shout at "Central Norte" which turns out to be the bus station I was at before--although it takes a lot less time to get there than it did with the cab. At Central Norte I run around a lot and find a bus to take to the pyramids which is just about to leave. They ask me whether I want to go to the Teohuatican pyramids or the Mayan ones. This is news to me as I didn't know there was a choice! So I choose to go to the Teohuatican pyramids because the woman I knew in San Miguel kept referring to herself as a princesa Teohuaticana and because I'd had a bad experience with a Mayan student.

On the bus I get lucky as there is is a family from Pennsylvania with a son who has spent a lot of time in Mexico. So I get off when they get off and go with them until we get inside. At first it's a little underwhelmig but then I notice that there is another section with the larger pyramids quite a distance away. It takes a long time to walk there on the beautiful path surrounded by Mexican tourists and the occasional Americans.



The largest one is majestic and is called the Pyramid of the Sun. It's easy to climb it after walking up and down the hills of San Miguel so much. I pass everyone except for the nuns, who race up and down the pyramids with flowing habits and light feet. There are people here of all ages, even school tours and the old women who persist for many hours and make it all the way to the top. At the bottom again we are surrounded by Mexican merchants who tease us by eating ice cream bars after our long bus rides and taxing climbs but only offer us trinkets. However there is a good taco restaurant on the way out and I'm also able to buy some dresses for the nieces and a t-shirt for Ben with the money I saved by not taking the expensive tour.

On the way home I wave down a bus on the highway to Central Norte, then I think I take the right city bus but it turns off the main road. I ask the driver where he is going and he pretends to be helpful but then just tells me to sit down. I start to freak out a little because with dyslexia it's very difficult to be lost. Eventually after talking to him some more he lets me off at a main intersection and I find out the only way to get back is to take the subway, which I do, and find my way back easily, much to my surprise! I'd been warned about thieves on the subway but there is no sign of problems and everyone seems unusually happy.

The next day I have so many problems getting ready to go back home that it reminds me of the information jamming time last February and so I wonder if this is the Canada energy funneling down to me. I hope not! Someone grabs a cab out from under me and I can't do anything because I have all my bags around me. The cab driver who I do get takes a "shortcut" which puts us into stalled traffic on the freeway and he has to go off and take a route he doesn't know and almost gets into an accident. At the airline they only have one person serving the demanding gringos and it takes over an hour before the short line moves enough for me to get service. The ticket clerk writes down the wrong gate but luckily the person in front of me in line, a Montreal ex-pat, has warned me about this problem and I find out immediately when I check with the clerk at the gate, who sends me to the correct gate.

Once I'm at the correct gate everything is problem-free and I remember why I like Air Mexicana. On the plane there is a rare empty seat in the middle beside me so I have space to lean my computer diagonally and write this blog. Off course there's a jammer in front of me who puts his seat as far back as possible and keeps bouncing it to try to get it further back. How pathetically predictable. But at least this time there's not an obscenely fat guy sitting beside me. After a while they pass out the bilingual (French and English) Canadian customs form and I watch the Spanish-speaking passengers struggle with the English and I translate some of the form into Spanish for my seat-mate. No one in Mexico speaks French except for the tourists from Montreal but any time I mention French the Mexicans' eyes light up and they are most interested, asking if I speak French.

What will Canada bring? Will it be better than before, will the energy be different? Will I be able to adjust after having been away for so long, or will I just quit my job after six months and return to San Miguel as a couple of friends predicted? One step at a time I guess. That's one thing that Mexico has taught me to do, is take it one day at a time.

Movin´ On...

Standing on the platform waiting for a bus to Mexico City, I'm surprised how easy it seems to move on. I have loved this city and it has loved me. But it seems easy to let go. Spiritual maturity? Yeah right.

Things are busy right up to the end. I have clients until the last day as people book sessions with me before I leave. I continue to encounter interesting challenges with clients right up to the end and learn important things. I'm surprised how easy it has become to know what is going on with different people and explain it to them. At the bus station I'm surprised to see a client who I worked with earlier in the week, a wonderful Mexican man who asks me about some of the things that are happening to him. I explain it to him the best I can. Earlier another client had emailed me and asked about what was happening to her. I realize I should put up a web site to support clients but I have such a block against creating web sites these days. All in good time I suppose.

Socially everything comes to a wonderful close. I visit my first landlords Jim and Therese and catch up with them. They seem different now from many of the others I've now met in town, even more peaceful and at home in a world of their own. I'm amazed at my good fortune of having had them as my first contacts in Mexico. I have my last session with my tutor on a sunny balcony. My friend David from university, who went to Guanajuato with me and who had invited me to the class party, takes me out for my first and only steak dinner at an Argentinian restaurant. I tell David that I wonder if I'd have done so many things in such a short time if my time here hadn't been limited to six months? And after doing some important clearing I attend my final conversation group at the library and who should decide to come but my favorite woman who I was seeing and had a fight with and we end up having a great few days together.

As the bus pulls out of the station I take a last look at some of the familiar landmarks: the town's only traffic light on the road to the train station, the curving highway where I lost my first cell phone, the turnoff to Queretero where we went on the tour with Ceasar and drove through the hail storm, and the now sleeping tiny stadium where we went to the rodeo. The friends who I went to the rodeo with are long gone, having departed for Guatemala last Monday. I suppose that's one thing that is making it easier to let go, having made friends and lost them so easily so many times.

I'm on a first-class Mexican bus, the cadillac of buses. The seats are wider and there are only three across, there is an incredible amount of leg room with a pull-out stool to rest your feet on, and there are movies just like on an ariplane. It will be hard to sqeeze into those tiny Canadian buses with all those depressing people again! They show one of my favorite old movies from the 90s, "Entrapment", in Spanish of course. To my surprise I find I can pick out many more Spanish words than before. I even catch myself thinking in Spanish at times now.

We pull into a huge bus station in Mexico city that seems more like an airport. I'm herded to a wicket to buy a taxi ticket into town. A porter takes me to a narrow Europen-style cab and throws my bags in the trunk. The driver races into traffic and drives stock car style which reminds me of Vancouver, although it is still more civilized here. When he drops me off I realize that the total cost of the bus and taxi trip together, although it seems a lot to me now, is less than that of a cab ride to Pearson airport in Toronto. It will be an adjustment going home. I'm not even used to having traffic lights.

I check in to a low-end hotel for $24 and hop next door to an American-style greasy spoon. At least the decor is American--the food is a little unusual, the kind of Mexican food you might would expect from a greasy spoon in Detroit. But they do serve up a good cup of coffee. I chat with the waitress who is an Aretha Franklin lookalike and she beams when I tell her who Aretha Franklin is and that the name of her most famous song is Respecto. Then I walk around the area and realize that I don´t have a great first impression of Mexico City as it seems like just another American city, with similar buildings and newsstands that display Cosmopolitan and entertainment magazines. The people seem less healthy and much darker in spirit than in San Miguel and are not as beautiful. My energy is so much lighter than theirs and they all feel heavy and I feel like I stand out. No one except the waitress and the hotel clerk understand my Spanish here, and it becomes apparent that what people say in San Miguel is true, that they are used to American accents there. I settle into a cafe to write this blog which I will copy to my SanDisk and post from the internet cafe next door, as it's hard to find wireless internet around here.

Mexican Rodeo

With only days left to go here, I find myself in front of the computer more and more. Maybe it's a way of hiding from the upcoming changes? Or maybe I'm starting to get back into a Canada frame of mind?

Much of the time I still spend studying Spanish and looking for those obscure language patterns that are oh-so-hard-to-find in printed courses but are so commonly used. I always know what they are and simply need the details. But that information is hidden like an image in raw jpeg code. Connie asked me why bother to study Spanish still? I guess being in Australia is a little bit like being surrounded by people who speak a different language but it's not quite the same motivation. For me it's a way of staying connected to the energy here and of course it would be nice to know even more Spanish whenever I return to a Spanish-speaking country. But mostly my right-brain language patterns are just so good that I want to keep exploring them and see where they lead. I'm even using them now to help my conversation friends learn English. It's nice to finally be learning what I've been trying so hard to learn all this time.

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I'm still surprised by the welcoming attitude that I continue to receive here. It's last Wednesday and I plan to go to an art opening but it is pouring rain. Finally it stops and I step through the puddles on the cobblestone streets to find my way to the cavernous Institudo. There is a brightly-lit room in the back from which excited chatter bubbles into the large plaza. When I enter the room a client and friend immediately sees me and comes over to greet me an enthusiastic hug. She is looking great and tells me that her whole life has changed. She asks if I still have time to see three more of her friends and I say of course.

It is pouring rain again when I leave, so much that I can barely make my way a block up the road to a place to stand under an overhanging edge and wait for the rain to subside. No such luck! The rain continues blissfully unaware of my walking schedule. There's light spilling onto the misty spray that is being thrown up by splashing cars and I run into a restaurant thinking I'll order a beer and wait it out. In a bar in the back I squeeze into the only remaining chair and start chatting with a Texan and a Californian. It turns out this is an ex-pat hang-out bar much like Chilis in Toronto, and it feels a little bit like a twilight-zone experience with a portal to a fun world instead of a dark one. I get to know everyone at the bar and play some Neil Young and Blue Rodeo on the jukebox to give everyone a taste of Canadian music. It goes over well and one of the guys plays some Guess Who in response. When the restaurnt closes they ask me to join them in the late-night bar up the street but I tell them I have to work the next day. The rain has stopped and I poke may way through the puddles shining brightly in the light of the near-full moon.

In Toronto you can walk the streets for days and not see anyone you know, or at least anyone who wants to say hello. On a busy day here I drop into a restaurant in between clients and find one of my most interesting clients there so we share lunch together. Then my Spanish teacher from the free Wednesday class shows up and gives us robust hello and tells me that he has put something into the next class especially for me (as I tend to ask a lot of questions). A few days later I walk with a few friends on a tour of the art openings of the evening and people greet me in each art opening and in the street.

Speaking of the twilight zone...Four times now I've been out with a woman when another woman who I've been seeing has seen us together. This means that now there is no one left as latina women are very possessive and these experiences have effectively turned all of them off me (one of my rewards being a long lecture on the evils of Mexican men who always cheat)...a case of the antisynchronicities of the universe creating a circumstance that had the same probability of happening as that of winning the Powerball. Maybe I should play the lottery!

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One day I am rewarded for frequenting the Mexican fondas (small family-owned food stands) with a flyer on the counter advertising a bullfight. This has been one of the must-do events on my list and I'm ecstatic because I'd heard rodeos don't start until summer. I talk it up with some new friends and the next day we make our way through the pulsing throng of dancers celebrating the Dia de los Locos (think Caribana in Toronto) to a sleepy street where the Plaza de Toros is located and turns out to be as deserted as an abandoned farmhouse. We ask someone in a nearby tienda where the event is and it turns out to be on the edge of town. It takes some time to find a cab while walking through the partying tourists but eventually we find one who takes us out on the highway to a small stadium surrounded by a chain-link fence that doesn't appear to have a gate.

We squeeze in through an opening and make our way towards a small stairway in the stadium. We each give 50 pesos to a woman who is sitting in a pickup truck taking bills and tearing off tickets. Once inside we realize we have hit a gold mine, a small outdoor venue that is only a quarter full and is basking lazily under the afternoon sun. We sit behind a man selling beer and wait for the events to happen.

The program varies from the tacky to the outright fascinating. At one point a bull escapes and runs around the parking lot outside the stadium while pursued by four men on horses. He runs to the far corner of the large lot and escapes three or four lassos before his legs are snagged and he is pulled to the ground. A few moments later he shows up again in the stadium to be taunted by the young matador.

Meanwhile, in front of us a drunken cowboy tries to get our attention. He's very talkative and from time to time one of us goes to sit with him when the events slow down and he becomes the more interesting attraction. He's angry that they didn't have a more powerful bull for the bullfight and concerned that the new bulls that have just been brought in on the truck will hurt his horses, which are being used outside the stadium. "You never know what they're going to bring," he drawls in a Mexican accent. "Those are the nastiest bulls and they kill horses." He talks about how he likes Mexico more than the US. "In Mexico you can do anything! We're free here!" he exclaims with a smile. "Every night I get wasted and drive my truck around and spin my wheels and no one cares." He tells me he was dealing drugs in the US and was put in prison for five years. "Then they brought me to the border and told me never to come back. They thought they were punishing me, but they were rewarding me, man!" he says with passion. He looks at me thoughtfully and says, "You've been there too haven't you?" I'm not sure what he's talking about so I ask a couple of questions. But what he's talking about is supposed to be understood. "You've been there too. I can see it in your eyes." I don't know what to say to this so I don't say anything.











When we leave the stadium, the fence is bent over at a steep angle from where the escaped bull had tried to knock it down.

Reflections in an Outdoor Cafe

Sitting in an outdoor cafe in the main square of Guanajuato, acid jazz gently throbbing in the background, people dressed in vibrant colors meandering down the streets. No one is in a hurry in this off-season university town. I dutifully wipe off some chili sauce from one of my fingers, left over from a melted cheese gordita with salsa roja, fried earlier on a huge gently curved round grill. The woman who served me beams when she asks, "Only one?" and I say, "OK, dos, esta mejor." (OK two, it is better).

La gente aquí es muy diferente. Creo que es la falta de tráfico, porque casi todos las calles aqui son demasiado confinado a permitir la pasaje de los carros. Esto crea una tranquilidad que es inapreciable. El coste de la progresa, en nuestras vidas modernas, es posiblemente sencillamente el falta de los sonidos tranquilos de las caminantes y la musica de suyas conversaciónes, y la capacidad a oir nuestros propios pensamientos.*

(The people here are very different. I think it's the absence of traffic, because almost all the streets are too confined to allow the passage of cars. This creates a peace that is without price. The cost of progress, in our modern lives, might simply be the lack of the peaceful sounds of people walking and their animated conversations, and the ability to hear one's own thoughts.)

I find myself beginning to appreciate the beauty of the Spanish language more deeply as I learn it better. Ideas seem to express themselves more freely and simply even in my stilted speech. Hay una riqueza en la lengua de la cual el inglés parece faltar. (There is a richness in the Spanish language that English appears to lack). I understand a little bit better now why my brother Don became enamored with the French language when he was a teenager.

However, I do find myself making up words to facilitate conversation. Two of my favorites are:

• margaritar: to drink margaritas; a regular "ar" verb that could probably be extended to coronar, cervezar, etc. But I think it should be reserved for margaritas.


• noviar: to try to make a woman your novia. This could be used both for men and women, with the understanding that when women noviar they are not necessarily finding a woman. Of course it invites an opposite, soloamigar.

Things I will miss most about Mexico...everyone always paying in cash and never having to stand in long debit/credit card lines, the long summer sun, the locally grown food ending up in tiny tiendas serving homemade gorditas, going for days without seeing a traffic light or even a stop sign, strolling down cobblestone streets dotted with the dung of burros while sipping a large glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice. Maid service, laundry service, and spending six dollars on a night out. The simple amigability of the Mexicans, animated Spanish conversations with my tutor, and of course los amigos. México, usted ha ganado mi corazón y un pedazo de ello siempre quedara aquí. (Mexico, you have won my heart and stolen a piece of it).

I realize now that el endulzando de mi vida (the sweetening of my life) that I have written about before occurred in Hawaii last August. Something indeed changed me there. The mood comes back easily: the ambient electrically-charged energy of the volcanic rock, the endless ocean spilling wetness into the air, and the majestic coconut palms.

A cab driver, who had been recommended to me by a woman whose life had been forever changed by the work I'd done with her in the seminar, drives slowly through the dusk as we discuss huna teachings. He says he likes my energy, tells me he will rent me a room for $300 and tries to cajole me into staying on the island and letting my flight go off without me. I am tempted to take him up on the offer but am thinking of my rented apartment, the next seminar in Vancouver, and all the work we want to do in our practice groups. I keep his number and while waiting for my plane on one of the beautiful outdoor benches in the damp evening air of the airport a Hawaiian woman from the seminar joins me and hands me another card showing the best web sites to get apartments in Hawaii.

Flying home cramped into a tiny stained seat on a Northwest jet with a six-hundred-pound man slowly expanding in the seat beside me, we pass over the US-Canada border and I instantly feel a cold sticky feeling as if we are making our way through spider webs composed of tiny shards of broken glass. At that moment I realize that with all the changes I will never see Canada with the same eyes again and have a deep knowing that I need to leave the country.

A few weeks later at the Vancouver seminar I meet my new friend Celena who tells me about living in San Miguel and she invites me to come live in the city. I know it is the perfect place and remember telling Terry two years earlier that Plan B was to live in Mexico, that all I needed was a place to go. Not long after this, I write an email to Celena whose energy now seems a little different, forecasting that I´ll be in San Miguel but she will not, which she calls silly. I hope I'm wrong, but of course I'm not, as two or three weeks after I arrive she changes into an entirely different person and essentially breaks off all contact with me. I'm quite upset at first as I was hoping she would introduce me to her healing group and some of her friends. But eventually I remember that she helped open the door to this wonderful place and in an indirect way also to new and interesting parts of myself. And of course the universe does bring me all these things and more, in its own time. It's as if the universe always has a backup plan.

This is what you find when you read some books, that as you near the end the climax consists not of the good guys shooting the bad guys but of revealing a new part of the story that makes the entire previous account a little bit bigger. Hopefully that's the case here!

* If you want to check my Spanish use imtranslator.