the cassandra pages

In the Parks

A yellow swallowtail on a pot of verbena at the Chapultepec castle.

Mexico City has such a reputation as an urban megalopolis with terrible air quality that one wouldn't think it had a lot of green space, but actually, the city's parks are many and beautiful.

The terrace of the castle overlooks the Chapultepec forest in every direction.

The Bosque de Chapultepec is one of the largest urban green spaces in the Western Hemisphere -- it's a forest park of 1,695 acres, twice the size of Central Park. Within the park are a number of museums - the famous Anthropology Museum, the Tamayo art museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art; a large lake (see above, top right); a zoo; many trails and paths and recreational areas where families love to stroll or picnic; and the Castle of Chapultepec itself with its extensive grounds.

A formal garden in the castle's top level courtyard.

Gardens require gardeners: these men had been trimming branches down below, and were struggling with their wheelbarrow, which overturned right after I took this picture.

A grove of palms underplanted with agapanthus, at the foot of the Chapultepec hill.

On certain Sundays, Paseo de la Reforma is closed to traffic and becomes a bike and pedestrian thoroughfare; we were lucky enough to hit one of those days. This is the street when it comes into the Chapultepec Park, giving access to the major museums and zoo.

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Nearer to where we were staying are the semi-circular Parque Espana, and the oval Parque Mexico, which forms the center of what used to be the Hippodrome, or racetrack. The former course of the racetrack is Avenida Amsterdam, which runs in a gentle oval around the entire park, and the two lanes of traffic are separated by a wide, planted garden of trees and plants with a pedestrian walkway in the center. It's a wonderful place to walk, and we often found ourselves taking this (somewhat longer, but scenic) path whenever we were heading to someplace in the neighborhood.

In both of these parks, we often saw dog trainers with a whole hoard of perfectly-behaved canines. We talked to this young man at right, below, whose charges included four Afghan rescue dogs, and a large pet pig.

For someone like me who is crazy about plants, the parks are an endless source of amazement and pleasure. Many of the plants that thrive in Mexico City are species I know as houseplants, except here they are huge, sometimes attaining the size of trees. There's enough rain here for them to grow, but along with the water-loving rubber trees and azaleas and banana trees, are the native desert plants - cacti and  various succulents -- and various monocots like the agaves, orchids, and bamboo. (I think I could happily go there and study and draw plants for the rest of my life.)

Every time we visit I notice more, and become more curious about this very different climate and ecology. And of course the birds and insects are different too; I spent an hour trying to get a good look at some tiny lizards in the Chapultepec gardens; they'd come out into the sun and then scurry around the trunk of the tree, just out of sight, like squirrels.

Of course, life is not so pleasant for the majority of the 22 million people who live in Mexico City; for many of them, just getting water takes up a big part of the day and is never certain. The Guardian ran an excellent photo essay yesterday by a photographer who walked around the entire periphery of Mexico City, documenting the often-dangerous, poor neighborhoods that spread up the sides of the old volcanoes on the edges of the valley. It's an eye-opening look at how much of the world, unfortunately, lives.

Drawings from Mexico - 1

A concha bread and two mangoes. I love how when you buy bread or pastries at the panaderia, each individual piece is wrapped in a square of thin waxy paper, which the clerk folds once around the bread, holds by the two open corners and then deftly spins to create a wrapper that won't unwind until you get home.

I was hoping to find time to draw in Mexico City - on other visits it's been pretty spotty, because there never seemed to be enough time. But I think another advantage of staying in an apartment, as well as having been to the city quite a few times before, was that we took more time to hang out at home and in our neighborhood or in cafes. I tried to take my sketchbook with me all the time, but I actually did more work at the apartment, continuing the still life drawings I've been working on for several years. Here's a first installment.

A rooftop terrace cafe overlooking the Templo Mayor - I need to add some color to this one.

We had intended to visit the archaeological site of the excavated Templo Mayor, just to the northeast of the Zocalo, on this particular day but it was hot, closing time was near, and rain threatened, so we opted for a rooftop beer and chips with guacamole; we stayed for an hour on this very pleasant terrace, with its own rooftop garden of cacti and succulents, watching the storm clouds advance over the city from the west.

Still life with agapanthus and the Virgin of Guadalupe.

Flowers are incredibly inexpensive in the city, and available from kiosks on many neighborhood streetcorners. This was a huge bouquet of blue agapanthus and orange astroelmaria; it cost $6.00 and the vendor mixed the two types of flowers and cut the thick stems for me with a machete -- it lasted the entire two weeks we were there. The Virgin candle was a little metal tin filled with pink rose-scented wax, since roses were the sign by which she manifested herself to Juan Diego in 1531. I bought it at the supermarket and lit it during the surgeries of two friends back in the U.S. that took place while we were there; it's a ritual of ours to light a candle when remembering friends or family in particular need, and since the Virgin is sacred and omnipresent in Mexico City, it seemed appropriate.

 

A garden at the Castlillo Chapultepec, with a giant agave, and the city beyond.

Although we'd never been there before, we visited Chapultepec Castle -- former home of the ill-fated Emperor Maximilian -- twice. On this first visit, we climbed up the winding path through the woods to discover a rather unattractive castle on spectacular grounds, with a commanding view of the city. I had wanted to do a lot more drawing there but it didn't happen until I returned to Montreal; I'm working on some now. I do have some good pictures to show you - it was a fascinating place.

Getting Started: Portraits of Women at the Museo Nacional de Arte

Unknown Artist, "Portrait of a Woman Wearing a Shawl," 2nd half of 19th C.

In the past year we've made a decision not to run around too much when traveling -- to do one big thing a day, but not get exhausted trying to do several. Just getting around in such a vast city takes both time and effort (our pedometer shows us that we walked and biked an average of 13-14 daily miles, sometimes as much as 20 in a day; we covered 185 miles in two weeks.) The pattern we developed was to make a substantial breakfast -- yogurt, whole grain cereal, fruit, sometimes eggs and bread -- in our apartment, and spend the first few hours of the day on correspondence, writing, working on pictures we'd taken, drawing, consulting maps and internet and making plans for the day. Then we usually took off by bike or metro or foot in the late morning for whatever destination we'd chosen, either packing a lunch or planning to eat a midday meal out, as many Mexicans do, in mid-afternoon. Depending on that, we'd either come back and cook a late dinner (or a light meal) at the apartment, or eat out, usually in the neighborhood where we were staying, and then have some time to read, shower, and relax. At this time of the year, Mexico City, at 7,000 feet, is still very temperate and pleasant - it never got hotter than the mid 70s (22 degrees C), often rained a little around 4 or 5 pm, and was quite cool at night and in the early morning.

One of the main reasons we go to Mexico City - this was our fifth trip - is to be immersed in a culture that has valued art and design throughout its history, from the pre-Colombian right through the present. On our first full day, we decided to go to the Museo Nacional de Arte. We've been before, but there are always special exhibitions -- and we also wanted to revisit their collection of 19th century landscape paintings by Jose Maria Velasco, who really began the Mexican landscape tradition, and whose work shows what the Valley of Mexico was like before the city filled it and pollution obscured the mountains that ring the valley. (There's a post about this from last year, called "The Air We Breathe.")

This time we saw two small special exhibitions that I thought were excellent. The first was a show of portraits of women by self-taught painters - some folkloric, some highly accomplished - including my favorite, the portrait at the top of this post. Here are some others:

Jose Maria Estrada, "Portrait of the girl Manuela Gutierrez," 1836.

 

I don't have the name of the artist: this painting shows the death of the matriarch of a family.

Unknown artist, "Portrait of a Woman Holding Roses."

 

The second exhibition showed small sculptures of women, and included a couple of prints about the work of sculpture itself: as a relief-printmaker, I would be pleased and inspired over the next two weeks to see a number of master-works by Mexican linocut and woodcut artists in various exhibitions.

Mardonio Magnaña, "Baptism," 2nd quarter of 20th C., stone

Hollow Female Figure, Seated (Maternity Figure), 6th-10th C., clay

Romulo Rozo, "The Mestiza," 1936, bronze

 

Gabriel Fernandez Ledesma, "Sculpture and Direct Carving," woodcut, c. 1928.

These strong portraits of women, in paintings and sculpture, stayed with me, especially during "International Women's Day", an observance I find extremely offensive in its encapsulation -- can anyone imagine an "International Men's Day?" However, that day turned out to be very interesting in Mexico City, so stay tuned!

 

Back, slightly battered, with some thoughts on risk and reward

A quiet neighborhood on the way into Mexico City from Benito Juarez Airport.

We returned to the snowy north from two weeks in Mexico City last night. As usual, it was a good trip, filled with color and warmth, a great deal of art, and the activity of a vast metropolis, but complicated this year by the fact that, at the end of the trip, we both had bike accidents. J. wrenched his knee when his bike slid out from under him on the rain-slick marble plaza in front of the Palacio de Bellas Artes, and I took a more spectacular fall the following day when I tried to leave the bike path and hit a curb that was obscured by a deep puddle. J., ahead of me, had just exited safely in what I thought was the same place. My bike stopped and I kept going, landing on my face and smashing my right shin. It all happened so fast I can't tell exactly what happened, except that I tried to break my fall with my hands, and that it hurt quite magnificently when my nose hit the sidewalk. However, that nose didn't break, there wasn't a lot of blood, I was able to walk home with J.'s assistance (he was, of course, horrified), and except for a floor-burned face, fat lip, and impressive swelling and bruising on my leg, I'm OK and on the mend, and J. is too; his injury was in some ways worse but a lot less obvious.

Lying on a bed with ice packs for a day gave me some time to think. I guess some people would consider our style of travel too risky, or perhaps not age-appropriate, but the advantages of being willing to go off the beaten path have been tremendous for us. The surfaces in Mexico City are extremely irregular everywhere; you really have to watch out even when walking on the sidewalks, because there are holes, loose paving stones, bulges and dips, obstacles. The air quality is often terrible. The metro is extremely crowded, and could be - I suppose - scary and confusing, but it's also fast, efficient, and a way to share getting around the city with ordinary Mexicans that you would never experience otherwise. It's important to know what neighborhoods to avoid, and when; which cabs are safe and which aren't. You can buy all your food in fancy restaurants, or you can shop in the local mercados and street markets. If you do go onto the streets, poverty, helplessness, medical calamities, and desperation are going to be in your face, along with awareness of your own privilege and mobility. It helps to have a basic knowledge of the language, and to be able to communicate respectfully and personally with local people and ask for their help if necessary, when you yourself are vulnerable. In sum, we've found that we need to be extremely aware of our surroundings at all times: it reminds me of downhill skiing, where there is risk and real-time decision-making, to be sure, but also the reward of a different world of experience, with full attention in each moment. It only works if you are willing to be changed.

Crowds in the centro historico. There seemed to be few international tourists in the city while we were there.

So much travel has become a prepared and sanitized experience, which is why the unpredictability of global terrorism has kept many Americans, in particular, at home. It would be possibly to go to Mexico City and experience it entirely differently than we do, from luxury hotels to vetted cab rides and guided tours. Personally, I think each of us has to consider the statistics, our health and preparedness, and our own personal balance between risk and discomfort with  uncertainty. I have never been afraid of flying; some people are. I regularly ride a bike in Montreal, where many people (especially my age) would not, and the paths are actually smaller, busier, and more dangerous than in Mexico City. We each make choices.

I grew up with a mother who was extremely risk-averse, especially about physical things, and a father who was much less so and determined to make me grow up unafraid. But, in general, people in my family did not travel much, or far: I've had to learn to do it. Part of that process has been learning to cope with some travel anxiety that came from my upbringing, and, ironically, that's been helped by occasionally getting sick or hurt or making a mistake, and finding out that I can survive. J. who was brought up by an international family and traveled a lot more than I did in his youth, has been a huge encouragement and help. I've discovered that if you're willing to travel the way we do way, you learn a great deal more than from taking cabs and staying in sanitized places that are prepared for western tourists. Interaction shows you how kind people are, and how willing they are to help. But it's not only that: I've learned a great deal about myself along the way, and gained a constantly shifting perspective rather than a fixed one. The stability in my life comes from an internal place, rather than external; I am grateful for that. I also realize that it's not what most people want, because at times I too find myself fighting with it, resisting, grasping for certainty and predictability. And then I step back, reconsider, and settle down.

I'll post some images of what we experienced over the next days, as we re-enter our life back home. One of the best aspects of this trip was staying in an apartment rather than the hotel we've used for the past four years; it allowed us to relax more and to cook our own food from the bountiful markets. And I found time to draw and paint; if we were to spend a longer period there I'd take better supplies and be even more intentional about it, because there is so much that calls to me.

Out into the Desert

All work shown in this post is by Mexican sculptor Javier Marin.

I've been thinking a lot, since Mexico but also before, about what makes people create the art they do. In my feed reader, on Flickr, and on Instagram, I "follow" a number of highly skilled and talented artists, and I've noticed that their work tends to fall into groups. On the one hand, there are the Mexican and American leftist printmakers, mostly young, often male, radical, political, influenced or participating in street art and body imagery, often obsessed by death symbolism, fantasy, and hyper-realistic animals. 

And then there are a number of artists, mostly British, who do contemporary landscapes and still-lives in various media, depicting a pastoral and interior world of beauty, inhabited by sleek hares and whippets, songbirds, figurines and dishes, flowers and seedpods. Their work, especially in printmaking, is extraordinarily fine -- and yet it could not be more removed from the gritty urban vision of the Mexicans; it belongs to a world where people can think about decoration and beauty in relative comfort. There's an immediate affinity because of my own heritage, but...it's both me and not me. Or perhaps it was once me, but no longer.

While in Mexico, I was blown away by the work of a contemporary sculptor, Javier Marín. Marín does large-scale figurative pieces in bronze, wood, and resin, and he is one of the best sculptors I've ever seen.

At first, the work looks classical: it's the human body, it's beautiful, it's realistic, and the poses and style (whether in the round or bas-relief) definitely reference the Greeks. Marín doesn't deny the connection, but says he feels an even greater affinity to the 16th century movement of Mannerism, and artists such as Pontormo, who subverted the ideal proportions and elegance of classicism through compositional tension and instability, and an intellectual approach to the subjects.

Marín's impact and message are therefore absolutely current: the proportions are altered; his figures, heads, and bodies are slashed and marked; they have been sawn apart and put back together with wire reminiscent of barbed wire of concentration camps; and their attitude of nobility and suffering forces our gaze inward and outward at the same time, toward our humanity and our inhumanity alike.

Marín's work was exhibited both in large public spaces and intimate rooms, and these spaces become part of the conversation the artist initiates: who are we, in relationship to the grand plaza, the governmental edifices, the cathedral and the history it represents?

Or in this chapel with its huge old-master paintings of the Holy Family, what is this monumental wooden figure, titled Mujer? This roughly-chiseled every-woman, but only from the waist down, her crude bare toes reminding me of the lines in Luisa A. Igloria's poem, Dolorosa, "her unshod peasant's feet/bloated with edema."

What is this white cascade of bodies and body parts, this waterfall that forces me to think of holocausts, mass graves, unsolved "disappearances," the drone victims and drowned refugees of our unhappy history and current miserable world?

And next to it, this gilded woman ascending; at last, perhaps, free?

Much has been written about Marín in Mexico, but he's relatively unknown outside the country; I find this incredible - but then, he's Mexican. Thankfully, he's still young - in his early 50s - and that could change.

The common denominator in all of the work I've mentioned is the high level of skill and dedication of the artists: they are all working hard, doing their best; they're just coming from such different places. And of course there are also outliers: for example, artists from the UK whose work is grounded in these same traditions but who address more thorny subjects - Clive Hicks-Jenkins is one; Mexican artists whose work is less political, and achingly beautiful, responding to the people and the land. Even Diego Rivera, whose murals were filled with political protest, painted many paintings of this type.

And so I find myself reflecting on where I fit, and where I want to go with my own creative work. I draw, every day if I can, and in recent years the drawings have often used objects from my daily life, but I'm more and more uncomfortable with the purely decorative, with the simple search for beauty, harmony, and order which no longer feels complete or consonant with my emotions, thoughts, or values. I realize that my drawings are often a way of keeping despair about the world at bay, of doing something in a given day that is creative and life-affirming - but I feel the drawings are more honest when they contain some reminder of mortality, loss, grief, sorrow, even cruelty: a skull, a fossil, a bone, a wilted plant, dead things - or else deliberately reflect the juxtaposition of cultures which is the place I seem to inhabit more and more, rather than a particular geographic, cultural, or socioeconomic aesthetic. The landscape, to which I've always felt such an affinity, is a symbol for me of both desolation and comfort, of human isolation and strength. And the medium of relief printmaking seems to offer opportunities for figurative work and bolder, more graphic statements about the human condition. Conversely, as the work of these other artists repeatedly show, technique and good ideas have to work hand in hand - both are crucial, but neither sufficient on its own - and both must continually evolve.

I think we need to think hard about what we're doing as artists and writers, musicians and performers, and to be aware that over our lifetimes we need to grow and change and keep moving deeper. The themes and subjects that draw us can be a pointer toward our core self, but repetition itself is a kind of death into which we can be lulled by comfort and ease, or, equally, seduced into by praise. I don't know exactly where I'm headed next, and I'm aware that the path is a rocky upward one, but I've come to trust it. In the end it's not even the art that's important, but the progress of the spirit. I'm grateful for the chances to travel and experience and be curious, but in today's interconnected world we don't actually have to leave home to push ourselves out into a wider wilderness, we just have to venture out from what feels familiar, and be willing to learn from our discomfort, restlessness and yearning.

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Sketching in Mexico

Laundry on the rooftops, the day before we left.

Several people asked me if I planned to do some sketching on our trip, and the answer was yes. Here's some of the evidence. I would have liked to do more, but it's hard when you're always on the move and not wanting to devote an hour or two of sitting-down-time to making a drawing. Still, I'm glad that I was able to do these, because a sketch somehow becomes a special kind of memory more than a photograph, probably because you remember where you were, how you felt, and what was happening as you concentrated on the sketch. During the hours when I was sick and had to stay in the hotel room, I turned to the sketchbook and was glad for that distraction, too.

The first sketch I did (above) was from the steps of a large gazebo in the Alameda Central, looking across Hidalgo at the very old churches there, Templo de San Juan de Dios and Parrochia de la Santa Veracruz. At the bottom you can see the tarps and umbrellas of the vendors who set up along the street every weekend, selling everything from books to bobby pins to candy and cast-off clothing. The tilt you see in the tower at right is real, a result of age and earthquakes. In fact, a few days later I was inside that church, and accidentally stepped up to my ankles in water that was seeping into the structure. In a few hours there were emergency crews standing outside, trying to figure out what to do, and the church was closed for the remainder of our visit. It's hard to imagine the expense or responsibility of maintaining these historical structures in a place that is subject to frequent earthquakes.

 

This is Parque Rio de Janeiro in the Condesa district. The crossing signs on the streets of the Condesa show a person wearing a hat and leading a dog on a leash - a Mexican friend told us that's because everyone in that upscale district wears a hat and has a dog. When we visited the park it certainly seemed to be true, and I had to record this large St. Bernard and its bored, cell-phone obsessed owner for posterity.

A bouquet of orange roses graced our room for nearly two weeks. After being able to buy beautiful flowers of all kinds for next-to-nothing, it's painful to come back to Montreal where they cost a small fortune: a bunch of tulips was a whopping $12.99 at the supermarket yesterday. I didn't buy any, but this is when we really need them!

 

Dinner in our room one night: a baguette (yes! and it was good!) with prosciutto, tomato and avocado salad, some Manchego cheese, and grapefruit sections with lime. (Oh, and a little tequila.)

The gloriously ornate Metropolitan Cathedral, from a perch overlooking the Zocalo.

Shrimp shells, after a very good fish/seafood dinner in Colonia Roma.

The hotel bathroom (getting a little desperate here!)

 

And the view from our hotel room window, looking toward Tacubaya over the rooftops.

Form

Sculpture by Jimenez Deredia

In Mexico I am always, immediately struck by the emphasis on form in all the arts. Whether dealing with architecture and public spaces, with fresco painting, or - especially - with sculpture, the emphatic and confident use of form is a major, defining aspect.

If we look around, there are reasons. The land, shaped by volcanic activity, is dramatic, and these shapes were echoed in the iconic stepped pyramids of Teotihuacan and Tenochtitlan.

The plants are sculptural.

The people themselves are monumental and beautiful.

There is a long history of form-emphatic art, from the very early Olmec heads (around 1000 BC)...

...through the long pre-Columbian period of remarkable ceramic sculpture...

...combined later with the Spanish wood-carving tradition.

Form finds expression in literal, representational ways, but also in abstraction: Mexico has a strong tradition of graphic design, surface decoration, typography, and pattern.

 

I'm always fascinated to see contemporary expressions of these traditions. While at the Museo Franz Mayer for the Decorative Arts, we saw an exhibition of contemporary ceramics. It was in two parts: a biennial competition for functional ceramics, and a separate room containing (mostly large) works by master living ceramic artists. I was crazy about some of these latter pieces and took pictures to show you:

Cactus, by Javier Villegas

Bodegon con taza y peces, by the same artist.

Florero, by Marta Ovalle

Horizontes continuos, by Gloria Carrasco. Each of these pieces is about two feet in the widest dimension. Aren't they beautiful?

The Air We Breathe

 A clear day, two years ago.

Mexico City's air quality has improved in the last two decades, but it is not exactly good. On clear days, the view from our hotel room included the mountains in the distance, but during this particular stay, that was an exception.

A typical recent day.

The city is at 7,000 feet, and fills the Valley of Mexico: once surely one of the most beautiful places on earth, surrounded by mountains including active volcanoes more than 17,000 feet tall.

Above, The Valley of Mexico from Del Rey Mill, by Jose Maria Velasco, painted in 1900. The Chapultepec castle is in the middle and the city itself is the small white expanse in front of the lake. Today the castle and its woods are a park, with the city extended all around them, over all the green space you can see in the picture above. Popocatepetl, on the right, erupted recently and has no snow cover at the present time.

Looking in the same direction on a pretty clear day, from the Torre Latinoamericana: nothing but city fills the entire valley.

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For the first couple of days, travelers from lower altitudes, like us, generally experience some breathlessness, especially when walking fast, carrying luggage, climbing stairs. I don't usually have too much of a problem with that. But I was very aware of discomfort in my lungs, and found myself coughing. After a week, I came down with a respiratory flu. Whether it's something I picked up on the airplane, or in the crowded metro, I'll never know, but I'm convinced that my lungs were already struggling from the pollution. Now at home, a week later, I'm still ill but gradually getting better. Yesterday when I looked out of the airplane at the frozen fields of Quebec, I wasn't shuddering like many of my fellow passengers: I couldn't wait to take a breath of that cold, clean air.

I was on the street every day, both as a cyclist and pedestrian. Every day, trucks passed us belching black smoke, buses filled the air with diesel fumes, the highways were choked with car traffic. In our neighborhood and all through the city, many people work outside or in spaces that are open to the outdoors - there's no way they can avoid exposure to the air. The effects on everyday health must be devastating. I don't think I couldn't survive there, but for the 22 million citizens of Mexico City, there's no choice. What about all the people who live in the Maximum Cities of the world, and can't fly away to places with better air, let alone water and sanitation? I have a close friend in Beijing. She has no options in that very polluted city.

What I observed, and the fact of my own fragility, have made me think a lot this week about us as biological organisms, with simple needs for air, water, and nutrition: things the earth naturally provides in abundance. Most of the time, we don't even think of ourselves in this way - like a plant or a bird or a goldfish - so dependent are we on our technologies and the ways they keep us removed from and oblivious to the cycles of life. I've thought about what we are doing to ourselves and all the living things, and it's been more appalling to me than ever. Air to breathe: the most basic requirement of all, and yet for millions and millions of human beings, even this is impossible.

What do the indigenous people think? First the Spanish came and violently took away their land, massacred thousands of people, decimated their rich and highly-developed native culture, and converted the people to Christianity; then industrialization destroyed much of the natural world with which they had always lived in harmony. And now, many of the indigenous people are forced to come into the city for work, to sell their foods or handcrafts on the street, or worse yet, to beg. In Mexico as nearly everywhere, the darker one's skin, the more discrimination there is, the more menial the jobs, and the fewer chances for education and economic advancement. There's more than one way to suffocate, and unfortunately the people with the least power are always the ones who suffer the most.

As I hope is obvious, I love Mexico, and I don't mean to be negative - simply realistic about some of the very real problems that became even more obvious to me during this trip. The legacy of colonialism continues, and we have to look it in the face if there is ever to be a hope of addressing what we've wrought.

Love Takes Many Forms

Happy Valentine's Day, a day late!

Last week we spent a day at Museo Franz Mayer for the Decorative Arts. The collection is housed in a former church, hospital and monastery. One of the exhibitions displayed the treasures of the convent for the Discalced Carmelites, the order founded by Saint Teresa of Avila, the Spanish mystic (1515-1582). The treasures are presented along with a history of the order and this particular foundation, and a detailed look into the life led by the nuns.

The house had a lifesize polychrome statue of Saint Teresa, dressed like a wealthy woman of the period, in embroidered velvet with sewn-on pearls - as my friend V. exclaimed "She NEVER would have worn that!" - and of course she's right! This figure looks like a doll but it's five feet tall; sometime I'd like to research and write about the Mexican tradition of making these polychromed figures, which are most often Jesus or the Virgin, and incredibly lifelike. I think wax is applied over the paint to give a such a flesh-like appearance.

The abbess also had an extraordinary robe, embroidered (a better word might be "encrusted") entirely with silver threads.

There were fascinating documents in calligraphic handwriting, including one bearing the signature of Saint Teresa herself. 

And, of course, there are relics. A piece of the heart of St. Teresa; a piece of the flesh of her friend and mentor, the great mystic St. John of the Cross; two rose-colored fabric hearts that supposedly touched her garment; and (more touchingly, at least to me) a tiny sandal that St. Teresa supposedly wore, housed in a delicate crystal box and covered with flowers.

The women who entered this order in New Spain were often daughters of wealthy aristocrats; some are shown in life-size paintings, their heads crowned with elaborate bouquets of roses. When they took their vows of solemn profession, the nuns became "brides of Christ," sworn to a life of chastity, poverty and obedience. I did not know that this order included the practice of self-mortification, but the display included these metal whips, covered with vicious barbs and thorns, used by the nuns to flagellate themselves:

If it's hard to imagine why anyone would do this, especially women, perhaps this painting gives a clue: here is Christ as "The Divine Spouse", lying in a bed of flowers, into which are inscribed the instructions for a devout life: "Gratitude," "Love", "Penance," Renunciation, mortification.

Is it such a huge leap from teen-age girls going crazy over modern rock stars? With an image like this as one's only object of devotion, and a completely cloistered life, I can imagine love-sick, sexually-repressed young women resorting to extremes to win his favor, even though there seems to be a huge contradiction between the peaceful atmosphere of convents and monasteries, the beautiful embroideries and paintings, and what went on behind the closed doors.

El Papa

Pope Francis' image is everywhere - here he is, almost lifesize along the route his motorcade will take to the Zocalo tomorrow. On the far right, you can also see his face on the side of a phone booth.

Readers of this blog know about my longstanding interest in religions and how they intersect with culture and politics, so it may not be a surprise that we timed our visit to Mexico City this year to coincide with visitation of Mexico by Pope Francis. He arrived tonight - in fact, we watched his flight come in from our hotel room - it was unmistakable because all air traffic had ceased for a long time beforehand, and the plane was large. The tv coverage showed his arrival at the Presidential Hangar, greeted by a mariachi band and folkloric dancers, thousands of cheering (handpicked? specially invited?) Mexicans in grandstands, President Pena and his wife (they were both married when they got together, but were granted a special divorce/marriage permission by the Vatican - don't get me started), and phalanxes of Mexican cardinals and governmental ministers.

We attended Obama's inauguration, and have participated in huge political demonstrations in New York City, so I thought I'd seen crowd control and security, but none of that has come anywhere close to what is happening here. Jonathan will be covering the subject in much greater detail on his blog, but here are a few pictures from today; tomorrow we'll try to get close to the actual events and crowds, and see the motorcade as the Pope travels up to the Basilica of Guadalupe to say Mass.

Part of the barricaded motorcade route, the Zocalo in the distance. There are three separate checkpoint zones that people will have to pass before reaching the venues where the pope will be appearing, and there will be 10,000 soldiers in the city in addition to all the city and federal police and civilian volunteers.

These guards gave a big smile for the camera, though.

Yesterday in the late afternoon, we went up to one of the terrace restaurants high above the Zocalo to drink tequila and take some pictures with a bird's-eye view of the preparations for tomorrow's crowd when the Pope goes to the National Palace (on the far side of the square) and the walks over to the Metropolitan Cathedral, on the left. There are big screens that will show live video, and the Zocalo itself is gridded with pens that with contain the crowds in small enough numbers both for security, and to protect the people themselves. The rather tiny light brown structure at middle left, in the roadway, is a temporary grand entrance leading to the cathedral; when we walked by it yesterday, there was a tent containing potted calla lilies to be placed on the stage, and a metal wall that will also be filled with plants to make a green backdrop for the Pope's remarks or blessing, and, of course, for the photo op. We won't try to go there; we'll watch on tv, and try to see his motorcade elsewhere.

As I've said before, I admire this Pope, as popes go, and hope he'll be safe here. In order to make the points he wishes to make, he will be visiting some very dangerous places, and as we've watched these preparations in such a complicated and chaotic city it's been obvious that no amount of planning or force could guarantee his safety here. I can't help but be reminded of Jesus' entry into Jerusalem, the people who revered him, and the governmental powers who wanted him silenced. So I hope all will go well.