the cassandra pages

Re-entry

Between singing at yesterday's services, I walked the quiet streets of my city. Queen Victoria stood coldly on her pedestal, the sun -- wan, but at least palpable -- shone on pale faces, but in the cafe where I finally stopped, a coach on the video screen was explaining hockey plays to little boys, still eagerly piling out onto the ice.

We'd been back from Mexico City for just two days. I felt disoriented, bereft. I missed the vast swarms of humanity at street crossings, the noise and exuberance, their luxurious black hair and relaxed faces; the riotous colors; the smells of frying meat, onions, chili, potatoes, corn, spices; the excessive surface decoration, the effortless mix of elegance with the popular street. We're so tame up here, I thought. So reservé, so diplomatique indeed.

In the cafe, I thought about how my choir would be singing Orlando Gibbons in a few minutes, with his tightly coiled but always-contained emotion. I love that music: it's part of my heritage, after all. But more and more, I find important parts of myself released in the warmth of Latin cultures, and it's hard both to leave that exuberance and largeness behind, and to preserve my discovered self in this much cooler and more private place.

--

Avenida Francisco I. Madero, in the historical center

It's always a shock to come back to Montreal from Mexico City, that maximum metropolis of 22 million people which fills the vast Valley of Mexico. After six trips, we've come to know it fairly well, and to feel comfortable there: we know where to go, how to get around, where to buy what we need, what to eat and what to avoid, where to get information, who to trust. There are favorite places we return to each time -- favorite paintings and artifacts, restaurants, public plazas, churches, markets, streets -- and there is always exploring and adventure. It's intense but no longer intimidating, so long as we don't take foolish risks, and accept the fact that unexpected things may happen. Over the years we've had bike accidents, and tripped on the uneven pavement; we've had phones stolen on crowded metro platforms; dealt with the altitude and pollution and figured out what to do in case of an earthquake; we've gotten sick and been helped and survived. What we've gained has vastly outweighed the problems. Some people probably wouldn't like that learning curve, or maybe they just want travel to be more comfortable, relaxing and easy, but they're missing one of the world's great cities and cultures, and they're missing interaction and relationship with Mexicans of the present, and their long, difficult, and proud history.

Chapultepec Park, Mexico City

Each year we've gone, there have been fewer white tourists, probably due to American politics and the spread of fear of violence by drug cartels. I often hear Canadians expressing a desire to go to Mexico's capital city, or telling us they've already been, but most Americans look horrified. There are large parts of the city where we would not go, for sure, but it's also true that Mexico City is not where most of the drug-related violence is taking place. Pickpockets operate in every big city: I had my wallet stolen in Rome; it also happens right here in Montreal. I feel sorry that so few people travel there. It certainly hurts the Mexican economy, and doesn't help dispel misconceptions and stereotypes. But I freely admit that it's not an easy place to visit or to become comfortable with. Someday, perhaps, we'll feel like it's too much for us, but I hope not, because it allows us to access a different side of ourselves, it offers challenges for both the body and mind, and gives us an opportunity to learn something about humanity in general that seems repressed in these colder, more formal, and privileged cultures further north.

Saturday salsa dancing, a regular event in the public park near the Ciudadela.

On a personal and even spiritual level, I find it encouraging to go there, because in spite of their terrible government, and the poverty and corruption, many of the people manage to live with a buoyancy and vibrancy, warmth and simplicity I seldom see in our own culture. There is a sense of pride that gets expressed in innumerable ways. Every single evening, the street vendors near our apartment scrubbed all their pans and stoves and then the pavement itself until it shone; people washed the windows of their shops and swept the street; the subways are extremely crowded but clean, with the floors made of glistening marble (beautiful stone is one resource the country has in abundance.) And there's constant music, noise, and color, and attention to design, in minute detail, everywhere, in spite of the hard lives so many people lead. Cultural attitudes, at least among the common people, seem less individualistic and more collective than ours; people look you directly in the eye, they smile, they say buenos dias and buenas tardes, and always return your greeting. Family is still extremely important, and positive, realistic attitudes toward aging, caring for the elderly, death and dying are deeply embedded in the culture. When people hear that we come every year, they smile with pride -- they love their city and their country, and are delighted that we do too. We got into a political discussion with a cab driver, who complained a lot about the candidates in the upcoming election and the general state of things, but then, after having exhausted the subject, he smiled and said, "Pero, yo soy Mexicano!!" "But, I am Mexican!" It spite of it all, he identifies himself as Mexican, not with a political party, or a current government or current problems: being Mexican is so much more than that.

Part of a huge mural by David Alfaro Siquerios about the Mexican revolution and workers' struggle, at the Castillo de Chapultepec

This is an attitude I've observed among other people -- Iranians, for instance, or Chinese -- with a long history who've seen governments, dynasties, dictators, emperors and kings come and go; they are united by language, place, culture and shared history, shared suffering. Mexican history goes back to the Olmecs, the first Meso-American civilization, dating from 1000 B.C., in the region near modern-day Veracruz. In America and Canada, we have nothing comparable: our national histories go back only a few hundred years, and the indigenous cultures were younger and less developed than in Latin America, and so decimated by genocide that few of us share that heritage, while in Mexico, a majority of the people are mixed-race. So here in the northern New World, we are left to piece our identities together from the fragmented histories of the places we, or our ancestors, came from. But it is never entirely satisfactory to understand oneself that way -- at least it hasn't been so for me.

Olmec sculptures, c. 1000-300 BCE, Museo Nacional de Antropologia

I'm interested not so much in nationalisms, but in what makes us human, and the shared qualities that give rise to civilizations. While these questions have been common to cultures for millennia, I find them harder and harder to grasp in the modern political landscape, which seems to me extremely destructive  -- perhaps even opposed -- to what we have historically called "human culture" and expressed in different and deeply valued ways. Perhaps that's why I appreciate the experience of going back, for a time, to live in an older society which hasn't yet been taken over by globalization, materialism and greed, and where people are still resistant to the whitewashing of their own culture. Yes, there are some franchises and global brands, American movies and tv, and people wearing t-shirts emblazoned with "Abercrombie & Fitch" and English slogans; there's wealth, multinational corporations, sleek skyscrapers, and a desire for modernization, but the reach of mass media has not yet destroyed the past, or altered people's innate sense of themselves as part of a whole complicated constellation of histories, meanings, and relationships that occurred in that particular place. "Yo soy Mexicano," says the taxi-driver, and he knows what he means.

Drawing in Sicily

In my studio, before the trip, I indulging in one of my life's pleasures, putting together art supplies for travel. This is a tiny kit of hard pastels, about the size of my phone, from a box of NuPastels I've had (I kid you not) since high school. I used to sketch with compressed charcoal a lot, but lately it's been pen and watercolor, and I thought maybe it was time for a change. Pastels, of course, are one of my studio mediums of choice. After doing some Conté sketching in Mexico City last year, I wanted to expand on that. It was a surprise to be able to get thirty colors into this little box, including Conte in black and sanguine, and a soft graphite pencil. dithered about the paper, though, and finally packed a delicious hemp-and-rag handmade paper block from the Montreal paper-maker, St-Armand. I added a package of hand-cleansing wipes, and a mini-can of hairspray to use as fixative.

I did a few test sketches at the studio. The paper seemed a bit too soft, but I convinced myself it would work, maybe even force me to be looser.

So, one of our first evenings in Palermo, I sat down with the new kit and did this sketch of the artichokes we planned to eat for dinner. No problem with the graphite, but when I began to work with the pastels I found, to my dismay, that the lovely paper in my sketchbook was just too soft. The hard pastels kept tearing up little bits of fiber if I pressed hard enough to leave strong marks, or else they skipped over the surface if I applied too little pressure.

After an hour of struggling, I realized I would have to abandon my idea and just use ink or pencil for the rest of the trip. Looking sadly at all the beautiful colors in my box, I realized I had been seduced by the handmade sketchbook paper, but I had been wrong. I did discover that I really liked having a toned background, rather than white or cream, and it encouraged me to see the values of the subjects differently, and to experiment, so all was not lost! And the artichokes were delicious.

Palermo's Mosaic - 2

Next door to St. Cataldo stands the Concattedrale Santa Maria dell’Ammiraglio, also known as the Martorana. Its founding charter dates from 1143, written in Arabic and Greek, and the church must have been completed by 1151, when its founder George of Antioch - an admiral and minister to King Roger II - was buried there. When the Arab traveller Ibn Jubayr visited the church in 1184, he described it as "the most beautiful monument in the world." 

Although I had seen pictures of individual elements of the Martorana, I was unprepared for the effect of the interior when I walked inside. Every inch of every surface is decorated, often in minute detail. On the far end of the church, the original Byzantine mosaics in glittering gold set off figures, patterns and scenes in celestial blue, reds, pinks, lighter blues, greens, browns and white. On the nearer end, the columns and ceiling were decorated in a Baroque style between the 16th and 18th centuries, with paintings and architectural details covered in intricate patterns of carved and inlaid marble. The visual effect is overwhelming: you have to sit down.

We were greeted by one of the most famous pieces of art in all of Sicily: a mosaic portrait of Roger II being crowned by none other than a levitating Christ himself.

This portrait was commissioned by Roger himself, and originally placed on the Norman Facade of the building. The Sicilian kings had a longstanding feud with the Pope, who would normally crown them himself -- by bypassing the Pope in this representation and going straight to Christ, Roger was making a bold statement about his right to the throne. His coronation robe has been preserved and is now in a museum in Vienna. On the opposite side is another portrait, also from the original facade, of the church's founder, George, prostrating himself at the feet of the Virgin.

Because I can read some Greek, the mosaic lettering all over the walls and ceiling attracted me like a cereal box: I couldn't help but try to read what was written. Here the letters read "Rogerios Rex" but I was confused until I realized that the Greek "S", or Sigma (Σ) that I expected to see was replaced by a C. I learned later that this is a simplified variation of Σ that was used in Hellenistic handwriting, and on coins, called the "lunate sigma" because of its crescent-moon shape  -- it appeared in all the inscriptions in the Palermo area, and must reflect its Greek heritage as well as common usage in religious contexts during that period.

The floor, and all the walls not given to mosaics, are covered in geometric Cosmatesque patterns in colored stone, typical of the Byzantine period in Italy but also reflective of Arab style and crasftmanship. This church contains inscriptions in Arabic, and like St. Cataldo and other monuments we would see later, its architecture derives from Islamic styles also found in north Africa.

This one is shown just slightly smaller than life-size. The red and green starbursts reminded me of poinsettias.

Overhead: full-length portraits of all the apostles, busts of lesser saints and contemporary figures, and the archangels surrounding Christ on a throne, while Biblical stories are depicted on the sides of the arches. My neck began to ache -- a feeling I'd have many times during our stay in Palermo.

Some of my favorite images were, not surprisingly, botanical. I loved this tree growing on rocks: it felt like  a place to rest my eyes, but it also gave the same quiet feeling, on a larger scale, as depictions of nature in Ottoman and Persian miniatures.

A French tour group entered the church while we were there, led by a local guide. When he was finished with his introduction and the people were looking around on their own, I sat down and talked to him for a while: he was a young man, and told me he specialized in the Arab-Norman heritage of the area. If we had had more time, and if J. were more fluent in French, we might have hired him to take us around for an  afternoon, but I enjoyed our conversation.

Only halfway through our first day, we began to see that "mosaic" was both a literal and figurative term in Palermo, describing not just these Byzantine, 12th century wonders, but the city's past and present history. Africa was never very far away, nor was Greece, nor was the Middle East. The Phoenicians had sailed here first, from Tyre, followed by Greeks and north Africans, then Romans, then Arabs, then the Normans who originally were, of course, "Norsemen" or Vikings. All of these cultures had left their marks and their patterns, and during some periods -- especially the 12th century under Roger and his descendants -- they had coexisted peacefully. During much more of its history, the island had known experienced terrible violence or, at best, constant tension. And yet, these monuments of a better time had been preserved, perhaps as a reminder of what was possible.

Sicily: Arrival

At the gate, leaving Heathrow.

The plane from London dropped down over the dark sea, and barely before we saw any lights at all, we were on the ground at Punta Raisi, about twenty kilometres west of Palermo. I peered out the window, across my husband, as the plane taxied in. A Ryanair jet, and one from Alitalia stood outside the small airport, but that was about all: not a surprise, since we had taken one of just two weekly flights offered by British Airways. Sunday or Wednesday, that was the choice. As we disembarked we could see the small group of passengers who were finishing their stay in Sicily, waiting to take the same plane back to London.

The Italian customs official held up my Canadian passport, compared my face to the photograph, and with a heavy flourish stamped the visa on a blank page. We picked up our checked bags -- already far too heavy, I thought -- and headed to the car rental desk, where a dark-haired young woman greeted us with a smile. "Could you please explain about the insurance?" my husband asked. As we had thought, we were covered for injury, but there was a deductible for any damage to the car up to a certain point. "I would advise you to buy the extra insurance to cover the deductible," she offered. "Driving in Sicily is, well, you know, the roads are narrow, there's a lot of traffic in the cities, it's easy to get a scratch or a dent." Jonathan looked at me; I shrugged. I think you'd feel better if you had the coverage, I said. "All right," he told her, wincing a little at the price. "Good," she said. "Is the Renault OK with you?" "Does it have a covered trunk area?" "Yes." "OK, that's fine then."

We walked out into the parking lot. It was warm, and the air smelled slightly of the sea. Our car was a blue Renault, bigger than we had expected; we muscled our bags into the hatch-back, and J. got behind the wheel. He booted the GPS system on his phone, a new application that he had tried out in Montreal and that was supposed to be better than Google in complicated urban areas, and handed it to me. We looked at each other: it had been a long trip, since leaving Montreal the night before, arriving at Heathrow in the European morning, and passing a long layover before our plane left for Palermo in mid-afternoon. "How do you feel?" I asked. "I'm good," he said. "I got enough sleep on the plane. Are you ok? Good, let's go!"

Some of our friends had sounded alarmed when we told them where we were going. "Aren't you worried about the Mafia!" was the most common comment, followed by "Be careful, I've heard there are lots of pickpockets in Sicily!" I'm not sure if anyone mentioned earthquakes, perhaps a more legitimate cause of concern. Someone else, with actual firsthand knowledge of the island, told us that rental cars were often abandoned on the highway a few miles from the airport, by drivers freaked out by the Italians passing them at high speed on both sides. J. hadn't wanted to drive into Palermo after a sleepless night, and I didn't blame him.

But the traffic on this Sunday evening was no more intense than back home in Montreal. It was a moonless night. We could see lights from the towns we passed, but had no sense of the landscape or the proximity of the sea; tall guardrails on both sides obstructed the eye-level view from the car's windows. "I wish we  could see," said J. "I can just make out the shapes of mountains, off to the right," I said. "They look pretty big. I think we're close to the shore, but I can't see a thing." The traffic picked up as we approached Palermo; we entered a roundabout that we had studied on the map, but the GPS didn't distinguish between the roads stacked on top of each other. We went around twice, and finally figured out the correct exit. Soon we had left the highway and entered the city streets. Many Italian towns and cities have traffic-restricted zones, called ZTLs, posted with closed-circuit cameras, and there is a big fine for entering or leaving them in a car without a permit, except for certain periods, of which Sunday evening was one. Our apartment was located inside the ZTL, in the historic center. We were on a main street; I followed the blue route as we traced it, but the voice-over kept getting confused, and the arrow indicating where we were seemed to lag behind by half a block. I gave instructions, as best I could. "Now turn right," said the GPS, in her pleasant voice. "That's correct," I confirmed." "Where?" said J. "At the next corner," I said. "I can't, it's closed." "Well, go straight then. and take the next right." "That's closed too, all the entrances to the ZTL are closed. We'll have to go around by the harbor, you'll have to tell me manually."

After twenty minutes we had entered the ZTL by a different route, and found ourselves in a warren of tiny deserted streets. Most were one-way; motorcycles sometimes zoomed past us, and we couldn't see any street signs. From the map, it looked like the apartment was nearby, but we couldn't figure out how to get there. A block ahead, we saw a fire, and as we approached we saw that it was a pile of garbage burning on the sidewalk, flames starting to lick up the side of a building. A crowd of young black men stood around, hands in their pockets, but otherwise the streets seemed empty. We drove past, and glanced at each other. Then we were in what seemed to be an empty market, with make-shift wooden stalls roofed with canvas tarps standing on a wet cobblestone pavement. "Try this way," I suggested, pointing left. The streets of the medieval city wound around in circles and arcs, bordered by ancient four-and-five-story buildings, and in a moment we passed the fire again, in the other direction; now a crowd had gathered, and we heard sirens in the distance. We entered the market area again, but exited a different way, through a street barely wide enough for our car. I breathed deeply; there was no point in panicking. "There are some carabinieri over there, I'm going to stop," said J., pulling off the street to park in a tight spot behind a police car. He took the phone, got out, and approached two of the policemen who were just standing and talking to each other; a young couple sharing a sandwich stood near them. I saw him show the screen to the policemen; they looked at each other, shrugged, then all of them laughed. J. came back to the car. "One guy is going to walk in front of us and show us how to go; he's not quite sure where the apartment is but he's going to point us in the right direction." I looked at my watch; nearly 10:00 pm. The owner had been planning to meet us at 9:00, but we weren't able to call or receive texts or calls because we didn't yet have an Italian SIM chip. "OK, sounds good." The officer walked down the alley to the right, motioning us to follow, and then pointed down an even narrower, curving passage, indicating we should go left at the end. The market area ended, and we came out into a small piazza paved with broad rounded stones -- yes, there was the church we had seen in the photographs of the apartment. We pulled over, and a young man immediately got out of a car parked nearby. "Jonathan?" he asked, giving us a broad grin.

After we apologized ("no, no problem," he assured us, "I figured you'd get lost, I've just been waiting here with my girlfriend") he led us to a tall, very old building that had been restored, and helped us carry our bags up four flights of marble stairs ("sorry, the elevator is broken, it will be fixed tomorrow") to a white apartment with 14-foot ceilings, a good kitchen and bath, a big bed. He answered our questions about buying a SIM, neighborhood restaurants, markets, and said to call or text him anytime. His footsteps echoed on as he went down the stairwell, and we heard the heavy wooden door shut behind him.

We went out on the balcony and looked out over tiled roofs to the church's facade, and the winding streets we had followed to finally arrive there. We couldn't see much, and all we wanted was something to eat and then bed; there would be time to orient ourselves the next day.

 

 

Thoughts on Travel

We've just come back to Montreal from an intense, eye-opening, two-week trip to Sicily. I'll be writing more about our experiences over the next couple of weeks, but first I wanted to say a few things about travel in general, because I've been thinking about that a lot during this trip.

I feel extremely fortunate to be able to travel. It was always a goal for J. and me, but with a few exceptions, we put it off: as self-employed people it was hard for us to get away for extended periods of time, and travel requiring airfare has always been expensive. We lived frugally for many years in order to be able to put money aside for later in life, and I'm grateful that we're still in good enough shape to be able to enjoy the kind of adventuresome travel we like to do. Nevertheless, I know I'm lucky, and that there are lots of reasons why many people never get to go far away, or choose not to.

Unlike my husband, who had traveled in Europe and the Middle East when he was young, I grew up in a family and among people who didn't travel much at all, and though I longed to go to faraway places, I was afraid. Not of flying, which I've always found exciting, but like my mother and other family members I had fears of getting sick or lost or being unable to sleep, and there was no one to give me the confidence to prepare well, then just go, see it as an adventure, and deal with whatever happens. You have to learn to travel, and it wasn't until I met J. that I had someone to trust and confide in who helped me overcome those fears. I loved big cities, but was nervous about them, especially getting round on my own, but eventually I got over that, too. I can still remember the thrill of accomplishment the first time I went off on my own in London, and found my way without trouble: it's given me a lifelong affection for that city. People who meet me now may see me as worldly, urban, confident and sophisticated, but there was a time when I certainly wasn't any of those things, and I have a lot of empathy for people who find travel daunting. Those fears still live inside me, and once in a while they still surface.

Travel, for me, is a privilege and a responsibility. If I'm lucky enough to go somewhere, I try to learn as much as I can, and to absorb that experience deeply so that I can share it in some way, do something with it that isn't just for myself. Some people travel inside their own bubble, like the loud, inconsiderate, demading tourists we all sometimes encounter. Some people seem like they aren't really seeing anything, just capturing each sight -- or themselves in front of it -- on their phone or iPad so they can show their friends they were there. I guess I see travel more as extra-ordinary time: an opportunity to leave normal comforts and routines aside, be vulnerable to experience, to suspend judgement, and to be open to the potential for internal change. I love the feeling of heightened sensory awareness, of having to figure complex things out and make quick decisions, of trying to communicate in unfamiliar languages and make connections simply as one human being to another. I like projecting myself less, and listening and seeing more.

J. and I have chosen not to stay in fancy hotels or eat out a lot. Because we are sometimes in locations where there is poverty, we keep a low profile, dress down, and try to blend in, even though it's obvious we aren't locals. Usually we stay in apartments or small b&bs where we can cook meals from food bought in local markets and do our own laundry; we try to bike or walk as much as we can, and to take care of ourselves rather than expecting to be served. I'm concerned about the carbon cost of air travel, but also realize that the money we spend in local economies like Mexico is helpful for the people there. I don't feel guilty about traveling, but I think we need to be aware of what we're doing and the impact it has.

I also realize that we are seen as immensely privileged by many of the people we meet: I am able to come into their place and go away again; I have money and freedom and opportunities that many people, both here and there, will never have. Being sensitive to these emotional complications is a significant part of travel for me, and I hope it informs what I write and what I draw or photograph -- or choose not to.

The more places I go, and the more our world becomes divided between haves and have-nots, the more I find myself thinking about these issues. Sicily is surrounded by the Mediterranean; its proximity to Africa and the Middle East has affected its entire history as well as the present. Refugees are not a theoretical concept to be debated, but an everyday reality. Mexico City has been hit by devastating earthquakes; its people live with corrupt government, injustice, grinding poverty, and constant violence.

I've been deeply affected and changed by what I've seen, not just as a witness to the present but to the layers of human history that travel reveals. I'm never sure what to do with it, but I don't want to merely collect beauty and ignore the awfulness. I need to find ways to hold and express both, because our world is, and has always been, made of both darkness and light.

After the Ocean

 

Back in the city, waves of people --

soft folds of sand-colored hair

pinned at a woman's nape,

light glancing off phones.

 

Flowers on dresses, swooping scooters

instead of gulls, flapping orange wings

of a cyclist's safety vest, the ceaseless lap

of traffic on de Lorimier.

 

And a little girl in black tulle, glimmering with gold --

like stars that night on the island --

tripping across Marquette, still unaware

of either infinity, or oblivion.

Florida, briefly

I am not a hot weather person, nor a beach person, but the ocean compels me. We were in Jacksonville, Florida last weekend to attend a memorial service for J's Uncle Anwar, who died a few months ago at 99. It was a family reunion as well, with cousins gathering from Texas, Toronto, D.C., Indiana, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, other parts of Florida, and, of course, Montreal.

The place where Anwar and MaryAnne have always lived is the opposite of the dazzling brightness of the white beaches that stretch along Florida's Atlantic coast. Just a few miles away, their property forms a long rectangle stretching away from its frontage on the St. John's River. When you turn into the driveway from Atlantic Boulevard, which, as its name implies, runs straight from Jacksonville to the ocean, you enter a perpendicular world: palms and palmettos, small cabins in overgrown wilderness, enormous live oaks dripping with Spanish moss, the deep green punctuated only by the occasional bright gold of a kumquat or orange hanging on a low tree. We get out of the car to a deafening buzz of insects, tiny lizards scatter into the underbrush, feral cats slink behind boxes, their eyes glinting from the shadows.

For me, Florida is never its highways, cities, and endless suburbs, but rather the blinding, bright limitlessness of the ocean, and the dark Gothic of the old deep south: frighteningly unfamiliar, fascinating, bewitching; temperamental and changeable; enigmatic and slow. I am never there long enough to understand anything, and always leave with the echoing, dismissive words of one tenant, to whom we were introduced over a papaya plant, as thirty cats sat at a distance waiting for their evening handout: "Oh: Northerners."

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.

---

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.

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.