Arbitrary Musings: San Miguel, Part the Last

I had intended to write this blog days ago, before leaving San Miguel, so that the chill mist of morning rising over the arid city could do its work on my sleepy brain. Perhaps it might have been better written then, more eloquent or more entertaining. Now there's no way of knowing. Saturday, August 17: THE. BIG. DAY. We are all up crazy-early, drinking weirdly-roasted coffee that tastes instant, even though we know it's not, not eating much. The bridal party begins the long, long process of playing dress-up at about 9 a.m., hair to be done, makeup, make sure none of the groomsmen go upstairs. After all the hype about how much there is to be done, there's a lot of hurry up and wait. Where to leave things out? Where to add them? To cast a writer's eye on which; to mention whom. First Look: My sister finally comes down the stairs in her wedding dress, followed by her bridesmaids all in teal. They make a vision against the yellow walls. I cannot describe it better than this photo does:

...she descends first to my father, then all the way down into the courtyard to her husband. I can't see their faces-I'm behind them, and above them on the patio, and honestly, that's just fine with me. This is their moment: the white-dress moment, the culmination of their love. They are holding hands now, walking towards the sun, away from me. I can't see it, but I know my sister's face is radiant. I know her husband is smiling. And then I think about worry. I think about "to miss". I think about "absence". And fonder hearts. And this time around. I do not "MISS HIM". All in capitals for emphasis, of course. I miss him in the way one misses the familiar while traveling alone: wouldn't it be nice to have someone to turn to, to exclaim over how beautiful, or how tasty, or look! In the way you begin to miss the daylight in Alaska, when fall settles in: it would be nice to have those extra couple of hours, but now it's the right temperature for fireplaces, hot tea. I miss him because he would love to be here, to sit and watch the sun set together, as we always do, merely in a new country, a new city, a newer world. I am accustomed to 'worrying'. I do not worry ABOUT HIM. I worry, but I don't-I worry about silly things, about whether we have food in the 'fridge for when I return. About whether he's getting enough sleep (he's not). I worry about the dog, frankly, more than I worry about 'what he's doing while I'm gone'. I realise that I have never had this; this reasonable facsimile of serenity. Always before I have traveled alone, wishing I had someone to 'share it with'; traveled toward someone who, all the while I was dabbing my eyelids with cold water and driving with the windows down, was moving away from me even as I raced to find them. Traveled having just left someone. Having been left. In limbo or otherwise. I do not worry about him because I know where he will be. I can see his routine in my head now; Not a day has passed that we haven't spoken, somehow. He tells me he loves me, that he cannot wait until I get back; that he's sad because he can't be there. I hear it all. I believe every word. How we wait all our lives for this absence of apprehension. How we know what someone will wear just to pick us up at an airport. The feeling of perfect stasis in the gut-there is nothing going on. There is nothing going wrong. In the heart. And then it's suddenly time to leave the chapel, to head back out into the scorching sun, and follow a donkey around while drinking shots of tequila from tiny clay mugs. True story. The parade is long, but it is hilarious. Spontaneous dances break out in the streets. True story. All of it. My mother is taking tequila shots. My father is taking tequila shots. The donkey is unhappy. More tequila shots. We are parading through the streets while strangers-locals, tourists, some guy who joins the party like he belongs there-clap and cheer the bride and groom. You see this in movies. You see this for real.

Because this: this parading through the streets, showing off to the crowd-this is what we're here for, aren't we? Shouldn't love be like this? A beating sun, a meandering line of family, of friends. Candy-colored clay cups, spontaneous dances. Spectators on balconies. We are all in love and we want to yell about it. Whitman said "barbaric yawp!". Over the rooftops. We are in love with each other; with the silliness of a donkey parade (with life's parade, with the parade of each other in and out and in again); with the charming confusion of being tourists in a foreign town maintained by ex-patriats. With being a tourist attraction to locals. We are in love with my sister and her husband and their love. And I am. I am in love. With a flawed, sometimes-cranky, beautiful man. Without all the agonizing over "whether we'll last". Without worry. Later, there are speeches. The sun goes down over the yellow casita. There are not one, but three fireworks displays, each one lit off from a rooftop closer than the last. We know we paid for one, for my sister. We say they are all for her. Because that's what we all wish, for ourselves, for the ones we love, when they finally find true love, isn't it? For fireworks. For all the fireworks in the city to be lit at once. For a faint smell of black powder. For the riot of the heart to be reflected in the sky.

If Rachael Ray could do it, so can I...

This blog may be inarticulate and disjointed, on account of I just spent the entire day trotting a somewhat unruly horse across the Mexican countryside, rappelling off a giant cliff & then hiking back up said cliff to get said horse to trot once again back to the ranch. I'll skip over the sordid details of my sister's bachelorette party last night; suffice to say that, once again, it's exactly what I DON'T want, if for no other reason than that I look hideous in spangly pink, and despise guessing games. And there were lots of spangles. And lots of games being played. Today, we're off on an organized adventure: horseback riding across the countryside, followed by (if one so chooses), rappelling from what we're told is a 14-story cliff face. Apparently, Rachael Ray has visited San Miguel, and was scared shitless by the selfsame rappelling excursion we're eventually going on. http://www.rachaelrayshow.com/show/view/1389/ I'm not afraid of much. Not snakes, nor traveling alone (clearly), nor heights. We meet the hungover bachelor party at the local Starbucks and pile into two elderly passenger vans. I'm groggy and overheated but ready to meet this cowboy stuff head on. The entire ride there, our driver and guide, Andres, discusses the implications of Monsanto's buyouts and genetic patenting on Mexican national agriculture, land and water rights; I'm sitting too far back to join in. He's telling us about his history: how he speaks at least three languages, plays African percussion in a traveling troupe, wants to start a business that salvages found items and supplies for people to create mixed-media art with: metal scrap, rope and twine, beads, mosaic tiles, paints. I've missed this-the propensity of travelers to 'spill their guts' to locals, and in turn to elicit these responses that tell us how expansive human ambition can be. What ambition and the notion of success appear as from place to place, from person to person. The drive lasts about thirty minutes, winding from San Miguel out into desert scrub. More goats. More cows. Fewer people. What strikes me about it most is the sparsity of population. One either side of the road, heat waves rising from the pavement, are men, women, children in twos and threes, single-file wending their way between cacti to the roadside. It seems settlement occurs mainly on bluffs, and in order to get from home to the closest bus stop or market, locals must cross from one side to the other. Public bus stops exist in places so far away from the city center; groups of people sit patiently in the hot sun, waiting. The final ascent to the ranch looks out over the landscape. It is green, dotted with desert flowers-orange, red, yellow. A huge black butterfly is chased by a small white one. It is what it always is, the world over: idyllic, pastoral, rustic. Cut to the chase: we're heading out on docile, seasoned horses handpicked for each of us by the gang of cowboys. Mind you, at least three of the cowboys are under the age of 16, one no older than 8. Although the trail is mellow and slow initially, soon we're cutting across the hills, where it becomes rocky and somewhat treacherous. My horse, whose name I never caught, is not particularly adept at this walking thing. He stumbles quite a few times, catching himself, while I hold on for dear life and picture being fallen upon and smashed. Fortunately although he sucks at walking, he manages to make it all the way down the meandering, climbing trail, across the river (where we stop for a brief break, much to the relief of us amateur riders and our butts), and up, up, up to the top of the daunting 14-story (about 150 foot) cliff those brave enough will rappel from. There's not a lot of ceremony or training to this activity. As soon as we arrive, we're asked who's going: it will be myself, two of my brothers, our friends Roger and Silver, and the groom. One of the other wives is game, until she looks over the edge and sees nothing but rock and rope the whole way down. I confess: when she declines, I pause as well. I mean, none of the other girls are going. No one's going to judge anyone for not wanting to back down a cliff attached to nothing but a (slightly weathered) piece of rope ballasted by some dude wearing spurs, cowboy boots and a giant sombrero. We waver in so many ways, in life: simply-what DO I want for breakfast? Complex: Who am I, today, or tomorrow, or ever? And why? And what am I afraid of? Perhaps it's trite or cliche, but this rappelling adventure is analogous in so many ways to what I've done and overcome just recently: finding the love of my life, and yes: having doubts. About who'd be happy, and who would look at us as if we were crazy. About whether or not we shouldn't just elope, run away, have our happiness to ourselves for a while. It took me almost a month to get up the courage to tell my parents, who, shockingly, are happier for us (almost, not quite...) than we are for ourselves and proceeded upon announcement to argue over who knew first that we were in love. We live so often in this type of controlled fall: the cliff we cannot control, nor the weather, nor the circumstance, but with one hand for strength and the other for balance, with the heart for courage and the brain for clarity, here we are anyway. We ascend. We descend again. I watch first my brothers, then Roger conquer the cliff. From far below (we can't see the bottom totally), all we hear are whoops and hollers. Everyone is exhilarated. The cowboys are highly amused. Finally I detach myself from the onlookers and march up to the anchor point. Eff it. Go big or go home. It is, in fact, easier, technique-wise, than it really looks. Most of the effort comes from your upper body as you suspend yourself with the left hand and control your "brakes" with the right. Ok, so that's an exaggeration: there are no bloody brakes. Essentially, you wear thick leather work gloves and hope to god your grip and arms are strong enough to carry you the entire way down. What a metaphor for life THAT is. At first, I'm doing alright, leaning back into the harness and divvying out rope steadily. Then, I lose my footing and start to spin. (Funny, this is in no way synonymous with how I fell in love with Robert. I knew the second I saw his smile as he came down my driveway, that I would marry this man, if he'd have me...) Cooool, well...now this is happening. It is extremely. High. Up. Oh, look. A vulture. Nice omen that is. My nature is to try and control. To be if not methodical, at least practical about problem-solving. When one is spinning 100 ft. above any sort of blessed firm earth, one has two and a half choices: keep spinning and freakin' out; just let it happen and engineer one's way back towards stability; just hang there and hope someone else pulls your sorry ass back in. I am proud of this: I choose number two. No screaming. No crying. No flailing about. I hang and let rope out, and hang, and let rope out, and gradually come back to face the cliff rather than the open, daunting view from up here. And yet, as I come back around to put my feet against solid rock, I miss that view: you truly can see everything from up here. Birds. The rest of the cliff face. Tiny dots that are my brothers and Roger waiting below. THe cliff face is reassuring only because I'm where one is supposed to be while rappelling down a giant cliff. Not because, any longer, it represents terra firma. It is what, technically, is meant to be faced; the other direction holds the definition of the sublime: awe mixed with fear. I am slow-my left shoulder, damaged from boxing, is starting to ache, but I make it down, straight through the thinnest gap between rocks, and am suddenly on my feet again, shaking a little, but nonetheless exuberant. Roger gives me a hug. We throw our heads back and yell up to the watchers, receiving whistles and catcalls back. Little did we know that we'd have to hike back up the rocky trail to the lookout point! We're getting our workouts in, today. Then, we're saddled back up and taking a mercifully short, flat (ish) jaunt back to the ranch for a home-cooked lunch: tortillas that are not yellow or white, but nut-brown with local corn; a dish of green chile and corn in sauce; "potato salad". Fresh ranchero cheese, whose source bellows from the cow-yard, flicking flies with its tail. This is not "authentic" in the sense that it is untouched by tourism; it is authentic in the way that a student exchange, or a gathering of two cultures permeated with modern commerce may be: we're tourists, yes, but we're eating 'real food'. They are ranchers, cowboys and cooks, yes, but what they offer us is the best they have, perhaps not what they'd keep for themselves. I'm exhausted, and I want my husband here. He'd be proud of me. He'd have done it himself. Our controlled fall isn't over: the wedding is coming up, ours. I still have nearly 24 hours worth of flying before I'm home in three days. I smell like horse and my own sweat. My left arm aches. I love him in a way I did not realise possible. It is better, far better, than its counterpart, this spinning. The wind picks up over the ranch, while we eat and eat, and love.

Back in the...er...saddle

Letters from San Miguel de Allende, Mexico: Anna y Hector, con amor siempre No matter where I am in the world, I'm the first one awake. It is 6:37 a.m. For two hours already, the neighboring rooster has seen fit to announce dawn, albeit the sun isn't even close to up, and everyone else in this house is sleeping. Jet lag weighs on us. I've spent almost 48 hours trying to get here, suspended primarily in that special limbo reserved for airports, for those who have everywhere and nowhere to be. Staring at arrival/departure boards and occasionally a cell phone upon whose face the time keeps auto-updating; sustaining consciousness in four or five hour stretches punctuated by dozing off. I've already finished two novels. Three cups of overpriced, but strong, coffee. A bagel with lox and cream cheese. One questionable poem. Upon finally, finally touching down in Queretaro, Guanajato, Mexico, what one sees is an expanse of grass. That's right: grass. Some common variety: red-seeded little banners waving over the ground. Grass is grass is grass, right? One sees it & is comforted by the fact that it looks, at least a little, like whatever field one's driven by countless times, back home; wherever, of course, home happens to be at that particular juncture in time. I've befriended a girl from the flight in, and we wait awkwardly for the driver holding signs with our full names on it, that we were told would appear to shuttle us the hour and a half from Queretaro to San Miguel. She's meeting her parents: ex-pats, like so many who make up the town's population, with a summer home in San Miguel. Her father is an architect. She wears a blue sundress. Her name is Lauren. The contrast between San Miguel and what we've just driven through to get here is stark; it is, in essence, what one expects people to expect of Mexico's countryside. Little herds of goats, or sheep, or cattle being driven along the road. Dogs and cats meandering-thin, some of them, but most remarkably healthy-looking. Tarps strung up over roof-less shacks advertising all kinds of street food: menudo, chicharrones, tacos of all kinds. Fresh fruit stands everywhere: pineapple, papaya, mango. Cacti poking up from the landscape. Prickly pears. Dust. San Miguel segregates itself along the skyline: colorfully-painted buildings, signs advertising art galleries, shops and music venues. Although I've read a bit about the town, its history and its current affairs, it nonetheless surprises me to see the streets dotted with Americans: women in white pantsuits and straw hats, gold jewelry, big earrings, watches and rings. Once at risk of becoming a dead town, over the years, beat poets, artists and those looking to escape from the U.S. revitalized San Miguel and made it their home: Neal Cassady, Erica Jong, Stirling Dickinson. It is decidedly "touristy", and yet I love it already: so much color, majestic cathedrals dotting the skyline as we descend a (very steep, typically-cobbled, somewhat treacherous) hill, then begin to climb another. My parents' rented casita sits atop yet another hill, accessed by a weird tunnel, which leads up yet another giant hill of a driveway. It's yellow. The door is answered by Teresa (the elderly Mexican woman, who speaks no English, and will cook for us every day that we're here), Sharyn (an ex-pat who pronounces all my tattoos "just lovely even though your mother doesn't like them"), and my mom. Despite having traveled as a family throughout our childhoods, this trip feels different: I've recently announced that Robert and I are engaged. Shockingly, instead of disapproval, I was met with my parents arguing over who first decided that "Robert should marry their daughter". Things feel...cleaner, somehow, between us now. More level. I wish he were here, but this time around, it just didn't work out. Teresa is in the kitchen picking the tender leaves from bunches of cilantro stalks. She rapid-fires something at me in Spanish, but I'm too jet-lagged to manage it. I stand at the table and eat prickly pear cactus fruit. A banana. A strange, slightly-bitter custard apple type thing called a cheremoya-these have recently started cropping up at Fred Meyer and Carrs back home, but as Ive read the seeds are incredibly poisonous, and the skin of the thing very closely resembles that of an alligator, hadn't braved up enough to try one as of yet. It's delicious. A pain to pick the seeds out and suck the fruit from them, but delicious nonetheless. I say hello to my sister and her other half, Hector. My brother is crashed out on one of the guest beds. The maid of honor and bridesmaid are up by the pool, sunning in the 75-degree heat. I decide to power through it and go into the city center with my father to buy wine and candles for outdoor tea lights. The streets are cobbled poorly in places; you must tread carefully, as if perpetually stepping over river rocks. Transportation here comes in outdated forms: 4-wheelers are a vehicle of choice, as are dirtbikes, the public bus, and very, very old Volkswagen Rabbits and Beetles. We pass villas, casitas, groups of kids drinking shave-ice concoctions from plastic baggies, tops tied off and straws inserted, like improvised juice boxes. This is what I've missed: sensory overload, the overwhelming urge to immediately run into each shop and open-air market to smell, taste, and touch whatever wares are inside. Dad buys his wine. Candles are purchased from a funerary store; they're hand-dipped, naturally, but are generally meant for placing on graves or taking to church to light for a loved one. Perhaps it's morbid to use them to decorate a wedding reception. Perhaps it's perfect. As fatigue sets in, so does an inability to articulate any longer. I remember this feeling well-staying up sounds awful, but so does sleeping. The sun sets over San Miguel below us as we all do some catching up. Teresa quietly disappeared hours ago, leaving behind her huge pans of beef carne, sauteed onions, fresh tortillas. A red salsa and green. A huge bowl of fresh guacamole. So we eat. We eat, and the wine flows, and there are stories and histories coming from everyone. It's astonishing to remember that most of us (except Hector) grew up together, alongside one another, and are now all around the big stone table on the veranda, looking out on this city with such a commingling of "American" and "Mexican" and a few things in between. We came to celebrate Anna y Hector-their matrimony, their love and their representation of life across two worlds. I think of Robert: of how we finish each others sentences so often. Of how I knew from the first time I saw him again that I would marry this man; I didn't much know or care whether he would want to marry me. Of what it means to finally find your "travel buddy for life", to face outward on what unfolds for you with all the exuberance of San Miguel's bright orange storefronts, its candy-colored stone walls.