Matilde

     On the 26th of January I visited Matilde. I went to the hut where she works in Zumpahuacan but she wasn't there so I went back to sit in my truck leaving the door open because "Zumpa" was warm this afternoon. The new concrete road still gleamed white and threw back a considerable amount of heat. I phoned Matilde and her daughter answered. Florina said Matilde was on her way to the hut but probably hadn't arrived yet. I was grateful to wait.
     I sat there on the hill taking in the view that included the volcano, Xinantecatl. Still there were streaks of snow like rips in its skin on its grey flanks. I breathed in the toasty landscape from this perch. I am always mesmerized by the pace of Zumpa, like Maycomb, 
Alabama which Harper Lee made famous in To Kill A mockingbird. Sweltering, shuffling, moving laboriously as every thread of your clothing nagged at your skin. 
     Three goats and a dog appeared darting out from between two houses of cement block. Ropes trailed from their necks. Escapees I thought. Two does and a buck. They were scrubby small mexican goats. A boy appeared from the same place and yelled "Puta" then threw rocks at them. They moved towards me well out of his reach stopping now and then to steal a mouthful of"different" grass. They passed my truck and disappeared where the white cement road meets the black asphalt highway. 
     After twenty minutes I saw a woman at the bottom of the hill wrapped in a rebozo walking up the road. It was her, Matilde, an illiterate independent woman who satisfies her life using what God gave the earth. She has a fire in her belly and an inclination to smile. We talked for a bit about an upcoming demonstration of her craft, making morrales or slinged bags that campesinos use to take what they need for the day of work in the fields. Most morrales are made from the ixtle or fiber of maguey cacti. Hers, however are made from the fiber of the penques (leaves) of the Joshua Tree (Izote). It is a softer fiber than maguey and does not chafe the skin. 
     I have seen her working from the stripping of the leaves to the weaving on a back strap loom. Today, however, she invited me down to the arroyo where she washes the stripped fibers. The path to the arroyo was decorated with diapers, and plastic bottles. I found I needed to look up into the large Ahuehuetes not down. Down is where the crust of the earth meets the modern world. We passed over one arroyo and then another that entered from a different direction. That one, which has water all year was where she washed. The bank was strewn  less garbage offset by rue , plantain, nettle, and the left overs from her trade.. Two large motherly Ahuehuetes cradled the spot in shade. On the bank were some cleansed fibers still light green, lightly coiled like the braids of a siren. In the pool there were leaves soaking. Matilde bent over to retrieve some leaves almost tumbling into the pool. She flailed them lightly against the surface of the water then combed them with her hand removing some of their green outer covering and exposing the raw fiber. This was the part of the process I had missed. 
     We moved up to her house made of carrizo and wooden posts. It was oval. I remarked how much it resembled the houses in Yucatan. I wondered if that is where this type  of weaving had entered the area,, on the heels of some errant souls from Yucatan Penninsula. Even Matilde's daughter Florina looks like a classic mayan. 
     Her simple bed was on one side and her spinning wheel on the other. Light filtered in between the carrizo like slices of lemon. There wasn't a single picture save the Virgin of Guadalupe. She told me she had found something at which she was good, that she had tried rebozos but they just didn't turn out right. Some people can raspar a maguey and from that cactus will flow honey for months,, and for others the maguey quickly dries up. Her father had taught her how to weave Izote as his father had taught him. She used the materials from about making something durable and useful. She told me of the satisfaction she got from that because it's hers and hers alone. I could have waxed nostalgic, thinking in a sweet fog, but I thought of how this woman, with so little posesses a great sense of humor and has fashioned a life from some leaves. I on the other hand pass an inordinate amount of time fantasizing about killing my neighbor without a conscience and this illiterate woman just works her craft passing one day through another immersed in threads of her own making. In my youth I had moved to the Northeast attracted to a simpler life, outside what seemed a burdening system. I know I was not 100% sucessful. All the goats and gardens could not substitute for complete comittment that comes from necessity. It is for this I admire Matilde. Of course she might not see it that way. She, for different circumstances, an accident of birth, arrived at a place where she is able to glean confidence for what she can achieve with her hands. It is a very simple, balanced, and unhistorical existence, free of envy, free of a thousand useless fights. Some might say though, that it is not a conscious life and therefore less valid than an examined choice. This is pure poppycock from those who cherish the idea of limitless ambition in the world as the path to a recognized credible life, but there are a million undocumented events each day that reaffirm the beauty of the human race, perhaps more than the recognition of one supposedly conscious man. I told Matilde that she was part of a special club, a genre of creators and she should be proud. A wizened smile captured her face and the room seemed to light up.