My Brother

     My brother is a perpetually depressed fellow. After a few days with him you will feel a numbing sensation in your capacity to understand. He is self absorbed, rarely listening to what anyone says in a social situation. He doesn't seem to be able to answer a question without falling into narcissism. At these moments his eyes shoot downwards and away as he responds,, but never to the question. Any inquiry inspires a trip to a land disturbingly far away from the theme. In addition, all his responses are predictably dark. He is Nostradamos with a Jersey accent. In fact Nostradamos is frequently quoted by him. It sounds like I am describing Donald Trump.

"From the calm morning, the end will come when of the dancing horse the number of circles will be nine." 
I'm not sure what the dancing horse and nine circles mean, but the Nostradamos quote he should be repeating is:

"Come the millennium, month 12, In the home of greatest power, The village idiot will come forth To be acclaimed the leader."
 
     He is perpetually rooted in a venerable past when people knew their place and the table was set as if every day was thanksgiving,,,, a never ending delicious feast populated by clever working class people, all with character and humor, posessing a bold "attitude", of presumed ownership. That allowed them more freedom than those lesser folk without connections. My brother draws his meagre happinesses from his personal depiction of the past.There is an animal spirit about him, always rummaging the immediate world about him in a search for scraps that confirm his insecurity. But he is funny and boy can he tell a story.
     My brother has been preoccupied with sex since he was nothing but a boy. Throughout his life he has changed women at the same rate that I have changed my underwear. Every "new one" is "the one" yet all his relationships seem to end in failure. My mother treated him, "the middle one", with the most vengeance. Perhaps his sexual needs are a substitute for the love he never received. After all, Satre said, "People don't talk of bread if they have it". His failed relationships with women are rooted in a deep seated confusion about MOM who was part Mary and part Sadaam Hussein. Trapped between a rock and a hard place his confusion may have emerged like a devlish sabateur betraying all the love he might have been able to cultivate in his life. Sweetness turns sour as day turns into night and he looks to the past to relieve the pain.

    Here is one of his letters concerning his woman at the time. According to him she was "witholding". He always writes in caps.:

THEY ALL STINK THESE DAYS !!!!! THEY USE THERE CHO CHAS LIKE A WALLET AND THEY HATE TO OPEN IT. CHEAP BITCHES ! BELIZE IS THE ANSWER FOR ME, REMEMBER I TOLD YOU I LIKED IT THERE AND IT HAS NOT SUBSIDED, BESIDES THEY SPEAK ENGLISH AND THERE NOT SPANISH. BIGGEST HIPPO GRITS ON THE FACE OF THE PLANET, BUT THEY CAN'T HELP IT. TALK TO YOU LATER

My response:

      You seem upset my friend. What did she do? Long ago women learned to use their vaginas as currency. It helps to prevent violence. It may be that those from certain countries use it better, more flagrantly, and more often than others. Evolution favors the "givens". I mean that given the fact that women are not as powerful as men, evolution has bestowed upon them other magical powers that allow them to get what they want without violence,,, by another form of coercion. They have had three million years to perfect the system. 
     I told some family members of your dilemma. They thought that the woman was smart to withold. Their side of the argument is quite evident. Hold out for shoes! Personally I find it hard to swallow their methods,,,,those methods are really not needed in all cases. Men don't need to pass life bludgeoning each other with weapons and women don't need to be domestic whores all the time. I hope we have advanced as a society so that we can co-exist without violence and that we can love without having to visit the bank. By the way, Belize, where the upper caste women are all blond,,,,and the beaches too.. It is rife with German infulence, perfect for you,, so we know that all the tractors run on time but sadly there are no stand-up comedians that I have ever heard of.
 
His response:

AND THE CLOCK IN MY HEAD KEEPS TICKING FAST TO THE END. I NEED TO LEAVE HERE SOON BECAUSE IT IS TO HEAD TRYING FOR ME. ALOT OF PEOPLE DIE OF CANCER HERE AFTER THEY RETIRE - WHO KNOWS. sAY HELLO TO THE GANG .

      Stories about him abound. Here is one that illuminates his risks and irresonsibility. 
      As a boy my brother had three dreams which occupied his will

1 To own a '57 T-Bird

2.To become a pilot.

3.To meet Kirby Grant who played Sky King in a 1950's TV series. He accomplished all three by the time he was 22. 

Sometimes it may be better to stretch out your dreams like a slinky. 
     A long time ago he used to visit me when I lived in the Northeast. I was into goats, chickens, and living off the land,,, as much as was possible. It was summer haying season for me and the weather was just right for the occiasion. My brother wanted to rent a plane and take me up for a ride. He wanted to show his older brother what he had accomplished. I don't like planes and firmly believe man was not meant to fly. I refused. Besides I had an obligation. A little miffed he took off to town and rented a plane from a small airport there, as I began mowing hay. It was a beautiful june day with intense sun,, just perfect for the task. A couple of hours into my work I heard a sound,,, you know when you put your lips together and blow air out with increasing force imitating the Dopler Effect and the approach of a plane. I looked up not yet making the connection between machine and sibling. Dropping out of the sky like Manfred Von Richtofen there came a small plane. It passed terribly close over the field and pulled up abruptly. At that moment I saw my brother in the cockpit. He was so close I could see his individual teeth and the middle finger he flung in my direction. He passed over twice like a crop duster on acid and then disappeared into the vast blue. I just stood there, leaning on my hayfork,, amazed and baffled.
      Unbeknownst to me one neighbor angered at this unknown lunatic called the airport to report the incident. Another neighbor on the other side was sitting on the toilet reading a head comic. He panicked at the sound thinking it was the police. He jumped up, I am sure without wiping, cutting down and burning his entire marijuana patch. I found this out from him during a conversation months later. Of course I did not reveal the identity of the pilot.
     When he landed my brother was met at the airport by an angry official who banned him for life from ever renting a plane there. 
     Another great story is the mexican cockfight to which I took him at Aunt Judy's. There are many galleros in the family. Judy, in fact has a cock fighting ring in her hotel. It is a fascination for me because of the blood sport as just an excuse for betting, and the fact that one is not looking over one's shoulder for  the animal rights crowd....or the police. Hell the police are in attendance. The only thing for which you must be alert is the drunks who have lost a bundle. Many times people go beserk and start shooting. My brother was drinking and after a bit, when his mind had melted enough that he decided to bet,,,,with the house. There are two ways of betting,,,,with the house or a private bet with another spectator. My brother lost like 100 pesos with the first bet. This did not deter him. He waited and watched. After a few fights had passed he told me he was beginning to develop a system  through observation. Like all betting drunks they eventually imagine a fantastical system,,, an order to what they are unable to control. My brother's system was in its infant stages when he bet 200 pesos and won like 170. This lucky streak spurred his blurred newfound confidence. He secretly revealed his trick to me in a hushed tone so the other mexicans about him, who didn't speak english, would not cop the trick. "When the rooster is being held by the impressario before the match and it winks at me it will be the winner", he said. What can one do with this, for when people have thick slices of mysticism in their religious sandwich there's no stopping them from ordering a second helping. He bet 200 pesos and watched his rooster quickly slashed in a flurry of blood and feathers. What does the addict do when the system fails him? He develops another. This time he thought that he noticed that the impressarios that handled the roosters with TLC won. He had a fresh perspective now and all he needed was proof. He sat out the next match to confirm the truth and saw that the pampered rooster triumphed. Daddy's little baby, even if over loved was a pure killer. 
     A little mexican boy watching the gringo came over to make a bet with my brother. Of course my sibling was bolstered by his new insight into the world of cocks and he was cocksure. He bet heavily when he saw el gallo bien papachado. The match began and ended in three seconds. The roosters came together and lifted into the air becoming like two chinese characters and then the motion abruptly stopped. In the breathless lapse in the action my brother's rooster lay in a pool of blood his crop and side ripped open like a can of tuna. The rooster's last meal was spilled all over the dirt. Two seconds later the kid appeared with a broad smile to collect his due.
     
     You have crossed the barrier into that age when you doubt almost every minute of your life, bro. It is the age of "they nag you by their magazine happiness". You are surrounded by tribes of convivial families with freckled kids in bucolic settings,, and Volvo station wagons,,, and semi spicy meatloaf on Saturday night with the little lady and Melissa and Joshua. It seems so overwhelming and distant,, so you in your sublime loneliness contemplate the hungarian immigrant girl at the donut shop as your perfect little lady at home. She is vulnerable and needs you you think. She is all vapor and fantasy. You are tired of the quotidien neglect. You wallow in self pity but you cannot sustain a relationship because women are just not people to you, they are substitutes for what you think you never had Take the hungarian doughnut girl home and set up shop but soon the hungry pack that has haunted your soul will be barking and she will become doubtful. Then one day when you are at work the plumber comes to the house to fix a "leak", and he will throw in her direction some lubricated compliments  because he suspected, after 2 minutes of eye contact that she was "scoreble". This is the circumstance that ever haunts you. 
     Many lives never attain any recognition outside of a hello from the pakistani 7/11 owner. however you feel especially ineffectual and hollow. Cosmic loneliness is real but how do you combat that or at least overcome the cold dark space. You know that in some relationships there is something magical, perhaps because some people just naturally know how to be "friends" with their mate and never lose the feeling that the sun shines out the ass of their partner. They deny their animal instinct in favor of something greater than themselves. However when you encircle yourself with  nostalgia you become cursed. It's sticky and viscous like honey but really not at all sweet. Human organisms have so much trouble arriving at happiness and if they do they rarely stay for long, but they can make it a long term destination by a will to wonder. So many people though just cannot muster that. If this was the intentional design for the universe then the creator really messed up bad. It's a botched job yet there are those moments so simple that we have the power to make into something sublime.

Clinch Eye And The Thunder

     One day this Red Ford Lobo screeches to a stop in the hotel like a scene from Smokey and The Bandit. I was upstairs in the corridor cleaning cobwebs feeling like my father on a saturday many years ago. I turned, leaving the webs for a second and I could see a terrified girl crouched down on the passenger side floor,her face contorted and pleading. This short round faced guy with a beard exits who looks like Harvey Weinstein. 

    One of his eyes was fluttering, flicking open then clinching shut. He had spittal emanating from the corners of his mouth. He spoke, snorting his words breathing noisily through his nose. He wanted to know where the owner was. Stupidly I said I was the owner. I should have said that I worked here 15 hours a day for food and a toilet,,,closer to the truth. This mexican tweedle dum was really whacked, god knows on what cocktail. He had that kind of head that if you kept hitting it repeatedly there would be no decernable effect,,,just the ever clinching eye. He started screaming accusations at me then he would jump back into the truck, quickly exit again, eye working open and closed spitting out things like remember this face,,,,pointing to his face. Fucking Spanish,,he grunted, probobly thinking I was Spanish. A group of clients near me dove for their rooms locking the door behind them. 
     On one of his several dramatic entrances and exits from the truck he stayed inside and  seemed to be searching for something on the floor. For a second I thought he may be armed,,,,it all seemed so bizarre. When he exited once again hands empty I asked him to leave and finally he kind of complied screeching out of the hotel, the petrified girl still crouched on the floor. I only hoped nobody was on the sidewalk who could have been hit. Meanwhile one of the maids took his license plate number.
     No one knew him nor recalled him being in the hotel before. After thinking about the incident I developed a theory about why this unknown maniac came here in such a tizzy. I betted that he had been refused by another hotel...for similar boorish behavior and was tendering his  insult on the route to the next place run by what he perceived as Spanish owners. He must have chosen an establishment where the owners look a little too white to be Mexicans. In fact a few days after the incident I spoke wih my wife's cousin, a hotel manager, he said there was a wild drunk with a young girl in their posada who he refused habitation. I bet my kidney it was clinch eye.
     My wife took the search for the identity of clinch eye to heart and found out he is a worthless drunken coke head supported by his brother, the doctor. He spends his days finding and fucking stupid girls who are impressed by large new red truck.

     Above our bed is a line of four square skylights. The moonlight at times enters like sharpened blades. Other times we can watch the bandicoots play after they have spent a night filling up on fruits, nuts, and insects. They pass the skylights jumping and running looking like monkeys. Two nights ago a thunder storm rolled in near midnight. I was floating in the netherworld between sleep and awake,,, almost making it to the island of my dreams where the temperature is always perfect and no one is ever hungry. I saw a light through my eyelids like a bomb had gone off, the orange light expanding from a single point into a large circle that filled my eyelid. That was the lightning. Perhaps 4 seconds passed when the thunder shook the night and rattled the house It seemed to be the loudest thunder boom I had ever heard. It took 4 seconds to reveal itself so it wasn't directly over our house. I wondered over whose house it actually was. The rumble trailed off tumbling into the night but it seemed to continue for an unnatural amount of time like a rogue wave that crashes onto the shoreline and just keeps coming right up over the seawall. 

Tenancingo and The Empuntadoras

      Bernal Diaz del Castillo, a soldier in Cortez's army wrote a chronicle of the conquest over the new world. He mentions seeing in the Texcoco market in 1524: "many sorts of spun cotton in hanks of every color, and it seems like the silk market at Granada, except that there is much greater quantity" (Diaz del Castillo 1956:213-16). The elements were here and being used in indigenous garments. Cotton has a very long history in the Americas. The cotton rebozo is inseparable from the Mexican identity. The reknown Mexican folk artist and friend of Diego Rivera, Dr. Atl, claimed it should be the Mexican Flag. 
     A rebozo is a collaboration between Two people, he who makes the cloth or paño (the majority of rebozos are made by men in Tenancingo) and another (usually a woman) who elaborates the fringe or punta. 

 

With a punta and without

Weaver

     The ikat pattern one finds on rebozos most likely came from the Phillipines. Research seems to show that Mindanao was ground zero for ikat. In Mindanao Ikat means "to tie". 
     NOTE: Take a look at this paper by Edward Yulo, one of many writings on Ikat patterns in Indonesia. 
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/8b7d/a788747d8cf4b9a6655856425a4824b7487b.pdf

                      Most Ikat designs look similar. It's the nature of the technique. 

                                   

                                       Ikat  from the Phillipines on Albaca a platano fiber

                                     

                                                      Ikat from Tenancingo on cotton fiber

      Let me state for the record that no one knows for sure how Ikat rebozos arrived in Mexico or Tenancingo. I like to think it was a love story. Here's what might have happened:

     Spanish Galleons carried on a lucrative trade between the Phillipines and Mexico from 1565 until 1815. The galleons, laden with oriental delights left the Phillipines steering their way to the northeast at least 30 degrees latitude in order to encounter favorable winds. After the long trip across the Pacific, the ships turned south upon seeing the first indications of land. The California coast was to be avoided. It was unchartered land and water. On a good voyage  the first land seen by the sailors would be the tip of the Baja peninsula. On a bad voyage they could see land much further north up to present day Oregon California border. California was in general dangerous. Expeditions to the coast often ended in disaster. Many never made it to the safe refuge of Acapulco. There were many shipwrecks when weather and unchartered waters did not comply.  In 1600, the galleon Capitana disappeared without a trace. Nuestro de Senora Aguda reportedly ran aground on a rock west of Catalina in 1641. Another galleon, Francisco Xavier, may have wrecked just south of the Columbia river in Oregon in 1707. These are just a few. Legends abound about wrecked vessels during the Phillipine Mexico trade route.
     There were other foreign dangers as well that plagued travel along the California coast. These galleons laden with riches became a magnet for pirates and coastal raiders who attacked settlements. Sir Francis Drake, a pirate who worked for the English royalty, as well as Thomas Cavendish another privateer plied the coast plundering spanish settlements and attacking galleons. If you didn't die of scurvy on the crossing you might succumb to a looting by pirates. George Compton, another marauder pursued the galleon San Sebastian in 1754. The galleon’s crew purposely ran the ship aground on Catalina Island to escape the picaroons set on destruction and pillaging. Compton, a rather unsavory character along with his barbarous crew captured and killed the surviving crew of the San Sebastian. 
     After 200 years of theivery the Spanish were compelled to colonize California. A series of forts or presidios were established along the coast. With the presidios, came the California missions. 
      From Baja the Galleons then sailed south to Acapulco. From this port city, much of the cargo was sent overland across Mexico and loaded at Vera Cruz onto ships bound for Havana, Cuba, where they would join the treasure fleet that sailed every year for Spain. In Acapulco mule trains were assembled that traveled over the knarled landscape passing through Iguala, taking on more gold, then Taxco for its silver. In that era Tenancingo was one of many stops but not to take on more riches but to leave some behind with those  who offered respite and supplies for the caravan. The first store in Tenancingo which served this trans-mexico commercial line was founded in 1540 or so in Tepalcaltepec, about 3 kilometers from the present Tenancingo Center. Commercialism arrived early in this pueblo.

                      

                       

                                               Acapulco Harbor Back In The Day

                    

     Once upon a time in the Phillipines an adventurous handsome Sama Bajau man with no family ties, named Melchor, signed on as a crew member for a spanish galleon to replace a cook's mate who died in a fight over a flirty tagalog girl while ashore in Mindanao. Melchor was a jack of all trades like so many Phillipinos. One day he might guide a plow,, the next day he was a wagon driver, then perhaps a tax collector, afterwards an attendant to gentry,, for ten years a weaver of cloth,, finally and now a sailor. Melchor's early life was given over to vagabondage however he always maintained a strong will to learn. In his ten years as a weaver on Mindanao he became an expert artisan in the making of ikat cloth on a backstrap loom. An adaptable creature, Melchor was tranquil not at all chatty. From the age of ten when he was orphaned he showed few signs of any real loyalty. His aunt who took over his care was too hobbled with pain to guide him. He ran the streets but his will to learn gave him work and kept him out of trouble.
      Melchor, now the sea gypsy made the perilous crossing passing, a lucky one for the wits of the captain and the favorable winds, The first land they saw was Baja California so the galleon sailed south down the coast to the safe harbour of Acapulco. It was march and the Viceroy was assembling an enormous mule train. Melchor saw an opportunity and made the aquaintance of one of the muleteers. He proved himself was a valuable asset for he had a knack with equines as well. 
     It must have been a sight, hundreds of men, soldiers, and women, more than 350 mules, burros, horses, wagons laden with cargo moving out over the rugged landscape,, passing through Tierra Colorada, Ocotito, up to Chilpancingo, crossing the Rio Balsas at Mezcala. They stopped in Iguala for a week where Melchor balked at the bare hills, heat, and desert climate. Taxco El Viejo was a bit more lush amd agreeable but like many mining towns rowdy and dangerous. The voyage continued over rugged hills but ever gaining altitude the dusty line of men and beasts inching upward to the higher plateau in the center of New Spain, passing the Grutas de Cacahuamilpa then Ixtapan de la Sal and entering the fertile cooler valley of Tenancingo. There the mule train stopped for two weeks to replenish supplies and take a much needed rest. By now Melchor was restless tiring of stubborn animals and convoluted landscapes. Tenancingo was flat with forests and rivers. There were gentle  winds and fields being pIanted. It  spoke to him like a promise and anyway Melchor was ripe for a change. All that was needed was a sign which appeared in the small adobe pueblo of Tepalcaltepec. It came in the form of a embracing smile from a stable owner Jacinto Lopez's daughter, Lupita. It seemed the young Lupita was prepared for a change as well, and this handsome Phillipino looked Mexican. After the two week layover  ended, with spring rapidly approaching, the mule train moved on towards Mexico City leaving Melchor and his budding heart behind. 
     Courtship was short yet deeply sweet and lasted a lifetime. Roots had finally extended and pegged in the deep soil of this high valley. Melchor began working in the stables but soon found a place with his cherished Lupita in the expanding center of Tenancingo. He fashioned a backstrap loom from scraps of wood and she opened a small tienda.They prospered through hard work and partnership he making fine ikat rebozos and she selling beans and sugar and pulque. Four of their eight children learned the craft of their father and their workshop grew.
     History does not hold much importance in Mexico as in many other places wracked by daily strife and rebozo history is also threadbare,, but after speaking with some older reboceros here in Tenancingo I discovered a few could remember that their fathers, grandfathers, and great grandfathers were invovled in rebozos. That covers at least 200 years. If the galeon trade stopped in 1815 well rebozos in Tenancingo may have a much older history.  

     

    Probably when muletrains were assembled in Vera Cruz returning with goods from Spain they could have carried elaborately knotted fringes on mantillas meant for Mexico's wealthier criollos.  

 

Knotted fringe of a mantilla from Spain

     No one can say from whom or when the first empuntadora in Tenancingo learned her trade. That may always remain a mystery. Originally the fringes or rapacejos on rebozos from Tenancingo were shorter and simpler. Many remember the short triangular style called Punta Español. At some point the fine macrame from the mantilla was adapted onto a  rebozo from Tenancingo. Indigenous images and patterns began to appear in the ever lengthening fringes.

Punta Español

    Thus the rapacejo of Tenancingo was born with figures of ducks, birds, flowers, letters, hearts, cocoles, arcs, and just plain beautiful macrame.

                                   

 

     The empuntadora's craft evolved. She became the person who could raise up a mediocre rebozo and transform a finely made rebozo into something sublime. However as her importance grew her recognition diminished. The weaver garnished the credit and the empuntadora was relegated to the nameles shadows. 

     In the last few years though a glimmer of light has illuminated the work of certain knotters because they have won some national premiums associated with textiles, but for the most part the empuntadora is still a concealed commodity. Weavers have always taken advantage of her position. This army of craftswomen has always been poor for they plied their craft as a pastime between the hours occupied by family matters. Their creative voice was weak. They knotted out of necessity and were paid a pittance receiving little recognition in the elaboration of a rebozo which really is a collaboration. There was once more than 1000 empuntadoras in Tenancingo.That number is dwindling as are the weavers. 

     There are more empuntadoras the further out one ventures from Tenancingo center in the the poorer hinterlands. In those regions necessity still rules yet each year it is more difficult  to find an empuntadora. Why be paid 10 dollars for a month's work. They can make more working in a papeleria. Their daughters have other interests so the artistic lineage is eroding. Economies and societies change. 

     The tianguis in Tenancingo on sundays on the corner of 14 de Marzo and Madero offers a window to the past and glimpse of the future. Here you will find sellers of rebozos but the empuntadoras outnumber the weavers. They come to sell their work, and at the same time to buy untied rebozos from the weavers. They add a knotted punta and return the next sunday to sell. It is one of the few ways they can make a little more money. I would guess from my informal survey that a majority of the empuntadoras are from Zumpahuacan, a poor pueblo 16 kilometers from Tenancingo. The trend is disturbing. I have met empuntadoras who have left the art to grow flowers or find work elsewhere. They don't voice it but after pressed they will admit to the economic abuse by weavers. The idea of being a participant in a special worldwide club never was and now isn't enough to sustain.  There may come a day when they will not be there for us and the reboceria of Tenancingo will suffer a blow of their own making. 

                                                                                 

The Land

     One fine drizzly afternoon my mother-in-law suggested that we go to Santo Desierto. With a few other family members we piled into my Dodge Van, nicknamed the "shoebox" or cajita..As we left the outskirts of Tenancingo we floated upwards on Dodge butterball shocks over the narrow steep serpentine road lined with tall cedars, past the dump, a red dirt scar in the landscape littered with the multicolored plastic jewelry of civilization. Basura, or garbage is a growing problem in the New World. Even though the herbalist in the market ties her bundles with grass the disposable culture in combination with hoardes of disdainful litter bugs decorate the landscape in a perpetual christmastide of flotsam. 
     We climbed and passed through a forest of encinos, older and well spaced with age, each tree giving the other respect, their crowns widening fans of knarly limbs. Set in the crotches of the limbs were epiphytes or "air plants",  those cactus like bunches that live above it all, parasitic actually, with a different set of skills for sustenance and a keen sense of place. The winding road afforded glimpses of Tenancingo below skirted on its perimeter by a quilt of fields. 
     At the top of this mountain, called Nexcongo, which is a national park, there is a Carmelite convent and a small village, called Santo Desierto actually part of Tenancingo. In the early 1900's, Fray Pedro, the lone ranger Carmelite Monk who watched over the nearly abandoned compound invited some to build houses there. Perhaps he was lonely. He could never have imagined the controversy that developed almost 120 years later when the town near the convent grew into the lower expectations of the 21st century. Now that the pueblo's month long fiesta in July, that was originally supposed to honor Nuestra Señora del Carmen and various guilds in the area has turned into a disorganized drunk fest the spiritual peace has been pirated. "The Desierto", which is actually a lush old growth forest, is supposed to be a place of contemplation,, a place where the ambience makes space for the mind's melody.
     

Lejos de la maraña auditiva de la ciudad, sin música ni ruido y con múltiples carteles que invitan a no hablar, el sitio es un centro de desintoxicación citadina y una invitación abierta a la meditación.

"El silencio tiene una importancia que a veces no comprendemos, sólo el silencio nos deja escuchar las cosas importantes", establece Miguel Murguía, sacerdote superior del Convento.

"Far from the auditory thicket of the city, without music or noise and multiple billboards the place invites you not to speak. The site is a center for urban detoxification and an open invitation to meditation."

"Silence has an importance that sometimes we do not understand, only silence allows us to listen to important things," says Miguel Murguía, Superior priest of the Convent."

     The air was fresh with a night's rain and cleansing altitude. Height seems to implore commanding and a feeling of being out of the fray. Altitude intoxicates. You become detached from the world below. From a roost you can delegate,, and "Commanding is breathing" as Camus said in "The Fall". This one,,,,or perhaps that one as one's eyes roam below touching the dots that are people and cows, both having equal value from such a perch.

                              

     In the pueblo, Sol and Victoria beer signs compete for your eye and vendors of Mexican fare including "pulque" abound. Pulque is the freshly fermented juice of the maguey, a large bluish green cactus with arms like tentacles. One taps the sweet juice then ferments it for a day or two until it is mildly alchoholic but it seems to possess "other" dreamy properties. Masons with whom I worked would often purchase some from the pulque girl at late lunch time and drink heartily in order to ease the pain of the hard work. After parking the cajita, we ambled past the lady with the upside down ears and baby teeth who sells tortillas. Two of the  young ones in our group decided to stay with the food at the puesto of the upside down eared mamacita, too lazy for the walk down to the convent. The rest  wended our way down the cedar lined road passing the stations of the cross encrusted in midget totems of concrete and stone. The white cedars or Teolates are like arbor vitaes in their most preferential environment, tall thick, grand and outsized creating a cool light. They stand at inclined attention,,,,,,,and the sweet angle makes them less military-like.  Originally from Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala, the Teolates inhabit temperate and cloud forest. Knarled encinos spotted the hillside whose branches seemed like unfurling streamers captured in mid flight. 
     At the bottom of the promenade there is an area of trinket vendors, who sell the kind of things everyone liked as a child like trompos, tablitas magicas, maracas, titeres, and baleros de copa. Before the final 200 yards to the convent in a circle of tall Teolates is a gauntlet of food stands that offer quesadillas de hongus, gorditas, pulque and mezcal. 
     The monastery sits in a natural bowl  swathed in trees. Its mossy walls hide all but the terra cotta roofs and two towers, one round and the other square. The cupola of the round tower descends from the top to rose windows, like portals, each set in its own round conical dormer. The flow of the shapes so attracted me for their organic detail. The walls hide the guts of the compound and the quarters for the carmelites. Even as one descends the hill and has a view from an angle above the inner geometry is restricted from view by the high walls. What is hidden beckons to be seen and what is seen beckons to be studied.

 

                                    



                       

 

     We lined up to evacuate our bladders in a little bathroom before entering the monastery. Many indigenous people, with various "looks", Navajo, Pueblo, Polynesians, East Indians, and Lebanese, were on pilgrammages all braids and rebozos. Some children peered from their charcoal eyes and smile, and the adults stared stoically. My mother-in-law, ever the amiable politician banters loudly with everyone. It is the perch from which she wishes to be seen and she always comes off well having the ability to communicate with all classes of people. This is a form of divinity for those that do not abuse it and a form of devilry when it cloaks raw ambition.
     We entered the church in silence through two courtyards of terra cotta framed in white walls aged a little yellow,,then through a hall and into the church proper. My mother-in-law seats herself left in the second pew closest to the altar. My wife seats herself to the right on the opposite side. I go to the front pew on the right......three separate souls who play ball with each other's heart. Everyone prayed but me unless really contemplation without structure is a form of praying. My wife speaks with her god while I wonder why there are two Virgin Marys with the baby Jesus, one large and one small.....insurance? It also plagues me to see the speakers of the P.A. system. I wonder when that arrived and why Carmaelites need speakers. I think about why the gold leaf wasn't well laid, why the paint was a little sloppy, the sequence of construction and from where the stone came.It is still for all its retouches a charming church. 
     The outside of the church seems better than the inside,,,perhaps because the hands of nature that over time caress the more exposed outer layer are more expert in the trade of detailing. As for the inside perhaps over the years various prelates needed to leave their mark inside the lord's house,,really their house, for it always seems to be not the house of the lord but of the monseignor,,,,,so they bought some paint, gathered some souls from the village and with all the questionable taste they could muster decorated. It now occured to me the process that I follow. It is a process of how and why. It is a system of dismantling,,,,stripping apart.
     My wife slides over to sit next to me and gave me her benediction and of course I felt myself slipping into the spell and caresses of my own catholic past. We rose and walked to one side of the interior. My wife commented on the door as she has commented on so many portals. She is a woman fascinated by doors,,,,,hopefully also what is on the other side. She made note of the old doors in San Luis Potosi, the large heavy doors of the monastery there. Old doors are time portals that have opened and closed for thousands of hellos and goodbyes, thousands of exits and entrances,,,,,,,revealing views into their interiors that they often very well hide. I doubted that she was aware of this behavior, and I wondered what she would say are the reasons,,,,, old doors are like the people she respects, who are archives of the past that will soon pass into oblivion as we hurtle into an age that regards only the green light urging accleration and transgression without the gathering of the shreds of humanity,,,,,humanity that has marked space and time.
    We left the monastery and walked back to our starting point. The upward climb out of the bowl is a strain for my zaftig mother-in-law: I stay with her telling her to count twenty steps and rest. Taking it in measured little bites helps. We arrive at the upside down eared papacita's kiosk and get down to gorditas and quesadillas. A gordita is a thick oval tortilla folded over a filling of fava beans to form an oval slipper which is grilled on the clay metate. When the skin is towards crisp salsa is added and sometimes grated cheese. Mamacita pats, flips, folds, and flops these onto the large clay cooking surface fueled by wood. I sit in the wake of the wood smoke and collect aroma, something that reminds me of the northern woods. I become engossed in the polyglot pilgrams who arrived at this kiosk before us and who are almost finished. They cut slow moving figures with soft voices and dark smooth skin. At the end comes the "count", for each must keep account of what they have eaten. So many of this, so many of that, three cervezas, two pulques,,,,each person responsible for their own consumption.
    
     A healing Shaman told a friend of mine,,"When we are upset we cannot believe what our mind tells us". 
     
     I bought some land in El Carmen, on the mountain. and built a stone house there, something unequivocal,, and when I stayed some nights bathed in quiet I would go outside looking towards the silent glowing splendor of Tenancingo and rule.