I have been here 18 years,,,and I think I still know nothing. However, what I do know is my love of new experiences,,,not extreme experiences like bungee jumping or mountain biking on 60 degree slopes with foot deep ruts. I like "two feet on the ground" foreign to my cultural comfort zone experiences,,, in essence thoroughly human interactions. For example eating mojarra in a tiny semidesert town called Mogote on the edge of a deep canyon. The sparsely vegetated hills are the color of toast, the air parched as the landscape, lurid and heavy even in the later afternoon. Mogote is a town with a heavy female demographic because long ago most of the men left for the States because there is nothing in the town except great expanses of short spiney sporadic acacias about which amble boney cattle. The women hold down the fort best they can waiting for a check or for the small percentage of husbands that may just return home. My experience there isn't wild or life threatening, just a place to stop for a real mexican meal along a man made pond abruptly outlined in planted palms. However the parched landscape, the eagles and buzzards bathing in the late afternoon thermals above the deep canyon, and the idiom are all foreign to me. Nerve endings are a little more sensitized in places like this, a rugged volcanic surging of rock and dry weed that is partly mine now.
Canyon in Mogote
A mural in the restaurant 200 kilometers inland
Palm lined presa
A second mural.
Lately I have been looking at Betty Boop cartoons on youtube. Once you see one the screen becomes infected by the algorithym. After seeing Max Fleisher's version of Snow White in which Betty Boop is Snow White dressed in her iconic skimpy black dress, I began to watch with interest the social interactions of my mexican family here. Have people ever turned into a cartoon right before your eyes? I do not imply that Mexicans seated about the crucible of the dinner table can appear like Betty Boop, aka Snow White, frozen in a block of ice or Koko the clown dancing like Cab Calloway as he sings St. James Infirmary blues in what appears to be a psychedelic underground. It's just that human interaction wherever it may be can at any given moment be viewed as something cobbled together out of spare parts. There's a storyline in there somewhere but it is obscured by the discursive path taken by the participants. Substitute, Italians, English, Muslims, Danes, Chinese, Japanese for what I was seeing and the view is the same. I knew a japanese lady who told me her father examined his bowel movements each morning then at the breakfast table he spoke of reading their form as you would tea leaves. When she told me this I thought of peculiar Stygian witches called the Graeae who shared one eye and one tooth. or dogs who use rectums as identification papers.
Apes have remained in our culture as great comedic counterparts. Some may remember The Dave Garroway News Show and his chimp sidekick, J. Fred Muggs who was a prime example of how animals so close genetically to humans can steal the show. There has always been some comedian who has discovered that he can use a "monkey" to do the heavy work and get the laughs while he passes the hat. His act is tied to an ape. Just think of an orangutan in a fedora with suspendors and a cigar working the crowd at Caesar's Palace. All the while the crowd is laughing at the parody of an ape not conscious that he is apeing them. It's funny really, a chimpanzee turning his lips inside out grabbing David Letterman's pen, drawing attention to human behavior for a moment. And all the while, down deep we don't see it as a parody, just funny for some reason. You know apes are part of our family tree but from a branch that we don't completely recognize as part of our own. We hide the reality of behaviors because we think we are superior with our chocolate covered ants, and flush
Mexican families are tight. They are social units unto themselves. They stay in one place, even live together for life out of need and efficiency. They don't often disperse like the other families up north. They are little closed circuit tribes. This makes them a prime target for study yet I have never read of one. They sometimes hunt together, sometimes fight, sometimes kill one another, for short periods go in for ostracism, drink to excess making noise all night, yet suddenly they will shed all negative behavior and can be found grooming one another like apes do for parasite control. They are a group in a country where everything is close to the bone,, and many say the meat is sweeter in that place.
I began to see my former gringo life as a mere monkey story. Yes people people possess the miracle of speech, have the capacity to figure things out, to see themselves in contrast to others,,,more so, it seems, than a tribe of baboons with puffy red asses running around threatening each other with their incisors, yet does our "look" and manner of acting mean we actually "employ" higher powers? Empathy is a higher power and it is in short supply. Intellect, described by F. Scott Fitzgerald as being able to hold two disparate thoughts in your head at the same time,,,, of course without choosing sides, is even more scarce these days.
I have heard my mexican family here spend countless hours in "chisme" (gossip). It is their pass time. Much of the prattle is about family members and others of the Tenancingo community. you know, a human being with a table, a chair, and a basket of fruit make a complex forum. Because the relationship between family members is in always in flux the gossip changes with the changing alliances. They will cast one out from time to time, but when a need arises the castaway is once again taken into the fold, which I believe is a method for tribal cohesion.....to preserve "the us" surmounts any and all rivalries.
I am comfortable in one sense in that I am, and will always be "outside" the genetic loop. I am not a threat to anyone,,economically or emotionally,,,,,I am free, like a latter day Jane Goddall to observe the tribe in their habitat. I have seen that much of the energy that fuels the changing social familial currents comes from economic sources or emotional choices that might threaten the social unit.
Mexicans are big on genetics. For example. adoption is considered a taboo. "They are not really from our genetic pool we can never feel truly comfortable with them". Ironically there isn't one recent child from the family I would want to adopt,,,and given a moment of reflection most of the adults in the family wouldn't want to adopt them either,,,,, but they would take them in if push comes to shove. There are four refuges for a Mexican, The church, a trade union, a political party, or the extended family, each shelter acting like a whole life insurance plan paid in full.
Interestingly, speaking of genetics, it is often impossible in Mexico to percieve a physical resemblance between children, their parents, and the rest of the family. Probobly in precolumbian times resemblances were more evident. In that era, the gene pool was like a single grand bowl of bronzed M&M's. Since the delivery of the euro-spanish-arabic-negro gene after 300,000 years of earthly separation the three children of two seemingly alike parents come out with three different faces. It is a result of the evolutionary chasm between the genetic codes. You end up with a dark one with indian features, a light one with a germanic bent, another with kinky hair,,,or chinese eyes, or at times russian squareish heads. Are they siblings??,,,,yes. How can you visually tell they are from one family???I don't know but my family will be spending countless hours parsing the body parts saying this one has the nose of her father or that one has the face of his paternal great-grandfather,,,,they are more like pieces thrown together from a junkyard to make a truck. Ironically if you switched them at birth no one would know the difference and yet the comparisons would continue,,,probobly to bolster the perceived genetic purity of "our little cosa nostra".
Look I know these absurdities are carried on by all families,,,it is the family burden. With Mexicans their closeness makes for tightly closed social systems. After the interactions, mexican families go home, which is just down the hall or just down the street. One can say that they do love one another,,,because of their eternal interest in one another. This is the way humans operate and live together. This is how they form social bonds. It is at times an ugly system but it works,,,,,it comes from millions of years of real genetic social engineering. Hominids figured out a way to bond, live in close quarters, cooperate, and prosper. In the USA they still prosper but only see one another at Thanksgiving.
It is a fascination,,if one has the luxury of distance,,,to see all the plotting, pooh-poohing, ever changing alliances,,,,and ever present inquisitions. Yet the mexican family is a bond like a nucleus with its protons, nuetrons, and electrons. I could never say that any one of my family members from the states,,,with the sole exception of my dear grandparents, would have ever helped me like Mexicans do with each other. They would stand and watch me sink into the quick sand without the offer of a hand,,,,,plotting how this would improve their position.
Conversation brings us into existence,,,like adding flame to a paper written upon with lemon juice and magically the words appear,,,,,or like the Chesire Cat. We speak some words and paint ourselves into existence. Certainly conversation puts down tracks we can follow. It uses others as our echo and helps us materialize in a certain way,,for a certain time. Of course while in a conversation some will be zealously selecting and judging the weight of each word. There are those that evaluate the moment and form strategies, those that judge instantaneously and instinctively,,and then there are the naive. The former two look out for themselves but there will always be those that just enjoy the ride.
I suppose I must ask why we choose certain collections of words,,certain expressions. I have no faith in purity. All but the naive calculate. For a million years we have known that to "withold" or to "offer" gets us things. The inside world is part of this external human structure and it is partially detached,,,it bumps about more freely,,,no? More freely,,,,that which defines life by degrees,,,,, and always there,,,, they hover,,,, the myriads of choices presented each second filtered by million year old baleen.
"I have always known that I would take this road. I did not know yesterday that it would be today!" 11th century Japanese poet.
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