Eterne Primavera from The Mexico Diaries

Wednesday, June 25, 2003

When you get to Mexico City and the polution sears your nose, take a long, deep breath and let it cut into your lungs a little. Don't worry. The acres of roses will come later. Careful to watch for cowpies on the way.

Greetings from Cuenavaca, Morelos, Mexico.

Last night:
Here I sit watching a fabulous storm with thunder, lightning and buckets of rain, wind whipping itself through the great palms as if they were dandylions. What else would I be doing at home, anyway? Pining for things just out of my reach and frustrated, that's what.

Today I got so frustrated with my spanish skills that I quietly thought that everything my mother, high school teachers and college professors taught me was a lie. HUGE lie. People don't speak as they do down here. And my mother intuits what I say anyway. There are so many colloquialisms I had no idea of, that I have been taking notes from the subtitles of Dawson´s Creek and not-so-new Brendan Frasier movies (both of which are strangely abundant on cable down here).

I woke up feeling like a viejita (little old woman) today. Yesterday I explored Cuernavaca by myself just to get oriented and on the long bus ride home (I had taken the wrong one) I think I put my hip out.The pain woke me in the early morning hours and was to the point where I didn't think I could do anything today. When something like that happens, you have to get up and move. Endure the pain. Let it work itself out. At the end of the day, it might nag a little, but at least you did something. I washed my clothes and wrote.

So far I've met four americans and two english people. I met an american couple with a blanched, mid-western look shopping in the cathedral plaza. Minnesota or Wisconsin, I'd say. I helped the english couple negotiate a deal for an alabaster carved mejican god, which ticked of the sales lady, because they didn't buy it because it was chipped. The other americans I met on that long busride-Patrick and Leah from Ohio. Schoolmates at one of the spanish schools here. They invited me to go to where the americans hang, but I didn't catch the name. Alcabres? Too bad, too. Patrick was easy on they eyes. He had nice glasses, too.

Cowpies.

I stayed for a few days at the ranch my aunt and uncle oprate for a few days. No fue mi tazo de te. For sure. Many goats. A few horses. Chickens, ducks, and a turkey. Three mean bulls and the cows they are separated from (hence why they are so mean). Sheep, too. Not many cowpies but lots of goat and sheep tarts. Talk about hoscotch. The back forty where we rode the horse smelled like freshly burned mesquite.

So on the way to Curenavaca I realized why they call it the 'lugar de eterne primavera' or 'place of eternal spring'. Just past the cornfields I saw them-fields of green dotted in red and white. As the bus drew closer, I saw acres and acres of roses. They might sit in a vase on your table someday.