why I'll never go native

Yesterday a golondrina flew into my classroom. A golondrina is a swallow; as so often happens with birds its name is much more lyrical in Spanish and better fits a tiny, airborne feathered thing. I had only ever seen them soaring and swooping, the sun glinting blue-black off their sleek backs, a flash of red belly during a particularly daring dive. I used to go to a bridge over the dwindling river to watch them flit back and forth whenever I felt homesick.

In Mexico it’s good luck to have a golondrina. People plant nests for them hoping they will fill them, and the birds will roost, then disappear, then return again and again. The golondrina, in Mexican folklore anyway, is thus a precious, restless little creature who, despite its wanderlust, never forgets its home.

(Perhaps you begin to understand why I have one tattooed on my arm.)

This one I didn’t recognize at first. Cowering on the floor of a dark room, its feathers dulled to gray. It seemed injured or paralyzed by fear, far from evoking the lyrical acrobatics I associate with the word -- and the bird -- golondrina. I stood dumb, not knowing what to do but unable to leave the little bird trapped in a corner under a table.

Luisa, one of the student assistants, came in. O, she said, una golondrina. Pobrecita, está atrapada. Levántala. Pick her up. It won’t bite me? I said. Luisa glanced at me, quizzically but too kindly to say anything, and stooped. She cradled the tiny bird in her hands and carried it out to the terrace, where she knelt down and opened her palms.

The bird rested there, closing its eyes, stretching over these two shiny black seeds a pale gray veil of the most delicate tissue. At that moment I wanted nothing more than to take it in my own hands and feel its diminutive heart palpitating against my fingers. For several seconds it seemed lulled by the fresh air and light. No vuela, Luisa said, disappointed. No, I said, it can fly. Gently I stroked its belly and it shuddered awake, took two tentative steps across Luisa’s hand and traced a graceful arc over the lip of the terrace and across the courtyard out of sight.

This morning on the bus, while I was abstracted and thinking about the golondrina, a tiny person perched on the seat next to mine. I couldn’t tell at first whether it was a man or a woman; he, or she, wore a black stocking cap and a white fleece jacket several sizes too big, in spite of the heat that already pressed in on us at nine in the morning. Out of the corner of my eye I could see a brown and leathery face, cured by sun and wind, and the broad, angular nose that betrays the indigenous here. After a moment this person spoke to me in a quiet tenor that further failed to resolve itself into male or female. ¿No hace como friyito? the voice said. No, I replied, I didn’t feel cold. Other passengers turned to look, perhaps wondering why someone would confide in me, a stranger, a foreigner. I mentally checked the location of my passport, my backpack, my camera, my wallet.

It was when a tiny, icy hand rested on top of mine where they lay in my lap that I realized she was a woman. I looked up into her face. Why are you so cold? I asked her. I don’t know, she said. Sometimes I think I don’t have any blood anymore. You must have some, otherwise you wouldn’t be here, I said and smiled, not really knowing what else to say.

She regarded me blankly. I studied her back. A life spent smiling had carved crow’s feet around her eyes, but they were ringed with a watery film as if she had recently been crying or indeed very ill. She told me she supposed it was natural for her to have no blood, since they took hers little by little each day in a hospital, four o’clock in the afternoon, four o’clock in the morning. I wasn’t sure to have understood her, so I made some general sympathetic comment and fell back into silence. A moment later, she announced bueno, aquí me bajo and shambled out of her seat. When she turned her back to walk down the aisle of the bus I realized the stocking cap concealed a bald head, and out of the top of the fleece jacket protruded the bones of an undernourished spine. Cancer, I thought. And she had tried to tell me, had given me chances to ask, and I had failed to hear.

I felt ashamed. How hard would it have been for me to trust such a small and defenseless person? How hard would it have been for me to take those cold, misshapen little hands and hold them in my warm ones for the duration of a bus ride? How hard could a tiny golondrina have bitten me before I set it free? What is it in me that flees this contact, this encounter? I know what to do and I yearn to do it, so why do I mistrust when I should love, and only realize it after?

My hands on my keyboard feel scalding hot, cursed. They are full of warmth and life if I could figure out how to share them.

and yet...

Further evidence that Querétaro is increasingly my second home: upon visiting Mexico City this weekend, three weeks into my time here, it dawned on me: I’m in Mexico for the summer. I was at the National Anthropology Museum, far from the home-away-from-home of my mundane, routine pursuits, watching it rain when this obvious realization finally clunked into place.

It occurs to me the word “home” has been cropping up with startling frequency in my writings lately.

Mexico City is a megalopolis, which essentially means two things to the casual traveler: 1.) everything that’s cheap elsewhere is exorbitantly priced because of the massive, war-zone-like distribution problems, and 2.) a lifetime wouldn’t be enough to see and do everything you can think up to see and do over the course of two days, so you have to save something for next time and resign yourself to sensory overload and exhaustion. For example, day one: ruins at Tenochtitlán in the morning, anthropology museum in the afternoon, followed by a night of mariachis, lasso tricks, folkloric dancing and cock fights, all enjoyed over a supper of roasted goat. Day two: Chapultepec (Mexico City’s question, if Central Park is New York’s answer to it), palace and home of Mexico’s six-year emperor, palace of fine arts, lunch at a café after which one of your favorite bands has named itself, and the National Museum of Art.

Here’s a fun game to play when you’re in Mexico: find the one weird thing wherever you are. No matter where you are and what you’re doing there’s always at least one thing in your environment that’s completely incongruous. You’re in the art museum looking at painting after 17th century painting of martyrs and Marys and suddenly there’s a kid in a wrestling mask. You’re in a shi-shi restaurant eating a buffet lunch Mexicans have prepared thinking it will appeal to Americans (featuring, for example, a substance almost but not quite entirely unlike mashed potatoes) when out of nowhere a man in a feathered headdress and loincloth barges in and starts blowing into a conch and whooping and whirling about. Times like these you don’t have to look too far for incongruities. Other times you have to dig a little deeper, but don’t worry, they’re there.

Another thing about Mexico: it’s baroque by nature. Baroque everywhere else went out of style a couple hundred years ago. Here, baroque is like energy: it doesn’t disappear, it merely changes form. The Palacio de Bellas Artes, a triumph my friends and companions had to drag me from kicking and screaming because I didn’t ever want to leave EVER, has all the grace and harmony and whimsy of my beloved art deco while still remaining summarily, consummately Mexican. If you visit the post office you’ll need to sit down after mailing your letter; the post office is breathtaking, and I am not even exaggerating.

I used to be ambivalent to Mexico City. After this weekend I really like it. Someone gave me a book of poetry. I took a picture of a fireman with his dog in the Zócalo. I got stalked by some strolling minstrels. I scratched the surface, and I will go back.

mexico reloaded

The funny thing about going back is how different everything isn’t. The things that surprised you the first time around, you expect them to be at least a little novel or disconcerting upon reentry, but they aren’t, you just kind of assume them again very quickly. I guess I thought I’d hear music I’d forgotten, taste flavors I’d left behind, and visit places I had neglected to miss and feel nostalgic, but really, being here hasn’t jogged my memory about much. This time around my recollections seem to have been remarkably faithful. Maybe I just haven’t stayed away long enough.

This is probably tied in with why I don’t have any over-arching, grandiose observations about Mexican culture or people for the time being. There are definitely some differences since last time I was here, but mostly in me: this time around I’m much less interested in meeting people I don’t know. I’m much more protective of my time, where and how I spend it and with whom. I’m less into playing paddleball with my heart and more invested in my job and my friendships. I’m more critical of what takes place in my environment. All this in some ways makes me more Mexican, more like the people who live out their lives here without assigning any special significance to living out their lives here.

On the other hand my current existence in Queretaro is much more provisional than before. Last time it seemed important to unpack, decorate, make a home for myself. I have yet to unpack. Although I’m staying the same amount of time at China’s this year as I did last, I don’t feel uncomfortable with the notion of living out of my suitcase for another month.

I don’t feel the urge to travel. In fact I’d love an excuse to stay home for a weekend. I’m traveling anyway, because it’s free and I’d be sorry later if I didn’t, but somewhere along the way my fever for the open road seems to have broken.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m very happy here. Despite missing my dog and my neighbor there’s no place I’d rather be, at least for a little while. At times I feel disappointed with myself for feeling so complacent, for not taking advantage of every single moment to pack them with unforgettable adventures. Given the life I’ve chosen to lead for the last ten years or so I would consider the loss of my sense of adventure as a sort of death.

But then I take such pleasure from the most mundane occurrences. La China lends me the car. I find my favorite shampoo on sale. I get paid in pesos. All of this is also an adventure of sorts, being a normal person in normal circumstances in a place that’s very much not normal for me. I start feeling like I could do it forever if I had to, although unlike last time I’m now fairly certain I don’t want to. I tell all this to China, my fellow Globe-Trotting International Person of Talent and Intrigue. She shrugs and says, yeah, because it’s your second home.
Congratulations. You’ve finally made it. You’re culturally integrated. You can tell because you feel so damn prosaic. That’s the irony I guess…home is where you hang your wonder.