Further Considerations of Rome

In Rome, death is always there, but if you drop a few coins in the slot, maybe you can get a few more days.

That is the dichotomy of Rome: Life and Death. It is a dead city, very much alive. Maybe the frenzy of life in Rome are the continual reminders of the old and the dead. Live today, for tomorrow you die.

One of the nicest hearses I have ever seen, and I wondered who it is/was who got a funeral in the Basilica S. Maria in Trastevere, one of Rome’s iconic churches.

We had a difficult, sad entry into our life here, in Rome. A most loved, most treasured, member of our family became sick and died not long after we arrived. Maybe that is why these momento  mori. Sophie Charlotte, our stone deaf, half-blind, beautiful pure white Turkish Wan cat, with her one green eye and one blue eye, became sick not long after we arrived and put away our things. We found a good Vet only two streets away from our place — a helpful thing for people without a car, needing many visits to the clinic — but after two weeks of brutal treatments, surgery, and an all-out struggle to save her from feline lymphoma, we decided to end her unrelenting and pointless suffering. The Vet, Dr. Paini, came to our apartment that terrible evening and put her into permanent sleep where she lay in our bedroom, on the rug, by the radiator, where she had gone … as animals do. So we could hold her in the moment of death, and she was not in a strange place, a place she had feared all her life.

So maybe that has colored our entry into the Roman world. Or discolored.

Sophie Charlotte. Died in Rome, 9 December 2014, age 11 years. She lived in Berlin, Washington, Buenos Aires, Mexico City, and Rome.

It is not fair to express feelings about a place like Rome within such discoloration. Maybe, for us, Rome will always be the place where Sophie died. Pets are, in so many ways, like our children — we take on the responsibility of caring for them, and they, who cannot take care of themselves, put their trust in us, even tacitly, that we will take care of them, we will protect them from harm, we will love them and let them love us, in their way. When we fail, when no matter how much they trust us, we still fail, it leaves us devastated for a long time. No matter what … we did not save her.

Okay. I am done with that.

I enjoy how so much of Roman life is lived on the streets, and in the piazzas. It is an endlessly looping movie. One of my favorite buskers in our piazza is this woman. She manipulates this puppet to paint a portrait on a small canvas, using paint and different brushes. I, to my regret, have no artistic skills, so it is not much to say that the puppet paints the portrait far better than I could, but not bad, considering it’s all done with strings.

The puppet painter of the Piazza S. Maria in Trastevere.

I do not understand how Italians can eat they way they do. I have a prodigious appetite and am not a small person — I weigh too much at 192 lbs, on a frame that should carry 175 lbs. In spite of that, even should I want to, I am unable to sit down for a meal and consume as much food as the typical Italian. Bulimia must be rampant here, there is no way these svelte Roman women can eat the thousands of calories at once, as I see often, and not wobble around like a Butterball Turkey. The Romans I see actually do eat all those courses you see on the menu — an antipasti, a pasta course, a meat or fish course, and a desert, all washed down with ample wine. I rarely eat more than one of the courses, usually the pasta course (with ample wine, of course), and I have gained 5 kilos in three months.

A typical lunch for me: a pasta course, a glass of wine, a bottle of sparkling water. For an Italian, this is only the beginning!

I am fascinated by the open market at the foot of our street, in the Piazza San Cosimato, which is open all mornings, everyday but Sunday, regardless of the weather. Everything farm fresh, or fresh-caught, and so delightful to see in such abundance that I have from time to time sat on a nearby bench and simply stared at it all. There is a fish stall, a meat stall, a man who sells only fresh made pasta, the cheese man, the flower vendor, and a dozen stalls with any fruit or vegetable you could want. What there is not, and I wish there was, is a baker, a bread man.

When this little girl has a kitchen of her own, she will know what to do in it.

I have always loved to walk, although the decrepit state of one’s body after so many decades of … well, life, has shortened the length of my walks. Even into my 50s, I had no problem walking for hours in a city, or hiking for a day in the mountains. In those heady days of youth (40s, 50s, even into the 60s) I did not bother taking a bus or a taxi or a car if the destination was less than a 90 minute walk. Oh well… . But I relish walking in Rome; it is an endless string of astonishments. You can point a camera in any direction, at anything, and have a postcard shot. Does one get jaded with all this over time?

This sort of things is everywhere, especially in Trastevere, where I live. There is nothing particular about this, I just liked the juxtaposition of the old and newer on one wall.

There are annoyances, but they are the fault of my own lack of experience, or rather, a different set of experiences. I am still unable to figure out where to buy common things, and often walk all over the place trying to find a certain type of nail, or, lately, a pair of brackets to hang a painting on the wall. There is a sort of supermarket in our neighborhood — Conad, which I am now unable to call anything but gonads — that is like a well-equipped 7-11, or a poorly-equipped Safeway. At least by now I have figured out where to find basic food items in there, and it does have a nice deli. I also buy wine there. I am unable to understand the labels on Italian wine bottles, only recognizing key words (like chianti), so it doesn’t much matter where I buy wine, since it’s all the same to me. In fact, for daily wine consumption, I have the fruit and veggie vendor down the street fill up a plastic water bottle with wine from the big barrels he has in back — 4 Euros a liter.

I am getting used to Rome now. I am slowly resolving my feeling of having failed Sophie’s trust in me, so I can almost enjoy the daily routine. There is a café in the piazza where I go regularly for a cafe coretto and acqua frizzante. Caffé Marzio. It fronts the fountain and the basilica. I am not used to it, sitting in a café with that view.

This is that view. It is the Piazza S. Maria in Trastevere.

Ah, but then, to the question. Am I working? Not much. Okay, let’s be honest here. I have not written one single new creative sentence since leaving Mexico City at the end of July. Erasing Rose sits locked at the same 75,000 words that existed in July. Oh, I do things with it, but all in the category of editing, sparkling, jiggling around. The last sentence I wrote back in July is the last sentence in the mss today.

But I have come across a cover idea I kind of like. This:

A cover without a book

I really do hope one day I will be able to fill in the space behind this empty cover.

Arrivederci

First consideration of Rome

A reasonably clean and not well-lighted place

We had a good lunch here one day. We haven’t yet had a bad meal in a restaurant in Rome, although some are better, a few are superior. That’s my first consideration of Rome — people eat well here, people value food and the time for eating. (As an aside, I have gained about 5 kilos since we arrived, putting back all the weight I lost in Mexico City.)

But, you know, what can you say about Rome, really. That’s at all new. Rome is probably one of the 5 top most written about cities on the planet. How do you write anything about Rome without tumbling into a pasta pot of cliches?

Everything you know or have heard about Rome is true.

This is what I like, so far: Food and wine, being surrounded by really, really old stuff, and the weather, sort of.

This is what irritates the crap out of me: The pure and unadulterated and never-ending chaos (quite a lot of which seems almost manufactured, as if appealing to some notion that it’s in the culture to have everything fucked up, whether or not it’s natural or necessary. Really. You get the idea that if a moment of calm or tranquility works its way to the surface of daily life, Romans will stomp it to death in a cacophony of mad gesturing and incoherent shouting — how dare you allow such a thing! The poverty you see everywhere, a lot of people are very poor here (causing me to wonder where they live, with rents at obscene levels). Romans live in a selfie bubble. They do not see you unless you have failed to get out of their way, causing them to crash into you. But I suppose this is understandable. Romans live smack dab in the middle of an antiquities Disneyland, a theme park of old shit, and throngs of camera-faced, gawking, oblivious tourists would make anyone myopic.

This is the fountain in the piazza down the street from where I live. This is the first time I have not seen it packed with seated gawkers.

Living here is exhausting. Rome is for the young and energetic. It is wearing me out.

More later.

My first amico

Been living in Rome 9 days now, and finally made a friend.

My first friend in Rome

Tweedly-dee, tweedly-dum

I intend to work this morning, but not until 4 loads of laundry are finished, some clothes and things are resorted in preparation for moving (again), and maybe a little trip to the market in there. It remains the case that whatever switch there is that turns off and on whatever creativity I can muster is in the off position. I wish I wasn’t so flaky about this, but I always have been, so get over it (as they say). My standard pretense of work is to make some sort of radical change in whatever there is of it already. In this case, there’s about 75,000 words of whatever it is. Sometimes I change the whole thing from a 3rd person narrator to a 1st person narrator, or vice versa, depending on what person it’s already in. Sometimes I change it all from past tense to present tense, or vice versa. That’s what I’m doing now — changing the thing from past to present. I end up with lots of versions, so ultimately I may be able to actually decide on the one I like best, the one best suited to the story being told.

Here’s a picture.

The 400 block of East Capitol St. NE

This is the view of the backside of the US Capitol building, taking standing in the middle of the street in front of the row house we’ve rented during our DC stay. We’re here two months, but almost half of that has passed … not enough, though. I would prefer to be in Rome already.

Another picture.

A street in Trastevere

This is our street in Trastevere, our place on the right side of the street, near the fountain, which is at the bottom of Gianicolo hill. It is a bit dismaying looking at all those scooters and predicting the noise level.

This novel, which is continuing to be called “Erasing Rose,” could very well be the best thing I’ve written (for publication), although the main competition will always be my 2005 novel, “Possessed by Shadows.” It may also be the last novel I am able to complete in the narrowing span allotted to my living days. Dead days last much longer, so it is too bad you just can’t do anything productive with all that time. For that reason, as well as the usual ego demands, I am almost desperate to finish the book. I had expected … rather, intended, to finish it before we left Mexico. Didn’t happen. Then I thought I might finish it in DC, before leaving for Rome — unlikely. The problem is, I don’t know how to end it. I don’t know what to do with Rose, how much of her to erase.

But whatever happens to it, it does seem to feel better, more comfortable, in the present tense and 3rd person. (Oddly, while grammatically it is a 3rd person narrator, that voice sure seems happy sounding like it’s 1st at heart.

I hear and must heed the call of the laundry.

I’ve been tagged

I don’t think I’ve been tagged before; if so, I must have missed it. Something about it feels odd, but also sort of flattering. Kate tagged me. Kate writes beautifully, and I do wish she did more of it publicly, or Internetly. I also wish she would keep her promises. She keeps promising to visit, but hasn’t shown up since leaving Buenos Aires a while back.

It’s called a blog hop, which also seems odd, don’t you think? Like a dance craze from the 50s. Do the blog hop, do dah. Kate was tagged by someone she knows named Rebecca Brooks, who has exceptionally nice hair. I am asked to tag some others, but actually, I don’t know any other writers, or at least none who wouldn’t think me crazy for “tagging” them, so I’ll skip that part. She proposes four questions, and here are my four answers.

What am I working on/writing? What I hope will be, if I can manage to figure out how to end it, my tenth novel. It’s called “Erasing Rose,” with Rose being, or discovering herself to have been, the child of one of the Disappeared from Argentina’s “Dirty War” between the late 70s and early 80s. She is in the story a self-destructing adult, unable to make a life going forward while brutally tethered to the reality of her history. It takes place about half and half in San Diego (where she escaped to from Buenos Aires) and Baja, Mexico, where she escapes to from the troubles of her life in southern California. About 75,000 words are good enough to keep, but I keep floundering around the end, after about two years work. Being right now in awkward transit between Mexico City and Rome, I’ve not been able to give this work the mental energy all writing demands. That’s about it. At my age, this could be my last novel, so I feel more than compelled to finish it, but to finish it well and good.

How does my work/writing differ from others of its genre? Well, let’s see. I don’t know that I write within a genre. My previous published novels are, with the exception of the first, which was called a psychological thriller (to my dismay), are usually categorized as literary fiction. Is that a genre? I can’t answer this question because I don’t really understand it.

Why do I write what I do? I write what I read. I mean, I write in something of the manner of the kind of novels I have always read, which are more or less referred to as literary fiction. I don’t think I have ever read a novel that fits squarely into one of the usual genres. I don’t read romances or spy stories or thrillers or detective mysteries … . Whatever else, I can’t think of. I do read travel non-fiction a bit, and a lot of political and historical works, especially essays. I like a limited range of memoirs. In other words, the short answer is that I write what I know from what I read and have read, in that style and that manner.

How does my writing process work?  Um … I would answer that quite differently at different periods in my writing life, which has now been ongoing steadily for almost fifty years. There would be me as the novice in my late teens through mid-twenties, when the compulsion to write damn near all the time was strong; then the me of undergraduate and graduate school (in philosophy) who was overwhelmed by the necessities and parameters of serious academic writing; the me of Iowa years, when artsy-craftsy writing and writerly socializing dominated; then the me of the professor years (thankfully brief) when I hardly wrote a creative word because of the demands of professing on a daily basis; finally the aging me, post-50, settling into a natural work rhythm, with few mind-distractions, writing most days for as long as I felt like it, and with, at that time, already five or so published books, off the pressure-to-publish treadmill wheel, when I learned how to write entirely and exclusively for myself and my own desires and demands (which dramatically improved my work, while at the same time dramatically decreasing my ability to be published) so that I could indulge myself as a writer … and now, when I can go weeks without writing a creative word, not worrying too much about it, knowing there will be those fine days when it is nothing to come out with two or three thousand words in a morning. I do, by the way, only write in the mornings. I am a morning person, I relish the light hours and hibernate in darkness. I have never written anything much post-lunch.

There it is. Are you happy, Kate. (You are missed!)

Stairs or ladder?

Entrance stairs to our 2nd/3rd floor flat rented for two months in DC. Try dragging your damn suitcases up this!

A Semi-Final Consideration of Mexico City

Our two years in Mexico City came to an end a few days ago; we are for the month in Boulder, Colorado, then on to Washington, DC, for two months, and to Rome by the end of October. Maybe it is too soon for a distanced and dispassionate look back over the two years, but here are a few preliminary thoughts.

First, this construction fiasco (photo below) made it so much easier to leave; in fact, desperate to leave. When we moved into our Polanco flat, there was an abandoned two-story office building (that may have begun its life as a house) directly behind us, sandwiched between two high-rise condo buildings, low enough so from our 4th floor balcony we had a decent view of trees demarcating the eastern edge of Chapultapec Park. A month or so ago, a crew of guys wielding mostly hammers and picks began knocking it down. Then, a few weeks ago, a gaggle of big construction machinery arrived and began this:

 

Thus it begins …

The last two weeks we lived with constant construction noise, from early morning to sunset, that will last for more than a year, according to the sign on the construction fence. We escaped just in time.

This is what I am sure to miss:

The weather. Even though we left in the rainy season (and it has been an unusually rainy one), generally Mexico City has the best weather of anyplace we have ever lived, or visited. Pretty much eternal spring.

The frank friendliness of Mexicans, even to strangers. (Unless they are in car, when friendliness abruptly transforms into vicious madness). They are quick to smile, to offer a helping hand or advice, and go out of their way to help a stranger on the street.

I will miss the feeling of security. Yes! I never felt even a shred of threat in Mexico City, never had one encounter with crime, and never felt unsafe. Unlike Manhattan, or Los Angeles, or DC, for example, which seem to me to be virtually crime-ridden.

Having seen photos of our Rome apartment, I am certainly going to miss the clean, large, well-lighted place where we lived in Polanco. This is the dining room from the living room:

 

Comfy-cozy

And this lavish, large office:

The office (shared with Holly and Sophie from time to time) Now the view is to the construction site below.

We are definitely going to miss our housekeeper, Tere, who came in and took over, in the most wonderful way. She also happened to be the best cook in Mexico, unarguably. She is a once in a lifetime person, and we will never again see her like.

All the trees and flowers and parks, not only in our colonia, but throughout the city.

Inexpensive and ubiquitous taxis, making it easy to get anywhere in the (massive) city without needing a car. (Only a masochistic idiot would drive a car in Mexico City.)

This is what I will not miss:

Food. I know it’s a surprise, but I found out that I don’t like much of the Mexican cuisine. To my taste, there is a certain underlying sameness, a similar flavor, in much of the food, no matter what. An underlying current of corn flavor, mainly. Although Poblano chiles dominate many flavors. I will probably never eat another taco again, ditto guacamole.

Bacteria-laden water. Not only can you not drink the water, but you cannot wash fruit and vegetables in it (unless you add a Clorox like solution to the water), cannot brush your teeth or rinse your mouth with it, and have to be careful not to open your mouth in the shower. (If Mexico City had clean, drinkable, useable water, the country would own the hemisphere.)

Traffic and the insanity of Mexicans in cars. (Maybe Rome traffic will necessitate a revision.)

A never-ending, no matter where you are, crush of people.

The nonsensical continual stream of protests, most of which are indeed for nonsensical reasons, that block major avenues for hours, and sometimes close access to the international airport. They are weekly occurrences. And they don’t make a bit of difference — except to the people simply trying to get from A to B on a bus or in a car.

The dubious skills of medical practitioners and the sometimes primitive hospital facilities.

So there it is –

Two years, it’s over, and I can’t imagine a circumstance that would bring me back to Mexico (or anywhere else in Latin America) again. It was better than I thought it would be, but I find very little to miss about it.

So as the sun sets over the city and Popo plumes, adios Mexico.

Random blogging

When I started “blogging,” some seven or eight years ago, like any new toy, I played with it to total distraction; also like a toy, I wore it out from overuse. It, blogging, seems a terribly self-indulgent activity, don’t you think? With the exception of writers (and others) who use blogging for restrictive and distinctive purposes — political journalism, for example, or to share one’s particular hobby or pastime with like-minded others — the rest of it seems like a written form of Selfies. Me! Read me! Look at me! Feel me! Let’s share me! We ought to be embarrassed. I often am.

For quite a while now, I have used this blog to post photographs that interested me, of places that interested me, and maybe a little of bit of “look where I went.”

Like this:

The place on the upper right side

The street

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We leave Mexico in less than three weeks, and after a lengthy holiday in the States, will move to Rome. Our apartment is in the west bank of the Tiber neighborhood of Trastevere, once the Bohemian quarter of Rome, but has lately been discovered. It is on this street, in the building on the right side of the street, near the end, with some greenery on the roof. Don’t you envy me? That’s what Selfie blogs are trying to get.

I’ve been thinking I should have a photo web site, and drop the pretense of this kind of thing, this pseudo literary blogging thing. I have noticed in the statistical page for this blog that to a great extent most of the readers who find this blog have Googled something about Buenos Aires or Mexico. An extraordinary and unusual number found it by Googling something to do with rain: rainy street, rainy day, etc. Because once a long time ago I wrote a post about how I was spending a rainy day (in a café, of course), decorated with a nice oil painting of a street market in the rain. Probably a dozen times a week someone comes to this blog because of that post. Yet most arrive looking for something about Buenos Aires, Patagonia, Argentina, Mexico City, Yucatan, Berlin, Slovakia, and the like.

So maybe I will come up with some sort of photo-based place blog. It would be less self-indulgent, at least.

If so, I’ll put a mention of it here.

Then we went to San Miguel & Guanajuato

San Miguel and laundry

Last week we traveled by bus (a rather luxurious one at that) from Mexico City to San Miguel de Allende, about four hours, the “we” being Holly and me and our long-time foreign service friend Dick, who is presently posted in Washington. We stayed three days, then bused over hill and dale to Guanajuato; both towns are world heritage sites. It was our second time in San Miguel; previously we were there in February and it was really, really cold. This time is was really, really rainy, but not cold. We also visited with another old friend, the writer Sandra Cisneros (House on Mango Street, et. al.), who has been living in San Miguel the past year or so. Sandra and I were both at Iowa, but a year apart, and quite a long time ago.

Photos will be blown up full-size by clicking on them.

Holly on the patio of our room at the B&B Casa Calderoni — where all the rooms are named after painters. We had the Gauguin room.

and had a fine Italian supper with Sandra, and a great view. See next.

 

the view from our table

This must be the house where Jesus lived when he was 17.

Dick & Holly on the bus, one of the rare moments they weren’t both doing the Blackberry tango.

View looking down onto the center of Guanajuato. That cheese wedge patch of green in the center is the Zocalo, or El Jardin, the tiniest promenade I’ve ever seen, and the most European.

Dick and Holly at the overlook.

A hot game of dominoes.

This worker’s partner, who had just walked away carrying two of these stones on his back, with a cigarette dangling from his lips, was probably near 70 years old. I am near 70 years old and couldn’t even lift one of these stones an inch off the ground. A tale of two lives.

Laundry day in Guanajuato

Another overview of the center of Guanajuato, using a camera app that imitates film from the Sixties, the way pictures are supposed to look.

This was the last holiday trip we will take while living in Mexico City. We leave at the end of July; first a month of home leave in Boulder, Colorado, then two months of this and that in Washington, before continuing to our next post — Rome. We should be there toward the end of October.

My plan (and hope) was to finish the novel I’ve been working on for the past two years, Erasing Rose, before leaving Mexico, but now I think that won’t happen. I thought the end was close, but it is not … it is far, far away. But then, what difference does it make? It’s not like I have a deadline (if advancing age doesn’t count as a deadline), or any publisher wanting it. Those days are over for me, but I admit it was a good run while it lasted. If I do finish this story, it will become my 11th novel.

When I was twelve years old, in a car with my mother driving me to school, she had asked what I wanted to do when I grew up. Without hesitation, I said I would be a writer … like Hemingway, some of whose stories I had read in magazines. Imagine the impact of Hemingway stories on a ten year old boy. That was now almost sixty years ago. My first novel (One Easy Piece / Coward-McCann) was published in 1982, when I was thirty-seven years old; I wasn’t ready much before that. It seemed to me that if I was to write “what you know,” it would help to know something first. So, although I was writing essentially everyday from my teenage years, it was just warming up, practicing the elements of craft … but mostly it was living: the Army, the vagabonding, working as a diver, then as captain of a charter fishing boat, then the years spent academically learning how to think (that’s why I worked my way through two degrees in philosophy — the only one of the intellectual disciplines with the sole purpose of learning how to think), writing three total failures while marrying and having children, trying to be a good person when it was so easy and compelling to be a bad one … then I was ready. More or less.

 

In days of yore

What is yore, anyway?

Doing computer housekeeping today, cleaning out an abundance of photos, putting them on a storage desk; I need to store about 10,000 photos somewhere, because they are bogging down the iPhoto program. Not making much progress because some photos have me drifting off on a nostalgia wave. Here some of those are.

This would have been in the spring of 1993, in Paris, with my climbing buddy, Laura, on our way down to Sintra, Portugal to scamper up a rock or two. George Whitman, who owned the place, took us up the little spiral stairs to show me where I could stay for a while, if I wanted, long as I was working on a book.

 

At the office of the Czechoslovak writers club, 1989, Prague.

Speaking of Prague, 1989, here I am with a group of Russian soldiers, about a month before the fall of the Wall.

Continuing with the subject of Communists, this is in front of the empty, burned out US Embassy in Saigon, summer of 1993. My favorite shirt of all time! Got it in Bali.

Inside the tunnel complex near Cu Chi, Vietnam. 1993.

In the imperial summer palace of the last emperor of Vietnam, Bao Dai, near Da Lat in the Central Highlands.

Waiting for the breakfast delivery at Poppies, Bali. This cottage, which was larger than some apartments I’ve lived in, with breakfast included, costs about $25 a night — in those days of yore.

In the category of things I used to do and cannot do anymore …

Running half marathons. At this point, through Balboa Park in San Diego. 1986, I think.

Scamper up and down rock walls. This one near Pajstun, Slovakia, around 1990 or 91.

Running a charter big game fishing boat, which I did out of Kona, Hawaii, in 1970. Oh, yes, I also had some pretty nice blond hair in those days.

Blue water sailing. This shot is heading out of San Diego — Point Loma in the background. 1983. The boat is a Westsail 32 staysail sloop.

I lived in Coronado, California between 1983 and 1991. I finished my second and wrote three more novels there.

I wrote four novels on this typewriter in this room in a tiny bungalow on 4th Street in Coronado, during the 80s. The beer and tequila and full ashtray helped.

Having a whisky at the end of the work day with my old friend, the novelist, Ken Kuhlken. 1984. Coronado.

My wife, Holly, has dragged me (sometimes under great duress) all around the world — literally. Most of the time I’d just as soon stay wherever I am and write — novelists often have more vivid mental lives than physical ones. But she wouldn’t hear of it, so around the world we went, and around again. I don’t even know how many countries we’ve spent some time in (not counting ones we only passed through for a few days): twenty, thirty, forty? Here are a few of my favorites. (Slovakia, which is my favorite country on the planet, is not here, because it feels more like home than a place I’ve traveled to.)

At the Raffles Hotel in Singapore, about as literary a place as one can get in that part of the world.

The train station, Saigon. Best food I ate in Asia was in Vietnam. And some of the most beautiful, classy women.

My temple outfit. In rural Bali. You had to cover your legs, so this was my ensemble. Love the color contrast. Oh, you also can’t go in if you’re menstruating, but that wasn’t an issue for me.

Finally, some random pictures that induced significant waves of nostalgia.

Hussong’s infamous cantina in Ensenada, Baja, Mexico. This must have been 1985 or 86. That’s my exceptionally gorgeous wife to my right.

On the Grand Canal, Venice. I think this was 1989.

With Holly, overlooking Portofino, Italy. 1989.

Overlooking the rocky beach at Nice, France. I forgot when. Late 80s.

Sweating my ass off after a jungle hike on the windward side of Oahu. Maybe 1986 or 87.

In downtown Murten, Switzerland. My wife’s namesake town.

I will be 70 years old next year, so figure I have only about another 30 or so years of life left. Where to next? What to write next? Who to meet? Only 30 more years! I need three times that. But it will be hard to compete with the last 70.

Edo’s Shangri-la

Today, 15 April, is the second birthday since my friend Edo transformed his substance into pure energy, leaving behind we substance-burdened, earth-bound creatures to wait our turn. We miss him as we wait. Edo was a fan of Mark Knopfler’s music, and especially liked this song: Shangri-La. Which, as much as any other place, is where he is now. Happy Birthday, Edo.

 

Blogging loses its flavor

Like chewing gum left on the bedpost overnight, blogging just isn’t the same in the morning, especially if the night has lasted damn near ten years! I suppose this is also true about most things you get used to, which could be a good argument to avoid getting used to things that are actually important, like, say, your marriage. Although I cannot make much of a case that blogging is important in that way. But let’s blog again anyway. This one congealing a pot of thoughts on our time in Mexico City, and the leaving of same.

Landing at Mexico City International Airport. That is not a dirty video screen, that is the air.

I have lived in Mexico City for the past 20 months, and am scheduled to leave (for Rome — yippee!) in less than four months. I was more or less happy to come here (after 3 ½ years in Buenos Aires) mainly for the food and the air travel proximity to places I go in the States from time to time. Proximity remains quite nice. Food? How could this happen? I am finished with Mexican food (although not quite yet the beer and tequila), and I hope to never see or have to eat another taco of any kind again. Ditto guacamole. I can’t even look at guacamole, much less eat it. Oh, and double ditto for Nopale cactus. The only way one should ingest a cactus is in liquid form (with or without a dead worm).

Huevos divorciados — divorced eggs. I used to like this, but now I can barely look at it.

The air is filthy most of the time, and with lungs working overtime trying to get an oxygen dose at 8K+ feet altitude, being able to taste and feel the air going down the throat is not pleasant. That’s in DF, of course. It might not be so bad in small places or coastal places. But then, it is in Mexico City I live. Yes, long-timers are quick to point out how much better the air is than 10, or 15, or 20 years ago. But it is what it is, not what it was.

Downtown Mexico City seen from the hill of the Basilica de Guadalupe.

 

I am more often asked about crime. Crime is not much of a problem in Mexico City, at least not in the areas where I live or wander. Fact is, crime rates are far higher in a dozen major US cities than in Mexico City. I am not effected by crime here, so it is not something to like or dislike. You are safer in Mexico City, by far, than in Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, Pittsburgh, and way safer than in crime-ridden Washington, DC.

You know, but that’s about all I really don’t like about Mexico City. The list of what I do like (some of which I am certainly going to miss) is much longer.

Weather. Mexico City has the most consistently fine weather of any place I’ve ever lived, and I’ve lived in lots and lots of places. Including San Diego, which claims to have the best weather in the continental US. It gets pretty damn cold in San Diego in the winter. It does not ever get anywhere near what I call cold here. It does not snow, there is no ice. From time to time I have worn a leather jacket. It also does not get hot. A really hot day here, mid-summer, might climb to the mid-to-upper 80s. I have not experienced it ever hitting 90 here.  Basically, it is more or  less an eternal spring. Weather here means the times when it rains most evenings and the times when it doesn’t rain at all. I am really going to miss that.

One of the best bookstore/cafes I have ever seen is here, not too far from where I live. It is called El Péndulo, and is one of a small chain of three in the city. Because I do most of my writing in cafes, finding this one dramatically enhanced my work day. I do not think El Péndulo is replaceable and I am going to miss is mightily.

El Péndulo outside (the one in Polanco)

 

El Péndulo inside, view from the table where I usually sit.

Having this cafe has made Mexico City good for my writing. I started a novel here — it is called “Erasing Rose” — which I hope to finish the first draft of before we leave in a few months, that portends to be pretty damn good. I am an environmentally-affected writer, and what surrounds me when I work can often determine whether I can work at all. I almost never work at home, regardless of how fine the office space, and the one I have here is pretty nice. I can do non-creative work at home, like editing or rearranging things, or playing with fonts, things like that, but I almost never create from fresh at home. Most of that work is, and always has been, done in cafes.

Well, that’s enough. It’s lunch time … oh, that reminds me of something else I don’t like about Mexico — lunch time. Most restaurants here either do not open until 1:30 (and will be empty for at least an hour after that), or if they are open, serve breakfast until 1:30 before switching to lunch. I wake up early, usually around six o’clock, and eat breakfast then. By noon, I’m hungry. Here I have almost no choice but to have a second breakfast or wait until after 1:30 to get lunch, by which time I feel at the door of death by starvation. The few places where I can get lunch — especially at the brand new deli (called Deli & Vine) just up the street, which has lunch from Noon on — are where I eat 90% of the time. Not to mention being able to get a Ruben or a Pastrami on Rye, or brisket, instead of another fucking fish taco.

 

Mayan residue

A small section of Tulum

While being  beach people along what is dumbly referred to as “The Mayan Riviera,” (see previous post), we spent one day visiting two ancient Mayan sites: Tulum and Coba. While not as famous as Chichen Itza, that works in their favor — fewer tourists (although not much fewer), and more direct accessibility. We booked a mini-tour out of Puerto Morelos, a van carrying 12 passengers, and drove south through a string of Las Vegas resorts (Mexican version), then along narrower roads where the ubiquitous vendors waited to pounce, and then a short walk into the city ruins. Tulum is a little more developed and a little more intact than Coba, which made Coba the more interesting.

The road winding through the ancient city of Coba. The distances are long, but a fleet of bicycle “taxis” wait near the entrance if you prefer not to spend all your time on foot. This is one section of the “Mayan Road,” which ran about 100 km west to near Chichen Itza.

Following is a series of photographs taken from Tulum and Coba, mid-January, 2014. Any photo can be enlarged by clicking on it.

 

Bicycle taxi in Coba

Football pitch

You can also walk or run the road through Coba. You can … I like the bike.

You can climb to the top of one of the Coba pyramids. This one is said to be the highest Mayan pyramid in the Yucatan.

Getting down is way spookier than climbing up.

 

Queen of the Mayan world. Some 50,000 people lived in Coba during its prime: 600 to 900 CE.

 

Coba ruin. Coba was abandoned in the mid-16th century, when the Spaniards conquered the peninsula. 

Football goal, don’t know if they really used human heads for the ball.

The rock is sandstone, which doesn’t weather all that well. This roof keeps rain of a carving.

 

Tulum’s claim to fame is a spectacular setting on the coast. Its prime came  between 1200 & 1500 CE, so it is newer than Coba. Tulum means wall in Mayan.

 

Tulum and the Caribbean. The beach below the cliff is popular for swimming and snorkeling.

The modern Mayan

 

Along the coastal trail below the Tulum cliffs.

Tulum palace

 

Tulum house

 

Entrance

 

House with a view

 

Popular with tourists. If you go, try to get there well before 11 a.m., because that’s when the fleets of tour buses arrive.

 

 

 

So we went to the sea

The view from the veranda of the condo we rented. The dock belongs to the UNAM fisheries research station that was next door.

It’s not that life is all that hard (for us) in Mexico City, but some of its consistencies do become tiring. So we took eight days in January and went to the Caribbean coast of the Yucatan Peninsula, to Puerto Morelos specifically. I made the odd discovery that I don’t always need a café for creative stimulation; when I was not simply staring at the view above, I found that my brain filled with ideas, and I came up with a grand solution to the problem in my current work, called “Erasing Rose,” that allowed me to finally move ahead from where I was stalled for a long time. Maybe relaxing is a good idea, although it is not one of my habits.

Puerto Morelos is a very small fishing village (with some tourists — most of whom seemed to be Mexicans from the area), on the coast a ways south of Cancun and a ways north of Playa del Carmen, both of which are far from being fishing villages these days and are packed to overflowing with tourists; maybe only tourists. We rented a nice condo — four levels with an apartment on each level, and we were on the bottom so could walk right out the door and onto that pure white flour-like sand. (If you’re interested in how to find such a beach condo in Puerto Morelos, we found this one on a website called Vrbo.)

This is the condo seen from the water’s edge; we were on the bottom.

We chose it partly because it was not in the village, and also the price was right (half or more of a hotel room, and we had three bedrooms and two baths). It was two kilometers north of the village center. We did not rent a car, so to get to the village with its restaurants and food shopping opportunities, we walked the beach. It took about 20-25 minutes, and the soft sand was fine exercise, although using new muscles required a masssage. Being away from the village and the big resorts — one of them for swinging nudists, and that was quite a show during our walks — it was quiet. The only sound we ever heard at night was the distant crashing of the surf a hundred meters or so off the shoreline, where it broke on the reef, the same reef so popular with divers in Belize to the south.

The white line at the horizon is the reef. Waves at the shoreline were more like water lapping at the edge of a lake. Snorkeling trips to the reef were a popular activity.

Like this all the way from the veranda to the shoreline.

Following are a few more photos from the holiday.

A beached whale trapped in the sand in front of the nudie sex resort, which I’ve forgotten the name of. A sign on the lifeguard tower warned against “sexual intercourse” on the beach there.

Sunburned buns … ouch!

Skin tone to die for, as they say.

On the walk along the beach into Puerto Morelos, ahead. The day we arrived, just after a storm. That’s me in the cool hat.

The only “supermarket” in town, but it covered the necessities for a holiday, including a decent selection of wine.

 

Harp? On the beach? At least it wasn’t more mariachis.

 

Wasting away again in you know where.

It has long been my notion that all living species — fish, fowl, and animal — are usually more humane than humans. Here, an albatross maintains guard over a sick or injured friend or mate, and you better not get too close.

Sunrise, the last morning, seen from our veranda.

And here’s an interesting titbit to close with. We took Interjet back to Mexico City from the Cancun airport — and Interjet is now our favorite Mexican airline — and one of the new features of this aircraft was outside video, showing the view from the cockpit. So we got to see what takeoff looked like from the pilot’s POV (it’s way fast), and then the approach into Mexico City. Here is what it looks like on final approach into Mexico City, from the pilot’s POV.

The final approach into the Mexico City International Airport. That’s smog, not a dirty video screen.

During this trip, we also visited to ancient Mayan sites: Cobu and Tulum. I’ll put up a few photos of that in a future post. Hope you enjoyed the show.

A holiday at home

Home. Heimat. Domov. Hogar. Maison. Hem. Huis. Where is your home? A difficult, if not impossible, question for perpetual vagabonds. I usually say simply that it’s where my stuff is. So right now my hogar is in Mexico City. Before that, my hogar was Buenos Aires. Before that, my home was Georgetown. Before that, my heimat was Berlin. Before that, my huis was South Africa. Before that, my domov was Slovakia.

I was born and grew through the childhood years in the small southern Arkansas town of Magnolia, and left there never to return at the age of seventeen. After that, I lived all over the place for short periods of time. The longest any of these places could be called home was eight years in Coronado, California. Second place on the longevity scale are the seven years in Slovakia. Then comes about four and a half years in Berlin. Then almost four years in Buenos Aires. Possibly the next casa will be in Rome.

With a vagabond history like that, I suppose one ought to be able to pick a favorite and claim that piece of earth as home. So, I choose Bratislava, Slovakia.

I have no rational explanation for this. In the same way friends can look askance at one’s choice of a lover or a mate and whisper, “What does he see in her?” “He could have done so much better, look at the choices he had.” But you’re in love, and has anyone, from the poets to the philosophers, ever explained love? The emotion of love is as close as it gets to making any sense of the human need to create gods — reason falls mute in the face of feeling. Passion always outweighs reason; passion has won every battle it has ever had with reason, and always will. A passionate life may lead one into tragedy, but it is all that makes life vital. Who would want to live without it in his life?

For sixteen days this month, my wife and i returned to Bratislava to visit friends and, importantly, to take a European break after some six years living in Latin America. (It took two days before I got over the fear of drinking water from the tap and the joy of not rinsing fruits and vegetables in a mild Clorox solution. What a simple thrill to rinse my mouth from the tap after brushing my teeth.)

I was a university professor during our years in Slovakia, and during those seven years had probably a thousand students pass through my classrooms. Over the years since, I have become personally close to some of them. One of the best parts of this trip was seeing how they looked in their 30s instead of late teens, what professions they entered, who they married, who they divorced, children or not. I met most of them where we used to meet when I was their teacher — the pub.

We stayed in the home of our oldest friends — not only oldest Slovak friends, but oldest friends period. They have and are having a tragic year, and we wanted to make our love and our presence known in this time. That is the fundamental reason we chose Slovakia for this annual holiday. Sometimes what you need to do is just be there.

So much for the preamble. The rambling preamble, at that. Here are some of the pictures.

With Betty Masek, one of my smartest students, who got married, had babies, living a long time in the States, then returned to live in a house in a small town.

The anachronistic pub where I spent most days — very fast free WiFi, not to mention a luscious variety of whiskies — and where I met the few ex-students I could find.

Tomas Beno, who was one of the most creative students I ever taught, with his girlfriend, Tatiana … okay, okay, yes I know, she’s hot!

Along with Beno and his girlfriend, Tatiana, I’m with the smartest student I ever taught: Diana Urickova, who seems to be abandoning the business world for a life as a sailboat skipper off the Dalmatian Coast.

Mirka Nacinova, who was my most exciting and at the same time fragile student; now the mother of two, living in Prague, a photographer and screenwriter.

In the old town, where people have walked these cobbled lanes for nearly a thousand years. There used to be a dingy but interesting bar downstairs from the wall on the right, but it’s gone. At least they didn’t put another McDonalds there.

The main promenade leading from the coronation church to the National Theater, enjoying one of the most spectacular autumn days one can imagine, or hope for. The buildings on the right side house a number of embassies: German, Czech, and at the end, American.

By the window in the Julius Meinl Kaffee, where I went when it was coffee I needed more than whisky, watching a couple of girls trying to pick up a pig.

Besides watching the utterly silly parade of marching tourists passing by, this was another good reason for hanging out at the Julius Meinl Kaffee.

We did not stay in the city, but in a small village at the western edge, bumped up against the borders with Austria and Hungary. On my daily journey into the old town, on the good old #91 bus, this is the way I walked from the house to the highway to get the bus. It was a deliciously foggy autumn morning when I took this picture.

Sometimes I got off the bus one stop before the Novy Most (new bridge) and walked across the Danube into the old town. The oldest part of the city is to the left, just out of this picture. The Danube is rarely blue, by the way. Turgid and brown would have made a better title for Strauss.

One day, walking to the bridge, I noticed this little display where local junkies shoot up. Most interesting to me was the array of homemade needle injectors.

A study in contrast. In the main square of Bratislava.

Riding the good old number 91, heading from the village to the stop at Novy Most, which abuts old town. I think I see where I might have picked up the case of flu I came home with.

“I write because nobody listen.” The writer’s anthem. Although these days, what do you do when nobody reads?

This made me happy, being the symbolicky stary otec (symbolic grandfather) to this little girl, who lost both her grandfathers this year. Mia gave me the most smiles this holiday.

With my darling Paula, and reading “Year Zero: 1945″ which appealed to my curiosity, since I was born that year, and wondered if my life began at year zero.

If we did not suffer, how would we know joy? Dumb ass question. Suffering has no value. I lost my old friend Edo this year, Paula’s husband. I wrote about him in a previous blog post. I finally had a chance to share with him a glass of fine Mexican tequila, and toast our quarter-century of wonderful memories. RIP my old friend.

My girl. With Michael’s Gate in the background.

My girl again. Crossing the Danube on the new bridge, with castle hill in the background. Maria Teresa used to ride her horse up and down the stairs in that castle. She was crowned Empress of the Austro-Hungarian empire in St. Martin’s Cathedral, at the foot of this ugly as shit bridge.

Waiting at the Vienna airport for the sad and long flight back to Mexico.

Dovidenia, Paula. Stay happy and we’ll see you soon.