Onyx wind chimes shaped like birds hang outside my bedroom. Each time a breeze stirs them, their music reminds me of the first trip I took to Mexico. While there, I was hoping to discover a part of the country that photographs can’t capture—the spirit of the place. Lawrence Durrell claims that landscape communicates this aspect. He says, “All landscapes ask the same question in the same whisper, ‘I am watching you—are you watching yourself in me’?”
In North America, our tendency is to set the elderly apart in nursing homes and retirement residences, “safe” places to await their death. In the Mexican towns I visited, this was less so. The elderly seem to be more visible, as is death. Night and day in the town squares young and old promenade, or sit and talk. They watch the colorful peasant costumes on men and women alike, the areas buzzing with vitality, fountains at the center constantly flowing with water. One man looked centuries old, as if visiting from the grave. The intricate interweaving of wrinkles on his face and the grey tone to his skin seemed an emblem of Death.
This interweaving on his face reminded me of other interweavings I noticed in the culture: Indian, Spanish, European. One evening I spent a splendid evening with Mexican woman named Dolorous who had lived in the States for a couple of years. A mutual friend had given me her number. Dolorous was extremely gracious, taking me to the bus station to pick up my ticket to Morelia. She also was very helpful in getting me on the correct bus, etc. Making these arrangements can be complicated when one isn’t fluent in the language.
Later, I visited her parents’ home, a new, three-level house in the suburbs, designed by her architect brother. Her fourteen-year old daughter—vivacious, rosy cheeked, well mannered, and beautiful—had tea with us. I also met her 88 year-old father, a highly educated, aristocratic gentleman who spoke English and French fluently. Though he had gone blind in recent years, alert and lucid, he still worked on his languages.
Heavy dark antique chests and cabinets dwarfed the place. Decay permeated everything. Faded objects and bunches of dried flowers preserved under glass. Baroque opalescence mixed with simple Spanish structures. Old and new combined. Most impressive was death’s presence in that house and culture: death of old values and old ways. Death as an everyday occurrence. Death and not enough money a major theme not just in this house but in the country.
This was brought home in a visit I took to the “Mumios” in Guanajuato, Diego Rivera’s birthplace. The mumios is a museum of the dead, displaying bodies of indigents who were unable to afford graves, preserved by something in the soil in that area. Inside glass cases, men, women, and children are caught by death. Most have their mouths open as if screaming in terror. Not a pretty death mask. Many still had hair, pubic and otherwise.
Though I was nearly fainting from the assault of so many death images, the Mexican tourists seemed perfectly at home, snapping pictures and chattering in Spanish. Their ease caused me to tough it out through the rest of the tour.
How has this exposure to Mexico continued to resonate in me, all these years later? I’m not sure I’m any easier with death, though I believe I’m more open to differences and to discovering the spirit of a place.