Frida

La Casa Azul

The above sketch was drawn shortly after visiting La Casa Azul in Coyoacan, Mexico. La Casa Azul is the cobalt-blue house turned museum and/or gallery where Frida Kahlo spent her childhood, a melodramatic chunk of her life with Diego, and eventually passed away within its familiar walls.

The house is like a living organism; a personification of the artist herself in all its colourful, macabre glory. The room where she died is preserved with eerily precious relics from trunks and photos to polished shoes and metal back braces. Seemingly untouched by the decades. It is as though you can see the sagging imprint of her figure on the mattress; like if you place your hand on the thick woven quilt you’ll feel the cooling heat of a body that’s momentarily crept off for a midnight drink.

I suppose it’s all staged for the curiously voyeuristic tourists that shuffle behind red velvet ropes to glimpse the ‘normalcy’ of this unusual woman. I felt like a stalker, haunting the rooms of someone I’ve read so much about (her personal diary included) and yet don’t actually know. The slow, deliberate steps of an intruder mixed with hushed reverence for her things; her life. My mind churned with thoughts of what Kahlo might think of the spectacle her most intimate refuge had become. Was this somehow an invasion of privacy; a betrayal?

I imagine her nationalistic spirit would understand that this is part of the legacy she’s left to Mexico. She’s become a symbol in both her home country and abroad. She has slowly ascended to the iconographic heights of Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevera, Emiliano Zapata, or The Virgin of Guadalupe. The strength of her image can evoke everything from sexual liberation to socialism. She represents a powerful female icon who challenges social constructions of femininity, patriarchy, and resistance towards modernization.

Sadly, her anti-capitalist sentiments are in conflict with the commodification of her image in the tourist market. The fact is that her face can now be found on magnets, purses, necklaces, post-cards and t-shirts all across Mexico (and elsewhere I’m sure). I bought a change purse. Kahlo has been branded…and I got suckered right into it. I guess everyone wants their memento.

I can’t help but wonder if it truly is a tragic fate for revolutionary icons like Kahlo to end up with their face on coffee mugs or silk-screened onto sweatshirts? Yes, figures like Kahlo opposed Western consumer based culture, and brand-marketing a revolutionary figure is ultimately in conflict with their ideals. However, I would argue that as mass-produced commodities in popular culture these symbols at least offer an echo of what they originally stood for. They are at least representative of positive ideals.

Without such memorabilia when would youth culture come in contact with Ernesto’s silhouette or Frida’s famous unibrow? Would these figures just fade away into the abyss of historic oblivion if they weren’t to be capitalized on? Ultimately, I would rather see symbols associated with idealism, freedom and resistance live on (even if the means to do so is somewhat paradoxical). It shows me that passionate ideals might still be alive, that people care, that there is still a desire for change no matter how dull and dwindling.

I realize that Kahlo, Che, Zapata, etcetera were imperfect people; that their images are often manipulated and romanticized (as I’m sure I’ve done in this post). Nonetheless, I don’t believe there is anything wrong with placing hope and meaning in such symbols. They offer an alternative; they offer heroes that are different from those found in the often homogenous cultural landscape we find ourselves in….ahhh ramblings. That’s enough of that.

Kahlo…Magnetized

Familia en una Canasta

Oaxacan Dusk (almost as good as the cheese but not quite)

Calla Lily Lady

Memory is like a watered down Michelada…

It’s already May. Time passes faster than an ice cube liquefying inside a beach-side Michelada during mid-day heat. It also leaves a watery, diluted taste in your mouth. Time that is, and luke-warm Micheladas. It’s as though you can only vaguely remember how good it was but it’s already gone; the flavour of lime and chile dull and lingering on your already parched tongue. I sort of feel this way about the last two months. I know how great my experiences have been but already the memories are dissolving into the oblivion of a humid Mexican afternoon. It’s all I can do to remember the taste of it all, the flavour fades so fast.

The past two months, I’ve traveled with friends from Guanajuato to Oaxaca eating crispy stuffed tlayudas, roasted chapulines (grasshoppers), and thick moles as black as an oil spill on your plate. I witnessed the eerily sombre Semana Santa procession in Oaxaca and surfed the beaches of Puerto Escondido. I’ve spent weekends in white-washed Taxco fumbling through silver markets and trekking through Las Grutas (caves) in the ether worldly glow of what appears to be a Baroque Cathedral turned inside out and upside down. It is quite literally as though wax was dripped into these caves and then sculpted by the hands of Gaudi or Dali until the stalactites resemble contorted lion heads, long lost lovers and of course, the blessed virgin Mary. I’ve lounged on the beaches of Zihuatenejo, paid my first bribe to the Mexican authorities, volunteered for Habitat for Humanity, and attended my first soccer game in the famous El Estadio Azteca in Mexico City (the last game before Mexico heads to the World Cup in South Africa).

I realize how privileged I am to be able to experience these things but as always I become lost in the experience itself, the contentment. I lack the foresight to try and capture the details of these experiences. When I am actually traveling (as in backpacking), I don’t have access to a computer. I scribble down lists, details, words, and memories on paper. I think that having seemingly unlimited ‘hostel’ time, without much technology, the routine of work and friends and normal life is very much conducive to why I write more on the road. I suppose that’s a fairly banal observation. It is just so frustrating to me that I can be surrounded by so many inspiring sights, feel so much creative energy and then not channel it towards anything; well aside from living it that is. The whole idea of this blog for me was to easily purge all those little details with ease and speed and relative consistency. So I guess my point is that I resolve to add more needless details, lists and tidbits, more sketches and randomness. I want to be able to savour this all in the years to come.

I know there is a balance somewhere in between. A place between work and travel, friends, and beer (haha) and that quiet creative space I crave but often disregard. I just need to find that space and make both deliberate and spontaneous time for it. I know that the potential is there and that the future me, (the me who 5 years from now will desperately want to remember how the steam rises from banana leafed tamales or how that first ice cold sip of a perfect condensation dripping Michelada tastes) will thank me for it.

Pavo Man

Sunday Market

So I just came home from an avocado-banana-newly pirated movie run at the Sunday market. It tickles my senses every time I enter the sticky heat of that crowded market…the smell of raw seafood, chicharron and freshly cut papaya, barrels of black beans, dried shrimp and the beet-red tentacles of pulpo (octopus) on ice. There’s something about the way light filters into the place…in warm subdued shades of pink and blue through the crinkled, tarp-ceilings that surround it. Everything enveloped by the hum of Spanish and the song of caged-birds chirping in the background. It sure beats fluorescent grocery store lights and shopping carts clipping your ankles.

Today there was a plaid/cowboy hat-clad man roaming the market with a turkey on a leash. It’s wrinkled-red jowl dangling like an immense clitoris from its beak. I barely flinched, it seemed so normal. Then I realized it wasn’t normal (for me) and I ruined any semblance of belonging to this scene by pulling my camera out and snapping a shot. I had impulsively decided to bring my camera with me and try to capture some of the more minute/mundane details that I failed to capture during my first month of tourist duty.

It does however seem a bit unnatural now. I mean, I am still technically a tourist in this city. The thing is I don’t feel like a regular tourist anymore and I don’t like the way my camera labels me as such. I suppose many would categorize me as an expat. Sure, I now know which taxi-bus to take or the best puesto (stand) for tamales/atole in the city but do I really belong? It doesn’t feel like it. I have only been living here for 6 months, so I wouldn’t even presume to lump myself within the expat community. I belong to neither.

All I know is that I want the best of both worlds. I want the limbo-state between an insider and an outsider. I want to feel some semblance of connection, to speak the language, to blend undetected amidst the local population. However, I still want to hold onto the fresh-tourist wonder that you feel the first time in a new city. I suppose this is why I decided to dust-off the camera, to look harder, to feel inspired by the ‘everyday’ of my new home. I want to hurriedly break-out the sketchbook or journal and really sink into the skin of this place. I want the familiar and the foreign, the mundane and the extraordinary. I want this place to ignite creative, conflictive thoughts and to provoke aesthetically beautiful images from my hands…but I also want to walk to the market and not feel compelled to snap photos. It’s a complete contradiction. Make me feel comfortable, feel home-like but in the same breath…just knock the air out of me; make me feel something, anything new, inspire me.

Arrugas

The sketch entitled arrugas (wrinkles) is inspired by a photo I saw on the wall of our Padrinos (Godfathers) house in Mexico City. He’s Mexican but lived in Guatemala for a good chunk of his life which is where he met my grandfather and made his way into the fabric of our family. Anyway, the photo was of a Guatemalan indigenous woman on the streets of Antigua. It was so tender and beautiful. I felt as though I was looking into my past and my future.

I saw my grandmother’s face in this mischievous, wrinkled smile, my mamita. I instantly felt a pang of nostalgia. I remembered watching her unwind the thick black bun that was always wound tight on the top of her head; the sweetness of her laugh, the crinkled skin on the top of her hands that looked like chinese paper. I remembered sometimes being afraid when I walked into the kitchen and saw my dad giving her an injection of insulin, her poor bruised skin. I remembered sometimes ignoring her as a child because I couldn’t really understand her and felt a wave of guilt.

I think this may have a lot to do with why I am so dead set on learning Spanish. I know it’s too late, she’s not here anymore. We’ll never have the conversation I imagine in my mind, when we can sit without any language barrier and she can tell me stories of her life, when I can hear the jokes she told without them being translated. We’ll never share that quiet afternoon in which I am redeemed of childish regrets and she tells me of her heartache and joy and leaves me with a sense of unspoken peace and strength. When I can tell her how much I truly loved and admired her.

I also saw my own face in that picture; or what I hope the lines and creases of my face will one day evoke. Grace, a joy for life, strength, humility, and a mischievious smirk (like you know the inside joke of the universe) and no one else understands. I hope to be that woman, or a woman like her. I suppose it’s an ideal I’ve constructed in my mind, like the imaginary conversation to be had with my mamita. I am far from the person I aspire to be but maybe one day, with enough wrinkles and time and experience I will know that I tried as hard as I could. I can only hope to have that mischevious smile, and feel like my life was everything it was supposed to be. I might even be lucky enough to have a quiet afternoon talking with my granddaughter about a life well lived; a fearless life, a life that would have made my mamita proud.