i caught a local bus up 65th to 58th, directionality is governed here by odd vs even. 58th is just one block from the center of the meridian universe, the main zocalo. first bus i’ve taken, but decided to because i was running late, and because it was pretty hot, and because i was carrying a backpack heavy enough to make me sweat enough to be unbearable upon arrival at L’s place… 🙂
anyway, soon after arriving in decent enough aromatic shape, we caught a first class air conditioned bus to Progresso, passing the 30 minute interval looking at photos of her children, grandchildren with all the comentaria of an Untypical abuela…. [grandmother]… probably as with any lacanian, the analysis never ceases… which might be unbearable, but not with L. it’s narratively always compelling and full of deeply felt observations and humor. it’s making me believe that lacan was made for latin american, and no where else, because only here is the psyche mature and robust enough to test his overly analytic methods, and put to a real test…
after arriving at the progresso bus station, we caught a small van-taxi to the house of her UNAM biologists friends, put our backpacks down in our respective rooms shown to us by the young yucatecan caretaker waiting for us. after which, we immediately almost ran directly to the shore of the gulf of mexico! where we kicked off our shoes and dug our bare feet into the white sand and breathed and breathed in the warm salt air driven by a not unseasonably unsizable breeze. so we sat in the sand amongst the seaweed debris and breathed, and did little else for awhile, not much at all, no not much else, for awhile.
after that there was a fabulously boring interval of several hours staring into the minimalist seascape while we settled in and, after that, strode with our new large, lung sea air filled steps back to the center of Progresso to get some lunch, ostensibly, but, really, only after the salt ocean air, only because we couldn’t stay still.
we did after a getting lost in the grid for a few long blocks find L’s fav ceviche restaurant, Sol y Mare, and partook and indeed, it was inexpressibly fined tuned to the finest of palettes.
and then well… and then well… a long walk back along the gentle waves breaking regularly against the very, very slowly eroding northern caribbean along a narrow strip of earth that forms the edge of the yucatan peninsular as it sits in creamy emerald, blue-white seas, throwing itself languidly with bleached crustacean shells against its millennially abrasive shores, and, in the constant, unbreakable sonic rhythms of waves replenishing every constancy upon which any chance depends.
right…
my point being that – in the midst of it all, L remarkably solved, in person, a tense situation between a ‘local german painter of 40’ years here, and, the 16 year old son of his single mother next door, lover neighbor who had begun to steel from him when he was in the shower…
ralf and i got to talk while L and the mother of the thief were working through things. was a period of moments that were very interesting in too many ways to encapsulate easily. L discovered for the first time that the mother had been ralf’s lover for many years, had supported her financially, but had recently refused to have sex with him because he refused to marry her… the upshot was that they decided to place the thief in a program in merida for ‘wayward’ boys for 3 months.
we got on, ralf and me. after a while, as he began to remember his english, it came back full throttle, which was a relief for me as his german-spanish mix was at times entirely opaque to me…
turns out he fled east germany, dessau, 50 years ago… spent time in NYC, then by chance operations ended up in progresso…well, actually further south in a small village called chixulub.
he and i saw eye to pen, or something like that. 🙂 between him and me and L, we had a bar hold none highly sophisticated conversation about what matters…
so, convergences with different histories and temporalities and raison d’être seem to constitute something of a SEAM, here.
and the next day, we went for dinner at ralf’s house in chixulub; we brought the two fish L had cooked earlier that we purchased from julio at the emerald, blue-white sea. it was an amazing struggle to watch him and his 14 year old helper drag a huge net from far from shore – it took more than two hours… and all to capture 4 sellable fish, which they there and then gutted and scaled and strung on yellow chord for us for a mere 5 USD. ralf served us fabulous german bread from a german bakery in merida that i will become a regular customer.
ralf has a fabulous house and studio in chixulub on a very large plot of land. the plot in front is so large and so tree-filled that the house is invisible from the street; and the plot behind the house is so large and tree-filled that the studio is invisible from the house. he’s definitely an obsessive intellectual, something of a hermit, absolutely devoted to his painting no matter whether he shows or sells his work, and he does to both to some degree; and to his vast library, from which all evening he rifled through to read us passages from his favorite cultural historians and philosophers. he has a library i will attempt to borrow from… the interiors of both house and studio wonderfully reflect the man – well ordered yet not fastidious, and somehow organically messy with a kind of contained intentionality, but warm and humorous and fully lived in, with nothing of the cold, hotel-like furniture and arrangement i’ve seen in other houses here. he served us a very good chilean cabernet and later, a fabulous, frozen tequila as we watch a football match – mexico vs bosnia-herzogovina. as will everything he does, he had a scholarly knowledge of the teams and kept up an informative and often hilarious commentary about the players and the play. as i’m learning, L soon faded as she does after 9pm so we left at half-time and caught the bus/van back to the main bus terminal in progressive, and walked in the balmy night air about a mile and half to the biologists’ house. the driver was apparently hilarious, keeping up a dialogue that had L in stitches the entire way, part of which apparently, was conducted in mayan. barely a sentence goes by without L cracking some kind of joke. and she has a very subversive, wicked sense of humor! the mayan driver was no doubt her equal… and though i understood very, very little, i too was in stitches simply by contagion.
we rose at 5 to see the blood blue supermoon which wasn’t at its peak, but it made L incredibly happy to see it. and now, thanks to her stories, the moon is for me a scifi camera! we went back to sleep, then, she cooked me breakfast, scrambled eggs with lots of tomato and tortillas, then walked to the bus station and returned to merida.
when i got back to the house, los dos gatos were waiting for me, crying to be fed after my two day absence. one can’t find cat sitters here… they are beginning to figure out that they have a bowl each… otherwise, it’s two heads per bowl…
🙂
xoxo
a notebook of epic reflections by mark bartlett 