boomboxes

today i took the metro to coyoacan, which is the former suburb where diego and frida lived during their most tumultuous years (i.e. harboring leon trotsky, etc). it is by far my favorite part of the city...at the center, two adjoining plazas - gorgeous plazas crawling with pigeons and balloons, chicharon stands, teenagers on benches absolutely going at it-tounges everywhere, and a towering cathedral dome (though i always find the little cathedral gardens off to the side or rear, rather than the glamorous front facade much more appealing). in one of the four chapels i adored a glass-encased statue of the virgin. the thing was, though, that the chapel was pitch dark, i even missed a step and nearly fell on my ass, and her glass box was raised to nearly ten feet and lit up like a street sign or a brothel window. she was beautiful, less elaborate than most apparitions i´ve seen, but completely lifelike and loveable. we had our moment, but were interupted by a veiled viejita gathering holy water in an extra large plastic water bottle...
off the plaza i found a photo shop advertising black and white passport photos for 40 pesos, so i had my picture taken in a tiny, dingy upstairs studio where the owner encouraged me to fix myself up at a miniature vanity he´d set up there, which was like primping myself in some 19th century dollhouse, complete with rusty silver hairbrushes and old fashioned hairpins. he tried to get me to crack a smile, but having just come from an entire museum filled with photographs of frida kahlo, i just had to pout.
after i shelled out the meager 40 pesos for what is, in my opinion, one of the most bizarre photos of myself i´ve ever seen, i wandered into the market, had a fried quesadilla with cotija cheese and huitlacoche (it´s a black fungus that grows on corn, and has a musty, mushroomlike flavor), i went back for another because i realized i hadn´t tasted the mole negro...and i made a very short list of some of the items i´d seen, including: mangoes, papaya, pumpkins and numerous other calabasas, gummy balls the size of my fist, chickens so dead they looked like rubber, dulce skulls with inscribed names, salted peanuts, spicy peanuts, old refrigerators (we´re talking 1950s), red glass jars, blue glass jars, green glass jars, apples, platanos, tortillas, and heart-shaped mirrors.
...in the hostel there is a mexican man and a german woman, who are quite a bit in love with each other.
he´s recently married to a woman from berlin and waiting here for his visa to clear amidst various problems, and she, the german woman in the hostel, is a recent graduate from law school - german immigration law, that is. went out for drinks with them...uncomfortable at moments, i´d say.
what else?
1. i have bed bugs
2. casa de frida blue is the most magnificent blue in the world. like zanzibar at dawn, like the fur on a plumseed, like the turquoise jewels embeded in an aztec woman´s teeth.
3. american tourists suck. quote of the day, in reference to the old lady beggars, "these people are very, very poor, honey. you should give them some mexican dollars".
4. my feet look like my mommy´s in her shoes.
5. note to americans: carry your boombox INSIDE your backpack, blast it suddenly in the subway car, make the tourists jumpier than they already are.

love from d.f.
lizzie