out with creativity! in with glaring cliches!

here it comes: it´s like a dream, really.

day one in oaxaca:

early morning, a line of teenagers in matching powder blue blouses and black slacks, laughter. light behind the rainclouds, just waiting for day, the mexican sky: so blue and grey at once. the trashman whistles something somber as he sweeps the zocalo, long, whispy green-grass broom, a cowboy hat.


on smell
as per usual i found myself spending too much time in a cathedral. a prayer to st. jude for protection and one to el virgin de guadalupe for everything else. then lilies.

there seemed to be a temporary altar erected, perhaps for the dia de los muertos festivities, in any case the permanent grand statue is shrouded in a maroon plastic tarp and from the silhouette it appears to be an angel with wings outstretched. in front of this ghost-angel is an uncommon crucifixion scene with a way-too-tiny mary at jesus´feet - not holding them, but staring straight ahead, hands in prayer, at the seated devout.

and the lilies.

the altar floats on an immense cloud of lily bundles, which extend in smaller bunches throughout the cathedral halls, spilling into the chapels...pink yellow white, the color of exposed flesh, human tissue, bruises, snow, water, butterflies. the smell is overwhelming - it presses upward from the creaky wood floor, tugs the body, enters the nose the eyes the mouth, exits a perfumed tear.

each breath in is like the crescendo of a distant ringing bell. it´s like sniffing the bottom of a baby´s foot, like clean stone, like mamaluca.

(mamaluca: back in coyoacan sam and i met a young mexican couple named bardo and gloria, who were quick to take a walk, pass the pipe, and let me make eyes with their adorable baby. the baby was dressed in a little yellow footsie-pajama suit which gloria informed us was referred to in spanish as a "mamaluca" - and since sam and i decided that the english language needed a new, evolved word for love, we decided on mamaluca. "i mamaluca this" and "i mamaluca that" and "i mamaluca you" etc).

on smell, memory, mamaluca of life
outside the cathedral i could still smell the lilies on myself. and something else. wearing clothes recently laundered in mexico city i couldn´t help but be reminded, vividly, each time i caught a whiff of myself, of being thirteen years old, wearing washed-by-your-divorced-dad-clothing, which smelled of the cheapest perfumy laundry detergent.

what was i doing? ah, practicing the art of cliche:
remembering home. being mostly here in oaxaca, but a little bit there, too.