Neat blue lines of agave in the Mexican highlands. The untouched rows of plants under a cool blue sky. Growing slow. And then a field that appears as if torn apart.
A jimador holds a coa. The instrument, hoe like, has a handle as tall as the man who takes it in his grip. The man´s white shirt, open at his chest, sticks, wet, to his back, even under the cool, high sky, as he hacks violently, time and time again, at the ripe agave. The outer leaves of the plant lie scattered around his work - torn and fractured like dismembered limbs. The man´s actions appear desperate. Around him, where the hearts of other plants have been torn from the ground, craters appear, as if small shells have exploded, rupturing the soil. Again he strikes the plant. Flicks head. Flies sweat. Thrusts again. And a new limb tears away. And the harvesting looks like a murder.
The next day I leave Tequila. The road winds once again through the fields of blue succulents, quietly awaiting the jimadors and death. Here, in the mountains, the warm, springlike air feels clean and pleasant to breathe. Butterflies flit, light, in the breeze. Bright white wings against light blue sky, passing of deep green fields, and beneath, along the road, lizards dart and scatter, in sun-fuelled panic. Grasshoppers flick themselves from peril to the long green grass, and sometimes flick themselves from peril to greater peril, further into the road. Occasionally the shiny, greenbluesilver gold-metallic shimmer of a beetle´s back catches the sun, as it attempts a journey, surely doomed to fail. The bodies of grasshoppers; dried, or half-dried-half-gooey-wet, internal organs spilled. And then another huge white butterfly dips in front of my eyes, dancing as if thepetals of a flower have been brought to life.
Perhaps I should pay less attention to these kinds of things, because the next time I look up a truck is reversing towards me, and my face has taken on a strange tingling, numb sensation, and my front wheel is jammed between the vehicle and the ground. Four men get out of the truck and ask if I´m okay.
"Si, si - muy bien," The answer should be sarcastic, but I feel like I´m smiling as I say it, and though I feel like I´ve just been punched in the face with something very big and metal, all I can feel is an overwhelming sense of relief that I´m not dead, and a kind of shock that I managed to head butt a rusty metal truck, without aquiring any injury.
The four men lift the back of the truck and free my bike and help me to the side of the road. That´s when I start shaking, I think.
One of the men says something in Spanish with the word hospital in it.
"No, no. Siento muy bien. No necesito." I say, trying in terrible Spanish to convince them that I feel fine.
"Necesitas." the man says kindly, and slowly, realising I can´t really speak Spanish at all, pointing to my chin.
"Es poquito," I say. "Solo poquito." I touch my chin to further illustrate that it´s really nothing at all, but when my hand comes away covered in blood, I agree that perhaps it is a good idea that we go to a hospital.
They put my bike on the back of their truck. I sit in the front with the man who has by this time introduced himself as José. He offers me elotes, corn on the cob, wrapped still in their leaves and steaming hot. I say no and thank him. I do not know how to say that I have never felt less like eating in all the time I can remember.
José seems pleased with my name, "Samwell!" It is a biblical name. "Cristiano?" he asks, and seeing the icons hanging from the rearview mirror, realising his obvious interest in the subject, and not feeling up to discussing agnosticism, I agree, "Si, Cristiano."
"Católico?"
"No."
We arrive after only a couple of minutes. It was the perfect place apparently to cycle into a truck; right on the edge of a town. I cover my chin with my hands as we enter the waiting room, José explains what happened, and they usher me in to a private room. The doctor or nurse, I´m not sure which, asks me lots of questions I can´t understand, and I realise that it must be hard for them to work out whether I´m showing signs of concussion, or if I just appear stupid and confused because I can hardly understand a word they are saying.
Every so often I recognise a word. ´Cabeza´ - head. "Mi cabeza es bien" I say. ´Dolor´ - pain. "No tengo dolor." "Puedo ver" I can see. "No otro dolor" I say, guessing then at the things they might ask me. This would have been much more difficult a month ago, I think.
The doctor or nurse administers a local anaesthetic to my already numb chin, and holds alcohol under my nose, as I begin to feel myself faint, and my grammatically incorrect chatter attempting to convince them that I´m fine, comes to an abrupt halt. In the same room, standing in the corner, a fat girl of about 20 watches as my chin is stitched back together. When I entered I took her for an assistant perhaps, but, as my face is being mended, it seems that her only role is to make shocked, slightly disgusted faces, occasional sounds portraying queasiness, and to give a general impression that she is finding the whole scene far too much to take.
In less than half an hour I am ready to leave. José pays for the treatment. And a ridiculous and quite unnecessary bandage is wrapped around my head. The effect is apparently so comic that José, the nurse-doctor, and the girl who did nothing useful at all decide that we must all have a photo together. On taking the camera out of my bag, however, I discover that it has been crushed by the accident and no longer works. Still, a broken camera and a cut chin is certainly not the worst I could have come away with, and I happily say goodbyes and thankyous to everyone who helped, and even to some people who didn´t help at all, as I leave toward Guadalajara.
Monday 25 October 2010
Tuesday 19 October 2010
Wednesday 13 October 2010
The tropics again, and the Mexican mainland
The next day I cycled in the tropics for the first time since Indonesia and the heavy wet sensation of the air, and the thick, dark green of the luxuriant undergrowth, the crashing brown waters of streams, and the languid movements of people carrying woven baskets of various foodstuffs, instantly made me think of Asia.
When I arrived in the small town of Acaponeta however, all thoughts of Asia disappeared. A quiet, old church caught the last light of the sun and glowed yellow in front of a deep blue sky. Children ran around joyously tormenting the pigeons, clapping explosions of wings into the air, and running among the small pecking heads as soon as the scattered breadcrumbs had enticed them. Delighted in their game, and apparently never tiring of its novelty, the ecstatic cries of four year olds, that have discovered new abilities, allowing them to control nature, and make it dance in terror, filled the golden plaza, as the evening shadows grew.
Old men sat on benches under trees. Some held cigarettes, and let curling waves of smoke tiredly lick the air, and others sat with arms folded tightly against vice. People sat on high stalls at taco stands, pouring salsa, and sprinkling coriander over the small round disks of tortillas, drinking sweet rice milk or Coca-Cola with straws.
An old lady shuffled slowly across the expanse of stone, punctuated here and there with a fountain, or a raised flower bed. She leaned on a metal frame, and her hands shook with the effort of each small step. I watched her slow journey across the plaza, and imagined her as the children scattering the pigeons in the sky, as the teenagers eating ice cream, and as the parents standing over the pigeon tormentors. I thought of all the sunsets that had fallen on her paths across this plaza, and how each one for the last several years had shone its light on a back slightly more bent, on movements more difficult, more awkward and slow. I watched and it was easy to conjure her life around this plaza, with all of my presumptions and generalizations staining the picture with untruth, but as I watched the children I couldn´t imagine them as her. Nor could I think of my own movements becoming so laborious and tired. As I watched her wearisome efforts shuffle out of sight, everything about her seemed as far away as death.
The last clouds turned to magical shades of purple, light greens and yellow in the sky,and laced their intricate patterns across the blue expanse. Electric lights shone gently from lampposts, the old men still sat, smoking and not smoking, and the parents began their efforts to tear their children from the birds. I too, grew tired of watching, and walked away along cobbled, peaceful streets.
The next day, too, I found myself sitting in the centre of another small town, the scene an exact replica almost of this one. And each day more the same tranquil predictability saw the last light of the sun, as I climbed out of the sticky coastal regions towards the Mexican Central Highlands.
When I arrived in the small town of Acaponeta however, all thoughts of Asia disappeared. A quiet, old church caught the last light of the sun and glowed yellow in front of a deep blue sky. Children ran around joyously tormenting the pigeons, clapping explosions of wings into the air, and running among the small pecking heads as soon as the scattered breadcrumbs had enticed them. Delighted in their game, and apparently never tiring of its novelty, the ecstatic cries of four year olds, that have discovered new abilities, allowing them to control nature, and make it dance in terror, filled the golden plaza, as the evening shadows grew.
Old men sat on benches under trees. Some held cigarettes, and let curling waves of smoke tiredly lick the air, and others sat with arms folded tightly against vice. People sat on high stalls at taco stands, pouring salsa, and sprinkling coriander over the small round disks of tortillas, drinking sweet rice milk or Coca-Cola with straws.
An old lady shuffled slowly across the expanse of stone, punctuated here and there with a fountain, or a raised flower bed. She leaned on a metal frame, and her hands shook with the effort of each small step. I watched her slow journey across the plaza, and imagined her as the children scattering the pigeons in the sky, as the teenagers eating ice cream, and as the parents standing over the pigeon tormentors. I thought of all the sunsets that had fallen on her paths across this plaza, and how each one for the last several years had shone its light on a back slightly more bent, on movements more difficult, more awkward and slow. I watched and it was easy to conjure her life around this plaza, with all of my presumptions and generalizations staining the picture with untruth, but as I watched the children I couldn´t imagine them as her. Nor could I think of my own movements becoming so laborious and tired. As I watched her wearisome efforts shuffle out of sight, everything about her seemed as far away as death.
The last clouds turned to magical shades of purple, light greens and yellow in the sky,and laced their intricate patterns across the blue expanse. Electric lights shone gently from lampposts, the old men still sat, smoking and not smoking, and the parents began their efforts to tear their children from the birds. I too, grew tired of watching, and walked away along cobbled, peaceful streets.
The next day, too, I found myself sitting in the centre of another small town, the scene an exact replica almost of this one. And each day more the same tranquil predictability saw the last light of the sun, as I climbed out of the sticky coastal regions towards the Mexican Central Highlands.
From 10,000 ft
Mazatlan
There is a picture from Maztalan that still fills my mind, upon the desire for recollection, with all the vivid wonder that it held as it first appeared before my eyes. It is a picture of a man. He is sitting on a bench in the main plaza to the south of the cathedral. His eyes water with sparkling, drunken tears, that never gather in sufficient quantity to fall slowly down his cheeks, but form a shimmering glaze in front of deep brown eyes and collect in tiny vertical pools where his eyelids meet. If he blinks I feel sure that the tears, for lack of alternative escape, will fall steadily down his face, and he will appear to passers by as though silently, happily crying. But I never see him blink. He has a thick, black beard; his skin is rough beyond his years and appears dry and old and worn out by the sun. Only, when he smiles, he reveals perfect white teeth in the darkness of the drunken night. His clothes are torn, and the lines of his calloused hands are exaggerated with the ingrained dirt that clings to them. Yet in the darkened night, from this bench beneath a tree that repels the yellow glare of street lamps, his brilliant teeth and his drunk-kind eyes sparkle as he holds out a plastic bottle of mezcal.
I take the bottle, flip open the plastic lid with my thumb, and take a sip of the liquid, warmed by the tropical night. Its warmth runs down my throat and lightly burns. It bursts in dazzling flames, and ignites small shivers that run from my shoulders, and causes me to shake. The man´s hands move slowly toward the sky, back and forth, his palms up turned, as he indicates that I should drink more. A greater quantity of the warm golden liquid once again makes my body shudder and a smile spreads wide under the man`s thick black beard as I thank him and he takes the bottle back.
I take the bottle, flip open the plastic lid with my thumb, and take a sip of the liquid, warmed by the tropical night. Its warmth runs down my throat and lightly burns. It bursts in dazzling flames, and ignites small shivers that run from my shoulders, and causes me to shake. The man´s hands move slowly toward the sky, back and forth, his palms up turned, as he indicates that I should drink more. A greater quantity of the warm golden liquid once again makes my body shudder and a smile spreads wide under the man`s thick black beard as I thank him and he takes the bottle back.
Javier, looking down over Zacapu
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