Noise and Calm

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I think I need some calm, my mind is zipping and feeling stressed from the constant noise and activity and changes. Had not planned to stay today, but when I got up late did not feel like moving on either. Got a bit drunk for my first time in Mexico last night - was going for one beer at one of the places under the portales that are by the zocallo as was feeling stressed and tired, had a second, and they were 3 for 2 so had a third - slightly busier there last night, the mariachis and other musicians who stroll around the portales approaching tables and playing for money - good but felt loud last night, and the guys selling watches, nuts, shining shoes, and women selling cigars. A band out later in the centre of the square with older couples dancing. Bought a blouse from a indigenous woman - is too big. My mind buzzed yesterday and went from thoughtfulness to calm to agitation.

The zocallo is nice with trees and benches and historic buildings, but as always, the historic centre becomes the tourist centre - fixed up for visitors, see the church, the municipal building, the vendors and activities in the squares, have a drink, etc - same everywhere - part of the global tourist experience.

Here is also the beach zone - Boca del Rio - where I went for a while yesterday and will go again today. Took the public bus out there - many largers hotels and condos and small hotels, big box stores, chain restaurants, modern beach place though empty now (though I think it does fill up more on weekends, semana santa and summer) and thankfully most of the hotels are across the street from the beach, many smaller beaches with brown sand but narrow and cannot walk between the beaches, traffic with 6 lane roads (a change from the 2 land highway in Chiapas). Went to the last beach out - quiet, windy so some waves, street was back a ways so only heard the ocean which was claming, it has a special appeal and relaxing effect, a bit cloudy which was good as sun is strong, and I felt my body relax for the first time in a week or so. Got hungry though, and thought I would catch a bus back closer to town where I had seen a row of palapa roofed restos along another beach. Well I got on the wrong bus - here buses go zipping along with various destinations painted on the front window - and while this would have eventually got my back to the town centre after it passed a circle with Plaza la America (a major mall) it turned up a major road and i realized that it was going in the wrong direction and I got stressed - busy multi-lane streets. Finally I got off and turned around and got off at mall which was near another beach - a major traffic circle - did not know which way to turn - taxis yelling "taxi, taxi" I head into shiny mall with mexican and american chain stores - wierd being in mall - come out other side - see way to water. By now am stressed, sit on another narrow beach, relax a bit and find right bus. Go to zone with palapa roofed restos selling seafood - beach more crowded though still empty, guys - the hosts - standing outside every resto - eat here, eat here, approaching you trying to get you to come in, walking you in that direction, roping you in, shouting senorita, chica (might as well be tourista) I loose it - had been fet up night before on zocallo - can´t look at posted menu or walk by without being accosted - and here is a place where I have gotten more comments from men - and leave area without eating though I am starving. Finally on walk back to centre a woman is selling coconuts from the back of a truck - first drink the juice from a straw though a hole they cut on top - then you bring it back and they split it open and scoop out the meat into one half with chili and lime juice - calmed my hunger a bit. ended up back on side street where local workers eat - place I had eaten the day before.

Had woken up to horns blowing and beeping, sounds of a major traffic jam and gridlock - at times they drive with horns here, and traffic was insane, cars, buses backed up in all directions. Went to Gran Cafe de Parroquia for coffee - huge and known for it - mainly locals and mexican tourists - the buzz of the chatter - vendors walking throughout selling newspapers - wishing I read Spanish - middle class mexicans spending money - often think of Mexico as poor and the countryside really is - but is also a middle class (and upper but do not not really encounter them) that compares to North America - as a backpacker cannot afford thier stuff. Think it is normal in North America or Europe, but in our stereotypes we forget about it here, that many live a good life, are cultured, educated and have money to spend. Then I wanted to go to the fort , guide book said a bus ran there, but stood waiting for a bus, looking for the destination on the window, but did not see it so went to tourist office and found that you need to take a boat, so went down but was windy and few tourists so boat was not running.

Went to the Naval Museum instead (alot of Navy here, academy i think, a few ships, and many uniforms) which was interesting though I understood about 1/2 of it. Looking at history of Spanish exploration and "conquest" of Mexico, the notion of finding a new land, a new world that you had not known or even imagined had existed - really hit me. Yeah, I know we learn about it, the "discovery" of the new world in books and schools, but yesterday it just became real - imagine today or next year - finding a new land, life that we hadn´t thought about - or having people from foreign planets or ??? (or others who you don´t think of as people) come here and take over. The uncharted territory for all those years, true exploration of lands and seas unknown to you (had pondered this with the North and Yukon and West when was there) - and encounters with other groups for the first time. Now all is charted, on the map, has been done, part of one "experience" or another (or maybe not for before finding the new world most thought the world was known).

Still with beaches and historic towns and ruins and resorts and language schools (elsewhere outdoors, monuments, museaums) feel that there are many defined experiences - you go to a place a do specific things - and while you may feel that you are unique not taking a tour - or as a backpacker ¨"better" because you don´t go to Cancun (though you become part of the "scene" in Tulum, Isla Mujeres, San Cristobal" etc, and the paths - yes our experiences are unique but are generally paths that others have done before us. The smugness - though even I feel that at times - last night drinking on zocollo - 2 middle american guys with white running shoes, one with baseball cap, the other striped collared T - looking for an English menu, wanting a Bud, not a word of Spanish - the por favor and gracias - generally struggling with what to eat and probably in general, and I felt a bit smug - the wanting to pay with credit card (this place was associated with 4* hotel so could process it - most small and cheaper places (ie where I go) from restos to hotels take cash only. Still at the same time, you meet people on different paths, different trips and journeys.

Yesterday and today I thought of my role as observer - the role I have generally playing in my life - watching, studying, analzing people, situations, life - always kinda on the outside. Here is reinforced - can´t really communicate, and am an outsider by definition - not something personal as in Alice, but as in gringa. And while I think this is my role - a sociologist without a place - from my studies long ago, from my love of people watching even as a youth on travels, from my need to write and analyse, it is one that has also caused me pain - the wanting to join in, to not be on the sidelines, to be a part of the group - something that has never really fit. But maybe for once instead of fighting it, and wishing that it were not so, I should embrace it and work with it. At times at hostels when there is a "scene" I feel outside and often am, but I have also met others more like me - people doing their own think - yes getting together and talking or going out - but also kinda on the outside of the pack - and truthfully, it is these people I enjoy more. And maybe that is the purpose of this blog - to write down observations and hopefully share them with a few others.

Other thoughts of yesterday - at City museum - how much more history is here than in Canada - here the base for the 16th century inland explorations - and imagining what the city would have been like before cars - yes, my dislike of the automobile becoming more instense here. Of how Mexicans truly formed a new people - the mix of Spanish and indegenous that most Mexicans are in one way of another - much more so that in US or Canada, and how there are few visible ethnic minorities (except indegenous) though reading history of Veracruz how have been influxes of other groups but at least to the eye seem more blended in. And later with the walled cities - here once was (one bastion still stands), Campeche etc. to keep out pirates, (and think of other walled cities of past in Europe, Quebec city etc) and idea of new wall on US border - not only keep others out, but keep people in, like Berlin Wall of old, old USSR which was condemned as such. And in Fototecha (photography museum) was exhibit of photos of the Chinese cultural revolution and Maoist days, and made me think of intellectuals as a class and the city vs the country - horrors of it, but also ideals behind it - and my desire for more integration of head and hands, can a class seperated survive for long or is that the downfall of much (but also creation of what is seen as culture). Time to stop blabbing.

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