ROUGH MAGIC

ON THE MOUNTAIN: The final blog post

2016-11-02T08:59:00.001-07:00

The next morning at 8 a.m., Antonio's father, Francisco, and an older brother, Bernabe, are standing anxiously in the municipal plaza of Santa Eulalia, looking around to find me.

I'm not hard to spot, the only white guy in town and half a head taller than everyone else, munching on some street food and drinking coffee in a paper cup.

Severino, who appears to be about six and the youngest in the family of nine childen, has also come along for the ride. He offers a shy smile of curiosity.

Bernabe is the only one who speaks some Spanish. He is also the driver of the truck we will take to reach their home high in the mountains. He grips the steering wheel tightly and navigates with jerky caution and intensity.

I soon understand why. There is no road as such. The three-hour trip proceeds over dirt, rocks, holes the size of wheelbarrows, gullies from previous mudslides, and areas covered with water. Where we are going definitely is not on the map.

The higher we climb, the more beautiful the landscape becomes, stretching out for miles in a dizzying mixture of mountain jungle, pine trees, rocky terrain, and tropical rain forest where bananas and coffee grow freely. You can see for miles through the valleys, towns in the far distance and beyond them, Mexico.

Hours later, we arrive at Francisco's house. He is a vigorous man exactly my age, hardy and healthy and surrounded by his family, except for those sons and grandchildren who have journeyed to America.

Using mostly sign language and a few Spanish words, surrounded by some of his children and grandchildren, he welcomes me into his humble house, stacks of wood outside, a dirt floor, a few joined rooms.

There is electricity, if no running water. I charge my phone, although cell phone reception is limited.

There is a Catholic church across the way and Francisco has the keys, motioning if I want to see inside. His brother Antonio walks over from his nearby house to join us.

Later, when I meet Antonio's son, also named Francisco and who speaks Spanish, do I learn that his father and uncle had been debating when the last time an outside visitor had been in this aldea. They decide that there was a priest some years back, and some coffee buyers, but apparently I am the only white person to be in this community for over 40 years.

At the wood burning stove in the kitchen, Antonio's sister Celia makes me coffee and macaroni shells in broth. It is warming and filling. A younger girl, a neighbor, offers me three bananas.

Every meal that I have here will be the same: macaroni soup, sometimes with chunks of chicken, bananas, tortillas, and coffee. Even the children drink coffee continually.

My phone provides hours of entertainment. I take videos and pictures. Laughing, everyone is thrilled and happy to see themselves, although a few run from the camera.

I arrange a video chat between Celia and Antonio in Champaign. They are two years apart in age and were close growing up. They talk and see each other for 12 minutes, although sometimes the signal gets lost and we have to reconnect. Celia wipes away a tear as they talk excitedly, joking and happy and yet heartbreaking at this reunion.

Later, family and neighbors gather for another video chat with Daniel, another brother who lives in Champaign with wife Victoria and son Franky. Twelve family members and neighbors assemble in front of my phone as I hold up the video image. Daniel talks and jokes and smiles from thousands of miles away. He sticks out his tongue and everyone bursts into laughter.

Every time I try to enter the kitchen, I hit my head on the doorway. I'm too tall. The open air toilet out back has no door and they are amused to see me try to use it as a urinal. The roof is much too small to stand up inside, but it takes a while to accustom myself to going outside like the other men and boys do.

I am staying in what was Daniel's house before he left. There are still his clothes and books and those things belonging to his family. One of the neighbor boys shows me Franky's left-behind pencils, pens, and toys. Some of the older children speak Spanish better than the adults. They do learn it in school. There is school.

At some point, Bernabe and I discuss the mystery of economic disparities, why some have so much and some so little. I think of those in the United States who consider themselves deprived and demanding more economic equality from our system. They are rich in comparison to what Bernabe has. Should he demand more economic equality with them?

Francisco's grown nephew Antonio, with his son Edgar by his side, gives me a tour of the area, showing me the burro and pigs, naming the various plants and herbs and how they are used, showing me the coffee plants growing wild and those they carefully cultivate in neat rows. It takes two years before the coffee beans can be harvested.

In the breathtaking mountain view, he can point to the town of Barillas in the distance, and further where Mexico lies.

I ask him about the violence in this area in the 70s and 80s, when many were forced to flee. He asks his father, Tio Antonio, who speaks some Spanish, but is illiterate and has never gone to school. Antonio remembers when the powerful came to try to take more of the land from the indigenous like himself, but these days there is calm.

The oldest brother Velasco has his own place, with an actual floor, and a small shop where he sells snacks and drinks and rents to a carpenter. He returned years ago from living in Los Angeles, where he earned enough money to furnish his home here. He has a wife and child, but seems the least content, even though he clearly owns more than the others. He expresses interest in returning to the States some day.

At night, everyone assembles around the kitchen fire. Francisco sits closest, warming himself. They speak in Q'anjob'al. We laugh at times because we don't understand.

Magdalena, Francisco's warm and welcoming wife, tends to the stove and coffee pot. She and Celia have made tortillas throughout the day. They always seem to be on their feet.

I watch and listen and laugh, sitting here and looking around the room and feeling as if I were in a movie or a dream, far from nowhere.

Without being able to converse, I ponder what this communal family is lacking. They have family, faith, love, food, music, and health. They have telephone service and flip phones. They have scenery that surpasses all expectations. And, yet, they leave.

When I was traveling in Mexico with other Americans, I observed that many had come to confirm their sense of superiority and justify their own way of life. They see misery and poverty around them, often in places where I saw beauty and joy and smiling faces.

The children in this nowhere are smiling, laughing, playing, enthralled to be alive.

The poor in more developed areas in Mexico, battered by reinforcement through American media and tourists who feel good about themselves by offering them a peso or two, are made to feel inferior. It sinks in. Many decide to come north by any means necessary.

Do I see the world through red, white, and green glasses? Sure, a little. But I'm not blind to the problems, either.

Are children selling candy in the streets here? Yes, but children are in the back seats of cars with parents OD'ing on drugs in America.

Are graduate students protesting for being underpaid here? Certainly, but the same could be said back home.

Is there gun violence here? Actually, very little. My friend with me in San Cristobal said he felt safer on these exciting and colorful streets than back home in Urbana, where we read of shootings this week just blocks from our homes.

We are told that few people own guns here. The government offered a trade-in program years ago. Bring a gun, get a big television set. It worked.

And the climate change anti-technology people who want to live sustainable lives without destroying the earth? Why aren't they holding up the indigenous Guatemalans as showing us the way we should live? It may be the way we are forced to live as climate change takes its toll.

But I ask myself, could I live like this? I don't think so.

Yet why should we expect them to live so close to the earth, without all the extras we have become accustomed to, when we cannot do it ourselves?

Night came hours ago. One by one, the assembled in the kitchen drift off to their places.

My bed is a raised platform of boards, covered with heavy blankets. My pillow is made of hard cardboard.

I'm not sure who is the most pleased and grateful for this visit, them or me. I feel so privileged to have been welcomed into this family.

In the morning, I will leave on that same treacherous drive, Bernabe clutching the wheel, and I'll be taking with me the birth certificates for Daniel's wife and son, which were requested by immigration officials in Chicago.

It rains hard all night, bringing into question whether the road will be passable in the morning. Still, between continual treks in the absolute darkness to relieve myself from too much coffee and the sound of water falling on the roof, I sleep and feel comforted in the world.

—--

DIA DE LOS MUERTOS

November 2, 2016

Today is the day of the dead in San Cristobal, just one of Mexico's great traditions of family.

It has been more than a week since I lived with the Guatemalan family in the mountains.

Following the tradition of honoring those who have passed, I make an altar for Lee using her picture, marigolds, fruit, pine needles, and candles.

There were three reasons for this trip.

One was to escape the final month of the election process.

Another was to visit the Q'anjob'al people in lost Guatemala, which turned out to be one of the great experiences of my life. While communication was bare bones, it was a great privilege to be with them, to share with them, to understand what sharing is, yet again.

The third was because of Lee. I had planned this trip a year ago and these weeks have been both in homage to her and also I have experienced in them such love, the journey has been like a gift from Lee to me and I will be eternally grateful.

I am grateful for all the people I met during this time, people I talked to, ate with, shared with, laughed and complained with, slept beside, bartered with, and those with whom I shared dreams.

Those would include Angel, Jaime, Francisco, Roco, Carlos, Marco, Carlitos, Charly, Alex, Alfonso, Salvador, Celia, Magadalena, Chan Kin, Manolo, Diego, Josua, Humberto, Leonardo, Penitencia, Juan Mateo, Velasco, Bernabe, Jeremias, Severino, Tio Antonio, Hernan, Manuel, Kin, Don Antonio, Walter, Jorge, and all the others, named and unnamed, who helped and shared so generously.

In Lee's final days, the assembled family – sons and fiancees and sister and pets – sat in the living room while Lee slept in the bedroom. We watched a series of movie musicals. I got Funny Girl from the library. For some reason, I'd never seen it. Barbra Streisand sang her signature song People, and we laughed and those of us old enough recalled the phenomenon of the singer and that song. People who need people are the luckiest people in the world, she sang, and I never quite got it.

As the steady stream of visitors came, those who had loved Lee and found it unbelievable and unbearable that she should slip away from us so quickly, I became exhausted at times. I feared that the sheer and constant numbers of people might drain Lee of what little energy she had left.

I asked her, should I tell all these people not to come?

"Let them come, Greg," she said and shook her head on the pillow. Her smile glowed. "Don't you see? It's always been about people. It's all about people."

THE END

SANTA EULALIA, HUEHUETENANGO, GUATEMALA

2016-11-01T09:33:00.001-07:00

Sunday, October 23

We are in a cloud.

Fog doesn't drift through the crowded Sunday market in Santa Eulalia. Rather, we have ascended to such an elevation in the Cuchumatanes Mountains, humans are the intruders in a nebulous atmosphere.

We breathe and drift within white patches and puffs.

We float in streets clogged with sellers of neatly stacked vegetables and tomatoes, herbs, tamales and corn, animals, and crafts.

I walk up and down the cobbled steep streets, searching for an Internet place, anyplace that might offer WiFi to send out my latest dispatch.

It was called Tres Hermanos and the boy running the place was proud to have service and proud to speak Spanish with me, rather than the predominant indigenous language, Q'anjob'al.

When I asked about WiFi capabilities, a woman nearby in traditional Guatemalan dress laughed at my pronounciation. They say WeeFee here.

The church in Santa Eulalia used to be "a large, dusty pink-colored building" where worshipers kneelt to pray amid the smoke from hundreds of candles. It was a folk-Catholic church that also allowed Mayan deities space at the opposite end of the building.

Sometimes worshipers would be lighting candles for such dark deities as Maximón at the same time a Catholic priest was giving mass at the other end of the building.

You see this phenomenon throughout this part of the world, in Southern Mexico, in indigenous villages such as San Juan Chamula and Zinacantan and El Remerillo in Chiapas, the state which used to be part of Guatemala, just as Texas used to be part of Mexico.

Entire families kneel together, with the church aglow with candles, pine boughs strewn throughout the floor and replenished weekly, animals brought in for healing rituals, then to be sacrificed.

Today, the historic Santa Eulalia church has been torn down while another, bigger and newer structure is being built in the same space. This enormous church is empty now except for scaffolding, bags of cement, a few candles burning near where the altar will be, and some intruding birds flying overhead.

Getting to Santa Eulalie was the goal, the end point of my journey. And here I am.

Here I am to meet the family of Antonio and several other immigrants who live and work in Champaign-Urbana. The family has been advised by phone to arrive in the morning to bring me to their ranch high in the mountains.

In Santa Eulalia, I had trouble finding a hotel. There was no sign, no indication on the locked door. Finally, I saw what might be a bell. It rang and someone came to show me a room with a bed and a desk for $4 the night.

I ask if there is a shower and am shown the closet where it is, and am given a towel, but decide against making myself even colder than I am.

A nearby restaurant offered a plain chicken wing soup. I had to tear the reluctant bird apart with my fingers. There was sweet coffee with cinnamon. A dog walked through looking for scraps, as a teen boy came to charge his phone in the wall socket.

So here I am to remain until the morning. What happens tomorrow I only imagine.

Tomorrow, when I finally meet the family of Antonio, I have no idea if there will be a shower, or even a bed. All I know is that it is hours from the town and over an unmarked road.

The weather was cold and hard and the rain continued through the night.

I PITY THE POOR IMMIGRANT

2016-10-29T06:57:00.001-07:00

Saturday, October 22, 2016

Unattended sheep graze on buried ruins high in the clouded mountains of Todos Santos Cuchumatanes.

Hummingbirds flit in and out of the flowers beneath the pomegranate tree.

A lone pair of lovers sit on the stones, looking out over the mountains, the town and valley below, their heads resting together.

It is Saturday, market day in this Mam-speaking, explosively colorful, indigenous town. The street is blocked with merchants selling plucked and live chickens, tubs of oversized cabbages and pineapples, sweets, bootleg DVDs, woven fabric and clothes, you name it.

Side streets rising at 30 degree angles are equally filled with sellers and buyers, wary children and laughing teens, all pushing their way through the cacaphony and chaos.

By 2 pm, the market has started to thin down. Rain is in the air. Some have gone into the church to pray. Others started drinking hours earlier.

All the men and boys in the town wear striking red striped pants and brilliantly embroidered shirts. Some also have flat hats. It is more than picturesque; it is a potent unifier of tradition.

By early afternoon, only one cabbage remained in the tub that was filled this morning. The plucked chickens also have sold well.

A man in striped pants falls down in the middle of the street, having overimbibed. Some help him up. Another man is sleeping on the concrete outside the cantina, curled in a fetal position.

As I walked down the steep incline from one of the many hiking areas near the town, I pass a small tailor shop where two men were working diligently with the famous striped fabric.

"If I bought some material, could you make me a pair of those pants?" I asked. "And how much would it cost?"

As it turned out, the young, sturdy tailor named Diego with a pleasant demeanor was amused. The cloth would cost $13, while the tailoring work itself would be less than $10. The deal was struck and measurements taken.

Diego had lived in Oakland, California, for five years, but had returned to Todos Santos eight years ago. It was likely, although I didn't ask, that he had set up his business, and probably bought his home, with the money he'd earned in the U.S.

This is not an infrequent circumstance. In fact, over and over again, I talked to people who had lived and worked in the United States.

And then, too, were Guatemalans and Mexicans who had traveled to the US merely for vacation and business, to Miami, New York, Chicago, New Orleans. They, too, had returned home, with no intention or interest in living in the United States.

Buying a slice of Guatemalan pizza and a cappuccino, I talked with another customer who had worked in Nebraska for 25 years, or so he claimed. He was not happy. He worked in a slaughterhouse.

"That's hard work," I said. He mimed the killing. He seemed bitter.

For some reason, Bob Dylan's song, "I Pity the Poor Immigrant," comes into my head. "I pity the poor immigrant who wishes he would've stayed home, who falls in love with wealth itself, and turns his back on me."

Four hours later, I climbed back up the steep incline, sweating from the vigorous up and down of the day, and picked up my pants.

Warm and comfortable, like one's favorite pair of jeans, they fit perfectly.

HUEHUETENANGO

2016-10-24T06:39:00.001-07:00

Saturday, October 22, 2016

The bus terminal at 4:30 in the morning is a Bosch-like vision of hell. Also at 4:30 in the afternoon. Or any time at all.

Garbage is strewn everywhere. The sounds of animals braying, possibly being slaughtered in the large cattle barn, joins the noise of cracked rubber tires splashing through mud, and incessant honking, and the shouting of barkers, seeking riders, calling out the names of towns.

There is no ticket office. You follow the sound of the shouting until you hear the town you hope to reach in these crowded, well-worn, and overly decorated buses, blaring music. There is no order. The buses move when and if and how they please through the mud, sides inches apart, edging their way past people, animals, oversized baskets of vegetables, and children.

A tree is filled with buzzards. No one bothers to find a bathroom to relieve himself. The street will do.

Leftover drunks from the previous night lie sprawled on benches. A mischievous boy takes a used plastic bottle, fills it with water from the ground, and offers it to the drunk to wash himself. Another man drinks from the same ground level spigot.

Above this chaos are a row of dubious, second-floor hotels, places I might have risked merely for the cheap thrill, when I was young.

I am waiting for the driver of the bus to Todos Santos Cuchumatanes, where today is the important market day. I had scouted out the ride the day before and confirmed that it would leave from this very spot at 5:30 a.m. Compared to most of the other vehicles, this is a luxury ride.

It is not yet dawn, but I cannot help but be conspicuous here, a comparatively tall white guy with a backpack. A young man approaches me, puts his hand on my shoulder, and warns me to be on the lookout for thieves. I am more wary of him than anyone else so far this morning.

Huehuetenango city, or Huehue, is the capital of the department of the same name, one of the 22 departments in the country. Unless I missed something, the city seems to be defined by endless traffic, the persistent and visible explosion of diesel fumes, and blaring music.

There is something desperate about Huehue, as if people cannot wait to be somewhere else, even within the city limits. Many haven't the time to even consider your presence, lost in their own concerns and dreams.

There are always exceptions. I was welcomed generously by Carlos, who owns a home on the town's busiest street. His house is a series of individual rooms surrounding an open garden, the sky above, kitten and fish pond and plants below. Behind this small complex are chickens and fruit trees.

I explored the heart of city, taking Carlos' suggestions. Near the town square, with its angular cut topiary, church, and government buildings, I ate a hearty breakfast at Café Jardin: eggs "estrellado" (sunny side up), spicy sausages, buttered bread, oatmeal, juice, and lots of coffee.

It warmed me up. My problems with Huehue could be due to the unseasonable cold snap that has hit the town. Everyone complains about it.

Manolo, who lives in one of the rooms Carlos seems to offer to anyone who asks, posts the following in Spanish on his Facebook page:

Cold = No hateful mosquitoes

Cold = Chocolate, sleep, and movies

Cold = An excuse to ask for hugs

Cold = No sweat

Cold = Is life

Thus, making the most and the best of whatever is at hand, another trait of resourceful Guatemalans.

By noon, I had hiked out of the city to the nearby ruins, the several thousand year old city of Zaculeu. The large structures (covered with white plaster years ago when United Fruit Company decided to "upgrade" rather than restore them) and golf course quality green expanse were filled with families who had come to picnic and play soccer for the day.

Positivity was restored. The people explored their roots, their heritage, and celebrated with food and fun. Families went into the site's museum to ponder the artifacts, paintings, ceramics and skulls of their past. There is a richness in having such immediate proximity to one's history, to still inhabit the land of one's ancestors.

In the morning, 5:30 came and I boarded the bus as the sun began to warm the road ahead. We picked up people along the way until the bus was full.

A Todos Santos native elder came in and sat beside me, wearing the regulation red striped pants, flowered white shirt, flat white and banded hat, and reached out to shake my hand. We rode together, watching the valleys and green heights of the Cuchumatanes mountains reach out before us.

Outside our window, a teenager climbed a slender tree with a single jutting branch, shoulder high, where he stood in meditation, watching trucks and buses pass.

People got on and off the bus, sometimes in locations of steep drop-offs, carrying their machetes down the mountain to nothing but trees and rocks below.

Two young women in full color attire walked down the road, side by side with grace, identical large baskets balanced perfectly atop their heads.

THE PHENOMENON OF SHARING

2016-10-23T14:58:00.000-07:00

In San Cristóbal, I wandered along the Guadalupe concourse toward the Iglesia de Guadalupe, high at the top of the hill and a daunting number of steps.

A fashion photographer at the base was taking pictures of a young woman in a flamboyant pink fluffy dress, the steep incline of steps making a striking background.

Two tourists were buying coconut and strawberry ice cream cones before beginning their climb. I bought one, too.

Once at the top, I surveyed the town and the surrounding mountains. A small cluster of inebriated men lingered by the edge of the church courtyard.

Two approached me.

"We need something to drink," the younger man said. He mentioned some shaking malady that I deciphered to mean he was sick from lack of a recent shot of tequila.

At least, he was being honest.

I engaged the two of them in talk. No, I said, I wouldn't give them money to get something to drink. How old was he? Couldn't he find social services to help him?

"Yes, but we don't want that. Give us money for tortillas then," he said.

They were of indigenous Tzotzil stock, but spoke plain Spanish. The younger was 26 and articulate. The older, thanking God for his longevity, said he was 52.

I appreciated the talk, which carried on in several directions for a while, I wished them luck, but didn't relent, moved on, and didn't give them any money. Should I have?

A week earlier, in the town of Ocosingo, I had been approached while eating breakfast. A young man came to me claiming to be Guatemalan and needing money to get back to his country. I listened to his spiel and, eager to return to my eggs and pancakes, gave him a few pesos.

The waitress shooed him away, told me the man wasn't really Guatemalan, but a drunk who always hung around begging for money.

It was $2. It fell within my budget for the day.

So, he didn't "deserve" the money. Who of us deserves anything in the end?

Lee very rarely turned down pleas for assistance, but she was clever. She gave things away without reserve: food, clothes, books, whatever she had. She bought candy or overpriced popcorn from Boy Scouts or those who knocked at the door. She believed in sharing without a second thought.

Travelers often talk about money, how much things cost, when and where officials put in the "bite" or "morditita" for bribes. We learn how to say "no" and wave away all the beggars and pleaders and those selling mangoes and chicken legs.

There were eight of us on the bus crossing the border into Guatemala, from Cuauhtemoc to La Mesilla. The middle-aged Finnish couple knew enough to ask for a receipt when the Guatemalan border guard demanded ten quetzales entry fee. Of course, they were whisked through without paying, because there is no such fee.

The others of us – a pair of Australian hippies, a newlywed couple from Guadalajara, me and another single straggler – had known no better and paid the fee.

Talking with these three couples was enriching in many ways, and not just in sharing ways to save money. The Finnish couple had traveled nine months out of every year for decades and would not return home from their Central American backpack tour until May. The Australians were about as crunchy as post-sixties hippies can get, but friendly and carrying far too many backpacks. The couple from Guadalajara had been exploring their native Mexico and were still in, well, the sweet honeymoon phase of their relationship.

Rather than making me sad, these couples and their close and sharing relationships made me unreasonably happy. My heart soared to see them so engaged in an endeavor that kept them close together, day in and day out, from one unexpected thing to the next.

I'm still walking the fence that Joan Didion wrote about, having lost her spouse of over 40 years, in "The Year of Magical Thinking." I'm not in denial over Lee's passing, it is that I continue to carry the feeling of having known such a close relationship. As it seemed to have ended, it instead was verified and confirmed as having existed, of having been tangible and real. We owned it. We knew it. We lived it.

And it is reflected in wonder every time I see couples like this going through their lives, sharing it all together.

It makes my happy, and sad, and happy all over again in the great joy of the confirmation of love.

Yesterday I was in Todos Santos Cuchumatanes, where the Mam population wear beautiful colored costumes and the annual All Saints celebration is about to begin. A young pineapple salesman in the market was giving away taste samples. He made a hard-pitched sell for me to buy one of his beautiful golden fruits.

"I can't eat a whole pineapple," I told him. "I'm leaving tomorrow."

"Give me money then," he said. "You have money, don't you?"

I should have. I could have. I didn't.

Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. I have taught myself not to regret either way, or judge. None of us deserves a thing.

When my time runs out here, I'll donate all my remaining quetzales and pesos to anyone who asks or looks like they could use them. Before I board the plane, I'll keep just enough to ride the metro on my next visit. It's what Lee would have done.

Everything is a gift.

INTERLUDE

2016-10-19T12:40:00.001-07:00

Is everybody OK up there?

From what I've heard, things are getting pretty ugly.

Down here in the real world, I am taking a four-day respite from all manner of excitement and adventure.

Rest. Read. Repack. Netflix.

So, this interlude blog post could be boring. Hoping not to be someone who knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing, I'm nevertheless going to insert some numerical equivalents in the notes that follow. Perhaps that will add interest.

I was here in San Cristóbal in January (round trip airfare from Chicago, about $400), scouting it out as a place for Lee and me to retire. It's a lovely town, not unlike Antigua, Guatemala, where Lee lived for a time and always loved. It caters to international tourists and expats, yet without relinquishing the old Mexican world charm, markets, indigenous influences, or character.

It's different this time. I splurged on the nice room with two beds and a hot shower next to the square ($17) instead of the place down the street ($10). There's a writing desk and pretty good WiFi.

Of course, everyone in the world has WiFi and phones. People everywhere walk around or sit in the square looking at their devices. Even the colorful indigenous people coming to the market seem to have a chicken in one hand and a phone in the other.

The kindness of Mexicans continues to astound me. The first night here, I stopped by the AirBnb apartment ($35) where a friend will join me to spend the last week of the month. I was going to ask to store one of my packs before heading down to Guatemala.

The co-owner, Andres, had just driven back from Mexico City (12 hour drive). He welcomed me to stay that night (no charge), and went to the market for tamales and herb tea in the morning. In a short time, we exchanged views on religion, politics, nutrition, health and happiness (priceless). I felt both welcomed and at home.

Preparing for Guatemala, I dumped everything out of my pack and sorted through it. One really needs so much less stuff than one imagines.

But, yes, in the jungle I apparently scraped up against one of those dangerous plants the guide Chan Kin warned us about. A strange blotchy mark appeared on my arms, feeling and looking like an intense sunburn. It seems to be fading slightly, now that I've applied the prescribed ointment ($2.50) and pills ($2).

I went to a walk-up doctor's office just off the square the other night, no appointment necessary, and was ushered directly in. He said the blotches (which I actually think look cool, or "chido" as everyone is saying these days) were just dermatitis reaction and not serious, writing up the prescription. (Total time taken: 10 minutes. No charge for the consultation.)

The first night here I spent several hours in a beautiful chocolate museum and restaurant, La Capitanía. While I worked on my laptop, I was served hot chocolate spiked with tequila ($2.25) and later a full plate of artfully displayed, steamed vegetables, from squash to asparagus, ($3.00). I'd been craving vegetables for weeks. Then I had a Spanish chicken and tortilla soup ($3.50). I think there was a beer or two in there as well.

My friend Carlos from Mexico City texted me to be sure to try some of the indigenous craft beers available here. Little mezcal bars and cervecerias pop up all over the place. I'll have to try the Tzotzil beer he recommended, "Baston de mando." (Guessing $2.50)

The coolest barbershop in probably the entire world is just off the square, Buenos Muchachos Barberia. I made an appointment for 8:30 in the evening. The place has just two chairs, serves coffee and beer, has tables for young people to come in and play dominoes or read Deadpool comics, plays hard rock like AC/DC, and takes meticulous care in crafting your hair and beard to perfection. 26-year-old Walter promised to rejuvenate me. Who was I to argue? We discussed the election. No one here understands how and why America has gone insane. If I don't move here, maybe I'll fly down once a month just to get that haircut. ($3)

I'm not sure GPS is going to work where I'm going in Guatemala. The unknown lies ahead. But I exchanged money in preparation, buying Guatemalan quetzales, each worth 13 American cents. The Mexican peso is worth about a nickel at the moment.

The other night I watched "13th" on Netflix on my laptop. It is the devastating indictment of the prison-industrial state in America. It is based in part on the book The New Jim Crow. It should be required viewing for all Americans to better understand our history and to prepare for our future, should we have one.

I bought a Mexican history book – focusing on Chiapas – at the bookstore here ($15). It was a splurge, but the color pictures are excellent and Mexican history goes back hundreds of years and is so diverse and rich, I needed the brush-up. Sometimes it's hard to keep your Toltecs, Totonacs, Olmecs, and Aztecs apart.

At the edge of town there's a mall. There's really no other way to describe it. It's a shopping mall, with McDonalds, Dominos Pizza, the equivalent of Target, and the Cinepolis, the multiplex movie theater.

The Tom Hanks/Ron Howard movie "Inferno" – based on the Dan Brown code and riddle thriller – is playing here in both dubbed and subtitled versions, along with about eight other titles, American and Mexican. "Inferno" doesn't open in the States for another 10 days or so. I had read the book, which I enjoyed, and the movie follows the plot and the exotic locations closely.

Remind me never to go again to Venice, Italy. It's quite beautiful enough in the movies without having to go elbow to elbow with tourists today.

The digital projection is splendid here. You can choose your seat assignment when you buy your ticket ($2.50). The large popcorn and soda and Crunch bar package is about $5.

All Dan Brown books are ridiculous – why don't the radical anti-population activists just release the darn virus instead of creating an elaborate cat-and-mouse clue-and-riddle labyrinth around the world for Tom Hanks to figure out just in the nick of time?

Because then there wouldn't be a movie, I guess. But as it turns out, the filmmakers couldn't even include the very most clever part of the book, probably thinking that American audiences were already so dumbed down that they didn't need to actually think about something.

Spoiler alert: In the movie, the virus is contained at the last minute, saving the world from a terrible plague. In the book, the virus is actually released and the world is infected in a way that makes some sense. The world isn't destroyed, it's only culled out by causing infertility in a large segment of the population.

The last Presidential debate is tonight. I won't be watching.

I am rooting for the virus.

THE SHAMAN DOESN’T TAKE VISA

2016-10-15T10:32:00.001-07:00

A torrential rain continues all night. My dreams are in brilliant white, like the gowns worn by the Lacandon men in this village. Lee is facing me, smiling. She is here with me and will do what I do. She will see everything, we will share everything, everything is going to be fine now and forever.

I wake up, but something of the dream continues, a comfort, peace.

Gordon and I set out again to walk into the rain forest, this time led by Chan Kin Garcia Martinez, who insists on using his last names to differentiate him from others in the town with the same first names, very common.

He wears the traditional white robe and sandals, carries a machete and stick, and stomps off into the jungle without a second thought.

He is a disappearing breed, and he knows it. Although his children have gone to school, three daughters and one son, they are taught Spanish and most from the village will likely leave. Chan Kin himself, while fully articulate in Spanish and a certified guide, never attended school.

"I used to eat everything natural," he tells us one of many stories. "Now, in the last 40 years, I eat chips, Pepsi, chemicals... That's just the way it is."

They used to eat alligator eggs, he explains, showing us a current alligator nest with perhaps 25 eggs. The tapirs who used to inhabit the jungle have mostly been killed for food. They still eat turtles some, which he says is delicious. Most of the monkeys have also been eaten here.

He describes the jaguars and the five kinds of snakes in the area.

None of the three churches in the village are Catholic. There is an evangelical church, a Pentecostal church, and one named Water of Life. Chan Kin does not attend.

"There are good things about churches," he says, "and bad things."

While he still reveres the last remaining Lacandon shaman, Don Antonio, the children do not.

Don Antonio is the last of the Lacandon, the last one to carry the secrets of praying to the gods, of healing and blessing, of preservation of the jungle.

"The land here is protected," Chan Kin says. "It can't be used for farms or business or trade. We can still harvest the plants and medicines, but not outsiders."

He would not live anywhere else. He has gone to Mexico City two times, he says, shaking his head.

"It is beautiful, the churches, the buildings, but... Too many people. Too many cars. I would get lost. I would follow someone but not lead there. Here, I do not get lost."

He points in several directions to the dense jungle surrounding us.

"Even without a path I can find home, I can find Metzabok, I know how to get to all the villages, I know how to get around. I don't get lost here."

He is short, brown, with curly thick black hair, striking against his white gown. He stoops to bail water out of the boat. With his machete, he finds a stick and cuts it to a point to moor the canoe, tying it with weeds.

Using his machete to get us through jungle where there is barely a path, he walks surely through the slippery mud and vegetation, chopping at the newly grown vegetation.

He still reveres the gods and lists them, god of rain, wind, earth, sun. There are many others, even those to protect foreigners.

No one knows who is going to replace the shaman Don Antonio, who is 80 or perhaps 85 or perhaps older. It is a concern Chan Kin often discusses with his brothers.

There is no one who is prepared to take over the job of shaman. Several people told us it was "too much work." You need years and years of study and preparation, ritual study and sacrifice. No one is ready.

That afternoon, we are taken to meet Don Antonio, who has agreed to meet us and perform a ritual blessing. We are told to be quiet upon approaching him. He does not hear well and does not speak Spanish, so there are several layers of translation.

He seems to know he is the last of his kind. He is welcoming, warm, and generous of spirit, not in the least forbidding.

The leaves of a jungle plant are filled with the smoke of the tree incense. The blessing is tossed our way as Don Antonio sings and chants for half an hour and then the ritual is over.

We are given the leaves and told not to lose them, that we will be protected from harm traveling, from illness.

We were told to give him an offering before going, but no one would dare tell us what was an appropriate amount. I try to hand him a peso bill worth $25.

Don Antonio looks up at me as though I were being ridiculous. He refuses the money. The boy who has led us here and translated for us also shook his head. They do not want this money.

"What would I do with that?" Don Antonio asks.

I negotiate a plan. We will go up to the restaurant and make change and let the boy bring back a more appropriate amount.

We buy snacks, and I give the boy some change for both him and the shaman, about half of what we initially offered. This was acceptable.

The ritual felt to me no different than a standard laying on of hands or traveling mercies blessing one might find in a North American Christian church. It is all to the same God, ultimately, the combination of all those gods on the shelf in Don Antonio's temple.

We drive out from Naha along impossible rock roads for over an hour, picking up a walking teen at one point, eventually finding ourselves in the Bonampak Lacandon settlement for the night. In the creek by our cabin, a man is bathing. We wash our clothes and hang them outside the cabin to dry. While Gordon takes a shower to get ready to go down for dinner, I eat the mushrooms I have been carrying since Palenque.

Apart from 15 minutes connectivity which we buy for 30 pesos at a food stand, there is still no Internet or WiFi. We are off the grid.

It has been a good day. Bob Dylan has won the Nobel Prize. Lee came to me in a dream. The shaman blessed me, far from any paved roads, high in the jungle, with the jaguar and the crocodile protecting us.

I meditate by the river and night comes. The rain will come again for it is the season, but there is the sense that all is well, that Lee is with me, that I have no fear, no apprehension, no obligation other than to give of what I have and am. The shaman Don Antonio has passed along the torch, to carry north, perhaps. Or so I imagine, with all being love, beauty, and wisdom always with us, always surrounding us, always alive in every step we take along an unknown path.

THE RUINS OF WAR

2016-10-15T06:35:00.001-07:00

(photos to be added later; Internet access poor to none at the moment)

In Naha, we eat with Kin, the 24-year-old son, or perhaps grandson, versions vary, of the ancient shaman Chan Kin, the founder of the dwindling Lacandon community.

Everyone is related, many are named Kin or Chan Kin, it is hard to discern precisely the ages or the relationships of these 1,000 inhabitants. They were once a semi-nomadic people, with a realm that stretched from Palenque to Guatemala, and they lived off the land exclusively.

Basically, they still do the same today. The jungle they know as home is a land and wildlife refuge protecting the jaguars and precious vegetation, lagunas and waterfalls.

The road here to Naha from Ocosingo is a three-hour, first and second gear, ditch and pothole evasion exercise, like an automotive game of Tetris. You dodge and turn in constant motion and, come bedtime, all you see with closed eyes are obstacles coming at you.

We drove behind horses and motorcycles, truck-buses filled with standing people. We passed school kids walking home in the middle of nowhere. There is no cell phone service in sight. It is all Zapatista territory, as hand lettered signage reminds us. The grass-roots political resistance movement erupted some 25 years ago, and while quiet in recent years, still has presence and holds defiant sway.

The rainy season has washed away much of the road, which may be re-leveled by machines once the season ends. Road or no road, the mountains, rivers, drifting clouds, vertical corn fields, and lakes remain spectacular year round.

Between Ocosingo and Naha, we turn off to visit the ruins of Tonina, which we expect to be just another of the thousands of semi-excavated ruins in the Mayan world.

We were wrong.

Tonina evoked a gasp at first sight. The pyramidal structure, multi-leveled and complex, actually is the highest of Mayan ruins in Latin America, taller than the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan, although few know of it. Maybe 20 people visit on a good day, according to a glance at the guest book, and very few Americans. Most probably come in from San Cristobal de las Casas, which is more than 100 kilometers away.

Manuel, who becomes our guide, is a Tzeltal native, a direct descendant of the warring tribes who lived here some 500 years before the first century. Leading up to 909 A.D. they waged war with Palenque and other groups from Tikal in Guatemala to Copan in Honduras.

From the peak, in the distance, there is some irony to see Mexico's military compound jutting up from the landscape. This training center and barracks were fortified during the Zapatista uprising and to this day probably are a more resented presence than the Zapatista rebels themselves.

With seeming effortless bounds, Manuel led me and Gordon, who had joined me back in Villahermosa, to the structure's pinnacle, once we had steeled our nerves before the final, steep ascent.

"Was there a God of Peace?" we asked Manuel.

"No," he replied quickly. "Just war."

From the top, as the light rainforest drizzle approached, we could see the structures and tombs, the playing field, the sacrificial stones, the stelae and sculptures of beheadings, the preserved frescos and stucco depictions of prisoners of war in chains, the royal chambers and prisons, all contained below within a single structure stretching out below, where workmen continued to excavate with painstaking care.

They cut away as natures invades, a battle of a different order. And they have not yet reached the structure's base.

What seem to be adjoining "mountains" next to us are but buried pyramids of equal importance and beauty, but the Mexican government has not yet begun to strip away what nature has done to obscure and destroy the man-made monuments and buildings and once great palaces under this earth.

In Naha, I sit here in a primitive village. I have electricity at least, and work by dim light under a mosquito net. The sounds of the jungle night are all I hear. I feel good. It is good for a change to contemplate without constantly checking my phone. We have not had cell service now for two days, so I really have no choice.

Nature always wins in the end.

THE ROAD TO NAHA

2016-10-12T05:42:00.001-07:00

Palenque is not as I'd remembered 25 years ago, when the site was basically unattended and visitors were allowed to roam freely.

Oddly, the change – while now more commercialized – is something of an improvement.

The structures, temples, tombs, the only Mayan ruins in Mexico to have been uncovered in a rain forest, are still stunning.

The vast number of buildings here remain buried by jungle vegetation, never unearthed.

Some places you can see tall trees growing above what are pieces of buildings still deep in the ground, a history of Mayan life hidden and rich and unexcavated.

But this time, one is encouraged to explore the surrounding jungle.

A Chol tour guide, Hernan, spared me nothing. Hernan speaks four languages with ease, Chol, Tzotzil, Spanish, and Italian. I would also credit him with speaking rain forest. I trusted him with my life.

We had barely begun our trek when toucans flew directly above us. Two kinds of monkeys screeched past. The sound carries for almost a mile.

We crawled under vines and poisonous vegetation that causes blisters on contact with the skin; we tasted termites from the parasite hives (smoky and spicy); we encountered mushrooms about which I may speak later; we waded across many of the springs, bolstered by the rainy season, utterly soaking ourselves; lemon trees, eucalyptus, ferns, the Ceiba tree of life, parasite trees intertwined, and the tree used to prepare sacrificial incense; we paused to swim in the river and refresh ourselves from the sticky humidity; we got lost.

At least, I was lost.

And maybe that has been the goal, in part. Although without WiFi for some long stretches, I've still manage to keep in touch enough with the boys that I don't feel any more of a distance than I would otherwise. After a week here, I feel accustomed, comfortable in the inevitable surprises that happen almost hourly.

I left Mexico City three days ago, flying into Villahermosa, then driving down to Palenque.

Nothing since has been straightforward. The plan has veered this way and that, changing by the minute. Actually, there hasn't been much of a plan.

One of the goals was to go the Lacandon village of Naha, buried somewhere here in Chiapas.

Last night, I arrived in Ocosingo, after crossing a winding mountainous road with serious construction issues. A huge tour bus had to maneuver a turn-around, which took an hour.

Now, I am sitting on the terrace of the Hotel Central in Ocosingo, overlooking the plaza in this surprisingly bustling little town. The mountains seem so close it is hard to say they are even in the distance. An entire cloud bank is driving across them at the moment. It is 7 am.

We learned last night, after a tour of cantinas and tequilas, that there is a road directly from Ocosingo to Naha. Or, something that poses as a road. It wasn't on any of the maps I had seen previously.

We will find out.

THE MINIMUM WAGES OF SIN

2016-10-08T14:40:00.001-07:00

It is my last day in Mexico City.

So much has been compressed into this past week, I need a vacation.

There has been a downside to Mexico City. Well, more than one. In addition to the layer of sadness I'm carrying around, my distance creates a certain loneliness that phone calls and texts cannot obscure.

And maybe there's some underlying guilt, too, from the privilege I have to be here, knowing I can always pack up and leave when I wish.

When I do glimpse the news from home, it's dizzying at all that is happening. I'm almost, almost, but not really, sorry to be missing it. The News-Gazette displays magnificent cowardice in refusing to endorse anyone for President. "Nobody for President" sneers the editorial headline. They should never be taken seriously again.

And today is Saturday. I'm going to predict The Donald will withdraw before facing Hillary in the debate tomorrow.

But I'm supposed to be living here away from all that.

I'm being shown around these last few day by Francisco Solis, a PhD candidate in Classic Literature. He is a fantastic guide, knowledgeable in history and tradition of this great country and city.

Francisco translates classic English language works (like Alice in Wonderland) for a publishing house, but he claims he would earn more working for minimum wage in the United States.

Minimum wage in Mexico is calculated by the day, not the hour. It's about $4.25 a day.

Friday, I head out in the morning, ostensibly for coffee, but mostly just to walk. I try to pass myself off as an expatriate resident and probably do a reasonable job of it.

The coffee and pastry guy on the corner doesn't bat an eye when I ask for sweetener instead of sugar. He's doing a good business for a Friday morning. His enterprise is probably making more than minimum wage, I hope.

But the real tourists, as if I were exempt from the label, are also up this morning west of the Zocalo. A young couple holding hands – she is wearing the shortest of shorts and flip-flops, he's in white t-shirt and cut-off jean -- seem directionless and oblivious. I follow them for a while, coffee cup in hand, just to watch their contrast against the brown industriousness of the world around them.

Three English-speaking women are standing outside their hotel looking at a phone, wondering why their Uber hasn't shown up. I am tempted to tell them that the police are redirecting traffic around the corner to allow a military convoy to pass. But I'm pretending not to be one of them, so I walk by.

List of spots I, the non-tourist, have hit in the past few days:

1)The beautiful Casino de Español, with restaurant and art exhibit of modernist Mexican painters. Breakfast of goat cheese omelet.

2) The Museo del Estanguillo with an exhibit of the history of sexual liberation in Mexico, featuring homoerotic drawings by Sergei Eisenstein, Victorian clippings, and the Spencer Tunick photograph of thousands of nude people crouched in rows on the Zocalo.

"I'm in that corner over there somewhere," Francisco proudly said.

3) Museo Nacional de Arte – The history of Mexico in massive 17th-20th century canvases and sculpture, housed in an ornate and enormous former government building. Francisco explains the progression from Spanish to indigenous painters, the changes in religious iconography, as we walk from floor to floor. A temporary exhibit of the classical Mexican landscapes by Jose Maria Velasco is awesome to me; Francisco burned out on them from his grade school textbooks.

4) Just down the street, the traditional Mexican restaurant Café Tacuba: great food and wonderful music.

5) The Yucatecan restaurant Coox Hanal. Unknown to tourists. Crammed with locals. Uncannily good.

6) The bar with the hole in the ceiling where Pancho Villa fired his rifle.

7) Los Cocuyos, the streetside taco stand, praised by the New York Times as the best tacos in the city. I could not disagree.

8) Debates over the best mezcales, from Mortal to Alipus to raw mezcal smuggled in Coke bottles from Oaxaca.

9) Or, just walking down the crowded avenues in the city center on a Saturday. Whether naked on the Zocalo or pushing through the buskers, buyers, bodies, beggars, it's all a great display of humanity in which each one of us, tourist and native alike, is all a tiny part.

10) Francisco tries to convince me to see a Mexican wrestling match, lucha libre. He loves wrestling, the shouting, and battle of good versus evil.

"And sometimes evil wins," he says. It is the closest thing we have today to ancient Greek theater, where emotions were purged in the same shouting, sometimes inebriated fashion.

Instead, we take the metro and an Uber and go out to the Polanco, the side of the city with glittering malls, high fashion and high rise modern architecture galleries, and prices to match Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills.

We don't go to wrestling. We see "The Lion King" instead.

NOTES ON RADIOHEAD

2016-10-07T11:28:00.001-07:00

Sobran boletos?
Faltan boletos?

Tickets?
Extra tickets?

Buying and selling for blocks

Flanked by sales stands for all manner of paraphernalia, unofficial merch vigorously hawked

It's the Palacio de los Deportes, the sports stadium mostly for basketball and volleyball, constructed for the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City.

Now they call it Palacio de los Rebotes – Stadium of the Bounce, not so much for bouncing balls but the echo of the sound in the place. Terrible acoustics smother pretty much everything, whether it's Beyonce or Muse.

Not that the audience seems to care. Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood moved to the music (I guess that's who those specks were).

The set was spare by most standards, with some abstract lighting effects.

Set list:
Burn the Witch
Daydreaming
Desert Island Disk
Ful Stop
My Iron Lung
The National Anthem
All I Need
Pyramid Song
Bloom
Separator
Identikit
The Numbers
Bodysnatchers
Feral
Nude
Everything in Its Right Place
Idioteque

Encore #1:
Let Down
Present Tense
Reckoner
Planet Telex
Weird Fishes/Arpeggi

Encore 2:
Fake Plastic Trees
Creep

WISH YOU WERE HERE

2016-10-07T10:24:00.001-07:00

Just for the record, here are images and impressions of the Roger Waters concert in the Zocalo last Saturday.

A week has already passed and – since I am operating blessedly without deadlines – I haven't until now bothered to write up what happened.

And I'm still not going to, exactly. Rather, it's just my loosely edited notes. The concert itself is probably available on YouTube.

NOTES

biggest crowd in the huge plaza, even more people than show up for the national patriotism days (200,000)

much celebration during th 2.5 hr. concert, with smoke, dancing and drink, all ages there, including babies

access closed an hour and a half before concert begins. capacity was reached.

the audience seems to know almost all the words

even from a great distance, the huge screens and crisp sound system (placed all around the square) made everything visible and audible to everyone. This alone was phenomenal.

shine on crazy diamond devoted to Syd Barrett

light rain for a short time dissuaded no one and the sellers of thin plastic raincoats were cleaning up

trio of celebrants in front of us were drinking tequila out of plastic bags. They shared.

The surround sound made it seem as if Waters' voice was behind us at times, very disorienting, as were the frequent helicopter sounds that, every single time, caused those nearby to jump and look up for the nonexistent invaders

Pink Floyd's The Wall to be tied into Donald Trump – in the heart of Mexico, no less. what could be more appropriate?

Waters did not hold back. Trump's bad quotes about everything were translated into Spanish and projected on the huge screens, along with related images

Other political commentary, from black lives matter to the disappeared in Mexico. Waters reads (in bad Spanish) letter to the Mexican president, to the cheers and boos of the crowd

local school children enlisted to appear with Waters and his excellent band. They danced in choreographed synchronization to "The Wall"

floating pigs

giant inflated pig emerges slowly from side during Trump section

smokestacks and industrial imagery on the plaza-wide screen very effective, and nice contrast to the ancient churches and government buildings surrounding the plaza

during the encore, the guitarist appeared atop the huge screen/wall, a tiny figure atop a massive scenario

set list:

Speak to Me

Breathe

Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun

One of These Days

Time

Breathe reprise

The Great Gig in the Sky

Money

Us and Them

Fearless

You'll Never Walk Alone

Shine on you crazy diamond (I-IV)

Welcome to the Machine

Have a Cigar

Wish You Were Here

Interlude (of sorts)

Pigs on the Wing 1

Pigs on the Wing 2 (rare)

The Happiest Days of our Lives

Another Brick in the Wall Part 2

Mother

Run Like Hell

Brain Damage

Eclipse

and for the encore, a beautiful rendition of

Comfortably Numb

the crowd sang along

CITY OF LOVERS

2016-10-05T10:52:00.001-07:00

Traffic rushes over stacked layers of beltways, perifericos, but it goes virtually unseen on the cobblestone streets below, in the affluent southern colonias of San Angel and Lomos de las Aguilas.

I will spend a few nights here, in the home of a friend, a psychotherapist who has designed his own house. It has five levels and open stairways, with bedrooms that open up to gardens filled with hummingbirds, flowering trees, and cacti.

Driving around last night, I learned that after 11 p.m., it is legal in Mexico to run red lights. We passed a police car and did just that, more than once.

There is another sort of liberty in the lovely colonia of Coyoacan, named for "place of the coyotes," where the intellectual and artistic class set up shop and mingle in plazas and squares, filled with labyrinthine shrubs and park benches filled with musicians and lovers.

Even the dogs run free.

These liberated dogs have owners and seem to be obedient enough, but there is a very communal feeling of freedom in the plazas and town squares here.

People eat at street cafes and drink chocolate, watching street performers or busking youth playing Creedence Clearwater songs on guitars.

Coyoacan is a neighborhood of old cobbled streets, old convents, old restaurants and bars, 150-year old trees, mazed gardens, and the homes of Frida Kahlo and Leon Trotsky.

There is a lot of activity for a Tuesday night at 11 pm. Merchants are still selling wares and arts and delicious stuff tempts from all directions.

Coyoacan suffered much during the 1985 earthquake aftermath, but most has been rebuilt now and changing through constant gentrification.

Many people embrace or nuzzle on park benches or standing by trees. Couples hold hands, including the same-sex couples that pass unperturbed all over the city.

But, I still wake up most mornings aware of the gaping hole in my own life, the missing piece. There are bittersweet pangs as I amble, lost much of the time, wandering like a somnambulant lover from Last Year in Marienbad, bearing the romantic loneliness of Death in Venice.

But I promised not to romanticize or sentimentalize.

Still, from what I've seen here, I'm convinced Mexico City been awarded the title of City of Lovers, wresting it away from Paris.

But, in just a few days, there will be jungle, rainforests, monkeys, ruins, hammocks, and beggars.

There are beggars here in Mexico City, of course, but not much more plentiful or aggressive than those I encountered on Michigan Avenue recently, where beggars all seem to have literary aspirations, writing down the details of their plight on pieces of cardboard.

Speaking of literary, Mexico City remains one of the great literary capitals of Latin America, along with Buenos Aires. Bookstores are everywhere and people still read books, even in cafes and on the metro.

BELLAS ARTES

2016-10-04T22:11:00.000-07:00

Before leaving the center today, I made a final trip up the Torre Latinoamericana to see an overview of heart of Mexico. Then I went to the third floor of Bellas Artes, which features stunning murals by Diego Rivera and David Siquieros, plus side galleries.. well, suffice it to say, one could spend the entire day there.

The politics of those murals seems entirely relevant still today.

Tonight, touring the lovely, sophisticated, artsy colonia de Coyoacan, and going past the houses of Rivera and Frida Kahlo.

An embarrassment of riches here...

Bellas Artes

Bellas Artes as seen from Torre Latinoamericana

Controller of the World

Liberation

Victim of Fascism

The Dictator and two others

MEXICO

2016-10-03T08:39:00.001-07:00

The taxi driver from the airport asks, when is your election? Who is going to win? I tell him Trump is a pendejo. He likes this.

Room 409 Hotel Principal in the city center. Hot water (once I figure out which of the vertically aligned faucets is which) and friendly staff, who have been holding my mail. $15, I'm not complaining.

Little about Mexico City is not photogenic. A continual street circus, a constant display of activity. Murals in the Metro:

A local off-the-street fair of artisanal goods, chocolates, ice creams, for Mexicans, but tourists like me are at least allowed in. A block away, an off-the-street boutique mini-mall, elegant restaurants, shops, hotel, trees growing up in the midst of the diners. Some shops offering New Age remedies and magic potions, something you'd more expect to see in Boulder or Portland.

A friend and I take an Uber to a Mexican restaurant on an off-street, reportedly the city's best chile rellenos. Unfortunately, it seems the rest of the city had a similar plan for dining today. Mariachis play inside and at one point sing "Happy Birthday" in English.

Bellas Artes, one of the world's most beautiful buildings, a gold dome, presiding over the endless bustle.

The Zocalo, the largest public plaza in all of Latin America, already filling up for the free Roger Water's concert. ABC News later says 200,000 attended and show a time-lapse video. You can seem me in the lower right hand corner.

Thank goodness for Google Maps. I follow my phone's instruction to walk to a bookstore, pharmacy, men's clothing outlet. Curiously, the GPS voice still gives directions in English. What's up with that?

On a street filled with bookstores, I ask for short stories by Juan Villoro. The attendant climbs a ladder, brings down a selection, and I buy the one that looks easiest.

Four-course lunch at Zafiro with Jaime. It's the restaurant operated by the culinary school. Excellent food and presentation, but overeager service. Grasshopper salad, chicken mole, sweet potato puffs, cauliflower, pomegranate and rose gelatos, espresso. Cost for two: $25.

I meet with two elementary school teachers to compare school systems. Much is the same, teachers underpaid and overworked. They have a longer school year, all grades wear uniforms (but they are not obligatory), and English is required in all levels, starting in kindergarten. Discipline measures and testing requirements seem similar.

It is the 11th annual Other Latitudes festival, offering plays from around the country. I see La Pasion de Elpidio, a beautiful two-person costume, puppetry, dance, music and mime show in which the performers inhabit a single costume to create a distinct characters, animating the story of two lovers, their passion, love, deaths, and reuniting in the glowing light of eternity. The audience is completely rapt. I find myself holding back sobs, but can't hide the tears.

HUNG UPSIDE DOWN

2016-09-30T10:42:00.001-07:00

Flying into Mexico City at night, it seems as if the plane were upside down. A vast galaxy twinkles beneath you, stretching out in all directions as far as you can see. The plane descends upon this cushion of stars, the light of a sprawling metropolis of 22 million people.

That's what I remember anyway. I'm still in Illinois, preparing for my afternoon flight from Midway. I have been packing for the last month, selecting a minimum amount of stuff from 40 years of accumulation with Lee.

I use her computer downstairs now, my computer upstairs, iPads, and WiFi-enabled old smart phones, and more processing power than is entirely necessary. Now, I'm leaving it behind for a while.

The screen saver on Lee's computer shows all the pictures she carefully had scanned, a constant display of our lives and our children's lives, all in various stages of development and obsessions, childhood and adulthood, lost lovers and found.

If I had perfect memory and could write a journal of every day of our lives, I would. That won't happen, but I do remember much, even from before the time she lived in Amsterdam working as a nanny, when I lived in Denver as a night watchman at a carnation greenhouse.

That was 1972, I think. We corresponded with mail that used postage stamps. I sent her the lyrics to Elton John's "My Song," and that was our song from then on.

Were we Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson? Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe?

The plans to go to Mexico City were made a year ago, when I hoped she and I could see Radiohead perform the final shows of their current tour on October 3.

Radiohead was Lee's favorite band, once she had finally gotten over The Clash and then Lou Reed. In my mind, she will be sitting next to me.

The concert will be the first evidence of magic on this sojourn southward through Chiapas and into Guatemala, far from the manufactured political turmoil of the north.

As I now leave the country, I think of Shakespeare's final play, The Tempest, when the aging, island-bound refugee Prospero decides to leave his life and his powers and his books behind him.

"This rough magic I here abjure," he says.

"We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep."

2016-09-29T04:11:00.000-07:00

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BEST LAID PLANS

2016-09-28T09:31:00.001-07:00

I took out Lee's ashes today, removing the bag from the temporary urn and cradling it. It still has the tag and metal seal from the Rortvedt Crematory. I hold it with a sort of humbling awe.

Lee loved her time in Guatemala. Studying English in Antigua, living with a family, working her way through the landscape, the language, the ruins.

I pondered the idea of taking some of her ashes with me, returning them to some mountainside corner of Guatemala. But I'm not ready to divide them yet.

I replaced the container back on the shelf, a shrine really, with her other artifacts and items: old photos of Busha and the boys, her father, small Tibetan prayer flags, a tin baby's cup, little paintings by Erica, a ceramic turtle to hold pennies, a picture of Tikal.

This blog, this record, is really for me. You don't have to read it. I just need the outlet to take some part of every day as I travel to honor Lee, without sinking irremediably into sentimentality. I am likely more than once to veer off track. I am likely to get lost.

I just want to keep track. No one knows what will happen. I purchased a one-way ticket to Mexico, and although so many plans have taken place since I bought that ticket, and various directions presented themselves, and hosts suddenly appeared, and helping hands reached out over and over, anything still is possible.

Just yesterday I received a long letter from an old friend of Lee's and mine from Merida, Mexico, enticing me to come to yet another corner of the vast and beautiful country.

This morning, I took Honey for a walk in the park while it was still dark. She was thrilled by the brisk, October air, as was I, glad to get to taste this season slightly before missing the turning of the leaves in a few weeks.

The food is nearly all gone. In the basement freezer, I found the last container of frozen asparagus and kale soup Lee had made. It's for dinner.

A WhatsApp text dinged on my phone.

"Come sooner," Jaime wrote from Mexico City. "If you get here Saturday morning, there's a huge concert for free that night in the Plaza de la Independencia."

And thus, many last-minute complications and interruptions ensue. I change my Southwest Airlines flight to leave one day earlier, for no charge. I emailed the Hotel Principal and after several less-than-grammatical back and forth exchanges, managed to change my reservation.

Complications with my teacher's license renewal appeared, involving a 48-year-old marijuana conviction. (Long story.) I have to scan and send eight pages of explicating information.

I decide I need a sport jacket for who-knows-what. I don't even own a suit. After driving out to Kohls, I realize that I would be much better served shopping in Mexico City. Google reveals men's clothing stores near my hotel with great prices, too.

The peso has dropped since January. One peso is now worth about one US nickel.

Now I am leaving a day sooner than planned and not a day too soon.

Simon calls, also using WhatsApp. He is nearby at the Guatemalan grocery store, having just wired $150 back home to his father.

He wants to bring me the names and numbers of two of his brothers in Santa Eulalia, Guatemala, my final destination.

"They have a car," he says. "They will meet you when you get off the bus."

I'm too wound up. I believe I am writing in both past and present tense but have no time to correct anything. I must rush to the bank. I still haven't packed.

Drinking coffee right now would be a disaster. Instead, I find the most relaxing tea on the shelf, chamomile lemon. Lee collected tea, it would seem. I count more than 30 different kinds and brands, Tazo, Traditional Medicinals, Republic of Tea, Twinings, greens and blacks and throat coat and chai...

I have a dozen other things to do, but I wanted to go through the collection, sort through them all, count them and remember.

THE DEBATE

2016-09-27T05:12:00.001-07:00

Ixcanul means means "volcano" in the Kaqchikel language.

Last night, when everyone else was watching a disdainful spectacle on television, I went to the Art Theater to see the movie "Ixcanul," the Guatemalan feature that won the Silver Bear award at the Berlin Film Festival. It is the official Guatemalan entry for the Academy Awards. It is very beautiful.

The volcano in the movie is called Pacayá. When Ernie was 17, he and I climbed to the very peak of that volcano. Then we hunted down the shrine to the evil Mayan deity, Maximón, in a private home in the indigenous village of Santiago Atitlán.

There we found the life-sized effigy of Maximón, sitting in the darkened space, burning cigar in his mouth, offerings of cigarettes and rum at his feet, candles aflame, and stuffed cats hanging from the ceiling. He also turns up in a scene in the movie.

The movie tells the story of two strong Kaqchikel women, a mother and daughter, who take essential, but sometimes foolish, means to preserve the lives of themselves and their community.

Before the debate last night, I took my blood pressure. It was 160/89. Not good.

But now it is over and I'll spend the day refining my packing.

And I'll imagine the debate I missed as a battle between Maximón and a strong woman battling against all odds for the rights of the least of us.

Today is Tuesday. On Friday, I vote. Saturday, I leave.

STAY, THE MIND CRIES

2016-09-26T13:45:00.001-07:00

My books. A whole shelf of William Burroughs. Beat poets. Edward Albee paperbacks dog-eared in high school. James Baldwin. Gertrude Stein. A hardbound, illustrated The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym.

My friends. My children. The Thursday night poker game, a ritual for more than ten years.

The ducks in the Boneyard. Even the strange fish sculpture that no one seems to like.

The changing of the trees in October.

I'm going to miss that this year. I'm going to miss things. Maybe I shouldn't go.

It's always like this. Why am I leaving?

When it comes down to the wire, I never want to go.

Suddenly, all the ordinary things you become accustomed to start to glow. You notice things. The animals, the sunsets. Honey and I have seen deer in the park some mornings. The herons in Crystal Lake.

I become like a foreigner visiting this strange town for the very first time. Everything is exotic and new.

Before I left on a trip to New York, I complained that just maybe I didn't really want or need to go this time after all. This never failed to infuriate Lee.

It was cool enough, for a change. I put on one of Lee's frayed flannel shirts before taking Honey for her early morning walk. The smell of patchouli still permeates Lee's closets and drawers. I can't bring myself to throw things away.

Blood pressure before meditating: 136/79

Blood pressure after meditating: 117/74

I will take out the recycling on Tuesday night for one final pick-up. The refrigerator is virtually empty. I don't know what I'm going to eat for the next four days.

Having harvested the seven cucumbers, three butternut squash, six tomatoes (mostly green), the kale and Swiss chard and dill and lettuce from Lee's garden, what remains is left behind to go fallow.

Anthony Bourdain ate noodles and fish in Hanoi in last night's No Reservations, touring through the wonderful islands in the blue sea, people living on floating villages. It's all threatened now, limited, by growing tourism, he said. And then Barack Obama showed up to share a beer.

"More people should have passports and travel," Bourdain said as the two ate noodles with chopsticks and talked congenially and laughed.

"You learn that people are the same around the world," Obama said.

I have cancelled home delivery of the New York Times, starting Saturday.

Today's headline: "Millions climb out of poverty, with pay rising." Thanks to "rising wages, and employment jumps, 3.5 million Americans rose out of poverty this year alone."

And then this: "No year during George W. Bush's, Bill Clinton's, George H.W. Bush's or Ronald Reagan's presidency was as safe as 2015," according to The Fair Punishment Project, a center based at Harvard Law School. The country is "safer under President Obama than under any other President in over a half-century."

"Violent crime in the U.S. is near historic lows and the country is dramatically safer than it was 45 years ago, 25 years ago, and 10 years ago."

Why am I leaving again?

If Lee knew how I was letting the dishes sit all day without soaking, she'd be livid.

I may be hesitant to leave, and can rationalize now all sorts of very good reasons to stay, but the truth is that if I never left it all behind, it would be easy to forget how much there is here to love.

Be like Honey, I tell myself. Time is insignificant for her. I'll be gone and I'll be back in no time. No time at all.

Tonight there is a Guatemalan movie, Ixcanul, at the Art Theater. I'll shove all the unfinished packing into a corner and go. I'll skip those talking heads on television tonight, that so-called debate, that stylized confrontation between two powerful people who play fast and loose with their ability to alter our world. I'm keeping my blood pressure where it is.

I'm leaving soon enough. I'll watch Ixcanul and it will be as if I've already left. I'm turning off my notifications.

IN SEARCH OF A BETTER WORLD

2016-09-25T10:29:00.001-07:00

There are approximately 1,000 Guatemalans from the mountain village of Santa Eulalia living under the radar in Champaign-Urbana.

You probably had no idea. Most of them speak the indigenous Mayan language of Q'anjob'al. Many also speak Spanish and they learn English.

Sounds in the Q'anjob'al language can be unique, described as "voiceless uvular implosives." Some of these sounds are only uttered in fewer than 1% of all human languages. Q'anjob'al, one of more than 30 indigenous languages in Guatemala, is spoken by only 77,000 today and is still taught in schools there.

Speaking Q'anjob'al: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giMS73yLXnM

The families living here who have migrated from Santa Eulalia keep to themselves, work extremely hard, raise their children, attend school, pay taxes, send money back home, and routinely check in and fill out forms with U.S. immigration officials.

I know this, because I've driven them up and back and waited with them in the sterile, sluggish government offices in Chicago.

After we drove home from one such visit, they insisted on paying me far more than was necessary. I could not refuse.

The next time you eat at a local restaurant, you can thank Q'anjob'al Guatemalans for your clean plates.

Last Sunday, I attended an early morning Catholic mass in Champaign held in the Q'anjob'al language. The worshipers numbered around 200, by my count. They streamed into the church, the women wearing traditional colorful dresses and sparkly head coverings. The youthful choir and musicians made glorious music, punctuated by young boys proficient at the tambourine and and wood block.

Last year, Lee and I met Antonio often when we took Honey on our afternoon walk to the park. He would be on his bicycle, headed to one of his two after-school jobs. Spanish being a second language for all of us, we enjoyed brief conversations. He laughs easily and maintains a cheerful disposition, despite his grueling schedule.

Eventually,Lee invited him to move into the spare upstairs bedroom, so he could remain in Urbana and finish school. When Lee became sick, he moved out again, back with his family in Champaign.

But by then I'd gotten to know several in Antonio's family – his brothers, his nephews, and others in the Q'anjob'al community.

Santa Eulalia, in the western district of Huehuetenango (pink)

I decided to visit Santa Eulalia myself.

I should arrive in the village in mid-October. One of the books I'd read said that, as agriculture began to wane in the area, leaving for the U.S. became the best and maybe only career option available for young men there. But getting to the United States is no easy endeavor. They tell stories of danger and death. Antonio was 15 when he arrived here, walking with a bottle of water through the desert.

I'll refrain from making political speculation or laying blame for this intolerable situation. I often wish that these peaceful Guatemalans would stay home, surrounded by the landscape they clearly love. But they have been bombarded by American commercial values. They mistakenly assume that the wealth they see on television represents a supreme virtue. That is the message we are selling, after all.

Even when they do come here, they maintain their powerful family values and customs.

Antonio warns me, laughing, about how the buses to the ranch where his father lives wind along a perilous ride on switchback curves through the mountains.

This blog is likely to be a bumpy ride, too. There will be days alone, days without contacts, days of jungle and rain forests and mountains. Days without WiFi. We will see how it goes, one day at a time.

Because this is what I have now to push me forward. This is part of my own period of adjustment and recovery, even as my own country goes through the tumultuous process of political renewal.

Maybe I'll find a Guatemalan shaman, a curandero, a healer. I can't think of any physical problems I have that need healing at the moment. Perhaps I'll ask the shaman to perform a ritual exorcism for my country's ailments as the days count down to the election.

2016-09-24T08:19:00.000-07:00

Sumadero canyon in Chiapas, Mexico

ONE WEEK OFF

2016-09-23T09:00:00.000-07:00

I dream of Lee almost every night. She is with me, as though nothing is wrong or out of the usual.

Last night, we were living in a white farmhouse, walking in the yard. Hens were at our feet, picking at the ground.

A white tiger suddenly raced past us, causing the chickens to flutter out of the way. I remembered having read somewhere that large, predatory feline creatures were moving back into Illinois.

"We have to get inside, really, really quickly," I said, thinking at the same time that I had to grab my phone and take pictures to post to Facebook.

But the tiger had gone, and I woke up. It was 5:30 a.m., still dark out, the sounds of crickets humming to the first cool nights of autumn , and Honey, the big, nuzzly, golden retriever mix that sleeps beneath my hammock, was nudging her nose into my face.

It has been nearly four months since Lee died, and only seven months since she was diagnosed with her cancer. Honey understands what has happened less than the rest of us, and it is incomprehensible to me and the boys and our friends, as unreal as a white tiger running through the cornfields of Illinois.

Honey thinks Lee will be here when we return from every walk outside. Or, she refuses to go for her walk, thinking she will miss Lee when she comes home from her daily swim.

Of course, I don't really know what Honey thinks, but I try to study her and figure it out, now that she and I are the sole companions in this big green house in downtown Urbana.

The concept of time does not seem important to Honey. She recognizes what time of day it is – when to eat, when to walk, when to poop – but not what the duration of time is, or so it seems to me. A minute, an hour, a week... Those are concepts that do not enter into her mental calculations.

Everything is now to Honey, and she expects Lee to come through the door every minute, wearing her baseball cap, carrying her swim suit bag, whistling and full of cheer.

This election cycle is even worse than eight years ago, when my blood pressure's inability to process a steady flow of falsehoods drove me to go to Mexico on the final month before the election, after voting, of course, for Barack Obama.

I am still sorting through all of Lee's enthusiastic activism, the mail keeps coming from all the issues she had supported, the petitions she signed. But at this point, I am tired of arguing with those throngs in America who worship at the Altar of the Untrue. One of them is running for President.

Everyone accepts that these scrolling, trolling comments on Facebook or Twitter are head-butting echo systems, all noise. Yet we continue, almost helplessly.

"Do not flatter yourself in thinking that you have much control over which temptations you click on," Andrew Sullivan has written, describing how Internet distraction almost killed him. "Silicon Valley's technologists and their ever-perfecting algorithms have discovered the form of bait that will have you jumping like a witless minnow."

The battery on my Galaxy S7 Edge almost certainly will run down when I am hiking through the Cuchumatanes mountains on the Western Highlands of northern Guatemala, on perilous and winding gravel roads. I will lose contact. I won't know who won the debates. Or care.

Maybe I'll regain focus again instead of being a slave to distraction. "Concentration is the new black," Sullivan has said.

I leave one week from today, taking my dreams with me.