Grasshoppers for Dinner

Monday, February 4, 2008
Coyoacán




Well, it was the first sort of social outing with a bunch of classmates from CEPE last Thursday after class, and given the odd mix of Korean, Japanese, Canadian, Me!, and Beré - our token Méxicana, odd combinations was certainly the order of the day. Nevertheless, none of us, I think, expected such an odd combination as grasshoppers and guacamole!! as we hopped onto the Coyoacán collectivo towards Mukyu on Avenida Miguel Angel Quevedo- the Ramen noodle place Keichi had been recommending. - and who would know better?
Anyway, the ramen was indeed excellent, muy sabroso - and genuine enough considering there was not a Japanese noodle chef in sight! - but even after a drink of Calpis, and then green tea ice cream for dessert, it was still too early to call it a night, so off we went into the center of Coyoacán to sit again for drinks at one of those broad shady terraces right on the Jardin Centenario. Some girls stayed with hot chocolate - which took a while to "grind"...! - while us guys opted for more serious fare, wicked mescal-based mixed concoctions like Xochiti or Huatulco sporting ingredients like sugar cane syrup, lime juice, coconut water or tamarind. Delish!




But the little complication was that we had to eat at least one little antojo - or snack since this was a restaurant we were sitting at. Nobody really hungry at all of course - after big fat bowls of ramen! "Oh, this guacamole dish looks nice and lite - Guacamole con chapulines - must come with chips, right?" And before Beré - the only one who knew - could finish explaining exactly what chapulines were, there they appeared in front of us - in a bowl! Now Japanese and Koreans eat some pretty weird s*#@, but no way were any of the girls going to even consider trying these golden-crispy-fried little grasshoppers sprinkled over the guacamole. Philippe and Keichi and I - with a little help from Beré - polished them off no sweat! Salty, curry-flavored and crunchy - Yum Yum! Tasteee!

Missing New York...

Monday, February 4, 2008
Coyoacán





These are the sorts of things I miss about New York right now!
But not so much...after this terrific long weekend trip to Tlaxcala...

How Special is a Concert!

Sunday, January 20, 2008
Coyoacán

Maybe it's just that I've been harboring - no nurturing - a deep yearning for good classical, preferably symphonic, music for ages now. So there was just a bit more I wanted to say about last night's fabulous concert, since it really was the highlight of that very special day. Now, the Sala Nezahualcóyotl is no small affair! It is, in fact, reputed to be the greatest concert hall in Latin America, and renowned especially for its fabulous acoustics. Let me try and describe it quickly so you can sit yourself down by my side. No, actually, let me get a picture of it for you so you can see for yourself. There, see it up above (I love this blog!) That's only the central area of the orchestra pit, part of a much larger space extending way back and up behind the field of this picture. But the most striking part, for me, you can see in this picture, and that's the glittery arrangement of faceted panels suspended directly above the orchestra pit. No doubt highly instrumental in creating that sumptuous acoustic resonance. Visually, it so reminded me of the deadly underneath portals of those huge alien ships in Independence Day - a bit disconcerting at first! (let's see if I can find you a picture of that!)



There! - am I imagining some uncanny resemblance, or what!
Anyway, the feeling was there - though not at all one of imminent anihilation! Just the intensely smart chaneling of sound energy. Those shiny mirrored panels also looked like someone took the bottom section of a vast disco mirror-ball and separated out the pieces to hang them separately as if the ball were exploding!

So, see the elevated tiers of balcony seating behind and around the stage. Well, that's me on the right in the front row (for US$6.50 remember!) I was looking right down onto the orchestra, so that - with the piano over to the left - not good to see the keyboard, but Mr. Mikhail Rudy was framed perfectly between the grand piano's lid and its support. Amazing to actually see not only the pianist head-on, but the actual workings of the inside of the piano - now that's a first for me! - and besides, it meant that the sound was just radiating straight up to me from those piano strings. Awsome!

Now all this is about the Bartok, No 3 by the way! Could there be a more ethereal, enchanting piano concerto ever?! Especially from the second-to-third movement when, out of a grounding of the most delicately soulful gentleness emerges a first puppy-playful and then just plain delicious love dance between the small orchestra and the piano, as passionate and gripping as anything you could imagine hearing on such a respectable stage. And the program says Bartok died - penniless and broken, in New York - just a few bars short of completing the final orchestration! Well, you could just die and go to heaven from hearing such heavenly music! - or I could! And as if that wasn't enough...the audience's rousing, stand-up ovation finally brought Mr Rudy back for an encore. A Chopin Nocturne, I'm sure it was - maybe No 4? - for more pure delight dripping from heaven in fragrant liquid crystals of bliss!

I guess you've figured out - I really enjoyed the concert!! Oh, and after intermission, the second half of the program was Brahms Symphony No 4 - quintessential XIX Century passion and pomp! Love it!
What a wonderful gift a fine concert is - just a plain ol' classical symphony concert!
Cultures and civilizations produce all sorts of stuff, don't we - from art and monuments and prosperity, to war, injustice and ... toxic waste. I always felt the orchestra was one of the great achievements of Western culture - all pompous and bourgeois though it may be!

Mexico City - in love!

Sunday, January 20, 2008
Coyoacán



I was going to tell you all about my cute little house in Coyoacán, right! - but since my sofa hasn't arrived yet - Ah, the sofa! - I think I'll wait until I can describe a more civilized, respectable household ... with a sofa! Meanwhile, something more pressing has come up anyway.

A relationship with a place is a wonderful thing, no? Just like any relationship. Don't you find that when you come to a new place, it can take some time before...something clicks, and that's when you get it, you begin to feel the place, and embark on a deeper relationship with it. Not that there isn't often a sort of love-at-first-sight thing, too. But I find that - usually a few days later - a special moment suddenly arises, and that's when I can begin to say "Wow, I love this place!"

Well, for me that moment here in Mexico City was yesterday - my first proper weekend day off. Mind you, that's not such a surprise considering that my whole first week was driven by a pretty serious routine - coffee - class - home - yoga - eat - internet etc. So, yesterday I determined to take a whole day off and, after welcoming Amalia in to clean up the house and do my laundry (Wow! - what a treat!) I set off to meet Walter for the first time - for lunch as it turned out, of a delicious cóctel de ostiones followed by an empanada de calamari and jugo de goyaba y limón - yum! Walter and Valéria - both Argentinians - are good friends of Alejandro's and - ojalá (I hope) will become so for me, too. Great to connect with someone outside the realm of CEPE and the foreign student scene.

Later in the afternoon, Walter dropped me off at the Museo Tamayo http://www.museotamayo.org/ since Tobias had reminded me that the current Tamayo exhibition was finishing this weekend and I should definitely see it. So, I was on my own for the rest of the day - but very pleased to finally off exploring Mexico City further afield than my local neighborhood. Anyway, what with photo stops, enjoying sculptures in the park, and playing with squirrels, by the time I was at the museum's door...it was closed! Oh, well, never mind. I'll come back tomorrow.

Ah, but the incomparable Museo Nacional de Anthropologia http://www.mna.inah.gob.mx is right next door, so...why not! Just for a quick little mini-tour before it closes (an hour later than Tamayo). It's been over 10 years since I was last here in February, 1997. Now, you have to understand that this is not only one of the great museums of the world - along with the Louvre, the Met, etc. but, more than that a a place that is truly magic to me. The museum is itself a temple, a repository that not only honors but perpetuates the cultural and spiritual heritage of Mexico's pre-columbian peoples.

By now, the sun had set and, amazingly, the museum even on this Saturday night, was virtually empty - what a treat! Though I thought I would just do a sort of ritual circumambulation as a tribute to the place, (because you know I'll be back here many many times - and, hey, my UNAM student ID gets me into most of the country's museums for free!) things didn't quite turn out that way. Slowly walking around the courtyard, peeping into the different halls, I only got as far as the Olmec gallery where the huge awsome head at the back just drew me right up to it. There I stood transfixed in communion and unmoving for the next 30 minutes of meditation that took me completely by surprise. Small clutches of people came and went, but I couldn't take my eyes off this penetrating stone gaze reaching out to me from the very origins of Mexican culture. It spoke to me of duality (a visual trick, no doubt) and of the union of opposites, (a theme reiterated later on the up-down flowing escalator of the Tácubaya subway station - a Koyaanisqatsi moment!) And that's pretty much as far as I got at the Museo Nacional de Anthropología! Not bad to kick off my hopefully lengthy love-affair, (actually begun 10 years ago) with this inspiring place that so eloquently articulates this country's tribute to its amazing heritage.


Now I had less than an hour to get all the way down to the Centro Cultural de la UNAM hoping to make it to this evening's concert by the Orquesta Filarmónica de la UNAM http://www.musicaunam.net/ Several subway and taxi rides later, yes, I made it though not in time for the first short piece "En Memoria de lídice" by Bohuslav Martinů (Oops! - never heard of 'im). A US$6:50 ticket got me to a seat I could not have wished to improve upon in this vast and wonderful Sala Nezahualcóyotl which looks sort of like the main opera hall of the Sydney Opera House - and is probably from about the same era. I'd love to wax all poetic about the divine concert that followed, but I'm afraid I'll have to leave that for later because right now, the afternoon is moving along and I want to get back to the Museo Tamayo before I really miss out on that exhibit altogether. So, more about the concert later...

Studying Spanish at UNAM

Sunday, January 13, 2008
Coyoacán, Mexico City

Well, classes start tomorrow already, so I'd better fill you in on these last few days' settling in here in Mexico City. CEPE (Centro de Estudios Para Estranjeros) is one of those departments where people from all over come to study Spanish - and Mexican culture - at UNAM (The National Autonomous University of Mexico) This is the oldest - and biggest - university in the Americas, and the campus is like a huge city unto itself, to the south of Downtown Centro Historico Mexico City. It's a long way back into the center of the city, but the subway is great here - about 20 cents (US) a ride! It's clean and bare and sort of quiet (running on rubber tyres) except that people will always get on selling CD's and they blare out their musical offerings full-blast on big portable speakers in their backpacks. This subway is sort of like a cross between Paris and ...Cairo!
It only clicked last Thursday after registration and placement tests, that UNAM holds a very special place in my childhood memories. The main library on Campus is none other than the famous iconic Bibliotheca Central built in 1956 by the architect Juan O'Gorman and covered with the largest mosaic mural on the planet showing vivid scenes from Mexico's history. http://bc.unam.mx/murales.htm
Now the reason this particular building is so special to me - in such a strangely obscured way - is that I remember seeing a bright unreal-looking picture of this building in some book or magazine - probably one of those kids' magazines like "Look and Learn" that I used to subscribe to when I was a kid. I remember being completely awe-struck by this intensely colorful and original building in that mythical, impossibly far-away place called Mexico which, to little me in Perth, Western Australia, in the early 60's must have seemed like some other planet. As I think back now, I feel that this very building was probably single-handedly responsible for kindling my passion for architecture, not to mention exotic far-away places!
Well, here I am in Mexico City at least 40 years later. My newest and first CEPE friend, Daisuke, and I are heading back onto the campus looking for the student cafeteria after enrolling for our courses. Now, I knew of course, that the library was somewhere in there, but the campus, like I said, is huge and I had never looked at a map properly. My Lonely Planet Guide is still waiting to be opened! And what's more, I had never come down here to the UNAM campus 12 odd years ago, when I first came to Mexico City with Nori and Megu.
Anyway, soon as we stepped through the first entrance way past the cafeteria... there it was!
Looming bold and solid and massive. The mosaics less bright than I had remembered them from that old magazine. Have they faded with time, I wonder? Needless to say, my heart was all a-thump as we stepped inside to find a spacious, bright, sunlight-flooded ground-floor study area - which I know will become one of my favorite haunts thanks in part to the wi-fi internet access which will make it a nice change from sitting at home on the computer...
Now that's just one reason why I'm looking forward to these next few months of study here in Mexico City! Another - and equally tantalizing one - is the gorgeous little place I've found to live in Coyoacán! - but that'll have to wait for my next posting...
Hasta luego, amigos!

First Day in Mexico City

Monday, January 7, 2008, 2:42 PM
Casa Gonzalez, Mexico City

First Day Musings

My first day in Mexico City – which will be my home for the next few months. I am sitting on my room’s broad clean-tiled upstairs terrace, shaded from the bright cheery-blue sky by an umbrella-covered, round, glass-and-cast iron table with those heavy iron garden chairs that are usually so hard to move around. Mine slides smoothly over the shiny amber tiles, however, on its soft rubber pads. I’m accompanied by many happy potted geraniums and bougainvilleas, large and small, and all is enclosed by a low, massive, turn of the century balustrade of grey limestone. Or is it cement? No matter! The terrace overlooks the lush, green inner garden of Casa Gonzalez. Orange trees, soft Irish-green lawn, Kayla Lilies, Poinsettias, sundry ferns and fronds, lazy butterflies, twittery little birds…
Over neighboring rooftops peep a few of the glittery glass towers of the Zona Rosa. The sky is host to occasional mass flappings of domesticated pigeons and a lonely bunch of ponderous white snail-clouds going somewhere else. Behind, and all around this tranquil haven, the thick, dense, low grumble of the City is ever-present.
A moment ago, just as I was remembering to begin the first round of a seven-day meditation cycle to release the old year and welcome the new – Thank you, dear Lea! – suddenly with the teeniest faint buzz, a little glimmery-green hummingbird appeared right next to me for a drink of nectar from the pink bougainvillea in the great pot nearest my table. Now that’s a blessing, we know! Thanks little fellah, angelito plumado! I know many flying or crawling spirits will grace my next few months here bringing subtle whispered messages from Beyond. That’s what Mexico’s like.
I arrived very late last night from Miami. Thank God for Miami. Thank you Julie and Jerry for so delightfully snipping that somewhat redundant umbilical cord. Because my departure from New York was no easy matter! visited as it was, by three wicked sisters of tribulation to send me off in a right tizzy! Let me tell you…
First, it took many hours – well into my last white night of packing and sitting up with Tina and Brandon, to realize that I had LOST my little carry bag!! (yes, with wallet, credit cards, vitals) possibly at the E.U. restaurant around the corner after a delicious farewell dinner with Miss BKNY. - or was it in a taxi, earlier…? What a restful last night’s sleep I got until 11 the next morning when it was finally found at the very restaurant where I’d abandoned it without as much as a cursory backward glance! Ouff!
Second, not devastating but truly tedious was the 45 minutes of haggling, re-packing, and threats of $100 excess baggage charge it took to get my cumbersome 6-months worth of “stuff” onto American Airlines Flight 1709. Whew! a sigh of relief you might expect. But no! – the best for last…
Moments later, at the security check, as I’m putting my belt and shoes back on, and an officer is cautiously emptying out my carry on backpack, baffled by images of all the video equipment and cables no doubt, I look up just in time to see his overworked young colleague pick up one of those grey plastic bins off the roller as if it’s empty. But no, it’s not empty. It has my laptop in it! My cherished darling sleek new Mac Book Pro. My most essential work tool for the next 6 months. Possibly the most expensive item I own! Yes indeed, there before my very astonished eyes, she dropped my computer BANG! right on its corner onto the cruel hard cement airport floor at my feet. Let me not upset myself further by continuing the story (for of course it had just begun! and will no doubt drag on for months!) Anyway, dented side ports and all, it did turn on – though with the most unsettling grinding groan of cyber pain – and here I am using it quite successfully right now. Please send prayers of virtual healing to keep it happy and well!!
So all the more blessings to the delicious following Sunday in Miami with dear Julie and Jerry for so successfully evaporating all trace of the dire and deadly grip of those three wicked sisters of distress, agents, I know, of Sri Ganpati’s playful mischief – placer and remover of obstacles!
And now, is the great metropolis calling? It’s mid-afternoon, warm and heavy but for an occasional swish of gossamer breeze. Shall I take off to make a new friend at the Museo Tamayo? or stroll down grand old Avenida Reforma to soak in the City’s fumes? stop at the corner café for a long-overdue breakfast/lunch? or withdraw coyly to my shady room for a little afternoon siesta? Let’s see….