Wednesday is my slack day

Wednesday is my slack day. Slack day as opposed to free day. Free days come with some degree of obligation to use them well. Slack days assign no such responsibility. I have class at 4pm, but the grand part of the day is straight-up relaxation. I didn’t sleep particularly late (8:00 for all those keeping score), but the tempo of this rainy morning has been wonderfully slow. My “parents” here don’t get up until ten or eleven every day which means that Scott and I have the house to ourselves for a few hours on the slack days. We washed a joint load of clothes and watched the Olympic recap while chopping banana into our customary Special K. I never had much of a palate for the stuff, but Zucaritas (the Mexican face of Frosted Flakes, complete with Tigre Toño) and Choco Krispies always seem far less appealing in the morning. And the whole milk helps.

It’s getting on toward eleven now and I’ve come down the mountain and lit for the first time at my friendly neighborhood pasteleria (place where they make and sell cakes) and café to write a bit before I head into town for lunch. With the rich smell of locally roasted Chiapas coffee beans drifting up from my Americano, I can’t help but be grateful that this piece of pre-yuppie culture has made it into the heart of México. Coffee shops. It’s a good thing they’re here because I’ve conditioned myself to do my very best work in coffee shops (or cafés as they are called here—and the idea of doing work in them is pretty foreign. But heck, so am I). In addition to a workspace, and perhaps more importantly, these places have been serving as a no-mans-land. A place to step out of straight México into a parallel México where I can process, take notes, read in English (I try to refrain from it as much as possible otherwise), or what have you. A bit of respite.

In the parallel México I can still practice Spanish, talking with the owners and baristas, but generally these people are not like your average José. They care less about impressing you, less about being polite and more about really communicating. This is refreshing because most people don’t actually care what you say—just smile and agree with a “que bueno!” or a deluge of their own thoughts and polite blabbering which makes it easy to chat and hard to converse. To actually have someone intently trying to understand you and help you out is a luxury here.

In one of my classes, I had to write an essay about “Luces y Sombras” (lights and shadows, good things and bad things) of my life in Cuernavaca. All of my “lights” had to do with the people, but so did the shadows. I wrote that my main beef with the Cuernavaca experience was that no one (Mexican) wanted to broach the tough subjects, no one wanted to have what I would call a real conversation. I mean, if I’m going to learn a language I would like reach the level of actually using it. I don’t consider myself a real intellectual, but like the way they talk. I want to have the option of speaking deeply in Spanish and being fluently, intelligently contrary if I want to be. But I don’t think they teach that here. I’ve learned from conversations, my own and those I overhear on the street, that most Mexicanos are really happy to talk for days about things that everyone agrees on. And conversations can be controversial as long as all the conversers are on the same side of the controversy. (say that a few times fast)

But the way I see it, if you and another person are totally on the same page about something you probably don’t need to talk a lot about it—that’s not communication, just reiteration. It’s the union of two different angles, the gentle give and take…the friction that makes communication beautiful. And worthwhile. Indeed, some of the very best conversations I’ve had have been with people of opposite and immovable opinions. Here interpersonal communication has been greased up, pared down, and streamlined so that it’s basically against the rules to create friction.

I’m trying to reconcile that with the huge protests that happen in Cuernavaca nearly every week. On Monday I was returning home from a trip to the mystical town of Tepoztlan and got stuck in downtown CVA for hours as thousands upon thousands of people blocked every major thoroughfare in the heart of the city. As I sat in a café reading Ocatavio Paz (a Mexican “intellectual” whose Spanish is beautiful and whose cultural commentary has been a much-needed counterweight to the shallow mainstream), el centro roared in protest of poor education, stolen property rights, and general unrest. It’s so strange that when these non-confrontational people gather by the thousands, they can become a clamoring mass unafraid of aggravating an entire city’s worth of motorists and commuters. These people who, on their own, would not even dare to correct you if you said their name wrong.

Welcome to Southern México.