jugos and chilaquiles

friday the 18th of may

talking to the fruit juice man this morning, he asked me what name i had for dios and i said krishna but really brother it's god that's love and told him about the event last night, the misa of the sufis and the singing and dancing, not what you would expect from these media these muslims live in a grove of peace and love and their liturgy is rumi of his nations and his gentle reflections on the agape, the unconditional love.

and he was like, well, you know, i really dig what you're saying. this from a moustached middle-aged mexican man running a styrofoam juice bar on the side of the ride. no long-haired hippie activist spiritual ombliguista we're talking to.

slowly as he humbles through oranges and grapefruit makes peoples juices and with them their days. all of this, "dios es el dueno de todo, the dueno of the creation". he has made all of this, the celery and even the mangos.

it's pretty clear to both of it. is it mango season after all.

"we can call him jehova in spanish or yahweh but he is the father and you know the important thing is that well do you think the father would create a large fire a hell of fire and sending his children there"

no, no uncle i don't.

im pretty excited to say no and i shake my head at him and there are some moments shared as i reach over the glass and jars of cut fruit -- all part of gods creation -- and shake his hand yes no i dont see how the father would do anything but care for his snotty kids.

it was just like the painting jessica showed me yesterday on the tour of san angel and coyoacan, the barefoot carmelite convent with the huge mural of a mother hen sacred mary and all her carmelite children, nuns on one side boys on the other, like chicks tufted in her holy wings. and that's how the juice man feels i think though he's probably never been down to that part of the town, as a working man shouldn't, and that's how i feel on a good day under a kind moon.

he continues, as humans are wont to do:

"and then look at this world!"

"hijole!"  [ damn ! ]

"look at all these beuatiful women, so many beautiful women!" there's the woman he works with, she blushes and i blush and there's no telling whose wife or duaghter or mother she is but well you know what i think she's beautiful,

"and look at these beautiful women and hijole!" he trails off into a private paradise and leaves me smiling at his partner.

"not just women but the animals too! and have you seen horses running", wiping down the counter, "its all from god", rinsing the juicer, "the birds! and the birds are animals too, and part of the Owner's creation, the garcas and pelicanos and eagles and, well, yes!"

and he's on to fruit cocktails with whipped cream and honey and granola and top and i'm off to work you know but its everywhere all around all the time its the air we breathe as he said. And the sufis too last night in the liturgy too before the dances, that we are like the wish and the god is the water we swim so much we have no idea its even there, that this very gift of energy and sunlight and prana and what it is we call Life slipping through our fingers and into our smiles, it's just everywher all the time so Thank You.

its free.

http://www.somethingconstructive.net/jamanta

mestizaje #23

in the plaza de las tres culturas in tlateloco, where the 1968 student matanza happened (more details after i see the movie tomorrow), denali and i encountered a stone inscription, carved in memory of present and past, that on such and such a day Cuautemoc fell to the power of Cortes, and

"no fue triunfo ni derrota,
fue el doloroso nacimiento del pueblo mestizo
que es el méxico de hoy"

that is

"it was neither triumph nor defeat,
it was the painful birth of the mestizo people
that is this mexico, today"

*

a darker twist on my theories of interracial marriage (and heightened beet consumption) being the fundamental prerequisite for world peace. the mestizaje in this country was a violent one, a forced mixing of indigenious blood with spanish conquerors and spanish missionaries, african warriors and african slaves. the people are as beautiful as you might imagine but there's not the same lightness and postmodern pleasure in the mixture here; perhaps the mestizaje happened early enough that instead of developing a consciousness of unity (or in addition to the roots of it), they have developed an actual race in itself, a mix that preserves its mixture and thus certian features of its "doloroso nacimiento" that fill the crime reports and avenues until today.

chiles

chiles at the post in mercado la merced, yesterday between mangos for 2 points a kilo and a witches cauldron of guanabana puree. i'll also have you know there are four kinds of sapote i've seen -- the mamey sapote (salmon colored, vulvlic seeds, really sweet), the chickoo sapote (common to india, very sweet, brown), the white sapote (green on the outside, haven't tried it), and the black sapote (a ball of gooey tar that uz once descibed as mexican acai and im compelled to agree. it is pudding).

all of which speaks to the infinite density of the amazonian project, how exotics we view as singular from afar turn out to be whole communities of exotic goodness up front. there as many kinds of apples as wines with as many varities and subtleties of perfume. we learned the same about mangos in india -- the pepper mango, the coconut mango, etc -- and now im learning that the once fabled and unique sapote is in reality a whole family of strange fruit trees shedding their sweet goodness on the violent crowns of this tropical mestizaje.

(back to the chiles)

ancho (reddish with a clear hint, a dried poblano)
mulato (almost black)
pasilla (longer skinnier spicier than the first two)

chile del arbol and the puya
guajillo

morita
mora
meco (the last three all beings kinds of chipotle, which is a form of dried xalapeno, i think...)


--
magic mexiphone through june 7th: +52 (1) 55 24 39 03 70
ground line: +52 55 50 25 34 12
+
because elephants are vegetarian.
http://www.somethingconstructive.net/jamanta

traitors and poets

"The poem is the dream made flesh, in a two-fold sense: as work of art, and as life itself, which is a work of art. When man becomes fully conscious of his powers, his role, his destiny, he is an artist and he ceases his struggle with reality. He becomes a traitor to the human race. He creates war because he has become permanently out of step with the rest of humanity. He sits on the doorstep of his mother's womb with his race memories and his incestuous longings and he refuses to budge. He lives out his dream of Paradise. He transmutes his real experience of life into spiritual equations. He scorns the ordinary alphabet which yields at most only a grammar of thought, and adopts the symbol, the metaphor, the ideograph. He writes Chinese. He creates an impossible wold out of an incomprehensible language, a lie that enchants and enslaves men."

3 jan 1937 from henry miller to lawrence durrell,
apparently from a book miller writes on d.h. lawrence

*

that's kind of how things are these days. sunlight on freshly shaven face and the jaw still sore from the force of the cheap razor. we had an action of safai last night and ill write about it with an update but for now to report that after Mango Week, during which erik and i only ate raw food and listen to live music, im back onto the beans and rice and corn and chiles and mexico is filling me with enthusiam for the world of the wikis and creating a mandala of love and starting an illiterary magazine and all the other deliria and debrayes. rest assured.

looks like monsoon hotel is coming out in a couple of works and we're working with the website designers to have the technical background up in time. look out for a cd release part on flag day. as it should be.

* ankurbhai *

dia de la madre, may 10

this is how it can be done. just a point of cultural comparison, mas alla del huitlacoche and incessant traffic (of all kinds, naturally).

today is mother's day. may 10th. a national holiday giving all women a paid holiday and everybody else a half day off. everyone recommends not going out as if their would be riots, because of the incredilbe amount of happy smiling mothers out eating and buying things and whatnot.

so, happy mothers day everyone. there is a monument to the mother in the middle of mexico city, huge and alongside a concrete plaza where protesting farmers camp and prostitutes ply their wares. its not frequented much from what i can tell and i'd go out to check today but im too afraid to leave the house.

ankur


--
magic mexiphone through june 7th: +52 (1) 55 24 39 03 70
ground line: +52 55 50 25 34 12
+
because elephants are vegetarian.
http://www.somethingconstructive.net/jamanta