Rights and Fights and Beauty

 Tim, as most people who know him will agree, is a lovely man.  

Tim at our favourite restaurant

My friend MaureenInAustralia, (who, 43 years ago, astonishingly jumped into the car where I was breastfeeding my first baby and told me that although she was nine years older than me we could still be best friends) calls my husband "the-nicest-man-in-the-world".  She sends us Christmas cards addressed to "Dearest Anne and Tim-the-nicest-man-in-the-world, ...".   

Our four children adore Tim and see him as "the rock", "the voice of reason", "calm in the storm" etc. 

I think I am the storm.  

One of the traits of a calm man is that he avoids confrontation, and even if drawn into it, remains calm and rational. 

I, however, fly into the face of the hurricane, all my swords drawn, dragon-fires blazing.  I have been enraged by injustice, cruelty, stupidity my entire life.   

Me and my dragon

In Lagos we stayed in a ground-floor AirBnB in a large ugly apartment block.  It was fairly empty as I think many of the apartments are rented out only in the summer months.  I did the washing one day and then carefully pegged it all onto the clothes-horse provided, and put it out on the pavement right in front of our balcony, in the sun.  As I was putting the final pegs on, I became aware that the strange shouting going on across the parking lot was an old French man raging at me!  "Non! Non!  It is forbidden!  No washing!"  

I was immediately shocked and infuriated. "Mon dieu but why?"  So I got Tim to help me lift the entire caboodle back over the wall of the balcony, during which we both managed to get our arms painfully scissored by the stupid clothes-horse.  

Next minute Tim was horrified to observe me marching purposefully across the parking lot, previously mentioned swords drawn, dragon-fires blazing.  

At the gate there was suddenly a beautiful young Adonis, wearing only a pair of shorts.  He greeted me in French and asked if he could help me, and even though I could have spoken his language, I needed my own, my emotional lexicon, for what I had to say!  I told him an angry old french man had shouted at me and he said, with a remorseful shrug of his shoulders, "Ah, that is my father."  

His cross-faced mother appeared around the balcony wall, and he acted as the go-between, even though we were all speaking English and could all hear one another perfectly. 

Me: "I just want to know what difference it will make to your father if I put my clothes out, way across the parking lot, in the sun, for a couple of hours, to dry them?"

Adonis: "She just wants to know why she can't put her washing?"

Cross-faced mother: "Because it is not beautiful!  We all live here!  It is not beautiful!"

Me: "Really? Have you looked around this ugly apartment block recently?"  (I thought it actually)  

Adonis: "They live here and it is not beautiful to see your washing."

Me: (speechless)

Adonis: "Have you tried it on the roof?"

Me: (thinking "What?")

from the rooftop (quite ugly)

Adonis: "You should have a key for the roof and there is sun there for the washing.  I can help you?"

Me: (thinking "Yes, please.") "Ah thanks so much, that is great, I will try that!"  Turning away.

Adonis: "Have a beautiful day!"  

So the sword-wielding dragon-rider found the solution!  Tim and I found the rooftop (I LOVE rooftops, azoteas in Mexico City), with the sun, and a 360° view, and everything turned out alright!  (And the washing dried.)  

"Have a beautiful day!" Indeed.

And Beauty, like Keats emphasized.  It is everywhere here in the natural world.

Happiness - Bodyboarding at Bordeira

Yesterday in beautiful tiny Carrapateira, after the best bodyboarding afternoon on Bordeira beach, I walked home over the dunes, which takes me about 45 minutes.  Tim pointed out that it should take 10 to 15 minutes but that I stop for every interesting thing, like a little dung beetle doing its important work on the horse manure.  (Dung beetles are the only animals known to navigate by the Milky Way! A little beetle navigates by the stars?!  Isn't the natural world an incredible treasure?)

A dung beetle with his prize

Little plover on her nest

Also a Kentish plover I discovered on my ramblings.  I suddenly noticed the little rapid-legged runner hurrying off,  and so I went and hid just over the dune, and sure enough, she checked very carefully, running hither and thither (yes, lovely archaic words) and eventually doubling back, when she thought it was safe, to her little nest of eggs, a really idiotic depression in the sand.  (I guess these birds evolved to do this weird useless kind of nest before there were all these awful human predatory beings to disturb them with their big feet and their clumsy nosy dogs!)

Little Egret preening

And a wonderfully relaxed preening Little Egret (which is quite big actually), bright white and shining in the reed-bed, as well as a Grey Heron floating off like a pterodactyl over the marsh in the evening light.

Little ancient god(dess)

And to my delight, the other day I noticed this little god with his beautiful crown making his slow way across our front "garden" which is just stones. He had to climb right up the fence too, and I thought he must be a wingless Praying Mantis.  

(I have just found out that she is a little goddess and indeed has wings and can fly.  I don't know why she spent so long walking and climbing in her wavery fashion. She is a Conehead Mantis and her antennae mark her as female.  They are plain and short, not feathery and long like that of the male.) 

Coastal beauty with Tim-the-nicest-man-in-the-world

I want to live near this coast always.  It is magnificent.   Wild cliffs, dunes, little bays with perfect waves, deep blue and turquoise ocean.  Big sky.  Not many people.  Perfect.

 

19 beds + some trees

Tim with one of the beautiful everyday sunsets of Puerto.

We are actually in Puerto Escondido, which I will write about in a future blog, but although I have been writing and drawing full time in my diary, I have not kept to my original desire to blog once a week.  Oh well, in the grand scheme of things, this is not a problem to worry about. 

Dancing tree-creatures

But I fell in love with the trees of Mexico City and have wanted to give them their due, and also, beds are really important to our lives, and there have been so many since we left our home in October.  

Tim and I have had a few lovely beds through our nearly 39 years together. In South Africa, our bed was a simple second-hand wooden frame double bed.  This was the bed where all the children came to climb in next to Tim {definitely not to me!} to tell him their nightmares and be comforted and put back in their own beds after they were calmed.  

To explain why they didn't call their mother, the usual comforter in the night: I coerced the entire family to call Tim instead, because sleep becomes your dearest wish after becoming a mother, you will in fact trade almost anything for it at times.  I justify this cruelty towards my children for these reasons: after firstly growing the babies in my body, next birthing them, and then breast-feeding them for literally years {6 years, two of the babies were twins and so should probably count double, so 8 years really} of days and sleepless nights, I felt by the time the children were weaned, I deserved to sleep deeply enough to dream again.

Our old bedroom with our lovely bed.

When we arrived in America (with hardly any money for luxuries like beds) we slept on a blow-up mattress for about a year.  That was not a lovely bed, because when they get old (their life span was just a few months back then), they slowly and maliciously let the air seep out during the night so that you wake up with sore hips and grumpy feelings from a night spent in effect sleeping on the floor.  

Our new friends Mary and Jim then upgraded their bed and donated their old one to us, which was a lovely stately tall bed.  Years later, in 2016, we finally bought our very first brand-new bed.  It is the most beautiful wooden bed with a headboard and a footboard, built for a queen!  It is at present waiting quietly for us in our storage unit, and we miss it terribly.  

We have slept in 19 beds since selling and leaving our home in October 2022!  Human beings spend so much of our lives in bed, and strangely enough we are unconscious for much of that time.  But our beds are refuges when we are sick or hurt. They are havens, where we experience the ecstasy of desire and the bliss of sleep and dreams. They are where we reconstitute our relationships, where sleep mends our own physical beings, rebuilding our bones and muscles, and our souls.  

Cotton sheets in Mexico City

Some of these 19 beds have been delightful, with clean white cotton sheets (the best), while others have been lumpy, or have had the worst pillows in the world, or have had those awful polyester sheets, which quite frankly shouldn't be allowed to exist.  

I have learned (am still mastering the art) to appreciate what is good about each place we have stayed in, and to know that fairly soon, there will be another to get used to for a brief moment in time.  And so maybe an accommodation has those aforementioned awful sheets, or the pillows seem to have been stuffed with balls of dough, or there is no kettle, (because there are countries where people don't like tea). Maybe there is no grater, or metal cutlery, or even china crockery, or a decent saucepan.  Sometimes the shower only trickles out enough hot water for one person a day.

Painting on my "table" in Puerto Escondido

You find instead that the place is gratifying in other ways, like the fact that it has space to unpack your art materials and leave them out, or that there is a large friendly fridge, or a small balcony which acts as an extra room in a cramped studio apartment, or a wonderful enormous inviting bed.  

These experiences are teaching me how to make do, with less, with what we have, to change the picture in my head, (something I have always exhorted my children and grandchildren to do).  Of course there are still some days where a lot of expletives float around in my vicinity.  

So on we go, next Friday, to our 20th bed, in CDMX (Mexico City), again.  (Also, beds are often made of wood, so they were once trees, so we sleep, like our ancient ape ancestors, held by trees.)  

In CDMX I will see all my old familiars again.  The trees I loved and greeted every day. (Not EVERY tree, I'm not crazy!😀  But yes, many.)  

The house made of trees

This building is on the way between Nick's place and ours, so although I tried to explore a different way every day, I would often choose this street so that I could spend some time gazing up from the shade of these glorious beings.  Some (on the side) are jacarandas, of which there are so many in CDMX (Mexico City) and there are multitudes of other intimate trees that remind me of my own country, South Africa. 

 

The toes are growing too long for the shoes!

If you ever go to CDMX, you will be astonished at the plant life there.  There is greenery everywhere, and people taking care of it all, growing plants on rooves, on sidewalks, and watering old trees and clearing lovingly around their roots.  

There are even trees in the puddles!

Builders will often conserve a tree and work around it to build a new edifice. It is common to see an entire site where the old building has been razed to the ground but the big old trees are still standing, healthy and strong and unfazed, patiently awaiting their new neighbors.  (Whereas in my experience in the US, a new building site will just employ one of those terrible, awful truck inventions which demolishes an ancient 10m high tree, with all its ringed history of nests and creatures, of hiding places for chickadees' seeds,  into nothing but a pile of lifeless wood-chips remaining, in just a few minutes, to be laid down later to actually stop things from growing!)  

Lines and dapples

Even though the walk to Nick's apartment is only about 10 minutes, it usually took me about half an hour because of stopping to express my adoration, enchanted every day by the tree beauties.   

Curtain fig beautifying wires.

Colour and growth everywhere. (and Nick)

decoration on a restaurant table

Overflowing

And our little lemon cypress Christmas Tree, which now lives in Nick's place.

Guatemala

Guatemala

Is a small proud woman

Wearing all the colors

Of her ancient country.

She has long black hair

That swirls like water at night

She looks out at the world with dark eyes.

Guatemala is a volcano called Fire

Puffing smoke like an old man with his pipe.

Also volcanoes of Water

And mud  

Centuries of eruption, corruption

And change, no rest or respite.

Guatemala is repression

In many forms.

By religion, by the government, by America, by the rich.

The violence of centuries.

Brutalized, colonized, 

Dehumanized. 

Guatemala is a sacred Maya lake called Atitlan,

“The place where the rainbow gets its colors”

Created by a caldera. 

The wise and ancient Tz'utujil culture

Flourished here, with reverence for the female and male

In all things.

Guatemala is a small boy on a lancha

traveling over the contaminated lake with his grandfather, 

half asleep standing up.

His older sister dressed in an old purple tutu,

A favorite of little girls all over our world,

gazing out at the uncertain lake before her, her future.

 

Guatemala is a comadrona recognized in a wall mural

In San Pedro, a woman with green eyes

And a don, a calling.

Devoted midwife of six generations of babies,

hiking up and down mountains to her clients,

Supporting women in the life-changing process of birth.

Guatemala is fields on steep hillsides

Filled with growing greens,

Corn, sugarcane, vegetables, coffee, beans

Subsistence farming with everyone working

Even the littlest children carrying heavy loads,

Trying to stave off malnutrition, a constant struggle to survive.

But,

Guatemala is a place where every green thing grows,

There are trees everywhere, old and young,

and so many birds singing

Hummingbirds flit in their inimitable buzzing flight

Magical delicate quick visitors, pollinating all the colours

of the flowers our eyes feast on.

And,

Guatemala is beauty, creativity, 

It is wide smiles that strangers don’t really deserve,

There are honours in abundance.

It is delicious food, coffee every morning

At a beautiful garden oasis, run by the two shy cousins,

We are given a touching gift on our last day.

Also,

Guatemala is a little old lady 

Trudging slowly home in the late afternoon light

Of Antigua, her shopping bag on her arm,

On her tired shoulder rides a beautiful Hummingbird moth,

at the end of the street, it takes wing and flies off

waving a wing, blessed by the old goddess.

Montezuma and a new year

Montezuma

I have been very slow to recover from Montezuma's Revenge, here in Mexico City. Although why Montezuma would want revenge on an older South-African woman with genetic roots from all over the European continent, (and even a tiny bit of North African Bedouin blood) is beyond me.

But here I am, alone in our AirBnB, having missed out on a balloon ride with Tim and Nick and Gina, our friend, over the pyramids of Teotihuacan, a very successful ancient Aztec civilization that flourished for about 700 years and then mysteriously ended, although it is now believed by historians that the cause could have been the terrible volcanic eruptions, perhaps in Central America, perhaps Krakatoa, which caused a minor Ice Age from 536 to 560CE. 

I went to the Museo de Antropologia with Matt a few days before Christmas, and learned so much about Teotihuacan so that I would have a good knowledge of the place even before we went, but it was not to be.  

Strange little clay figurines from Teotihuacan which
apparently represent the duality of human nature, 
our darkness and our light.

 

Playing a game on Nick's phone caused
much laughter during the wait for the balloon
ride that never happened.

But I am fine with being left behind, because they didn't really want to leave me and they have missed me. I wanted them to have the lovely experience that we had planned. Our first booking, a special treat for all four of us being together in Mexico, was cancelled, after waiting hours and hours at the site, because the fog would not lift. I was still hale and hearty that time. 

 

Elephant ear lungs, from a painting
of mine

Having lived with chronic asthma since I was four years old, I have learned to deal with missing out on things due to illness. It is a horrible affliction to have, make no mistake, but it has also taught me so much. As a small child I often consciously appreciated when I was breathing normally, which is a strange thing to think about as a kid who usually just runs around from here to there, doing and making and playing and learning. I would sometimes just stop and think, "Wow, I can breathe! The breathing out is the same as the breathing in, amazing!" 

 Often I would spend hours wheezing "like the squeaky swing that needed oiling" according to my best friend's dad, who frequently had to wake up in the middle of the night, during a sleepover at their house, to take me home because I was wheezing so badly! (The word asthma comes from the greek word aazein, meaning to breathe noisily.)

 Also, having asthma, which was treated with antiquated drugs at that time, like ephedrine, meant that I lived on just a couple of hours' sleep a night for years as a child, which also meant that I read a whole book every night. So while my lungs were struggling to allow my body to survive and thrive, my soul grew up very rapidly, as I constantly read books way beyond my years. 

My dad and I

 My dad taught me to read when I was three which was the greatest gift he gave me, and I have devoured all the stories of the world for all the years since then. 

And that was long ago, that terrible suffering, as a child. In my memories that adversity and distress seem like a mountain, up close huge and difficult to climb, but seen from far away, fading into the mist.  Because in 1990 someone brilliant invented the inhaled steroid, which changed my life, and that of my daughter Jess, who unluckily inherited the asthma gene in our family.  Neither of us have been admitted to hospital for asthma since that date! ("Touch wood," as we say in South Africa, although it's quite rude to say that in America, where they say, "Knock on wood!")

View from our azotea, showing examples
of other rooftops.

 So part of the morning was spent sitting on our azotea or rooftop, my eyrie, reading and at times surveying my queendom (the view of Mexico City). 

 

It is a phenomenon of Mexico City, that many people living in apartment blocks have access to the rooftop, and often a private piece of it. Edifices are built up to five storeys high, and then the rooftops are flat and walled in, divided into separate havens where people can have gardens of potted plants, where they can hang their washing, where they can sit and take in their Vitamin D fix for the day. 

 

Sparklers to ring in the New Year

Lighting sparklers to ring in 2023, on our rooftop.

My old kitchen table with plants.

If I lived in Mexico City, my azotea would be exquisite. There would be plants everywhere, green and inviting, shady and colorful, full of flowers and light, and there would be a bird feeder, and a hummingbird feeder, for all the beautiful birds of Mexico, and a big wooden table with comfy chairs, to sit and read and write and watch from under a large orange umbrella, just like my beautiful deck in our old house which is no longer my home. In Afrikaans, one of the languages of South Africa, there is a word for longing, "verlang" which perfectly encompasses all those feelings of longing, of nostalgia, of wishing to be back somewhere, even just for a moment. 

Most of our family on our deck in 2019, the last
time we were all together there.

 

Rufous Sabrewing Hummingbird

But outside our apartment, there is a tall Mexican Ash, (more than 5 storeys high) which looked quite ill when we arrived, but was, I think, just recovering from having lost leaves due to the season, and in the time we have been here, it has gone from that ghost of a tree to a green and fragrant-flowered haven for numerous creatures, butterflies, yellow-bellied woodpeckers, inca doves, the ubiquitous sparrows, and even a few beautiful hummingbirds.  So during my own recuperation and "re-growing of my leaves" I glimpsed one of these magical creatures in my beautiful Ash one day with a feeling of utter joy.  My mother taught me to delight in these sorts of things, beauty, small things, the way to equilibrium.