This week-end I decided to explore Cuernavaca beyond my home drag, Avenida Morelos. Yesterday I took a cab and asked to be taken to Librería Gandhi, a bookstore that had been recommended by one of the professors at the Tec. The taxi driver knew where I wanted to go and took me there by a fairly circuitous route (but Cuernavaca is so cleaved by gulches that there is no route that is not circuitous) and he explained to me that there was a “manifestación” or demonstration downtown at the Zócalo and that one had to avoid it. I later saw he was right as the bus that took me back to the Zócalo got stuck in traffic on a street full of shops with signs claiming “se compra oro”, ‘gold bought here.’ The taxi driver was a chatty type, or I encouraged his chattiness from the back seat, and told me that he had been a philosophy student at the university, that he had valiantly taken on “Neetch” (i.e., Nietzsche), and that he had written a “tesina” or graduating paper on truth, or Truth, that is, on finding out how to catch such slippery eel. He said that the Mexican essayist Carlos Monsiváis had been great inspiration, and that Monsiváis convinced him that truth was really very malleable –a postmodern position, I take it. The driver also asked me where I was from, and immediately he went on to inquire who were more pretty, Mexican women or Spanish women. I missed my chance (I should have unhesitatingly answered: But of course the mexicanas!) to point out to him that the truthful answer to his question was slippery, subjective, and surely phantasmagoric. I told him instead that at my age more and more women appear beautiful and thus I had a sort of data overload to be able to decide. And neither will I tell you, my patient readers, which ones I think the more beautiful. Come and see for yourselves.
It turns out that Librería Gandhi is now Ganco Colorines, and I am going to take a break now and give them a call to see if one book I was after has arrived.
The book in question is La puta de Babilonia, i.e., “The Whore of Babylon,” an anticlerical tract I read about in a magazine at a coffee shop the other day and whose author’s name I now have forgotten [Fernando Vallejo]. I felt a bit self-consicous asking for the whore of Babylon, but the bookstore staff didn’t seem to share the feeling. When I called this afternoon I heard one of them shout to the house: “Has the whore of Babylon arrived?” Apparently the book is selling quite hotly. The author is a Colombian who has now gotten Mexican citizenship; he is quite well known (though not enough for me to have his name in my head right now) and has earned distinguished literary prizes. He is, apparently, a sworn enemy of his fellow and more famous Colombian, Gabriel García Márquez.
At Ganco/Gandhi I bought a couple of books because I have finally gotten tired of the novel I was reading (too long, too tedious; it isn’t getting to the point—and I no longer care to find out who done it). I purchased a novel by the Spaniard Javier Marías, a little book of poems, and Pedro Páramo, the second and last book by the great Mexican writer Juan Rulfo as I feel the time has come for me to read that classic. I was actually looking for poetry, hoping to find some good verse by Mexican poets. The TEC teacher who told me about the Gandhi recommended a few poets, but I could find none of them in the stacks.
In my search, I leafed through a number of volumes and read a few of the poems. What a sorry state poetry is in this day and age! Or at least the poetry that does not quite sell and remains in Ganco’s bookshelves. What I read seemed to me dull and narcissistic, and huffing with self importance. The poet observes the shape of a leaf in a tree and thinks he’s had a revelation; or he feels that his feeling is very felt. Vagaries of this sort. Hello! Don’t these folks know that the competition for the reader’s attention is fierce and that they better give us something concrete and intelligent? Apparently not, when you are sailing the black waters of true poetic inspiration.
You might ask why, given my reaction, I did purchase a book of poems. Well, for one thing, it was cheap (reduced from 40 to 36 pesos), and I guess I was feeling guilty for having such negative view of the art. Or perhaps because I sensed in the poet a certain brotherhood, the brotherhood of the contradictory or at least contrary spirit. I am talking about Cantos del tchandala (no idea yet what tchandala means, and no much hope I’ll find out) by Juan Carvajal, published in 1999. Here is my translation of a poem:
THE ARTIST
I have succeeded, because
(I am an artist) I have failed.
But if (in the obscure terms
Of the art) to fail is to succeed,
Then I have failed. And so,
How could I ever enjoy my success?
(and how could I avoid it?)
If it is but a failure,
The purest sign of my victory.
Well, as you see, Carvajal likes parentheses (and anybody who likes patentheses couldn’t be all bad).
Beyond Avenida Morelos
This morning I continued my exploration of Cuernavaca. Its central square (there are two squares with one common vertex, actually) was alive and well and as crowded as I imagine the Tokyo subway at rush hour. Birds chirping madly on the trees, hundreds of vendors, and about two dozen shoe-shine stands, each with its own awning to keep the customer cool. Most of those were idle, however, a result I am sure of the modern prevalence of sneakers over shinable brogues.
Then I walked up Avenida Guerrero (the name of another state, where Acapulco is) and found myself inside the Mercado Adolfo López Mateos. I was the lone gringo in that labyrinth of humdrum stalls and narrow corridors remindful of Moorish suqs minus the spices; I got out as quickly as I could and came back to the center by going around it rather than retracing my steps. Most folks in there appeared perfectly indifferent to me, and in fact indifferent to business. A lot of vendors were squatting on the floor and having some hand-held repast, the kind tourists are warned to stay away from.
More pleasant, on the way back home, was my visit to the Museo Robert Brady, next to the Cathedral. Mr Brady was a rich gringo who established himself in Cuernavaca, either bought or had a magnificent house built –called “Casa de la Torre”—and collected all kinds of art objects from Mexico, Haiti, and around the world. There are a number of pieces by Diego Rivera (a couple of very nice pencil drawings) and an oil (at least) by Frida Kahlo, amid lots of other paintings and drawings. The house itself is delightful with many sitting areas around a grand patio. A plus is that you get to see the kitchen and at least three bathrooms. Every room, including the bathrooms, has works of art; Brady was your rich compulsive collector; the brochure informs us that the collection consists of over 1,300 art objects. A bit dizzying, but pleasant nevertheless. I enjoyed the walls of one bathroom in particular where a number of posters and drawings of dancers were displayed, a couple of Josephine Baker. Francesca will love the house with its many sitting areas and handsome tiled surfaces in interesting blues and yellows. All the bathrooms had a sunken bath/shower area, in colorful Mexican tile. If you want to dream of a Mexico of elegance, glamour and ease, the Casa de la Torre will give you the perfect image.
After that I came back to my much more modest apartment and took a nap. It’s been hot today, and it is still hot now at six thirty. I confess I am a little lonely, a little bored. I could fix myself a drink. Or I could write a poem about the play of light on one single leaf in the hule tree before the terrace and in my poem go into detail about my man-to-muse relationship with poetry itself. Or I could do both. I am sure a victorious failure will ensue.
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