Whew!

Well, so much for updating my blog everyday, eh? It was a whirlwind week, and very wonderful. Here are the highlights:

Tuesday:

Moros, one of the museums in Cuernavaca, had an excellent collection of Frida Kahlos and Diego Riveras (including the famous one of the two indigenous women kneeling in front of easter lilies). It also had some great modern art, like a video of a fox trotting through the National Gallery in London; our tour guide told us that the same artist did another video, but this time with a flock of sheep that got progressively smaller throughout the video as though the sheep were one by one staying behind in the museum (possibly in the Louvre, but I can’t remember if that’s right or not).

The dinner at Hotel Bajo del Volcan (Under the Volcano) was very tasty, but the event itself was long and not very well organized. The table of poets ended up writing a joint poem instead of paying attention…i.e. one person writes a line and then passes it on. It was all we could do to keep from bursting out laughing during the very serious reading…

Wednesday:

Temazcal and the “Student” reading—Temazcal is a spiritual cleansing in an adobe sweat lodge. People hyped it to be way hotter than they made it for us, but it was still a great experience; the guy who was facilitating did a ceremonial cleansing before we went in, saying prayers over us, and then (women in one lodge, men in the other) we all crawled naked into this little hole in the hut, were given eucalyptus branches to fan the hot air down onto us, and lay down on a bed of eucalyptus. We also rubbed aloe onto ourselves. Quite the experience.

That evening was the student reading, which I put in quotes because it really didn’t focus much on the students…. Carolyn’s husband Harry presented his work; he’s a photographer of immense skill and sensitivity, and he and Carolyn have been in war zones around the world, so the show was intense to say the least. Harry’s talk through out the show was really amazing, emphasizing the importance of witnessing these events, and finding a way to educate others about atrocities going on in other countries without making those citizens voiceless victims. It is truly appalling what our country has been responsible for in the past (and the present!!!), and almost equally appalling how easy it is for us (as American citizens being fed what the press wants us to see) to blindly support perpetrators of massacres and violence. Harry’s photos are not only documentation—he has an eye for beauty within pain, and has captured some of the most heart-wrenching expressions on people’s faces in his photographs. I was deeply affected by his show.

So, as you might have guessed, a bit of a hard act to follow, no? A few people read, but the focus of the conversation was elsewhere. I read one poem, and I would say about 6 other people read (out of 10 poets, and at least 10 or 12 fiction writers…), but none the less, the house we used was beautiful and eccentric and the evening was lovely—they just shouldn’t have called it the student reading!

Thursday:

By Thursday, I think we were all getting pretty tired. That evening was a reading by Tomas Segovia, one of the greatest living Mexican poets. Since the event was in Spanish, not many people went, but I decided that since I’m here to learn, I might as well hear (tee hee) as much Spanish as possible. Mr. Segovia turned out to be quite a wonderful presence, and he talked and lectured a bunch more than he read; the “reading” was, in effect, a lecture on prosody and poetic forms with a few poems thrown in to demonstrate his point. I was surprised at how much I could understand (the poems were hard), and I got a lot from the lecture, mostly (I think) because so much of the terminology of form, syllabics and prosody are cognates in Spanish (so the words sound like the ones in English). The evening was a success!

Friday:

We did workshop differently than we had been on Friday because we decided as a group that it was important for us each to have some one on one time with Carolyn. So, we carried on as usual (discussing poems and manuscript projects in the order we had been using all week), but without Carolyn leading, and each of us went to talk to her for 20 minutes by turns. Workshop proceeded beautifully for the whole week. This group was such a joy to work with; all of us are close, sensitive readers of each other’s work, and we all came to this workshop with such different experiences (in writing and in life) that I feel like each poem got the widest possible reading and criticism. I am really going to miss having them all around!

During my meeting with Carolyn she told me that she thinks the poems I had in workshop this week are a big start to a manuscript, and that I should use the title of one of my poems as the title for my first book! (I had no idea going in to this that any of these poems had anything except the inner workings of my mind in common, so this is huge!) I’m excited to start working on these poems more, and working through all the comments from my fellow poets, but I decided that I’m going to let them ferment, if you will, while I’m still in Mexico and really get to them when I get back home. Also, several people suggested places that they think I should send poems, so hopefully my second published poem will be in a reputable journal or magazine instead of some weird hand-out!!

Saturday:

Some of us got up in the morning (after the Elena Poiniatowska reading on Friday night, which was great despite the crowd of loud teenagers in the back of the auditorium… and after whatever it was that we did that night…I’ve forgotten) and got on a tour bus to Xochicalco, the site of one of the great Tolpec (sp?) cities in ancient Mexico. It was a city built on a hill, and for years people thought that it was just a spiritual center with priests and only enough people to keep it going, but new discoveries have come to light illustrating that it had approximately 20-30 thousand people living in it at its height. It was apparently built more like a Mayan city than a Tolpec city because they decided that the Mayan design would work better for a hill-top. I learned many wonderful and interesting things, which, if you are interested you can read about here:

Xochicalco

That evening we had the closing dinner at another beautiful house in Tepoztlán, which, unfortunately, we only got to see at night. There was a washed-up (I thought…) opera singer who sang some songs for us, and then some of us went back to the roof-top for more wine drinking and chatter. It was hard to say goodbye—the thing that really made this program what it was for me were all the people I met, in my workshop and out. I will miss them all terribly! I hope we can all stay in touch!

Sunday: (today…)

I climbed up to Tepozteco, Tepoztán’s very own Aztecan pyramid. It was a bit of a mod scene, but a nice hike up steep stairs to the top of the mountain, and a spectacular view of Tepoztlán and out over to Cuernavaca. As soon as I’m no longer in the world of slow, expensive internet, I’ll post pictures!

Then, I said goodbye to my homestay family. They have been wonderful to me! I’m hoping that I’ll have time to go back to Tepoztlán while I’m still in Mexico to visit them, since it’s less than an hour, and the bus only costs $1.20. We shall see. So, I got on the bus, and came here to Cuernavaca. It is quite the change of scenery; Tepoztlán is truly a little village, even though it has many many gringos living outside of it and a Hippy colony nearby. There you feel like you’re outside of time, and the western influences have been integrated in a very Tepoztlán way… Cuernavaca, on the other hand, is very much a city. There are Burger King and Subways and Starbucks, lots of SUVs, young people who are chic and well dressed, and it sprawls. It feels a little like culture shock, even though I’m really not far from where I just was!

My new family seems great. Sergio and Celia Rojas are the patriarch and matriarch; as far as I can tell they have one daughter (very possibly more) who has two children—a boy and a girl. The boy (man) just got married, so the daughter in law is also around a lot. I found out over dinner that they are Mormons! The son was talking about having recently finished his mission (I guess they all have to do that…). Seems a bit odd and incongruous, but I really want to ask how the family ended up being Mormon… The house is big and beautiful, with a lovely courtyard/garden, and an open design, which is great because Cuernavaca is also quite a bit warmer than Tepoztlán. I haven’t yet been here in the middle of the day, but it’s definitely about 10 or 15 degrees warmer tonight than it ever was in Tepoztlán, so I can only imagine!

There are three other people staying here, Sally, from Connecticut who came three years ago with an Audubon Society group and decided to return on her own, and two girls from St. Catherines College in Minnesota who are here with a class about women in Mexican communities (I’m not clear on details). I think that all three of them will be gone by next week….Anyhow, more on all of this soon!