Thursday, November 3, 2011

San Miguel de Allende

The Queretero tournament was quite an adventure. Only five of my teammates from Pachamamas went, so we were split up onto different teams rather than playing together. On Sunday, I hadn’t intended to play and really wanted to go to museums, but I kept waiting and waiting until the decision was essentially made for me. Why is it the case that moving to a foreign country doesn’t faze me, but the idea of leaving my team and going into the city for a day by myself makes my heart race? I realize that there are lots of open factors and unknowns, but that doesn’t explain my calm about big changes and neurotic anxieties about small things out of my control. Lately I’ve been trying to plan like mad – how do I get to practice next week? What will we eat when we get home from work on Wednesday? What time should we leave work to pick up tortillas? It’s like I’m clinging desperately, obsessing some might say, over things that I have some autonomy over because there is so much more swirling above me that is entirely out of my hands. It’s a very exhausting dichotomy.

Anyway, after we went to dinner in the center, I went home with Pablo, a friend from Pachamamas who’d just moved to Queretero, who was crashing at his friend’s place. He’d expressed interest in accompanying me to San Miguel and thus became my travel buddy for the rest of the weekend.  We woke up on Monday morning and headed for the bus station for the one-hour trip to San Miguel. I felt calm and free. As a background, I’d like to tell you that it was important for me to go to this city because this was the town where my mom’s friend, Joyce, lived for 10 years. It was she who inspired me, really. I had always said I wanted to go abroad and then one day she told me she and her husband picked up and moved here. And I thought, “Oh, you can just do that? Cool!” She made me realize that you don’t need an excuse to do what you want to do – just figure it out and go. So I wanted to pay a tribute to her and visit this funky pueblo.

 It was just as she described it – artsy and charming. There were expats on every corner. You could distinguish the foreigners by the way they stood, by their shoes, their maps and Ibuprofen bottles (after a long weekend and another pulled quad I secretly coveted their over-the-counter pharmaceuticals, but I kept walking).

Pablo was a fabulous travel partner – so relaxed, similar non-agenda and interests and a fabulous conversationalist.  We spontaneously hopped another bus to Atonontilco, famous for its sanctuary, but not much else. The church was known as the site where San Miguel Hidalgo assembled the community to march to San Miguel de Allende and initiate the grito (the shout) that began the War of Independence. They grabbed the flag of the Virgin Guadalupe to rally behind. This rallying point started a great conversation about how even with official separation of church and state, everything is so connected to Catholicism that the government is very similar to a theocracy. Many of my friends in Cholula resent this because they don’t practice a faith. Recently, Calderón stated that even though we may not be all practitioners or believers, we are all “Guadalupanos” (of the Virgin Guadalupe). This really upset my friend:“How can you make such blanket statements about who I am?” And yet, even those most disconnected from the church still tend to cross themselves and have confirmation ceremonies. It really is a very interesting culture of faith here.

 Anyway, we walked to the end of the world – down a long cobblestone path that led out of the town, or at least to the mezcal distillery whose owner greeted us at the elaborate iron gate. ”I’m 67 years old! I have 7 sons and daughters here and I’ve seen them grow up here!” We took a step back from his strong breath. Apparently he’d been in charge of taste-testing that day. “One day, with more calm, you can come back and have a look around!....Well, come on in!” We didn’t stay long or score any samples, but we did get a peek at his giant plantation. Then we back-tracked to the sanctuary and the other half of the town with the store, restaurant, paper shop and rows of tents selling rosaries. We leaned on an old pickup truck while doctoring our cans of Modelo Negro with salt and lime and continued talking about religion.

 We wandered a bit more around San Miguel and then got on the return bus to Queretero where we parted ways. I’m not sure what I would’ve done had Pablo not been there to offer me a bed and hold my hand. But the more hesitant I became, the more I realized how important it was for me to go. I continue to attempt to let things work themselves out, as is the Mexican way, but it may kill me first. Maybe someday I’ll be less tightly-wound. I keep doing things like jumping buses to unknown places and getting haircuts in a foreign language, throwing my agenda to the winds, but I’m not sure if it’s helping or just giving me high blood pressure. I’m having a damn good time trying to figure out the answer, though. And my hair doesn’t look too bad, either.

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