It rained! Which is how we found out that our roof has a leak in it, and some of our books were ruined! Yesssss! It's the first time it's rained since I've lived in Oaxaca, and it's really not supposed to rain until the rainy season, and also it's cold. It's a perfect oatmeal morning.
There's been a lot to look at and think about the past few days, and that funny thing happened where I kept putting off writing about it and now none of it seems very important. Sigh. But really, I guess the point is that since I returned, I've been feeling quite lucky to live in a place where there's lots to look at and think about and where the days are beautiful and the sunsets are satisfying. Even if I can't stand the food :P
Well, let's get started: I went back to America, which was wonderful, and I probably saw you and it was probably really great to see you, unless I didn't see you and Ali, I am so sorry I didn't get to see you. I spent lots of time with my niece and nephews, which was fantastic. My niece got a full piano from Santa Claus, and she played some stuff for us (Chopin, Christmas stuff, and something she's been writing). If there is anything that can apparently make me cry like a baby, it's my nine-year-old piano genius niece. In general, though, the kids are all so sweet and funny and playing with them was wonderful. My mom made lots of empanadas (broccoli and cauliflower ones for me) and buñuelos, which I definitely ate a huge share of.
I spent a lot of time thinking about things that matter and things that don't matter and how many things that don't seem to matter made me so sick. Heartbreak always seems kind of silly in retrospect, I guess.
Once I got back to Oaxaca, it was sunny and busy and the city didn't seem to look over its shoulder to notice my return, which made it easier for me to messily try to assume my place along its jumbled ranks. I got right back into work, which is all about some Mexican sustainable agriculture right now. I am reading lots of great articles, and I went to a meeting with the Mexican postmodern superstar Gustavo Esteva himself. The meeting is basically about the coming insurrection and our place in it. It was a really silly meeting and it made me uncomfortable, mostly because it seemed like Esteva was taking a whole lot of space and it was all really academic (even in its references to the EZ) and I looked around at his listeners to find that I was easily one of the youngest and that the crowd was about half foreigners and half Oaxacans. In other words, not what I would consider optimal insurrection conditions. Finally, Esteva got down to business and started suggesting potential actions (I think, especially, since some folks may not have understood what he meant by "actions"), and his one suggestion was, "Say we all organize ourselves and in the middle of the night, we plant seedlings all over the city." Someone countered that planting green things is the city's job, and Esteva refuted that argument, claiming, "No, the city's job, based on the city's desires, is to cover more things with concrete. Our job, based on our desires, is to cover those same public spaces with green things. We want those things." I thought that was awesome, and I figured I could probably warm him up to puppets after a while, so I think I'll probably keep going to those meetings.
There are a lot of thoughts that come and go my way during the days, about animals, children, politics, indigenous rights, recipes, colors, and whatever other stuff, but most of the time, it all seems like the most important thing in the world at the moment, and then I forget about it. Ah, the stuff of life.
At some point this week, I became angry and was glad that I have such good coworkers, because Tony introduced me to the Ani DiFranco (would you believe I never had that phase?) and then we made a cream sauce and ate it with pasta and I made molasses cookies. Then, I talked Tony into loaning me one of his new Pema Chödrön books. It was a very effective course of action.
Today, mostly out of boredom and alone-ness (as opposed to loneliness, which is sad), I decided to make some homemade vegetable broth to use in recipes in the next few weeks. I ended up, for a few reasons (it's Saturday, I had to buy things for Betty and Tony's delegation, I had nothing better to do, I was taking pictures anyway), going to three different markets and also the grocery store.
First, I went to El Pochote, the organic market. The greens man, whom I am falling in love with a little because he is so sheepish but most importantly because of his ability to provide me with things like huge bouquets of chard with a little peach ladybug or a tiny cauliflower ("it is for two people," he says), surely had a beautiful tableful of stuff today, and he even let me take a picture. I got coffee and tomatoes there, too. Then, on to Xiguela, where I found the snacks for the delegation (amaranth-y things), tahini, tofu, and ginger. After that, I hit up the Soledad market--there, I got a juice from the old juice man (beet and grapefruit), potatoes, and a couple of onions. I left all that stuff at my house and rested up for the biggest errand of the day. None of the other markets had had any fruit, which we needed for the delegation, so I decided to go to Abastos (which you may remember, is the market from hell). At Abastos, I found rosemary (at a healer's stall) and fruit, as well as a ridiculously cheap one-kilo bag of beautiful pecans. Abastos is crazy, especially on Saturdays, especially on a cold, rainy day. Everyone is shouting at you to buy something. The thing is, if you can think of it, they probably have it (or at least a Chinese rip-off version of it).
Finally, I went to the supermarket and had my typical Mexican supermarket experience, wherein I am looking for something that seems unremarkable, say orange juice, a pie tin, a package containing less than 30 eggs, and they don't have it. Not that they ran out of it, just that they don't sell it. When this happened, I used to be able to just shrug and keep walking, but the more time I spend in Mexico, the more I find myself just staring into the space where whatever I am looking for "should" be, thinking that maybe if I wait just long enough, it will somehow arrive. Come on. Orange juice. Seriously.
After I finished all these errands, I came home and made the vegetable broth, which I then froze in ice cube trays. Then, I decided that maybe I should make a pie out of some of those pecans that I'd found at the market. Then, I thought about how much I like bourbon with pecan pie, and I remembered the tiny bottle of Maker's Mark (mmmm) that Charlie gave me for Christmas, and I reasoned that I should make some bourbon whipped cream to go with the pecan pie, so I went ahead and did that, too.
So yeah, today I was ridiculous. I feel like in some ways, I'm treading water trying to get back in the swing of things. But most of the time, even though I'm running around all crazy and doing eight things at once, I really enjoy at least six of those things, and I can sit back at the end of the day and be a little satisfied, so maybe that's okay.
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