Great expectations

Have landed in Chiapas with my friends from Chicago, and am surrounded by the rolling green mountains of coffee and corn country. Getting here was a piece of astonishing cake. I'm starting to wonder if I'll ever have in Mexico the kind of mishaps and adventures that I expected, and whether or not this is a reflection of my waning adventure-seekingness, and should I therefore feel lame (like when I suddenly stopped feeling comfortable commuting to work on a kick-scooter). But this is more likely the result of a combination of factors, including that Mexico is pretty darn developed, especially when it comes to tourism, and that I am not necessarily wimpy but more cognizant of the benefits of shelling out 15 extra pesos for a plate of tacos served above room-temperature in a well-lit area.

Something slightly out of the ordinary did happen, however, this morning at Benito Juarez Airport in Mexico City. As my friends and I got out of our cab, I was too busy trying to act like I knew exactly what I was doing, flying to Chiapas and all, to realize that I had left one of my bags in the trunk. As the driver sped away from the kiss-and-fly lane, I ran after him with flip-flops echoing, arms waving frantically, and huffing my best whistle and most desperate "¡¡ESPERE!!", which turned out to be effective only in grabbing the momentary attention of bored businessmen as they scrolled through their Blackberries on the curb.

I stopped running and got on the phone with the taxi company, apologizing to the people around me as it rang. "Sorry to freak out," I said, my voice still stuck in a half-shout, which led me to an uncomfortable vision of myself in an American flag T-shirt and matching fannypack. As I told the operator what had happened, a short and stocky airport employee ran up to me, also out of breath, and anxious to chime in.

"He was in a maroon Subaru, but I didn't get the plates!" he shouted at my phone. This was because, as he later told me while we scanned the traffic for turned-around maroon cars, he thought I'd been robbed by my driver. In that moment, I felt like he and I would've made great spokespeople for the official Visit Mexico tourism campaign slogan.

X marks the spot

Tomorrow kicks off a month of trips, which will culminate in my move to Xalapa, Veracruz at the end of February. Goodbye estarbucks, WiFi and puffy-sleeved blazer; hello mountains, dubbed Harrison Ford bus movies, and greatest invention on earth. My February stops include, but are not limited to, Taxco, Oaxaca, and Tuxtla, (and I'm crossing fingers for vacancy at the Hotel Xibalba at Palenque).... so I invite you to insert joke about x-rated or x-cellent adventures here. 

Although I'm happy as a clam (for they too can live with little oxygen) in the capital, I'm pretty stoked to see more of this country. But in order to do this, I will have to first get over my feelings about wearing a T-shirt two days in a row, hand sanitizer, and jam band festivals. Yes, it is time to broaden my horizons.

Audio Postcard: Lagrimas de Amor

Mexico has fed many aspects of my inner geek, but none so much as the part of me that likes (and gets spooked by) old recordings, the cracklier the better.  Awhile ago I found a vintage record shop on Xola Avenue called Discolandia, where $30 gets you a stack of legal CDs so huge that you have to sandwich it between your hands and chin on your way to the cashier, in the style of Cinderella's Gus Gus (if you don't already have this image seared into your early childhood memory, it's here at minute 3:40).

Since Discolandia is so cheap I usually rely on non-traditional methods of selecting CDs, like pulling out every album with the word "Super" in the title, or pre-war sibling duos, or women wearing large hats. There is only one artist, or really just one song, that I have searched for on purpose.

I first heard Olimpo Cardenas' Lagrimas de Amor when I was streaming pandora at work last year. His voice was so smooth, and the song's bassline so simple and catchy, that I went back to the website every day and sat through countless less-amazing old Mexican songs, crossing my fingers that Olimpo would come up. I scoured the internet for a recording I could buy, but no luck.

Fast forward a year, when I started making repeated trips to Discolandia in search of this song. I bought four separate Olimpo anthologies, which to my amazement featured multiple occurrences of duds like Osito de Felpa ("Plush Teddy Bear") and Lagrimas del Alma ("Tears of the Soul"), but not a single track with Lagrimas de Amor ("Tears of Love.") 

As frustrating as it was, it also seemed weirdly cool that this song refused to be captured. It's one of several 20th-century feelings I don't expect to have very often in my lifetime. I should be satisfied, I decided, with occasionally hiring trios of elderly men in Plaza Garibaldi to play Lagrimas de Amor for me, where their struggle to remember the lyrics only adds to the song's elusive appeal.

I finally tracked down the song a few weeks ago, as I was running past a CD vendor on my way down the steps to the Balderas subway station. I caught a glimpse of Olimpo's face on a CD jacket, peeking out from under a pile of other Mexican artists* - my fifth (and final!) anthology.

*Olimpo was born in Ecuador, but made a tremendous splash in 1950s Mexico.

Who's stoked?

I'm stoked.

Smoggles

I have been warned that January and February are the worst smog months of the year. It hasn't rained a drop since October, and breeze is rare. The air has just been hanging out above us for months, like a couch surfer who can't take a hint to leave, or at least shower.

This means it's easy to get sick, especially if you've just come back from an extreme pamper zone. Fortunately, Mexico City offers many home remedies to whatever sicknesses it throws at you. Below are my current favorites.

Atole, an ancient Aztec corn drink in FUN new packaging

Herbs! Throw 'em in some boiling water, place towel over head, and sniff.

Drugs! If the herbs don't work, you can buy antibiotics over-the-counter and for very cheap.

Wacky movies! This is "The Musketeer" sung by Tin-Tan, one of Mexico's favorite comic actors and worst dancers.

Now taking requests

Today I had a one-on-one with a very popular man in Mexico City, a Mr. St. Judas Tadeo. I visited him upon hearing that he was the patron saint of not only Mexico City, but also of lost causes and desperate cases.

A plastic St. Judas Tadeo, keeping watch over some sweet breads

I had passed his church many times on the way back and forth from my music school. It sticks out like a sore, 17th-century thumb in the middle of busy Paseo de la Reforma, a lonely outlier on the border of the historic downtown. Dilapidated, sagging, its Baroque facade caked with soot, the place seems like something of a lost cause itself. Taco vendors surround it, along with countless stands where you can buy St. Judas Tadeo candles, bracelets, and T-shirts. 

I walked inside, clutching my new candle guaranteed to burn for at least 30 hours. When choosing between candles at the bus stop, I was given many options of varying prices, depending on just how lost my cause was. I passed a man at the door wearing a physician's white coat, peddling what appeared to be herbal remedies dispensed from amber-colored glass vials, which he concocted by referring to an inky, ancient-looking manuscript.

Inside, the church was far simpler by comparison to others I've seen, but bright with sunlight and the traffic of midday mass. I joined a throng of people standing before the altar, listening to a charismatic bald priest wrap up his message, followed by the announcements.  "Today we're selling a compilation CD of San Judas Tadeo devotionals," he said, "for the low-low price of 100 pesos." 

Looking around, it didn't take me long to realize that my own lost cause paled in comparison to those of my neighbors. Blind women with canes grasped their St. J. T. cards above their heads, murmuring prayers. An elderly man scooted past me on his knees, determined to humbly traverse the length of the church in this popular Mexican fashion. A devoted daughter helped her handicapped mother find a seat in a pew, her arms dripping with St. Judas Tadeo merchandise.

Ok, so I can easily see where opponents of the Catholic church get their ideas about saints and statues and idol worship. I also seem to recall a passage in the Bible (Matthew 21, thank you Google) when Jesus flipped out upon realizing that people had set up merch tables in the temple. But even if you could cut through the enterprise with a knife today at San Hipolito Church, it would take a chainsaw to break through the atmosphere of unshakeable hope and meditation, which struck me as all the more remarkable considering the number of distractions both inside and out. It seemed to hover over the churchgoers as they advanced, en masse, to light candles at St. Judas Tadeo's feet. 

I found myself swept up among them and planted in a kneeler before I knew it. I was staring up at St. J. T.'s nose, my candle already burning. I looked to the people around me for cues on what to do. Everyone was lost in their own thoughts and murmurings, with the occasional interruption to take a cell phone call. An altar boy was listening to his iPod. Traffic buzzed outside. In a city of 23 million, I figured Saint Judas had heard just about everything, so I introduced myself and started talking.

Flying Cat Lady

As I made my way through airport security at O'Hare, I heard meowing. Since I have a talent for attracting cats at airports, this did not strike me as unusual. Once at the Indira Gandhi International Airport in Delhi, a stray cat who had somehow gotten past security forced his company on me for two hours, even as I attempted to lose him in the duty-free shop.

The O'Hare cat was meowing anxiously from inside a designer caddy. His owner, a willowy woman who goo-gooed to him in Spanish, took him out so that they could cuddle their way through the metal detector together. Her accent, belted coat, and gold bling gave her away as a resident of Mexico City. This cat was going to be on my flight.

I was first annoyed, because of my allergy and general disdain for cats. But then I sensed an opportunity. I looked at my ticket: 34E, one of the worst seats on the plane. Located in the back, it meant I would be last to exit, and therefore last in line for the nightmarishly bureaucratic experience of clearing Mexico City airport immigration. Please let Cat Lady be my seat mate, I prayed.

Sure enough, when I threw my bag under seat 34E on the plane, I heard meowing from so close that it instantly triggered my body to assume a pre-sneeze position. I whirled around and, to my delight, Cat Lady was sitting directly behind me—In 35E, the Absolute Worst Seat on the Plane. Her carry-on was meowing woefully, and likely getting ready to poop, directly below my seat.

After a failed attempt to start a friendly conversation with Cat Lady (I opened by asking her if she drugged him for the trip), I instead tried to smile warmly and hoped that would make up for what I was about to do.  When the flight attendant came around, I whispered to her that there was a cat on the plane, that I was very allergic and I didn't mean to be a bother, but I would be happy to move to a different seat if that was possible?

Cat Lady overheard me and, now onto my little scheme, interrupted to tell the flight attendant that SHE would gladly volunteer to move to a different seat instead. The people in her row rolled their eyes at this, openly acknowledging the fact we all hated our seats.  The flight attendant assured us she would see to this immediately after takeoff.

Within 15 minutes, I was eating carrot cake in first class. 

"Well somebody lucked out for having allergies!" exclaimed a new flight attendant loudly while pouring my drink, reminding me and everyone else that I was still technically riffraff. Even though I was served dinner last, I happily told my story of upward mobility to my seatmates, who were nowhere near as excited as I'd hoped. 

I sank back into my seat and comforted my itchy eyes with a steamed towel that had been thrown into my lap, realizing I had managed to annoy everyone on an airplane.  After all, my advancement to first class required that I pass every single row....except 35, and they all knew exactly where I was.

When we landed, I was the first to exit, thank God. I dashed to the immigration desk, more grateful than ever for the chance to avoid the lines, since Cat Lady would be among them.