Three Things from Edmonton podcast - Episode 88: seasons in the sol, on the road, outside the box

 

From our vacation hideout in México, here is episode 88 of the Three Things podcast. 

                               

1. Estaciones en el sol ☀️

Route 45 into the city from the Guanajuato Airport was not where I expected to come across Terry Jacks, but there he was in our little Kia Rio as it shot through the highway dark. Our driver, Fernando, explained that he didn’t understand all of the words, but he loved playing the music. The three of us—me, Shelagh, our guide, fixer, translator, friend and boxing explainer, Sheryl—represented the 1970s and Canada to the best of our home range.

I remember being consciously aware of my suddenly unsophisticated music taste the first time I heard somebody trash the song. I liked it. I still do. I thought, and still do, that the hills that we climbed were just seasons out of time was clever. The songwriter is saying the season of childhood is on the clock, and that it expires. Sadly, we grow older. But he’s also saying those childhood hills remain out of time and untouchable in the sense of somehow existing apart from time. Those memories retain a nostalgic purity. In this way, the phrase “seasons out of time” carries contradictory meanings—it describes both the passage of time and the passage from time.

I was thinking along these lines as Fernardo wove the car up and down the tight streets of Guanajuato. Soon enough, we clogged to a dead stop. People streamed by. Flags flew. Music played. Street food aroma rode the breeze. We had arrived on the eve of Mexican Independence Day.  Coming down the sidewalk was a parade of people singing Cielito Lindo to the mariachi musicians who led them. I jumped out of the car and ran back to join them. Having grown up with north-end Chilean friends, I know the words to the chorus, even though I don’t understand wholly what they mean. It does gladden the heart to sing in a lovely city, though.

2. Life on the road 🇲🇽 🧨

I have experienced some remarkable things on this trip. La celebración del Grito de Independencia along with 25,000 others in Guanajuato. The tunnels we took to get there. The view of Guanajuato from the hills above the city. By day, its pastel buildings, those gems—pinks, greens, blues, oranges—shining in the sun,  by night the city’s electric lights steps of votive candles set in the hillside. The woman who didn’t as much work the street corn stand as play it, perform it for a line of hungry patrons, her hands a blur. We greeted a bride and groom as they floated up a narrow street. In a basilica I watched a baptism. I followed mourners as they shouldered a casket into a cemetery. In the town of Dolores Hidalgo we found the giant sombrero-and-mosaic-serrape-shaped tomb of El Rey, the singer José Alfredo Jiménez in front of which fans posed just so so as to appear to be wearing the hat and shawl in photos taken by graveyard workers. 

It’s been a visual feast. The old buildings, the cobblestone streets, the dramatic spires. The metalwork. It’s a place where Shelagh and I are constantly saying, or thinking, this is like Slavo’s art.

Eclipsing all of this beauty was the sight of Independence Day fireworks the night we flew in. But not the fireworks themselves. What I still see is the joy in the eyes of the three children I watched watching them. 

3. Outside the box 🥊

I was determined to order my breakfast in Spanish until the waiter asked his first question. I did not follow his Spanish or English, nor he mine, so there we were on a rooftop patio, the soaring neo-Gothic, pink-spired Church of San Miguel Arcángel towering above, grappling with language, trying to connect. We reverted to signs. He pointed to three pastries and indicated I could choose one. I took a cinnamon bun.

 
“Canelo,” I said, pantoming two quick jabs and an upper cut. The waiter smiled and laughed. 

Canelo, which is Spanish for cinnamon, is the nickname for México’s Saúl Álvarez, the country’s red-haired boxing hero who had won a couple of days earlier against Kazakhstan’s Gennady “Triple G”  Golovkin. 

So, big picture here. The waiter and I were either two strangers separated by a gulf of latitude and language or two guys talking a little boxing. The church bells rang.

🎧 Three Things podcast, episode 88, with sound from México:    [5:30]

#happythings