If you haven’t read them yet, go back and visit Part 3, Part 2 and Part 1 of this series about La Paz, Mexico.
I walked out of the Posada LunaSol compound at 9 a.m. with the spring back in my step. I remained stunned by the little miracle that had just occurred, of being ushered back into the active present by an impersonal atmosphere of beauty and nourishment, both physical and aesthetic-spiritual. For the first time since leaving home, I was actually on vacation!
Out on the street, I turned right. These streets, I remembered from the previous afternoon’s outing, led to the malecon in a few blocks.
The morning air was still comfortable, even delicious. In my enthusiasm, I pulled my harmonica from my pocket and began belting love songs out into the blue air. I ambled along, walking stick in hand, backpack on my back—and on my head, the stylish straw cowboy hat with an oval turquoise decoration front and centre—the hat that I wear for my outdoor work at home as a preschool teacher.
This was something I’d done for years. Hitting the notes on the harmonica and crooning the inspiring songs I’d collected over the years was another thing that brought me into harmony and kept me in the sometimes-ecstatic moment.
“’Til the moon deserts the sky,
‘Til all the seas run dry,
‘Til then I’ll worship you…”
It was my way of worshipping Existence as I walked. If anyone heard and enjoyed, that was just a bonus. On one long block, I happened past a security checkpoint of some military or government compound. I’d passed it yesterday, but had forgotten it was there. I was surprised to hear the guard’s enthusiastic “Muy bien!” and turning, see him smile and wave.
I soon came in view of the long walkway curving along the bay. The sight of the water soothed my eyes. I walked onto the path amid a fairly steady stream of young skateboarders and scooter riders.
Before too long, though, the sun began to make its power felt. I stopped singing to conserve energy and concentrated on just walking and noticing where I was. I recognized the sushi restaurant that was as far as I’d gone on foot the day before. From there on, I was seeing all this for the first time, except for the day before’s taxi dash to the hotel.
It wasn’t long before the streetside became more interesting. I was entering the “beautified” area. This section of town didn’t seem to have a name here comparable to the “Barrio Gottica” I’d explored in Barcelona or the “Cuidad Viejo” in Montevideo. The designation I heard most was just “downtown.”
I crossed the street from the malecon over to a regular concrete sidewalk. I passed a little mobile contraption with the words COFFEE BIKE painted on it. I smiled at the female proprietor standing beside it. Hawkers of boat rides and hotel or restaurant coupons, as well as panhandlers, began to appear. In a block or two came actual shade trees, bringing welcome relief from the heat. They were also design elements amid the charming cafés and restaurants with outdoor tables and open-front terraces that were becoming legion.
I felt a bit like a character in an Ernest Hemingway story. Here, the drama of life went on in a setting that said “paradise.” Behind the façade of the sea, the graceful coconut palms and the oceanfront boulevard was the timeless presence of the café, the archetypal place where one sat and observed life going by.
The ubiquitous paradox of opposites presented itself everywhere: the sumptuous world of well-dressed tourists who could afford food at these restaurants, and the simultaneous threadbare world of the beggars and panhandlers whom one tried to look away from before they could catch your eye and ask for a handout. Handouts were risky to give because they attracted more entreaties. It usually seemed best to keep walking.
I enjoyed my passage through this area of town. The downtown of a small tropical city was a persistent backdrop in my world, an ambiance I’d sought out repeatedly in my life. The palm trees themselves had mystique for me. As a child, my very first drawings had been imaginings of a street like this, in Havana or someplace, utilizing vanishing-point perspective.
The Cathedral
I was looking for a particular establishment that was actually in an adjoining part of downtown that didn’t directly face the sea. At Calle Independencia, the street that made its way inland from a waterfront monument to Mexico’s constitution and revolution, I turned right and continued walking on an uphill grade that required more effort. Added to that, it was now 10 a.m. and the sun was even higher and hotter than before.
Walking downtown on the main street, I wondered “What restaurant is this?” It was much more crowded than the others. Turned out to be the “Mexican IRS (Taxes) office!
This part of downtown wasn’t as touristy. Across the street was a fairly large building with a big green neon sign saying SEARS, similar to ones I’d seen all my life in the States. My destination was the Catedral Hotel. Now and then I asked someone, pointing and saying “Catedral?” because clearly, a hotel with that name would be near the Cathedral itself.
I continued the steep climb for several blocks. At my next inquiry, someone pointed straight ahead of me, and I actually saw what was obviously the Cathedral. I brought up Google Maps on my phone, and unlike before, got a Wi-Fi connection!
The app led me to a low, modern building of off-white brick, just across the street from the Cathedral. I pulled open its glass door and went inside, on the prowl for the café I sought. I didn’t even know if it existed. My friend’s son, who’d lived in La Paz, had recommended this as the “place to stay.” I’d already booked my room at Posada LunaSol, but intuited that this more centrally located hostelry would have a coffee shop worthy of making a home base downtown.
I was disappointed, though. There was a restaurant that, unlike the rest of the lobby area, was air-conditioned. However, when I entered, I immediately saw a large sign proclaiming BREAKFAST BUFFET, and noticed there were no tables for one or two. Not feeling justified in taking up a large one, I took my leave of both the restaurant and the hotel.
Back outside, the day was reaching the point at which I absolutely needed to get out of the heat. It’s difficult to describe how stifling it felt. My health is generally alright, but I’m 75 years old and take a blood pressure pill and a cholesterol pill every day, so I didn’t want to push my luck.
Comfort when I needed it
With no idea which way to go, I struck out along a random trajectory that straddled the park fronting the Cathedral. After a block, I passed a small, dark café whose front door was open, indicating no AC. I went in anyway, just hoping that dark would also mean a survivable temperature.
The café wasn’t terribly uncomfortable, with its lights off. A middle-aged lady and a younger one stood behind the counter at the back.
“Do you have coffee?” I asked them.
“Coffee, si,” said one.
“Any decaf?”
“Ah, si.”
“Do either of you speak any English?” I asked.
“A little bit,” the younger woman replied.
“Can I get half-regular and half-decaf?” I asked.
“Half and half. Si, si,” she said.
“Great.”
I walked around the tables, trying to find the coolest one, before noticing that the back door was open and revealed the existence of some kind of outdoor terrace.
“May I go back there and check?”
The women nodded. I walked into the back area along a rock pathway. At the very back of the terrace area was a little lean-to with a thatched roof. Inside the lean-to was a nice-sized wooden table with a chair. I walked under the lean-to. Receiving no direct sun, it was fairly comfortable.
Then I noticed a big electric fan a few feet in front of the lean-to, aiming right at me. Following its cord, I saw that it was plugged in. I approached and turned it on at high speed. The blades whirled, whipping up a breeze, and I returned to sit in the chair. I’d found my cool café for the next hour or two.
The younger woman appeared, smiling, with my coffee on a tray along with cream and sweeteners. I pulled my Stevia and a bottle of water out of my backpack, which had become baglike when I’d set it down on the table. Lifting it up again, I took out two books and my notebook. I added cream and sweeteners to the coffee for drinking. Now I was ready to work.
On my phone—my laptop was too cumbersome to carry around in the heat—I began writing about the serendipity of finding this place, just when I needed it. I took a photo of my table with the coffee and my bag, which was made in Nepal and is quite photogenic with its bright reds and oranges, as the fan blasted away. For the next two hours I did read and write in the notebook, stopping occasionally to note who had replied to my post and to acknowledge those replies.
Towards the end of the session, the sun began to take away even this comfort spot, fan or no fan. I needed to be on my way and to find someplace that really was air-conditioned. Before leaving, I phoned Barbara, and showed her via Facetime the bonanza I’d found two hours before. Then I caught her up on my night, my morning and the strenuous search after walking the malecon.
She said, “You’d better get yourself some electrolytes!”
I told her I’d make that my top priority when I left the café. Checking my Facebook page again, I discovered that a friend who’d grown up here in Mexico had written me the same thing.
I gathered my things and went back into the café to thank the ladies. Across from them at the counter, a middle-aged man with a bald head and black plastic glasses was in the process of ordering something in a decidedly American accent.
“Hi, I’m from near San Francisco,” I said to him. “I’m trying to find a pharmacy, to get some electrolytes.”
“I moved here from the City myself, two years ago,“ he said. “I’m Paul.”
“Max,” I reciprocated.
“Wait ’til I get my coffee,” Paul said. “Then we can go out front and I can show you. There’s a pharmacy just down the street.”
When we were out on the sidewalk, he put an arm on my back and pointed. “See where that bus is turning, just past the park next to the Cathedral? In front of that big white building?” he said. “Just keep going down this side of the street, a block past there. You’ll see it.”
“Thanks!” I said. “By the way, what is the big white building?”
“That’s the art museum.”
“Wow, the art museum!” I repeated. “I was hoping La Paz had one. I’ll go there as soon as I have my electrolytes!”
“Enjoy,” said Paul. “Maybe I’ll see you around here again.”
Museo de Arte
Fortified with a bottle of electrolytes, which I’d stashed in my bag after taking a few swigs, I came back outside, crossed the street, and approached the Museo de Arte de Baja California. From the walls of the white building hung colourful streamers promoting current exhibits. I’d seen that practice all over the world in such institutions; it was practically a museum-world protocol. The preview got your juices flowing.
The exhibits described in the streamers looked quite interesting. One, a photo exhibit, was called “Identity.” Another was a semi-surrealist mural about Mexican history and spirituality. Eager to enter, I pulled open the front door.
After checking my backpack and hat and talking a bit to the docents at the front counter, I walked down an incline toward a big room devoted to the large mural I’d seen previewed on a streamer. I could make out enough details to feel strongly drawn to it.
Victor Cauduro
Standing directly in front of it, I read an explanatory panel that introduced the work in English. The mural’s title was The Color of Time. It depicted both the mythic and the historical Mexico. The four large panels began on the left with the dawn of human history, and ended with a rather ghastly depiction of present time on the right. The painter, Victor Cauduro, had consummate skill. The vision he shared was so clearly depicted, and at the same time so painful that it was hard to look at. And yet, one had to.
The panel on the far left portrayed strong, noble-looking, mostly naked figures of ancient Mexico. At the focal point of the scene, an artist-shaman was doing a sacred painting on the face of a large rock. Several families stood nearby, in the foreground. Many of these figures had areas of their legs and other parts of their bodies hollowed out and replaced by something dark and metallic-looking. This surrealist element of the picture baffled me, thematically.
The next panel took place in the Spanish period, with a central image of a Catholic priest blessing a native man. But there were other symbols that gave me pause about accepting that image at face value. The fruit on the cactuses was a bright red, seeming to signify the blood of Christ. Perched on top of another cactus were three very ominous-looking crows.
The third panel showed a man with his luggage in a little burro cart, moving toward the future, which was shown in the last panel, representing our present. Arrayed at the bottom of the right side of this third panel were several dozen kinds of clocks, digital and otherwise. Time was moving, becoming an obsession. Three runners, who have only the outlines of human figures, were rushing towards the future as well. All of this occurred in the Baja California desert, like in the first two panels.
The last panel portrayed a tourist recording with his camcorder as his wife stood beside him. His camcorder appeared to be filming a chasm in the Earth, as the three runners from the previous panel arrived here in the present. There were also, in the background, three figures: another tourist, playing golf; a young man leaping in a frenzy, holding an electric guitar; and a bright red car (more blood of Christ) passing by. The red cactus fruit was there, too. A humble ice cream vendor from the state of Michoacan, walking by with his little freezer cart, was about the only really natural, down-to-earth figure in the picture.
I stood, mesmerized, before this vision. How did Victor Cauduro, the artist, endure his vision of the bleakness of modern life? I thought of my own country, where madness is also ever-present. To remain aware is to feel an almost impossible burden.
Kijano
Having gazed my fill at Cauduro’s mural, whose title could easily have been The Crucifixion of Humanity, I walked up and around the museum ramps to an upper level. I wanted to explore a vast and flamboyant exhibit called Allegory of Death and Other Subtleties of Life II by Carlos Maciel Sánchez, also known as Kijano. Earlier, I’d noticed these brilliant canvasses, somewhat reminiscent of Tarot symbolism, from afar.
The docent at the front counter had been slightly apologetic about the exhibit, saying, “As you know, Mexicans are a bit preoccupied with death.” Instead of replying, “And Americans are a bit preoccupied with avoiding it,” I made a mental note to be sure to spend some time viewing these works.
Approaching them, I also wanted to run away. Could I handle what they had to say?
As I slowly passed through these rooms, I was stunned by the voluptuousness of the many female figures. One had a crescent moon in the night sky for a face. A gorgeous figure with long black hair held onto a tropical fruit tree next to a colourful toucan with a piece of golden fruit in its mouth. But in the space within the woman’s head was a less distinct drawing that looked like a rudimentary sketch of a bull, with horns and a strange, bushy mustache!
Who are you, Kijano? What are you doing to me? Your glowing, or even on-fire canvasses exert such a pull on me! But with almost equal force, I still want to flee!
What would Meher Baba say about these … these brazen paintings? This artist embraced the most blazing colours, juxtaposed them, added gorgeous women and also, frequently, the figure of death.
Remembering the docent’s words again, I thought: But isn’t everyone preoccupied to some degree with death, whether or not he or she makes paintings that depict it explicitly? Isn’t Kijano afraid of anything? What is his life like? He seems to have no reservations about what he can load into his powerful canvasses and deliver to the world!
I didn’t want to be a Puritan! A moralist, perhaps, but not a puritanically straitjacketed moralist! I did want to act with equanimity. Kijano’s works seemed to depict a great deal of passion. Meher Baba—in fact, all the “Masters of Wisdom” who have espoused what has been called the perennial philosophy—counsel compassion and dispassion.
But we can’t just repress our passions, either, can we? Bringing them to the surface is surely the first step in becoming free from them. Kijano’s work confronted me with colour, voluptuousness, and yes, I would say beauty as well—the fruit of being, like the fruit the toucan held in its mouth.
The paintings triggered my desires for all of this. I wanted freedom, as well … freedom to enjoy, without being judged or damned. And, standing in the paintings like a final challenge to all the life and symbolism I saw dramatized before me here—that inscrutable figure of death, from whom I continue to flee.
I didn’t always know what I was seeing at this small but expertly-curated museum, or “where to put it.” But I was seeing beyond the person whom I habitually thought of as myself. That had to be a good thing.
The museum was a temple. The most engaging pieces I saw didn’t represent ultimate Oneness. Their parade of symbols represented the artist reaching deep within, bringing forth images from the mine of his engaged psyche. Wasn’t this more than simple sensationalism? To grab a serious viewer, didn’t a painting have to be an expression of a truth that the artist was discovering? I was grabbed. There was mystery here. I was being shown visions. Whether I could decipher them or not, this was, I felt, making me a bigger person. Leaving the museum, I felt full.
Luminosity at the pool
I paid the taxi driver and walked back into the hotel compound. Passing the swimming pool area, a strong desire flooded me as I approached the stairs: “I’m gonna go up, change clothes, come right back down and jump in!” Several children had been keeping cool here yesterday, but now the whole area was deserted.
I wasn’t settling for just a shower after the morning I’d had. A celebration was in order. Suddenly, I was 75 years old going on 12!
I deposited my stuff in the room, put on some other shorts, and ran back down the steps and onto the pool deck. I had to run—and jump, too—when I got to the pavement, as it was so hot! I should have put my sandals back on, but it was too late. I made it in little jumps to the graded pool steps and began walking, a step at a time, down into the chest-high water.
A hotel worker, probably a family member, was standing on the terrace across the water, putting in a new recliner chair and umbrella. He’d smiled to see me hopping over to the pool steps.
“You come in, too!” I shouted at him, continuing my descent. He smiled again and made his excuse in Spanish.
From my standing position, I now bent double and launched myself underwater, breast-stroking across the pool, my favorite thing to do when I swim. At first, my eyes were closed, but I opened them while continuing to stroke. They were met by the luminous aqua-green of the pool’s paint, which seemed to colour the water as well.
I had a feeling of being in a special place, a place of light, for the light of the sun filtered down here to this cool, refreshing place. A sentence I’d read recently came to mind: “According to the Tribes, Heaven is not in the sky, but underwater.”
I looked down and saw, on the pool bottom, some kind of black form, swimming along with me. My shadow, I realized, but it seemed at first to have its own independent life. It flapped its finlike arms in rhythm with mine.
Perhaps its blackness contributed to its seeming like a doppelganger or even some kind of guardian figure, more than a mere phenomenon caused by the placement of the sun and my body. Surrounding it, like something supernatural, was what looked like shards of light making their way into the water: a mandala of luminosity around the figure!
I returned to my room feeling that I’d had much more than a dip in the pool.
GO TO PART FIVE: PURGATORIO: A sumptuous meal followed by a not-so-sumptuous night in La Paz
image 1: Wikimedia Commons; image 2: Wikimedia Commons; image 13: Museo de Arte de Baja California Sur; all other images: Max Reif
