Mexico City. Our adventures in the largest city on earth were of the minor/safe/tourist kind. We went to the Museum of Anthropology and enjoyed the exhibit that our friend Asaf recommended on Teotihuacan. We also sat in front of the mural of "An afternoon in the Alameda," by Diego Rivera, and enjoyed the comfortable seats and low lighting as an opportunity to take a nap as much as to admire the fine mural.
Altogether from the time we left Oaxaca by night bus, we felt the growing realization that our trip was almost over and that we were going to have to head home. Two weeks, the paltry amount of time we budgeted for our trip through Mexico, was not sufficient to explore the country, or even to do justice to a single city. We both want to return, hopefully to spend more time and explore in greater detail this country of stark contrasts between an incredible passion for life, and the ever-present threat of death.
Now back in the United States we are in our own separate worlds, Cat rediscovering New York and getting her apartment in order after a month's absence, while I am in Minnesota, helping my dad make apple butter from our tree and getting ready to go canoe-camping for a week in Canada.
And so this story ends, and others are yet to begin. We are on a threshold between places, awaiting the future yet unable to predict its path. Like the blind woman in Mexico City whom we helped to cross the street, our last day in the country: We are feeling forward tenuously towards what tomorrow may bring, standing together in our separate worlds, in the doorway between going and staying.
Between going and staying the day wavers,
in love with its own transparency.
The circular afternoon is now a bay
where the world in stillness rocks.
All is visible and all elusive,
all is near and can't be touched.
Paper, book, pencil, glass,
rest in the shade of their names.
Time throbbing in my temples repeats
the same unchanging syllable of blood.
The light turns the indifferent wall
into a ghostly theater of reflections.
I find myself in the middle of an eye,
watching myself in its blank stare.
The moment scatters. Motionless,
I stay and go: I am a pause.
-Octavio Paz
Thanks all for reading our blog, and if, as is the case, there are any errors or ommissions from this narrative, chalk it up to the fallibility of memory because life is like that.
Love,
Brian Blakely and Catherine Nolet
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Teotihuacan: Place where men become gods
Up with the sun, we headed out by way of the metro to the bus terminal that would take us to Teotihuacan, site of the pre-Aztec city state of over 200,000 people and of the famous Pyramids of the Sun and Moon.
On our bus ride we passed through the eternally growing City of Mexico, sprawling recklessly out onto every available plot of land apparently without end. Cat dozed while I stared out at the graffiti coated barriers bordering the crowded, noisy highway, and trying to imagine the fertile shores of the former lake Texcoco, now a barren desert of sprawling concrete houses. I must have drifted because I awoke to Catherine nudging me, whispering "Listen!" A traveling musician had gotten on the bus and was singing an old Beatles song in Spanish, crooning; "I just called to say I love you..."
We arrived at the archaeological site of Teotihuacan early in the morning, yet still not before the first forty or so tour buses of students. Walking through the parking lot, we stumbled onto a sixty-foot tall cedar trunk, on top of which were four men dressed as Aztecs. These were the "bird men," recreating a ritual of some pre-hispanic culture by spinning down off of the top of their eyre on thick ropes wrapped around their hips, making lazy, ever wider circles as they descended. It seemed very peaceful, and we half wondered if they would let us up to try with them.
Teotihuacan is the name given by the Mexica to the abandoned city fifty miles north of their capital. In Nahuatl it means, "The place where men become gods," and indeed, the Aztecs believed that such a massive site must have been built by superhuman beings, whose remains, they hypothesized, had been buried along the severely rectilinear "Calle de los Muertos," (Street of the Dead) in the structures that bordered the ceremonial path leading to the pyramid of the moon.
Walking the same path that astonished Aztec leaders some six hundred years ago, the same sense of disbelief sinks into you. Not that these structures were built by gods, but that they were built by humans, remains the impossibility. Although nestled in the shadows of enormous mountains, the pyramids remain giants, their squat immensity defiant of a modern purpose yet powerfully suggestive, hinting at a ritualized barbarity that is realized through the rigid mathematics of "primitive" design.
We walked through the subterranean "edeficios superpuestos," where we stood in front of pyramids buried beneath later structures and therefore preserved, and marveled at the faded polychrome paint and stucco covering the dark volanic rock in remnants of their original colors.
To have seen the city at the height of its power, every surface coated in the clean white stucco and then painted according to a sacred color scheme with images of sacred beings, would have been an incredible sight.
Not to get too long-winded, our trip was made particularly amusing by the hordes of vendors selling reproduction Teotihuacano masks and aztec sunstone embroideries, whose technique of selling them was a dramatic show of draping the large blankets over themselves, heads bowed, and then popping them open as tourists walk past, as though the sellers were male birds posturing in some obscure mating dance. Another highly popular product sold at the site is the animal noise making whistle, which can make two sounds. The first is a keening dirge that sounds like a kettle left on the stove in a distant room, and the second, a Jaguar roar that sounds strongly like me clearing my throat in the shower. "Achghuauchhhhh!" The vendors also try to spring this upon the tourists, picking spots about ten meters apart from one another, so that the echoes of the last "Jaguar roar," are still fading when the next "Eagle call," comes... Very highly amusing.
There are two theories as to how and why the city of Teotihuacan was abandoned. The first, that resource depletion coupled with overcrowding led to the city being deprived of a base of goods with which to maintain its top-heavy ruling class. The second, that severe climate change forced the people to abandon the site. What is known clearly is this: Around 800AD, at roughly the same time as the collapse of the Mayan city-states of Palenque, Copan and Tikal, the city of Teotihuacan was almost completely destroyed by a massive fire that left the remains of its buildings, the f0undations to be more exact, scorched black.
Whether the fire was the result of overcrowding and "accidental," like the London Fire of 1666, or a popular rebuttal of the forces that governed Teotihuacan is not known. As with all collapses, the end of the classical age of Teotihuacan corresponded to a complete end in the creation of histories of the city so that when the Aztecs, relative newcomers to the empire game, founded their capital, the city was completely abandoned and barren.
The pyramid of the sun is too big to be real. Cat and I climbed the increasingly steep steps, in the scorching heat of midday, beneath our practical sombrillas. At the summit we nestled in among the crowd of people towards the summit, enjoying the view from the top and being annoyed by a little boy with a noise maker who enjoyed throwing things at his doting parents.
After walking around the site a little while longer, we headed to a comedor where a meal of tacos and two beers provided a welcome antecedent for our trip back to Mexico City. We both passed out on the bus, awakening to get into the metro and head downtown.
On our bus ride we passed through the eternally growing City of Mexico, sprawling recklessly out onto every available plot of land apparently without end. Cat dozed while I stared out at the graffiti coated barriers bordering the crowded, noisy highway, and trying to imagine the fertile shores of the former lake Texcoco, now a barren desert of sprawling concrete houses. I must have drifted because I awoke to Catherine nudging me, whispering "Listen!" A traveling musician had gotten on the bus and was singing an old Beatles song in Spanish, crooning; "I just called to say I love you..."
We arrived at the archaeological site of Teotihuacan early in the morning, yet still not before the first forty or so tour buses of students. Walking through the parking lot, we stumbled onto a sixty-foot tall cedar trunk, on top of which were four men dressed as Aztecs. These were the "bird men," recreating a ritual of some pre-hispanic culture by spinning down off of the top of their eyre on thick ropes wrapped around their hips, making lazy, ever wider circles as they descended. It seemed very peaceful, and we half wondered if they would let us up to try with them.
Teotihuacan is the name given by the Mexica to the abandoned city fifty miles north of their capital. In Nahuatl it means, "The place where men become gods," and indeed, the Aztecs believed that such a massive site must have been built by superhuman beings, whose remains, they hypothesized, had been buried along the severely rectilinear "Calle de los Muertos," (Street of the Dead) in the structures that bordered the ceremonial path leading to the pyramid of the moon.
Walking the same path that astonished Aztec leaders some six hundred years ago, the same sense of disbelief sinks into you. Not that these structures were built by gods, but that they were built by humans, remains the impossibility. Although nestled in the shadows of enormous mountains, the pyramids remain giants, their squat immensity defiant of a modern purpose yet powerfully suggestive, hinting at a ritualized barbarity that is realized through the rigid mathematics of "primitive" design.
We walked through the subterranean "edeficios superpuestos," where we stood in front of pyramids buried beneath later structures and therefore preserved, and marveled at the faded polychrome paint and stucco covering the dark volanic rock in remnants of their original colors.
To have seen the city at the height of its power, every surface coated in the clean white stucco and then painted according to a sacred color scheme with images of sacred beings, would have been an incredible sight.
Not to get too long-winded, our trip was made particularly amusing by the hordes of vendors selling reproduction Teotihuacano masks and aztec sunstone embroideries, whose technique of selling them was a dramatic show of draping the large blankets over themselves, heads bowed, and then popping them open as tourists walk past, as though the sellers were male birds posturing in some obscure mating dance. Another highly popular product sold at the site is the animal noise making whistle, which can make two sounds. The first is a keening dirge that sounds like a kettle left on the stove in a distant room, and the second, a Jaguar roar that sounds strongly like me clearing my throat in the shower. "Achghuauchhhhh!" The vendors also try to spring this upon the tourists, picking spots about ten meters apart from one another, so that the echoes of the last "Jaguar roar," are still fading when the next "Eagle call," comes... Very highly amusing.
There are two theories as to how and why the city of Teotihuacan was abandoned. The first, that resource depletion coupled with overcrowding led to the city being deprived of a base of goods with which to maintain its top-heavy ruling class. The second, that severe climate change forced the people to abandon the site. What is known clearly is this: Around 800AD, at roughly the same time as the collapse of the Mayan city-states of Palenque, Copan and Tikal, the city of Teotihuacan was almost completely destroyed by a massive fire that left the remains of its buildings, the f0undations to be more exact, scorched black.
Whether the fire was the result of overcrowding and "accidental," like the London Fire of 1666, or a popular rebuttal of the forces that governed Teotihuacan is not known. As with all collapses, the end of the classical age of Teotihuacan corresponded to a complete end in the creation of histories of the city so that when the Aztecs, relative newcomers to the empire game, founded their capital, the city was completely abandoned and barren.
The pyramid of the sun is too big to be real. Cat and I climbed the increasingly steep steps, in the scorching heat of midday, beneath our practical sombrillas. At the summit we nestled in among the crowd of people towards the summit, enjoying the view from the top and being annoyed by a little boy with a noise maker who enjoyed throwing things at his doting parents.
After walking around the site a little while longer, we headed to a comedor where a meal of tacos and two beers provided a welcome antecedent for our trip back to Mexico City. We both passed out on the bus, awakening to get into the metro and head downtown.
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