7/ Dog Days
Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.
— Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Rime of the Ancient MAriner
A rainy season afternoon in Oaxaca.
It is August—the rainy season in Oaxaca, although there hasn’t been that much rain so far. The Guelaguetza crowds are long gone, the calendas have dwindled in number to those celebrating a patron saint or two at a neighborhood cathedral. The days are warm yet pleasant: weather reports in the 90s and 100s from around the U.S. provide daily validation of the wisdom of our move. Typically, the mornings are cool and clear, the surrounding mountains a velvety green set against an azure sky. Clouds begin building up in late morning, providing occasional relief from the pressure of the midday sun. By mid-afternoon we begin to hear the distant rumble of thunder, distinguishable from the blaring of passing buses by virtue of its duration and profundity. If we’re lucky we’ll get a brief sprinkle or two—it hasn’t been all that humid here, but when it gets sticky in the afternoon a shower freshens the air nicely. The thunder and lightning show may continue, harmlessly, into the evening; but once or twice it has morphed into storms of epic proportions, with sheets of water falling from a sky bright-lit by frequent flashes, wind whipping through the trees and rivers of run-off flowing through the streets. It’s a good time to be sitting comfortably inside, or on a sheltered patio, watching it all unfold from a place of relative calm.
And, at long last, we have such a place. As promised, the apartment was opened to us on August 4th, and we made our 6th (and hopefully final) move since leaving Seattle on June 19th.
It was the first time we had seen the apartment free of the disgusting detritus of the previous tenants, and while our initial reaction was one of relief, further inspection of the premises revealed some disappointing details, such as:
No king bed, as promised (instead, a queen and two twins)
No chairs for the kitchen table
No towel racks
No toilet paper holders (or toilet paper, for that matter)
One of two showers apparently inoperative
No hot water in the kitchen
No drinking water, period
Cat fur lingering on and under the furniture
Weird glass light globes suspended from the ceiling at exactly my head level
Walls unpainted, with nail holes left unfilled here and there
Etc.
The furniture, all hand-made out of unfinished pine lumber, resembled the output of a high school wood-shop class. Two squat wardrobes represented all the available storage for us and our (anticipated) guests. An 8-foot-tall front door featured inch-wide gaps around its perimeter, and in the main bathroom, the sole window’s metal frame was rusted in place at half-mast, in open invitation to all manner of winged varmints. We were paying what we considered top dollar for the place, but all I could see in our move’s aftermath was its deficiencies.
My fantasy Oaxacan home had featured colorful Mexican tile, beautiful hand-woven rugs, sturdily useful pottery, and handsome, functional furniture. Our apartment possessed none of these. Así es.
On the brighter side, it was ours for as long as we wanted. Our suitcases were empty and stored away for the first time in 6 weeks. We had access to a washer and dryer. The queen bed was reasonably comfortable. There was an electric fan AND the aforementioned lap pool. We were within minutes of a beautiful park and the main tourist areas of the city. And finally, we had a pleasant, tree-shrouded, covered patio on the second floor from which to watch the summer rain fall from the Oaxacan sky.
Our downstairs neighbors (a friendly couple of similar vintage from North Carolina) offered us solace, advice and help. The landlady, they said, was completely open to fixing things that weren’t to our satisfaction, and so we set about creating a punch-list of items to be addressed in the coming days, immediately followed by a second list of things we would absolutely need to buy in order to live comfortably, such as:
DRINKING WATER
TOILET PAPER
FOOD
Dish drainer
Grown-up kitchen utensils
Salt, pepper and other condiments
Absorbent bath towels
Mosquito repellent
Etc.
We started paying closer attention to nearby artisan stalls, markets and shops for decorative items with which to relieve the boredom of our expansive, whitewashed walls. The only existing adornments were several carved gourds of local origin and, inexplicably, six framed copies of exactly the same black & white print—that of a Mexican woman fixing another woman’s hair. Two of these identical prints hung in each of the bedrooms, as well as in the kitchen/dining area; when asked why we had 6 of the same prints in our apartment, our landlady replied, “They are not the same. You can see that the number on each print is different.” (We asked our neighbors, whose apartment sported its own equally repetitive collection: How many copies of this print does she own?? They weren’t sure, but rendered the question moot by buying some attractive photos of old Oaxaca and gluing them onto the glass in front of the prints.
The prints (2 of 6).
Meanwhile, we began to scout out the neighborhood to identify the places that would become our hangouts in the weeks and months ahead: the panedería next to the big park where we walk in the morning has fresh-made churros, our new favorite pastry; the tortas truck around the corner sells the best grilled sandwiches in the city for around $1.50 each. We bought memberships at a surprisingly well-equipped gym, 4 blocks away—a development that immediately began to yield dividends in terms of physical and psychological well-being. And we re-tooled our Spanish lessons to focus on one-on-one instruction at a school around the corner, at hours more convenient to our newly-developing routines.
Martha’s sister Gail, who has lived in many far-flung places around the globe (and in far more primitive conditions than ours), told us that after about two months we would wake up one morning and everything would seem normal. And she was right.
For the first time, I was beginning to glimpse the contours and colors of our life-to-be: waking to the sound of cathedral bells reverberating in the morning air; being greeted with a smile in the neighborhood shops and restaurants where my face was now becoming familiar; the ebb and flow of tourist crowds as the annual festivals come and go; and the first, fleeting sense of finding my place in this special community.
Rain falling on the inner courtyard, from our 2nd-floor balcony.
