A few words about Mexico

Today we left San Miguel de Allende for Queretaro on the ETN, fastest luxury bus in Mexico. We arrived an hour later and took the Primera Plus to the airport in Mexico City. The Ramada Inn has a shuttle service to  and from the airport, so it was five hours total.  Now it's late at night. I'll get a good nights rest for the big trip tomorrow.

The road from San Miguel takes you past the cactus badlands of the high desert, through the industrial parks on the outskirts of Queretaro and into the heart of the valley of Mexico, still-proud plains where once ruled the Aztec civilizations.  Their stone pyramids still stand in faraway places like La Cañada de la Virgen, Teotihuacan, Monte Alban, Palenque. The purple volcanos that dominate the valley of Mexico are still active and throw vast fumerolas of ash into the stratosphere.

Gringos have such silly ideas about Mexico. They are always talking about riding bicycles around from pueblo to pueblo, drinking tequila, chasing señoritas and seeing bullfights. Older gringos are into being Hemingwayesque. They grow beards and try on a macho attitude.

On a personal level, I didn't come to Mexico to be Hemingway. It was my karma. 

The Mexican people are warm human beings. But nothing is as it seems. The taxi driver is as likely to have been an ex-boxer as he is to be a law school graduate. Appearances deceive.

My journey is one of celebration. I celebrate my personal odyssey, but also my life and faith, which I share with you. Allow me to celebrate Mexico.

Rural Mexico is a poem, a song, a bar-room ballad, cantina, ranchera, corrido. A constant one-act play about money, God, the Catholic church, compadrismo, death, fiestas, gossip, the church, death, sex, matrimony, the church, God, and death.

But if life in the provinces is a Balzac short story, or Chekovian play, Mexico City is an epic, a saga, a neverending story of 20 million souls who wake up every morning and make this extraordinary monster run. It makes no sense whatsoever that so many cars, buses, bicycles,metro trains, 18 wheelers, minibuses, microbuses, combis and urbanos jam the impassable streets while thousands of protestors block traffic, commandeer toll botths, smash windows and burn down government offices demanding equal pay, any pay at all, fair working conditions,many working conditions, an end to corruption, decent education, and the return of 43 disappeared students who were kidnapped, gunshot, cut into pieces, burned and thrown into the garbage. the city is a constant negotiation between the forces of absolute evil and the innate goodness of the human soul.

And yet the City of Mexico has been a refuge for homeless poets and saints: Octavio Paz, Pablo Casals, Jack Kerouack, Alan Ginsberg, even poor Trotsky himself took shelter as the house guest of the great cubist Diego Rivera and painter Frida Kahlo.  The great sadhu and spiritual teacher, my old friend Bhakti Kushum Ashram Maharaja hails from Mexico City.

City of mighty volcanos and earthquakes, I salute you tonight, even as tomorrow I will leave you behind for the land of the ancient Maya on the Yucatan Peninsula. Both Aztecs and Mayas maintained a great civilization that stretches back thousands of years. Is it possible that they communicated with other ancient cultures in India and Egypt long ago. 

Stay tuned, dear reader.