I've had a craving recently to revisit the state of Guanajuato...so, since I'm taking this week off to celebrate Valentine's Day, I thought I'd re-post for us one of my favorite trip reports, written two years ago. Hope you enjoy it!

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"If there's one thing I've learned in life, it's never ever say no to a road trip." Denny Crane

Last spring, as I languished in San Pancho during the months of Waiting and Hoping, I received a proposition from some friends.

"How about a road trip?"

I checked my non-schedule and hopped a Primera Plus bus in La Peñita to Guadalajara. Four and a half hours later--during which I'd enjoyed the scenery, a very strange movie, and the gratis Bimbo bread and mystery meat sandwich--the ubiquitous Travis and Allen picked me up at the insane Tonala bus station. They gave me a night to recover from my bus adventure, and the next morning we piled into the Honda and headed east and a smidgen north to the 450-year-old city of Guanajuato, which is pretty much right in the middle of Mexico.

To this day, none of us is sure exactly how we got there. Mexican road signs leave something to be desired: namely, how to get where you're going. I remember passing through an area that looked suspiciously like eastern Oregon...

...and we took some bypasses that turned out be longer than throughpasses; and by some miracle ended up in the outskirts of Guanajuato, where the manager of the house we'd rented met us to lead us into the labyrinth of the city. We climbed and climbed and turned and twisted and finally took a hairpin left into a narrow cobbled cliff-like lane which descended past houses and tiny stores and men toting water bottles up the hill on their backs. Our guide stopped beside a doorway just long enough for us to throw me and a few things out on the sidewalk, then led the guys to some parking garage somewhere far away.

The house was perched on the side of a hill, an imaginative remodel kitty-corner across the street from a very lively almost-all-night bar.

But the view from the roof was spectacular. We spent downtime up there pointing out houses to each other on the surrounding hillsides. "See the orange one over there with the tall windows? Now look left to the mint green one and straight up to the bright blue one. I really like the balcony on the yellow and red one next to it." 

                                                             Photo courtesy A. Pool 

...then wandered back down checking out the old houses.

Once back in the center of the city, we had plazas to visit,

churches to smile at,

serendipitous art to admire,

and a dark and deliciously eccentric bar to discover.

 
I'm sure you've read on travel pages and in traveler's reviews how some city is a "gem". I'm here to tell you: Guanajuato is the whole jewelry box. A feast for the eyes, a history that is as rich and haunted as its fabled silver mines, and some undefinable joyful dignity to it all. People fill the plazas every night to talk and watch and be in the community. The sidewalk cafes are always busy. Students from the University of Guanajuato stroll through the streets playing their instruments and performing street theater. Salsa and tango music twirls through the night air. Teatro Juarez--the opera house--topped with its huge muses, hosts music from all over the world.

On our last night there, we were invited to a restaurant near the main plaza by our new friend Betsy. We sat at a long table chatting with people from all over Mexico, Europe and the U.S. Then a young man walked in, sat down beside the open windows, opened up a black case and began to play his cello. To be wrapped in that tender music in the heart of this intelligent and whimsical city was pure magic. It was like nothing I'd ever experienced in or out of Mexico.

Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter. Mark Twain

I imagine you’ve noticed, if you’re a woman living in the United States, what happens when you reach your fifties and edge into your sixties: let's call it the Invisibility Effect.

I was beginning to notice this phenomenon when I lived full time in the States. My white hair and the lines in my face seemed sometimes to act as an Invisibility Cloak. Not necessarily in a good way, either. Not like an invisible super-heroine who could rob from the rich and give to the poor without ever being seen lifting files from a slick corporate office or striding about a hyper-mansion helping herself to jewels and rare coins.

This other invisibility is insidious. It lurks in our popular culture, which so idolizes youth and model thinness in women that those of us who are of a certain age are passé, not worthy of attention or a second look. Some years ago, I read an article regarding this state of affairs written by Tina Brown, editor of Newsweek and thedailybeast.com, when Susan Boyle, the post-middle-aged Scottish singer, won Britain’s Got Talent in 2009.

You women know what I’m talking about: the constant clamor that women be young. This phenomenon commands magical weight-loss and cellulite-reducing products, endless plastic surgery, trophy wives, and all the other male-centric oppressions that encumber women in so many cultures. Values that are skewed, if not screwed.

So now imagine my delight entering this particular culture to discover that not only am I seen, but I am often admired outright despite--or maybe even because--of my age. I noticed it immediately, and I notice the contrast between the Mexican and U.S. cultures every time I travel back and forth. I like the attitudes better here in Mexico.

One day in Bucerias, at a beach restaurant I’d never been to, I was treated to an admiring ogle by the host as I approached. “Where have you been?” he said. “I’ve had your table ready for two hours!”

Now, surely, one takes these comments with a large grain of salt and plenty of laughter. But really, who can resist being escorted with a flourish to a table in the sand and assured that anything I needed was mine without question?

Another day, at another beach restaurant, a handsome young jewelry vendor came to my table. I expected him to pass by when I told him I wasn’t buying. Instead, he stopped to chat. “Are you married?” he asked. “Yes,” I replied, as I was at the time. Then he asked in a combination of Spanish and English, “How do you say “que lastima”? I replied in English, “‘It’s a shame’”.

“Aahh,” he nodded, then said in English, “It’s shame you are married. I like you much and soon I think I will love you.”

This kind of thing happens a lot here. Mexico, of course, is the land of machismo, which often drives me crazy. But never have I felt accosted, insulted or threatened by the looks and comments I receive. They are often sweet and always respectful, including the gazes from workers who stop what they’re doing as I pass and watch me walk by. I always greet them with a ‘buenos dias’, and they invariably reply in chorus. Kind of cute, really.

Political correctness doesn’t exist in backwater Mexico. It may not exist in any of Mexico. I find it rather refreshing, to tell you the truth.

Some women might actually prefer invisibility to a cab stand full of lounging taxi drivers shaking their heads as I pass and saying, “¡Qué bonita!” or “¡Mamacita!” I don’t. It’s fine with me. I’m a mature women. I can take it.

I've also noticed lately that some American men my age can see me. I'm glad. It means they haven't all swallowed the company line. In fact, now and then a man comes along who actually cherishes the evidence of experience in an older woman, who likes a face with lines in it and a shared cultural history, who is not craving youth for himself or for the women around him. Makes me think all that Women's Liberation stuff we did way back when wasn't all for nought. Makes me think some men get it.

This is my birthday post, by the way. My own birthday, not the blog’s. As I add another year, I wanted to tell you these stories. I’m reminded every day of my life that age is relative, as is beauty. So today, I wanted to remind you.

xo

C

Youth is the gift of nature, but age is a work of art. Stanslav Lec

It takes a long time to become young. Pablo Picasso

My mother always taught me, as I'm sure yours did you, that we're supposed to send thank you notes after receiving a gift.

So here's mine for today, having been reminded by Jeremy a few days ago that this month is my two-year anniversary of writing this blog.

First, thanks for reminding me, Jeremy.

Second, and this one's to you: thanks for the gift of your encouragement, your comments on the blog and face-to-face, your emails, your friendship and your unflagging support and persistence in following these Friday scribbles.

Persistence is a trait I don't often assign to myself. Looking over my life, I can see that I've had it in necessary practical matters, but it still seems alien somehow. When it comes to creative endeavors, I usually think of myself as a flibbertigibbet, a hummingbird that samples every flower and seldom lands. 

With your help, I've learned that I can stay with something I like to do, even if it seems less than prudent, very impractical, and sort of goofy. Thanks for that.

Strangely, all the best things in my life right now have those same ingredients. Nothing I'm doing can be described as prudent. Most things I'm doing are certainly impractical. More and more, I am attracted to and delighted by the goofy. 

It's been both a release and a relief to move away from practical and prudent into goofy. I feel like I've been waiting for this time of my life to do just that. I admit I am tickled to discover that I have the capacity just to play. I often celebrate this new state of being, and thanks to you, I have a weekly reminder in case I am tempted to forget. Because writing this blog is really fun for me.

So I will persist with San Pancho Vida.

That said, I will ask your permission right now to skip some weeks in this third year. I plan to be very busy being goofy. I have some serious playing to do.

And seriously, while I'm playing...I just might play hooky.