(New subscribers: welcome! If you want to read about my family’s DIY sabbatical in Mexico—and how we’re pulling it off financially—the rest of the series is here. To capture the time, I’ve been making some lists in homage to the Pillow Book of Sei Shōnagon.)
Things I Have Been Called
Joven. Jovencito. Caballero. Amigo. Señor. Extranjero. Güey. Güero. Güerito. Gabacho. Maestro. Profesor. Profe. The grandfather of my youngest children.
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Varieties of Nonhumans
Clubfooted pigeons. An actual herd of wild cats.
Roaming dogs. Leashed dogs. Trapped-on-balcony dogs.
Cute sewer rats. Recently dead and soggy rats. Extremely dead and leathery rats.
Cockroaches. Scorpions.
Burros. Songbirds. Roosters.
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Averting One’s Gaze
One averts one’s gaze from many things.
There’s the angry and drunken basurero out cold facedown by the panadería in the middle of the day.
The guy in handcuffs being hauled off by police, hollering and swearing, bending his knees and lifting his feet so they have to literally carry him away. You are walking with your young child and want her not to see, so you turn her away from it all and yourself with her.
Sometimes one looks away in revulsion: a mangled dead pigeon on the sidewalk. Fresh dogshit. Smashed cockroaches littering the callejones.
Occasionally a guy so covered with scalp, face, and neck tattoos that it seems likely that he’s done crimes for the gang + done time for the gang, but you can’t be sure because you avert your gaze before you can make out any specific affiliation. You don’t want any trouble, nor do you want to gawk.
Vulnerability, disability, physical suffering—all more common here. Sometimes someone is marked by something so painful or intense that you make eye contact briefly to communicate warmth and attempt to make them feel seen, but once that is accomplished: you avert your gaze.
Particularly because of the history of a cultura machista, you take care to avert your gaze from young women who (you somehow believe you can tell in an instant) may feel that you are being in any way macho or forward or creepy.
The woman who begs by the ágora in a manner both plaintive and sour. You have given her money many times, and when you don’t feel like giving her any more, you walk right past her in a manner that is curt and indifferent.
The worst is when you avert your gaze from the children selling trinkets.
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Delightful Things
Pink pepper trees.
Posse of middle-aged women sparring together on the concrete pad at the park dedicated to el box.
Next to them, a big guy in a sleeveless black hoodie—hood up—does his pre-boxing workout: he beats a truck tire with a metal pipe like he’s chopping wood. He is the toughest person in the world.
Never-before-seen new arrivals at the frutería. Granadillas. Ciruelas. Rambutanes.
Guys driving motorcycles up and down the callejones.
Parents and grandparents walking their kindergartener to school—the child in the CUTEST gingham jardín de niños smock.
Superabundance of bougainvillea.
The word in Spanish: “bugambilia.”
Delight of cognates. A young couple walks past and one of them says to the other that “Lamentablemente,” such-and-such happened.
Running into the reina de pan (our plaza-in-the-morningtime friend) on the plaza at night. She’s with her grandbaby and wants to show her off to us.
Imagining the OGs of the New York graffitti scene visiting Guadalajara and going back home like “Guys. Guys. We need to get our shit together. These Guadalajara kids are eating our lunch.”
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Indescribable Things
Eyes of the girl on Federalismo. A pretty child waiting with infinite patience in the shade of an awning during the green light. When it turns red, she walks unhurried into traffic and starts juggling for coins.
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Things That Are Carried
Stacks of bricks. Huge panes of glass. Buckets of water, paint, wet cement. Buckets of elote. Sacks of cement. Garrafones. Flats of Coke. Sacks of trash. Lumber. Rebar. Cinderblocks. Tanks of butane. Racks of balloons. Baskets of bread. Trays of churros. Bicycles. Puestos. Abuelitas in lawn chairs and wheelchairs. Cats in backpacks with windows.