politics in the dump

Irony is a harsh handmaiden.

I started with sorting paperwork as part of Operation Sell-the-House.  And what should show up first?  A box of campaign paraphernalia from my 1988 run for the Oregon legislature.  A campaign that ended up in a narrow margin loss.

Budgets.  Newspaper articles.  Endorsements.  Buttons.  Campaign literature.

Lots of good memories.  And a reminder that I could never imagine wasting more of my life with political activity.  Especially, as a candidate.

And who is that guy in the photograph?  It is hard to believe I was ever that young.  But the 39-year old guy in the brochure is now over two decades older.

So, off goes most of the stuff to the city dump.  With a few reminders to keep me from stepping into the arena again.

The photograph at the top of the post is the cover of the campaign's first brochure.  But this is my favorite photograph.

Having no children of my own, I borrowed my brother's son, Ryan, to highlight the "schools" policy in the brochure.

Ryan is now in his 30s with a son of his own -- both of whom I should see this coming weekend at Thanksgiving dinner in Portland. 

talking trash

It is election day.  And I am in Oregon.

Usually, I get to watch American elections in the isolation of my little village.  But not this year.  I will be in the midst of the melee.  Waiting to see if voters are willing to soldier on or to take out the trash.

There will be no choice for me.  Taking out the trash is why I am in Oregon.

When I left here almost four years ago, I left one major task unfinished -- when I decided not to sell the Salem house before I headed south.

I had started dividing my possessions into piles: garbage, Salvation Army donations, things south-bound, things to be stored.  I stopped in mid-task once I realized I could simply ignore the hard choices -- a bit like our avoidance-prone politicians.

But the time for those choices is here.

The photograph at the top of this post is symbolic of my task.  It was a third bedroom I once used as an office -- and turned into a junk room on my trek south.

Almost everyone I know has a room or closet or basement or garage devoted to the memorialization of things that should be gone, but we do not have the moral courage to rid ourselves of.

This morning I will start in the office.  I already have a good idea what I am facing.  Almost everything is going to head to the dumpster.

Books are going to be the greatest burden.  Each book means something to my life.  But I seldom look at them these days.  And the Mexican coast would not be kind to them.  Even if I could get them there.

So far, I am not certain where a good home for them will be.

You will notice the lack of one category in my decision tree.  There will be no estate sale.  No lawn sale.  No garage sale.  No eBay account.

Even though I have a lot of items that have a respectable value (such as Roadway programs signed by stars), I do not have time to be an entrepreneur of collectibles.  I will leave that to the Salvation Army.
 
So, early this morning, I will start sorting and tossing.

And the voters?  They will make their own decisions.

dead reckoning

"Who am I?"

Over a year ago, I started an essay tackling that question.  The catalyst was the recently-released Autobiography of Mark Twain.  When I read the last page, I realized I knew a lot about Mark Twain, but next to nothing about his creator -- Samuel Clemens.  Clemens spent decades weaving a cocoon around his own life while creating the comfortable façade of the witty Twain. 

That may be one reason we find it so easy to believe Hal Holbrook successfully channels him.  Twain was simply another of Clemens’s fictional characters.

Of course, we all try similar legerdemain in our lives.  The role we create for ourselves is often not how the rest of the world sees us.

Last summer I received two email from long-time readers of this blog.  Both of them described me as being a social extrovert.  When I am actually a painfully shy introvert.

We see that disconnect around us every day.  Especially in the west where we invent First World Problems for ourselves.

You can hear it in the plaintive postmodern cries demanding the world to see outliers as they choose to portray themselves.  Creating fodder for the mangers of political correctness.

Modernists (especially the traditionalists in their ranks) are not so subjective.  What they think of other people is what they objectively observe.

So, what does all this have to do with the Day of the Dead?

My fellow bloggers told me I would never forget the experience.  That it was not like anything I had seen.  Part of that is true.

I will never forget the 16 hours we spent in the area around Lake Pátzcuaro observing how Purépecha (and other Mexicans) remember their loved ones who have died.

We started with a daylight visit to the cemetery at Tzintzuntzan.  The cemetery had a large police contingent for security -- and an even larger contingent of boys carrying plastic jack-o-lanterns begging for pesos (no candy, thank you very much) from well-heeled tourists.

The light gave us an opportunity to see why the graves are lovingly prepared.  Usually decorated with orange marigolds -- lots of marigolds -- and purple-hued cockscombs.

As is true in most cultures, the wealthier the family, the more elaborate the display honoring the dead.  You might not be able to take it with you.  But your survivors can spend it on the glory of your memory.

And that is what this day is all about.  Remembering.  If we are what people know of us while we are alive, we have a certain immortality as long as there are those who will remember us.

Like this display.  There appeared to be no grave.  But Miguel was either a child or an adult whose life was somehow touched by trucks -- a fitting memorial for my own father.

We then spent the rest of the afternoon in Pátzcuaro.  You have read my comments about the town’s most honored benefactor -- Don Vasco de Quiroga.  How do you honor a man you revere, but have never met?

With a stylized altar as mythical as the heroic statue of the man that rises above the display.

Or maybe it is the heritage of the dancers that still perform for tourists each weekend.

Nightfall changed everything.  After all, it is only in the night that the spirits of the dead will visit the graveyards or their former homes to communicate with the living.

That sense of reverence and memory thickened in the graveyard of Arocutin -- a village on the western side of the lake.  And the only stop where the cemetery is in the walled yard of the church.

The candle light and the marigolds created an orange light making it easy to see why village relatives were spending the night where they were.  A rite that was communal, but also exclusive to each clan.

From Arocutin, we drove over to the former island of Jaracuaro -- famous for its production of hand-made straw hats.

Even though the hat sellers -- and other vendors -- were not going to miss the opportunity for selling wares to tourists, most local people were  there for a long night of Purépecha-inspired song and dance.  And food.  Lots of food.

We then drove to the other side of the lake.  To Ihuatzio -- best known for its archaeological site.  But on that night, its graveyard was the star.  With both the young --

-- and the elderly remembering those who had taken a journey every one of us in that yard will take.  And realizing we may be next in line for our own memorial service.

On our way back to Morelia, we stopped in the small graveyard of Tzurumútaro. Where the wealthy were easily distinguished from the graves of the poor.

Or where an unusual mix of Hummel-style figures kept company with the photograph of a couple now deceased.

And where the ubiquitous march of Halloween has made a beachhead in the land of tradition.

The next morning in Morelia, I found this interesting twist on tradition in the courtyard of one of the city’s larger churches.

For those of you who are not familiar with Mexican stores, Oxxo is the equivalent of 7-11 or Plaid Pantry.

For me, the tradition of remembering the dead was not new.  Even though Memorial Day was initiated as a way to honor America’s military dead, some families -- including my own -- would use it as a day to remember all of our deceased family members.

My mother and her sisters would drive to cemeteries to decorate graves.  When we were in southern Oregon, my mother would always buy flowers to decorate the graves of both her and my father’s families.

And we would reminisce on who they were.

Do the spirits of the dead visit graveyards on certain nights?  It seems to be a universal belief among pagan tribes throughout the world.

I don’t know.  But I do know that as long as we remember those who have gone on to the undiscovered country before us will remain alive as long as we maintain their memory.

grave thoughts

My reflections on Day of the Dead are almost completed.

While watching the Purépecha remember their dead, this recent Billy Collins poem from Horoscopes for the Dead echoed through my memory.  It is appropriately titled "Grave."

Tomorrow we can discuss its underlying philosophy.

What do you think of my new glasses

I asked as I stood under a shade tree
before the joined grave of my parents,

and what followed was a long silence
that descended on the rows of the dead
and on the fields and the woods beyond,

one of the one hundred kinds of silence
according to the Chinese belief,
each one distinct from the others,

but the differences being so faint
that only a few special monks
were able to tell them apart.

They make you look very scholarly,
I heard my mother say
once I lay down on the ground

and pressed an ear into the soft grass.
Then I rolled over and pressed
my other ear to the ground,

the ear my father likes to speak into,
but he would say nothing,
and I could not find a silence

among the 100 Chinese silences
that would fit the one that he created
even though I was the one

who had just made up the business
of the 100 Chinese silences -
the Silence of the Night Boat

and the Silence of the Lotus,
cousin to the Silence of the Temple Bell
only deeper and softer, like petals, at its farthest edges.

the rest of the dead

I am going to give you all a little rest from reading this blog.  I am in the highlands for the Day/Night of the Dead celebrations -- without internet access.

I will be back on Sunday -- in Oregon.  With a few tales of the dead and living.

the dead arrive early

For those of you who are too impatient to wait for my Day/Night of the Dead experience in Pátzcuaro, fret not.

My young Mexican neighbors have come to your rescue.

Our little village lacks a lot of what is traditional elsewhere in Mexico.  But this is a tourist spot -- and it knows how to take advantage of any excuse for a fiesta.  And to then make the event its own.

On Tuesday afternoon the local high school students flocked to our little plaza and started constructing their notion of what a Day/Night of the Dead altar should look like. 

Their teachers had provided instructions for all of the required elements.  Given those constraints, artistic license was theirs to pursue.

The results were interesting, but I had more fun watching the production come together.  Like most school projects, two or three students took the project seriously while the rest of their classmates wandered about aimlessly socializing. 

Young men tossed off personal insults to other young men, who puffed up their chests in indignation while their girl friends told them to stop acting like children.

And they danced to rock music (with some English rap lyrics that would have made my sailor uncles blush).  If this was a day to have fun, they were doing it.  And, of course, there was the usual flock of grandmothers shaking their heads at the "disrespectful" spectacle.

The result was about a dozen booths that looked oddly like a science fair in the Parrish Middle School gymnasium -- if the science fair had been held on Halloween night.

The booths are meant to act as public remembrances of deceased friends and relatives.

The usual Catholic paraphernalia was present.  But objects from the deceased’s life were the centerpiece of each altar.  Clothes.  Food.  Drink.  Cigarettes.  (This is one event that has not yet surrendered to the heath police.)

The most mundane objects were the most poignant. Reading glasses.  Well-worn sandals that will not be worn again.  An old scooter.

All of it looking vaguely familiar.  And then it hit me.  The collection of personal memorabilia looked liked every Evangelical Christian "celebration of life" ceremony I have attended for the past two or three decades.

These are my people. 

But seeing death through the eyes of teenagers is always a unique experience.  The sentimentally comes packed in the bubble wrap of bathos.  And is always outweighed by sheer self-referential fun.  Often slipping into a Michael Jackson Thriller homage more than remembering the deceased.

But some pieces were artistically inspired.  Going from this --

-- to this in just a few hours of patient mosaic work.

The display in the plaza is about as far away as possible in detail from what I will see in Pátzcuaro during the next three days.  But it has a semblance of the same spirit.

In the same way that Day/Night of the Dead is a second cousin three times removed of Halloween.

fair service

One of the joys of living in a small town for a few years is the daily trip to the post office.

I suspect the ritual is the same for village life in England, Honduras, or China.  Check the box for mail.  And, more importantly, chat with the postal clerk about the latest goings-on in town. 

What Agatha Christie novel would be worth reading without a similar plot-propelling scene?

Even though our temperatures are still past 90 degrees before noon, I decided to walk to town yesterday -- to enjoy this little town of mine.

And it was a bonanza day at the post office.  All three clerks were there.  Each with interesting tales.

We talked about the universal topic of the weather.  Car wrecks.  And my upcoming trips to Pátzcuaro and Oregon.

Even my postal box held more mail than usual.  Two magazines.  Well, the September and October editions of the same magazine.

As a blogger, I have been quite a booster of the Mexican postal system.  It is usually very reliable.  Certainly as reliable as the high-cost postal services used by some expatriates.

But,now and then, something odd happens.  It usually takes about 10 to 14days for mail to be delivered from up north.  In July, I sent off a pack of cards and letters -- both to Mexico and The States.  It took six to eight weeks for the mail to be delivered.

And we all know the story about my subscription to The Economist.  It arrived fine for a few weeks.  And then just stopped.

Now, the odd delivery of different issues on the same day.  I have no idea what happened.  And I am not concerned.  At least, they arrived.

One thing I have learned in Mexico is that getting in a lather over a few late magazines is not worth the bother.  My focus is on the fact that I will now have something to read on the bus on my way to the hotel in Morelia.

It is certainly not the end of my world.

And my conversation at the post office is always worth far more than what shows up in my box.