My Bark is Better Than My Bite

My biting commentary today will not be as good as the bark. Isn't that great stuff? A guy who has a tree business in San Francisco does these images, and gave me a copy. He calls it bark as art. Beautiful how some people can take what is all around us, everyday, and frame it into something we can all recognize as beautiful. I will find his name here somewhere in my 90's office space (lots of paper, things, and as an afterthought, an electronic device or two.) I am a nineties (1890's) kind of guy.

I had a dream, the other night that was so clear it made me sad. That deep deep sad you get sometimes. It was me dying that bummed me out. Even being awake, it sort of still hurt. Imagine, the world without us two, gentle reader. Damn. That's just sad. I had visited Mexico in my dream, it seems. I have roots in Mexico, and am a quarter Mexican. Here is a photo from El Dia De Los Muertes, here in Portland. A friend's party.

And what is Mexican? Notice you can get MIX out of that word real easy. Lots of the oldest and most advanced tribes in the Americas, with a history written by the conquerors, telling of blood and sacrifices. Who knows what they were really like? Some 300 'authentic' Aztec religions are reportedly in Mexico City today.

The small truths that remain, though, are that the Aztecs had a city of a million (Now it is 22 million-Mexico City) living on a lake high in the mountains, farming their stuff, and building their pyramids, and they blew it. The rulers got a little too into themselves. Or maybe they just weren't that into slaves. I read somewhere that the Inca had more miles of road than the Romans did in Europe. But no wheel.

A view from the trees notes that Inca rulers communicated via runners, who carried lengths of string, in Pony Express fashion, hundreds of miles. The knots told the story, in a code only known to those ruling classes. Each runner only ran about a mile. Imagine if we could get that well organized with tree work. Knots are still signatures, in certain work. I used a half-hitch for years, because I was ignorant, as a stopper knot. Now I use a figure-eight as a stopper. You can find little figure eights all over my things. But of course, you can find them all over the place.

When Cortez and the rest of them got there, they introduced smallpox and stuff, quite by accident. This reduced the population of Mexico from 24 million to about 1.5 million in a few years. Their fire sticks are the stuff of legend, and every schoolchild hears about how they went into battle with the mighty Aztecs and won, but we have to remember, they brought disease as a front line.

Back to my dream. I am part Mexican, and my Nena was born Mexican, in Mexico City. But her Father was from an old family around Vera Cruz. She came here at three, on the wrong side of that Mexican Revolution. In my childhood, I was always just an American; its all I knew. I also seemed to notice lots of Mexican people at family reunions and weddings, but I took little notice of this. In other words, my mother, a Chicana, was 'passing'. My Nena, who we always called that, not Grandma, spoke little bits of Spanish. But we didn't learn it.

Later, Mom got into the women's movement, and the Chicana thing, but for us kids it was a surprise, sort of. We always knew we could get a good tan, and take the heat well, but we did not identify as people of the South Americas.

Later, a cousin became a Flamenca. Another became a professor of Latin American Women's literature. What the hell? And my sister began speaking a passable Spanish, after living in Mexico on a boat for years. What was I missing?

I took note of the dream, but until I walked into an Aztec Ceremony in Mount Tabor Park, I really had it on a back burner. That's when I started connecting the dots. I watched full on costumed Aztecs do a religious ceremony up there last weekend, and it was mostly in Spanish, but some other Native Americans were there who spoke English and were translated to.

And a truck of mine broke down, six weeks after I purchased it. I sold it at auction, not having the heart to trade it in. Four days after the auction, I am riding my bike, and a Mexican dude is driving my former truck across the intersection I stop at.

That's when I decided for sure I was buying a ticket to Mexico City. If I do not listen to the signals, they become louder and louder, and might manifest themselves as symptoms. I don't need more of those. I am going to Mexico.