Chiapas Marimba #1
Same
Boy drummer
Chiapas Marimba #2: Erick and two marimba players
Chiapas Marimba #3
Tavo, Pedro, Me, Erick, and Yadira
Cacti in gorge wall
Pedro sleeping in a boat
Yadira, wet after piercing rain
A tired man sleeps
Children flee the harsh gaze of a camera
Puddle Stomping
The Marimba Maker's Workshop
The Hall of the Marimba Maker
A human and a human construct
In opposition to a human construct, a magic tree stands across a park
cool picture from the marimba museum wall
Balloon Man
Omar in a charming sweater eating fruitSunday September 7 I went to Tuxtla Gutierrez, the capital of Chiapas, with my family. We left at a jarringly early time in the morning and I watched the sunrise over green countryside and the human detritus strewn across it. I slept and had to pee terribly. Chiapas is gorgeous, beautiful. There are mountains here, small and green ones. At least, there are places where the clouds touch down onto the mountains (fog) which I reject calling fog.
The city of Tuztla is huge to my eyes, and fills the floor between giant mountain walls. It looks the same as all Mexican cities look. It may be the general foreigness I still have, but all Mexican cities look the same. Perhaps my eyes are still drawn to the things that distinguish Mexico from Michigan and don't see the things that distinguish one city from another. Mexicans presumably gloss over the things I notice and see the smaller details. We wandered through the city for a short time, passing street shops carrying a lot of knickknacks and crafts. Women accosted us perpetually trying to sell handmade cloth bags and bracelets.
We made our way down to the riverside, which is lined with restaurants. The restaurants are all exactly the same and seem to blend into one another, where not separated by streets. They are open air, facing toward the river, which has nothing on the other side. They have wooden tables and white table cloths and wooden chairs. Every restaurant houses one or two or three or more musical accompaniments, all marimba drumset combinations with variable numbers of marimba players. I believe there were at least 7 of these pairs within perhaps no more than three restaurants, in a span of no more than 500 yards. Chiapas claims to be the originator of the marimba, and essentially all of its folk music from a certain time on seems to be marimba music. The true story seems to include the original marimba or its idea being carried from Africa by slaves and then developed to its modern form in Chiapas.
After eating and talking to some marimbists, we went down the riverside a bit to buy tickets for our river cruise. I like that I often don't understand what's going on (because my Spanish isn't good enough to understand side conversations in which people aren't talking to me directly) and so I end up on boats with only assumptions about where they're going. We had to wait a considerable time for our boat, so while we're waiting for it, I'll tell you about the street vendors in this area. There are a lot of them, they're persistent, and they sell a variety of things. We were heckled at least three times by the same mumbling dvd/cd pirate while eating, and then by two different plastic jewelry vendors. Down by the river there are people selling sno-cone equivalents, people selling gum, candy, and cigarettes, and one "trail mix" vendor, who carried bags of peanuts, pistachios, m&ms, and other nuts and the like.
The boat left at a pace that pushed back the skin on your face and made it uncomfortable to keep your eyes open. The river was flooded slightly and the groves of trees on the far side were up to their metaphorical hips in water. We entered the true canyon after passing under an old bridge and a bigger new bridge. There were people waving to us from the top. The canyon walls at the mouth there, under the bridges, is covered in cacti. As we entered further into the canyon proper, the walls changed from steep and rocky to slopy and green and back again. The sky at this point was huge and populous and confused, but very blue; there were no grey clouds. There were a few fishermen around the shores in places.
I can't communicate in words or photographs the feeling of being in a canyon. So go to a canyon and understand the idea I'm comunicating in order that I can adequately share my experience! In general the canyon is huge and green, with grey spots where the plants can't gain a foothold. They are scraggly, though, and plants can hang on just about anywhere. Not actually anywhere, though. There are a few important events that happened passing through the canyon:
A dead dog floats through the filth and garbage in the river. He floats so that the water creates a line that bisects him symmetrically (is it weird that the word symmetric isn't symmetric?). The one regret I have from this trip is not getting a picture of this dead dog. Sorry you can't share this one, guys.
A white bird with orange beak waits in front of a waterfall.
The entire canyon is filled with magic trees. This is true of Mexico in general. There should be many pictures up there, sufficient to illustrate the point.
Birds frequently fly overhead. They are some kind of water bird, with a big pelican mouth and grey-brown colors. Their flight is miraculous. They beat and beat against the air, climbing painfully slowly, with visible effort but at the same time effortlessly, reach a height, and dive back to the water, dipping infinitely close to the water but never touching the water, and then swoop back into the sky.
Christmas Tree waterfall. I hesitate to classify things as the most beautiful of my life, because I frequently get this impression and then forget these things and get the same impression about other things, but I got the impression here that it was the most beautiful thing I'd ever experienced. It's a waterfall, you can see in the pictures, that is shaped like a Christmas Tree, and is green. The branches are these curved stone outcroppings presumably made by minerals left by misty falling water. They are impossibly thin and green. The water falls from the top and turns into a mist. The mist drifts out with the wind over the river, and returns to water as it touches upon the branches below. We took the boat in directly underneath this, and so we felt the water falling on our faces and looked up into the sun, directly overhead. The sun passes through the mist and imbues it with a blissful clarity and glow.
The end of our tour or halfway point more like was the dam. Damn dams. It looked like shit. There were electric towers lining the canyons there and a long strip of floating barrels, against which days worth of trash had piled up, and upon which seabirds alighted.
We returned the way we'd come, but now the sky was turning grey and the sun was hiding. We turned a corner and saw mist pouring out of the canyon before us; a cloud, who had found its way down into the river for a swim, presumably to get out of the beating sun. We entered the cloud and experienced with it its escape from the sun and its slow fall into the river. The rain drops were sharp and piercing and riding through the cloud felt like perpetually walking into a pine branch. I assume that, like the pine branch, sharp rain drops are a defense mechanism against the potential dangers of bumbling pedestrians.
We returned to the city, wandered a bit, encountering three locations of importance: an old convent, and the house of the marimba maker. The convent is important because it housed two gardens, the first of which centered around a gigantic magic tree (the source of the convent's power, undoubtably) which had roots extending out into the streets. The wall of the garden was built overtop of the root instead of cutting it to accomodate the wall. There were a lot of dogs in this part of town.
The marimba maker's house is exactly as beautiful as it sounds. This is a man who handmakes wood marimbas, understand. The hallway from the living room to the workshop is lined with plants, and the workshop is open air. It opens out toward the river. There are marimbas everywhere, of course, and giant resonators laying about, along with woodworking tools and pictures of old marimbas and their makers. In the lower portion there are two giant wooden statues, life size, of indigenous men playing marimbas. One is a marching sort, carried at the waist, and the other just has a few bars on a string hanging on his left arm and a mallet in the right. Also, there is an african marimba, made with gourds as resonators.
After the marimba maker, we went to a few shops and looked at miniature marimbas and zapatista t-shirts. This was all in a park where we had parked. In the park proper there is a contest between a man-made behemoth and a natural behemoth. The tree wins, of course. It's one of the most incredible trees I've ever seen.
Then we ate in a mediocre vegetarian restaurant chain and headed to the park (other park, other part of town. Possibly even another town?). In the park, a marimba band played in the gazebo and people danced all around it. I have a picture of three balloon vendors standing almost literally in the exact same place. It illustrates the high concentration of balloon vendors in this park. Off to the side of the park is the marimba museum. It is not very big, but has one room full of marimbas of all types. There are marimbas without accidentals, marimbas made with gourds, round marimbas, marching marimbas, 3 0ctave, 4 octave, 5 octave, 6 octave, and 7 octave marimbas, metal marimbas, feet marimbas, and exquisitely decorated handcarved wooden marimbas.
On the way home, we were stopped first by the military just leaving Tuxtla. I was scared at first, because the men had automatic rifles and carried them everywhere, but then I realized that we were just stopped as part of a government program to get people to appreciate the most gigantic and old tree off to the right, just immediately where we stopped. We were then stopped once more after stopping to go to the bathroom. This time they looked in our car in the console and shit. A few of us had to get out. I didn't. While we were driving home I got a poetic image of all these magic trees floating out of the canyon, hovering in the air, with people riding in the branches. I imagine it would be a great album cover.
The city of Tuztla is huge to my eyes, and fills the floor between giant mountain walls. It looks the same as all Mexican cities look. It may be the general foreigness I still have, but all Mexican cities look the same. Perhaps my eyes are still drawn to the things that distinguish Mexico from Michigan and don't see the things that distinguish one city from another. Mexicans presumably gloss over the things I notice and see the smaller details. We wandered through the city for a short time, passing street shops carrying a lot of knickknacks and crafts. Women accosted us perpetually trying to sell handmade cloth bags and bracelets.
We made our way down to the riverside, which is lined with restaurants. The restaurants are all exactly the same and seem to blend into one another, where not separated by streets. They are open air, facing toward the river, which has nothing on the other side. They have wooden tables and white table cloths and wooden chairs. Every restaurant houses one or two or three or more musical accompaniments, all marimba drumset combinations with variable numbers of marimba players. I believe there were at least 7 of these pairs within perhaps no more than three restaurants, in a span of no more than 500 yards. Chiapas claims to be the originator of the marimba, and essentially all of its folk music from a certain time on seems to be marimba music. The true story seems to include the original marimba or its idea being carried from Africa by slaves and then developed to its modern form in Chiapas.
After eating and talking to some marimbists, we went down the riverside a bit to buy tickets for our river cruise. I like that I often don't understand what's going on (because my Spanish isn't good enough to understand side conversations in which people aren't talking to me directly) and so I end up on boats with only assumptions about where they're going. We had to wait a considerable time for our boat, so while we're waiting for it, I'll tell you about the street vendors in this area. There are a lot of them, they're persistent, and they sell a variety of things. We were heckled at least three times by the same mumbling dvd/cd pirate while eating, and then by two different plastic jewelry vendors. Down by the river there are people selling sno-cone equivalents, people selling gum, candy, and cigarettes, and one "trail mix" vendor, who carried bags of peanuts, pistachios, m&ms, and other nuts and the like.
The boat left at a pace that pushed back the skin on your face and made it uncomfortable to keep your eyes open. The river was flooded slightly and the groves of trees on the far side were up to their metaphorical hips in water. We entered the true canyon after passing under an old bridge and a bigger new bridge. There were people waving to us from the top. The canyon walls at the mouth there, under the bridges, is covered in cacti. As we entered further into the canyon proper, the walls changed from steep and rocky to slopy and green and back again. The sky at this point was huge and populous and confused, but very blue; there were no grey clouds. There were a few fishermen around the shores in places.
I can't communicate in words or photographs the feeling of being in a canyon. So go to a canyon and understand the idea I'm comunicating in order that I can adequately share my experience! In general the canyon is huge and green, with grey spots where the plants can't gain a foothold. They are scraggly, though, and plants can hang on just about anywhere. Not actually anywhere, though. There are a few important events that happened passing through the canyon:
A dead dog floats through the filth and garbage in the river. He floats so that the water creates a line that bisects him symmetrically (is it weird that the word symmetric isn't symmetric?). The one regret I have from this trip is not getting a picture of this dead dog. Sorry you can't share this one, guys.
A white bird with orange beak waits in front of a waterfall.
The entire canyon is filled with magic trees. This is true of Mexico in general. There should be many pictures up there, sufficient to illustrate the point.
Birds frequently fly overhead. They are some kind of water bird, with a big pelican mouth and grey-brown colors. Their flight is miraculous. They beat and beat against the air, climbing painfully slowly, with visible effort but at the same time effortlessly, reach a height, and dive back to the water, dipping infinitely close to the water but never touching the water, and then swoop back into the sky.
Christmas Tree waterfall. I hesitate to classify things as the most beautiful of my life, because I frequently get this impression and then forget these things and get the same impression about other things, but I got the impression here that it was the most beautiful thing I'd ever experienced. It's a waterfall, you can see in the pictures, that is shaped like a Christmas Tree, and is green. The branches are these curved stone outcroppings presumably made by minerals left by misty falling water. They are impossibly thin and green. The water falls from the top and turns into a mist. The mist drifts out with the wind over the river, and returns to water as it touches upon the branches below. We took the boat in directly underneath this, and so we felt the water falling on our faces and looked up into the sun, directly overhead. The sun passes through the mist and imbues it with a blissful clarity and glow.
The end of our tour or halfway point more like was the dam. Damn dams. It looked like shit. There were electric towers lining the canyons there and a long strip of floating barrels, against which days worth of trash had piled up, and upon which seabirds alighted.
We returned the way we'd come, but now the sky was turning grey and the sun was hiding. We turned a corner and saw mist pouring out of the canyon before us; a cloud, who had found its way down into the river for a swim, presumably to get out of the beating sun. We entered the cloud and experienced with it its escape from the sun and its slow fall into the river. The rain drops were sharp and piercing and riding through the cloud felt like perpetually walking into a pine branch. I assume that, like the pine branch, sharp rain drops are a defense mechanism against the potential dangers of bumbling pedestrians.
We returned to the city, wandered a bit, encountering three locations of importance: an old convent, and the house of the marimba maker. The convent is important because it housed two gardens, the first of which centered around a gigantic magic tree (the source of the convent's power, undoubtably) which had roots extending out into the streets. The wall of the garden was built overtop of the root instead of cutting it to accomodate the wall. There were a lot of dogs in this part of town.
The marimba maker's house is exactly as beautiful as it sounds. This is a man who handmakes wood marimbas, understand. The hallway from the living room to the workshop is lined with plants, and the workshop is open air. It opens out toward the river. There are marimbas everywhere, of course, and giant resonators laying about, along with woodworking tools and pictures of old marimbas and their makers. In the lower portion there are two giant wooden statues, life size, of indigenous men playing marimbas. One is a marching sort, carried at the waist, and the other just has a few bars on a string hanging on his left arm and a mallet in the right. Also, there is an african marimba, made with gourds as resonators.
After the marimba maker, we went to a few shops and looked at miniature marimbas and zapatista t-shirts. This was all in a park where we had parked. In the park proper there is a contest between a man-made behemoth and a natural behemoth. The tree wins, of course. It's one of the most incredible trees I've ever seen.
Then we ate in a mediocre vegetarian restaurant chain and headed to the park (other park, other part of town. Possibly even another town?). In the park, a marimba band played in the gazebo and people danced all around it. I have a picture of three balloon vendors standing almost literally in the exact same place. It illustrates the high concentration of balloon vendors in this park. Off to the side of the park is the marimba museum. It is not very big, but has one room full of marimbas of all types. There are marimbas without accidentals, marimbas made with gourds, round marimbas, marching marimbas, 3 0ctave, 4 octave, 5 octave, 6 octave, and 7 octave marimbas, metal marimbas, feet marimbas, and exquisitely decorated handcarved wooden marimbas.
On the way home, we were stopped first by the military just leaving Tuxtla. I was scared at first, because the men had automatic rifles and carried them everywhere, but then I realized that we were just stopped as part of a government program to get people to appreciate the most gigantic and old tree off to the right, just immediately where we stopped. We were then stopped once more after stopping to go to the bathroom. This time they looked in our car in the console and shit. A few of us had to get out. I didn't. While we were driving home I got a poetic image of all these magic trees floating out of the canyon, hovering in the air, with people riding in the branches. I imagine it would be a great album cover.
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