Trouble in Paradise But Getting Clearer

I didn´t freak out, I just sat with it and made an alternative plan. Here´s what´s up:

Last night I was on the main drag (the Adoquin) and I saw this certain kind of art that I´ve come to adore here. It´s called papela amate pintoras - painting on amate, the bark of a certain tree. The material is just so damn compelling - but most of the paintings are really not very good, trite really. Last night I saw some fine examples - subject matter that matched the material, finally, and I sought out the artist.

The painter, as it turned out, is an Indio of the Nawhat tribe. The previous evening I had interviewed another Nawhat whose work was ceramico. Even in my crap Spanish (which is getting better) I was able to interview sources in a language they speak - and I simply cannot tell you how thrilling that is.

That´s what I wanted to write last night - that despite all the weird things that have happened here and the extraordinary speed at which I seem to have ripped through my budget, (which will happen less now that I know What Not to Do), I am really enjoying the following aspects of where I am: 1) the beach, 2) learning Spanish, and 3) applying what I learn Instantly to the people around me. Immersion reallu *is* the only way to go in learning a language (though the lessons I have received from Angelica have been really quite invaluable.)

At this moment, I don´t know what´s up with the landlord, but I would prefer to pay him nothing. Last night, I looked into a cabana place that is much more in keeping with what I originally had in mind - fairly rustic low budget travelling, about $7 a night for a cabana for one person. They have a couple of communal cooking areas, and now that I actually know where the markets are and how to reach them, I don´t think I´ll have a whole lot of problems with my original plan of how to live cheaply - and even though I´ve somehoe blown a lot, I´ve here, I´ve learned What Not to Do, and I feel like that´s been the best part - learning.

The plan is to stay, either at the original place or this other spot, until the end of next week. I want to take another week´s work of class to work on present, past, imperfect and future tenses as well as increased verb vocabularly. Then I may want to go south to Zipolite or Mazunte, which I´ve heard a lot about. Both are within the hour and are supposed to be less touristy and less expensive than here.

Finally - everyone I´ve talked to here has told me I need to go to Oaxaca City to look at the art, and since I met Michele Gibbs and her partner George Colman, I know I will go. She is a performance poet ex-pat with a radical progressive past - he is an oral historian and writer. Both have offered to hook me up with indigenous artists they know working in a radical contemporary vein. I have to go see what´s it´s like - everyone says it´s extraordinary, and I think I would be missing a major opportunity to not go now.

I had forgotten that it had been ten years since I traveled outside the United States - I don´t miss it in the slightest, but the culture shock has been rather extreme and I haven´t yet *really* found my place in it. But I am learning more than just Spanish...I really am learning something important about myself here - what it is yet I can´t exactly speak, but it seems to be causing interesting shifts within me.

cheers
gregoryp(tm)

http://www.realoaxaca.com/from-the-field/