Mummies! -- Guanajuato, Mexico

I'm starting this post from a small, pleasant room not so far from Mercado Hidalgo. The floor is a red tile, the walls are white and the curtains are striped baby and navy blue. The tiny refrigerator to the left of my bed grumbles periodically, like he's having trouble with his sinuses and is switching between snoring, blowing out his ears, and clearing phlegm from his refrigerator throat. 

My fourth day in Mexico is drawing to a close. Only three more full days and then I fly home to Boy. Back to a job (or five) and back to a life of being grounded. A life that doesn't quite harmonize with my heart, but a life that's necessary for the time being. 

This brief adventure has been an excellent reset for me. To get me back to writing. To get me back to listening. To get me back to a state of innocent fascination. 

How can I carry this home to Grand Junction? 

It helps that I'm finally getting my feet back into doors that bring me fulfillment. I'll be substitute teaching yoga at Movement Therapies, teaching every Tuesday and Thursday at Yoga West and teaching at the local university starting in January. I hope to get my license in massage therapy this spring and perhaps do an acro yoga teacher training in the not-so-distant future. 

That's all well and good. But how will I maintain this deep connection to the present when I'm so desperate for the future? That time when I'm gallivanting the world with Boy? 

Boy and I have decided to stay in Colorado another year. Our original plan was to quit our jobs in February and hop on over to Iceland in March. But we were both offered incredibly rewarding positions at the homeless shelter for teens where we work -- under the condition that we stay for a year -- so, we, uh... chose to postpone our adventure/life. 

I think that last statement is a very telltale sign about why I'm struggling so much to be present. 

Postpone LIFE?

That's impossible.  But... but allowing myself to be happy whilst grounded in Grand Junction, even if everything I'm doing for work is in harmony with who I am, just feels like I'm betraying that other life. Like I'm pushing it away. It's like the wounded phase of a horrible break up -- that part where you find it impossible to let that lover go because you can't comprehend life without him/her.  

If there's one thing I've learned from traveling, it's that the world doesn't wait. It keeps moving, with or without me. I can't expect my traveling life to stay put where I left it, just as I couldn't expect my Grand Junction life to pick up where it left off. So my only choice is to be happy now. I'm not betraying anything, because that life I had doesn't even exist anymore. Not really. Being with Boy for nearly a year has changed the way I view and interact with the world, and the world has certainly not kept still. So I can stop feeling like I'm missing out on or am betraying that other life and I can just let myself be where I am.  

That other life. Doesn't exist anymore. 

So let yourself be happy. 

My second day in Guanajuato started off with coffee. 

The way all good days start. 

There are only a few cafes in Guanajuato, but Cafe Tal is so sublime that I care nary a lick about this preposterous deficit. Tal has tiny tables in windows overlooking cobbled streets. The coffee is delicious (even when the waitress gets my order wrong) and they have a striped cat. A striped cat who analyzes the room for the lap that looks a) the softest and b) owned by the person who appears to be the busiest (so to distract them from what they're doing), and hops on up.

As I'm usually wearing my Mexican comfy pants and am busily working away on this blog, my lap fulfills both criteria quite nicely.

I bought a couple of tamales for breakfast as we headed down the already familiar path to the historic district.

Jardin de la Union. 

There's always live music happening here. 

I just. Don't get it. Um...?

A view of El Pipila from the ground. People either take the bus or the funicular up to this monument to watch the sunset over Guanajuato. A very few walk. As it's bloody steep and there are enough stairs in this city without putting oneself through the drudgery of ascending an unmentionable amount of extra. 

As it was halloween we thought it was the opportune time to take a gander at the 100+ mummified corpses on display at the famous Museo de las Momias..

Walking in Guanajuato is incredibly pleasant (when not climbing an unmentionable amount of stairs). The streets are occasionally crowded and shuffling shoulders can be tiresome, but for the most part, I could happily stroll Guanajuato for hours on end.

Admiring the colors...

Lusting after the chicharron...

And noticing how incredibly full the city is. Every street corner occupied by a man or woman selling his/her wares. All the interesting hands and faces and fruits and vegetables and paint peeling from walls centuries old.

A n unmentionable amount of stairs. 

The view from the top of an unmentionable amount of stairs. 

Most of the people whose bodies are now displayed at the Mummy's Museum in Guanajuato died in a cholera outbreak in 1833. Their bodies stayed in their wall vault coffins until the 1860s, when a tax was placed on their space. If the families of the deceased didn't pay the grave tax for three years straight, the bodies were immediately disinterred and the wall vaults were made available for other corpses. This tax lasted for nearly a hundred years, and during that time, hundreds of mummies were...umm... evicted.

The first mummy discovered. A French doctor named Remigio Leroy. 

In 1900, the cemetery workers began charging visitors a few pesos to view the mummies. Because the mummies had little (no) protection, many of them lost pieces to tourists who wanted to take home a souvenir.

Because these people were buried very quickly during a cholera outbreak (to prevent the further spread of disease), it is a popular belief that many of them were buried alive.

Expressions like this is why.

I found the babies particularly haunting.

This 6 month-old fetus is the smallest mummy in the world. His mother died in childbirth and was standing next to him in the display.

I couldn't bring myself to take her picture.

The museum was full of broken mirrors. Which were very effective at emphasizing the fascinating, horrifying ambience.

I've seldom been more disturbed in my life. Disturbed, fascinated, saddened -- I found myself experiencing a whole gamut of mostly negative emotions.

"Let's go get ice cream now," I suggested to Bee.

I ate two ice cream cones that day.

Bee ate four.

A couple of times a day, there are short parades down the walking street. Men in masks pound drums, clearing the way for boys in large painted skulls and girls with painted faces.

Fueled up on ice cream and with many ghastly images to stomp out of our minds, Bee and I thundered up the unmentionable amount of stairs to El Pipila.

(We would have taken the funicular, but it was closed for the day)

El Pipilo's real name was Juan Jose de los Reyes Martinez Amaro (what the hell were his parents thinking?).  Juan Jose de los Reyes Martinez Amaro was a miner who courageously burnt down the wooden door of a stone storehouse in which the indigenous peoples' Spanish oppressors were taking refuge. 

View from the top.

Bee and I took some photographs, did a bit of shopping, and moseyed back into the historic district to see what the evening had in store.

An altar. These are built to remember and celebrate beloved friends and family members who've passed. The belief is that during the 1st and 2nd of November, the deceased make a long, tedious journey back to the land of the living. Hence, the altars are laden with offrendes such as favorite foods, alcohols and candies (spirits have to be ravenous after such a long trek). Candles are lit to welcome the spirit to the altar. Also, marigolds. A truckload of marigolds. These flowers represent death and it's said that their smell helps guide the spirits to the altars. Each altar is also decorated with sugar skulls and Bread of the Dead (Pan de Muerto). To... umm... again, symbolize death. 

This person must have played the ukulele. 

We happened upon a free acrobatics performance in the middle of one of the plazas.

Why don't I happen upon these more often? 

Tired, full of ice-cream and still processing the images of disinterred corpses, we stumbled back to Kay's.