Guadalajara

I really liked this town. It may go on the list of places we can live for our year out of the country. Its well located in Mexico between many other places. We walked a lot and zarha and I took the double decker bus with the guided headset tour to get a braoder view of the city and history. It may be the most bike friendly city in Latin America I have seen thus far. The main avenue across the city is closed every sunday for a 6 mile radius and opened to bikers. Also roller bladers and pedestrians take to the streets free of cars. That was great to see. The city has a high youthful enery and lots of street performaces. Of course the architecture, museums and amazing market could have kept us there many more days!

The night we arrived to Gaudalajara we ate dinner in a plaza in front of a mammoth cathedral settled zarha into our room at the friendly family run hotel and then Andy and I headed for the Zona Rosa (the gay hip area.) We had heard about "Sexys Bar" (a transgender gay bar that has evening AND morning drag shows)from our Lonely Planet guide book. Footnote, lonely planet really is our bible while traveling, as many travelers say! We only stayed at the club long enough to have a soda, it was very smokey and crowded. The dance floor was packed booty to booty with gay lesbian transgender locals. A cute dyky woman approaced me as soon as I walked in and asked, what I thought was.. "Are you a dancer you look like someone I have seen blah blah blah" I am not totally sure what she was saying through the screaming disco music, which made the language barrier greater. I bowed out of the conversation wondering if it was some clever pick up line as the scene had a classic meat market bar vibe. We finished our drink and walked around the many blocks of clubs. There is a dynmic hip night life and for bigger parties than us, who can bear the smoke, lots of fun to be had in these creatively lit and decorated spaces. We never did see a drag show but the street life provided us a show of its own. I quess Guadalajara is the San Francisco of Mexico. I found the intersection of this progressive social scene and devote historical place fascinating.

WARNING: potentially irreverent sacrilegious writing follows. Read at own risk****

Holy cathedrals! I enter these garatuan oppulent "holy" places and I genuinely try to feel the lovin´ vibe. I sit, trying to meditate, really trying to tap into whatever the presence is or feel the inspiration. I can never see past my aggetaion and I last at most five minutes before I take the fast track out the nearest door. Sitting at every door of the cathedral and dotted around the city are disabled, sick, old beggars. I recall what Don Timmerman (radical catholic worker ex priest) said to me once about cathedrals in Rome "Why not open them up to house the homeless or dismantle them to build homes and feed people!" It made sense to me then and still does. I sit on these stiff wooden pews surrounded by those morbid images of Christ and other alleged saints preserved in glass coffins and the feeling in there is as dead, fake and pretentious as the display cases. How many tortured martyrs do we create everyday at the hands of greed, intolerance and hatred. Maybe these cathedrals could rotate the saints bodies with those tortured to death daily. If they want to reflect on suffering, torture and injustice why not bring in any or all of the many wounded and homeless and glorify them?
Why not connect this history with similiar issues of today and inspire resitance and change to this degredation of humanity?

So five minutes is this heathens limit within any of these places and then the looming pillars, gold oppulent statues, dead and rotting images freak me out and again im out the door. This has been my pattern many times in this land of Cathedrals and it happened in Spain too. However in Spain I didnt seem to enter as many as I do here. Here, they seem to be the main stay of any town no matter how small.

saying all this, I still need to recognize the heart and emotion I felt in Gaudalajara. I seemed to weep all day like a maudlin devote, sad and reverant full of compassion. I cried around town not becuase what I felt in the churhces but for the suffering outside. A friend of mine gave me 5 dollars and told me it was a Jewish tradition to give 5 one dollar bills to needy street people while traveling. I have not really sensed much poverty unil G. which in general does not seem worse than poverty I have seen in poor areas of the US. I followed the Jewsih tradition in the dripping catholic town and I gave the money she gave me to others.

One old man, possilby mentally disabled sitting on legs bent in an unnatural way had such a sweet and accepting face I wanted to sit and talk with him for a while. My own dis-ability with Spanish prevented me from engaging me, but he thanked me so tenderly for this little money I gave him, I felt my chest tingle and tears flowing and I wondered "is this Christ?" This happened throughout the day I would marvel at something beautiful and become totally absorbed and then I would have a heart felt thought that brought me to tears. I was immediately face to face with the sadness I feel with many relationships, peoples loss and suffering on many levels.

maybe I didnt get "it" in the cathedrals and I have huge reactions to the imagery there but I did feel penetrated by some spirit of this place and I loved it! Any place that can provoke that much emotion, compassion and thoughtfulness, is a place I want to be.

If you read this far, you too are compassionate....I blather on and on
who ever you are reading this
I LOVE YOU!
peace
dawn