Homeward Bound

These last days were full of vacation activities. Grandma and I took a cooking class at a ranch out in the country. It was touch and go for a bit, but things came out deliciously in the end. We took a daytrip to a nearby city with more of the same: colonial architecture; traditional pottery; churches on every corner. It’s amazing how even relaxing becomes routine.

We finished up last night with a great meal and an evening in the central plaza. We stopped for a bit and watched a folk band entertain a crowd of locals. They were charming and talented. The star was a boy who looked bored out of his mind. They were all in costume, mimicking something whose original I’ve never seen. On the band leaders it looked kitsch, on him it looked like a punishment. He looked so sullen playing his tambourine; I thought he might be working off a community service debt. But when his solo came and he took to the center, he exploded into dance: hands and feet striking out and magically finding the tambourine waiting. Still his face was ashen. Note: plaza performers make money by selling small cups of wine to patrons for $2.

I’m at the airport waiting for a quick hop to Mexico City, then on in one straight shot back to Los Angeles. I think of all that raw land rolling… all those people dreaming in the immensity of it… or something. Did you know that Neal Cassidy died in San Miguel? It’s unclear whether he was hit by a train, drunk and stoned on the tracks, or expired from excess nearby. He’s an enigma to me. He was a constant fixture in the writings of Jack Kerouac; a setting sun in Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test; but he barely wrote a word. He finished a rough autobiography a few days before he met that last train. There aren’t many male muses these days, I guess.

I do believe in a world defined by opposites, and if it takes the constant work, the daily grind, to so thoroughly appreciate time away, then it’s a price fairly paid. I’m not quite trued up yet. I will need to venture out again sometime soon. So where to next? An idealized spot from childhood? The remote wilderness? Decadence by a pool? I suspect I won’t be bringing Grandma, but I can’t imagine this trip without her. Being so far from home, yet able to tap into a well of history tying me to my family, my blood, helped the rest of the world fall away, leaving behind a thick mixture of the distant past and the coming future. Family is Family. Peoples is Peoples.