The Jig is Up

I’ve had an amazing five months, been to some beautiful places, and seen some amazing things, but for better or worse the jig is up. I’m moving back to New York city next month.

I am ambivalent about the move. On one hand, it will be great to back in a city I know and love, but on the other I will miss the itinerant lifestyle. Also, while I’m excited by the prospect of finding a new job and working on new projects (somewhere besides my kitchen table), I’m going to miss the luxury of waking up whenever my body tells me to to do some writing.
What all this boils down to is that my last few weeks in Playa del Carmen will be spent job hunting– never the most fun task. I crawl through the job boards, craft up cover letters, and then send them off with little expectation of hearing back. I’m off to the job boards now in fact. At least hiring seems to be on the upswing and I have had a pretty encouraging response from the past week of applying. Keep your fingers crossed for me!

Guantanamera

It’s my new favorite song, because of or despite the fact I heard it a lot when I was in Cuba the past 10 days. In many ways the trip was an eye opener for me, and I took 538 pictures to prove it (Holy Fidel!). Music is in all the squares and streets from radios in the morning to the ubiquitous live bands at night. I was staying in casa particulares, private houses that rented rooms, and I began to suspect after a few nights that every Cuban knows how to play an instrument and dance salsa.

The cheerfulness of the music and the dancing glosses over some of the harder aspects of Cuban life, but at night in Havana when the dim lights hide the cracks and dirt of some old square, and the musicians play Guantanamera, it can be truly magical.

Mayan Clothes, Contemporary Painters


The show Panaramico de la Plastica Yucatanese at the Center for Visual Arts in Merida, with its focus on contemporary Yucatan artists, caught me by surprise by including many pieces of women, specifically in traditional Mayan costumes.

Carol Acereto, Belleza indigena, 2008

Having been in Merida about a month now, I would no longer make the mistake of thinking the artist is idealizing the past–rather it expresses an opinion about a changing present. Acereto’s painting features young girls in traditional Mayan dress, white embroidered around the square neckline. Even today in Merida women wear the traditional white shift dress to go about their lives, as do Mayan women who come into Merida for the markets. Surprisingly, perhaps, I also see younger women wearing a top in the same style with jeans–is traditional Mayan dress as in vogue as a t-shirt?

Sandra Nikolai, Chismorreo en el mercato yucateo, 2009

Sandra Nikolai’s women you might see at any market, which is as frenetic as the scene above suggests, and the colors remind me of the brightly-painted buildings. The florid palette and bustling brush strokes make sense to me after walking through the sensory cacophony of the markets.

Sandra Nikolai, Otra garnachita, 2009

A tortilla maker? Whatever little street food is being made, the artist treats the subject with dignity and I love the strong lines of the hand. It seems like the Mayan heritage is being explored, and valued positively, in these works. As a middle-aged man on the street told me yesterday, Spanish was his second language–Mayan his first, and his village an hour outside of Merida continues to make hammocks as its industry.

Jaime Barrera, Homenaje a Cy Twombly, 2009

On the other hand, he spoke fluent English and worked as a waiter at a restaurant called Main St. It’s a changing world. A homage to one of my favorite painters hung in the show as well, which overall testified to a variety of influences and interests among contemporary Yucatan painters.