“ The most acceptable offering to God Himself comes from a grateful and joyful heart. "
- William Shakespeare
As the saying goes, when a loved ones passes away they are, “Gone from our sight, but never from our hearts.” Here in Mexico, where Dia de Muertos, or Day of the Dead, is a national holiday, it is occasion to remember our departed loved ones in a spectacular way.
Yesterday, when Amy and I were driving into town we passed fields of flowers bustling with activity. People were cutting and loading armfuls of marigolds and cockscomb into pickup trucks, cars, onto donkeys or simply carrying loads on their back. A palpable sense of excitement is in the air. The smells and colors are stimulating both to the senses and soul.
Everyone it seems, builds an “ofrenda” or shrine to the departed in their home. Also entries to homes and businesses are decorated with flowers.
Amy and I have built our own ofrenda near our front door in our entry hall. I must say it feels good. When I am near the ofrenda I feel warmth.
The ofrenda is a portal, bridging worlds. That is its purpose, to reach into another place and open doors of perception. Commemorating spirits gone into the next world, we build our altars of flowers along with meaningful objects and reminders⏤everything to honor souls and life.
Dia de Muertos, or “Day of the Dead,” always sounded strange to me; like a zombie movie or something. In English, the word ”dead” has a lifeless connotation. “Day of the Ancestors” is really the meaning. I like that. We honor our ancestors and want them always near us. We hope to have good relationships with our loved ones that have gone before us. So we talk with them. They pray for us and we pray for them.
Seated at our table, (for awhile).
Now that Amy and I are living in Mexico, we are adopting the celebration whole heartedly. Not just as spectators. This year we are making an ofrenda: a home altar with a collection of objects placed on a ritual display during Día de Muertos celebration. The ofrenda is presented to commemorate the souls of loved ones in the family and to welcome them to the altar setting.
Although we are going into our dry season here in Oaxaca, fields of color can be seen. Marigolds bloom to be harvested just in time for Dia De Muertos celebrations. Also Cockscomb with its brilliant crimson color.
Detail from "Memento Mori" by Steven Boone
Covid precautions are still in place but excitement is building and celebrations will occur. After all, Dia De Muertos is a Mexican national holiday.
Detail from a painting in progress by Amy Cordova Boone
Amy is working on finishing an ofrenda painting. I just finished “Memento Mori,” a painting with the theme of the inevitability of death.
Amy had read of bandits on the roads in Mexico so it was with some trepidation that we decided to begin our journey driving north from Oaxaca to Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA. That was over a month ago. We went, and returned the beginning of October with relatively few incidents. One week of our sojourn transpired in San Francisco. The most troublesome occurrences of our trip happened in the States.
We drove so that we could load some of our essentials from storage in Santa Fe into our car. I have been wanting a desktop computer. The new iMac is wonderful. We don’t have a formal address in Oaxaca to mail order it, so on the way north we stopped in Mexico City at the Apple store. I deliberated buying it on the spot, or on the return. I did not want to buy it in the States because there are charges for bringing new electronics like computers into Mexico. To make a long story short, I ended up buying it and later discovering in the USA I would have paid 400.00 dollars less. It turned out we breezed through the border both times without hassle.
The best part of our travels in Mexico was undoubtedly five days in Mexico City. It has a fabulous wealth of art and culture. We stayed in a wonderful hotel downtown that welcomed us with luxury and safety. Our time was relaxed and more or less untroubled; except for being cheated once by a taxi driver.
When we reached the outskirts of Santa Fe and stopped along a road next to a hiking trail through the hills, the smells of the high desert and intimately familiar terrain brought a flood of feelings into my bones. The wealth of over 40 years of lived life there came back all at once.
Dear friends extended to us hospitality.
The trip to San Francisco was planned because both Amy and I have both had deep and meaningful visits to the city, but never together. We arrived to beautiful weather and rented a car for a week. The next day clouds blocked the sun and it stayed that way until we left. Furthermore, after visiting a wonderful museum on our first day, we came to our car in the parking lot only to discover a smashed window and glass all over the back seat. This was to temper our trip.
Our remaining time in Santa Fe was spent with friends and going through the objects we have stored. It is mostly artwork of value, art materials, antiques, furniture, clothes and miscellany. I spent over 1000.00 USD buying art supplies impossible to find in Oaxaca. Amy also bought supplies.
Our return trip went smoothly and we crossed the border at Del Rio, Texas into Acuna, Mexico with ease. No encounters with bandits, just busy roads crowded with big trucks pulling trailers.
Certainly, some people don’t like it. It is commonly regarded as vandalism. But that is not true of all the “street” art found in Oaxaca. As an artist, I enjoy graffiti that is well done. Downtown walls in Oaxaca although often brightly painted are humble and plain, except for simple embellishments. All the graffiti gives flavor to the milieu. Oaxaca is one of the world’s printmaking and graphics centers—so it is bound to go out in the streets—especially with revolutionary fervor. Artists in Mexico are traditionally known to be in the vanguard of revolution. I always carry my Leica camera with me when walking downtown looking for the unusual. It might be a beggar, a child, something thrown in the gutter or a building facade, etc. Amy, being an artist, likes the wall art as well. Often she will stop in front of a woodblock print, pasted up on a wall and say, Wow! Other times a hand painted cartoon might grab us, such as La Calavera Catrina, lady death made up fancifully.
Yesterday, while we were downtown we walked by a wall with incredible images pasted upon it. An entrance to a restaurant is there, so permission must have been granted. The images were of black slaves in bondage. The pictures were an attempt to remind people that slavery existed in Mexico’s past. The Spaniards brought slaves to work on sugar plantations. I know about slavery in the USA but it is a surprise to learn of it in Mexico too.
Much of the graffiti is making a statement of some kind. So it is meant to provoke. Perhaps tourists and some locals object to this, but when it is done well, I stop and take notice.
Since moving to Mexico, Amy and I share a studio and make our art side by side. It is a happy arrangement. We listen to music and occasionally look over the shoulder of the other to see what’s happening. She has her own style and so do I. We are different in mind and background when it comes to art. Nonetheless there is plenty of common ground.
Just today we are finishing paintings. I made a large piece with a native Oaxaca girl as subject. She is someone I saw not long ago. With her sister, she was in the the town center sitting on a sidewalk, selling little drawings and sketches made with colored pencils on paper. Amy and I bought a piece from her older sister. I took photos of both of them and the younger one had a slightly forlorn look. People were walking by without slowing down. The girls were dressed very nicely. My painting is made with oil paints.
Between Snakes and Hummingbirds, acrylic on canvas, 60x90 cm
Amy is finishing her second of a three part series titled Daughters of Tonantzin. The new work is entitled, “Quinto Sol / Entre Culebras y Colibríes .“ ( Between Snakes and Hummingbirds) A tribute to the power of innocence; and the magic and majesty of the universe.
There are several people who have made a big difference to Amy and I since we moved to San Pedro Ixtlahuaca, the village outside of Oaxaca, Mexico. We arrived in March of this year. Mayolo Galindo was one of the first people we made a good connection with. He liked us and we liked him immediately—we are all artists. Mayolo knows about as much English as I do Spanish, that is, almost none. But Amy knows enough Spanish to get us by.
Mayolo helped design and then made our wonderful stairway banister in the front hall. He made curving curtain rods to go above our arched windows in the master bedroom. And he attached deer heads at the top. Our home is called “Dos Venados," or Two Deers. The railing has two deer heads attached. On my birthday, he gifted us a wonderful tin framed mirror, complete with pounded embellishments and two deer heads with roses.
It is very difficult to get the art materials I am accustomed to in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA. Mayolo said he could build me frames, so I decided to give him a chance. He said he could make something out of tin. I have never framed with this material. I had some doubts. We talked about the design. He is a master with metal and delivered a wonderful frame.
It now adorns my portrait of Frida Kahlo.
“The good neighbor looks beyond the external accidents and discerns those inner qualities that make all men human and, therefore, brothers.”—Martin Luther King, Jr.
When Amy gets an idea for a painting, I can “see” the light go on. Then, with a burst of energy she goes to work. It is like tapping pure water, rising from an aquifer deep in the earth, bringing life to flow over the terrain.
Daughter of Tonantzín. acrylic on canvas, 24" x 36"
I enjoyed being near her while she painted her most recent work called, Daughter of Tonantzín.
Amy said:
“I have been a bit slow in getting to my paints since moving to Mexico last spring. My art has always had its inspiration from landscapes, people and places I have lived. I must feel them before I can paint them. So southern Mexico is very new and my DNA hasn’t fully absorbed the magic and majesty.
I have always loved Guadalupe, the dark skinned Madonna and her predecessor Tonantzín, the ancient mother goddess of Mexico. I intend to do a series of three paintings, which depict the descendants of Tonantzín who walk the rocky paths of my new home. The Zapotec women are humble and quiet; they are the daughters of Tonantzín/Guadalupe. Sacred in their own right.”
The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek. ― Joseph Campbell
Outside my back door is a small shady glade with canna lilies ten feet tall. They are always blooming. The place is so magical that it instantly claims my sense of place and time. When I arrive there, no matter what I’ve been thinking or doing, I am transported to the “here and now”.
I am living with the earth. Every day roaming on the property, planting, pulling weeds, tending, cutting grass, observing. Secretly, I think I have wanted to do this for a long time but was not in the right place and time of life. Even so, today I confided to Amy that I feared losing my creative edge; after all, I am an artist. “Don’t worry,” she said, “ that won’t happen.” For the time being, photography has taken precedence over painting. This has happened in the past particularly when I have been traveling extensively. Being out and about exploring, it is easy to have my camera at hand. My artistic eye for subject matter and composition guides my hand.
Meanwhile, adventures continue. We went to a birthday party with food, drink, orchestra and forty dancers in traditional costumes. And as a backdrop to the events were wall murals painted by art students that copied Amy’s illustrations from the book Dreamcarver.
At Dainzú site
San Jerónimo Tlacochahuaya
We took a hike with a group that explored the ancient ruins of Dainzú, a Zapotec archaeological site first occupied 700-600 BC. Then sauntered through fields of agave (used to produce mezcal spirits—takes about twenty years before the plants are ready) until we reached a village, San Jerónimo Tlacochahuaya, that is home to a gem of a church. The construction of this work dates from the middle of the 16th century and its creators were Dominican friars. We could not go inside, but the doors were open and let enough light in that I could stand and marvel at the wall and ceiling decorations and sacred paintings and sculptures.
Our Mexican friends Mayolo and Marta went with us to the village of Tlacolula de Matamoros which has a thriving Sunday market that we wandered through. I bought a watering can hand made from tin, some herbal medicine and sundries, while Amy bought handmade aprons and some organic foods to take home. We visited the village church: the spectacular Capilla del Señor de Tlacolula (16th century), also known as the Chapel of the Martyrs. It is completely covered with polychrome stucco and mirrors, and contains a series of statues of the most macabre martyrs (crucified, beheaded, stabbed, with an ax to the head ...). Precious wrought iron gates stand amid the baroque interior.
Church at Tlacolula
No sooner had we begun the forty-five minute drive back to Oaxaca than we encountered stalled traffic on the highway. Mayolo got out and hiked to a police car only to find that protestors had closed the highway. This is the second time Amy and I have had the bad luck to encounter such civil disobedience. It would be a three hour wait! We turned around and went to Mitla, a nearby town famous for an archaeological zone—one of the most important in the state of Oaxaca . It was inhabited by the Zapotecs after the fall of Monte Albán and later occupied by the Mixtecs. In this archaeological zone, the mosaic frets stand out, as well as the presence of thousands of carved pieces. “Mitla comes from Mictlan, a word of Nahuatl origin that means 'place of the dead’, and in Zapotec it is known as Liobaa, “house of tombs”. At the fall of Monte Albán, around AD 750, Mitla was one of the cities in which the political and religious power of the Zapotecs of the Central Valleys was concentrated until the arrival of the Spanish. “ —Arqueologiamexicana
At last, we headed home, this time without delay.
We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us. ― Joseph Campbell
Little devil on the roof said, “Black snake, black snake!” Fog obscured the land at sunrise. On the roof top veranda I could not see hills, fields or mountains—only a couple lights gleaming nearby. I liked the mysterious atmosphere and had my camera to take a few pictures. “What about the black snake, little devil?” “The neighbor is afraid of the black snake. His children see it in your grass.”
Because of the rain that comes each day, my property is wild in green verdure, and thick with vegetation—transformed suddenly from the end of the dry season when it looked like a brown moonscape.
Yesterday, Amy came to me and said, “The neighbor wants to take a machete to cut the plants on our side of the fence.”
We have several neighbors, and this one is volatile, unkempt, and unpredictable. He is about 33 years old, lives in little more than a shack and has five children. His property is strewn with garbage, and ours would be too if not for the fence. I went up the hill through the tall grass to see him. Amy followed close behind. Standing by his home, he saw me and from the other side of the fence began speaking excitedly. I don’t understand Spanish, but know the word “niños” or children. He used the word culebra several times. It means snake. Amy heard him and said, “He says a big black snake is in the grass and has been scaring his children. He wants to cut the plants down.” Furthermore, he saidthat since the man across the road plowed his field to plant corn, the rats and mice have come to live in the grasses at our property; thus the snake that feeds on them. I looked at his squalid property, with hardly a nice plant showing. A little boy peered out from between his legs, eyes bulging and mouth open.
We had heard of the big snake that lives on our property. The former owner, a German agronomist, liked it. Our cleaning lady says it has been here since before the house. We hear that there are more than one, and once the German woman had to call a man to the house to kill a snake that she discovered under her refrigerator.
I am a “plant person”. The vegetable kingdom talks with me and I have a green thumb. I can hear plants talk. So I don’t like killing or maiming them and apologize. Now, Amy said, “Let him do it, for the children.” So I pointed out the trees and shrubs I wanted to save. He came over and began whacking away with his machete. I helped for a while with a weed cutter, then stepped away. When I got back, he had cut a small tree and some of the tall ornamental grasses.
Later, at the house Amy saw me upset and said, “Let it go.”
Meanwhile, the fog had lifted and little devil on the roof sat complacent in the morning sun.
Stop signs have frustrated me in life. I get up to speed making real progress going to a destination, when suddenly the sign looms ahead; ordering me to a standstill. The impatience is my fault. But perhaps warranted when I see no reason to stop. Oh well.
Oaxaca does not have stop signs, only traffic lights.Instead of stop signs are “tope” (pronounced toe-pay). In the USA they are called speed bumps. After several months living here am I accepting them without much of a grudge. I have learned to ease up just in time to roll over them before gathering speed again. A couple times I did not see the tope before crashing over with a thump. Amy and I have seen them on dirt roads too, where people make them to slow traffic. Amy counted almost forty between our home in the village and the nearest shopping center a couple miles away.
The other adjustment to life we are making is learning to live with insects. For more than four decades in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA, I often gave thanks for being free of mosquitos, flies and chiggers. That has changed and insect bites are common. And plants are eaten by pests—mostly ants. It brings back memories from my childhood in Illinois, and later Washington DC.
Just today I noticed some flowers gone we had grown from seed, called Jamaica, that make a nice tea. Yesterday 20 were about two inches high in a neat row and today only two were left standing. A similar attack occurred on rose bushes. I had to dig up denuded plants and put them in pots where I can keep an eye on them as they recover. We joke that they are in the hospital.
Standing at our back door this afternoon I remarked to Amy, “Oh well, there is so much to be thankful for. Look at our marvelous plants, and how happy the earth is now.”
Most dogs in America do not have a “dog’s life”. If they came down to Mexico, they would go running back home with tails wagging. Dogs’ in Mexico mostly have to fend for themselves, and rarely get to have owners that tend lavishly to them.
Amy and I see dogs wandering around, flea bitten and bedraggled, with wounds from fights or collisions. Our village has many. Many people live in little more than tin shacks. Unfortunately veterinary care is out of the question and the mongrels have multiple litters.
The poor creatures tug at Amy’s heartstrings more than mine. “At least they are not being eaten like the dogs in China,” I told her. Then I added, “It might be better to be eaten.”
We have property that is mostly fenced, but dogs’ have come in. I chase them out and have patched some entry points. One dog is acceptable—“Benito," who we learned belongs to a neighbor. He comes several times a day for treats, and has taken to barking at intruders. I have to say, I really like him, and Amy adores him. I joke and call him “Freddy the Freeloader," and Amy calls him “Loki”.
The thing about Benito is we cannot touch him. He will snarl and snap. As a companion he is good if I simply acknowledge him. He occasionally licks my hand and a couple times jumped up to hug me. But touching him is not allowed. Same with Amy, who is his major benefactor. No touching, though he will lick her hand.
Little hungry mongrel
We have noticed animals sometimes are slapped or kicked, so maybe if that has happened, the dog will be defensive. The other day we went for our second covid vaccination. A young dog came to us and stayed by for a couple hours. It was raining lightly. A group of ladies was behind us and one swatted the dog with her umbrella, and kicked it once. It stayed with us until the end. We felt like taking it home but maybe it belonged to someone.
Recently one of the neighbors’ dogs came on the heels of Benito to our back door. He was thin, just little more than a puppy and looked at us so hopefully. Amy gave him some dog food. (She buys dog food now at the grocery store.) He ate it quickly and looked around for more. I warned her, “If you start, soon packs of dogs will arrive at our door.”
We have heard of a dog sanctuary in Oaxaca, started by Americans who doubtless felt sympathy and had the time and resources to make the humanitarian gesture.
We have Loki; or Benito, or Freddy the Freeloader . . . whatever his name.
