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It's been a long time since I've been in Morelia. I wish I'd had a digital camera back then, but I don't believe they existed at that time. In fact I had one of the cheapest cameras there were, afraid I'd lose it, and also I didn't take nearly as many pictures as I take now that I don't have to buy film. I'm so glad I took the pictures I did, though. They are now getting very dark, but I can still see what's on them, or could the last time I looked, because I was there - I took the pictures - and I remember what I was doing and where I was, and so on. Without the pictures I would barely be able recall any of it; when I see them, it comes back to me. I wonder if it's a lot like it used to be there. It was the most amazing place to be in, and I lived there for months, staying with different families. It was so unbelievably different than anyplace I'd been, in the U.S., and so much like "the old days" that it truly changed the way I look at life, and definitely "enlarged my world." I came out of that "immersion experience" a different person with a different outlook on life. I was very often "downtown" in Morelia, walking up and down the narrow streets, going everywhere that I could. I walked from one side of the city to the other, often. I remember very well thinking about how I'd like to go back there and live there the rest of my life and paint and draw. I wonder if it's that "old-fashioned" still. I remember so well, now that I'm thinking about it, the very old stone buildings, the downtown sidewalks swept by shop owners every morning, walking around a large freshly-killed pig that had been delivered onto a sidewalk in front of a small restaurant (fresh pork), the man on the bakery bicycle, the pickup truck with its containers full of milk in the back, just brought in from the country after the morning's milking, a man trying to get a live chicken into the back of his fairly large truck, but the door kept slamming shut before he could get the chicken inside, the sidewalk markets and the more established (and much stinkier - think "bloody meat," over-mature vegetables, really smelly plastic products, and throw in some urine smell, too ... but it was fascinating) indoor market. A writer would think they were set down in Paradise there, there is so much to see (and smell) and think about. I would appreciate it more now than then, even, and I couldn't get enough of it then; and I would be able to do more with the input now, to transform my awareness into something (artwork) that would tell people elsewhere that there can be real satisfying "life" in life, if we accept that it can be dirty sometimes, a little less regulated, less zoned, less accommodating to cars rather than people, and - yes - maybe even a little smellier. The old and meaningful and beautiful things wouldn't be either torn down or thrown out, or kept inside museums or behind walls or only in neighborhoods where the rich lived. It would be there for all to walk through and be in, live in, do business in, have lunch in, buy groceries and everything else you need in, and appreciate every single day. Sitting on a long bench under large shady trees, with pigeons, and lots of other people, sharing the space. Is that a parade coming down the street? There's a couple begging, playing the most awful music but at least they're entertaining us. People work hard, yes, but they're out there with the others all the time, and can enjoy the beauty and the deliciousness of life in the most simple ways, with the old city still alive all around and part of everyone's life - Things are close together; nothing is more than a walk away.
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OUTDOOR Drawings here |
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