This morning, or rather afternoon, we caught a colectivo to San Augustin Etla. By morning I mean afternoon, but it was the first thing we did this Sunday after brunching. By catching a colectivo I mean we stumbled around in the general area where the colectivos left from until we were shoved into a taxi and were then charged much more than the colectivo rate, more the taxi rate, even though for about half the journey we were crammed in with three other people. And by San Augustin Etla, I mostly mean the Centro de los Artes located at Vista Hermana in that general area.
The moment the taxi turned off the highway, the scenery changed completely. The houses became large, the surroundings green and lush, and all around steep hills. CASA is located in an old hacienda next to an improbably large church and overlooking the valley. I have rarely visited a place and wanted to live there as much. The house itself was huge and beautiful, of course, in that decayed and dishevelled way that Mexico does well intentionally and Lebanon does unintentionally, with two imments halls, one on top of the other. Behind it were green, tree covered hills, and all around was grass and trees. The hillside fell steeply from its wall, overlooking a green valley with, as yet, relatively few settlements. Behind it was an old furnace, its smoke stack standing high, and an odd circular building painted faded green and yellow. All around there was water, fed by a stream which diverted to run through shallow pool after shallow pool, at different levels, and finally released to run down the hillside where again another house captured it into pools. The furnace was surrounded by clear glassy water with a narrow path running through it. The water tumbled over the side to stream down a moss coloured wall and then disappeared into a deep drain, only to emerge again later in another pool.
There was one exhibition on, which we didn’t realse was an exhibition until we later noticed a signboard outside CASA. it consisted of paper cuts over the tall windows of the upstairs hall.
I would love to live in a place like that, beautiful and old and complex, and with people able to come and go freely.
After exploring the gallery we walked out to see a path running down to a paper mill. We followed it through thick greenery and past more shallow pools, to come out by the paper mill, again surrounded by water. The mill was closed, and we strolled on through residential streets where the only sound was that of music playing from the various houses. On the road we found a taxi and just took it for ourselves to return to Oaxaca.
Here we were dropped off at the Zocalo where there was an immense cheering crowd. We went closer to see what they were cheering and found it was one of Mexico’s vast cohort of clowns, getting more wild applause than I have ever seen. Unfortunately he spotted us, or rather the tall, white Gentleman Friend, and had a bantering, amusing conversation with him, in the course of which he offered him a Mexican lady of the GF’s choice. The GF declined, pointing towards me, and I got drawn into the game. The clown took me into the centre of the circle, ascertained my minimal level of Spanish and pulled out a deflated balloon which was immediately apparent as intended to have strong sexual connotations. I played along with unusual aplomb, despite feeling like I might perish, and luckily both the clown and the audience were gentle and good natured types. Finally the GF redeemed himself by stomping up with a cartoonish look of rage and dragged me off, but not before the clown had had twisted the balloon penis into a black swan and presented it to me. I gave it to the nearest small child and we made good our escape.