Adventures into Mexico by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780742569423
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2013-06-25T00:00:00+00:00

Mexico: Learning to See the Details

Experiencing the Mexican landscape in those years helped me to see more clearly the everyday world, something that life back home with its tranquility and blandness would not have provided. Vistas in Mexico in their natural and built environments were so full of rich details of color, pattern, and variety that I realized even more strongly the importance of seeing things on three different levels: the overview level or wide-angle perspective, the medium-level for observation of one’s immediate surroundings, and the more focused low-level for examination of up-close details in what could be called “still-life scenes.” This helped me to gain a taste for wanting to understand the complexity and diversity of my surroundings—something that helped me begin to understand life in Mexico more completely—so that what might seem chaotic to some became commonplace to me and other MCC students.

Reading the landscape and grasping what I was seeing was something I had learned to do instinctively through a wilderness upbringing in the Salmon River country of central Idaho. I learned, as did my brother Jim, that survival could depend on remembering details in the landscape and how they varied at different times of the day. We had to construct very accurate mental maps if we were to find our way back home or find the safest and best route up or down a mountain face. My high-school art classes in Idaho also had been an important setting for learning to focus on details. Now in Mexico, it was possible to hone those skills as the landscapes and the human activity that filled them came together in a honeycomb of action and excitement.

Take, for example, a periodic Mexican market, where a multitude of visually exciting elements is jammed into a handful of street blocks. The density of the mix would be the same if these people and their activities had been thrown into a bowl and stirred with a giant wooden spoon. Add the sounds, smells, and tastes of the market, and for some it can be a nearly overwhelming experience.

The Toluca Market on Fridays, for example, was so rich in actions, sights, sounds, and smells, and all of it flooding one’s senses, that most non-Mexicans reacted in one of two ways. Either they jumped into the scene and reveled in it, or they looked around for a bit before fleeing to a bar or café where it was possible for them to focus their senses on a less dizzying scene. I often had another strategy that helped me give structure to the apparent chaos and disorder. I first looked for a high place from which to get an overview of the basic layout of the market, and where I could best gain a perspective on the activities that were clustered in each part of the market below. Getting a feeling for the whole gave me a solid understanding of the parts and even of those places that it might be best to visit early and of the others that were just beginning to evolve.

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