Guanajuato Redux

6.5.07 TakingOff

At LAX the smell of jet fuel takes me places even before I arrive at check-in. I love that aroma, the promise of something new and different. A family dressed in black reunites at my gate, a tall man carrying a glossy small mahogany box with a color photo embedded on top. I imagine the deceased’s ashes inside, being returned to the ancestral dirt, the importance of one’s roots.

A few minutes into taxi-ing on the runway, in the dark, I am awoken by the screams of an agitated man. They escalate as he wails in Spanish about “los ninos” Bush, the war, he is Jesus and some other man is about to blow up the plane. This other man, approaches the distressed guy who gets out of his seat and still yelling, starts banging on the overhead bins. The flight attendants approach and along with others, try to calm him. One brings a glass of water and this other man in a camel overcoat stands in front of the psycho, keeping his attention. We all listen to his rantings as the attendants scurry about, the plane turns around and oddly we all remain calm at midnight. He takes off his shirt and keeps up his tirade, directing it at this quiet young man who just maintains eye contact. At one point the wacko threatens to punch him and a female attendant tells him to calm down and punch her instead, knowing it seems, that he will not hit a woman. He is encircled by a few passengers who all just watch as if to contain his rage in a fixed area. And the silent man’s steadfast-ness seems to ground the man. Finally the firemen arrive and try to talk him down with no success. He climbs onto the arm of a chair and starts pumping his hips at a woman and begins to undo his belt, his torso already bare. The 3 Firemen wrestle him to a seat and the police arrive as he continues to vacillate between babbling in the voice of a child and yelling at the injustices of America and how the money continues to burn him.

We finally have to dis-embark for a security check of the plane and I approach the silent man in the camel coat, a Mexican, asking if he works in mental health. No, but with street kids. He knew the man needed to have calm around him to not fuel his agitation and I agreed that had it been an American flight, the attendants would have reacted more physically. It felt more like a family “intervention” than a confrontation and we laughed at the difference in cultures. I thank him for his help and wonder how the event would have turned out had it been a linebacker on his way down to Cabo who decided to intervene.

So, with 3 hours to spare in Mexico City aeroport, I enjoy my typical breakfast of fruit and cottage cheese, awaiting a connection having missed my first one. I love these places of transit, of floating between realities.

Alejandra, a chatty lovely young thing meets me at the Leon airport with a kiss and a smile and David, med student from North Carolina with a handshake. We stop off to have posole for lunch and then I am deposited at the lovely Casa Marfil. 3 levels with a lovely garden in between and Mamacit the dog. Birds of various ilk and a rooster portend little sleep but the solid stone floors promise cool air in the hacienda. Alejandra tells of her first American husband who put her on a bicycle and told her not to come back until she had found a job. She has since married a Mexican.

I take a walk down the street after making some coffee in the kitchen that smells of guavas. The blue sky I remember so well hovers lightly on my shoulder and the quiet follows me down the roadway. The sweat feels good as I march along and watch the students leave school. I return to Casa Marfil and play the flute a bit in the acoustically friendly salon but am interrupted by what sounds like a 78 record player next door playing Scott Joplin rags. We tangle for air space and then I sit down to prepare for my meeting at 6.l