Taking the “A” Train

By Cherie Magnus

What is it about trains?

We all love them–the waiting, the leaving, the whistles. Who can hear the distant “woo-woo” of a train without feeling something’s longing, nostalgia, the urge to hop on and leave your old life behind? Literature abounds with romantic train symbols: The Polar Express, Streetcar Named Desire, Train to Nowhere, The Last Train Home.

The same for tunnels, which can be passages to somewhere mysterious and unknown. Aren’t the words, “secret tunnel” exciting? Tunnels are a metaphor of life and death? Mystery and secrets? The birth experience, with light and life at the end?

And when there are trains in tunnels, well, in the old movies Hollywood movies during the moral censorship days of the Hayes Code, when a train went into a tunnel, the audience knew the stars were having sex.

Most people don’t find the subway so romantic. But taking the A line of the Buenos Aires subway is usually an opportunity for me to be transported to realms other than the stations of Peru, Piedras and Pasco.

The “A” line is the oldest in the Buenos Aires subway system, or Supte. Construction began in 1911 and opened to the public in 1913. It’s a short line of only 13 stations, beginning from the Plaza de Mayo. There the President’s Pink House and the Cathedral sit at right angles around a plaza full of history, monuments, protests, and souvenir stands hawking blue and white Argentine flags.

A couple of cars have been replaced, but generally when I ride to my Castellano class or to church, I take one of the original wooden cars. At times it’s almost a mystical ride, especially early in the morning or late at night. As I sit on the wooden slat benches, the train rocks me from side to side, the rings hanging from the ceiling swing hypnotically. The original incandescent lighting is still in use in old-fashioned glass shades, and the light glows on the wood, brass and beveled mirrors. These original cars have windows at both ends so you can see right through to the next car or to the black tunnel you have just left or into the one you are entering. The world up top seems so far away.

During the day, cars passing over the grills on the street above, make daylight come and go as the train rumbles along in the dark tunnel.
Light in tunnels is a strong metaphor. During a series of site-specific dance performances in Los Angeles by Collage Dance Theater in the year 2000, abandoned subway tunnels from the 20’s were used in the work, SubVersions. A brilliant idea full of symbolism, dancers dug through rubble for lost hope, and waltzed as phantoms through the elegant art deco Terminal building. Finally they built a makeshift boat full of happy passengers waving goodbye, which was borne on shoulders, down the dark tunnel until its light disappeared.

Because tunnels are so appealing, wise businessmen around the world put the lure of exploring history underground to good use. In Seattle, Washington, a popular tourist attraction is a walking tour of the subterranean tunnels under Pioneer Square, once the main roadways and ground-floor storefronts of old downtown.

The abandoned silver mine shaft in Zacatecas, Mexico, was turned into an amusement park-type of attraction with an underground disco. Patrons take the old mine train from the entrance and pass the centuries old chapel with flowers and burning candles still honoring the miners who lost there lives there underground.

In Paris, tourists line up to explore the Catacombs, and not too long ago they also went on underground sewer tours. Here in Buenos Aires are forgotten old tunnels as well. El Zanjón de Granados, on Defensa in San Telmo, is 150 meters of tunnels, 4 meters wide, dating from the beginning of the 19th century. And under the Manzana de las Luces are Jesuit tunnels even older.

I’m not a spelunker, or cave explorer. I don’t belong to any narrow gauge or steam train club. I don’t search out the roller coasters of the world. I’m not about to climb into an old well or abandoned mineshaft.

I’m just going to keep on taking the A Train. It’s not hard to imagine, as the train appears from nowhere in the station, that the next stop is somewhere ethereal and strange. I take my seat and vanish into history.

Cherie Magnus (left, back to camera) now lives in Buenos Aires. She has written many articles and has contributed to the-vu for many years, from California, from Cuba, from Europe, from Mexico and now from Argentina. Follow her blog at http://tangocherie.blogspot.com/

An American Diary from Mexico – Episode 12

Leaving San Miguel
By Cherie Magnus

If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll end up somewhere else.
–Yogi Berra

That terrible ache and nostalgia for home when home is gone, and this isn’t it. And the sun so white like an onion. And who the hell thought of placing a city here with no large body of water anyway! In less than three hours we could be at the border, but where’s the border to the past, I ask you, where? – Sandra Cisneros, Caramelo

In the evening flocks of grackles wrote V’s against the mango sky. The setting sun shone through the dusty dome windows of Las Monjas one block west, and I could see the towers of five more colonial churches from my rooftop. Almost every day beneath the windows of my apartment passed processions of pilgrims, celebrants, or mourners. The Virgin sat on the back of a pickup truck or thirty schoolchildren carried an enormous Mexican flag or peppy tuba bands and old men, hats in hand, walked behind a hearse.

Even so, after two years in Mexico I had overdosed on the traditional fiestas that used to enchant me. As someone who enjoys the Latin passion in the cultures of France and Cuba, I couldn’t find the same joie de vivre in Mexico. Mexican allegre was not a moving, pulsing force, but comfort and relaxation—abundant good food, bright and happy music, flowing beer and tequila, family togetherness and church. The sole ecstasy I witnessed was in the many fervent religious activities. I missed the zest and energy on the street and in the music that I found so compelling elsewhere.

I enjoyed greeting friends and acquaintances whenever I stepped out my door, yet the population was transitory, and new friends were hard to keep, often leaving after a short stay to return home to Canada or the United States. Real relationships had little time to develop. My circle of friends had changed. My favorite bar had closed, and even before that I stopped going out in the evening. I found that without realizing it, I was drinking too much, too often, as a way to be with people. Lately I might go to Harry Bissett’s on Martini Night, and after two Cosmos, the smoke and the cackling Texas laughter would drive me around the corner and home. I read, worked on the computer, wrote articles and emails to the world “out there,” and watched Mexican TV. The folks I counted on were the women in my cancer support group, my friends at church, the group of writers who met at my house weekly, my fellow flamenco students, as well as the two or three friends I made at the bars when I first arrived. I had some Mexican friends by now, too, yet somehow there was always a gap between us which wasn’t a problem of language. I guess it was cultural differences, although I hated to think that was possible between people who cared about one another.

There were several different social groups in San Miguel, and I didn’t fit into any of them: the cocktail party circuit; the landed house builders, remodelers and decorators who had inexhaustible discussions on whether to paint the sala saffron or aubergine; the old hippies in beads; the Texas Junior League women with perfectly streaked blond hair and chunky silver jewelry active in charity fundraisers; the gringa owners of boutiques and businesses; the newly reinvented artists; and of course the Mexicans who had little time to spare away from their work and families.

Where I felt empowered, at my best, and at home was with dancers. In San Miguel I had searched out dance in studios, schools, clubs, theaters, parties, and discos. I tried Sweat Your Prayers on Sunday mornings, folk dance at the Bellas Artes, contact improvisation, Mexican folklorico, salsa in classes and clubs, and took the bus to Mexico City in search of tango, the immigrant’s dance. More than a hundred years ago in Buenos Aires, the lonely porteno, far from his loved ones in Europe, was drawn to the connection and nostalgia of tango. In Mexico one’s family is large and ubiquitous, and people live for the moment. Unlike me, the Mexican has no need to search for a family in a milonga, and Mexican tango is almost an oxymoron.

Finally it was flamenco that saved my body and spirit. And after a student flamenco recital in which I did a solo belly dance, opportunities presented themselves to teach La Danse Orientale, to perform, to collaborate creatively with the flamenco teacher and musicians. But then what? I couldn’t afford to keep going in the financial hole every month and manufacturing my own artistic outlets. I knew I couldn’t live forever in the expensive Brigadoon Gringolandia that was San Miguel. If I did, I’d soon be one of the crones sitting in doorways with knarled hands outstretched to passing tourists.

The view from Cherie’s roof
Much of the Happy Hour conversations now centered on how the town had changed and how expensive it had become. I had done my best to live within my budget, moving three times to cheaper and smaller San Miguel apartments, nevertheless from the beginning it had been an impossible dream in the most costly place to live in Mexico. I had increasingly gone into my savings, and soon they would be gone if I didn’t do something drastic. San Miguel de Allende had been my home throughout three icy winters when I wore dance tights 24/7 and my electric throw over my shoulders on a long extension cord, heating my apartment with pots of water boiling on the stove. And during two hot and breathless springs, when dusty winds covered the town filling my lungs with desert sand, bus exhaust, and dried dog and burro dung. The weather-perfect months in between I revelled in the afternoon rains, the ideal temperature, and the dazzling colors of the bougainvillia-bejeweled colonial architecture. Now the pleasure I found in San Miguel was no longer enough, and not for the rest of my life.

I learned a lot in Mexico, I had made friends I cherished, I loved my apartment and the beauty of the town, where, like at Chateau Rodney in Los Angeles, I heard church bells and train whistles calling me to places far away. It was time to move on—to someplace where the cost of living was less, where there was symphony and ballet and art museums, to someplace where I could dance more than solos. I yearned for the embrace of tango.

After more than a decade of searching, it looked like my future would be in other places, other hemispheres. I missed Los Angeles and the United States, and if wishes could make it so, I would still be living with my family in our house in Los Feliz under the Hollywood Sign. I had twice paddled in the River Styx, and now I’ve been blessed with the chance of forging another life. I would have designed a different path for myself, but my life unfolded without consulting me.

Once again I had to bid a painful farewell to good friends, a mixed group of beloved people who had welcomed this stranger into their homes, lives and hearts. I was going to miss the man selling cigarettes and sodas on the corner, the flower seller who made the rounds of all the bars and restaurants every night, the girl who practiced her cello while working in the gallery below my apartment. I was worn-out from the partings and leave-takings of the last twelve years. But in Mexico, where nothing was as it seemed, “manana” didn’t mean tomorrow, and “Adios!” was not goodbye.

View down from Cherie’s Balcony

Phoebe’s Tail at home in San Miguel

About this author: With degrees in English, Dance, and Library Science from UCLA, Cherie has published many articles in professional journals and magazines. Her solo travels to Europe and Latin America have inspired several pieces published in Skirt!, PassionFruit, Moxie, JourneyWoman, Dancing USA, GoNomad, Open Spaces, Porthole, The Cusco Weekly, the-vu, and various online magazines. She was the dance critic for the Cerritos News in Orange County, California before moving to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. She is currently at work on a novel situated in France, when she’s not out dancing. Follow her blog at http://tangocherie.blogspot.com/

An American Diary from Mexico – Episode 11

The Worlds of Xochimilco
By Cherie Magnus

A lake carries you into recesses of feeling otherwise impenetrable. ~William Wordsworth

In gardens, beauty is a by-product. The main business is sex and death. ~Sam Llewelyn

Xochimilco, the “place of the flower fields” (in Nahuatl), is at once an ancient Aztec dream, a modern Mexican fiesta, and an eccentric eerie nightmare—all in one glorious experience and all in one day. Imagine in one short Mexico City afternoon floating between two cultures centuries apart, with the added fillip of a hidden island of ghosts and dead dolls.

Very little remains of Aztec daily life and splendor. Aside from the pyramids, and artifacts displayed in museums, we can only guess at the wonders of Tenochtitlan while we stand in the middle of Mexico City’s Zocalo and stare at the cathedral sinking slowly into the ooze of the primordial lake below.

In pre-Hispanic times the Xochimilcas built rectangular soil-covered rafts (chinampas) in Lake Xochimilco, which with time became islands rooted to the bottom and separated by water-filled canals. Perhaps because the Floating Gardens of Xochimilco were built on the eternal lake, they still exist. Thankfully they have been restored and reclaimed from the pollution and neglect that almost caused their extinction, and Xochimilco was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1987. Not only do the floating gardens enthrall visitors and tourists, but they are still used today as they have been since the Tenth Century—to grow plants, vegetables and flowers for central Mexico.

You feel like you’re at the seaside as you enter one of Xochimilco’s many embarcaderos filled with the colorful flat-bottomed boats called trajineras. Now duplicated in crepe paper, in times past the multicolored designs with girls’ names on the front and tops of the boats were made of fresh flowers. Still for special occasions, arrangements can be made in advance for real floral decorations to cover the boat and to spell out the name of the honoree. There are so many crafts waiting that you can walk from deck to deck all across the landing to the one of your choice. You hire a trajinera by the hour, and unfortunately most tourists opt for only one hour, imagining that they have seen what there is to see and rush off to the next attraction on their Mexico City list. For such an extraordinary historical, cultural, and natural site, there is little hype in the travel media. But the local Mexican people know how to party and enjoy themselves, and on weekends the smaller, higher section of the canals and gardens are jammed with vessels and competing floating mariachi bands, stern to port, starboard to starboard, at times resembling bump ‘em boats at a carnival.

Like in Venice, the gondolas are propelled by one man (and here sometimes a strong woman) standing on the back with a long pole. Our boat with a long narrow table and twenty yellow straw-bottomed chairs, contained only my friend, myself, and a plastic bucket of iced beverages, but even when a boat is party packed, one person provides the power. The only mechanical sound on the canals is from the occasional police motor boat. The trajineras move in silence, but the happy people on them are loudly partying as Mexicans do better than anyone.

The fiesta boats generally have refreshments brought from home, but if anything is forgotten (and for the more casual cruiser who is less prepared) vendors conveniently drift by selling flowers, drinks, candy, souvenirs, fresh hot snacks and main dishes, blankets and rebozos, as well as floating photographers to commemorate the moment. There are boat after boatload of uniformed mariachis and vessels containing only a single mirimba, which tie up to the party boats during the short concerts paid for by the song. Our gondola barely squeezed by a flotilla of six tied together two by two, plus the required aquatic mariachi attachment. Women were dancing on the three feet of deck when we collided, spilling beer and flowers into the canal, but the fiesta continued with even more laughter as we passed them by. People wave and call out to each other. Several parties had family members regaling their captive partiers with jokes, and we laughed as well.

Homes and plant nurseries and green houses of roses line the upper canals; floating bridges are hauled by ropes into place when necessary for crossing. The islands have no cars, and there are small private gondolas used by residents for transportation. The Aztecs brought in everything to their city on boats such as these, and today the canals are used in much the same way.

Soon we arrive at the lock and descend to the lower and larger area of islands which are pastoral cornfields, farms and pasturelands of grazing animals. We pass indian children in green canoes filled with flowers, and two small boys paddling home with their bicycle on board. No mariachi boats, only the quiet kiss of the water as the gondolier poles us forward. Lazy trees lounge on the banks trailing their limbs in the water, bright red bougainvillea punctuates the green stillness, an occasional mudhen navigates through the waterlilies, a salamander suns on a rock, fish disturb the water’s satin surface, insects and birds sing. Another world—mystical, serene, timeless. Our festive trajinera seems anachronistic, but we are too blissful to care.

The mood changes when we land at the Isla de las Munecas, the Island of the Dolls. Don Julian lived there for fifty years, and for the twenty-five before his death two years ago, sought to appease the ghost of a drowned child with the dolls he pulled up from the depths of the canals. Dead dolls of all kinds hang from the trees and vines and rafters, their eyes bewitching and disturbing the visitors who have come to gawk and photograph in this surreal sanctuary. There is an altar to Don Julian, and in an open shed, a kind of museum. As the fame of the Island of the Dolls spreads, people all over the world send their own dolls to be displayed and to disintegrate, covered by cobwebs and dust with all the rest. It can be disconcerting to see your favorite Betsy or Ginny naked, muddy, missing a limb, and hanging by the neck. While bizarre and off-putting for some (one woman tourist refused to get out of the boat), the island is in fact a kind of work of art in the realm of other “one man’s fantasy” environments—Edward James, Simon Rodia, even William Randolph Hurst come to mind.

Don Julian’s family is carrying on the tradition, and the creepy feel of wandering among childhood toys once beautiful and cherished now tainted by evil and death, is balanced by Don Julian’s jovial nephew barbecuing fresh corn under the palapa and laying out juicy limes and chili for the tequila he proudly serves us.

Even so, one journeys back to the lock and to the parties and festivities in the high canals and then to the busy embarcadero and home, wherever it is, changed. Some voyages—the best ones—are like that.

About this author: With degrees in English, Dance, and Library Science from UCLA, Cherie has published many articles in professional journals and magazines. Her solo travels to Europe and Latin America have inspired several pieces published in Skirt!, PassionFruit, Moxie, JourneyWoman, Dancing USA, GoNomad, Open Spaces, Porthole, The Cusco Weekly, the-vu, and various online magazines. She was the dance critic for the Cerritos News in Orange County, California before moving to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. She is currently at work on a novel situated in France, when she’s not out dancing. Follow her blog at http://tangocherie.blogspot.com/