Originally posted by Osprey
I'll reprise one of my oldies but goodies here because it fits.
Quizás
Yesterday the beach was a war zone. Well, maybe a miniature war zone. Squadrons of dragonflies, wave after wave of tiny helicopters, strafed the
beach. The mission: find and eat every small bug on the beach. A million sorties following some unseen leader with orders to move west but stay
between the shore and the palms.
While I was pretending to be an heroic war correspondent risking my neck to give the world the real-time sights and sounds of the action along the
beachhead, two Mexican fishing boats roared through the surf, up onto the beach. Pepe and his brothers said their hellos. Pepe said the sigarones,
the dragonflies, signaled rain. When I asked him when we could expect the rain he answered with his grinning-pirate look, it said it pleased him to
be vague.
His brother, Juan, said they come out after a rain. Juan has the look and demeanor of a Mexican Archie Bunker. Who should I believe? If we throw
out the niggardly constraints of time, they are both right.
This is how I spend my time in Mexico -- having to choose between two (or more) answers to every question. The land may be mostly implacable granite
and prickly cactus but it is pure quicksand for anyone looking for a hard-and-fast answer to anything. In order to better communicate I have forced
myself to be a better listener. I have not learned enough. I use the words siempre and nunca, always and never, as and when the conversation
dictates. These words are rarely spoken in this pueblo -- perhaps used little in all of Mexico. In a land where nothing is what it appears to be I
should expect to hear probables and posibles, a vezes, quisás manana. (probably, possibly, at times, perhaps tomorrow) The language demonstrates
the basic fatalistic view of the Mexican people. Fatalism defines the culture, pervades every sector of society.
The bending, warping of time is not culturally unique but it stands out like a c-ckroach on a wedding cake when compared to the U.S. cultural
imperative, the atomic clock exactitudes we are so proud of, the "seventeen jewels that dictate the rules".
The western world misinterprets the Mexican time view and world view, sees the people as non-productive, lazy. Time, taken in the abstract, the
Mexican way, offsets the Judeo/Christian stigma of guilt. The time-bending thing allows Mexicans to enjoy the leisure and forgiveness of a mas o menos
attitude about how they run their daily lives. Being a day early or three days late does not call for a trip to the confessional, a single mea culpa.
When two compadres joke with one another, the word lazy, flojo, is often used but it evokes laughter not scorn.
Only now, after spending a few years in Mexico, am I beginning to understand and appreciate the subtlety of these quirks of culture. One day I may
reap some of the benefits myself. I won't bore you with a long list of wonderful side effects but we can both feel the obvious orgullo de patria,
country pride, a Mexican worker must feel, arriving a week late for work, upon learning that his whole crew was laid off several days ago.
|
(That has become my new favorite word, learned right here on
BajaNomad).
)in length.
But not everything that everyone brings is going to be palatable to everyone else!
That's human nature....across all cultures!
that's scary.....thats a horrible thought.....and why not just stay in America instead of taking over the world.....
