I am here in Guanajuanto, a beautiful Spanish colonial city in Mexico. It is located in the state that shares the same name, and it has been declared one of those important cities that must preserve its character for everyone in the world to see. I think their tagline is something like "La Patrimonia de la Humanidad" or something extremely pompus to that effect. But the city is extremely beautiful and extremely inviting. You can guess how many tourists are here, but they are here for a good reason.

I am chilling at an internet cafe, listening to old mp3s I have recorded in the past, and thinking about what the hell I am going to do next. Traveling by yourself in a different country is a strange thing. I am not sure a lot of people do it because it is a little disconcerting. If you aren't doing anything, you have nobody to talk to, and so you wind up running around doing things. I am afraid that I have hit nearly everything that the Lonely Planet guidebook had talked about. Almost. I am saving some things for tomorrow as well because I am not leaving until 5 pm.

The people here are pretty friendly and very used to dumb tourists wandering helplessly through their city. So they don't mind so much when I stutter broken Spanish and looked completely lost. I suppose that Guanajuanto is a better place to visit by yourself than some other place like Mexico City or perhaps somewhere in Sinaloa.

Coffee shops are one of the most annoying things man has thought of. I suppose the lesser of evils would be those hip, indie coffee shops that have a bunch of members of the near Revolution, college dropouts turned emo who then reformed and now attend the local community college, and anyone else who may consider him/herself somewhat intelligent and interesting but really aren't.

On one hand, Starbucks is better than this. At least in Mexico, everyone comes here. They bring their children, their friends, they sit and chat about this and that - nothing important but they don't pretend it is important, and they aren't trying to create a scene - and then they leave. Very simple. Sure the furniture and whatever else is in the store is standardized and everywhere just like any other American chain. The thing that really gets me is the terrible music that they play on their stereo. It is as if they have gotten every soft rock artist to cover important songs in rock history. For example, a slow, ballad of Ring of Fire or a Jose Gonzalezish version of Stairway to Heaven. I am just waiting for the cheez, raindrop version of Party Hard by Andrew W.K. to come out as well.



I wish I had a better place to write this paper.

Callejón de los Milagros

This movie was given to me by a roommate, who was leaving for Puerto Vallarta and did not want to carry the movie to the all-inclusive resort he was about to leave for. So, he bestowed it upon me to bring back to the house.

The movie is told in four parts, devoted to particular characters in a rather poor section of el Callejón de los Milagros, a colonia in Mexico City. The movie proceeds generally in chronological order, but there are times that the story overlaps and rehashes certain scenes from different perspectives, complicating and expanding upon the neighborhood.

The movie is heart-wrenching because it captures the degree of hopelessness in the lives of the Mexicans today. There is a sadness that the movie captures: one of long lost hope and exhaustion. By the end of the movie, you cannot despair because you have gotten used to the despair, you can only shake your head.

Labels: movies