In my last post I mentioned the lack of respect for wisdom and experience that I feel here in Cancun. There’s a deeper level to this than just problems with retailers.

I sometimes feel that living here I myself can’t get wiser, can’t gain wisdom. I feel that I spend so much of my energy here just trying to live a “normal” life that there isn’t extra time for study or reflection and there isn’t cultural support for growth. I feel that the problems I have because I live here are often so big, so un-fixable and so ultimately hopeless that the only way I could prove to myself that I was taking a positive step forward, that I was using my wisdom, would be to pack up and leave.

The shortsightedness in the way Cancun businesses are run is just the beginning, just the tip of the iceberg. The bigger issue is the way that society operates here. Life is hard enough here that you have to become selfish and shielded in order to survive here. And so most people think only about themselves, they don’t concern themselves with the betterment of society, they don’t concern themselves with other people’s well-being and they don’t value (or even notice) the wisdom of those around them.

Of course I’m generalizing. Of course I can name 10 people right now who do care about others and to whom wisdom does adhere. But I can name 100 who are so self-involved, so stuck in the rut of just surviving here that they are not learning, are not getting ahead, not helping make this a better place. It makes me really sad. And it makes me question my own judgment for staying here this long.

[Before you bitch at me that I should pack up and leave let me say that you are right, and we plan to, but we need to finish some projects, sell the house and plan the move. And it will probably take us a year to get out of here. So in the meantime, I’m here, like it or not.]

As I was thinking about this lack of wisdom issue the lyrics to Pearl Jam’s song “Immortality” kept running through my head. So I thought I would share the song with you (especially with Susan and Joyce). The video is here and the lyrics are below. This song is rumored to be about the suicide of Kurt Cobain. The video a little rough, but Eddie is masterful as always and Mike’s guitar solo will make you remember that there is a God. Enjoy.

Immortality by Pearl Jam

vacate is the word…vengeance has no place on me or her
cannot find the comfort in this world
artificial tear…vessel stabbed…next up, volunteers
vulnerable, wisdom can’t adhere…
a truant finds home…and a wish to hold on…
but there’s a trapdoor in the sun…immortality…
as privileged as a whore…victims in demand for public show
swept out through the cracks beneath the door
holier than thou, how?
surrendered…executed anyhow
scrawl dissolved, cigar box on the floor…
a truant finds home…and a wish to hold on too…
he saw the trapdoor in the sun…
immortality…
i cannot stop the thought…i’m running in the dark…
coming up a which way sign…all good truants must decide…
oh, stripped and sold, mom…auctioned forearm…
and whiskers in the sink…
truants move on…cannot stay long
some die just to live…

One of the things that’s most striking to me about the culture here in Cancun is the lack of respect for wisdom and experience. You see this especially in the retail, services and banking sectors here. But it’s present in many forms here.

When you look for a job here you are confronted by Help Wanted Ads asking for light-skinned, tall, skinny people who are under 35 (short, old, heavy, dark people need not apply). It is common for these ads to outline what you should look like. But often these ads make no mention of experience. Knowing what you are doing, being experienced in your field, is often less important than having the look the company wants.

You feel this lack of wisdom and lack of respect for experience when you have a problem with a local business. All too often problems are met with blank stares and statements that your problem can only be solved by a) someone who is not there are present and won’t be back today or by b) sending a request to the main office in Mexico City which will take weeks. I cannot tell you the number of times I’ve found that the person that I have in front of me, the person who is witness to my trouble, is not capable of solving my problem and furthermore doesn’t care!

The result is that we consumers suffer poor and inefficient service. And we find ourselves losing respect for the impotent employees in the businesses that we have problems with.

I imagine that employees of these business must feel powerless. The home office, the boss, doesn’t trust them to solve problems so the employee sees lots of frustrated clients but can’t help them. It can’t be very satisfying to work in an environment like that. And that’s probably why these employees have to not care, because they can’t do anything anyway.

My own experience, as both an employee and as an employer, is that good employees are the ones that jump in to solve problems as soon as they recognize them. As a boss you want to cultivate a culture where your employees feel rewarded for and are expected to solve the client’s problems as quickly and as well as possible. But this concept seems to be foreign here in Cancun. Here in Cancun the customer is almost never right.

According to my National Geographic Society “Bird Migration Map for the Western Hemisphere” the Yucatan Peninsula is a stopping point for birds that migrate from as far away as Baffin Island in Northeastern Canada and Uruguay in South America. I’m not sure how many of these birds actually bother to come through Cancun, but some certainly do get spotted here.

When we first bought our house the yard had no mature trees. Now, 5 years later, we have a monster of a ficus tree, 5 huge bugambilias, a chico zapote that’s almost 2 stories tall and a naranja (orange) tree which is full of (green) oranges at the moment. Needless to say we have lots of attractive branches for birds to land on.

And land they do. Each morning we are awakened by birds who sit in the ficus, just outside our bedroom window. Once they start their squawking the cats inevitably jump onto the windowsills and watch the bird show for a few hours. Some cats get more into this than others and a couple of the cats get a little carried away making imitative “bird” noises and periodically launching themselves up onto the window screen in a futile attempt to chase a bird.

The other day we were awakened by bird squawks. But this time they were not coming from the ficus tree, they were coming from the other side of the house, from the backyard. And this time it wasn’t the usual 10 or 20 birds having their normal pre-coffee discussion about how to torment our 8 cats. No. This time it was roughly 90 to 100 birds. And this time they were squawking like no one’s business. These birds were LOUD, they had a purpose, they were raising an alarm!

When we looked we saw birds perched along every edge of every roof and wall around our backyard. And ALL of them were squawking INTO our backyard!

We raced into the yard and found the problem. Several guilty-looking cats had a bird cornered in our backyard. They were close enough to the bird that it couldn’t take flight. We chased the cats into the house and then fended off the dog who had come to “help”. Once free of cat interference the bird flew halfway up the wall and landed on a vine in the corner. Then it was able to fly to the top of the wall. I couldn’t tell if it’s short flights were due to it being injured or whether they were due to space limitations coupled with being in shock. But the bird got away under its own power.

As soon as the bird topped the wall it’s squawking brethren quit their alarming and went about their business. But I have to say I was really, really impressed with how all those birds tried to help their fallen friend. If they had not woken us up that bird would have been cat food.

I’ve always thought I would like to feed birds and become a birdwatcher. But it may have to wait until another life, a life in which I don’t pull every starving cat I find off the street and bring it home.

I’m not very good at being sick. I’m a good enough patient, in that I take my meds as directed and mostly do what the doc says. But the mental side of things is rough for me.

Inactivity makes me depressed, it always has. If I go more than 3 days without exercise I start feeling uncomfortable in my skin. And when I’m not moving around I’m more prone to headaches and body aches. So sometimes the bed rest I need when I’m sick makes certain symptoms worse.

Being sick, especially when it’s a lung thing, means I have to walk that fine line between doing too much and not doing enough. If I lay around “healing” then things that didn’t hurt before start to. If I force myself to move around I wear myself out and don’t heal.

As I get older the ratio between how much to move and how much to NOT move is changing. So the answer to this mystery of how much to rest and how much to not rest changes over time. Well, I’m just not smart enough to figure it out…too many variables in this equation for my pea-brain.

The good news, I guess, is that I’m well enough to worry about this. Four days ago I was so sick that going down the stairs to make a cup of tea would leave me dizzy and weak for hours. Now I’m pondering whether to go walk the dog. So I guess that whatever this mysterious ratio of activity and inactivity is I must be mostly getting it right, since I’m mostly feeling better.

I’m getting better but it’s slow and arduous; two steps forward and one step back. The doc wants me to do another round of antibiotics and he’s concerned with how much fluid is still in my lungs. I’m a long way from being back to normal but at least the fever is gone so I can think again.

Thanks to all of my pals who’ve commented and called and sent emails. When you are flat on your back feeling horrible it’s very nice to know that you have friends out there.

A week ago I had what I thought was a pollen allergy attack. It came suddenly and the symptoms were sneezing, itchy eyes and a scratchy throat. The next day I had a low fever but didn’t feel too bad. But that night the fever rose to over 101.7°F (38.7°C). For the next couple of days the fever rose and fell depending on how much Advil I took, but it never broke. I also developed a cough which got worse and worse.

Finally I agreed to let my husband drag me to the doctor. Given that his job provides both of us with health insurance I agreed to go to the emergency room at the ISSSTE clinic which is covered by our policy. We always joke that the service at the ISSSTE is so bad that you only want to go there in an emergency. Well we got there and the Urgencias sign was lit up, but the door was locked. We could see that the building was occupied so we went looking for another door. We found a security guard who told us that yes there was a doctor in the building but that she couldn’t see me. My husband can be very insistent and basically made the guard take us to see the doctor. As the guard led us through the back alley of the clinic we passed several starving kittens. I wanted to scoop them up and get back in the car and go home. I did not want to deal with a clinic that didn’t want to help me.

Once we got inside the ISSSTE clinic my husband found the doctor and asked her to see me. He told her I had been running a high fever for 4 days. Her response was to BLAME HIM for not bringing me sooner (he’d been begging me to go to the doctor for several days). She also said she could not even examine me because she would get in big trouble. She gave a long convoluted explanation of all the bureaucratic red tape that was barring her from even looking at me.

I got fed up with her droning and I told everyone present that I was too sick to listen to this. I left the building in tears. After that ordeal I couldn’t stand the idea of going to another hospital or clinic, I just wanted to go home to bed. (And no I didn’t take the kittens even though I wanted to.)

The next day, yesterday, I woke up and the cough was stronger. And it had moved into my lungs. I could feel a heaviness in my chest. This time my husband took me to a private doctor who was recommended to us. The doc asked all the right questions, checked me for dehydration, checked my organs and listened to my chest. And then he listened to my chest two more times. His diagnosis is a bacterial lung infection. If you Google bacterial lung infection you find lots of hits for pneumonia and some for bronchitis.

I’ve already had pneumonia three times in my life. Each time I came down with it just after a drastic change in the weather (the transition of winter to spring). I’ve had bronchitis twice, once it started after a big change in the weather and the other time it started after getting a lungful of campfire smoke. Two weeks ago our rainy season began here. Prior to that it was dry and hot, but two weeks ago we started getting big downpours. And now here I am with a lung illness.

The doc put me on an antibiotic and an expectorant. It would have been good if I had realized sooner that this was not an allergy, but the first couple of days of the fever I was convinced that I was just very allergic to something that that rains had given bloom to. I guess with my lung history I shouldn’t have screwed around, but I didn’t realize I was sick until I was very sick.

I may not post for a while, it will depend on how well these antibiotics work.

This is for ex-pats living in Mexico, if you are Mexican don’t get offended because this is just a joke. You know you’ve lived in Mexico too long when:

• You think it’s normal to see an entire family (mom, dad, 3 kids) riding on a motor scooter together with not a single helmet among them.
• You know several ex-pats living in Mexico who you suspect, or know, are wanted back home.
• You know the proper amounts of money to bribe the cops with for various driving infractions.
• You have forgotten what it’s like to be able to drink the water coming from your home’s faucet.
• You think it’s normal to see a baby riding in it’s mother’s lap in the front seat of a car and not in a car seat.
• You no longer expect law enforcement officers to actually enforce laws.
• You can sing along with the horrible songs that the various gas companies blare from their trucks as they drive around.
• You’ve adopted the attitude of “it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission” and you now do things you shouldn’t figuring you’ll get out of it later.
• You know somebody who knows somebody who has been executed by the mafia here.
• If you look like a gringo, you’ve accepted that the “gringo tax” is just part of life here and you don’t fight it. (For the uninitiated the gringo tax is the extra that gringos get charged just because they are assumed to be dripping in dollars.)

OK, that’s all I can think of right now. You guys got any more?

As I sit here listening to the NPR story titled Inventor’s Ashes Buried in His Creation: Pringles Can I feel compelled to make a public statement.

I do not want to be buried in the ground when I die. I can think of no greater torture than to be stuck underground for all of eternity. I am claustrophobic and I don’t much like the dark. I have no desire to be consumed by worms, or worse, to be embalmed and then not consumed at all.

I do not believe there is an after-life and I don’t believe in ghosts (much). But it is my solemn promise to those I leave behind when I depart this world that I will HAUNT YOU if you inter me! I swear it!

My wish is to be cremated and scattered in the good places! If my people need a spot on this earth to call mine then they have my permission to take not more than a thimble-full of my ashes and place them just underneath the sod so that I can still see light and so that my matter will quickly become part of the grass above me. Anything more than this and I will haunt, make no mistake!

In addition to liking the Mexican custom of saying Provecho I also like the common custom of greeting people by kissing them on the cheek.

In Mexico the custom is to greet a person by kissing their right cheek just once. Let me clarify and say that men here don’t kiss each other on the cheek, they usually do a pat on the back kind of hug that is sometimes preceded by a handshake. But men will greet women with a cheek kiss. And women greet both women and men with a cheek kiss.

Not everyone gets a cheek kiss, only certain people in your circle are going to expect one. Neither my husband nor myself greets our housekeeper with a cheek kiss, it just doesn’t feel right. And usually I won’t greet someone I am meeting for the first time with a cheek kiss, but sometimes if they are young, or if we are being introduced by a close friend I will give a kiss to a new acquaintance. And we normally don’t greet neighbors with a cheek kiss because they are too familiar, we see them too often for it to be practical.

But when the person you are greeting is a friend or acquaintance usually a cheek kiss is in order. There are all kinds of cheek kisses and they mean all kinds of things. Some of the more memorable types of cheek kisses are:

~ The “I actually don’t like you but I’m kissing you to be polite” kiss. This one is usually given by and to women. It’s often given as just a “mwah” sound in your right ear, there’s not any touching of cheeks and usually there’s no pretense made to pretend to hug.

~ Then there’s the “I’ve got loads of make-up on (and/or a hat on) so don’t mess me up by touching me” kiss. This one also normally involves just a kiss sound in your ear with no cheek touching. But if there’s an accidental touch, and the person really does like you, they will apologize for the lipstick they just put on your cheek.

~ There’s also the “I don’t want your spouse/partner to realize I like you so I’m going to kiss you just a little wrong and maybe he/she won’t notice” kiss. This kiss is a little too emphatic, sometimes it’s too wet and sometimes it lands too close to the edge of your mouth and doesn’t make it quite onto your cheek proper.

~ But the very best kind of cheek kiss is the “It’s really good to see you” kiss. This is the only kiss that should take place imho. This is the one where you really mean it and they do too and both parties feel totally at ease.

I first learned the “It’s really good to see you” cheek kiss from my husband’s family and Mexican friends back when we were living in the U.S. So by the time I came to Mexico I was used to the cheek kissing custom.

Now, after 8 years of being around lots of cheek kissing Mexicans, I’ve found that greeting people with a cheek kiss is very simply normal. And when I travel back to the U.S. I gleefully inflict cheek kissing on my friends there, whether they are expecting it or not. And if they aren’t quite expecting it I cover my totally intentional cheek kiss by saying “I’m Mexican now, so I can’t help it.” Ha!

I think that the thing I really like about cheek kissing is that it softens the social edge between people, and it does so right at the beginning of the conversation. If you start off with a cheek kiss then you are starting with trust and mutual appreciation.