Where Ruins Rule

Tags

Antigua, Art, earthquakes, Guatemala, memory, ruins, the past, volcanoes

When we suddenly find a flight to Antigua, Guatemala after a last-minute change of travel plans, we’ve got to act fast. In the next 24 hours, we need to find lodging, a list of top sightseeing stops, a few active outings, and a way to get around. We do an obligatory Google exploration and then hit the search bars on the websites of a few blogging friends we seem to remember have been here (thank you, Alison and Don and Nicole!), and in a few short hours, we have a preliminary plan.

We quickly see what we expected to see: the cheerful metal of the chicken buses, the alabaster church fronts, the small Mayan women wrapped in jewel-toned garments and stooped under their loads of street wares. The chock-a-block markets, the volcanoes that loom over the town and stud the countryside. The chocolate, the coffee, the jade.

And then a strange thing happens. We really have no major objectives here; in fact, we have a perfect excuse to just be – we’ve had no time to plan! – to take things in, to let the city in through our eyes and our minds for a few days. We slooowww down, and J patiently lets me stop and photograph things that do not tell a typical kind of travel story.

Writers and readers love whole, substantial things – buildings and shrines, temples and monuments. Histories, records, narratives. The more we amble aimlessly around Antigua, the more I am drawn to its pieces, and the bits that draw me the most are the walls – both the scuffed-up sides of ordinary buildings and the decaying exteriors of the enormous number of ruins in this earthquake-terrorized town.

What draws me so insistently to these panels of imperfection? At home, I like modern architecture and clean lines, sleek surfaces and a dearth of clutter, yet the chipped and faded paint on the crumbling walls pulls me in, as do the hulking structures, half hollowed out, strewn around the town, their deterioration conjuring the past even as they sit among the trappings of modern life.

They please the eye first, a patchwork of color and texture, a random splash of shapes not specifically formed by man. The elements have crafted this art; the rain has faded the reds, the volcanic dirt has darkened the yellows, the brush of body parts and clothing has burnished the blues. Then they begin to work on memory, evoking time gone by both here and everywhere – the rise and fall of civilizations, of peoples and ideas.

Which color came first? Was it the oxidized reds and ochres that appear most frequently? The yellows seem old, too, and so soft, almost as if they were done in colored pencil.

I imagine the whites being added later, maybe the blues also, as later generations cooled the colors down, an attempt to add a little crisp cleanness to the hot, dusty town perhaps.

Paul Cooper, writing in a BBC art and culture article, says “[ruins] are places an observer can get lost, where time slips away.” I feel this happening at the sanctuary of San Francisco, a complex of religious structures outside of the main streets that is without question my favorite place in town.

There is a functioning church here, a faded beauty after multiple earthquakes altered its form over the years, but it’s the gardens around the church where a trance sets in and time does slip away. There are fields of stone rising from the earth, heaving up from the grass and among the palm trees.

Bougainvillea languishes on a shattered stairwell; splintered archways admit huge ovals of sky, and more gaping holes yawn in pitted walls. New green growth sprouts from dirt-filled crevices between stone and brick; I’m transfixed by the apposition of destruction and regrowth.

At a certain point, though, I snap to, and begin to question my infatuation with the decay. Is this like disaster tourism, wanting to exalt for the sake of art and literature what was a horrific time for generations of Guatemalans? Am I imposing a developed world appreciation for those “artistic” mottled walls on the modest city shops when they are really just a result of poverty, a fix that is simply unaffordable?

Cooper comes to my rescue on the first count. “Mankind has always lived among its own ruins. Since our earliest history, we have explored ruined places, feared them and drawn inspiration from them, and we can trace that complex fascination in our art and writing.” I study the pockmarked walls again and decide they have been left this way on purpose, and thankfully so. They are stunning and warm, simple and inviting.

We do hike our volcano, climb up to the cross on a hilltop overlooking the town, stray into a church or two, but for the most part, this stay is all about wandering and wondering for me.

Antigua – so aptly named – is a reminder that we carry the past, both good and bad, with us always. The things we build may not last what the earth throws at them either, but what is left has its own beauty and power. Especially here in Antigua.

 

A Dinner to Remember

Tags

cultural differences, dinnertime, family, Greece, memory

I am traveling this week between my old and new homes, so I will be lazy and recycle a story of a dinner I will never forget for this week’s photo challenge.

***

My first real connection with the wider world started with a little goat, a katsikaki, as it was called in the tiny arid villages of central Greece. I was a teenager at the time, on my first trip out of the United States. I had just spent a few weeks at a Greek Orthodox camp on the western shores of the country, and now I was traveling into the heart of the Peloponnese with my yiayia and papou to spend a week at Papou’s childhood home.

A distant relative was driving, and as we crawled along the rutted and twisted roads of Arcadia, my grandmother told me stories and taught me Greek in the back seat while the men sat up front, smoking silently as we rode. The road dipped and curled, backtracking endlessly upon itself as we climbed and descended the mountains and valleys. Although the windows were down, it felt as though we were looking through dirty glass as the dust swirled around us and the brown scrubgrass, muted green olive trees, and hazy summer sky melted together in a miasma of July heat. The car seemed to float across the landscape, its progress slow but steady in the oppressive warmth and constant thrum of cicadas and other chirping insects.

When she was young, Yiayia said, she had been rich and pretty and courted by many wealthy Greek suitors. She talked of trips on the Orient Express and her engagement to a young shipping magnate who had given her a silver ring encrusted with diamonds to herald the connection between the two aristocratic families. But that union was not meant to be, as my headstrong grandmother threw over the young scion for a dashing and hardworking immigrant new to America – my Papou.

It was his village we were riding to – a remote enclave of some 100 people, isolated and poor, deep in the heart of the mainland. Even the name conjured up images of ancient, black-garbed peasants, gnarled olive trees, mangy scrounging dogs, and mule paths that were now used as roads. Thoughts of the Orient Express, or even Athens, lay irretrievably far away as we pulled into the town square, a tiny area in front of the church. Old women emerged from the tiny stucco houses to wrap themselves around Papou’s neck – the long-lost son of the village. The widows keened over my grandfather’s arrival, but the children and young adults turned their attention to me – a blonde, green-eyed teenager in a jean skirt.

The week passed in slow motion, with morning trips up the hill to fresh water wells and afternoon gatherings in the tiny square for coffee and too-sweet pastries. Knots of old men and widows clustered in the streets, and farm animals emerged from under the houses to roam the village by day. The goats were the ring leaders, the billies bullying and the ewes taking up camp where they wished. Their babies, the katsikakia, were still innocent and irresistibly darling. The little one that lived under our house was my favorite, with its narrow head and silky ears. It scampered on the slender legs of a fawn and craved affection like a puppy as it moved its soft body into my legs. I spent hours with the tiny kid, hiding in the cool stone pen under the house, traipsing along with him to the well, and feeding him extra morsels of food away from the watchful eyes of Aunt S and Uncle T, my elderly hosts.

Finally, it was time to leave the village and return to Athens. Our bags were packed, the car was checked for the return drive, and goodbyes were said throughout the village. Sweet little Aunt S set the table with her finest belongings and spent the afternoon cooking a farewell feast for my grandparents and me. The house was festive; delicious aromas filled the air and the adults were cheerful as they sipped their retsina and smoked companionably on the grapevine-draped porch.

We took our seats at the table and were touched at the time and expense our poor relatives had invested in this meal. It might be years before American visitors came again, and S threw everything into making our last night special. The wine continued to flow, the small plates were passed, and S left to bring in the main course. She walked through the blue-painted door with a huge platter in her hands and a look of pure pride and happiness on her face. She came straight toward me. Puzzled, I glanced at my yiayia; the adults were always served first here. Aunt S beamed; “To katsikaki sou! …your little goat!” Stunned, horrified, nearly hysterical, I looked back at my grandmother. “Smile,” she hissed. “Say thank you … and eat it.”

I grew up that day, choking down this token of my relatives’ love and respect for me and my grandparents. They had given to me what I loved most in that tiny village and, as wrong as it all seemed to me at the time, it remains a hauntingly strong memory of that first trip away from home.