Part 2: Pescador de Hombres, San Andres Xecul

On the way back down the hill from the chapel, we caught San Simon. San Simon is not a saint in the Catholic sense . . . but people are very enthused. I believe his more famous shrine is in a nearby town called Zunil, and another version named Maximon at Lago Atitlan.

Best I can understand from what people have told me, San Simon was an English doctor a few hundred years ago who helped a lot of people out. So for this, he is now venerated as something of a Catholic saint/Mayan deity. I forget the specific Mayan deity, and again, he's not an actual Catholic saint, but in San Andres the Virgin of Guadalupe appears to be quite comfortable up on the wall next to him. People bring candles . . . different colors for different things. I was told that red is love, black is for some variety of ill wishes, and purple is for prostitutes who want more work. Green and yellow were the most popular candles but no one said what they were for.

There were actually two San Simons in the same room at the spot in San Andres. This might sound weird until you consider how many crucifixes you'll see in any given Catholic church, or how many Steely Dan records I own. (All of them, thanks.)

Here he is:


Here's the more traditional and more important figure of San Simon. People bring him cigarettes and aguardiente and whisky. He has a permanent cigarette holder on a chain around his neck, so you can give him a lit cigarette if you like, and you can actually pour the whisky right down his throat as well.





Anyway, it feels dirty to take pictures of and make jokes about something that people really believe in, so I hope none of this lightheartedness comes of as disrespect. It's just that it seemed sort of surreal to me. When we got there, there was a family there. Dad/granddad was bringing each kid up to San Simon one at a time and twirling a cane around the kid's head several times. I really wanted to know what the significance of it all was, and I thought about asking. But then I thought maybe it would've been disrespectful to force someone to respond to my robotic "how's my subjunctive coming along" childspeak at that moment.

San Simon moves to a new house every year. At first I thought this made a lot of sense from a social welfare standpoint: at 5Q per visitor for 365 days, San Simon rakes it in for whichever family hosts him. If everyone in town got San Simon once in a lifetime, it could be a big help and sort of an economic bedrock of the local community. But ours is not that kind of world, and it turns out San Simon is basically owned by a group of rich people, and if you pay them enough money they will let you keep him around for a year.

There's nothing much to say about the actual church except that it's great. It's a pretty run-of-the-mill Catholic church for the most part, except that about 50 years ago someone decided it would be a good idea to coat it in primary colors. It's repainted every three years.


Again with the mix of religious tradtions: the jaguar is a Mayan deity (someone told me the sun deity), and there are jaguars hanging out near the cross at the top.


Inside they have really gone all out with neon, including Christmas lights on the various saints' halos. The neon banner above Jesus reminds me of the one at St. Sabina's in Chicago.



More Leonard Cohen: Check out this old PBS video of him and Judy Collins singing "Suzanne". There's also a good version of them doing "That's No Way to Say Goodbye," but I like "Suzanne" better because Judy Collins mispronounces the word "drowning" at the 1:50 mark. Supposedly there's a performance of "Famous Blue Raincoat" as well, but I can't find it. Incidentally, this non-sequitir YouTube link is actually relevant to the post, thanks, because Jesus was a sailor when he walked upon the water.


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Part 1: Pescador de Hombres, San Andres Xecul

Went yesterday to San Andres Xecul, which is maybe 30 minutes from Xela, and famous for its colorful church. "Famous for its colorful church" is maybe not a phrase that promises to impress, but I would have to say that this church had me absolutely floored by virtue of its yellowness. This is one of my favorite things I have ever seen in my life. This is not an exaggeration. This is a shaping up to be a very direct blog post.

We first climbed the hill up to an equally colorful but apparently less-of-a-big-deal chapel. It sits next to a small piece of land with three crosses, Calvary-style, the place constantly on fire for reasons having to do with worship: here's a kind of syncretism going on here, Catholic rituals mixing with Mayan. I took some shots and then felt voyeuristic and obnoxious when I realized what was going on. Such is life, such is my every day here.


The cross on the left gets sort of lost in this shot, but it's there in real life.




I almost like the chapel better than the church, for the ghosts dancing underneath the pineapples up top.



I loved the view of the church from the top.


For the record, I just listened to a Bob Dylan version of "Hallelujah" and it sucked. Not a song to be performed by someone who's arguably been phoning everthing in since his late-twenties.

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Give Us Your Best Sid Vicious

In which Cristian looks like a character from Mike Tyson's Punchout, and Steven looks eerily, embarrassingly like Bam Bam Bigelow.

Jessica and Cristian are from Germany, and they are so nice that they are perhaps reason enough to one day visit that country. Though I'd also like to see Berlin at some point in my life.

Later on in this evening I looked down only to find that I was bleeding.


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A Charlie Horse, Of Course

Unrelated: Pulled up YouTube to satiate a minor Leonard Cohen fixation . . . does anyone have strong feelings one way or the other about Jeff Buckley's version of "Hallelujah?"

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"Negocios as Usual"

Shouts go out to Eric for the post-title idea. This is our EPMD shot, and given the apparent size of my face I fear that I may have to be the Eric to his Parrish. Who's booty?

Anyway, Eric rolled through town like ball lightning with his very cool friends Kat and Nick, charmed everyone with his salsa-dancing abilities and general social uterus-ness, and by morning was Copan-bound, via Mazatenango.

Eric, please tell me how long the ride to Mazate was, because I'm supposed to go visit someone there before I leave. Hello to Nick and Kat.

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Can't Stop Won't Stop Sellin' Mad Izm

Good to see that Junior Senator Burris is getting the complete cold shoulder from everyone now that it appears that he perjured himself in Blago's impeachment proceedings. However, in entertainment value this is a far cry from the rad stuff His Royal Bardness Blago was pulling last month. I'm hoping that he gets a TV show in some weird twist of pop-culture weirdness.

In the meantime, is it a sign of creepy hokeyness that I found this funny?

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Two random music thoughts from Guatemala, followed by a question and a Manu Chao reference.

The other day Eric and his fine amig -o and -a swung through Xela, from El Salvador, on the way to Panama (???). We had a fine time at a gringo-fied spot near Parque Central, watching karaoke and awaiting our never-to-be-had opportunity to absolutely slay "Back in the USSR" for the good people of Xela. Pictures to be posted. On our way out the door, after karaoke was over, we heard two tracks from Portishead's Dummy.

I would just like to go on record as saying that I really really like that record, and that I will be burning the more recent record from Jessica when I get home. Incidentally, I heard the same two tracks ("Biscuit," and I forget the name of the other) before a panel discussion about the recent insanity in Gaza, and while I'm losing any thread of a coherent thought at this point in this post, I will just say again that that was a really good album.

Then I grabbed a hot chocolate with a couple friends Tuesday night, and heard Black Sabbath's "Iron Man," which is a song I dismissed when I was in high school as music for motocross fans. Ten years removed from that oppressive culture (not of high school, but rather of motocross fans), I have to say that the doomy, bendy guitar part at the beginning sounds really cool. (It also sounds like you are about to die.)

We also caught a live version of Descendents' "I'm Not a Loser," and even though I think it was Sublime performing it, I was still into it. Which reminds me: Anyone out there hear the Descendents album that came out last year, and if so, was it good?

Clearly I'm missing some of the music that sits on my shelves, even though I really have come to enjoy a lot of the music I hear here as well.

Yesterday at the end of the Spanish lesson, Saul was like, "Do you like music, what kind of music do you like?" I often avoid answering this question in the U.S., and a person sounds like even more of a goon answering it in a language they are not good at using. And on top of that, the endless genre-slicing and splicing that goes on these days poses a problem: how to reassemble all the feigned-obscurity into a reasonably meaningful response to a fair and simple question? I gave up at "varios tipos."

Saul's response was simple: "Do you like Manu Chao?" Manu Chao sort of makes me depressed for whatever reasons, but his songs also account for something like 25% of the spanish I knew before I got to Guatemala, so: "Of course." Saul pulled out a guitar and gave me a lyric sheet and made me sing "Clandestino" with him. "Can you play the guitar?" No. "Then we will have a lesson tomorrow." Thanks, Saul.

Too much pointless text requires a few pointless photos:

Saw some rad stuff today and am excited to share colorful photos of a colorful church in a colorful place.

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Miranda Rights Too?

Via Jessica, found out the North Dakota House passed a bill to give fertilized eggs the same rights as people. Presumably this means that they still don't have the right to health care . . . which is maybe a kind of loophole? I guess we'll leave that to the legal minds. Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't this the Roe v. Wade powderkeg that the antichoice folks have been trying to pass for three years?

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Our Lady of the Leaking Overpass, Chicago, 2006

Chicago folks, remember when the Blessed Mother stopped by the Kennedy Expressway?

Shouts go out to Gil, caught taking a photo in this very photo. Meta.



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Random LA Shot, 2006

Sitting around on Important Business (waiting to pay the school) and ran across this. Shortly after I moved to LA I decided I liked it because I kept seeing things like this:

Sorry about image size and quality. Thanks to Danny for the heads up on changing photo size.

Oddly Romantic Non-Sequitir Spanish Lesson

Today I was with my teacher Saul and I heard this song that I recognized floating in from from the other room. I asked why I recognized the song and we went into the other room to listen. Saul immediately recognized the song and said with a laugh, "Perhaps you were in love with a woman."

????

Not sure what that meant but it did not qualify as a reason to remember the song. I recognized the song because it was Vicente Fernandez.

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Dinner Hour, Fatima

This is Juanito. Juanito is the youngest son in the family that fed me for a week at the mountain school that I went to in late-January. Juanito has a six-month old niece who sometimes sends him into fits of jealousy, but otherwise he is always charmed and always wants to know everyone's name, even though he never remembers. "Como te llama, vos?"

This kid on the left in the green shirt: I don't know his name but I'm partial to him, in part because all the other kids his age make fun of him and try to force him out of the pictures, and he weathers it with a certain quiet dignity. On this particular day he and his friend/brother asked me to take their photo, and when I agreed they very quickly moved together and adjusted for the shot. Check out the subtle pinky hand-hold. I love that the little kid in the red shirt, all of three or four years old, looks like an old man. He's dressed for retirement.

The girl on the left asked for a photo, and the girl on the right was certain that she was out of the frame. Check out lefty's identical pose in every photo.



Juanito is everywhere you turn in Fatima.

Not sure who this other kid is.


Kevin is Juanito's older brother, and he showed up with what appears to be a box of cigarettes, wanting to be in all the photos.



More than anything, Kevin wanted to be in his own photo.


These kids wanted bike shots.

Once again they didn't want to let dignified pinky kid (orange shirt) in the photo.

When he finally got in, he also got bunny ears.

One of the kids wanted to take a photo, and when he did he accidentally cut off dignified orange shirt pinky kid's head.

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