Pictures and no pictures

Today (Saturday, not now today due to the evils of Blogger, which have been causing me much rage) I went to a village, San Miguel Tlaixpan, to go to a place that turned out to be closed. (Most villages have two names – a saint and a difficult-to-prounounce-when-you-first-hear-it.) Which was irritating, but I had a little wander and took pictures of bougainvillea outside the church, rich and brilliant in the sun. It seems that here they put the dead elsewhere entirely, and in front of the church there is often a beautiful ornamental garden. It makes a difference – I think the church seems joyful rather than sombre, without the immediate proximity of the terror, mystery, solitude and sadness of all those inscrutable graves. And I can’t help thinking – rather, feeling – churches should have something of sombreness about them, and mystery, and perhaps even a hint of the terrible. I like graveyards very much, though I suppose I can like them just as much elsewhere.

I also took this photograph:















These flags were not as pretty as the ones in La Purificacion, and were sun-faded and wind-tattered – but they still fluttered and still made me happy. And I finally have a picture so now you know I wasn’t imagining it.

On my frustrated way back I decided to stop off at Parque Nacional Molino de Flores. I have been there briefly before, for a meal, but not really seen beyond the car park and the place we ate.

There is nothing like visiting late in the afternoon, when the sunlight is golden and slanting and when most of the visitors have gone home, for falling in love with a place.

It is beautiful, and I fell in love with it. But, perverse being that I am, this time I wanted my eyes to be enough and I just didn’t want to take any pictures, not today.

It isn’t what we would think of as a national park – a group of historic colonial buildings with a bit of land around it, with food and souvenir stalls and restaurants and a children’s funfair and pony rides. The buildings are gorgeous – half-ruined but with all their grandeur and grace – all steps and staircases; windows in tumbling, roofless walls; doorways and archways; courtyards and rooms that are courtyards now. And being Mexico, all the dangerous ruins that children might possibly fall off aren’t really safeguarded, so you can wander and explore and enjoy it without being fenced off from all the exciting bits.

Then there is a gorge with a stream tumbling between boulders and children playing, and at the top a little waterfall, and everywhere bridges to somewhere and nowhere, and more flights of steps, and in the side of the rock a church that you step into straight from an iron bridge, and tall trees that make you feel entirely at peace.

I bought a bag of biscuits from some elderly nuns making their rounds with their baskets, in cream habits like heavenly robes. It’s a good wheeze: even I can’t say no to a nun, so imagine how the Catholics feel.

Walking back to catch a bus through all the stalls and restaurants couldn’t take the shine off it, nor even the inevitable rubbish all over the place. Three children – two girls and a boy – had taken over an empty stall to play at feasting from a doll’s teaset, carefully pouring juice into the tiny cups.

I walked away smiling.