Jason Weiss
Meadowland
Tinta regada
1 de mayo de 2024
Like all bad dreams, this seemed quite real. And yet, it could only happen through unconsciousness. We first rolled into Oaxaca hours earlier, where we found a hotel without much trouble—one of those affairs with an elaborate inner patio garden, and the rooms off the corridors beyond. We put our bags in our rooms and headed back out to see the city while we still had half the afternoon. Someone suggested the steam baths, which sounded like a good idea, to relax and freshen up after driving for hours already to get there. Isaac or Nicky procured a joint from the proprietor of the baths, even better. And so, we schvitzed and got stoned a while, and when we were done wandered over to the popular market area nearby. It wasn’t long that we had plunged in among the stalls, however, before I got separated from the others and glancing about, saw I was suddenly on my own.Having never been to the city, I was completely lost. Could I even find my way back to the hotel? From that street to the steam baths to the market area, we had taken enough turns that I no longer felt too sure which direction it was in. The joint didn’t help matters exactly, but even so, it was nice. Still, I kept walking, taking my time, there was so much to look at. I was bound to run into my friends eventually. Of course I would, no use to panic. For several blocks I walked, to the end of the market in one direction, then turned to follow it to the left, and back up what seemed like the other side. The further I went, the less I could tell where I’d entered. Had I passed this way already? The market was large enough, with its various paths, that I hardly knew if a face or a stall was familiar. When you walk into a new place, you don’t think to notice every detail like you’re entering the minotaur’s labyrinth and will need to find your way out again. Besides, there was no minotaur, and when you go in with friends, it doesn’t occur to you how easily you might lose track of each other and what then.
As the situation persisted, I did begin to get a little worried. What was I going to do? Who could I ask for help? How would I explain? I wasn’t a little kid, although I was not entirely grown up yet either, if that mattered. No real plan of action materialized in my mind. Maybe if I stopped strolling around for a spell, let the crowds pass by, my friends would emerge when least expected. But how do you catch the unexpected by surprise? And then something else caught my ear instead. A young woman standing at the counter of her stall was singing a tune, wordlessly, that I recognized. It wasn’t a Mexican tune. Like a signal from far across the world it had landed there, by some unfathomable route, and I had stumbled forth from my own great distance to hear it. Only a few years earlier had I heard that song for the first time, on a record I found at the Berkeley Public Library, or maybe a cheap used copy I chanced upon at Moe’s Books, Pete Seeger and Frank Hamilton’s Nonesuch and Other Folk Tunes, on Folkways. An old Russian song, “Meadowland,” the melody had stuck in my head—as it has to this day, fifty years later. There seemed something miraculous about us meeting like that, me, the song, through the woman who was not much older than me, but I did not let on. I lingered just close enough to listen and yet remain unnoticed, to not disturb her brief reverie and mine as well.
From Other Lives Our Own (forthcoming)
