From Mexico

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anguille
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Joined: Sat Jul 17, 2010 12:02 am

From Mexico

Postby anguille » Wed Aug 04, 2010 7:12 pm

If someone wants to know something about Mexico, please ask me, because I want to know about you and your country.

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Rumpelteazer
Posts: 143
Joined: Mon Aug 24, 2009 5:30 pm
Group: Cheltenham
Location: Gloucestershire, UK

Re: From Mexico

Postby Rumpelteazer » Wed Aug 04, 2010 10:01 pm

Hi Anguille

It's lovely to see someone from Mexico on the forum. I live in Gloucestershire in the UK - in the middle of the countryside. I used to live in London during the week, but I much prefer the natural surroundings of the Cotswolds. I've never been to Mexico, but I have been on a bird-watching holiday to Costa Rica, which was wonderful - masses of hummingbirds and the gorgeous resplendant quetzal.

I've seen from the international links page on the main website that there are two groups in Mexico. Which do you belong to? I would be interested to know how many there are in your group and what sort of material you study. Do you use our papers from the UK, the New York papers, the Spanish ones, or perhaps you produce your own? I expect you have explored the Archive forum and seen the amazing amount of material we have there. I find it's particularly good during the long summer holidays to have something to read and something specific to practise (our groups don't start again until mid September).

What would you like to know about the UK?

anguille
Posts: 8
Joined: Sat Jul 17, 2010 12:02 am

Re: From Mexico

Postby anguille » Fri Aug 06, 2010 11:16 pm

Hi¡ Rumpelteazer


I´ve never been to London but I met to Mr. Peter Eadie and some members from UK when they came to Mexico.
I belong to the Group of Mexico city. We are about 40 members. We read papers from UK, from New York and The Audiences of H. H. I usually read the material from the Archive forum. I know you like to read, I like it too. We´ll start the meetings the last week of August.
I would like to know if Gloucestrshire is a small city or big city, an ancient city or modern city or both. Are the buildings ancient or modern?. Does the city has a theater? Do you like to go to the theater? What are the main economic activities in the city? When you go to the town, how far away is from your home? Do you like to travel in your country? What is your favourite city? And how is the climate? It´s hot or It´s rainy in the summer time.

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Rumpelteazer
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Joined: Mon Aug 24, 2009 5:30 pm
Group: Cheltenham
Location: Gloucestershire, UK

Re: From Mexico

Postby Rumpelteazer » Sat Aug 07, 2010 11:32 am

Hello again, Anguille. I'm very pleased you are using the Archive.

What a lot of questions! First, Gloucestershire is a county rather than a city. It's an area of just over 1,000 square miles comprising: limestone hills dotted with small areas of broadleaved woodland (known as the Cotswolds); the Severn valley - a fertile plain either side of the river Severn; and the mixed woodland of the Forest of Dean and Wye Valley to the west. The climate is very varied and unpredictable. We recently had a drought lasting over a month but now it is raining a bit. It rarely gets uncomfortably hot in summer - mostly around the low 20's C (low 70's F), but where I am we are often snowed in for a few days in winter. The Severn river often floods and we had particularly bad floods in 2007.

I think the main areas of economic activity in Gloucestershire are probably financial services (mostly insurance, funds management), distribution and warehousing, and tourism (in the Cotswolds and Forest of Dean). There are also a few small and medium-sized manufacturing companies. Gloucestershire has one city, Gloucester, which is not very big and with the exception of the Cathedral not very interesting architecturally. But the Cathedral is lovely. (Have a look at this photo of the cloisters.) It has recently become well-known because parts of the Harry Potter films were filmed there. There are regular concerts and the Three Choirs festival is held there every three years. One member of our group - a musician - held a 'sound workshop' in the crypt one evening, by candlelight after all the visitors had left and the Cathedral doors were locked. It was magical.

Cheltenham is a large town very close to Gloucester and this has some fine Regency buildings as well as lots of new building. It has a theatre and a lovely old spa building, the Pump Room, in the middle of a park. This is where I generally go to hear concerts and piano recitals. But my favourite nearby town is Cirencester which is mostly old stone buildings from between the 15th and 19th century. This website has some photos.

I live right out in the Cotswold countryside surrounded by fields and woodlands, roughly equidistant from Gloucester, Cheltenham and Cirencester - all about 10-12 miles away. There are also many very beautiful small villages in the Cotswolds. I'm not at all keen on towns and cities - I prefer to spend as much time as possible in natural surroundings. You have probably seen this quotation from HH which was in the recent New York paper on Bliss:
Go out once a week or fortnight into the open and let your senses and mind have a fresh air, natural noise, clean and pure smell and natural sight to look at. These are good food for senses and mind which come through finer vibrations.
So I'm very lucky to be able to do this every day. We are particularly lucky in the UK to have a huge network of public footpaths through fields, over hills, by rivers and through woodland. There are around 3,400 miles of footpaths in Gloucestershire alone. This is an example from one of my favourite walks.
I don't tend to travel very much within the UK apart from going down to Devon to walk along the coastal path or on Dartmoor.

So do you live in Mexico city or outside the city? Do you manage to get out into the countryside? Or do you prefer the city? From what I've heard, Mexico city is a great cultural centre with very good museums, art galleries concert halls, theatres etc.

anguille
Posts: 8
Joined: Sat Jul 17, 2010 12:02 am

Re: From Mexico

Postby anguille » Sun Aug 08, 2010 5:37 am

Hello Rumpealteazer

I really enjoyed your description. thank you for it.
I live outside of The Mexico city, but I work near to the town and I have to go there every day and it takes about one and half hour. In Mexico city you can see the ancient past and the present in one street. When I see that kind of strange visions I think the time into the eternity past too fast. One of my favorite places outside of the city is Cuernavaca, where Malcom Lowrly wrote "Under The Volcano". The climate is spring almost all the year. A lot of kind of birds and bouterflies flying arouns you, and the landscape is so beautiful. It´s a wonderful food for the senses, I feel so good when I go there, is easy remeber the P.A. there.
The summer in Mexico It´s rainy and changing all day, in the morning It´s cool in the midle of the day It´s hot, in the evening rains a lot.

Today I just make one question. What is your favorite novel?

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Rumpelteazer
Posts: 143
Joined: Mon Aug 24, 2009 5:30 pm
Group: Cheltenham
Location: Gloucestershire, UK

Re: From Mexico

Postby Rumpelteazer » Sun Aug 08, 2010 5:54 pm

Hi Anguille

Cuernavaca sounds lovely. It's good to have somewhere like that within easy reach. I have vivid memories of the wonderful butterflies we saw in Costa Rica. I imagine yours may be similar. Blue Morphos were my favourite. My husband had a lot of fun trying to photograph them!

I don't really have a favourite novel, but here is a list of the ones that came immediately to mind, in no particular order. They are all among the very short list of novels I have read more than once, and all had some kind of impact, over many years, on the way I thought about things:

  • Emma by Jane Austin - set in the physically and psychologically constrained world of the early 19th century English gentry, it is a wonderful illustration of how interfering in other people's lives, albeit with the best of intentions, can lead to misunderstandings and unfortunate consequences.
  • Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier - an exciting story with the moral that you should not unquestioningly believe other people's perceptions of people and events of which you have no direct knowledge. The truth may be entirely different ...
  • The Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov - science fiction novels based on his concept of psycho-history - the 'science' of predicting and then influencing the course of human history by considering human behaviour en masse as purely mechanical and therefore in statistical terms, predictable. (His 'Robot series' is also excellent - exploring what makes humans 'human'.)
  • The Strange Life of Ivan Osokin by P.D. Ouspensky - about the difficulty, at an individual level, of escaping from repeated mechanical behaviour patterns. (The only novel with a 'happy ending' that reduced me to tears when I first read it in my early 20s.)
  • Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban. Describes a world after a nuclear war where the survivors live a very primitive life but with access to scattered remnants of past civilisations. Language has decayed to an extraordinary, partially phonetic approximation of phrases from earlier civilisations. Unfortunately the entire book is written in this (invented) language which makes it pretty difficult to read even for people whose mother tongue is English. But for those able to read it, it does present interesting parallels with how ancient knowledge and teachings have decayed over time into the religions of today in which most of the inner truth and meaning has been lost.
  • Siddhartha by Herman Hesse - about a spiritual journey to enlightenment through the many different experiences gained from living a normal life in the world.
What is/are your favourite novel(s)?

anguille
Posts: 8
Joined: Sat Jul 17, 2010 12:02 am

Re: From Mexico

Postby anguille » Mon Aug 09, 2010 12:33 am

Hi again Rumpelteazer,

The footpaths through the fields in UK are beautiful. And the landscapes are wonderful. I think you feel happy for living there. I saw the photographs and I feel a still place.
The climate in Costa Rica is the same in some beaches of Mexico, It´s hot almost every day. I have not seen the Blue Morphos, just in the tv, and It´s a wonderful butterfly.
You mentioned some of my favourite novels and authors; “Siddartha”, “The Strange life of Ivan Osokin”. I love the science fiction, Isaac Asimov is one of my favourite authors.
I enjoyed reading these novels:

Voyage to Ixtlan by Carlos Castaneda. Carlos Castaneda is an anthropologist and He was researching the tradition medicine when He met old men in the north of Mexico known as Don Juan, who know all the ancient secrets of the traditional medicine. It is a wonderful and strange history. Carlos Castaneda always said that the history is a real history. I think this is a great novel, because is very difficult to stop reading.

El siglo de las luces by Alejo Carpentier. This novel is about a cuban that lived in Spain during the civil war. Alejo Carpentier was one of the most important writers of Cuba. I like very much some of his novels.

Pedro Páramo and El llano en llamas by Juan Rulfo. Juan Rulfo is one of the most important writer of México. Their histories are during and after the revolution in México.
I love some classics novels like Ulises by James Joyce, A la recherché du temp perdu by Marcel Proust.

The concert that you mentioned in your reply I think was wonderful. What is your favourite music?

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Rumpelteazer
Posts: 143
Joined: Mon Aug 24, 2009 5:30 pm
Group: Cheltenham
Location: Gloucestershire, UK

Re: From Mexico

Postby Rumpelteazer » Mon Aug 09, 2010 6:19 pm

anguille wrote:I love the science fiction, Isaac Asimov is one of my favourite authors.
I think science fiction is a much undervalued genre. It provides a way of questioning objectively the political, ethical, cultural and religious ideas and beliefs to which we are attached - especially those that cannot be discussed openly in an impartial way for fear of being laughed at, ostracised or worse. A good science fiction author shines a light on the strange psychology and behaviours of human beings. When I'm in a difficult or annoying situation, I sometimes find it helpful to imagine an alien being from some distant planet watching it all with curiousity, perhaps some amusement, and of course, entirely detached. Whatever that alien is thinking is probably exactly what I should be thinking.

My favourite composers (from each era) are: Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Debussy, the earlier works of Stravinsky, Gershwin - the first two being my overall favourites. But there many pieces that I love by other composers. I also like some types of jazz - e.g. ragtime, Dave Brubeck, Bill Evans.

What sort of music do you like?

anguille
Posts: 8
Joined: Sat Jul 17, 2010 12:02 am

Re: From Mexico

Postby anguille » Fri Aug 13, 2010 5:17 am

Hi¡ Rumpelteazer


I read science fiction some years ago with passion because the genre of science fiction gave me the opportunity of imagine a lot of kind of worlds and a lot of kind of strange life. And you right is and undervalued genre I don´t know why because is very difficult write a good tale or novel of science fiction. And you have to know some branches of science or be a scientific and also a good writer.
Your metaphor about the alien is nice and truth. If We want to find another right and truth point of view We have to be like an detached alien. I´ve not read recently science fiction, I wish to read something new, if you know some good writer of the new age of the science fiction please tell me his or her name.

I like very much the Baroque music, and ancient sacred music, I enjoy the Byzantine Chant, Maronite Chant by Soer Marie Keyrouz, she has her web page. I like Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Vivaldi, Telemann and in the 20th century Olivier Messiaen “Quatuor our la Fin du Temps”
I like Jazz music, Blues, something music of Rock and Roll and Rock. But I always back to the classical and ancient music.

Diogenes
Posts: 15
Joined: Tue Sep 08, 2009 10:25 am

Re: From Mexico

Postby Diogenes » Sat Aug 14, 2010 3:32 pm

I particularly like short stories by Ray Bradbury.


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