Oaxaca Journal, Oliver Sacks, 2019.

These are my notes on Oaxaca Journal, by Oliver Sacks, 2019. This is part 8 of the course of essay reading I am doing with CT; in particular, this is part of what we have dubbed ‘The Summer of Sacks.’ Strictly speaking, these are not essays but rather chapters — or daily entries – from a journal he kept of a trip to Oaxaca, Mexico, with the American Fern Society.

Contents

Introduction

Sacks opens by writing of his love of the Natural History journals of the nineteenth century, and their blend of the personal and professional. He notes that most of the naturalists were essentially amateurs, self-taught, and feeling their way before or as biology and botany were crystalizing into sciences. He adds:

This sweet, unspoiled, preprofessional atmosphere, ruled by a sense of adventure and wonder rather than by egotism and a lust for priority and fame, still survives here and there, it seems to me, in certain natural history societies, and amateur societies of astronomers and archaeologists, whose quiet yet essential existences are virtually unknown to the public. It was the sense of such an atmosphere that drew me to the American Fern Society in the first place, that incited me to go with them on their fern-tour to Oaxaca early in 2000.
Oliver Sacks, Oaxaca Journal, p xiv

Friday (NYC to Oaxaca: planes and airports)

Sacks notes that he has made little attempt to turn his daily journal into a more polished account, though he admits to adding a little background on topics like chocolate. But mostly, this is his journal as he wrote it, and thus he begins with boarding the flight to Oaxaca where he the members of his tour will coalesce.

The plane itself – an AeroMexico flight – has an atmosphere quite unlike anything I’ve ever seen. We are scarcely off the ground before everyone gets up – chatting in the aisles, opening bags of food, breast-feeding babies – an instant social scene, like a Mexican café or market. One is already in Mexico as soon as one boards. … How crucial it is to see other cultures, to see how special, how local they are, how un-universal one’s own is.
Oliver Sacks, Oaxaca Journal, p 1

There are two things I like here. One is that his description of the scene in the plane reminds me of an experience Katie and I had riding a bus in the Yucatan. The bus was taking to visit one or more archeological sites whose names currently escape me. We were moving through a city, and what struck me was that the bus driver had his window open and was chatting with people on the street at stoplights; or he would call out to people, or they to him. In the U.S. I am used to being in a sort of spatial bubble when I am traveling in a vehicle; one is isolated from those in other vehicles, and certainly from pedestrians. Not so in Mexico. Space flows and connects in a much more interleaved way.

The second is his observation on the locality of culture, how non-universal what we assume are our ways of interacting. And, although he did not make a point of this, at how clearly this indicates that culture is produced by people interacting. The social scene is not because the plane is Mexican, but that the people are; and furthermore, with a critical mass, their culture embraces and entrains others…

Sacks also describes the American Fern Society, and gives a bit of its history and a sense of its character. Here he discusses his love of 19th century natural history, and the role of amateurs in science; this theme is extracted and used in the introduction, which I have already discussed.

The chapter ends with the arrival in the Oaxaca airport.

Saturday (The Delights of Oaxaca City)

As we learn later, the group — 30 people in all — is staying in a hotel on the outskirts of Oaxaca. The chapter opens as they are doing a bus tour of Oaxaca City. We get a sense for the group — many of them are avid birders, and having more luck at spotting birds than ferns in central Oaxaca. The tour visits many site I’m familiar with: Santa Domingo Church, the market, the Zoccolo, and the Chocolate Factory. All these resonate with me, but in particular the description of the Chocolate Factory is memorable. Here families from the county arrive with sacks of beans, and they are roasted, and then ground. The factory is noisy with the whir of the grinding machines, and redolent with odors as thick chocolate liquor infused with cinnamon and chili and other spices oozes out of the machines. Sacks remind us of Proust and his madeleines, and the way that taste and especially smell open the gates of memory. We also get a bit of history of Mexico, provided by the tour guide, and fill-in information on chocolate and chilis and so forth.

reading break

Sunday (Foray to the Meadow of Flowers)

The plan for the day is to visit Llano de las Flores (Meadow of the Flowers), although it is in the midst of winter (the dry season), and there will be no flowers. There will be some ferns, and we begin to learn about them and their interesting reproductive cycle (with the alternating generations of sporophyte and gametophyte), as well as learn about various other tour participants as the day unfolds.

We also learn about Sacks, and that, while he appreciates ferns, he prefers the more primitive “fern affiliates,” like lugworts and lichen. I was amused by his rationale (and wondered if it was somehow an echo of his mostly-closeted life as a gay man):

But I, though I also appreciate the beatify of such adaptations, prefer the green and scentless world of ferns, an ancient green would, the world as it was before the coming of flowers. A world, too, with a charming modesty, where reproductive organs — stamens and pistils — are not thrust out flamboyantly but concealed, with a certain delicacy, on the undersides of leafy fronds.
Oliver Sacks, Oaxaca Journal, page 42

We also learn about hallucinogenic plants, the importance of nitrogen fixing, and the various chemical defenses of bracken. At lunch, Sacks over-eats, and also affected by the altitude, is ill for the rest of the day. It is just as well, as this chapter has gotten quite long, and we’ve had quite a lot about ferns!

Monday (Tule Tree and Yagul)

This is a short chapter. There is a bus tour of sites in the vicinity of Oaxaca, most notably the 6,000+ year old Tule tree, and the ruins of Yagul.

Tuesday (Solo in the Zocalo)

Today is a long trip to the coast, which Sacks opts out of due to what he later regretfully refers to as the “banality of a slipped disk.” Instead, he takes a shuttle bus and spends much of the day in the Zocalo. It is a short but lovely chapter. I believe it is my favorite, and it’s curious as to why that should be the case: it is not about ferns, or natural history, or touring or exploration. It is about sitting and observing and reflecting.

I have found a little table at an outdoor cafe in the zócalo. The cathedral, noble, dilapidated, is to my left, and this charming, alive plaza is full of handsome young people and cafés. In front of me old Indian women in serapes and straw hats sell religious cons and trinkets by the cathedral. The trees (Indian Laurels, so-called, though they are a species of fig) are verdant, and the sky and air springlike. Huge clusters of balloons, helium-fled, strain upward on their leashes — some look big enough to carry a child away. Some have broken free and have lodged in the branches of trees above the square.
Oliver Sacks, Oaxaca Journal, p 80

So, this being my favorite bit probably says a lot about me and what I value. I find immense pleasure in being somewhere, public yet anonymous, with something good to read or engaging to write, with the possibility of savory food or refreshing drink, with the opportunity to watch the slow ballet of people as the interact with one another, or simply respond to the space and environment. As Sacks notes:

When I came to this square a few hours ago, everyone avoided the shade and sat huddled in the sun, warming themselves like lizards in its rays; now the pattern is reversed – the sun-baked cafés and benches are deserted, while those in the cool shade are packed. And then, in the late afternoon, they trek back to catch the sun’s last rays. It would be nice to have a time-lapse film of this diurnal migration. A frame every thirty seconds, a thousand in eight hours, would give a delightful minute-long summary of this cycle.
Oliver Sacks, Oaxaca Journal, p. 81-82

It reminds me of William Whyte’s The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces, where he looks at the way in which people interact with strangers, and with the environment. He, too, observed how inhabitants of a square — in this case, I believe, in Chicago – followed the sun when it was cool, and sought the shade when it was warm. And at all time, being good Americanos, maintained as much distance between themselves as possible. Do Mexicans do likewise? I don’t know.

Wednesday (Mineral Spring visit)

Today, after the long expedition (for everyone but Sacks) is a day of easy optional activities. Sacks chooses to go on an outing to the Hierve de augua Mineral Springs. There are more ferns to be appreciated, and they receive their due. Sacks marvels at the Mineral Spring:

The spring percolates through a whole mountain of limestone before it bubbles out from the side of the mountain into a huge basin, and from here it tracks downward, depositing lime and other minerals as it goes, until it makes its final drop from a semicircle of cliffs. But by this time, with evaporation and absorption, the water is so saturated with minerals that it crystallizes, turns to stone, as it falls, thus the “petrified water-fall.” It is an amazing simulacrum of a waterfall, consisting not of water but of the mineral calcite, yellowish-white, hanging in vast rippling sheets from the cliffs above.
Oliver Sacks, Oaxaca Journal, p. 91

But his companions, after a glance, a more interested in ferns. It seems to me that Sacks’ boyhood interest in chemistry has saved him (in my view), allowed him to glimpse the wonder of this non-living phenomenon. But Sacks, too, has his predilections,

What fascinates me equally are the mosses and the tiny heart-shaped liverworts adhering to these bone-dry rocks. I would not have thought such things possible, for one thinks of these (liverworts above all) as quintessentially moist and moisture-loving plants, among the first plants to make it onto land, but having (one would think) no way of conserving water or otherwise protecting themselves, for they have such thin and delicate tissues. But they are evidently able to survive the dry season, apparently quite as well as the xerophytic ferns. The question is – must ask John – whether flowering plants can do as well as these “primitives” in this sort of suspended animation.
Oliver Sacks, Oaxaca Journal, p. 91-92

The tour continues, and eventually returns to the hotel to rejoin the entire group. Sacks reflects on his experience, and how he feels a part of the group — which excepting himself is entirely couples (straight, gay or lesbian):

I myself may be the only single person here, but I have been single, a singleton, all my life. Yet here this does not matter in the least, either. I have a strong feeling of being one of the group, of belonging, of communal affection – a feeling that is extremely rare in my life, and may be in part a cause of a strange “symptom” I have had, an odd feeling in the last day or so, which I was hard put to diagnose, and first ascribed to the altitude. It was, I suddenly realized, a feeling of joy, a feeling so unusual I was slow to recognize it. There are many causes for this joyousness, I suspect – the plants, the ruins, the people of Oaxaca – but the sense of this sweet community, belonging, is surely a part of it.
Oliver Sacks, Oaxaca Journal, p. 99-100

I wonder about this. I first became interested… intrigued?… by Sacks in reading his final book, Gratitude. I was struck by the joy with which he looked back on his life — which clearly had many non-joyful moments. But, by the time of Gratitude, joy seemed to be part of his being. Was this really a rather late discovery? Did it begin on this trip to Oaxaca? I’m not sure, but I take pleasure in thinking that even later in life one can learn things that shape who one is and how one views one’s lifelong experience.

Thursday (Mitla, Matatlan, Teotitlan de Valle)

A tour around the tourist attractions within a few hours of Oaxaca city. The Mitla ruins with their geometric forms; Matatlan with its mescal distilleries; Teotitlan de Valle with its weaving. With regard to Mitla, Sacks makes an interesting connection to neurology:

But the ceilings, the tops of the walls, have exquisite, complex, geometrical figures. I copy some of these into my note-book – tessellations, ramparts, like the visual “fortification” patterns one may get during a migraine, and complex hexagonal and pentagonal patterns. I am reminded of patterns in Navajo rugs, of Moorish arabesques. Normally one of the more silent members of the group – who am I to speak up in so erudite a group? – I am stimulated by the geometric figures around us to speak of neurological form-constants, the geometrical hallucinations of honey-combs, spiderwebs, latticeworks, spirals, or funnels which can appear in starvation, sensory deprivation or intoxications, as well as migraine. Were psilocybin mushrooms used to induce such hal-lucinations? Or the morning glory seeds common in Oaxaca? People are startled by my sudden loquacity, but intrigued by the notion of universal hallucinatory form-constants, a possible neurological foundation for the art of so many cultures.
—Oliver Sacks, Oaxaca Journal, p. 109

Friday (Monte Alban and the ball court)

A visit to Monte Alban, with reflections on Olmec and Zapotec civilizations, and the role of astronomy. Discussion of the game played in the ball courts, and of the use of rubber to make the balls and the export of rubber to Europe

Saturday (Visit to Boone’s place in Ixtlan)

A journey to Boone’s place near Ixtlan, punctuated by an encounter with the military embodied in very young boys with machine guns. A discussion of neatness or elegance. Ferning at 8,000 feet. Boone’s aims to improve life for the locals by finding a perennial species of corn and perhaps using its corn-smut resistant genes for cross-breeding.

Sunday (Last full day of ferning, and departure)

A brief final chapter describing the last day of ferning, a non-threatening encounter with some dogs, and a picnic. Includes early depature on Monday for the airport, where Sacks reflects on the trip and says final goodbyes.