Rebecca a Ghost Presence in Mérida in 2018

Cenote de los Sacrificios - Chichen Itza - 2007

Rosemary and I returned from a trip to Mérida, Yucatán this past Monday.

I have to admit here that in the beginning of this 2018 I have been overwhelmed by stuff including a trip in January to New York City. I have been remiss in writing blogs. I don’t think I have ever had so many holes to fill. I don’t skip days I have not blogged. I go back and fill them.

But I have been thinking (I am 75) on the futility (I am not sure of this word) of keeping my stiff upper lip and to soldier on and write stuff.

My two granddaughters have been in my thoughts and in particular Rebecca who is now 20. It was in 2007 that we took her to Mérida and stayed in the same hotel, Hotel Casa del Balam, that we stayed in this time. For us she was a melancholic presence, a ghost that accompanied us wherever we went.

In 2007 my cameras were film cameras. One of them was an extraordinary German panoramic camera, a Noblex. This camera swept an imge that was two and a quarter inches wide by seven inches long.

It would seem that back in 2007 I was mostly interested in printing photographs in my darkroom and I overlooked the potential of the scanner I had then (a very good one that has since been superseded by a better one).

Today as I downloaded into my computer the Mérida pictures I took with both my Fuji X-E1 and X-E3 and the iPhone3g I became curious. Not filed under Mexico in my travel files but in my family files I found Mérida 2007 – Rebecca. Perhaps of the many that I shot, I only scanned four or five which may be buried in a few blogs (which I will find!) and post here as links.

Rebecca/Mérida Links
Sanborns in Mérida 
Uxmal and Rebecca heats up
The Peace God Versus the War God 
Safe and Sound in Celestún 
Rebecca in Blue 
Asymptotes 
Rebecca eats Mexican
Casa de Frida 
Sunsets,caves and fireworks 
Ad Maiorem dei Gloriam 

As of now I am not sure if I will place  here any of the photographs I took this past week.

I noticed this one from 2007 which is a Noblex sweep of the the Cenote de los Sacrificios at Chichen Itza. Here the Mayans performed their human sacrifices and pushed many into the deep cenote to drown. Priceless artifacts have been since the beginning of the 20^th century dredged up from the muddy bottom.

Two thousand and seven was the second time I had gone to Chichen Itza (this time in 2018 I skipped it and the crowds and opted for the lovely and less crowded Uxmal.

Rebecca Stewart in Uxmal 2007

Whenever I go to these Mayan ruins I am transported in time and I feel that I am discovering the ruins as if I were a 19^th century explorer. In some cases I go further in time and imagine the Mayans themselves (no different from the modern Yucatecans who are friendly and who are short and have round faces. Many still speak the language of their ancestors. Most cities and towns in Yucatán conserve some variant of their original name. There are only a few cities like Vallalodid that have a modern Spanish name.

My memory of that cenote from 2007 (in extreme heat and humid) is an eerie one. I could imagine the screams of those sacrificed although perhaps they were drugged. This Noblex image I have converted into a pseudo cyanotype.  The photograph of Rebecca in Uxmal is the result of a slow shutter (that is why it is not all that sharp). Rebecca seems to be ghost (read the exraordinary poem, in Spanish and in English by my Mexican poet friend Homero Aridjis below) and that is how I felt when Rosemary and I returned to Uxmal this time around. The other photograph of Rebecca in Uxmal I took with a 35mm Russian swivel-lens panoramic called a Horizont.

Rebecca Stewart Uxmal 2007

Carta de México


Por estas callejuelas
ancestros invisibles
caminan con nosotros

ruidos de coches
miradas de niños
y cuerpos de muchachas
los traspasan

Impalpables y vagos
frente a puertas que ya no son
y puentes que son vaciós
los atravesamos

mientras con el sol en la cara
nosotros vamos también
hacia la transparencia



Letter From Mexico

Invisible ancestors
walk with us
through these back streets

car-noises
the stares of children
young girls’ bodies
cross through them

Weightless     vague
we travel through them
at doorways that no longer are
on bridges that are empty

while with the sun on our faces
we too
move toward transparency

Homero Aridjis
Eyest to See Otherwise - Ojos de otro mirar
Selected Poems
Edited by Betty Farber and George McWhirter

Link to: Ancestros Invisibles - Invisible Ancestors