The Art Of Design

Whether it is that the Mexican himself is skilled in improvisation and therefore presents both challenge and inspiration or because more leisure lets latent abilities and interests come to the fore or whether Mexico simply attracts more versatile people whatever the reason it's more common than not to find your neighbors and friends active in many levels of the community. One man is simultaneously archaeol ogist, writer, editor and photographer. One woman may teach English, write a couple of books a year, photograph and do darkroom work, play the violin in a chamber music group, and supervise the building of a home. An artist founds and directs a riding school, is partner in an art gallery, runs a store, paints and writes. A Mexican friend is a phar-macist, state deputy, historian, teacher of Spanish, director of a cultural center, amateur archaeologist and genealogist.

On the other hand there are those who are so unaccustomed to leisure that it frightens or disturbs them and they do not know how to all their days. Others rejoice in the amplitude of time and whole-heartedly enjoy a day of shopping at the market, chatting with friends in the plaza, inspecting art galleries, standing at the door bemused with the village scene and hospitable to chance passers-by; catching up on long deferred reading, taking new pleasare in relating the daily pictures by corre-spondence, and gardening.

It is a fact that certain communities tend to develop in a way that attracts certain types of people, and a visitor to Mexico may have foreknowledge of the kind of city or village he might wish to pass some weeks, months or years in. Yet no amount of theoretical preparation quite accounts for the actual response that makes a visitor fall in love with one city and scorn another. Each city has its own ambience. Does the foreigner fancy a sort of eaclave traus-planted from northern culture to a more benign climate where he can be com-fortable and insulated from native life? Or a heterogeneous cross-section of age, type, and vocational background? Or an industrial and commercial city with a sudden zeed for technicians and experts of various kinds recruited on a temporary basis?

"It takes all kinds to make a world," the old folksay goes. Mexico leaves you free to pick and choose your time and scene on a completely individual basis and there, perhaps, lies the secret of her charm.

The first thing that strikes the urban American who visits Mexico is a pronounced easing of tension and a greater sense of leisure. World news and reports of violence don't intrude with such in tense thrust on residents here -- possibly because there is less access to or dependence on television, radio, newspapers - the result? Time in which to enjoy, instead, the sun, the garden, the plaza and all the other attributes of Mexico.

Try Mexico For Recycling the "Inner" Environment

As one resident remarked, this may be a deceptive good you can't retire from the life of the world. But it is good to ease the pressure, even for a little while, and this is the gift that Mexico presents to the visitor.

Hospitality here in Mexico seems to be warmer, more inclusive, more casually extended. Not just for cocktails or dinner, either, but for overnight or longer stays There is usually more accommodation for guests, for one thing. There are servants to do the work, and the cost of hospitality is much less than it is up north. Newcomers are struck by the graciousness with which veteran residents show their homes, and extend welcome to them.

Parents with young children often develop a closer and more demonstra tive relationship with them than is com mon in the States, where the father is away all day on business and the mother has her own million things to do. A busi nessman working in Mexico often dis covers his family because of the custom of lunch and siesta hour at home, and sees much more of them in their daily setting and understands them and their life better than he ever did before.

A surprising factor in all this sense of leisure and relaxed tension is the feeling one gets of commitment and involve ment. In the North, most people work at jobs, commute to office, plant or classroom and return home at night, sometimes to some hobby for relaxation, but most often feelin exhausted. They're dependent on the machinery of life, for transportation, heating, cooling, and for work itself. And the clock governs all.

The prestige of the clock and calen dar in Mexico is minimal, for good or ill you live much closer to the funda mentals of life and to the guidance of the sun, the moon, the seasons. You don't have depersonalized deliveries of fuel, for example. Little boys and gnarled campesinos country folk bring wood for the fireplace by burro loads, and you can more easily visualize the whole process of going out to chop branches of mesquite than you ever could conceive of the machinery that produces and conveys oil, coal or gas to your northern home.

People of all ages, even retirees, frequently find themselves engaged in not one kind of work but many because they have become involved in their com munity. Orphanage, hospital, school, library -- all such projects are personally close to the individual, and not merely the subject of fund-raising letters calculated to effect a goal at a distance, In Mexico, the school child who needs better light and equipment, the stooped old lady next door, all of these are close at hand to remind you of their humanity and their needs, and you often see an immediate effect in your giving or sharing in whatever work or help is needed.