Flying diamonds

December debuted weird. Normally a sunny month, a trend that continues into January, February, through Springtime really.

As we pulled back the bedroom drapes after dawn, we were sucker punched with gloom. It was drizzling. This simply is not done in December. It is demonic and hints of hard feelings roiling in the spirit world. We were cursed.

The day ground on. It did not improve. Mount Fuji-taco glowered. There was nothing good about this day. Rats!

Until just now, about 5 p.m., a miracle sailed by, assisted by the sun. It was a fleeting moment but enough to set everything right, to provide equilibrium. To show justice and mercy.

By pure chance or the love of the Goddess or both, we saw it: There was a break in the clouds. The sun squeezed through. It didn´t last long, but it was so sweet.

Two elements combined: The brief moment of beautiful sunshine from a small crack in the clouds. And scores of white egrets. They sank below the mountain ridge, catching the sunshine perfectly on their ivory feathers as they banked.

They were flying diamonds, resplendent.

And then it ended. The egrets vanished. The clouds closed ranks. The gloom returned, but it´s okay. We are happy.

Spell on the plaza

We´re listening to a priest, who´s droning musically in the church over our left shoulder, a Mass with a microphone.

It´s yesterday, Sunday, 5:30 p.m. on our big, tree-filled barrio plaza, and we´re sitting solo on a steel bench.

The congregation drones during the priest´s pauses, saying what he said, we guess. Dead leaves litter the plaza, which is undergoing renovations, work that began five years back.

It´s the biggest plaza in Pátzcuaro after the Plaza Grande downtown. The initial work was replacing the grungy sidewalk with Saltillo tile, gussying up the ancient kiosk and installing colonial light standards, now mostly destroyed by drunks.

Hold on now. The church, 400 years old, is disgorging the faithful. We were mostly alone. Here comes company, but they show no interest in sitting, just strolling home.

. . . filled with the love of God, Jesus and the Virgin Mary.

On the far side of the railroad track, a block away, we hear the warm-up howls of glue-sniffing boys, easing into the night. They skipped Mass. They, the sinners who need it most.

Plaza renovation renewed a couple months ago. An inner walkway hugging the main sidewalk is being cobblestoned. It also connects, with eight wheel spokes, to the huge kiosk.

It´s about half done. There was a pause of a few weeks when money to buy cement dried up, but they´re back at it.

Here comes a train blaring its Horn of God. The glue-addled louts stand no chance against that. They´re drowned out.

A pickup parks nearby. A recording of xylophone tunes erupts from the truck, an attention-getter. They´re selling ice cream. Nobody pauses, so they pull away after a spell.

Lady Zapata says the ice cream music reminds her of the Chuckie horror movies, not something that sells vanilla, chocolate and strawberry. Even with a cherry.

Dusk draws near. It´s cool and dry, a slight breeze stirs the dead leaves. The shoe store is open. So is the papelería and a small general store. A couple of kids play. It´s quiet.

We look over our shoulder.The church door is shut. The priest headed home. Let´s do the same. Lady Zapata waits.

(Note: The item titled Going to Guanajuato, which occupied this spot for a brief spell, has moved to a more appropriate place, The Bierce Account.)

One messy life

We´re retired, they say. But it doesn´t feel that way.

Retirement implies there was a career, a focus on work that lasted for decades. The decades we did.

The focus we lacked, utterly.

Retirement in this case was simply arriving at a corner where change was conceivable and, luckily, it happened at age 55, which ain´t bad, brother.

The 55 watershed was significant because it separated that ole messy lifestyle from today´s sun-kissed Ranchito.

Let´s look at the so-called career: It was newspapering, and we simply fell into it. Never took a journalism course. Never took but one English course in the university that was not required.

Before that, there was a messy stint in the military. Following the discharge, we fell into a fling with a cute lass in Spanish class, which ended in matrimony. Roe versus Wade came later.

There was toil as a telephone installer, then an insurance salesman in a New Orleans department store. Didn´t suit, as one might imagine. But a married boy with a baby needs a job.

A cabbie by night, we completed college.

Dad pulled strings and we ended up at the newspaper in New Orleans. No experience, no training, no nuttin´.

Just a father with friends.

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

The newspapering continued for almost 30 years, primarily in the nasty heat of New Orleans and Houston plus two brief (totaling 16 months) spells in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Editing work, inside at a desk, preferably late at night away from the honchos who expected ambition. Ha!

It was a flat-line career fueled by inertia, good looks, inborn talent, and a low-grade but constant affection for alcohol.

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

The first marriage strung out for five years till the Call of the Wild overcame us. We hit the road, Jack.

About five more years passed during which we worked in the Caribbean on those two occasions, sweating even more, which made the Cuba libres taste lovelier.

Just a black-bearded Jimmy Buffet.

Back in New Orleans, we met another cutie who wanted to move in.

And she did. Blackbeard didn´t think it would last long.

He had lived with others. But this one stuck it out for seven years.

Like high-end flypaper from Tiffany & Co.

Finally we married for corporate medical coverage, not your best motive for matrimony. It lasted another ten years due to, again, inertia and martinis. More messy life.

Finally, her eyes opened, and Blackbeard was tossed on the street, at 50 not so young anymore, not so resilient.

It hurt. Did it ever. Boy, did it ever. Utter shock.

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

And that´s when the messy life began to dry up and take form. After half a century. Shock therapy.

One year further on, March 30, 1996, to be exact, we decided to come totally clean. That evening we were sitting solo in a taco joint on a sharp edge of Houston, Texas. The sun had set. We glanced about us, and marveled at the clarity of sober light.

But the clarity also put into focus the messy life of past and present. This was very, very painful.

It was time for Felipe´s Fabulous Florida Vacation.

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

A year later, we sat on a hillside near Tallahassee where we spent a week with a psychologist who stirred us a brew of psilocybin, and we drank two nights, first Monday, then Wednesday, a day of rest, like God´s Sunday, in between.

It was a first for us. In subsequent reading, we´ve learned there are various ways to approach these inexplicable events.

Too many do it for entertainment, but it´s best to do it like the primitives have done it for centuries in all corners of this messy world.

We catapulted past a curtain of Indian drumbeats and into the bodies of sensuous women and wild, savage animals. We walked down the hillside and saw the Earth breathe, literally.

We saw ice crystals and blood, and we cried.

We died and spotted that famous light in the tunnel though we did not make it up to the bulb. Not our time, not just yet.

We woke that Wednesday night an altered man at 52. The messiness was swept up and tossed away.

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

Two former wives will attest to our stony distance and untouchability. But on returning from the Florida vacation, nerve ends ablaze, we fell into the arms of a friend whose life was also a mess . . . but on the other side of the spectrum.

She knew too much emotion, not too little. It was our baptism of fire into another way of being, the lessons learned in Florida exploded into the real world. Hand in hand, the two of us sank beneath the waves and almost drowned.

But again we did not die. It was on-the-job training, a shocking scream of Latina skin, glistening eyes and words of love spoken in the candlelight, something never felt before.

It flamed out after three months. But it was enough for then.

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

Three years later, we "retired," packed two suitcases and hopped a jet alone to Guadalajara. Ironically, we now live an awake and steady life in the very messy world of Mexico.

With Lady Zapata who bakes us cookies.

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

Dedicated to the two former wives and one daughter who deserved better. The first former wife found better and married him decades ago. The lovely daughter found better in her second husband and stepfather.

The second former wife, as far as we know, still awaits better, and we pray she finds it.

Song by Elizabeth Fraser of the Cocteau Twins.

(Note: Entheogenic artwork by Alex Grey.)

Going guare 2

We spoke just below of the guare garb being stitched by Lady Zapata.

She has worn native attire before. Perhaps the earliest example is this shot snapped when she was a tyke.

. . . posing on a Pátzcuaro roof.

It is worth noting that yours truly was in the Air Force at the same time. What does that tell you?

Exactly. The old goat should be jailed.

Going guare

The sky is pure blue. A hummer is lunching on flowers of aloe vera.

A big lizard is doing push-ups on the black rock of the downstairs terraza, and los dos Zapatas are sitting on the Jesus Patio noonish.

It´s a wonderful day, brisk and beautiful. We´ve given the grass its final cut of 2009, and a few pear leaves lie on the ground.

We´re reading John Worthen´s biography of D.H. Lawrence, and Lady Zapata is stitching the Virgin of Guadalupe on a guare apron. It will complement the Purépecha skirt she purchased at the street market during the Day of the Dead.

She already owns a matching blouse and only lacks huaraches to complete the full nine yards of indigenous attire.

The required apron she is sewing by hand. Her hair is quite long enough for two pigtails which she will wrap with ribbon.

The 12th of December is the Virgin of Guadalupe´s Big Day. Many Mexicans turn out in traditional attire. It´s little girls more than anybody, but Lady Zapata is a child at heart.

The season´s first frost sat on the grass this morning though it wasn´t enough to freeze the birdbath. Later for that.

It´s a good day, a good day to read a book and sew a virgin on the Jesus Patio while the sun is shining.

(Note: That´s not Lady Zapata in the photo. It´s a little guare, a guarecita, a pint-sized guare, pronounced wah-reh, kinda.)

The boxcar life

Waking at 4 a.m. gives you the world alone. The party animals have passed out, and the early birds are still asleep.

It´s quiet, and you can lie there and listen to . . . well, not much. The breath of Lady Zapata and, with luck, a train will pass.

There are two ways to look at trains. On a passenger train, you´ve purchased a ticket and your clothes are clean. On a freight, you have no ticket because you´ve just jumped on.

And your duds are old and dirty.

The freight route requires weapons: A scoped rifle for downing deer as dusk approaches. You do this from the boxcar door and then leap out to find and cook it. You´ll want matches.

That´s your day´s main meal. You can´t eat it all, of course, but save a haunch for tomorrow´s lunch.

It´s tougher to grab a moving boxcar the next day with that load, but you´ll be glad you have the meat around 1 p.m.

You´ll also need a sawed-off shotgun that you keep tucked into the rear of your pants. There´s a risk of shooting your tail off, so take care. Loaded, not cocked. It´s a protective weapon.

There can be other people like you on any boxcar. They may want that deer haunch, so you´ll have to shoot them. A scatter blast is great for this. Then just kick them out the door.

The third and final weapon is a frightful, folding blade with serrated edges. Toting this is easy. Just toss it into your pocket. It serves two purposes. Slicing venison is primary.

But if someone like you slips too close for shotgunning. Yank out the knife and stick 'em. Then just kick them out the door.

Yes, whether shotgunned or knifed, disposing of the body stays the same. No need to be inventive. It´s a simple life.

A certain type of man can live like this for years. Yes, a man. A woman, with very rare exceptions, won´t live this way.

But if you meet one of those rare women, exit the boxcar rapidly. This is not cowardly. It is common sense.

Lady Zapata shifts to her side, making a little sound. The train has passed. You hear a rooster. You realize you´re not lying atop a sawed-off shotgun. And you smile.

You´re not a savage, living alone.

(The lovely railroad sound of Bo Diddley.)

Pirate ship sails

We´re overdue for big changes in Mexico.

That´s one thing.

Another thing is that the Gringos are clueless about Mexico. Maybe that will change, but don´t bet on it.

But let´s not address that here. Let´s go out on the dock to our sister ship, the black pirate, The Bierce Account.

The final cut

Walking hand in hand yesterday morning around our barrio´s big, beautiful plaza, we looked up and saw golden leaves.*

Yes, autumn displays itself here at 7,200 feet above the faraway sea, although not like it does in North Carolina.

Yet our own yard seems conflicted, in some sort of psychological crisis. The peach tree, as usual, has dropped most of its leaves. The plum, however, is just now deciding (the first time this year) to flower and sprout new leaves. What´s with that?

The loquat tree is fruiting to beat the proverbial band, so much so that some branches are drooping low, threatening to snap from the weight. One did just that last year.

The golden daturas, which give us such visual and olfactory joy through the summertime rains, have faded. But the jasmine has gotten its second wind. What´s up with that too?

The first freeze cannot be far over the mountain ridge. We feel in our bones it will come early this year. Yes, one sunny morn a big, black grackle will get a dawn shock as it executes a perfect landing on the bird bath. He will encounter an ice rink.

He will slide and squawk! And we will giggle.

But here is the great issue: The grass is still green. It´s neither high nor low. It´s a trifle shaggy. Does it need a final cut?

Or can we go the lazy route, waiting for Mama Nature to slice it down with her frigid fingers?

As in most things now, shiftlessness likely will prevail.

* It´s not quite so colorful here on the barrio plaza. We stole the photo off the internet.

Chocolate-chip cookies

Do you see the cookie in this photo of the downstairs terraza? Of course not. We´re chewing it. It´s good and chewy, as all God-fearing, chocolate-chip cookies should be.

It´s Pastry Day on the Plaza, and Lady Zapata has been in the kitchen all morning baking, baking, baking. Cookies, carrot cakes, little pies of tuna, mole and chicken.

We´ve been doing what we usually do, which is not much of anything. There is a gift one must possess to pull this off with dash, verve and panache. A trick, if you insist.

One must not feel guilty.

That´s right. If one´s hair is silver, as this one´s hair certainly is, one has the right to vegetate, and there is nothing anyone should say about it. Of course, our life is not one of total vegetation. But a degree of vegetation takes place.

Saturday morning is one of our prime vegetation periods. Monday through Friday, there are things to do even though we have no salaried position. But Saturday mornings, while Lady Zapata flits about the kitchen, we do little. Dang little.

Well, we did sweep the upstairs terraza a few minutes ago. That, as it usually does, ended with a swing in the hammock. We also noticed our right-side neighbors have more turkeys.

So we swayed in the hammock, listened to the turkeys gobble, and admired the blue skies and smelled the clear, cool air.

We also peeked over the outer ledge and saw that the Hotelito de Mal Reputito was empty, not a grunt nor sigh in sight.*

Then we headed downstairs, passed through the kitchen for a few roasted peanuts and the cookie, sat on a wicker rocker and snapped this photo.

No matter what we say here, there must be some visual element. The photo shows what we´ve mentioned many times in the past: November is our best month, nature-wise.

But it has nothing to do with cookies.

* Grunts and sighs cannot be seen? Guess again.

Mr. Tangerine Man

Hey! Mr. Tangerine Man, play a song for me,
In the jingle jangle morning I'll come followin' you.*

About this time every year, tangerines pop up everywhere. Mostly in the street markets.

Last week we bought a juicer, a first for us. Got a nice Turmix that revs like a nitro-fueled drag racer.

Kinda scary, actually.

Lady Zapata is in charge of juice. When we first wed, she used a big cast-iron gizmo with a long handle. Strictly powered by her beautifully toned and undulating biceps. No motor needed.

Couple years later, we purchased a little plastic, electric jobbie. It was simple, and it worked fairly well.

Last week we were in Morelia where we had to kill half the day while the Hellacious Honda got a lube job. After dropping the car off, we were sauntering down the sidewalk about 11 a.m., which is our second-breakfast hour. Two things happened:

1. We saw a bullfight poster and there, looking right at us, was the matador who owns the condo (la casita) we are purchasing. Good-looking stud muffin named Chacón.

2. And then we spotted two sidewalk stands. One sold tacos, the other juice. First we had tacos. And then, across the street, juice. We enjoyed the juice and admired their Turmix juicer. We walked right across the street to Sears and bought one. On sale.

Now, every morning as the sun rises over the Mexican Sierra, a sound similar to a nitro-fueled dragster sails noisily over the Pumpkin Wall from the kitchen. Va-roooom!

It is the death scream of fruit, the noise of fresh juice!

And, this time of year, that juice will be tangerine which, in Mexico, is called mandarina.

Hey! Señor Mandarina Man, play a song for me.
I´m not sleepy, and there is no place I´m going to.

* Apologies to Señor Dylan.

Tortoise and the hare

We´re sitting on the downstairs terraza 10-ish, admiring the look of spiderwebs in the sunlight.

Lady Zapata is in the kitchen baking a cake of mil hojas for her sister´s business downtown. The look of spiderwebs in the sunlight does not engage her. An attractive mil hojas does.

In many respects, we are entirely different people. She is shy. Yours truly is not. Though shy, she is an extrovert, an apparent contradiction, but it is not. At least in this case.

Yours truly is intensely introverted, often confused with shyness, which it does not have to be, though sometimes it is.

We two pull through the Big Red Gate at night, park under the clay-tile portal, and get out of the Honda. She strides into the house because there´s always something to do.

We stand on the Romance Sidewalk and look at the incredible array of stars. Sometimes we don´t step through the door till five minutes later, or so. But that´s doing something.

Years back we heard someone compared to a Harley-Davidson with the throttle stuck wide open. That fits Lady Zapata to the proverbial T. But yours truly´s Harley is usually in idle.

Of course, the Tortoise and the Hare is not an apt analogy because the beasts were engaged in a race. We are not racing. And if we were, our Hare would win, not the Tortoise.

Seen from the Jesus Patio, the sunlight does delightful things with spiderwebs. And the mil hojas is really delicious.

Let´s call it a tie. A draw. A dead heat.

Sunday morning report

On the hammock near 11 a.m. The sky is blue. The air is clean.

A power saw sounds in the far distance. So do some chickens. No dogs barking right now.

It´s mostly tranquil.

Sunday´s a big day at the Hotelito. We peeked over the terraza edge a few moments ago. All eight rooms are occupied. Though it´s not noon yet, these clearly classify as nooners.

In the other direction, where lives the horse with the tones of a silverback gorilla, we spot a big turkey perched on a wooden sawhorse in the yard. He´s a brand-new barrio bird.

Thanksgiving turkey, you might think. But here in Mexico we don´t do Thanksgiving because we have so little to be thankful about. Just problems. Corruption and violence.

So that turkey likely has nothing to worry about, at least this month. But somebody will gobble him in good time because he´s too ugly for a pet. He´s no parrot, not even a parakeet.

There you have it. A Sunday morning report. Off the hammock now, of course, because it´s difficult to type on a desktop computer while you´re swaying in a hammock.

But there´s a nice window over the monitor, a window where we see Mount Fuji-taco, a real sweet view. We watch a flock of white egrets flying east below the ridge of the Sierra.

Come to think of it -- thinking a little more deeply and clearly -- there is one Mexican who has much to be thankful for.

This guy at the keyboard. And the one he´s wedded to.

And that´s the absolute end of this Sunday morning report.

We hear winter

A cold night breeze buffets the banana trees, some of which are 20 feet tall, or so.

The bamboo chimes go bonkers, and we wonder about winter. We wonder when we can quit caring about the yard.

Our sharp senses say this winter might be a bad one. They surely vary. Our first two winters in Mexico were bone-crackers.

We were alone then with no woman to keep us warm. Perhaps the cold seemed worse for that, but likely not. Cold is cold.

And then the winters slacked up a while, showed spirit. And the last two or so haven´t seemed so bad. Perhaps it´s the woman who keeps us warm now. That and the goose-down comforters, one here and another in Mexico City.

Comforters, not women. Just one woman. You can´t have too many down comforters, but you can have too many women.

One is just right.

There comes a point, usually at the first frost or freeze, when we just throw up our hands and shrug, hoping for the best in the yard. Hoping everything makes it through till March.

Most everything does. Then the warm, dry springtime and, finally, June comes with the cool rains. Everything pops up again green and happy and colorful. Wet, very wet.

It´s a cycle, of course, but the winter curve can get nasty. We´ll see what happens this year. We have plenty of propane in the big white tank and dry firewood under the portal.

And a warm woman. That´s the good part. But just one.

Apples, etc.

Awake on the king bed at 5 a.m., we sense apples.

Not apples specifically but the fresh sensation one associates with crisp apples.

Fresh cool air.

Last night the clean mountain air was improved by light. The moon was not full, but it was not far from it. Fresh air and moonlight make a good night.

There is no heavy industry in our neck of the Mexican woods. Usually the air is nice. In springtime the farmers burn the dry fields, and that hazes things up a bit. And a nearby brick kiln gets stoked up now and then. That smokes like Bogart.

But those are bumps on the long-term calendar. The Ranchito is fresh, and on full-moon nights it reminds us of one specific, solitary, frozen moonlit eve on a Carolina mountaintop.

Many years ago.

There was snow on the ground. Of course, Pátzcuaro doesn´t get snow, but that night has stuck with us for ages and, for some reason, when a similar chill moonlight falls within the Pumpkin Wall, we spot that same moonshine snow with the mind´s eye.

Ain´t that strange?

It´s great living where the air is clean.

Even if the streets often are not.

The graveyard run

So many tombs, so little time. Grave responsibilities.

We have two graves to tend in two different towns.

Our Days of the Dead started yesterday in Pátzcuaro´s main cemetery.*

Lady Zapata´s brother lies there. He was shot dead by a lunatic in 1986 when he was 28 years old, and the murderer never spent more than a night or two behind bars, if that.

Today he lives free as the birdies in the nearby city of Celaya, walking proof that in Mexico you can get away with murder if you have wealthy relatives, which he had in those days.

We arrived around noon, threading ourselves through the throng with broom, dustpan, bleach, flowers, incense and candles.

We hired a young boy to bring water from the well and give the grave a good scrubbing with a stiff brush. We paid him 30 pesos, spread the flowers and lit the lights and incense.

That was yesterday.

* * * *

This morning we pointed the Hellacious Honda down the toll highway in the direction of Uruapan to the nearby tropical town where Lady Zapata´s parents were born long ago.

In the lovely mountains where avocados grow.

Her mother died giving birth in 1963 when she was only 31. The attending doctor was her own husband, Lady Zapata´s dad, and we´ve always wondered at the burden of guilt he must have toted to his own dying day at 61. He was a family physician.

We carried the same gear we had used yesterday, but this time we did the sweeping and scrubbing ourselves, bringing water from the well. We left flowers, lit candles and incense.

Much of the small town´s population appeared to be at the cemetery. There were stalls just outside the gate, selling tacos, tequila, fruit, flowers and balloons. And three trampolines on which children were bouncing and laughing.

* * * *

Putting the dead aside, we then drove the Hellacious Honda to Uruapan where we lunched on salmon sandwiches, salads and mocha frappés. We´re happy to be alive.

* We´re not counting the visit two hours earlier to the cemetery in Tzintzuntzan 10 miles away. It was in Tzintzuntzan´s cemetery that we shot the photos for the previous entry.

Dead children

While mañaña, Nov. 2, is the Day of the Dead for grownups, today is the Day of the Dead for children.

We drove to the cemetery in nearby Tzintzuntzan this morning. The cemetery was full of people decorating for tonight. Tzintzuntzan´s cemetery is one of the biggest draws in the area.

These two graves grabbed our attention. The one at top is decorated like a baby carriage. And below is the resting place of another child. Notice the photo in the middle of the cross.

It is the actual baby dressed in blue pyjamas. The baby in the photo is dead. He was dressed and posed on his bed. And photographed. This type of display is not uncommon.

The baby´s bottle is just to the left of the cross´s base.

Dead times

We were in Morelia yesterday to see Brad Pitt killing and scalping Nazis.

Eating a nice veggie baguette in Subway, we gazed around us.

Almost nobody. We were in the Plaza Morelia, one of the three big shopping centers in the capital city.

It was disturbing. Not only were there very few people passing by, lots of the stores were closed, as in Out of Business.

The biggest tourist draw in Pátzcuaro every year, and an event that brings in plenty of pesos, is the Day of the Dead. And we´ve been dealt a double whammy.

Last year, about six weeks before Los Muertos, which is the Day of the Dead, some bad guys tossed grenades during a Morelia parade. That kept spooked tourists home quite a spell.

Day of the Dead suffered. The big artisan market on the Plaza Grande here was mostly a flop in 2008.

And now the economic crisis (caused by Greedy Gringos up north) is giving us a repeat show.

The artisan market on the plaza was scheduled to open last Monday. But it got off to a pokey start just yesterday. Hotels, we hear, still have vacant rooms, which is astounding since many people normally reserve a year in advance.

But Brad Pitt hung quite a collection of Nazi scalps on his belt, so that put us in a cheery mood leaving yesterday´s movie. Scalped Nazis are always a cause for merriment and optimism.

It´s a sweet way to carve a skinhead.

All about texture

Texture grows in importance as you age, perhaps due to your seeing more of it in the mirror.

A Mexican house has better texture than an American house. Anything made of rock and cement struts its texture better than something made of wood studs and sheetrock.

The texture of Mexican homes is more difficult to drive a nail into. For that reason, real macho nails are common in Mexico.

While it´s true that things tend to take on more texture as they age, sometimes it´s just a matter of noticing.

Out on the Jesus Patio, we notice the fuzzy texture of a bumblebee as it hovers over our knee. It decides not to land, which is good because it may have felt the texture of death.

Often texture is a matter of design. A 1957 Buick Roadmaster has more texture than a 2010 Lexus RS. Yes, the past had more visual texture than the present. There are exceptions.

Life can assume texture in other ways. We´re purchasing a condo here in Pátzcuaro. It´s a modern design with tasteful details and walking distance to the Plaza Grande.

What on Earth for?

One day, yours truly will be Promoted to Glory, as the West Virginia hillbillies say. Not soon, we hope. When that happens, Lady Zapata will want smaller accommodations.

But why buy now? Need you ask? Great time to buy.

We will furnish it, and spend occasional nights there, but mostly it will sit vacant. The good news for you is that if you want to visit Pátzcuaro, you can stay there for a reasonable donation towards our croissantitos and black cafecitos.

It´s a really snazzy, two-story place with two bedrooms, garage for one car, 2.5 bathrooms, wood-burning fireplace, equipped kitchen, wood floor upstairs, tile floor downstairs, skylights and a mountain view from the balcony.

And genuine Mexican neighbors on the cobblestone street.

Life´s texture is changing for us.

Above is the Ranchito Jr., the white building. It´s one of the best housing buys going in Pátzcuaro, and relatively unknown due to not being in the hands of a real estate agency. There are more waiting to be sold. Price is about $75,000. Great deal.

Yesterday´s goats

A low-flying vulture circles the Ranchito. A sharp eye can see far, far higher where 10, perhaps 15, more are circling.

It is yesterday, and they´re halfway to Venus. Hunting dinner.

It is dinnertime, the midday comida, the principal meal of Latinos and Southern Rednecks who remember rural life as it used to be in Southwest Georgia.

Dinner at midday, supper at night. Lots of lemonade.

We just returned from our own lunch down the highway at the gas station restaurant.

Those circling vultures would love a good, dead goat out in the green fields between here and Mount Fuji-taco. Or maybe near the lake´s squishy edge, softer pickings, marinated in mud.

Sun illumines the Jesus Patio, but black clouds line the distant mountaintops. Gonna rain? The rainy season should have ended by now. We haven´t felt a fine deluge in weeks.

But back to goats. We´re reading Vargas Llosa's Feast of the Goat, a novel set in Trujillo´s Dominican Republic.

For the agile, there are connections here between vultures, goats, the Jesus Patio and yours truly who remembers driving drunkenly down the coastal highway long ago outside Santo Domingo with a teen-aged mulata wearing a wig.

It was late on a starry night, and we heard the waves.

However, here and now, the black clouds are dispersing, and we imagine another dry day will pass.

And it surely did.

Fall of night

Mexican sunrise and sunset photos are popular. Everybody does them. Here´s a post-sunset picture, and the camera is pointed East, not West.

The sun has set behind your chair.

That´s Mount Fuji-taco beneath the monster piece of fluff. If you swing in the hammock on the upstairs terraza about 7:30 p.m. you get to enjoy this, and the mosquitoes get to enjoy you.

Horse next door

Plenty of verbal wildlife lives within easy earshot of the Ranchito.

Burros, cows, chickens, dogs, stumbling drunks and glue-sniffing adolescents.

Next door is a movable menagerie. Animals come and go. It´s the neighbor on our right. The Hotelito´s on the left.

We´ve seen goats, chickens, dogs and other beasts directly over the Pumpkin Wall from our second-story vantage point.

Now we hear neighs.*

It´s our new neighbor, a large, gray horse. But gray doesn´t tell it well. He´s the tone of a silverback gorilla.

We headed upstairs yesterday to take a photo from the second-story terraza. The horse was facing our way, but by the time we zoomed the lens, his owner -- the man in the black cowboy hat -- had appeared and poured feed in the trough.

The horse was giving us a nice head shot, but with the feed in the trough he turned tail, showing his less-attractive nether region. You´ve seen horses´ asses all your life. You don´t need another from us. The internet photo above will have to do.

As mentioned, animals come and go over there. We´re not sure why there´s a horse now, but we suspect it will vanish one day as did the woman who lived there.

It was a warm family scene our first Ranchito years. Mom and Dad, maybe in their mid-50s, lived there with some questionable younger relatives. Mom kept a fire going under a big, black pot in a long, open shed in the backyard.

That was to wash clothes, which were hung on the line where they waved at us as we swayed in the hammock. We were compatriots in the breeze.

And then Mom died. The fire under the iron pot went out. Weeds grew, and the grass needed cutting. One day most of the shed fell down, and that part left is the home of the horse whose colors look like a silverback gorilla.

Dad still lives there with the questionable younger relatives, including the man in the black cowboy hat who drives a tractor. The only person who smiles over there is Dad. Not the cowboy hat, nor his young wife, nor the screaming child.

The gray horse looks healthy, content. He would smile if he knew how, but one day we will awake, and the stall will be vacant.

* Why do horses neigh instead of nay? Do they really care if they seem negative? Must they disguise their true feelings?

This is a silverback gorilla. He´s wondering what in the world he has to do with Mexico.

Night longing

Last night and the night before, an engine cranked.

It was very soft and, had we been asleep, it would have gone unnoticed.

About 5 a.m.

Guests were driving out of the Hotelito de Mal Reputito. One imagines the stories behind these two couples, and couples they were, of course.

Perhaps Pedro had to get home before his wife stirred. Before dawn. Maybe María needed to slip between the sheets while her husband still snored. María runs the bigger risk.

Business in the Hotelito is spare but constant. Our neighboring Hotel de Paso is often vacant. There are only eight rooms. Sunday is quite popular, showing disrespect to the Pope.

Instead of being down on their knees at the Basilica, speaking with God, they´re going down on their knees at the Hotelito, moaning like the Devil.

Instead of begging for forgiveness, they beg for release.

The Hotelito has proven to be a fine neighbor, a seven-day, 24-hour security service, free for us just next door.

It is quiet. Nobody makes a racket. Most guests don´t want to draw attention. They want nothing more than to be left alone and unclothed. Quiet, naked neighbors.

You can´t ask for anything better than that.

The Horn of God

It starts softly from afar. The angels are coming. They play trumpets and ring bells.

It´s dark, and you´re lying in bed, awake by chance, and you hear it. Just the horn at first, a long, drawn-out tone.

With a touch of vibrato.

The celestials come closer. Some would call it a train, but we know better. It´s the horn of God.

There is a rumbling sound. Wait! It is a train indeed. Fooled again. How many nights has this happened? Hundreds.

It´s the Kansas City Southern de Mexico.

Now closer, we hear the bell. Dong, dong, dong, dong, just like that. But it´s an Earthly Bell, to shoo drunks off the track.

Trains pass nightly, probably two or three times. It´s hard to know because we normally don´t wake, even for the noisy ones.

Some are noisier than others, depending on the engineer. Some are polite, others less so, not caring if they disrupt our dozing.

The track runs parallel to the street out front, but due to the length of the Ranchito property and the fortuitous placement of the casa, our king bed is about two blocks distant.

But it runs directly behind the houses across the street. We imagine those neighbors´ nights get mighty lively with the Horn of God so very near. And the dong, dong, dong.

One grows used to these nightly concerts quite quickly. We enjoy being so intimate with the nocturnal visits of the divine.

But one night that Horn will truly sound. It will have a come-hither tone, and it won´t be approaching from Morelia.

Late afternoon asphalt

We´re doing a celebratory swing, more than one actually, in the hammock to mark the happy arrival of asphalt.

But we bounded down from the hammock long enough to snap this photo of a few things on the terraza ledge. That item on the left is a ceramic frog with a gaping mouth.

On the right is a tiny Easter Island Head. In the middle, the spot of honor and late sunshine, is an empty flower pot. If a flower pot is pretty enough, it can hold its own without a flower.

Nothing much survives on the upstairs terraza because every year winter cruises through, murdering everything out there.

This is very disturbing, and the only solution is maguey so that´s about all we have on that exposed terraza. The hammock doesn´t care about winter. But let´s look at asphalt now.

Every summer the rainy season puts potholes in our street from the plaza to the Ranchito and on up to a highway not far away. All the main streets in our barrio are cobblestone with the exception of the street where we live. How about that?

And every year about this time, asphalt arrives. It came in a different style this year, more than usual. On the plaza, somebody dropped two dump-truck loads of tar.

And neighbors along the street, with wheelbarrows and pickup trucks and shovels, have spread it wherever needed.

It seems to be a community effort that we were unaware of in advance. One imagines they figured the Gringo wouldn´t want to soil his dainty fingers, and they would have been right.

But we applaud this work, and look forward to driving the Hellacious Honda home smoothly in the months to come.

Butterflies and exercise

From this golden perch on the hillside at noon, we look across the high mountain valley where rests El Lago de Pátzcuaro, one of the highest grand lakes of the world, they say.

Yes, we´re at the gym, waiting yet again for Lady Zapata who works out longer and looks it. The sky is blue with puffy white clouds sitting atop the mountains. It´s a snazzy 70 or so.

Our shirt is lime green, sleeves rolled up just enough to provide a peek at our snake-and-skull forearm tattoo, remnant of an unfocused youth, almost 40 years back in New Orleans.

The cool breeze messes with our slicked-back silver hair.

A chatty child of 5 bellows in the restaurant behind our shoulder. He´s leaving us in peace just now, thank the Goddess.

We´re circled by flowers, pink and red and white, with butterflies. And, in a bit, we´ll be buying roadside, roasted chicken for lunch with beans and rice at the Ranchito.

Yikes! Here comes that kid.

The Goddess has forsaken us. But the hillside is steep, and one wonders how far an old man can heave a noisy boy.

* * * *

We have a fresh routine. Once a week, we´ll throw on raggedy duds before morning showers. We´ll leap into the Hellacious Honda and roar to the Plaza Grande, 15 minutes away.

We´ll tote two cups and hot, black cafecitos in a Thermos that will be tossed (with napkins) into a plastic bag. We´ll kidnap two cushions from our terraza chairs, and they´ll make sitting on the plaza´s concrete benches quite bearable.

Half a block away, we will buy fresh, sweet pastries to provide counterpoint to the cafecitos. And there we will sit with what we call first breakfast. It will be 8:30 in the morning.

We will bite and sip, the two of us, our cabooses cushioned, watching exercisers circle the plaza. Exercise always feels better as an observer, nicer watched than done.

This is a lovely routine, and we´re delighted to have thought of it. Perhaps we´ll see you down there, jogging past. You, not us.

Foggy October

The wooded hillside that rises behind the Ranchito is half hidden in fog this morning, and the temp is a snazzy 58.

Sunny mornings are grand, but so is this because it supplies an attitude. The photo was taken at 8:30, but in a few hours the sun will be shining, giving us happy faces.

Lady Zapata is sitting there on the porch but hidden in the shadow, an invisible woman with her hot, black cafecito. Such is the power of a Mexican mountain morning in October.

The Mexican gardener

An orderly yard, like an orderly desk, reflects an orderly mind.

But there are no orderly minds, just minds that are orderly on occasion.

And only then when life is at stake.

An orderly yard and desk make us feel good. Some people never have orderly desks, and that speaks badly of them.

People with messy desks will disappoint you. Be quite sure that their yards are the same unless they hire it out. And their dishes will often sit in the sink, soiled. The sink will be questionable.

As mentioned here many times, yours truly is the Ranchito gardener. There is no other. Usually, our yard is orderly. The sink is almost always orderly, rarely questionable. Our mind, like all minds, are orderly on occasion. Sometimes not.

Yours is no different. Don´t think otherwise.

Personal experience taught us that a tumultuous mind can be the most interesting mind of all. But this works best if you´re sitting still, preferably with your eyes closed in the dark, alone.

It doesn´t mix with chores. Don´t try to shave.

Yesterday morning, we dug into some delayed gardening toil, and today the yard is very orderly. We edged with the weedeater, having cut the grass two days earlier. We whacked back some unruly plants with sharp shears.

We pushed the wheelbarrow about the yard, picking up detritus. With the pruning saw, we removed three big maguey fronds, taking care with the juice which tosses a venomous rash.

We were on our knees quite a bit, and the old yard jeans got wet. Then we opened the Big Red Gate and pushed the barrow down the street to the ravine where we heave green garbage, biodegradable stuff.

Then we showered. We were clean and felt good. Looking at our orderly yard this morning, we know it reflects those clefts of our mind that are orderly part of the time.

End of night

This is how night ends. There are visual variations, some better, some worse. The morning always comes happy and optimistic.

Felizmente. Con alegría.

The nights, however, fall in two shades: Sunshine yellow and doom gray. Sunshine yellow means the heart beats with a calm. A peace lies upon the body, suspended in a good nowhere.

Often there is no awakening till dawn when your eyes open to the realization that you´ve slept in sunshine yellow.

Doom gray, on the other hand, means you awaken now and again. The heart beats fast, and there is no peace upon the body. You are hanging in a bad nowhere.

Tristemente. Infelizmente.

What determines the night route?

It seems rather without plan or intention. But we have noticed that the slightest worry or problem, no matter how trivial or solvable, sends the night down the dark, potholed road.

There is no heaven on earth. No paradise here.

Gay Pátzcuaro

A favored reader of The Tales from Boston sent this photo of the former location of Pátzcuaro´s gay bar.

This topic has been chewed extensively on the comments section of the post below entitled Lesbians and cashews.

We thought we´d bring it out of the comments closet.

The previous post had little to do with lesbians (or cashews) but our Boston reader pointed out that during a visit to Pátzcuaro almost three years ago he had visited this gay bar. We were unaware of a gay bar in Pátzcuaro. Imagine our shock!

The gay scene, it seems, has amplified since his visit. This nightspot, which calls itself a café instead of a bar, has expanded to two locations. This location above has vanished.

The two locations are located now on Calle Romero off the Plaza Grande and on Avenida Lázaro Cárdenas as you enter downtown from Morelia. Both are called El Closet Café.

In the photo, the former El Closet was at the rear of this entryway into an interior patio that it shared with a pizza joint.

So, all you rainbow types can feel free to tour our town. We have two Closets for you. And pizza.

The same Bostonian also sent the photo below of Mount Fuji-taco beyond the red-tile roofs of Pátzcuaro. We´re including it simply because the photo is just boooootiful!

This ain´t Topeka, Mary!


(Note: This perhaps is the first of an occasional series. In the future, we may reveal where the following folks bend their elbows: campesinos, straight people, Purépechas, lesbians, lawyers, mental defectives, doctors, nurses, Gringo tourists, pathological do-gooders and African-Mexicans.)

Good hot soup

We´re on the Jesus Patio after lunch, legs extended straight out onto the seat of another white chair.

We´re doing two things:

1. Reading.

2. Digesting.

It´s a mild, sweet day. Earlier, sitting here before lunch, we heard Inca doves and bumblebees. But not now. It is quiet.

Perhaps the doves and bees have their own Jesus Patios somewhere, and they´re doing what we´re doing, reading and digesting, following chow-down. Worms and nectar.

But they can´t read, you say, but that wouldn´t make them different from us now because we aren´t reading either.

That was our aim, sitting here, but we can´t keep our eyes open. The afternoon is too still, too mild, too shady, too silent under the Big Cafecito Umbrella.

We snooze now and then, like an old man on a park bench, leaving the fat book open but ignored.

That drops us to Number 2: Digesting.

We´re digesting caldo de res (beef stew, Mexican-style). Years back, our best caldo de res was served at a Mexican joint in the Heights of Houston, Texas. It´s an old neighborhood, the Heights. There is nothing particularly high* about it.

Lady Zapata cooks up something similar. No need now to travel so far. Most caldo de res in Mexico is mediocre due to meat with gristle, which is commonplace here. It´s the cheaper cut.

But we buy good beef.

The quiet is broken by a loudspeaker truck bouncing down the street. Our eyes pop open, and we spot a hummingbird. This is what you call a Mexican trade-off: bad thing, good thing.

We need a cafecito to keep alert. Maybe then we can read.

- - - -

* Just the cholos at night.