On the bus home from the Telmex office we are joined by a man, no more than seven years old. He positions himself against an empty seat next to us, displays his randomly arranged teeth in a mirthless smile and produces the tools of his trade: a ribbed piece of wood and a metal hair pick. Not much music can be produced with such. He does not really try, this old man. Where is his mother? With a tenuous grip on the three-note scale he sings his way from bus stop to bus stop, one eye on the 2-peso coin in my hand. Religious fanaticism marks his work for three stops, blandly segueing to torrid goings-on in the bushes between a young man and his amour. He collects three pesos and is replaced by a young man handing out leaflets, which Anna takes for political propaganda. Not. You accept the paper, you listen to the spiel from the back of the bus, and you are asked for a donation. How much change can a man hold in his pockets?
Telmex, a never-never land where the brothers Grimm found their inspiration. Ostensibly a telephone office, yet full of surprises. We talked of that before.
Blog. What a strange word. It evokes images of a deep-sea world. But then, ‘table’ is a strange word too: say it out loud five times and it looses all meaning. I blog with only the faintest notion of what it is supposed to look like.
We have shopped and decorated, talked with Jaime who frames pictures for us; Jose Louis the welder who will cut fences and install them in Branko’s house. Don Bernardo, who sells us flowers and brings Anna plants for the garden; the newspaper vendor, too old and dignified to exchange names with, and who accepts my ‘buenos dias’ every morning when I exchange 6 pesos for the A.M. newspaper. The tamales lady on the corner of Dos Rios, who smiles in recognition and sells us a very occasional tamale, mindful as we are of the bundled-in calories.
Guanajuato is seductive: it takes a while to take her in, but once you do she is part of you. I don’t write travelogues; magazines and newspapers do a much better job of it. If you want more pix and history try this Guanajuato site orthis site
Joan and Lud left Monday morning to go back to their lives in Allentown. As if the town were ours, we showed them around with the pride of ones responsible for it. Just as we open the front door to walk them down to the main street to catch a cab for the airport, two pleasant men in blue overalls are preparing to cut off our electric power. To this end they have a clipboard with instructions (#1), and a serious pair of wire cutters (#2). In utter panic I stumble through the niceties of meeting strangers and call out for Anna. A man needs to know his limitations. ‘Buenos dias’ all around, in that we do not fail. The fruits of a good upbringing. But the wire cutters are not holstered. Lud and Joan are ready to leave while disaster looms. Just last week we finally got full power back after five days of service requests, and here are representatives of that same outfit ready to cut us off. The clipboard lists an unpaid bill, hence their unfortunate mission. Unpaid? Not possible, we say. Yes, unpaid. We plead and promise greased lightning. We are on the way to the Electric Co office, right now. Please don’t cut us off. (The night before we met an acquaintance who had forgotten to pay her bill upon her return from a trip home to the US. She was cut off and implored the company for a week to restore service. She finally resorted to an illegal hook-up by a local electrician). ‘Don’t tell the office that we were here, because we have orders,’ said the men. These are the words of Kafka: an unseen authority, unknown but heeded. We promise and we don’t. In the taxi we wonder if this isn’t some sort of scam they are trying out on gringos, and in retrospect I wonder if I should not have whipped out my wallet right away.
Inside the office we stand in line for half an hour. While Anna waits and two men are running around unchecked with cutters, I run to an ATM to arm us with sufficient funds to bribe an ethicist. Our turn comes, and one minute later we stand outside in the blazing sun, on a sharply sloping street. We owe 51 pesos, less than $5. Apparently Jose Gutierrez, who takes care of our bills while we’re away, had failed to notice this insignificant amount. Do you have any idea how menacing wire cutters can be? Very.
How fortunate we are not to hear rap music. We do hear ‘Los Tigres de Norte’ at a very early hour, blasting from the hill side across. Or, 60’s music from the French painter who lives across from us. Federico adds classical cello music (“It is a great day,” he says walking by’ “a great day to live!”). I sit on the patio and hear at first a cacophony, until all music blends into a mélange hard to describe, a composite sound that is the daily backdrop of our lives. Yesterday, when Anna was cooking a fabulous meal, I wondered what it would take to capture both visual and olfactory images in one medium. It would mean a whole new technology, somewhat analogous to image and sound in the ‘talkies’. There are novels describing food, and reading them we taste and smell.
We don’t really know her, this French woman, but her name is Claude and her dog is called Bonnie. Federico, the paper maker below us, claims she is a wonderful painter, but then, Federico is given to exaggeration. Claude comes home late at night, and her dog (is he a companion or merely a defense from amorous Mexicanos?) sets off the two German Shepherds who live their lives under our bedroom window, locked in behind fences, surrounded by their own excrement.
There is rain and then there are downpours of biblical proportions. The last few days we have experienced the latter. Hurricane Dean wends its way across Mexico, its tentacles spreading wide and far. No wind, just menacing dark clouds filling the sky in the Guanajuato valley. The city declared an emergency, a full-blown red alert for flooding. The presas (reservoirs) above the city are in danger of overflowing, and send floods into the lower downtown. Schools were closed for the day (much like Allentown, where a mere snowflake causes massive interruption of public services). Nothing happened. We follow the news about the Yucatan where serious damage was inflicted. Again, we thank our stars having left the Tulum beach.
In the garden the ficus tree sheds great numbers of berries. Like hail they clatter on the paving stones and bounce off the glass-top table. We are the fortunate owners of a female tree. Who would have thought? It is clear to me that the tree itself has no faith in its own ability to procreate: why else drop so many berries?
Jerry and Gill visited us yesterday: they came for a few days to San Miguel de Allende (SMA), where they have a house. Anna and I hop aboard a plane once in a while, and we think of ourselves as quite the travelers. Compared to them we are pikers! They generously offered us the use of their house in SMA, which will allow us to spend more time there to go shopping. Gto is wonderful and pleases all of the senses, but it cannot satisfy our deeply rooted shopping urges. A circular power saw (me), garden furniture (Anna) are high on the list. And, who knows, some artesanias? You can never have enough artwork. Our mechanism for justification is well-oiled.
Distance provides perspective. Distance between Allentown and Guanajuato.
Here, looking out the window as I write this, the randomness of the city contrasts with the order of the Pennsylvania Dutch. It seems to me that life in Allentown (or the US for that matter) is more angular, more sharply defined: There I react to events, to the larger life around me, and define myself that way. I am a democrat, I disagree with the local politics, I hate the war. My experiences are defined by what I would want to see differently.
In Gto I have lost that need to judge, to push off against that which I experience as a system and a construct. I read the local paper, read of the shenanigans of the political parties, of the venality of city council, and think: so what? What is different? And why should I worry?
Anna and I are finding a different rhythm, finding a life that has more to do with us. Are we growing old?
I attach some random images of what surrounds us. Perhaps you will get a sense of life here.
By the way: I had no idea how prophetic the title of my last blog was. ‘Figs are to die for.’ Literally. Be careful of what you wish for, or heedlessly consume.
