Life Style Refugee

Ow! Dammit.

Just to prove that my poor old body,  which I have often remarked has got a lot more miles than the model year would indicate, is turning 50, I’ve done something evil to my back, and it hurts like hell.

It certainly hurts enough to interfere with my ability to post my weekly entertaining article full of insights and helpful tips. Oh, wait, that’s somebody elses blog. Okay, well, it interferes with my war against the unarticulated thought, let’s put it that way.

It’s a shame, too, because this week, Bruno and I have commenced on yet another Gringo  rite of passage. We are painting the house Bright Mexican Colors.

Listen, good luck trying to find any Dutch Boy Oyster White around here. Our North American obsession with the various whiter shades of pale must seem pathetically anemic to the local folks when they finally scramble across the border. The closest thing to neutral here is called Forceful Orange.

And I’m a realtor. My instinct is to paint it white and put down beige carpet. The simple act of picking a palette when the choices are not only infinite, but infinitly bright, creates a mental lockdown.

Last week I wrote that I had been stunned into silence by the appearance of a dumb peacock, whose bright blue breast feathers amid the rest of the colors of a simple Mexican street made a simple walk something that you had to lie in a darkened room to recover from.

Hah.

That was nothing, nothing I tell you. I spent the last week dithering around with the other matrons in the Sherman Williams store here, trying to choose just the right yellow (June Day!) and  the perfect orange (Mango Smoothie!)

Jesus Christ, now that it’s up, it looks like the inside of a furnace.

On Saturday morning, I woke up to find that Raphael, our man of all work, had abandoned his usual uniform of camouflage pants and do-rag in favor of a sort of cuban sugar planter look, with a broad brimmed hat and cigar. I assume this is to mark the fact that we have given him enough money to pay helpers while painting the house, a practical move that he seems to have interpreted as a promotion to general contractor. it was pretty clear that he had no intention of getting any paint on his snowy white guayabera.

I’m scared to tell him that I think the colors I picked look like Kristi Yamaguchi’s samba dress on Dancing with The Stars.

 So I’m going to have a lot to write about as soon as I get my back taken care of.  I’m off to Chapala for an appointment with Dr. Xavier, chiropractor and acupuncturist. Yesterday, while trying to collect referrals for someone to fix my back, right now, I was satisfied that he’s my best bet.

 At a Cinco de Mayo party last night, I mentioned his name and the group I was chatting with all nodded knowingly and agreed “Oh, yeah, if he’s not in rehab,. he’s great!”

You can’t do better than that. Hasta luego!

Over time the dogs and I have developed the routine of a short walk in the afternoon followed by their dinner.

Involving her daily meal greatly improves the chances that LupitaValdez will actually return to the house, and not run off looking for a handsome male poodle to take her to the really good trash cans for a meal.

Our afternoon walk happens at 4:00, after Judge Judy, and they know exactly when she drops her gavel for the last time.

At 4:00 the sun, which is never fierce around here, has been slowly heating things up until the air is saturated with warmth and very few people are motivated enough to be out and about.

April and May are our summer, and it’s hot. The atmosphere is lethargic and syrupy, and the cobblestone streets become a dusty mexican cliche. I’m prepared to testify that there is more gravity in paradise during these two months, and every step is heavy and slow. Sitting feels like being pinned to a chair.

About this same time of day recently, I dropped in to check on the progress of the new house Georgette is building. When I got there, her construction crew were all dozing on flattened cardboard cartons, hats over their eyes. The maestro was indolently warming tortillas on a small fire.

They didn’t move when we showed up, either. I personally felt anxious on their behalf, as if we’d caught them watching porn on their computers when they were supposed to be filling out quarterly goals, but neither they nor Georgette felt awkward at the interruption of their nap. We actually stepped over one of them to go look at her new fountain.

Yesterday, I was walking the dogs and I encountered an old woman hobbling from the direction of Ajijic. She looked about 99, thin and wrinkled, with a sweater wrapped around her head.

“Hacer calor!” I ventured cheerfully, since I was having one of those contented all’s-right-with-the-world moments that occur so frequently here in my village.

She returned my greeting and congratulated me on being so fat, as she believed it to be an excellent protection from the heat, and kept me from having to have a sweater on my head.

We strolled together for a little bit, the dogs capering around our ankles until a peacock wandered into our path and created a diversion. A huge, Castanedian peacock, with a chest of such a hallucinatory shade of blue that it I hadn’t known I was drug free, it would have freaked me out.

This peacock, which really did exist by the way, was dragging a tail long enough to reach across the narrow cobblestone street from sidewalk to sidewalk . The appearance of a unicorn wouldn’t have seemed any more fantastic, and the combination of the colors sported by this huge peacock and the butterflies and hummingbirds in the bougainvillea was enough to stun me into silence for a minute.

The dogs couldn’t have cared less about it’s mystical nature however, and chased it with the same lack of reverence with which they harass the less patrician local roosters.

At the sound of their noise, a pile of oily rags piled on top of a nearby cottage leapt into the air and started barking merrily, revealing itself as one of our local rooftop dogs.

My companion told me that she was coming from San Andres Church, a pretty good hike away. She’d been to a funeral, and was sad about it, and in addition was struggling with a little cold, so it was hard times all around. It was clear from her gossipy tone that sharing this list of woes was a fun and pleasant way to while away a few minutes.

I clucked and tsked, idly wondering how it was that I understood her when she was speaking in an unlikely Indian dialect, until she disappeared through a tiny door that had magically appeared in the bougainvillea spilling over an ancient garden wall, and which disappeared again as soon as she closed the door.

Okay. I made up the part about the door. But the rest is true.

Schema: A pattern imposed on complex reality or experience to assist in explaining it, mediate perception, or guide response.

Wow, really? My sister Annie introduced me to the concept of schema, but I interpreted it to mean the endless references to television shows of the sixties that she and I make. For instance, Beanie and Cecil, an early childhood favorite of mine.

In Lauren Groff’s The Monsters of Templeton, her protagonist retreats to the Upstate New York village where she was raised on the same day that it’s ancient Lake Monster dies.  In my mind, the monster looked like Cecil. Or, alternately, a series of  snakey arches against the horizon with a friendly dragon’s  head at one end and a tail at the other.  Like this:

It really made me want a Lake Monster of my own,so I  posted this question on a local webboard, famous for it’s neighborhood beauty parlor style of gossip.

Are there any legends, myths or tall tales associated with the lake? I’ve heard a story about a pair of manatees that were “hired” to clear the lirio, and also that the lake was full of positive energy crystals, which may or may not have something to do with something else I hear often, which is that there’s a high incidence of UFO’s. Have you heard any tales?

As it turns out, there’s not much in the way of sea monster lore around here. They have a  legend in the fishing community over on Scorpion Island, but careful listening will reveal that the monster they’re talking about is, in fact, the manatees that were brought in to eat the water hyacinth that was choking the lake. Unfortunately, they had never seen a manatee over in those parts, so they thought it was a sea monster, and a pretty darn delicious one at that.

And Fred Reed, a reprobate  rum guzzling, porn-and-gun loving fugitive from an Elmore Leonard novel who lives in these parts,  has written about another almost-sea monster in  his story, “Mexican Deaths.” You’ll find it by going to his remarkable webpage , Fred On Everything.  Look in the  Table of Contents on the left side of the screen for Article #382.

But even that turned out to be maybe a crocodile. And not a big green ticking one, with an old fashioned two bell alarm clock in it’s tummy,  the mental picture my Disney saturated schema produced.

No, this would be a souvenir iguana from Guatemala that mutated into a giant from living in the polluted lake and fed itself on little dogs that strayed too far from their owners.  Brother, that is so Mexican.

So, I’ll have to do without a Lake Monster for now.

Although I could post a sighting over on the beauty parlor board, and by next week there would be folks in town that would swear we’d always had one. And that they’d seen it, too.

After all, I’ve already shown what it’s supposed to look like.

My future as a writer is murky, primarily because the idea of doing research of any kind makes me want to lie down on the floor, exhausted.

 I proved this to myself by Googling a dumb story I remember from the confused days after I finally quit abusing every substance in the known world, from margaritas to cement dust.

  Okay, maybe not cement dust,but you get what I’m saying. In those early days of sobriety, I found real life to be a baffling and dangerous challenge. Comforting parables and new age catch phrases were a help to me.

The story I was trying to Google has to do with babies and angels, and honestly, if you’ve got nothing better to do with your afternoon than spend it retching into your computer keyboard, try plugging those two words into your search engine

It’s  about an older brother leaning over his baby sister’s crib and telling her to listen as hard as she can, because as he grows older, it gets more and more difficult to hear the angels talking to him.

Yes, I know, eww. Sorry.

Anyway, I think about it sometimes, because it’s getting harder and harder to look around me and laugh at how funny and quirky my Mexican village is. It’s starting to seem pretty normal. Wonderful, but normal.

 I think I’ll be able to hear the angels for a little while longer, even so.

Because, I haven’t seen it all or done it all in Mexico, not by a long shot.

For instance, I recently visited GiGi and Paco’s house on top of Chula Vista Hill. The house is gaining a well deserved reputation for fabulosity since they remodeled it, as well it should. They have, after all, replaced or improved every brick and pane of glass in that big heap of canterra marble and stupefying views. Paco, who is well, well over six feet tall, even went so far as to lower a few floors in order to have the high ceilings that he wanted. The result is not only highly photogenic, but very inviting, and we all hang out there as often as they’ll let us.

They have two teenagers, and it’s a popular party house with that set as well, since  a deep pool, flat screen TV,  and killer sound system were  remodeled into the house along with the wrought iron light fixtures and tile countertops. When I attended this particular party I was introduced to a lot of teenage Mexican beautiful people in training.

Seriously, what gorgeous kids, with all those flashing white teeth and black curls and armloads of bracelets. Devasting, really. And when we were introduced every single one of them solemnly kissed me on the cheek, as naturally and elegantly as a, well, I guess as a Mexican teenager.

  Quite the refreshing change from lunky teenaged boys looking at their giant sneakers and grunting “hey” before returning to their x-boxes, it was kind of sexy to have all these Raouls and Alejandros greeting me with such urbanity. From an anthropologist’s point of view,  of course. I mean, it’s very interesting to see at what a young age these junior latino dreamboats have absorbed the ability to make you feel like they’re about to start crooning rumba-boleros.

Honestly, I’ve remarked many times on how lucky it is that I didn’t move here when I was in my twenties. No  mariachi, cliff diver, bullfighter and rodeo cowboy  would have been safe.

  But the kissing thing, well, it’s not something that’s limited to teenagers, it’s universal. I’ve been kissed on both cheeks by bank tellers to celebrate making a deposit. My maid wouldn’t dream of leaving the house without planting one on me, and I’ve never met a child of any age who didn’t “besame” with a slime of banana kiss or a big mango-y smack. It’s the done thing in business to kiss on introduction, especially between women. And I have a great picture of the famous  Ajijic “kissing cop” laying one on my niece when she was visiting.

It ’s  a wonderful thing to spend your day getting kissed by teenagers, maids and bank tellers.

Like hearing angels.

My little dog Lupita got stung by a bee the other day. It threw me into a tizzy and I spent the afternoon trying to get her to rest the injured paw on an ice pack.

She’s a smart dog. Plenty smart enough to recognize that being adopted by a Gringa is the way to go. Although I’m convinced that she occasionally yearns for “the life” on the mean streets and the adrenaline rush of trading sex with a tough little terrier for tortilla scraps from the restaurant garbage.

Shameless slave to low pop culture that I am, I can’t resist those shows that feature snarling mothers shoving their pageant babies under the spray tan machine before sculpting old school Priscilla Presley hair onto their darling little heads.

I get the same kick out of dog shows. And the secret desire I once nurtured to be Miss Teen America has translated into a fantasy that involves Westminster opening up a new category for Mexican Street Dogs.

Which actually makes more sense than the cavalcade of inbreeding that you have now. I mean, if you mate a beagle with a beagle, what’s the big deal about ending up with a beagle? What else could you get?

But when the raffle of life presents you with a cute, smart, well behaved street dog whose parents are a combination of SharPei, Dalmation, and Chihuahua, well, that’s something worth showing off.

 There are six or seven breeds among the founding families of Ajijic’s dogs. And unless a dog is fully grown upon adoption, it’s a crapshoot. It appears, for example, that for a while dachsund teenagers were rebelling by dating schnauzers. We have enough of that progeny to nearly qualify as a new breed, and I can tell you, it’s a weird looking canine.

The other day, I was having a cappuchino at Tony’s Chicken Wings on the carreterra. I heard a very scary rumbling that seemd to come from under the next table, something like the sound of a bridge collapsing.

The table was occupied by our local hipsters, Jason and Daphne. They are by far the coolest people in town , their closest competition being one or two moldy old hep cats and several faded rat packers who drink martooneys and snap their fingers along to The Tijuana Brass. On the Hi-fi. Whatever.
Jason and Daphne are real live Kool Katz, and determined not to be sucked back into 1962 by the retirement vortex here. They own an excellent coffee shop in San Antonio, Cafe Adelita, where the music is always hip and the vibe is always groovy.

Wait. What was I talking about, anyway?

Oh, right. So I heard this gutteral rumbling noise, and, looking under the table, I saw a…well, a monster.

It had a bristling ridge of coarse black hair cresting between it’s massive shoulder blades and two ropes of drool hanging from it’s jaw. It’s eyes burned with, I’m guessing, hellfire, and it’s lips were curled back from jagged teeth, fiercely bared in the “I’m totally going to maul you and leave deadly flesh eating bacteria on the pieces of your body I don’t swallow” position.

“Jesus,” I said, “What the hell is that?

” They said at the shelter it’s a Black Lab.” Jason replied. Not very confidently, I thought.

“Yeah, well, no it’s not. A werewolf, maybe.”

Daphne, who is petite and french and edgy and has mastered the cosmetic art of the smokey eye, said. “Oui. But today zey haf tol’ us he also eez maybe a leetle part chow.”

“And maybe Rottweiler” Jason added mournfully, looking down into the lox and bagel he had ordered. Tony’s Chicken Wings is an awesome place for breakfast, by the way, with fabulous fruit plates and sandwiches. I’ve never heard of anyone ordering chicken there, though.

“Jesus” I said again.

“Yeah. So he’s dumb, like a lab, but aggressive. Like a chow.”

“Or a Rottweiler,” I supplied.

“Ah, but ‘ee eez so cuute, no?”

And there it was. Love is blind. The love we have for our adopted street dogs around here is blind and retarded. We are fools for our pets.

Want proof? Okay, well, here’s Lupita and Millie, my Champion Mexican Street Dogs. I think either one of them could kick Uno’s ass next year at Westminster.

Especially if there’s a flip flop eating category.

The good hearted folks at Lakeside have done a wonderful job of rescuing and controlling the street dog population here. They do it for love, and your donations are welcome and necessary.

 God Bless all us Amuricans, and our conviction that the closer you get to Philadelphia, the closer to reality you are. I mean, Christ wasn’t born in Colonial Williamsburg, for Pete’s sake, but that doesn’t stop my family from asking “Gosh, do they have Christmas in Mexico?” 

Um, yeah. Because, while Christopher Columbus was still reading his map and wondering where India had got to, Spain was already here, baptising left and right.  And there was no monkey business separating church and state or any of that. It is Catholic up in here.

All right, yes, there are a few Aztec and Mayan flourishes on the True Religion, as I have written about before.  But when I tried to explain the Easter Bunny, or Conejo Gigantico, and his basket of Eggs to my maid, I could see that she felt like our whole country could use a little of that old  time Inquisition to get things back on track.

And who can blame her? The customs that I take for granted really do scream Pagan Fertility Rite.

It seems weirder still in a place as Easter obsessed as Mexico. Because , ohyoubetcha, they celebrate Easter here. Full on, with every village on the lakeshore suddenly looking like the Haight in 1967, awash in Jesuses and Mary Magdalenes and Roman Centurions taking cigarette breaks against schoolyard walls.

The holiday traffic, always a pain in the ass, has been especially awful as inching along at a snail’s pace is the only way to prevent running over one of the sandaled pedestrians dragging  a giant cross or riding  a burro through a palm arch or rolling a boulder away from the mouth of a papier mache cave.

But Good Luck finding an egg hunt.

***************************

On a completely different topic, the very excellent magazine, Inside Mexico, had the great good taste to ask me to submit an article.

Do I seem casual?  Don’t be fooled. I couldn’t be more excited if the New Yorker called me personally.

Not only can the magazine be downloaded for free, but my little article can also be found in the complimentary issue offered on Mexicana’s flights.   Here it is, in case you’re not the downloading type.

Ajijic’s Annual Chili Cook-off: I Love a Parade.In the past couple of weeks, I have viewed with some misgiving the invitation in the Gringo Press to “Join the Parade!’ for the 30th Annual Chili Cook-off.There are plenty of local eccentrics who won’t be able to resist the chance to get dressed up and dance along the parade route, scaring the little children and convincing the Mexicans that we’ve all got a screw loose.

The fact is, that although Ajijic has achieved a fairly deep veneer of Yankee polish, you still have to be at least a little bit, well, let’s say free-spirited, to want to move to Mexico.And nothing brings out the inner flower child like a parade. Never mind the people who follow the chili cook off circuit, which takes free spirit to a whole new level.

I brought up the subject of the parade with my friend Georgette Richmond, confident that she would respond with one of her bizarre tales of the old days, when Ajijic was really wild and wooly.

“We used to have chicken races at the Chili Cook Off,” she began, in her society Texas drawl.

“Back then Morley Eager borrowed the elephant from the Mexican circus and rode it in the parade, and Jaimie dressed up like a Mariachi.” Jaimie Niembro is the superbly debonaire broker at Ajijic Real Estate. Imagining him dressed as a Mariachi is like picturing your parents tripping on acid.

“I wore a chicken costume I’d gotten in Austin from a promotion at Rosies’s Cantina,” she continued,  as if that somehow made sense.“What we’d do, is, we’d stuff a chicken into a piece of PVC pipe, and then one of the boys would shove it out with a toilet plunger, and everyone would bet on which chicken would fly the farthest. We raised a looooot of money on those chicken races. The animal activists stopped us in the end, though,”

To Georgette the cessation of the chicken races was clearly another example of the world going to hell in a handbasket, like recess being eliminated from elementary school curriculums, and the success of rap music. She misses the wild and wooly days, but I don’t think we’d be able to handle them any more.

I have to admit it, though. I do love a parade.

The chili cook off benefits eight local charities.  Although there will not be any chicken races, there will be music, food, raffles, big stage entertainment, and of course, chili. For info, go to www.mexicanchilicookoff.com

So there you have it. Remember, you knew me when. Oh, and do check out the magazine Inside Mexico, it’s really good.

Jesus Christ, if anyone else in my world dies, I’m going to weigh 300 pounds, I kid you not.

Since I’ve long since given up all the drugs that do any good,  I’m a big one for turning to food in times of stress.

 I wouldn’t have thought it was possible to be an emotional eater in a country where most delicacies come from the deep interior of an animal (instead of  the more genteel exterior, where the steaks are located. Menudo? Menudon’t!) and lard is a favorite condiment. 

But Mexico does love it’s turquoise and shocking pink pastries, too. And there’s always the chile and papaya flavored candy.

Anyway, life goes on, and it’s time to say good-by to Marty (and Mozart), and to quit pretending that the carton of ice crystals flavored with goat’s milk caramel is going to make me feel better.

 It’s Easter! New Beginnings!

My favorite part of this time of year is the annual newspaper article from the Catholic Church telling the Mexican people to  please, for the love of Mike, calm the hell down. 

Beach week in these parts is not reserved for graduating high school seniors, or even horny college kids who want to get their beer pong on.

In Mexico, Beach week is a family affair. The whole fam-damily saddles up on Friday night and heads for the coast, taking the ordinarily dicey driving standard to a breathtaking new level of reckless endangerment. As I write they are pouring into hotel rooms in Manzanillo and Puerto Vallarta, shooting off firecrackers and blasting ranchero  music from cars  lined up at the waterfront and smashing confetti filled eggs on each other’s heads.

It  drives the bosses over at the One True Church mental, and they have bulletin boards all over the place reminding people that Holy Week is a time to reflect and abstain and wear somber clothing, not run around getting drunk on cheap tequila  and banging on pinatas.

We’re staying put, as are all sensible Gringos, peering out from behind our curtains with cotton sticking our of our ears against the cohetes.

I don’t anticipate any tranquility, even without the gangs of glamourous Guadalajarans roaming our area in their blingy t-shirts and Prada sneakers, swigging cervesa by the bucketfull.

My Mom and 16 year old niece are here for the week.

You may remember that her sister was taken on a cruise to celebrate graduating from high school without an expulsion or pregnanacy on her record.

Yeah,  with this one it seemed like it might be a good idea to go ahead and get that  trip out of the way, even though there’s another year before graduation. 

Anyway, they’re here for the week. I love them both, which doesn’t mean that by the end of the visit I won’t  be snatching my hair out by the handfuls.

Pass the Menudo.

Hi everybody…. I just wanted to say that I’m leaving the “Legend of Marty Miller” up for a week before I post again. Just my tribute, dumb and small as it is.  I’ll put up a new post the weekend of March 14. Thanks E

Do I seem bitter this week? I feel it, a little.

I got word that someone who was very important in my life has died, and I’m not in the effing mood for life’s lessons. Or to write another obituary, for that matter.

Marty, who was  powerful and charismatic, broad shouldered, bald headed, and on  friendly terms with folding money, who could fix whatever was broke and break anything he was mad at, has died.

It seems impossible to me, because I thought he was immortal.

Marty and I had a relationship for more than a decade, during which we sailed on big boats to scuba dive off little islands and flew to wherever the Redskins were playing for long weekends and bought big jewelry and wore fur and suede and cowboy hats and tinted shades.

He was a bit of a rescuer and a lot in love with broken women, and I guess I would have never had a chance at sanity if we had stayed together, but that wouldn’t have stopped me.

Sometimes being crazy seemed like a small price to pay for the glamour and excitement of living with him.

It never occurred to me that I would never see him again, and even Bruno, who is well acquainted with the legend of Mark Miller, was rattled at the suddeness and permanence of his abrupt departure from this world.

But, you know what? That’s how he rolled.

 I couldn’t forget Marty while he was alive,  and I certainly won’t forget him now. Nobody who knew him will.

He was an unforgettable man.
Vaya Con Dios, Marty.

You know that “quaint” is not all a walk in the Disney park. There’s always something that doesn’t show up in the postcards.

I have to believe that raw sewage was running down the gutters of Brothers Grimm’s fairy tale villages,and that the snowglobe world of Hans Christian Andersen was pretty freaking cold.

Here in our Mexican Village we have cerulean blue skies and town squares where ice cream vendors greet you with a smile and a wave and bougainvillea spilling over pastel garden walls. And cobblestones. We have cobblestones grouted together with generations of dust and horseshit. It couldn’t be any quainter, believe me.

I love the cobblestones, some of which have been here since the conquistadors. But there’s a down side.

For instance, we live at the bottom of a mountain. When the rains come in June, millions of gallons of rainwater will start rushing down the mountain to fill our lake after the dry season.

And, you know, carrying ancient cobblestones and horseshit with it. Quaint!

I think about this stuff every time I get out of my car.The curbs here are very deep to accomodate the summer rains, and the streets are, in their quaint way, exceedingly narrow.

Nobody was driving Lincoln Navigators when the streets were built, if you follow me.

They do now, though, and if you don’t park with your tires right up against the curb, you are guaranteed to lose a sideview mirror.

Which is why it was so disturbing when Young Hollywood seemed determined to make going commando fashionable. All that leaping in and out of sports cars without panties!

Thankfully, they’ve all gone to jail or rehab and I don’t have to have nightmares about that particular trend catching on among the fashion forward here.

For one thing, the weather is more temperate here in Paradise than it is in steamy Los Angeles. It’s certainly cool enough that most of us remember to put our knickers on before we leave the house.

Thank God.

Because the danger of being forced into a Brittany Spears style exit from our cars in the village exists. The simple fact of the curbs being higher than some of the cars we drive makes it…awkward.

There’s always a moment when exiting from the drivers side that requires getting out from under the steering wheel and onto the curb that can’t be accomplished without a grand plie in the style of Olive Oyle.

Not quaint.