room with a view

My brother and I do not always see eye-to-eye.

That, of course, is true of all great thinkers, who tend to see the world from different perspectives. Great thinkers. But also my brother and me.

Darrel has long advocated building a staircase with access to the roof of the pavilions on my upper terrace. His idea has been to construct a palapa atop one of the pavilions to take advantage of the view.

I have opposed the idea for two reasons. The first is aesthetic. A stairway and a palapa would ruin the lines of my Barragán-inspired house. The men who installed the solar panels on my roof did a marvelous job of retaining the planar surfaces of the house. I do not want to ruin the lines with more construction.

Come to think of it, the second reason is also aesthetic. There is really no view from the top of the pavilion. Even though I am just blocks from the ocean and our alluvial plain is surrounded by hills, there is not much to see from the roof.

There is the Great Antenna of Barra, the OXXO sign, and lots of trees. But that is about it. Naming the palapa Buenavista would be an exercise in sardonic sarcasm.

Omar reminded me yesterday that it was once again time to clean the solar panels that reside where Darrel envisioned his palapa. So, at o-dark-thirty, I met my son on the top of the pavilion with hose, rag, and squeegee to remove the layers of dust and bird excrement that have accumulated on the panels since their last cleaning.

Even though the view from up there is nothing to write home about (even though I am writing your home about it), I always pause my chores to take a look at what is happening around the neighborhood. From up there, I can see behind most of my neighbors' walls. At sunrise, there is very little going on.

Having had my perspective fix for the morning, I finished up my Dora day chores. Gathering up the garbage bags from each of the bathrooms and the kitchen. Trimming the vines that I left uncut last Saturday. Sweeping out the garage. What Dora and I mockingly refer to as "Steve's Man Duties."

Because it is Wednesday, I threw the dirty laundry into the car and drove over to San Patricio to drop it off with the laundress. On the way home, I had another of those experiences that reminds me why I have chosen to live in Mexico.

Highway 200 is the road that unites our middle-of-nowhere villages with the edge-of-somewhere. If you want to transport a load of mangoes, a bus filled with passengers, or a tourist family along the Mexico Pacific coast, you will need to drive on Highway 200. It is our link with modernity.

Apparently, a herd of cows did not get that message. Right in the middle of town on highway 200, a herd of cows -- fifteen to twenty -- had decided to take their morning saunter. They looked like extras from Blazing Saddles. If a person was herding them, he was not in sight.

The head cow was staring at the rather sheepish and befuddled bull. Had my Star Trek universal translator been working, I am certain I would have heard her saying: "I told you to stop for directions. But, no. You could not do that because you are too bull-headed. Now, look where we are."

Because they were in a no hurry to get to wherever they forgot they were going, they had several cars, motorcycles, trucks, and buses backed up -- all patiently waiting for the cows to decide what they were going to do. There was no horn honking. No yelling. In fact, to a person, all of the drivers looked as if the situation was no more remarkable than finding a tope in the road.

Life really is about perspective. Too often we are looking for that perfect view that will enhance our outlooks in the same way that we search out circumstances that we just know will fix everything in our ill-fated lives. Even though we know it is never going to happen.

Maybe it takes waiting for the cows in our paths to move on. That it is not finding circumstances to improve our lives, but learning how to find the joy in each circumstance we encounter.

That would be a view worth adopting. It might even deserve its own palapa.