writing through the day

Pop the corn.  Pour the soda.  And buy those raisenettes and jujubes.


It is movie night.  Or more accurately, movie day.


But I am getting ahead of myself.  My stop at the Guanajuato International Film Festival did not start until the afternoon.  And my day of activities was well under way by then.


I have been very fortunate to meet a number of fellow bloggers during my stay in San Miguel de Allende  I expected to meet most of them.  But we had a surprise visitor this morning.


Marc Olson of an alaskan in yucatán stopped by for a quick visit.  Babs and I picked him up at the bus station and drove him up to her house -- where we had a pleasant conversation on what he is doing in this part of the world.


For several years he has been spending part of his summers in a puebla outside of Querétaro.  It is something like summer camp with a purpose.  He teaches ways for the children to help their village become more sustainable.  By planting trees.  Taking care of litter.  Learning how to be a friendlier presence on this planet.  I am hoping he will tell us a bit more on his blog.

We then adjourned to lunch.  Because what would a blogger meet be without food?  We decided on Italian, and Babs directed us to a little restaurant I have walked past several times – El Vivlio.  I am not going to walk by again without stopping to eat.


The food was far better than anything in Melaque.  In fact, it was better than most of the restaurants in Salem.


But, as good as the food was, the conversation was better.  We talked about what seems to work on each of our blogs.  And what we have learned from fellow bloggers.  Plus our usual critique of the blogs we like -- and why -- and those that don’t seem to work for us as well as others.  Of course, we lamented the passing of Felipe’s blog.


Far too soon our afternoon was over and Marc rushed to catch a cab in a downpour.  Babs decided to catch a cab back up the hill.  And I elected to wander over to the film festival.


Someone has done a great job of turning an unused cinema into a great venue for the festival.  Everything (including what I assume are temporary seat cushions) had a spiffy look.


When I arrived, they were showing a series of shorter films.  I did not catch the title of the first film.  But it was a clever montage of group photographs of people who represent power in the world culture -- all scanned left to right and increasing in speed to represent that power is power. 


Even though I am not quite certain what Queen Elizabeth and the Chippendale dancers have in common.  What the power photographs did have in common is that everyone was in stiff poses.


The parade of bourgeois rectitude was replaced with heroic photographs of young people throwing Molotov cocktails and challenging The Man.  As revolutionary propaganda it was visually interesting.  But the title I missed could easily have been “Clichés of Youth.”


And speaking of youth, the next two films were about boys on wheels.  Skateboard wheels to be exact.


The first was a documentary entitled Skateistan -- eponymously titled for a program in Afghanistan to teach Afghan boys and girls to skateboard.  A place to break down sexual and class barriers while giving the children hope.  One of the male skaters lamented the fact that the Taliban had brought peace, now there was war, and that Afghanistan needs a leader who can bring peace.  The End.  I guess that was the hopeful note.


The other skater film was Dragonslayer -- an American film (partly filmed in Oregon) about a young man who has nothing in life except skating.  It was dreadfully boring.  And I suspect the director wanted it that way.  For us to share in this kid’s almost existential Charybdis.  My suggestion would be to get his butt to Afghanistan at Skateistan.


But I cannot skip over my favorite Mexican short.  For me, it was the highlight of the afternoon.  Tomatl is a witty revenge film.  In some incredibly clever stop-action photography, the film traces the spread of the tomato throughout the world as an Aztec plot.  When the Aztec calendar ends next year, a secret poison in the tomato will annihilate the world in revenge for what the Spanish did to the Aztecs.  If you note a tongue buried deep in a certain Mayan myth, you will appreciate what the film offers.


But the big piece was in the evening.  Paul Schrader’s Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters.

 

Before the film began, Paul Schrader, who wrote and directed the film, told us a bit about the background of the film and how it related to some of his other works – including Taxi Driver and its theme of ritual suicide. 


The film is a stylized biography of Yukio Mishami’s life using three of his novels as devices to move Mishami’s life along.  For artistic authenticity, the dialog is in Japanese.  And where there are usually English subtitles, Spanish subtitles appeared.  As a result, a lot of the expatriate audience cleared out in the first 15 minutes.  But, to be fair, quite a few Mexican nationals left early as well.


It is too bad.  They missed a stunningly beautiful film -- very Japanese in its visual effects.  And some marvelous acting.  Not to mention an outstanding soundtrack by Philip Glass.


For me, it topped off a great day of talking about writing and seeing the results of some very good writing on the screen.


I was about to add one rant.  But I will save that for another day.  This day was too good to ruin it with my own irritations with some audience members.

  

renting my culture

My trip to San Miguel de Allende has turned out to be far more enlightening than I thought it would be.


I knew the place was a nest of artists.  But I was pleasantly surprised that it was not one of those navel-gazing art communities that excludes outsiders.  Amish in better designed clothes.


Instead, San Miguel invites people to participate in its artiness.  There are galleries ready to trade the magic of Mexico on canvas or tin or fabric for a wad of peso notes.


But there are also the festivals.  Jazz.  Chamber music.  Film.  All in progress on this stay.


The place is looking alluring enough that I decided to take a look at what is available for rent.  Just in case I want to spend some more time away from the beach now and then.


A friend suggested what I have heard from several other sources -- just start walking and looking for rental signs.  They are all over the place.


For instance, the house pictured at the top of this post is located up the hill from Babs’s place.  It probably is not what I am interested in.  It is too far from town for a reasonable walk -- and the view does not appear to balance out that disadvantage.  But I might take a look.  Just out of curiosity.

 

After my brief rental scout trip, Babs and I headed to dinner with a group of San Miguel residents at El Buen.  Friday night is comfort food night.  Fried chicken.  Fried catfish.  Meatloaf.  Macaroni and cheese.  Mashed potatoes.  Corn bread.  I almost felt as if we had strayed into Atlanta.


The conversation was as varied as the guests.  Who is required to pay capital gains on real estate transactions?  What does the immigration office here require for FM3 renewals?  Who has seen the worst dust storm?  What new restaurants have good food?


There were eight of us.  All Americans.  All, but one, expatriates.  And none of us knew every other person at the table.  But the conversation was lively and entertaining.  You won’t find that with every group of strangers.

 

After dinner, Ron and Fred (from church) asked me if I wanted to join them to watch a film being shown in the jardin as part of the Guanajuato International Film Festival.  This year, the festival is honoring South Korean films.  But tonight's open-air presentation was a short about a Mexican director.


Unfortunately, where we were standing, the soundtrack was hard to hear.  Especially since a mariachi band was doing its best to drown out the sound and make a few pesos of their own.


We then walked by a theater that has been disused for several years.  It has been refurbished and is now the prime venue for the films.  From the exterior, you could tell this was A Place For Film Folks.  Backless couches grouped for conversations that no one was having because their obviously expensive telephones were stuck to their ears.  Too busy to chat.


Tomorrow Paul Schrader’s Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters will be on screen.  And Schrader will receive an award for his writing and directing.  If I can, I would like to get tickets.  If I do, I might get some interesting photographs.


With events like this in town, you can see why I might be interested in picking up a house to rent for regular visits.

doing good -- doing better

The San Miguel education of Steve Cotton continues.


Today was Do Gooder day.


Now, I know a lot of you think of “Do Gooder” as a pejorative.  If you do, you are most likely confusing it with its genetic mutants: “Officious Meddler” and “Make Me Feel Better About Myselfer.”


Babs and I spent part of our afternoon at the real McCoy.  A fundraiser for Mujeres en Cambio de San Miguel de Allende.  The group was formed to provide middle school, high school, and university scholarships to Mexican girls in rural communities. 


Those of you who have read the blogs of parents with children in Mexican schools know of the additional expenses every family faces in keeping children in school.  For rural families, the expense is often prohibitive.  And girls are the first to lose out.

 

The function was held at Patsy’s Place.  A lovely rancho on the road to Dolores Hidalgo.


This was not going to be a soup kitchen affair.  The tables were well-appointed and the women were dressed as if attending any fundraiser in Marin County.  It was a place To Be Seen.


The meal was delicious.  And the pitch was well-delivered when everyone had finished eating.  But, as I watched the hat being passed for donations, the take certainly did not seem to match the outfits in the room.


And this lunch gave me an opportunity to see the side of the San Miguel that made me reluctant to visit in the first place.  I would estimate that 90% of the people in the room were salt of the earth people.


But it only takes one or two to create a negative impression.  The type of people who get their ideas straight for their own publications and can only speak in sound bites.  The repeated use of the phrase “I hate” is usually a dead giveaway that you are about to hear something that is concurrently conclusory and vacuous.


But It was a good cause.  And I enjoyed most of the company. 

 

On the way back to San Miguel, we stopped at the Sanctuary of Atotonilco.  It is another of those 17th century churches associated with a vision.  In this one, Jesus, wearing a crown of thorns and carrying a cross, appeared to Father Luis Felipe Neri de Alfaroion, and requested a church to be built in the desert scrub bush.


And there it still stands.  A new UNESCO World Heritage site.


The sanctuary is interesting historically and architecturally.  The history is fleeting.  But it was from this church that the warrior-priest grabbed the banner of Our Lady of Guadalupe to begin his journey in 1810 to Dolores Hidalgo to declare independence -- and then on to Guanajuato to massacre a bunch of Spanish families.


The architectural interest is the interior of the church.  It is covered with paintings on the walls and the ceiling -- to the point it is often called the “Sistine Chapel of Mexico.”

 

The comparison is apt in the scope of the project, but not its artistic quality.  Much of the painting has recently been restored.  The church is built over an old spring where the Indians would bathe nude.  The humidity has caused a good deal of damage to the walls and the paintings.


What has been restored reflects the plain style of Flemish painters – the inspiration for the series of scenes from the life of Jesus.


As we sat and looked at the opulence of this little chapel, we talked about the many Indian lives that were lost in the conquest, and in the mining of the silver and gold that made these churches possible.  But, even knowing that history, busloads of their descendants pour in to this church to worship.


And that made me remember that hat being passed around earlier in the afternoon.  The peso notes would not have paid for anything in the church.  Maybe that is a parable that when we choose to do good, sometimes we need to do better.


”For where your wealth is, there your heart will be also.” 

in the garden of babs

It is a pleasantly hot day in San Miguel.


Well, “pleasant” and “hot” for me.  It is 75 degrees with 38% humidity -- a really nice day in my book.   

Right now in Melaque, it is 90 degrees and 66% humidity.  I think I chose a good time to escape to the mountains.


Something is afoot in the town this afternoon.  There has been the usual volley of rockets.  Now the church bells are apeal.  And I am not certain what is up because I have snuggled myself into this pleasant house for the full day.


For those of you who have wondered if my failure to post over the last 36 hours might have something to do with my scorpion sting -- it didn’t.  I was simply out enjoying myself.  And enjoying myself in.


Yesterday I joined a few other residents of San Miguel at the last episode of the Harry Potter film series.  In a modern, tidy cineplex at the shopping center I mentioned the other day.  And I saw it for 46 peso -- about $3.92 (US).

 

The Harry Potter books and films are obviously addressed to pre-teens and young teens  But the story is as old as all quest literature.  Odysseus would have fully understood what he had to do if he had been wizardly spelled into Harry Potter’s loafers.


I also bought a new book for my Kindle based on some dinner conversation at Billie’s welcoming party.  I have enjoyed the two books I have read by Erik Larson: The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America; and Thunderstruck.


 

I knew he had just published a new book, but I had not paid much attention to it.  The advice of my dinner mates and my experience with the two earlier books tipped me over the edge.  While I was waiting for the movie to start, I simply ordered up the book on my Kindle.  In a cinema theater.  In Mexico.  Great world, isn’t it?


The book is In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin.  Larson tells the story of the early, vulnerable years of Hitler’s rule when nations (often for understandable reasons) took no action to hem in Nazi power.  Rather than mere history narrative, he tells the tale through the eyes of the newly-appointed American ambassador to Germany and his family.

 

According to my Kindle, I am 60% of the way through the book.  I should finish it tonight.


It does not matter that the reader will know what happens to some of the major characters.  Larson has the pen of a novelist -- a novelist who can conjure up believable dialog that cannot possibly be historical, but has the feel of authenticity.


Will Rudolf Diels, the first head of the Gestapo, survive his political games?  Will Ernst Röhm seize control of the German Army?  Will President Paul von Hindenburg (a blimp of a man) dismiss Hitler at the request of the army?  Will the ambassador's daughter betray the United States to the Soviet Union?


I suspect most of you know the answers to those questions.  They are all part of our past -- part of who we are.


But it doesn't matter that we know the fate of each of the characters.  The book is a good read.  Larson is capable of pulling us out of our anachronistic view of history and putting us in the position of the people who had to live their lives in that milieu.

 

Speaking of milieu, the photographs that grace this post are of Babs’s lovely casita.  It bears her decorative touch in each room.  A decorative touch that makes me feel as if I know San Miguel without setting foot outside the door.


But I will tomorrow  Set foot outside the door, that is.


Babs has a treat for me – and I intend to share.

float like a butterfly, sting like a scorpion

I have finally been inducted into the Order of the Scorpion-stung.


But I doubt I will get any oak leaf clusters.


Monday evening, as I was preparing for bed, I gargled, brushed my teeth, and reached for the bottle containing my blood pressure pills.  As I picked it up, I felt a small scratch.  At first I thought I had been scraped by one of those plastic labels pharmacists up north insist on putting on pill bottles these days.


But then I felt movement.  Before I could fully register this little pas de deux, I saw a brown object pirouetting toward the toilet -- probably knowing that was going to be its next home in any event.  Only when it performed a perfect splash landing did I see what it was.


Of course, you know what it was -- because I already told you.  A small brown scorpion.  That is it at the top of this post -- doing its Michael Phelps impression in the bowl.


From everything I have heard, I am one lucky dude.  I must have had my finger in just the right position to not take a full frontal hit.  But it did break the flesh.  And it does sting.


Did I immediately go to the internet and refresh myself on the immediate steps to take after being stung by a scorpion?  Of course, not.  I had to figure out how to take a macro photograph for all of you.


Even now, rather then keep my cold compress on my finger, I am typing.


I could argue that shows my dedication to you.  Of course, what it proves is that my sting is not really a big deal. 


And I am likely to get kicked out of my newly-admitted society.

getting real with mexico

You are looking at a piece of history.


An old piece of history.  The Camino Real de Tierra Adentro.  The silver route. 


The road the Spanish used to transport silver from Zacatecas, Guanajuato, and San Luis Potosi to Mexico City and to ship mercury from Europe north to extract that silver.  The road from Spanish national rags to riches to rags.


The stones that are there now are not the same as were there in the 1600s.  Even though it feels that way when you are driving over them.


The stretch of the royal highway pictured above is in San Miguel.  Between Babs’s house and the place I decided for today’s Mexico adventure.


Rather than visit the market stalls to buy two weeks of groceries, I decided to slowly drive the king’s highway to a shopping center on the outskirts of San Miguel.  For me, it is a bit exotic.  We simply do not have things like this in Melaque.

For me, it is a tourist destination.  For the Mexican families I encountered, it is simply a convenience in their lives.


It looks like almost any shopping center you would find in a small California town.  A big box department store (Liverpool).  Banks.  Coffee shops.  McDonald’s.  Optician.  Multi-plex theater.  Video arcade.  Large grocery store (Soriana).  Office Depot.


Before I visited San Miguel, several people told me I should skip the place.  It is nothing more than Gringolandia.  All you hear is English.  It is not authentically Mexican.


It was the last point that got me thinking as I looked around in the shopping center this afternoon.  I didn’t see any burros.  Or sombreros.  Or happy peasants beating the stuffing out of a piñata.


What I did see were parents having lunch with their families at McDonald’s.  Shopping for corn flakes at Soriana.  Buying computers at Office Depot.  Trying on clothes at Liverpool.


In short, middle class people acting just as they would in Fresno, Oxford, or Madrid.


Not too long ago on one of my Mexico message boards, a young Mexican in Mexico City took we expatriates to task for trying to freeze Mexico in amber.  The land of siestas, burros, and sombreros.  To her, that is not Mexico.  Mexico is young families doing their best to improve their lots in some of the world’s most  exciting cities.  To her, that is the authentic Mexico.


I suspect she is both wrong and right -- as are the amber-fixated expatriates.


There are a lot of Mexicos.  But all of them are changing to one extent or other.  And each of them is authentically Mexican.  Because they exist in Mexico.


The trick is finding the Mexico that meets your passions -- and then change right along with it.


And my passion?  Today I found part of it.  And I am enjoying its contribution as I write.

Can Mexico get any more authentic than this?

blogging off

I apologize for slacking off these past two days.  But I decided it was much better to live friendships than to write about them.


Radical idea, eh?


This past week reminded me that the value of friendship is in the doing. 


If you asked me what the three of us discussed during our trips this past week, I could give you a vague idea of the topics.  But if you were not there as a participant, knowing the topics would do you little good.


I fully anticipated good conversation with Brian.  He is a minister.  A teacher.  A scholar.  And he has lived in several countries around the world.  He is one of those people who remind you with his talent just how the art of conversation has slipped away in general society.


But his son, Holden, turned out to be a great joy.  I was a bit intimidated about what I would do to occupy the interests of a 16-year old boy.  I have always known he was very intelligent.  But 16 is a challenging age.


It turned out not to be a problem.  His conversation topics and his ability to argue (in the rhetorical sense of that word) bore the DNA of the idealistic dreams of any teenage boy.  But he is also very logical and can hold his own in any discussion.


I should not have been surprised.  After all, he has almost completed all of his requirements to obtain his civilian flight license.


But he is still a teenager.  And discussions only go so far.


He told me before he arrived that he would be interested in riding a jet ski.  I knew I had seen them on the west end of the beach earlier in the year.  But each time we were on that side of the beach, nada.


On Saturday, we decided to have one last lunch on the beach before I drove them to the airport for their afternoon flight.  Just as we sat down, we all saw it.  One jet ski in the water.  Just waiting to be ridden.


Holden did a quick calculation of time, and decided if we were economical with our lunch time, he could get in a full half hour of jet ski before we had to leave.


So, we did.  And he had a great time.  That is him out there almost as the only vessel on Navidad Bay.  Whipping back and forth.  Writing his initials in the Pacific.

My only regret is that there was not another one available.  It would have been fun to race him -- reliving some of those old motorcycle days.  When rules were just a fading ember in the back of the mind.

But, it eventually ended.  As did their week in Melaque.

 

I dropped them off at the airport, and took delivery of my GPS mount and power adapter – brought from Seattle by the very capable hands of my friend, Anne.


The mount is now installed on the windshield of the Welfare Escape, and the GPS is pointed toward San Miguel for my return drive to the highlands.  That is what I will be doing all day on Sunday.