A star fell from the heavens and landed in a pocket park in San Miguel de Allende,
Right behind the Parroquia de San Miguel Arcangel.
Crazy how people take such things in stride.
If a star had fallen anywhere else, people would have been looking for it on the five o’clock news.
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Tis the season.
For what?
Commercials, of course.
Holiday commercials, filled with tinsel and snow, all merry and bright.
Urging you to get your Christmas shopping just right.
We’re here to help you, they say, with nary a snarky grin.
You see, we know what trouble you’re in with your kin.
The right presents can bail you out.
Listen to our adverts, Bubba, in case there is some doubt.
But for the big hearts and amazing foresight of one Mexican family, a newly built structure in Colonia La Luz might have become another OXXO store. Instead, with a lot of help from a lot of friends, it will become the new home of San Miguel Playhouse.
The theater lost its home on Independencia when the owners of the property put it up for sale. With no lease on the property they have been occupying since 2014 and the threat of eviction hanging over their head, the troupe couldn’t plan a new season. As they say in the business, the theater went dark in May.
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They’re mostly gone now, the visitors, the tourists. Swept away by a late-season burst of rain and the chill in the air. Out with the marigolds and Catrinas and jacked-up prices — “make hay while the sun shines.” In with the hint of calm and solitude, if only for an eye-wink.
It is quiet for a moment. The so-called high season begins shortly, as the first dusting of snow transforms parts north and the occasional residents descend for the winter rounds of social gatherings, fine dining, concerts, and art exhibitions.
People coming and going in San Miguel are kind of like seasons all their own.
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Don’t go looking for her. She is gone. I’m glad I stopped to make her acquaintance before heading next door to Cafe Murmullo to meet friends for breakfast.
In the time it took me to down waffles piled high with blackberries and raspberries with a drizzle of strawberry compote and two cups of chai latte, she was gone.
Women like that, so fickle. Here one moment, big hat and bangles. Gone the next.
Maybe next year. Same time, same place?
I will wait for her. Grateful for what little time we had together. (About five minutes this morning, to be honest.)
Meanwhile, the murals remain, of course. In the entrance to Instituto Allende on Calle Ancha de San Antonio 22. And they are beautiful. Are they not? Stop by and peek in the door. Murals are meant to be seen and appreciated.
Catrinas, too. But their time is short.
Who ever heard of a parade starting on time in San Miguel de Allende? Well, ALMOST on time.
Last night’s official parade of the dead got off within 20 minutes of its announced time of 6 p.m. By our standards, that’s awfully good. And it caught a lot of Catrinas and Catrines by surprise.
The first band and mobs of gaily dressed skeletal creatures were out of the gate on Cardo like it was the Kentucky Derby and not Dia de Muertos. All of a sudden, a hundred bystanders with iPhones and Nikon cameras were scrambling down the Ancha to get ahead of the parade.
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Gaily costumed and made-up men and women just sort of filtered into the plaza last night in twos and fours. If there was a grand parade from any of the private Catrina parties around San Miguel de Allende, it was after I left.
By 8 p.m., I’d seen enough. And what I saw was delightful.
(Catch up with Thursday night’s official parade here.)
There were lots of traditional Catrinas and Catrines but there were spinoffs, too. Like the two cowboys, the bishop, the woman in the illuminated cape, and the tyrannosaurus rex. Yes, a dinosaur. It is just that kind of year.
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Musings, Magic, San Miguel and More 