The voice is young, sweet, innocent and yet, broken in a way only love’s betrayal can scar.
She accompanies herself on a guitar, languidly strumming. Not living, not dead. In the between. In the neverland of a broken heart. The vocalist drags out the last words of each line, as if groping toward a precipice. It may be in Spanish but it feels very French.
The singing is coming from an upper patio of the building next door.
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Matthew 25:40: “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me. “
And the rain pours down
Like on no day before.
My Rose takes our red umbrella
And hangs it over the hummingbird’s nest.
.
Like on no day before
But the three tiny eggs
And their mother stay dry.
.
And the rain pours down
Like on no day before
But my Rose thinks only
Of the frailest among us.
.
My heart fills with love
For a woman who thinks like that.
Let the rain pour down
Like on no day before.
Postscript: There are now babies in the nest and Rose lets me place the umbrella up when it starts to rain. Sometimes.
Every time I think that I’ve photographed the Parroquia San Miguel de Arcangel from every conceivable angle during the past five years, something new comes along.
It’s like in physics. Scientists were pretty sure that the Standard Model that addresses all “of nature’s known particles and forces” was The Overall Encompassing Answer to Everything.
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(The author begs your indulgence if you already read this on Facebook. The blog seems a better home for it. Thank you for reading and commenting. — The editor)
A whole ocean spreads out before them
But for two little boys
A string of shallow pools
And some rocks
Are quite enough.
Splashing water with foot-stomping fierceness
They move rocks from pool to pool.
They wallow in the deepest one
Like beached sea lions.
All the while, the ocean calls
In vain.
It sends dolphins to entice them
But the boys will have none of that.
Yesterday, at a children’s park,
It was the rolling green lawn, the wind twisted climbing trees, and the incurious squirrels
That captivated their imaginations.
Not the swings, not the slides, not the plastic and rope confections of an adult’s imagination.
They are like cats with boxes and Christmas wrapping.
Give us nature’s raw materials,
they seem to say,
And we will build sailing ships and castles
And fantastic flying machines
In our fertile minds.
They did it. The Loco marched, danced, walked, twirled, teased, sweated, tossed candy and rubber balls, waved, smiled, and consumed copious amounts of water and electrolyte drinks on Sunday morning.
And the thousands lining both sides of many downtown San Miguel de Allende streets loved every hot and sticky, broiling, joyous moment of the Contvite de Locos.
What an incredible day.
The city estimates that 130,000 people were in San Miguel for the parade, of whom 5,300 were Locos marching in the parade. Only 43 people required medical attention for heat, falling, tripping, or other maladies. Four individuals were arrested during this very family-oriented festivity.
It is worth noting that the city staffed a number of “hydration stations” along the parade route for marchers and watchers.
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You know that feeling? Like you are being watched by somebody in the park? Somebody you can’t see. But those eyes …
This morning while walking the gentle philosophy dog, Moppit, in Parque Guadiana I couldn’t shake the feeling there there were eyes upon me.
Well, I wasn’t completely wrong.
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And the Creator said, “epiphyllum oxypetalum, you shall be a cactus, though you do not look like one. Once a year and only at night, you shall bear forth beautiful flowers while the world sleeps. Before dawn your flowers shall wither away, but only before being ravaged by bats.”
The epiphyllum oxypetalum did not understand this curious fate but it knew better than to argue with the Creator.
Perhaps the Creator felt a little guilty because later, the epiphyllum oxypetalum was given a lovely and pronounceable name: Queen of the Night.
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I met a woman, in my dreams last night.
Her senses are scrambled.
She touches through her eyes.
She sees through her nose.
She tastes and smells through her skin.
She listens through her mouth.
She speaks through her ears.
Speaking isn’t a sense. I know.
But this was her dream.
I only happened to walk into it.
“What a fine mess you are in,” I say.
“Or is this a path to enlightenment?
“Or a punishment? Some sad karma?”
Mainly, she remains mute, confused.
As would I, in such a confounding scramble.
I ask her if I could walk a mile in her shoes.
“My shoes?” she cries. “Do you mean to say that I still have feet?”
Just what she didn’t need, someone else in her shoes.
“Are they still at the bottom of my legs?” she asks.
Under the circumstances, it was an unkind thing to say.
Swapping sensual responsibilities has its strengths.
Imagine listening through your mouth,
Drawing in another’s words with your breath.
Savoring them, absorbing them, digesting them.
You would actually have to listen.
Rather than think of some clever retort.
Suppose you speak through your ears.
That requires special talent well beyond small talk.
I don’t even know how it can be done.
My dream offered nothing on this.
Maybe, intently listening is a form of speaking.
Silence does speak volumes as others chatter on.
Putting your senses to work in areas
For which they were not trained
Sounds like a grueling, but potentially rewarding, exercise.
Sort of like the blind man whose other senses
Compensate by growing intensely acute.
Perhaps all senses ought to be rotated once in a while,
Like the tires on your car.
We grow lazy, only hearing through our ears,
Seeing through our eyes, speaking/tasting through our mouths,
feeling through our skin, smelling through our noses.
Shake them up, I say!
And when, again, we grow too comfortable,
Rotate them once more!
Keep the fine treads of our senses staying sharp.
Perhaps if we employ all our senses to share the load —
Let the eyes do the speaking, let the ears do the seeing,
Let the skin replace taste and smell …
Soon, all our sensations grow muscle and power.
Newer sensations arise, previously unknown sensations.
Next thing you know, the heart and brain
Want to engage in this circus of sensations, too.
And, then, won’t things get interesting?
We are fully present in processing our environment
We are fully engaged in evaluating, understanding, inhabiting.
Deep immersion, full immersion, absorption and immersion.
Life gets more interesting because we will be, well … living.
No longer just data-processing and consumption machines.
We are higher beings. At one, for once, with the various universes.
The woman in my dream knows none of this just yet.
She is still trying to …
Touch through her eyes.
See through her nose.
Taste and smell through her skin.
Listen through her mouth.
Speak through her ears.
Find her footing.
I try to tell the woman in my dream that it will get better.
But her face is blank. She betrays no thoughts.
The woman in my dream moves on, back to the shadows.
She seems neither excited nor saddened.
I gather it will take some time.
Perhaps she will come back on another night
And show me what she has learned.
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“The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider’s web.” — Pablo Picasso
Spider webs are beautiful things. Unless you walk face-first into one in the dark of night.
Then, not so beautiful. Or interesting.
My friend Sonny once sat for hours on the floor of our Cape Cod house staring at a spider as it wove a stringy orb behind a door. Sonny insisted he learned a lot from observing the construction of the web.
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I say it often, perhaps insufferably often for some people, but every day that I step out the front door in San Miguel de Allende, I expect a miracle to happen.
Oh, not a big miracle. Not always.
Just little miracles.
Like the smile on the face of a mother herding her three children toward the church.
Like the carpet of lavender jacaranda flowers worked into a patch of cobblestones.
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Musings, Magic, San Miguel and More 