What’s a Sunday morning without a few crazies parading through the neighborhood?
Empty indeed.
We got our share today. The first of three parades around San Miguel de Allende began at the Parroquia an Antonio de Padua around 10 a.m. and danced down Callejohn San Antonio before hanging a left on the Ancha and heading for Centro.
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Wow. Talk about landing on your feet, if only for one Saturday.
Last week, the popular Mercado Sano took a hit when an outside electrical fire forced its closing, through this weekend apparently.
What to do with the hugely popular TOSMA market that occupied the back parking and cavernous storage buildings?
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Tried a CBD oil concoction for enabling sleep last night, then I ended up on the roof, mesmerized by the lighting around Parroquia San Antonio de Padua. I couldn’t stop staring at it, so I took this photograph.
The church is about a block away. When celebrations call for fireworks, as they often do, this is a great rooftop patio on which to be.
If the church looks other-worldly, it may be because my head was in an other-worldly place.
My sleep didn’t improve. Not yet anyway.
Though my dreams were weirder than normal, which, if you know my dreams, is saying a lot.
We’ll see what tonight brings.
Or doesn’t bring.
Meanwhile, sleep well. Embrace the new day. Do good works. Think kindly of others. Embrace second chances. Never shirk from responsibilities. Choose the right outfit for the occasion. Never take the last of the yogurt, even the store-bought kind. Don’t second-guess motivations in people who seem meaner than you. Smile and make eye contact with everyone. Frequent more than one bakery. When you tip someone, surprise yourself and go big. Try to remember the name of at least one person you meet this week.
Now, say good night.
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This cross sits to the right of my desk, on an empty chair. It is one of many crosses that we have inherited. Our home in San Miguel de Allende comes with crosses, cow skulls, pottery and milagros pegged to doors here and there.
Milagros are those little tin objects you see on the cross that look as though they might be Monopoly board pieces.
While I have always been aware of the cross — lord knows I’ve moved it around often enough — I never really paid close attention to it.
Until this morning.
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I’ve said it before: You want magic in San Miguel de Allende? Then just step out your front door.
Today, it was the arrival of the procession honoring Our Lady of Guadalupe. The cavalcade of the holy and horses turned onto Callejon San Antonio at noon sharp and proceeded to walk in stops and starts toward the Parroquia de San Antonio de Padua.
Progress was halting because there were hundreds of people attempting to fill the already busy square for the celebration of the Mass.
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It is popular and entirely appropriate in San Miguel de Allende to say “You never know what’s behind a closed door.”
Entrances on San Miguel streets give you no hint at all as to what lies behind them.
The most humble of doors can open onto a garden of Eden, a fairyland, a small village, a rabbit warren of homes, a vast and empty park, a stately hacienda, ancient ruins, a private town square surrounded by stately homes, ageless and towering trees, private roads – well, whatever imagination and money can conjure.
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In San Miguel de Allende, we call this the rainy season.
Many days, the clouds will roll in during the afternoon and by 5 p.m. or so, there will be rain, thunder, and lightning.
It is happening right now as I write about it. A little early in the day, 1:30 p.m. but nobody ever complains about the rain.
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Sometimes, you just have to go with the material that is right in front of you.
Today, it is nothing more than clouds.
Just clouds.
“You should see the clouds,” Rose calls out to me. I am in my favorite chair, in a cool dark room, battling ignorance and mean people on Twitter. “They’re really beautiful.”
She is right. Rose knows her clouds.
Big beautiful fluffy, floating, languid, lazily hithering and dithering clouds.
Not “looks like rain” clouds. Not trouble-ahead clouds. Not massive gray-dark sheets of roiling angry wetness.
Just legions of marshmallow clouds floating over San Miguel de Allende on a summer’s afternoon.
The kind of clouds in which you can see famous faces, clowns, ghouls, horses, funny dogs, dragons, elephants, and cars.
The kind of clouds for which soft fields of grass were created, so you could lie on your back and see famous faces, clowns, ghouls, horses, funny dogs, dragons, elephants, and cars.
The kind of clouds that inspired Joni Mitchell to write “Both Sides Now.”
The kind of clouds that John Constable painted in sprawling vistas like “The Hay Wain” and “Wivenhoe Park.”
Where would poets be without clouds? Looking at you, Percy Bysshe Shelley.
Maybe they are the same clouds, just recycled two centuries later?
Still hanging around, but posing now for iPhones.
Or, the kind of clouds under which young people fall in love and old people fall into reminiscing.
The kind of clouds for which the word “chiaroscuro” was invented.
Nobody can say that, back in the day, they had better clouds than these.
I’ve seen the evidence.
The best clouds ever — and always — are the ones that capture your imagination for a moment, just before morphing into whispy cotton candy swirls.
Timing is everything with clouds.
Pull your head up out of your cell phone, your busy works, your depression, your self-obsession, your shoe gazing — and look up.
Don’t let a day go by without observing the clouds, no matter how many or how few.
Don’t compare them to clouds past. That is not why they are here.
This is no cloud fashion show.
Clouds appear because they are trying to tell us something.
Seek out their shapeshifting secrets.
Learn their names, understand their reasons.
Follow the shadows they cast upon the ground.
You won’t find a pot of gold.
Maybe something better.
Love?
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And I turned to you and I said No guru, no method, no teacher
Just you and I and nature And the father in the garden
–VAN MORRISON, “IN THE GARDEN”
So I sit here in the garden, in the early summer light
A cup of coffee grows cold beside me
In the stillness that morning brings, fleeting stillness
The workers next door have not yet stirred to break the silence
With their hammers and saws and boisterous shouts.
There is still room for the birds in the dense green
To sing their songs, perform their magic,
Find love among the branches.
I don’t know the geography of this garden by name,
Only by the heart, defined by what my eyes take in:
The delicate flowers, the flirty birds, the twisty vines,
The shaded coolness of the branches. So many voices
of green, vying for my attention. I know
Only that it is too beautiful for me to rise and exert my will
Where it is unwanted, unasked for, upon another day.
An empty bag awaits upstairs with a ticket to somewhere far
And I only know I don’t want to leave the garden.
I want to sit here in the peace, in the coolness,
Listening to the plants breathing ever so lightly
Parsing out their secrets ever so lightly
Unlocking a state of grace ever so lightly,
Grace I can not achieve no matter how hard I try.
Outside, mothers and fathers walk their children
Hand in hand to school as church bells chime,
A touch of grace all its own.
I see their shadows pass on frosted windows,
And I sit and listen to the plants.
And listen to the birds.
And listen to the silence.
And my coffee grows cold for I dare not move
I can not move,
I don’t want to move.
I want only to become one
With the stillness.
In the garden.
While there is still time.
Musings, Magic, San Miguel and More 