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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Gertrude Stein had a problem. She’d always had the problem but it was all the more acute in 1934 when she stood before 500 people and tried to speak.
She stuttered.
But that wasn’t the worst of it. Her stutter caused obvious discomfort among her adoring fans and that caused her to lose confidence and when Gertrude Stein lost confidence, she lost her line of thought. Which was not easy to follow to begin with.
The first couple of lectures on her long-awaited U.S. tour were described in the American press as disappointing and worse, confusing.
And this would never do, as she had six months of lectures across the United States lined up, each limited to 500 people maximum and each had been sold out months ago.
In a bit of a panic, Stein told an assistant to reach out to her good friend Mina Loy, a bohemian Everywoman sort, living in Paris. A feminist, painter, poet, playwright, novelist, designer — god knows, if it was about art, Mina had done it. If anyone could punch up a speech and clear up her, um, diction issues, Stein reasoned, it would be Mina.
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I do not shop. I do not wander into stores and glide up and down aisles looking for just the right … thing. I don’t compare prices. I don’t compare similar products. I don’t read labels. I don’t calculate the savings between the Jumbo and Family sizes. I don’t clip coupons.
I buy local because I’m too lazy to walk to a cheaper store. I shop to survive, not to find pleasure.
But you don’t have to twist my arm to get me up the hill to the Tuesday Market.
I love the hustle and bustle. I love the jockeying for position at a tabletop clothing dump. I love to hear the shouts of “Barata! Barata! Barato!” and “Venta! Venta! Venta!” I love the smell of the food, the fish on ice, the produce, the fresh piles of strawberries. The piles of hardware and kitchenware and racks of hats, and row upon row of shoes, and … well, just name it, there’s a pile of it somewhere.
And such a deal I have for you.
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News item: Conde Nast Traveler names San Miguel de Allende the “friendliest city in the world.” It beats out Dublin, Lisbon, Bangkok, Copenhagen, Mexico City, and Bruges among others. The media company previously named San Miguel the “best small city in the world.”
This can’t be good.
I was asked to respond to all this by an otherwise sharp and responsible newspaper colleague. And so …
All right, the next guy who says San Miguel de Allende is the friendliest city in the world gets a punch in the nose, see?
A city with a reputation like that could get itself hurt, see? A city could pick up a rep-u-tation with talk like that, and not the good kind, see?
Other cities start thinking it’s a patsy and start aping all that friendly stuff and the next thing you know, you’ve got a six-way tie for the friendliest city.
And that ain’t good for nobody, see?
Why, if everybody is friendly, then what’s this world coming to?
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Lilies in bloom, Colonia San Antonio, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.
Because, after this week, you deserve something beautiful.
Breathe in, breathe out.
Drink in the colors and shapes.
Fall into the petals and let your imagination
Slide down the slopes,
Through the anthers and filaments,
A pollen forest of serenity.
Shimmy up the style,
Sit atop the style,
You kins and queens of your own world.
Once again, breathe in, breathe out.
With lilies about, peace grows
In the heart’s garden.
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Did I go too far? This Calla lily is in bloom just outside the kitchen door.
It stops me in my tracks every morning when I enter for breakfast. It has been in full bloom for nearly a week now and shows no signs of fading. A hardy one, for sure.
The original photograph, taken Wednesday, Nov. 2, is a bit flatter and duller than this. I’ll post it below. I blame it on the ambient light and the limits of the iPhone camera. And my own limitations as a photographer.
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Musings, Magic, San Miguel and More 