Silent night

Silent night, holy night (to many), solo night. That´s what yours truly is enjoying. A quiet, solitary night at the Ranchito.

And where is Lady Zapata? In Morelia with her pack of kin. Mexicans tend to celebrate Christmas most of all on Christmas Eve, and the later the hour the better. Around midnight sounds ideal for dining. You´d think we´re in Spain.

To us, it sounds like past bedtime.

After much angst over the years, we´ve reached an accord. She goes wherever they go, and yours truly stays home, enjoying the peace. That is what it´s all about anyway: peace.

The old boy is happy with this arrangement. She finds it a little unsettling and feels guilty, but we send her packing anyway, with her homemade pecan pies and hummus . . .

. . . and her guilt fades, one imagines, in the general racket created when a Mexican family collects in one spot.

And, of course, the following morning, she feels stunned and her eyes are red from scant sleep. She swears never again. But the negatives fade, and the tradition plods on. Till next year.

She will share the gossip. Who got drunk. Who got angry. Who stormed out in a snit. There´s never any shortage of that. It´s best to stay home and hear about it second-hand.

* * * *

At age 65, we´re still waiting for the ideal Christmas, the kind portrayed on Hallmark cards. Where happy people in heavy coats bearing gifts enter beautifully decked-out houses as snow falls gently on the lawn. The tree is bright and beautiful.

The dog is always a Cocker Spaniel, black and white.

Where are these places? Fact is, yours truly got off to a bad start, Christmas-wise. Dad was a drunk, and there is little in the way of holiday memory. And as you begin, you usually continue. We remember only one childhood Christmas, just one.

We were not at home. Our family of four was at Granny´s farm in Georgia. Yours truly was 6. With sister, 9, we fell asleep in the bedroom next to the living room where stood the Christmas tree. We had put out cookies and milk for Santa.

There really was a chimney.

We awoke the next morning to a pile of loot that Santa had left after downing the milk and cookies. The gift that has remained in memory these six decades was a vinyl record. Gene Autry sang Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

The beautiful sound of an ideal world to a child of 6.

We played the tune over and over that morning. There was no snow, but it was grand anyway. That one Christmas.

Just that one.

One wonders how those cookies tasted with bourbon.

(Note: Gene Autry sings Rudolph.)

(Note 2: Tomorrow we head off to Mexico City for a short spell. New Year´s Eve will be in Querétaro. Breakfast on Jan. 1 will be the divine Eggs Benedict in La Casa de la Marquesa.)

The scissor man

We step into the barber shop as night falls, sit on the hard wooden bench and wait. Another fellow´s in the chair.

The shop is perhaps eight feet by 15 feet, small. A Mass is being said from the radio, loud Latin.

The ceiling hangs high, about 20 feet up there. There are wooden beams. It´s a single-chair shop, and the barber is not a young man.

He lives with his daughter, we have heard.

An antique coffee urn sits on a small table jammed into a corner. A fusebox clings to the wall nearby. A framed artwork, religious, hangs on the front wall. Attached to it are a small Mexican flag and a silk rosebud. There are calendars.

But no naked women.

The Mass drones on, and we wait, shaggy. The tiny head of a tortured Jesus is stuck somehow to the wide mirror that is framed in stressed wood and hanging from iron spikes driven into the brick wall. A counter for barber gear is under that mirror.

Brushes, scissors, shaving mug and soap brush. We spot a straight razor and squirm. There´s a candle for blackouts. Also a statue, over a foot high, of some saint. The Mass drones on.

The barber has a bushy, Mexican moustache, and we wonder who cuts his hair. He wears a sweater the color of coffee.

The high, old door to the nearby sidewalk is open. The sun is setting behind the red-tile roof across the narrow street. The barber chair is very old, and the barber is very slow.

We step to the door, giving a breather to our butt from the wooden bench. It is hard. We´ve been waiting almost an hour. It´s dark out now. We notice the brick wall behind the mirror only extends halfway to the ceiling.

There´s another business beyond that brick divider, a dentist. We hear neither drills nor cries of pain. Suspended atop the brick wall, sitting on a metal grate, are two big water tanks, each 450 liters. For the dentist or barber? Likely both.

The wall facing the mirror is stucco, old, very old, give or take a century or two. Suddenly, it´s our turn! We take the throne, and what was a very slow barber becomes an artist.

He doesn´t do much with electric clippers. He´s a scissor man. Each hair gets personal attention. It is lifted, inspected, judged and reduced to its ideal proportions. This takes time.

Later we step out into the cold night, looking good.

And the Mass drones on.

Dark and damp

Circling the Romance Sidewalk at 8:30, it´s 50 degrees hugged by dense fog. Ravens fly overhead none too silently. Caw!

We have a nice cafecito in hand. These recent December mornings have dawned uncharacteristically. The sun should be shining, and it does later in the day. But it fights first with the funk of dark and damp. Whatta Mexico!

Not too bad really. Could be worse. Lady Zapata´s in the kitchen with a chimichurri sauce. That´s for lunch later at 2.

* * * *

Now we´re sitting in the living room, a gas heater near our knees. Music by Midival Pundits lends a wicked air. Just across are two oil paintings we purchased recently for the new casita nearer downtown.

One, by an artist named Cordero, shows a flowering red datura. We bought it on the Plaza Grande. The other is twice the size, showing a pigtailed woman in indigenous attire. She´s making tortillas over an outdoor fire under a lean-to at dusk.

A dark Lake Pátzcuaro looms in the distance. A lone shining star hangs in the heavens over the Sierra. We bought that one on the sidewalk from another painter, a poor man. He was walking about, hoping to find someone like us. His lucky day.

And ours. We had it framed.

Our knees are toasty now. Midival Pundits winds up Kesariya, and it´s time for warm croissantitos and orange marmalade.

Our big head

When La Catrina took center stage next to the Alamo Wall on Sunday, the poor Olmec head was moved to the big patio out thataway, the far side of the Alamo Wall.

He rests body-less on the hard, rock ground, but he doesn´t seem to care. His Mona Lisa expression has not changed. We did give him a stone ball to play with, next to his cheek.

Okay, he can´t really play. It´s just company.

That´s the Pumpkin Wall at the rear, obviously. We imagine that bougainvillea bush back there will, in a few years, attain monster proportions, providing more snazz to this end of the Ranchito.

Snazz matters.

Our Catrina

We´ve wanted a big stone Catrina since we crossed the Rio Bravo in 2000. And now we have one. She even has a child.

A stone carver near here displays his wares at the side of the roadway. This beauty appeared some weeks back, and we´ve admired it. We assumed it would cost a mighty sum.

Sunday we stopped and asked, and were shocked to hear a price of 2,000 pesos, which translates to about $160, delivered, which they did yesterday, the carver, his wife and son, 11.

Catrina and her child sit where the big Olmec head sat for years. The head had to be moved, so the stone carver, his wife and son toted it to another spot in the yard. With tons of effort.

It was thrilling and nerve-wracking to watch this process because both Catrina and the Olmec head weigh mucho! And the family didn´t bring anything much to move them with . . .

. . . which is typical here. But it got done, also typical.

Both carvings are solid stone, and Catrina is 4.5 feet tall.

But over 6 feet, standing atop her rock base.

And now, as we sit mornings at the dining room table enjoying our black cafecitos and hot croissantitos, we will have a direct view to Catrina and child, stone-dead Mexican icons.

And at night, as we pull the Hellacious Honda through the Big Red Gate and up the rock incline, an automatic light flicks on. It casts lovely shadows on the Alamo Wall and its ivy.

The Olmec head now lives on the stone patio we installed some months back over the entire section between this back side of the Alamo Wall and the Pumpkin Wall abutting the street.

The light will illuminate Olmec enough so he can show his fat, stony expression, now covered with years of mold.

We´ll park beneath the tile portal and walk the curved Romance Sidewalk under the stars (when it´s not raining -- we have eight dry months) toward the casa.

Catrina and child will catch just a bit of the automatic light but enough that they will watch us. We will see them in the shadows, mother and babe, joined in eternal rigor mortis.

Buenos días, Montgomery

We obviously took a wrong turn on our trip south. We were headed to Mexico. That was the plan.

Almost 10 years ago.

Yet here we are out in a large yard with a dirty denim coat and watch cap against the morning chill.

The sky is gray and grim. We are raking dead leaves and pulling weeds. Our pants knees are wet. Toes too.

Where is the beach? Why aren´t we in shorts and Hawaiian shirt, made of rayon? Where are the donkey sex shows?

Where is the violence and bloodshed? Where are the narcos? Where are the cruise ships and timeshares?

Where are the mariachi bands? The coconut palms? Where are these things? Where is that Mexico shown in the photo?

Maybe we´re really in Montgomery, Alabama.

In the Har-Deen

About 90 minutes before darkness, we´re in the yard. Jardín in Spanish, sounding more elegant, kinda British with a Latino edge.

Jardín -- note the accent mark. Har-deen, you must say.

So, here we are alone in the Har-deen, taking advantage of the sun being behind the house and Lady Zapata being at the gym.

Totally solo in the Har-deen with a rake, wheelbarrow, pickax, snippers and old leather garden gloves, Har-deen mitts.

Little chores tend to pile up, and we´re gonna trim that pile down a notch. We yank dead, yellow fronds from the base of lilies. We murder four baby magueys with the pickax. We snip old, dead, crinkly leaves from the beefy aloe vera.

We rake refuse from the base of a pear bush. We notice circling vultures which takes us back to the pickax. Leon Trotsky was murdered in 1940 in Mexico City by a man with an icepick.

It´s often written that way: an icepick. You might imagine the assassin stepping in from the kitchen where he had just made lemonade. Refreshment before murder.

Like a lemonade, Leon? Thwack!

Double duty with the icepick. Actually, it was a pick used by climbers of snow-covered mountains, that kind of icepick, bigger and nastier, but not so bulky that it could not secreted under the suit of a sneaky assassin sent by Stalin.

After the cleanup is done, we water plants that abut the terraza. Tip: If you´re gonna use a hose, pee first. Avoid stress.

When the work is done, we sit on the Jesus Patio and wait. Maybe we´ll see bats flying from under the terraza roof tiles.

Anything is possible in a Mexican Har-deen.

Pirate ship sails

Our version of the Virgin hits the streets of Pátzcuaro.

She´s 400 years old, made of corn paste, and she rarely steps out.

The locals spruce up, act pious, and some participate in a night parade even though one might argue they aren´t likely to head to Heaven, no matter what they do.

But let´s not address that here. Let´s go out on the dock to our sister ship, the black pirate, The Bierce Account.

Sword of Damocles

The Eggman left a parting gift: a blade, the Sword of Damocles. It now dangles keen-edged above Felipe´s silver-tressed noggin, held up by filaments of smoke and irresponsibility.

Here´s the deal: The Eggman wanted a child to play with, so he found a hospital in a nearby town, and that hospital had a spare. He volunteered to be its daddy. Almost seven years ago.

They had tried for years to get a baby the normal, thrilling way, arms wrapped around. But it didn´t happen.

Must have been a curse or something. More likely that Mother Nature knows what´s best.

The Eggman´s wife is not maternal, had no interest in being a mother and still has none, but she was a Mexican woman to the core. She said yes to her man, obedient.

They brought the newborn home from the hospital in that nearby town, born just the previous day. The kid was cute. We´ll give him that, and he turned out to be remarkably bright and imaginative, leaving Mom and Dad far, far behind.

As you may recall (if not, there´s a link below), the Eggman was found in an ancient house last Mother´s Day with a bullet in his breast. He was dead. That´s the good news.

The bad news was that he was our lifeboat in one respect: Were something to befall his wife, well, the child still had a daddy to take over, poorly but better than nothing.

That lifeboat was swamped by a small, .22-caliber swell.

The child is nearly 7, and we call him the Little Vaquero. He lives with his mama, the Widow Woman who is in her late 40s. Her favorite activities are sitting, gossiping and smoking.

Especially smoking. She knows it´s time to fire up another fag when the taste of filter makes her wince.

Early death runs in the family. She also has no Last Will because she can´t work up the will to walk around the corner to the lawyer´s office and write one. Better to sit and smoke.

She owns lots of property and a business which, by right, falls into the lad´s lap on her death. But no will invites shenanigans in Mexico from other relatives. We´ve seen it. Her daddy died 30 years ago intestate, and the repercussions are felt still.

We pray she holds on for another 12 years minimum. Our fingers are crossed, and our toes and every other molecule in our body, all crossed for good luck. God help us. Please, Jesus.

Because if she does not, the Little Vaquero has one option only: Moving to the Ranchito. There is absolutely no other.

* The Eggman.

Falling leaves

(This is a rerun from a few years ago. It´s still apt.)

The leaves are falling on the Plaza Grande in Patzcuaro, so autumn has arrived again.

Sitting at a coffee shop, we see a raggedy man sweep the plaza with a huge palm frond.

Passing on the sidewalk is a 15-foot clown, a man on stilts with a sad face, his own, juggling for pesos.

There are lots of tourists today, families, children, and most appear happy. How not?

However, autumn to many is a mood piece, and the mood is not a chipper one. Sadness instead.

The carefree days of summer are over. The chill of winter looms. Autumn, being the bridge, oppresses the heart for many.

Sadness is no stranger to Mexico.

Much of what passes as local color, jugglers and fire-eaters at intersections, clowns, folks dancing in Indian attire, old ladies sitting on the sidewalk selling, actually are needy people doing what they can to put tortillas on the table.

Tourists come and go, loving the local color, rarely seeing the sadness, la tristeza del otoño, the sadness of fall.

The falling leaves drift by the window,

The autumn leaves of red and gold.

I see your lips, the summer kisses,

The sun-burned hands I used to hold.

-- Johnny Mercer.

Flying diamonds

December debuted weird. Normally a sunny month, a trend that continues into January, February, through Springtime really.

As we pulled back the bedroom drapes after dawn, we were sucker punched with gloom. It was drizzling. This simply is not done in December. It is demonic and hints of hard feelings roiling in the spirit world. We were cursed.

The day ground on. It did not improve. Mount Fuji-taco glowered. There was nothing good about this day. Rats!

Until just now, about 5 p.m., a miracle sailed by, assisted by the sun. It was a fleeting moment but enough to set everything right, to provide equilibrium. To show justice and mercy.

By pure chance or the love of the Goddess or both, we saw it: There was a break in the clouds. The sun squeezed through. It didn´t last long, but it was so sweet.

Two elements combined: The brief moment of beautiful sunshine from a small crack in the clouds. And scores of white egrets. They sank below the mountain ridge, catching the sunshine perfectly on their ivory feathers as they banked.

They were flying diamonds, resplendent.

And then it ended. The egrets vanished. The clouds closed ranks. The gloom returned, but it´s okay. We are happy.

Spell on the plaza

We´re listening to a priest, who´s droning musically in the church over our left shoulder, a Mass with a microphone.

It´s yesterday, Sunday, 5:30 p.m. on our big, tree-filled barrio plaza, and we´re sitting solo on a steel bench.

The congregation drones during the priest´s pauses, saying what he said, we guess. Dead leaves litter the plaza, which is undergoing renovations, work that began five years back.

It´s the biggest plaza in Pátzcuaro after the Plaza Grande downtown. The initial work was replacing the grungy sidewalk with Saltillo tile, gussying up the ancient kiosk and installing colonial light standards, now mostly destroyed by drunks.

Hold on now. The church, 400 years old, is disgorging the faithful. We were mostly alone. Here comes company, but they show no interest in sitting, just strolling home.

. . . filled with the love of God, Jesus and the Virgin Mary.

On the far side of the railroad track, a block away, we hear the warm-up howls of glue-sniffing boys, easing into the night. They skipped Mass. They, the sinners who need it most.

Plaza renovation renewed a couple months ago. An inner walkway hugging the main sidewalk is being cobblestoned. It also connects, with eight wheel spokes, to the huge kiosk.

It´s about half done. There was a pause of a few weeks when money to buy cement dried up, but they´re back at it.

Here comes a train blaring its Horn of God. The glue-addled louts stand no chance against that. They´re drowned out.

A pickup parks nearby. A recording of xylophone tunes erupts from the truck, an attention-getter. They´re selling ice cream. Nobody pauses, so they pull away after a spell.

Lady Zapata says the ice cream music reminds her of the Chuckie horror movies, not something that sells vanilla, chocolate and strawberry. Even with a cherry.

Dusk draws near. It´s cool and dry, a slight breeze stirs the dead leaves. The shoe store is open. So is the papelería and a small general store. A couple of kids play. It´s quiet.

We look over our shoulder.The church door is shut. The priest headed home. Let´s do the same. Lady Zapata waits.

(Note: The item titled Going to Guanajuato, which occupied this spot for a brief spell, has moved to a more appropriate place, The Bierce Account.)

One messy life

We´re retired, they say. But it doesn´t feel that way.

Retirement implies there was a career, a focus on work that lasted for decades. The decades we did.

The focus we lacked, utterly.

Retirement in this case was simply arriving at a corner where change was conceivable and, luckily, it happened at age 55, which ain´t bad, brother.

The 55 watershed was significant because it separated that ole messy lifestyle from today´s sun-kissed Ranchito.

Let´s look at the so-called career: It was newspapering, and we simply fell into it. Never took a journalism course. Never took but one English course in the university that was not required.

Before that, there was a messy stint in the military. Following the discharge, we fell into a fling with a cute lass in Spanish class, which ended in matrimony. Roe versus Wade came later.

There was toil as a telephone installer, then an insurance salesman in a New Orleans department store. Didn´t suit, as one might imagine. But a married boy with a baby needs a job.

A cabbie by night, we completed college.

Dad pulled strings and we ended up at the newspaper in New Orleans. No experience, no training, no nuttin´.

Just a father with friends.

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

The newspapering continued for almost 30 years, primarily in the nasty heat of New Orleans and Houston plus two brief (totaling 16 months) spells in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Editing work, inside at a desk, preferably late at night away from the honchos who expected ambition. Ha!

It was a flat-line career fueled by inertia, good looks, inborn talent, and a low-grade but constant affection for alcohol.

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

The first marriage strung out for five years till the Call of the Wild overcame us. We hit the road, Jack.

About five more years passed during which we worked in the Caribbean on those two occasions, sweating even more, which made the Cuba libres taste lovelier.

Just a black-bearded Jimmy Buffet.

Back in New Orleans, we met another cutie who wanted to move in.

And she did. Blackbeard didn´t think it would last long.

He had lived with others. But this one stuck it out for seven years.

Like high-end flypaper from Tiffany & Co.

Finally we married for corporate medical coverage, not your best motive for matrimony. It lasted another ten years due to, again, inertia and martinis. More messy life.

Finally, her eyes opened, and Blackbeard was tossed on the street, at 50 not so young anymore, not so resilient.

It hurt. Did it ever. Boy, did it ever. Utter shock.

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

And that´s when the messy life began to dry up and take form. After half a century. Shock therapy.

One year further on, March 30, 1996, to be exact, we decided to come totally clean. That evening we were sitting solo in a taco joint on a sharp edge of Houston, Texas. The sun had set. We glanced about us, and marveled at the clarity of sober light.

But the clarity also put into focus the messy life of past and present. This was very, very painful.

It was time for Felipe´s Fabulous Florida Vacation.

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

A year later, we sat on a hillside near Tallahassee where we spent a week with a psychologist who stirred us a brew of psilocybin, and we drank two nights, first Monday, then Wednesday, a day of rest, like God´s Sunday, in between.

It was a first for us. In subsequent reading, we´ve learned there are various ways to approach these inexplicable events.

Too many do it for entertainment, but it´s best to do it like the primitives have done it for centuries in all corners of this messy world.

We catapulted past a curtain of Indian drumbeats and into the bodies of sensuous women and wild, savage animals. We walked down the hillside and saw the Earth breathe, literally.

We saw ice crystals and blood, and we cried.

We died and spotted that famous light in the tunnel though we did not make it up to the bulb. Not our time, not just yet.

We woke that Wednesday night an altered man at 52. The messiness was swept up and tossed away.

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

Two former wives will attest to our stony distance and untouchability. But on returning from the Florida vacation, nerve ends ablaze, we fell into the arms of a friend whose life was also a mess . . . but on the other side of the spectrum.

She knew too much emotion, not too little. It was our baptism of fire into another way of being, the lessons learned in Florida exploded into the real world. Hand in hand, the two of us sank beneath the waves and almost drowned.

But again we did not die. It was on-the-job training, a shocking scream of Latina skin, glistening eyes and words of love spoken in the candlelight, something never felt before.

It flamed out after three months. But it was enough for then.

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

Three years later, we "retired," packed two suitcases and hopped a jet alone to Guadalajara. Ironically, we now live an awake and steady life in the very messy world of Mexico.

With Lady Zapata who bakes us cookies.

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

Dedicated to the two former wives and one daughter who deserved better. The first former wife found better and married him decades ago. The lovely daughter found better in her second husband and stepfather.

The second former wife, as far as we know, still awaits better, and we pray she finds it.

Song by Elizabeth Fraser of the Cocteau Twins.

(Note: Entheogenic artwork by Alex Grey.)

Going guare 2

We spoke just below of the guare garb being stitched by Lady Zapata.

She has worn native attire before. Perhaps the earliest example is this shot snapped when she was a tyke.

. . . posing on a Pátzcuaro roof.

It is worth noting that yours truly was in the Air Force at the same time. What does that tell you?

Exactly. The old goat should be jailed.

Going guare

The sky is pure blue. A hummer is lunching on flowers of aloe vera.

A big lizard is doing push-ups on the black rock of the downstairs terraza, and los dos Zapatas are sitting on the Jesus Patio noonish.

It´s a wonderful day, brisk and beautiful. We´ve given the grass its final cut of 2009, and a few pear leaves lie on the ground.

We´re reading John Worthen´s biography of D.H. Lawrence, and Lady Zapata is stitching the Virgin of Guadalupe on a guare apron. It will complement the Purépecha skirt she purchased at the street market during the Day of the Dead.

She already owns a matching blouse and only lacks huaraches to complete the full nine yards of indigenous attire.

The required apron she is sewing by hand. Her hair is quite long enough for two pigtails which she will wrap with ribbon.

The 12th of December is the Virgin of Guadalupe´s Big Day. Many Mexicans turn out in traditional attire. It´s little girls more than anybody, but Lady Zapata is a child at heart.

The season´s first frost sat on the grass this morning though it wasn´t enough to freeze the birdbath. Later for that.

It´s a good day, a good day to read a book and sew a virgin on the Jesus Patio while the sun is shining.

(Note: That´s not Lady Zapata in the photo. It´s a little guare, a guarecita, a pint-sized guare, pronounced wah-reh, kinda.)

The boxcar life

Waking at 4 a.m. gives you the world alone. The party animals have passed out, and the early birds are still asleep.

It´s quiet, and you can lie there and listen to . . . well, not much. The breath of Lady Zapata and, with luck, a train will pass.

There are two ways to look at trains. On a passenger train, you´ve purchased a ticket and your clothes are clean. On a freight, you have no ticket because you´ve just jumped on.

And your duds are old and dirty.

The freight route requires weapons: A scoped rifle for downing deer as dusk approaches. You do this from the boxcar door and then leap out to find and cook it. You´ll want matches.

That´s your day´s main meal. You can´t eat it all, of course, but save a haunch for tomorrow´s lunch.

It´s tougher to grab a moving boxcar the next day with that load, but you´ll be glad you have the meat around 1 p.m.

You´ll also need a sawed-off shotgun that you keep tucked into the rear of your pants. There´s a risk of shooting your tail off, so take care. Loaded, not cocked. It´s a protective weapon.

There can be other people like you on any boxcar. They may want that deer haunch, so you´ll have to shoot them. A scatter blast is great for this. Then just kick them out the door.

The third and final weapon is a frightful, folding blade with serrated edges. Toting this is easy. Just toss it into your pocket. It serves two purposes. Slicing venison is primary.

But if someone like you slips too close for shotgunning. Yank out the knife and stick 'em. Then just kick them out the door.

Yes, whether shotgunned or knifed, disposing of the body stays the same. No need to be inventive. It´s a simple life.

A certain type of man can live like this for years. Yes, a man. A woman, with very rare exceptions, won´t live this way.

But if you meet one of those rare women, exit the boxcar rapidly. This is not cowardly. It is common sense.

Lady Zapata shifts to her side, making a little sound. The train has passed. You hear a rooster. You realize you´re not lying atop a sawed-off shotgun. And you smile.

You´re not a savage, living alone.

(The lovely railroad sound of Bo Diddley.)

Pirate ship sails

We´re overdue for big changes in Mexico.

That´s one thing.

Another thing is that the Gringos are clueless about Mexico. Maybe that will change, but don´t bet on it.

But let´s not address that here. Let´s go out on the dock to our sister ship, the black pirate, The Bierce Account.

The final cut

Walking hand in hand yesterday morning around our barrio´s big, beautiful plaza, we looked up and saw golden leaves.*

Yes, autumn displays itself here at 7,200 feet above the faraway sea, although not like it does in North Carolina.

Yet our own yard seems conflicted, in some sort of psychological crisis. The peach tree, as usual, has dropped most of its leaves. The plum, however, is just now deciding (the first time this year) to flower and sprout new leaves. What´s with that?

The loquat tree is fruiting to beat the proverbial band, so much so that some branches are drooping low, threatening to snap from the weight. One did just that last year.

The golden daturas, which give us such visual and olfactory joy through the summertime rains, have faded. But the jasmine has gotten its second wind. What´s up with that too?

The first freeze cannot be far over the mountain ridge. We feel in our bones it will come early this year. Yes, one sunny morn a big, black grackle will get a dawn shock as it executes a perfect landing on the bird bath. He will encounter an ice rink.

He will slide and squawk! And we will giggle.

But here is the great issue: The grass is still green. It´s neither high nor low. It´s a trifle shaggy. Does it need a final cut?

Or can we go the lazy route, waiting for Mama Nature to slice it down with her frigid fingers?

As in most things now, shiftlessness likely will prevail.

* It´s not quite so colorful here on the barrio plaza. We stole the photo off the internet.

Chocolate-chip cookies

Do you see the cookie in this photo of the downstairs terraza? Of course not. We´re chewing it. It´s good and chewy, as all God-fearing, chocolate-chip cookies should be.

It´s Pastry Day on the Plaza, and Lady Zapata has been in the kitchen all morning baking, baking, baking. Cookies, carrot cakes, little pies of tuna, mole and chicken.

We´ve been doing what we usually do, which is not much of anything. There is a gift one must possess to pull this off with dash, verve and panache. A trick, if you insist.

One must not feel guilty.

That´s right. If one´s hair is silver, as this one´s hair certainly is, one has the right to vegetate, and there is nothing anyone should say about it. Of course, our life is not one of total vegetation. But a degree of vegetation takes place.

Saturday morning is one of our prime vegetation periods. Monday through Friday, there are things to do even though we have no salaried position. But Saturday mornings, while Lady Zapata flits about the kitchen, we do little. Dang little.

Well, we did sweep the upstairs terraza a few minutes ago. That, as it usually does, ended with a swing in the hammock. We also noticed our right-side neighbors have more turkeys.

So we swayed in the hammock, listened to the turkeys gobble, and admired the blue skies and smelled the clear, cool air.

We also peeked over the outer ledge and saw that the Hotelito de Mal Reputito was empty, not a grunt nor sigh in sight.*

Then we headed downstairs, passed through the kitchen for a few roasted peanuts and the cookie, sat on a wicker rocker and snapped this photo.

No matter what we say here, there must be some visual element. The photo shows what we´ve mentioned many times in the past: November is our best month, nature-wise.

But it has nothing to do with cookies.

* Grunts and sighs cannot be seen? Guess again.

Mr. Tangerine Man

Hey! Mr. Tangerine Man, play a song for me,
In the jingle jangle morning I'll come followin' you.*

About this time every year, tangerines pop up everywhere. Mostly in the street markets.

Last week we bought a juicer, a first for us. Got a nice Turmix that revs like a nitro-fueled drag racer.

Kinda scary, actually.

Lady Zapata is in charge of juice. When we first wed, she used a big cast-iron gizmo with a long handle. Strictly powered by her beautifully toned and undulating biceps. No motor needed.

Couple years later, we purchased a little plastic, electric jobbie. It was simple, and it worked fairly well.

Last week we were in Morelia where we had to kill half the day while the Hellacious Honda got a lube job. After dropping the car off, we were sauntering down the sidewalk about 11 a.m., which is our second-breakfast hour. Two things happened:

1. We saw a bullfight poster and there, looking right at us, was the matador who owns the condo (la casita) we are purchasing. Good-looking stud muffin named Chacón.

2. And then we spotted two sidewalk stands. One sold tacos, the other juice. First we had tacos. And then, across the street, juice. We enjoyed the juice and admired their Turmix juicer. We walked right across the street to Sears and bought one. On sale.

Now, every morning as the sun rises over the Mexican Sierra, a sound similar to a nitro-fueled dragster sails noisily over the Pumpkin Wall from the kitchen. Va-roooom!

It is the death scream of fruit, the noise of fresh juice!

And, this time of year, that juice will be tangerine which, in Mexico, is called mandarina.

Hey! Señor Mandarina Man, play a song for me.
I´m not sleepy, and there is no place I´m going to.

* Apologies to Señor Dylan.

Tortoise and the hare

We´re sitting on the downstairs terraza 10-ish, admiring the look of spiderwebs in the sunlight.

Lady Zapata is in the kitchen baking a cake of mil hojas for her sister´s business downtown. The look of spiderwebs in the sunlight does not engage her. An attractive mil hojas does.

In many respects, we are entirely different people. She is shy. Yours truly is not. Though shy, she is an extrovert, an apparent contradiction, but it is not. At least in this case.

Yours truly is intensely introverted, often confused with shyness, which it does not have to be, though sometimes it is.

We two pull through the Big Red Gate at night, park under the clay-tile portal, and get out of the Honda. She strides into the house because there´s always something to do.

We stand on the Romance Sidewalk and look at the incredible array of stars. Sometimes we don´t step through the door till five minutes later, or so. But that´s doing something.

Years back we heard someone compared to a Harley-Davidson with the throttle stuck wide open. That fits Lady Zapata to the proverbial T. But yours truly´s Harley is usually in idle.

Of course, the Tortoise and the Hare is not an apt analogy because the beasts were engaged in a race. We are not racing. And if we were, our Hare would win, not the Tortoise.

Seen from the Jesus Patio, the sunlight does delightful things with spiderwebs. And the mil hojas is really delicious.

Let´s call it a tie. A draw. A dead heat.

Sunday morning report

On the hammock near 11 a.m. The sky is blue. The air is clean.

A power saw sounds in the far distance. So do some chickens. No dogs barking right now.

It´s mostly tranquil.

Sunday´s a big day at the Hotelito. We peeked over the terraza edge a few moments ago. All eight rooms are occupied. Though it´s not noon yet, these clearly classify as nooners.

In the other direction, where lives the horse with the tones of a silverback gorilla, we spot a big turkey perched on a wooden sawhorse in the yard. He´s a brand-new barrio bird.

Thanksgiving turkey, you might think. But here in Mexico we don´t do Thanksgiving because we have so little to be thankful about. Just problems. Corruption and violence.

So that turkey likely has nothing to worry about, at least this month. But somebody will gobble him in good time because he´s too ugly for a pet. He´s no parrot, not even a parakeet.

There you have it. A Sunday morning report. Off the hammock now, of course, because it´s difficult to type on a desktop computer while you´re swaying in a hammock.

But there´s a nice window over the monitor, a window where we see Mount Fuji-taco, a real sweet view. We watch a flock of white egrets flying east below the ridge of the Sierra.

Come to think of it -- thinking a little more deeply and clearly -- there is one Mexican who has much to be thankful for.

This guy at the keyboard. And the one he´s wedded to.

And that´s the absolute end of this Sunday morning report.

We hear winter

A cold night breeze buffets the banana trees, some of which are 20 feet tall, or so.

The bamboo chimes go bonkers, and we wonder about winter. We wonder when we can quit caring about the yard.

Our sharp senses say this winter might be a bad one. They surely vary. Our first two winters in Mexico were bone-crackers.

We were alone then with no woman to keep us warm. Perhaps the cold seemed worse for that, but likely not. Cold is cold.

And then the winters slacked up a while, showed spirit. And the last two or so haven´t seemed so bad. Perhaps it´s the woman who keeps us warm now. That and the goose-down comforters, one here and another in Mexico City.

Comforters, not women. Just one woman. You can´t have too many down comforters, but you can have too many women.

One is just right.

There comes a point, usually at the first frost or freeze, when we just throw up our hands and shrug, hoping for the best in the yard. Hoping everything makes it through till March.

Most everything does. Then the warm, dry springtime and, finally, June comes with the cool rains. Everything pops up again green and happy and colorful. Wet, very wet.

It´s a cycle, of course, but the winter curve can get nasty. We´ll see what happens this year. We have plenty of propane in the big white tank and dry firewood under the portal.

And a warm woman. That´s the good part. But just one.

Apples, etc.

Awake on the king bed at 5 a.m., we sense apples.

Not apples specifically but the fresh sensation one associates with crisp apples.

Fresh cool air.

Last night the clean mountain air was improved by light. The moon was not full, but it was not far from it. Fresh air and moonlight make a good night.

There is no heavy industry in our neck of the Mexican woods. Usually the air is nice. In springtime the farmers burn the dry fields, and that hazes things up a bit. And a nearby brick kiln gets stoked up now and then. That smokes like Bogart.

But those are bumps on the long-term calendar. The Ranchito is fresh, and on full-moon nights it reminds us of one specific, solitary, frozen moonlit eve on a Carolina mountaintop.

Many years ago.

There was snow on the ground. Of course, Pátzcuaro doesn´t get snow, but that night has stuck with us for ages and, for some reason, when a similar chill moonlight falls within the Pumpkin Wall, we spot that same moonshine snow with the mind´s eye.

Ain´t that strange?

It´s great living where the air is clean.

Even if the streets often are not.

The graveyard run

So many tombs, so little time. Grave responsibilities.

We have two graves to tend in two different towns.

Our Days of the Dead started yesterday in Pátzcuaro´s main cemetery.*

Lady Zapata´s brother lies there. He was shot dead by a lunatic in 1986 when he was 28 years old, and the murderer never spent more than a night or two behind bars, if that.

Today he lives free as the birdies in the nearby city of Celaya, walking proof that in Mexico you can get away with murder if you have wealthy relatives, which he had in those days.

We arrived around noon, threading ourselves through the throng with broom, dustpan, bleach, flowers, incense and candles.

We hired a young boy to bring water from the well and give the grave a good scrubbing with a stiff brush. We paid him 30 pesos, spread the flowers and lit the lights and incense.

That was yesterday.

* * * *

This morning we pointed the Hellacious Honda down the toll highway in the direction of Uruapan to the nearby tropical town where Lady Zapata´s parents were born long ago.

In the lovely mountains where avocados grow.

Her mother died giving birth in 1963 when she was only 31. The attending doctor was her own husband, Lady Zapata´s dad, and we´ve always wondered at the burden of guilt he must have toted to his own dying day at 61. He was a family physician.

We carried the same gear we had used yesterday, but this time we did the sweeping and scrubbing ourselves, bringing water from the well. We left flowers, lit candles and incense.

Much of the small town´s population appeared to be at the cemetery. There were stalls just outside the gate, selling tacos, tequila, fruit, flowers and balloons. And three trampolines on which children were bouncing and laughing.

* * * *

Putting the dead aside, we then drove the Hellacious Honda to Uruapan where we lunched on salmon sandwiches, salads and mocha frappés. We´re happy to be alive.

* We´re not counting the visit two hours earlier to the cemetery in Tzintzuntzan 10 miles away. It was in Tzintzuntzan´s cemetery that we shot the photos for the previous entry.

Dead children

While mañaña, Nov. 2, is the Day of the Dead for grownups, today is the Day of the Dead for children.

We drove to the cemetery in nearby Tzintzuntzan this morning. The cemetery was full of people decorating for tonight. Tzintzuntzan´s cemetery is one of the biggest draws in the area.

These two graves grabbed our attention. The one at top is decorated like a baby carriage. And below is the resting place of another child. Notice the photo in the middle of the cross.

It is the actual baby dressed in blue pyjamas. The baby in the photo is dead. He was dressed and posed on his bed. And photographed. This type of display is not uncommon.

The baby´s bottle is just to the left of the cross´s base.

Dead times

We were in Morelia yesterday to see Brad Pitt killing and scalping Nazis.

Eating a nice veggie baguette in Subway, we gazed around us.

Almost nobody. We were in the Plaza Morelia, one of the three big shopping centers in the capital city.

It was disturbing. Not only were there very few people passing by, lots of the stores were closed, as in Out of Business.

The biggest tourist draw in Pátzcuaro every year, and an event that brings in plenty of pesos, is the Day of the Dead. And we´ve been dealt a double whammy.

Last year, about six weeks before Los Muertos, which is the Day of the Dead, some bad guys tossed grenades during a Morelia parade. That kept spooked tourists home quite a spell.

Day of the Dead suffered. The big artisan market on the Plaza Grande here was mostly a flop in 2008.

And now the economic crisis (caused by Greedy Gringos up north) is giving us a repeat show.

The artisan market on the plaza was scheduled to open last Monday. But it got off to a pokey start just yesterday. Hotels, we hear, still have vacant rooms, which is astounding since many people normally reserve a year in advance.

But Brad Pitt hung quite a collection of Nazi scalps on his belt, so that put us in a cheery mood leaving yesterday´s movie. Scalped Nazis are always a cause for merriment and optimism.

It´s a sweet way to carve a skinhead.

All about texture

Texture grows in importance as you age, perhaps due to your seeing more of it in the mirror.

A Mexican house has better texture than an American house. Anything made of rock and cement struts its texture better than something made of wood studs and sheetrock.

The texture of Mexican homes is more difficult to drive a nail into. For that reason, real macho nails are common in Mexico.

While it´s true that things tend to take on more texture as they age, sometimes it´s just a matter of noticing.

Out on the Jesus Patio, we notice the fuzzy texture of a bumblebee as it hovers over our knee. It decides not to land, which is good because it may have felt the texture of death.

Often texture is a matter of design. A 1957 Buick Roadmaster has more texture than a 2010 Lexus RS. Yes, the past had more visual texture than the present. There are exceptions.

Life can assume texture in other ways. We´re purchasing a condo here in Pátzcuaro. It´s a modern design with tasteful details and walking distance to the Plaza Grande.

What on Earth for?

One day, yours truly will be Promoted to Glory, as the West Virginia hillbillies say. Not soon, we hope. When that happens, Lady Zapata will want smaller accommodations.

But why buy now? Need you ask? Great time to buy.

We will furnish it, and spend occasional nights there, but mostly it will sit vacant. The good news for you is that if you want to visit Pátzcuaro, you can stay there for a reasonable donation towards our croissantitos and black cafecitos.

It´s a really snazzy, two-story place with two bedrooms, garage for one car, 2.5 bathrooms, wood-burning fireplace, equipped kitchen, wood floor upstairs, tile floor downstairs, skylights and a mountain view from the balcony.

And genuine Mexican neighbors on the cobblestone street.

Life´s texture is changing for us.

Above is the Ranchito Jr., the white building. It´s one of the best housing buys going in Pátzcuaro, and relatively unknown due to not being in the hands of a real estate agency. There are more waiting to be sold. Price is about $75,000. Great deal.

Yesterday´s goats

A low-flying vulture circles the Ranchito. A sharp eye can see far, far higher where 10, perhaps 15, more are circling.

It is yesterday, and they´re halfway to Venus. Hunting dinner.

It is dinnertime, the midday comida, the principal meal of Latinos and Southern Rednecks who remember rural life as it used to be in Southwest Georgia.

Dinner at midday, supper at night. Lots of lemonade.

We just returned from our own lunch down the highway at the gas station restaurant.

Those circling vultures would love a good, dead goat out in the green fields between here and Mount Fuji-taco. Or maybe near the lake´s squishy edge, softer pickings, marinated in mud.

Sun illumines the Jesus Patio, but black clouds line the distant mountaintops. Gonna rain? The rainy season should have ended by now. We haven´t felt a fine deluge in weeks.

But back to goats. We´re reading Vargas Llosa's Feast of the Goat, a novel set in Trujillo´s Dominican Republic.

For the agile, there are connections here between vultures, goats, the Jesus Patio and yours truly who remembers driving drunkenly down the coastal highway long ago outside Santo Domingo with a teen-aged mulata wearing a wig.

It was late on a starry night, and we heard the waves.

However, here and now, the black clouds are dispersing, and we imagine another dry day will pass.

And it surely did.

Fall of night

Mexican sunrise and sunset photos are popular. Everybody does them. Here´s a post-sunset picture, and the camera is pointed East, not West.

The sun has set behind your chair.

That´s Mount Fuji-taco beneath the monster piece of fluff. If you swing in the hammock on the upstairs terraza about 7:30 p.m. you get to enjoy this, and the mosquitoes get to enjoy you.