Rejected By the Only Group In Town

Rejected By the Only Group In Town

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            I’ve moved often enough to know there are certain mathematical realities. Generally it takes two years until I have an acquaintance or two, someone with whom I can attend the opera or go to a play reading, both of which I can find here in Mazatlan.  In five years I shall have acquired a friend or two, not necessarily the same first two people. That is just the way it is. Sure, I can go places by myself, and do. But it is more fun to share the experience.

            I can goose the program forward a bit in two ways, by joining a group of like-minded people and/or by volunteer work. The other day I set off to find information about a group of writers. Where better to discover writers than at a bookstore. Writers are readers. Half a block over and a dozen or more blocks up the street the Mazatlan Book and Coffee Company sits snug back in a small plaza behind a bank and a laundry.

            This bookstore, which I found the first year I vacationed in Mazatlan, is filled with used books, books in English, overwhelmingly of the beach-read variety. But by diligent probing, plucking and piddling through the stacks I can always find a few gems of literary fiction and the occasional non-fiction book that grabs my attention. Not that I’m a snob. I read trash too.

            When I left Harlem, I walked away from a 4,500 volume personal library. I brought with me a mere five boxes of books. One box contained my two-volume Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, my indispensible Strunk and White on style, which I read annually for fun, and a couple other books on style and grammar which I should consult more frequently. The rest are old favorites. I’m reduced to maybe a hundred books. I have no intention of re-creating a vast library. But I am a reader. Eventually I’ll own an e-book. But I’ll never lose my love of the heft of a book and the tactile experience of turning paper.

            Within ten minutes at the Mazatlan Book and Coffee Company, I had chosen a book on basketball (think Chicago Bulls in the ‘90’s) by Phil Jackson, a book by Coetzee and one by Achebe, not exactly beach reads, and a bag of coffee beans. Coffee and books go together like, well, like books and coffee.

            Given another ten minutes, I had swapped yarns with Jerry, a snowbird whose uncle is a beekeeper in Power, Montana and whose wife is a writer.  Then Twila came around a corner of the stacks to tell me her husband was a McPherson from Chinook, class of ’59. She lives in Glendive and knows people I know.  

            In half an hour I had gathered three books, coffee beans, stories, smiles and the name with email address of the contact person for the writers group.

            I have been known to embarrass my friends by how easily I insert myself into conversations with complete strangers. But it took two days to gather my courage and email Mike to ask about the writers group. I threw out a feeler. I’m a writer. It is a solitary life. I would like to join a group of writers. That is the gist of what I said.

            Mike replied that the group met once a week and in order to join, a writer must be committed to the group and serious about writing “fiction stories” and seeking publication of the same.

            My heart broke and sank to the soles of my sandals. I am a poet and essayist. I don’t have a single plot, story line, or fiction character cluttering up the back passages of my brain. I have been outright scorned and rejected. This group does not want me.

            I wrote back and said that if a fiction came to visit me, I’d contact him again, blah, blah, blah, making nice. Mike wrote back with more blah, blah, blah, making nice.

            So for the present I’ll hang out more often at the Mazatlan Book store. I’ll volunteer to dust the stacks at the English Book Library.  I’ll keep writing poetry and essays. Sooner or later I’ll rub up against another poet, another essayist or two.

            In a few days maybe I’ll quit plotting the murder(s) of the despicable antagonist Mike and his twisted band of followers by the rejected and lovable protagonist (heroine) who commits the perfect crime(s) and lives to tell the story.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

February 20, 2014

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Next Year or Manana—Both Mean “Wait and Hope”

Next Year or Manana—Both Mean “Wait and Hope”

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            Living several years in Montana, known as “Next Year Country” because of vagaries of climate and other erratic conditions, was good transitional training for relocating to Mexico, “Manana Country”.

            Consider mail delivery. Anyone in a small town on the north-central Montana plains will tell you that a letter from either coast takes four days to arrive. Overnight or express delivery also takes four days. That’s just the way it is. One learns to shrug and compensate.

            Last week, I received my first two pieces of Christmas mail. Was I ever excited! I checked the post marks and did the math: four days to leave Montana, two days to arrive at the border where the mail is transferred to the dusty saddlebags of the man holding the lead rope of a burro. The saddlebags are slung over the back of his true-footed pack animal, along with provisions for two months. Man and beast pick their way through cactus on dry desert trails and slog over treacherous mountain passes. When they reach the coastal city where I live, the mail is sorted for delivery by a man on a scooter. By the time an important letter is delivered, urgent mail is no longer urgent. Maybe that’s a bonus.

            Last week was a busy week. Lupe transferred to Los Cabos to work for the next month, possibly two. So I had to learn to do all the things that he had been doing for me. One of those chores concerns my internet company. For four months we have paid for wireless internet, a service we do not receive. Why not? A shrug, “No modems; come back next week”. This time we were told, “Come back February 26”. 

            So early on the 26^th, I will climb aboard the Sabalo Centro bus and ask the driver to let me off at Lola Beltran on Olas Altas. From there I will walk downhill about eight blocks to the Megacable office. I will probably be told, possibly in sign language, “Come back in April.” I’ll go through the motions. Likely I will trudge empty-handed up the hill to catch the bus home.

            The hardest thing for me to deal with is the water heater, which has only worked sporadically since I moved here in November. 

            I admit I don’t have a degree in plumbing. Mostly I avoid anything to do with electricity or natural gas. Necessity is the mother of learning. When I remodeled my house in Harlem a few short years ago, I learned to change a light fixture. I replaced several fixtures without killing myself. When I moved here, I had to re-learn to cook with gas. I quickly mastered lighting the burners and oven and have lived to tell it.

            But the water heater was in the final stages of a slow death. The pilot flame had to be re-lit every couple days. In the beginning, I waited for Lupe to be home to light the pilot so I could have hot water. He would take the key, a flashlight, and candle lighter and go around the corner to the water-heater room. In an hour or two I could shower.

Now I had to learn to do it myself. I unlocked the door and swung it wide for the gas fumes to disperse into the open air. Holding my nose, I reached in and twisted the control to “off”. It’s in Spanish, but no matter. Starting from way outside, I approached the room slowly, holding my arm rigidly extended, and triggered the candle lighter several times to make sure it didn’t shoot four-foot flames from escaped gas. Once I deemed it safe, I entered and turned the control to “pilot” and held down the red knob the requisite fifteen seconds or longer. Then I turned the control to “max”, which means what you think it should. With good luck the burner under the heater ignited. Sometimes I had to repeat the process four or five or six times before the burner caught flame. I got pretty good at it. I mastered my fear. Mostly.

Last night I spent half an hour repeating the routine. I am well-acquainted with the line going to the pilot. That line has a hole in it. No wonder it doesn’t work. The real wonder is that I have not blown myself into a crispy critter. I got my neighbor Frank to take a look. After a few more unsuccessful attempts to light the burner, we murmured R-I-P and locked the door on the carcass of the dead, leaky heater. Frank phoned our landlady. “She’ll order a new electric heater. She’ll arrange an electrician to install it.”

When? Manana? Or maybe next year?

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

February 13, 2014

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If It Had Been A Rattlesnake

If It Had Been A Rattlesnake

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            Those familiar dangers we learn from childhood on are such a part of our consciousness that they carry instinctual wisdom and warnings that become second nature. Growing up in the Milk River Valley and the foothills and plains beyond, we know to stay away from the River in flood, stay out of the pasture with the mean bull and don’t pick up a baby rattlesnake, cute or not.

            Such wisdom even tells us if the rattlesnake has just had its head chopped off, leave it for a while. Reflexive action can be dangerous. Let the dead snake alone, like three days, I say. For example, I would never in a million years smash a rattlesnake and immediately reach down to pick it up to put it in the trash.

            Along toward evening last Sunday I was working at my computer, finished my project, closed the program and stood up. My foot squished something crunchy and alive. Fortunately, my feet were clad in sandals. I lifted my foot and looked down to see what had gotten itself put into my path. Immediately I was transported half way across the room and expletives unfit for a family newspaper issued forth from my mouth. Where my foot had been nano-seconds before lay a dead scorpion the size of a small dog. I swear.

            The thing is dead, right. I’m bigger than it is and had squished it heartily. My heart slowed down. I grabbed a paper towel and reached to pick the it up and dispose of the carcass. The dead scorpion reached up as I reached down and stung me on my forefinger. I didn’t know they could do that.

            I left it where it was, carefully stepped around it and sat back at my computer and searched for information on what to do for a scorpion sting. There was a long list of things such as apply Benadryl, go to hospital, ice the affected area, go to hospital, carry anti-venom kit (That’s telling me to lock the barn door after the horse ran away.) on and on and on and go to hospital. So I did what any self-respecting I-can-take-care-of-myself-type person would do. I got ice and a rag and wrapped my finger in ice.

            A few minutes later Lupe walked in the door. “Hi, Hon. Oh, by the way, a scorpion just stung me.”

            “Where?”

            “There.” I pointed to the super-sized mangled body on the floor.

            “No, where did he sting you?”

            “Oh. Here.” I held up my hand wrapped in a rag soaked with dripping, melting ice, my finger numb and tingling and painful.

            Next I remember a series of disjointed scenes, like in a bad movie. I was tucked into the car, my hand still wrapped in ice, careering through the night darkened back streets of Mazatlan. I held on for dear life as we rolled around corners, taking every shortcut. I giggled. This drama hardly seemed necessary. It’s not like the scorpion hit me full strength. We rolled up to the door of the Red Cross Hospital.

            Flash forward. I was lying on a gurney. A nurse injected three hypos of mystery medicine through a tube attached to a needle attached to my inner elbow. I don’t do needles. That part was exciting. Still on the gurney, I had to wait a couple hours, for “observation”. Now and then someone came through and asked my difficult questions such as “Do you know your name.”

            Eventually Dr. Hector called me into his office to make sure I could walk and kept me there another half hour asking the hard questions, “Do you know your name?” He wanted to keep me six hours but I convinced him I could go home. Dr. Hector released me with medication, a list of don’ts which included no alcohol (no problem), no caffeine (painful) and no operating a motor vehicle (easy). He said to stay in bed three days (a joke, right).

             I thought the whole thing a bit melodramatic. One day in bed, okay. I had things to do the next day. A third day was truly excessive. I slept the first day. The second day I thought I would humor Dr. Hector so cancelled things to do and people to see. The third day I got up for an hour, yawned and said to myself, “I think I’ll just lie down for a little nap.” Several times.

Now that I’m back in the land of the truly living, I have learned a world of wisdom and knowledge concerning scorpions. I never put my feet on the floor without looking first. Never go barefoot around the house. Never pick up a dead scorpion. Maybe in three days if it hasn’t moved.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

February 6, 2014

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Ode to Spring and The Nesting Syndrome

Ode to Spring and The Nesting Syndrome

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            Spring lurks around the corner patiently waiting to burst forth into kaleidoscopic glory. Down here in Mexico, while daily temperatures peak in the perfection of the lower eighties and bougainvillea weighty with color drape over every upright structure, who can tell from spring! Not much to go by but a calendar.

            If one has a calendar. When the New Year approached I could not find a new calendar. I’m an old hand at making do. My much-scribbled 2013 calendar is filling the gap. For example, January began on a Wednesday this year. I flipped through last year’s calendar to May, where the first of the month fell on Wednesday. I’ll conveniently flip the page to June to represent February but the months are muchly messed up thereafter.

            In the sub-tropics, familiar clues to the approach of the magical season which unlocks the icy grip of winter are sadly lacking. (The icy grip of winter is also lacking but that breaks my heart not one whit.) In mailboxes all over Montana, garden catalogs are showing up, luring Montana gardeners to order seeds and seedlings which never have and never will grow in our too hot, too cold, too wet, too dry country. But along with green beans and beets, we order the more exotic with all the faith of parishioners who perennially put their hopes in the “next-year” basket.

            What is going on with me? I’ve been here three months, a notorious “red flag” time for those who’ve signed up for any major life change. I wanna go home. Oh, not permanently. I want a “Montana fix”, a shot of perhaps two weeks. Spring seems like a good time for a visit. I could migrate back with the robins.

            My daughter tells me that since I obviously don’t have cabin fever, I must have spring fever. She says things like, “Get a grip, Mom.” She thinks it makes perfect sense that I want to migrate. “After all, Mom, you are a nester. Fixing up your nest has always been a priority for you. Concentrate on your nest where you are.”

            It is true. I am a nester. This is the first time I’ve moved anywhere and did not immediately fix up my house to suit myself. The studio is temporary, I told myself. I’ll find a house in short order and let the fixing begin.

            I’ve not yet found the house I want. I am re-thinking the whole house thing. This studio, which I found on my very first day in Mazatlan, is quite adequate, or would be if I finished unpacking the boxes that line the walls. Maybe my landlady will store some of the furniture. I already know what I want to have built.

            Ouch! That reminds me of an embarrassing financial faux pas I nearly committed in the interest of feathering my yet-to-be-found nest. A woman I met on the street told me that a man who works for her told her that a woman down the way had a houseful of furniture she was selling at outrageously good prices and I should at least take a gander.

            The very old Concordia style furniture (a style which has been made by craftsmen in Concordia, south of here, for hundreds of years) was just what I had in mind. When I went to see the furniture, I didn’t have money with me. But, after a few minutes of requisite haggling over the price, I said I’d take it. The woman on the street, the man who does jobs for her, the woman selling the furniture, all assured me I was getting a great bargain.

            That night Common Sense dropped by for a chat. “You don’t have a house sweetie. What if that pile of furniture doesn’t suit the place you find, for find it you will. What about those two rocking chairs you dreamed of having made in Concordia?”

            So I did what I should have done in the first place. I took Lupe to see the furniture. I knew instantly that I was in trouble. Lupe just shook his head. I backed out of the deal, glad to leave with a little dignity and no hard feelings. When the time comes, I’ll go to Concordia and order exactly what I want at half the money i nearly shelled out for old dry twigs and me with no nest in which to put them.

            Spring is around the corner. The orioles on my back patio are exhibiting disgraceful behavior. I might or might not make that migratory journey north. Or I might finish unpacking boxes in the nest I’m in, temporary or not, and arrange to gather my own twigs.  

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

January 30, 2014 

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