It’s a Conspiracy

 

It’s a Conspiracy 

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Hurricane Estelle blew in lugging a heavy cloud blanket behind her until the sky looked like cry me a river.

Day after day after day darkness reigned and time warped, smudged and dripped down the mountain walls like Dali-esque clocks.

If one took the sky and flattened it out like a topographical map, it would be criss-crossed by rivers cascading off the edges in waterfalls. (Flat sky, flat earth, what’s the difference!)

Under cover of day as dark as nightfall, somebody sneaked in and stole the sun.

I heard rumors that “they” took the sun to Montana where, doubled up, it reigns supreme forcing temperatures into the triple digit extremes.

Meanwhile, life as usual in central Mexico, right?

Wrong. While in town for dental work, I saw my neighbor Ariel and we had a ten minute chat. Next day, he felt sick, tested positive for Covid. We all who summer here are fully jabbed with needle marks to prove it. Life is not fair, right, Ariel?

So I self-quarantined for a week. Not that isolation is unusual this time of year, with hardly anybody about. But I have vulnerable friends, so would rather err on the side of caution.

With that modicum of extra time on my hands, I got an idea. Not a lightbulb idea. It coalesced slowly. With numbers of Covid cases and deaths on the rise everywhere, despite Covid being a left/right wing conspiracy, I figured I’d probably not grow wings and fly north for yet another year. Sigh of Disappointment.

So I consulted with my team, Leo and Josue, and asked if a bathroom could be made in the tool tunnel on the back side of the bodega, which is minimally used, most tools and manly gear residing in the other tunnel to the left side of the bodega.

Team took measurements, said it is do-able, and gave me a price less than I’d spend on a northern trip. So once a doorway is knocked through, my travel money will be flushed down the toilet, or rather, will go to build a toilet, sink and shower in a wee-tiny strip of space, but will make my bodega bedroom with en-suite much more attractive to any friends lined up for trips south to visit me.

So, if you haven’t got your passport yet, get that application filled out, please.

The destruction/construction area is covered by a roof, so take that, Hurricane Estelle. Pttttt!

The other conspiracy I can only partially blame on Estelle. The synthetics fabrics industries have rendered natural fibers such as cotton, linen and wool, very hard to find and expensive. In town there are no cotton fabrics suitable for clothing. None. Synthetics make my skin hurt. Truth.

In Guadalajara, there is a wonderful huge fabrics store with acres of cotton fabrics for dressmaking. For the past month, Michelle, Ana and I have intended a trip to the City. Every week, our plans were blown out of the water (Like that one?) by one and another Hurricane, stacked off the coast, one after the other, just to foil our plans, of course. I call this the clipped-wings conspiracy.

Guadalajara is an ancient city, grown to over six million people, built over literally thousands of years. Parts of the city are ancient with little drainage and are vulnerable to storms. Streets flood with regularity. If Guadalajara is rainy, we don’t go. It’s that simple. We are wary, having watched videos of cars washed sideways down flooded streets, smashing into everything along the way.

Not to be outdone by mere weather or the oil industry, I have now made a new nighty from bedsheets, and three blouses from cotton beach wraps.

I’ll not thumb my nose at hurricanes or major or minor conspiracies. We plan to go to Guad next week. Will we make it? Maybe so, maybe no.

Will my en-suite be finished in time for your visit? Maybe so, maybe no.

Will the sun escape the chain of clouds and again grace our sky? See above.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

July third week

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It’s a Great Place to Live . . . But

 

               It’s a Great Place to Live . . . But

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Yes, it’s a great place to live (for me) but you wouldn’t want to visit.

I’ve been accused of having a Paradise Complex, but it is not true. I’ve been told Paradise is full of snakes and liars and have no reason to either believe it or not believe it.

Nope. I live in a dusty little cow-town, farm village in Mexico and though I often say I live in Paradise, I mean Paradise for me. For me. Amen. And Awomen.

When Dr. Landazari, eye specialist, who lives in Mazatlan, the Pearl of the Pacific, but performs his surgeries in ultra-modern Guadalajara, flew over Etzatlan to see just where in, er, where I’d moved, he asked me before he scraped my eyeballs, “Why do you want to live in that dirty little town?”

What could I say? How could I tell him, an unbeliever, that I feel at home here? After all, I grew up in a dusty little farm town. There is a reason the highway by-passed my hometown on the way to elsewhere.

Is Paradise an accident of geography? Is that how Heaven got to be up there and the Saints and Angels walked in clouds? Remember, the earth was flat back then, before it wrapped itself into a swirling ball.

So why not have Paradise be wherever one lands? Or the Nether regions if one is so inclined. You know, the fiery pit. Same geography.

I came here in 2016 with all the fervor of a woman in love. What’s not to love? I had a small house just the right size, a large yard, just the right size, and a town, a little dirty and timeworn, with shops that carried everything I needed, with diligent searching, if not everything I wanted. Goldilocks had arrived.

It’s a great place to live but you wouldn’t want to visit.

There is nothing touristy here. We don’t have sandy beaches, or any other beach. No river or ocean. No amusement park. No casinos. No movie theatre. No mall. No big box stores. No spectacular wonders of the world. No Wally’s World. No MickyD’s.

Streets are cobblestone. That will joggle your suspension system all right, both yours and your car’s.  A shopping trip for basic supplies for a week might send you to a dozen tiny tiendas, or more. Houses are not insulated, not built to code (Code? What’s that?), windows leak, roofs have to be cleaned and sealed annually, and probably not more than a dozen people in the whole town speak English and why would they?

Those are some reasons some of you might not like it here. Nothing is familiar. Nothing is, well, comfortable. It’s foreign.

That’s why tourists go to all-inclusive, air-conditioned beach resorts on holiday. They are enclosed in a known world where the staff speak English; they provide zip-lines, day tours, and familiar food. Vendors ply the beach with cheap sun-glasses, printed tee-shirts, henna tattoos of geckos and braid your hair with beads. It’s comfortable. Safe. Meow.

Okay. So how do I find Paradise in a dusty little village, far from the madding crowds? 

Skip over the part where flowers bloom year round and temperatures are generally moderate, and fruit falls off the trees into one’s mouth, rather like “summertime, and the living is easy”.

My first visit here, I was crossing the wide street from the Plaza, slowly, my cane a permanent extension of my right hand. A young man, perhaps sixteen or seventeen, ran across the street, gave me his arm and walked me across, helped me up the curb, said, “Adios, Senora,” and went on to join his friends who waved to me.

It happened right here, see where that stain is. That stain is where my heart melted into the sidewalk, where I became a permanent part of this village. It’s the People.

I’m older and physically impaired, read “invisible”. Not here. Teenagers greet me. Everybody says hello. Elsewhere, I am invisible. Here, I am at Home.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

Second week, July 2022

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Memories . . . Thoughts . . . Changes

 

            Memories . . . Thoughts . . . Changes 

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Why do memories come to visit, often at inopportune times? I’ve questions but no answers.

I distinctly remember once telling a minimalist friend how much I admired her way of life. An entire bare wall with one picture. A vase with one sprig of flower. “But I know me. I couldn’t be minimalist in my surroundings. I like it. I just can’t do it.”

My home was never cluttered. But wherever one cast one’s eyes, one would find a vignette of simple beauty. That’s my passion. Making spaces beautiful.

I’m also not a collector—except of old china tea cups, vintage tablecloths, and lovely old mixing bowls, all kitchenware. But that was back then, before I changed my entire life to Mexico.

Another distinct memory, even older, was when a friend said, “Sondra, if you found yourself in Hell, you’d start arranging furniture and hanging pictures.” I took it as a compliment at the time. Years later I wondered if he meant I made myself comfortable in difficult circumstances instead of clawing my way out, perhaps up a rung, into Purgatory? Even so, I’d still be arranging furniture and hanging pictures.

Here I am today, living in Paradise, living a minimalist life I could never have previously imagined, and loving it.

Do I miss my stuff? No, not a bit, not even the china cups, tablecloths and ceramic bowls.

When I made the decision to move to Mexico, I made the decision to completely change my life, to not drag my old life along with me. That means all my stuff. Like I said, no regrets. But, lucky me, I’ve made a lot of moves and changes in my life and knew at least what to expect of myself.

What triggered these memories was watching how my various neighbors have made changes in moves or partial moves to Mexico and how they’ve made these changes work for them. Other than Lani, who has lived here a dozen years before the rest of us showed up, only two couples and myself live here full-time. Others are half-timers or part-timers.

We all approach our lives differently, of course. I’m just looking through a keyhole at this one tiny aspect of our lives.

Some of my neighbors moved into furnished spaces and left them intact, adding personal touches only, perhaps focusing on the outdoor space. Others pitched the works, or like me, moved into bare walls and a blank slate. Some brought loads of goods from home. Most put together an eclectic mix of favorite items from home plus traditional Mexican art and furnishings.

New Minimalist Me, I brought clothing, sheets and towels, silverware, an iron, those sorts of basic supplies in my move to Mexico and nothing more. I think what triggered this path of memory and thought is watching one set of neighbors who bought three houses on the rancho and have filled them with their entire household of belongings from Washington.

Now for the part I don’t like to tell, the piece of my story that shows my uglies. Nobody is more righteous than the converted, right? So in my rather new minimalist persona, I confess to feeling a little bit prideful that I need so little and other neighbors, not just the ones I mentioned, by the way, but others, need so much. Self-righteous pride stinketh worse than a neighbor’s field full of cow flops.

Redemption cometh. Fortunately. Given time, I can find at least eighteen sides to every situation and defend them all.  

My good neighbors moved to a new country, left behind friends, jobs, home, all that was familiar to them. Why not bring with them all the surroundings that give them comfort and a familiar feeling, surrounded by things they know.

We each approach change differently. I chose a blank slate. They chose the familiar. We are neither right nor wrong. This is not a test.

And though I now have moved up the rung from Hell to Paradise, I still “hang pictures on the wall”. Okay, I don’t have walls but I have windows and from two windows, my Granada tree obscured the view of most of my back yard, which is a beautiful back yard.

We each view the world through personal eyeballs. We each stand in personal shoes, none alike, all different.

Yesterday I had my gardener remove the Granada tree. Gone. My view is returned. My vignette of beauty from those windows is my comfort, like hanging a new painting.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

First week in July

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An imaginary story, none of which, or all of which, is true!

 

An imaginary story, none of which, or all of which, is true! 

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One day in the far distant future, back when I was God, time is relative, one of my very intelligent earth persons proved that, but more will be revealed, anyway, one day one of my other earth persons requested a visit.

Which I granted. I set up times for personal visitation, one hour in the early morning and one hour late at night, since most hours in between, I seem to be out of sight, out of mind.

I quite like visitation. No matter whom I am scheduled to see, visitation is always, well, let me give an example.

“God, we need help down here.”

“What is the problem, my child?”

“You gotta help. We’re desperate. Now that each State is a separate Nation, it’s a mess. The vote is coming up. You gotta make it come out right. I swear to God we cannot keep going on like this. Woops, slip of my tongue there, I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll take any acknowledgement I can get these days. However, you know I don’t interfere in politics. You all chose this path, so make it work, eh?”

“But people can’t get food, or medicine, or meet basic needs. We are scared. We are dying. The roads are crumbling. Not that we have cars that still run, most of us. Getting drinkable water is a nightmare.

“And you know how we divided up the land in our Nation so that every citizen had an equal parcel. Well, some acreage isn’t inhabitable. And some people are going feral and shooting their neighbors, rioting in the streets, and“

“Let me interrupt you here. Hmmm. I believe there is precedent for giving people uninhabitable land. Ah, here it is in the records, yes, such parcels were designated ‘Reservations’. The People made it work for them, not easy, no. If they can do it, you can do it.

“The record also shows that you voted to have no taxes, taxes being deemed oppressive, and no social services, such services being deemed unconstitutional in your State, I mean Nation, so it looks to me like the way you have it set up, if you want roads, all you have to do is get a group of people together, find picks and shovels, and build the roads. Right? Is that how you all envisioned this working?”

            “Have pity on us. Please help.”

“I told you, I don’t interfere in those things. Now anything else you want, you know, the usual requests, sunshine, rain, your team to win the football game, blessings or curses?”

            “Please don’t make bad jokes. We need help. Everybody is scared. Everyone is fighting.”

“I see you glanced at your Rolex. Before you leave, let me show you something to think about. Come up here next to me. Look around you. What do you see?”

            “I see a bunch of trees.”

“What kind of trees do you see?”

“That is a cottonwood. There is a box elder tree. Willow. Pine. Fir. I don’t recognize most of the others--trees I don’t know. Just trees. All kinds of trees.”

“Uh, huh. Every kind of tree is here for you to see. Each one different. Each unique. Something for you to think about, maybe.

“Special Effects, could we have some wind, level one, please, through the tree tops.

“Now what do you see?”

“Is there a test?” Gulp. “The branches move differently. Some leaves are frothy and some look thick, heavy, plastic-like. They all move differently in the wind.”

“Very good. Every tree moves differently but however they sway in the dance with the wind, they all connect, like holding hands, at the roots. That is my gift for you for today. Think about it.

“You look disappointed. I can’t give you what you wanted. It’s not in my nature. What I just gave you could be a tool for you to use for building better.

“Careful on the top step as you exit my presence. Adios, sayonara, ciao, cheers. And good luck with your mess down there. I’ll be watching.”

See what I mean? Those earthlings provide riveting entertainment.  

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

End of June, 2022

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