Time Lost

Or e’er, thrice summer gone, we first surveyed,

Beyond the azure wave and dusty lands,

This lofty place where now mine eye on domes

And towers dwells ….

Sorry.  I’ve been reading Cymbeline!  Anyway, as I was saying, before our first trip to San Miguel, we read a couple of books which Jeanne had found at Amazon (she does that: she finds tour books and so forth, then gets me to read them so she doesn’t have to).  One was Tony Cohan’s On Mexican Time, and the other was Falling in Love with San Miguel, by Carol Schmidt and Norma Hair.  Cohan was married to an artist when they moved here, and the women are a lesbian couple who also built a life

here.  Jeanne claims to have seen them around here twice.  It turns out that the ladies are right now in the process of leaving here for health reasons having to do with altitude (6400’), though they still love the place and don’t exactly relish going back to Phoenix; and local scuttle says that Cohan has been seized upon by a younger woman and has left the artist. 

Carol and Norma write very practical books and blogs about our not-so-little town: what it’s like to be gay here, and how to live cheaply on Social Security income, for example.  Tony Cohan was a writer from LA already before coming here, and the book is much more esoteric.  He writes about coming here on vacation and slowly being sucked into a different view of the world.  They eventually bought a fixer-upper and settled here for a number of years.  As his title suggests, he is preoccupied about how life here’s changes your view of reality.  I sympathize.

A couple of days ago, Jeanne and I were sitting in the jardín, as the plaza here is known.  It is a beautiful square in front of the main church (there are many, and almost all architecturally significant), the mock-Gothic Parroquia, shady with huge sculpted ficus by day, softly lit with twining lights at night, and it is the town’s social center, busy by day and crowded by night.  For no particular reason, I asked Jeanne the time.  “Twelve forty-eight,” she replied.  At that moment, the parroquia clock chimed out noon.  It is, of course, correct; as is Jeanne – but not here.  Here, there is really no such concept as 12:48: why would the forty-eight be important?

Later in the day we returned to the jardin, which is only about five blocks away.  We sat on a bench looking outwards, listening to a rather good mariachi band in front of one of the restaurants under the arcades, and not too far away there was a tuna, as they are called in Spain and probably here: student groups singing traditional songs in colorful costumes.  Children all around are playing with inflated toys and flashing lights bought from the vendors on the church steps.  Adults stand around the food stalls which sell roasted corn and other delicacies.

Were it not for all this activity, I might think we were stuck in Waiting for Godot.  “We should be going,” says my Vladimir.  We do not move.  “Are we ready to leave?” asks her Estragon, somewhat later.  She does not answer.  It appears we are not ready to leave.  Even when we do stand up, it is to take another stroll around the plaza.

At home, on our rooftop, I sit and write, rigging up an umbrella against the bright light so that I can see the screen.  I’m often distracted by the view, and take numerous pictures of the agglomeration of domes which appeared in an earlier blog, because they are to me what Rouen cathedral was to Monet, a net designed to catch the light.  I suspect Monet’s pictures are better (!), but it doesn’t matter: I just sit here and lose track of time until Jeanne’s head startles me when it appears, breathing hard, at the top of our spiral staircase.  How long have we been here?  Must be six or seven weeks, right?

We are back at the jardín.  We could not find the restaurant we had chosen for a late-night snack, so we settled for a very good pizza at La Terraza on the corner of the square.  Had we found our first choice, we would have missed it all.  The square is hopping, with at least two mariachi bands.  One of them hooks up with a large table of people next to us, and we are surrounded by the band, all nine of them: three violins, three trumpets, and three guitars of various sizes. They are very good and they go on forever.  

In contrast to the Colombian music we hear from time to time because of our family connections, all Mexican tunes, even the sad ones, are happy and infectious; whereas all Colombian tunes, even the happy ones, are plaintive and melancholy.  Much of the mariachi music is in ¾ time, but my old folk-dancer’s ear says that some are in weird Balkan rhythms, 9/16 or something.  The evening is magic, even the children as young as five winding through the musicians trying to sell gum for a peso or two are picturesque.  If you think it is a cliché to sit on a balmy evening in a beautiful setting and listen to nine tenors singing Cielito lindo, all I can say is, don’t knock it until you’ve fried it.  Go out and see what you can find in downtown Minneapolis at ten o’ clock at night, my friends.  As we leave, we bump into the other mariachi band following a white donkey and leading a young couple, a bunch of people in odd military uniforms, plus a nondescript crowd picked up along the way.  (The next day, we see the same couple posing for wedding pictures.)

I’ll tell you this.  I have lived a cosmopolitan life, as many of you know, and could take you to places in England, France, Spain or the U.S. as lovely as Baja California.  But if I had to choose a single place to settle down because of the people themselves, it would be magical, maddening Mexico every time.

San Miguel de Allende: wonderful and Safe

The school resides in a 300 yr. old building.

My teacher Jorge.  

Mexico always surprises me in ways both delightful and terrifying. (i.e. husband falling into oil pit)  Thirty years ago when I lived in Mexico City for several weeks  I vividly remember walking down a busy street in the Zona Rosa district when I looked to my left and saw the ruins of a gigantic Aztec pyramid being excavated well below street level.  It was then I knew I had to come back to this country.  It was well over three decades before I did return to Mexico and each time I return I understand why I love this country so much. 

The classrooms are all off this courtyard.

The surprises this time include the fact that my Spanish is improving and most importantly, there have been no near fatal accidents so far.  This is major considering the treacherous and exhausting stairway to our apartment and the narrow sidewalks and cobblestone streets everywhere here.  I came with moderate to low expectations with regard to Spanish because I know how difficult language learning is but, I feel I have made progress.  

My school, Academia Hispano Americano began here in 1959. The setting and the staff are fantastic.  My class size has never gone above six, so you get a lot of attention.  Our teacher, Jorge, is a native of San Miguel and started in a bi-lingual school as a young child.  He really knows his stuff!  My class goes from 8:30 to 11:30 each day with two breaks for coffee and homemade sweets served up by Jose (below).  I have met people from all over the US, many of whom have lived abroad for extended periods of time.  All have an interesting life stories to tell and interesting reasons as to why they are studying here in San Miguel.                                        

Jose serves us coffee and homemade treats each day at break-time.

We would like nothing more than to come back here in the near future, if we are lucky enough to be able to do so.   Living in San Miguel makes you feel like you have gone back a few centuries to a life that is more simple and meaningful.  San Miguel can also be a good place to lose a couple pounds and stay fit just by the mere fact you have to buy groceries.  You walk a lot of blocks to get your groceries and you sure don't want to have to carry very much.  I also love being able to communicate in another language.  Lastly, there is something about the Mexican people; their wisdom, their joy, their creativity, their fatalism, that make you want to return to this country.  Mexicans seem to know things about living that people in other parts of the world have either forgotten or never knew.   

   

The 1910 Mexican Revolution

It’s a very odd morning.  Jeanne is not feeling well and has stayed home from school, so I’m sneaking around so as not to disturb her.  It’s not clear, however, why any noise I could make would wake her (and certainly she slept through my washing the dishes), since she has not responded to the noise outside.  Across the street from us a workman with execrable taste in music is fixing the roof; the dogs are barking, too, for no more apparent reason than usual, but I don’t let it bother me.

It reminds me of the story told to us by our friend Judith, who lives high on the hill near where we stayed last time we were here, with a stunning view of the town.  An American rents an apartment in San Miguel, but after a week he calls his Mexican landlady and tells her that he simply can’t stay there.  He loves everything about the apartment, the neighborhood, the location, but he can’t stand the incessant noise, especially the barking dogs.  “Then why do you listen to them?” she asks.

The sun is sneaking around too: that’s the other odd thing about the morning.  When I got up and brought my coffee out here, it seemed like another beautiful day was planned.  The town usually has clear skies above us as soon as he sun starts to do his job (suns being masculine according to standard Jungian theory), while the hills all around us have a tonsure of clouds above them.  We are on the eastern edge, with the hill essentially starting at our doorstep, but we have a long view across to the sunset hills, which are often covered in a haze, as they still are now.  On our side, however, the clouds suddenly cascaded over the hills in a thick mist such as one sees all the time in the English Lake District.   The grand houses on the hill disappeared, and all those domes and towers showing in our first blog acquired a neutral background, the green hill behind them no longer existing.  An hour later, all the fog has disappeared.

We are surrounded not only by hills, but by history, for this area, the states of Guanajuato and Querétaro, are the landmarks of Mexican independence and democracy.  The USA had to deal only nice people like the British, but the Mexicans suffered greatly under the Hapsburgs, who brought them the gifts of elegance and military arrogance, and, especially, the Spanish, who brought them the gift of militant and gory Catholicism.  Some of it this history is reflected in place names: our own San Miguel de Allende and the nearby Dolores Hidalgo.  The city of Querétaro, which we visited last weekend, is a major focus of this activity, and our guide was obviously proud to highlight it for us.  During the uprisings and the back and forth of the struggle it served briefly as the capital of Mexico, and the constitution was signed there.

The city itself is sprawling and modern, and attracts people from all over Mexico to work in its factories, but the historic center is preserved and charming, with several lovely plazas lined with trees and fountains.  On our way in, we stopped at the famous Los Arcos, a massive aqueduct built in the early 18^th century and still in use, much larger, if much younger,  than the Roman one in Segovia.  A nearby mausoleum houses the remains of La Corregidora, heroine of the uprising of 1810, as well as those of her husband, the former governor of the region.  We went on to the Cerro de las Campañas, so-called because the rocks, when struck, sound like bells.  Here, poor Emperor Maximilian’s lavish exploitation of the people came to a timely end.  The Hapsburgs erected what I think is a puny little chapel as a memorial; but it is dwarfed by a colossal statue of Benito Juarez, Mexico’s first president after final independence in 1910.  Power to the people ‘n’ all that.

The rest of the afternoon was spent in lunch (that delicious huitlacoche!) and visiting some of the lovelier baroque buildings (churches, museums, former private houses).  By that time, this old geezer was ready for home, but enjoyed the trip back through the fertile agricultural zone.  We later discovered that the area produces several well-considered wines.  We have a bottle of the red which we haven’t opened yet, but we love the semi-sweet white which we are using as a cocktail and are thinking of bringing back with us.

How can you not love a place where you can get unheralded wines, huitlacoche, and a fifth of Evan Williams for eleven bucks?