New Year's Revelations...

Dear Friends,

Feliz Año Nuevos. I know it’s been a long time since I’ve communicated, especially since my blog entered a dormant phase after I left Mexico in March 2011. The past year has been a time of endings. My mom--the amazing, valiant Carmen--died at 92. Some forever friendships and family connections dissolved. A job offer required me to trade my beloved southwest vistas for the hazy, conservative Midwest—a place I thought I’d never return after moving to Colorado in 1986. It’s tempting to focus only on the losses. But as I said to a colleague who was recently forced out of a job he’d held for a long time, but had outgrown-- the new thing can’t begin until the old thing comes to an end.

There’s no getting around the grieving process. But with my new job at Joyce Meyer Ministries, I’ve been challenged to change my natural tendency to view life through a lens of melancholy (hmm…wouldn’t that be a lovely name for a girl? Melancholia Rand…) to something a bit more optimistic. More than once the Universe (i.e., God) has spoken to me: it’s time to shake the dust off your feet and look forward for a change. Imagine new possibilities: New friends. New paradigms. Even new family. Be grateful for what you have, not what’s still missing. 

I have a job as a writer (with benefits!) at a time when traditional editorial jobs are going the way of the golden toad and the dodo bird. And after nearly four years with no permanent address, I’m finally settled in a charming apartment in a lovely old St. Louis neighborhood across from a big park where Bo and Rocky can roam off the leash. I have enough income to indulge my passion for thrift stores, and take the occasional trip to New Mexico to see my buddies. Oh, and here’s my nyaa-nyaa for those trapped in gloomier climes: I just came back from 10 days in Puerto Vallarta where I stayed with my friend Gloria at her historic posada, Los Cuatro Vientos. After nearly two years away, it was a sentimental journey filled with happy reunions and swims in the healing ocean.

My job entails writing curriculum for Joyce Meyer’s “action plans,” as well as magazine features, marketing copy and other projects. This year I’ve written journaling workbooks based on her books and teachings, including Power Thoughts, Fruit of the Spirit and Battlefield of the Mind. Working at a place where most of my colleagues are half my age, I’ve been forced to stay current with new technologies—although my favorite game on my Kindle is grandmotherly Mahjongg, not “Angry Birds.”

What have I learned in the past year? That what you want is not necessarily what you need. That God provides—usually at the 11th hour. That our “families” are not always related to us by blood. That it’s healthiest to pursue relationships with people who believe the best about one another. That sometimes you have to make peace with things being unresolved. And that it takes a lot less emotional energy to forgive someone than to hold a grudge.   

I’ve discovered that for at least this present season, I need routine and stability—not another “adventure.” I’m particularly grateful that my sister Dodi and I have grown closer after being virtual strangers for decades. We talk regularly on the phone—getting to know one another and working through our respective issues with candor, respect and trust. 

It’s been a year of solitude (what my friend Kathy Parham calls “sacred loneliness”), and many times I’ve felt like a fish out of water in the city where I was born and spent the first 10 years of my life. I wouldn’t have chosen St. Louis as a place to live. But here is where the door opened. I’m trusting God that there’s a lesson I’m supposed to learn from this. More will be revealed.

Blessings to you. May all your life transitions be smooth ones…life is so much easier when you just go with it. Have a great 2013. 

Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland. (Isaiah 43:18-19 NIV)

Love, bird

   

Waning Moon

A couple of weeks ago, I stood on Pilitas Street in Puerto Vallarta and gazed heavenward at a full moon, gleaming in the night sky like a porcelain dinner plate. I wanted to reach up and pluck it from the sky – one last souvenir of Mexico -- pack it in my suitcase for the long drive back to the US, then pull it out and stick-pin it to the wall of whatever cubicle or listless reality awaited me back home.

I so loved my Puerto Vallarta script. In it, I was Shirley Valentine, dressed in rumpled linen, sauntering around Zona Romantica to my various appointments, soaking up the Bohemian life, savoring the quirky irony of being the sole heterosexual female in a neighborhood populated almost exclusively by gay men.

On Saturday mornings, I made my way down Olas Altas, over to the Rio Quale bridge, past the marimba players at the Puente del Fuente Restaurant and up the stairs to PV Writers Group meetings, where I read from my book-in-progress to an invariably receptive audience. Later, I’d drop by to chew the fat with Ray of Ray’s Bazaar or hike up the steep hill to my friend Ricardo's villa to let him ply me with espresso and hearty meals served on his immense farm table.

I developed fast friendships with local Mexicans and hung out with Israel in working-class Pitillal, far from the tourists and timeshare salesmen lurking on the Malecon. Occasionally, I’d meet my friends Martha and Xochitl at the Cheeky Monkey to drink $1.00 Margaritas as the sun set on the bay.

They liked me, they really liked me -- to paraphrase Sally Field’s infamous Oscar acceptance speech. The place felt enchanted, like I’d finally come home.

But it’s always like that when an experience is new, before it dawns on you that people are not larger-than-life supporting players in a movie starring you. Before you realize that people have their own scripts. Before things happen that put a stick through the scrim of your romantic constructs, tearing a big, jagged hole in the way you thought things were. Or were supposed to be.

Like so many people in Vallarta, I juggled numerous money-making schemes -- from selling my photo notecards at Gloria's hotel to designing necklaces for the diminutive pooches favored by homosexual men. "And your little dog, too -- bling for the tiny dog in your life." But nothing really caught fire. My business, Palabras Magicas Marketing, quickly ran out of steam when the tourist industry continued its slow decline and nobody wanted to pay for my services. I could feel the meter quickly running out on my Vallarta adventure.

Shortly before I left PV, Israel introduced me to his friend Jaime. A quiet man who lived in an unwired hut in the jungle above Nogalito, Jaimie showed up from time to time to sit in my kitchen and talk about mystery, philosophy and his mission to feed the fourteen dogs and cats in his charge. He reminded me of a Mexican Saint Francis of Assisi.

It was not clear to me how Jaime made a living. He and Israel once tried to start a fix-it and appliance repair business, but their loopy attitudes toward time doomed their partnership from the get-go. Whenever their individual orbits managed to intersect, all they did was argue over which of them showed up too late or too early for a pre-arranged business meeting. It was laughable to watch them bumble through their plan to get rich doing odd jobs for gringo condo owners, when neither of them had a working cell phone, or even a watch between them.

One day as I was cooking dinner for all of us, Jaime picked up my guitar and started to play an impromptu concert. I watched slack-jawed as he finger-picked one song after another -- “Lara’s Theme,” “Spanish Eyes,” “Stairway to Heaven,” and Beatles songs, my favorite. Between sets, he caressed the seasoned flat-top, turning it over in his hands before his fingers found the strings again, the music pouring out of him like water from a broken main.

Jaime raved about my guitar – a Yamaha FG-160 I’d owned since 1973, purchased when I was a freshman in college. It occurred to me that I should give him the guitar, which I hadn’t played seriously for years. Perhaps he could use it to make tips on the street, or find himself a gig at a local restaurant.

I thought long and hard about releasing the instrument I’d owned for almost 40 years. The more I mulled it over, the more it seemed like the right thing to do. The day I handed the guitar over to him, I said, “Jaime, please promise me you won’t sell this guitar for a few pesos the next time you are desperate for dog food…” And he promised me, “No, no…this is very special. I will keep it forever.” No one had ever given him anything so fine. I saw him again on the street days later. He grabbed my hand, thanking me again, and promised, “I will never forget you.” An apparition of Roberta the Superhero elbowed out of my subconscious, standing with arms crossed and nodding, jut-jawed: yes, my work here is done. I am indeed a good person.

That was a few weeks ago. Yesterday, Israel called me from Mexico. “Jaime sold your guitar for 1,000 pesos,” he announced before the phone went dead. He must have purchased just enough cell phone time to call me with the news. My stomach did a slow somersault and I heard myself groan at the mental image of my wonderful old guitar propped up in a pawnshop window. I’d been suckered by my own bleeding-heart need to save someone who didn’t want to be saved.

Aside from reminding myself once more that what people do with the gifts we give is their own business, I am also again confronted with the issue of expectations. Specifically, disappointed ones.

I went to Mexico with high hopes. That people would recognize my abilities and want to hire me. That those I had been generous to would be generous and honest in return. That friendship would always be reciprocated. Most especially, that no one would try to pull the wool over my eyes – eyes that often fail to see that people choose their own lives. I can’t save them. Only God can do that – and even He/She has to bitch-slap them to get their attention.

But so as not to become beady-eyed and cynical about people’s motives, I try to focus on the many friends and strangers who have been kind to me with no expectation of return; volleys of grace unleashed upon me more times than I can count. And then there's the matter of my own relationship gaffes and moral failures. If I'm going to be intellectually honest, I can't ignore the things I’ve done that let people down. As I add it all up, my conclusion is that I need mercy considerably more than I require justice.

And the moon, I’ve decided, shines no brighter in Puerto Vallarta than anywhere else. It also wanes there, making for nights every bit as lonely as my night spent in a sleeze-bucket, no-tell motel in Lordsburg, New Mexico, the day I crossed the border back into the US.

Where ever you go, there you are. We carry our Heavens, our Hells and our Purgatories within us, right next to our psychic souvenirs. Puerto Vallarta, I’ve decided, is just a state of mind. Heaven draws near when we forgive the people who hurt us, and choose to love them despite the myriad ways they stick knives in our hearts. Just like I have to forgive Jaime. And just like I hope the people I’ve disappointed will find their way to forgiving me.

Entropy and Hope

(The following is a chapter from my new book, tentatively titled Where Ever You Go, There You Are; Change, Loss and La Vida Loca in Puerto Vallarta.)

Yesterday, Israel and I made our way to one of our favorite haunts, Peninsula Beach, where the Pitillal River empties into the ocean. We like it there because we can bathe the dogs in the shallow river water at the same time we get to enjoy the crashing surf. Israel loads up our two camp chairs, our beach umbrella and the cooler, and we make our way to a spit of sand where the river snakes around on its way to the sea.

Sadly, our beach gear has deteriorated at what feels like warp speed – paralleling our swiftly ending idylls together in Mexico. The canvas on the chairs has grown threadbare to the point where Israel sat down recently, and the seat gave way, his butt hitting the sand. Yesterday, he pulled our beach umbrella out of its sleeve and the whole thing came apart, with the nylon material tearing loose from the frame and flapping ridiculously in the stiff ocean breeze. I said, “Israel, it’s trash. Let’s just throw it away.” But Israel is like a dog with a bone when it comes to salvaging things that I would classify as "basura.” He’s resourceful in the way of someone who has had to scrounge and make do for most of his life. His room in Pitillal is crammed with funky finds harvested from the beach or fished out of trash barrels: broken fans, toaster ovens, old TV’s, still serviceable clothing and shoes – all of which he plans to clean, repair and sell at the flea market.

Mexicans are accustomed to extending the life of everything, from old appliances to junker cars. There really is no such thing as refuse in Mexico. Men with backpacks root through icky trash bags looking for aluminum cans and old beer bottles to barter at the recycler. In Guadalajara, we ran across a street vender selling used clothing as new, complete with cardboard tags stapled to the pockets. Look closer and there was the Goodwill pricetag still attached. What we consumer Americans might consign to a dumpster, working class Mexicans see as currency for survival -- or a retail opportunity. I love that about Mexicans. They don’t waste anything.

But, back to the umbrella situation. Israel pulled a plastic bag out of the sand, tore it into strips and began to perform triage on the pathetic beach umbrella. Little by little, he re-attached the nylon skin to the ribs. Then, as per our beach routine, he got down on hands and knees, dug a hole and planted the umbrella. I spread our faded beach towels on the two chairs and positioned the cooler between us. The dogs frolicked back and forth between the beach and the river, careful not to stray too far from the compass point of our dilapidated little outpost on the ocean prairie.

Paul Simon once wrote that everything put together sooner or later falls apart. Since coming to Mexico a mere two years ago, I’ve seen that process playing out not only in the disintegration of our beach furniture, but in the landmarks and topography of the enchanted bubble that is our Vallarta. When we first came to Peninsula Beach, the river still ran wild between the towering high rises. Mexican families congregated on the high dunes, while kids and dogs threw themselves into the crazy confluence of river and ocean. Bathers reveled in the fast current and chaotic surf. Once we watched a man reach into the water and pull out a large fish with his bare hands -- which he and his family proceeded to cook for dinner over a wood fire. Israel and I would wade out to where the ocean and river collided, giggling like children as the waves tried to knock us off our feet. Israel held up pieces of tortilla for the seagulls and laughed his high-pitched Amadeus laugh when they snatched the bread from his fingers. One night last year during a full moon, we visited the beach with my dog Bo, and watched breathlessly as the domed silhouette of a sea turtle silently made her way up the mouth of the river, searching for a place to lay her eggs. Israel tried to collapse the sand to help her, but the current was too strong. She slipped beneath the water and returned to the sea.

Who could have foreseen that in the space of a year, such experiences would grow extinct? The developers have succeeded in taming the Pitillal River with a series of jetties, sandbag walls and artificial dunes. The river has been reduced to a benign trickle, a capillary of shallow water flowing parallel to the beach, as ho-hum as the Lazy River ride at an urban water park.

I try not to get depressed about change. To go with the flow, as it were. But I grieve with each extinction – the old pier in Olas Altas, the Page in the Sun bookstore, even our favorite limoncillo plant in Colonia Villa Los Flores – we used to cut the leaves for tea. It’s been decimated by a cement wall. The other day I was walking the dogs among the condos in my neighborhood and came upon the dismembered remains of a large banyan tree, lying in chunks in a parking space. I felt like someone had died. It’s such a balancing act, this process of making peace with loss, while trusting that new sources of love and wonder will come to fill the void.

Israel, on the other hand, adapts. Yesterday, during one of our stops on the way to the beach, he found two pristine kitchen tiles at the side of the road which he studied for an hour, excited about using them for an art project. He placed them on the dashboard of the van as we exited the beach parking area. As I made a sweeping left turn onto the road into Fluvial, the tiles slid across the dash and flew out the passenger-side window. I heard them shatter as they hit the pavement. “What was that?” I said, not having seen it. “Eet’s nawtheen,” he said, not even bothering a backward glance. “Just keep going,” he said. I pressed him until he told me it was his art project. “Ohh, I’m sorry Israel.” “Eet’s okay,” he said. “Eet’s always best to keep going. Dun’t slow down. Just keep going ahead.”

And that, I’ve decided, is what one must do to stay positive in a present that’s pulling away from us like a receding tide, even as we’re still splashing in the water merged with the moment. When I leave Mexico, Israel will take possession of the chairs, the umbrella and all the fading, physical souvenirs of our friendship. He’ll sit down with needle and thread and carefully mend the damaged camp chair, reinforce the seams of the stuff sacks, stitch everything back together in an effort to breathe a second life into them. Just like his dream of my return, which he’s confident will happen. God has told him it is so.

Puerto Vallarta Swan Song

My time in Puerto Vallarta is swiftly drawing to a close. Only two or three weeks to go before I load up the Gypsy Wagon and the two dogs, and leave this place I’ve grown to love like home, once, and maybe for good.

A few days ago, Israel and went over to Pitillal to run errands, including a stop at a dentist’s office. I’ve made an appointment to have some crowns done – 800 pesos each (under $100) for the acrylics, $1400 pesos (about $120) each for the porcelains. I will try to get three crowns done.

We parked the van on a side street, and when we returned, we discovered the right rear fender had been bashed in by a city bus turning onto the narrow street. So began another of our adventures in investigative futility, trying to run down the offending bus in the vain hope of getting some sort of compensation (the telltale green paint was streaked across the dented metal).

We followed one of the green busses on its route through the back streets of Pitillal, further and further out from town, where the cobblestones give way to dirt roads, studded with potholes and the air filled with dust. The episode reminded me of the scene in “The Thomas Crown Affair” with a hundred identical men in suits and bowler hats circulating through a museum to throw police off the trail, as we followed one bus and then another in search of the culprit. We finally ended up at the bus lot on the outskirts of Pitillal, walking around looking for evidence of white paint on the front bumpers of all the parked busses. But of course, we knew the drivers had probably already closed ranks, radioing each other about the crazy gringa looking for justice. It was a silly waste of time and gasoline. I’ve since accepted the new dent as one more souvenir of my time in Mexico.

Yesterday, I met my friend Chloe at El Sofa, my favorite coffee joint on Carranza Street. I walked the dogs there with me. It was a serendipitous appointment. It turns out that Rocky, my adopted llasa apso, once belonged to someone in that neighborhood who fell ill and had to return to the States. Rocky spent months as a street dog until the SPCA rescued him. Everyone recognized Rocky, including the sweet lesbian couple who have a tienda next to El Sofa. They even produced a photo of Rocky from his former life.

While I waited for Chloe to show up, a young woman sat down on a stool and began to play classical music on the violin. She played all of Ravel’s “Bolero,” and other classical pieces. Bo enjoyed it so much, he curled up under the girl’s chair. Chloe showed up halfway through the performance and we sat entranced for the next 30 min. I wept. Actually, I wept on and off all day. I love Puerto Vallarta. The art, the music, the seediness, the quirky insanity of the place. I hate to go, but it's time.

Today, during the PV Writers conference, I skipped one of the sessions to speak with Don Gallery, the head of PV Writers. He’s very old and in frail health. I pumped Don for an hour about his life growing up in the Hollywood of the 1930’s and ‘40’s, the biological son of silent screen star Barbara La Marr, and the adopted son of Zasu Pitts. He told me about hanging out as a kid with Shirley Temple, going to the theater with Bugsy Seigel and Virginia Hill, being squired to the beach with Jean Harlow, even dating a 15-year-old Elizabeth Taylor: she held the hubcap as he changed a flat tire, tossing her the lug nuts. And who should serenade them as he worked, but Hoagy Carmichael on the ukulele. Don’s family owned the original Rin-Tin-Tin. He said that Jean Harlow loved that dog, and he died of old age, his head in her lap in his family’s house on Rockingham Drive.

Only in Vallarta.

(postscript: A few days ago, Don Gallery suffered a stroke. He's home now, but he is unable to speak. I feel blessed to have been able to talk with him for over an hour last week. Thank you, Don!)

Israel's Prayers

When I first married Stephen, I used to ask him to pray for us. Looking back, I see now how uncomfortable that was for him. Although he claimed to be a Christian and postured in our church, he was as disconnected from God as he was from himself and me. His prayers came out sounding speechy, formal and pompous. They offered me no comfort, and they probably offered him no comfort either, other than the hollow pleasure of hearing himself orate.

Israel, on the other hand, prays as naturally as he breathes. His prayers pour out of him like music, or water tumbling over smooth stones, in Spanish. He tells me, “Okay, now I gonna’ pray for us.” And he begins, “Señor...gracias,Señor... ” and even though my Español is hardly fluent, I understand every word, or nearly every word. I feel like when he opens his mouth to pray, he is plugged into God with a heavy duty, three-prong power cord, and the energy is both pouring out of him and into him, humming and filling us both with peace.

Last night, Israel said, “God used to tell me the future. But I used drugs and fawk too many women, so He take the gift from me.” Israel makes these kinds of pronouncements all the time in between his straight-faced, but hysterical takes on Mexican culture, such as, “I am not like Mexican men. I am Dominican. I am clean. Mexican men, they smell like a mohng-key.”

As much of an outlaw as Israel can be at times, I believe he and God are on the same wavelength. And that’s what I love about God. He uses the unexpected people - the naifs, the outsiders, the unpracticed, the uncredentialed – to be His conduit and His Voice. Israel prays without pretense or consciousness of himself, and I believe him when he says the Lord is going to deliver us.

Culture Clash, Christmas, 2010

NOTE The following is a chapter from the book I'm writing about my time in Mexico, lessons learned, etc. Honest comments are invited...

I’ve been learning about people’s languages. Israel’s, I’ve decided, is mental telepathy.

Israel never has minutes on his cellphone, or it’s broken or buried in his mochilla. He emails me through Facebook from his son’s laptop to ask me if I’m busy, but he’s never around to get my reply. We make a date to see each other the following day, but then he doesn’t show up. When I finally hear from him, he says, “I try no to bother you when you are workeen.” Then I tell him, “Israel, we agreed that you were coming over this evening. I waited for you.”

The other night we agreed that he would bring the fixings for dinner at my apartment and that he would arrive before sunset so we could walk on the Malecon. But at 7 pm, long past sunset, he called me and said, “Dahleen, are you coming to pick me up?” “Israel,” I said, “I don’t want to drive all the way to Pitillal right now.” “Okay.” He said, “I jump-een the shower and be there right away.” I hung up, and immediately felt a pang of guilt that he would have to pack up our dinner and ride the bus all the way to my apartment. So I tried to call him back. The call went to voicemail. Okay, I thought, I will go pick him up. He dawdles a lot so maybe I can catch him before he leaves his apartment.

I hopped in the van with both dogs, drove down the hill, winding past the street vendors on Via Carranza, over to Insurgentes and the Rio Cuale bridge, rattling over the cobblestones to Calle Juarez, which wound around and dumped me out on Francisco Villa Blvd. Two miles down, I missed the turn-off to the lateral road and had to drive all the way to Wal-Mart to make a right, and then got stuck behind a creeping Camaro that came to a full stop every time it approached a tope. I finally got to the turn for Fluvial and backtracked to the apartment complex where Israel lives. I pulled into the parking lot and looked up at his window. The lights were off. He’d already left. Shit. I could feel the dogs staring at me in the dark. Are we there yet? Their eyes were pleading: I have to pee. “In a minute,” I said. “We’re almost there.” I tore out of the parking lot and barreled out to the main road, making my way back to Francisco Villa, and finally onto Paseo Diaz Ordaz, the street that fronts the busy Malecon. I was halfway down when my cell phone rang.

“Hola, Roberta, this is Israel. Where are you, dahleen?”

“I’m driving on the Malecon. Where are you?”

“I’m at Senor Frog’s.”

“I tried to pick you up in Pitillal.”

“Dahleen, I look for you. Tell me where you are on the Malecon.”

“I’m approaching the black and white light house.”

“I am in the park. I will find you.”

I pulled up just past the park behind a tour bus, stopping in the middle of the road as cars honked behind us. Israel showed up out of nowhere and slid in with his backpack and a bag crammed with Tupperware full of hot soup. I was getting stressed. Actually I had been stressed for an hour already.

“Dahleen,” he said, “I make you a good deener.” I immediately went into lecture mode. “I thought you were going to be at my apartment so we could watch the sunset. What happened?” I could hear the nagging, girlfriend-from-hell tone in my voice, but couldn’t seem to moderate it. He launched into a saga about trying to collect from all the people who owed him money. I knew this would be a conversational black hole. “I drove all the way over to Pitillal to pick you up.” “Oh, nooo…” he said, the words trailing off. It would do no good to belabor it. The dogs restlessly pacing over his lap crushing his genitals pretty much drove home the point.

Learning people’s languages, as most of us should know by now, is not nearly as much about nouns and verbs and tenses, as it is about grasping people’s values, and the emotions, intentions and history that drive their behavior.

Some Mexican customs make perfect sense to me, such as letting dogs have entrée to restaurants and being able to park a car on either side of the street facing in any direction. We have so many anal-retentive regulations in the US, we’ve taken all the wildwooliness out of our heritage. Mexicans have the right idea: if you fall into that gaping hole in the sidewalk, it’s your own damn fault for not paying attention. If you get impaled on rebar after falling off a hotel balcony with no railing, sorry amigo, it was just your time to go. We’ll be sure to have a picnic on your grave come Dia de Los Muertos and leave some quesadillas and a liter of Coke on the sarcophagus for you.

I try so hard not to be an ugly American. I walk around hyper-vigilant that I don’t come across as imperious, condescending or callous to Mexican sensibilities – in particular working class people, who by virtue of living in a tourist town, are mostly relegated to serving Americans. Even worse, Americans in leisure mode. What must it be like having to schmooz with, wait on, fawn over and clean up after a bunch of spoiled foreigners, day after day, for probably half of what the average American teen earns at McDonald’s. And in your own country, no less.

I am as ingratiating as anyone who has yet to master more than the most rudimentary aspects of Spanish grammar. I don’t flash designer labels or expensive jewelry. I avoid shi-shi restaurants and any place in Puerto Vallarta with snob appeal. My biggest luxuries are 20 peso mocha frappes from OXXO and the forty liters of gas I put in my old Windstar van every two weeks. I try to blend in as much as is possible for a woman with fair skin and blonde hair, realizing that even though I’m only a couple of freelance jobs away from homelessness, I still have more options than the average Mexican. At least I can leave.

Lately, however, I’ve found myself bumping up against some Mexican customs that quite frankly, chap my hide, and test the limits of my ability to remain cheerfully detached. I find the indifference to the suffering of animals to be . . . okay, I’ll say it: unevolved. I also deem Mexican machismo to be an asinine remnant of a mindset that should have been bred out of the Mexican DNA by the turn of the millennium. Someone told me recently that the reason people don’t neuter their dogs in Mexico is that Mexican men don’t want to rob their mutts, however malnourished and tick-ridden, of their “manhood.” To that, all I can say in my phonetically practiced Español is: sheesh.

And then there was Christmas eve. Something happened that night that revealed aspects of a malevolent, intolerant, yankee bruja I didn’t know lived inside me. What happened is now common knowledge on Pilitas, where the event has probably now been circulated, hashed, rehashed and embellished by the neighbors . . . Did you hear what that crazy gringa did? She ruined our Navidad…

I’d been fighting the flu. Israel was sick, too. We made our way home after dinner on Christmas eve, both exhausted and ready to be rendered comatose by heavy-duty nighttime cold medicine. The Christmas posadas were in full swing. It was about 10 pm.

Like lovers in a suicide pact, we downed our Theraflu and collapsed into bed. But by some cruel twist of cosmic timing, just as our heads hit the pillow, the people in the house next door cranked up the stereo, which just happened to be perched on the balcony directly beneath the open concrete blocks above our heads. It was banda music -- Mexican country music that features tremulous tenors, accordions, trumpets and tubas with every song in the same repetitive “oompah” time signature. IMHO, it’s a hundred times worse than Bill Murray waking up to “I Got You Babe,” over and over in “Groundhog Day.”

We tried earplugs. I tried stereo headphones placed over the earplugs. I tried folded mini-pads over the earplugs, under the headphones. Nothing worked. 11 pm. 12 am. At 1 am, I put on my robe and went out on the balcony to observe. Someone saw me there and cranked the music up louder. I went back into the bedroom and paced around like a cornered animal. Nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. It felt like aural rape.

My carefully cultivated UN Goodwill Ambassador façade cracked and crumbled. This was war. I went into the kitchen and started flipping through my CD Collection. I pulled Joe Cocker’s Greatest Hits from the sleeve, got my Cambridge Soundworks CD player and went back to the bedroom. I stuck the CD in, cranked the radio up as loud as it would go and stood on the bed with the radio over my head like John Cusack in “Say Anything.” But I was really in full “Scarface” mode, wielding my badass stereo like a submachine gun, classic rock spraying the neighborhood like bullets. “The Letter” blasted out of the stereo speakers, filling the room and obliterating the sound of the banda music. Israel was laughing and punching the air with his fist. The dogs cowered under the bed. I decided to sing along. Bah…bah…bah..baba…babah. BAH...BAH…BAH…BABA-BABAH. I stood there with my knees buckling and my mouth dry as one song after another erupted from the radio…”Cry Me a River….” “Delta Lady”… “A Little Help from My Friends.” Yep, I smirked. My speakers are definitely bigger than yours. Take THAT you macho Mexican Neanderthals!

But, after 30 minutes, I was spent. I lowered the radio and the banda music continued. I may have won the battle, but they had won the war.
At 3 a.m., the four drunks on the balcony started singing along with the music. Sometime after 4 a.m., silence finally descended. One by one, they all passed out. By that time, I was past caring. It was the Alamo on Pilitas Street. And I was just another dead Texan.

When I mentioned the incident in an email to my landlord who had gone to the States for the holiday, she vociferously defended the behavior of my neighbors, suggesting that their carrying on was just another quaint Mexican custom, a part of the local color of Christmas in Mexico. Shame on ME, insensitive, spoiled, politically incorrect gringa. Instead of fighting them, we should have joined them – in a sort of secular, narco-oompah-country music version of that famous story about American and German soldiers on Christmas Eve in WWI laying down their weapons to sing “Silent Night” together. I countered that joining in with four drunk jerks singing banda at the top of their lungs was not my idea of détente. Or even Christmas for that matter.

What I realized from the episode is that learning people’s languages is much harder than I once thought. So much gets in the way. Class. Ethnicity. Your conviction about an absolutely non-negotiable tradition vs. my uncompromisable need for adequate shut-eye. Even our notions of time come into play – is an hour really an hour? Or is it something more elastic? Maybe even a political statement? It’s a wonder people can communicate at all across the deep gorge of their differences.

This morning I let the dogs out for their morning constitution. We headed for the dusty, rocky lot at the end of the street that’s being cleared for another condo. My two favorite neighborhood kids were waiting there, Monty and little Consuelo, with her big brown eyes and sweet Cabbage Patch face. I don’t speak much Spanish and they don’t speak English. But they know my dogs’ names. Consuelo patted Rocky’s head and Monty swiped his hand over the funny “lion” tassel at the end of Bo’s tail. We hiked up the rock pile to the plateau overlooking a little arroyo. Monty smiled at me, picked up a rock and pitched it at a tree. “Good arm!” I said, making a pitching motion with my hand. “You should be a baseball player!” He grinned. I picked up a small rock and pitched it into the polluted stream below. Soon all three of us were having a grand time picking up rocks and tossing them into the water. I didn’t stress myself out trying to turn the moment into a Spanish lesson. Somehow words weren’t all that important. Mainly, we just smiled at each other and laughed a lot. Eventually, Monty took Consuelo’s hand and the three of us, plus the two dogs, picked our way back over the rocks and down to the street. “See you later, alligator,” I said to Monty as the two disappeared into their house. Well, I thought. Two down and an entire neighborhood to go…

Tomorrow’s another day in Paradise. And New Year’s Eve is just around the corner. Guess I oughta’ brush up on my banda.

Return to Puerto Vallarta

Bo and I left Los Alamos on Monday afternoon. A light rain was falling on the Jemez Mountains as we wound down the long canyon highway toward Santa Fe. By the time we reached the bottom of the hill at Pojoaque, the clouds had parted. My "Darth Vader" window tint has turned out to be a smart investment for the glaring desert sunlight. You can't see in, but I can see out. Like RayBans for the van.

We only made it as far as Lordsburg, NM, that first night. In the morning, we hit the road early, stopping only for a quick McDonald's breakfast (a burrito for me, a sausage McMuffin for Bo). By early afternoon, we were passing big yellow billboards beckoning us to see "The THING," a kitschy tourist trap on the outskirts of Tucson. As I closed in on Tucson proper, scenes with my ex-husband pricked the folds of memory, but receded quickly like footprints on beach sand, minus the old anguish. Tucson is just a place now.

My friends Liz and Jon Bailey welcomed me like family, which a girl without an address needs after so many hours alone in a car with just a dog and Pimsleur Spanish learning CD's for company.

That night I discovered an email from a company in Colo Spgs interested in me for a Creative Director position. I wrote back that I was on my way to Mexico, but would be happy to interview with them on Skype when I got to PV. They sounded eager to talk to me.

Car Larder

At Wal-Mart, I purchased a summer sausage and some canned nuts to stick under the front seat for potential bribes. I debated the purchase of a sexy black nylon console box for my dashboard, but realized the empty white cardboard box used to display craft paints was just as practical -- and free to boot. I'd nickeled and dimed myself to death on little gadgets for the van . . . hand sanitizer on a caribiner, CD sleeves for the visors, collapsible dog dishes, lanyards hung with padlock keys, police whistle, pepper spray and a portable panic alarm. There was a slim Igloo cooler that fit the narrow space between the bucket seats, and my "Jesus" club -- protection fashioned from a table leg, painted bright blue with JESUS in hot pink along the side. For good measure, I hammered round-headed upholstery tacks on the end. The club took the place of a 22" machete I originally purchased on the advice of my friend Lewis, who explained my security strategy this way:

"What you do is, you fold cardboard around the blade, with the seam on the blade side. Run cheap, brown plastic packing tape down the seam. Then when some bandito approaches you, keep the lanyard around your wrist and the blade at your side. When the guy cames at you, hit him with the back side of the blade first. If that doesn't stop him, hit him with the blade side and cut his arm off. The cops won't arrest you for that...you were just teachin' him a lesson."

Of course, in theory, I adored the idea of cutting some would-be rapist's arm off should I get into a tight spot (it would certainly make for great book chapter). But in the end, I thought better of having a lethal weapon that some bloodthirsty Mexican thug could just as easily use on me. I returned the machete to Home Depot in exchange for the table leg. (Somehow, it seemed more benign being bludgeoned to death than hacked to pieces -- go figure.)

Dubrovnik, Here I Come

All the goo-gaws, dogbowls and talismans hanging from the rearview mirror and visor latches made the van feel like a gypsy wagon jangling with wares to sell to the townsfolk of some Latvian hill town. But perhaps the luckiest and most practical acquisition was a TomTom GPS device programmed with routes for the US and Mexico -- a gift from Sheila's physicist friend Hank.

On Sunday night, Liz, Jon and I watched "Avatar" on their flat screen TV. Monday morning, Liz loaded me up with breakfast bars and packets of beef jerky for the trip. After jigsawing a few last items onto the floor of the passenger side and arranging my mascots, Oxxo and Pemex, on a corner of the dash for good luck, Bo and I pulled away from the curb and headed for the border at Nogales. The van was packed as tightly as a Chinese puzzle box, riding low and slow. If I tried to shift one curtain rod, several items would landslide into the front seat. As I steered the Whale onto the Nogales highway, I gazed off to my left, where the sun's rays lanced a mottled ceiling of grey clouds and danced over the Catalina mountains, purple and breathtaking in the distance. By the time I eased onto the truck route heading for the border, the clouds had parted and el Sol was baking the desert.

We Don't Need No Stinkin' Badges

My first stop was the the customs station just the other side of the border. I didn't see the giant cement tope till I was almost on top of it. I tried to slow down, but too late, the undercarriage of the van slammed the speed bump with a seismic jolt. I tried to ease by in the "non-declare" lane, but it was a slow morning and three young so-called customs "inspectors" motioned me into the "declare" lane. I lifted the back hatch and immediately they spotted the dorm-size fridge and a corner of my flat screen TV. The head customs dweeb led me and Bo past a pile of contraband tires and into an office, handed me a piece of scrap paper and told me to make a list of the entire contents of my vehicle. I listed the TV, a radio, a laptop, the fridge, some art. He looked at my list and arbitrarily declared, "894 pesos" (about $70). Secretly I was relieved I didn't have to unpack the whole car.

With my tax paid, I was waved on. A few miles ahead I stopped again to register my vehicle. That process took another hour and another $70 charged to my credit card. A few more miles ahead, another customs inspector pulled me over into a weigh station. I showed the female federale my papers and she, too, waved me on. The border drama was over. It was almost 2 pm.

Night #1, San Carlos

The sun was setting on the Baja as I veered right, away from Guaymas and into the Yankee-fied resort town of San Carlos. San Carlos can best be described as Mexico "light," with beach bars, pool float vendors and billboards in English advertising ReMax, Best Western and Subway.

The main drag was largely deserted. October in the Baja is oppressively humid, with a hot breeze blowing off the Sea of Cortez giving no relief. I stopped at the the renovated Fiesta Real Hotel where I stayed last year. The place was completely empty, but the girl at the reception desk refused to negotiate on the $65 room. I knew from last year's stay that the a/c barely worked and there was no TV. The Best Western was also a ghost town, but the price of a room was just as outrageous and they wouldn't take Bo. I finally settled on the threadbare, but moderately clean Creston Motel. No view, but dog friendly, with working a/c and telecable. The pool looked inviting, but by the time I lugged in coolers, cpap machine, dogfood and laptops, I was spent. It was nearly dark when I took Bo for his evening constitution past some new construction to the beach. He pooped on the rocks, but the loud waves and strange surroundings made him skittish. We trudged back to the room and I barely had energy to watch Dr. Phil on the American Network and nibble on some jerky before dropping off with the TV still flickering -- my gringa nightlight.

Day #2, La Celestina Gasca

In the morning, I packed up the car and waited for the Banamex to open so I could buy pesos. Swarms of gnats attacked the minute I opened the car door. Bo hovered by the bank's plate glass window as I waited in line for a teller.

It was almost 11 a.m. when we finally drove out of San Carlos and picked up the toll highway on the other side of Guaymas. This was the travel day I dreaded most. From San Carlos on, Mexico feels like the dark side of the moon. No comforting reminders of America. No cellphone signal. As I threaded the van through the comparatively manicured streets of Navajoa, I saw a man carrying a filthy mattress on his back in the rain. The stuff we throw in the dumpster in the US, people here re-sell at the local bazaar. Bedbugs are just a way of life in Mexico.

I remember last year's marathon second day on the road, wending my way to the far side of industrialized Guaymas, past the ragged fish shacks, potholes and polluted coastal waters, on to the ugly, smelly city of Obregon, and the long, endless stretches of toll road -- breaking my rule about stopping while it was still daylight. At that time, I stopped for the night in Culiacan, a seedy, depressing city controlled by drug cartels. Despite its alliterative, poetic name, Culiacan is a muggy, homely toad of a town squatting on a matted, grassy plain nowhere in sight of the ocean. The air is thick with the humidity of the tropics, but none of the beauty. A month after I first passed through, federales found the severed heads of two women in a cooler in the back of a pickup truck parked along the highway -- a gruesome message for someone in that hideous Sinaloa turf war. I didn't know at the time that the white sand and blue Pacific ocean were only an hour away as we headed south toward Mazatlan.

Faith

I was determined not to stop in Culiacan this year, but the sun was setting and there was a scary development with my vehicle. Twice as I pulled up to tollbooths, the car just stopped -- no brakes, no steering. It started up again, but I noticed the engine light had come on. I was halfway between Culiacan and Mazatlan.

The tollroads are dotted with S.O.S phones. Theoretically, if you have car trouble, you can pull over and summon help. The Green Angels -- mechanics in Volkswagen Beetles, equipped to fix your car and send you on your way -- supposedly appear from nowhere like little gremlin superheroes. When the engine light came on, I pulled over at one of the phones and pushed the button, according to the instructions in English and Spanish. "Bueno," I said into the grilled speaker phone. No response. "BUENO!" I said louder. Nada. The phone was dead. Apparently, thieves had taken the battery. I have since learned that most of the S.O.S. phones are broken, as useful as prop phones on a movie set.

I climbed back in the van and limped along for another 20 miles, watching the engine light. I finally made it to a Pemex gas station, where a police car was parked, occupied by two federales. It was about 6 p.m. The men took a peek under the hood, repeating in Spanish that my "bomba" might be bad. But despite the engine light, it appeared the engine wasn't hot. I told him I wanted to make it to La Cruz. He said, maybe two hours and that it would still be light when I got there.

It was dusk when I drove past the exit for Culiacan. Right at the turn-off for Mazatlan, the car had a complete power failure. I was able to steer into the narrow crook in the road where the road branches off to the Pacific coastal highway. I started the car up again and kept driving. Within half an hour, the sun had dropped like a stone. In another 10 minutes, it was pitch black. No street lights. No shoulder to pull off on. Just my high beams fanning the pavement, sniffing for any sign of civilization.

Around 9:30 p.m. the sign for La Cruz materialized like an apparition floating up from the depths of a Scottish loch. I pulled off and drove a few hundred yards down a blacktop road to a Pemex station. I bought some gas and a fuel additive, and the boy at the pump told me to get back on the highway and count the bridges to La Celestina Gasca; I knew there was a lovely little motel there, my safe haven for the night. At the fourth bridge, I should make a hard right. But I was so tired by then that I was becoming disoriented. I made a wrong turn from the gas station and ended up on a windy back road to nowhere. Fortunately, the GPS helped me get back on the tollroad. I was beginning to look forward to the computerized woman's voice telling me without passion or judgment, "Make a U-turn as soon as possible." Thank you, Bonnie, I most certainly will.

I started to count the bridges one by one. At the fourth bridge, there would be a dogleg to the right. The motel would be there in the hollow. I counted each bridge as it loomed out of the darkness, but somehow I miscounted. I MISSED THE TURN. I would have to drive 23 miles further down the road to catch the retorno BACK to La Celestina Gasca.

By this time, I was praying out loud. "God, I need an angel. Please send me an angel." A voice whispered somewhere in my gelatinized brain, "I will send you an angel when you need one." 46 miles later, I made the correct turn onto the dirt road leading to La Celestina Gasca. It was after 10:30 p.m. I was literally vibrating with fatigue when I stepped out of the car. The girl at the desk took my 280 pesos, swept the crickets out of room #13 and turned the a/c on high. Bo rolled in the lush, dewy grass of the courtyard. On my last luggage-hauling trip back to the room, I kicked a toad away from the doorjam and unlocked the door -- only it wasn't my room. A man yelled at me from the bed and I called out "Lo siento!" -- slamming the door. I whisked by the tableau of praying mantises and geckos congregated on the walls under a coach light, and scurried into my room. Apparently all the rooms at La Celestina had the same key. I pushed a chair up to my doorknob, took a cold shower and climbed into a bed with fresh sheets and a new mattress. Thank God. Dreaded Day #2 was over.

Day #3, Guayabito

I slept late the next morning. The little motel at La Celestina Gasca is an oasis on the edge of the tiny beach hamlet of La Cruz, about 50 mi. north of Mazatlan. It holds special magic for me, because it was the place where Bo first discovered the ocean in 2009 -- and none too soon, after that first miserable night in Culiacan. Bo was so traumatized by the trip at that point, he'd slept on a wet towel on the marble bathroom floor of the Zar Motel. Gazing upon my poor, panting dog, I asked God and my own conscience, "What have I done to my dog?"

When I first glimpsed the ribbon of white sand and blue ocean a mile off to the right in 2009, the residual pall of the night in Culiacan immediately lifted. The sky had turned a bright, beachy azul. I began to watch for a road that would take me to the water. The tiny fishing village of La Celestina Gasca appeared and I turned onto a dirt road that led past the motel, to a magnificent stretch of public beach. Bo and I walked up and down the beach playing tag with the waves. Bo's torpor turned into canine exhilaration as he romped and rolled in the sand. On that day a year ago, Bo and I had stopped at a small tienda where a mother and daughter sold snack foods to mostly Canadian tourists. I took their picture and the woman let me use the toilet in her house, just behind the store. I promised to send them the photo. But I lost the scrap of cardboard with the daughter's email address.

This year, before I left the states, I had four large prints of the photo made. This morning in 2010, I guided the Whale over the bumpy dirt road to the tienda. The mother and daughter were there. They were thrilled with the set of photos. But I told the woman, Sara, that I was scared. I'd had car trouble. And the tears started to flow. We have Jesus, she said. We don't have to be scared. He is with us. Then she and her daughter insisted that they take me to a mechanic in town who could fix my car. It was already nearly noon. I followed their dust-covered, dinged-up Toyota Corolla into town, gingerly guiding the van over rutted streets and potholes the size of kiddie wading pools, to a mechanic working in a small garage.

There was an hour wait, but we passed the time practicing language detente and munching on Wal-Mart trail mix. Once the mechanic got to it, the work went quickly. Sara invited me to spend a night at her mother's house to rest. I politely declined, telling her I really had to get to Vallarta in time to review a theater performance for Banderas News on Thursday. The mechanic replaced the air filter, charged me a whopping 490 pesos(maybe $45). He took me on a quick test drive, and I was back on the road before 3 p.m. God sent me not one, but THREE angels -- exactly when I needed them.

An hour later, I drove through chaotic, dusty Mazatlan, including a nasty stretch of gravelly, pitted road with air thick enough to choke on. Eventually, the city gave way to jungle-covered mountains, broad expanses of lakes and wetlands, with few signs of human habitation. At Tepic, I exited the tollroad onto Mex 200, the serpentine two-lane mountain highway that eventually threads into Puerto Vallarta. But it was slow-gowing, with giant semi trucks downshifting all the way. It was dark when I got to Guayabito, another charming beach town. I spent the night at La Mision Hotel, crossing the street to eat a wonderful meal of coconut shrimp at La Pina Loca Restaurant. After a quick dip in the pool, and a shower, Bo and I crashed. I didn't even holler when a palmetto bug crawled out from under my foot in the shower.

Day #4, Puerto Vallarta

After a walk on the beach and a full Mexican breakfast, Bo and I drove the rest of the way into Puerto Vallarta, arriving around 2 p.m. at Gloria's Hotel. I checked in with Gloria, then drove the van over to my new apt. in Colonia Emiliano Zapata. Unexpectedly, Eva the landlady's half-dozen children all pitched in to help unload the van. afterward, I took the three youngest to the McDonald's on the malecon for icecream cones, then headed back to Gloria's to get dressed for dinner and the "Get Back" Beatles tribute show at Teatro Vallarta; a review was due the next day. On Friday, I wrote my review and interviewed on Skype for the Creative Director job in Colorado Springs. When the young V.P. asked me the quintessential cliche interview question, "Where do you want to be in five years?" I answered appropriately.

But honestly, the life I'm living now doesn't jibe with five year plans. I am so immersed in the present moment, I have no idea where I'll be or what I will be doing in five years. I could be hit by one of PV's diesel-spewing busses tomorrow. The only thing I know is, and all any of us can know is, as my friend Margaret first uttered the phrase a decade ago...more will be revealed. I'm learning to live comfortably with mystery. How about you?