Magic Shirt Socialite

Barney asked for more song lyrics and (groan) I suppose we all have soundtracks to our lives. So with internet access out today I'll do my best to remember some lyrics or make some up. If he'd asked for guitar riffs it would be a lot easier.

Ride, ride, ride the magic bus...

Every male needs a magic shirt. My nephew Ben has his bus shirt that he always wears to bed. I sort of had a magic shirt but it was in tatters. So it was time to go looking for another. But where could one find such a thing? Why not at the place where you can get everything, the Tuesday market?

You can get anything you want
En el mercado martesiante.

So after Spanish class one Tuesday I returned to the throbbing cornucopia of worldly delights to simply wander. I found a cassette tape recorder for tapes from the library. Some good knives, a tempting hammock which I passed on, and some fresh fish. And a high-priced designer shirt for veinte pesos.

Starry starry night
Paint your palette blue and gold

Of course I wanted to try the shirt out right away. Luckily this was the day of the eclipse and there was a special event in the Botanical Garden. So after a short siesta I began the long walk up the hill and out into the country. People were already gathering for the lecture and looking forward to the campfire*. I sat on a short wall by the edge of the canyon since I'd been admiring the full moon in town the night before and knew where it would rise. I was all by myself but someone with a telescope hesitantly joined me. "Are you sure the moon is going to rise here?" "That's where it was last night in the city." His family joined him but in spite of my best efforts to chat with them they were unusually aloof. Also hardly anyone came to join us, as if they were afraid of people who thought the moon would rise in the east. I wondered if the shirt was working.

But the moon did rise, and then a beautiful Mexican woman came and sat with me and we started chatting in Spanish and English. She was learning English at a school a block away from mine. We laughingly did our best to communicate more then she went off to join her family. Then a man with a Texas drawl came and sat beside me and started to talk like a long lost friend. He told me about coming here 35 years ago. Now he is in his mid-70s and retired. We watched the moon rise together and chatted until the start of the eclipse but then I wanted to walk home while there was still light as I was still feeling a little ill from using the ascension code. On the streets It was a festive atmosphere with families and groups of teenagers talking excitedly. When I arrived home the eclipse had peaked to a burnt orange. Dave lent his binoculars to me and my new neighbour Gordon and we watched the full moon and traded information about the town. Finally I went back to my balcony thinking again how it good it is to just let things show up in Mexico.

I'm just a gringo in a far-away country
Eating roast pork in high society

Later in the week an email appeared from Yoli, a woman who I'd met at one of Dave and Jo's dinners, inviting me to her birthday party. So I rode with Dave and Jo to a different section on the top of the hill and was escorted into a huge house with polished stone floors and multiple sightlines. I felt like I'd been escorted into high society. We went into a back room that completely opened onto a large garden patio that had four long tables laid out. Yoli gave me a big hug then continued around welcoming the guests.

There was an open bar and the Mexican bartender seemed especially proud of his margaritas, so of course I had one. A woman called me over as she recognized me from Dave and Jo's and before long I was telling two or three interested people about my Matrix work. After the second margarita the dinner bell rang and we made our way around a buffet of homemade Mexican food. The highlight was a roasted side of pork that was being cut for us by the bartender. Needless to say, it was a great evening.

Smokin in the boy's room, smokin in the boy's room
Now teacher don't you tell me, all of your rules, Cause everybody knows that smoking ain't allowed in school

On Monday I showed up in Spanish class with my magic shirt and asked a question in class using words I knew from "Spanish in 10 minutes a day". The people in the rowdy back corner started ribbing me for being so smart. Chatting on the sidewalk outside after class, one of them introduced me to her sister who kept showing up in different places about town for the rest of the week. (At the library she introduced me to some of her young Mexican students in her English class, asked them how to say ustedes in English, and grinned when they all shouted, with a southern drawl, "Y'all".)

We may never pass this way again...

This began a week of long, languid lunches in the gringo cafe with a group of classmates. The central character was a woman Louisa from The Netherlands, who is in her sixties, used to be a judge, and is a cultured traveler. I also began hanging out with my new friend Christina who I mentioned in an earlier blog, the only person in the class who is younger than me.

Ride, ride, ride the magic bus...

On Friday Christina and I met in front of the library and found our way to the bus stop where we could catch a bus to the local hot springs. We had good directions from Louisa's landlady and after spending some time on the highway got off on a dusty road and navigated our way through a large garden to a table where a weathered Mexican greeted us with a smile and asked for cieniquarante pesos.

After changing, we found ourselves in a beautiful network of swimming pools and seating lawns. The large swimming pool at the front led to a smaller, warmer one which had a stone archway in the back corner. Wading through chest-high warm water we followed the stone passage for a minute or two, crossed a set of steps, and ended up in a huge domed cavern with small holes that let the sunlight onto the water like sparkling laser beams. The echo was so strong in the cavern that we spoke in whispers. We met a number of acquaintances by the pool and later ended up in a large patio cafe where I found myself sipping my first frozen margarita since arriving here.

On the bus ride back I did some Matrix work on Christina. When we got off the bus outside Plaza Civica we hugged each other goodbye as Christina was heading back to upstate New York that night, and we told each other we wished we'd found each other earlier.


* My dad and I spent much of Christmas in the country enjoying the wonderful hospitality of my cousin Barry, his wife Pat, his son Clinton, and his daughter Stacey. They had their annual bonfire in the back woods on boxing day. This impressive three-story work of engineering became my new standard for bonfires. Now every other fire is just a campfire.