Fifth letter: Back in Bucerías
Hello again, friends. The statistics kept here on Medium tell me that there are between one and ten of you who may read these letters on any given day. I am so very grateful that you do.
I know that you will forgive redundancies, misspellings, and even repetitions to some degree; I appreciate your indulgence. Whatever skill I had at preventing such errors seems to have been much abraded by time and the pharmaceuticals I ingest daily. But I am grateful to them, too — to the blessed, hated drugs that allow me to function, if to a lesser degree. I accept the bargain.
I hate being silenced, on the other hand. For example, I hate FaceBook’s bizarre, byzantine and (I suspect) bigoted algorithms for shutting me away from the correspondents I once had, many gained in 2016, interviewing the shut-out Bernie Sanders delegates in Philadelphia. All the conversations and revelations and insights revealed on those pages were lost, vanished without access to appeal. Such arrogance. I’m sure Zuckerberg kept all the deviously divined intimacies about my life and proclivities and buying habits, though.
So, again, my thanks. I continue to find puzzles and novelty here in Mexico, and I came away from ‘Las Juntas y Los Veranos’ with pink polka-dots nicely spaced on my alabaster legs, as if the black-flies prefer to dine separately. I cannot say their bites are particularly annoying as such bites go, though they are different looking from those of mosquitos— a pink circle with a hard white nib. And I can’t see the little demons — either because my eyes are getting old, or because the bugs are tiny. At least they don’t have the habit of buzzing around the ear while I’m trying to sleep.
I had the idea of hopping into the little pool here at Casa Tranquila, with the intent of giving the bug-bites some chlorine disinfection. I apparently enjoyed myself a little too much, gleefully prancing weightless to snatch at the red bougainvillea blossoms, and belatedly discovering my sacroiliac won’t tolerate such motion, weightless or not. So, ha, once again to the bed. Hello, ceiling fan. Hurrah for laptops that can be operated while prone.
I read the news from the USA today, and I shudder a little to think I must return later this Summer, to the land of trans-haters and race-murderers and capitalism uber alles. For now, the respite is real. For example:
As we were preparing to leave LJ-y-LV, a dozen schoolchildren were passing me in their Catholic uniforms, politely refraining from staring, as they ascended the winding cobblestone street . I gave them what I hoped was an encouraging look (I have been told that I habitually glower) as I lugged the wheelchair into our van, proud of my unreliable moment of strength. Their leather lace-up shoe steps were nearly inaudible under the valley wind and the raucous chickens.
Most of them passed, but one lingered. I turned to see a nine-year-old girl approach calmly, to ask me a question. In my mind I had an answer ready: “Oh, I just like to dye my hair blue, for the fun of it — “
That’s not what she was about. She just wanted to know if I would like some help, loading heavy things. I thanked her and said no, we were just departing for the city, but I wanted to say, what cadre of angels do you belong to, that you think first of helping this old lady, even when you are just a little girl, clearly on your daily rounds? Do you know that you just lifted a brick from my heart? “Gracias” just doesn’t seem to cover it.
This is why I love Mexicans. They do this kind of thing, all the time. Sure, there are all types and blah, blah, blah. But.
I am straining to hear the little bells that ring at all hours — they are faint, maybe too faint to hear over the whirring fans. I can smell someone’s late dinner, cebollas roasting with beef, wafting in through the sliding door, competing now with the rose-scented soap in the shower stall. Bottles clink outside, and young men are laughing together. I’ll probably get up much later, in the quiet of the night; I often do, and I’ll lurch to the cool smooth balcony in my bare feet, and maybe I’ll hear a bell, somewhere in the distance.