Letter 6: Bucerías symphony

Evening: Gabi and Lucila’s kind inquisitive voices echo down the balcony, as they trim, clean, sweep, laugh, deal with vexed Canadians, fix appliances, and keep this place humming. Ruslan’s ‘Si Señor’ is barely audible from the bookstore. Ponies amble down the cobblestones, three abreast and inexplicably happy about horse stuff, capering, cloppitaclappita. Tocka tock.

A dog howls with such feeling and sostenuto and diminuendo it breaks your heart; the distant bells peal; hammers tap insistently, drills wail, a long pipe is blown to its whistling over-harmonics to signal tamales are…