LA PHANTASMA DE MINERAL DE POZOS

This photo is a happy accident from the cosmos or perhaps a fortelling of things to come. It happened Saturday when I was outside my home in Pozos taking a photo of the Day of the Dead window I had created the night before. Yes, I know I am a little early, but as I am a gringa and used to Holloween in the USA, I could not wait until the appropriate time.......usually around the 30th of October. Also, I have a Tienda de Ropas operating out of the first half of my Main Sala which features this window and I wanted to get peoples attention. So..........thinking I was taking a photo of what was in the window and not realizing that I was picking up a reflection of the sky and house behind me and also not realizing that the skeleton mask I had placed on the manniquin was all that came thru the window and the bars in front of the window.......Viola..............magic and a true representative of the legend that Pozos is a ghost town even with thousands of live souls. I wanted to share this with all of you because I am so excited about it. You would think I am a real photographer and I promise I did not photoshop this.

1959

Jazz, yeah jazz,jazz and then more jazz but not just jazz, Tonight, Maria, and When your a Jet your a Jet all the way, to your first cigarette to your last dying day, dancing down Grant Avenue in the middle of the night and you owned it. Yeah baby, its yours all wrapped up in fantasy tissue and ribbon crossed and bleeding life
San Francisco 1959, six months of freedom between college and marriage later in June
Coffee house chatter and mix, Sartre, Rimbaud, Miller and Nin. Coltrane, Miles, Mulligan and Simone. Oh yeah I home. No longer alone, but lonely, between naive teen and hip and groovy chic. Dressed in black on black, walking the fogged blurred streets, watching yesterdays news fly down the streets of the financial district in bunches and blobs on a deserted Sunday stroll. Thinking drunk tank pubs were cool with their garish light and wordless poets. But Jazz, spilling out on the streets at night promising exotic entanglements or more, beat, beat, snap, snap, yeah baby, be bop a dop, whooo de a do a doo dop a loo dop a skiiiiiiiii yap a do wah a do wha YEAH. That was my drug, my memory, what I miss, what I long for, what I rmember before regular life set in and I felt a prisoner and have dug every hole I can to escape.

Inside The Human Heart

Some times what doctors ask begins a trip into the land of terror. Thus, it was with this in mind that I reluctently went 45 miles down from San Miguel to Queretero to a hospital with the name Place de la Curezon or something similar. It was there that I had one of the most amazing experiences of my life. It was right up there with sex and other life altering events of my life.

I have spent my whole life taking my heart for granted, just like all the other organs in my body.You do your thing I will do my mine. The great Cosmic HA comes to mind now that I write those words.

It was because it was on TV very similar to this is your life Gayle McClure or what ever you are calling your self of late. There in black and white was my very hard working valiant heart pumping away as it has been for 73 years now. I was prepared for thump a dump and similar sounds that is the heart of all music, but I was not prepared for the squish squish off beat nor the occasional gaggle of geese that flew by with their honk honk sounds, It was and I am sure it is a whole universe captured within each of us. Seeing it move in its rythmic patterns and fluid movement was somewhat like looking at the universe and all its mysteries. At one point it looked like a jellyfish or a squid moving away from something ( probably me). I immediately wanted to make a piece of art from what I was seeing and feeling.

I will never stop thinking of it and what it looked like and its determination to do its job regardless of my lack of cooperation. I kept looking for wounded places, places that were broken or had healed as best they could, showing scars and tears. I asked the doctor if he could tell how many times my heart had been broken..........he laughed but did not answer. It matters not, I know. My heart keeps its secrets.

So, if you ever have to have a sonogram or whatever it was on your heart, look forward to a journey into the very mystery of life and know that you are connected thru your heart to all that is and ever will be. It is the BIG BANG.

Inside The Human Heart

BEACH BITCH

hOLA.........came back from the beach a few days ago and I can not decide if I liked it or not. I loved the view from our hill top home that belongs to a friends daughter. Except for the pagoda like building on the left of the photo, I felt like I was on any given Island in Greece. Of course, Greece has few trees but the blue of the bay and the white of the surrounding terrace and other building suggests my fantasy. However once down in the midst of the tourist hubble bubble, that is a different story.
I am a northern California girl and I am not used to all these palapa resturants and trinkets and not being able to see the beach because the Palapa to the left and right block the view except for what is in front of you and walking on the beach is somewhat hazardous due to para sailing etc. My idea of the beach is deserted, wild, free and lots of drama from the waves and if you want to eat you have to bring a picnic. It gets stranger and stranger the longer I am on this planet. What I grew up with has long ago vanished and I have such a struggle understanding the replacements. Oh well get over it Gayle. I did like Trancones and Barra de Potisi because of the deserted aspect of the beaches there and especially Barra de Potisi because of a wide river that tried to enter into the oncoming waves of sea and the energy that created. But, clearly this was not a favorite of very many people as the one Palapa and a few others were deserted. I felt sorry for them but glad for me. Such a problem trying to figure out what is right for me and for everyone else. I know that few will agree with me but I think almost every thought we have is political and should be addressed as such since we do not live here alone. So there it is, my skewed view of the beach trip. Oh, I must tell you that the food was wonderful that we cooked our selves at the casa and unpredictable elsewhere. I loved the softness of the air and the people (Mexican) who lived there were especially friendly and smiling.

Bloger Rain..................like many before me, there have been many references to the amount of rain we are having in a period known to have no rain. It is like California rain at an appropriate time, however it is not. If it rains now like it does it California then what is it going to do in June or July when the farmers depend upon it. Crops do not grow in rain just because it is raining, it needs warmth and there in none. So what happens? I am hoping and praying that this is just a blink in the weather pattern. But what if it is not? What happens to Mexico and its dependence on its crops. Does the earth know that this is not to be relied upon or what? I worry, but I worry about a lot of thing that happen to the earth, as she is our mother and she like all mother has her moods and reactions. So great we do not have to water as much as we would normally but what of June or July or the whole summer. What will grow and how will the animals be fed? Just a thought and not a very cherry one. Sorry

The Feral Community

There are many cats in Mexico and unfortunately many of them have no homes nor any food that they can count on. Mexicans in general do not care for cats, they like dogs. Cats are too suspicious for their liking and are generally shunned. Because of the cats ability to climb, jump and squirm through or over and under any obstacle, they are ever present.

I have a cat, I have always had a cat except for periods of mourning over a cat that left this reality for who knows what. My cat at present is a great friend and very affectionate and extends that friendliness to all other cats it comes into contact with. This means that he (Farruco) shows any cat looking for food and lodging how to climb the right tree to gain access to his food bowl that he does not feel needs defending. This is a problem for me because I spend far to much money on cat food for a cat or cats that are not mine, and even worse they, because they have not been altered, spray my entire house, marking it as theirs. I think I could handle the food thing were it not for the spraying. At any rate I keep thinking of ways to block their entrance which then means my own cat has no access to the real world. Or, even worse, I think of how I can trap them and take them some where else. The best scenario is a vet who will fix them so there will not be more helpless, starving lonely cats. This is difficult as they are very hip to all human efforts to entrap or otherwise mess with their world.

Now comes the reason for this blog. I understand these cats as I have so often in this life felt like a feral cat. Creeping around the edges of society and what is deemed the civilized world, I have felt that I needed to grab what ever I could when I could, although I wished for more. I have so often left what ever comfort I had found for some other adventure and been unavailable for real human intimacy for fear of what that might cost me. I have wanted what domestication promises but have always mistrusted what I would lose. I understand these cats and it prevents me from doing much more then just wishing they would find some other source of sustenance and move on.

So then, I start thinking of the link between the original Gitano population out of India and eventually strongly represented in the Andalusian part of Spain and all that has happened to them and why. I see that they were and are the feral beings of this world and that is why their song and their music speaks for my heart and my soul.

Their is a movie I just saw the other night that is in no way about cats, or feral people but it is about a similar situation UP IN THE AIR. Worth seeing, if this subject interests you.