I’M WITH JESÙS NOW, PLAYING TAKEAWAY and THE CIRCLE OF MEXICAN LIFE

Hola, ya’ll, one last time desde the sun y fun capital of Guanajuato. Well, not really for the “last time”, but since I made the bright self-in-corner-painting-move of calling the previous post “penultimate”, we’re sort of stuck with this being a “one last time” and so it will be. Let’s say the last one this time round from the brisk cool and sunny morning studio of our real despite-all-odds home, Casa 9 en El Rincon de Sta. Maria, Col. Obraje, San Miguel de Allende, Gte., Estados Unidos de Mexico. For, yes, we leave for the March-Madness-Mueller-Memo obsessed northeastern US too early Tuesday morning after nigh on to three months in this whiplash paradise.
 
I wish we could tie-up what we’ve come to calling the Alter Cocker Adventure: Phase One with a  neat litany of universal lessons learned con happy ever after all nuggets of cactus rainbows and unihorned burros astride our impeccably finished minor league-Barragàn modernist desert palace, but what we’re really taking back home for a while is much more complex and dare I say life-altering than that. “Yeah?”, I hear you thinking; “will we finally get some substance, some little profundity from all the sad-clown attempted comedy of these aren’t we brave scribblings?” “Sure, life’s wonderfully messy even after you’re eligible for the senior ticket discounts on Metro North, we knew that. And so…? Give us and a proper ending ending, for Crissake!”
 
Hold-on, you’re looking for the life-altering, surprising but uplifting take-away of this intense but, let’s face it, only one quarter of a year excursion a couple of degrees south and one language and time zone away? Don’t know yet, sorry. As Jackie says, we’ve got to let it percolate, but you will be the second to know when the moral brew is ready. We give you our Valente-like promise. Teehee. In the meantime, we’ll just wrap up the diarist chronology thang, post some nice pix and let you get back to your brackets as we drag out our three dusty suitcases and stare towards Tuesday March 26th, VM Day. (Well if Jan 8th was D-day, then March 26th should be Victory in Mexico Day, right? Ok, make it Victory OF Mexico, smart-asses!) Three suitcases, a camera bag and one cat carrier. Yup, I said ONE cat carrier.
Bummer alert!
 
As you may recall, we delayed our original return date for a few original reasons, the weather here was too mind-bendingly gorgeous to go back to always disappointing March in NY, didn’t want to interrupt AJ’s visit and there were more unfinished projects to oversee on the completion of THE HOUSE. Added to that was an unspoken lingering hope that Girlscout would finally descend from the rooftops or ascend from the arroyos of the Obraje in the nick o time, given a little more of it. But that didn’t happen. I think we’ve come to terms with her flight, however. She’s obviously found her place here, perhaps making a stand that until the present pro-canine/anti-cat US regime is overthrown, she will remain in AMLO’s feline friendly socialist paradise. Or more likely, she’s always been a hider, and just hid for too long this time. Don’t cry for Girlscout, Argentina, we think she’s just embarking on the third of her nine lives, but you may lend some sympathy to her former estadounidense humans. Especially the female human who remains fairly bereft at her loss. On the other hand, the prospect of seeing our short-legged, long haired orange tabby with a handlebar mustache, bandolero, dangling cigarillo and shaded almond eyes under a sombrero gives us something to look forward to upon our return to SMA for Phase Two in late summer!
 
And before we take down that Bummer alert, remember the “Halefrigginluia” raised in the last post over finally getting internet from the time-shifted Ma Bell of Mexico, Telmex? That lasted two and half days until the communication-monopolies-are-the-same-world-over technicians discovered that our line had been spliced onto an overloaded distribution node thanks, evidently, to the incentive of “lunch-money” to the installer buey last Saturday. And I thought I was getting the hang of working the sitch here!  After all, I grew in Louisiana and worked for NOPSI, but when that little peso-incentivized electrical improvisation slowed everyone else’s web access in the Rincon, our electron enabled lifeline to you, dear friends and fam, got pulled pronto by HQ. Now we’re talking easy three weeks and the prospect of having to stoop to going with the dreaded cable company, Megacable just to keep our webcam broadcasting and our solar panels registering while we’re gone! This is where I’d usually employ my patented lazy button on an unresolved plot point, “stay-tuned”, but if this is the last post, I got to find another device, hmm.
 
Ok, you want some takeaways? Here’s one, ConEd ShmonEd or we’re not in Orleans parish any more, Dorothy. Semi-seriously, though, new definitions of achievement rise in new cultural situations! The right view of this seeming slap-down here is that another major milestone that we thought we had reached we get to look forward to reaching again upon our return! Build, knock down, build again! The circle of Mexican life!
 
That wasn’t so hard, ok, here’s another: You, my bloggispherephiles, are all living examples of another lesson of our first round of the Michael & Jackie Mexican Adventure Bracket. That’s the simple and universal Duh that the most precious and cherished of all unexpected but fervently hoped-for discoveries when throwing yourself into the uncomfort zone are people. No matter how unbelievably and breathtakingly pleasing to the senses the strange new venue, it’s uncovering the shared and unique landscape of its inhabitants that makes you anxious for the next day to begin. I mean when was the last time you woke up at 5:30am and thought, damn, it’s not time to get up yet. I’m not talking about too much caffeine either. We’re reminded of our oh so distant youth when we left the humid monotony of the delta for the cold shock of Manhattan and the prospect of meeting all of you, as an example. So it is that his last lap of Phase One has delivered unto us the gift of even more amazing humans that instantaneously trigger and neutralize all of the two-steps-backism of this insanely beautiful, clement, seductive, hard-easy, familiar-strange, cat-dog new blessedly not-home home.
 
So we’re leaving this build, knock-down, build again place in the hands of a whole new cast of characters. You’ve met most of them, the villains and saints of our adventure and we encourage you to contact Meg Simon who will be casting the Netflix series from the podcast of this blog in the very near future if you’re interested in a role. Add to the existing dramatis personae the following:
Manolo, our infectiously can-do-but-at-my-own-pace accountant turned real estate broker turned property manager and his wife, daughter and son who are to be the guardian angels of Casa 9 till we return and after.
Sarai, the encyclopedic and overwhelmingly diligent landscape designer and experimental horticulturist and her crew of equally diligent plant bueys who are turning the several outdoor spaces of our could-be cold modernist home into an amazing botanic refuge.
Jesùs, our gimlet-eyed guardhouse guy who has become our trusted fix what Valente’s guys have gotten wrong guy who possesses the surest hands of any portrait painter and the calm demeanor of any astronaut.
 
See you all back north in a few long days, changed but the same, built, knocked-down, built again. Stay tuned…