Gail Walter's Open Salon Blog

What Mexico Made Us Do

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 10:03:03 -0400

We are sitting on wickedly reclining wooden chairs with our feet in the fine white sand. We are different now. Opposite is our brand new compatriot grinning and plying us shamelessly with margaritas on the rocks with salt. The brazen July sun is setting over a lazy Caribbean. Our Caribbean. But it wasn’t always this way.

Sometimes it’s just necessary to come clean, to take responsibility or to deftly shift blame for the things that happen. In this case the fault lies squarely on the shoulders of that beguiling, bewitching Mexico, a country altogether too colorful for it’s own good.

We were innocents, not young, but innocents. Innocents with a slowly gleaned sliver of savings gathering dust in our bank account. It was May and it was necessary to take our family away from a shy Colorado spring. We chose Mexico, but really, Mexico chose us.

We were level headed before we got there, in possession of as many faculties as we could muster over the turbulent, trying landscape of the years. We were level headed maybe a few days into the vacation, and then we lost it. It wasn’t a loud thing this losing, no crashing sound as it landed on the ground. More the whisper of stays loosening in a light breeze.

We didn’t know we’d lost it or what the ‘it’ was that had left us wide open. All that grew was a capacity for spontaneity, which, by its very nature, is hard to see coming.

Where we were exactly when it hit was on the warm paving of a curved road in Playa del Carmen on our strolling, heedless way into town.

“Lets just go in and see what they have,” Michel said, pointing at the local realtor’s office not quite hidden in amongst some riotous bougainvillea.

We stepped into the airconditioned office all sandaled and casual and were led immediately into the office of our grinning compatriot, Oswaldo. Of course.

Michel introduced the subject but then I took over and pointed to a spot behind the realtor’s head. We all stopped and turned to look at the white washed wall.

“Only if you have one of those,” I said. Strong voiced like Julia playing Erin Brokovich, but shorter.

They both knew what I was talking about. Next door was Villas Arqueologicas, subject of many swooning ‘if onlys’.

“If only we knew who stayed here. If only they’d rent these out. If only I knew who to contact to arrange that. If only…”

And the ‘how lucky’s’.

“How lucky these people are. How lucky to live here.”

“As a matter of fact”, Oswaldo said, and picked up a set of keys. We walked out the door, in through the next gate, round the pool and up the stairs. The doors were French and teak, and lots of them. I stepped in on my feet with no weight on them and fell in love.

Two days later we’d made an english offer to the spanish owners and they’d accepted, in spanish. That’s how you jump. How an alternative reality seeds and takes root. That’s how our feet are in the sand. We’re just back from the extraordinary experience of a bilingual closing in a foreign land. That’s how this is ours now; another life, another country, another language. Mexico made us do it.

Tartan Troubles

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 13:03:55 -0400

I am Scottish, and some other more complicated things. But I am, on one side, one side of my father’s side, quite simply, Scottish. That means, my proud mom of the more complicated, colourful history, told me, I have my own clan, my own kilt and my own tartan. Not my very own, you understand, but one shared with my wild haired clansmen scattered and diluted across all four corners of the earth like myself.

Now, too many decades later, I am finally visiting the land of my forefathers. They have been waiting a very long time.

I have one day and one night in Edinburgh before starting our drive tour of the Highlands. As we arrive at the Balmoral Hotel I resolve to evolve, let go of the reins a bit, and let our dear old friends, now living in Edinburgh, choose our dinner spot. This is a mistake.

It is the kind of night that summons ancient memories like peat smoke; of chilly drafts in gothic castles, granite grey and slick with rain. Perhaps it’s the gothic weather in this gothic city that makes them choose a gothic themed bar. An impossibly seedy, Vegas style version of a Scottish pub complete with garish goth plaster figures leering like displaced pirates from every wall. The music is the sound a nightmare would make if it were an instrument, the volume cranked really high, and the place completely empty and smelling of very old beer.

The food is exactly what you’d expect to find in such a place; badly battered fish with violated chips. The only high point is when I drop something precious under the table and need to spend some time there, looking for it. It is mercifully quiet under there in the dirty dark. I can briefly shed my ‘fun, fun, fun’, deer in the headlights look, for something more genuine and morose.

Under the table

So this is to be my single memory of food and the night in Edinburgh. It seems impossibly unfair. I seriously consider staying under the table and sulking. Once again I am bowled over by the misplaced tolerance of my very dear companions. We should run from there screaming.

Now it is morning and I have cast off the grizzly remnants of the night before for a dawn filled with the surprise of a call to prayer floating across the slate rooftops, over the Leith, singing to the Scottish sunrise. I am in love with this ancient city, so full of its past, that sings so audaciously to an unimagined future.

Today I will find my clan, or at least, today I will find my tartan. I will hunt it down, buy it and bring it home victorious for my offspring to revel in the fabric of their wild and woolly history. I must hie me to the castle surrounds to seek that very cloth.

It is not hard to spot the tartan shops, down the rain slick cobbled streets with the castle looming behind me as well as the sharp, cold wind. I slip in slick and wet myself, warmed by the bright colors.

Gibson, Gibson, Gibson? I never thought it had a music to it but at least it had a clan. I find it, at least I think that's it and I am relieved. It's more prepossessing in person -- face to face. No, it's not. That's not it. It's the other one. Oh. What can I say? That I'm surprised we ever made any art with such a history of bad taste? That I know what clan, what tartan I want, and it's not the one I have. That I have to force myself to buy the tartan, tiny little pieces, no substantial wooly scarf. No point. Lime green, baby blue, altogether too much yellow. With all due respect, who'd want to wear it now?

Vegas Spit And Polish

Wed, 7 Mar 2012 15:03:43 -0500

Can you do both of us?

We’re leaving Las Vegas, he’s a shoeshine man at McCarran Airport. There’s one of him and two of us. We’re not there on purpose, Vegas that is. It’s that time of year again, and it’s work. Okay, okay, there were windows of play.

Robert is small, for a man, but not thin. A dapper gentleman with a black bow tie, clipped grey hair, moustache and baldpate. He stands idle next to his raised shoeshine station in a patch of quiet just before gate 53 to Denver.

“No problem”, he says. “I’ve got all the time in the world”. And waves us up onto the dais. When it comes to my turn I can’t reach the pedals, I mean the foot things. I have to bundle my jacket and my purse behind the small of my back and perch there, very different to Michel, reclining with his NY Times.

I lean forward, thrown into a conversation I’m not sure I prefer to the NY Times.

“I’ve been thinking of buying one of the mobile ones, y’know,” Robert’s pointing at what we’re sitting on.

“It’s fine now, but in summer it just dries up. Everyone’s in sandals. If I have a mobile one I can go into the offices in downtown, they still wear shoes.”

“So how long have you been living here?”

“Oh, ‘bout five years.”

“And where were you before that?” Robert’s easy going, we’re meeting over my beloved old Steve Maddens. We both care about footwear so there’s a bond.

“California. Sacramento. Used to be the director of a non-profit. NDC, have you heard of them? We organized kid’s lunches for daycare. USDA approved. In the end there were 175 branches.”

I don’t use words, I just look at him over the slightly improved black toe of my boot. What happened?

“Well, I had a heart attack… the youngest of our four kids left home.” He stops, straightens up, waves his brush around and shrugs.

“You know.”

I wait. I have to. He has my foot in his hand.

“So I got on an online dating site. That’s how I found her, my new wife. She was here, in Vegas. I came out to meet her. We had fun together…” He recollects, smiles the same size and shape of his moustache and shrugs again. “And my car broke down.” He’s distracted, soft yellow cloth with red piping held aloft. He’s engaged with me now, not my boots.

“So you live here now? What’s it like, the cost of living?”

“Not so bad…you know nothing on the shelf in the grocery store comes from here.

“Bit worrying really.” Shakes his neat head. “If there had to be some sort of unusual incident that cut us off from the rest of the world…”

“And then there’s the house. They had to take a mortgage on it, you know, when they split up, my wife and her ex. We ended up with a loan of $250,000 on a house worth $75,000. So we pay the mortgage. We pay it like it’s rent.”

“And the strip. You locals avoid it, right?”

“Well, yes, but the restaurants, we come here for dining. Y’know the Rio? They do this half off for residents. The food’s not that good but it’s not bad either. OK for a night on the town.”

We’re done. The boots look new. Thank you very much, lovely to speak to a resident. We begin our polished walk away.

“You know, yesterday.” We turn around.

“ I called my wife. It was kinda slow, so I called her: ‘Just wanted to say I love you’.

“Five minutes later the phone rang. It was her: ‘Ok (theatrical pause) so what have you done wrong?’”

We laugh, shake our heads and glide out of Vegas leaving nothing that happened there behind, not even Robert, his myriad pots of polish and his new life in the Nevada desert.

The Avenue That Loves People

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 12:02:56 -0500

I seldom venture from the Parklane Hotel here in Dongguan. It’s grand enough to take it personally. The surrounding avenues and architecture are monumental, a person could get lost crossing the road. So I am reluctant, you understand. And I normally arrive late on a muggy southern China night and leave early the next morning so there has been no need. Today is different. They will pick me up in the smart car tomorrow. I arrived last night. That’s a whole day. The size and weight of this hotel is smooth, heavy and closed like a high-class prison, I must escape.

I walk round the shiny black capsules picking up busy people to drop them off at considerably less shiny factories. I skirt the complicated fountain and the carefully arranged dull green of the gardens and head for the broad expanse of avenue. It has taken me all day to muster the courage to leave my cultivated captivity.

I have stood indecisive in the room far above, staring out the window that won’t open, across the vast avenue lined with disciplined, wan greenery, at the bulk of a shocking pink shopping mall. To the left is the elevated hotel swimming pool surrounded by the kind of worrying green they have at mini golf venues. There is not a soul around.

Down on ground floor I make it across the immaculately landscaped sidewalks, dodge through the barely disciplined traffic and take a swift left away from the shouting pink of the mall.

That’s when I notice a real avenue. The light falls differently here. It bounces off the faithful repetition of tree upon tree turning the air silver green, the pale pattern of white trunks almost spectral. I am at least a century from the brash cacophony of the mall.

I look at my watch. It’s 4.30. I start walking down the center. I stroll like I belong but see no sign of another foreigner like myself, not one. This is not where tourists go.

Even the workers here seem caught in a surreal pause.

I see the benches. I notice small parties of people beginning to arrive. Mostly they are elderly and slow, some of the feet that shuffle and swing wear old, worn slippers, surprised to be outside.

Men sit on one bench, all five of them, women on another a decent distance away. The pattern is repeated all down the avenue. They sit every which way, crossed legs swinging. The conversation is not animated the way it is when you tell something the first time. It is unhurried and unsurprising. No-one turns to each other aghast. Not much gesticulating, more the air of an upright but companionable afternoon nap. A very small, very old women perches at the end of a bench, facing out. She is looking down the avenue like it is her life.

The women are more subdued than the men. For years they have been at home at this time, tending to serious things, food and children. They look a little wrung out, a little tired. Their clothes are dated, more communist drab than the sharp assertive garb of their children. The shirts are like faded men’s shirts the pants are no-nonsense synthetics with sagging-bottoms, once a color like mauve or pale blue.

The men’s benches are livelier, like a pub if you ditched the beer and held it outdoors. The men face inwards, they even laugh, they’re passing the time like they always have. A perpetual pall of smoke hangs over them.

Young people march swiftly through, six abreast, like invading conquerors. Men, shiny and new in immaculate white shirts, black pants, black shoes, black computer bags. The young women click sharp black heels and dare to sit alone in bright, assertive colors on benches.

It is 5.30 and getting dark. There are many people out here now, I cannot turn around. I am drawn into this other space, this rare opportunity to glide through and pretend to be unnoticed, seeing different people doing the same things under a different sun. I must get to the end of this avenue before I let myself turn round.

I am loping almost now. Light and delighted. This is where all the city people are now, away from the monumental architecture that dwarfs them, away from the drab exertion that fades shirts, held now in this timeless tunnel of green that will be gentle with them.

On the way back to the hotel I pass an officer in a parked police car. His mouth is open, his eyes are closed. The law is asleep. I pass the shouting pink mall because I have to, garish pink and blue balloons flinch to the beat of distorted music so loud you can’t hear it. I look around, there is no-one here…

And Verily...

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 16:02:47 -0500

I say unto you --I had to do this as an exercise years ago, and it was grave fun. What have you to say, my flock? Do we have any spontaneous sermonettes to add?

“You have heard it said that it is a good and worthy thing to volunteer for a nonprofit organization but I say to you if it is only to enhance your resume and not out of genuine concern for those you are “helping” then they will likely not benefit from your empty actions and you will end up with a great job and an empty heart.

You have heard it said that a man shall buy his wife diamonds which are a girl’s best friend and take her to candlelit dinners and gaze into her eyes but I say to you if you have not heard her through her tears and loved her when she’s ugly and disheveled you have not truly loved at all and when all is said and done you will have diamonds and candles and no warmth of human flesh and no body beside you when you sleep.

You have heard it said that parents should love their children and guide them in the pursuit of perfection but I say to you if you have not shown your children how to love imperfection then they will be without love for the world as it is and themselves as they are and they will grow up in despair and die in grief.

You have heard it said that good taste is admirable but I say to you if you lack the courage to admit less elevated tastes you shall find yourself surrounded by people just like yourself and the conversations will echo with emptiness and be competitions and everyone will wear layers of armor lest they be discovered for who they truly are.

You have heard it said that it oils the wheels of society to do and say what is expected and not rock the boat but I say to you if all that you say and all that you do is mere lip service to an order you believe supports you than you will wake up one day to find the ground gone beneath your feet and your mouth in the shape of a scream. "