Jan Baumgartner's Open Salon Blog

love.

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 16:11:36 -0500

My husband died at home in June of 2002 from ALS, Lou Gehrig's Disease. He was the greatest joy of my life. To have found it once was a miracle, to expect it twice...

This is a love story. And, a story of thanks.

When It Is Time To Go

...Like glimpses of forgotten dreams ~ Tennyson

I will forever remember those words, the last of tiny white petals to bloom from his soft pink lips. How they shot over and through me - not a rain of flowers, but a torrent of water - engulfed by waves. I remember the numbness, the fighting for my breath as I felt the sea pull me under, my need to repeat the words, seemingly through mouthfuls of sand, when, in fact, they were as clear and as deafening as any words ever spoken.

"I think it is time to go."

"It's time to go? Okay," I said in a voice I did not recognize. A voice as fragile as cracked glass, as surprised as a newborn.

No matter how hard you try, no matter how much you think you've prepared, you can never be. Not for those words. How can you? They are the beginning of the next world, the ending of another - only one of which you can be a part. At that moment, again, the universe has changed. Shifted. Hold on! You know what the next wave will bring, the power and force of its energy. It will take you under, swallow you low into its belly, if you don't find your anchor. Now is the time. Toss it over and let it settle, deep.

He nodded, weakly. His face resigned, sad from the words, the finality of his decision, the letting go.

From what depths does one pull in finding the strength to utter those words? How does one feel when the final decision is made, when the leaving behind, however painful, is far more preferable and right than the unknown?

I had never seen him look so sad. Even in the freedom of decision, of releasing himself from stillness and torment, his eyes were shadowed with sorrow. But as the days went on, that would change. The color that began to bloom in his hollowed cheeks was that of acceptance, of peace.

There were some days when he would smile. No bodily movement, no voice, just a small blooming of the lips - a flower, one last time from this earth. Was the flower for me? Or was it what he was just beginning to know as his new door opened little by little each day?

He stopped eating. That was how he would release himself, let go. In a body that had nearly disappeared, frail, shattered, weighing almost nothing at all, it still took thirteen days. Thirteen days before he joined the wind - blowing like dandelion spore, riding the thermals on a wish. His wish.

It is hard to go about your business when your husband is dying in the next room. Does he smell the food I prepare for myself? Does it make the starving process all the more difficult, to resist sustenance, resist life? It took me a couple of days to fully digest that one - the different dynamics playing out in each room, the sheer determination of each of us separated only by a narrow threshold - one of survival, the other of death. But, I had to eat. I had to retain my strength, my health. Somehow, amidst the turmoil of the last few years, I remained strong, my health intact. I could not falter now. I still had things to take care of - John, his final wishes, my life. If only one of us was to survive, then I would walk away as strong and as unscathed as I possibly could.

As I look back on those last days, on my questions, concerns and heartbreak over the processes of living and dying, I realize that much of what plagued me were the philosophical questions and angst of a healthy human being.

When one is dying, when one has made the decision to release himself from disease or illness, the mind must surely function in a way that we cannot comprehend. It is not ours to understand.

One evening, I asked John if the smell of my dinner bothered him, made it more difficult. He smiled and whispered, "no." There appeared to be no internal struggle of want or need for food. The idea of sustenance, hunger, satiation, were no longer part of John's world. When I accepted this, to the degree where one can understand such a foreign concept, I was able to abandon the feelings of guilt, despair, the need to feed and nurture him even though I knew it could not or should not be.

Each day, a new wave rolled over me. When I felt myself going under, I would slip out onto the deck, if only for a short while, and regain my footing from the temple of nature that surrounded me. Always, the natural world had sustained me, and now more than ever, as my husband lay dying, as my closest friends and family were thousands of miles away, Nature's reassuring embrace kept me grounded and forever grateful.

I missed the sound of voices, of interaction, of the days when John and I would engage in hours of effortless discussion about everything and nothing at all. But in exchange for lost voices, I received the gift of birdsong, of wind rustling through leaves, the gentle lapping of waves along the cove, the delicate rift of butterfly, bee and hummingbird wings.

I watched the rosa rugosas seemingly explode overnight with hot pink roses. The deep purple lupine in the lower field grew tall and sturdy. The crabapple blossoms came and went, the lilac bush filled the house with sweet perfume, and a multitude of fledglings flew in and out of the garden, testing their wings, the miracle of flight.

And always, there was Africa. In my spiritual connection with nature, the world outside my doors, the reminder and memories of Africa were always close to the surface, and yet nearest to my heart.

A week into John's decision to stop eating, he asked to get out of bed one last time. He wanted to watch our wedding video, he told me. It was the last request he made. The hospice nurse didn't think he should be removed from bed, too precarious and painful at this stage, and she offered to bring her own small television and v.c.r. to our home, to the bedroom, and set it up so we could view it from John's bed.

But he would not have it. Once more, he wanted to be taken from his bed, sit upright in the world, and watch a video we had not seen since our wedding day, nearly eleven years earlier.

I remember the last time I lifted him from his bed. I hoisted his small body into the lift and to the air; his limbs and head hanging limp like a rag doll. I wheeled him into the sitting room where I had everything ready for the screening. The wheelchair seemed to swallow him, a wisp of a body more of bone and loose flesh than anything else, his head way too large now and out of proportion, barely able to balance itself on a slackened neck.

I sat next to him. I held his hand. We watched ourselves, younger and healthier then, filled with joy, laughter, and so much hope. He saw his sister and brother, our family and friends. We watched ourselves embrace and kiss beneath a stand of ancient redwoods near the sea, in the city by the bay.

He wept. I choked back tears as I held him tighter, tenderly securing my arms around him, one last time.

Everything then, was for the last time.

What came next, and through our tears, caught us both off guard. We had forgotten that following the wedding day video, was footage from our first date many years before, taken by a friend as we attended the annual Renaissance Fair in Marin County. How young we looked, then. How beautiful he looked. I had forgotten how beautiful he once was. I heard his voice again, clear, strong, yet soft as silk. I saw his healthy, strong body move freely and fluidly. I saw the exuberance of life in his pale blue eyes, hope for the future on our younger, innocent faces.

Innocence is a marvelous thing. It is good not to know too much of what lies ahead - how abruptly the world can end - the edge and drop oftentimes closer than one would like.

We wept together. We wept for those days, for happier times. We wept over the loss of his body, his voice, and our future. But most of all, we wept for the strength of our love. We had not been afforded the gift of time, of hopes and dreams, of growing old with one another. But rather, we were blessed with a love that had endured and blossomed in the hardest of times, sustained us through disease, and even at death, was a bond greater than any other we had ever known. As we often said, our time may have been cut short, but what we had, together, most people do not find in a lifetime.

I wheeled him back to bed. His blue eyes were red and swollen. I kissed him. He fell asleep quickly and peacefully.

In watching him sleep, I felt a small wave caress my body. This one was gentle and warm. It rocked me, easily, pooled around my ankles, then slipped out to sea.

Excerpt from the memoir, In the Heart of the Lily, copyright 2007, Jan Baumgartner

Content cannot be reprinted without the express permission of the author.

The Beard

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 23:11:34 -0500

The Beard (1979-2009) The Beard expired at home with his beloved Face at his side. He is survived by His Face. They had no Sideburns.

Cartoon character Snow Job, or Bearded Martian?

I had heard rumors that men were from Mars, women from Venus, but never truly felt there was so vast a divide that we could be born from opposing planets. To me the differences were far more subtle; say, men from the Big Bend region of Texas or Spunky Puddle, Ohio, whereas women might hail from Heavenly Valley, California or Sweet Lips, Tennessee. Well, that was until yesterday:

I was surprised to find my Old Lover (who shall be referred to as Ol) and his Newish Girlfriend (Ng) at my front door. She was bearing a brown paper bag smelling of warm pastries and a spreading grease stain, which is always a good sign.

Normally, friends would not indulge themselves in the “pop in” knowing that I work from home and Ol and I had had this understanding: In the past, he would call first so not to disrupt my writing schedule, I would not pop into his art studio knowing he might be at work on a canvas. But there they were, just back in town after a few days in Seattle for his art show, of which I had heard, he had done quite well and sold a few ridiculously large canvases.

“Sorry to disturb,” he apologized, “but we were in the neighborhood and thought we’d drop off some chocolate filled croissants.” We laughed good-naturedly and I figured they had read my latest piece.

We sat down at the wrought iron table in the overgrown patio garden, shaded by the rubber tree. It wasn’t until I looked up from the contents of the goodie bag that I noticed Ol was no longer sporting a cascade of whiskers and in fact, was clean shaven. “Oh my God! You shaved your beard!” I laughed, as if he might not realize he was missing a face once covered with what appeared to be a small, unidentifiable mammal, much like the specie which hitches a ride atop Donald Trump’s scalp.

“I know, isn’t it great!” said Ng, running her fingers across Ol’s smooth jaw line. “After he read your essay he felt compelled to trim. Who would have known such a beautiful jaw was hiding under all that fur?” she laughed.

I liked Ng. Our paths had crossed long before and I always found her to have a fine sense of humor and so was rather pleased when Ol had told me some months before that they had become a couple. The problem now was that Ol seemed rather miffed and I had to assume the latest essay about my Expired Lover and loss of lust had not tapped into his funny bone but rather, had hit a nerve. Obviously, I had gained points with Ng and Ol was now her New Improved Lover (or Nil) but Ol looked as though I had just run over his dog.

“So, you thought my beard needed trimming?” he asked, helping himself to one of the three chocolate plumped croissants. Now, this is where I started to realize that he was indeed a Martian and not a Big Bender because if I had to guess, I would have thought that if anything struck an irksome chord in him from my latest piece, it might be that his ego was somewhat bruised when I said I no longer found him sexually attractive or worthy of knuckle dragging or Von Trapp yodeling, that he was a bit grayer and thinner on top, or that I was more intrigued by the tiny yellow bird perched on a nearby branch. But no, mentioning that his beard needed trimming seemed to have spurned a disturbing melancholy. Where was Dr. Phil when you really needed him?

“I heard your show did very well,” I zigzagged.

“Surprisingly well, yes. You know, I always tried to keep my beard rather neat,” he catapulted. “I had that beard for nearly 30 years. No one’s ever mentioned it was unkempt before.”

I had never used the word unkempt and from his bizarre behavior, one would think I had suggested his unruly mop looked like the Uni-bomber. Ng and I exchanged nervous glances characteristic of Sweet Lippers.

“I hadn’t planned on shaving it off it’s just when I started trimming, I got carried away, I guess. I’d trim one side a bit shorter, then would have to even out the other side, then I accidentally cut too much off leaving a baldish spot so had no choice but to shave the whole damn thing.” He finished his croissant and went to tear off an end of the remaining pastry, mine. I wanted to kick him in the shins but refrained as I knew this would only exacerbate his grieving over his phantom beard.

It was obvious to me that in my many decades of dealing with what I now realized were indeed Martians and not the fun-loving Spunky Puddlers, I was no closer to understanding them than I was before. I had innocently mentioned a mass of hair, his face hamster, but in my naiveté had hit on something that was a bone of contention for irritable Martians.

If he hadn’t touched my croissant, I might have felt badly for his loss but in all honesty, I had no idea that men were so sensitive or attached to their facial hair. Do they see a beard as a security blanket, a pet, a dependent for a tax deduction? And years ago when a good friend of mine shaved his soul patch after I jokingly commented that it had no rhythm; did I unleash, perhaps, the first of my seemingly bad hair karma episodes?

“I’m sorry,” I grinned, “but I agree with Ng, you look really great without a beard.”

“Thank you,” he smiled, “but next time, you shouldn’t be so glib when attacking someone’s beard.”

I looked around my shoulder to see if Ashton Kutcher was hunkering behind the tangle of hormonal ivy. Attacking? He made it sound as if I had to defend myself against a rabid raccoon. Obviously, Ol had shaved off a goodly portion of his sense of humor when the whiskers dropped to the bathroom floor.

I congratulated him on his successful art show and thanked her for the croissants.

After they left I realized just how vast the planetary divide was amongst Martians and Venusians, feeling a bit sad that my old perspective of Big Benders and Sweet Lippers was seen through a very small and innocent lens.

Even more upsetting, though, was as I sat solo at the wrought iron table beneath the giant rubber tree, serenaded by the fountains’ regurgitating fish mouth and a lone mourning dove, I was left with only half of a chocolate plumped croissant and nary a handful of crumbs.

I looked up at the mourning dove but it flushed from the tree leaving a splat of an exclamation mark on the table, barely missing what remained of my sweet. I knew this was a sign, of what I was unsure, but nervously felt my chin to see if my fate might be with the circus.

A bearded lady or bearded woman is a woman who has a visible beard. These women have long been a phenomenon of legend, curiosity, ridicule.

The Heart is a Fickle Little Muscle

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 20:11:24 -0500

"bleeding hearts"

So I’m sitting in my patio garden somewhere in Colonial Mexico, surrounded by dilapidated pink stone walls, crumbling in that old world charm sort of way, the carved cement fishes’ mouth regurgitating into the waters of the Italianate fountain, walls moaning from the weight of years of unattended ivy, and enveloped by a primordial jungle of overly hormonal impatiens, ferns, fuchsia, snails, a small but healthy tangerine tree in an old terracotta pot, a hidden lime tree that produces tiny, delicate limes with decadent amounts of juice, and sitting with me beneath the dappled sunlight of a massive shade tree at one of the white wrought iron tables is an old lover, not old in dog years, per se, but old in the sense that our carnal proclivities are many months stale, and I am remembering how he once was the most beautiful, sensual creature to me, and how the very smell of his brown skin and proximity of his body would make me twitch beneath my layers even when I wasn’t wearing layers while voluptuous beads of sweat would shape above my forming uni-brow, and my vocabulary would be reduced to one and two syllable words while spattering an occasional grunt in a very sexy and feminine Neanderthal kind of way.

And here we are after months of no contact, sitting opposite one another in this falling apart Colonial garden, yet very much alive tangle of growth and blooms and pungent smells of citrus and sweet – and I am looking at him and thinking “how were we ever so attracted to each other?” and thinking he is thinking the same thing and all the while wondering how just a few months ago we couldn’t keep our hands off of one another no matter how hard we tried and the thought of him once made my knees buckle, my knuckles drag, and he could reduce me to yodeling like a furry von Trapp or speaking in tongues, also like a tipsy von Trapp, and now, well, nada.

The small beating organ we call the heart is a fickle little muscle; from devil-may-care Bonobo antics, to sheer indifference barely worthy of a pant hoot – I am unsure if the fickleness is survival of the fittest; mere protection of the moody organ itself, or nothing more than a peak or dip in hormones. Either way, the black or white of it all leaves nary a beat of gray. Lust fades. And while that truth should have me feeling both sad and relieved, I’m feeling rather indifferent. When it fades, adios scraped knuckles, buenos dias upright and eloquent conversationalist.

With time, do we lose all past feelings of lust, and on occasion, love, in order to protect ourselves from further damage? Do our senses, intellect, desires, all do a proverbial 180, or 360 to the otherwise misinformed, or those who don’t learn from their mistakes, in order that the once irresistible and the pain caused from it, dissipate while the heart forms a new protective layer? I envision its resilience much like the reptile that loses an appendage then grows another, just like that. From three-legged Hopalong Heart to full-bodied, Back in the Race Toad.

As I sit here, listening to the fish mouth regurgitate into the murky green water of the fountain, aware of a ghost-like dashing and darting of a hummingbird hidden somewhere alongside the tangle of hot pink and orange fuchsia climbing the peeling coral colored 300 year old walls, the brilliant, blinding blue of the high mountain sky, I look at this expired lover, lust shelf life way past gone, the very one who had me turned into a freak of nature in public when those x-rated thoughts cross your mind at the worst of times, say when in the corner tienda meaning to buy soap but instead leaving with a half pound of ham, suddenly aware you are not fit to be in public, but to be tied, and you’re wondering if you’re not really naked and only wearing black socks, and you are certain that every man, woman, child and feral street dog not only can smell your overactive ‘mones, but can see that your mind is filled with naughty thoughts and you must get home before you’re arrested for indecent visuals, or gang humped by mangy canines – and well, I feel as though I may have just been crowned with a new, fully formed appendage – meaning, my once fractured, closed-down heart, and insatiable lust, has mended, re-bloomed, and dissipated. Just like that. Tiara on a Toad.

And so I continue to stare at this surreal vision of my No Longer Good By lover, notice how his beard needs trimming, how he’s gotten a tad grayer and a bit thinner on top, and I surreptitiously glance at his shoulders and pecks hiding behind his t-shirt just to see if there is any chance that my fickle little organ might skip a beat, or wheeze even (he’s still beautiful, mind you), and I am cognizant that he has the same idea in mind and has sneaked a not so subtle peek at the area of my chest that might be hiding cleavage, while I am pretending to admire a tiny finch perched on a low branch very close to where I am sitting, and it dawns on me that I’m more intrigued by the bravado of this tiny yellow bird and that I feel no inkling of sexual temptation, nothing, not the once ubiquitous if not annoying surge of moisture that would follow at the very mention of his name, but in fact, am very much aware of the dryness of my contact lenses which seem to be adhering to my eyeballs, and that by now, I should have needed to pee at least twice during the course of our hour long conversation considering I had had two cups of very strong coffee and the tinkling fish mouth should have had me sprinting to the loo, but my eyes are dry and I don’t have to pee and truth be told, there is no hint of moisture in the nether regions and I wonder:

How can we go from A to Z in our feelings without fully remembering, or no longer weighted down by all the phases in between? From perpetual horizontal mode to snail spotting in the garden -- where does all the feeling go? Does the heart spit it out, much like the regurgitating fish mouth, and is that why the spray of water from its mouth spews clear but the water in the fountain below is always murky, no longer transparent? Are the fountain’s opaque waters nothing more than a subconscious heart detox, a shedding of its tears? Or is it simply a matter of bleach?

Hence, all parts being equal, well not really, but the mind is a close second to other parts south of the border, I am grateful that if nothing else, we can still engage in a depth of conversation; that would be the old lover, not the fish.

And this sudden realization and thriving new appendage is only confirmed when as we’re chatting about worthy non-profits and how one can make a difference with so little, my mind goes here:

I remember my friend, Consi, once describing her diminutive pier de tier rental in Paris, and that the bathroom was so Lilliputian that she couldn’t fully fit into the shower, which necessitated her choosing body parts and taking a “whore’s bath.” “You know,” she’d say, “crotch and underarms, what more needs washing, really, especially if you’re not having sex.” Secretly, I hoped she did this in reverse, underarms and then crotch. And wondered, too, why she’d call it a whore’s bath if her reason for needing this hygienic shortcut was because she wasn’t having sex.

Years later, I mentioned to friends of mine that I didn’t always feel the need for a full shower each morning and that once in awhile, I would simply take a quick but effective whore’s bath. Later, the wife told me that her husband asked her that night what the hell I meant when I said I would take a “horse bath.” I decided not to explain the difference, preferring to let him think that on occasion I had the uncanny need to roll in the dust to rid myself of fleas.

But back to my point: I’m thinking about fleas and my only insatiable desire at this moment is a chocolate plumped croissant and the desire to trim the beard of a once irresistible sex God.

The heart is a fickle little muscle.

Outing Montezuma

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 16:07:29 -0400

Photo by Esparta; courtesy Flickr

From the Fiction Pool ~ A Story from a Faraway Mountain Village

They say that blood is thicker than water. But I’ll tell you what’s thicker than the two of them. Mierda. That’s as thick as it gets, especially when you’re standing smack dab in the middle of it.

Somehow against all odds, or perhaps in perfect harmony with the macabre humor of the malevolent spirits of amor, I ended up in A Tail of Two Cities, a place that was the best of all possible worlds and at the same time, the biggest incestuous mound of excrement I had ever stepped into.

This place, which I have come to love; this glorious spot on the map that they say is magical, built on high energy layers of crystal and breathtakingly beautiful, is equally as bizarre, codependent and dysfunctional as your worst nightmare. It’s that frightening family next door that makes everyone walk on the opposite side of the street. The story of those with destructive malfunctions deconstructed by a panel of shrinks on Oprah and Dr. Phil. The decades old ick that keeps getting ickier at Hef’s Playboy Mansion, more affectionately known as Cocoon Meets Pee Wee’s Big Top. You get my drift.

Let me start at the beginning, as I remember it. And since I’m still working my way through the slosh, my recollections of the cesspool may be embellished a bit, but I feel I’ve earned that dramatic license since my shoes will forever be misshapen, my step off kilter and to this day, I continue to stop and shake loose imaginary feces that I feel clinging to my soles, still.

The New Yorker, His Wife and the Temptation of the Vine

He and his wife were New Yorkers. He was an artist. Notice I use past tense although all players, to my knowledge, are still alive and well, thriving in the glorious heap beneath the searing Mexican sun.

Every year they vacationed in this small Mexican village: A seemingly ideal Colonial enclave of narrow cobbled streets, picturesque burros resting along curbs, melodic church bells, enticing scents and tastes. Maybe this is where things start to go horribly wrong for gringos from cold, northern hinterlands; relentless south of the border sun, blinding light, donkey dung, nostril searing aromas of chili peppers and tropical blooms, scantily clothed bodies, and the incessant pealing of those bells, bells, bells, bells - reminding you that you are always just a step away from sinning, or stepping into a warm pile of shit.

And this, my friends, is far too much titillation for the average gringo used to ice storms and plaid flannel sheets well past Memorial Day. It doesn’t take long before one starts to become delusional under the weight of so much sun.

He came to the land of perennial sunshine to paint. His wife came to learn African dance and let her mind rest from harried days as a successful psychotherapist. At home in New York, as well as in the Mexican paradise, they began to grow apart. One chilly autumn eve in Manhattan after a vintage bottle of Chateauneuf du Pape, one of their last meaningful conversations went like this:

“You know, I have to be honest, and maybe it’s the wine talking but I feel the need to communicate: You have become so self absorbed, you and your paintings, your shows, your collectors and protégés that it’s difficult to be around you these days. Between your enlarged canvases and inflated ego, this apartment is feeling unbearably cramped - I can hardly breathe.”

“Really,” he said, admiring the Pope’s legs. “Well you and your incessant psychobabble of 27 years are numbing and beginning to fall on deaf ears. Frankly, I find sexual fantasies of mowing the lawn far more exciting than the actual thought of making love with you. Notice and ruminate over the words numbing, actual, babble and thought. All we’re missing here is a noun and a really good adjective and you just might have enough to outline a paper on tuning out and turning off - the necessity and reality of masturbation in an unhealthy marriage.”

“You’re a narcissist and an idiot,” she sniffed. “I’m surprised you can even grip your brush anymore. And besides, we don’t even have a lawn.”

“My point, exactly.”

Impressed by their banter, they laughed and shared a toast that as usual, they were in perfect equilibrium and harmony with their emotions and with that they agreed to the possibility of a marital separation and to open another bottle of Cotes du Rhone. This one, however, they didn’t need to let breathe. At that moment, everything in the room had done all the breathing together that ever needed to be done.

Now it was time to exhale – and what they didn’t know, and all the other future players didn’t know, was that the collected exhalation beginning with wine soaked breaths from a townhouse in Soho and rippling its way thousands of miles southward, sneaking across the border in a vaporous wave and over the heads of border guards and citizen vigilantes, would cause the desert winds to blow in all directions – a virtual tempest of dry, cutting heat, and as strong winds don’t mix well with Montezuma’s Revenge, the reek of unfaithful and interconnecting lives spread across the land like floods across barren desert soil.

And there is nothing quite as charming or mesmerizing as an ethereal village on a hill, built on smooth crystalline layers that behind the scenes, is a virtual caldron of bubbling adios that in the dead of night, begins to snake its way through the antiquated gutters of a seemingly idyllic 16^th century town and starts to pool and spat on warm door steps.

The Married New Yorker, the Divorced French Woman with Three Children and Lips of Claret

Their last trip together to this mystical Mexican village is where he met her. She was French as only a French woman can be, and had lips as plump and as deliciously scarlet as the French clarets that touched his palate and ran rivers through his veins each night.

She had lived in the village for many years and had three small children from a past husband, two boys and a girl. His were grown now and he had been glad, but suddenly the idea of young children seemed tantalizing. Or maybe it had nothing to do with offspring so much as they were tiny extensions of this full bodied femme fatale and anything that could have sprung from her loins had to be blessed – much like the case of vintage burgundy he longed to own but was always just out of his grasp.

But I’m jumping ahead of myself. The French-wine-loving New Yorker and the provocative woman from St. Remy, a place where he once painted beneath the white light of the Provencal sun and felt only the benign beginnings of the Mistral, met along the cobbles when the spirits intervened. And even though he was still married he forgot this part of his past and present, and without his brain’s approval, his body swung into action, full tilt boogie right there on the street, on those ancient, uneven and holy cobbles where balance is off at the best of times, but when you’re suddenly hobbled by the tipping weight of an unexpected appendage, not only did he have to steady himself inside a door jam, but he no longer wished to mow lawns or whack weeds, and she no longer wished to drink alone.

And thus, the winds of change began to howl. And these winds, this evil tempest brewing south of the border in a high mountain village in Colonial Mexico, would make the infamous Provencal Mistral feel like a gentle fucking breeze.

In a Wine Glass, a Doggy Bag, a Warm Tortilla, or a Nutshell

So the tempestuous affair ensued for a few glorious sweat and wine-soaked weeks. It ended only because he and his wife had to return to New York. But, he couldn’t shake loose those full bodied lips that tasted of vine-ripened currents, pan-fried huckleberries and a hint of freshly dug truffles; and his wife, too, had seen a vision, much like the Shroud of Turin, in the movements of one impossibly lithe and limber dance instructor from Burkina Faso and now found it hard to concentrate while operating heavy machinery.

Soon after they split, and he made plans to move to the magical mountain village where in his romantic, artistic broad-stroked-brush-of-happily-ever-after-sunshine-yellow, he and the French woman from St. Remy and her three precious children would live happily ever after. He was, in fact, in love with her.

But before he could get there, and he could only move so fast, after all, he had a life in New York and things to tend to and paths to clear before moving south of the border, she found another. Someone who promised her the heavens and she married him, lock, stock and wine barrel on a night of full moon, La Loca Luna, where the hundreds of unwanted street dogs howled in unison and deposited their ample wedding gifts throughout the neighborhood.

The French Woman, Her New Husband, More Kids than a Barrel of Monkeys, and How the Wind Began to Change

The woman’s new husband was divorced. He was a Canadian living in Mexico. His ex-wife and his four teenage sons lived in Toronto. Not wanting to be absent from his children in the hinterlands, they agreed to a rather unconventional living arrangement: He would live half the year in Mexico with his new French wife and her three young children, the other half in Toronto where he could be near his frigid, hormonal offspring.

If the New Yorker thought that his angst was fleeting and all was coming up roses now that his path was cleared and his lawn forever mown, he was sorely mistaken. He stepped off the plane into that intoxicating, high altitude Mexican heat and drove toward his new village home where he hoped to hold the hand of his claret-lipped lover so she would never again trip on those dangerous, crap-covered cobbles.

But when he heard she had wed, he fell into a deep depression: A darkness that changed his mood and paintings and once vibrant color scheme. His paintings now were not of colors that bloomed and propagated in such a warm paradise, but of tough luck and hard, rigid lines of black, somber shades of violet and cobalt. He swore he would never buy another tube of Crimson Yellow and if forced, perhaps only by water boarding, to use some tone of that hideous, hopeful color, would only agree to Burnt Ochre. But even that was too optimistic. And in that mindset, water boarding actually sounded preferable to facing the lying tints of hope.

Yet somehow they remained friends, but his heart could never fully separate from her, it was as if he was tethered to this woman, heart and soul, and he never gave up hope, even years later, that someday she would leave her husband and they would live the life he had always dreamed of. For his own peace of mind he called himself single, even thought he felt happy once again and ready to move on, accepting the platonic friendship as better than nothing. But everyone knows that being friends following being lovers is bullshit, and this is where even more of it hit the fan.

The Documentary Filmmaker from Chicago Bumps into Blue Artist on Cobbled Streets While Scraping Dog Dung from her Dansko Clogs

She was there to film a documentary for her local PBS station about the street dogs. She was maneuvering her way across the cobbles while fumbling with a heavy camera bag, a small boom, a water bottle, a bag of kibble, and a packet of warm tortillas that she bought from an old woman on the street even though she didn’t want them and was already late for the shoot.

He had just bought a bottle of Rosé from the Loire and was eager to sit on the terrace, alone. Looking down to scrape her clog, she ran head on and into him, and he barely held onto his sunset in a bottle, and her boom landed smack between his legs with a rather unexpected jolt, and he wasn’t sure if he was permanently maimed or had been born again, because when he looked up from his boomed crotch, he saw the Virgin of Guadalupe tiled on the wall next to him, and in front, an angel with a bag of kibble. And again, more worlds collided causing yet another shift in the prevailing waft.

They connected and commiserated about the unfairness of life, thus becoming fast friends. She listened to his woes about his lost love. She told him secrets about her love starved marriage and years of her husband’s infidelity while she gave birth to their five children. She shot her footage of Dogs Gone Wild and flew home to The Windy City. She divorced. Little did she know just how temperate these small blows would come to feel.

She flew back. They made love. She fell in love, he could not. But still, she dreamed of a future with the blue New Yorker. But his heart was still in France, right there in Mexico. Another year came and went, nothing much changed, and the smell was so familiar that everyone seemed to either not notice or had gotten used to the subtle stench.

The Windy City woman continued to come and go and they maintained some form of a relationship even though he couldn’t fully open to her. And for half the year and nearly every afternoon, he still saw his true love for a late déjeuner. The five of them would sit around the kitchen table for an hour and enjoy a large family style meal usually of roast chicken and garlic, a wedge of Manchego and tortillas for the kids, Brie and baguette for her, slices of ripe avocado and mango. A bottle of wine. He would then walk home, half of his heart on his sleeve, the other half left on the kitchen table alongside the leftover chicken bones and bread crumbs. She would call her husband in Toronto.

The lover in Chicago finished her film about the street dogs of Mexico and dreamed of the day when he would finally be there for her – his full corazón, untethered. She too, never gave up hope. And so everyone kept hoping – for something different – so out of sync it would make a dubbed Japanese horror film look and sound perfectly simpático. As if everyone’s lips were moving in time with their words, but everyone spoke a different language and no one understood the other and they so wished they knew sign language because at this point, communication was left to the dogs.

The English Professor from Dartmouth who came to the Village of Magic with Cold Hands and Warm Heart, a Bullfighter, and the New Yorker from Blue to Red to Purple

A widow, she had survived her husband’s painful and drawn out death from colon cancer, and a subsequent relationship with a certified sociopath, and now a few years later, did a solo journey to this mountainous village to bask in its healing powers, escape the wrath of winter, and to finish her book, Your Intestines and You: The Power of Colonics and How There Can be a Silver Lining for Any and All Intestinal Wall.

They met at the reception for his latest art show. The space was cramped, far too small for the tightly clustered knots of overly dressed people clad in magnificently bulbous stone baubles, the sea of wineglasses, and the massive canvases that seemed to suck the very life out of the ancient interior, tossing out and onto the cobbles the resident, and now, pissed off spirits.

She snaked her way through and collected her glass of inferior red wine and wondered how anyone could create such haunting paintings while surrounded by perennial sunshine and vibrant explosions of color. She felt it hard to catch her breath, suffocated by the looming daggers of gray and violet, shards and slashes of cobalt, and one particularly bleak canvas that took up an entire wall that was nothing more than solid black and nearly indiscernible to the naked eye, a tiny red tear stain, or was it a drop of blood, in the bottom right hand corner.

Just then, a diminutive woman wearing a turquoise pinky ring the size of a golf ball, bumped into her and jammed the weapon into her ribcage, and it smarted, and that coupled with the gut wrenching death blow of paintings by such a disturbed mind, made her want to suck down a rather enormous pitcher of mango margaritas.

Fumbling her way toward the door she bumped into what had to be the devil himself clad head to toe in black, spilling her wine across his sleeve. Before words formed, their eyes locked and the blue New Yorker whose canvases depicted a life without meaning, and the English professor from Dartmouth who knew colons inside and out, felt that destiny had intervened, but to what length and end, only the irritated spirits knew for sure.

She fled onto the uneven streets and tripped her way through a group of inebriated tourists singing La Negra Noche alongside less than impressed Mariachis, disappearing into a swirl of darkness, a handful of leg humping street dogs hunkering close behind. He stood in the gallery, his half heart pumping so wildly for the first time in years that he deliberately splashed his glass of wine across the remaining dry sleeve, dousing the throbbing organ in attempts to calm down the very madness of its beating.

For the next few days and unexpectedly, their paths would cross. They’d wave or yell “hola!” from opposite sides of the street until they could no longer bear it and agreed to meet on the same side of the cobbles. But the attraction was so powerful, so palpable, they could barely articulate. “I’m unavailable,” he blurted before they managed hello. “I have the overwhelming urge to kiss you but I warn you now, you might very well want to keep your lips to yourself or on the edge of your wineglass or wherever else you may want to put them. My heart is not free – it’s trapped with another and so I cannot fully be there for you.”

To say the Dartmouth professor was puzzled would have been an understatement. This was the first time they had been in close proximity to one another since the art opening, and here they were on the cobbles having no history of previous conversation, and she wasn’t holding a wineglass and they hadn’t yet exchanged names and so this ominous, if not psychopathic, verbal outing made her shoes feel funny as if she were standing in a warm puddle of something unpleasantly familiar. Granted, his paintings were dark and foreboding, but this personality glitch and the fact that he was hermetically sealed in Mars Black beneath the searing Mexican sun, smacked of borderline whack job.

But she ignored his warnings and he only listened to half a heart, and they took turns locking their lips not only on their wineglasses but each other, although their guts told them they were making a grave mistake, much like the initial moments following eating fish tacos from a street vendor, but the chemical attraction was far too great for their combined intellects, and the fireworks of pheromones became the only language they understood and thus the cloud got thicker and thicker and God forbid anyone light a match.

Meanwhile, a bullfighter clad in full matador costume and swaggering in his usual bravado slipped into the corner tienda for a bag of pork rinds.

She was buying six bottles of water, one for herself and the others for her sunstroked children. Suddenly, her red faced five-pack began to jump up and down on the hard tiled floor shouting at the tops of their lungs, “Look mom, a real live bullfighter!” She collected her change and looked up and into the flat out dumbest, most exquisitely handsome face she had ever seen. He flashed a movie star smile of straight and gleaming pearly whites, simultaneously winking and as if in slow motion, parted his beautifully positioned, moist plump lips and said, “Olé!” as if it were covered in chocolate.

Normally such a despicable display would make her respond in a very straightforward manner such as “you’ve got to be kidding me,” or “fuck off cocksucker,” but she was fairly certain he wouldn’t catch her drift and before her brain clicked on and her eyes could focus on the unbelievable display of embroidery and sequins, the small vessel-like shape resting atop his head and the unnaturally tight fitting pants, her mouth fully disengaged from her body, floated into the middle of the tienda and hanging in mid air whispered, “Olé right back atcha!”

Her children giggled and clapped and screamed “Olé!” and ten tiny hands began to touch his outfit, pulling at his vest, tapping his sequins all the while squealing, “do you really kill bulls, mister?! Do you really kill bulls?! Look at his funny hat, mom! It’s shaped like a taco! Where’s your sword, anyway? Ma?” He didn’t seem to mind the attention.

She had discovered the unnaturally tight fitting pants.

Orange Cones, El Dandy, and a New Shrink in Town

It was the most exciting, mind-numbing sex either of them had had in a very long time. And yet, the professor from Dartmouth still seemed to manage conversation. The now not-so-blue New Yorker had always been with women who used far too many words, and while he was all for stimulating conversation and soul searching exploration, the professor took verbosity to a new art form. And though he toiled with what colors he would use to paint this exotic lovemaking verbiage, he knew he had never seen anything quite so quirky in a tube.

Thank God, he thought, their week had an abundance of carnal stimulation, but she managed, still, to incessantly chat during lovemaking, sometimes carrying on full blown conversation, often without response, yet she didn’t seem to notice. At the brink of orgasm, while others might moan or pant hoot, scream or yodel, she would often mumble, “flaxseeds are God’s gift to the colon,” or “how ‘bout them Red Sox?” This, he never fully understood but he was fairly certain she had no idea she was mouthing such drivel and he let it go as some bizarre form of climactic disengagement, lack of oxygen to the brain when her body swooned and her mind turned into one of her blender recipes for a colon cleansing smoothie. How the Sox fit in was a tad more baffling. He was smitten.

Meanwhile, the documentary filmmaker, realizing her affair with the blue New Yorker was on the skids, couldn’t seem to shake the vision of one glorious bullfighter and the way he sported his magnificent red muleta. This unsettled her, and for many reasons.

Granted, they didn’t understand a word each other said, but that was of no importance. The uncomfortable poking and prodding was what he did for a living – he was a slayer of bulls – and she, a lifelong, card carrying member of PETA. Yet the vision of his firmness in those ill-fitting pants and his cocoa covered “olé!” switched her brain off, and motorized her feet to glide down the cobbled street and stand in front of his casita, her hand clutching the brass knocker in the shape of a tiny bull’s head.

His bedroom walls were painted oxblood red, the bed linens, red silk. A black leather beanbag chair squatted in a corner. The walls were blank except for the wall behind the thick wooden headboard. Above the bed was a huge framed poster of one famous matador, El Dandy, a legend in Mexico, and an obvious stimulus check or love worship for one randy bullfighter.

Things, however, were not going at all well in this magical Mexican village. The English professor from Dartmouth and the not-so-blue New Yorker found themselves in a real pickle. She thought she may be falling in love. He was feeling twinges with only half a heart. But in truth, it was less than half; the larger half still lay beating on someone else’s kitchen table. And if nothing more he was brutally honest, and he quickly pointed out that a divided organ made it nearly impossible to fulfill any one woman. And she knew she could never fully trust a half-hearted endeavor and thus, the battle of broken and fragmented hearts and parts still tethered turned into shades of gray and violet and an abyss of cobalt, and the finality of their words pierced deep like a matadors sword ~ the coup de grace.

“Forget canvases!” she shouted. “Perhaps you should consider a performance piece instead. You, in the center of the gallery, roped off, and surrounded by orange cones, bound in yellow crime scene tape – a large X taped across your chest and reading Do Not Enter!”

With that, he told her that her issues were her issues and his issues were his issues and he refused to take responsibility for her issues when he had so many of his own issues and their issues were their issues – and with that, she kicked him out of her casita – barking at him as he walked the entire length of the ancient cobbled street. She stopped, finally, when he had turned the corner and she realized that she had surpassed her word count.

Just up the street, and oblivious to the dregs of intimacy that trailed along the cobbles, the therapist from New York moved the last of her boxes into the apartment she now shared with her lover from Burkina Faso.

Help! I’ve Fallen and I Can’t Get Up!

“I need to talk to someone,” the Windy City woman confided to her friend over cups of strong coffee. “I can’t get enough of him and yet we talk about nothing – it’s a twisted, sexual addiction with a man who speaks only gibberish and shouts “Olé!” at climax and murders bovine.

I have two weeks left here and I need help. If I look up and into the eyes of El Dandy one more time while I’m riding the bull, I’ll surely shove his sword into my own heart.”

The friend fumbled through her purse and produced a card. “I met this woman at my African dance class. She just moved here from New York. She’s living with the instructor from Burkina Faso. Set up a small office at their casita, doing a little counseling on the side. I hear she’s a rather good.”

The documentary filmmaker from the Windy City who once carried kibble and now walked bull-legged, took the card and made a mental note to call the therapist later that day.

“He’s broken my heart,” she whispered to a friend over healing herb tonics at a local café. “My stomach is in constant turmoil. I’m popping Pepto Bismol like Tic Tacs. Look, my tongue has turned black.”

With that she produced a tongue that mirrored the color and hopelessness of his canvases. “My colon feels like a briquette manufacturing plant. Not even my flaxseed smoothies are loosing things up. I think I need to talk to someone.”

Her friend fumbled through her purse and produced a card. “Odd, you’re the second person today to ask for a recommendation of a shrink. This woman is a therapist from New York, just moved here. She’s living with the African dance instructor from Burkina Faso. I hear she’s good, knows how to cut through the psychobabble. She’s taking new clients. Hmm, must be something in the water, or a shift in the breeze.”

The English Professor from Dartmouth with a fractured heart, a black canvas tongue and who no longer knew her colon inside and out, popped a Pepto Bismol and made a mental note to call later that day.

Everyone Loves a Parade

Up the ancient, steep and narrow streets, four shivering teens from Canada, their father, a French stepmother with lips of scarlet, and three young step-siblings who sprung from her loins, stepped onto the steaming cobbles to enjoy a leisurely stroll beneath a soothing Mexican sun in hopes of finally thawing the frigid four.

Having promised her five-pack a final afternoon of hot chocolate and churros, the Windy City woman ushered her children out the front door and toward the jardin. Meeting on the narrow sidewalk, the French-Canadian family bumped into the bull-legged filmmaker and her five children sporting tiny red capes and the party spilled into the middle of the street.

Just then the school bells chimed and 30 uniformed children jostled off of the curb, screaming and shouting, and sweeping up and into their wave of blue and white, all who dared walk in the center of the cobbles. The Dartmouth professor stepped out her front door to expose her fracture to the healing powers of the sun and was caught up in the tumble.

The therapist from New York and her lover from Burkina Faso, having just finished their African dance class and still moving to its rhythms took front and center of the impromptu parade, the dancer from Africa now leading the group in a swirl of limber movements and song that pierced the entire neighborhood.

The bullfighter, out for his daily fix of pork rinds, brought up the tail and shouted “Olé!” The school children sang Mexican songs at the tops of their lungs. The three French children sang songs from their mother’s beloved soil, the once frigid teens from Canada sang along with their siblings, the parents laughed, the dancer danced, and the bullfighter pranced.

A mariachi band resting in the shade of a stone hacienda joined the swell, strumming their guitars. An old woman selling tortillas moved along the parade route handing out warm snacks to singing school children. Street dogs and family dogs collected on rooftops and terraces and along the curbs and barked and howled and sang in tune.

Cars could no longer pass. Pedestrians, young and old, tall and small, became part of the pulsating parade. The ancient stone cobbles warmed and waved to a sea of tropical colors. There was deafening singing and laughing and everyone forgot where they were going and knew not where they were headed, but they knew they were all moving in the same direction.

Up on his terrace, the New Yorker opened a bottle of wine and stared at his blank canvas. He heard the laughter from a block away, the singing, the shouting, the dogs howling, and wondered what all the commotion was about. He glanced over at a single stem of a calla lily and noticed the soft, sensuous curve of the creamy white tip and the strong hopeful protuberance from its center. He saw the sunshine yellow of the pistil reaching skyward in nothing less than a leap of faith. He looked again at the blank canvas. He glanced down at his palate and the hopeless shades of grays and blacks and dark violet. And at that moment, after years of uncertainty, he realized it might just be time to make peace with Crimson Yellow.

~ The End ~

*Cannot be reprinted without consent of the author.

A native Californian, Jan Baumgartner is a writer and book editor dividing her time between surviving in Maine and living in Mexico. Her writings on Mexico are included in the book/literary journal, Lady Jane (San Francisco Bay Press, 2009). Her background includes scriptwriting, comedy writing for the No. California Emmy Awards, and travel writing for The New York Times. She has worked as a grant writer for the non-profit sector in the fields of academia, AIDS, and wildlife conservation for NGO's in the U.S. and Africa. Her articles and essays have appeared in numerous online and print publications including the NYT, Bangor Daily News, SCOOP New Zealand, Open.Salon, Wolf Moon Journal, Media for Freedom Nepal, and Banderas News in Mexico. In addition to working on a memoir about her husband's death from ALS and how travels in Africa became one of her greatest sources of inspiration, she writes for online sites/magazines based in San Miguel de Allende, MX.

San Miguel Copes with Media-Fueled Alarm, Not H1N1 Virus

Sat, 2 May 2009 21:05:54 -0400

Reported from San Miguel de Allende, State of Guanajuato, Mexico

Rumors, Speculation and Fear: San Miguel de Allende Copes with the Spread of Media-Fueled Alarm, Not H1N1 Flu Virus

For the last several days, I have watched the systematic shutting down of this otherwise tranquil city in the highlands of central Mexico. To date, there are no confirmed cases of the H1N1 virus in the entire state of Guanajuato. But you would never know that by the air of growing concern, masked faces, and government mandated closings that has this otherwise bustling town still, and eerily quiet.

Monday afternoon was the first sign that the fear and ripple effect of the closing down of one of the world’s most populated cities, Mexico City, had worked its way to San Miguel some 180 miles northwest of the country’s capital. The children’s playground at Parque Juarez was all but empty, void of the usual energy and laughter. Walking down Calle Nueva to Natura, the health food store where I do most of my shopping, I was shocked to see faces clad in masks along the cobbled street and on the busier stretch of Ancha San Antonio. Many of those on foot, bicycles, in cars, all wore pale green face masks on a day that was settling in on 90 degrees and while dry, felt heavy and stifling.

Inside Natura the refrigerators and shelves were uncharacteristically bare. A young woman and her son were buying a flat of farm fresh eggs. I overheard her telling another customer that the kids had been sent home earlier that morning, that by decree all schools in Mexico would be shut down until May 6. “You’re kidding,” I said, “why, when there hasn’t been a single confirmed case of flu in the state?” “I know,” she shrugged, “this media hype is getting ridiculous.” She went on to tell how friends had witnessed a near “mob scene” at a local pharmacy stripping shelves of hand sanitizers and demanding Tamiflu. “I think instead of hand sanitizers we should all drop to the ground and eat a little dirt.” She smirked. “That might be what keeps us healthy.” Her young son, in complete agreement, was grinning from ear to ear. I had to wonder if her comment wouldn’t come back to haunt her one day – not because she or her family would have contracted the flu, but she may have inadvertently given her son free reign to take daily dust baths.

I crossed the street to pick up a few additional groceries at Espinos market and was equally as surprised to see their personnel clad in the suffocating masks and donning plastic gloves. I found myself adding a few extra items to my basket not knowing if I returned in a day, perhaps two, if the shelves might be stripped as food stockpiling would become the task at hand for everyone worried about closings or a reduction or slowing down of deliveries and service.

Walking home in the dry and dusty late April heat, I remembered what a Mexican friend had told me last year. April and May are the dustiest, sultriest months of the year after many months of little to no rain, parched earth and desert winds. She said that many Mexicans and gringos living here tend to get sick during those two months, colds, flu, simply due to the dust and dirt – nothing more than the time of year.

I wondered then, would the paranoia already gripping the town only contribute to the panic and, if one got ill during the flu scare who might otherwise have their annual cold or flu, unnecessarily flock to doctors and hospitals fearful of H1N1?

Nearing my street of Terraplen I ran into a friend who threw air kisses. Later, at the corner tienda I saw another friend who gave me a hug and a kiss on the cheek. “What, no air kiss?” I smiled. “You’ve got to be kidding,” he said, “this whole flu thing is overblown, media-driven.” I tended to agree.

The next day, more and more venues were shutting down; the library, theaters, some bars and nightclubs, art classes, government agencies. I walked down Reloj Street and saw even more people donning masks, mainly Mexicans, a few gringos. The Mexicans in masks were mostly younger, perhaps 20’s and 30’s and more than likely due to the fact that those diagnosed in and around Mexico City were primarily younger adults. The usually bustling jardin or zocalo was nearly empty. An older gringo sat alone on a park bench wearing his mask. On a nearby bench a group of mariachis sat in the shade chatting, their instruments parked, no one to play for.

Late afternoon brought yet more news of how rapidly things were changing. Reported on a local online Civil List and posted by Ed Clancy, the U.S. Consular Agent for San Miguel de Allende, I received the following notice:

April 28, 2009Update on Flu Outbreak in Mexico – Mexico City Closes Most Public Establishments; State Department updates Travel Alert for Mexico

U.S. citizens traveling or residing in Mexico City should be aware that on Tuesday, April 28, 2009, the Mayor of Mexico City ordered the closure of all establishments where large numbers of the public gather until May 6, including restaurants, bars, discos, night clubs, cinemas, movie theaters, theaters, gyms, and convention centers.

The State Department believes it is important for all citizens to maintain readiness for all possibilities in case of an emergency. Because of potential disruptions in shopping patterns, the U.S. Embassy is advising its employees to consider stockpiling two-weeks of emergency supplies such as food, water, infant formula and medicines, as well as to verify the availability of cash or credit cards. U.S. citizens traveling or resident in Mexico should consider doing the same.

On Friday morning, San Miguel’s weekly English newspaper, Atencion, reported the latest:

As of April 28, all public activities within the municipality of Allende were restricted. Students of all ages were sent home April 27. Sports centers, museums, libraries, nightclubs and theaters have been requested to close. Churches, although recommended to close, continue to ring their bells. Celebrations for Labor Day on May 1 and the Santa Cruz on May 3 have been cancelled.

Restaurants and bars serving food are permitted to continue business as usual. According to Francisco Bautista Espinoza, Civic Protection’s assistant-in-training and public relations officer, supermarkets, pharmacies and banks will stay open but staff are following hygiene recommendations, such as wearing surgical masks and gloves as well as cleaning counters regularly with alcohol or chlorine. Restrictions apply even to private events. “Weddings, quinceañeras (15th birthday) parties—all must be suspended; Civic Protection is monitoring the city to ascertain the federal mandate is being obeyed,” he said.

The Civil List had its share of postings by concerned residents, some skeptical of the “scare” and its virulence, while others were operating on panic mode. Additional postings by restaurants and cafés were offering food para llevar (take out) and some delivery service for those afraid to dine in a public place.

The paranoia was spreading, far more quickly than any new or suspected cases of flu.

But later at Espinos I noticed a change. The employees were no longer wearing masks. “No masks today?” I asked, “No,” the cashier smiled waving her hand in front of her face, “mucho calor!” too hot, she said. The fear was wearing thin. No cases of H1N1 reported. The few days of concern and safeguards were taking a toll and the numbers weren’t adding up. More and more people, both Mexicans and gringos alike were asking “what is going on, how much of this is blown out of proportion? Was this flu really as deadly and as virulent as the media and government would have us believe?”

Initial reported cases of confirmed diagnoses and deaths within Mexico were revised. Instead of thousands confirmed ill from this new strain of flu, governments, health organizations and world media were now saying only 455 cases confirmed illnesses and 16 deaths attributed to H1N1, not 167 previously reported. In a county of 110 million people, these numbers were miniscule. Stats began to pop up and were discussed by those in town: 36,000 die each year in the U.S. during flu season from flu and complications – how and why was the world in a frenzy over the “outbreak” of H1N1?

When all is said and done there might be plenty of blame to go around. The last couple of day’s news sources are reporting that experts say this flu might very well “fizzle out” in the next two to three weeks. They say it is possible it may come back in the fall and winter and perhaps stronger, but as with previous reports, this is speculation. What isn’t speculation but sad fact is that it will take months, if not years, for the Mexican economy and its people to rebound from this nightmare.

According to a recent Reuters report: “With its tourism industry savaged, shoppers staying home and exports to the U.S. in steep decline, Mexico could find itself in the longest, deepest recession it has seen in years,” according to analysts.

Approximately 45% of Mexicans live in what is described as “moderate poverty.” Tourism in Mexico generates approximately $14 billion annually and in an economy already depressed and tourism negatively impacted due to the U.S. media reports about widespread drug violence within the country, the nation will fall into even greater despair. Mexico City’s Chamber of Commerce estimates that the city is experiencing a loss of approximately $58 million dollars each day since the outbreak, which doesn’t include escalating losses due to restaurant closures and lack of tourists.

We will never know how much of the fear-fueled media hype is responsible for the continued decline and economic depression in Mexico. More and more people are canceling business trips and vacations. I can’t help but feel that both sides of the political coin, the rightwing media voice that has long instilled the fear of “other,” Mexico, and the unsafe borders, the “wanton” violence, so blown out of proportion and oftentimes slim or slanted on facts, as well as the extremist leftwing reporting that blames this new strain on malevolent government forces, deliberate biochemical wars, big pharma and the likes – are all partially responsible for the world-wide paranoia that has systematically taken down a country I have come to love. A country where I live half of my life, feel safe, at home and for which I am grateful.

From my terrace last night, the city seemed eerily quiet. Was I imagining a lack of cars and music and voices usually profound in and around my neighborhood and the jardin, or was it silent due to people afraid to go out, opting to stay indoors or leave town altogether? For a moment I felt vulnerable, not because I felt I was in danger of contracting a flu that had yet to make its way anywhere near my adopted town of San Miguel de Allende, but more so due to the strange ambience and seemingly lack of life around me. Was fear itself, the prospect of panic in upcoming days contributing to my feelings of vulnerability – the fear of the unknown - the fear of fear?

Looking out across the rooftops and marveling at the brilliant lights of the Parroquia Church, Las Monjas and Bellas Artes, I knew I’d be okay. But the ache in my gut was in the knowing that this town, this country would be suffering financial hardship for years down the road. Families, who had little, would have less. Children would go to bed hungry. And at the end of the day, a flu strain that just might not have the wherewithal or virulence that the world was warned of won’t be the only player in what helped further cripple a country, a people, a culture.

For my money, much of the U.S. entertainment media that calls itself news but thrives on sensationalism and scare tactics, no longer reliable, factual or accountable for their actions and lacking in journalistic integrity, will be greatly responsible for the suffering it has wreaked on its neighbor.

H1N1 was the newest infotainment news. Octomom and her many offspring no longer had enough legs, it was time for a summer hit, an action-packed thriller, and a new flu strain that could wipe out millions worldwide had blockbuster written all over it.