Today we make our next move. From Casa to Casita. I love being able to use “ita” for just about everything;, perro/perrito, mesa/mesita. Not grande/pequeño…more subtle. A simple exchange of the larger version for the smaller version. Steve and I always cycle back to the smaller version. And somehow that move creates a larger experience. Go figure!
So here we go again. Picking up roots and moving from what now feels like home. This Casa is even named Casa de Los Abuelos (house of the grandparents) and headed for Chata y Chuchito’s GuestRoom. We’re trading our 3-bedroom house in a Guadelejara Weekend neighborhood for a one-room walk-up in the heart of town. Drifting again. Not really sure how and where we will be. Exciting, right? Ready to trade Yes & No for a whole lot of Maybe. I enjoy this aspect of transition. I truly love the other-worldly!
These are both very Ajijic-Mexican barrios. And, they are very different.
One is mountainside. One is lakeside.
One is spacious and tranquil. Wide streets lined with majestic trees. Park benches among beautiful shrubs. Birdsongs
The other has narrow cobblestone streets alive with roosters, horses, music and small tiendas on every block. Dogs nap on the sidewalks. Church bells.
One is near the bike path. The other is near the malecon. I could go on….
One is green and lush with groundskeepers who perfect their art daily. The other finds colorful murals next to barbed-wire fences and broken down cars. You see many drab walls and formidable gates that seem lifeless and unfriendly. But then the gate opens a bit to reveal the most amazing garden and terraces with fountains.
On my daily walkabouts there is always the hint of surprises to be revealed. Aromas or a tiny patch of color draws my attention and if I stop for just a moment I find something that seemed hidden. Some small discovery.
As I write I hear the gentle chip, chip, chip of the stone mason creating a new wall. Singing as he works. I feel the breeze from the window and feel like a bird perched in the tree just beyond my chair. I smell the tortillas. The church bells tell me that soon I will hear children laughing.
Since we spent months together in our teardrop camper we can joke about our downsizing from casa to casita. In truth, this isn’t actually a casita. Just one room. But really, it does seem that the windows on a new world are flung wide open. Lovely.
I truly appreciate these two barrios. Grateful for the opportunity to gain glimpses into different worlds. And realize how much I have to learn.
HUMAN FOLLY From Steve
150 years ago people were desperate to find a shortcut from the East Coast to the Gold Fields of California. 40 years earlier. Ferdinand de Lesseps a Frenchman had led a team of thousands to construct the Suez Canal opening the Far East to Europe. It was a financial boon for France, and made.De Lesseps a national hero.
De lessups was one in a million with an easy warmth,charisma,athleticism, and drive to manifest in this new age of machinery. He brought honor and zillions of dollars to France.
A few years later he began to feel his manifest destiny was to do the same in Central America. To unite the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
Believing in his own infallibility, his ability to lead, he led the charge to build a canal across the isthmus of Panama, a much more daunting project: across mountains, roaring, rivers, over unstable soils , and untreatable diseases. He ignored the advice of engineers and experienced travelers knowledgeable about this jungle area in Central America. Instead, he went with his hunch that the same method used in the deserts of Suez would work in the jungles of panama. He believed that his will power and the advent of new technologies would triumph up over, poisonous, snakes, jaguars, malaria, yellow fever, high mountains,Mudslides and raging rivers. Seven years later he was defeated.Mother nature had its way. In his quest, his charismatic appeal for funds encourage millions of Frenchman to invest their life savings in his company.
In todays dollars billions of dollars were wasted, small family investors lost everything, more than 25,000 people lost their lives to disease.
His ability to articulate a dream of greatness and sacrifice hoodwinked his own soul and an entire nation. When it was obvious in the first year or two that the project was troubled, he paid off the media not to write anything negative about the project.
Ferdinand de Lesseps really wasn’t a bad man. He had no interest in money or profit. His drive for national pride and to be heroic turned into ambition and blinded him.
He was unable to listen to those that disagreed with him, specifically almost all the engineers that looked at the project.
On a smaller scale every day we tangle with our own egos. Every day is the challenge not to take the easy way of repeating the past, every day is the opportunity to live in integrity, to do no harm, to live peacefully, and contentedly, to be well.
Of course human folly is plentiful in todays world. The Tao imagines the world perfect in all its imperfections,human good, human evil, and unconsciousness. The universe is forever out of our control.
Steve & Debbie’s Grand Adventure 