After Kristina and I finished our meal in our favorite vegetarian restaurant, we had to order this chocolate cake with avocado and cocoa frosting. It came with a shot of yellow milk, which was milk with turmeric. Who could resist sampling this unique combination? I generously let Kristina drink all of the milk!!!!
For Brian’s Last of the Card Challenge
These stories I am about to tell are true stories (or so I have been told) from San Juan Cosala, the small Mexican pueblo where I have lived for 21 years. Those foreigners who live in the village would say, perhaps, that I am not really a part of it, and maybe it is true, for in truth I live on the mountain a half mile or more above the town, and perhaps that is why, although I am told they are stories everyone knows, I heard this one only today. Thanks, Kristina, for adding to the rich collection of stories of the pueblo that I have heard over the years. One was. the story of the death of the town vet that I told you two days ago. Now, I am going to tell you more—one a day—until I run out of them or people stop telling me new ones.
The Caguama*
“I’d sell my soul for a caguama!” People heard her utter the pledge as she stood in the street that they had seen her traverse so many times in search of someone who would provide her with her compulsion: beer, or if she was lucky, perhaps tequila. Those who were standing near her then saw her look down, and there at her feet was a 20 peso bill-—enough at that time long ago to buy the quart bottle of beer she had just said she desired.
So she bought the bottle of beer she had wished for and, unable to wait to drink it in the privacy of her own home, she sat on a bench near the store where she bought it to drink it. But from that time on, or so the often-repeated story goes, she wandered the streets talking to herself, and she was never the same. It was as though she had lost some part of herself. A sad story, but then that was the bargain she had made.”
*The Spanish word for a loggerhead sea turtle–caguama–is also Mexican slang for a 32 ounce bottle of beer, the connection being, presumably, that the farther down the bottle one drinks, the more it comes to resemble its aquatic namesake.
Tomorrow: “The Time that Death Came to San Juan Cosala.”
And to go with this new image, more rocks, and an old story:
After my husband Bob died and I moved to Mexico, I started finding hearts everywhere on the long walks I took every morning. The first one was on the side of a cow, the other on the forehead of a calf. I found plastic hearts and the imprints of hearts on shoe bottom impressions pressed in the sand. Then I began to find heart-shaped rocks. It was uncanny. Messages, perhaps, or perhaps just my increased consciousness of anything that could be a sign. This continued for some time, but as my initial crushing grief lifted, so did my insistence that these were messages.
Then, at least a year after his death, on a driving trip enroute to the states, I returned to one of our favorite places—Bahia de Los Angeles in Baja California. As I stood tossing rocks into the ocean, I suddenly felt my wedding ring slip off and go flying into the water. Stupid, stupid! I berated myself, and knowing it was futile, I nonetheless went wading into the surf that was spreading out on the sand, then deeper into the water to where I imagined the ring had disappeared.
What were the chances? I searched for five minutes, then ten, and I was about to give up when a retreating wave wiped the ripples out of the surface of the water and there below I saw my heavy gold ring set in diamonds and lapis lazuli. As I scooped it up, a rock that lay buried in the sand beneath it came up in my hand as well, and after slipping the ring onto my finger again, I was about to toss the rock back into the water, when I happened to glance down at it and saw that it was in the perfect shape of a heart!
For Cee’s FOTD
Mexican Petunia–my fast-spreading little garden pest! Here covering the bushes by my pool.
Still reading through journals of my past . Here is something I wrote. Since there is no attribution, I believe the words are my own:
“To be ourselves, we must complete ourselves.”
I think this is something I’ve always felt, even when I was too young to know this is what I was feeling. Even at this stage of life, I feel like I’m not finished becoming me, and if incarnation is a fact, perhaps this continues into the next life. I hope so, because then there is hope for the whole world, including some of its largest villains. Here is another quote from the same page–one in which I was doing a lot of philosophizing.
Those who are governed by reason desire nothing for themselves which they do not also desire for the rest of mankind.
Next to it, I scribbled in pencil, “Baruch Spinoza,” which makes me think that either the quote was his or something I wrote after reading something he had written. I looked it up and it is, indeed a short version of what he had written.
And, one last intriguing quote, unattributed, which I’d like to have your comments on:
Conscience is not innate, but acquired, and varies with geography.
Although I live up on the mountain above the small town of San Juan Cosala, on Lake Chapala in Mexico, Yolanda, my housekeeper, is my information line to happenings in the pueblo. Lately, I’ve been going through a lifetime of journals–thoughts scribbled down in bound books small enough to carry in my pocket or purse, and this is what I discovered today, told to me by Yolanda four years ago :
“The night the veterinarian in the pueblo died, the dogs, they all howled, and the cats scratched in the dirt and on the wooden door frames with their claws—every cat and every dog in town—two days ago when his car crashed and he died.”
For Linda Hill’s “One-LIner Wednesday.” Second photo of dog by Justinas Teselis on Unsplash. All other photos by me.
I am adding this story to my group of tales about San Juan Cosala told to me by various people. I am titling this group of stories told by word of mouth, “Everybody Knows”
When I did my 24 Hours blog, I forgot to post my very favorite photo, which was the one that made me decide to post favorite (and one worse) photos of that 24 hours! Here it is, photographed, I believe, in the parking lot of the International School. Two perfect heart rocks, joined side-by-side forever.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 