Posted by pancho from customer-148-233-71-33.uninet.net.mx (148.233.71.33) on Thursday, February 27, 2003 at 7:05PM :
It´s lovely down here this time of year. Get up at the crack of dawn to brew coffee, squeeze fresh OJ and type. Shorts and sandals from sun up to sun down. Sky is clear and pristine....the sun pours over the valley like cream. The horses in the field below get playfull, nipping and rearing, waiting for the alfalfa. Cactus lights up in the early morning glow. All sorts of bright birds...red and orange and achingly yellow yellow...homely sparrows too. A wild cat with a lopped off tail has adopted us...warily trying to make friends with the seven others we brought with us.
Kids get up when they feel like it...come in for breakfast. The nice thing about homes down here is that you live outdoors. The children´s rooms open onto a patio filled with bougenvellia, roses, oregano, pepper trees, a dwarf orange. several other kinds of flowers and plants I never heard of.
After breakfast I go off to the studio, about twenty yards away, we´ve got five acres fenced in and all of Mexico outside...another in a long line of glorified sheds and barns I´ve had for studios, starting with the back of my pick-up truck in New York. This one is open to the air and sun..has a Spanish tile roof the sunlight leaks in through. As the day warms up one by one the three dogs come in and do what all dogs in Mexico do...they lay down and sleep...snoring lightly. I work on.
In the late afternoon I drive two of them in for classes...one is taking Tae Kwan Do, the other Flamenco and Tango classes. That´s what I´m doing in town now...waiting. We don´t have "school" in any regular fashion. Some mornings after breakfast we play poker...sometimes I give them math problems on the chalk board...mostly they´re on their own. We talk a lot at all odd hours about anything that interests them, or me or their mother. I´m not worried...all schools do is kill spirit...not a one of them enhances it. Those who do well do it in spite of formal education, not because of it. Like the world needs another accountant or doctor. Should they want to they can always attend college...why fart around with the lower grades...all they´re doing is processing people...like cheese...bland, pale things formed between plastic sheets. Screw it...
We usually get a movie a day to watch...if it´s been sunny and we have enough juice stored in the batteries. The two younger ones take the Bronco out for drives...no one minds around here about a driving license...dirt roads anyway, far from any highway or serious traffic. Down the road a ways there´s a swimming pool and hot springs...nicely tended grounds, palm trees and peace and quiet...they drive there once a week for the afternoon. And of course the horses.
Haven´t got any insurance...no medical or dental...no savings, no retirement. What I can make is in my hands...but we have time...that most precious thing. Just to be able to watch them grow from morning to night, day in day out. Wouldn´t trade it for anything.
Now if I can just get over the broken back the Assyrian leeders tried to give me...we´ll be fine.
-- pancho
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