I order an omelet, toast, and black coffee.
The Cafe de Arte is on a side street in the Historical District and traffic is thin this Sunday morning around seven.
There is a bookcase near a corner of the dining area where browsers find books to go with their eggs. Displayed art, done by local folks, portray agrarian scenes and stylized portraits of life in Nicaragua. A Trip Adviser sticker on a merchandising case tells me I am not the first to patronize this eatery.
A couple enter after I have been here about ten minutes, and then another older gentleman shuffles in and takes a chair with a view out the front door.
In this place where horse drawn carriages clatter on the streets outside, couples do what they normally like to do. The old gentleman looks at his phone and connects to wifi. He has seen changes in his lifetime and one of the worst is not being able to walk without fear of falling.
Home bases and food are two things I settle on first in a new place. If I have a good home base and have a good place to eat, I am most of the way to my nirvana.
My Denver omelet in Granada, it turns out,tastes the same in Nicaragua as it does in Denver.
We return our golf cart.
The cart jockey is a tiny man wearing shorts, tennis shoes with big socks, a blue faded ball cap. There are four carts ahead of ours that he has to clean, toss trash, wipe down seats, check gas, and inspect. We use golf carts because they speed up our play and that, in theory, helps us score better.
At my feet is a small key with a number 3 on it. Barely visible, I pick it up, bend it, watch it spring back to its original position. It isn’t a real golf cart key because they are metal and a different shape.
I ask the little Irishman with blond hair pushing out from under the sides of his ball cap what my found key goes to?
He looks a moment while he wipes down a cart seat.
” That’s the key to the box of Forgotten Dreams. ”
There are many keys in this world. Keys to lock boxes, keys to offices and homes, keys to cars, keys to your heart.
All the dreams in the world aren’t much good if you forget where you put them.
As we head back to the car, I hear him whistling ” Danny Boy. ”
I believe he has a box full of dreams under his bed that he opens frequently.
This Padre Island surf isn’t the best but the wind here is usually strong and steady.
Kite surfers combine kites and surfboards and hitch themselves to the wind for free rides, skimming the top of the surf like stones thrown across the top of a lake’s surface.
Wearing wet suits, their rides today last as long as this wind lasts, and, in South Padre Island, the wind is no hundred pound weakling.
An older surfer with a red kite laments that there ” isn’t enough wind ” as he holds a finger up to test which direction it is coming into the beach.
Regardless of misgivings , he still gets his kite aloft, follows it into the surf, lays back, and lets his kite pull him upright. It appears, as I watch him, that he is moving quick, parallel to the beach, his kite blasted by the breezes
Letting nature pull you for a free ride is hard to beat.
Sharing the water with others who love what you love is also fun. There are several of these kite surfers out there, taking care not to run into each other.
Last time I looked, we live and play in a paradise.
Early, gold hunters show up with wading boots, windbreakers, wide brimmed caps, sunglasses, their gold detectors dipped into frothy water.
The sky, water, and beach run together like a tightly edited film. Everything in this landscape moves but seems to stand still. Clouds blow past, waves roll in, seagulls take flight. A raven stops on a fence. Shell seekers prowl and the gold hunters are left alone with their devices.
They wear headphones that keep their ears listening for upticks, bleeps of sound, excited electronics. All movement cancels itself out, like white noise on a television. If you are still and look straight ahead, all you hear is the wind and all you see is the horizon – frozen in the moment.
Spanish galleons crossed these waters in the sixteen and seventeenth centuries taking gold from the America’s back to Europe. For as much as was lost at sea, many times more got safely back to vaults and banks and the King’s Treasury.The gold funded wars, New World exploration, luxurious court lifestyles, foreign affairs, palaces. Merchants became rich, pirates created legends, and their names were stolen by professional football teams.
While our prospectors move methodically, a middle aged surfer adjusts his gear and prepares for another trip out.
” Not very big waves, ” I suggest.
” They are big enough,” he smiles, ” I am a beginner. ”
Beginning anything new in your fifties is something to write about. This much older than a teen shows me his black wet suit that helps insulate him from the cold Gulf of Mexico water.
Who is to say who is having more fun – those hunting gold, swimming, or riding waves on a surfboard?
It is a gorgeous day where land meets sea, whether you are on sand or in the water.
Old dogs are always learning new tricks.
Isla Blanca Park, at the south end of South Padre Island, is full of recreational vehicles that are more homes than campers.
Snowbirds come down here to the tip of Texas for months, unfold carpets in front of their rigs, set up lawn chairs, bring out plants and yard ornaments, and congregate with friends to talk about fishing, the direction the country is going, kids, and the past more than the future. The fifth wheels, motor homes, trailers are mostly new with multiple slide outs that gleam in the sun. On the drive down many acquire a coat of road mud, grime, and fallout from hundreds of miles traveling down from Canada, Minnesota, Illinois, Michigan.
This morning men clean one of our neighborhood RV’s from top to bottom. After the wash, they hand wax and polish till this unit looks like it did when it came off its showroom floor.
Dave, who brought his Air stream trailer, contracts them to wash and wax his truck and trailer for a hundred and thirty dollars using a special Air stream wax. Three Mexican contractors finish it in half a day.
Like at the Happy Trails Resort in Surprise, vacationers are not concerned with the nationality of the men or their wives or girlfriends doing the job. They are here, ready to work, have tools and experience, and turn out service that gets them referred all the way down the street.
RV’s, like boats, take hands on attention.
Being retired comes with responsibilities to do as little as you can for as cheap as you can get someone else to do it.
People love dogs.
Dogs behave as we humans should behave. They are loyal, patient, love unconditionally, and show affection.
Many retirees who pull their Rv’s to the Isla Blanca Park in South Padre Island, Texas do so because they don’t want to leave their dogs home with strangers or alone in a kennel with other dogs where they pick up a lot of bad habits. It makes economic and moral sense to take your dogs on vacation with you because dogs are family from the first day they adopt you.
This morning two adults walk two dogs. Even though leashes bind animals to their masters, one senses the leashes could be released, the dogs would scamper, but ultimately return to their masters sides where they belong.
This morning humans wouldn’t think about letting their best friends run away from their side.There is a $2000 fine if dogs are found running loose and the beach is patrolled by uniformed men in official trucks.
People love dogs more than money, but not by much.
There are dining opportunities available this morning.
This girl is carrying, on her head, confections to sell in front of the New Cathedral to afternoon crowds the day after New Year.
The mounds of whipped cream with ice cream cones stuck in the top, look like curlers and wiggle as she walks.
This treat doesn’t melt, tastes good hours after it is made, and doesn’t cost much for consumers- little kids and old timers.
By the end of afternoon the mounds of treats will be more than half gone.
It will be as if a giant reaches down, with his right forefinger, and scoops up a sample, gives an appreciative nod, and rumbles off towards the mountains for an afternoon nap.
This affair starts early.
Usually, people wait till dark to do their exorcisms, but this bunch has already laid their body in the street in front of a business and are stuffing papers down its pants.
In a world of camera phones, nothing goes un-noticed and un-reported. These participants don’t care if people are watching. It is probable this is a replica of their boss and they are, as a group, telling him what they think of him. It takes a few matches before smoke comes with fire close behind.
There is something eerie about seeing a body set on fire, even if It is a make believe body.It calls up images from the Mid East where real people are set on fire, heads cut off, and people blow each other up with explosives..
This bloodletting will be over tonight and tomorrow shops will close, streets and sidewalks will be hosed down, and people will spend time with family.
Exorcisms are best finished quickly, and remembered for a long long time.
Ecuador doesn’t celebrate Halloween but they have New Year’s Eve to take Halloween’s place.
Today there are bad spirits about.
They are atop cars, seated in chairs in retail stores, looking down from balconies, slumped on curbs and grouped near churches. Some are fully dressed and have ears and noses and eyes and mouths. Others are misformed aberrations that somehow have survived termination. The tradition is to stuff them with messages, good and bad, light them on fire in the street, then jump over them to make your wishes come true.
The effigies have been appearing early. In a spirit place like Cuenca, with churches and crosses in every part of town, one has to accept that there are Demons as well as Angels.
Getting rid of bad has good consequences.
In a place where there were only five murders last year, there is still a reservoir of pent up anger that has to be released.
We need our rituals and traditions.
Certain things in our certain world are unpleasantly uncertain.
This exhibit is in a Cuenca city government supported gallery, Salon del Pueblo, next to the Don Colon Restaurant, across from the New Cathedral.
The artist is a teacher of art locally. He was born in Cuenca. His art is stark and grotesque but his drawing technique is exquisite.
Here are the artist’s own words :
” The grotesque in my imagery is essential. I use it to unveil the present time situation where reality is shaped by deformation. I portray a dominant culture that imposes its perspectives in order to maintain its power. Its main instrument is media because it easily spreads ideas about the ‘others.’ Television is a good example to understand how economic and political powers try to shape our lives. They sell and impose on people their goals and dreams; they deceive us to defend their economic interest. Those ideals are false, illusion,and, therefore, there is an effect of distortion. Mass media consumers are filled with ready to consume ideas presented in spectacle formats…… The grotesque in the Spanish culture is also known as ” esperpento”, an aesthetic term coined by the writer Ramon del Valle-Inclan. He used it to describe his time as obscure and ruled by the power of the monarchy and the Catholic Church in Spain…… In my view, the idea of ” esperpento” is still a means to criticize power. I use it to understand a society where consumerism and entertainment shape the way people see their future, themselves, and others. To see life through a TV screen is to see it, distorted….. ”
” To sum up, the grotesque in my work is the way to represent the journey in a contradictory system that sells dreams for a very high price. ”
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