Twelve years, and it still is a wonder to me how young and old seem to float over the adoquins (paving stones), like fairies they move—seldom, if ever, tripping—while I, el gringo, pick out each footfall, as if I am climbing the face of Mount Washington.

When the wind blows from the north, el Norté, the sky darkness, a mass of gray clouds gathers overhead, and you hunker down, await the change, as a chill develops, and sometimes, especially if it is in the ‘rainy season’ drops descend (you can count them at times): bells clang out from the many churches in town, and around five after a real heat spell, you wait for the precious rain to stop.

Sitting at the Jardin or Zócalo, the main square in all Mexican towns, looking at the Parroquia—this unusual Gothic façade—the faithful, and there are many of these, on the sound of the bells, move toward the open Parroquia doors. Brown arms of Indian heritage, lightened by Spanish blood brought from the conquest days of Cortez and generations of northern Europeans, clutch their children tightly in their arms, but always with great affection.

I’m a visitor here in San Miguel el Viejo, known as San Miguel de Allende. Trying as best I can to ‘learn to walk on cobble-stones’. As an artist I am given many privileges, and these require that I be responsible and thoughtful of these gifts. I am given the privilege of being an observer; the privilege of being a participant; and the privilege of being allowed to face a blank canvas of one’s own desires. This necessitates that you pay back the place that offers you the opportunity to work on your art.

Temple of the Fifth Sun

So many court yards, so many fountains, so little water. “Praise the Lord/for sister Water/For she is most useful/and humble/and Gay/and precious and chaste.”

* In Mesoamerican mythology, the Cosmos was created five times. The creations are described as the Five Suns. Today we live in the creation of the Fifth Sun. The myth’s details describe reality, human’s place in the cosmos, the  concurrence of life and death, the foundation of time and space and the importance of ritual, sacrifice, debt repayment and death, the foundation of time and space and the importance of personal responsibility.

Canyon Road

It is so difficult to place a positive perspective on a churning Mexican landscape. It is as Carols Fuentes said in his Introduction to the photography journal Mexico: A Higher Vision: “Everything in Mexico vibrates simultaneously, perhaps because the clouds constantly soften the harshness of the imperious Mexican elements, so none truly triumphs over the other.”

These vibrations are at the center of the Mexican psyche, for how else can one explain why so often when you meet a Mexican on the street you get an ‘upward glance and a downward stare’. While youthful faces look north, to the Border, to what is said to be a ‘right of passage for all Mexican youth’. Many, of course, head north for work, to escape the abject poverty of small desolate towns, really outposts on a highway that leads north to the United States. And when this northern giant gets an economic cold, Mexico gets pneumonia. You say: “It ain’t fair!” Well it isn’t going to be gotten under any control by wishful thinking and mere government declarations.

My painting studio is in one of the best areas—quiet, great views, a real neighborhood with festivals

Four Trees, Three Hill Mexico

My passport rests in my bureau drawer, along with enough traveler’s checks to enable me to go north in style. My Mexican brothers and sisters must crawl through the desert beset by insects, hoping that they can find a way to avoid hiring a coyote to help them find a way to cross the Rio Bravo, what we call the Rio Grande. This river and the three thousand-mile borders of these two countries have a history of grief. Just another cross for Mexico to bear.

On the Rio Grande side of the river the Bush administration has arranged for the wealthy to get a greater amount of the “apple pie” as plans call for fewer taxes for the wealthiest. President Bush’s plans to kill the Inheritance Tax, widening of the gap between the very rich and the rest of the citizens will move the United States to create out of wide sections of the United States: another third world. Not that Mexico is a total third world country as it has a growing middle class and substantial number of more billionaires per capita than many other countries in the world. But injustice continues unabated. Why does this great injustice continue?

Maybe that’s why I walk gingerly on these cobblestone streets. My North American mind-set has been bombarded by ‘news flashes’ and worse now that we have 9-11: more & more alerts. I doubt that the local Mexican gives a hoot about it all. They float over the ankle breaking stones, not weighted down with the world’s garbage on their backs; they can avoid the holes that enable an orthopedic surgeon to declare San Miguel a “foot doctor’s paradise”. Well, sure it makes a difference to be born to a given locality as opposed to being a visitor. You get use to 7,000 feet elevations, steep slopes, and cobblestones.

But, I believe it is much more than this simple explanation. I think that you are elevated above the traps by the way you breathe and think, and how you to relate to each other and the place you are in.