What the Iguana Wants Me To Know

          Every year we go to the beach and everybody sees iguanas but me. Our beach is the most beautiful place on earth, La Manzanilla, Jalisco. Iguanas used to be plentiful in this region, known to tourists as Costalegre (The Happy Coast), but locals have had a taste for iguana meat and the reptile is now more scarce than it used to be. Still, a two foot long iguana sat in the middle of the entrance road last year, staring down our car. Carla, who loves reptiles so much she was sure she had a relationship with a small green snake won at a fair when she was about ten, jumped out of the car and approached it. It jumped into combat stance and hissed at Carla until she stopped. Then it ran off. Of course I was not in the car.
          This year, however, I am an iguana magnet. Covering our last 10 kilometers to reach La Manz, a taxi driver stood on the side of the road next to his ride, holding an iguana upside down by the tail. I stared at its white belly and realized it was probably dead and the driver was doubtless thinking soup. Did you see that? I said to the car. I got blank stares.
          Sunday, we walked to the end of our street to visit the dozens of crocodriles who inhabit the mangrove there. Something flashed in the tree ahead. A fat green iguana. "Look!" I said, but nobody in my family saw anything.
          Monday, Carlos and I strolled down main street, Maria Asuncion, back from buying fish and mangoes. I glanced into a real estate office and on the entrance rug sat a blue iguana.  "Como se llama?" I asked the young gal in the office. She looked around from her computer. "Aaayyyyy!"
          "It´s not your pet?" I asked.
          "Estas cosas me dan miedo!" she shrieked.
          I ran to our rental, found Carla sunning and panted, "Need Reptile Rescue."
          Within minutes, she had Iguana Blue trapped, calmed (with her t-shirt over his head) and released into vegetation.
           Seeing iguanas 3 days in a row? It had to be a sign.
           On Tuesday, we went to Melaque and ate breakfast facing the sea. After I snuck into an internet cafe. "Iguanas come into our awareness when we need a reminder to just BE," informed the first site I looked at. "Iguanas bring the message that we have impressive gifts we can use for our well-being," said the next.
          Yesterday I was on the lookout for iguanas, aware at the same time, that if I was looking, they probably wouldn´t appear.
          Sure enough, nada. 
          During dinner, though, the gecko who has lived in the apartment ever since we began renting it for a week in May eight years ago, ran across the south wall. It ran into the house and reappeared on the porch. It scurried back and forth. "What an attention seeker," I muttered. Normally, the gecko just sat up near the roof and watched us.
          This morning, I snuck back to the internet (this is our unplugged week) while Carlos made chilaquiles.
          - Gecko females can reproduce without males.
          - Geckos don´t have eyelids. all-seeing?
          Geckos don´t show up much in discussions of spirit animals, so I looked at lizards.
          - Lizard teaches us the importance of respecting and remembering our dreams.
            In my dreams recently, there has been a man in a hat who could have entered our house but didn´t. There was a tower that I climbed.
             As I looked further, there was this: Those who feel the spirit of the lizard can learn ways to use their enhanced sensory perceptions to connect with their deeper psychic and spiritual awareness. 
           

          Which is the path I´m on presently. More tomorrow about what I´m learning about my power.

Spirit Visits

Um. I blog. I remember that. I used to with frequency. O well. Here I am again, sifting through my memory. Things are quiet on the spirit visitation front. Or are they? Now my memory is coming up with a pressure on my calf while I slept a couple of weeks ago. It lasted a full 30 seconds or so. A slight shove during a different night. I look over and Carlos is dead asleep facing away from me. A cell phone ring the night after the shove. Just once. The tone was not that of my cell phone nor of Carlos'.

Remembering eating breakfast at Cafe de La Parroquia one morning with Carlos and Carla.
Carla says, I feel thoughtful today.
Me - How?
Carla - I feel like I'm in another dimension, like I'm over there watching all of us, but I'm not here. Know what I mean?
Me - No. I experience you right there across from me, eating enchiladas.
Carla - Really?

I have a friend in Wisconsin who believes in science and not in God. I tell him about my experiences, about Carla. He is skeptical but open. He owns two campus bars. He told two of his bartenders one night about the things I tell him - Carla's clairvoyance, spirits nudging me. The bartenders are gals in their twenties. They tell him I need to have my head examined.

I'm sure my stories sound nutty to a good number of people. I challenge anyone to live a week with Carla and see if they reconsider their outlook.

Carla says her maestros wake her up and remind her of her tarea – to be a living example of not wearing a thought.  "Like, Mom," she says. "Yesterday when you were fretting about getting to the dermatologist on time and I was still laying on the massage table.  I knew it would be OK to get there late."  Sure enough, we got to the dermatoligist's office after 2 pm, but the previous client didn’t come out until about 2:20.  “So I look like I’m a slug and I don’t care, but really I know it’s going to be alright.”

It's going to be alright. 

Will She Stay or Will She Go?

Judy and Dan from Vermont came to the opening of Carlos' abstract art show at Galeria One on Saturday.
"I'm almost to the end of your book!" Judy said.  She turned and punched Carlos on the arm.  "You didn't go to your rehearsal dinner!"

The pair had visited San Miguel some eight years before, and during their stay, Judy booked several massages with Carlos in our spa, Jasmine. They swapped stories.  Judy - world traveler with her husband.  Carlos - married to an American gal who was writing the story of meeting him.

Last week, Judy had a massage with Carlos and was delighted to find I had completed my book.  She bought Flirting in Spanish.  Early Saturday, I taught creative writing to 25 kids in Palo Colorado, then spent the rest of the day hanging paintings with Carlos.  Judy and Dan happened by.  "I can't put your book down!" she said.  "You just went to that dance and you're deciding whether to stay in Mexico!"  A few hours later, they came to the gallery opening.  "Nice paintings, Carlos. But I can't stay.  I have to go home and read to the end and see if you guys stay together!"

Above is one of the paintings from the show.  MOMA - leave a comment here and we can talk!

What the Angels Want Me to Know

I told Carla about the angels I heard singing. (See previous post.)  

“Mom, they are definitely trying to reach you. What do you think they are trying to tell you?” 

“I don’t know,” I said. 

“Just be aware.  Don’t try too hard.  Let it come.  You’ll find out,” my 17-year old said.

So I have some maestros, or teachers, and they are trying to tell me something with supernantural signs.  Why me, and what could it be?  I am not gifted with extra abilities like my daughter.  What am I supposed to be doing with the regular abilities I have?  Or learning? Or understanding?

Maybe the answer is in my dreams.  They’ve been vivid lately, and full of detail.  Like the lady riding a white horse around and around in a circular arena. She had very long hair and was very competent on the horse.  She was standing on its back with her arms spread as the horse galloped.  She was naked but there was no shame to it.  My girls did this – volting - years ago when they were learning to ride.  The gal in the dream was very confident and I had the feeling of wanting my kids to see her.  Here’s what one dream interpretation site said:

To dream of a white horse signifies purity and good fortune. It indicates the image of a prince charming and his white horse coming to save the princess.

Horses symbolize strength, speed, and endurance. It also indicates having control over things and directing them towards your aim. 

To dream of a woman symbolizes love, nurture, caring, and passivity. It may represent your female side or your own mother.

I told my poet friend Fay about the angelic singing I’d heard the day before. 

“Angels are all around us,” Fay said. “I spoke to angels once through a medium.  They’re very bossy! My angel told me to get a pen and paper and write things down.  She said I would work in a store.  I thought,’ Me in a store?  I don’t think so.’”   We spoke in Garrison and Garrison book store in San Miguel.  She knew I saw the irony.  “And here I am, perfectly at home, surrounded by books.”

“Angels and spirits are trying to reach you because you are open.  And because you put a beautiful and honest work into the world,” Fay said. She gestured to my memoir, displayed on a Garrison and Garrison table.  Tears formed in my eyes.

Earlier that day a friend who’d lived in San Miguel when our kids were little, came into the spa to buy a second copy of my book for a friend.  “Almost finished your book. Wow.” my friend, Carmen, said drolly. “You really put yourself out there.”  Her tone was part respect, part repulsion. 

I focus on a text I picked up on Facebook earlier in the week that I keep going back to.  It was written by a Mayan leader who wants the world to know that 2012 is not the end of the world at all, but a time of great change as our planet moves into the World of the Fifth Sun. 

At sunrise on December 21, 2012 for the first time in 26,000 years the Sun rises to conjunct the intersection of the Milky Way and the plane of the ecliptic. This cosmic cross is considered to be an embodiment of the Sacred Tree, The Tree of Life, a tree remembered in all the world's spiritual traditions. 

I love thinking that a giant cross will be formed across the galaxy on my youngest daughter’s 16^th birthday.  I go back and read a favorite line from the Mayan leader. 

The element of the Fifth Sun is celestial.

Spirits, Elves and Buried Treasure

New Year’s Day asada in our house yesterday. I told of hearing celestial singing as I drank coffee with my husband early on New Years Eve day.(story to follow in next blog post!)  Immediately my mother-in-law had a story. 

“I woke up at 3 AM one night, hearing children playing outside the window.  I couldn’t make out what they were saying.  I just heard children’t voices and laughter.  I went outside to tell them it was time to go home and there wasn’t a soul in sight.”  

Carmen looked around the table where Carlos’ father Silvano, Carlos, the girls and I sat expectantly with our beef tacos. 

“Duendes,” she said.

Elves! I was not surprised.  Carla sees or feels them in the trees along the river to the left of the highway to Dolores Hidalgo.  During the basketball season, we drive over to Dolores every Saturday for Carlos’ games and Carla scans the treeline for duendes.

I tell my mother- and father-in-law about having my ankle grabbed by an unknown entity at 5:15 a.m.the other morning.

“You know what that means,” Carmen says knowingly. 

No, I don’t!  Enlighten me!

Carmen held up her hand, her thumb and forefinger separated by several inches, gripping an imaginary stack of bills.  

“I’m supposed to find the treasure?” I asked.

Carmen nodded her head.  She is not the first to have mentioned this theory.  After my first post about being woken by the spirit ankle-squeezer, I got this reply from Mexican blogger Leslie Limon, who is also married to a Mexican man. (http://www.motherhoodinmexico.com/)

If you don't mind me adding my two centavos, Hubby's family believes that if you are visited by a spirit/ghost, it's because there is money or treasure buried somewhere near you and they want you to find it. Next time your visitor is around, ask where the treasure is? :)

OK, Spirit, I’m ready! I'm leaving my ankles at the bottom of the bed for more messages.  It would be lovely if you could pinchingly point out where the bag of gold is hidden.  It occurs to me though, that there is no bag of money on our land or hidden in our walls because we built our house (it’s half built anyway) from scratch.  Shrubs were removed, land was turned over, walls were constructed.  Nothing was turned up unless it was and some albanil made off with our rightful treasure!  Then it occurs to me too that the treasure is us, the Ortega family, sitting around a table full of food, swapping stories. 

Can’t a little elf just show up, whisper in my ear and tell me if I’m right?  Or pinch my ankle.

New Reviews!

A delightful end-of-the-year review!  Mexconnect is one of the most widely used sites for Mexican travelers and residents.  It's very informative and well-written, and its reviewer has read Flirting in Spanish! 

http://www.mexconnect.com/articles/3841-flirting-in-spanish-what-mexico-taught-me-about-love-living-and-forgiveness 

Flirting in Spanish has also been reviewed lately on these blogs:

http://interestedmindsreviews.blogspot.com/

http://melaniesrandomthoughts-melanie.blogspot.com/

http://abookishaffair.blogspot.com/2011/12/review-flirting-in-spanish-by-susan.html

Lucky me!  Mil gracias to all who have read and reviewed Flirting in Spanish!  And a prosperous 2012 to all! 

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What the Diplomat Told Me

Carlos' mantra these days is synchronicity, and here is how it showed up yesterday for me.  

An elegant 60-ish woman came in for a massage and facial yesterday.   She is a diplomat for Panama, and was once the Panamanian consul in Baltimore.  She is soon to publish a book, and we talked writing.  I told her about the paranormal tendencies in my family and how someone pinched my ankle while I slept, and that I didn’t know if it was my maestros or Mary.

“It was Mary,” she said. 

“How do you know?”

“I just feel strongly that it was your friend.  She hasn’t passed on.  She needs help.”

“But why would she come to me if she needs help?  I would think she would hang around her own house, with her husband.  Or at Warren and Tuli’s.  Mary and I were very good friends, but Tuli was clearly her BFF.”

“There is a spirituality at your house that is going to help her cross over, isn’t there?  Your daughter can detect spirits and your husband meditates at 5 every morning, right?”

“Oh, yeah,” I said. 

She went on to tell me of when her then 5-year old son, while vacationing at Disney World in Florida, said suddenly, “A tree has fallen onto our roof, and crashed into my room.”   Sure enough, when they returned to Panama, they found their home’s roof crushed by a tree.

“You can help Mary,” my client, Elvira said, as I massaged her neck.  “Find a priest to say 9 masses for her, and she will pass on.” 

Not an unheard of proposition.  My mother has paid for dozens of Masses in her lifetime.  Surely there are enough churches in San Miguel for that to be an easy task. But is that the end?  Is that all the spirit wanted from me?

Bring It On, Maestros!

                So my maestros, as Carla says, or Mary - wait, maybe my recently deceased friend, Mary is now one of my maestros! - woke me at 5:15 the other morning by pinching my ankle, and today I paid attention to the message and woke at 5:15.  Not that I exactly got out of bed (oh toasty bed!) at tal hora.  Still, it’s still dark and starry out and here I am, once again at the task of figuring out what I must wake up from.  Or to. 

                One, I’m literally awake and I think this is half the battle.  I paid attention.  I got out of bed.  I’ve been thinking of getting up earlier to write for days, and here I am finally doing it. IS THIS WHAT YOU WANT, great masters?  I’ve been taking the steps that allow me to get up earlier too.  Last night, during A Charlie Brown Christmas, I whimpered and put my feet in my husband’s lap, and he gave me reflexology which knocked me into a deep sleep before 8 pm.

                My other creeping thought is that I should be meditating.  My husband turned off the Christmas lights around the chimney and is meditating in the dark to my left wrapped in the afghan my grandmother knitted about 50 years ago, like he does every morning.   But whoa, writing and meditating?  I’ve giving myself a big round of applause for sticking to this page and not jumping over to see what 500 of my friends have been posting about during the night. (I just looked – winter flu, tree decorating, college admission.)        

Next to me I have The Complete Idiot’s Guide Dream Dictionary.  Last night I looked up Tiger for Carlos.  He had a dream of some tigers running around his mother’s neighborhood.  He didn’t want them to be caught.  Tigers: Power, Nonconformity, and standing out from the crowd.  Sounds like the opposite of Carlos, although he is an insidious leader – quiet around gringos, but the acerbic joker, the one who makes his buddies laugh.  Yet, twist the glass a bit and we see Carlos the artist.  If you see a tiger in your dream, you can make a strong impression right now or strike out on your own and do just fine.   Carlos is doing some powerful paintings these days, and talking about taking them to a gallery which once displayed his earlier art.  Then he hesitates.  Grab that Tiger power and go, Big Guy!

                Suddenly I am remembering a dream I had frequently as a grade school kid.  I was in a car but there was no driver.  Driving: Driving symbolizes the direction you are going. Are you in control? Are you lost? Pay attention to how you drive and where you are going for clues about the path you are currently taking in your life. I was ten, eleven, twelve, when I dreamed about having no driver.  I was worried about my direction in life then? When are these Maestros going to give me some flippin' answers, I ask you.

                It’s clear outside now and my Tae Kwon Do class calls.  And the big questions remain: What if I am supposed to be waking up to Enlightment?  What is Enlightment?  Does Facebook or Charlie Brown bring me closer to Enlightment?  And also, when will I get my Christmas shopping done? 

Heel, Heal, Does it have appeal?

Last night I dined with my favorite author friend (apart from you, Bev) Sandra Gulland at La Brasserie (apologies to Valeria if I butchered the restaurant name - I know no French).  Her book, my book - so much to catch up on! Sandra summers in Canada and I haven't seen her since last May.  The latest draft of her latest book is in to her editor - whew! I told her about my ankle being pinched by Who Knows Who With What Message. She agrees it's a good topic to pursue.

Today a spa client say, Oh, you were grabbed on your heel.  Heal?

Another spa client told about visiting a shaman near Cuernavaca some 20 years ago for the "chicken treatment."  I've heard of curanderos using eggs and fire and gladiolas but not live chickens.  This New York gal says she was having trouble with a "friend" who owed her money.  So another American friend in Cuernevaca took her to see Don Lucio who had her stand over a burning something and let the smoke go up her skirt.  Then Don Lucio and the friend, who in fact was apprenticing with the Don, beat her lightly with live chickens.  Then the chickens were sacrificed and thrown off the mountain. Ya.  Then leaving the mountain the friend's car broke down and the friend accused her of causing the disrepair with the release of all her bad energy.

Were things fixed with your friend at home? I asked.

Not really, the client said. But I had been out of work for quite some time and I DID get a job immediately upon my return to New York.

Close Encounters of the Mexican Kind: Was Mary Visiting Me or Another Spirit?

Carlos talks about synchronicity.  That if we are aware, we'll notice it happens all the time.  Friday morning last week, somebody pinched my ankle three times and woke me from a deep sleep.  But nobody was in the bedroom with me.  (See my previous post.)  By 11 that day, I was guesting in Michelle Garrison's Spanish grammar class where the topic of the day was brujeria and santeria and Catholicism in Mexico. I told the students at Cafe Contento, in Spanish, about my experience and that I was still trying to figure out what I had to wake up to. Mouths dropped open; their attention was complete.  "Were you scared?" one woman asked.
         "No."
         "Were you able to sleep after that?" wondered another.
         "Actually, I told the spirit I was going back to sleep and to please wake me up at 6:15.  When I woke and looked at the clock, it was 6:13."

          Mexicans had a whole different take on a spirit visitation.  By the end of the day, we were in my brother-in-law Hector's car on our way to a teacher party with him. "So, somebody tugged on my ankle early this morning," I told him. "Carlos was in the living room - it wasn't him."
          "Ha, you got off easy," Hector said. "Once the lady who hangs around my mother's house gave me a cachetada!"
          I brought it up again at the party.  Everybody at the table had a story.  The spirit in fulano's house.  The shaman who worked in the pueblo near Celaya who died but is kept by the villagers, embalmed and hidden in someone's house. Those pueblos around Celaya, si, hombre.  Todos tienen sus brujos.

          My 16-year old sees spirits all over the place. Once we went into a downtown store in San Miguel that sells householdy things like hand-blown glass pitchers and glasses, tablecloths, antique tables.  "There's a dead person here," she said, as we ascended to the second floor.
          "What's he doing?" I asked.
          "Watching us," she said, picking up a silver plated spoon.
          Carla had promised early in the day to check our bedroom and see if it was our recently deceased friend Mary hanging around.  When we got home from the teacher party, I called her in.
           "Oh, yeah, there's someone here," she said.
           "It is Mary?"
           "No, it's one of your maestros, here to give you some conocimiento."
           "What's the knowledge I need?  What am I supposed to know?!"
           Carla shrugged, and ran out of the room.  There was a song on YouTube her sister wanted her to hear.
           So now I have more questions than answers.  Coine on, Gringo Nation, help me out!  This is my moment and I don't know how to grab it! Who was in my room and what am I supposed to be learning?

Ghost in the Machine

THE FOLLOWING IS FACTUAL AND NOT EXAGGERATED.  This morning, I was woken by someone pressing on my ankle three times. I looked at the clock - 5:15 - and looked around for my husband. Usually he wakes me at 6:15, sometimes by turning on the light, sometimes by passing the cup of coffee he's made me near my nose, sometimes by pressing on my ankle.  But this morning at 5:15, he was not in the room.

Carlos routinely wakes at 5 AM and goes into the living room to meditate, so I was not surprised when I called his name twice and he didn't answer.  But someone had clearly pressed on my ankle and woken me from a deep sleep.

My friend Mary died two months ago, on October 1, of cancer that attacked various organs including her lungs, and finally moved to her brain. She was a non-smoking vegan. She ran the independent book store Libros El Tecolote in San Miguel for 17 years.  I worked there when my Sean, now 14, was born.  Mary was my first friend in San Miguel.  We were artists' models, sometimes working together, like I detail in my memoir, Flirting in Spanish (http://tinyurl.com/865e85z).  She was older than me by 5 weeks.  Tomorrow is my birthday.  Did Mary try to wake me up to say Happy Birthday?  Did Mary try to WAKE ME UP?

And what am I supposed to be woken up TO?  I'm thinking it was Mary in my bedroom this morning because I think she has visited before. A couple of weeks ago I woke at around 1 am to voices, the kind you might hear on speeded up recording - human but unintelligible. I went into the living room to tell Carla to quit Skyping her friend Weasel in Texas and go to bed.  But the living room was dark.  I walked upstairs to tell my two daughters to quiet down.  But they were asleep.

Days later, I lay on the couch moaning from intestinal pain. My husband put his hands over me to see if he could move the energy around to give me relief.  "Huh," he said after a few minutes.
          "Huh, what?" I demanded.
          "You have a great deal of cold around you."
          "And that's making me sick?"
          "No, there's a dead person here."
          "Doing what?"
          "Visiting."
          "Who could it be?" I asked.  Mary hadn't occurred to me just yet.
          "Who is it who just passed and might want to visit?"
          Now he was annoying me with his riddles.
          "Well, what does she want?"
          "Ask her."
          Aaargh! I wanted to yell.  You're the one with the extra perceptions!  Can't you just give me the message?

           My psychic 16-year old is going to check the house for Mary when we get home.  Meantime, WAKE UP is still rocking through my head.  Maybe if I say Pretty Please, Mary will crash my bedroom again soon and tell me what I have to wake up to, or from.

Reasons to Feel Optimistic

Was visited yesterday by two friends who live in a town near Monterrey.  Juan is researching why Mexican teens don't continue their schooling for his PhD.  During their travels this past August, they returned to their hometown the day a fire was started in a Monterrey casino that killed 53 people.  The fire was atrributed to clashing cartel members.  In communication in the days following, my friends were frightened, laying low, hearing of people disappearing and worse.  How are things now, I asked them yesterday.

I ask because fortunately, in San Miguel, we have not experienced drug violence.

Both friends brightened at the question.  Things are better, they said. Those responsible for the casino fire have been arrested, they reported.  Lots of the cartel commanders have been jailed too. What's left are ragtag street criminals without organization.  The military is keeping up a presence, and establishing little posts in neighborhoods to keep the streets safe.  Visitors are returning to tourist sites in the area.  Residents are returning to towns that had been evacuated when cartel members threatened to move in.  Order and peace are returning.

I've been praying for some Mexican healing, and my heart sings to hear it.

An Unexpected Turnaround

Yesterday, Mexican news reports said that tourism was up around 2% in 2011.  That's good news, and surprisingly, it just might be true.  Last month, for the first time in three years, the numbers in our business, Jasmine Spa, went up.  That is, after a steady three-year slide in earnings, October 2011 was better than October 2010. 
Why?  I have absolutely no idea.  There were times during the past three years when Carlos and I considered closing Jasmine Spa.  There was the swine flu, blamed on Mexico even though I personally knew of NOBODY in the state of Guanajuato who had the illness. Then, on top of the bugs: drugs.  Escalating power fights between the cartels on the coasts and on the border, but NOT here in our town, and relentless media coverage of it, had some people believing Mexico was a war zone.  The sluggish economic recovery in the United States didn´t help. The landlord would come around and we'd have nothing to offer but empty pockets.

But we kept on.  A base of local clients kept us paying the phone and light bills.  We struck deals with our kids' schools.  We stayed home, or went to the presa (lake) and watched the water and the sun.  I worked on my writing, not memoir this time but a Young Adult novel.  And now, a good month.  Rental people say THanksgiving weekend will bring tourists as well. 

All I can say is Viva Mexico.

Hey, a really cool site called spanglishbaby reviewed my travel/romance memoir, Flirting in Spanish.  Check it out! 

http://www.spanglishbaby.com/2011/11/book-review-flirting-in-spanish-giveaway/

Been Scrapbooked!

Since my travel and romance memoir is, in fact, a love story, I´ve been snooping around on some romance sites and blogs.  That's how I ended up being the guest author SCRAPBOOKED by romance reader and blogger Nat at Reading Romances - http://readingromances.wordpress.com/2011/10/27/an-authors-scrapbook-susan-mckinney/
It was way fun to put together!  Go over to the Reading Romances blog and see what my favorite hobby is, what my secret wish is and who my favorite authors are.  It's such a cool presentation! Thanks, Nat! 

Literary Sala reading tonight!

If you are in San Miguel, please come to the Posada de San Francisco tonight at 5 pm for a reading by Alice Deham and me!  Since my memoir Flirting in Spanish was "in-progress" for about a hundred years, and I´ve read from it several dozen times, it seems, I´m trying to present something different tonight.  Like maybe a little video presentation where you´ll see lots of the actual characters in the book, including some of San Miguel´s literary luminaries from the early 90s.  Should be fun.

Alice Denham´s most recent book Sleeping with Bad Boys was reviewed by the NT Times (in case you don't, those NY Times folks are a pretty busy lot and getting them to pay attention to your book is a big coup).  Alice was one of the first writers to give me advice as I slogged away at memoir-writing; plus she was at my wedding. 

Hope to see you all!  Signed copies of Flirting in Spanish will be on sale!

Hope to see you there!

How El Negrito is not a matter of Political Correctness in Mexico

Bimbo in Mexico is like Wonder.  Bimbo produces white sandwich bread, promoted by a little white osito (bear cub) in a chef´s hat, and now, 2011, it also offers scores of whole wheat and multigrain options.
Bimbo sells packaged sweet cakes, too, kind of like Hostess selections in the US. One of its most popular is the Negrito. The Little Black One.
The Negrito is a white cake (it was once compared to a hot dog roll) both filled and topped with chocolate.  On its package is a black boy with a huge Afro and big stepping Keep on Truckin' feet.  He has a Negrito in his hand and a smile on his face, happy presumably to have his yummy snack.

If you are chubby in Mexico, you are probably nicknamed Gorda.  If you are skinny, you are Flaca, unless someone in your life has a wry sense of humor, and you are called Gorda.  Sean as a toddler was called Tortuga because, naked, we imagined her a turtle without its shell.  If you are light, you are called Guera.  If you are dark, you are Negro, or Negra, like my sister-in-law.  So a black boy or a chocolate snack is El Negrito.  Here in Mexico, it´s all good.

Flor de calabaza and a roof

It´s almost September, the time when rancho folks come into town with buckets of flor de calabaza for sale.  That´s the yellow zuchini flower that many Mexicans sautee and tuck into quesadillas.  The taco lady with hands of steel declined to buy the offered flor de calabaza this morning, but gave the boy selling them a couple of tacos.  After, he insisted she accept a bunch of the edible flowers anyway.

End of the summer also, in our case, means that my brother-in-law, a labor lawyer in León, just won a big case he´d been working on. What that means is that he came to visit his mom in San Miguel yesterday with an overloaded wallet. 

There is a chapter in my memoir, Flirting in Spanish, entitled The Lamina Roofed House.  It told how Carlos took me to his parents´ house for the first time.  Approaching his house, I could see that part of the roof was lamina - corrugated plastic.  There was another chapter that I decided not to include.  It detailed how some drunk soccer boys, sitting on a hill above my mother-in-law´s house began to throw bottles at the house while I sat outside nursing infant Carla one Sunday.  When they ran out of beer bottles, they threw rocks.  My five foot tall mother-in-law ran outside with a machete raised over her head.  The nonsensical attack was over as soon as it started, and the boys came to the house the next day to apologize, and promise to buy another piece of lamina, as they´d torn a hole in the roof.  That was nineteen years ago.  For 19 years - more actually - the family sweated under that roof during hot months and shivered in the cold.  Now, with big brother´s success, the family will get a proper poured-cement roof.  And the lamina roof that my chapter details will be a thing of the past.

Now on Kindle!

My memoir, Flirting in Spanish is now available to all Kindle readers!

http://www.amazon.com/Flirting-in-Spanish-ebook/dp/B005EZ3LVQ/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1311976510&sr=8-3

Interviewed by the Wisconsin State Journal!

I am so happy to be with Antaeus Books.  The publisher, Jayne Navarre is the genius who thought of adding a glossary of words to use when "flirting in Spanish" at the back of my book, Flirting in Spanish. 

Antaeus is not a big Random House, so lots of the publicity effort falls to me.  This past week, I contacted a writer acquaintance named Doug Moe, who has written for Madison, Wisconsin newspapers since I used to work in news there in the 80s.  Hey, I said, Maybe you remember me?  Wanna take a look at my new book?

Fortunately he did.  He is a wonderful writer who I remember for writing a long magazine piece on the sensational 1980s murder of a police officer´s ex-wife by hired assassin Joseph Hecht.  The fascinating trial came with hints of gay activity on Hecht´s part, a glamorous and sullen girlfriend who was put on the stand, and the defendant himself.  Dressed in an Izod shirt, he looked like someone I might have chatted with in a bar.  My part in the coverage came when Hecht complained of headaches, got himself transported to University hospital, pulled a gun while there, and escaped.  I, traveling in the News 3 car with videographer, Mike Van Susteren that day happened upon Joey Hecht in his getaway car before the police found him...one of the biggest adreneline rushes of my life.  Within the hour, the police had located and captured him.

I´ve always admired Doug, and now he has written an article about me and Flirting in Spanish. My mother was thrilled about the article and wants to know if Doug Moe the writer is related to Doug Moe the former NBA coach...a comment that would only come out of a family like ours. 

Here´s the article: http://tinyurl.com/44qts5p

Texas Book Reading

I'm in San Antonio, Texas and yesterday received an overnighted envelope of Flirting in Spanish trade paperbacks in time for a reading held last night in the home of my good friends, the Judsons. 

I held the book in my hands for the first time!  I rubbed it on my cheeks.  "Sean, come here.  Touch the book!"  Right, Mom.  She put a finger on it.  Carla is more one for rituals.  She ran her hand over the book reverently. 

Later, by the end of the evening, I had met some wonderful women from different areas of my friend, Margaret's life.  And sold 25 books to 15 women!  They bought books for themselves, books for their sisters, their friends.  It was incredible.

I am seeing Texas on this trip in a new way.  Later, I'll write about why I can now put Texas and beautiful in the same sentence.