On Leaving San Miguel

During the day, bougainvillea blossoms, fuscia fireworks on vines, drop from trees above the terrace outside my door, grace the stones below, like bright candies, tossed from some benevolent hand. Every morning, Leon, the gardener sweeps away the blossoms, rough scratch of twig broom on stone, makes the terrace clean, gray, smooth. I come home in cool-shadowed twilight. It's happened again, this offering of random fragile fuscia beauty blossoms, on the stones outside my door. '

My Lost Childhood

Colours
Are
My childhood
Bridges over the
River Grand.
I grew up there:
Downtown ballet lessons and lunch at Diana's Reataurant.
Galt, Ontario:
End of an era.


Operation Municpality!
Nimwits in the capitol,
Toronto, also known as Cabbagetown,
Assessed potential
Revenue, and
Integrated Galt, my hometown, with two
Other cities- my childhood disappeared.

'

Mamacita in the Morning

Mamacita in the morning
where are you rushing to,
scooting 'cross my terrace
and over the old stone wall?

Mamcita in the morning
slow down and say hello,
brush up against my kindness,
sit and purr with me awhile.

Mamacita, Mamacita in the morning,
where? In the canyon,
why? Is your lover there?
Or is it Old Raton?

Birds are in the Canyon too,
Mama, is your belly empty?
I have food for you,
there is no need to hunt the Canadita.

Wild Mamacita, the Canadita calls,
and you cannot ignore it's pull,
any more than I can follow
over the canyon wall.


'

National Chocolate Day

This is a new statutory holiday in Canada, to be celebrated in February, on the fifteenth. February is the only month in Canada without a statutory holiday, and it is the month that, without question, needs one the most. It is unfathomable that this basic human right has been overlooked to this late date.

They wanted to make Valentine's Day the stat, but there was too much opposition from the singletons: that ever-more-powerful-growing consumer group, so after consulting with me, the government has decided to implement my idea of National Chocolate Day on February fifteenth. That way all the Valentine's Day aficionados can piggy-back onto it, and the singles are also assuaged. Every Canadian knows we need a holiday in February, and the fifteenth is a nice round number, halfway through the month.

Chocolate, in all its forms, is the focus of the celebration.

For three evenings before the fifteenth there will be a special Chocolate Market where people can buy fabulous creations- works of art, really, all made with the finest grade of chocolate, from white to dark, syrup to mocha lattes, hot chocolate with whipped cream and marshmallows, cake, pastry, pie, crepes, every imaginable cookie that has, or can be modified to have chocolate, all these will be available, and more. There are no limits to the creative pursuit of new and exotic chocolate products for Chocolate Day.

There will also be a special two-day Chocolate Market exactly one month before Chocolate Day, so that people can buy gifts to mail to loved ones. Chocolate themed cakes that can withstand shipping, stationary and novelty gifts of every description will be available, and each year new designs of chocolate decorative lights and scented candles will come on the market, because in Canada, February is still pretty dark.

On the fifteenth, all the stores close, and people do nothing but eat chocolate, and talk about chocolate and the great meaning it has in their lives, how it has helped them to transform spiritually, and supported them to happier, more prosperous lives. The children play games on boards made of chocolate, with chocolate dice that you eat after rolling. (Each game comes with a hundred sets of chocolate dice.) At the end of the game, the winner breaks it all into pieces and shares it with all her playmates equally.

And speaking of playmates, lovers of all descriptions have full license to use chocolate in any and all of its forms for pleasure, fun, romance and full on hot blooded you-know-what. There are special restricted rooms at the Chocolate Markets to cater to this lucrative clientèle.

Dinner is a big part of National Chocolate Day. Everyone needs some real food by at least lunch-time, so the mid-day meal is the main one of the day. Chicken Mole is traditionally served, and salad with a cocoa vinaigrette. Chocolate-chili sprinkles add sweetness and heat to the vegetables and potatoes or rice. For dessert, the traditional choice is chocolate fondue, but it is currently beginning to be challenged by another favorite, chocolate cream pie.

At night everyone goes to sleep with a little piece of chocolate under their pillow, to sweeten their dreams and inspire sensuality during the still-long winter season. In the morning they bury the dream chocolate under the snow, where in a few weeks, crocuses will begin to bloom.

Writing in San Miguel

I remember this room in San Miguel; I was here before, wasn't I? Surrounded by this unbelievable mural: ceiling-high, terracotta skin, curved into hundreds of indigenous bodies, arms, strong backs and faces, praying hands, white eyes, white toenails. There is too much to see; it is like sitting inside a fire. But then we were writing, too, when I was here before, weren't we? Sitting in chairs facing forward like an audience watching a play, but instead, we all had notebooks and pens, all silently writing, soft brush of hand over page, a sniffle, a profound sigh, voices carrying through the window from the cafe next door.

Yes, I remember. It was the end of April, 2006, and I was getting ready to leave San Miguel, for the first time. I remember sitting with the writer's group, in the Quetzal Room at the Biblioteca, and tears rising in my eyes as I thought of how much I had learned during my time in this city: how to walk with an open heart, how to smile in the morning, how to see beauty, how to love more people, and then to love even more people than that.

Yes, that is a good memory, the one of writing in the Biblioteca, in the time and the place where I became a writer, to myself, and to the world. That memory is different from the second time I came to San Miguel, to heal my broken heart, and writing, or the third time I came with my new lover, and writing, or the fourth time I came to get my friend sober, and writing, or the fifth time I came, after my mother died, and writing, or the last time I came and stayed, and stayed, still, still writing.

"They'll have to carry me out of here in a box," I declare, and someday they will, and I'll still be writing even then, I imagine, because stories never end, and ways of telling them are infinite. When my body has become earth, and I live in the stars, remember me here, the first time, writing, here in the Biblioteca, in San Miguel, here with my tribe, in this room of fire, each of us writing, and writing, and writing, and writing, and writing, and writing and...