CV joints

         It is a Friday morning in late April. I sit here in the shade, waiting on the mechanics to set right my car again.  This shop is open-air, and so there is a strong cooling breeze blowing here in the shade.  We are having an early and persistent summer this year.  The land, the river, everything is drier than I have ever seen it.  This intense heat is burning up everything.  At this altitude, getting out of the sun means finding a cool temperature.  And so, I don’t mind waiting for my rear tires to be looked after.

               These days I find myself driving the hour to Durango every week, and back.  I have found a therapist who uses magnets in the ear to relieve pain and stress.  She changes them every week, fine tuning the treatment.  It is amazing the relief I get from these treatments.  However, all these kilometers on the car have uncovered a flaw.  The rear tires are so badly aligned that new tires wear out in a year; strips of steel band are exposed on the inside of the tire.  Last week I stopped at the Pemex/Oxxo station a few miles outside of Durango, on my way home.  A bunch of gentlemen were gathered there, taking a break.  Judging by their camo outfits, I thought they might be Guardsmen returning from an exercise.  I could be wrong, there was no standard uniform amongst them.  If I had encountered them on the highway in Montana, I might have thought them on a hunting trip.  Before I had gone a few steps towards the door to the Oxxo, they called to me.  My tire was flat!  A few of us gathered around it.  Was it a puncture, or something more serious?  The guy feeling around the inner edge of the tire recoiled his hand; it was pricked by something sharp.  Sure enough, the one-year old tire had worn through.  We checked the other side; same thing, just not flat yet. 

               They rallied to the call, gathered around, found a jack and a tire iron, and set to putting on my ‘temporary’ tire.  They advised me to drive very slowly on the way home.  I grabbed my ice cream bar from inside Oxxo and set out on my long journey home, going 40 MPH with flashers lit.  As I diligently attended to this dangerous journey, I reflected that I had given the men kudos, thanking them as heroes, but had offered no monetary reward.  Honestly, sometimes I wonder where my head is at.

               On the journey home I called my favorite used-tire guy, a friendly old codger just a few doors down from the Aurrera Bodega.  He rallied to get in the car and come help me.  Wow.  I explained that I was still coming on my own steam, and asked if he could find me a couple of tires while I was on my way to him. 

               My angels were ever so faithful to me, and so I arrived safely to the used-tire shop in Canatlan.  I pulled the only chair out of the back of the shop and onto the sidewalk.  The late afternoon sun was behind the building, so I sat in the shade and played backgammon on my phone for the time it took him to put on my two new used tires.  These, too, were an off-brand, and so would wear out in a matter of months if I did not fix the problem.  Sometimes he can find me a set of slightly worn Michelin’s, but this was not one of those times.  It is just as well, since without getting the rear end aligned, again they would be shredded in no time.

               Here I am, faced once again with the basic problem of life in a backwater like Canatlan.  It is filled with jacks of all trades, but master of none.  Where can I take my car for this repair?  I had no way to know if someone happened to be experienced in this task.  I wanted to take it to Durango, relying on my friend Oscar to guide me to a reliable shop.  However, Oscar is a busy landlord of many properties, and never did come through for me.  I took the car back to the very same place where I bought this last set of tires, a year ago.  I do not remember if I bought these new tires before, or after my car rolled over on the highway in January, 2023.  Did the problem with the rear tires crop up after that accident?  Did the awful man who was tasked with rebuilding the frame of my car swap out my good CV Joints with faulty ones, making a profit while he kept me in limbo without a car for five months?  Or, when the new tires were put on, did this tire shop simply not do a thorough check, putting new tires on an old problem?  At this moment, there are three young men clustered around the rear end of my car, looking up at the situation from the well.  I can only hope that among them there is enough know-how to find the problem and fix it.  One can hope.

               During the few short months that Christine, from Canada, spent with me at Luz de Compasion, through her online research,  she introduced me to the many hot springs in the area.  Now I try to go weekly to the one outside of Durango, not far from the farm where is the new owner of my beloved horses.  That is, the horses are there; he lives in a nice house in Durango proper.  Caretakers live on the farm, replacing me as their herd. At the spa, I met a group of retired people who seemed to all speak English.  In particular I had a long conversation with one gentleman, Jose.  Subsequently, I tried to make my visits to the spa on Wednesdays, hoping to see him again.  I’ve gone perhaps four times, but have not seen him or them again, except for one gentleman who wears a prosthetic leg, and comes diligently for water exercises.  I spend an hour soaking in the heat, and doing exercises to loosen up my damaged leg and hip.  I think this workout is doing some good, and along with the magnets in the ear, I have hope that I can get back maybe 90% of use of that hip.

               I get the news after inspection; the rear cannot be aligned as is, but requires a part.  This part must be ordered from somewhere far off, and so I await the news of when it can arrive.  Tomorrow, next week; as long as it is before my next trip to Durango.  These are the things that make me go over budget; my pension is just not enough.

               And here comes the news.  The parts are very expensive, and then there is the labor.  Not counting the new tires I’ll have to buy on my next trip to Durango’s WalMart, that bite is $5,000 pesos.  At the current unfavorable exchange rate, that comes to almost $400 US, almost half my monthly pension.  The cost of the new tires should bring it to over the top, beyond the 50% point.  That is not good news.

               Speaking of Christine, she should be flying out on her journey homeward this week.  During her time here, against my advice, she adopted a dog.  She said she wanted to take the dog back to Canada with her.  We discussed what had to be done to do that.  She knew she had to take the dog to the vet and get required paperwork; nothing more than ordinary shots.  In fact, we had gotten the dog spayed, and it may even be that nothing more was needed than the signature of the vet.  However, Christine never did this.  Meanwhile, the dog wound up back at Luz; and now she is mine.  That brings the total of indoor dogs to three.  Since one of those dogs is the neurotic Loki, who adopted me over his natal home a mile away, this is a bit much.  Her name is Betsy.  She comes with problems. 

               Although I enjoyed the company of Christine, she was getting restless.  Frankly, life here on the farm outside of town is boring.  She did not seem to like the TV shows I watched.  We played backgammon once on a makeshift board, but it wasn’t engaging enough for her to merit a second play.  She is marvelously gifted with plants, and so puttered about her house planting seeds, and finding cactus to root in pots.  After she left, I took the one tomato plant into my care, moving it to my porch and into a bigger pot.  With care, it has now grown quite tall and bears odd looking tomatoes, almost like grape tomatoes but longer.  The nascent stalks of cactus inspired me to start a cactus garden.  I used abandoned mounds of gravel and dirt outside the smallest house, and now have five of one kind and quite a few of an aloe vera and another very similar.   In time, these will all grow and fill out a nice five-foot square plot.  They will not die from lack of water, like all my other plants and trees.  They need water only twice a year.

There came an odor emanating from Christine’s house.  Over the weeks of her stay, it was growing stronger.  Just walking past the house, the odor permeated the very air outside.  I did not recognize it.  Was it the sewer? Was she putting something down the sink during her cooking?  Finally, I asked her to move into the other house while we figured out what it was.  I truly thought it might be toxic.

               This brought things to a head, and within a couple of days she packed up what little she had and asked me to drive her to a motel in town.  Betsy went with her.

               One day a few weeks later, while leaving the Aurrera Bodega with my groceries, I saw Betsy lying outside the store.  When she saw me, she went bonkers with joy, followed me to the car and hopped in to join Loki and Junior.  I went back inside to look for Christine.  I did not see her.  I started to drive away, but thought I might need to make a second look.  I didn’t want to think that Christine would knowingly abandon Betsy.  I drove back to the supermarket, parked, and did another walk-through.  I did not see Christine.  And so it was that Betsy is living with me again.  One day shortly after, all three dogs were lying on the bed while I watched afternoon television.  Suddenly I heard squealing, barking, scrambling of claws on the floor.  Betsy had fallen off the bed, broken her leg, and Loki went berserk peeing everywhere.  I had to take her to a dog orthopedist in Durango; her healing was trying, and expensive.  It was, at least, a clean break and did not require an operation.  Still, keeping it fixed and immobile while it healed was very problematic, and expensive.  Canatlan is just not equipped for more than the simplest veterinarian needs. [1] Betsy pulled off one bandage after another.  I took her to a local vet, who put on a cast and elaborate wrappings, for an exorbitant price considering that Betsy pulled it all off again in a day.  The vet had put a collar on her, which could have helped, except that the collar was the wrong size, wrapped too tightly about her head so that she had no visibility. She was frantic; I had to pull it off.

               Within weeks, I started noticing that smell again, this time in my house!  The problem stems from Betsy.  She has preferred to spend her time inside, in fact, on my lap.  She never seemed to need to go outside to pee.  I got out the mop and Pinesol, and magically the smell was gone.  Interestingly, I found Christine to be an immaculate house cleaner.  I do not understand how she could have allowed Betsy’s urine to accumulate in her house so.  But there it was.  Mystery solved.  Now Betsy must live outside, in the doghouse. 

               When I returned yesterday from my weekly treatment in Durango, I did not see Betsy.  I carried the groceries in with two trips, while the dogs were jumping in and out of the car.  I had left them home alone all day, and they were a bit exuberant at my arrival.  After the last trip, I left the rear door open; I forgot about it, and in the morning saw it was still open.  I needed two trips this morning to bring my computer and a chair into the car for the visit to the new tire shop, where the alignment was to take place.  Once there, I saw black-haired Betsy lying down on the floor of the back seat.  Now she lies beside me, as I sit here in the shade typing.  What am I to do with this dog?  Does the malodorous urine indicate that she is ill?  Her leg is almost healed now; she is beginning to put weight on it.  She seems to display no other indication of an internal illness, except for her lethargy.  I just found an engorged tick sucking on her lip, but that can’t account for this long-term smelly urine.  Since the Orthopede’s xray revealed that she has arthritic hips, I presumed that she was an old girl, and that accounted for the broken bone and her lethargy.  But I am told, not so.  She is only about three years old.  Some breeds, I am told, are prone to arthritis.  This was told me by a middle-aged veterinarian here in Canatlan, whom I found to be a bit full of herself.  I know that some large dogs, like retrievers and maybe German Shepherds, do tend to go lame in the hind quarters at around ten years.  I have never heard of a breed that gets geriatric hips at age three or four years.  Learn something new every day?  I still take this Vet’s opinion with a grain of salt.  Consider this.  About three weeks after Betsy broke her leg, after all my failed efforts to wrap the broken bone, I took her to this veterinarian trusting that she could succeed where I failed.  She called the clinic in Durango to get a copy of Betsy’s x-ray, without which, she said, she could not wrap the leg.  I offered to draw her the x-ray image, but she insisted she needed the x-ray from Durango.  She called.  She did not give my name nor Betsy’s; she only said that a foreigner brought in a dog with a broken leg.  The x-ray she received on her phone was clearly not Betsy’s.  When I pointed that out to her, she just shrugged her shoulders, dismissing me as a source of information.  This was not confidence-instilling behavior.  Yet, echoing what I said earlier, the competence level found in Canatlan leaves much to be desired.  Given all of this, I am at a quandary to know what to do with this dog and her stinky urine.

               The shop owner comes to me with the good news that he has found the CV joints, and that they are on their way from Durango.  There will be only a few more hours wait until the car is ready for me to drive off.  I get a ride back to town, where I can wait more comfortably until the car is ready.  My friend Lupita, in spite of all her own personal burdens, kindly leaves her job to pick me up and so I await at her place of work.  I can only hope that when the car is ready, the manager will call me and pick me up.  More likely, since we did not exchange phone numbers, I will take a taxi back there at the end of the day and ransom my car.

               The visit with Lupita raises an interesting opportunity.  This resourceful, hard working woman needs temporary help.  Although she is employed by the city of Canatlan as a cleaner, she somehow also has taken on responsibility for a tiny food shack on the grounds of the public park where twice a week vendors come to sell their goods.  I will learn how to prepare simple Mexican foods, like gorditas and zapatoes.  She will do the serious food prep the night before, and I will simply spend a few hours a day taking orders and assembling the simple dishes.  This will give her time to find another worker, one who will not steal from her as did the previous worker.  But that is a story for another day. 

              

 

 

              

 

---

[1] See elsewhere the story of how Patas Blancas nearly died from an open-air gelding procedure.

To love or not to love

 

To Love or not To Love

 

Some women seem to need love.  A woman married for decades suddenly becomes a widow.  I have seen, time and time again, how this woman quickly attracts another mate.  This is not my experience.

In my youth I felt strong connections, serially, to men.  I called this ‘love’.  It could not have been love, however, because it did not last, it was never unconditional.  The emotion or state of being that I call love comes with a strength that cannot allow it to die.  Yet here I am, at the end of my life, alone.  I still do not know what it feels like to ‘love’

Now you come into my life.  I met you on vacation, and that should have been the end of it.  You are there, I am here.  But you do not let it die.  You call me daily, and renew your hunger for me.  This must be Maya, an illusion.  What is in it for you?  I am an old woman, on the verge of death.  I cannot give you babies, I cannot be a good Housewife.  I am at best a casual housekeeper and a seasonal cook.  If you had my love for a lifetime, it would be short lived.  So why do you pursue me?

Most of my life I have worked hard to gain control over my emotions and imagination.  I see through transient alliances for what they are.  I do not confuse them for the real thing, and so I hold back and protect my heart lest it break, once again.  No more!

You say you want ‘an experience’ with me.  That is a new one on me, what is ‘an experience’?  It is easy for me to sit here, miles away, and see your sweet face filled with love, and imagine that there could be more.  The Wise Woman in me reminds me constantly that this is merely an illusion.  Your words and sentiments are incredibly sensitive and romantic.  You sweep me off my feet, making me believe that you cannot live without me. 

The cynic within me says, ‘yea, right’.

This is a time of turmoil, in my life.  It comes with stress.  The cherished house I built, the home I live in, the land I have come to love, has been sold.  I must move on in the next few months.  To start my life again?  Where?  Why must I?  How long must this alien existence go on?  I want to go home, to my spiritual domain, shedding the bonds and limitations of this flesh.  Will the last ten years of my life continue as the previous eighty?  Alone, fending for myself, fierce intelligence protecting me from the world that is out there, each soul demanding its own, willing to give little of protection and love in return.

Now you come along, creating the illusion that at last someone has come into my life who wants to protect me, to take care of me, to lift from my shoulders the nearly unbearable weight of this self-protecting life.  Am I to fall back upon my youthful optimism and trust, the pattern of giving and getting transient ‘love’ in return?  Do you offer me one last, ultimate, heartbreak?  Is that cruelty, or a blessing?  Is it true, ‘it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all’?  Isn’t that a loser’s lament?

Now we get to the word ‘love’.  It has taken on broad meanings over time.  There are many kinds of love, as the Greek language has shown us. 

Is it better to have had the love of a child, and then lost it, then never to have had a child at all?  No, I can say from experience, that offers a life time of pain.  Pain of separation, pain of feeling condemnation, of being not enough, of somehow abandonment and betrayal.  One could live happily without knowing this kind of love and loss.

There is paternal love, love of ones parents.  That comes with so many pitfalls.  Are we closer to one than to the other?  Buddhist philosophy tells us that at the moment of conception we are drawn in by attraction to one partner, which can then lead to jealousy of the other partner, setting us up for lifelong conflict.  Not all relationships are so easily defined, but in my case I think this may have been true.  I have felt very protective of my father, loathing my mother for her rough handling of him.  This has robbed me of feeling maternal love.  Even beyond death, my bond with my father remains strong.  I am still puzzled by the subtleties of maternal love.

There is fraternal love.  In a literal sense, that would mean love for and between my siblings.  I am blessed not to ever have been emotionally estranged from my siblings, but love for me has always come behind love for their partners, which is how it should be.  Having no partner myself, I often look to them for affirmation and loyalty, but that is not included in the ‘brotherly love’ package.  Spouse always comes before siblings, in my experience.

There is erotic love.  Through the years of cultural and social development, ‘maturity’ or perhaps more accurately, ‘decay’, I have seen the cultural confines of this kind of love loosen.  We live in an age of open pornography.  The nude body is flaunted everywhere we look, in films, in advertising,  in the flesh.  The privacy of the human body and sexuality used to evoke eroticism within the bonds of relationship.  Now it is open to the public, no modesty, no commitments needed.  Were we to allow ourselves the bonds of commitment and relationship, erotic love would be most private, most welcomed.  Erotic love is satisfying, deeply fulfilling, but not when it is cheapened by multiple partners in casual liaisons.  At least, that is my perception. 

Lastly, then, love such as is lacking in my life cannot be contained within ‘an experience’.  I have had a life full of experiences, adventures, and I do not crave more.  Now I crave alone melting into the eternal love and acceptance and glow that comes with death.  It is foolish of me to think that you could feel for me that committed love, that self-sacrificing love that puts the other first, that is ultimately loyal and continues growing until the final separation of death; and perhaps beyond.  You would have to be a highly realized spiritual being to go there.  As much as I feel your purity and sincerity, I see no evidence that you are that being.  You are still young, still looking to have experiences, to learn, to grow.  You did not come into this world to wait for our reunion, to continue a love that was kindled in other bodies.  I am enough of a romantic to imagine it could be so, yet the realist in me says that is a fantasy.

My sweet, sweet young man, I wish for you to find that love in a peer, so that you need not suffer the pain of separation too soon.  I wish for you an undying love that will hold you in its embrace for the rest of your life.  Do not squander your love on passing attractions.  Do not sully the purity of heart that I see in you now, by casual liaisons, or transient passions.

Know love, in all its forms, and do not give it away lightly where it will be betrayed.  Learn the difference, and know when to love and when not to love.  Ultimately, love is a gift, not a tool or a weapon.  I wish it for you in abundance.

Tale of the lost pony

 

Well, all right then.  The sun has crested the hill.  I’ve done my chores.  I’ve added nectar to the two hummingbird feeders, filled the three bowls with kittie kibble, and tossed a bunch of alfalfa into the corral for the horses.  I’ve brewed a cup of hot tea, and it’s time to tell a story.

As pets, horses can be a big expense.  Aside from the joy of admiring these handsome huge creatures and getting the occasional affectionate face hugs from them, they need to offer more to make it worth it. One should be able to climb up their backs and be carried out into the day.

Patas Blancas has been through various efforts by three different people to train him, in his four years. Lack of continuity has been our downfall.  It is high time that he cooperate and accept the saddle and bit.  In fact, he does accept certain people on his back.  But to give a good ride is yet beyond his reach.  He is willful.  A good horse will not only accept a rider, but will agree to also work together with the rider to accomplish a mutual goal.  Although he is healthy, and in the spring he was even fat, I have been negligent in his care.  I have made a firm commitment to turn over a new leaf.

Each morning at dawn I separate him from his filly, and lead him to a small enclosure.  Knowing a hungry horse cannot think of anything but food, I give each of them a small portion of alfalfa.  I keep the filly in the corral so that she will not be a distraction to him.  I go back in the house for my morning prayers and first cuppa.

My theory is that in fifteen minutes a day, he will slowly learn to understand and accept basic commands.  I lead him in moves around the 25 foot long rectangle, on a rope, and at the end of each revolution he is rewarded with a slice of apple. 

One day I was returning from a shopping trip to town, when I saw a yearling colt standing in the road, at my fence, communicating with my two horses.  I left the gate open, and he wandered in.  I had no idea who he was or where he came from, but wandering free on the road could not be a safe option for him.  I did not put him in the corral with the horses, but left him free to give them time to adjust to each other.

I started putting notices on my Facebook page, knowing that a few local women followed it.  No one responded.  For three days, I wrote reminders that the little guy was still here, waiting for his owner.  I went around asking if anyone knew of a missing pony.  I found out where the center for registered brands is located, in Canatlan, and went there.  The young man took a copy of the horse’s photo and said he would end out a notice to his list.  Days passed, and still nothing. 

Pony walks up to the fence and goes nose to nose with the filly for a moment.  Then suddenly she draws back and whinnies; an unseen message passed between them, and she did not like it. 

When they are all freely grazing around the two acres here, the pony keeps his distance.  When the pair go down the embankment to the riverbed pasture, he follows along behind them at a safe distance.  They all spend hours down there grazing.

They all three come back up and continue grazing.  If the pony gets too chummy, Patas lunges for his neck.  If he gets too close to the filly, she aims a hind kick at him.  I feel sorry for him.  It looks like they are not accepting him.

Sometimes he goes down to the riverbed alone.  I might bring him his morning rations of alfalfa down there, where he won’t have to fight the othr two for it.  The undergrowth is so thick there that I can walk the length of the area and see no sign of him.  He senses my presence, and before long reveals himself to me.   

One rumor had it that a woman at a ranch called La Luz was missing a horse.  Not knowing where that was, I drove to Rancho Seco, the nearest town down the road and heavily invested in horses.  I drove slowly down the dusty roads looking for someone to ask.  One old man sat on a stone under the eaves; I asked him; no.  I drove on a little further, and saw a bent old man leaning on a cane in the street in front of a car and a house.  He said he knew of this place.  As he described its location, towards the town of Sauceda, I knew that was too far a distance for this horse to wander lost. 

The untamed horse now walks after me, looking for food.  He follows me to the stable, and I close the door behind him.  My firewood guy rides up on his motorbike, asking about the sale of my two horses.  We agree on a price, at the moment he has the money but it won’t stay in his pocket long.  I am not ready to part with them.  I show him the pony and ask if he recognizes him.  He does not, but while the guy is here and the pony is enclosed in the stable, we put a harness on him.  First the guy makes a lasso of a thick rope, and tosses it over the resisting head of the pony.  It slides nicely into place, and we have the means to hold him still while we put the harness on him. 

This week the moon is full.  I am awakened by a strange noise, a thud.  I put on slippers and walk outside into the moonlight.  The two horses in the corral are close to the fence.  The pony is just a few feet away, standing by the locked stable where the hay is kept.  I walk up to him and talk with him a bit.  The still night air is magical.  He remains very still, relaxed, aglow with moonlight.  I freely pat his nose, and then his neck.  It was a tender moment.  My filly had been with me a month before she would let me touch her like that.

After a week, I heard that Tocho, here in El Pozole, had lost a pony.  I drove to the last known residence and left a note in the door.  I returned the next day, and found the note untouched.  I knew he had another place, out towards the Sierra.  One time when my horses had wandered off from the river onto the other bank, he had put them within his gates and, after a day, came on his motorcycle to tell me I should keep my horses in check, they were causing damage, the usual tirade.  that day I jumped in my car and followed him the few miles out.  There I saw my horses out in the distance on a slight hill, mixing with the cattle.  There were no damaged fences or crops in sight.  My horses do not rampage.  I called them to me, they ambled down the hillside in their own good time, and walked out the gate I had opened for them.  They returned the way they came, to the riverbed, across, through our fence and up the embankment to their corral.  That’s how I knew that Tocho had another place.

This day I drove back out to that place, as best as I could remember it.  In the dusty roadway there are various tracks leading off into other fenced pasture lands.  I could not find the gate and hillside I had in my memory.  Frustrated, I turned around and headed home.  I had not gone but a few yards when a motorcyclist, passing on the left, greeted me.  I recognized him as the youngest son of Tocho, the youth who had first tried to train Patas Blancas.  I threw my arm out the window and hailed him to stop, as I fumbled with the other hand to switch off the radio. 

I told him I found a pony.  A broad smile melted his face.  “You found my horse!” 

I drove back home, and waited for him.  After a while he returned, with a length of thick rope.  While I waited, I went down to the riverbed side of my property, where the three horses were.  The pony followed me up the embankment, no doubt in hopes that I would have some alfalfa for him.  I got him into the small stable, and closed the door. 

I showed the kid to the stable.  He went inside, and fashioned a halter with the rope he brought.  He removed the harness I had put on him.  While the kid went to bring up his motorcycle, I held the horse still and calm.  I said my goodbyes to him.  He is a sweet pony.  The kid led the horse away behind his motorcycle.  I thought my horse would be happy to be rid of him, this intrusion on his well-ordered life as king of the pack.  I was wrong!

Patas was in the corral as the pony was led away.  He went ballistic!  He whinnied angrily.  He galloped down the length of the corral towards the gate, whinnying noisily.  He galloped back and again, at full speed, to the corral gate, and back again towards the road.  He did it again, dancing and bucking.  It was quite a show.

I think I learned something that day about the nature of the horse.  He had put the colt through days of hazing, teaching him lessons he needed about his place in the herd.  Patas was not rejecting the pony, though it might have seemed that way to me.  As the leader of the herd, he was nurturing him, teaching him the way of horses, teaching him his place in the pecking order.

I am always humbled, when the horses teach me something, increasing my awareness of the nature of these most noble of beasts.  I have waited literally all my life to finally realize my dream to have my own horse companion.  I cherish every day, knowing our time together is so short. 

Here is Cinderella at dusk

Blancas and me, signing off

A different approach to Transgender

 It seems to me that transgender rights are administered unequally across classes.  ‘Gender reassignment surgery’ is very expensive. What about all those who feel dysphoric about their gender but don’t have the thousands of dollars needed for surgery?  I would hazard a guess that those who can buy the surgery are a minute percentage of their lower-income siblings.

I hear the stories of children who knew at a very young age that ‘something was wrong’ inside them.  They did not share their gender’s interests.  Boys who wanted more colorful or frilly clothes, and who preferred playing with dolls than ball and bat.  Girls who preferred to climb trees, wrestle, and learn to use tools under the hood of a car were traditionally called ‘tomboys’, but with budding breasts were forced into a different social class.

These children suffer depression as they grow towards maturity.  Why is that?  No doubt they experience bullying, name calling, and ostracizing from both sides of the gender line.  As a teenager experiencing new hormones, depression can occur, it is part of the experience for many, but for sexually dysphoric youth it is deeper and more terminal. 

Parents seek help, when they see their child suffering this treatment.  They may assume that the medical professionals have an answer, so they haul these young people off to a doctor’s office.  There they may find antidepressants, or hormone blockers.  For more desperate patents, treatments of estrogen or testosterone are condoned.

One day it occurred to me that maybe our culture is heading down the wrong path.  After all, theologians who have studied such things tell us that we choose where we will be born, in order to work out our path to spiritual awakening.  We choose our family, our siblings, our gender.  That being the case, how is it possible that we made a ‘mistake’ in the gender we chose?  Sorry, folks, but I don’t see that as a possibility.  We were born with certain personality traits, yes.  To assume that means we don’t have the body to match the personality does not make sense.  Is medical intervention the answer?  Only because we are thinking too small, too ‘within the box’, can we not see our way clear to a more equitable solution.

It is society’s reaction to the choices of these dysphoric people.  I see in my mind’s eye a feminine person, with dress, ruffles and flare, in full makeup, and a beard. 

What about the female to male transition?  I see far less of that on reality TV shows.  It is much easier for a woman to pass as a man, externally.  Does she want to perform like a man sexually?  Lesbians have been using strap-ons already, so why would surgery be necessary?  And when else does a penis come into play?  In a locker room?  That, again, is a societally-conditioned response.  Does that require surgery to change?

I envision a society, a culture, where people can express themselves naturally, without fear of being criticized, ridiculed, ostracized.  I don’t think it necessary for an athlete to compete outside their biological gender to feel fulfilled.  Boys feel more comfortable running with a group of girls?  Let them!  Just not when competing in the Olympics.  Girls want to run with the boys? Work harder in the gym.  Again, not in the Olympics.

If such a culture existed, a person could learn to live with the hormones they were biologically programmed to have, without feeling dysphoric. 

You get the idea.  Not necessary to belabor it.  I do wonder where I have missed the mark, since I am not part of this gender-dysphoric community.  Were I to write my biography without specifying my gender, it might well be ambiguous.  I have not lived a traditional role.  That, however, does not qualify me to speak for this community.  There may be things I am missing.  Surely that is so.

I never hear this subject debated.  I hear that people are fighting for their LGBTQ rights.  I would like to hear the terms of that movement extended.  If society accepted people who are ‘different’, if the roles dictated by society were to be reevaluated and modified, would people feel the need to be so vocal, so ‘in-your-face’ about their differences and different needs?  Would they still feel the need to organize marches?

My voice is not loud enough to engender a conversation over this different perspective.  I wish it were, because the unhappiness of such a large number of people disturbs my spiritual tranquility.  I would rather see a solution that comes from the minds and hearts of people, from growth in spiritual awareness, than from the medical profession mangling the beautiful human body.

Proposed feud solution

 

Todo con cerca o nadie con cerca

 

Para alcanzar paz entre vecinos, para vivir en paz y harmonía, se requiere:

A.      Humberto Diaz Rodríguez (Beto) cerca su terreno particular por orilla lado nordeste, separando terreno público y terreno privada, con portal cerrado que da acceso cuando se necesita.  Este alambre será terminado por 15 de Julio, 2023

B.      Por medio de vecinos buenos y mostrar buena voluntad, Beto ofrece compartir usa del estanque (lo cual es por terreno público, pero lo mayor parte coloque en el terreno contiguo del privada de Luz de Compasion) por lo cual tiene certificado usa agricultura del Conagua,) el parte este entre el arbole grande y orilla.

C.      El terreno público será apartado entre el parte que contigua del terreno de Beto and del Luz de Compasion a la latitud 24°35’16” N 104°47’28” W

El alambre que se construyó por Luz de Compasion será reestablecido como fue antes de Beto lo movió en mayo 2023.

 

D.       Al caso de Beto intenta hacer más larga el estanque que existe en porción de terreno público contigua al terrena de Luz de Compasion, se hace al sur del alambre este, sin molestar alambre suyo. 

 

Le ley Federal que dicta este terreno se encuentra aquí:  Articulo 27 y Articulo 113, Constitución de México

 

 

 

 

Firmado por                                                                                                     Testigos:

 

Humberto Diaz Rodriguez                                                                           1.

 

Luz de Compasion (Satina Anziano)                                                        2.

 

water feud and ineffective law in Mexico

 

Hollywood found their own gold mines in developing stories about the American west and feuds over water and land rights.  Here we are, in the twenty-first century, living out these same feuds.  Society has grown, we have electric cars and AI, but humanity continues running on its own basic instincts.

I have written here in this blog about the water feud with the neighbor on my north side, Juanito.  The lovely meadow below his property lies fallow, while he locks his horse up in a hot tiny yard of an ancestor’s abandoned adobe house with dried weeds for food.  The poor creatures bones grow more and more pronounced.

The neighbor on the south side continues to flex his muscles unchecked.  The way the politics are set up here, a small hamlet like El Pozole gets to elect for a three-year term someone who will function as the ‘law’.  When Gloria held that post, I mirrored the other old ladies in calling her the Mayor.  Now that elected post has fallen to Beto, who is called the Judge.  He got the vote, in my opinion, because the other candidates running were various brothers of one very large family, and loyalties of the rest of the village were split among the brothers.  In other words, this unpopular candidate won by default.

Barred from Juanito's pleasant meadow, the horses still needed a safe place to graze.  Their corral is just prairie dirt before the rainy season.  I needed access to the public land contiguous to my land.  Beto, at the time this hectare was sold to become Luz de Compasion, put up fences around that piece of public land and applied for a water permit for exclusive use of the little pool of water that lies within its borders.  I asked him to be a good neighbor and let me use my piece of land, if I would enclose the south side with a fence so my horses would not stray to his land.  He said no.  I called upon the powers that be in the municipality, that being an office called ‘sindico’, and a mediator judge.  The word translates to ‘union’, but I have no idea what factions comprise it.  First two guys from that sindico office came, to assess my complaint.  They were stunned to see the public lands enclosed by fences. 

People live here as they did one hundred years ago.  What laws may have changed in the intervening years seem to have escaped the awareness of these people.

These guys called another meeting, such as we had when Juanito complained about my use of his well.  Beto also attended that first meeting, because I was asking for access to my land.  The lady judge, Juanita, came to this meeting, with her assistant Chayito.  Begrudgingly, Beto agreed I could open up the fence that separated my land from the public land, as long as I put up a fence on the south border confining my horses to ‘my’ public land.  The subject of the little pond arose, I asked for a small piece of it for use by my horses.  He apparently agreed to share.

Sadly, nothing was ever written up.  No notes, no reports were ever recorded.

It took me a week to assemble the materials and the workers, but the fence was done while Beto was coincidentally visiting his brother in California.  He was secretive about the length of his visit, telling one person one thing and his boss another. 

Beto returned, and was not happy with the results.  Another meeting was called, and again Beto agreed that I could continue access of a small portion of the pool. 

Beto then proceeded to tear down my fence, and move it about ten meters further north into what should have been the land contiguous to my property, thus cutting me off from access to the pond.  What treachery.  I cut the barbed wire, so my horses could continue their occasional five-minute frolic in the water.  But then there was no barrier to keep them from then proceeding onto the public land contiguous with Beto’s private land, and, uhoh, his private land, because he never enclosed that with fencing.

Beto is jealously protecting this pond, 'for his cows'.  These cows come to this three-hectare site only for a few months each year, about ten of them, during rainy season.  They have a tank of water for drinking, which is on Beto’s private land, provided by the municipal irrigation water system that happens to be located on this piece of land.  Since he never enclosed his property with fencing, the cows have access to this large span of property.  These are not dairy cows, but saleable meat on hoof.

There are laws governing this Federal land.  This land is a flood zone, an eco system.  The laws governing its use, so that the flood zone maintains its function.

It is to remain open, no one can construct barriers (such as fences).  It is not to be used for commercial purposes, such as grazing cattle meant for market.  The natural springs and pools appearing there are not to be interfered with.  No damming them, no expanding them.  No permits are to be issued for private use of their waters.

Another section within the Mexican Constitution pertraining to water rights says that if the pool of water, for which you obtained a certificate for private use, is not being used as intended and stipulated in the certificate, the certificate should be invalidated.  This pretty much describes the situation, but is there any force behind this law. 

There is the law, and then there is Beto.  'And never the twain shall meet.'

I have tried the legal process.  Four times, the mediators have come out to the property to meet with my neighbors and settle these disputes.  The terrorist on one side has won.  I have access to my well, but I do not put my horses down into that lovely meadow anymore.  He does not put his hapless horse down there either, unfortunately.

Beto, however, is recalcitrant. He may have paid lip service to an accord allowing me a little access to ‘his’ pond, but out of the sight and hearing of the mediation committee he has reneged.  And so it is time to call upon the true law of the land.  Not the municipally sanctioned ‘syndicates’, not the mediation judge, not the police.  The organized crime group is the only reliable muscle.  This is what I have always been told, and so I am putting this truth to the test.  I have taken my complaint to the storefront in town where the chiefs hold court.  I had to wait many hours over various days until a chief was free to speak with me, but I finally got a hearing.  He has called a meeting between me and Beto for two days hence.  I reacted with fear at the words, but he reassured me that it would be fine.  I really don’t want to try to talk with this man, Beto, again.  His evil is so intense that it scares me.

I am surprised to hear that mediation was also a first step with these people.  I think they take their responsibility seriously.  Let us hope so!  I will ask for deadlines for the fence to be built, so that he can not agree to the face and drag his heels when pressure is off.  I had been told that the MO for enforcement was that the first step was a certain number of whacks on the back with a bat, like three or five.  If the person does not comply after that, a limb might be broken.  This is the rumor.  Now I will find out the reality.

And two days later, I arrive primed for confronting Beto yet again, with the map and ‘acuerdo’ in hand at the little storefront with the sign ‘SIX’ above the door.  The young man who sits at the horseshoe desk in the unlit back of the store called his chief when I arrived.  There was no Beto in attendance.  And so I was told, once again, that I needed to come back again tomorrow, same time.

I have to wonder just how much attention this ‘chief’ is giving this situation.  Does he not know that this situation has already been mediated four times, with the same null results?  I have documented in a nutshell the summary of these talks, the reasonable solution.  I have decided that I will not again endure facing Beto, who lies as easily as breathes.  If this alternate justice system cannot deal with this situation either, then I have to give up, surrender, be the victim.

Yesterday I went down to the riverbank to explore more closely how things stand now.  Beto has reinforced the fence he put up on my side of the public land, without access to the water for my horses.  I climbed over to his side of the fence, and took pictures of the fence lined up with LdeC buildings seen clearly through the trees.  His boldness is brazen. 

The horses followed me down to the riverbed.  I did not tie them.  I cannot leave them there tied, because they wander and wrap the ropes around shrubs and trees, until they can no longer move.  I left them there, and went about my investigating.  When it was time to go back home, I looked for the horses.  I did not see them.  I followed the hoof prints on the soft ground, walking quite a way to new turf.  On the other side of the riverbank the fencing is in poor condition, so that the horses crossed inland.  I continued a ways in towards the edge of the broad riverbank.  I climbed up the embankment there, seeing that there was a fence line perpendicular to the rise.  That is when I saw two mules, inside the fence across the river.  My horses were so excited to discover these new friends, they romped and tossed their heads, vocalizing.  In their excitement I was a little worried they might trample me, they were so including me in their joy.  I called them, I put a rope on Cinderella, and they followed me back down the embankment towards the river.  I tempted them with pieces of carrots.  And then they had enough of me, and ran back to their new friends, trailing rope in the mud.  I knew there was no use in chasing them, so I went back home.  The humidity is high at this time of year. The outing had worked up quite a sweat, and so I jumped into the shower and focused on getting to my meeting.

Later in the day, when the horses did not return on their own, I walked back down to the river.  The land down there is thick with shrubs.  I wondered if the dogs and I had left enough scent on the trail for the horses to find their way back.  They heard me coming, and whinnied before I saw them.  I called to them, and met them half way.  I lead them through the thicket of overgrowth to the hole in the fence, and then they went on ahead of me across the overgrown field, up the embankment, and straight to their corral.

I learned that I could indeed allow them to roam free at the river’s edge, but I would need to clearly mark the way home for them.  I have a roll of tape like the police use to rope off a crime scene.  I will have to string it along the fence opening and on both sides of a path through the bush to the clearing.  Hopefully that will do the trick.  They will always come home at sunset, if they can find the way, for their evening measure of alfalfa.  In truth, they had more surprises for me.

The next I let them out of the corral again.  They grazed for a while in the newly growing grass, it being rainy season.  They eventually wandered down the embankment to the riverbed.  They must have retraced their steps to the two donkeys.  Later in the day I went to check on them, and also to try to string up the tape to guide them home.  I wandered up and down the river bank, but did not see them.  I called, but they did not answer.  I did not see a lot of fresh hoof prints, nor droppings.  I went back to the house, curious, a little concerned, but without energy to walk a few miles to track them down.  I opened the roadside gate for good measure, just in case they followed the riverbed to the road crossing.  All I could do now is wait, and trust.

Late in the afternoon, approaching dusk, they popped up over the embankment and moseyed on up to their corral, where I had laid out some alfalfa.  I closed the gate.

Having decided that I would blow off the day’s appointed meeting with Beto and the ‘chief’, I was feeling unsettled.  I could just imagine Beto showing up, the two of them having a cozy meeting, and deciding it was not necessary to do anything further to appease the old lady.  I felt the need for a go-between, to pursuade the 'chief' to see my position more clearly.  There were three people who had suggested using the malandro option.  I thought about each one, and then chose to approach Jose. 

Jose, the Carpenter, is an interesting character.  I first met him in the parking lot of Aurrera, the Walmart subsidiary.  I had just parked, when a motorcycle pulled up next to me.  Jose greeted me with a friendly smile, and struck up a conversation.  I saw a middle-aged man with a very Italian face, a nose reminiscent of my father’s.  He introduced himself as a carpenter, and gave me his phone number.  I later on did try him out on a few projects.  His work proved unreliable, but he grew on me as a friend.  One time I went away for three weeks, and he ‘housesat’ for me.  I thought that meant he and his wife would move out to my ranch and take a break in the countryside.  When I returned I found my cats well fed, my plants watered, but no sign that anyone had been in the house.

That is when I finally asked him about his limp.  It was obvious.  He spun some story about falling off his motorbike, but when he rolled up his jeans I saw a swelling or growth.  The word carbuncle came to mind.  It was not the raw wound of a fall, but more a chronic condition. 

As the months and year went by, I began to see him more and more on his motorcycle, carrying envelopes and small packages.  When I visited his small shop I saw less activity there.

One day we passed on the street and stopped to chat.  He said he was working at the municipal building.  As is typical here, there were no details, no specifics.  It was left to me to figure out from clues just what was going on.

It has been three or four years now since that first meeting.  Jose is a regular fixture at the municipal building.  My Pozole friend, Rita, sits in a anti room, perhaps she is a secretary to whomever sits in the office at the front of the building.  She has established that Jose and I are friends, so anytime I pass by and greet her she informs me that Jose was just here, or is coming right back.  I guesses he functioned as an official currier.

At dawn I sent him a message asking him to call me, as I would like to ask a favor.  He called me around 9:30.  I tried to explain what I wanted, but it was too difficult over the phone.  I quickly dressed and drove down to town, before he disappeared again.  I knew from past conversations that he had friends among the organized crime groups.  It appeared to me that everyone did, these people are well integrated into the community.  I asked him to speak with this ‘chief’ for me, to explain to the chief that my presence was not needed at yet another mediation meeting with Beto; there had been four attempts so far, through the official process with municipal ‘sindicos’ and the judge.  Jose had been in close contact with the sindicos throughout, and new all the details of those four meetings.  All I asked was that he speak with the guy by phone. 

It is human nature, isn’t it.  People never want to say ‘no’ to your face.  This was the task I needed done, no other.  I pleaded with him, if he couldn’t do it, just tell me.  Don’t tell me ‘tomorrow’, or ‘I’ll see’, or ‘I know a guy’.  I could have saved my breath.  He was silent for long moments, looking off to the distance as we sat just inside the entrance to the municipal building, on the two chairs before the reception/information desk under the stairwell.  He turned to me hopefully, ‘Maybe the President can help?”  The recently elected president of Canatlan, Angela, is also wife to a prominent member of the organized crime group.  I would be embarrassed, importuning, to think that she would care about my piddling problem.  True, Beto was an elected official who was totally abusing his office, but in the greater scheme of things what did it really matter.

I gave him a copy of the acuerdo, and the map from Google Earth, and left.

Over a number of days, and many hours sitting in their storefront waiting, in the end it came to nothing.  Perhaps if I had offered a significant amount of money, I might have gotten attention.  I did mention a payment, and was told that this was not expected.  The 'chief' arranged a meeting between me and Beto, which I felt was totally unnecessary but, whatever.  I turned up at the appointed time; Beto did not, nor the 'chief'.  That was the end of that.

I accept that my horses will have no water when they are down on the riverbed meadow.  There was a break in the public fence leading to the river, through which the horses could escape, cross the river, and wind up on the other side of the sierra.  I innocently expected that they would always come home at the end of the day.  One day, however, they did not.  At dawn I drove around, up into the sierra, to the farm where the donkeys live, but I did not see my horses anywhere.  What more could I do.  I waited.  Sure enough, in the afternoon Tocho came roaring up to my door on his motorcycle.  He started with the usual, 'I could call they police', 'they are causing damage, who will pay' kind of rhetoric.  That blew past, and I asked where they were and could I pay next week, as I was awaiting a pension check.  I changed my shoes and hopped in the car, without stopping for ropes.  He led me to a fenced in hillside.  The horses were on the horizon.  I called to them.  They came ambling down towards me, while Tocho waited and watched, off the side.  We opened the gate, the horses followed, and turned right.  My car and that way home was to the left.  Gosh.  I rushed home and grabbed some rope and returned, but by then they had disappeared.  I drove further in the direction they had walked, and realized that there is a section of the riverbank, on the opposite side from my farm, that had no fencing.  By the time I got home, the horses were in the stable munching their way through a bale of alfalfa.

With the post hole digger and a roll of barbed wire in hand, I tried to fix that part of the fence.  There was about twenty feet that needed shoring up.  I worked all morning, but just could not manage to get the poles to stand up, without cutting all the wires and starting from scratch.  I gave up.  Next day, I returned to the fence line and dragged dead branches of trees.  These seem to be the trim left over from cutting down a tree to use as a fence post.  Big gobs of smaller branches and twigs heading in all directions.  I pulled them all over to the fence line and laid them up against it.  I was able to build enough of a barrier, so that now the horses cannot escape to the river.  Surprisingly, they now seem to be willing to spend hours down there.  In the past, I would want them to go down there but after an hour, they would return.  The rains have come since then, and greened up the place.  Maybe that is why.

The fight is over.  Their side has won.  It is all meaningless egoistic chest thumping in the end.  The horses are fine, when they are thirsty they know their way back to the corral and the water trough there.  Meanwhile, they have turned the farm into a lovely pastoral scene.  The rains have greened up the fields, their grazing has left them well-trimmed, .Luz de Compasion now looks like a lovely park, which is how I had envisioned it years ago.  Life is good.