Walkie Talkie

Greg sez:


Jen and I bused yesterday into Tlaquepaque (which I call Walkie Talkie), a city next to Guadalajara known for upscale shops, restaurants, and artwork. We went in to meet Randall, our Carolina friend who's been living in Tlaquepaque for several years. Sure enough, we met him at a modest new restaurant called Pancha la Boba, which is two small rooms whitewashed and subsequently written over by patrons' eclectic musings, some as foolish as the restaurant name (which means something like Pancha the Dumbie) and some aspiring to epigrams, wit, and wisdom.

We enjoyed a hearty breakfast at Randall's expense, talked with the cook Mary and her son, who was already (10:30  am, Sunday) enjoying his first beer with breakfast, and then did some window buying and sightseeing in the various touristy neighborhoods of Walkie Talkie. We bought a few knickknacks if not paddywhacks and then hiked to Randall's home. (They call him Sr. Rolando in Mexico.) He has a shotgun suite of rooms not much enhanced or decorated since he began renting, as he's trying to buy now but this process in Mexico can be very protracted. It depends on how many parties own the property, or have claims to owning it, and how many lawyers, honest or not, have their fingers in the pie.

To make a long afternoon short, we retired then to the bar at a boutique hotel called La Quinta Don Jose, where Jen took us 2 yrs ago, as a vacation from our vacation on Lake Chapala, and soon hooked up again, amiably, with Charlie, the bartender, who makes a mean margarita and speaks passable English. He has a Spanish-English dictionary at the ready to improve his competence and is generous in dispensing his own learning in Spanish as a Foreign Language (SFL).

Jen and I were at the bar with Sr. Rolando awhile when, totally out of the blue, a couple entered and spied up -- and their jaws dropped. It was Sharon and Glenn Sorrie, who own a B & B in Mazatlan and were our hosts there on 2 or 3 occasions. My gods, what serendipity! We hadn't seen them in over two years, and here they were just checking in to the Don Jose, where they would spend two nights on the way home from a shopping excursion to Michoacan and Jalisco.

These good folks, with their friend Debby, who runs a massage parlor in Mazatlan, were staying over two nights and shopping in Tlaquepaque and Tonala, a neighboring community, for artsy goods, especially Katarinas (Day of the Dead dolls) for a new store they are to run in their B & B.

What are we to make of such coincidences, such happy coincidences, which fate throws our way? How likely was it that we would run into each other at that time and that place? The occasion was much like another time in Mexico, some years back, in Oaxaca City, when Jen and I ran into the couple who had sold us our St. Paul home, Lou and Julie Casagrande, and then moved to Boston. They just happened to be visiting Oaxaca at the same time we were -- and happened to be, at that moment, in the same art gallery we were visiting (and where we buying a painting called "El Foco" by Enrique Flores).

We can be looking for someone or something for ages, without finding it. (Does happiness come to mind?) Then, in a twinkling, a lightning flash, we find ourselves with people we have known from long ago! That is, we find ourselves not so much by active seeking as by losing ourselves in the day to day details of getting and spending, waking and sleeping, scrambling about the landscape.

We enjoyed seeing Glenn and Sharon so much, and imbibing more than a few margaritas, that we stayed with them for dinner at the Don Jose and took a room, next to theirs, and stayed the night.

In the morning, this morning, everything was fresh and new. We breakfasted together, said goodby, and trusted that we would meet again before too long -- this time, through our efforts, Jen's and mine, to get down to Mazatlan.