Recovery

I knew what I was getting in to when I agreed to go to the weekly Farmer’s Market.  Liberated retirees, hippies, drop outs, refugees, gender queers and Mexicans and all in the three ring circus of gluten free and organic products.  I don’t which is worse, geeks and freaks into technology or geeks and freaks into the environment. 

We get suckered to a table where an old lady is selling homemade marmalades, pestos and salsas.  A bald guy is buying up some salsa verde and tells us to try. We do, its great, and he tells us how he is going to prepare his pork loin with this stuff. Great, but we but some tamarind stuff and some sort of salsa made form pomegranate.  The old lady says it’s great on cheese.  Why not?  There is a lady sitting in front of the table, perhaps serving as a translator for the old lady behind the table.  We strike up a conversation and get another view of what life is like here.

We mosey on around the small enclave of tables and I see a guy who looks like a Hare Krishna drop out, shaved head with silly hair puff on the back.  He is an artisan cheese make.  He holds up half a wheel of cheese and tells some lady to touch it. She does, sticks her finger right in the center of the cheese and presses hard. I think this is gross.  No telling where those fingers have been, especially in this place!  Tonya wonders over to the cheese table and his helper asks if we would like to sample some cheese.  Tonya says yes-but she doesn’t know this guy lets strangers touch his cheese.  I refuse.

We make the rounds and buy a few pieces of bread, look at the artisan soaps, some people are dishing up tacos and sopas and spot some great looking honey.  We check the prices of some rugs and stop at a table where a lady has stitched some silly pink panther motifs on to pillowcases. Horrid.  Who would buy that crap?  However, Tonya starts chatting and ends up standing there for a while.  We see this other pillow case where she has stitched an amazing and vibrant vase of flowers. Tonya snatches it up, as well as buys a small cell phone case she made, with a church and two trees on it.  Simple, but we like it.  The ladies beside us are talking about some new cause they are signing people up for and they all wear matching baseball caps. Ugh.

On the way out we stop at a makeshift stand with dog calendars and some photos and postcards.  I have already seen this calendar elsewhere for sale around town, but we start talking to the guy manning the stand.  It is the guy who actually made all these.  He’s from Vermont.  Grey hair, glasses on head and dog by his side.  We talk shop over the photographs for a few, then get specific. “What do people do here?  What do you do here?”

“This is it!” he says.  He sells dog calendars.  By trade, he is a glass blower.  He says after 25 years he dropped out of the rat race of the East coast, and decided to stop everything and rediscover himself. “I was in a life transition” he says” I was in a state of recovery.  I wanted to get away from all the emptiness of never having enough stuff and worrying what society says and does next” he says.  I don’t show it, but inside I am cringing.  I hate this kind of talk.  It sounds a bit like indoctrination to me when I hear this stuff.  Still, the old dude is cool, so I carry on conversing.  This is all he does.  He has no real job and doesn’t work with glass anymore.  He photographs the dogs in the area and sells postcards and calendars.  He says it’s scary, because there is not a lot of money to be made from hocking calendars.  Still, he loves it and says he’s thrown himself into it headlong.  I like dogs…I love dogs.  Tonya loves dogs, so we dig where he is coming from.  We talk about our favorite lovely animals for a few minutes and Tonya wants to help him, so she buys a calendar.  My favorite photo is not in there, so I am a bit bummed.   The stranger’s conversation keeps us interested and he asks where we live.  This changes the dialogue completely.

“Wasn’t it odd moving into a world of retirees?” I ask pointedly. “How did you do it?”  He smiles and continues with the mantra of ‘recovering’, but then moves on. “I was in a life transition, so I wanted away from the speed of life.  I wanted to be around people like the retirees.  I actually liked it!  It helped me to readjust” he says laughing.  “I didn’t run from anything, or deny it.  I changed and stopped doing what I was doing in Vermont, and I wanted to leave it behind.” He says that for a while the greyhairs were a great help, “…but not so much anymore, I try to distance my self from them now” he states.  We discuss how one moves within and between the communities here, blending with the Mexicans, the retirees, and the Texans.  Everyone who lives here always makes a point to point out The Texans. I don’t tell him I am Texan, I just listen.

The Texans got the money.  The Texans have the homes.  The Texans throw the parties, but according to varying sources, The Texans drink.  They drink a lot here.  In fact, a guy just told us that the wealthy Texans buy homes on the hill and rarely venture out.  He says they have their alcohol delivered up the hill.  The downside is that because of the current bedlam which is Mexico and the state of the nation thanks to inept inexperienced moron as President, many Texans have left and had to go home to guard what is left of their money.  Now, things are changing.  Europeans and Mexicans are creeping in.  This seems to be the vortex of where all this blending is going on.  For some odd reason, this is the place to be to change, redirect, rediscover, and get lost.  As a friend said the other day, it is “A sunny place for shady people”.

He tells us how he has a Mexican girlfriend and he has moved out into the countryside, renting a place on a horse farm.  He says it’s wonderful.  “I don’t hang with the retirees and gringos so much anymore.  I have befriended Mexicans and with my girlfriend, I now move in a different circle.”  He tells us if we want to watch how all this works in full swing, to come back in February when this gay reclusive art freak finishes up his new project and opens his new museum for all to see. “He’s a freak” he says laughing, “and I don’t mean just weird, I mean he is psychedelic, like way into outer space weird”.

“Why do I wanna come and go to this opening full of art wank, art fags and weirdoes?”

“Because everyone goes.  The Mexicans, the retirees, the scenesters, everyone.  It will be a big deal”  He stops and collects his thoughts.  “You know, you would be surprised at these people here.  The retirees can be quiet surprising” he affirms.  ‘I was at this party a while back.  I would say there were 50 people there.  I don’t get high anymore, and there were two other people there who don’t either…so that left 47 people who did”

“What drinking…?” I ask

“No. getting high” he bursts out in laughter.  “I mean, we are the younger generation.  It is kind of shocking to see the retirees going at it.  I suppose we don’t think of them ding those things.  They are supposed to scold us, but man!  They go nuts!” of course, he admits drink will pour, but the main thing is these old buggers get totally plastered and even get into psychedelics.  “At this particular party, they made pot brownies.  Everyone was eating them and getting plastered.  I didn’t eat any, and neither did the other two.  We laughed at the behavior of these people though.  Even though these old people aren’t addicts, the behavior of an addict is there” I start to worry if this is going to be some kind of life counseling conversation and new age BS.  “The owner had a couple of Bassett Hounds.  One of them came walking in to the kitchen with a baggie in its mouth.  It was full of brownies!  A short while later the hostess and owner of the house comes in, blitzed of her head, and it kicks in…” he says while he adjusts his glasses. “She comes in and accuses the lady I am talking to of stealing her pot brownies, ‘Look. I had extra baggies of these brownies here, I made so many, and now one of the bags is gone…”  he shake his head and looks straight at us, ‘Can you believe it?  Just like an addict, the fear, the accusation and the paranoia.  Anyway, I tell the hostess that my friend didn’t take the bag of brownies.  She didn’t believe me, but insisted that this girl did it.  Then she went off about how now there is a criminal in the house and it will ruin the party because they are stealing her things.  She was so high.  She had no idea the dog ate them, but instead, she started to accuse others about it.”  He says that she eventually found out that the dog had eaten them, but thankfully it was only one of her dogs and not both.  She panicked and asked this guy what to do.  He laughs as he says, “I told her the dog would be OK” he makes a face, showing that he was hoping he was right, “I told her to turn the TV on, put the dog in a chair and set him in front of the screen, with the sound down”  She did, and he made it through ok.

We are all having a good laugh at the poor dog’s expense, and he acts out the dog in the chair, ‘the owner said he got a little weird.  He would look at the screen, then tense up, turn his head bear his teeth and make a groan. Then he would loosen up and watch the screen some more.  It was like he was seeing things or having flashbacks…but he worked through it and was OK”

As he is finishing up the dope party story, the lady who helped him translate the calendar happens to walk up.  She was born in Mexico City too, so she and Tonya hit it right off.  We all stand and talk as they tear down the stalls around us.  “Things are really starting to change here” he says, ‘I truly believe there is like a third culture developing here, one that understands the Gringos and is Mexican.  They can take the best from the old ways, some from the Gringos and make it fit together somehow.  It’s really great!’ he says.  No doubt, he may only sell calendars and postcards, but he loves it here and swears he would not go back.  This was truly an unexpected morning.  I knew I would see some freaks and hippies, but this guy was a very pleasant surprise.  So is the translator!  We say goodbye, but before we make off, he asks for our email addresses to be on his email list. 

We walk back down the long road into the center.  It is really hot now; the sun is at full power.  I see a beer specialty store and peep in.  Tonya buys me a Kronenbourg. That gets me excited.  We continue on and Tonya glances over her shoulder, "Look who’s behind us” she says.  I turn and it is the lady who was sitting in front of the marmalade table.  We say hello again. “Can I ask you another odd question?” I say walk side by side with her. “Sure. What?”

“Where can we get a good rotisserie chicken here” I say.  Tonya moans in embarrassment.  The lady smiles and points back to where we came from, “All the way back there, at the Happy Chicken” she says smiling and then loses herself in the crowd.  We continue to walk home and later, taking the lady's advice, we do go to Happy Chicken and it was very good.