On My Birthday in Mexico

Bernardo Ramonfaur, Unsplash

I got drunk

I didn’t mean to, but the ginger margaritas were that good. The little restaurant down the street was better than expected, the music was exceptional, the octopus was fresh, we were the only gringos and I was seduced.

Ambiance is worth a lot and this place had it. It was called El Manantial, The Source.

I was reminded of the old time poetry of Mexico, and strangely enough, of why I’m here. Not the circumstances that bring me here, but rather how it fits my spirit. I changed my direction at age nineteen from theatre to painting rather arbitrarily. My brother had dropped the torch of art when he died prematurely, and I picked it up impulsively and ran with it. It took me fifty years to make something of it. At this age, with my limp and uneasy balance, acting is not in the cards, but I still have a sense of language.

I still wake up with poetic monologues running in my head. I still love music and exotic scenes. I still notice “characters.” I still imagine scenarios and I find them by instinct, it seems.

So, we’re five short blocks down the street in a place that would cost ten times as much in Austin just for the ambiance, celebrating my birthday, when it occurs to me how much beauty and poetry surround me every day.