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404 Oaxaca – foto by smith

There is no water pressure here. Water here is propelled by gravity. They fill big plastic water tanks called tinacos which sit on the roof and dribble water down the gravity well. You don’t take a shower so much as you walk around under the gravity dribble trying to get all your body wet. And the hot water heater holds about two tablespoons of water, so you wet yourself, turn off the water, wash yourself with soap, then turn on the almost gone hot water and try real fast to rinse all the soap off your chilled body before the water goes stone cold.

You can’t drink the water either cuz you’ll twist up in diarrheic pain and die painfully from worms and parasites and feces and cockroach parts.

I don’t like living where I can’t drink the water, but I can’t afford to live where I can drink the water. That won’t be a factor long because soon you won’t be able to drink the water in the USA or England or Europe because instead of maintaining and repairing the water infrastructure of the first world countries, the politicians are giving all our money to their rich friends or using it to kill brown-skinned folk in the middle east. But this is a good thing because there are way too many people on earth anyway and bad water is a fine way to kill most of them off. After all, we don’t want to crowd the rich. Might get scabies.

But beyond water, this is my favorite place I’ve ever lived. Going someplace here is like walking through a painter’s palette – a stroll in pastel and primary colors, the painted building fronts like a test brush of each color, tone, and texture imaginable. I receive a hit of happiness every time I go outside, or just stand at our second floor kitchen window watching the people, animal, vehicle and color spectrum flow below.

Yesterday walking in the cool sun below a faded blue sky, I was balancing 20 pounds of dirty laundry on my bicycle as I awkwardly walked it to the lavenderia. I was having quite a difficult time when I realized I’m having one fine time of life what with the green black mountains rising in front of me playing hide & seek with the white wispy clouds as I walked beneath banana trees, pomegranate trees, mango trees, lime trees, orange trees, grapefruit trees, humongous trees topped with large orange flowers reaching for the sky, friendly people nodding to me in their multi-colored clothes in front of their endlessly colored swatches of homes.

Plus the dogs. I have all my street dog friends – Yipper, Hellhound, Sadeyes, Howler, Roofdog. I even have a roof dog enemy who goes berserk and jumps up, fur bristling, tale wagging, furiously barking at me every time I walk by, while he just lays and watches the rest of the world pass. Of course I’m the only one who ever talks to him. Lady thinks he wants a bite of me so badly she’s afraid he’s going to leap from the second floor to me in his rage. I talk to every dog and infrequent cat we pass. Every time I return home, I walk back and talk to our landlord’s second floor porch parrot who imitates my whistles and chirps “pretty bird” back to me as he does summersaults around his perch bar and dances back and forth for me.

It’s like summertime where the fish are easy, the dogs are jumpin’ and the colors are high.

Summertime – by George Gershwin

Summertime and the livin’ is easy
Fish are jumpin’ and the cotton is high

Your daddy’s rich and your mamma’s good lookin’
So hush little baby don’t you cry

One of these mornings you’re going to rise up singing
Then you’ll spread your wings and you’ll take to the sky

But till that morning there’s a’nothing can harm you
With daddy and mamma standing by


my roof dog foe – foto by smith

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