BIRD´S EYE VIEW
By Joseph Kandoll

I see the world pass by from my balcony. I sit there, sometimes with a chair I bring out from inside, sometimes just on the steps that lead up to the rooftop where I hang my clothes to dry. Sometimes I have a smoke, or maybe a drink. But mostly I just go there to sit and watch the world go by.

I live on a quiet street in Lopez Mateos. It is a colonia not far from a bus stop, near a main road, Libremiento. If I take the bus in one direction, I go through the tunnels toward Olas Altas and the world of coffee shops, souvenir stands, galleries and restaurants. If I take the bus in another, I go toward downtown, to the malecón, to the clubs and bars and shops of the center of town. If I take the bus in the other direction, I can catch a plane to anywhere in the world or a bus to points throughout the country, to work, to the supermarket where I do my shopping. I feel as if I am at the center of the world.

It is not a busy street. There is not much traffic, even on busy holidays. What traffic there is usually goes at a leisurely pace. The street is made of the traditional cobblestones. Since I moved here in 1996, the street has been patched many times and redone completely once. I observed the highway workers laying the foundation of sand, the dump truck hauling in loads of rounded stones, and the stone workers choosing them carefully before laying them in organized patterns of larger stones along the edges and smaller stones in the middle. I watched them smoothing over it a layer of cement to hold the stones during the rainy season when the street becomes a river.

When it rains, I stand–instead of sit–on the balcony. The rain pours all around me, but the roof overhead protects me. It feels like a cupola with the openings arching upwards gracefully. The lightning strikes and the thunder roars and I am like Zeus watching the people scurry below. They protect themselves with newspapers or plastic or the occasional umbrella or raincoat. Or they run, drenched, their clothes wet through-and-through, their shoes squishing in the water that runs down the street towards the arroyo that leads it toward the sea.

I watch the sunsets from my balcony or the fireworks that light up the sky on New Year’s Eve. I watch the mountains on one side and the sea on the other. In front of me is the street, a stage for the neighborhood as it passes.

The earliest sound is usually the man with the Swiss cowbell, who passes through the darkness of early morning. I am reminded I need to take out my garbage before the truck comes slowly down the street. My neighbor across the street, a single mother with two grown children and a grandchild, wakes early to take advantage of the quiet to check over the flowerbed that she coaxed out of a dusty, weedy roadside. She weeds with only the street lights and a dim bulb over her entrance giving her light. She waters and pampers her dear little tree, which has survived complete uprooting during a heavy rain, frequent nipping by passing mules and horses, and even the occasional football or skateboard. I have seen her talking to it, I have seen her scolding it, I have seen her encouraging it as the tiny tree formed buds for flowers that draped like white bells when they opened.

Another early passerby is the woman wearing a baseball cap and pants and sweatshirt, even on the warm summer mornings. She heads down the mountains from behind with a horse and a mule. On their backs are burlap sacks of varying sizes. On her way back up the hill later in the day, the bags are full. She is carrying slop and vegetable matter, perhaps for pigs or chickens or maybe for her garden. If she goes by early, I can expect to see her heading down for a second trip shortly after midday. Her knee-high black rubber boots remind me of the boots we wore as kids to milk the cows and clean the barn. They are all-weather boots, as ours were.

Next is the elderly man, perhaps a cousin, also on his way down from the mountains with his horse and burro. They also carry bags and buckets, for the same purpose of collecting throwaway scraps. He stops at the neighbors across the street who invariably have a bucket of kitchen leftovers for him. What makes him unusual is his little chihuahua who rides, balanced carefully astride the back of the burro. Several months ago it was missing and I mourned its absence until it reappeared suddenly, one leg in a bandage, once again precariously straddling the burro’s blanket saddle. For awhile the old man was accompanied in his parade by a colt, a frisky thing, which had a mind of its own as to where it could nibble and trespass. It either found a new home or has its own tour of duty elsewhere.

There is the season of the dragonflies, the magic dragons of my childhood. They flit in and out of the palm trees, the pink flowering tree in front and the yellow one in the back. And there is the season of the tiny flying insects that bring out the bats at about sunset. I watch the bats swoop through the air, their tiny cries ‘radaring-in’ on their prey. The sky is getting darker and I know it’s time to go inside.

When I have friends from out of town, or out of the country, I proudly carry up two chairs and maybe even a little side table. We have margaritas or a beer, we have coffee if it’s cool, we have a smoke. And when we’re not talking, we’re just looking out over the sea and the mountains, marveling at the beauty around us. Other than my company, my friends tell me they miss the quiet balcony the most.

Without my balcony, I might not have had the opportunity to let the sounds and smells and sights of Mexico absorb me and fill me as they have. It took a year of sitting and watching and listening and smelling to be able to feel like I understood even the least bit of what makes Mexico so special. It is a combination of all those things, including, I begrudgingly admit, the children who love to play in the street below, their raucous noise rising above to fill the evening air.

Living here, I find what I yearned for as a child on an isolated farm in rainy Washington state. I find what I dreamed of when I thought of the sea and the mountains in the same frame. I find what I looked for in people who have found peace among their own and don’t attempt to change the world to fit their own vision.
They call it paradise here. When I was a child, in our country church we were taught that paradise was something that was only obtainable in the hereafter. I am happy to prove them wrong. I have my ringside seat right here in Puerto Vallarta.