My Life

Many years later I saw her at Lake Chapala, wandering distractedly amidst the bric a brac and assorted wooden artifacts, hanging wind chimes and cheap necklaces.

Mary had lost the playful smile, smirking at her  husband as he intently examined each item as if enthralled by the ordinary tourist crap.  He moved along the rows of wind chimes, testing each in turn with extended fingertips.  She was repulsed by his polished  fingernails as they coaxed little muted clinks from each assortment of sea shells or wooden fluted tubes with an opening near the top to bring out the pitch.

“These I think are very fine,” he spoke to her in the tone he  had learned to use when neutrality and avoidance were paramount for the day.  “Do you not think so, Mary?”

“Yes Walter,” she replied absently.  “Go ahead and choose one that you like.  We can hang it on the side porch next to the hammock, where it will remind you of your blissful weekend here.”

Their arrival at the Bed and Breakfast, or Bey and Bey as Walter pronounced it with his lingering  accent, had fit the usual pattern.  After dinner at a quaint taco restaurant and a few bottles  of  icy Cervezas, Walter showed all the signs necessary to make her decide to get the holiday sex over with.  Back in the room he donned his striped pajamas and leaned back on the springy bed.  Five minutes later it was over with,  this procedure taking care of the romantic aspect of things, at least for the weekend.

God, I despise you, she thought as he made much of selecting just the right tone of sea shell rather than clicking wood.  When they left the souvenir stand, Walter casually dangling the green and white bag from his wrist, he took her arm in his for walking purposes, so pleased with himself.  Arm in arm, until death do us part. Dr. Mary Brown lightened her step and smiled at the other tourists.

“Come Walter, let’s take a look at the fishing  boats in the harbor.” She was completely relaxed, happy and confident about the future.  At that moment she decided to kill him.

Our street is washed clean, cobblestones glistening in the bright morning sun, as eager smiling Mexican friends and neighbors await the arrival of Jesus on his donkey, marking the beginning of two weeks - Seamana Santa and Pasqua - celebrating this most holy of observances in Mexico.  

The parade comes into view at the top of the street while our neighbor Virgen is still weaving palm fronds at the curb with her adorable neice.

I get into position across from our house with the yellow wall, camera in hand.

We are about to be engulfed by a throng of Priests, Altar Children and villagers waving beautifully meshed palm fronds.

“Who was playing that loud music last night? Does this happen all the time?”

I glance  up from the viewfinder to see a prim lady in light green cashmere sweater loosely draped over an expensive skirt and blouse outfit.

“Oh yes, that must have been the Lucky Dogs Band over at the Cafe Adelita,” I answer mildly, hoping she will be satisfied with the answer.

“No, it was much too loud. Who else was playing music last night?”

As Jesus approaches it strikes me how this brief interplay encapsulates in minute detail how so many North Americans are imprisoned by their unfailing grasp of life’s true essence; her vituperative questioning reminiscent of human resource managerial skill sets - the persistent recrimination and blame - couched in civil yet so superior language. Read the rest of this entry »

Unless you hit a large grey and black one in the pitch darkness of the Guadalajara highway, and a drunken Vaquero exits in slowmo from the saddle into your windshield, before disappearing over the roof.

No, I don’t have pictures, other than the four second reel that flickers across my sleeping vision every night at two AM.  Nor did I decide to photograph the medieval Mexican dungeon where I sat much later that night trying to conserve my last few cigarettes, which served both as comforters and incense against the putrid stench of a windowless, airless cell that had not been cleaned in decades. You see, the  traffic laws in Mexico are what they call “Napoleonic,” in that the innocent are presumed guilty unless proven otherwise, but you do get to keep whatever possesions are on your person when the police take you away in a brand new shiny white Ford F-150 with Validad de Jalisco proudly emblazoned on it’s sides. In my case, a pocket camera, cell phone, wallet, keys, cigarettes and loose change were in my pockets and eventually made it to the jail cell along with my belt. And I must have had a premonition as to my ultimate destination, as I grabbed insulin kit and light jacket from the trunk of my trusty misshapen 1991 Ford Taurus, a true Mexican car in every sense, except that it clearly was  unable to stop the force of a five-hundred pound horse and one-hundred-seventy pound rider who had just decided it was time to cross the crowded highway, at night with his bags of cerveza and tequila.  It was, after all, Carnivale week. Who could blame him?

For the ensuing seven hours I sat on the, shall we say, concrete bench (imagine a very small steamroom made of cement, with no plumbing or electricity, and certainly devoid of any Spa atmosphere), where it was easy to imagine the plight of Spanish Inquisition prisoners to the accompaniment of very loud churchbells which sounded out each quarter hour from the tower somewhere above the dungeon. Read the rest of this entry »

Click on pictures for reviews and biography…

Heinrich Joachim obituary by Ari Goldman

My Cello (c)BrunoJoachim

I notice some leaves need raking as I walk silently around the backyard of the decrepit but stately property in White Plains. Trying to leave my father’s house, feeling extreme discomfort and anxiety - yet unable to break away from looking one last time through the cabinets in the living room. Like a child finding treasures, hidden in the back are Greek sculptures of Mythological Gods, in a perfect backlit display whose neatness belies the usual clutter of the environment. Beautiful vases, artifacts, shiny coins and scintillating jewelry, pottery urns and marble busts of Zeus and Athena. I deposit a few in shopping bags my father has thoughtfully left stacked in a corner.

Elsewhere I discover several fragments of his life the way he left them: old books with dog-eared annotations, travel video guides to Greece (I imagine him watching them with his girlfriend Lynn while they sip brandy in the candlelit old living room while he sagely instructs her on the ways of the ancient Greeks); several stacks of cards and letters from his children; railway tickets to Ohio stamped 1954, his musician’s union card, fifteen paper Christmas plates, and the Santa Claus ornament my mother used to hang on the tree so long ago. Read the rest of this entry »