A Holiday Time

It’s Christmas Eve. Here, like in many countries, it is the special time for Christmas celebration. Families go to an early evening Mass and then retreat to their homes for a feast and for the giving of presents, or, first the feast and presents and then  midnight Mass. This is a very Catholic country, with a pious population, as the celebrations from December 1-12 for the Virgin of Guadalupe reveal every year. For me the Christmas period will be very simple, with mostly quiet days. Actually most of our days here are fairly quiet: walking on the malecon, swimming, reading, eating, more walking and reading and eating, with maybe a nap thrown is as needed. Several times every day I am struck by my good fortune in being able to spend the winter in this beautiful place. 

I recently got busy consolidating and then getting rid of a tonne of “stuff” left in our condo by the previous owner. These condos generally sell as does a cottage in Ontario – contents included. The walls as well as most surfaces were covered with a hodge-podge of pictures, masks, and other assorted objets. Drawers in the dining area cabinet contained candles, paper napkins, old books and papers, pieces of material, place mats, and etc.  In the second bedroom drawers held sheets and towels never used as housekeeping supplies these as needed. I pulled everything down and/or out, putting them on the cabinet and the dining room table. Our gal who comes six days a week to spruce up the apartment, picked out things that she would like to take home, and went off with four garbage bags full. Two of the fellows from the front desk came up and took away the rest in bags and in a large box. They planned to give the things out to the other staff as well. In the centre of the living space was a large dark wooden table with six uncomfortable straight-back chairs and the aforementioned cabinet with drawers. We had a couple of the lads come up and help us to shift it all around: the cabinet against the back of the kitchen bar – to be used to hold papers and work materials; the table up against one wall, and, the chairs distributed about the edges of the room – at least for now. When we find better chairs, these will go to Mercedes, a woman who is our interpreter with the lawyer who has organized the sale of the condo from Suzanne to us. Mercedes recovered the cushions on our balcony chairs for us; I’ve put the remaining material over the newly side-lined table. All of this has given us a more streamlined and open space. Lots more will have to happen – probably a kitchen revamp but that will have to wait to next year. If you want a refresher on what the condo looked like when we took it over, go to the third post on my blog www.puertovallartaphotos.blogspot.com

The people who work here are so genuinely nice. One of them is a handsome 23 year old who lives with his girl friend and their two children: his 3 year old “princess” and his 11 month old “champion.” He has been working here on security and the front desk for several years as he has put himself through university. He will graduate in April with a business degree. He is taking an English course now as well. A year ago he had hardly any English but has gained quite a bit since we last saw him. He says that his greatest difficulty is  understanding what is said to him during a conversation and then finding the words quickly enough to respond. I asked him if he would like me to point things out when we spoke; he would. It’s little things, like saying he would look for another work, instead of job, or, his daughter has (rather than is) 3 years old. He entirely shines when he speaks of his kids. Our “maid,” Ilea speaks little English but doesn’t let that stop her. She chats away to us until we get the idea – all with lots of laughs and tries at the words in Spanish and/or English.

Tomorrow Catherine and her housemate, best buddy, and sister-in-law, Emily Smith will host an elegant brunch for Emma, Theo, Gregory (their cousin), and Catherine’s dad, Maurice, at their home in Jackson’s Point. I will call and chat with them over Skype -- always a lot of fun. Elizabeth and Billie are in Vancouver but are coming here to visit for eight days in early February. We all look forward to their being here.

I’ve been reading a lot of books since we arrived; usually I’m looking at several at once. Martin Amis’ recent The Zone of Interest, set in Auschwitz, I found harder to read than some of the straight narratives of survivors. He manages to portray through literature some of the utter moral decay of people like Hoess who viewed themselves as simply doing a difficult job well. I also re-read The Last Just Man by Andre Schwarz-Bart, written in 1959, truly an amazing achievement – a book that pulls no punches about the Holocaust but is at the same time poetically written, ironic, and even wryly humorous. I have with me and have read also Maus I and Maus II, the graphic novels of Artie Spiegelman, who transcribed his conversations and difficult encounters with his Holocaust-survivor father. The AGO has just launched an exhibit of Spiegelman’s original drawings made for the books, for which he won the 1992 Pulitzer Prize. And there are other books as well that I am making my way through. This past few days I have been reading newspapers: 

We got a Saturday Globe and a Sunday New York Times. Roberto had Monday’s NYT and today’s for us as well. Lots to chew on there. In the weekend book section of the NYT, Dick Cavet said in an interview that he thought we ought to read half as many books, but to read them twice. There’s a lot to that. Certainly my second reading of The Last Just Man had vastly different resonance for me than when I read it thirty or forty years ago.

I hope all have a peaceful and happy holiday season. All my best wishes to all of you.

A New Place in the Annex?

Readers of this blog will be aware that last winter we went through a surprising turn of events when our house on Croydon Rd, on the market for a number of months, suddenly sold while we were here in Mexico. The new owners were keen to take up residence there ASAP so, sight unseen (except by my friend, Roz) we leased an apartment on Major St, moving in there just a scant two weeks after our return to Toronto at the end of February. It seems that we are going to be in a similar situation this winter and spring.

All was cosy with our new landlords until they discovered serendipitously that I was plying my trade there. Immediately a major reaction: why had we hidden this fact? I must immediately cease and desist, and so on. It made no difference (especially to the gentleman in question) when we pointed out that this was a legitimate usage of the premises according to the by-laws of the City of Toronto and the Landlord/Tenants Act. Moreover, I had not “hidden” my intentions. It had never occurred to me that I needed to disguise them as I have conducted a private practice in whatever mode of accommodation I have had since 1987. We were threatened with eviction if I did not give them a statement in writing that I would no longer work there. We sent them copies of the relevant Acts covering this eventuality, and, I believe that they consulted a lawyer. After a month or so of unpleasantness, the issue seemed to blow over.

I spoke by phone with our landlady a couple of days ago. She was surprised to hear that we would not return to Toronto until the end of March, the point at which our year-long contract with them expires. Our plan had been to give them rent cheques into the summer and to decide over the spring whether or not to remain. Our options had suddenly become more open by the sale of our condo in Orillia – it will close in early January. I told the lady that I had left more cheques at the house for her to pick up on one of her visits there. She informed me then that if we wanted to stay on that her husband wanted a new contract drawn up and that the rent would be raised. She said that she would talk to her husband and get back to us in a couple of day. We rather expect a new round of unpleasantness is about to ensue and have decided that we will leave our lovely, though by no means perfect, home on Major St as soon as we can find new digs and arrange a move.

This is where you come in, dear friends and neighbours of a Toronto/Annex persuasion: we ask you to keep your eyes and ears attuned to suitable places for us, generally in our present area and of our current size. We are open to renting or to buying, preferably a two or three bedroom place with two washrooms. If the accommodation is a rental apartment or a condo, we would like a balcony (essential for morning contemplation), especially one facing away from a busy street. I have looked on the mls.ca for both rental places and ones for sale in the Annex-ish area. At the moment there is little available, though undoubtedly more will open up as spring comes. But there is nothing like ears to the ground as we often hear about people moving or contemplating moves, even before their places go on the market. OK. You get the idea.

Life goes on here in PV. We have fallen more or less into our usual routines. We plan to go out to a suburb of PV today to investigate used bicycles. From there we will go to a fabric shop out by the marina to select material with which to re-cover our balcony pillows. Yesterday we purchased two small paintings at an exhibit in the restaurant at the front of our building. The exhibit was held by one of the residents here and three other women with whom she shares work space. We are much given to discussions about redecorating our condo. We have inherited all of the furniture, pictures, and objet of the lady who had previously owned our place. Now we have to consider all of it and tailor the space according to our own preferences. But there is no rush for any of this.

I’m going to send this off quickly just to get your imagination going re where I might live next, but will write again soon about other things happening here in the (dare I say it?) winter-free south.

A Return to Puerto Vallarta

And so we are back in Puerto Vallarta for another winter, this time for four months – December to March inclusive. Last year we had three months and the year before, two. Who knows what next year will bring? We arrived on Sunday afternoon after spending a night in Mexico City, entirely disoriented and pooped from schlepping about with our four heavy suitcases filled with the paraphernalia one expects to need during one-third of the year. Need I say that much of the transported mass was books? At any rate we are here, making our way into life in the beautiful southland.

We did a lot of walking on Monday – up to the fruit and vegetable market; a visit to a small health food store to check on the availability of Rice Dreams (rice milk); to the open fish market for on-the-spot filleted sea bass for our supper, and, to our close-by “gourmet” market for feta cheese and some lovely French beans. Later we took the bus out to Costco, looking for an electric kettle. We walked all over that enormous emporium, finding no electric kettles, but an over-priced one for the top of the stove. Next, the bus again to Mega – a jumbo-sized general store, rather like a Walmart. Here we found the desired object at a quite reasonable price and purchased it along with some essential beer and wine. Our bus home disgorged one and all about a mile or so from our condo. The yearly celebrations for December 12^th’s feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe have begun: the core of the old town is given over daily to parades in her honour. (I wrote about this feast and also more about the town last year in the first post on this blog.) And so, whether we wanted it or not, we had our first walk along the malecon, even stopping to pick up a container of the gelato at my favourite shop. Later we went along the main street of this area, Olas Atas, to visit Roberto at his shop, and to order the New York Times that arrives three times a week at his place. It was a lot of walking but it felt good after our several days of packing up and of travel.

I am continuing to read about the holocaust. On Friday mornings this fall I audited a course by Doris Bergen at U of T that traced the development of the Nazi state from 1933 when Hitler first came to power, to 1939 when Poland was invaded. In the spring term she will cover the war years 1939-45. I am now going through a tome by Saul Friedlander, his second, entitled: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945: The Years of Extermination. His first covered the pre-war years 1933-39 and was subtitled: The Years of Persecution. I’ve had this book for a few years though have not studied it until now. Friedlander puts forth his theory elaborated in his first book, that the essence of Hitler’s bond with the German people was his positioning himself as a “redeemer,” a nicely Christian concept, or Jewish if one substitutes “messiah.” He was to redeem the Volk, the German/Aryan people by purifying it of foreign elements, especially by ridding it of the Jews whom he depicted as sub-human vermin on the one hand, and, world power brokers bent upon the destruction of the German people, on the other. Quite a contradiction to straddle! He also promised the “millennium,” a thousand years of German national prosperity and expansion.

It is interesting to see how the various students of this period position themselves and vie with one another for the best over-all analytical concept. In his introduction Friedlander dismisses Daniel Jonah Goldhagen’s approach in “Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust.”  Goldhagen identified the basic cause for the Holocaust in a particularly ingrained German anti-Semitic passion. Friedlander also questions the focus of Christopher R Browning on social-psychological constraints and group dynamics in Browning’s book “Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland.” However,  Goldhagen gets his own back in a review of Friedlander’s book published in The Washington Post, calling Friedlander’s thinking “woolly,” and in summarizing his comments saying, “Friedlander’s book provides a useful, updated panorama of the events of the Holocaust, but readers seeking more than an introductory narrative will have to look elsewhere.” Ouch! Such is the world of academe! Each of these works, regardless of the particular view they are ascribing, brings a wealth of detail based on recent research and scholarship. Friedlander, for example, makes generous use of diaries written during the war by people in ghettos and even in concentration camps -- hidden and later recovered. Since the fall of the USSR many documents of this kind previously in archives in the east have become available, shedding new light and perspectives on the period.

So I will read the works of all these fellows and learn from each, because as I have been saying for decades, many things can be true at the same time. I want to get a three-ring notebook so that I can put down the important pieces that I come upon in my reading. Otherwise, all the detail and the things I suddenly understand come and go in the ether that I sometimes call my brain as it stands at this rather “woolly” phase of my life. Good to have a record to review and to savour.

We have a new, magic phone that we can use here in Mexico just as if we are in Toronto. It is a 647 number. If you call my number in Toronto, the message will give it to you, so you can call either me without long distance charges. Is that magic or what? It is such a wonderful thing to be able to go out walking freely morning, afternoon, and/or evening and enjoy the breeze off the ocean and the loveliness of the scene.

I hope all are well in Toronto, Sutton, Kingston, Ottawa, Montreal, Nova Scotia, Vancouver, Kalamazoo, Portage, Lansing, or wherever else you might be reading this. Little notes back saying how things are going in your world are appreciated. All the best.