Occassional MazReal writer Gerald Hawsley* gets pissed off with heat and takes it out on Snowbirds.
“Hot chilli peppers in the blistering
sun”. Bob Dylan incorporates this line in his song about Durango perfectly
evoking the summer up there although he's probably never been there at all and nor have I but down here on the coast we could sing the same
line “hot friggin'chilli peppers in the friggin' sweltering sun” referring to Mazatlán. Anyway it can just as easily refer to my little bit of Mazatlán.
I am of Anglo Saxon, Austro Hungarian, pale Scandinavian, northern temperate climate blood with a hint of Dalmatian from my father's 12th wife and servant girl and inside my office or library as I prefer to call it as there is a Kindle lying on a chair, it is a constant 360 degrees Celcius (to our friends from the north that translates as some other number in degrees F) even taking into account the four fans aimed at me, my steaming computer and my termite eaten chunky Concordian-built plywood desk.
I use fans and have no air con. Whilst writing I am surrounded with fans blowing hot air. I have a ceiling fan 5 meters up spinning to within an inch of its life constantly clack clacking its moving parts, behind me straining on its electricity cord there is a large airplane propeller encased in a black rusting cage aimed at the back of my head which, if I had hair, it would be tearing it out. There is a smaller ‘fill-in’ fan oscillating to my left cooling my left side naturally. A Sumo Fan (that always tickles me), a plastic squatting Sumo wrestler cradling a fan that I bought from the souvenir section of a backstreet Macau whore house, gently cools my nose and eye brows. It is still 600 degrees C and although the fans blow the hot air around they do apply a veneer of chill.
I am of Anglo Saxon, Austro Hungarian, pale Scandinavian, northern temperate climate blood with a hint of Dalmatian from my father's 12th wife and servant girl and inside my office or library as I prefer to call it as there is a Kindle lying on a chair, it is a constant 360 degrees Celcius (to our friends from the north that translates as some other number in degrees F) even taking into account the four fans aimed at me, my steaming computer and my termite eaten chunky Concordian-built plywood desk.
I use fans and have no air con. Whilst writing I am surrounded with fans blowing hot air. I have a ceiling fan 5 meters up spinning to within an inch of its life constantly clack clacking its moving parts, behind me straining on its electricity cord there is a large airplane propeller encased in a black rusting cage aimed at the back of my head which, if I had hair, it would be tearing it out. There is a smaller ‘fill-in’ fan oscillating to my left cooling my left side naturally. A Sumo Fan (that always tickles me), a plastic squatting Sumo wrestler cradling a fan that I bought from the souvenir section of a backstreet Macau whore house, gently cools my nose and eye brows. It is still 600 degrees C and although the fans blow the hot air around they do apply a veneer of chill.
My Amazonian Teak desk built by Indians from the Peruvian village of Iquitos obliquely looks out the
floor-to-ceiling windows onto the street where for much of the day catching the
street breeze sits a gaggle of old men on the large window sills street side. My
window sills are the perfect width and height to sit on and these old men waft away flies and sit
and chat and mumble about stuff that is happening around them. Between me and
them is 30 centimeters of space and a net curtain so they cannot see me but
I can see their silhouette and I can
clearly hear every mumble, fart and cough. If I was an impatient man I would
rattle the bars of my cage with a stick and tell them to get the fuck off of my property but I like the soothing background chat as it never lets me forget I am in Mexico.
I listen to them out the corner of my ear and learn a few words like pinche this and pinche that. But most of what they say is unintelligible for me because they all have loose fitting false teeth which rattle as they talk and sometime José doesn’t even bother to put his in so his mumblings become even more indistinct and kind of slurpy. Occasionally when they get really annoying I switch on my ultra sonic dog preventer which interferes drastically with their hearing aids causing them to sometimes spew out their teeth and roll around on the street howling and tearing at their ears. Oh how I laugh sometimes because they haven't figured out what is happening.
I listen to them out the corner of my ear and learn a few words like pinche this and pinche that. But most of what they say is unintelligible for me because they all have loose fitting false teeth which rattle as they talk and sometime José doesn’t even bother to put his in so his mumblings become even more indistinct and kind of slurpy. Occasionally when they get really annoying I switch on my ultra sonic dog preventer which interferes drastically with their hearing aids causing them to sometimes spew out their teeth and roll around on the street howling and tearing at their ears. Oh how I laugh sometimes because they haven't figured out what is happening.
It is so hot in my library cum office that
the net curtains don’t waft inwards in that romantic way bringing in a breeze
instead they lie flat and tight against the metal bars from the hot air pushing
them outwards. Occasionally I slink off and lie draped in the hammock on the
patio. Expired there I order my imported Filipino boy I named Abdul to gently push
the hammock backwards and forwards so the movement will agitate the air. I sometimes shed my kit
and stand under the garden shower till the cool water already in the pipes
becomes hot from the sun-heated water in the tank. ( I got to remember to replace the black tank with a white)The subsequent effort of
drying soon adds a fresh sweat and its back to the library half-dried to stand
in front of the fans.
More complaining after the jump. Snowbirds with delicate sensibilities are advised to stop here.....
