Arriving on vacation in a pleasant spot, careless of the world, it seems almost too easy to pull up stakes at home and move one's domestic machinery to whatever the place. It's natural to look around at a good prospect with a view to staying on - if life on vacation is pleasant here (one naturally reasons) why could not life simpliciter be pleasant here? People have ended up in the Bahamas, Mexico, Cuba ante la Revolucion, Majorca, on little pretext and less forethought. For that matter, plenty of people have moved to San Miguel, too – and some of them have left. It's only natural to want to make permanent a pleasant change of prospect, even in the teeth of better wisdom. But it is also a fixture of human nature that people can't keep a secret to save their souls. If they like a place, particularly an undiscovered, undespoilt, undeveloped and remote place, the first thing they do is tell every one of their friends to a man, advise them to buy property before the secret is out, and before the month is out those unpeopled beaches or colonial avenues or palmy vistas or shoals of endearing seals and otters are featured in every slick travel magazine as one of "Ten Secret [sic] Best Getaways."
San Miguel is not like that - the city hasn't been anyone's secret for something like 550 years (since the Spaniards accidently decapitated the San Miguelenses whilst baptizing them) and its Instituto has been the recipient of more GI Bill tuition dollars than any comparable academy (should there be such) in the expatriate world. The American and European community here is still large though apparently not so flourishing as in recent years. But it is a city of artists (or 'artistes') of all breeds and seems a place where a sizeble portion of the baby boom has come to regroup after a life of prosperous employment and too much sauce veloute on the meatloaf. Those who have gone native no longer leave the house with a Wal Mart photography department hung around their necks, but you can generally spot them by the holstered cell phone precariously perched at the vestigial waist. The Baby Boom has long since crested, washed up and bubbled away in the sand, on this shore as in every place else.
But if there has never, for more than half a milennium, been any secret about San Miguel, it still has its enablers - the Newcomer's Club that meets weekly (naturally the club meets, with the utmost inconsideration, in a delightfully undiscovered little cafe that Cec and I discovered by ourselves on a main street just off the alley from our house). What better way to learn about prospects here, asked Cec excitedly. We can make lots of new friends. Only by ignoring my instinctive shudder could she eject me from the refuge of a closet and trundle me up the street to face my fellow uninitiates - a gathering (I quickly surmised) each one carrying a large purse and washing down cubes of vinyl cheese with a timid glass of warm white wine. At the end of the alley Cec made an unexpected turn away from the cafe and we marched on up the street to a pleasant restaurant in the courtyard of the old stone Instituto, where across the intervening city roofs we could see the large old parish church perched on its eminence (not on His Eminence) with its illuminated cross on the main steeple.
San Miguel is not like that - the city hasn't been anyone's secret for something like 550 years (since the Spaniards accidently decapitated the San Miguelenses whilst baptizing them) and its Instituto has been the recipient of more GI Bill tuition dollars than any comparable academy (should there be such) in the expatriate world. The American and European community here is still large though apparently not so flourishing as in recent years. But it is a city of artists (or 'artistes') of all breeds and seems a place where a sizeble portion of the baby boom has come to regroup after a life of prosperous employment and too much sauce veloute on the meatloaf. Those who have gone native no longer leave the house with a Wal Mart photography department hung around their necks, but you can generally spot them by the holstered cell phone precariously perched at the vestigial waist. The Baby Boom has long since crested, washed up and bubbled away in the sand, on this shore as in every place else.
But if there has never, for more than half a milennium, been any secret about San Miguel, it still has its enablers - the Newcomer's Club that meets weekly (naturally the club meets, with the utmost inconsideration, in a delightfully undiscovered little cafe that Cec and I discovered by ourselves on a main street just off the alley from our house). What better way to learn about prospects here, asked Cec excitedly. We can make lots of new friends. Only by ignoring my instinctive shudder could she eject me from the refuge of a closet and trundle me up the street to face my fellow uninitiates - a gathering (I quickly surmised) each one carrying a large purse and washing down cubes of vinyl cheese with a timid glass of warm white wine. At the end of the alley Cec made an unexpected turn away from the cafe and we marched on up the street to a pleasant restaurant in the courtyard of the old stone Instituto, where across the intervening city roofs we could see the large old parish church perched on its eminence (not on His Eminence) with its illuminated cross on the main steeple.
She expressed momentary puzzlement about not having noticed, on our way, the little cafe of the warm white wine. I remained demure. Nevertheless, making our way back down the avenue towards our alleyway, Cec bolted for the site and I followed dutifully, imprecating the social instincts in general and in particular. Cec stopped in the doorway and closely regarded a long table heaped with large purses and pale glasses of wine. It was as I had speculated, a menagerie of ill use. We left for home.
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