THE SHAVE

After a few days in Cuernavaca, Adela and I have returned to Mexico City where I plan to reside indefinitely. Ignacio and I were unofficial compadres. I took his second son Cuauhtémoc into the bathroom and baptized him with water from the toilet.

Upon our return to Colonia Jardin Balbuena I went for a shave. In the old days there wasn't a week that I didn't cross to Matamoros for a shave. As I sat back in the chair with a hot towel wrapped around my face, the memories from those bygone days came flowing back. With a straight razor sharpened on a leather strap, the barber would foam my face two or three times, sweep the blade across the whiskers like a conductor leading an orchestra with his baton and then bring his performance to an end with a flourish by splashing alcohol on my tender skin. For an encore I would stop in the plaza for a shoeshine.

I know that a person can't escape his or her problems, but I had to escape Brownsville for a well-deserved hiatus. Mexico City offers many options. I luxuriate in the area between the Zócalo and Bellas Artes. There are innumerable restaurants and you eat like a king for $20. I'm talking good food!

I am relishing such an infatuating moment (Experience has taught me to be wary of infatuating moments because they can lead you to places you had no intentions of going.) that I am contemplating the idea that I could live here permanently, only returning to the United States to die because I have health insurance to make the exit less painful and more convenient in terms of disposing the body.

One of the most renown bar/restaurants is El Gallo de Oro. Does anything compare to wining and dining with a soccer game on the television? The waiters hark back to a time when these men attired in tuxedos treated their trade like an art and served their clients with a professionalism that you don't receive from kids waiting tables in chain restaurants.

Mexico City is a poetic place and a perfect refuge for a writer. The weather is cool and it rains almost every day. I don't find tranquility in the countryside. I find silence in the noise. I have lived at the Cameron Hotel in downtown Brownsville on many occasions and I never tired of emerging from the foyer onto the streets. Mexico City is that sensation to the millionth degree.

I will continue to pontificate about Brownsville via the blog and Facebook. Like reading a box score in baseball, I don't need to be there to recreate the reality. Why should I surrender one of my strengths? Anything that inspires one to write should never be dismissed.

I am at my best in the confessional genre. I observe myself as if I were a journalist covering a politician. I objectify myself and therefore the person I am scrutinizing no longer becomes me. He becomes a fictional character in the human drama. This perspective provides me with a vehicle to delve into our condition as individuals dealing with the ups-and-downs of our lives and those who interact with us.

An artist must be conflicted. An artist must be sensitive. An artist must be edgy. An artist must be obsessional. The gift doesn't come free. One pays a heavy price in order to gain insight into our existences. Sometimes that price comes at the expense of our own lives.

How is it possible to be so confused at 75 years of age? That is a question I am perennially asking myself. But there is a positive to this negative: If I weren't looking for answers, I wouldn't be in Mexico City returning to a carefree lifestyle that I once savored as a young man. Though I am incessantly filled with much trepidation, Mexico City has excited me.

Nonetheless, I am cautious. I am akin to a cancer patient who has been told he is in remission, but lives in fear that it could return again until a sufficient period of time has passed and he has gained the confidence that he is truly cured of his anxieties. I am looking for tranquility. I haven't known serenity for many years although time spent with my three sons and many friends and acquaintances have provided me with brief respites from the relentless anguish.

If I died tomorrow, there would be an unanimity among the few mourners that I had lived life. But there is so much more life to be lived. My quest is to find peace by escaping the torment that hounds me. But is my karma so bad that I have been condemned to purgatory for the rest of my days? Quien sabe.