Mazatlan

There is a picture from Maztalan that still fills my mind, upon the desire for recollection, with all the vivid wonder that it held as it first appeared before my eyes. It is a picture of a man. He is sitting on a bench in the main plaza to the south of the cathedral. His eyes water with sparkling, drunken tears, that never gather in sufficient quantity to fall slowly down his cheeks, but form a shimmering glaze in front of deep brown eyes and collect in tiny vertical pools where his eyelids meet. If he blinks I feel sure that the tears, for lack of alternative escape, will fall steadily down his face, and he will appear to passers by as though silently, happily crying. But I never see him blink. He has a thick, black beard; his skin is rough beyond his years and appears dry and old and worn out by the sun. Only, when he smiles, he reveals perfect white teeth in the darkness of the drunken night. His clothes are torn, and the lines of his calloused hands are exaggerated with the ingrained dirt that clings to them. Yet in the darkened night, from this bench beneath a tree that repels the yellow glare of street lamps, his brilliant teeth and his drunk-kind eyes sparkle as he holds out a plastic bottle of mezcal.

I take the bottle, flip open the plastic lid with my thumb, and take a sip of the liquid, warmed by the tropical night. Its warmth runs down my throat and lightly burns. It bursts in dazzling flames, and ignites small shivers that run from my shoulders, and causes me to shake. The man´s hands move slowly toward the sky, back and forth, his palms up turned, as he indicates that I should drink more. A greater quantity of the warm golden liquid once again makes my body shudder and a smile spreads wide under the man`s thick black beard as I thank him and he takes the bottle back.

Javier, looking down over Zacapu