Sometimes when my mind wanders, it feels like I am walking down a steep city
street almost falling,  as if I am flying and dreaming. In my dream a great wave
cascades over my bald spot, as if it were an island in a sky blue Mediterranean
sea. Maybe dreams are like flying, falling.
 
I sit in the town square across from The Parroquia the great cathedral in San
Miguel de Allende. It rises pink and brown in the early morning light. A woman
dressed in white with a blood red shawl enters, making signs of the cross so
quickly that I think  she is swatting at flies or some invisible demon, but this is
just her private ritual as she enters church. This is her crazy way of falling or
dreaming. The arrangement we make in our mind with no one but ourselves.
 
I love the faces of the Indians. They are darker, more bronze in color than
Spaniards. A young Indian girl walks toward me with the sun on her face. 
It is as if she is wearing a mask of polished copper. Her skin is radiant in the
morning light, as she quickly  passes by without looking at me. What is her dream?
Does she yearn to fall too? Are we alike in this way?
 
San Miguel de Allende is a city built in the clouds on the shoulders of nine
churches. The buildings are painted yellow, orange, red, green, and white,
like great tropical birds. They stand against a clear blue sky. It is easy to fall here.
Time moves so slowly on this mountain of silver and dreaming.

Two broad-bottomed house maids wearing uniforms the color of orange sherbet
walk by. They carry a large green garbage container between them as they pass
me in the early morning mist on their way to work. They are dreaming too. I can
tell because their eyelids are closed, but their eyes are moving.
 
At dawn people pour buckets of water onto the cobblestone sidewalks outside
their homes and shops. Sweeping them with brooms that look like witches riding
sticks, they wash yesterday’s debris away, yesterday’s fallen dreams into the gutter.
Sidewalks must be clean to carry dreamers.
 
Me? What is my dream? In Mexico, I become Latin and romantic. Maybe
looking at  these women whose faces glisten like copper in the morning light
makes me feel this way. Or perhaps it is the thin mountain air that gives my
dreams room to rise up and find me. My dream today is for a lover. My
dream doesn’t require her to grow old with me and  rub my forehead as I
lay dying. She only needs to fill my dream time. My moment here and now.
 
Isn’t that why we dream? To have the impossible for just a moment? To reach
for things beyond our grasp during those times when falling and dreaming live
suspended above our kitchen sink, answering machine, and dinner table?