When I first arrived in Mexico I did a hell of a lot of walking. I walked every day, up and down steep hills, and over broken streets with potholes and cobblestones.
When you do this kind of walking, it’s very important to look down. If you don’t look down, and look at the surroundings all the time, surely you will stumble and fall. I believe the majority of seniors here walk with canes. I walk with a cane now too but only when I’m going to wild places and very old parts of town like Ajijic. |My vertigo has gotten much better as I work at it all the time. The sidewalks are extremely narrow as are many of the roads. The cobblestones are worn and bumpy and some stones are popping up, which can catch you off guard if you foolishly wear sandals instead of good walking shoes.
The most dangerous part aside from crossing streets is my depth perception problem. I have a hard time trying to judge the distance from the sidewalk to the street. Sometimes it can be very steep and that is really hard if you don’t have a cane; especially with a week leg, or if both legs are not strong.
When I moved to San Antonio my life got immediately better. Before my infamous tumble when I injured by knee, I used to collect wires I found in the streets. There is always lots of construction going on around here. People are building all the time. When construction is in full swing, the combination of chain link fencing, cement trucks, flatbed trucks of bricks and wire towers seem to be everywhere you look.
The vehicles run over everything and smash anything soft into the cobblestones, changing the poor victims into unrecognizable shapes. Wires are my favorite things. Although I dearly love the disappearing metal soup and soda can lids. I find them pretty nice when they are rusted into oblivion and are full of holes, leaving them wafer thin like some sort of ancient ceremonial disc.
When wires are run over many times, it really improve their shape when the cement trucks do their damage. I got to the point where I was actually looking for them. I just could not help myself from this new compulsion. That can be dangerous. I’ve had lovely friends collect some for me too. They have left them for me on my patio table. How fun is that? I have kept these smashed treasures from my travels and someday I will create a few works of art from them. Until that day, I want to catalog my precious collection here so I won’t forget my early days in this amazing place.
Painting Mexico 