No Recipe

There is no recipe when walking down a dusty road along the Rio Cuale, looking up and seeing both an orange plastic pumpkin and a jolly red Santa figure side by side on a rooftop. They were a colourful reminder that we were back in our favourite place, Mexico! Here in Vancouver, we normally put away seasonal touches before the next holiday comes around, how refreshing to observe this freer hand, why couldn’t every day be celebrated we asked ourselves? Travelling to or living in Mexico has always opened our eyes and minds to new thoughts or ways to live. After our stint in those two rooms on Lazaro Cardenas, on our next visit and after much searching, we found a very nice apartment building with studios and the odd 1 bedroom.

Journal Excerpt: Nov.07/2000                                                                                                          

We found a studio apartment in a favourite area of ours, Olas Altas. It is very sweet with a great view of the jungle and ocean. It is also much quieter than last year’s apartment, we do hear taxi traffic and monster truck traffic but this we can live with. What I like is hearing the birds, children laughing and the odd piece of Mexican music coming out of a car window. We also see the sun rising, the moon rising and the sun setting outside our balcony doors – we just love our little balcony! During the humid nights recently, Terry slept on the balcony. Our apartment has a nice double mattress, a couch, a wood table with 3 chairs, 1 bar stool, a good fridge and gas hotplate as well as a night table. We have candles this year and our little apartment has a very peaceful atmosphere when they are lit, it feels like we are in a very exotic place. Actually, the hills around us remind me of Kyrenia, Cyprus (a beautiful island I visited while living in Germany as a young teen); now I know why I love Puerto Vallarta so much.

This phrase, “there is no recipe” is something that I hear often from our neighbour Huguette, these words can sometimes take away the pain of a heartbreak, can help one try to make sense of an illness or our small world of day to day troubles (big or small). As each moment of our lives unfold, there is indeed no recipe no matter how much we might want one, we can only be grateful and in awe of what is revealed at the end, to find out what we have been cooking! Recently, I shared Huguette’s phrase with a neighbour and when her face lit up, I knew they were the right words to say, they are words that can set you free, there is no recipe and that is O.K.

The “Janitizio”