A magical world.
A friend recently commented that the world I live in is a magical world. Very true. I love my life and the places we visit. I find enormous pleasure in watching the world. If a moment translates into a photo, even better, because then I can share what I see.
Walking through Santa Rosalia yesterday evening, cooling down after a hot day, the low sun beamed through trees sending a ray of light on a small city square where people were sitting and talking. This moment was so complete, so calm and vibrant at the same time, the photo might not do it justice.
Radu and I shared a pizza on a shaded patio overlooking a square in front of the mayor’s office. It was early evening and the town was coming out to walk the streets. ‘Flaneuring’ is a southern European thing, I experienced for the first time in Fano/ Italy, a small town at the Adriatic, when before dinner the town walked in the main streets, meeting and greeting.
Santa Rosalía does this too. Some people walked home from work, kids went to the basketball game in the gym next door, a group of girls met up, an old women walked by with her stroller and an old man rode his electric one. Cars cruised down one street and up another, in them rode families, children climbing around on the seats, babies on their mothers laps or in their driving fathers arms. A convertible, souped up VW bug drove up with young men jumping out and a group of mine workers rode by on the back of a flatbed truck.
After dinner we ate an ice cream on a bench in front of Santa Barbara church which was holding mass inside. The muffled voice of the priest travelled out of the steel church, which once stood next to the tower in Paris, was dissembled and shipped to the Baja after Eiffel won first price for both. The sun now reflected off the canyon bluff indirectly illuminating the white-painted metal plates of the quaint church.
True gardeners come out at this hour to tend to their plants. One street over a man, Alfredo, was watering his sidewalk planters and the street trees he had planted from small pots, which were now mature and tall shading his corner house. I noticed the biggest Fiddle-leaf Ficus tree I had ever seen and stopped to marvel it. Alfredo was curious to know its name: Ficus lyrata, perfectly fitting the large, glossy, lyra shaped leaves. He had also built trellises over the sidewalks now laden with fragrant vines, grew Hibiscus in the sunnier spots and tropical shade plants on his front porch.
This hour is magic. The light an hour before sunset is so rich and it paints everything it strikes. The shadows are long and dramatic giving emphasis to the otherwise mundane. This theatrical light is the perfect, as if staged, backdrop for the towns’ socializing hour.
I love my life because it affords me to pause and watch, to notice and capture and, hopefully, to share my and our magical world.
