Though a New Yorker by birth and by temperament, I lived for years in California and cannot help but compare the latter with our Lakeside area. In Los Angeles, you don´t have to look down when you´re walking to avoid tripping; you just have to look from side to side to avoid getting shot. Unlike Hollywood, in Ajijic, a red handkerchief in a man´s back pocket doesn´t mean he´s gay; it means he sweats. In Los Angeles, a big problem is the location of the table you´re eating at in Spago´s , whereas in Ajijic, if you´re Mexican, the problem is , are you eating at all. In the U.S., if you don´t pay your bill, the phone company sends you notices for a couple of months before shutting your phone off. Well here, they shut it off immediately without any notice, but they do continue your incoming calls. They figure if their computers have made a mistake and you really did pay, you won´t be embarrassed in front of your friends. This kind of prevents a person from getting angry, you know? Like so what if you are being stabbed, at least they have the decency to also give you a tourniquet. In my previous California life, I didn´t care much for Mexican music, but then the American pop scene changed and our music (punk, rap, hip-hop, etc.) became so grating, that I can best describe it as being the cuspidor of sound. I have now come to appreciate Mexican music. I mean, one hasn´t lived until one hears a solo rendition of "Sentimental Journey" on the tuba. And Mexican music is far more international than I ever realized . It´s sort of Swiss sort of Spanish, sort of German, sort of Elvis, with a soupcon of Sousa. If Mexican music could take human form, it would have a huge frenetic mustache, gentle, slumberous eyes, and its fly would be open. On an empty lot abutting my property in San Antonio Tlaycapan, there lived a horse whose owner, though personally unknown to me, works hard, they say, to feed his family. Within weeks, the horse (I call her "Dobbinette") had eaten all the grass and weeds growing on the lot, so, late one night, she and her tub of water were moved by the owner to another empty lot farther away, where there grew more grass and weeds. One day, while walking around town , I noticed that there was no longer anything edible left in the new lot either, and Dobbinette was forlornly standing over an empty water tub. Returning to my house, I filled a 5-gallon pail with water, and sloshed it back, whereupon the animal drained the now-only-half-full pail in practically one thirsty pull. "Not my horse, not my problem," I told myself, but only the first half of that statement was true. Afterwards, I went to the market and bought some boxes of alfalfa, a couple of large containers of Quaker Oats (I knew horses liked oats because I´ve seen so many John Wayne movies), carrots and apples, returned to the lot and pushed the food through the barbed wire. This proved to be so well received by Dobbinette that I did it every day, eventually adding some legitimate (as opposed to human) alfalfa from the Ajijic feed store, 6 kilos of which were then hand-carried back and divided into daily portions mixed with the other stuff. A couple of weeks later, a well meaning soul called to my attention the fact that I might be offending the horse´s owner, you know, hurting his pride, and said that Mexicans would believe that, if the horse died of starvation, it was God´s will. Not caring much for this theory, I went to the local church, and prayed to St. Anthony for help. Next morning, there mysteriously appeared a full tub of water for the horse. Talk about instant gratification. Turned out that other neighbors had filled it with water from their hose , which reached just far enough . Milagro! After getting word to the owner, and his permission, Dobbinette has now been returned to the property next door, making it much simpler to get her fed and watered each day, until the owner himself can handle it. Now here´s where the difference comes in -- In the U.S., if you tried to feed a hungry horse that didn´t belong to you, you´d probably get sued. Speaking of the differences between Mexico and the U.S. reminds me of the old story about the masochist who meets the sadist on the street. "Oh please," whines the masochist, "hurt me, hurt me." Replies the sadist, "No."