by Dr. David Fialkoff

I like watching the Jardin's New Years and Independence Day fireworks from my rooftop. Sure it's more distant, but it has its advantages. There is no crowd and it offers a wider point of view, including other, smaller displays in various neighborhoods; unison for the misanthropic.

Here in colonia San Antonio, my short, narrow alley dead ends at the back wall of the back courtyard of the church. This wall also makes up part of my kitchen wall. I tell everyone, "I'm Jewish. But if I'm wrong, I only have to go over the wall. Don't tell the rabbi." So situated, on the night before Dia de Los Locos I have a front row seat to an impressive pyrotechnic extravaganza. The show comes to me.

That evening, the higher launches are propelled, by combined cannon and rocket, up from that back courtyard, with deep booms preceding their aerial explosions. While, lower and midrange displays are launched (without cannon) from the front of the church. That evening, my rooftop would be too close.

As it was, several Saturday nights ago, watching from the narrow alley outside my front door, I was already wary of falling cinders. My head cocked fully back, looking straight up at hundreds of thousands of ignitions every minute, my eyes, wide open, felt vulnerable. But there was a stiff breeze, up at that height, blowing away the debris, scattering the clouds of nitroglycerin smoke.

I love fireworks. Each time some lucky couple is tying the knot over at the Instituto Allende I rush out to view those smaller, briefer matrimonial displays. I can best see those, factoring in nearby buildings, by standing on the remnant cornerstone of the house that once occupied the empty lot next door. Balanced there precariously in the night, I say a little prayer of thanksgiving to whichever Chinese emperor it was who sponsored the invention of gunpowder.

One of my earliest memories is going out with my Uncle Joe on his skiff at night, to beat the price of admission and see the Fourth of July fireworks at Ocean Beach in New London, Connecticut.

So, a couple of Saturday nights ago, 12 hours before the Los Locos parade, found me at my end of the alley, looking up with devil-may-care insouciance at bombs bursting in air, enjoying the over-the-top glitter and roar, up close. I was especially admiring the innovations, new shimmering golden curtains of sparks opening and closing, waving across the sky, when the boyfriend of my neighbor arrived home.

(The Mexican term "novio" better describes their association as it implies both boyfriend and husband. The Church here in Mexico, particularly bothered by the popularity of these more casual relationships, refuses to baptize the children born of them, until the parents sanctify their union.)

Surly sums up this young man's attitude. He's always courteous, even deferential towards his girlfriend; not a bad guy superficially. But just below the surface, given any difficulty, he's unfriendly and unforgiving, at least to me. His young lady, who is friendly according to her capacity, is right at home with his anti-social attitude. Like his "father-in-law" before him, her boyfriend is easily offended and ready to fight... physically.

I saw the "father-in-law," who is gone now several years, savagely attack his younger brother over a sofa the brother was taking from their mother's house next door to his. After beating his brother into retreat, the older brother actually broke the back of the sofa while dragging it with a thud off the younger's pickup truck and into his own house. All this while the middle brother was admonishing him to "Recuerda tu madre," Remember your mother. Mexicans don't say "our mother," as we do north of the border.

Twice his girlfriend has called off her boyfriend, telling him to stand down, when his and my verbal interaction escalated. (You don't need to let your car warm up here in Mexico, especially not for four minutes in the mid-afternoon, especially not with the exhaust entering my house right under my front door, especially not after I already very politely asked you to back away a bit.) Once, when she wasn't around, he cornered me in the alley and poked me four or five times aggressively in the chest over some imagined slight.

Since then, with him less than half my age and more than twice my weight, I cut him a wide berth. Not knowing who might be a relative or acquaintance of his, and likely as surly as him, I don't involve myself with goings-on outside my door, anymore. Isolated as I am, enjoying those little human actions as I do, still, unless someone is explicitly calling for help, I keep to myself.

That evening, below an ongoing, spectacular pyrotechnic display, my head plugged into the nearby heaven, I was alerted to his presence by him rapping at his own door. At this, I looked over my shoulder, and, sure that I could be in no way offending anyone, continued staring aloft. A few moments later, as the show went mightily on, I heard him disappear inside.

One way Buddha's teaching: "A belief in personal identity is the first error of mind," translates into modern parlance is, "Don't take it personally." The question, "How could they treat me that way?" is wrong from the start. They are not treating you that way; not you in particular. That's the way they treat everyone. That's the way they treat themselves.

Rejoice. You only have to suffer their presence for a short while. They have to live with themselves.

Friendship rubs some people the wrong way. They are incapable of peer-to-peer interactions. They are confronted by human intimacy. I don't know, and I don't want to know, what traumatic upbringing predisposes my surly neighbor to fight.

But I do know that anyone who could turn away from, who does not look up in wonder at, tens of thousands of multi-colored sparks spectacularly bursting across the sky right overhead, anyone who will walk away from such scintillating heavenly displays, anyone with such a closed, embittered sensibility cannot be expected to appreciate my more subtle neighborly charms.

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Dr. David Fialkoff presents Lokkal, our local social network, the community online and off, Atención robustly reborn for the digital age. If you can, please do contribute content, or your hard-earned cash, to support Lokkal, SMA's Voice. Use the orange, Paypal donate button below. Thank you.

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