Los sombras y los angelos

Last week I found Jesus in a piece of cake, and this week I found my shadow. What next? It's finally starting to get warm here and I'm planning to initiate some rooftop yoga classes with guests here at Alma del Sol, my home here in Guanajuato, Mexico.

Some of the highlights of everyday are, of course, the culinary offerings of this sensuous culture. Clara -- who has become my gringa partner in crime and who works as a chef in St. Louis -- departed from our usual exotic salsas and moles and served biscuits and gravy for breakfast this morning. Guicho, who I have adopted as my younger brother, looked at the gravy suspiciously and decided to stick to something more familiar. . . something with chiles.

The Downes Method endures, even south of the border. . . I was approached early this week at La Escuela Mexicana, where I'm taking ten hours a week of Spanish language courses, by a couple of the teachers seeking assistance with their New Year's resolution to get in shape. So Almendra -- who is 26, a lawyer, and the only one of her girlfriends who isn't married -- and Juan Carlos -- 20, gay, chubby and adorable -- and I have been making daily pilgrimages to the track, where I run them around and engage them in various death-defying calesthenic exercises. Yesterday, as Juan Carlos and I were finishing our final lap, a guy named Miguel Angel emerged from the shadows and asked me to come teach at the school where he trains martial arts. I think I understood about 70% of what he said, including that he works as a security guard at the prison. Angel walked back into town with us, but disappeared quickly when Juan Carlos and I stopped to watch some older people rocking the Danzon on a make-shift stage in the middle of the street. We'll see if he appears again.