On Mexican Time: A New Life in San Miguel

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In the mid-1980s, Tony Cohan and his artist wife, Masako, decided they had had enough of the hectic pace and inherent insecurities of life in Los Angeles and made tracks for the historic town of San Miguel de Allende in central Mexico. At first they rented rooms in a hotel. Then, when the hotel became less appealing, they graduated to renting an apartment. Almost inevitably, they eventually found themselves buying a 250-year-old hacienda on the verge of collapse, with wonderfully elegant Spanish colonial architecture and a garden brimming with papayas, avocados, and custard apples.

What followed was a love affair with a country and its people that has endured. On Mexican Time is a lyrical attempt to capture the Mexican magic that bewitched the two of them. Cohan introduces us to a quirky cast of Mexicans and expats, including murderers, idealists, philanderers, and writers. Spanning 15 years, the book conveys something of the curiously intangible passage of time, as we watch girls become mothers, marriages drift apart, and friends come and go. The text is rich with sensuous details, and Cohan is excellent at conveying the sights, sounds, smells, and tastes of a country that he clearly adores.

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
When Los Angeles-based novelist Tony Cohan and his artist wife, Masako, first visited the colonial city of San Miguel de Allende in 1985, the closest they could get by plane was Mexico City. From there, they had to take an unpleasant 170-mile bus trip to the dusty turnaround in the middle of the city. Now it is quite different, as I discovered when I traveled to San Miguel last year -- visitors can fly into L￯﾿ﾽon International Airport and take a quick bus ride to the new concrete bus terminal about a mile from San Miguel. When I arrived, I was greeted by friendly taxi drivers ready to take me to what may be the cleanest and tidiest city in all of Mexico.

San Miguel de Allende rests at an elevation of more than a mile in the mountains northwest of Mexico City. The Spanish may have found silver among those hills, but upon their arrival, Tony Cohan and his wife found much more. Who wouldn't want to vacation, much less live, in a place that enchants all the senses? While I was reading On Mexican Time, I was not surprised when Cohan and Masako decided to give up their fast-paced lives in Los Angeles and settle in colorful San Miguel, among walls that were standing when the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock.

On Mexican Time, Cohan's evocative portrait of San Miguel, is a totally sensual experience. From the sounds of the 15 bell towers, whose chimes overlap in chaotic harmony, to the tastes of the street vendors' boiled corn in the jardin, the main town square, San Miguel is a place where everything has a voice. Days there are languid, and time is marked by little things, such as the gentle knock of shy young girls selling squash blossoms for soup. Early on, Cohan realizes that he can become lost "staring at the exfoliating pentimenti of an eroding wall." He understands that these layers of paint mirror the layers of time and existence that flake away and are added to continuously. While Cohan seems to find an intangible lesson in every breath of San Miguel's air, his wife furthers the "Mexicanization" of the couple by indulging her appreciation for folk art and the local cuisine, filling their 250-year-old stone house with the colors, textures, smells, and tastes of San Miguel. Masako's fascination with the festival celebrating the Day of the Dead brings us to accept, as she does, the normalcy of eating chocolates shaped like skulls.

Cohan's words become the reader's eyes and ears, as he takes you through the market and fills his bolsas with fresh vegetables, sauces, and flowers. In one particularly vivid passage, describing a dinner party lit by candles because the notoriously unreliable electricity was knocked out by a storm, I felt as though I was a guest at his table. Surrounded by locals and foreigners, listening to the rain, Cohan captures the dramatic local lore of San Miguel. Relating a true story of a "re-killing," a murder that took two attempts, Cohan leaves readers perplexed and intrigued by Mexican law, which in this case seems based more on passion than on morality or justice.

I particularly enjoyed Cohan's description of the nightly parade in the jardin, which conjures up images of innocent chaperoned love and budding sexuality. Under the watchful fa￯﾿ﾽade of La Parroquia, the city's cathedral, whose sandstone evolves daily from a soft to a deep pink under the close sun, the "ridiculously romantic" young lovers pass each other and exchange glances that foreshadow futures and children together. Families congregate here nightly, entertained by mariachi bands around the square's edge and a brass band in the center. When I was relaxing in the square, I recall the children running with balloons and smiles while eating their unnaturally colored cotton candy, just like the parish fairs of my childhood in Louisiana. Cohan provides us with the soundtrack of this nightly festival celebrating the good things in life.

In fact, On Mexican Time is one of those good things. Instead of a simple "how to move to Mexico" book, Tony Cohan gives us a "how to know life in Mexico" book. After reading On Mexican Time, everyone will want to know life there. I am fortunate enough to have experienced this beautiful, eccentric city -- but for those who haven't, there is Cohan's excellent book.

Fred Jordan lives in New Orleans and travels frequently throughout Mexico and Belize.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

When Los Angeles novelist Tony Cohan and his artist wife, Masako, visited central Mexico one winter, they fell under the spell of a place where the pace of life is leisurely, the cobblestone streets and sun-splashed plazas are enchanting, and the sights and sounds of daily fiestas fill the air. Awakened to needs they didn't know they had, they returned to California, sold their house, and cast off for San Miguel de Allende. On Mexican Time is Cohan's evocatively written memoir of how he and his wife absorb the town's sensual ambience, eventually find and refurbish a crumbling 250-year-old house, and become entwined in the endless drama of Mexican life. From peso devaluations and water shortages to the romantic entanglements of their handyman and the local legend of a man who was "killed twice", On Mexican Time captures the indelible characters, little tragedies, and curious incidents of life in a distinctive Mexican town. At the same time, it enfolds readers in the delight of one of the world's most desirable travel destinations.

Brimming with mystery, joy, and hilarity, On Mexican Time is a stirring, seductive celebration of another way of life—a tale of Americans who, finding a home in Mexico, find themselves anew.

About the Author: Tony Cohan is the author of the novels Canary, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and Opium. A widely published travel writer, he is also a jazz lyricist whose collaborators include Chick Corea. He divides his time among Venice, California, and Mexico.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

In 1985, novelist and travel writer Cohan (Canary; Secular and Sacred) and his wife, Masako, traveled on a whim to the colorful Mexican town of San Miguel de Allende, where fireworks sputter from wooden towers on feast days, "mariachi singers' plangent howls" season the air, "cats roam the rooftops unimpeded" and "history, religion and ceremony soften the effects of change." Lured back for repeated visits, the Cohans finally made their home there. Casual yet studied in tone, this ode to Cohan's adopted town and nation devotes much space to San Miguel's legends, ancient and modern. The local nunnery's founder, who turned worms into butterflies, may be more fiction than fact. Cohan's acquaintance Ren , though, is real enough: the story of the murder that the locals believe he committed dominates a disturbing chapter called "The Man Who Was Killed Twice." Hospitality vies with inefficiency to make Cohan's Mexico a place of surprising ease and random hazards: "Mexican buses are reliable, cheap, and safe," but Mexican highway patrolmen demand bribes or worse; a friend of Cohan's dies when a hospital can't get her blood type. The Mexican day seems to last longer, and "nothing happens between two and four." Cohan also presents less serious downsides to his calmer Mexican lifestyle, explaining why it took him so long to get a verandah built on his 250-year-old house. The last few years have seen San Miguel become a destination for hip tourists: Cohan's pleasant account of its former obscurity may send his fans to further crowd its streets. (Jan.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

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