Gangs like bacteria need certain conditions to develop. One of the key conditions in San Miguel is the belief that there is Magic. It is that belief that causes people to start to lose touch with reality and act and live in ways that would not happen at home.
Why would anyone buy a house in San Miguel less than one week after visiting it for the first time if there were not under some illusion that this place is SPECIAL.
Shangri-La is a mystical, harmonious valley enclosed in the western end of the Kunlun Mountains. Shangri-La has become synonymous with any earthly paradise – a permanently happy land, isolated from the outside world.
It is not a real place but was invented by Oscar-winning British author, James Hilton. In his novel, Lost Horizon, he describes a mystical valley in Tibet called Shangri-La, where the main character finds love, inner peace and a sense of purpose
Hmmm sounds suspiciously like San Miguel. In the mountains, permanently happy land, isolated from the outside world.
The concept of a Shangri La or a Garden of Eden or a Utopia run deep in our psych
- a life-long quest or something elusive that is much sought – that place of perfection.
There are many instances of people creating Shangri La.
United States President Franklin Delano Roosevelt being considerably fond of Hilton’s novel, named the presidential retreat now known as Camp David “Shangri-La” in 1942.
Lutcher Stark, a prominent Texas philanthropist, started building his own Shangri-La in Orange, Texas. His Shangri-La was a beautiful azalea garden situated along a Cypress swamp. By 1950, thousands of people were traveling to Orange to visit Shangri La. Every major magazine dealing with gardens published photographs of the beautiful Shangri La in Texas. In 1958, a major snowstorm struck Texas, destroying thousands of azaleas and closing the garden for forty years. The garden has recently been renovated and is now open to the public once again.
In the novel Lost Horizon, the people who live at Shangri-La are almost immortal, living years beyond the normal lifespan and only very slowly aging in appearance. Plastic surgery can create the same effect as the Day of the Dead Gang shows.
Ojai, California was the location for the 1937 Frank Capra film. The outdoor scenes of the villagers of Shangri-La and a cavorting Ronald Colman and Jane Wyatt were in fact filmed in nearby Sherwood Forest (Westlake Village) and Palm Springs. The exterior of the grand lamasery was built and later dismantled on the Columbia Ranch in Burbank, California. However, according to film historian Kendall Miller in the photodocumentary bonus feature on the “Lost Horizon” DVD, an aerial shot of Ojai Valley taken from an outlook on Highway 150 was used to represent the Shangri-La valley.
Is San Miguel Shangi La? Is that why there are Gangs? Is this how people act in paradise? Is there a snow storm coming? Will real estate prices increase?
Filed under: Magic and Miracles in San Miguel | Tagged: Shangri La
Guess I would have to move to Toronto if I didn’t have my gangs.
What would you do without your “gangs”?
See it is Shangri La. We have a comment from Jane Wyatt aka Babs and a comment about Ronald Coleman.
Personal comment directed at those who think I don’t like San Miguel. To be honest, when the sun sets and that golden colour settles over the town, it is magical.
Actually, I know a Gringo in Pátzcuaro who bought a home here via the internet before he had even set foot in the town. Had never, ever been here. That was a few years ago and, against all odds, he´s now happy as a dead hog in the sunshine, a permanent resident.
It has been my Shangri-La. A place of tranquility and peace. Out of the rat race – out of the materialistic need for more – and out of any need to be any more then who or what I am.
I don’t think it’s magic as much as it is the innate beauty of the place that draws me back over and over again………