Hussong’s Cantina on Ruiz Street in Ensenada, Baja, is one of those checklist places that anyone from San Diego had to visit at least once.
An original Caesar salad in Tijuana (or one of the more unsavory attractions), a margarita at the Rosarito Beach Hotel, a stop for lobster and a pitcher of margaritas in Puerto Nuevo, and a night at Hussong’s, ebbing and flowing with the tide of drunken masses.
Now that was a pretty good weekend.
Hussong’s was unique among cantinas. It wasn’t artificially constructed as some faux Mexican fantasy to pull in the tourists with campy decor and T-shirts. Hussong’s holds liquor license No. 2 in Ensenada and is in the same building John Hussong bought and gussied up in 1892.
A few days ago, I watched a documentary on the human digestive system. One thing these scientists and nutritionists kept repeating when asked about food choices: “Listen to your body.”
OK, what does that even mean?
Since puberty, “listen to your body” has been the siren’s call leading me down a path to only one place, a place filled with regret, remorse, shame — and maybe a little “wowzer!”
I tried my idea for global peace on a few people in the crowd today as we waited for the Exploding Judases to commence.
“What if all across the United States people had a day like this where you could hang effigies of your enemies and other bad people — and watch as they were blown to bits?”
“Just think of the catharsis!”
How to begin to describe the strange looks that I got. …
“Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.”
– Leonardo da Vinci
Flying like Superman no longer appeals to me the way it did in my youth. You remember, “faster than a speeding bullet,” – and all that leaping tall buildings with a single bound.
It may be an age thing.
These days, I could use “stronger than a locomotive.” But I’d settle for just a stronger cup of coffee.
The apex of my yearning to fly like Superman came as he streaked around the world counterclockwise until he created enough counterforce to slow its rotation. He did do that, right? I could be conflating my own imagination with some comic book or movie scenario.
An old friend sent me a list today of all the former employees of the Wilson Publishing Company who would be attending a reunion in the next week or so.
The list spans more than 40 years. I was surprised to find that I know or recognize nearly half the names. Each name sent me into fresh reverie, triggered a sweet memory of another era.
My friend, Brian Mitchell, like me, was an editor of one of Wilson’s several weekly newspapers in Southern Rhode Island. Brian’s was the newest of the three and he got to create his paper from scratch – a most challenging and yet, enviable, task.
Mine was a hand-me-down, more than 100 years old but well-cared for – the flagship paper of the little Wilson empire, The Narragansett Times.
The voice is young, sweet, innocent and yet, broken in a way only love’s betrayal can scar.
She accompanies herself on a guitar, languidly strumming. Not living, not dead. In the between. In the neverland of a broken heart. The vocalist drags out the last words of each line, as if groping toward a precipice. It may be in Spanish but it feels very French.
The singing is coming from an upper patio of the building next door.
I met a woman, in my dreams last night. Her senses are scrambled. She touches through her eyes. She sees through her nose. She tastes and smells through her skin. She listens through her mouth. She speaks through her ears.
Speaking isn’t a sense. I know. But this was her dream. I only happened to walk into it.
“What a fine mess you are in,” I say. “Or is this a path to enlightenment? “Or a punishment? Some sad karma?” Mainly, she remains mute, confused. As would I, in such a confounding scramble.
I ask her if I could walk a mile in her shoes. “My shoes?” she cries. “Do you mean to say that I still have feet?” Just what she didn’t need, someone else in her shoes. “Are they still at the bottom of my legs?” she asks.
Under the circumstances, it was an unkind thing to say.
Swapping sensual responsibilities has its strengths. Imagine listening through your mouth, Drawing in another’s words with your breath. Savoring them, absorbing them, digesting them. You would actually have to listen. Rather than think of some clever retort.
Suppose you speak through your ears. That requires special talent well beyond small talk. I don’t even know how it can be done. My dream offered nothing on this. Maybe, intently listening is a form of speaking. Silence does speak volumes as others chatter on.
Putting your senses to work in areas For which they were not trained Sounds like a grueling, but potentially rewarding, exercise. Sort of like the blind man whose other senses Compensate by growing intensely acute.
Perhaps all senses ought to be rotated once in a while, Like the tires on your car. We grow lazy, only hearing through our ears, Seeing through our eyes, speaking/tasting through our mouths, feeling through our skin, smelling through our noses.
Shake them up, I say! And when, again, we grow too comfortable, Rotate them once more! Keep the fine treads of our senses staying sharp.
Perhaps if we employ all our senses to share the load — Let the eyes do the speaking, let the ears do the seeing, Let the skin replace taste and smell …
Soon, all our sensations grow muscle and power. Newer sensations arise, previously unknown sensations. Next thing you know, the heart and brain Want to engage in this circus of sensations, too. And, then, won’t things get interesting?
We are fully present in processing our environment We are fully engaged in evaluating, understanding, inhabiting.
Deep immersion, full immersion, absorption and immersion.
Life gets more interesting because we will be, well … living. No longer just data-processing and consumption machines. We are higher beings. At one, for once, with the various universes.
The woman in my dream knows none of this just yet. She is still trying to … Touch through her eyes. See through her nose. Taste and smell through her skin. Listen through her mouth. Speak through her ears. Find her footing.
I try to tell the woman in my dream that it will get better. But her face is blank. She betrays no thoughts. The woman in my dream moves on, back to the shadows. She seems neither excited nor saddened.
I gather it will take some time. Perhaps she will come back on another night And show me what she has learned.
Images were generated by artificial intelligence based on the first stanza.
Jay Leno autographs bags of chips in 1987 at his Beverly Hills home. I’m the terrorist-looking guy behind him. Photos by Jim Skovmand.
Recently, my old friend and colleague Jim Skovmand was searching for some papers on his computer when he came up with these photos, which he sent to me on Tuesday. What a great way to unlock a memory!
Jim and I joined the Copley Press organization around the same time, he in the photography pool and I with The (San Diego) Evening Tribune. The photo pool then was more like a deep lake – more than 50 photographers, editors, managers, and lab staff serving the Tribune and the rival morning paper, The San Diego Union.
As Jim recently pointed out, it took five years before we had an assignment together – that’s how big the new-gathering organization was in those days.
This was the assignment we shared and it was a doozie.
To understand the significance of Perry Como passing through our town on Christmas Eve in 1967 – no, not just passing but actually stopping – you have to understand the insignificance of Brookville, Pennsylvania.
The town that I fondly, though inaccurately, call my hometown, was in the middle of nowhere until the honking huge Interstate-80 was laid north of town and sucked up all traffic and little remaining interest in Brookville. Though you could see and hear thousands of cars and trucks pass by daily, Brookville was deeper into nowhere than ever before.
Musings, Magic, San Miguel and More 