He awoke with a sharp grunt. Like someone had kicked him in the balls.
Come to think of it, it hurt down there, too. And he had to pee. Again.
“Driver,” he called to the front of the black town car. “Pull over. I have to piss again.”
“Can you hold it for about 10 minutes, Mr. Trump? This is a pretty bad place to pull over.”
“President. I told you to refer to me as President Trump. I don’t want to say it again.”
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Here is how it all unfolds.
Trump loses. He loses badly. The numbers are so clear and decisive that there is no wiggle room for Trump to claim fraud. The victory is decisive.
Trump does not concede defeat because he and his family are all busy packing.
Trump abdicates his “MAGA throne,” goes into exile in Russia, and sets up a shadow government. The money he has squeezed from the faithful in side scams and the money he has harvested from foreign interests is already safely deposited in Russian vaults and bitcoin portfolios.
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“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.
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After today’s concert in the Temple of the Third Order on Calle San Francisco, the maestro David Soteno Jimenez from Metepec in the State of Mexico had nothing but praise for the nearly 150-year-old pipe organ on which he performed.
“It is magnificent,” he enthused. “You see that it has only one keyboard and yet it has such a range of sound.” His one observation was that the stops that provide the keyboard its range take a bit of muscle to pull out — not an easy feat when your fingers are rolling a glissando down the keys.
He laughed as he mimicked a tug of war with the instrument, then showered it with more love.
Soteno Jimenez is the first artist from outside of San Miguel de Allende to “kick the tires” so to speak on the recently installed organ.
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News headline: Hallmark has created 42 movies for the holiday.
Subsequently, House Beautiful magazine gushed about the “comforting predictability of these flicks … No matter which title you switch on, the best thing about a Hallmark holiday movie is knowing that pretty soon you’ll be watching a happy ending.”
I don’t know if people who watch all 42 of these movies get a participation medal or a stay at the sanatorium. And Hallmark isn’t the only one flooding the zone. Somebody, noticing the overwhelming whiteness of characters in Hallmark movies, began putting out ethnic versions with the same insipient stories.
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Tis the season.
For what?
Commercials, of course.
Holiday commercials, filled with tinsel and snow, all merry and bright.
Urging you to get your Christmas shopping just right.
We’re here to help you, they say, with nary a snarky grin.
You see, we know what trouble you’re in with your kin.
The right presents can bail you out.
Listen to our adverts, Bubba, in case there is some doubt.
Great news! I’m breaking into the real estate business in San Miguel de Allende. Has to be easier and less-crowded than local foodie and influencer gigs.
Here’s my first offering: a modestly priced fixer-upper on the outer edge of the hot and trendy Colonia Guadalupe neighborhood. It is a mostly flat, — one, two three, four … — 10-minute walk to Centro. And we all know how incredibly important it is to walk to Centro.
Close to bus lines. Very, very close.
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I’ve been handed my first writing assignment in ages, covering a much-anticipated wedding in Portugal. At the same time, an incredible opportunity has come up involving a full-time job for a major newspaper chain covering nothing but Taylor Swift.
Isn’t that just the way these things happen?
You are a nobody for years. Unread, unfollowed, untalked about, an aging ghost of a writer drifting through the literary fields. Suddenly you have to choose between the wedding of the decade and Taylor Swift.
The story of my life.
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In counseling the British writer Robert Graves on a possible move to Majorca, Gertrude Stein called it “a paradise – if you can stand it.”
And that is as good an explanation as any of the complicated relationship many people have with Jimmy Buffett. The man sold a brand of paradise. Millions bought at least some version of it – be it a beachy lifestyle, the music, a devotion to margaritas, Hawaiian shirts and sandals, sportfishing, sailing, and all the Margaritaville bars, retirement communities, casinos, resorts …
Buffett wasn’t the first to turn a lifestyle into a commodity but few seem to do it better. Maybe Donald Trump. These days you can be a cradle-to-grave Parrothead with apologies toward none. More than anything, we worship success and if a guy sells a million records or makes a million dollars, he will find no shortage of admirers.
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“Everything is made out of magic, leaves and trees, flowers and birds, badgers and foxes and squirrels and people. So it must be all around us. In this garden — in all the places.” — The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett.
It is easy to get lost in a garden,
No matter how small it might be.
There you are, sitting in full possession of your mind
Ready to conjure great things that will soon become
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Musings, Magic, San Miguel and More 