That moment when you realize the offbeat lead to a blog post that you have been struggling with since Thanksgiving isn’t really the lead to a blog post, but an offbeat poem that celebrates the particular insanity that grips us between Halloween and Boxer Day.
I say this, fully cognizant of the fact that I am not a poet.
So you must draw your own conclusions:
San Miguel torch singer María Sánchez gave a stunning concert under the trees near Parque Juarez on Saturday, backed by the talent-rich Usual Suspects including Julián Arcos, Rubén Olivera, and Victor Monterrubio.
She is a wonderful singer for whom, my wife says, I carry a big crush. “He moans when she sings,” she tells friends.
Maybe so, on both accounts.
María Sánchez with her beautiful new granddaughter, Olivia, after her performance.
Her singing does something to me. I can’t deny it. But I am mature enough to separate the singer from the song, from the real person beneath it all. I think. I mean, I was wondering “What on earth is María Sánchez doing singing outside, and at 1 p.m.?” So my imagination does slip in through the backdoor when she sings.
In my mind, she is a torch meant to burn only in the night when the heart and soul are at their darkest and most lonely. Obviously, I do have fantasies about María Sánchez.
Rather than spoil her concert by trying to describe it, below is the story that wrote itself as I sat in the bright sunlight, listening to her sing. Any relationship to people living or dead is strictly coincidental. Blame it on mescal: Continue reading
I have never been good with deaths, weddings, baptisms, or birthdays. Even holidays. Christmas always felt designed to highlight my personal ineptitude at selecting presents for people I love but should get to know better.
Lately, deaths seem to overshadow all else.
I don’t know about you, but I lost an awful lot of good colleagues and friends in 2019. Continue reading
She sits on the cold stone stoop. She looks neither left nor right.
Her head is bowed, mostly, her left hand extends for alms.
The hand rests on her knee. It is rigid and curled into an unnatural cup. A shape carved over a lifetime. A boney cup meant to hold, pesos, centavos.
Give or don’t give. It is all the same. Continue reading
Something was a little off when Moppit and I reached the Ancha on our walk early this morning. Not a single car was parked on the normally busy thoroughfare that divides Centro from Colonia San Antonio.
On any other day, both curbs would be lined with cars.
Either somebody was going to be moving a giant house down the street on a flatbed — or there was a parade scheduled. Continue reading
What crimes were perpetrated upon society, so heinous that such innocent-looking flowers should be locked behind bars?
I ask you.
Are they behind these bars for our protection?
Are they the offspring of legendary Bella Donna? Kin to the deadly sweet-smelling Nerium Oleander? Gang members of Titan Arum, alias the stinky “corpse plant”? Continue reading
The bed of a pickup truck is probably the last place most of us would go looking for art.
The pickup truck has one job: to haul things. We fill the beds with wood, bricks, dirt, furniture, boxes, people, camping gear, tools, food, stuff and more stuff … then we haul it from Point A to Point B.
Job well done. Continue reading
