The Catrina face-painting tag team, Efrain Gonzalez and Laura Cerroblanco, launched their season with a party on Friday at Restaurante Lolita at Salida a Celaya #52.
It was a chance to learn a little about Dia de Los Muertos, watch the dynamic duo paint some faces, hear some fine music from Gabriela Espinosa and Sharon Itoi, enjoy a dinner prepared by Chef Fernando Guarneros, and reconnect with some old friends and make some new ones.
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We love our mojigangas.
The tall, human-fueled street puppets have been around San Miguel de Allende since 1924. They are of as many varieties as there is of life.
They can be comic, satirical, political, nuptial, magical, tragic, whimsical, mystical, surreal, fantastical, scary, devilish, angelic, familiar, historical, sexy, skeletal, ethnic, gypsies, tramps and thieves, and even, ordinary.
Like those images above from a recent parade in San Miguel.
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It is that time of year. The skeletons in our closets find their way to the streets of San Miguel de Allende.
Not those skeletons.
These are more literal.
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We once lived in a house that had a 360-degree view of San Miguel de Allende from the rooftop.
We still live in the house but the view is mostly gone.
In its place is a three-story condo project that wraps around the two sides facing Centro, the Parroquia, and the sunrise. It would be oppressive were it not for the chiffon yellow paint job. Chiffon yellow tends to soothe.
At any rate, this picture is not about that.
This picture was taken many blocks away on the top floor of the Posada de Las Monjas hotel on Calle Canal. Twice a week I climb the Escher–like staircases to the top to take Pilates. The walk to the studio is almost as grueling as the class. But obviously worth it.
And I’m not just saying that because the instructor is my wife, Rose Alcantara.
This is the view from the studio.
On Monday , we were expecting a late-season shower. The clouds to the West looked promising. They apparently had business elsewhere. All we got were sprinkles.
And a spectacular view.
We were mystified.
One minute, Dr. Grace Lim is delivering her weekly health talk on Wednesday to the nearly 120 guests of So Others May Eat in the Parroquia de San Miguel Arcangel courtyard.
“Many of you only have each other,” she reminds the elderly San Miguelians, all over the age of 65. “You need to watch out for each other.”
A frail elderly woman reaches up and asks for the microphone and Dr. Lim hands it to her.
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“(His) gift for artifice notwithstanding, he’d spun such dense layers of fabrication that inevitably he lapsed into self-contradiction.” – “Fantasia for Piano” By Mark Singer, Sept. 10, 2007, New Yorker magazine.
When the end came, it was a mere shadow of the audacious and raucous life that led up to it.
How sad. Imagine a man who promiscuously craved attention his entire life dying alone in a cold and dark room in a cold and dark dacha in the midst of a most unforgiving Russian winter.
Or nearly alone. With him was the sullen old nurse who spoke little English and seemed to know more about boiling cabbage than ministering to a dying man. In her defense, boiled cabbage was valued more by her people than this corpulent and grotesque American who knew only how to complain.
“Everything,” she often told her husband as they ate dinner in the dacha kitchen. “There is nothing in this existence which is not out to make his life miserable. Just ask him. Jesus Christ did not suffer as much for all Mankind as this man thinks he suffers when the temperature drops just a few degrees.
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We had a discussion the other night about High Season. Specifically, how do you know when it begins?
Somebody suggested you know when you can’t get a table at a restaurant you’ve been walking into for the past five months. Someone else thought Dia de los Muertos was the line of demarcation. Perhaps it’s when you can get an Uber every day of the week.
I decided that today officially marks the beginning of the “busy season.”
And the marker is the Pro Musica classical music concert series.
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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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Art is best left to describe itself.
I’m a firm believer in that.
But I also believe you should let people know where they can find the cool stuff. This, for example.
The beauty of San Miguel de Allende is that you find art everywhere, often in the most unexpected places.
Especially murals.
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A long hike is never really over.
We finished walking Scotland’s West Highland Way on September 18. It is still very much on my mind and I suspect it will be hanging around.
There were lessons learned. Both about myself and the trail.
That’s really what it is mostly about in the end, isn’t it? Nobody walks – let’s call it 100 miles – and walks away not knowing something new about themselves.
Even if it is only whether or not you love toe socks.
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