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A cynic might say there are more murals, statues and pictures wearing masks in San Miguel de Allende than actual people.
I wouldn’t know.
Lately, the only people I hang out with are murals, statues, and pictures. And they all seem to be wearing masks.
Which is why I prefer their company to that of people who will not wear masks. They even look smarter than people without masks.
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Since the beginning of the Covid sequestration, I’ve been taking the occasional walkabout here in San Miguel de Allende. I’ve even taken some that were inspired by my beloved city but strictly products of the mind.
Honestly, we’re all kind of feeling like we are at the “break out” point.
I hope this will help.
Below is a selection of the walks — real and fantasy — that I’ve enjoyed over the past few months.
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My whole neighborhood put on a lunch for about 30 hungry and hard-working guys today.
They have been with us for a while now, long enough to know many of them by sight and wish each other a good day. These are the guys who tore up our street, right down to the dirt, and installed new utilities — sewer,water, fiber-optic.
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We went for a walk on Sunday.
Or maybe it was a hike. When does a walk stop being a walk and become a hike? Is it the distance? The degree of difficulty? The moment when you suddenly realize one call to Uber could end all this?
Anyhow, we went for a walk on Sunday.
Eight miles, round-trip.
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I know “curated” does not mean “stuff left over.”
A curator searches through his or her museum’s basements, files, archives, vaults, hallways, and subterranean sanctorums in search of pieces that support an important theme or idea.
The hope is that, as a whole, a curated show will tell a story or bolster an idea. A curated show is more than a theme — say for example, pictures with something red in them.
There is no doubt that during self-isolation, we have changed. As our lives slowed down, our perception has improved. I dare say that we are all seeing, feeling, hearing, loving, fearing in ways our previously busy, noisy, distracting, and demanding lives would not permit.
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In a crossword puzzle today:
“It might send you to the moon”
Horizontal. Four letters.
So obvious. I wrote in
LOVE
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But LOVE is thwarted by insensitive vertical clues
That have nothing to do with love:
“Some shortcuts for ships” CANALS
“Body position in yoga” ASANA
“Great ___ National Park” BASIN
“Brand of figure-shaping underwear” SPANX
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For a flight to the moon,
The crossword’s answer
Is pretty pedestrian. (Especially after
Spanx and asana which, come to think of it,
May have something to do with love.)
Perhaps songwriters and poets should create
Our nation’s crossword puzzle clues.
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Love, of course, is all you need.
Love will send you to the moon.
But romantic metaphors, apparently,
Have no place in a Wednesday
New York Times Crossword Puzzle.
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Although, the clue for 57 down,
“Middle of many metaphors,”
Suggests somebody knows something
About figures of speech.
If not love.
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That answer, to 57 down, sadly,
Is not LOVE, either.
It is only three letters: ISA
Really, only two words, “IS A”
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ISA, as in …
He is a car wreck waiting to happen.
Her love is a one-way trip to the moon.
He is a puddle of mush when she walks into the room.
Their love is a three-ring circus.
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ISA is an “ugh …”
(Also three letters, but not an answer.)
I don’t want and ugh. I want a hug.
I want better. I want more.
I want LOVE to send us to the moon.
Even in a Wednesday crossword puzzle.
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But if LOVE doesn’t, or can’t,
Send us to the moon
Because things get in the way, like,
Canals, yoga, tight underwear and national parks
What will?
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A very important question
These days:
What sends you to the moon?
What keeps you from taking a trip to the moon?
Use as many letters and metaphors as you wish.
These days, we walk around Parque Juarez.
No, not walk around in Parque Juarez.
Just, walk around. The perimeter.
We circle the park, as you would circle a fishbowl.
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The rainy season has begun in San Miguel de Allende and brings with it an abundance of lush and impossibly green vegetation. There is a freshness to everything — the streets, the air, the flowers now blooming everywhere in mad bursts of color.
Walking though older parts of San Miguel feel like you have been transported to dense tropical forests in an era far removed from the present.
The perfect getaway for the homebound in the Age of Pandemic.
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The summer that “Jaws” came out, I was sailing very poorly on a tiny wooden platform called a Sailfish off the coast of South Chatham on Cape Cod.
Mind you, I had never sailed before.
We were rigged with a larger than normal sail, which under normal circumstances would have made for easy gliding on a sultry summer day.
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Musings, Magic, San Miguel and More 