How can you tell if a parade is about to break out in San Miguel de Allende?
Sadly, if you are a gringo, you’re probably the last to know. Parades and processions, for the most part, are cultural. You may not be connected to the network that announces such things. So, pay attention. Follow these tips and you may end up on the sidewalk watching one of the most unique and exciting things to happen in this city.
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That must have been some party.
Early this morning, the limpia crew was all over the square in front of the Parroquia de San Miguel de Arcangel with brooms, buckets, and tanks of water. The bucketers would scoop and splash water on the stones and the sweepers descend on the water like hungry birds, sloshing it left and right, until only clean damp stone remains.
Splash and repeat. In the early morning breeze. The first in what feels like months.
While this is cleaning writ large, all over San Miguel de Allende in the morning, women (mostly) wash the sidewalks and streets in front of their homes. Same routine — water, bucket, and broom — as they have been doing for centuries.
Why the public square on a Sunday morning? I can’t say.
A messy party? Too much spilled and melted ice cream? Too much dust? In anticipation of the arrival of a wedding princess or social media queen? Simple hygiene?
You just never know, do you?
Unless you ask.
But why spoil the fun?
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!”
Continue readingLet me start the week by saying, dawg, I’m tired. It may be the hyper-awareness of a birthday of a certain age that came and went last week but really drove home the point: I have had way too many birthdays in my life.
And that realization leads to another realization: I’m tired.
All of this is to say that as I was putting this calendar together Saturday night, I reached a point where finishing this thing wasn’t going to happen on deadline. So, on Sunday, I updated this page with a half-dozen more fun things for you to consider.
And as always, send your ideas and events to robertj.hawkins2012@gmail.com. Thanks for playing along!
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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. …
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If you haven’t been, you owe it to yourself to go see the Exploding Judases, today, Sunday, at noon. Go sooner and get a close-up look at the lifesize papier mache figures that will be blown to smithereens. You may even recognize one or two! You may even want to project a name or two of your own onto the more anonymous ones.
Frankly, the pyrotechnics signal the end of High Season, that semi-sad time of year when the season begins to change, to heat up and get really really dry, and all that money changes course and begins to flow back north to the United States and Canada.
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You can attend two magnificent classical performances on the same day, a spooky play reading, a night of expert storytelling, and learn how to read “Ulysses” for pleasure. Watch as the greatest soccer rivalry in the Western Hemisphere fires up again Sunday night. Take to the stage for a Live Mic night, watch an Oscar-winning documentary, or see one of the greatest movies of all time.
The toughest seat in town will be for the re-birth of the guitar-fueled Media Luna’s trio of concerts.
Probably most important of all is that all week long the Catholic faithful will be reliving the Passion of Christ in ceremony, pageantry, prayer, liturgy, and in the end pyrotechnics.
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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.
Continue reading“Tree down’s just another word for nothing left to lose …” — singer unknown.
Well, not much of a tree. More like a very dense collection of termite tunnels encased in a very mulchy tree-like substance.
The tree had been topped long ago. Which is good, because the abbreviated trunk barely grazed the exterior wall of Casa Liza hotel on Bjd. de Chorro # 7 in ZonaCentro. Imagine one of those towering trees in the park doing the same.
There is just enough room by the Casa Liza wall to squeeze by. The very agile can scoot beneath the trunk, as did Moppit the Philosopher dog on this otherwise serene Sunday morning.
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All day today, since sunrise roughly, colorfully costumed dancers, drummers, and musicians have been filing into the central jardin of San Miguel de Allende. They fill the four corners of the park in front of the Parroquia de San Miguel Arcangel with trancelike dances to the steady beat dozens of drums.
For visitors and expats, the pageantry has been extraordinarily colorful and thrilling but there is a deeply religious foundation to it all that goes back 450 years. Centuries ago the statue called the Lord of the Conquest arrived in the region. Señor de la Conquista is a life-sized Christ and one of the most revered images in this World Heritage City, and not only because of its antiquity.
Many of these dancers began their journey on Thursday evening with an all-night vigil of music, ceremony, chanting in preparation for the grueling performances today. I will leave you with these images but if you want to know more, please visit the Facebook page of my good friend Efrain Gonzalez.
He has written extensively on this and the many other cultural events with which San Miguel is blessed.
Be sure to click on any image to expand it.
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Musings, Magic, San Miguel and More 