A reader pointed out yesterday that my blog post on flowers which included some from Cape Cod and Newport, Rhode Island, was sorely lacking, in his opinion.
He essentially asked, How can you post pictures from these two places and not include a single ocean view?
In the writer’s own words, “No cape or Newport there..no ocean in site.”
Continue reading
In San Miguel de Allende, we call this the rainy season.
Many days, the clouds will roll in during the afternoon and by 5 p.m. or so, there will be rain, thunder, and lightning.
It is happening right now as I write about it. A little early in the day, 1:30 p.m. but nobody ever complains about the rain.
Continue reading
Sometimes, you just have to go with the material that is right in front of you.
Today, it is nothing more than clouds.
Just clouds.
“You should see the clouds,” Rose calls out to me. I am in my favorite chair, in a cool dark room, battling ignorance and mean people on Twitter. “They’re really beautiful.”
She is right. Rose knows her clouds.
Big beautiful fluffy, floating, languid, lazily hithering and dithering clouds.
Not “looks like rain” clouds. Not trouble-ahead clouds. Not massive gray-dark sheets of roiling angry wetness.
Just legions of marshmallow clouds floating over San Miguel de Allende on a summer’s afternoon.
The kind of clouds in which you can see famous faces, clowns, ghouls, horses, funny dogs, dragons, elephants, and cars.
The kind of clouds for which soft fields of grass were created, so you could lie on your back and see famous faces, clowns, ghouls, horses, funny dogs, dragons, elephants, and cars.
The kind of clouds that inspired Joni Mitchell to write “Both Sides Now.”
The kind of clouds that John Constable painted in sprawling vistas like “The Hay Wain” and “Wivenhoe Park.”
Where would poets be without clouds? Looking at you, Percy Bysshe Shelley.
Maybe they are the same clouds, just recycled two centuries later?
Still hanging around, but posing now for iPhones.
Or, the kind of clouds under which young people fall in love and old people fall into reminiscing.
The kind of clouds for which the word “chiaroscuro” was invented.
Nobody can say that, back in the day, they had better clouds than these.
I’ve seen the evidence.
The best clouds ever — and always — are the ones that capture your imagination for a moment, just before morphing into whispy cotton candy swirls.
Timing is everything with clouds.
Pull your head up out of your cell phone, your busy works, your depression, your self-obsession, your shoe gazing — and look up.
Don’t let a day go by without observing the clouds, no matter how many or how few.
Don’t compare them to clouds past. That is not why they are here.
This is no cloud fashion show.
Clouds appear because they are trying to tell us something.
Seek out their shapeshifting secrets.
Learn their names, understand their reasons.
Follow the shadows they cast upon the ground.
You won’t find a pot of gold.
Maybe something better.
Love?
_______________________________________________________________________
If you enjoyed this post, consider subscribing and passing on the link to friends. It is all free. To subscribe, click on the three-bar thing at the top of this page (in the red circle). Feel free to share this post!
You want to hear about how my IT wizard supercharged my streaming media speed so that I can actually watch a movie uninterrupted (sometimes) off my FireStick?
Nah. Me neither.
How about the coming Sriracha shortage because drought conditions in northern Mexico are killing off the chiles harvest and the hot-sauce factory has closed?
You already know that one, huh?
Continue reading
Of course, there were fireworks to finish off the celebration of Saint Anthony in Colonia San Antonio.
And they were beauts.
Worth climbing up to the upper deck to watch. So worth it. Enough said.
Just a great way to finish off a crazy Sunday.
Happy Father’s Day to all of you Dads. Hope there were crazy moments and fireworks and lots of love in your life today.
What was this?
Just before the San Antonio fireworks, this cluster of lights floated up into the sky and hovered for about six minutes. In sync with the music, they rotated, changed position, changed color, and spun slowly around. And then floated ever-so-slowly to earth.
It was an unusual aerial ballet.
Computer-synced drones? Alien space ships? Northern Lights? Too much wine? What do you think?
Video of the San Antonio fireworks:
Click on any photo to enlarge:
_______________________________________________________________________
If you enjoyed this post, consider subscribing and passing on the link to friends. It is all free. To subscribe, click on the three-bar thing at the top of this page (in the red circle). Feel free to share this post!
That’s true. I only saw half the Crazies parade this morning in San Miguel de Allende.
The upper half.
Even at 6-foot-2 I wasn’t tall enough, or close enough to watch the Dia de Los Locos parade with such an unobstructed view. Man, there were a lot of people out there, and they got to the curb long before I did. What’s fair is fair.
Therefore, you may notice that many of my photographs are filtered through a variety of hairstyles, various hats, the occasional waving hands and fingers, hands holding iPhones in front of my iPhone, and the odd umbrella.
Continue reading
Leopold Bloom poses a tantalizing puzzle in James Joyce’s epic novel “Ulysses”: “cross Dublin without passing a pub.”
Thanks, I suppose, to computers, GPS, and Google maps, that puzzle has been solved many times over. Why you would want to do it, is a puzzle to me. When in Ireland. …
Here’s a tougher puzzle: Walk across Dublin and not see a reference to James Joyce – be it a photograph, a statue, a quote on a wall, a bookstore window, a mural, a pub name, a simple conversation, or a T-shirt in a tourist shop.
It feels like Joyce is Dublin and Dublin is Joyce, and though he has been dead these many decades, the full ripe glory of his passion for this city is everywhere.
Continue reading
We’ve been dodging in and out of the rain since we began walking the Wild Atlantic Way in County Clare four days ago. This morning, awakening to the steady patter of rain on the windows of the Wild Atlantic Lodge in Ballyvaughan, it feels like we’ve run out of dodges.
Did we really want to walk to Carran — or Carron? It is spelled both ways, often side by side, and nobody seems to really care. I asked. “Either way,” is the most common response.
One of the Burren walking guides calls this leg “extremely rewarding and scenic …”
Well, that is encouraging. Except it is dumping buckets outside.
But wait, there is more.
Continue reading
Moppit the Philosopher Dog is pretty insistent that I take her for a walk, no more than 10 minutes after she finishes her 5 p.m. dinner. She is a creature of habit. Moppit starts a huff-snorting sound around my ankles if I’m not reaching for the leash, the kind of sound a woman makes when the husband comes home late smelling of booze and perfume and mumbles “biznish shmeeting.”
lately, it has been in the high 80s around 5 p.m. here in San Miguel de Allende, so I try to reason with her.
But a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.
Continue reading
The best days to walk around Centro in San Miguel de Allende have got to be Thursday through Saturday.
Thursdays seem to be when the girls celebrating their quinceañeras come to the Parroquia to pose in their lavish 15th birthday gowns. A charming sight to see. Tiaras on their head, sneakers beneath a billowed and sparkling gown. A furrowed brow as the photographer aligns the perfect shot erupts into a brilliant smile on command.
The young woman pictured here stands in the middle of Calle Aldama for a classic image with Parroquia de San Miguel Arcángel in the background.
Continue reading
Musings, Magic, San Miguel and More 