Life is like a box of farm-fresh vegetables. You never know what you are going to get.
I know. I know. I can hear Rose Alcantara’s voice already, “Don’t play with your food!”
I can’t help it. Such an abundance. It demands a shot at Still Life before it is reduced to gourmet.
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My name is … well, never mind my name.
Just know that I walk these cobblestone streets and … I see things.
Things I can’t explain. Things that need no explanation. Things that are new to me but are as old as time. Things that are marked down 20 percent for this day only. Things that are here today and gone tomorrow, probably back to the United States. Things that say something. Things that have nothing to say but will buy you a drink, just for the company. Things that I find interesting but my dog doesn’t.
You know, things.
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Give a child a paintbrush … and you’ll be wiping down walls for months.
Ah, but give a child a paintbrush and a mission and soon enough the child will be creating art.
On Sunday at Belles Artes, there was a whole lot of art going on. Two stories worth of bristling, carefree, happy kids unleashed into a crafty and colorful world of creativity.
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Do not look for rhyme nor reason in these photographs.
If they have anything in common, you could file them under “things that caught my eye this morning.”
That, and the fact that they were all taken in San Miguel de Allende.
Did I mention they were all taken today?
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“What goes around comes around.”
The expression has always carried a negative connotation. Long before Justin Timberlake grabbed the idiom by the tail and turned it into a hit song of bad love and betrayal with the help of Scarlett Johansson treating each other badly.
But karma has two sides.
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After a long night of parading, doing battle with the Devil, blowing off fireworks, celebrating the city’s namesake, and just all-around old-fashioned shoulder-rubbing with neighbors — what do San Miguelenses like to do the next day?
Parade some more.
Of course.
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With all the celebrating going on in San Miguel this weekend, it is easy to forget that love is always in the air.
I submit these photographs as evidence.
These were all taken on Sunday morning before I’d even had breakfast. The peacocks sauntered over while I was having breakfast. In fact, they came up to a very large enclosure housing a quartet of finches.
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The painting of a tiny Thai jungle village set against snow-tipped blue mountains in our casita has gained a full moon.
The moon wasn’t there yesterday.
And it was not there when Rose Alcantara acquired the painting on the island of Koh Samui, off Thailand, many many years ago. (She doesn’t want to think of how many.)
It is a charming and primitive scene of four red-tiled peaked-roof houses, painted in bright tropical colors. A red-dirt road curves through the settlement. Flowers of many colors encroach on the green grass yards, pushed in by the encroaching jungle. A rickety fence or two and an ancient wooden cart enhance the setting.
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The four good sisters were walking in tight black-and-white formation up Calle Ancha de San Antonio on Friday, Sept. 23, 2022, around 9 a.m.
That’s it. Nothing more to it. They just made me feel like smiling. Who wouldn’t smile at seeing a happy scrum of nuns?
I thought they were headed into a scrum with the tourist cluster headed down the sidewalk, but they stayed their formation and the visiting team blinked.
I’m sure pleasantries were exchanged by all. That’s just the way it is in Magical San Miguel.
Flower power along the busy Calle Cuna de Allende, next to the Parroquia de San Miguel de Arcangel in Centro.
In the doorway of El Alcazar restaurant and hotel, a couple painstakingly added real roses to the living floral doorframe.
Who wouldn’t want to walk through such a door on their way to dinner? Be it ever so fleeting an experience.
The gorgeous frame was created on Friday and gone by Monday.
Several doors down, this floral frame at Uri Zatarin Art Gallery was built to last, out of silk flowers. It was still there on Monday evening, as beautiful as ever.
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.”
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