My guest video blogger Caira Button is the Catrina on the right. Her lovely assistant is Catrina Rose Alcantara. Facial art is by our talented friend and neighbor Jimmy Hickey.
Good news, Musings & Magic fans, we have a guest blogger today!
A guest VIDEO blogger.
Let me introduce Caira Button, daughter of my dear wife, Rose Alcantara, and an accomplished video blogger who lives in Chicago. Continue reading
Hummingbirds are drawn to the atrium at the top of our stairwell.
The blue glass lantern looks like a feeder, I think.
But the atrium is like a fish wier. Once a bird flies in, it can’t get out.
There is something sad and poetic about this, as they flutter from corner to corner. Like little feathered Marcel Marceaus, they feel the edges of the glass box, probe the invisible, flap wings against the glass.
Freedom is a fraction of an inch away but the glass will not yield to their perceptions.
Sometimes, on the outside, a mate flies up to the glass. You can feel the concern. Continue reading
The collection of images in this post have no specific relevance to this post, other than they are “things” I have noticed since Thursday’s Literary Sala. For example, how often to you see a Sue Grafton book sitting on a window ledge? Especially themed well with the window display was “K is for Killer.”
I went to the Literary Sala this week to learn about urban sketching and Mexican cuisine but, more than that, I learned how to see San Miguel through new, fresh, and exciting eyes.
Susan Dorf has been drawing San Miguel scenes and people for a decade and many know her through the colorful sketchpad images that appear in the weekly bi-lingual paper, Atencion. Her eye for detail is extraordinary and her ability to capture the essence of street scenes in ink and watercolor rivals the hundreds of iPhones trying to do the same.
Patricia Juana Merrill Márquez is a San Miguel native with roots going back 400 years. She is an architect, a hotelier, and a champion for Mexican cuisine. She also collects dichos — Mexican idioms and aphorisms that open a window onto this unique culture. “The Buen Provecho Book,” is a mix of recipes and lively insight into Mexican culture.
I guarantee that few of us see the same San Miguel as these two. Continue reading
Gordon Ramsay knows flan. And you don’t.
Two things happened last week.
My wife, Rose, and her daughter, Caira, binge-watched the 10th anniversary season of Gordon Ramsay’s “MasterChef.”
It is what they love to do when they are together.
Because our place is small, I sort of binge-overheard. Continue reading
Truck carrying decorative stone moves up the Libramente. Also a weird self-portrait.
Many people know that I have a sense of humor that can best be described as “curious.” And at worse, “idiotic.”
Nobody has said that to my face –unless you count Facebook. It is what I tell myself in social situations when I find myself babbling on about … “oh god, what was I just saying? Idiot!”
Metropolitan Opera regional finalists and program producer Rodrigo Garciarroyo accept the ovations after an encore performance Sunday night at St. Paul’s Church in San Miguel de Allende.
“Something wonderful is happening here,” said Rodrigo Garciarroyo last night, after eight of Mexico’s finest young opera singers performed for more than two and a half hours before a very full house in St. Paul’s Church last night.
Producer and host Garciarroyo is a big man, in size and personality, and I don’t think he is given to understatement but then, we were all reaching for superlatives after this concert.
And all of us felt we were coming up a bit short. Continue reading
What could be more romantic than a carriage pulled by two black steeds, ready to whisk away the new bride and groom?
If it is Saturday, there are weddings to be had at the Parroquia de San Miguel in Centro.
Wedding parties are stacked up like planes over O’Hare, waiting to touch down in the gaudy sanctuary for their moment of nuptualism.
Yet, there is no assembly line feel to all this. Continue reading
Riders paused in front of the Parroquia for prayers, selfies, regrouping, and socializing before riding out of town.
Hundreds of cowboys and cowgirls have come to town for the blessings of the church on riders and their mounts on Friday, Nov. 8 around 5 p.m. More riders may gallop through Centro on Saturday.
They are celebrating the feast of St. Martin, patron saint of horse riders. Continue reading
The pied pipers of San Miguel, leading a birthday party down Cuna de Allende on Thursday evening, November 7, 2019.
The thing about San Miguel de Allende is, when you set off to do one thing, something else pops up along the way.
Then something else.
Then something else again.
And so on, until you are back home again. Continue reading
The view from my terrace this evening, Doves on the wire in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. November 2019.
Like a bird on the wire,
Like a drunk in some old midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free.
— Leonard Cohen – “Bird on the Wire,” 1979
What can possibly be more free than birds on a wire?
They come. They go. They gather. They fly off on a whim.
Doves gather and coo sweet nothings in each others’ ears.
But mostly they sit silently, thinking thoughts beyond our reach and ken.
They enjoy the buzzy thrum of power surging beneath their feet.
They face forward, into the weather, keeping feathers unruffled.
Much as we wish we could go through life.
Blackbirds watch the world whiz by from a safe perch in Porto, Portugal. October 2019.
The next best thing to birds on a wire?
Birds on a rail.
Eleven blackbirds all in a row.
What a conversation up there!
Blackbirds tell each other the most inappropriate jokes. They make fun of the tourists passing below.
They insult each other and slap each other on the back before flying off in search of a beer.
Separately.
Illusions. Tui, Spain. October 2019.
We walk past buildings and see loose wires, draped across the front.
“An unsightly mess,” we think. Then we walk on.
Into the unsightly mess that is our lives.
The rare soul sees art, or the opportunity for art.
Even rarer is the one who commits the act of art.
Enabling the rest of us, who have passed the same wire for untold ages,
to smile, to chuckle, to enjoy the whimsy of an artistic soul/warrior.
Commit art where and when you can.
Be like Leonard Cohen.
Express yourself.
Let the rest of the world figure it out.
Musings, Magic, San Miguel and More 