Champagne, Chocolate, and Strawberries

Bone, whom I introduced in the previous entry, does not try to frame her shots the way that I try to. I have no problem with that. She is, after all, a Romanticist. I am a Classicist. Looking at her photos is for that reason all the more interesting for me.

Sister Lucia

Chrismas Day, Colonia Adolfo López Mateos

This is my pal, Yvón, and I on Christmas Day. Yvón has her left hand extended to keep the riff-raff out of the photograph, the riff-raff in this case being her five-year-old sister, Lucia. It is pronounced ee-BONE, or just Bone for short. Bone is ten years old and one of Fortino's grandchildren. I have written about Fortino many times here and am not going to recap all that. I spent Christmas Day at Fortino's place. During the day it was only the extended family that lives in his little house. As night fell his sisters arrived with their families, and the evening therefore involved the extended, extended family.

I am Content this Christmas

I am content with the fact that I have no alarm clock.

I am content with lingering in the sleeping bag and watching the sunrise through my windows, which have no curtains and need none.

I am content with my little Spanish espresso machine, especially in the morning. I am more than content with caffeine.

Gifts: A Little Piece of Fiction

[The video that accompanies this can be seen by clicking here.]

He could hear her chirping on her way to the bathroom inside. He settled himself in the upright chair on the second floor terrace awash in moonlight and stretched his legs out, a tinnitus of insect sounds in his ears. The night was still and hot.

She walked back onto the terrace with the baggie and papers that he had purchased for her and stashed in the drawer under the water jug, her heels clicking on the tiles.

I gon make some smoke . . . We had fun tonight you and me. Yes?

We had big fun, baby.

Pátzcuaro Doorway

12 July 2011

A Cross-Checked Field; A Thing of Beauty

Is it possible to describe in words the surface planting of a checked field of corn in those days so that one who has never seen it done can acquire the idea of it? And if I describe Tommy Schofield doing it, a master at planting a checked field, can I bring him back to life, some life anyway, for a couple of minutes? It would be an indisputably good thing to do if it could be done. Tommy and his wife had no children. I know of only three other people who might still be alive to remember him.

The Stephen Bloom Thing

Observations From 20 Years of Iowa Life 

Stephen Bloom in The Atlantic

Plaza Cívica Ignacio Allende

San Miguel de Allende, 11 December 2009.

Quit Bitching and Drive

In swearing off the expatriate cocktail party circuit and taking up with the economically disadvantaged of Mexico, I did more than trade fresh shrimp and grouper nuggets for two-day-old carp out of the river. I also traded a vague, theoretical, distant, comfortable, soft-around-the-edges sympathy for the plight of these people for the hard practicalities of life among 'em.

 Luis Eduardo awaiting departure.

Let's Stay Together . . . or not.

I . . . I'm so in love with you.

I'm pretty sure that is what I am

 supposed to say in these circumstances.

Preface to the Corrida [From the Archive]

 Lascaux Cave Painting, Approximately 12,000 B.C.

Reluctantly, I have had to admit to myself that it is necessary to explain further several seemingly unrelated things. I am calling this a preface. I have no idea what to call the last entry. A foreward?

The Corrida [From the Archives]

Anything capable of arousing passion in its favor will surely raise as much passion against it. --Ernest Hemingway.

I have been writing a piece without any intention of posting it here in my blog. I simply wanted to record an extraordinary Sunday afternoon at the bull ring while it was still fresh in my memory. It was the competitive end to a series of corridas in the days leading up the biggest fiesta here, La Alborada. Perhaps I will leave it with the many other private things that I I have written that will not be published in a blog or anywhere else, for that matter.