In Vino Veritas

There are mornings when I say to myself:
"Self. Now may be the time to cool it a little with the Cheap Red Wine."
And I readily agree
and I feel righteous and saintly all day
till about four in the afternoon when I decide that it will be just as valid
to start the cool-out period
tomorrow.

What A Wonderful And Weird World

I am sitting here in Mexico
writing my post in English
remembering a time as a young person in Denmark
where I found a little book of Japanese haiku
translated to German.

This last post-- a short one to be sure--was one of the more difficult ones to write.
Like a Haiku poem with its only 17 syllables for the poet/writer to say all he needs to say, I tried to convey my feelings of aloneness in the gray area between dreams and reality in as few words as possible.
I hope I succeeded.

My Moment

There is a moment in the morning when my dreams fade and reality is still like an out of focus television screen.
At that moment I feel so deeply alone.
Eventually the screen clears and that moment of loneliness passes
till the next time.

Igor's decorating hints.

Following the advice of Igor ( see post March 23rd ) , I set out to find palms to soften the view of the monster mast, but being inherently frugal, and living in the jungle with easy access to palms from seedlings to full grown, massive plants, I decided to dig some myself.
Armed with my shovel I searched out likely subjects and started digging. And digging.
The blasted palms have root systems that defy regular digging out.
After many disasters, many buckets of sweat and even more blisters, the end result was one medium palm and two mini ones.
Mind you, these are the palms that grow like weeds in the jungle, right around my house.
I look at my pitiful result and think that maybe, just maybe, I have to admit defeat and get me to a nursery.
Good thing I decided against the chintz.

Chinese Laundry

Albin's son Mads is going to China.
Albin told me in an email, and what a wondrous experience it must be to spend four months in place like China.
And speaking of China made me remember the Chinese Laundry we used when we lived in New York.
It was located on 17th street, round the corner from the building on Park Avenue South that First Chamber Dance Company shared with the restaurant Max's Kansas City, a hang-out for Andy Warhol and his crowd.
In those days there were no coin operated laundries in the neighborhood, and we most certainly did not have laundry facilities in the basement.
The basement had an enormous monster of an oil heater providing heat to the whole building, which was shut off when Max's closed down in the early hours of the morning. And then turned on by me when I took the Schnauzers out for their morning pit stop.
But no other laundry opportunity than the Chinese on 17th.
It was run by a family, and only the youngest spoke any English a tall, which became a problem when I forgot to collect my laundry before an extended tour and, when I returned, realized that I did not have the ticket and I most certainly did not have the laundry, sheets and such like.
It was difficult to explain my problem, but with the help of a lot of gestures and an honest face and a copy of whatever mysterious sign they had labeled on my sheets with permanent ink, I got my laundry back.
I am glad I was young when I lived in New York.

My post [mast]

They left.
The last of the imported workers from Mexico City, the second group, packed their car and left today, this afternoon.
The cell post is all mine now.
And such a post.
It is way bigger and way more intrusive than I was let to believe.
But there it is, looming over my house in the woods.
In the movie Young Frankenstein, Igor exclaims when Hr. Frankenstein despairs over the state of the castle when he first sees it
Oh I don't know. A few potted plants and some chintz.......
Maybe this is the way to approach it.
A few potted plants and some bright paint and ...voila.
It couldn't be worse than the Pepto Bismol color of my post office

The Mexican Gene

I believe in genes. I believe that Mexicans have one, as of yet unidentified gene, a gene that restricts them from using signals when they drive.
This makes driving here in Vallarta adventurous at times and dangerous as well.
When one is driving it is imperative to watch out for the car ahead as the driver may at any time decide to take a turn without signaling, trusting that other drivers are alert.
He -- or frightening more often she--will suddenly brake and take a turn. Right ones are the easy ones, the left turns command that the car comes to a full stop to check for oncoming traffic before the driver puts the foot on the gas and swerves to the left.
Now this is mostly a problem here where I live, because due to the beach on the one side and the mountains on the other, we are stuck with a two lane road and not much chance for expansion.
So here you have the full delight of the Mexican gene, for miles and miles and miles.
One day they will find it and we will all take a deep breath and say
there you are
and then go on being careful, because discovering the gene does not mean they can change it.

A miserable night - and lately there have been many - will go something like this
Telly on the blink so I read a book and fall asleep in the chair.
Wake up and decide to go to bed but first let the mutts out.
Priscilla refuses to come home.
Wake up with the mosquitoes launching full frontal attack. Get up and start a spiral ( an incense like nasty smoke and anti mosquito thingy )
Back to sleep.
Priscilla barks in the street to be let in. Get up, let her in and go back to sleep.
Mosquitoes defy the spiral smoke. Get up and turn on the ceiling fan. Back to sleep.
Toby does his woof-ing to be lifted (don't ask ) up on the bed. Trying to go back to sleep.
One of the Worthless Ones jump on the bed to show affection by licking my face.
Now I don't even try to go back to sleep anymore.
The time is about 6:45 and I get up to start the day.

The URL

When I started this blog, I had to fill out scads and scads of information
and the end result was my very own blog
with my very own URL.
But somewhere something went awry with my URL, which- as I understand it- should have been a simple repeat of the name of the blog, namely alansthoughts.
Somehow, and I shall never figure out how, the URL ended up being alan-alansthoughts.
You go figure.
And I have never been able to change it;
it feels like the commandments chiseled in stone, not to be tinkered with.
Somewhere there must be a person a lot smarter than I who can either change it or explain why not.
Till then I am stuck with my mysterious URL.
PS
According to my PCs for Dummies, URL means Uniform Resource Locator.
Now that helped a lot.

Breakfast for Pat

Pat from Walla Walla was a recent friend of Chuck's and she came for a visit and stay overnight in our house in Seattle.
I had cooked fish fillets for dinner and must have fretted about the leftovers for Pat said
Oh, I always eat that for breakfast.
Being unwise in the ways of women, and particularly this woman,
and wanting to make a good impression for Chuck's sake,
I served her the fish for breakfast, neatly garnished and with a piece of toast.
She did not forgive me for a long time.
When we finally could talk about the fish-for-breakfast disaster she said:
Alan, you could at least have heated it.

They call me Mister Alan

Actually, it is more like "Meester Alan"
and "they" are the guys imported from Mexico City to erect the cell phone mast
and the nicest guys they are.
Its a motley crew and they truly work hard. All is done by hand. The holes are dug by hand, the re-bar constructed by hand and all the cement is mixed by hand and carried by the bucketful, stepping over the pieces of the monster mast taking up a great deal of space by the stagnant pool where they haul their water supply, by hand.
And they seem in such good spirits all day long, even when they get their break late, and even when they work so late that I have to turn on all the lights outside so they can see where they are going.
They are great guys
their bosses in Mexico City, not so much.

Recession

It has been a long week since I made it to the supermarket, since I have had folks from Iusacell working on getting ready to erect a mast on a piece of land that I am leasing to them, and -since I am alone here- I could not leave the premises.
Today, Sunday, I got to go to Costco for dog food and to my supermarket of choice for food for me, and here is where my heart almost stopped.
When last I shopped, my Cheap Red Wine in cartons sold for 28 pesos and change.
Today, to my absolute horror, a sign said SALE One Brick Of Wine 38 Pesos.
When, I wonder, when did it jump ten pesos.
And nobody told me.
I am a devout customer, faithful and punctual, and nobody told me.
That leaves me with but one option
the cheap 4 liter bottles of wine at Costco,
till they too change the price.

In memory of summers lost

One summer in high school, my best buddy and I were working as parking attendants at Dyrehavsbakken in Denmark, the world's oldest surviving amusement park, founded in 1583.
It was the late fifties and cars were not as abundant as now, so the parking area was a field adjacent to the park and often served by kids like Gert, my buddy, and me.
We even got to wear a cap with a gold braid.
We were the proud cap-wearing adolescents who made life miserable for the people who had trouble parking the way we thought they ought to.
And we made a little money.
But what I remember most dearly, are the nights, when we finally quit after midnight, and we got on our bicycles and rode back to the suburb where we lived, through those magical , light summer nights when it never really gets dark.
And we were best buddies.
Then.