Dinner at Eight (BYO flame-thrower)!!!

 

I hadn't realized you could do THIS!!!

After a few minutes of contemplation, whilest being above the stare of the half-worn-off Face of the Dalai Lama and waiting for “the Internets” to UNEXPLODE, I opened the PDF file of my Tennessee Williams memoir (having not read any of it AT ALL in at least two years), and was IMMEDIATELY STRUCK by the Williams quote I had placed at its front “All good art is an indiscretion.”

Let me  explain that the reason I’m ABOVE the Dalai Lama’s half worn off face has NOTHING to do with my 6’ 11” height, but the fact that in desperation to find something that would work as a mouse pad when the table top REFUSED to (AYE refuse to use touch-pads – they are TOTALLY problematic for me – and I always fear I will offend them ONE TOO MANY TIMES and they will knot my operating system so bad that not even a clever Mexican could help – and THAT’s saying A LOT!!!).

So since not even contortionists compute using a mouse held higher than their head (usually), the Dalai Lama, for practical reasons, is “beneath me” – or at least half my physical bulk as I sit at my makeshift desk -- and the wear and tear of mousing is the reason his face has worn half off.

 

The visage of His Holiness graces the cover of the May 2010 issue of SHAMBALA SUN (which also contains the article “Spinning Tiger Woods Tarrant on Jung” which MIGHT be TWO articles and the separator has been eaten by my mouse. I have NO idea what a “Tarrant” is, but spell-check is NOT having a problem with it so if the Internet would get KINDLY UNEXPLODED, I could look it up. As it is, I could probably translate it into Spanish, but my THICK English/Spanish dictionary is currently out of lazy reach.

 

Now, back when I fled the US for Mexico (the first time), in 2010, I discovered it was FAR easier to part with even my treasured art collection than I would EVER have imagined, but when Gen. Collin Powell’s former Chief Protocol Officer FIRMLY tells you that you must leave the country POST HASTE or the Republicans (her life-long Party from which she was just beginning to heal from, and whose RABID members had already tried unsuccessfully to commit me to a mental hospital FIVE TIMES in ONE MONTH  -- the one we had just mercifully exited – and TWO of those times with the help of my sisters Julie and Jane (one each), even art loses its importance and must be simply disposed of without a backward thought.

 

But as I sorted through the physical evidence of a life I knew I was leaving ENTIRELY behind, being that His Holiness  graced the cover of something as portable and non-spacy as a magazine, I recall thinking No, the Dalai Lama is a true-KEEPER.

 

Now backpedalling to the exploded Internet – what that is, and how it came to be – let’s skip a lot of verbiage and simply say it has to do with translation or mistranslation  of what my landlady’s entire family took SEVEN MINUTES to convey (accompanied by more charades-gymnastics than an entire Village People concert), when in PANIC I went to try to get them to reset the DSL modem after the Internet crapped out only TWO MINUTES before last night’s Presidential Debate – which seemed to me would be the most important event in political history during my lifetime.

 

And here it is THIRTEEN HOURS later (22.75 hours later when the Internet, power, and cell service FINALLY returned to Chacala and I am POSTING this – WITHOUT succumbing to the temptation to read a single piece of news, email or Facebook Folly, first), and I just discovered my landlady’s family was CORRECT: something (probably not Thor, as they seemed to be strongly suggesting, since there were no storms in the area then), HAD in fact EXPLODED a communications facility nearby, as even the TelCel signal is entirely absent  STILL (I guess), since last night I decided the outage was a SIGN FROM GOD that I shouldn’t watch the debate and not callin’/trying’ to call NOBODY-neither, I took a two-hour nap to avoid thinking about what-all I was missing.

 

On awakening about 9:30 (local), and discovering the outage was continuing, I turned off the a/c (not really needed since it had dropped all the way down to from a 96 degree high to 78 – and a light jacket was actually called for), for the peace-and-quiet of its muzzling.

I wanted to meditate, so, again eschewed the temptation to call someone in the States for a report, I retired to my terrace with a virgin 10” pie plate of home-cooked Crème Brulee (having no Bain Marie, I had slow-baked it in my oven at 250 degrees, WHICH WORKED BEAUTIFULLY!!!), and a bottle of Bordeaux (both bought at Costco, the frozen Crème Brulee mixture, mindlessly after a taste of a sample – never considering that I own no flame-thrower stronger than a Bic lighter, so crusting it was impossible-- but at least I had had the sense not to attempt that).

And then I could NOT locate any of my Vacu-Vin stoppers, so had to finish the entire bottle of wine.

The best part of THAT was that afterward,  not only was I able to walk without staggering, but realized that my foot has healed so much that it is (after ELEVEN MONTHS of near-constant PAIN due to the DEEP plantar wart picked up in the showers at Mercy House Homeless Shelter and Drug-Trafficking Center in Wilmington, NC – and then the acid and liquid-nitrogen freezing treatments of the last five months), finally about ¾ healed AND NO LONGER PAINFUL SO I CAN RESUME WALKING PLACES LIKE ALL BUT THE MOST DISABLED HUMANS!!!

I mean there had been NO POINT complaining over all those months of all that pain in my blog – especially when it was only TWO DAYS after the STRONGEST nitrogen freezing, and all the blistering and bleeding that resulted from it, that I made SEVEN back and forth trips to move quickly (and six weeks earlier than planned), from Puerto Vallarta to Chacala because then-mayor Chava Gonzalez Resendiz was AFTER MY ASS for repeatedly publishing the photo of his grand Nazi salute, and my drug-corrupted neighbors (and especially my closet-fag-gringo landlord), were making clear I was in danger of losing my life – AGAIN, and this time SERIOUSLY.

That’s a lot of carrying heavy stuff up and down flights of stairs at BOTH ends, when only in Chacala did I feel safe enough to hire some local helpers. The doctor’s orders had been to STAY OFF MY FEET as much as humanly possible for about five days, and then limited walking would be OK for the week after that. Well, I do what I have to do, and my feet are coming along fine, now -- thank you very much!!!

Clearly ALL communications will be down for at least a few more hours here in Chacala, so before going to the next town to make use of the Internet and cell-phone service, I guess I’ll cook that third-pound of bacon that’s been defrosted almost too long – and have another big mess of my now-deflowered (un-crusted) Crème Brulee MEGA!!!

Scott

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