ALONE

I often talk about going to Portugal and staying for an indefinite period of time. Claudia has said it would be wonderful if she and Michael were with me. After our short stay at the Island, it wouldn't work.

They have constant needs, beginning with eating. They also demand incessant entertainment. No poetry would flow from my pen if I had to deal with their demands every day.

I want to be in small apartment or a hotel room with a balcony that overlooks Lisbon or Coimbra or Porto or wherever I decided to stay. I want peace and quiet so I can think, write, read, study and strum my guitar. I could not pursue these amusements if I had to attend to Claudia and Michael.

Michael would be impossible. He would be bored out of his mind. Sitting in a cafe and sipping coffee would not qualify as fun. I might register him in a gym, but exercising would hardly fill his day. As I said at the beginning of this paragraph, he would be impossible. It would be one complaint after another until the hellhole Brownsville would seem like heaven to him.

Claudia would be tolerable, but she would wear on my nerves just dealing with her next meal. She is also the type of person who wants to do and see things at a much quicker pace than I care to move. The two nights at the Island convinced me that I would be miserable.

I sound like someone who hasn't won the lottery but is fighting with different family members over every one's portion. With Coronavirus casting its dark shadow over us, I may not escape its lethal presence or its ramifications in my daily life.

For one, Portugal won't allow any Americans into the country. Perhaps, there are other destinations. I don't know. I'm not interested in going to Africa or Asia. I have limited my imagination to Europe and South America and to the best of my knowledge we aren't welcomed in any of these countries.

It may be my destination to remain incarcerated with Claudia and Michael in our house for years. It is a comfortable existence because we retire to different rooms and I comfortably pursue my interests. But if my destination were to lead me to extended stays elsewhere, I would have to go alone if I wanted to enjoy myself. Otherwise, I would be miserable. It is sad to brush aside my family, but as Trump said in a recent interview about the 170,000 COVID deaths, "It is what it is."

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

REMI THROWS ELECTION TO BIDEN

Cameron County Elections Administrator Remi Garza is so Democratic that he bleeds blue. But how deep is his loyalty to the party? Does he rival George Parr who provided the crucial votes from Duval County that allowed Lyndon Baines Johnson to defeat Coke Stevenson for the U.S. Senate in 1948 and pave LBJ's path to the presidency? We would hope so. He knows that Trump is a cancer who is destroying our country. He knows that a figurative civil war is taking place as a result of Trump's polarizing politics that is eviscerating this nation. He knows that Trump is the epitome of evil and as a result of his many mortal sins God is punishing the United States as if we were Sodom and Gomorrah. Granted, it won't be an easy task. Trump defeated Clinton by 800,000 votes in 2016. To be on the safe side, Garza needs to find a million votes. Cameron County went for the Democrat, 60,000 to 30,000. Garza, therefore, must find 970,000 votes. Parr only had to deliver 200 votes, but Garza isn...
Read more

GROOVIN' ON A SUNDAY AFTERNOON

In history there are events that change the sequence of time, the birth of Jesus Christ the most obvious example. But in communities, nations and the world there are occurrences that will serve as a reference point in the lives of individuals. There is the before and after of the earthquake. There is the before and after of the flood.  And there is the before and after of the war. As we know from personal deaths in our own families, existence subsequently changes forever. For me there will be the Coronavirus before and after. As a baby boomer, I escaped Vietnam because the country sent white trash, ghetto blacks and barrio Mexicans to do the fighting while we middle-class white boys partied through college. If I had had the combat experience, I'm sure my perspective would be different, but I didn't. With the exception of a few passings, my life has been free of trauma. I don't take this fortunate fate lightly. I knocked on my head regularly. Coronavirus, however, has perman...
Read more

JASON MOODY SITS FOR INTERVIEW

Jason "The Jackal" Moody, the new public information officer for the Brownsville Independent School District (BISD), is well-known in political circles. He has advised scores of candidates who, in the end, have usually lost to Rodrigo Moreno's Pink Ape aspirants. At The McHale Report we prefer imaginary interviews to the real thing because they don't take much time and they are more enjoyable to pen because we have more of a penchant for fiction than we do for realism although we mix them on occasion which has made Dr. G.F. McHale-Scully, our founder, famous world-wide for creating the fictional/realism genre. Our good friend Robert Sanchez contributed an inflatable woman to the blog. We filled her with air and her dimensions were quite extraordinary. Sanchez had previously baptized her Nubia and the name seem to fit her sensuous state. We sat her in a comfortable seat. Cris Valadez, ex-County Judge Carlos Cascos' former aide, is a ventriloquist. He sounds quite s...
Read more