I’m standing on the beach, but the beach is gone. Instead of miles of white sand and clear blue Mediterranean waters, there are now massive piles of debris stretching along the coast, fading into the horizon. The debris is stacked high in mounds, separated by lower stretches of rubble. It looks like the city bulldozers, usually here at dawn to smooth the sand, came early to build a grim mountain range of broken things. I […]

By Max Milano I came to Mexico City to do some research for a novel I’m writing called “Hollywood Gringo”. The story is set in the 1950s when Mexico City became a magnet for postwar Gringos on the GI bill, who then, like now, were attracted to the city’s openness, culture, cuisine, and low prices. I had read William S. Burroughs’s books Queer and Junkie and Naked Lunch and became somewhat obsessed with Burroughs’s life […]

By Max Milano The Estero Beach Resort is the best hotel in Ensenada. It’s a heaven of subdued luxury on a spot privileged by nature. It sits across the waters from a great sandbar that forms a natural lagoon with a long and wide beach on its ocean-facing side. At the tip of the sandbar, there’s a deep and narrow tidal channel with the Estero Beach Resort on the mainland shore and a sandy beach […]

It’s late at night, and darkness engulfs us as I drive southbound on Highway AP-7 between Barcelona and Tarragona. I am thinking of the Roman Empire because Highway AP-7 follows the ancient Roman road, the Via Augusta, which once linked Cadiz with Rome. Traffic is light, but mosquitoes swarm the car, challenging visibility. Our windshield wiper fluid is exhausted, leaving smeared bugs obstructing the view. Every few kilometers, electronic signs in Catalan, French, English, and […]

Aragon is a high, arid desert stretching from the Pyrenees in Northern Spain to the Ebro Valley and southward to Teruel and the Valencia border. It’s hot in summer and cold in winter, when its red desert land is coated with snow. George Orwell served in Aragon’s badlands during the Spanish Civil War and wrote about how the machine gun nests on the hills looked almost beautiful in the winter snow. It’s summer now, and […]