Suggested Song: New Dawn, Gaby Moreno Suggested Drink: Sidewinder IPA, Snake Lake Brewing Company
“To change one’s life: (1) start immediately; (2) do it flamboyantly; and (3) no exceptions.” – William James
Snakes molt a few times per year. Their bodies outgrow the old skin, and shedding it helps remove pesky annoyances like parasites and debris.
I’m attempting a molt as the year closes out. I’ve outgrown this skin, and there is always debris to cast. As to parasites, I work hard to stay surrounded with allies and advocates, even of the corrupting kind. Still, there is value in refreshing the circle, for that’s not a zero sum game.
Snake Shedding Skin, by Alysha Dawn
I admit to a few moral failings, from the Calvinist perspective. It can be challenging to refuse a petit verre when offered, and then another. I can tumble for someone impulsively and irrationally, taking the scars and leaving the tears. (The chances of this happening increase proportionally with the number of petits verres.) I am a master procrastinator. Nothing motivates me to dust or do laundry more impulsively than a creative deadline. What else? Plenty.
Can we too slither free from our vexing debris? Unlikely completely. But starting the new year with a fresh unsullied skin, even if not surviving first contact, can be instructive. Some blemished bits and unhealthy pieces merit leaving on the trail. A new set of faults and flaws surely await our serpentine glide. Onward.
So, just how do we slip the skin? These 3 pillars provide the core foundation of authenticity and personal stability (or so I will argue over un petit verre): what you do; where you live; and whom you love. Dislodging just one can provide ample imbalance to loosen the membrane. (I upended all 3 with my move to Provence in 2010. Effective, but not sure I’d recommend it.)
Where I live
It’s normal to experience the occasional stall. The wind dies, the sails flutter, the sea calms, and there you sit. I have learned to accept these pauses as an excuse to do nothing productive until the wind picks back up (see moral failings above). It always has and I have had fun waiting. Recently it hasn’t, and so I’ve decided to row to a new lagoon across the sea. Maybe there’s a fresh breeze over there. Maybe I’ll grow a brilliant new skin over there.
Here I float in my new lagoon, typing a few words and playing some music when not dusting or doing laundry. C’mon you beautiful breeze.
Puta, Spanish for“Whore” (noun): “A person who is willing to compromise their integrity or principles for personal gain.” Merriam-Webster Dictionary
1980s
I was known to venture south of the border on occasion in my youth, crossing the Rio Grande into Nuevo Laredo or down the Baja coast to Ensenada. The unpredictable lawlessness of these border regions sparked the adrenalin injectors in ways not possible north of the divide.
I made acquaintances down there that still warm the corazón. I sought to be a safe after-hours companion, with little money and pidgin Spanish, but charming in my clueless gringo way. Nothing was solicited but trust and adventure. Rainée took me midnight dancing at the Ballroom Holiday Inn, where she kept a room on the manager’s tab. Claudia had a tiny live/work bungalow behind a La Zona cantina. We drank Tecate from the can and talked LA Olympics until sunrise. She aspired to dance the salsa for a gold medal. Never mind my teasing that modern dance wasn’t an official category. But Billy, mírame bailar!
The infamous Hussong’s Cantina, Ensenada, Mexico.
These were very good people with no good options. What they did on-meter was transactional and transparent; contrived but not shameful. I didn’t venture south for that and they appreciated it, but tenderness can be found in dark corners. Green shoots in squalor. Good people with no good options. Putas descontentas.
2025
Tim Cook and Marc Benioff (CEOs of Apple and Salesforce, respectively) joined a coterie of business leaders for dinner at the White House last week, and toasted Mohammed bin Salman’s red carpet visit to Washington. Salman had come bearing petro-riches, including $1T in US investments in return for Saudi access to America’s world-leading technology in energy, defense, and AI.
The 2 tech titans enjoyed honeynut squash soup and pistachio-crusted rack of lamb with a man who, according to the CIA, ordered the brutal murder and bone saw dismemberment of an American journalist (Jamal Khashoggi) in 2019. The Saudi government, when confronted with a mountain of evidence including an audio recording of Khashoggi’s final moments, conceded that, yes, it executed the killing. (Salman contested the CIA’s claim that he ordered the hit.) Also in 2019, 5 Saudi men confessed under torture to homosexual acts and were publicly beheaded. Common theater in the enlightened kingdom.
I’ve long admired Cook and Benioff. In contrast to a legion of increasingly brash and self-consumed tech titans, Cook and Benioff are reserved and stoic. They direct their considerable wealth toward charities and good causes heroically, and Benioff has been a great champion of my beloved San Francisco. But in the Trump multiverse, sharing polite dinner conversation with a murderous authoritarian is okay. I’m crestfallen.
Glass Apple wafer, gifted to President Trump by Tim Cook, August 6, 2025.
Here was Tim Cook, powerful leader of the second most valuable company on this planet, presenting (with stunning deference) a glass wafer on 24-karat gold base in August to our own aspiring authoritarian. “You have been a great advocate for American innovation and manufacturing, and I’m grateful for your leadership and your commitment.” The words from his lips were pure ingratiation; the look on his face complete descontento.
And there was Marc Benioff, exasperating admirers in October by backing Trump’s call for a National Guard deployment in San Francisco and adding, in a New York Times interview, “I fully support the president,” who “is doing a great job.” A virulent backlash provoked a rapid backtrack, but the damage was done. Yet another self-inflicted momento descontento.
An instructive aside
Ford Motor Company was the largest car manufacturer in the world in the early 20th century. Our man Henry was a brilliant pioneer of production design, supply chain management, and mass marketing and sales. He was also lauded in Mein Kampf and decorated with the Nazi Grand Cross of the German Eagle for complicity, through Ford-Worke, with Hitler’s war machine. Despite Ford’s stellar accomplishments and immense wealth, a vulgar little asterisk attesting to this Nazi complicity forever colored the legacy. (Public mea culpas later in life did nothing to remove the stain.)
Tim and Marc, you are good people. Unlike my gal pals Rainée and Claudia, YOU HAVE OPTIONS. Your net worths exceed $2B (Cook) and $9B (Benioff) in fuck you money. You can simply refuse to play the grovelling game, turn down the royal invitations, and decline comment on the current administration. And if this most minimal display of moral backbone puts shareholder value at risk (I submit that it will have the opposite effect), then FUCKING STEP DOWN.
Your 2 companies have deep benches of talented CEOs-in-waiting. You are getting on in age and not indispensable (I know that is hard to hear, on both counts). Your shareholders will be just fine; you’ll be just fine. Your legacies will remain (mostly) intact, and those vulgar little asterisks can be avoided. Best of all, you will cease being putas descontentos.
Suggested Song: Take Me to the River, Al Green Suggested Drink: AIX Rosé (A masterclass on global wine marketing.)
“The greatest thing in this world is not so much where we stand as in what direction we are moving.” – Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
I arrived in Aix-en-Provence in the fall of 2010. My son Jess arrived a month later and the twins the following year. It was the start of an era: the Aix-en-Magill years. As I close out this chapter and prepare for the movers, the nature of our eras begs for a glass of wine and a few words.
First contact
Kids can be our greatest ambassadors when arriving in a new town, especially as strangers in a strange land. They make first contact. We meet other parents through their new-found friendships. We enjoy culture-shock group therapy in the school parking lot, waiting for a pick-up. We convene for boozy dinner parties and let our kids run wild for a few hours, comparing their rascally behaviors like pirate scars. Oh you think your kid’s a handful? These engaging new friendships are chicken soup for the wandering soul and soften the landing.
Just another summer afternoon with friends in Aix-en-Provence.
A testament to the intimacy of bonds amongst true compadres is through the naming convention of said friends. Last names trump first names and nicknames trump them all, once that deep familiarity is reached. Each term of endearment holds a history. Chairman of the Board; the Bean; Max the Swede and Canadian Dave; Bongos Eddy and Dada, Parker and Finkel and Magill. In all cases the wives were equally as amusing (and kids suitably troublesome).
In time the kids grow up. Some ask to finish their high-school years back home, their parents dutifully join them, and an era winds down. This is the nature of expat communities: a constant churn as new families arrive and others bid their adieus. It can touch the left-behinds with melancholy, but also provoke a healthy consideration of next moves, to evolve in our own ways and not go stale. I’m beginning to feel stale. My 3 Magill bumpkins have taken root in California. I miss San Francisco. And so I’m moving on.
Let if flow
Life is not an immortal home set on a solid foundation. It is a Huck Finn raft floating down a mighty river. We have a rudder and some (self-deceiving sense of) control, but the current ultimately decides. The wide stretches are slow and calm, the narrow rapids exhilarating. Some inflowing channels, like new friends, sweep us on ahead, and some outflows pull us down unplanned bearings.
The serene Charente River, near my brother’s home in France.
And so it is with eras. There are feeding streams and swirling eddies and new water churning with the old constantly. I mingle with the new and old here in Aix, some arrivals diving into a fresh era, others rewinding to a more contained stasis. We can be part of all of these, but our own personal eras remain singularly unique. We must lean into them, draw great comfort from them, and know when to let them go.
Suggested Song: I Can’t Help Myself, The Four Tops. Suggested Drink: Remy Martin XO cognac. (To warm you up, all the way down.)
Dauntless (adjective): incapable of being intimidated or subdued. Merriam-Webster Dictionary
My brother has started work on another home in France. Fixer-uppers doesn’t do these projects justice. The homes are reduced to little more than gangly frames, with interior walls knocked down, ceilings peeled back, floors dug up, and the entire layouts reimagined. Then the fun begins. The man is dauntless.
Where once stood a wall. Work begins on the new home.
What drives someone to madness? Captain Ahab was consumed by a white whale, Kurtz with a lust for absolute power, and Earhart to conquer the skies. As for Joe? He has a keen eye for crumbled possibilities and loves a big challenge. Add in equal parts (1) handy with tools, (2) a Scots-Irish work ethic, and (3) an allergy to passive retirement (two days on a cruise ship would cover him in hives), and you have the perfect propellant for a one-man wrecking ball and rebuilding crew.
NY Times reporter, 1923: “WHY do you want to climb Mount Everest?” George Mallory: “Because it’s there.”
These projects aren’t motivated by expectations of grand financial reward (he’d be happy to take it). Joe’s last 2 remodels – in France’s Normandy and Charente regions – crafted architecturally stunning homes that sold at premiums to the purchase prices, but minus the costs of tools, materials, and hired tradesmen (divided over time and to the power of Joe’s physical labor) did not generate significant upside.
Nor has any residence yet produced the perfect forever home perhaps Joe and wife Barbara anticipate when reviewing blueprints. This new project will be home #8 together, and she’s inquired more than once through through the years if this might be their final move. Definitely, until Joe spots another beautifully dilapidated dwelling that rouses the imagination.
The kitchen, installed by Joe, at the former home. Now a luxury bed and breakfast.
You might ask if he’s hoping to leave a legacy with his impressive set of rehabilitated habitats. The stoic will insist that he’s not. Brought into this world in ’52, departed in TBD, raise a toast to a life well spent, and done. (To quote the tombstone epitaph from one of our hometown’s colorful characters: Darn it all, plunked in.)
No, there is no Ahab obsession or divine provenance at play in Joe’s labors. No Ark building at the commands of a greater power. He enjoys doing it and does it exceedingly well. I think it’s simply something he cannot not do. The itch that demands a scratch. It’s his soul fuel.
Despite our brotherly differences in talents and interests, in this we share. I commit a lot of money and time to my music projects. A hefty investment goes into each album to pay for session musicians, studio time, rehearsal space, home recording equipment, guitars, keyboards, and other stuff. None of my releases have yet covered their costs, but still I compose new songs, plan new projects, and dream of possibilities.
The same can be said for my writing. Postcards from a Runaway essays have been published monthly since 2011, first on my personal website here and now on Substack. Good writing requires time and tinkering, and occasionally I hit that mark. After hundreds of hours of pen to paper over a dozen-plus years, total readership sums to a few hundred subscribers. Still, I write daily, chipping away on new essays and musical scripts, and publishing playbooks on life change and startup creation. Like picking up a guitar or sitting at the piano, it’s simply something I cannot not do. The ghost that demands you engage. It’s my soul fuel.
there’s a ghost out in the hall a shadow on your wall I’m a candle in night see me dancing in the light can you see me now? – From C’mon C’mon, I’m Here!, on my upcoming album.
Joe would love to double his money on the new home I’m sure. He’s rebuilding it regardless. I’d love for an essay or song to go viral. It’s unexpected, but still I create. At least Joe’s brick and mortar triumphs will provide warm family sanctuaries for generations to come. My creative trace may dissipate quickly like digital stardust to the wind. Still, we’re lucky to have our soul fuel, our blind passions, especially post the career years. They may extend our days above terra firma (having life purpose is known to extend lifespan), and keep us up early and mildly interesting. And if not, we’re at least having fun before the darn it all, plunked in.
To my loyal readers, I am in the process of consolidating websites and this particular one has its days numbered. The primary page for my essays, those copied here, will remain at Substack. You may want to follow me there, at no charge (ever).
Is there any greater comfort than being home? Perhaps your humble hearth is not as Conde Naste as a sun-kissed villa in Tuscany, nor as opulent as a rambling compound in Calabasas. But it is infinitely cozier and more familiar, regardless of placement and volume. When feeding the soul in slippers and pjs, we just want to be home.
I’ve lived in a 2 bedroom flat in Aix-en-Provence since 2010. By American standards it’s humble in size but rich in character. Constructed about the time Columbus was bobbing around the Bahamas, my apartment’s high-beamed ceilings and terracotta floors evoke a genteel period when Aix was the parliamentary center of the greater region. Think powdered wigs and bodice tops, ripe for the ripping (as Flaubert would have us believe). While deliberating the Sun King’s impending visit from Versailles, my airy salon may have hosted a gaggle of countesses (that sounds sexist) nibbling on candied almond calissons and sipping fine champagne, pinkies extended most delicately. Okay, who’s doing the flower arrangements?
Huit Calissons d’Aix, by Elisabeth Hoffmann.
One’s home is more than a collection of rooms plus roof for the rain. It is our private refuge and space for healing. It is our expression of self. Photos there speak of family and friends and favorite holidays. Kitchens there feed loved ones. When the day is done and dishes put away, we lever back the recliner, dip the tea bag, open the novel or click on the remote. Ahhh, home.
The comforts of home are top of mind now (in my small brain), for 2 reasons.
#1: The flux of the world.
More than 120 million people worldwide are currently displaced from the sanctuary of home, according to the UN, a 6 percent uptick from the year before. That includes a full quarter of the Syrian population, Ukrainians and Afghanis by the millions, and refugees from dozens of countries across the planet too numerous to list. Despite the varying conditions for their transient lodging, from spare rooms to squalid camps, one sentiment is shared: a deep longing for home.
Add to that count two million Gazans, who have been hounded south, then chased north, then south again, and to where next? As of August, an estimated 92 percent of all homes in the strip lay in ruins, former occupants either dead or starving in tents. It’s thought that 49 of the Israelis kidnapped on October 7 remain hostage and alive (is that the word?) in the dark tunnels underground. All longing deeply, deeply for home.
That this purge would take root in the US was unimaginable just months ago. Now that root has taken, and with a flourish. As of the summer, ICE has detained 60 thousand undocumented immigrants (70% of which have no criminal records) for eviction. Stephen Miller’s stretch goal is one million per year (quite the ambitious Nazi), and ICE is tripling the number of agents by year-end to hit his quota. That’s a million moms, dads, sons and daughters, deeply knit into our communities’ fabrics, taken from their homes and given the boot. Last night was lemonade and T-ball in the neighorhood cul-de-sac. Tonight its suitcases and cots in a distant detention center. Like the Ukrainians and Palestinians and so many more, they will soon be crying for home.
The “worst of the worst” being rounded up in Camarillo, California, June 2025.
#2: The flux in my life: I’m leaving home.
Aix-en-Provence will be in my rearview come December, after 15 years of amazing joy and discovery here. More on why in coming Postcards, but I will surely miss this flat, its comically uneven floors, the drafty tall windows, its cheap kitchen appliances (that produced some stunning meals through the years), the family photos here and books stacked there, my daughter Stella’s daybed in the living room corner, and the faux antique tables and stands bought for a dime from the local flea market. (My sons and I lugged more of that stuff up the wide promenade through Aix than I care to remember. What, pay for delivery?)
I’m leaving on my own terms, taking what I want, and heading where I decide (back to San Francisco, of course). This is my home and I’ll miss it, probably long deeply for it when reading this article or seeing that show about Provence. But it’s my call and I can return when I want. How blessed is that in today’s world? Don’t catch me crying.
Suggested Song: Starry Starry Night, Don McLean Suggested Drink: Pastis: … just add water (the official drink of Provence)
“When you’re born there, it’s hopeless, nothing else is good enough.” – Paul Cézanne (referring to Aix-en-Provence.)
Cézanne is THE son of this city. Other great artists have called it home (Émile Zola and Bill Magill, as fine examples), but none attained the level of acclaim and continued adoration of our good friend Paul. And for that he’s being celebrated this summer with exhibits and events in Aix.
I’ve often considered Cézanne’s peerless renown over my years in Aix, tracing his steps through town (the favorite haunts are marked with sidewalk-embedded badges) and lingering over his works in the modest, local Musée Granet. In 2012, the royals from Qatar paid north of $250 million for his The Card Players, making it the world’s most valuable painting at the time. (Did they realise he painted 3 versions? Suckers!)
The Card Players, Paul Cézanne (version #3)
My appreciation of art is recreational at best. I do like Cézanne, but love Van Gogh. Vincent, too, tumbled hard for the soft yet vivid hues of Provence, doing his most celebrated works in Arles (the ear cutting) and Saint-Rémy (the asylum sleeping). Maybe it’s the drama queen in me that is roused so deeply by the hallucinatory Starry Night, painted before a summer sunrise in 1889 from his asylum window.
A tortured artist Cézanne was not, but radically trailblazing, and considered the creative leap through which impressionist water lilies met cubist taureaux. Picasso and Matisse are both said to have called him “the father of us all,” and the English curator Lawrence Gowing submits that Cézanne’s daring work with the knife pallet introduced “the idea of art as emotional ejaculation.” (I’m committing that phrase to memory.)
But this isn’t an essay about one man’s genius.
What I find most fascinating about Cézanne’s story is not his meteoric impact on 19th century art, but the spooky threads of style and concept that connect this artistic evolution to his trailblazing contemporaries in other disciplines of the same period, such as literature, music, science, mathematics, and dance.
An argument can be made – and ChatGPT makes it here more succinctly than me – that the creative pioneers of this period shared Cézanne’s obsession with:
Subjectivity and perception. Cézanne wasn’t just painting what he saw, but how he perceived the subject of his gaze.
Fragmentation and reconstruction. He broke forms first into geometric shapes, and then reconstructed them wholly reimagined on canvas.
The essence of things. Cézanne placed a higher emphasis on the underlying essence of objects than the mere surface appearances.
Bibemus Quarry, Paul Cézanne
And so I prompted my trusted assistant further to offer examples that amplify my Wednesday afternoon art-of-distraction epiphany of inspired interdisciplinary connections. And this they/them told me:
On literature, “Marcel Proust’s ‘In Search of Lost Time’ is almost exactly the literary equivalent of Cézanne. He broke from traditional narrative structures and focused on subjective experience, memory, and the reconstruction of reality through fragments of sensory detail.”
On music, “Claude Debussy moved away from traditional harmonic structures in music. Like Cézanne, Debussy was creating atmosphere and evoking emotions through suggestion rather than direct statement.”
Listen to Rêverie, by Debussy:
On philosophy, “Henri Bergson’s philosophy of duration aligns with Cézanne’s attempt to capture the essence of objects over time and through multiple perspectives. He emphasized intuition and subjective experience as ways of knowing the world.”
On dance, “Isadora Duncan rejected the rigid formality of classical ballet, seeking a more natural and expressive form of movement. She was after something real and less contrived, as was Cézanne.” Watch Duncan dance here.
Additionally, math and science became increasingly abstract through the 19th century, with the introduction of complex numbers and the theory of entropy, holding that every system in the universe inevitably trends toward disorganized states. (One look at my son Shane’s bedroom, during his teenage bedlam years, was convincing proof that the theory of entropy was holding up well.)
But this isn’t even an essay about spooky threads in a temporal creative plane. This is a meandering stream-of-consciousness lazy summer arc about the much-debated merits of higher education in 2025. Stay with me, we’re almost done.
At the University of California, Davis I studied physics (major #1) and economics (major #2), to which I pivoted after making first contact with the mental horsepower required to complete major #1. (Also, the hottest girls on campus were on the liberal arts side of the Quad.) Davis was a fantastic school with an amazing faculty, and I learned a lot in both departments. But it wasn’t the core courses that marked me most deeply, nor made me a more interesting Bill. It was in the wildly obtuse electives in which I chose to enroll: Altered States of Consciousness; Mexican History; Film Appreciation, Wine Tasting, and (most relevant to this essay) a course that extended the oft-discussed creative parallels between Picasso and Stravinsky to the works of Max Plank, Sigmund Freud, Samuel Beckett, Alberto Giacometti, and John Cage. This course blew . my . fucking . mind. As my expressive friend and author Mike Finkel is known to exclaim: BOOM!
John Cage and Yoko Ono performing Music Walk in Tokyo, 1962.
You may see where I’m going here. Without this Davis course my recent Wednesday afternoon – pre-apéro – would not have been wasted noodling on Cézanne’s threading connections. For that matter, without my university immersion I’d be ill suited to pontificate on the significance of Casablanca in the larger pantheon of Hollywood films, or explain the improbable success of Cortez and his band of 500 conquistadors in wrestling control of Tenochtitlan from Montezuma and his immense Aztec army, or (and this is my favorite) introducing my son Jess to the concept of lucid dreaming as a child. Fascinated with the concept of controlling his own dreams, Jess threw his teenage self into mastering the skill (should it truly exist).
Not everyone needs a 4-year university education. Shane is finishing up his second trade school degree now, happy as a clam, and fully employed. But the admonition of higher education, mostly by bloviating billionaires like Musk, Thiel, and Altman, completely misses the mark. Yes, ALL institutions should be in constant states of evaluation and reform, but a university’s greatest value is not in preparing you to maximize income, it’s about seeding your curiosity in unexplored areas that will render you a more interesting and engaging person, and through that elevation, a more creative contributor to society writ large (or writ small, with your apéro friends on any given August afternoon).
Suggested Song: People Got to Be Free, The Rascals Suggested Drink: POG (Passionfruit, Orange, and Guava) juice. An Hawaiian favorite.
Ana arrived at the Magill door like Mary Poppins in a huipil. Stella and Shane were born in late December and our hands were full. Our oldest, Jess, was a good kid for a 4-year old, but he was still 4 years old; always in motion. I had just started a full-time-and-a-half job in venture capital and Alexandra was starting a full-time-and-a-half job as mom of 3, on an energy pack depleted by 9 months of carrying 2, and then the delivery. We looked for help.
Ana had a distinctly Mayan veneer. Black hair, brown eyes, and bronze skin. Wide, short, solid, and purposeful. Always with a smile, but no need for small talk. Ask her to do something, she did it. ¿Qué puedo hacer por ti ahora, Alejandra?
“What has happened to us in this country? If we study our own history, we find that we have always been ready to receive the unfortunate from other countries, and though this may seem a generous gesture on our part, we have profited a thousand fold by what they have brought us.” – Eleanor Roosevelt
We hired Ana part-time to help with house cleaning while Alexandra focused on the kids. She soon shared the kids and we split up the house chores. Her natural skills as guardian and kid catcher were astounding, her tenderness with children pure mana to us as frazzled parents. Our confidence in her as middle inning relief was absolute (a gratuitous baseball reference, sorry).
At 40, Ana was already a grandmother, with her daughter now expecting #2, unattached, and not yet 20. Ana held a deep faith and was distraught with her daughter’s wayward irresponsibility, but working multiple jobs for various families from dawn through dark left no time to sentry her own. So, we hired her full time to help lessen the load.
“The bald fact is that the entire restaurant industry in America would close down overnight, would never recover, if current immigration laws were enforced quickly and thoroughly across the board.” – Anthony Bourdain
The 2 women grew close; Alexandra and Ana. Both were shaped by challenging childhoods. They were smart and ambitious women, convinced that much better things were possible very far from home. For my wife, that meant a bolt from the Paris suburbs and an oppressive home life, west across an ocean and then a continent. For Ana, that meant an escape from grinding Guatemalan violence and poverty, north across a border and then a second.
Ana arranged for her father to try that perilous route as well, but his coyote couriers decided at the last moment, perhaps there was more to squeeze through ransom. Ana made the journey from San Francisco to Tijuana, where she swallowed her panic and stepped into a van with said kidnappers gunned up and threatening carnage. She didn’t have the money. She did bring what she could, perhaps half, and on her knees begged in tears to let her return to California with her ailing padre. They took every dime and anything else of value, then shoved them both out of the van. Alive, at least.
“A child on the other side of the border is no less worthy of love and compassion than my own child.” – President Barrak Obama
Ana became family to us, as trusted with our kids and home as any loved abuela or tia. When we vacationed we took her with us. Not to watch the 3 rapscallions while the majestic couple frolicked and partied (Alexandra was a spendthrift who didn’t party, which explains how we afforded to buy a family home in San Francisco). But to gift Ana a few days of escape from the daily battles that consumed her life.
I think there are pictures of her in one of our old photo albums, waist deep in the warm waters off Poipu Beach in Kauai, staring wistfully out to the endless horizon, where the blue sea met the blue sky. On our final day of that trip Alexandra asked if she was eager to get back home. No, she said, no not at all, she never wanted this trip to end. She would just float in these calm Hawaiian waters forever if she could, free from it all.
Who could imagine depriving Ana of that dream?
Stephen Miller, Goebbels reincarnate, wants his scalps. Three thousand a day, and snap the fuck to it. Tom Homan, brownshirt-in-chief, is happy to execute. Sir,Yes Sir! Gardeners are tackled mid weed whack and leaf blow; day laborers corralled and zip-tied in Home Depot parking lots; visa seekers ambushed at their monthly immigration appointments. All are stunned and confused while cuffed, some punched and thrown to the ground, few get an explanation. And then disappeared. Inhumanity in the extreme, for your Fox viewing pleasure.
“Shall we refuse the unhappy fugitives from distress that hospitality which the savages of the wilderness extended to our fathers arriving in this land? Shall oppressed humanity find no asylum on this globe?” -President Thomas Jefferson
I think about Ana now, from the idyllic perch of my Provence apartment. Those pesky Magill tykes she chased around, fed, and held sleeping to her bosom late into the night, are now in their 20s. Alexandra and I divorced 10 years back, but still the closest of friends and allies. The Hawaiian family holidays are over.
I did nothing to merit my gender (male), skin tone (white), or place of birth (America). And those prized gifts have afforded me a great shot at life security, affluence, and self-realization. Ana and millions like her were gifted little, yet made my effort x10. Yes, border controls and a well regulated immigration system are modern necessities. But would a bit of humility and humanity be too much to ask?
Afterword
According to this 2025 report by the Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy:
For every 1 million undocumented immigrants who reside in the US, public services receive $8.9 billion in additional tax revenue. (They paid $96.7 billion in federal, state, and local taxes in 2022.)
More than a third of these tax dollars fund programs – including Social Security, Medicare, and unemployment insurance – that undocumented immigrants are barred from accessing.
In 40 of the 50 US states, undocumented immigrants pay higher state and local tax rates than the top 1 percent of households living within those borders.
Additionally,
About 46% of the Fortune 500 companies were started by immigrants or their children.
Almost 1 in 4 entrepreneurs in the US are immigrants.
Chico bid his forever goodbyes this week. At 17, he’d had a great run. Chihuahuas can go 20 in a vacuum, but Chico was no bubble boy. Gutter pizza (any toppings), table scraps (any meal), festering roadkill (any species), and the occasional spilled beer. Anything on the ground was fair game. He had one impressively indomitable constitution.
Chico’s immunity to alimental peril likely stemmed from his destitute origins: an orphaned pup from the Dominican Republic hill country. The Sottak family had lost their much-loved black lab, leaving a hole in the family heart. A scruffy white street rat didn’t seem the obvious cure, but when offered, the parents (Mike and Toni) were outvoted by the daughters (Savannah and Lindsey), and Chico joined the clan.
Fresh off the boat and new to the family.
The Sottaks live a charmed life, at least through a charmed geography. San Francisco, Turks & Caicos Islands (where they adopted Chico), Aix-en-Provence (where they met your writer), and now Charleston. They are a social family with a lot of good friends weaving in and out of their lives. Chico was the through line that connected everyone through everywhere. Hey, how is Chico? That question started most greetings if months or years had passed.
In Aix, where we became good friends, it was bestowed upon me from time to time to dog sit. My feral cat Chloe loathed sharing her flat with this fur-ball Chihuahua. Chico hated the relentless stalking and menacing glares that made napping impossible. But despite the occasional flare-ups they mostly kept to their designated corners.
There was no better pet to carouse with for a single man in Provence. Never on leash, Chico was a tireless terrasse flâner and shameless seducer. The bartenders and restaurateurs knew him, chefs and bouchers gifting him prized nibbles and bones. He wasn’t averse to the soft lap of an attractive woman, straw sipping her Aperol Spritz on a summer evening and stroking his soft fur. Oh si mignon, le petit chien !
You can tell a lot about people by how they treat their pets. Some dote, some abuse, and some provide just the perfect balance of love, support, and independence. I grew up on a farm and our dogs and cats came and went as they pleased. Sometimes they’d sleep in the cardboard box in laundry room, sometimes they’d disappear for a few days. In the freeze of the Pennsylvania winter, the dog and cat would grudgingly climb into that box together. Damn it’s cold.
Chico, poolside in Provence.
The Sottaks are my kind of pet people. There was a lot of love in the Chico home, from all 4 of them. Their gentleness with and loyalty to the dog reflected the same manner they treat everyone in their orbit. Perhaps it’s why I feel blessed to remain in it. And also blessed to have been with them during this difficult week. Mike and Toni have been staying in Aix for the past month, and Chico picked this period start the hard slide. There are worse places to expire than Provence, eating well, drinking well, sitting poolside or on some attractive woman’s lap. Another Apero Spritz monsieur. Just going to relax here for the moment.
Suggested Song: Only God Can Judge Me, 2Pac Suggested Drink: Cristal champagne (On ice at Club 55, Saint Tropez)
Listen to this essay:
Inertia (noun): The property of a body that resists any change to its uniform motion; equivalent to its mass. – Encyclopedia Britannica
Sean Combs is giving a masterclass in the art of total brand destruction. What took 30 years to carefully assemble has suffered a rapid unscheduled disassembly in just a few weeks of testimony. The alpha silverback who was swimming with women turns out to be voyeuristic cuck ogling from the corner, … with severe anger issues. Shakespearean in its tragedy.
The Diddy Circus was built on three rings of over-indulgence, unaccountability, and a fatally-inflated sense of self. It took just one errant spark – the infamous hotel hallway beatdown – to set the that big tent aflame. Still, none of us are saints, at least none in my crowd. Where some see a morality play, I see a cautionary tale. Be humble and play small ball with one’s peccadillos.
Flywheels operate on the principles of inertial energy and Combs got caught in a big flywheel of bad behavior. The more mass they carry and faster they spin, the greater energy is required to slow them down. His was a truly mighty mass at hypersonic velocity. Too much money paired with too little introspection can be a lethal cocktail. The Brooklyn Jail is a poor place to ponder the physics of life. But I’m guessing he’s quickly up to speed on the laws of personal inertial energy.
Flywheels and the gyroscopic moment: MITCalc
We’ve all been on that wheel, just not with P mass at Diddy spin. Some of our flywheels can be as innocuous as a bowl of M&Ms with Netflix. Once you get started; damn, where did all those go? Some can be more destructive, like a bad gambling habit or substance issues. Okay, just an hour at the slots or a single pint of beer, then I’m out of here. Good luck with that.
I’ve stopped kidding myself with the one-and-I’m-done fantasy when out with good friends. If I really need to avoid that flywheel, then I really need to avoid those friends, at least for that evening. This works, mostly. Depends on the time of day and month of year. It’s summer in Provence. You try staying indoors.
I have no sympathy for Combs, but neither do I delight in his demise. Mostly I wonder why a man of his stature didn’t have better friends or minders. Dude, just wind it back a bit. A few years ago I was suffering through an unhealthy relationship and embarrassing myself badly. My inner circle lured me to O’Sullivan’s Pub one evening, sat me down and suggested, gently but firmly, that I pull my shit together. I did. God bless them.
Combs will be pardoned by our Grifter in Chief. With an estimated net worth of $1 billion, he has more than enough for the presidential pay-to-play. But he’s done. That bad boy alpha is a masturbating beta. The confident ladies’ man is just another jealous wife beater. The golden glow has turned to coal dust. Combs may again vacation on Turks & Caicos or Saint Tropez in a mega-yacht, but every stroll through town will draw the stares of disgust he’ll understand well: fucking loser. Money can buy extravagance and Cristal champagne, but not respect, and definitely not self-respect. Spin your flywheels with care.
Spring is the season of rebirth. Green shoots. New leaves. Fertilization and pollination and Mother Nature in all her horny glory. The sterile winter of grey torpor (can I just go to bed yet?) surrenders to a pregnancy of vibrant possibilities. Ready to kick the winter blues? Follow her lead and get knocked up.
The pregnancy bug can manifest in ways beyond just with child: a future pregnant with possibilities; a community pregnant with friendships; a film or novel or other art piece pregnant with meaning, and so on. Regardless of one’s fertility objective, all productive intercourse requires the Rule of 4 and in this order:
Engagement
Penetration
Endurance
Climax
Let’s take a closer look.
Engagement
It takes two to tango, as the saying goes. Eager to get gestating? Then shake off the winter hibernation, mix with masses, and connect.
Your dance partner may indeed be a co-parenting prospect and the nature of engagement carnal by design. But that object of desire could equally be an exciting new project of deep meaning, or a newly discovered film director from the French New Wave school, or group of friends hosting Friday night wine tastings. In all cases, the experiences are deeper and more satisfying when shared with others (just like sex!). Who can support your project, join for some popcorn, or share some tasting notes? The zygotes of possibility won’t get planted with you shrouded in a prophylactic bubble.
Tango, by Lucie Llong
And the most effective prophylactic? Our phones. Nothing insulates us better from the ambiance of life and sends that I’m not interested signal to others than public phone scrolling, headphones on, and eye contact avoided. Little surprise that the percentage of 18-30 year olds going sexless for more than a year has doubled since 2011 (to now about 40%), with 1 in 4 Gen Z adults saying they’ve NEVER HAD SEX. For the love of god, put that thing away, smile at a stranger, and engage. Nature will take care of the rest.
Penetration
The tip of the iceberg reveals little about the depths below. One night stands can be a fun distraction, but unsatisfying in the vein of deeper relationships. Fascination with that avant-garde school of cinema will be richer once a dive into its various directors, their films and go-to actors, and philosophies about movies, is made. Getting knocked up by Godard will require more than just seeing Breathless at your local arthouse and thinking, well that was weird. That new life project of deep personal meaning? It is all just barstool talk until research is done, plans are set, deadlines made, and an official launch announced, and then launched.
Penetration requires a plunge in all manner of things. So line to the target, then make your push.
Endurance
Endurance is a particularly vexing challenge for men through our sexually active years. When young we can’t hold off and when old struggle to hang in. Bless our empathetic partners. Wait, what, again?
Fortunately, our non-carnal ventures are less susceptible to the whims of age and nature. Those weekend wine club gatherings will get even more enjoyable in time, and when shared with the same crew. Remembering favorite regional theme nights and laughing together about the blind tasting fails. Pinot noir, no way! Every Friday evening a group of expat men meet for drinks in my hometown of Aix-en-Provence. It’s become a popular event for ending the week, mingling with friends, and sharing the joys of being strangers in a strange land. For the regular members, these Directors Meetings have become an indispensable part of their lives in Provence, and equally appreciated by the wives. Off you go.
With our life legacy projects there are mistakes made and blind alleys chased. A strategy for dealing with disappointment is key. We need to endure through these setbacks as much as celebrate the achievements. But in the end, accomplishment is that much sweeter when the outcomes are much less certain and require that extra push.
Climax
We all know what this is (those of us not in the sex-denied Gen Z cohort). It is what one works toward and can reach delirium in achieving. But in truth, the greatest reward is enjoyed during the journey, not its completion. Meeting someone magical and starting down that wondrous path of romance together. Pursuing an ambitious dream and coming to appreciate more deeply our own strengths and limitations. Sitting (suffering?) through a dozen films of Godard and Truffaut, with someone who now has become a close friend (a Siskel to your Ebert), and remembering all the mystery and vexation and boxes of Jujubes and popcorn. Okay, next up Louis B Mayer epics!
Nature fixes age limits on getting pregnant with a child, but not for other endeavors of great fun and reward. Just remember the Rule of 4 and you’ll be knocked up in no time. It’s the spring of new possibilities; get out there!
BILL MAGILL 