Beauty Is In The Eye Of The Beholden

The birds have spread the word that we are back and our feeders are busy this morning. I took my first wander up the mountain but I didn't make it as far as usual because my lungs haven't quite made the adjustment from sea level to 10,600 feet of altitude. It was one of those glorious mornings when the air is crisp and the sun is shining and you break a sweat even though it hasn't broke 40 degrees Fahrenheit yet. I took a deep breath and looked around and for about the millionth time congratulated myself on living in a place most people only dream of living.

And then I thought of our other home, Chelem,Yucatan, Mexico. Just a tad bit different. We had guests stop by for a short visit there a few weeks ago. They were on a cruise ship that made a stop in Progreso so they thought they'd take a gander at our new digs. We picked them up at the Mercado….. and then took them on a drive down the Malecon and then by the nicer homes of Progreso. It was a short tour. Then we crossed the Yucalpeten Puente (bridge). The weather was playing nice that morning and the sun speckled waters made the boats in the marinas look shiny and new or at least seaworthy.

We drove them by our favorite watering holes, our favorite place to grab a taco on the square, our favorite hardware store, Tocha, where we go first before we head off to the Mecca of Merida and her box store temples. Our guests were polite. They made nice noises. They actually oohed and ahhhed when we drove by a little tienda all freshly painted white with its bright red recumbent Coca-Cola bottle displayed on the side of the building. They said nothing about the trash that lurks in the corners and escapes across the dusty roads or the air of neglect that seems to permeate a good number of the buildings. They didn't have to. We knew what they were thinking. We knew because we think the same thing every time we take a drive. Why are we here?

The answer is always the same. The beauty.

The beauty is found in a crumbling bar at the table of a disparate band of expats struggling to figure out ways to make the burdened lives of the people of their adopted home more congenial without forcing their own ideas of "better" upon them.

It's there in a hot summer night with the sound of foreign and native laughter mingling in the joy of a child's first birthday.

It's there on an early morning beach in the shy smile of a sea worn fisherman as he offers a beautiful shell to the gringo lady he has seen devotedly combing the sands much in the same way he searches the seas.

They are both treasure seekers.

Beauty is that nugget of hope that if we look deep enough, work hard enough, and dream high enough, we will find the treasure.

 

P.S. I've added a link down on the left for one of the "nuggets" we have going in Chelem, The Chelem Christmas Toy Drive. Take a looksee.

P.P.S. Well fart! I guess we can't link facebook pages. Check out Yucatan Coast Animal Aid and Chelem Christmas Toy Drive on facebook. There is also a Toy Drive in Chuburna and several programs that support the local schools and there is so much more that needs to be done. So if you were wondering, that's what all of us loafers do down there all day....when we're not in the middle of construction projects.

Jimmy Buffett Laments the Fouling of his Paradise

Well, it took a monumental natural disaster to get me off my ass and start posting again. And for this post I'm cancelling my moratorium on cussing. You might have noticed that the title of this blog is "Jimmy Buffett Laments the Fouling of his Paradise". Oh Thank YOU, JIMMY! Read further along on the Margaritaville site and you will see that Jimmy is actually lamenting that the opening of his new hotel in Pensacola might be delayed. In the words of the Great Man Himself, the fucking fucker is fucked! Jimmy, your songs used to be the anthems of my life. Then I watched you singing at that TYCO party in Greece ($250,000 is probably small change for you). Cancel your Vegas concert and get your ass down to Mobile and hold a free concert for those eleven men that lost their life on that rig, the rig workers that are now out of work, the shrimpers, the oystermen, the waiters, the hotel housekeepers, the guy with his guitar case open on Bourbon Street.

Start being the man you sing you are.

Until then I'm holding a personal moratorium on anything "Jimmy Buffett" I will no longer drink from a Tin Cup Chalice, I will never buy anything with the Margaritaville logo including the mixes and the mixer(Hello? Who were you marketing to? The people who are rich enough to buy this shit would never wear that logo and the people that do buy it are probably up to their eyeballs in debt. I've been there. You?). I will never again coax bar crowds to go search for lost shakers of salt, I will never again win every trivia question having to do with you at the Schooner Wharf Bar in Key West. Do you remember that place and that bar? I think you used to have a studio right behind there. I went through a hurricane with my sailboat tied to the docks there. You? Your books sent me off on an adventure. I've lit the fresnel lens at the Elbow Cay Lighthouse, I've seen G.E. doing its best while sitting at anchor at Cane Garden Bay, and I've skated for 14 hours during a Labor Day Jerry Lewis Marathon when I was 12 years old and "Come Monday" was on the charts.

I will not be buying " A Pirate Looks At 70" because I don't see you as the same guy that bought his Dad an Oyster Po'Boy at the Mobile docks.

My friend, your Grampa has his hand on the starboard rail and he is just shaking his head at you. He doesn't recognize you. Neither do I.
Ever so humbly, Mary Kay

P.S. Always a PS. The cap'n only has two requests for his funeral: One is that I play "It's been a Lovely Cruise" the other is that I don't bring a date to his funeral. Of course, I will honor one request. Which one?