I’m back in my home zone… I crank up some Rock-n-Roll on the stereo set, with speakers and wire… it’s Lou Reed’s New York, on vinyl, this album has been stuck in my head the whole time I’ve been gone. Amazingly all the buttons and knobs magically click into position, as though I’d just turned it all on yesterday. My new goal, well one of many, is to breathe some new life into the cold space… it’s been a little droopy since the quarantine time came around. We used to have fun pArties in here. Now it’s an Art studio and Print shop and that kind of place should be vibrant as well. I feel a new feeling within me, maybe it is a seedling of early Spring, which is officially 46 days away. All of Winter is only 90 days, so, hey! we are right around the half-way mark… I know it’s easy for me to say hey, when I’ve been gone for 31 days of the first part, down in the warm wilds of a Mexican Island. Finding inspiration in a foreign place is easy, you just gotta look around and the same can be said for my most familiar places. Sometimes the familiar can glaze over and You’ll miss the special magics that are there, as well. I was talking to my Friend the other day about this… We determined that it’s even more special to find magic in the every day. I feel like that’s a challenge to mix with the goal of breathing new life and for being aware of the breathing and never taking it for granted. I am reminded now, of swimming underwater for as far as I could and that amazing feeling, which became almost euphoric by the end, of that first breath that You can take and how much air you breathe in… I also think of a whale coming up from the depths to fill its lungs.
it’s hard to keep making a regular blog posting, here in USA, even quarantining in place(s), as I have been, however without WiFi, so I have struggled with making a next one, although I am determined, no matter how unnecessary this all may be! I was almost out of my data-plan, so I had to call up to say what can be done and they gave me another whole amount for free because they said I had used very little in the past. I was just talking to a Friend about how You’ve got to squeeze through the corporate corridors to go to amazing places, those are the worst parts of travel, the airports and the customs and security check-points… the same is true with trying to even get to speak to a customer service representative. This is not something You don’t know, already and each of us has spent too much of our precious time with it already, so I’ll zip it on that topic. My point, in reading back over this, is that the automated system doesn’t give You a free month’s data, only humans do!
I just went out to the edge of the river and caught some solar rays reflecting off of the water and from the sun itself, which was perfectly positioned above the hills across the river to make a really good afternoon glow. There is some powerful magic in that light, another of those self-evident truths, which I mention as though we’ve been talking about self-evident truths all long… haven’t we?
this is the last day of the first half of Winter, tomorrow (Saturday), the second half begins. I am counting two 45 day halves… that is, if my math is correct (see above). Last year we had a one day longer Winter, thanks to Leap Year but this year is just a regular old 365 day year. I am really scratching the surface of useful information… What else? Well, it’s really nice to take a shower without having to worry about getting water in Your mouth. I’ve got work to do and Art to make and I am still sorting out what I did in Mexico for a whole month. I gotta reclaim some creative oomph here in my own home-style location, so I am working on putting down that foundation.
Dynamic Art Gallerie 
Re-entry Blues, or Cogitations in Covid-time. Everything about what you’ve just experienced & that happened to you, so colorful, exotic, wonderful, strange, odd?, amazing, memorable! & homecoming- good, safe, tiresome, sweet, strange, odd, familiar…..you’ve captured some of that eternal quandary of the traveler (wanderer-seeker…) in your blogs here. They say travel to other lands is especially meaningful to artists & writers – I think of a few I know I know about from studying them in literature, Alexis de Tocqueville to America, Flaubert in Egypt, Joyce in Italy, Hemingway in France & Spain, Paul Theroux around the world by train & ?? —it meant the world to them. It expands horizons & stretches sensibilities wide. I think you benefitted a lot from your month of Mexican experiences. ¡Hoora! ¡Bravo! ¡Viva! for Foreign Adventures & Safe Homecomings (Moms are grateful!).
Love,
Mom
Thank You, Mom, your comment here is much better than the above randomness. I appreciate Your thoughts, as always!
I thoroughly enjoyed each blog & your wonderful photos & watched for them to pop up every evening or noonday. I have all my life enjoyed reading travel books, especially accounts of foreign lands, where I am not likely to ever go. Five glorious, highly readable & recommended books I’ve read a least twice over that so expanded my general knowledge of the world: Out of Africa (Kenya) by Isak Dinesen; The Great Railway Bazaar (London to Siberia & Back by Train) by Paul Theroux, A Moveable Feast (Paris) by Ernest Hemingway, Bitter Lemons (Cypress) by Lawrence Durrell, & A Time of Gifts (A Walk from London to Istanbul) by Patrick Leigh Fermor. I have not traveled the wide world except in my armchair, kind of like Thoreau who said, he was widely traveled in Concord, but reading travel writing has taken me all over the world. Your great blogs took me to colorful Isla Mujeres, Mexico! Mucho Gracias!
Love,
Mom
Mom, thank You for Your recommendations, I am glad to say that I have read one of them, which is an all-time favourite book of mine… and since You have been to Paris (as a young person) and I have not (even so far into middle-age), You must know that it stays with You forever after, right?
Beautiful Isla. Nice photos. When can we go back.
David
David! I am just seeing this. I am going back in late February…. I hope to see You there!