A month on the road, well a month since i left northern Europe for the Caribe. This is not really a road trip although i have a journey coming up next month to Guanajuato. Its more about how to establish yourself comfortably in another country as a traveller / resident doing something you love that is different from what you normally do. And that for me is teaching kids film/drama studies which i have resumed at a school here in Playa. Its also about being somewhere warm, having access to a beach, daily swimming, fresh fruit , living simply and integrating with another culture. For me thats Mexico. Last year i hung out with a bunch of other ex pat long term hotel residents living here for their own diverse reasons. I also got to know the local Mayan community around me, which continues to be a wonderful experience that settled travel brings. I can see that with the people i meet here like me others have made their own settled / nomadic adjustments to life. One interesting encounter came recently from an email address inscribed inside the book cover of a John Le Carre novel i had picked up from El Mundos. I wrote, the person answered , we caught up and discussed just this, the nomadic/settled life, how to adjust , how to simplify , how to de clutter, how find the books you want to read, how a traveler deals with extended sojourns in other countries, how to be content.
Two forces are operating, one is to settle down and acquire, the other is to release, then pack light and move, airport. The settlers and the nomads. In one sense i am lucky, i am able to work in Europe over the summer save enough money to keep me in Peas, Rice & Monte Cristo No 2s over winter in the Caribbean . I don't have family responsibilities, although i question the decisions in life that have led to my current solitary existence, and one oppotunity in particular that slipped away. Those forces act to a greater or lesser extent in all of us, mostly sub consciously. They are vestiges of our nomadic genes trying to over come our more recent civilizing urge to be in one place. The second is about 10,000 years old and the 1st is probably 3/4 million years old. If you have been a nomad the older you get though the more you do want to settle, and to have loved ones around you on a day to day basis. The more i understand about the possibilities of an organically designed eco house lifestyle the more i want to find that piece of land again and touch this earth lightly*I know for me its somewhere in the sunny tropics, speaking of which we have had about 2 weeks of solid rain here, kind of monsoonal in its intensity, i have a theory that its the energy of an unformed Hurricane slowly dissapating over the Eastern Yucatan. Bummer for the beach. Hey ! there is no perfect place, but there is contentment.
* Glenn Murcutt A very smart in tune Architect
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