If you fall in love with potential, you learn to live with desperation.

-- Source unknown

It seems that's what developed over the past seven years or so. My love for Yucatan was subtly transformed into a love for the potential. Actions that might actually lead to some fruition diminished, then ceased. I still looked at real estate photos occasionally, but my attention was on the potential. And moving to Colorado was in itself an act of desperation after I felt unprepared for the move to Merida in 2004. I've never felt truly at home here, and often wondered where I might go to regain that sense of belonging last felt in the home we owned back in Hayward for ten years. Various states were considered - New Mexico, Oregon, even back to California now that the full devastation of the real estate collapse has made that imaginable again.

But Yucatan seemed increasingly remote. Lovely potential, but just a notion against a background of desperation.



And then the visit of last week. Action. A real place with associations of sound, smell, sight that were nearly forgotton. After returning to Colorado, we both were struck by the isolation of sitting in a closed-up house, protected from the cold outside. No sound of church bells, jungle birds, or music from a distant plaza. No breezes stirring or scents carried on moist dense air.



We rarely eat out here. It costs a lot, and the quality almost always sucks. While we were in Yucatan, the possibilities were so dazzling, with incredible dishes made with incredible ingredients to choose from. Tropical drinks of such intense flavor and freshness that it would be a thrill to order, see, and drink.



The cost of eating out at the modest places we prefer in Yucatan is about the same or less than if I were to prepare meals at home here, assuming I buy quality ingredients that aren't toxic with pesticides or grown in sterile monoculture soil. Since a lot is shipped in from thousands of miles away, it's usually not fresh.



It seems if we don't want all of this to recede into the realm of mere potential, the course of action must be...continued action.

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