Early Money is Like Yeast
It seemed as if all the universal elements required to ensure that I have shit for a day aligned early this morning and were then abruptly thrown out of whack with one quick e-mail from my mum. "Late whatever-you-celebrate-now gift," the subject line read. The rest of it: "I'm buying you a ticket back to Mexico--late holiday gift."
"Are you buying me one back home as well?" I responded. It wouldn't be unlike my mother to offer up a one-way trip south of the border as an alternative to my impending spinsterhood.
The words gift horse and mouth flooded my conscience right after I hit Send, so I grabbed the phone, ticking off one check box on the Phone Calls to Mom Log that will eventually serve as a paper trail that leads to a failed New Year's resolution. When she answered, I quickly explained that this year, this year, I planned to trade crystal clear oceans, jet skis, beer in the Sierra Madre, and tan pool boys for rain, men who've gone a lifetime without dental work, peas-with-everything cuisine, and a grandmother who long ago forgot the last of her Yankee grandchildren. This year, I'm going to Scotland.
My mother sighed, defeated, having obviously weighed the very same trade offs, hoping for a different outcome. "But you were so much happier there," she said. There being Mexico.
Little does she know. Arizona is the closest to Mexico my mother will ever come and dining where the locals eat is an act so distanced from her reality that she might cease to exist if ever confronted with the chance. I was gifted.
Not even my traveling companions were privy to what I left between certain walls or on the sand. I like it that way. I treasure my secrets. As much as I talk, I don't have many. The ones I have, those few, are sacred. I don't even let cameras violate my privacy. If you weren't there, you'll never truly feel like you were. No matter how badly you wish for it and how adamantly you say you feel like you were, all out of reverence for some photographer.
I don't have much time off accrued here at The Place That Won't Be Named so I won't be using that ticket anytime soon. Accordingly, I've planned other, mini-vacations, getaways. Thirteen of my loosely knit girlfriends rented some "haunted" rooms at The Stanley, an occasion we'll use to wear old bridesmaid's dresses to the hotel lounge and then retreat to our rooms to watch The Shining on air mattresses. The weekend may turn me into a neutron-dancing eighties throwback with a drug problem, but I'm looking forward to it. As I am tomorrow night's outing to see Def Poetry on tour (Mos Def as the emcee would have put the night on par with a trip to the tropics, but I’ll leave happy just the same).
So my wait for a real vacation will be sprinkled with fun. I'll dream about Mexico while others dream about me. It's true. In an e-mail from a friend just today, this: Here is something I wanted to tell you. When I was all doped up post surgery, I was having really weird dreams. In one I lived in this ultra-modern high rise apartment that was flooded but I had people over anyway. You were raiding my liquor supply and you kept yelling "If we don't take it, it will mix with the water and be ruined."
"Are you buying me one back home as well?" I responded. It wouldn't be unlike my mother to offer up a one-way trip south of the border as an alternative to my impending spinsterhood.
The words gift horse and mouth flooded my conscience right after I hit Send, so I grabbed the phone, ticking off one check box on the Phone Calls to Mom Log that will eventually serve as a paper trail that leads to a failed New Year's resolution. When she answered, I quickly explained that this year, this year, I planned to trade crystal clear oceans, jet skis, beer in the Sierra Madre, and tan pool boys for rain, men who've gone a lifetime without dental work, peas-with-everything cuisine, and a grandmother who long ago forgot the last of her Yankee grandchildren. This year, I'm going to Scotland.
My mother sighed, defeated, having obviously weighed the very same trade offs, hoping for a different outcome. "But you were so much happier there," she said. There being Mexico.
Little does she know. Arizona is the closest to Mexico my mother will ever come and dining where the locals eat is an act so distanced from her reality that she might cease to exist if ever confronted with the chance. I was gifted.
Not even my traveling companions were privy to what I left between certain walls or on the sand. I like it that way. I treasure my secrets. As much as I talk, I don't have many. The ones I have, those few, are sacred. I don't even let cameras violate my privacy. If you weren't there, you'll never truly feel like you were. No matter how badly you wish for it and how adamantly you say you feel like you were, all out of reverence for some photographer.
I don't have much time off accrued here at The Place That Won't Be Named so I won't be using that ticket anytime soon. Accordingly, I've planned other, mini-vacations, getaways. Thirteen of my loosely knit girlfriends rented some "haunted" rooms at The Stanley, an occasion we'll use to wear old bridesmaid's dresses to the hotel lounge and then retreat to our rooms to watch The Shining on air mattresses. The weekend may turn me into a neutron-dancing eighties throwback with a drug problem, but I'm looking forward to it. As I am tomorrow night's outing to see Def Poetry on tour (Mos Def as the emcee would have put the night on par with a trip to the tropics, but I’ll leave happy just the same).
So my wait for a real vacation will be sprinkled with fun. I'll dream about Mexico while others dream about me. It's true. In an e-mail from a friend just today, this: Here is something I wanted to tell you. When I was all doped up post surgery, I was having really weird dreams. In one I lived in this ultra-modern high rise apartment that was flooded but I had people over anyway. You were raiding my liquor supply and you kept yelling "If we don't take it, it will mix with the water and be ruined."