Pinnacles

I'm having a hard time coming home from this vacation. Certainly, my physical body is back here, in Portland. And it was followed, about 24 hours later, by the arrival of my luggage. But my focus is still lagging.

The sun was warm, the sand was warm, the sea was warm - albeit a bit too choppy for snorkeling. And even though we were floating right over the second largest coral reef in the world (Sian Ka'an) and even though I couldn't snorkel, I was happy.

I did my first ever rent-a-car-and-drive-it-in-a-foreign-country adventure. All went well - even though we got stopped by the Mexican police at a checkpoint and jounced by the speedbumps and deeply confused by speed limit signs that seemed to change drastically every few miles, er, kilometers. Somehow, it was all still good.


We visited the Mayan ruins at Chichen Itza - that's the main temple to Kukulkan, nicknamed "El Castillo", pictured above. Everything I read about Mayans and Toltecs and blood sacrifice and ball games and serpents on the solstices (or is it equinoxes? it's equinoxes, I checked) is all fading to a fuzzy blur . . . but I still can't quite seem to commit to really being back in Portland. I've been going through the motions, doing laundry, doing follow-up work with the other half of my brain, doing basic gluing and construction to prepare for a show I'm hanging next week, but it's as though I'm still lounging oceanside.

A week in the Yucatan is not enough.

Somehow, it doesn't surprise me that so many of the bungalow hotels in Tulum and along the "Riviera Maya" south of Cancun are owned by non-Mexicans - it's the kind of place that seduces. You begin to think about buying land, opening your own bungalow hotel, or maybe a little restaurant. Tulum - based on the number of Italian restaurants - seems specially designed to seduce Italians . . . and, well, me.

So, since I had planned on posting every day in March, and choosing a theme or project to base those posts around, I've selected Travel. My mind is still moving on Mexico time, and I'm just going to let it. I'm still feeling sand between my toes (did I almost leave the house in flip-flops the other day? yes) so I'm just going to dig in. Like many artists, I travel all the time, even when I'm standing still in my studio . . . and so March will be a celebration of the Journey.