GO AWAY!
(I love you)
A friend has an art gallery
of his colorful,
amazingly authentic paintings
(they draw YOU in)
in Isla Mujeres, Mexico
with THAT sign
at his open door.
He is brilliant,
talented,
gorgeous,
charismatic,
(and twelve).
If you Google Earth’ed
Isla Mujeres
you would see
the mob of locals,
and tourists,
surrounding his gallery,
surrounding him.
He is open from 5pm to 10pm.
He is bored with Paradise.
“I am making a great living,
my art flies off the walls,
but i am SO bored,
I’m thinking Miami next?”
I have another friend
who doesn’t live
in Isla Mujeres,
but would give
her glass-eye
to live there.
She could absolutely
have lived in Isla
fourteen times over,
but doesn’t.
She is creative,
beautiful,
she is art incarnate.
She is NOT twelve.
I understand both friends.
We can only grapple,
with what we can grapple,
when we can grapple.
In 2000,
Mary Grace
graduated from High School,
and I decided to exhale.
I sold everything in America,
houses, cars, and clothes,
bought 10 black tank tops,
10 black bathing suits,
black flip flops,
and arrived in Isla Mujeres.
I lived in Paradise.
I loved in Paradise.
I laughed in Paradise.
I left Paradise in 2001.
My time in Isla
was gathering time,
time to experience THAT,
time to live that life.
It wasn’t my time
to do what I went to do,
which was to write.
It was my time
to make major memories in Mexico,
to learn the lessons of that life,
not yet my time to write.
Listen.
Look at your life,
(I’m talking to myself again)
see where you’ve been,
look at where you are going,
all you can do is
be wherever you are,
until you aren’t.
If you have done
what you came to do,
whoever you are,
wherever you are,
and whatever that is,
and you are done,
exercise your faith,
say Thank You,
and continue on
your journey.
Give yourself permission to change.
I am in Paradise
right now
writing this ditty.
Pinch me.
My daughter, friends, and I
are golf-carting
around the island today
watching the waves roll in,
making more mexican memories,
maybe making a tour of Cantinas?
I’ve got 4 days left in Isla,
and I seriously can’t fucking wait
to get back
to my local life in Atlanta,
my goofy-ass gallery;
SISTER LOUISA’S ART GALLERY
IN THE CHURCH OF THE LIVING ROOM
AND PING PONG EMPORIUM
…Come On In, Precious!
I am smiling
while writing,
aware,
that wherever I go,
there I am.
