WHERE TO NOW St. PETER

My last Blog was written sitting in the kitchen of Ardsheal house in Bermuda. Time line wise that would be six weeks ago, not a great deal of time and at this moment it seems like a memory from another world.

From Bermuda we traveled back to The Ranch in Tennessee for a couple weeks, then on to New York City and my wife's Italian family reunion. What a trip,I mean not for nuthin', they are all so warm and crazy. I got to meet my Mee's legacy and it was a great gift. I'd only been to New York once before so the experience of the city was new and surreal. I do spend time in Mexico City with all the coming and going to Teotihuacan. Mexico City is a world unto itself with 20 million plus residents. New York on the other hand, felt so livable and eclectic. We were staying in our friends, Iva and Jerry Peele's, apartment in Greenwich Village, the west Village to be exact. I love the feeling of walking out of the apartment building and into the street. There's so much life happening in New York. So many little realities all converging in the same place at the same time.

For years the idea of New York seemed unattractive to me, so I never went. That's how I made a lot of decisions, by how something I'd never experienced, felt or sounded, rather than by having an open mind and finding out for real. I lived a lot of my life based on assumptions and then would go one step further and create stories from those assumptions which I plugged into my perspective as though those stories came from actual experience. I was not doing that this time. This time I was walking down Greenwich Street in the warm August air looking for a diner to have breakfast with my family and friends. There was life going on everywhere. On the street, in the shops, at the park—movement and color, talk and laughter. We found our Diner and they even had Grits. What a trip, eating grits in a little Diner in the west village. You gotta love it.

After breakfast we walked to the Bleeker Street park and let Bella and Lola be kids for a while. I immediately noticed the great mix of color and language that blended into the swirl of children. They all played , laughed, ran and negotiated their sharing together with only an occasional whine, and that never lasted more than a second or two. Kids don't fall into dark holes of argument and anger cus their attention doesn't seem to stay hooked by those temptations. They have better things to do, like enjoy the moment. I actually saw this happening while I looked on and something about the simple truth of putting my attention into what I enjoy came clear to me.That's how I want to live my life.

Sure, as adults we have responsibilities that aren't fun or exciting, but neither are they painful or terrible unless we make them so. I may not want to do something and I don't have to make the experience miserable just to prove to myself I don't like it. So what, big deal, who cares, life moves on. It's us humans that decide to stay stuck on the things we don't like or we don't agree with. That's not life doing anything to us that's us doing it to us.

We spent five days in the great city of New York, saw THE LITTLE MERMAID on Broadway, ate, drank, walked and then took the train upstate to Iva and Jerry's farm, Herondale, in Ancramdale, N.Y.[ herondalefarm.com] Man, it's really beautiful in the Hudson River Valley in August. After a couple nights on the farm we headed back to the city and our flight home to Mexico.

Tennessee, Bermuda, New York City, Herondale Farm, Mexico City, Teotihuacan, Sayulita......exhale.........

As I feel my way back through the great summer journey, I realize it may take a day or two for all of me to regroup here on the west coast of Mexico in our little Village of Sayulita. All the energy and happenings in the U.S. are a great temptation to go back and do more, and right now we're considering lots of options that may just take us back North to GringoLandia. What I know is that the longer I stay here living on the wild jungle coast of Mexico the less chance that busy world of American opportunity has of reeling me back in. Either way, it is for real,and all good.

So for all the uncertainty that freedom offers, I look out to sea and hear Sir Elton John in the background...SO, WHERE TO NOW ST. PETER, IF IT'S TRUE I'M IN YOUR HANDS..........Peace Be With You, Lee