Love Letter : 30 Countries and Counting

“Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising which tempt you to believe that your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires courage.”

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Here we are, 200,000,000* extranjeras, immigrants, and vagabonds living outside of our own countries.  It happens rather often that other expatriates or locals comment on how brave they believe me to be for moving to Mexico alone.  While bravery is an essential quality for such a monumental shift, comfort with traveling and prior research are a larger part of the final decision to change my location.  

This life long desire to live fully elsewhere was well nurtured by inspirational books and sushi bar exotica music.  When I was in California for graduate studies in Art Therapy, I met Marilla and Ivan Arguelles.  Marilla shaped her love of textiles and books, (her father was a Dickens' like proprietor of an antique and rare bookstore in Tennesse), to correspond with her political life as an activist.  At the time of our dearest level of friendship, she was taken by the quilt as a story telling art form, and was in the process of editing an anthology of poems, short stories and drawings by prisoners of Pelican Bay.  

Ivan's Mexican born father, who mingled with Leon Trotsky, Diego Rivera, and Frida Kahlo, and his German born mother, influenced his love of language and words.  When I met Ivan, he was fluent in seventeen  languages, and had published several volumes of poetry.  In competitions with Allen Ginsberg, his words continue to capture the turbulence of truth seekers.  

The Arguelles family took their sons, as toddlers, to Europe and India, frequently sleeping on beaches and in public parks.  As often as I had traveled Mexico, I never brought my children with me.  Now, I wish that I had those memories to share with them.

We journeyman expatriates are dreamers, writers, artists and activist.  We accept the unexpected and anticipate its' hello.  We travel with nothing and everything.  We compare and we let go.  Sometimes we go back, to the land that shaped our early selves, or to the land that houses our soul.  And we remember what brought us to this place, and thank those who led us here.

The Broad

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