The Fantasy of Stopping

So I mentioned in my last post that I told Barry I was ready to stop.

After several weeks of traveling on buses and shopping for hotels, just stopping for awhile sounds idyllic. My fantasy is this: Barry and I find a comfortable, pretty town, with a simple place to base ourselves. Maybe it's a hotel room with kitchen facilities. Maybe it's a studio apartment. We take walks, we swim, we write, I shop for food and cook, we meet folks, we invite them over for a drink or a meal.

It sounds cozy. It sounds comfortable. It sounds like Eureka!

I miss our cozy apartment in Eureka. Enjoying our late-afternoon glass of wine, looking out at our neighbor apartments. Dipping down to the hot tub once, twice, or several times a day. Cooking up one of my one-pot stews, while Barry watches the Simpsons, three yards away. (Funny. I love our life in Mexico, but right now it's the coziness of our life and home in Old Town that call me). We are at the midway point of our trip. We've been in Colombia for three weeks, and we have another three weeks to go. My mind doesn't absorb this information easily. Three weeks? I think. What on earth will we do all that time?

I know what we'll do. More of the same, pretty much, and the same is good. It's just that at a certain point, my mind rebels. What is all this for? I ask myself. What's the point? What good is it doing anyone? Remind me again, why am I in Colombia?

It was your decision, I tell myself (sternly). You can't blame Barry (God, how I'd love to!) An old drama, blaming him because I'm in some country and I forget why I'm there. But in this case. I chose the country and I chose the dates. Damn!

I always go through this. It's nothing new. And oddly, though I say I want to stop, I'm often the first of us to say, "Let's move on."

The only remedy is to take the next step, whatever that is. Right now the next step is to wake Barry, who is in our dark room and won't wake by himself, and doesn't like to sleep late.

OK, that's what I'll do. Go wake him, make us coffee, go to the store for yogurt, come back, we'll have breakfast, then stroll around Cartagena (which reminded me last night strongly of New Orleans, where I went to college), and surrender to the day.