30 Days

Is not a long time, but it's not nothing either. It's how long I've been a DMT (DiveMaster Trainee) on Roatan, how long since I've left New York's bright hole  for West End's brown one.  It has been an interesting month.  Lot's of time to look at sunsets and stars and to be sad about being alone and not wanting to be.  Also diving and carrying tanks and not killing yourself with your sausage and listening to Memphis Slim.  Traveling, or being. sure is different.  You are never off the net, never (or always) out of touch.  Local R-O-A-T-A-N radio blares where XM once ruled.  Shows local control is not always the answer.

Tonite, I've been wondering whether people see the same thing when they look at something.  I don't mean whether Jo looks mad but whether blue is blue and how many blades does the turning fan have.  I've also been wondering whether the act of retirement inevitably alters one's life.

I remember years of walking from the car to my office and saying goodbye to the day - emerging in darkness. Here I watch the sun set, I live with people who want to have fun, I visit a magical world, and I get paid too (OK - not true). Can I maintain my attitude in my usual environs. Tune in for the answer to this question.

The place is magical: beach, sun, openness, freedom. Weather amazing. The town sits around a mud track which keeps the pace safe and sociable. The plan is to pave it, thus enabling profit and commerce. After the skies of NYC, the stars are quite unreal. Perhaps not the stars of the high desert but magical in themselves as three planets divide the sky. Reminiscent of the sky above Tulum in the fall of 74 and that's the problem for it is 2012 not 1974, and I am at the other end of the reef which decorates the coast of from here to there, and perhaps at the other end of a life as well.