San Pancho Year: 21 April 2010

I came to San Pancho on the 22nd of April, 2009, 364 days ago.  I arrived fresh from a Northwest year marked by freak heat waves, crippling blizzards, and one of the dreariest, rainiest springs in memory.  Bruised and battered by the difficult weather and the precipitous downturn of the U.S. economy, I arrived in San Pancho feeling like a person just released from a carnival ride that had run too long.   


Years of confining my aspirations within the bounds of what is safe, both financially and personally, had broken me in a way I wasn't sure I could recover from, at least not fully, not with the vigor with which I once embraced life and uncertainly, challenge and opportunity.  I was burnt out, jaded, dull in mind and spirit and desperate for a change.  I chose San Pancho sight unseen, hoping, wishing, praying, dreaming on my feet, even, that here I could create a new beginning.  


I soon learned that I'd stumbled into a very special place.  San Pancho seemed to me a place lost in time.  Upon coming here, I was immediately flooded with memories of my childhood in rural Hawaii. Life at this latitude produces so many of the same effects of light and temperature, flora and fauna, that I often felt as if I'd seen this or that little corner of the pueblo, that stretch of jungle road or beachfront before, perhaps in a dream.  


A year later, flashes of deja vu still hold me in thrall.  But nostalgia has been pushed to the margins of my experience by my year in San Pancho.  New memories and increasingly complex layers of understanding have distinguished this place from my childhood home.  No longer Hawaii-lite, San Pancho now holds it's own distinct place in my consciousness.


When the decision was made to leave the U.S., I was one of 5 who wanted to expatriate and start over together.  Two  of the original group lost their dream of Mexico to the collapse of the U.S. economy.  The three of us who remained harbored big dreams of a social business enterprise and NGO building, but those dreams died along the way as well, casualties of changing priorities and changing lives. 


6 months ago, as I contemplated the changes to our plans, I wrote, 

I started on this adventure as one of a group of five. Five quickly became three. Now I wonder if three will become two. Alone, I worry, what will we do? 


...I won't pretend the thought hasn't kept me awake a night or two. But the fear is balanced by the excitement of making a life in the world and of the rich narrative I can create if I have the courage to act boldly, even if it costs me material comforts. Every lifetime is a story that unfolds in chapters. The materials with which our stories are bound may not be so grand, but, if we are lucky, the story we make from what we are given is up to us...

At the one year mark, my resolve to live boldly has been hardened by experience.  The insecurity that so defines the lives of the majority of the people of Mexico has bolstered my belief that none of us is promised more than each moment as it is lived; none more than we can hold in our two hands today, now, and even that only at the behest of others.  I intend to revel in the experience of life as it unfolds, unfettered by fears of the future and all it might hold.  

My impetuous embrace of an uncertain future has caused some to comment, to marvel at what they call courage.  But, you know, it's not courage so much as fear that has driven me out into the world.  I fear the certainty of regret at the end of a life lived small.

This embrace of uncertainty, buoyed as it is by the belief that nothing is really certain, is something I believe us middle-aged queers have to contribute in the way of life experience.  We have seen the world change dramatically in the last 40 years.  


We grew up in a dangerous world where assaults and murders were commonplace.  Those of us who came of age in the 80s remember the AIDS crisis.  In those years we lost what seemed like everything - our friends, our freedom, our youthful fearlessness - only to learn that it is possible to find solace in survival, in our resiliency and the confidence derived from our ability to recreate ourselves, even in the wake of an ongoing pandemic.  

There were no templates for this life.  Yet, we knew that if we allowed fear to control us, to confine our aspirations and define us as people, we might just as well not live at all.  We defied fear and threw open the closet door.  We accepted danger, understanding that it was the price of freedom.  

Today we find ourselves living lives we could never have dreamed of as children.  We never imagined we would experience even as much as tolerance, much less be embraced by so many.  The world has changed, even here in rural Mexico.  That change was caused by the collective decision on the part of thousands, even millions of us, to dare to come out from under cover; to live and love and celebrate our difference in hostile company.  

That the stigma was so great and the danger so real gave us the fortitude to live boldly.  That stigma, that danger, that bleak picture of a future alone and unloved was a gift, at least for me. It forced me to take a leap of faith, to accept a future of uncertainty that has been richer and freer than was promised by the certain limitations and humiliations to which I was born.  

When I came here, my aspirations and my confidence were lofted above fear by this experience.  I chose to give up my life in the U.S., to give away the safety of the cage for the freedom of the treacherous wild, just as I chose to give up the closet.  And I've learned that the wild isn't so wild after all; that people are just people, the world over, and the security we are promised if we just follow the rules and are careful not to rock the boat in the U.S. is not all it's cracked up to be.  


I'm not sure I will continue on this road forever but for now, at least, I'm enjoying the journey.