i am a lady. i am a dama. i tug at my white fleece blanket, they gave me, because the air conditioning was too cold.
the windows are steamy, in the most exciting of ways - like a car after you make out with someone on a cold night, or the kitchen at christmas. the palm trees' movement in the caribbean wind is irresistible, of course.
my scarf is draped around my knees popping out of my pencil skirt under the table. I twirl my $250 peso pinot noir and realize, this color, this could only be pinot noir, i learned this a few years ago now, the color of a rich california coast pinot. central valley, for sure.
i always wish there were gates in this wall letting the sea breathe. these hotels are true fortresses, the water could go 20' up against the windows and we might see some frantic fish in the event of a hurricane watching us back in this human aquarium of a restaurant, the perfect tropical foliage now sea flowers, and the palms mustily flooded to their tips with crystalline blue water.
Sometimes I have nightmares about witnessing tsunamis. I am often on a hill, often in a spectacular hotel, often poorly made; often with someone I love, who I know is fleeting and will not last long in my heart because
"Es una marca dinamarca, en el estilo británico, de porto portugués, EN méxico, importado no sé donde. jaja!" I joked to my well-trained waiter. Nah, I didn't need to try the porto. The bottle was half empty. Of course it wasn't corked. The temperature was perfect. It was light, like a Pimm's. In color and in intensity. A springtime port.
My friends from tsunami dreams, it's not that they don't last, it's that dreams don't before you forget them. Strangely, my tsunami dreams are fantastic. Within them they are so colossal it becomes vivid, and I know I am dreaming, similar to when I know I am happy: everything becomes sublimely visible and the forces of nature are upon me.
If I go a month without traveling to Cancun, my first night in Cancun, I take off my clothes, get in bed, open the doors as wide as they go, turn the A/C to 80 degrees and pray for the warm sea air to fill the room and warm me and unravel my lungs into a summery night I missed so much in California and then Mexico City. The summer night feeling. Damp covers. But with this spiritually colossal force of the ocean, visible many stories down, brilliant and fluorescent almost even at night, the somehow wild, most majestic caribbean sea. The caribbean sea is so tame that you open to it wholly. It's not a leap of faith to go walking, but for jellyfish. It's not you versus the sea, it's you in the sea. It's you, amazed at this insanely beautiful sea. But man, does this place speak to you at night, not unlike a full moon, exclusively through magnetism and iridescent majesty. Except that I don't believe in feudalism, or whatever monarchies are supposed to have represented, and I honestly can't imagine goddesses
The affogato with crema and canela and avellanas has arrived. Homemade gelato and biscotti. Holy crap.
Yemanja is the goddess of the sea, from Afro-Brazilian myth. The sea is the vehicle to imagining home, identity, freedom, according to one Afro-Brazilian writer and poet. This affogato is insanely delicious.
A while back, I was sitting up straight, grateful for the lobster, stroking the gold satin ribbon draped across the table. Thinking about being 80 and a little excited about it, thinking about some equivalent of the Grand Hotel Budapest for me, here in the caribbean to - - ok, i'm totally uncomfortable talking about my own death, but one morning after one of those first nights here in cancun, when the magnetism wildly takes me over and i peer over at dawn into the ocean and put as much of my spirit into it as it is releasing onto me, I might have even said out loud the voice in my head was so confident "i am going to die here". And that was the most deeply peaceful fulfilled feeling. I will be fulfilled one day, so deeply and peacefully. Something I am few places, but in this fortressed spot, nature still overwhelms in an eternal way. Really. i'm still creeped out at myself for having admitted this last bit.
So, I am 28. I'm reading about engineering roles in Paris, my interview is at 7:30am. I don't know if I want this more or Malaysia. I got promoted at Google, and as long as I go real big, I can imagine staying with them, this technological freedom. I can see into the future. My job isn't to inspire. It's dangerous to focus, some say. This isn't new.
It's a good lesson, anyway. Who not to focus on, you know? And remember if I'm not useful for someone, I could be wildly useful for someone else wildly useful for me. This is the kind of career faith and relationship faith I have at 28.
The pinot noir has worn off, and I miss the humidity. I'm going upstairs.
***addendum: the waiter gave me a single red rose with my bill. "Ahh, uao, que es esto?" "es una detalle ...." "do you give it to all the women who dine alone here?" I wanted to sound as least rude as possible. For curiosity, how many of these roses do you give a night? "between treinta y ...." Surely, many women may come for business here. "Yes, we give it to the nice pretty girls". He was giving me a compliment, not calling me a woman. I stopped to smell the rose, before I put the card in. "Well, I'm just writing here." I said. Somehow it all came out softer in Spanish, but who knows how I came off. Romance lives. A sideways reminder that I live in another culture, that I am a woman and need to be reminded that being alone is not ok, pitiful, or worthy of cherish, i'm really not sure, but this glassware sure is nice, i ALWAYS accept roses, and the waiter really made me smile due to his over-the-top service, and I truly don't think he was flirting.
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