I sent Britton this link about Puerto Rico. I signed up for electronic updates about Puerto Rico from the New York Times so I occasionally see something in there about PR. I thought Britton summed it up perfectly well with his comment:
I couldn’t even scrape the frost off my windshield this morning. The -4 degree temperature seems to make a super bond with the frost and the glass. It was worse than the blue countertops!
Whiskey and fresh coconut water in the warmth of PR sounds good about now. So does live salsa and alcapurrias.
Sometimes I think maybe people think we are escapists. Well, I am reading a new book called Getting Stoned with Savages about a young couple who move to and live in the South Pacific and I thought his sentiments exactly:
“I have been called many things in my life but if there has been one constant, one barb, one arrow flung my way time after time, it is the accusation that I am, in essence, nothing more than an escapist. Apparently this is bad, suspect, possibly even un-American….Escapism, we are to believe, is evidence of a deficiency in character, a certain failure of temperment, and like so many -isms, is to be strenuously avoided. How do you expect to get ahead? people ask. But the question altogether misses the point. The escapist doesn’t want to get ahead. He simply wants to get away. I understand this, for I am an unapologetic escapist.”
-From Getting Stoned with Savages by J. Maarten Troost
We may be escapists but we can’t wait for our Puerto Rico dream to come true.
I can see where escapism is a “bad” thing if you have always shirked responsibility– social, financial, ecological, for example, and the word does imply said character traits. But for people who have pursued the American dream for decades (and maybe it turned out to be a bad dream, or just an empty promise concealed by smoke and mirrors that didn’t work out like they thought it would), moving to any slow-paced, warm weather area while continuing to work to improve their character and endeavor to lead a sustainable lifestyle, what’s not to admire about that??? There has to be a better word to describe such a transition other than “escapism”. Fran
Don’t fret about wanting to have adventures. You’ve lived in the same place a long time and making a move shows you have spunk and courage. Lots of folks are afraid of anything new, whether it be a place, an idea, or an experience. The nice thing about new places is that one gets new food, friends, experiences, adventures, climate and perspective all at once. I thought about you when I read in the paper today that yesterday Greeley and Laramie WY were the two coldest places in the continental U.S. — it said minus 6 Brrrrr… We are still golfing out back, but will be getting cold weather soon. I think.