Last night, my wife and I went to Chili's in the hotel zone, and enjoyed sitting at seaside, in Chili's of all places, and feeling quite content to be there. Mexican families were on the beach as the night settled in, and we walked barefoot on the beach, feeling completely safe in spite of the dark. Cancun, and Mexico, has now become our home, and the lines between countries, well blurred.... ________________________ Eighteen years ago, when I first began living abroad, I lived in Russia, where the closest thing to a billboard was a neon sign on top of a building exhorting people to be careful with fire. This felt good to me, because I'd become disgusted with the commercialization of life in the U.S. With time, and the opening of the former Soviet Union to western ways, this changed, and a parody of western life, more crass and violent than anything you could find in the west took root, calling itself capitalism; as a result, I felt compelled to move further east, looking for something more pure. Now, after many years of being chased eastward by the process of commercialization of life, which we equate with development, I've given up, accepting Walmart and other western influences as part of the life I must live. In Mexico, it has reached the point where these businesses don't even seem American to me, anymore, just part of life in Mexico. ____________________
