En el año pasado

In the past year. . .

​​Having everything in walking distance used to be a dream of mine, but as I grew out of my idealism and my teenage years, it seemed like just that: something that could never be a reality. My aunt used to live on Divis​a​dero Street in San Francisco, and when I was 18, the idea of living in a tiny apartment with a stairwell out the kitchen window, a restaurant on one corner, and a market on the other seemed like the perfect little life for me to live someday. Shortly after I recognized the amount of discomfort associated, including racket from the street, traffic preventing you from getting out of those city blocks, and the debilitating expense in a city like that. I realized that lifestyle in America is more trouble that it's worth and accepted suburbia as the only livable option in the US, accepting the compromise as I made my little life in Hawaii.

Last year I had the pleasure of living on Diamond Head Road for the winter, waking up to walk across the street to see sunrise, sunset, and whales breaching, swimming once or twice a day, but not having a market I could walk to for my basic necessities.  One of the few times I rode my bike from Safeway with a basket full of groceries, I arrived home with a sad carton of cracked eggs. At that time I walked around Kapiolani park, imagining my next place being even better than the amazing cottage I had (despite plenty of naysayers) and can’t believe how MUCH better it is, exactly 1 year later.

Here I am in Tenerife, a place most of us hadn't heard of until I landed here, and situated in Calatella, an east side, European island neighborhood that has blown my socks off. When I'm not walking to and from the fun within minutes of my condo, I zip around the four lane highways in my tiny rental car at 120km per hour, not having crossed​​ a single pothole yet, on this island almost the exact size of Oahu.  That car rental also costs me far less than it would to own the​​ same thing in America, with no maintenance or commitment I walk down to the black sand beach morning and evening, have a coffee or a vino for 1-2 euros, and pop into any of the three mercados in walking distance of me to buy fresh seafood to throw in a skillet for​​ dinner. They sell local meat and cheese from the deli by weight so I can get a single serving, bottles of wine run $2, and the frutería had a special on papaya today, E1 per kilo. Yes folks, that’s 50 cents a pound for fresh Canarian papaya. So sweet and almost as seedless as the ones specially grown in Foster Village with love. 

Every time I jump off a cliff I somehow land more elevated. I do believe I’ve beaten the laws of gravity; today I heard it called “inverse paranoia”. The universe is somehow working to make my life better and better.

http://pronoia.net/def.html