The Maz

I've been missing Mazatlan a lot lately. It's just, for me, spring is kind of synonymous with the place. It was Spring 1995 when I first started to feel comfortable there and it was spring 1996 when I returned and felt like I had come home. To give you an idea, I checked out a map of the city's bus routes and could just about feel myself there again, imagining the city as I rode through it, remember the sites, the landmarks, the neighborhoods and even the street names. Part of the problem is my tendency to indulge nostalgia. Mazatlan was great and I dwell on that, wishing there was a way I could recapture the time I spent there, the things I felt there, all that stuff. It's only compounded by the fact that if I went back to visit, it would be as tourist. I'd spend maybe a week there and come home. There would be no way to get back what I experienced there 10 years. I guess that's why people say you can never go home again. You can't. The past has passed. But I'd like to think I could live there again someday. It seems the only way, in my mind, to reconnect with the city, the culture, the people, the members, is to live there. Then I could troll the markets, eat the food, visit the members, go to church, introduce Becky to everything wonderful about the city, give my girls some culture. I'll keep dreaming, keep wishing I was pulling in seven figures a year so I could buy a little bungalow in downtown Maz and eat all the sweet, sweet Mexican food I wanted. I guess I better write that book.