March 1, 2006 - Guadalajara, Mexico / We arrived safe and sound. It was bright and sunny and warm. The air smelled like fresh corn tortillas, mangoes and diesel fuel. There were family waiting for us at the airport.

It was very difficult getting packed and out of Santa Monica. Because we weren't just packing for a vacation. We were leaving.
Did we bring the right assortment of clothes? The right software, USB cords? Enough trail mix? We couldn't really be sure.

We did the best we could and we were proud of the hard work we did accomplish in the previous 48 hours: the truck and car rentals, the vast shutting down of the Grid: electric, gas, satellite, DSL, mail forwarding to the local mail center; the packing and transporting of our belongings into a 10x10 storage unit 45 miles north along the coast, the long goodbyes and dinner parties with friends and family, the organization of portable files of papers and voluminous documents of our lives that needed to accompany us on our journey.

And for two months prior, we had carefully sorted through the house and our belongings, disposing the detritus of our lives with yard sales, new adopted homes for favorite plants, kitchenware giveaways to friends and family. We were determined to end up with only 25% of what we had. We imagined the essential Zen simplicity of some mythic new life we had always dreamed about. Tatami mats, wooden bridges over koi ponds, walls of glass and concrete floors with flat screen everything and wireless Bluetooth everywhere. Mountains and waterfalls in the back yard, vegetable gardens and fruit trees in the front.

And finally, everything we had was evaluated and judged on it's merit. There were three categories. 'Definitely out'. 'Maybe save it'. 'Take another look'. Not a single item was deemed worthy enough for an immediate 'definitely save it'.
Favorite old clothes. ancient masking tape. Spools of jute and hemp rope, rolls of scented drawer liners. Document files of 20 years of utility bills. Demitasse spoons. Paperbacks of The Call of the Wild and The Scarlet Letter. Duplicate photographs, 2 for 1 specials, from a time when one went into a drugstore and gave over rolls of unexposed film into the hands of a 18 year old who cropped and rearranged your scenic shots and then tinted them blue. Out. Out. All of it.

It is largely true that paperwork left in an untidy pile to be filed later, will die a natural death. However the luxury of a deathwatch was not an option anymore. And everything you never finished, every unframed print, unfinished photo album, unfiled correspondence rises up to mock you.
Some of it was difficult. An unused lazy boy chair had to go. I ran my hand over the perforated top for one last time, where the beloved Vanilla, now long dead, had pecked and torn tiny holes into the beige leather as cockatiels will do when left unattended. 300 or 400 books went to the Montana Avenue Branch Library. Let some one else try to finish Turgenev, Didion and Balzac. Jelly jars with Tom and Jerry cartoons on them, that we adored. It was as if we were cleaning out the lifetime debris of two recently passed elderly uncles. We were our own undertakers, lawyers, pall bearers. Our lives passed through the eyes of those who would come after us, attend to us and our belongings.

At least we had the luxury of deciding what stayed and what left, unlike my father and his wife who recently lost everything in the ferocity of Hurricane Katrina; fleeing with their lives, one pair of shoes, some army medals, four photographs and a small bag of food only hours before it slammed into their home in Mississippi, filling their home with 8 feet of storm water, turds, dead bodies, and the neighbors lawn furniture.

Better to die in your own filth and paperwork, some say. Stacks of newspapers soaked in cat pee, mounds of castoff clothing where the spare bedroom should be. Let they who inherit do the clean up, they say.

We could not do that. We are Gay. And Mexican. Two subgroups that clean and mop with Pine-sol and water for it's own pleasure. And we imagine and hope that those that come after us, to dispose of our things, find arbequina olives marinating in cloves and tarragon in the fridge and 3 kinds of walnut oil in the pantry and Diane Kennedy cookbooks and boxer briefs from Banana Republic arranged by color. I pray that in my final hours, I have the wherewithal to ask for the computer mouse and the strength to hit delete. delete. delete.

 Imagine for a moment, having to evacuate your home, your city, your country before the Cossacks arrived with their scimitars and animal skin vests, and you had 2 hours to pack whatever you needed and flee. That's how it felt in the final hours before our departure for the airport hotel where we holed up for an overnighter until our plane departed at ten a.m. the next day. It began to rain slightly. We had not eaten anything of substance. I broke down and cried in the car on the way from our hotel to dinner at friend's. I barely had enough strength to see through the rain and dark. We had only six hours to sleep before we re-packed for our flight.

But we did it. And the sun was shining in Guadalajara. And I could see Mama Chuy and Guicho past the gate of the Aduana as we passed through Customs into their welcoming arms.