Since arriving at the family home in South Florida, I’ve enjoyed the pleasures of renewing family ties with a branch of my extended, blended and befriended family -- a family that includes married couples, as well as the formerly married; their brothers and sisters; their children, who share one or both biological parents; lots of grandchildren; and all sorts of life experiences and worldviews. Christian, atheist, capitalist, anarchist, conservative, “new age,” and “strictly business,” are just a few of the perspectives that inform and challenge one another around here. The family is united by respect and loyalty and love. We have feasted; sunned ourselves on the beach; watched a couple of horse races and toured a casino; faced the multiple, life-threatening illnesses of one family member and the accidental fall of another that has resulted in her breaking her back (at the age of 85). In the midst of it all, I learned that one of my aunts, the last of my mother’s generation, died (leaving my generation to begin dying off to make room for the next). I also received the joyous news that I will be a grandmother again (grandchild number three) by the time this trip is over, come spring. And so life goes on, within us and without us..

Because these past three weeks have been unexpectedly eventful, I’ve stayed a week longer than I intended. But Renegade Research is my own attempt, as an organic intellectual (to use Antonio Gramsci’s term), to make sense of and draw lessons from reality as it arises in my experience; and so, any situation in which I’m involved with others, has its own lessons to teach and its own knowledge to impart -- and sometimes even some dots to connect.

Except for the illnesses and deaths of relatives, this part of my trip has been mostly pure pleasure. But whether pleasurable or painful, or somewhere in between, experiences can become a rut if they simply become repetitious and don’t challenge us to see things in new ways. I’m about to radically de-centre my own perspective in a place where I speak only a few words of the language, where I know only one person, and where I will have no definite itinerary.

Today I’ll be flying to Mexico City, my next destination. I’d have preferred going by boat and bus, but the ferry that used to go between Tampa and Mérida is no longer in service. I’d almost rather swim than fly, but sometimes the most interesting, most enlarging experiences come our way when we’re not getting our way.

feral@renegaderesearch.org