Peru, Where are You?

Foreignness and familiarity: you can find them anywhere. In your own country. Par exemple, Florida. I've been here before. I get Florida. It has the same chain stores as the Northeast, the geckos and little iguanas have long since stopped surprising me, and the genetic makeup of the people, while further along in years, hasn't radically changed.

But what's strange is living in a gated community. Gated communities do not thrive in the north, and I really don't understand their existence in the south, except as an extension of the "club." The neighborhood doesn't just "happen" to have a golf course; the golf course just happens to have a neighborhood. This is a state in which residences are designed around the attractions (golf courses, Disney World, swamps, and so on) to maximize the amount of money they can suck dry from the elderly. And I don't think the retirees would want it any other way.

I love so many kinds of writing, but my dream, my absolute dream, is to write-on-the-go. I wasn't being cute when I called this blog, littlemissnomad (OK, a little). That's the goal, to get moving and to write from there. Moscow, Australia, Argentina, Hawaii, Berlin, hell, Antarctica, the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, so on and so forth, until I get tired and have to retire in London.

I'm trying to write this part of my novel that's set in Peru, but it's hard to write when I can't see it in my head. If I don't see it in my head, I generalize, and that makes for crap writing.

In other words, I'm getting restless and worried about how much writing I'm getting done, and if it's any good. Moreover, I'm going back North in early April, finishing up what I need to finish up, and then after Easter, I have two months before my dad's wedding and my summer job commences. What am I going to do and where am I going to do it? That's the question. If anyone knows a cheap place for me to go that ain't on the eastern seaboard, I am all ears.