In Playa, about the middle of January, I had a melt down because of another nudity conflict with my wife. There was almost no opportunity in Casa Verde, the building we shared with at least four other rental units, for nudity other than in the bedroom and the dining room which had become my writing centre. In my crash, I deleted the photos which I had taken which hadn’t been very many since our arrival in Mexico. I also deleted the blog site to which I had been posting. And, I didn’t revive the blog site until now with a new blog site home for Through a Naturist Lens. It didn’t stop there. I cut up my bathing suit. It was as if I was trying to erase more than just public proofs of my “flirtation” with nudity. My wife bought me two new bathing suits and I stuffed nudity into a deep, dark closet and locked it. I put on my best game face and pretended like a pro as you can see in the photo above.
When we moved to Puerto Morelos in February, because of the arrangement that had been made with KT, our landlady, about my nudity in the garden, I was able to be nude both in and out of the studio a good portion of the time. No photos were taken. The only other times I would get nude was when we were in deep enough water near the beach so that I could put my mini-brief bathing suit on my wrist. It was a small act of rebellion which crept out of the closet I had thought was forever sealed.
For the most part, life went well as I worked on the edits to my first novel, A Small Company of Pilgrims. Our neighbours from two doors down, came to stay in Puerto Morelos in March. We ended up spending a good amount of time with them. They also got to experience being in the water next to us while I was wearing my bathing suit as a wrist band. There was no secret that I was nude. This is the same couple with her being the one to visit our house when I was nude back in Canada, the one who was mentioned in a couple of posts.
Then, I began to take photos again for a new version of my blog site which like its predecessor was deleted not long after we returned to Canada. One blog post in particular was suggested by my wife, Why I am a Naturist. The blog post was shared with everyone who followed me on Facebook. The several hundred followers I had on Facebook got to see the posts which I had carefully cropped so as to not offend. My being a naturist became public knowledge for all who were following me on Facebook. By February 2nd I had 110 copies of my Naked Poetry book downloaded and 149 copies of my Broken Road story downloaded.
And then, another meltdown happened and I lost all the posts and images for the past three and a half months.
Today it is Earth Day, the first day in a new attempt to return to balance as a naturist. I took this photo in the early afternoon at the entrance to a provincial park about three-quarters of an hour from my home. It is the first saved naturist photo from 2014. I am trying to understand my habit of destroy and rebuild, over and over again. I wonder if I should belong to a form of Alcoholics Anonymous. I fell off the wagon and I am once again getting up and trying again.