That's Gonna Leave A Mark

source

“Farm Help wanted. Family farm located North West of Goodland, Kansas. Dryland & Irrigation. Housing provided. Salary negotiable. Call for more details. Evenings only and ask for Ed.” ad on Craigslist

That doesn’t sound like a bad gig, it’s a little windy out there but it’s quiet, not a lot going on. Pretty easy to get away from the brouhaha of the new health bill. Along the old highway west of Goodland is an old native stone fence and years ago you could find arrow heads and fossils in the ditches. I wonder if anyone would notice if I just disappeared and sent money in from the farm? I also have a romantic image of the “housing”, I’m picturing a cute little frame farm house with a big Cottonwood tree in the front. The light golden in the evening and blue in the morning as it ricochets off the white washed walls and golden wood floors. Realistically, it’s probably a 1970’s single wide trailer with dirty lime green shag carpeting. I also have a romantic notion of the person who will ultimately get the job. I’m picturing someone like Beau Bridges in Crazy Heart or any of David Straithairn characters in his Sayles films during the 90’s. Maybe a woman like Cher'scharacter in Silkwood. This is the perfect job for a contemplative person with a past who is interested in working their body so hard their mind can’t remind them of what is broken in their spirit. I could dig that. Especially since the salary is negotiable and I could only work on a farm, outside in the elements rain, cold or shine for about eleventy million dollars. However, wasn’t it Thomas Wolfe in Look Homeward Angel who said something to the effect of no matter where you go, there you are? So yeah, day in and day out you fuss over the irrigation system, repair fences, spread manure and work until your body aches. But you still have that time just after dark when it’s too early for bed and too late for work that your mind reminds you of what you are running away from and even the stars in that big dark sky aren‘t a comfort or a congenial companion. Actually, someone like me, a semi suburban, semi housewife running away from her children and working on a farm would make for an interesting novel. Because sweaty, dirty work is a hell of a lot easier than raising teenagers.

Wally killed an important member of the family Friday. Mitzy. He hit a patch of ice and lost control of the old Mitz, slamming into the back of another SUV. Airbags deployed, front end destroyed. Car gone. After I discovered no one was hurt and all the paperwork had been taken care of, he was safe and the ticket was simple I hung up the phone and very professionally burst into tears at the nurses station. One. More. Thing. I. Get. To. Deal. With. Visions of hanging out at a café in Goodland were looking pretty good.

Poor Mitzy, this wasn’t her first rodeo, either. I tried to destroy her in 2003. It was at the bottom of my life just before I crawled out of a hole and away from a desperate situation. The only reason we were able to fix Mitzy was because while the radiator was almost in my lap, the airbags stayed securely in the dash and steering wheel. I still dream about those seconds when I realized I was going to hit the tiny car in front of me, praying out loud I wouldn’t kill or maim the driver. My prayer was answered and the car I hit slid up and under my front end. One of the first things I said to the nice young man in the car was: “I can’t imagine how frightening it was to see me barreling towards you.” He gave me a stunned nod.

Wally was able to calmly relay to me what had happened but then he paused and said: “I know how much you loved your truck.“ His biggest fear then spilled forth: I would kick him out of the house for wrecking Mitzy. Well, yeah, if he was using it as a rolling meth lab at the time. Poor kid, he is convinced he is the biggest fuck up on the planet because he is having a time of it finding a job and now he wrecked a car. He’s a little mystified why I’m being so nice to him but I figure there isn’t enough room for me to kick him in the ass because he is doing a great job of it all on his own. The absolute irony of this is he was on his way home from a successful job interview. We will find a way and make a way to get him to and from work. Wally also thinks he is the only member of the family who has wrecked a car. He momentarily forgot how I wrecked the car, how his granddad rolled a car in 1971, and tried to take out a sign in 2007. He probably doesn’t’ realize his cousin wrecked a car when he was in high school. Accidents happen. Some are worse than others. This one could have been bad, too. I am just thankful it wasn’t. And God is really good at putting people in your life when you need them, too. The tow truck driver happened to be in the office when we arrived this morning to settle up on the bill. He was jovial and tried to joke with Wally, asking him if this was the first car he killed and telling us about the trouble he got into as a teenager. The manager was empathetic and extended his condolences for the loss of the old truck and was genuinely relieved to see Wally wasn’t hurt. It was one of those moments which restore my faith in humans as being ultimately kind and benevolent creatures.

The weather was sort of nasty today, hard cold wind under gray skies that threatened snow over the west side of town. Perfect day for a funeral, all we needed was some rain. Poor old girl, the right side looked untouched (Wally had just given her a shampoo and a spit shine, she was looking hawt) but the front end was mashed and the grill was gone, you could see the radiator and her left “eye” was dangling from the socket. The windshield had a shattered spot as if something had been hurled into it. From the inside. I felt my heart leap into my throat.

“What hit the windshield?“

I knew the answer wasn’t “head” because Wally always wears his seat belt and won’t start the car until everyone is buckled in. (hmmm how would I know this?)

“Oh just my hand” was his flippant reply.

I started to blubber, the small burn on the left side of his face was scary enough but the idea he might have broken his right hand was too much too bear. It didn’t get any easier when I opened the drivers side door. Opening the door was sobering. Like a Jack-in-the-Box, the steering wheel had popped open and the air bag was out. The dashboard reminded me of a cardboard cake made specifically for a girl to jump out and sing a randy song or “Happy Birthday”. There were papers and things tossed all over the front seat and floorboards. I was reaching around looking through the documents to make sure there wasn’t anything I needed or wanted when I came across a pristine piece of yellow paper folded around several old photographs. The photos and letter looked as if it had just been taken from the envelope and the letter was in my mother’s handwriting. I groaned, this was all too much and now this artifact. I wanted to run off to the farm. I glanced over the letter and scanned the pictures. I didn’t immediately grasp when it had been written but it was a long time ago. I showed it to Wally and he didn’t remember ever seeing it. After we finished our sad errand and I was at home I put pieces together and figured out it was written in about 1997. Three years before I even bought the car. The letter ends with: “Kiss Evan for me and hug and kiss yourself, too.” The idea of Wally reaching over and kissing his brother made me laugh. Mother wanted us to know she was watching over Wally. Mom died in our house, actually in what is now Wally’s room; me and The Girl hear her voice every once in a while and I have lucid dreams about her. What a comfort it is to know my mother is looking after us. I had suspected as much but now I know it for sure.

I must confess that I am grieving the loss of this vehicle. Not so much because the next few months could be really interesting in a hellish way: sharing a car or chauffeuring him around while I save enough for a beater mobile. It’s because of what Mitzy symbolized for me. She was my emancipation. Mitzy was the first car I bought all by myself and at the ripe old age of 39, too. No father or husband offering input, down payments or anything. I did it all on my own. She really was my first car. And we saw a lot of the country together; hauled a lot of antiques, groceries, dirt and kids. She served us well for one hundred and nine thousand miles. Rest in peace, Mitzy.

"Fire Bad, Tree Pretty"

picture source

March seems to be about continuing my intellectual break: between the Jersey Girl bounty hunter novels on vacation last month and overdosing on Buffy The Vampire Slayer via Hulu this month I’m thinking my brain has called it quits on thinking/sussing out/deducting/inducting/ or figuring out anything beyond blood sucking demons or bad guys in Atlantic City. I’m not sure if it’s all the crap swirling around me and happening to my family and those I love or if menopause is eating my brain. I’ve been meaning to blog about menopause but I keep forgetting to and then when I remember I just get all choked up about it and grab a cookie instead.

But I have to confess, Buffy is making me happy. I didn’t watch Buffy in the late nineties when it came on television the first time. I wish I could say it’s because I was busy making Dinosaur Dioramas for a third grade project or cupcakes for a preschool. But no I was a Xena girl. Not enough time in my life thirteen years ago for two chop sokey camp-a-thons television shows. Ward blamed Xena: Warrior Princess for the questioning I did about my sexual orientation while I was in therapy eleven years ago. Um…yeah, cuz teevee shows make people gay that’s why everyone who watched Will and Grace have thrown aside their real lives and are in New York City looking for Karen and a cocktail. I wonder if I had watched Buffy all those years ago if I would have gone to a therapist wondering if I were a vampire slayer or a watcher? Good thing I didn’t, my blogging would be from a small room in a quiet hospital.

A padded cell sounds good about now. I managed to ruin both of my sons’ lives last Wednesday before 0730 in the morning! It was awesome! Because everyone knows I live to ruin my kids’ lives: I told Wally he had to get his shit together or he was losing the privilege to drive my car and then I explained to Beav he was going to his dad’s house after school rather than my house (where the PS3 lives). Wow, you would have thought their lives had just become Shakespeare meets Brecht in the level of tragedy I had inflicted upon them both. If I had that kind of power I certainly wouldn’t be exercising it on the likes of them. Hell, I would have sent my favorite president to hate--W--and his little friends up into a roaring puff of smoke about the time Sunnydale was swallowed up by the Hell mouth.

Menopause seems a likely cause for my lackluster intellectual leanings is that it took me AN ENTIRE SEASON of Buffy to figure out the extremely droll irony of a Hell mouth existing under a high school. I had to put the episode on pause so I could laugh and laugh and laugh again when the irony finally sank into my withering gray matter. Then I was halfway through season two when the light bulb went on: Whedon didn’t take the vampire stuff seriously and was poking fun at a genre, himself, and the fans.

I are very smart.

Or maybe I’m taking a brain break because life feels really hard lately. I’m exhausted by a series of bad events taking place in the lives of people I know and love. I’m really tired of worrying I’m coming home to or waking up to a dead dog. I’m sick of nagging a kid about cleaning up after himself or nagging to help around the house (just pick one and I’m nagging at him); I’m sick of the patients who--on some days--feel like Whedonesque demons with bad latex faces and glow in the dark eyes holding me down and sucking my soul out of my open mouth. I think its winter. It’s been dark and gray this winter and we haven’t had as much sun as we usually have. Add a child who feels like a failure at the ripe old age of 19 (Dude, save that for 30 years from now, ok when you‘ve really made some boneheaded mistakes) with a dollop of frustration surrounding the continued disinterest in his sons exhibited by the Asshole I Was Stupid Enough To Breed With, and ice all of that with ever fluctuating hormones and you have the makings of a really hard winter and looking for a friend in Mr. Stabby. Too bad things like a child preceding a parent in death, stage 3 cancer and broken hearts aren’t vampires a slayer could stake in their hearts so they dissolve into a pile of gray ashes.

"Whatever is causing the Joan Collins 'tude, deal with it. Embrace the pain, spank your inner moppet, whatever, but get over it." -- Cordelia

Day Light Savings time has helped tremendously. It’s a pleasure to be sitting here at 1815 and the sun is just beginning to wane. The second Saturday in March springs us forward to summer. Springs me forward to all sorts of things like working in the yard and spanking my inner moppet.

When Good-bye Means Hello

ADD girl has three separate pieces started for this week’s blog. Fortunately, the other two will keep because they aren’t going to seem any less current in a week or three from today and y’all will never know next weeks idea didn’t spring forth from my forehead the second I sat at the computer. (Oh don’t I wish!) I’m on day three of three off and I’ve kept myself busy with projects in the drafty, dark basement I ironically refer to--when I’m feeling expansive--”the studio”. We celebrated my birthday in fine style at my favorite drinking hole. Nothing like starting a dreaded birthday in a whimsically decorated room sipping a breakfast martini with two of your very favorite people on the planet.

I finished organizing all the lace, trims, linens and fabrics I have been collecting or inherited over the years this past week, too. I refurbished a few tee shirts, sweaters and made a dress this week, too. I’m not such a great seamstress, very slow and can’t get it perfect enough before frustration sets in but this week, I swear I was channeling my mom; a talented seamstress and designer. I was doing things I didn’t know I had forgotten how to do. It was very cool and Zen.

For about a minute.

So for the last month I've been working on repurposing clothing, using bits and pieces of antique textiles on reclaimed/used clothing. I thought I would love it. I thought I would just love love love designing the clothing, doing the handwork, piecing them together. The Girl thought she would just love love love the grunt work at the sewing machine.

Um no.

And that’s ok.

It felt like a chore except for that minute when I fixed a waistband the majority of the time I was discouraged or bored or both.

But this is the first time I have abandoned a project and didn't feel like a failure or that I was quitting because I was too lazy to finish what I started. Quite to the contrary. I feel liberated in the knowledge that I'm really not meant to design clothing from scratch.

Tis the week for beginning new things or putting to rest old things. A Happiness Project was launched by one of my new Facebook friends (love this woman. Love. Her. Sister of a guy I went to high school with. He was cute and wild and sort of dangerous back then. Apple doesn’t fall too far from that tree or so it seems.) Another friend is meeting with a group of architects and designers to discuss the feasibility of starting a career in design in this economy (I have one word for her: Slim) Finally, I know I have yammered about this to death but my father is getting married! I can’t wait to get to know our new family. Everyone has been so warm and welcoming, it’s grace at work. Besides this I have a great excuse to go to Texas Hill Country as many times as they can stand me.

I'm still putting together an Etsy store (if I'm satisfied with this spring's work, I'll open in July and the few pieces of clothing we did will be there. I have a feeling the store is going to be a mish-mash of all sorts of things I like to do. My biggest fear is I will end up on regretsy.

Today is the first day in a few I’ve been really happy--at the bottom of my soul happy--in about a week. Growing older was weighing on me; my exhaustion with nursing is at a critical point; and my son’s frustration with joblessness and boredom is weighing on me. Apparently, it’s so hard on him he can’t bring himself to clean his room or empty the dishwasher when asked…but that’s another blog, isn’t it? And OH. MY. GOD. his utter lack of sound judgment has me closer to running away than my job! The good news (?) I’m not alone in this and know more mother’s with kids like this than I care to think about with shutter over the future of the planet. His underdeveloped cerebral cortex is making me wish for a lobotomy or running away some place no one think to look for me like Vegas or Pittsburgh.

But isn’t it wonderful I know what makes me happy? Playing with words, ideas, paper, glue, paint, and little bits of stuff makes me happy. Cooking, nagging, and taking care of sick people: not so much.

This made me really happy today:

The Discipline of Joy
3/10/2010
Joy's a choice. Joy's a discipline. Misery's easy. Sometimes, you don't feel like you can handle the burden of joy, so you slouch and frump and sigh and feel exhausted. Joy can be a real pain,like doing elevated push-ups on your TRX system in the basement. Right now, the joy doesn't want to ignite. I'm feeling the pressure of writing against the schedule of outside things. Inside vs. outside. I have to rush back to school today--my writing day--to sit in a PhD oral defense. Tomorrow, I have to teach, though I can get in some writing after. But Friday, I rush away to Tucson
Festival of Books. Love Tucson, love my friends there, love the festival, and I
love fancy hotel weekends with Cinderella. But...Teresita...Tomas...deadlines...work. I can't get it done. So my decision
today is to embrace the discipline of Joy. Capital J. Because I'm feeling a li'l
beat. Luis A. Urrea


It’s a tough job but someone’s got to do it this burden of joy.

Find some joy. Like me, you might have to look in the spaces between the words or the space between the beat of your heart but it’s there. I promise.

In Which Our Heroine Takes a Sledge Hammer To A Wall

"Eeyore," said Owl, "Christopher Robin is giving
a party." "Very interesting," said Eeyore. "I suppose they will be sending
me down the odd bits which got trodden on. Kind and Thoughtful. Not at all,
don't mention it."

"Brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not
there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to show how badly we want
something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want
something badly enough. They are there to keep out the other people.” Randy
Pausch The Last Lecture

I’m a little late on this Last Lecture bandwagon and I finally listened to his lecture about childhood dreams today. A lovely bit of synchronicity in my life because I’m moving towards a couple of childhood dreams in tangible--albeit--baby steps. Too bad I have strong Eeyore tendencies and think any minute the world will discover I’m a faker and completely without any abilities so paralysis sits next to me. My other pet theory I like to play with and coddle is I really have been given the odd bits of talent and luck; those odd bits “which got trodden on”. (That quote always makes me giggle dispite myself) I also have made a BFF out of guilt. I’m facing down my fiftieth year and finally, finally courageous to do something with the imaginative sparks I have been gifted with. What the hell took me so long?

I am my own brick wall.

Not the first wall I’ve encountered.

Years ago, I underwent a reiki healing session help overcome some (then) chronic back pain but what really happened was a release of old bad psychic energy, which in turn did away with the back pain. Stay with me here even if you don’t believe in metaphysical healing because frankly six years later, I’m not too sure I fully believe what happened to me. During the reiki session, I was given a vision of a dirt wall that was created with mud, trash and twigs. Those who were positive forces in my life surrounded me and were helping take down the wall. Bit by bit we disassembled the wall. People would come and go and some would try to get me to stop working when it was obvious I was very tired. My helpers would tire and stop working, trying to convince me to rest but I would gently indicate it wasn’t time for me to stop. When the people who I allowed to weigh me down or hurt me the most entered into the picture, I would physically push them away so they wouldn’t interfere with the task. The wall was circular and in the middle of the wall was an entity (God/Jesus/Buddha/Me whomever it was It) bathed in light and a warmth that shone on the back of my head and I felt comfortably warm. Two of the most malevolent people in my life returned and started to cram dirt, rocks, trash back into the wall as I took it down and I was filled a deep and abiding anger as I pushed them away, screaming at them to leave me and to stop building the wall. When I pushed them away, I would push them away and out of the warm light. Soon the wall was gone and all that was left was a trench and I walked the circle my eyes shut against its’ brilliance and savoring how it felt on my skin. The depth of my grief and the sobbing after the treatment scared my wonderful practitioner. She was very afraid she had released something better left untouched and had accidentally broken something inside of me. Something had broken, it was a dam. A dam of resentment, pain, anger and self-pity. Who knew this was the first step.

Since that day, life has been pretty simple and satisfying over the last six years. I’ve been given enormous and generous gifts of people, time, oppertunities, you name it it’s been given to me. However, in the last eighteen months my life feels like it’s at the brink of becoming a murky, uncertain and difficult mess. Fortunately, I have gained enough personal insight to know this doesn’t mean I’m going to get so ridiculously depressed I can’t leave the house or work or care for myself. Tearing down that dirt wall moved me past the point of suffering from ever again suffering such a depression. Yes, I refer to it as a healing. Because it was.

So why all the naval gazing? I’m exactly 72 hours from my 49th birthday and birthdays always call up the worst in me. My woo-woo therapist told me my mom‘s last month of pregnancy was probably very difficult and that‘s why birthdays are hard for me. Mom couldn‘t remember such details about her pregnancy, which is particularly telling. Whatever, I think it’s just my birthday and I err on the side of too much introspection to begin with. Deep thinking: a Piscean occupational hazard of sorts.

Now I am faced with a big brick wall that I thought was The Economy, my age, my sons, my geography, my socio-economic level. . . That brick wall was everything but what it really was. Me.

I am my own brick wall.

Should I hit my head against in exasperated defeat?

Use it as a prop to watch my final years go by as I ruminate in everything I could have done?

Do I take a sledge hammer to it and move it?


Tigger wants to move it. Eeyore is afraid it will fall on her while she’s swinging at it. But if it falls, it's no longer in the way, right?

So Peace out this week and I will. Promise. And just in case you are getting me presents all I want for my birthday is a son who acts his age and gets his shit together and another son who doesn’t act as if he is the center of the world. A public option for health care would be nice too so I can quit my thankless job without feeling completely irresponsible.

source here

Bodice Ripping Bounty Hunters And Better Living Through Beer

I didn’t write much this vacation. I had these lofty ideas about writing everyday, cycling every morning, reading…blah blah ginger blah. So what did I do? I watched telenovelas, stared at the ocean, played with my camera and drank beer. It’s amazing I didn’t gain any weight because I was on the “Gain At Least Five Pounds Vacation Diet” in Mexico. The Girl pointed out to me we did do a lot of walking. Yeah, to the Mercado del Cerveza about a half mile away from the casita. And we walked or cycled about a mile for the fabulous deep fried shrimp tacos and beer we had almost everyday for dinner or lunch (or both because they lace those tacos with crack). And when I wasn’t drinking beer I was chugging back Mexican Coca Cola. Good thing a serving has about ten fewer calories. I firmly believe vacation should be about suspending one’s present reality. I mean really, I can’t even imagine going to some sort of spa where you eat toy food and only drink water and exercise all day. That sounds like some sort of Hell to me and I think I would rather spend a week working at the hospital or trying to motivate Wally and The Beav to clean their rooms and their bathroom.

I did read. But I’m a big old book snob and I don’t read. Just. Anything. My usual vacation read is something akin to Byatt, Hoffman or Seth. My snobbishness has resulted in a couple of epic fails as far as lighthearted vacation reading goes. Can you say Atonement? There’s a feel good happy beach read. The other beach read fail was a Russo novel. I can’t even remember which novel but it was about a desperate situation in a dying industrial town in upstate New York. In fact, The Girl almost committed an epic fail when she picked up Hardy’s Jude The Obscure. I handed her a stick for her eye and said, “Dude, one word: “Atonement’.“ I didn’t tell her about the summer I read Tess of the D’Urbervilles and was so insufferably sad and depressed my roommate Jack hid the book from me. But I digress…Because of these two epic fails, coupled with my OCD I spend about six months selecting just the right books for Mexico. They must be uplifting, well written, imaginative and NOT in the top one hundred. It’s a careful process to say the least and one best beaten to death with the google stick. In an effort to live more deliberately I didn’t bother with that this year so I would make use of the lovely bookstore where we call home for two weeks a year. I did take two “emergency” books. I’m a veracious reader and usually burn through ten books in two weeks, so taking two books was akin to taking only three pairs of shoes. (Which I also did much to my chagrin and deprivation) This vacation was no exception, I did read ten books. I started with The Mercy Of Thin Air. A ghost story that required some thought and careful reading. Next up was Sweetness At The Bottom Of The Pie a delightful mystery that required some thought but not as thinky as the first novel.

And then I lost my mind and my bearings and started reading Amanda Quick. I confess one of my guilty pleasures is fantasy novel meets Steam Punk. The Little Book is one of my all time favorite novels and The Blue Glass Books of the Dream Eaters complete brain candy last year in Mexico. So this Arcane Society thing was close to these. When I was about fourteen I read stacks of Regency romance novels and Barbara Cartland novels. So Quick’s novels and this sort of romance subgenre was new to me. They were surprisingly good and terribly entertaining. Fun like eating cookies and drinking Coca cola too quickly and ending up belching with a flourish is fun and vaguely satisfying. I read three of them and then found myself on menacing brow and quivering breath overload. I knew I had had enough when I predicted which chapter our heroine was going to be kidnapped. But this experimenting thing was fun. What other genre could I test? True Crime? Nah, too depressing. Espionage? Nah too…I dunno…male. Shopping/Dating/Twenty-something? Nah that would just piss me off that I hadn’t written them.

In other words, how much further down was this spiral into pulp fiction taking me? Evanovich that’s where. I followed the exploits of the plucky Stacy Plum for three novels until I was tired of hearing about her spandex shorts and her wisecracking grandma. I must admit each one of the novels had an amusing and imaginative cast of supporting characters that kept me interested. And I openly guffawed many times over a few days. But I must say had we stayed in Mexico much longer I was spiraling towards Cartland romances and Mexican tabloids.

This vacation turned into an exercise of escape. I have become so unbelievably frustrated with myself and how I’m living my life recently that I must have been trying to lose myself in fluffy fiction. Fortunately, I didn‘t try to lose myself in alcohol--I didn‘t drink that much--because I finally learned a few years ago you can‘t escape yourself so I‘ve stopped doing that and just put the old tapes and guilt trips on pause for a week or so. But for a couple of weeks I got to see what being a beautiful young woman just past marriagablilty; living in genteel poverty in Victorian England was like. And when I tired of that I discovered what the life an Italian/Hungarian bounty hunter in Trenton, New Jersey looked like. And isn’t that what reading--on vacation--is about? Escape?

Sunset Over the Mangrove

February 17th:

The first thing I saw this morning when I awakened was one of the dippers. I think it was the big dipper, but I’m not sure. Anyhow, it was amazing to awaken in the dark, thinking minutes between falling asleep and awakening had passed to discover per my handy indiglo watch I had slept soundly for seven hours. It was five am on our departure day in Mexico. The morning was dark with a clear sky and the Big Dipper was inviting me to ladle stars. For the first time in many days there wasn’t any wind or clouds or rain in the early morning. Awakening to a constellation just outside my window was one of the most delicious gifts I’ve been given these last two weeks. The good news/bad news of the day. We hadn’t enjoyed the most stellar weather in Mexico this year but at least we weren’t buried under 30 inches of snow like the east coast or bracing ourselves for sub zero temperatures. We had rain almost every day we were here and while my skin isn’t as burnished as some years, the gardens, mangrove and jungle around us appear quenched and lush. The other night we took the collectivo (local bus) to the Colonia for dinner. We passed through the mangrove and the sun was setting. I had never seen a sun set over the mangrove. The sun cast an orange and red glow on the marsh’s surface the trees were black spots along the shoreline. As we drove along the road through the mangrove, I remembered our caretaker’s description of the officials from Cancun trying to convince the local PTB the mangrove was “dead” and therefore the only thing left to do was fill it in and build a big resort. How proud he was to tell us the townspeople brought their own biologists in to ascertain what they all knew was true: nothing was wrong with the mangrove, it was simply dry and suffering from drought. The people did not want to sacrifice their way of life for a chance at greater economic opportunity. Fancy that. Feeling as if you have enough.

A few days ago, we took a tour away from the coast and into the interior. Twenty-five kilometers later and it’s as if the huge Mega resort and Disco Bongo Bongo cease to exist. The villages are small and simple. Some would call them “ramshackle” “mean” “pathetic” or “dirty”. If you peek inside of the cinderblock houses they usually appear empty because the hammocks are tucked up and out of site: the structures are used for sleeping and work takes place outside in the light. These villages aren’t old colonial villages and towns with most were founded well after the 1910 revolution. The Mexican government has started listening to the indigenous people and have protected some of the land in the this part of the country. They have also entrusted the care of the land to the people. To say they live simply is an understatement. Their day to day living makes the average middle class American camping trip look like a four star hotel experience. Dirt floors, dark windowless palapas, hammocks. I’m not sure if they had running water or not but pumping water from the ground isn’t difficult when the water table is close to the surface. At first glimpse most would call these people “dirty”. Their clothing was faded and only the man wore shoes. His wife does embroidery and sewing to sell while he helps the biologists observe the plants and animals in the reserve. Their children appeared well fed and happy. No one was whining about who’s turn it was on the x box. In fact no one was whining. A few years ago, I certainly would have referred to them as dirty or backward or ignorant out of my own ignorance. But fortunately, I have moved out of my pampered existence and realize it’s all about what’s in your head not outside of your head. Our day trip included a traditional Mayan lunch with a family near a village and it was perhaps one of the best meals I had this vacation all without the benefit of a Viking stove or Henk`l knives or electricity. An Anthony Bourdain moment. Tony would have loved this meal: chicken seasoned with the achiote seed ground into a paste and flavored with orange juice along with traditional rice, beans and tortillas. The smallest children were home with the women and dressed in their best traditional dresses. They were friendly and quiet experts at making their own fun. The little girls had created a mortar and pestle and were grinding a leaf, mimicking their mother and grandmother’s way. The little boy was running about and would come back to them for a few seconds and then run away again. I wish I knew what they were saying to one another as they were chattering with one another the whole time. (Someday I’m going to speak Spanish well enough to eavesdrop on small children at play and the cab drivers.) Before we left their home, the little boy presented me with a small blossom and a shy good bye. It would seem I have a fan in Mexico.

More importantly than a romantic conquest, I learned a lesson. These people do not seem paralyzed by what they lack. Before Sunday, I would have referred to them as living in poverty. When truthfully they were not essentially impoverished. They appeared healthy and happy, just as happy as the people I saw strolling down the beach these past two weeks. (Probably happier than many) The same People who strolled to an airport after paying about 5000 pesos to sit on an airplane so they could spend another 20000 pesos for a hotel room with cement bed, a restaurant serving ridiculously terrible food and a bar with even crappier booze. An amount of money comparable to a CEO bonus. Please know I am not condescending to these people and cooing over them and gushing about how terribly sweet the natives are or bless their indigenous hearts in all their Indian simplicity. In fact, quite the opposite, I’m kicking myself in the ass for requiring so much to “live”. Nor am I naive enough to think many who live in the small villages don’t hanker for a fancy life elsewhere. Hell, we have a perceived problem at our border with folks who think it’s all that and a bag of chips in El Norte. It is human nature to want what someone else has, however some of us--me--get more carried away with this than others. So I need to remember the simple gifts, like awakening to the Big Dipper turned upside down showering stars all over the Eastern sky, a little boy giving me a small blossom, or the achioto red of a mangrove at dusk.

My Doorway To The Sea

I suppose I could start my first vacation blog a la Keillor as if I’m telling a story about Lake Woebegone but that would be highly unoriginal. But it has been quiet here in PM, the winter people (ourselves included) are here and along with them a few new characters. This place isn’t as alive with characters as places further from North America. It’s obvious people do come here to get lost or hide. Last year we met one guy from Norway or Denmark or one of those cold sub arctic European countries who was living in a shack in the jungle and only had a rattly old bike for transport. What I remember most was how unbelievably dirty he was without having that all too familiar “homeless” smell my transient patients carry with them like a badge of courage. But this year, his clothes were clean and he had much needed dental work done. I knew better than to ask what he was doing with himself; in this part of the world it could be anything/everything and none of it I want to have a part of or even a whiff of knowing. Our favorite bar owner has actually lost a little weight but he carries the weight of the world on the sides of his eyes in the form of not one but two small children he has created with a much younger Mexican woman and with these two sprogs he has adopted her whole family. Yesterday at the dock I saw a guy who looked like a pirate. Seriously, not an AK 47 toting pirate but Jack Sparrow meets Rasta meets Deadhead Arrrrrrrr ye’ matey pirate. I didn’t have the telephoto with me yesterday otherwise his picture would grace my blog and probably my Facebook profile because really? Jack Sparrow meets Rasta meets Deadhead is so pointedly unusual everyone should take a lesson from him and display their internal and secret selves for the rest of the world to see.

The characters in this town are not limited to the two-legged creatures, either. The feral dogs range from mangy and mean (we try to carry a big stick when we walk at night) to dirty but sweet. Not only do I make up stories for the people I see around town, giving them back story and ironic dialogues but I anthropomorphize the beach dogs. We see Susie--a spotted short-haired mix of boxer and pit bull--hanging at the Uruguay place. She’s a sweet girl, scrappy but sweet and seems to get along with the other dogs. Susie is the Peggy Lee character form Lady and the Tramp. Across the street, Ramone de Guerre Fuentes holds court at the tourist hotel and bar. He is an elderly golden retriever with bad hips and swinging balls. He is the go-to dog if you need to know where the best trash is or the sweetest bitch in heat. Ramone has his old paw on the pulse of this town and isn't afraid to assert his authority with younger upstarts and the dogs who were lucky enough to leave "the life". The dogs who have been adopted and are tethered in yards or taken for proper walks have a sort of swagger about them because they have been adopted and moved from the street to the yard. Realistically, not an easy thing to do. A couple of years ago, we met a dog named Jet. His name was Jet because he had ears which extended straight out from his head. The people he adopted every year said they found him hanging by their gate a few years ago and each winter when they return Jet is there, waiting for them. But you couldn’t touch Jet or even act as if you were going to touch him without a low menacing growl. Poor Jet, it was obviously he adored these people because he would lay close to them and watch them with soft worshiping brown eyes but he was inherently broken by life in the street when his people were far away and he had to find scraps of food and a cool place to stay.

Last year, a couple of days before we had to leave our home away from home a little German Shepard mix wandered into the pool area of our casita. He was collared with a message on his tag, about being a peaceful creature, so I referred to him as “The Wayne Dyer of beach dogs” and it was shortened and stuck. I promise on my mother’s urn we did not feed or provide water for Wayne. But Wayne attached himself to The Girl and followed us around for our last two or three days. People would compliment us on our “cute dog”. I thought about Wayne all year and shortly after we arrived I proclaimed to The Girl: “If we see Wayne, I’m bringing him home with us.” This idea was appropriately nixed because as TG put it: “Dude, we already have a thousand dollar dog, we don’t need another one.” She also went on to tell me the chances of seeing Wayne were slim.

Or were they.



Wayne greeted us at our place on the beach he came up to TG like Kipper does after she’s been at work. It was unbelievably sweet and so miraculous it made me cry. Our beach dog is here and has been taken care of by some old hippies who named him Jack. Call me selfish but he looks more like a Wayne. I was relieved to see he has been well fed and is just as sweet and gentle as before. I still think he would make a fine addition to our household. However, I think Wayne would miss the sea and the ability to run free along the water.

Twenty mumblty years ago I lived in a ski town. The characters in a beach town are different from the characters in a ski town. Mind you, it was a manufactured ski town but it was a resort and there was a motley crew of Trustaferians, Hanger-ons, Euro trash playboys and girls and then folks like us just eking out an existence. Oh and there were white people with names like Spenser and Molly who made it possible for us to eek out a living. Spenser and Molly are here, too but they usually just stay near their Timeshare beaches and tentatively stop in and take a peek at the “Cute little town but it’s too Mexican” (I kid you not, I heard someone say this a few years ago) Anyhow, the characters in the World Class Resort weren’t as “colorful” as they characters in the Beach Town. Probably because the I’m much older now and pay attention to people besides myself and have the ability to “see” the characters and celebrate their unique approach to the world rather get bitched up because they aren’t just like me.


I’m not completely free of my Redneck roots because I think the local locals--the actual Mexicans who have lived here their whole lives--are colorful, too. On the corner of the square, is the cab stand and the cab drivers come in all shapes and sizes and span the gamut of ages from 20ish to 50ish. They sit on the benches and gossip with each other all day, too. I would love to know what they talk about because they have probably seen it all, driving people to and from the airport, the markets and the larger towns to the north and south of our fishing village. My guess is if you live in PM you have to be very secretive if you are doing something or someone you aren’t supposed to be doing. Charming to an outsider but ultimately it can become repressive and suffocating if you live it. My favorite local character is a tiny elderly Mayan man who sits in a chair near the pier. Years before he would scavenge the beach but I think one of the local dive shop owners took pity on him and gave him a job selling scuba trips. Yesterday me and TG took the bikes to the dock to purchase the fresh catch of the day and as we approached the dock, “Charlie Brown” (his name for himself) said to us with a broad sweep of his hand: “Welcome to my Doorway to the Sea!”




Poetry.