City of Morelia
Perhaps what I will remember most about Morelia is the constant ring of church bells across the city. At night I lay and listen as they sing to each other throughout the city like the creatures in the Zocalo treetops -- competing with one another, verse after verse, in an attempt to make their song heard above the noise of the bustling streets.
Mexico City
I am well on my way to "drunk," with my step-brother, in a small rooftop cafe, overlooking the biggest city in the world. You'll be so inspired, Big Ryan said to me...
City of Oaxaca
Cold showers in the morning sun. A seven hour bus ride with two Danish girls. Clouds so close -- pretty sure I could whisper and God would hear. Walking by an open window and have to stop at the sound of dozens of little school children yelling for their teacher's attention. Breakfast with a guy name Mike, from Seattle, and eggs with cheese, covered in a red sauce that tastes like nothing I've ever tasted. And an Internet cafe with a picture of the Space Needle on the wall next to a small sign that reads, in English, We don't speak English!!! And attached to the Samsung desktop computer below the sign is a mouse pad with a graphic of Mickey himself on it.
City of Oaxaca
Met a German named Simon who is twenty and lost his bag on the flight from Berlin to Mexico City. Met a Polish girl name Alexandra who loves Thievery Corporation and who wrote poetry in another language in my journal. Met a Kiwi (from New Zealand) who is dating a guy named Craig that reminds me of a guy back home named Chris Swisher. Met two Danish girls who stop every conversation around them when they laugh. Met another German named Andy who had his appendix removed in Guatemala. Met a Brit named Tony who we called "Bullet Tooth" and who paid fifty pesos for a tattoo in Central America. Met two German girls who were both vegetarians. Met a guy named Mike from Seattle who bought grasshoppers for all of us to snack on. Met two girls from Boston who hate the Yankees. Met a guy from New York who barged into our room at four AM, drunk, and got into a fist fight with one of our sleeping hostel flat-mates...
City of San Cristobal del las Casas
Moments of consciousness on a twelve hour bus ride. I think I just saw a whorehouse, Brandon says. And then we are winding down narrow mountain roads. And then I see lightning storms that flash from behind distant peaks to light up the clear sky above us. And then we are stopped at an oasis of lights, a small bus terminal, that is surrounded by the darkness of night. I wonder if we can get out, Brandon says. I shrug and close my eyes again. When I open them we are still at a small bus terminal, surrounded by darkness, but this time I see Brandon outside, walking back and forth and stretching. And then I realize that it is a different bus terminal, that three hours has passed since I last looked. And then we are winding along again. It is getting light and I can now see some of the richest colors -- reds and blues from the sky with every shade of green the Jumbo Crayon Box ever had to offer below. And there is this fog straight out of a fairytale -- white, thick pillows of fog that seem to steal the pre-dawn light and trap it within, creating an unearthly glow of morning purity. And then later, long after the twelve hour night bus, when writing about the pre-dawn world of San Cristobal... I still feel a shiver brush down my neck and across my arms at the memory of the images I have stolen from this magical land.
City of San Cristobal del las Casas
Have you ever seen one? Brandon points to a colorful depiction of Zapatistas standing in a corn field. Have I ever seen one, asks the guy working the desk at the hostel. Yeah, Brandon says, a Zapatista? His name is Fernando and his hands begin to nervously play with a pen. Yeah, I've seen one or two, he says. I saw them take the Zocalo, the town square, in '97, he says. And I saw truck loads of their dead bodies being hauled away after the army came and pushed them back out to the small villages around here.
Really, Brandon asks. Yeah, he says, we had to go hideout in my house (he points to his left) and from my upstairs I could see the... he pauses... how do you say... artillery? He says. We could see it as the army pushed them into the jungle. It was pretty amazing, he says. There were still bodies laying in ditches along the side of the road for a long time, he says. He looks away now but continues to fidget with his pen. Wow, Brandon says. Yeah man, Fernando says. There was a lot of death. The army even went into the hospitals, where these guys were laying there that had been shot in the arm or in the leg, and they would just walk along all the beds and... He can't go on with the story but he makes a gun with his thumb and index finger and points it downward, then recoils, then points it down again, and so on.
That must have been quite a terrible experience, Brandon says. Yeah man, he agrees slowly. We had a curfew and everything. If you were out past six they would shoot you. It is quiet for a moment. Wow, Brandon says with a whistle. There seems to be nothing else to say. Yeah man, Fernando says again. And now he's moving again, like the movement helps distract him from what he doesn't want to remember. Well, thanks for sharing that with us, Brandon says. No problem, he says. And then we walk out for breakfast. We walk for a while without saying anything. And then Brandon says to me, So should we eat breakfast at the same place or should we try something new?
The Other Half (Between San Cristobal and Palenque)
I wish you could be here
Brother, with me
In Mexico.
Every picture
Is missing its other half.
And for every empty
Beer, there sits
One unopened.
Someday, my brother,
You and your son, and me --
We will see the world.
Because today
I realized that seeing the world
Without you is like
Letting the world see
Only half of me.
Mayan Ruins at Palenque
What a moment this is. To be sitting under a thatched roof. Having a cigarette. In the middle of the jungle. With huge drops of rain flooding from the unseen sky. And a Santana song being plucked on an electric guitar and amplified by a ten inch speaker. While I scribble down pieces of tomorrow's memory. By the flickering light of a hand crafted candle.
Mayan Ruins at Palenque
Arrived around ten. Sopping wet. Slapping at mosquito's already. Thought comes to mind again that we still have no Malaria pills. Cross my fingers between slaps. Spot two Aussie girls we met in San Cristobal and one of them leads us down a trail through the jungle to find an open room. First place we find has nothing left. So we cross a river but the second place is full too. Finally we bump into this guy who can't habla Engles pero tienes dos mas... He shows us the rooms. We cuss and swear at our luck and then we pay him. He leaves. We drop our bags and go have a beer with the two Aussie girls. Just as we settle into a table we are asked to move the table back. Then two performers play the bongos while two more dance with burning torches. I finish my Corona. I'm not feeling 100%, still recovering from food poisoning two days earlier and the Corona didn't help. The place is shutting down and we all say goodnight. We walk through the jungle. It is coming alive with sounds of the night -- crickets maybe, birds, screaming monkeys... and a drunken local playing guitar and singing. We pass him on the way. The smell of weed wafts from the bar at which he plays. Hippies with dreadlocks hanging from beanies sing along. We get to our rooms, turn on the light and in unison both scream. The guy next door comes over and swats the massive roach with his boot. So we climb into bed, wrap up in our sheets and try not to think about all the wildlife that is sharing our room with us. But then we can't sleep because this drunk, and very high, local is belting out "Hotel California" for all he's worth. Brandon and I can't help it and we break into uncontrollable laughter. Then the local covers a Beatles song. And John Lennon's "Imagine" after that. He may have just nearly ruined the song forever and now I'm really starting to feel sick again, like the food poisoning is coming back. I walk to the bathroom. That doesn't help so I stand out behind our room until I get the dry-heaves. I give up on feeling better all together and decide to go to bed and fight the nausea laying down. I lay there, cursing the Corona, until I finally get tired enough to forget about being sick and then I fall asleep.
City of Playa del Carmen
Submerged in water -
Warm, salty, Caribbean.
Face up,
Watching - stars, lights
Of Cozumel, shadows
Of night. Water
Muffles sounds - of Brandon
The girls, drunk
American tourists and trendy
American music.
Can only hear
The sound of my heart
Pumping alcohol through
My bloodstream.
This moment feels
Spiritual - so quiet I think
I might be able to hear
A still, small
Voice. So I ask
And then I wait,
And I wait.
Then I feel it.
I don't hear it but
A chill washes through me, like
A wave - not a crashing
One but a rolling wave -
The words, I love
And then, you.
City of Playa del Carmen
This is truly paradise. White sands, Caribbean blue stretching out to the horizon and colliding there with the soft colors of the sky. A stiff, salty breeze and my hammock hanging in the shade of palm trees just feet from the surf. Three kids play contentedly, running back and forth between sand and waves, one of the little nino's shorts working their way down his legs as he runs. To the side the rest of the family has thrown up a couple of their own hammocks and sit in the shade playing with cards.
Just off shore, tied to a buoy, sits a small fishing boat with three friends laughing over a cooler of beer, waiting for the evening to head out once more and earn their day's keep. I suddenly think that if I were Cameron Gray... I might not ever return home either.
City of San Cristobal del las Casas (2n time, on our way from Playa Del Carmen to Puerto Angel)
I stand alone, a cigarette in my left hand, outside the small brick building that serves as the San Cristobal bus station, shivering in the chilled, rainy mist of the mountain air (in stark contrast to the warm Caribbean breezes) and I watch two brothers as they shove each other in laughter at their mother's side. They both carry small braids across one arm and cling to miniature baskets that hold little wooden carvings with their other hand. The two boys are mini-me versions of their mother. They follow her as she pedals her own armful of wares, lost in their own private game as they "work."
Back in a nearby village their father, and perhaps even an older brother or two, work the fields or some other task worthy of a man. And someday these two boys will leave their mother's side and join the world of men. Someday they will be forced, out of necessity, to toil endlessly in a field or with armfuls of bricks on some muddy hillside so that a light skinned Spaniard, or even a Gringo, can sit back and enjoy the life of the blessed upper class. And because of all this, or perhaps in spite of it, the endless attempt by one people to break the fee spirits of another people -- these two boys may someday pull long black masks over their faces and drape belts of ammunition across their chests and take up the rusty old weapons of already fallen comrades to follow in the footsteps of El Che. Or perhaps one of them will meet a girl earlier in life and have a family with her. And because of this family he will instead join the Policia de San Cristobal or the Mexican Army. And then these two brothers would be on opposite sides of an age old conflict, like Jacob and Esau, and then maybe someday these two brothers would unwittingly, or even knowingly, take up arms against one another...
But for now these two boys know nothing, nor care for, such complications of life in the state of Chiappas. They are content to laugh, arm in arm, as they spend just another routine day beside their loving mother.
And as I finish my cigarette, flicking it into the puddle at my feet, I suddenly feel an ache within me. An ache for my little brother and for my mother -- for the days when it was only the three of us. Those times when we would ride horses through the woods of our mother's childhood, or when we would follow her -- race behind her -- as she would lead us down the ski slopes toward lunch. Those times on the road, the three of us telling stories, singing and playing games. What a beautiful time in a broken childhood that was. A time when my brother and I knew nothing, nor cared for, the cruel reality that can be life. A time when our days were as simple as sharing a laugh about some private game, arm in arm, as we spent just another routine day with our loving mother.
City of Zipolite
This is a place to come to write a book, I said to Brandon. Later that day I met a guy from Colorado who works as a ski instructor during the winter and who lives here the rest of the year. There is actually several people who are writers who live her, he said to me.
Got me to thinking. What would I write, I wonder, if I actually came to a place like this, if I actually forced myself to finish something for once. It would be a story of two brothers, this I already know, have known for years now. It would be a tragedy too. But it would be a tragedy that gives birth to hope, to inspiration even. Yes, it would be a tragedy that is not -- or rather does not allow itself, to be just that -- a tragedy. The story is there, always there, just under the surface -- hiding, brooding, growing into its own. But I can never seem to grasp hold of it. It is as elusive as happiness itself -- a cliche, I know. But all the same, it is true. Perhaps a setting such as this would indeed help me to find it -- to find them both. Or perhaps only time will coax it from its lair. Never the less, this place really is a place you could come to write a book. If time is the answer, perhaps I will someday return here to do just that.
City of Zipolite
Walking on sand, by the light of a half moon, through ominous barriers of rocks and then you see it. In a soft Mezcal glow, the candlelight dots the elevated sands of a private fairy tale beach called the Alchemista. Stretching up and off to the left, the candlelight winds, like an iridescent serpent, and then nestles itself into the mouth of what can only be a Mexican Camelot -- reborn high on the cliffs, among palms that guard watch over this Pacific hideaway. The soft electronic sounds of a group you will hunt down months later on the Internet because of this very moment are hypnotizing and you sit, sipping your Bohemia in contented silence, on a piece of drift wood suspended by rope next to the bar. Hours later, as you fall asleep in your hammock, perched high in your own little castle, the world begins to fade far away. It fades, and fades, until all you are left with -- all you can see -- are those hundreds of candles. And then you dream.
City of Zipolite
Why are young men consumed by dreams of what will someday be? And old men consumed with stories of what have been?
There are two very different forces here: hope, and fear. Hope for what can be seen in this life, felt in this life, experienced in this life; and fear for none of it being enough, for none of it really mattering -- fear for leaving no legacy, for living a life that made no difference. These two forces work in opposition, like the waves of a mighty ocean, colliding with powerful under currents and shooting skyward -- reaching toward heaven in search of the truth, the reason for all of this. And like the necessary balance between wave and undertow, there seems to be no way to out think the transition from hope to fear, from young to old.
City of Puerto Escondido
Can't get myself to write anything. Won't give in to the journaling. Want to write about waves, a surf board, plans of a sailboat over a beer, surf girls that wear trucker hats and big sunglasses. Want to write about pro surfers, and walking barefoot everyday, the sunsets, the new friendships, the plans and the regrets. Want to capture the view from our hostel -- the palms, the white domed rooftops, the green hills, the sand and the blue Pacific Ocean. Want to capture the view from out beyond the break of the surf -- the jumping schools of fish all around, the steady lull of rolling waves, a Swiss girl -- I think her name was Petra, sitting on her board next to you, the city spreading out in front of you, two locals hurling themselves into flips off of sand dunes.
Want to write about all this -- feelings are so strong I could write a book on all this. But I can't. Only days left now, maybe that's why. Time running out. Best save the writing for the cold fog of the Walla Walla Valley. Best get some breakfast, grab my board and head for the surf.
North of Puerto Escondido (a small village with amazing an amazing surf break)
My friends will never understand, I say to the German girl laying in another hammock beside my own. Even if I try to describe it, I say, they just won't understand. By this I mean the safari trip to get to this place -- the small boat, laden with fruits, vegetables, eggs, a chicken, an old woman and her young son and six, white, excited backpackers with surf boards; and then the pickup truck that wouldn't run, that we had to push start; and then the ride in the back of this truck, down a rough, dirt road; and how Simon and I climbed out the back and stood up above the truck bed roof, the wind in our faces, the beach to our left and strange buffalo all around us, holding on for our lives and yelling with the innocent, wide-eyed excitement of small boys. By this I mean the modest village of huts that sit on the beach and the mixture of brown and black in the children who play just down the beach. By this I mean the twelve to fifteen foot swells crashing only feet from our hammocks and how the sun rises over the water to our left and sets over the water to our right, and how the sun paints the sky in both it's rise and its fall -- in reds and pinks that are so common to a tropical sunset.
And by saying this -- that no one will ever understand, I mean also the quick, natural friendships that have been forged between travelers, strangers and kindred souls. No, my friends will never understand, I say again, and Brandon begins to whistle in the background, I'm in heaven... In heaven...
That night I awake in a cold sweat -- shivering and damp. And it happens several times. But then Martin, the Austrian guy in another hammock next to me, wakes me up. Look, he says. And when I do I see a giant orb of red, still half buried by the Pacific Ocean, cresting the horizon in a single moment of pure brilliance that stretches on for what seems like an eternity. Neither of us says anything and as I roll over in search of one more hour of sleep I notice that I am no longer wet and no longer shivering.
City of Puerto Escondido
Bar Fly, on the roof,
The Milky Way
Overhead. DJ spins
Downstairs - drum and bass.
A low table, pillows,
A hookah,
With Manzana flavored tobacco
And nine new friends.
Feeling of being back
Home,
At the Green Lantern
With the boys.
And a girl -
Is there always a girl?
From Holland,
With dark skin, and still
Darker eyes
Who is twenty-eight and works
With children at risk
In Amsterdam.
Feelings of driving
To Portland
And what its like
To talk to a friend,
Who is a girl,
For three hours without
An awkward
Pause.
The beach,
With two cold Dos XX,
Brandon and Simon,
An Austrian named Martin,
Two Swiss guys and
Two German girls who smile
In the darkness.
Surrounded by fishing boats
And covered by a blanket of
Stars overhead.
And a feeling of night,
Walking alone,
Smoking a cigarette and then one more.
1 comments:
I had no idea you were such a good writer. :)
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