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Dispatch from Silence and Distant Sunlight
table of contents:
1. Meditation; 2. Medication; 3. Mexication
1. MEDITATION - The Universe Is My Nose-strils
"Just
observe," said the guru's voice. "Whatever the sensation, just
observe." I had been seated cross-legged, eyes closed, for what felt
like hours and had probably been at least 15 minutes. The pain shooting
through my back was excruciating.
"Limit your awareness to the triangular area below the
nostrils and above the upper lip." He had a perfect Indian guru accent
and he said the word 'nostrils' as if it were 'nose-strils'. It made me
smile. My 'nose-streels.' I desperately wanted to know if anyone else
was smiling, and so for the first time in what had to have been at
least 18 minutes now, I opened my eyes. There we were, 200 or so of us,
seated silently on the floor of a vast, wood-walled, slightly drafty
hall that was vaulted like a church, but if there was a Jesus up there
above the raised dais on which sat the solemn 'assistant teachers,' He
had been carefully and discreetly covered by white sheeting. Down here
on the floor, we meditators were seated in precise rows, as if on a
chessboard. I was in spot F-9. The guy on my right -- F-8 -- was
starting to slouch forward, forward, to stretch his back. The guy right
in front of me, E-9, was unmoving, a solid rock of a meditator. I was
surrounded by men. On the other side of the 'A' row was an aisle, and
the women were seated on the other side of the aisle. Indeed,
throughout the entire ten days, the men and women were strictly
segregated and we never saw each other. I discreetly glanced around me;
many men were silently shifting positions in discomfort. There were no
smiles.
"Limit your awareness to the triangular area below the
Nosestrils..." said the guru. "The focus of your mind..." I closed my
eyes again and his voice went silent. My mind focused on my legs, and
then on the cushion below me, and then I wondered if some people's
cushions were softer than others, and then I thought about how I always
want what others have, and then came the saying 'the grass is always
greener on the other side,' and that made me think of the place in
China where I'd been where the grass really had been greener on the
other side, and that made me think of rural China, and that made me
think of great rural Chinese food, and that made me wonder whether the
food tonight was going to be good, and that made me think that often
these retreats are expensive and have great food, but this one is free
and maybe we just get bread and water, and then I thought as long as
there's butter for the bread that would be tasty...
"Limit your awareness to the triangular area..."
That's
how the first day went. The second day was about the same, or worse. I
couldn't limit my awareness to my head, let alone to my Nosestrils.
There still were no smiles. And there certainly wasn't any laughter. It
was more of a shell-shocked concentration camp kind of vibe. Were we
all doing some kind of suffering solidarity project? I couldn't
remember. We were observing Noble Silence, which means not only do you
not talk, ever, but you don't communicate at all, ever. No gestures, no
nodding, no shrugging, no sign language. No eye contact. I was starving
not only for some kind of food in the evening (lunch was served at 11am
and there was no dinner), but for some kind of human interaction. For
some reason I couldn't remember, I had chosen to spend the holiday
season in cold and silence.
Also there was no reading, no writing, no 'rithmetic. No
ipods, no iphones, no icomputers, no idrinks at fun bars, no
ichocolates to sweeten the day, no ilaughter with friends. No imusic at
all. And the ibell rang at 4am every imorning to wake us up. And then
we would iwalk to the meditation hall and start the day. I couldn't
believe it was going to go on for 10 days like this.
I made it from day to day by listening to the guru's words in
the evening "discourse." 'You are here to learn how to eradicate
suffering,' he said during one night's lecture on Buddhism. 'Give this
a chance.' I had tried many things in life, I told myself, I could try
this for ten days.
The day started at 4, and by the time my head hit the pillow
at 9:30 each night, I had meditated at least 10 hours. Or at least
pretended to meditate. I sat there and watched my legs and back scream
in pain and my attention roam wildly over my life, my relationships, my
projects, my regrets, my highlight reel of pleasant moments, my
fantasies of faraway foods, sounds, and human touch. Over and over.
On the third day I noticed that I could feel the air pass into
my Nosestrils, even when I wasn't breathing hard or in any unusual way.
I was able to watch that feeling for a couple whole breaths without
thinking about other things. But then my back or legs would scream out,
or I'd hear F-8 snorting his mucus, or I'd become unbelievably curious
about something and open my eyes. Or I would start to nod off. This
last one happened a lot -- the guru's voice was slow and rhythmic as he
trailed off into silence, and I was tired, and I had my eyes closed,
and I was trying not to think. "Of Course I'm Going to Fall Asleep!" I
shouted. To myself. Nobly. Silently.
That evening, on the 5-minute walk down to the meditation hall
from the men's cabins, I inhaled the cold air into my Nosestrils. I
felt it clearly, sublimely, and I tried doing a Walking Meditation. It
was there, nothing but the breath, and for the first time, I stayed
with it continuously. My feet carried me downhill. In and out came the
air. There was nothing else. In. Out. My thoughts shut off.
I thought again. My next thought. It was...I'm inside the
building, taking off my shoes. I stepped into the hall, walked to F-9,
arranged my cushions, and sat down.
"Limit your awareness..." came the guru's voice.
I closed my eyes and went to my "triangular area." The air
came. The air went. In. Out. My thoughts shut off. The entire universe
shrank, as if I had a telephoto lens, and there was only the area below
my nose and above my lips. Minutes went by. I noticed I could hear more
acutely. I heard all the sniffling and shifting and repositioning and
occasional belching and sneezing. "It's cold," I noticed. The thought
came: "People might be getting sick." Suddenly I felt pain in my back
like a fire roaring up my spine. "I can't get sick," I thought. "But
something's happening here," a different voice said. My body had a
third voice. It whispered, cajoled, teased, yearned, screamed, bellowed
at me to please, kindly, shift those legs.
I chose to stay put that time. I stayed there. I went and
lived in my triangular area. The air came. The air went. Thoughts shut
off. After a while I thought, "Wow, my back doesn't hurt very much
right now," and the minute the thought came, like a piano dropped from
a plane, the pain roared back. "MOVE!" it shrieked. "WHY ARE YOU
KILLING YOURSELF?" But I stayed there. I felt the cold drafty air. My
head felt cold. "You're going to get sick," my body said.
I stayed put. The universe was my Nosestrils. I began to feel
the heat from the pain in my back spread across my spine. It rode up my
neck and behind my ears and over the back of my head. I watched it.
With a will of its own, the heat covered my face and burst out the top
of my head. The heat pushed through my chest like a demon. I began to
sweat profusely. My heartbeat quickened. The need to move increased. My
legs were asleep, completely numb, yet I could feel the heat pulse
through them and down into my feet and toes. I felt sweat bead on my
forehead. I watched the air come and go through my Nosestrils. In. Out.
The guru broke his silence. He chanted as he always did to
signify that the hour meditation was over. For the first time, I hadn't
moved for an entire hour.
I stumbled to my feet. An
indescribable ecstasy poured through my entire body. The demon was
gone. The heat had vanished. I suddenly knew I had just beaten an
illness. Something had come into my body, and my focused energy had
absorbed it and returned it to the universe.
I remembered at that moment that it normally takes at least a
minute or two for my feet, when asleep, to reawaken to blood and
sensation. And it's usually painful. This time, the moment I stood up
my feet were completely normal, without pain. "Something's happening
here," I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror.
The next day, the guru said it was time to extend the kind of
focused sensation we had used with the "Triangular Area" to the entire
body. "Right," I thought sarcastically. "That's impossible." Indeed,
just when I was getting somewhere with my triangular area, it was gone.
'Give this a chance.'
Two Demons and a Monkey
Those middle days
were like some video game in which you have to beat two demons in order
to get into a temple to fight a monkey. The two demons on either side
of the temple door are: 1. the body's howling discomfort, and 2. the
body's gentle sleepiness. When I could slay those two demons, I could
get inside for a chance at the Monkey, which is the mind. The mind
jumped around, playfully, telling me all kinds of fascinating things,
over and over again, in rapid-fire, so that I don't notice that I only
have about eight different thoughts.
The Discomfort Demon I found I could vanquish with a kneeling
position and an extra cushion. He would still shriek at me and tear
apart my back at times, but I realized that my fears of permanent
bodily damage were ridiculous; every time I stood up after meditating,
the pain was gone within moments. I began to believe what the guru was
saying about the relationship between the body and mind.
With the Drowsiness Demon, I stumbled on a nearly perfect
solution. Naps. A 20-50 minute delicious nap (inevitably full of vast,
fascinating, vivid dreams of every kind of sensual and interactive
experience I was otherwise starving for) after lunch would generally
slay the Drowsiness Demon for the remainder of the day.
So I moved into the temple time and again and took on the
Monkey Mind. This was the real game, and I had so many wins and losses
and ties and cheating no-contests and reinventions of the rules and
altogether alternative adventures that it all defies description.
What I can say is that I slowly began to sense my entire
body, head to toes, with the perspicacious acuity I had first sensed in
my Nosestrils. As the days went on, the guru's words led us into every
part of the body, and we began to move through our flesh and bones in a
sweeping pattern. First the top of the head, the back of the head, the
sides, then the temples, then the forehead, the eyebrows, the eyes.
"Just observe," he said. "In each part of the body. What is the
sensation? Is it a tingling sensation, a sharp sensation, a throbbing
sensation? Is it cold, hot, painful, pleasant? Just observe. We are not
here to change anything. Just observe." As the hours progressed, I was
able to sense more and more subtly. The earlobe. The baby toe. The
'kneepit.' And when my thoughts returned, I could focus as I wished. I
began to have new thoughts, thoughts I had never had before.
The food served each day for lunch turned out to be good. Very
simple sauteed vegetables in a curry sauce, or Thai tofu noodles, or
vegetarian Mexican fajitas; and then there was always brown rice and
white rice and salad. It was served at 11 am. After that, we had only a
snack at 5pm -- tea and fruit. But after the first few days I was
rarely hungry, even as my senses became so heightened I occasionally
sensed (via smell? telepathy?) what and when we were going to eat
before it happened.
On Day 8, my senses took another leap. The guru instructed us
to observe intensely our sensations not just when we were meditating,
but throughout the day. That night, my snack was half an orange, and I
can safely say that eating it was one of the ten most blissful
experiences of my life. With open eyes, I gazed at its glorious orange
color. I marveled at the patience of a drop of juice hanging on its
edge. I peeled the half orange with my fingernails, feeling the soft
whiteness of the underside of the rind dig into the tender flesh of my
fingertips. I folded the peeled half-orange back on itself, opening it,
separating it in two. A squirt of juice shot at my nose and I nearly
laughed out loud in delight. I took the first section, awestruck by its
perfect size and shape, and I moved it along my lips. I dropped it into
my mouth and the first greeting of its sweetness turned my world inside
out. I watched my tongue thrill to the fabric of the inner grains of
its orange flesh. My tongue pushed it back, onto my molars, which
proceeded to sort of grind and rip it apart, freeing more of its
sweetness to run back across my tongue. My teeth and tongue went on
playing this game for a while, and then my tongue pushed it back,
further back, down the throat and into the esophagus, and then it slid
into the stomach, which began its own grateful game of rending it
further and getting to know in intimate detail every molecule that
makes an orange an orange. My fingers tore off the next section.
Before I knew it, it was Day 10. We were about to begin
talking as well as mingling and making eye contact and noticing that
there was another gender. It seemed impossible. We concluded the
morning meditation with a new kind of sitting -- an expansive joyous
kind of meditation called metta bhavana that cultivates and spreads
compassion and loving kindness. It was profound. The guru spoke of
vibrating 'kalapas' -- subatomic particles. He explained that that this
is what the universe is (essentially, the Buddha discovered 2500 years
ago what today's particle physicists have begun to confirm). The guru
instructed us that our meditation in our open bodies could increase the
vibrational quality of the space we were in and infuse it with
compassion and love for all beings.
And then we were done. The guru's voice was gone. The
assistant teachers rose and walked out of the room. Some calm voice
came into my mind, a voice that seemed to be the guru's but had a
slightly warmer quality. "It's your life to live now. This learning is
done for now."
I walked out of the meditation hall in quiet ecstasy. I had
long ago thought of the first word I wanted to say, but I was surprised
it came to my mind at the precise moment. It was a pristine forest
morning, the sun was shining gorgeously, and I looked over into the
eyes of the man walking out of the hall beside me. We were strangers,
but as we made eye contact I felt I'd known him forever.
"Wow," he said, a grin stretching from ear to ear.
I smiled and spoke. "Rosebud."
2. MEDICATION - A Cure for the Common Craving
Throughout
the week the guru, whose name is Goenkaji (he wasn't physically there
with us; we experienced his voice via a variety of video and audio
recordings) taught us exhaustively about Buddhism, and his words were
full of beauty and wisdom. I loved most of it and had doubts about some
of it. I mention some of my thoughts further below, but one of the
teachings that resonated like thunder in my mind throughout the week
were his words on craving and aversion. These are our primary sources
of suffering, he explained, and as I looked over all my relationships
and ways of being in life, I saw countless ways this was true.
The bliss of Day 10 continued. We spoke with each other and
shared insights and questions. Instead of an afternoon nap, I wrote for
the first time in ten days. I was overcome with the desire to keep this
wisdom fresh and new in my mind as I returned to the world, to keep the
teachings about Craving and Aversion with me in every moment, and also
to free myself again to live in a world full of huge sensations of
pleasure and pain. So I wrote two poems -- for me to memorize so they
might come to mind in the moment I found myself trapped in Craving or
Aversion, Pleasure or Suffering. One is to remain awake during
pleasure, the other to remain awake during suffering.
Here is Pleasure.
May I generate no craving to extend it now or recreate it later,
May I enjoy it deeply,
This is a road I travel only once.
Here is Suffering.
May I have no aversion to it,
May I endure it bravely and patiently,
This is a road I travel only once.
My companions, Iris
and Hannah, both of whom of course I hadn't seen in 10 days, were on
the same highs I was: energetic in focus, sensual in gratitude, eager
and curious in conversation. We drove home together, from the woods
around Occidental, through the town of Sebastopol, and back down to the
Bay. We shared with each other insights on Buddhism and ourselves, new
year's intentions, and a first meal away from the simple food of the
Vipassana Center.
We took our first delightful bites of food silently, sensing
the food in our mouths. I was eating an avocado omelet. Then we spoke
and had wonderful conversations about life. In a moment of silence, I
smiled and said to myself:
Here is Pleasure.
May I generate no craving to extend it now or recreate it later,
May I enjoy it deeply,
This is a road I travel only once.
And then I was home, my senses heightened to the heavens. I sat in my room and meditated.
Three days went by in a delicious whirlwind. I was in the
office, and then sharing my experiences with Daimian, then Alexa, then
Libby.
And then it was dawn and my backpack was on my back and
I was hiking to the BART station. It was that day of the hellish
storms. I had never seen the streets of my neighborhood, the Mission,
this way. The wind nonchalantly tossed entire blue recycling tubs down
valencia street. Paper and cardboard boxes flew into my shins and
knees. The rain was horizontal. Soaked, staring at concrete, I couldn't
imagine nature resisting my departure with any more strength, but I
angled my body into the gale and walked.
I said to myself:
Here is Suffering.
May I have no aversion to it,
May I endure it bravely and patiently,
This is a road I travel only once.
At
the airport, all flights were grounded. The storm raged outside the
tall plate glass windows. I had a vision: A huge silver god plucking me
out of this maelstrom, whisking me through the heavens, and dropping me
on the white sands of some balmy beach.
An hour went by and I bought a book at the airport bookstore. Eat, Pray, Love.
A woman's spiritual journey to pleasure, wisdom, and balance across
Italy, India, and Indonesia. "All countries that start with 'I'," she
notices halfway through the book. "And I guess that's what I'm really
exploring -- I."
Two hours later, my visions of a savior god had turned to
visions of more suffering -- of a return hike through the torrential
fury, from BART to my apartment. And then the gate opened. We handed
over our boarding passes. The jet rolled into the rain, and we took off
straight into the eye of the storm.
3. MEXICATION - Being and Becoming
God
exists. Clearly. At least the silver one I had dreamed of while in that
witches' cauldron of stormy fury in San Franciso, for here I am,
dropped gently by some heavenly hand into a balmy perfection of sun,
sand, and the rushing blue curl of the world's waters. That these two
worlds simultaneously exist -- violent tempests and balmy beach breezes
-- like simultaneous craving and aversion of the very same person,
place, or thing -- proves that the world is too big for us ever to wrap
our minds around. May I remember this when I am next caught up in
craving or aversion: whatever it is, it's merely a problem of
perspective.
I watch a boy who just minutes before had sandled down to the
water between two american tourists, reel in with his fishing line a
gorgeous two-foot mackerel. Two older wizened fishermen follow him but
catch nothing. Fifteen minutes later the boy reels in another beauty.
I recline in the sand and smile deep into the blue overhead.
Here is Pleasure.
May I generate no craving to extend it now or recreate it later,
May I enjoy it deeply,
This is a road I travel only once.
I too eat fresh mackerel that night -- and marlin and shrimp -- on spicy tostadas and "al mojo de ajo," which is an estilo mexicano
of sauteeing things in butter and garlic to golden perfection. I take
my first bite in the way that I had tasted the Blissful Orange -- in
what I now call Tasting Meditation: I savor the wild variety of
delicious flavors one by one. My mind relaxes, and new thoughts arise.
I often forget something -- to simply "be." I always want to
"become." To become something, someone, some way. There is "be" and
there is "become." All of the ideas -- Enneagram, Landmark, Buddhism,
meditation, music, writing, poetry, friends, society -- and all of the
impulses they create -- they seem to fall into these two big buckets:
Being and Becoming.
I want just to be.
Not that I love any less the
intention, creativity, or power of dreams, ideas, and inspirations that
we bring the world in the hopes of becoming, evolving, creating
something new. We are here for a reason; something breathes life into
us, transforms us momentarily into gods.
But we starve without, at times, simply being. We need,
sometimes, to do nothing more than be aware we are alive. To do nothing
but admire the world exactly as it is. Maybe admire, too, ourselves,
exactly as we are. Be. There is nothing to become. There is nothing for
others to become. There is nothing for the world to become. Life is a
flash, a little gift, a tostada of pain, pleasure, and equanimity. And
then it's gone, regardless of what we or anyone else has become. Here,
gone. Be, become, be.
Tequila and Equanibliss
I board a bus for Tequila, the birthplace of the famous bebida made
from the blue cactus called "agave." The landscape out the window turns
rocky as we climb from the beach into the foothills of the Sierra Madre
del Sur. The beauty is spoiled for me, however, when the bus's two
television screens flash on and bellow a miserable slapstick Hollywood
film called 'Little Man,' which follows a midget criminal as he fools
an innocent couple into believing he's a baby. I take out Eat, Pray, Love and follow the woman's transition from pure
sensual pleasures in Italy to pure meditation and devotion in India,
but I'm near the back of the bus and as we wind into the hills, I begin
to feel sick. I have to stop reading and look straight ahead, and I'm
drawn into the movie, for which I have, as a guru might say, aversion.
I get up to speak with the driver -- to confirm that he will let me off
in the town of Tequila. "
No, no se puede," he shakes his head. ("I can't"). "This bus is
going to Guadalajara, and it doesn't stop." I argue with him for a
moment, but I hear the foolish errors in my Spanish, and anyway I don't
want to distract him as he takes the hairpin turns. I return to my
seat, feeling imprisoned, feeling like the Wayans brothers onscreen are
my jailkeepers. I gaze into space, and there they are, the words.
Here is Suffering.
May I have no aversion to it,
May I endure it bravely and patiently,
This is a road I travel only once.
I laugh a little, at myself. "Bravely and patiently." The words seem melodramatic. Everything is a problem of perspective.
I meditate a while, and then find my mind focusing on Buddhism,
proving that Buddhism can't possibly be true. Buddhism assumes that
man's mind is bigger than the universe, that through purification and
focus of the mind, one can transcend the puzzles, pleasures, and pains
that the universe constantly sends us. But how could a mind ever, even
in enlightenment, wrap around the final layer of existence in this
universe, since we operate within this universe? Buddhism holds that
through "
sheyla" (devout living) "samadhi" (mental purification) and "pannya"
(widsom), one can reach a place of clarity and illumination and,
finally, enlightenment, beyond craving and aversion. But this itself
smacks of a deep mental craving for escape.
Buddhism holds that the world is full of change, vicissitude,
unpredictability, and that the world will always throw us suffering or
pleasure or something unexpected. Only through sheyla, samadhi, and
pannya can one get beyond this cycle, to a place where craving
and aversion no longer torment us. But we know that when we get there,
we will struggle with the craving to keep it. And that the universe
will send us suffering or pleasure or something unexpected, and that
only through mental purification and samadhi we can get beyond this cycle, to a place where craving
and aversion no longer torment us. But we know that when we get to that
place, we will struggle with the craving to keep it. And that the
universe will send us suffering or pleasure or something unexpected,
and that only through mental purification and samadhi we can get beyond this cycle, to a place where craving no longer exists. But we know that when we get there...
In
other words, can the human mind finally go beyond its own existence in
the universe, or does the universe and its unpredictability finally
throw every being another wild card he or she has to work with?
I sense it is the latter, and that this is a proof not that
Buddhism can't be true, but rather that enlightenment doesn't exist.
Enlightenment is an idea, a very enticing idea, but it generates only
craving. What seems to exist is an ever-refining state of
consciousness, like an onion, and each layer requires wisdom and
courage to peel off. Each layer is some deep emotional, mental, or
physical craving or aversion, and each of these require
transformational activity to see through and to finally shed. And every
time we peel off even one layer, we experience (relative) enlightenment
about our life and about the universe, and we get to enjoy that refined
state forever. And then there's another layer of the onion.
I sense that there's something else that we start to
experience, an attainable state somewhere between equanimity and bliss,
an "equanibliss," in which, through wisdom and through shedding layers
of the onion, our cravings and aversions shrink into desires, and then
into mere preferences, and then finally into feather-weight, nearly
transparent preferences. Preferences never totally go away, but in
equanibliss we observe when life goes the way we prefer, calmly and
joyfully: "Cool! Here's my preference. Was my preference right?" and
when life doesn't go according to our preferences, we observe with
curiosity: "Here's what I don't prefer. It too is life. Was my
preference right?"
More Mexican and Most Mexican
Though it
hadn't been my preference, I'm on the bus all the way to Guadalajara. I
spend several days there, strolling the city's lovely plazas and
wondering again why we keep getting rid of our public spaces in the
United States; every trip to Latin America reminds me how much plazas
improve life for all, rich and poor. I fall into conversations here and
there, make friends here and there, and my mind slowly but surely
remembers Spanish. I take good care of myself in the pastry and ice
cream shops. And at all times of day and night I feast on delicious,
inexpensive food -- not just quesadillas, chilaquiles, and enchiladas,
but local specialties like
birria (steamed goat) tacos and pozole (a traditional
stew hailing from indigenous times that blends hominy (alkali-soaked
corn kernels), chile peppers, cabbage, cilantro,
pork, limes, and radishes). Mexicans call Guadalajara "the most Mexican
city," since its life incorporates both indigenous and colonial
cultures; it doesn't hurt that it's also home to the country's most
popular soccer team, Chivas, and that it's the birthplace of mariachi
music, sombreros, rodeos, and the Mexican Hat Dance.
I do make it to the nearby birthplace of that other quintessential "cosa Mexicana"
-- Tequila. Traveling through fields of the blue agave cacti (they look
like four-foot-high heads of blue pineapples) to get there, and passing
through numerous tequila-making villages, it feels like a visit to Napa
or Sonoma. Instead of Wine Country, I'm on pilgrimage in the heart of
Tequila Country. In one village's Museo Nacional del Tequila I learn
about the different purities and types and the white, gold, rested, and
aged styles of "the most Mexican drink." And in one of the many
distilleries nearby (I choose to visit the largest one, the home of
Jose Cuervo, a sprawling museum and distillery called "El Mundo
Cuervo"), I get to witness the process of splitting and crushing the
hearts of the ripe cacti, the double fermentation, and the aging
process. I finally sit in a fancy tasting room and sample the various
styles. Seated at a table with a German girl, a Spanish guy, a
Colombian lady, and a Mexican cowboy, we're shown how to swish, sniff,
and taste the various glasses of gold and silver delight. The best A�ejo ("aged" -- in oak barrels for 3-5 years) has
delicious subtleties, fruitiness, oakiness, caramelness, spicy
sharpness. This, by the way, from me, a guy who's never had a taste for
the stuff -- or at least for the impure unaged stuff that passes for
"tequila" in most American bars, parties, and frat houses. By the end
of the visit I was both a delighted student and an enthusiastic (and
inebriated) customer.
From Tequila, I go south, to Mexico's largest natural lake, el
Lago Chapala. There, in the lakeside village of Ajijic, god visits me
again. She gives me another day on earth. It was the 10th and I needed
to hurry to my rendezvous with my family, but I sat meditating by the
lake for a long time, and when I returned to town, it had become the
9th. I don't know how. And then it was the 8th. I reset the calendar on
my watch, which perhaps I had inadvertently affected when I adjusted
for the timezone change. I ask others about it, but everyone seems
quite undisturbed by the fact that, to my gringo mind, the date has
changed. Twice.
Fire and Ice
Utterly unsure what is going
on with the mysteries of time, I continue south, to Colima, a town
nestled at the foot of twin volcanoes. One is active and often steaming
and smoking -- if not erupting, as it did in 2005; the other is extinct
and covered in ice and snow. The twin peaks can be seen from the town
plazas, and the intense polarity of their energy -- the fire and ice --
are felt palpably in the tropical streets. For good measure,
earthquakes also like Colima, and a 2003 temblor wracked the city. I
stay near a lovely plaza called El Jardin Nunez and take solo trips up
to the volcanoes. Unfortunately I can't put together a trek to summit
the peak of the snow-capped one, but I do find a way to visit Laguna La
Maria - an elegant lake in the shadow of Los Volcanes. I've never
figured out why I'm so drawn to bodies of water, wherever I go, but so
it is. A bus takes me from Colima up through tiny villages, Suchitlan
and La Becerrera, and as we climb into the hills, the views of the
valleys and the volcanoes towering overhead are vast and stunning.
Beige turns quickly to emerald green. Before long I am the last
passenger on the bus.
I stand at the door to get off as the driver turns the bus
around. He tells me this is the last bus back to Colima. There aren't
any more. But if I'm at an intersection 50 yards down the road ("that
one, over there") at 5:20, he says, I'll be able to hail a combi down
to one of the villages and look to get home from there. I thank him and
get off.
And there I am, alone, walking on a long country road of
black volcanic cobblestones. There are a few homes on my right: tiny
houses consisting each of a single adobe room. Four children stop
playing with their ball to stare at me and to return my "
buenas tardes" as if I am the first gringo they've seen in
months or years. The sun is high and hot the road is under a canopy of
trees, and I walk in delight to the lake itself. Before I reach the
lake, I come to its resort -- a small white hotel with a soccer field.
An old punctured deflated Chivas soccer ball is hiding in a bush, and I
retrieve it and runbarefoot on the field with the ball, back and forth.
I reach the lake and meditate in a shady cove, with white
ducks swimming nearby and a boat of fishermen far away tossing a net
into the rippling water. The sun cuts a blinding reflection across the
water, and I marvel at whatever god this is who changed the time and
weather and dropped me here. A line from Eat, Pray, Love comes to me. "May god play in my blood the way the sun likes to play in water."
Of course I lose track of time and barely make it back to the
intersection on time. Well, it's 5:25, so I'm worried. The first
vehicle appears -- a red minivan that looks too small to be a bus, but
thankfully it stops. I never find out if it's the bus or just a kind
man, but he takes me. He's an extremely aggressive driver, a cowboy
bent on showing off his skills on the tight mountain curves, and he
drives close to other vehicles, and then swerves recklessly around them
on hairpin turns. But he doesn't ask for a fare and takes me and the
other passengers (who appear to be friends) all the way back to Colima.
No Smiling
I stop in a tiny diner for dinner. There's no menu, but the waitress tells me they have pozole stew and tacos, and it sounds perfect. Alongside an ice-cold Estrella (they only seem to serve beer ice-cold here), the
pozole is an amazing meal, and I eat and write a bit in my
journal. When I look up, a young woman is boring into me boldly with
her eyes. I gaze back, and our eyes lock. There is something ineffable
about this kind of stare; there's no smile, only electricity, and it
crosses a room like telepathy. The first few tenths of a second are one
thing, the rest of that first second another, and then after that it
moves into completely uncharted territory. It goes from "I like you" to
"I love looking at you" to "I am completely yours, possess me, have
everything I can possibly offer." It is not something you can ignore.
Try it.
Everything about this part of Mexico is ridiculously romantic.
In every plaza, in the mist of every fountain, under the shade of every
gorgeous tree, there is a couple, young or old, kissing or talking, in
each others' hands or arms or laps. The sweetness is everywhere; even
the pastry and ice cream shops are utterly countless.
This woman is too young. She's with an older woman, probably her mother. Where did she learn this scorching gaze? I look at her one last time and let my mind wander a moment. Then I return to my journal.
A Perfect Island
A few days later I found
myself in Puerto Vallarta again, at the seaside Sheraton Buganvilias
Vacacion Club, for a weeklong rendezvous with my family. There were two
pools, two hot tubs, swim-up bars, gorgeous stretches of beach, and
splendid views of the sun's nightly detonation in the Pacific. What had
been Mexico became a glorious, perfect island of America. My family and
I rented a boat, caught fish of our own, and made fresh lime-cured
ceviche.
Many times I breathed through my Nose-strils and smiled.
Here is Pleasure.
May I generate no craving to extend it now or recreate it later,
May I enjoy it deeply,
This is a road I travel only once.
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