When Desire Does a Bait and Switch

He fell hard for the dream he projected onto her. She was a match to his imagination, and the fire caught on dry tinder, years in the making. She was the "if only" of his fantasies, and he could see the far horizons of possibility in her -- a playmate, a travel buddy, a perfect fit for all the good times. We can make our world just right, he said, no problems, not muss, no fuss, all fun and comfort. It came as a surprise when she asserted her difference, stepping outside his narrow slice of what he thought was possible. The real journey, she said, lay within, a place he had locked up tight in the taboo of never-in-this-life; too much pain there, the thing he avoided most, the thing that ran him, the silent advisor behind all of his decisions, that raw nerve of loss. He had braided suffering into the inevitable pain that comes with a life and had identified with that. One might say that this was the end, but one would be mistaken. The departure from the known, the line of sight he thought was all there was, became an answer to a question he didn't know he was asking. There was a more to this life than he imagined and it took a shattering of the self and the surrender to a heart breaking open to loosen the scales from his eyes.

Darkness Is On the Move

Some Americans, roughly a third of us, have chosen the Dark Side: fear, greed,violent domination, regimentation, -- meanness. They/we have chosen not to work through their shadows, the trauma hidden in the psyche. They/we choose instead to locate the "enemy" "out there," in people of color, poverty, and lack of power -- immigrants and other marginalized groups, mainly, but also anyone who disagrees with them. These/we Americans hate and want to destroy these "enemies." They/we will destroy every vestige of democracy to do so. They/we are like a snake eating itself out of anger, spite, and terror of its own, self-created monsters.

The other two thirds of Americans, if they want to live in a freer, more democratic state, have to organize and regain power. It will take courage to stand up to the brutality of a police state. It will require that we overcome differences to work together to reinstate a democracy. 

The times will be hard, because the fearful, our brothers and sisters, have already erected walls, fences, and weapons. Courage, community, and clarity of vision are the tools we need and have to use. 

The work is there, waiting. The consequences of denial or forfeit of action will be dire, for we all will enter a long night of shadow.

Mexico (Draft)

I lived in Mexico for almost two years, off and on, with trips out of the country to renew visas and to make developed world wages so I could better travel and live.

Those first days, I was a sponge and a set of eyeballs. I just stared and absorbed the sounds, smells, colors, and energy of a people hustling to make a living. The sidewalks were packed with people, alive with vendors selling fresh -squeezed orange juice, small stacks of limes or tomatoes or trinkets. A card table was a livelihood.I had to learn to politely decline offers to buy whatever they were selling, but still their eyes sought mine out -- "Here comes a sale, a gringo. Money is nothing to them." 

I trailed streamers of student identity from Madison: baggy jeans, funky baseball cap, worn t-shirt, beat-up sneakers. None of this impressed anyone. Dressing down was not stylish or much appreciated. 

I had studied Spanish most of my high-school and college life, and had a pretty solid grasp on grammar, but not on pronunciation. I must have sounded to them like some Spanish aristocrat dropped out of the sky from the 19th century. My formal address and stilted, whole word elocution made people smile, if not outright laugh. 

While Mexico City, the Distrito Federal, was a humming, cosmopolitan urban monster of a city with much to offer, I wanted something quieter, so went to Cuernavaca to find a language school. They called it the City of Eternal Springtime, and it lived up to that title. There were blooming plants coming up out of cracks in the sidewalk, on the sides of buildings, and sprawled across the countryside. In the distance were the volcanoes, Ixta and Popo. 

I found a guesthouse, a casa de huespedes, and rented a room with the intent to stay for a while. It was not a tourist spot ans catered more to young Mexican workers. There was a teacher, some receptionists, a crazy guy who traveled to pick up eyeglass lenses that needed to be ground to fit prescriptions, sales people, students, and oil workers in Cuernavaca on leave from the derricks out in the Gulf of Mexico. 

We cooked in a communal kitchen so got ro know each other. The kitchen looked over a narrow but busy street frequented by vendors pushing carts and singing their services. Buses and cars were few but took up the whole street, so people had to hug the walls to avoid collisions. It all worked somehow, if not chaotically. 

I enrolled in a language school that catered to Europeans mainly who were on leave from jobs or on holiday and wanted to engage with the locals. Language and culture and field-trips and romance made for energetic community. 

I preferred the working locals to the well-heeled backpacker language school folks, but the latter were a nice break from the overwhelm of trying to acculturate. 

(To be Continued...)

Back In Life

The pain has subsided. The surges and crippling knives have gone calm and quiet. They have retreated back into the mystery from which they came. I am grateful, fresh from the memory of incessant assault on the senses. I again am free to let the mind wander, to see, from a place of peace, what is in front of me, to decide what it is I want to do, how it is I would like to spend this day, not beset by the harassing horde of nervous agitation. It's a gift, and I know that it is easy to forget, once one is here, back in the land of the well, with all the distraction that comes with being here. I will try to remember and to bow in gratitude for the day. I want to use it well. 

Three Thirty In the Morning

I walk in the company of cats. They are the ones who know this time, the time when all things are possible because space and possibility walk with us in the dark. For this moment, I rise above the pulsing pain after strapping on the ice packs on my thigh and back. Once settled I can travel to where the mind takes me until I again return to the subject at hand, the little daggers that hold my attention hostage. I remember bio luminescence behind a sailboat that I worked on off the coast of Central America. It was my watch and the seas were calm as I held the course for Punta Arenas in Costa Rica. I remember my hundred-dollar pickup truck heading west to Colorado with skis on the roof, tips gently dancing in the wind. I remember the shock of diving into Lake Superior on a solo backpacking trip to Isle Royale. I taste the time left to me and lean into it. A train plays a mournful song to the waning moon. Who will you see today, pilgrim? What will you carry with you from this moment outside your habits and routines? How will you trace the story waiting for you to tell? Will you be able and willing to part the screen of distraction to see and embrace this moment and whatever it holds?

Pain Talk

Still in pain and slowly getting worse. My task is not to resist or to panic, but to go with it, disidentify with it, let it be a "taste of purification" that is distinct from suffering. Observe precisely the ebbs and flows without making it a thing or wishing it was something else, wishing I could get out on my bike or or sleep the sleep of a honeymoon beloved. No, the pain is there, and it's calling. It says work. Do the work of letting me be without resisting. I hear you. I turn my attention to sorting the sensations from the prayers for them to end. 

Abnormality

Donna Frazzee, the girl who sat behind me in fifth grade, used the whisper "abnorm" to me when she wanted to bug me. She thought this was very funny and would double up in an all but silent exhale of a giggle at her own joke. (My first name in Norman, and I was named after my father, so called Erec to keep us distinct in the family.) Donna's secret joke forecasted a trajectory of my time here on earth. I have been out-of-step, or a half-bubble-off-plumb, my whole life. I just can't seem to fit into the boxes people want to put me in. Anyway, it comes as no surprise that my body has taken up the moniker as well. My MRI for the hot, stabbing pain in my lower back, hip, and thigh has revealed "abnormalities," growths, in other words. You could say tumors, but there is still some further tests to run. None of this is anything to worry about, though; it's just the path life takes and another turn in the circuitous road I travel. I am relieved, actually, to have the beginnings of a diagnosis. Now I can see it down there, in the complicated tunnels of the spine, all those nerves, discs, and Gaudi-inspired bone structures -- a little something that reminds me this ain't no paved, easy, predictable, normal garden path. Carry on, y'all. And remember that your time is likely shorter than you think. Rejoice in this day, and try to breathe through the pain. XO.