What Makes Me Jump Up and Down, Point and Squeal Like a Little Kid?

Seeing porpoise surfing the waves next to my boat under the Golden Gate Bridge! Fucking awesome!!

Something Interesting I Recently Read About Love...

To love always knowing the tragic end looms, if only in death itself - to give freely nonetheless, to say in the moment, yes, my soul swells with sweetness that I will brave not to deny; foolishness or wisdom - I choose the latter. To embrace the ephemeral nature of affinity and the transcendence of love, to simply sit still in the moment and quietly say yes. Not for the return on investment but for the splendor of the singular moment of truth, for the insatiable drive to be in alignment, if only for the fleeting moment. For the truth of love that we so many work to deny in so many minutes of so many days until we are near the end, supine, infirm. Stripped of our pretenses, no longer a servant to fear, it is then that so many of us transcend our shame and confess that we do indeed love. It is when we are supine and infirm that we no longer fear what interpretations will be made of our words, or who will recoil for fear of expectations, or who will recoil for analysis, or who will recoil with suspicion. Those who suffer the luxury of contemplating tomorrow often indulge in fearing it, believing fear will protect. Sad thing is fear does protect. It protects us from daring, protects us from possibility, protects us from the joy of loving enough to feel the pain of disappointment, the pain of rejection, the pain of loss, and the pain of betrayal. But the cost of this protection is high, and in the end, it is a net loss.

Anonymous

Hey Dad

Sometimes I stand with the fridge door open for a long time, contemplating the contents. Sometimes I have the heat on in the house with the window open in my room. Sometimes I drive my car with the window rolled down and the AC blasting. Then I remember I pay the bills. I note that wasting energy is just not very responsible. So I close the fridge. I turn off the heat. I roll up the window. But I have to admit a certain satisfaction in the momentary defiance. But ultimately, I realize, you were right.

Kino Bay: The Two Rules, Opera as Retribution, a Ride Through the Sonoran Desert With a One-Eyed-Pit-bull Named Felon, and My New Favorite Beer

Catherine, a fellow traveler, philosopher, appreciator of surly bartenders and broody folks with the wanderlust....we met at Cafe No Se (a Latin American beacon for the likes of such folks) in Antigua, GT, and became instant pals.

She can drink, she's read a book or two, and she loves Faulkner's nobel prize acceptance speech (so do I for all it's ridiculous romanticism). She lives in Paris and Mexico. She's smart, cynical, sarcastic, loves civeche and fish tacos, and she's very easy and fun to be with....so when she invited me to visit her in Kino Bay, Mexico, I said, "How's the end of March?" She met me at the Hermosillo airport in her very practical minivan with a cold Negro Modelo and a smile....that's how the weekend started.

Before my arrival Catherine explained in an email that there are two rules for staying at her pad in Kino:

1: Dip your feet in the bucket before coming off the beach to the porch

2: Don't pick at the asbestos ceiling

I wrote back that I could live within these rules (are you kidding me? fucking love Mexico!). After a couple beers and a shot of tequila, she added one about not snorting the roach poison...again, I said I could live with that.

Kino is a sleepy Mexican town on the northern coast of the mainland on the Sea of Cortez. The town is divided between old Kino, a typical Mexican town, and New Kino, where the gringos have built their houses on the beach. Normally, it is a very quiet place but not this particular weekend.....it was "youth week," which is something akin to spring break. Rich kids from Hermosillo, the Sonoran State capital an hour east, flock to the coast to party like children while relentlessly blasting really really bad Mexican pop music.

The house next to Catherine's is abandoned and so a gang of 15-20 kids took up residence, camping and drinking around a fire pit and being really fucking noisy all night long. I was undisturbed having drank enough beer and having utilized very effective earplugs. Catherine however declared that she would get her revenge in the morning!

The next day I woke, stirred, pulled out the plugs....stared at the ceiling, blinking, trying to digest the sensory input I was getting....what was that rather sweet noise? I stumbled outta bed and headed through the beach-side porch towards the bathroom and realized that Catherine had her stereo aimed at the neighbors yard blaring opera!! I looked through the fence and saw at least a dozen young bodies sleeping in the dirt, on sleeping bags...some cuddled, some sprawled...beer bottles piled high here and there. And the air was filled with Mozart's Marriage of Figaro or some such! Catherine lamented that her stereo could not be turned up any higher! We sat and drank fruit smoothies on the porch, looked at the sea, and grinned.

The next day was spent wandering the coast through the Sonoran desert with two blue collar gringos, Rich and Miles, that we had met at Jorge's restaurant the night before. They were kind enough....although not the brightest bulbs. Rich had a severe case of verbal diarrhea and Miles had a mustache that was simply criminal in it's scraggly-ness. But they took us along on their quads and the best company was actually Rich's one-eyed pit-bull named Felon (no joke people...that's his name and he has only one eye). He is thick-headed, pure muscle, intense, and sweet as hell. I spent the day wrestling to keep him in the Ranger as we bounced along the remote dirt roads.

Our first stop at the edge of the sea, Rich and I assembled his shore rods, waded out about 70 yards into the shallow water and cast big silver spoons over a rock reef. We jigged and got nibbles....but set not one bite! But as usual I enjoyed the sport of it...the exercise, the concentration, the sea surrounding me.

We continued on, wandering inland and then to the sea...the estuary...stopping at the edge of the mangroves and shallow inlets. We saw hundreds and hundreds of birds...pelicans and frigates and terns and turkey vultures and gulls....occasionally flushing them as we moved through the cacophony of flapping wings. We saw oysters and clams and muscles....waded a small inlet that had crabs and football-sized sea slugs that spit dark purple ink when disturbed. And yes, I disturbed them. The wildlife highlight though, was a pod of dolphins that frolicked yards from the shore! Big ones and little ones swimming and breaching and flopping and splashing! Could have sworn one waved at me and smiled....but then, that's just the way I see things.

On the way back to town we drove through a Seri Indian village where the complex brutal ironies abound....sweet, poor children waving and smiling. Men filling bottles at the water tank....smoking and moving slowly under the mid-day sun. Cinder block houses scattered among the piles of garbage and rusting whatnot. Catherine later explained the way these folks have been exploited from every direction, the government, the mixed-race Mexicans....the gringos. And so they have landed in this government built village on the margin of Kino. Their indigenous history eclipsed. We just waved and smiled and motored through.

By the end of the day we were exhausted and caked in dirt. Miles and I spent the bulk of the day eating Rich and Catherine's dust....it looked like I had on pancake makeup and the old white t-shirt I was wearing....well, don't think it will ever be white again. Catherine owes me pics and I will post them when I get them.

My new favorite beer is: Bohemia.

Living in Between

You sleeping in jest
smiling
like midnight
gone soft in summer.
Yesterday slithers among
the jasmine and poppies
aimless and content.
The smell of night mingles
with the smell of us
the distinctions gone smooth…
as winter passes
the difference between
in here and out there
needless.
You supine
draped easily
in my mind
trusting the contoured reasoning
the absurdity of time
so obvious and naked
in the soft tissue
connecting one moment
to the next.
You believing
in our synchronized gate
down Dolores Street
to the corner
for carrot soup
and crustinies
water with lemon
sitting
in sturdy wooden chairs
smiling…
present and able.
We watched the moon
waxing and waning over the city
denying the measure it implied
accepting only the stunning truth
as we smiled through the smoke of
herbal cigarettes…
you let me hold your hand.
The white noise
of porn and wine
quelled by the simple companionship
of cotton and soap….
you always bought cucumber soaps
and brushed your teeth acceptingly.
I rest on the memory
realizing it’s immediacy and fiction
not denying its inherent truth
just the distance I perceive between us.

March 7, 2006

Papa and Mexican Fishermen...Doing So Much With So Little

Today Catherine and I sat on the porch, well fed, rested, looking west at the great Sea of Cortez and talking of literature and booze and travel and love and sex. She is a woman whom for 25 years has traveled east to Spain to watch the running of the bulls in Pamplona....an unrelenting tradition of excess that has been around for decades longer than us. It was Spain that Papa, Earnest Hemingway, wrote about in his novel The Sun Also Rises. I tried to recall a quote I had committed to memory so long ago....about living as though our actions had no consequence....Papa drinking Absinth and eating and drinking and not sleeping and waxing philosophically and whatnot for days on end. Catherine knows, at least more specifically in this instance, of what he speaks....and so Papa came into focus.

Catherine then shared a story about how Hemingway was once asked in a bar...or should I say he was challenged in a bar to write a short story in 6 words or less. His response, with his usual laconic and economical brilliance was:

For sale, baby shoes, never worn.

We got to talking about how, despite his brilliance he was rumored to be an arrogant womanizing prick...and I had recently read how, although she adored him, he was cruel to Dorothy Parker, that great modern, unrepentant self-possessed femme smartass. But as usual, I digress....

For it is the doing so much with so little that moved me to recall again how every time I see Mexican fishermen in their sparse pangas working the sea I am reminded that so many do so much with so little. Yesterday we passed a small fish camp on a remote shore of the Sea of Cortez where the men sat sewing, repairing their nets, sitting next to their meek shelters made of driftwood and tarps....we passed on our hearty quads noisy and powerful offering smiles and a buenas tardes. They work without the proverbial net....taking to the sea with little but their wits and a few resources and old outboards whose parts they know better than their wives bodies. They work the sea and cook fish-head soups at night on the beach and drink when it's available and talk of the return when sex and a bit more comfort will be theirs.

Later that night I sat in an austere restaurant in old Kino...where the locals go. It presents the aesthetic of an old cafeteria....with tile floors, cheap paintings, horrible lighting, the irony of a huge flat-screen TV blaring Mexican pop music. And the proprietor greets us with a handshake and the warmth of a family member and we make our order in Spanish and drink a Bohemia and talk of the day while in the back they prepare for us in a simple kitchen the fruits of those humble fisherman. We munch on chips and guacamole and wait in the grease saturated air....in time we sit before our longosta and camarons presented on hearty old plates with an iceberg lettuce garnish and carrots and onions and cucumbers. We eat. We fill ourselves. We linger and talk of the things that educated gringas talk about. We are languid and lazy and we leave a generous tip and shake hands and smile and wish buenas noches and head back through town to sit on the porch and nurse another Bohemia under the temperate Mexican night....and later, I think about those fishermen on the beach....and the cook in the back of that modest restaurant preparing our fare....doing so much with so little.

Some men do it with nets and muscle....and some men do it with words. And I appreciate the skill and temerity of both.

__________________

Alas, today, we challenged ourselves....Catherine suggesting we write out six words as a biography. We sat and played with the language for a spell...and then we landed, for now, on the following:

Catherine's are:

Growing up was never an option.

Grad from Stanford, went to bulls.

Mer's:

A kind broody nut we love.

Butch, brave, kind, and slightly neurotic.

....and so it is.

...and one for the road:

Mescal and lime, a perfect marriage.

Care to take the challenge?

Standing in Quiet Appreciation...the Art of Accepting What's Offered

When a man offers you a cold beer in the middle of the dessert in a third world country...even though you know it will harden your arteries and make you fat, you nod and smile, take the beer...let the coolness slide down your throat, and stand in quiet appreciation.

When a man offers you a cigarette and lends you his flame...even though you know it will rot your lungs, you nod and smile, take the draw, and as the buzz hits....you stand in quiet appreciation.

And when a sweet waiter brings you pan, bread, and you know the doc said gluten is no good for you...you nod with a gracias, and sit and eat in quiet appreciation.

I step out under the brilliant midnight Mexican sky and look west while the sea whispers to me something familiar and transcendent....something words cannot capture....she has comforted and calmed me for a lifetime....and I ponder the balance between temperance and vice...and understand that I am only a visitor...here and always, I am only a visitor...and so I stand in quiet appreciation.

And I will return to the states and eat salads and drink water and work my body and abstain and....sit in quiet appreciation...at least for a minute or two.

Other Writers
Steve Sanfield is a great haiku master.
He lives in the country with Sarah,
his beautiful wife,
and he writes about the small things
which stand for all things.
Kyozan Joshu Roshi,
who has brought hundreds of monks
to a full awakening,
addresses the simultaneous
expansion and contraction
of the cosmos.
I go on and on
about a noble young woman
who unfastened her jeans
in the front seat of my jeep
and let me touch
the source of life
because I was so far from it.
I've got to tell you, friends,
I prefer my stuff to theirs.

Leonard Cohen

Gotta say, I am with Leonard on this one.....