2/26: Mexico Road Trip: Palenque

Saturday would prove to be the zenith of the road-trip. These are days that are conceived at a bizarre cosmic confluence where Life and Experience converge and create a torrent that can neither be dammed, crossed, nor navigated. Only ridden. These are the seldom-found days I live for. Days that toy with innate fear and contrived expectations while literally clawing at your senses and, upon reflection, leave in its wake deep traces on the soul. The sights, sounds, even the smells, remain---just mind’s eye glance away. Among the last few year's follies and escapades, this particular Saturday ranks near the top--along side my first night camping on the Pacific, the Oregon train-hop, and MasterCrafting the Willamette River on my weekend pass into Portland Aristocracy with Andre.

2/25: Mexico Road Trip: Agua Azul & Palenque

A faint shadow hovered over Dylancita (named for Bob Dylan) whenever we stopped: her peculiar habit of occasionally refusing to start! Particularly at military checkpoints, there was always silence and a holding of the collective breath when James prepared to turn the key. When it started, the Combi Gods were pleased. When it didn't? Well, five other people were available to push--much to the amusement of bystanders. It was a minor nuisance that somehow added an odd texture to the trip and was never a serious problem...except for two instances later in the trip.  One could have been literally catastrophic. 

James went about trying to find the cause on Friday morning. As handy as he was mechanically, he had a cavalier attitude toward tires, of all things! When I poked my head beneath, I saw that the left rear tire was less a tire than a ragged piece of worn rubber featuring a full, silver halo of exposed, busted bands! Horrifying! We had just spent a day snaking over mountains and bounding over topes! He was visibly annoyed when I told him he NEEDED to replace it but, moving his ego aside (so mine may take center stage), I take full credit for saving the Dylancita Party from certain peril somewhere beyond Ocosingo! I expect a medal and public recognition at some point...

In case you think I exaggerate

2/24: Mexico Road Trip: Toniná

Aside from Canada and perhaps Iceland*, all cultures have redeeming qualities. While Brits excel at misplaced snobbery and snotty sarcasm, I’ve rarely heard them described as "skilled" drivers. Combine that with the directional lobotomy of learning to drive on the left side of the road, and it's clear: James had overcome staggering odds. He was displaying authentic skill when snaking his power steeringless Combi through Chumula’s tight, steep streets! 

Any stereotypical NASCAR fan would envy James’s reading ability--while publically embracing ignorance and pronouncing James's wealth of literacy (readin’, ritin’, and...rithma...addin') as "faggy".** Now, imagine their horror (and repeated flurry of the word “fag”) when they see that he also boasts a superior mastery of the temperamental clutch and idiosyncratic gears! He displayed both skills flawlessly, in reverse, while liberating us from the extortionist's inclined parking lot on Sunday.

James knew his Combi. James understood Mexico’s roadways. James was our captain. No one even suggested another helmsman until days later, when midnight fatigue corrupted judgment and our new navigator's assignment ended with a close encounter with a semi!

2/19-23: San Cristobal-Flux Capacitor...Fluxing

With entirely too much beef and chicken that would go missing in the hostel's kitchen, we had an excuse for a Saturday barbecue with James and Maarja. Several of us spent the afternoon gorging and discovered that Maarja’s Aunt and Uncle, Eevi and Jan, would arrive in San Cristobal in a few days. James and Maarja wanted to do something special with them, so we discussed a six-man Combi-roadtrip to Palenque. Suddenly, abandoning San Cristobal on Monday seemed rash, and as the day ended we had made plans to take the Combi on a more immediate mini-trip: to a nearby indigenous village, San Juan de Chumula, on Sunday.

2/15-18: San Cristobal-Revolution and Domestication

Pardon me while I indulge myself by highlighting a distinction...and brag for a moment. 

The following few paragraphs are an example of where millions of Moonbeam "travel writers" simply pander and choose to babble about things like an “a-maaaaa-zing cultural diversity” found and bound together by a “common fundamental belief in human dignity, individual freedom, and national sovereignty” neatly encompassed, “both in name and atmosphere, inside San Cristobal’s most famous night spot and social beacon": Revolution.

Horseshit.

MARKETING REVOLUTION

True: Revolution is San Cristobal’s best known bar. Also true: It’s small, it’s dark, and it’s too expensive. It’s marketed, like mass-produced Zapatista trinketry, to the abundant young, naive tourists prancing into town with their plumage erect; their "worldliness" on display to the world; their brazen idealism proudly unrelated to and unconcerned with whether their abstract ideas and textbook philosophies can coexist with tangible pragmatism and action.

2/8-14: San Cristobal-Jose Luis's Galactic Station

Jose Luis

I loved Jose Luis’s place immediately! His was a large guest house in a farm-like setting that  reminded me of Asheville, North Carolina. The house consisted a large main room which worked non-stop as the kitchen, dining, and living area and maintained a rural Montana or New Mexico vibe. The wood floors creaked constantly enhancing the rustic, frontierish ambiance.

I found Jose Luis to be one of the youngest 57-year olds I’d met. He spoke good English thanks in part to having lived, married and had children in the US, and acted as though we’d known each other for years. I thought it was because he had met Chris in January, but this was just how he was with everyone! 

Jose Luis's Place

2/8: San Cristobal-Inadequate Introductions

Chiapas

Chiapas is an incredibly beautiful, fascinating place whose history, including the Mayan ruins in Palenque, draws visitors from around the world. Its very pheromones seem to exude the essence of authentic and unapologetic revolution, revolt, and independence. While Tuxtla Gutierrez is now its capitol, San Cristobal is the political and spiritual center of the local Mayan/Mestizo population, and an epicenter of the Zapatista movement that became a sensation for successfully revolting against the Mexican government in 1994. Images of Emiliano Zapata, Pancho Villa, Che Guevara, and Subcomandante Marcos are never far away and have even become an important part of the areas primary industry: tourism.

This is by no meant as a comprehensive historical account, but briefly the Zapatistas (EZLN) brand and market themselves as an indigenous movement demanding to simply be left alone to live their traditional way of life unmolested by the Mexican government. During the '94 uprising, the Zapatistas occupied four cities in the mountains surrounding, and including, San Cristobal. After a bloody battle in Ocosingo, in the mountains a few hours northeast of San Cristobal, they eventually reached an edgy compromise with the federal government ending outward hostilities, but tensions continue today due in large part to what international watchdog groups described as a brutal government repression of the uprising. Examples included aerial bombardment of indigenous villages surrounding San Cristobal, torture, summary executions, and mass graves with much of the violence perpetrated against the unarmed, indigenous population of the area. Being there 17-years later, it was eerily common to see fully armed troops stationed at various points around the city, particularly El Centro.

2/7-8: Cancun to San Cristobal-Mexico Real

Regrettably, there are areas where we as Americans have utterly failed. Public transportation is one of them. When Americans think of Mexican buses, they think of sweaty, overcrowded, chicken-filled, mechanically questionable jalopies lumbering down underdeveloped, bandit-filled roads. While I’ve heard they do actually exist, the general stereotype is horseshit. Settling in aboard the Cristobal-Colon coach bound for San Cristobal, I thought of the South African woman I shared an overpacked Greyhound with in ‘08. She found American buses disgusting, the customer service appalling, and put the blame squarely on Greyhound’s virtual monopoly. Although Cristobal-Colon is a Mexican second-class line, it’s one of several to choose from and in direct comparison, Greyhound is clearly the cattle car company in the conversation!

2/3-7: Tulum, Mexico

Checking out of the hostel and running around took most of the morning, and by the time we settled into our early afternoon bus south, I was ready to be rid of Cancun. In retrospect it was probably a combination of things: hearing Chris rave about how "expensive" it was in Cancun although, compared to the US, it seemed dirt cheap to me, plus an extreme curiosity to see what "real" Mexico was like as opposed to the place where all the signs were also in English.

2/1-3: Cancun, Mexico

My flight's path was over the Gulf of Mexico directly to the Yucatan Peninsula, and seeing the shoreline I was struck that, other than Juarez across the Rio Grande from I-10 in El Paso, I was finally glimpsing something other than Terra Americana/Canadia for the first time since briefly living in Germany when I was 15. As the plane descended, it was clear from the air that this was indeed another world; one I was eager to see with my own eyes as opposed to the controlled electronic agenda-driven snapshots we are inundated with in the States.

Mexico: A Prologue

Despite simmering on a hidden backburner for a year or two, the notion of traveling to Mexico and the rest of Latin America is something that never went away. A trek to Peru was one of my original ideas well before 2008 when Chris and I spent countless hours bouncing adventureman ideas around his Denver apartment imagining such an adventure. As you can imagine there were the endless questions about things such as safety, corruption, the culture, and language barriers. Then in February '09, when I reconnected with my "long lost" family, the travels made it clear that they had their own ideas about where I would be going and why.

A Patricide

As is typical, the preceding Waiting for the Miracle idea is mostly distilled from my own experiences, so there is one glaring caveat to the subject that I should address.

That sense of waiting is something that had just always been there. I have never had a real point of comparison so my cause may be different from someone else's, yet I know "waiting" isn't rare. I've seen it in several other people: it seems there comes a time, perhaps with the realization that time's no longer our friend, when we begin to see that the miracle just isn't coming and we'd better get off our asses and start looking for answers ourselves. 

Waiting for the Miracle

Baby, I've been waiting,

I've been waiting night and day.

I didn't see the time,

I waited half my life away.

There were lots of invitations

and I know you sent me some,

but I was waiting

for the miracle, for the miracle to come.

I know you really loved me.

but, you see, my hands were tied.

I know it must have hurt you,

it must have hurt your pride

to have to stand beneath my window

with your bugle and your drum,

and me I'm up there waiting

for the miracle, for the miracle to come.

- Leonard Cohen

It seems as though some among us who are actively seeking their own answers are determined to seek their validation and enlightenment via mentors, sages, cultural shamans, or even personal saviors rather than through the experience of meeting the personal challenges required to win a hard-earned wisdom.

Avatars and Cheese

Over the last two-years, there were numerous times I’ve caught myself making decisions so that my "story" would be better. The blog had become a bit of a hybrid creative-outlet/ego-feeder; something I too closely identified with. I liked the idea that I was doing something that others either couldn't do or were afraid to, and naturally that appealed to me! Telling the story has, at times, shadowed why I'm doing it. Nothing personal, but what I'm doing should have nothing to do with entertaining anyone else!

Escapist Voodoo

To recap once again, after 2009s travels ended with Port Townsend, I settled into last winter by starting down a path that, quite frankly, I was unprepared for. When I jabbed my pen into Don Quixote, the notion that each of us silently deal in secret, disguised and silent self-delusion, I struck a mammoth vein of fool’s gold. I certainly hit something incredibly significant, but I was also stunningly naive about what it meant, and more foolish still in believing Freud’s Dragon wouldn’t turn on me!

Winter Quarters 2011

Colossal, dramatic changes are kicking in the door and suddenly time is very limited. Although I sincerely want to tie all of 2010 together, I haven’t due to a peculiar (and extended) incoherence. Now, I no longer have the luxury of spending days on end attempting to perfectly articulate a detailed play-by-play.

By way of comparison, 2010 was sparsely “written up” relative to ’08 and ’09. Don’t be mistaken in thinking that’s because it was uneventful! After my time with Rael and my sister in California way back in March, in retrospect the year was spent alternately struggling to process and avoiding excruciating revelations, conclusions, and connections. The last few months were spent finally reconciling all of them.

8/27: Boise, ID

Mike elected to stay in Boise until Saturday, and I was glad to hear it. They needed another day out of the car and that would provide a chance to get to know Ben & Brad a bit better. Besides, I was selfishly enjoying this new (to me) dynamic!

8/26: Boise, ID

Mike, Bobbie, and Ally returned from a quick but perfectly enjoyable visit to Bend and their plan is to return east as soon as tomorrow, depending on what I decide to do. I honestly don’t know what that will be. I’m inclined to stay and head toward Portland again; of course, there’s always something unresolved. I also could have them drop me in Cheyenne to hitch or catch a bus home, or suggest a return through Colorado where they could drop me in Denver.

8/25: Boise, ID

Dave worked a full day, but once he was home we embarked upon a remarkable chat concerning the results of one losing their religion or spiritual compass. Considering his background of renouncing Mormonism after climbing its ranks, Dave has a rare, fascinating, and original perspective and personal experience with it. I explored how my loss of "trust-in-the-compass" coincided with the negativity I seem to attract lately; at least since the Chris rants of February, if not all the way back to Andre. The conversation eventually turned to forgiveness (or lack of); giving people, myself included if not first, permission to be, as Rael put it, flawed.

8/22-24: Boise, ID

Our "coincidental" timing was remarkable. We arrived at Lynette's at about 11pm, literally a few short minutes before their cab, and after 36-hours in the car, proceeded to fight car lag while exchanging enthusiastic greetings and reacquainting ourselves.