Rebirth

I made it through my second week of grad school with a small hiccup in my plan but it was one that was easy to fix with the help of a patient family and a few extra hours after work.  The poisonous thought entered my mind which tells us to quit as soon as we are confronted by the most minimal of setbacks.  That very poison is probably responsible for causing so many people to stop playing musical instruments or never getting past the first paragraph of that book they have been wanting to write.  Maybe it's doubt.  It's probably doubt and I blindly recognized it as a force that was going to grow stronger against my favor unless I destroy it in its infancy.

Lately the idea of 'rebirth' has been playing in my mind.  I feel like a new person.  I hate that I wrote that, it doesn't describe how I really feel.  Let me try again.  I feel like an old part of me has died, a chapter has finished, and while I have the option to stop writing this book all together I still have a much more exciting option of not-giving up.  And it feels good.  Salem was responsible for this.  When my wife was pregnant I began to see the future in a way I never thought would be physically possible.  I could begin to imagine myself and where I will be in eighteen years and admittedly the thought concerned me a bit.  I began to worry about my job and the sustainability of my body while I work in such a physically demanding profession.  That very profession has given me a house to our name as well stability in my home country, something I never had thought possible a few years ago.

Rebirth.. Birth.. Salem.. I'm watching this little beautiful and curious baby turn into a toddler and although it is cold outside I cannot help but think about how nice it will be to take him into the lake this summer.  I had a premonition about this a long time ago that one or two of you might remember about this, it's a very meaningful to me.  Salem saw his first squirrel today, at least the first one I was around to see with him.  We have been staring out the window on this very lazy weekend and I realize that it has been quite a long time since I've let my spirit so free.  No phone, no distractions, just an open heart and an open mind.  Then I heard her calling again..

Today I want to look at many maps as if I have never seen a map before.  I want these maps to collect and be found by my son in a few years and I want the world to suddenly seem much larger than he can understand.  He has barely seen our backyard, God I have so much to show him.  And this is how I found my rebirth, through my beautiful son.  He is the biggest motivation I have to get back out there and be bold and amazing.  I'm perhaps one of the last people on this planet, so it seems, that still believes in the good of things to come and I want to show my son this world while there is still a possibility to find other believers out there.

Rivers

 It wasn't that long ago that I was searching for a new metaphor.  One of my best friends wrote a book and in the first few lines the book asked, "they never taught us that metaphors are magic did they?"  So I wanted a new metaphor. 

You're sitting by a river, meditating, observing.  Some rivers flow free and some crash dramatically into logs and stones and pieces of broken highway left to slow the passing water.  Some rivers are almost still, they are shallow and you can see the colorful stones painting the bottoms of their aquatic dwelling.  Some rivers lead into many faraway unknown destinations while some rivers fall down to places below.  I'm at my river, dear diary, and I have come to know this body of water very well.  I know the way it flows and sometimes I'm certain that nobody knows better what this river needs than myself.  I was here first.  These things should have all been true but somehow my river was beginning to clog itself.  

What is the great metaphor?  I believe that our rivers are full of beautiful things: friends and family, acquaintances, branches and stones as well as many troubling things: doubt, fear, uncertainty, sharp pointy pieces of glass, litter.  I'm beginning to see my river in my meditations, those I'm able to find time for in this new chapter in my life about being a parent.  The ability to reflect is a luxury.  Again, you need still water in order to reflect, do you not?  

So I took to my river and began to rearrange the beautiful stones and branches as well began to clean up the litter.  It looked nice from my grassy riverbank.  It's not done, in fact some branches are being stubborn and snagging leaves and seaweed.  Every now and then I slice my toe on a broken bottle.   It's working though, I'm beginning to feel my flow.

Time is but a Blink of the Mind's Eye

 Hey Salem, if you’re reading my blog I hope you start here because this is the best part.  This is around the time when you came into my life. 

 

I stumbled on this old photo I took when I was in the Peace Corps about 15 years ago.  It’s nice to look at a number and watch it grow over time, you’ll understand that someday.  But this blog is not intended for nostalgia anymore, in fact it is something I wish to use to look forward.  I am writing this very entry on the day before I went back to school to become a teacher again.   

These moments in my life are sometimes stamped on my body, typically in tattoos.  A long time ago I had certain glyphs from the early people of Mexico tattooed on my back and I had it done to celebrate my decision to become a teacher.  Time would pass and I’d long enjoy the completeness I felt in my profession but some events happened in my life that took me off course, yet I cannot write those words and feel honest about them as I know now where that course has led me upon today.   I had to cover that tattoo to make way for a larger one (fun fact: you’re in there) and it happened around the time I thought I had ended my career as a teacher.  Well, that has changed now and I’ll begin my Master’s tomorrow fresh with a healing glyph upon my left forearm. 

This special Sunday feels perfect.  Your mom is so beautiful.  Your grandparents love you and you’ll see them today.  Sometimes I look at you and I feel ‘forever’ in the same way that you look up to the silence of God’s mystery and feel comfort and stillness in the idea of ‘forever’.  I’m so proud of you and I can’t wait to meet the beautiful young man you’ll become. 

Please tell me which is better as my curious mind has never resolved, to inspire or to be inspired?  Are they not a balance like all things?  Does the 38-year-old child who authors this blog ever satisfy himself with answers to pointless questions like this?  Personally, I feel a whirlwind of both these days.  Something like ten months have passed since our planet became infected with a horrible virus that has managed to stack very high brick walls between our family and friends.  These were isolating times and often people saw this as an opportunity to soul search, I myself included.  I am beginning to see the future through a slightly more focused periscope and it scared me to have had such uncertainty about how things might have unfolded.  In the past I was kinda crazy, I still am. 

So, this is my commitment.  I have about two years of a program and I’d like to check in weekly with at most one photo to share with you and whatever thoughts pass through this curious mind might reach the ears of others who know what I’m feeling.  This is my path to get back into the world while managing to keep part of myself here with those whom I love.  It’s a challenge and it seems extraordinary to society but I’m going to write for us a very different path and I hope you all love it.

Samoa, 2006

Puebla, Mexico

Nunca deja de soñar...

Today’s journey brought nine hours of travel and turned it into conversation and understanding.  I woke up this morning in San Cristóbal and tonight I will lay my head down in the beautiful historical city of Puebla, Mexico.  

The future is a very uncertain thing and in this confusion I somehow take a great comfort.. but enough of my esoteric words, rather I wish to tell you that in this moment I’m content with my uncertainty.  You see, earlier today we struggled with a very important choice to make as we weren’t sure which border would be safest for us to cross from Mexico back into USA.  Although we are still days away from the border we must begin making plans to guide our vessel home.  This took us to Puebla.  

Perhaps you’ve e heard of cinco de mayo in college when you took shots of tequila and wore a silly Mexican sombrero but honestly that crap is nonsense here.  The fifth of May represents a great part of Mexico’s history and it’s really wild to believe that we have appropriated their culture to such a degree yet who am I to be surprised when we still celebrate saint Patrick’s Day be getting blindingly drunk with no knowledge of its origin?  To me Puebla represents so much more. Let me explain...

I believe that the manner in which we view a culture not only reflects our knowledge of their history yet it reflects how we see ourselves in the world in general.  Do we see ourselves as alone and vulnerable to the unknown?  Or do we embrace our differences and see ourselves as an integral part of the notion of “culture” in general?  Do we believe what we hear about other countries or do we go see for ourselves that really we aren’t so different after all?

This takes us to Puebla, a city I’ve barely begun to explore.  We came here on a whim that the Matamoros/Brownsville border is currently too dangerous to cross.  This probably isn’t true as thousands of vehicles pass every day but the fear gripped me and I found myself looking into other ports of entry into USA.  (Listen listen what speaks to you? Listen listen you know it’s true..)

Cumbia.. my not so secret love of a musical genre that has barely crossed into the United States.. your 4/4 shuffle has tempted me for years.  I’ll say it, I want to go to Monterrey, Mexico and hear for myself the rhythm that has imported itself from Colombia.  Is this why I have found myself in new paths unexplored? I might not know the answer to that question for several days but for now I know that in this moment I’m happy, content and eager to explore the next chapter of my travels.

Never stop dreaming.

Intrepid traveler

We are not humans having a spiritual journey.... we are spirits having a human journey 🙏

This post begins in the unpronounceable Mexican border town directly across from La Mesilla, Guatemala.  The town’s main road serves as a connection between the two countries and should you find yourself staying here, it would be presumable that you’ve reached nighttime and the immigration offices are closed.  So now there is not much more to do than sit at outdoor food wagons drinking cold Coca-Cola from a glass bottle while eating amazingly inexpensive tacos and finding yourself in Spanish conversation with locals and other viajeros (travelers).  Sitting on low plastic chairs, these light-hearted yet somehow deep conversations with total strangers in their native tongue feel very familiar and comforting to me for they are happening all over the world.

These moments are indeed among the cherished reasons why I travel.  Here at this taco stand there are no borders between our countries, no disgusting politicians telling us how we should feel about people of other nations, yet here myself and my new friend share a meal and a few laughs about esoteric references that only true lovers of Latin American culture would understand.  

I come back to the cheap motel which coincidentally we stayed at two years ago, the first time we drove to Guatemala, look at myself in the mirror and realize that my greasy face shows it’s travels well.  I’m 36, proudly covered in tattooed scars, awake and alive in this moment.  

Travel is different now that I’m older.  I’m no longer the shirtless hostel guy playing guitar on the roof drinking beer with travelers of many nations (wait... yeah I am) but now something more; a man who has found himself a wonderful fiancé and a newly discovered lust to search this planet for signs that my original theories were correct: when you tear down the borders created by imaginary geopolitical lines, when you try even a little to entertain the notion that you can learn another language, when you harness enough courage to travel across great distances of land only then do you truly realize that we aren’t so different after all.  

My gosh, the horrible things I hear these days coming from the mouths of those back home who have never so much as tried the food of a different culture.. it pains me to think that so many people have such terrible beliefs about people from other nations.  

Que puta eres señor trump.. te compadezco..  

How cliché I feel saying this but a little understanding goes such a long way.   

My friends, we are not the opinions of our government nor the fear which is embodied within us from the media.  Travel.  Buy a ticket to somewhere you are supposed to be afraid of and go there.  Not for one week but for a long time.  See for yourself if what you’ve been told is true because nobody else will do it for you.  We should celebrate our differences not fear them.

This journey is a long one which will take me four solid months.  We shall continue across Mexico and back into the United States only to find ourselves flying soon back to Guatemala and eventually to a small Caribbean island off the coast of Honduras where we can begin a new life and a new chapter in our story together.  This sounds complicated but to Elena and I it makes perfect sense.  (Hu)man has long carried an insatiable desire to explore what lies beyond the hills and across the sea and to me personally it’s sad that we’ve come to deny ourselves this wanderlust.  This is very normal for me and I have no plans to stop.  As it’s been said before me, one day I shall return with wider eyes and words more soothing to the ears.  The world will sleep yet we too shall continue to travel as it is our birth right to do so.  

Tomorrow we depart for San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico.

Love and respect your neighbors.

Return to the Sea

"The sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever.."

-Jacques Yves Cousteau

I found myself a few months ago about thirty meters underwater somewhere off the coast of Utila, Honduras.  My girlfriend and I traveled there in February being guided by a calling to explore somewhere new yet strangely familiar.  Islands seemed to be calling to us as we find our elements seem to collide where water meets tropical trees.  We've wandered jungles and waterfalls and even vast deserts to find absolute peace in abundance as well as absolute mystery in absence of anything at all.  Yet, as it came to be, I found my true self deep underwater.

Scuba diving is a great sport.  There are few things to compare diving to besides deep space travel with mysterious alien lifeforms abounding.  You'll come across corals that so beautifully remind you of plants and trees yet they are actually miracles formed by tiny animals who live with such fragility that even the tiniest changes to their environments can devastate their populations.  On any given dive you will probably encounter fish who greet you with all sort of expressions ranging from curious to hostile or even perhaps indifferent to your amazement of their beauty.  Some fish are amazingly evolved predators trying to catch other fish who are impressively skilled in their art of camouflage.  Among the coral and fish you will find other types of life in the form of the universe's wild imagination and at times you won't believe that you are still on Earth.  These things are all truly beautiful and I'm lucky to have such a hobby which will soon enough be my job, however it's not these surreal beauties which have captivated me in the way I'm referring to.  I found myself while staring deep into the abyss.

"He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster.  And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze also into thee."

-Friedrich Nietzche

Admittedly, I've kept a secret from the world for a long time.  It's only recently that I've become more open about depression, which is something that I've almost felt ashamed of since I was very young.  Honestly there is no time in life to waste feeling ashamed and truth be told things have actually been marginally easier for me once I started coming clean with others about my struggles with serotonin levels.  For some reason I had even believed that men in the workplace are unable to talk about their feelings yet I boldly tried at the marina a few months ago one particular day when I was quite beside myself.  I asked everybody to bear with me and I apologized for seeming scattered and distant.  Much to my surprise nobody really mocked me for it and a few other dudes even contributed that they too struggle with similar things.  

This is new to me, being open, in fact I've only been honest with myself for a few years now.  Somehow in that long journey I've made traversing the planet I had found and lost myself so many times that I just assumed it was part of the travel process.  Sometimes I felt so lonely even in the company of good friends who truly cared about me.  Other times I felt lost in my own head like I didn't know who I was when looking in the mirror.  I'd catch myself finishing half sentences out loud saying things like "...then I guess I'll never know what's wrong with me."  

So after years of assuming I was just an over-traveled sojourner of unimaginable freedom who has somehow found peace in losing his mind abroad I began to realize that there was a conversation which was desperately overdue.  

This conversation I speak of is the kind of conversation one has with nature on long walks alone or even those thoughts which vocalize when driving long distances and becoming closer with the open road miles from your home.  For me, this conversation began a few months ago about thirty meters underwater.

The abyss is seriously intimidating.  In my travels I've been privileged to see the underwater abyss in her many different forms.  When I lived in Samoa I used to don a simple mask and snorkel which I borrowed form my fishing village.  For what seemed like hours I would sit on rocks underwater holding onto pieces of shelf to keep myself submerged about six inches over my head.  Just breathe.  Stare into the endless blue and know that there is no land to be seen for thousands of miles.  

Some parts of the oceans I've explore have given me the opportunity to see first hand the edge of tectonic plate (I think that's what they are called).  The depth of the water will drop from about one hundred feet to immense distances of many miles towards the endless nothing below: The Abyss.

Maybe some people feel this endlessness when staring at the stars at night or perhaps even far away in the desert where they are surrounded by nothing but sand and their own thoughts.  I guess this would be the closest example I could think of but the abyss of the sea has a special hold on me and I would like to offer perhaps a warning of her beauty.  

To me the abyssal sea is like (...searching desperately for examples) the ring from Lord of the Rings (d'oh... lame example) or perhaps the tree of knowledge of good and evil.  I know of her temptations and I've been warned by philosophers who have come before me that this spell she casts on you could one day cost your life if you fall under her enchantment.  To me, I came to visit her with what I hoped was a strong heart and a healthy sense of listening.  We have an ongoing conversation when I'm deep underwater and visiting her is like running into an old friend at Ram's Horn at 3:00am and talking over coffee.  We just pick up right where we left off and she looks deep into each time and asks the words I've waited so long to hear from anyone that cares about me, "how are you?"

"How am I?"  I'm not sure.. I haven't really thought about it in a while.  We haven't spoken since March and in the meantime I've been working my ass off on my boats trying to save up for the next phase of our togetherness.  

After a few months more of training I'll have achieved my Dive Master and legally be permitted to take tourists around interesting parts of the reef.  I liked the idea at first but honestly I'm only pursuing Dive Master as a means to eventually become an instructor.  You see.. the abyss didn't reveal to me that I was non-deserving of mental happiness nor did she tell me I was unfit to live in such a world, she did however tell me that I need to teach others again.. I haven't been a teacher in over three years.  She reached to me and told me that I'm going to get any help from others but I have to look deep into myself, my own abyssal thoughts, to find my true calling on this planet.  

I'll say it... I miss teaching.  Somehow I became kinda good at it and since I've stopped teaching I've missed out on amazing opportunities to reach others.  That conversation, that ongoing dialogue I've had with the deep dark blue has shown me that I'm really the abyss and unless I conquer my own monsters I too will become swallowed up whole.  

I won't advertise to the world that I've written this blogpost, I'll just publish it and walk away.  Come with me if you like and follow this journey of a fish returning to the sea.. it all starts now, in this 18 hours or so I have left in my homeland before returning to Central America tomorrow and eventually to the sea.

Sea Glass 6

When dogs once roamed these beaches the objects which washed ashore were much different.  There were no plastic bottle caps nor corn chip bags, in fact the only trace of human’s influence on the sandy shores were pieces of sea glass.

You might not have been aware of this but there are different categories of sea glass each based on how rare they are.  Normal valued sea glass are typically green or brown like beer bottles but rare sea glass includes pink and aqua marine or even orange or red.

It didn’t matter to the dogs though they are colorblind