So I Disappeared for a Little While..With Good Reason...

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Meeting Trevor in Oaxaca

I convinced Trevor, and to be fair, he also convinced himself, to come out to Oaxaca for a week. We spent two days in the city before traveling together to Mazunte and Zipolite. For our own reasons, we had a lot of face-to-face communicating that needed to be done if either of us is going to achieve our goals for the next couple of months. Our time together was both strenuous and beneficial, like a community retreat, an equally painful and refreshing deep breath of necessity. We even spent our last night drawing up maps straight out of the activity book pages of the Community Involvement Center seminars I used to lead. We asked ourselves: Where have we been? Where are we going (really, with details)? Okay, so take a breath, look around, where does that leave us right now? Then we got out colored pencils.

When he left, we were both determined, motivated, passionate about our goals, ready to take the world head on at first opportunity.

On Trevor´s last afternoon, we rode together in the back of the collectivo truck, and I saw him off in Pochutla in the same rickety van with the same questionable brakes and funny smell in which we arrived together, and I headed back to Mazunte alone. The next day I proceeded to fall directly into a lonesome depression, partially due to being abruptly cut-off from a week of constant companionship and partially due to my same old bad self-badgering mental habits.

Meeting Myself in Mazunte

In what was definitely the most important part of my trip so far (and arguably the best time of self-reflection and presence I have experienced since graduating last Spring) in the span of 24 hours I transitioned quickly from point A: feeling stomach-sick and self-loathing while looking up bus and plane ticket prices back to the states to rush home to my family and friends, my abundant sources of comfort and care, to point B: confidently purchasing bus tickets to San Cristóbal, a city ten hours further away from home and everything I know, with a renewed sense of purpose and self- shaky stomach and all.

My journal entry from this period went something like this (and yes I am getting personal all over this public blog):

"This morning I woke from an evening of illness, feeling

weak and dizzy. In a moment of absolute clarity, one in which I felt more present than I have in months, I caught in my gaze my traveling backpack sitting dirty on the cement floor and thought, abruptly, 'I am alone in Mexico.' And I felt the statement so completely. "I..am..so...alone." It embodied me.
Rather than responding with self-congratulations on my newfound autonomy, I freaked out. 'I am alone in Mexico. What am I doing here? What am I accomplishing?' In an instant I forgot everything I had set out to learn and achieve, and all of my positive self-analysis from just days before when I was with Trevor had disappeared. All I wanted to do was head straight to the bus depot to return to the Oaxaca City airport and go home- wherever I might decide home to be in my frenzy.
Luckily, nothing could be done until I could no longer feel my sick stomach every time I took a step, so I had all day to think about my decision.
But...man, I felt so damn lonely, so deeply unhappy with just being with myself. Part of this had to do with spending the last week with Trevor, speaking English and feeling comfortable. I've quite suddenly found myself alone and surprisingly stagnant. It was as if I had no idea that I had chosen to be here, that I make all of my decisions (and how exhilarating that is!).

What I really found myself in was a state of withdrawal.

A withdrawal from years of distraction and meaningless superficial goals-upon which I could rely to preoccupy my ego and satisfactorily gauge my self-worth (i.e. nobody grades you on your ability to travel alone in Mexico-how can you be sure you're doing it right?)

And my first reaction? My first inclination? RUN HOME IMMEDIATELY.

So seeing it clearly now, I wonder why my unconscious self was repeating to me "You are weak, you need to go to where other people will take care of you and tell you what to do. You can't do this alone."

And so here it is, one of my biggest personal demons-my self-judgment- in full force, naked and barren, tempting me to forsake my journey of self-exploration. Why? Because journeys of self-exploration hurt, and that's not fun.

So I realized I am standing directly in front of my most pressing obstacle for real achievement, and it's heavy, and it's big, and I'm not going to overcome it in this one day. But I am going to take the first huge step, to just sit with it, sit in it. Because really, this is not about Mazunte, or being far from home, this type of loneliness is not new, and this kind of confusion over my goals, my future, my abilities and value (both self-contained and to society) is part of an ongoing struggle. The difference here is there is nowhere to hide. I can´t eat something delicious (ow!stomach), I can´t walk more than a block, I can´t even check Facebook, and this town has no cell phone reception. It is just me with me.

And right now, it really does hurt, I can literally feel my heart tightening and my stomach sinking."


After sitting in that thought pattern for awhile, looking squarely at LAX or San Cristóbal, I made my decision. I realized that this type of internal struggle will produce an outcome, will help to awaken within me the kind of confidence and creative passion I have been aspiring towards for years now, and is well-worth the pain. And so I thought, firmly and assuredly: "Hey loneliness, we're going to San Cristóbal, so get comfortable, we're going to be working together for quite some time."

Last Day in Mazunte - It´s a Good One

On my final day, me and myself went on a big sunny date to Ventanilla, an awesome nature reserve co-operative two miles west of Mazunte.

Facts about Ventanilla (all told to me in Spanish, thank you very much):

+Some 20 families, supposedly all related, live at this beach, all working together to preserve a large lagoon and the wildlife therein, and to reforest the lagoon´s red mangrove population.

+The sand is 80%!m(MISSING)etal at Ventanilla, due to the intensive activity of local tectonic plates and their subsequent metallic excrements, making the sand appear shimmery and black. You can stick a magnet in the sand and a whole lot of metal comes out. My tour guide´s grandfather researched the unique sand and is locally famous for discovering the metal.

+The color of the lagoon is red, dark red, because the roots of the mangroves all over the lagoon release tannin into the water.

+The lagoon has crocodiles, iguanas, giant termite populations with nests and tons of weird, noisy beautiful birds, including egrits (with pride I informed my guide-in spanish!- that in Humboldt County you can find many herons and egrits as well)

+Green iguanas son vegetarianas...black ones are not. Mostly the green iguanas on the reserve eat lettuce and tomatoes, the same sole vegetables I want to eat for the rest of my life after being sick.

+If your tour guide has a crush on you and you are the only person in the big ol´boat, you can learn how to paddle it throughthe lagoon labrynth and turn it around, you can break open the mangrove branches to find the termites bustling inside, and you can tie up the boat and walk through the giant, strong mangrove roots barefoot for awhile.

+In 2004, a narco plane crashed at Ventanilla and there are still wings sticking out of the sand. I left my tour guide and walked down to them myself. It was incredibly surreal, the accident could have been yesterday. Why did they clean up most of the plane and leave the wings sticking out of the ground? As a reminder to the rest of the narco traffickers that its very difficult to land there?

I walked back along the beach alone, speaking spanish aloud to myself. A boy went by on a horse ushering a cow along in front of him ("El caballo es detras de la vaca. La vaca es enfrente de el caballo. El nino se sita..no...sitase...en el caballo...El caballo es detras de la vaca...."). I waved to the boy, he came over to me on the beach and just had his horse walk alongside me while he stared at my butt. I tried to make conversation but the 14 year old ranchero preferred to continue to stare at my butt while making kissing noises...then he rode off and I began "El nino irritante sitase en el caballo y lo me molestia...no me gusta el nino irritante.....El caballo es detras de la vaca..." I walked the few kilometers back and up the road, proudly announcing under my breath "He estando en Mexico por un mes, aqui en el estado de Oaxaca. Antes de venir a Mexico no puede hablar espanol, pero ahorra hablo mucho mas! Creeo que mi espanol is bueno por solomente un mes...si?....El caballo es detras de la vaca..." I was so proud! Then I encounterd my tour guide, Victor, at the end of the road and he asked in Spanish if I had gone to the plane and in terrible Spanglish I answered that I had but there were some people in a big group and >I only really got close to the first plane wing not the second....he gave me a quizzical look...I had been speaking Spanish before..to him...why would he understand my too-fast-for-english-speakers-to-understand-english now? And he bid me goodbye and got on his bicycle. And I walked on down the road, answering him properly in Spanish in my mind, with near perfect grammer, tenses and all.

Next step: speak Spanish outside of my head.

More Synchronicity

When I returned, after stopping by the awesome natural cosmetics co-operative in town for some serious dark dark chocolate, I spoke with Lance online. He told me it was raining and he had tea and vegan muffins. I told him I had ben incredibly nostalgic for rain and tea. And I felt lonely again for a moment.

I went to find my friends on the beach to say goodbye. They were actually sad that I was leaving. What did I expect? I knew I would miss them, but...hmm well that felt nice.

I ran back to my place at La Empanada restaurant...and it began to rain. For the first time in Mexico since I´ve arrived. I got my rain. I ran into the restaurant, ordered a big salad and tea, and ran through the rain up to my room. As I finished packing, just as I was about to grab everything and head out the door, "Rolling Stone" by Bob Dylan came on loud and clear asking me, "How does it feel? To be on your own? With no direction at all? Like a rollin´stone?"

And I responded: "Pretty damn good, Bob!"

And went downstairs to sip my tea under a palapa sheltered from the rain before my bus ride out of town.

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