Journals from the Jungle 29: Crossing Over

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Journals from the Jungle — stories from my recent travels, drawn from my journals. Raw reflections on nature, adventure, freedom, and the unraveling of old beliefs in pursuit of a more embodied, autonomous life.

I ought to try to remember that I have had, and I am having, these experiences. That when I leave, and miss them, I may recall that they are within me. Integration. My therapist and I talk about how moments can be maintained in memory rather than lost. I’m not sure I agree, but I try.

Sunset, man—it gets me every single time. I love this place like a person, but also as more than a person—it’s as if it’s a mirror, some equally reflective and receptive vessel, some sort of both production and also object or recipient of … love. It’s wonderfully warm and also impersonal. Like I can love it so hard—I can take everything from it—and it will remain. Not only that, it will love me back even harder, give me more than I can handle. I can throw myself into it, or at it, and it will simply continue on being. It will receive everything I have to give—or want to be rid of. It will transform into light and blind me with tears. It will yank me off my feet, pull me under and spin me like the insignificant material object I am—a single fleeting bubble in the froth. It will change every single second while also remaining itself. Consistent novelty. What perfection.

What more could we ask for in love? To be nurtured and f*cked at the same time. To be kissed roughly, injured by beauty, annihilated in order to become whole. Taken and also disregarded at once entirely. To be consumed by it—to merge at last, to give up. Add in turn to receive … everything.

Night: This place is so many contrasting things that don’t typically exist together, and endlessly so. Every time I look at it, it’s better.

I’m reflecting on how writing my book and buying this house would have been excitement enough, but no, I have to go all the way, and here I am—still going.

Dinner: I cook an entire pile of shrimp that I eat with my hands. I take off all of my clothes. I remember how my ex-partner said that his care for me was poetically large. That he wanted to be the best partner he could be for me because relationships are choices and I was who he chose to spend life with. I saw this as incredible, and yet I felt skittish—aloof and uneasy. Should I have believed him and let him teach me—or was that not me? Didn’t he deserve someone who felt the same way? During our final conversations, I couldn’t bring myself to emote. I felt like I couldn’t give away anything. I couldn’t share what I was apparently reclaiming for myself.

I watch the sunset from a fetal position. At its end, there are these shards of light that I recognize, but it takes me a minute to place them. When I do, I realize that they look like little tears in the fabric of existence. I have seen them in my dreams.

I stay on afterward to watch it bloom. A glow envelops the beach, the cliffs, the jungle. The sea reflects it. I feel my brain accept the surreality, not even struggling to make sense anymore. It has simply given up.

I finish the last of my tube of toothpaste. I buy the last bunch of bananas. I sleep terribly. I put on dance music, throw on my swimsuit, and run off to see the waves.

I think about how he said that he loved me, not because it’s about being in love, but because he chose to. I realize that that’s the one you marry, because it is a choice not a force of nature, which are not subject to change but certain to. And here I am now, living for the forces of nature, and also suffering by the winds of their change.

Afternoon: I get in my whitewater surfing session. It is distractingly beautiful. Everything is white—that god-light hour. The sun is white, the sky, the sea, me. From the horizon to my chin, which I rest on the board in awe, a sea of light. I forget if I’m wet or dry, warm or cold, because I am purely and totally merged. Even my mind is softened by the waves, which rise up and seethe in frothing mists beyond the break, shadows that explode into haze. So many times, it is just the way it is now, I’ve forgotten where I end and the environment begins.

And bless the sea, bless surfing, bless it all. I soften. I realize that whatever will happen, should. Pura vida. Let it be. Let it come. Let it go. Let go. Let it.

The recent rain erases all traces of life from the beach. It is bare, new, and speckled from the drops. Padded firm.

I saw so many friends today and new acquaintances. It’s been so easy to meet people here. It’s so drastically different from my limited and often energetically taxing group of friends in NYC. This community feels like being surrounded by a bunch of happy, healthy, like-minded defectors who couldn’t leave this place and so don’t need me to explain why I can’t either. They get me because I am like them, which means that we here are just a little different from the rest.

I found myself a new surf coach. The prettiest (style-wise) longboarder I’ve seen out here. We’re surfing tomorrow. And yes, he’s hot.

After the break: “What I do not know is that one of the three has been looking for me. I am no longer no one here. I am now the new girl in town. And this being a very small town, suddenly everyone knows. One of those three is going to change me. That process is going to be part of this whole place opening up another dimension and sucking me into it. I thought I was enveloped already, and I was, but I’d been laying low, keeping to myself, floating around. What would come next would be true immersion.”