praying to false gods

forgive them Mother, for they know not what they do.

last night’s rising moon looked strikingly like a lighthouse, a faro. indeed, it was.

as i made my way through barbed wire and brush to what remains of the dunes, it was necessary to use the light on my phone to guide me. on the way back, the moon illuminated the way.

there i was, sitting in darkness, in the massive tire tracks of a bulldozer, waiting for her as i considered all aspects of the moment.

the fragility of the sands of time.

(for those who do not know the backstory, a local development project started bulldozing new beachfront lots on my local beach recently. i wrote about it a couple weeks ago, which garnered much attention but not so many likes in the <3 department. i mean, who can blame my readers? it’s difficult to like something like that.)

zoom back a couple of blocks and who am i but a bilingual perrita with a deed to property and a strong opinion? no matter how many nice well-meaning invitations i receive from the powers that be, they aren’t really changing anything because of me.

nevertheless, the ongoing construction has felt violently stupid, and therefore extremely difficult to watch.

they just went ahead and bull-dozed the only “old growth” this beachfront pueblito had, destabilizing the entire structure of the coastline while the waves continue to close-out closer and closer.

a wave that closes out is basically one that folds over in on itself like a pancake. these are not waves to surf, because there is no where to go. they can actually be quite dangerous to swim in, as well. the full force and momentum of the ocean, rather than gliding to shore on a angle, just hits with full impact in a straight line.

prior to the jetties, there was a surfable wave here that curved nicely into the beach. but it all comes down to physics, and the jetties changed that equation. push comes to shove the force of the ocean needs to go somewhere.

this is what causes erosion. this is what is eating the beach. this is what will eventually be their undoing, and really the undoing of many coastal communities, especially those graced with the benevolent god of “development.”

the thing is, it’s not just the dunes that are at stake here, it is my own peace of mind, and now matter how much this project makes me want to scream daily, it’s probably better for everyone if i just take a moment and dance in my kitchen.

this too shall pass

as will all things.

i watch these big bulldozers and backhoes raking through the dirt and i can’t help but think of small children playing with toys in a sand box, and that perceived form of omnipotence one gets from moving the earth.

i watch them as they carve their roads and build their fake plateaus and it reminds me of every other big luxury development that is completely misaligned with nature. rather than follow and respect her form and flows, this kind of man wants to dominate and manipulate. he wants to decide what she looks like, what she wears when she goes out at night. there is a gas-lighting affect here, where sooner or later no one will remember that it ever looked like anything else, save the strange lack of basic orientation and sense of confusion one gets while navigating home late at night.

this is why being in housing developments always gives me a slight feeling of anxiety.

nothing makes sense. it’s all just speed bumps and golf carts.

i suppose the bottom line is that these people really, are in a certain sense, children. the destruction that they are creating is akin to a kid with crayons on white walls.

they don’t know what they’re doing, nor what they have already done.

they don’t know what they’ve lost, because they never saw it to begin with.

by and large the people who create and support these projects don’t spend time at the beach; they’re rather go sit in a chaise lounge at a beach club with a view of the ocean. meanwhile, the local population, beach dwellers and fishermen for generations, crowd together on the tiny public beach that is really just an extension of the marina.

if you happen upon one of those public beaches on a late Sunday afternoon you’ll probably find it strewn with trash. sad but true, for whatever reason the concept of picking up after one’s self seems to be a part of colonialist expansion. a lot of people use this argument to rationalize luxury development. they say that the local population wasn’t taking care of the nature anyway, and i have most definitely thought or said something similar myself on various occasions.

i mean really, who likes to pick up someone else’s trash?

however, every time that thought passes through my mind as i walk past a pile of Tecate cans or Michelob Ultra bottles, I am reminded of two other things — 1. it just takes one asshole littering trash to look like 20 people, and 2. what is truly worse for the environment, a few glass bottles in the dunes or a dozen luxury homes with no one in them who have their AC blasting the entire year?

people like to look at the obvious and ignore the subtle truth. no matter how much the local population litters, that pales in comparison to the run-off of all the golf courses or the countless single use plastic bottles used by so many expat travelers.

it feels important to state, maybe this all sounds like judgment, but it is mostly just observation. if i could look elsewhere, i would. but this is where i live.

that said, it has become abundantly apparent that sometimes it is necessary to unplug from that which triggers us. it is actually quite a common trauma response to focus on that which triggers us rather than avoiding the triggers, that same principle around how we choose partners that activate our wounds, right up until we have the awareness, capacity, and tools to heal them.

to make a long story short, it is a choice: do i water the tree i want to grow, or the one i want to root out of my garden?

in the weeks since i published Concepción i have had a number of interesting conversations. some people have chose to part company with me, whether temporarily or permanently, who knows. some people have felt inspired by what they consider to be activism. others have expressed what might be called ‘grief fatigue,’ which is to say, they might agree with the sentiment behind the exposure but would really rather just talk about something else that makes them laugh.

not that i blame them. i’d like to laugh more.

but as i said to them, i’ll say to you — it is a trauma, both old and new, and that isn’t going to go away until we let it rise to the surface. trauma demands acknowledgment, even if turning towards it doesn’t initially feel good.

it’s like opening up a wound that is filled with pus. maybe it healed on the surface, but the infection just went deeper, causing even more damage to the individual or the system in which it is living.

i don’t speak to these things because it is fun. i speak about them because it is necessary and important.

Image by Eugene Smith: “The Magnum photographer made his last photo essay about industrial mercury poisoning in the Japanese city of Minamata, helping to bring justice and visibility to the victims”

in the early 70s the photographer Eugene Smith traveled to an area of Japan called Minamata, which had been releasing toxic levels of mercury waste into the water for decades. what he documented there is not pretty. rather, it is quite tragic. however, his documentation of the effects of that industrial run-off quite likely prevented future episodes from happening.

it takes an incredible amount of practiced detachment to document difficult things, listen to painful stories, hold space for difficult truths. but the bottom line is, the more of that toxic stuff we let come to the surface of our being, the more space we have inside to cultivate what really lights us up.

all this discussion has been bringing me back to a profound moment i had a number of years ago with one of the primary teachers of this lifetime, my dear friend Jaq. some of you were blessed to know her quite intimately, and if there is anywhere the phrase “if you know then you know” is relevant, it is most definitely applicable here.

to be a firecracker at the age of 103 is no small task. to be a 103 year old firecracker with a penchant for Socratic discussions is entirely next level.

on this particular occasion i had ridden the train up the Pacific coast to see her, and along the way had quite a difficult encounter with someone close to me. naturally, i told her about it, and there we were, sitting in her living room, as she kept nodding over her cup of tea saying, “oh, you’re right, yes, you’re right…” over and over again.

if i didn’t know better i would have sworn she agreed with me, but i did know better, which is to say, i knew she was basically making fun of me.

yes, i was right. maybe indeed that was true. but the point was, did it matter?

i am right, and, it doesn’t matter one bit.

go chew on that for a while.

«insert here sticker of an older woman with a mug of tea shrugging»

this too shall pass.

from the Buddhist perspective, i was probably too attached to the dunes, and precisely because of that attachment i suffered their destruction. mind you, this is not in any way to say that the Buddha would condone this activity, but it does emphasize the essence of his noble truths, which state first and foremost that life is suffering, and that this suffering comes because everything is impermanent.

people like to say that “Freedom isn’t Free,” but i disagree.

freedom is like peace, a natural state that we cover up with so many other things.

i thought i’d share with you a picture of the faro, that lighthouse that has become so contested.

the thing is, even though everything within walking distance is called Puerto Los Cabos, we are really in the Pueblo de la Playa, a fishing village established over 200 years ago by a few brave families, an “original affluent society,” to quote anthropologist Marshall Sahlins.

back in the day they used to bath in the freshwater pools of the estuary. all their appliances like washing machines and car parts were brought in on pangas, small boats were maneuvered with relative ease by these people of the sea because that is what they had been doing for generations.

the faro was their guiding light before technology came to be, and the farero, the keeper of the lighthouse, used to invite the whole pueblo up to the dunes at the end of each year for a collective celebration. now there is no farero, and the lighthouse itself is contained behind a chainlink fence in the middle of the planned development like a tiger in a zoo.

sometimes they turn it on. no one really knows who.

much like native populations all over the world, the peoples of this pueblo often did not have deed to the land they had lived on their entire lives, because that was never a part of the agreement they had with their neighbors or nature. but just as there are people who are content with a simple life, there are also those who always want more, the conquistadors and explorers of the world. the ones that think anything that doesn’t have a fence around it is free and fair game.

there is a long history of colonialism in all parts of the world, and Mexico was certainly not spared. that it remains a classist society is taken as obvious by most Mexicans, and because of this ubiquitous phenomenon we are gently coaxed into shrugging our shoulders and focusing on the areas of life where we can make direct change rather than trying to “right the wrongs of history,” as they say.

it could be much worse…

and yet, couldn’t it be so much better?

is it really necessary to take down 700 year old cacti in order to make a road lined by palm trees? is it really necessary to cut the electrical and water lines of local residents just so they sell you their land?

is it really so hard to just be a good neighbor?

so yes, you won.

you won, you won, you won.

do what you want.

you don’t have my blessing but it’s not like you care anyway.

it is also not the only place this is happening as we speak. Right now in another part of Mexico, Playa Las Cocinas in Nayarit, the same exact thing is happening. they are just getting more protests and therefore more news coverage.

the problem, of course, is that while “Federal land” in theory is owned by the people, in practice it is traded like poker chips amongst the elites who play this game of providing yet another luxury resort in an originally affluent location.

few choose to acknowledge that is precisely the restraint and collective cohabitation of such areas that have preserved these paradises for decades if not centuries. people who choose to live with and in the land, instead of on top of it.

why is it that luxury defines itself first and foremost as separate? so many of these luxury developments feel claustrophobic and cold, sterile reproductions of the environment they destroyed in order to replace it. the architecture is normally cookie cutter, and the result is the same: another road that used to be public turning private with a security booth asking for your credentials in order to pass.

once you arrive in this climate controlled paradise you will most certainly have a view, but of what? an ocean you can’t even touch?

like i said, it’s a choice.

do you want true affluence, or do you want luxury?

do you want to be with, or be without?

as always, take it all with a grain of salt and a heavy dose of compassion.

because as stated in the beginning, they know not what they do.

maybe they’re even trying to do something different, and i see that, too.

we can take them at their best intentions, even as they pave the way to their own destruction. honestly, when all is said and done, life is about being happy.

being happy with what we do, what we make, our primary friends and associations.

i can walk down the beach these days and see both the gods of destruction as well as the gods of creation. i know that there is more than one story to tell here and i’m just sharing the one that i see.

i’m not telling you i’m right. that isn’t the point anyway.

so for all the playas and all the pueblos, let’s raise a prayer for their future, as well as a large exhale. release the anger, the hatred, the rage, the frustration.

release it as she would, the Mother Nature that created us all.

amazing thing is, she’s the least judgmental. she still loves all of us equally, even those that inflict damage upon her.

which perhaps brings me to the final and most important point — there is no separation between us and her.

that destruction we inflict upon our environment is inflicted upon us, whether we are aware of it or not. likewise, that which we grow feeds and sustains us.

so let’s leave it with a smile. even if it is a subtle smile. a knowing smile.

a smile like Jaq had as she sat there with her cat in her lap.

because you are not my enemy… you never were.

by Drew Cameron, Combat Paper

…

No, you are not my enemy
my partner my friend.
We were betrayed.

You are not my enemy
my child my self.
Our blood is the same.

You are not my enemy
my memories and rage.
Re-making sense now together.

You are not my enemy
you never were.
You are a part of me
as I am with you.

You are not my enemy
we will stay true.

You are not my enemy
we will change this
with you.

you are not my enemy
are not my enemy
not my enemy
my enemy
enemy

-Drew Cameron, Warrior Writers (excerpt)

you are not my enemy, our blood is the same.

thank you dear reader for your presence and attention.

we will shift into a new vibe next week.

in the meantime, may you be happy, and healthy, and free.

rsvp: vidabierta

Share the hot pink buddha