make life iller

i find the city to be far less attractive than the un-tainted earth.
take a plant from the other side of the world, stick it in a pot,
and cut off some of it's branches,
how could that possibly be more attractive than the tree
right outside your window?

life is better with an exposed heart. i thought about it and it's true.
turns out i don't expose my heart to that to which i am not attracted.

who came up with these styles?
this one, a copy of a 500 year old english home - why?
why should i care about your interesting stairway architecture?
how can that look better here than something OF this land?
could i expose my heart to something this unnattractive?

2,000 miles away people play a game
you sit on a couch and watch them on a screen,
is that what humans were meant for?
i suppose i value the animal more than the intellectual.
all this buzzing around - why?

i can't call them all fools -
they must be going towards what (they think) they want.
surely they can't all want THIS, can they?
maybe they don't stop to think.
shouldn't they separate themselves from this ill-directed inertia?

though it's unattractive and i don't want to expose my heart to it
i walk down from the hill to blend
with a father and son discussing the why's of this world together
and weave confidently through the flow of traffic
on upper solano

grateful for what i want.
wearing a sign over my head which says, "i know who i am"

one long sentence

i arrived on the scuba-diving pirate island of utila, honduras, on a friday night with a taller-than-me, drum-playing, dreaded and tattoed swede, after an hour and a half nearly-capsizing-the-whole-time boat ride through 15 foot seas, to discover motorcycles, four-wheelers, bicycles and golf carts speeding back and forth along the one pedestrian street, weaving their way between tourists and pirate-speaking locals who wandered to and fro below the sounds of reggae blasted from homemade balcony speakers. then i spent two days patrolling the streets in a haze of indecisive stress, trying to decide between twelve seemingly equal yet highly competitive dive shops, only to choose one which a day later i deemed too much of a coolness-oriented twenty year old hangout and switched to another one to take my diving course. now i am instructed, one on one, by a chain-smoking, speedo-clad german named ralf, who is quite nice and a great teacher. we have gone diving twice, and i have somehow survived with fifty feet of water over my head for halves of hours, drifting along the sides of coral walls with my ears gradually approaching one another due to pressure, without succumbing to the suicidal urge to laugh at the incredibleness and ridiculousness of being that far underwater, thereby dislodging my breathing apparatus from my mouth. i have yet to gain an exemplary degree of "control" or "comfort" with this bizarre sport, but i do have two more days and four more journeys beneath the sea in which to figure the shit out.*

*(two days later) i figured it out.

i think i´m falling in love with xela

i think i´m felling in love with xela (it happened last week).
after just one day i was all into this fine guatemalan city...it´s native and mountainous around the edges, plain central american chaos throughout the thick outer core, with a creamy european filling in the center. everywhere you look there´s something beautiful or interesting...and not so touristy either. the lighting in this city looks like it was laid out by a hollywood lighting designer. women roam the streets in beautiful skirts and colorful clothes, looking more beautiful than ...
there are alot of foreigners here, but they´re all studying spanish, so the locals know they ain´t looking to spend a ton of money. it´s real, if not slightly upscale, guatemala.

around mexico in a month

um, chiapas.
san cristobal is quaint by all accounts, including mine...


this guy´s got some serious junk in his trunk. like, mega-muffins.


mega-muffins and this world-class skater all reside in tuxtla-guiterrez, or t-gootz, as i would call it if i lived there. this sweet young punk is ripping it up outside the bigcity theatre, which i didn´t not even for a moment enter.


the highlight of my passing through of t-gootz was the parque de la marimba. (not shown). every night all the dancers of the town gather for some classically mexcian marimba music played by nine old guys in starched white shirts. not coincidentally, all of the dancers of the town are over sixty years in age. they show up every afternoon at six to do the slow motion boogie with their wives and husbands, and their friends husbands and wives, for three solid hours til the sun goes down or the old guys stop playing, whichever comes second. dancing the marimba appears rather similar to dancing a waltz, or perhaps a mellow tango. the park is packed with the oldies dancing, the kids playing and pleading with their parents to buy them balloons, and the middle aged teenagers watching from the back row, dreaming of a day when they will be old enough that dancing the marimba will not be considered uncool. and the best part is that it ain´t a tourist event. i swear they´re not putting on a show for anyone. nonetheless, it´s a hell of a show. the spry old dudes lead their ladies with funk, flavor, crazy individual styles and well-practiced ease. the women gracefully and effortlessly match step for step, bumping the attractiveness of the dance up to at least eleven. i loved the parque de la marimba. watch out for some low-impact marimba music to be creeping it´s way into my next dj set.

after dancing, head over to get some street corn, with mayonaisse, of course.


the chiapas beach is unpopulated, unless you count garbage and baby turtles.

a nice round month in mexico.

dos poemas de san cristobal

Authentic Sombrero Sahuayo
why do you torture me so?
you are so wonderful for blocking the suns rays
couldn´t you just leave it at that?

must you carry in your tightly sewn straw weave
a thousand and one possibilities for me to be judged?

maybe i´ll be judged a poser wanna-be mexican
or a tall goofy psuedo rockstar,
a localler than thou mochilero viajero
or a gangly assortment of no-style,
a trying to be cool californian
or a clueless exploitative gringo -
maybe i`d be judged a cool traveller.

i don´t want this hat to mean anything
i don´t even want to be cool.

but as soon as it touches my shiny peachfuzz head
the judgements come rolling into my cabeza
the hat sucks them from somewhere within my own
paranoid image conscious skeleton

it was designed to aid in the harvesting of corn
but atop this two meter walking beanpole
it only harvests unwanted attention

Oh Authentic Mexican Sahuayo Sombrero
you make me wander the streets like a sunday drunk
up one avenue and down the other
rubberbanding closer and farther from the sombreria where i bought you
from your grumpy foster parent shopowner

certainly there are more important things to worry about
or better yet - nothing at all.
please, whether upon my head or my bedpost
let me enjoy the fragrance of this day, and feel the feelings i felt before my fingers discovered your fine mexican contours.

*********

i can barely see, above the high duotone walls
green rounded mountains drawing a curvy line
accross the cloudy sky

rotting tile roofs sit quietly breathing the morning.
the low wet clouds have cleared around the city
more than they have in my head

twenty five day palenque time warp detour
nipping at the heels of my
trying-to-be empty mind

aqui estoy. san cristobal. mexico.
surrounded by more than
internet cafes
amber jewelry shops
plazas de artesania
opportunities to buy buy buy

"compra este, compralo, para mi...compra este"
in the sweetest pleading leading voice

i want to invite her to tea
sit down and tell me about your life
but ours is a business relationship

my clean gringo getup, to her
a day or week´s worth of food for the family
her wrinkled earthen beauty, to me
an idealistic native novelty

maybe if i touched her hand
looked into her eyes
and spoke my heart

you are beautiful
i want you and your family to live, and be happy
i want to know you, and pray for your health
we don`t understand each other

that last taxi that sped by looked like a rally car

this is

this is the town where they grow your coffee. it´s called san cayetano.


this is the roof of the house where they dry your coffee.


these are the coffee grower´s dogs running accross your coffee.


this is the coolest guy in mexico. he grew and dried your coffee.


this is the church in the town where your coffe came from.


these are the women who work the coffee fields, taking a break.

fiesta de barro *** mudfest 06

leaving for guatemala, i had many ideas about what i was going to get myself into down here. one of them was that i had no idea - that i´d be discovering the plan along the way...going with the flow as they say.

what i discovered is that having no plan is harder than it sounds. for me anyway. put on the table in front of me a blank calendar for the next three months and i can certainly walk away from the table without writing anything on the paper...but my brain already automatically filled it up with names dates and places. so i say, sure i´ll just go where i´m called to go, but i find that more often i´m going where i thought i woulda gone when my mind done formulated its route map a month ago. within that there´s still plenty of room for spontenaeity, but now is a chance to see where the universe takes me if i really listen, which means dropping that premeditated mental mapquest.



i did it. i grinded the gears to a halt and stepped off the train. in palenque. i thought i´d be there for two or three days. but palenque kept offering me another thing to stay for. first it was the impending arrival of mr. bryan cole and his lovely sidekick allison. (you can slap me for that one later allison...if you by some longshot see this.) we perused the ruins and tore up the nightlife scene in one wild twenty-four hour period before they hightailed it north and left me to fend for myself versus my not-as-stereotypically-goofily-japanese-as-he-appears-in-this-photo friend gen. the next reason to stay was to go for more walks in the jungle. which at first appeared frightfully full of venomous treats, but upon second inspection can actually be friendly enough to walk barefoot or linger long enough to watch the moon come up from below the trees. (granted, palenque roadside jungle ain´t exactly the amazon.) next, it was a community of heartfelt folks working in the local vegetarian restaurant, with whom i enjoyed some meditations, some dancing, and some plain old kindred spirit type friendship.

just when i thought it was high time to get out of tourist-land and back into the hills, another possibility blew into town, by way of atlanta, GA. (sproleses represent!) a quirky visionary mud house building poet named ratsack, and his band of six atlantans on their first trip to mexico arrived in town, touting their project as one that could ultimately change the world and the entire social economic save-up-your-whole-life-to-buy-a-house system. i was down with that, but also they were good people and it had this self-expression element that i felt i should investigate. the plan was to build a mud structure on some fortunate soul´s land, not by working our asses off, but rather, by dancing, making music, and eating good food, during which celebration miraculously would be built this fine house. this was where i had to confront my pre-made travel plan and see if i could actually let it go.

i signed on for a few days to see what would happen. during the first week we bounced from a ranch outside palenque to a local indigenous community outside palenque, back to palenque, and around palenque again, trying to decide on a location and a date for our building festival. the six atlantans had arrived partly to contribute to this project, but as it turned out also with their own intentions and desires for their short one week stay...which made coming up with a group agreement rather...well, it didn´t happen. still that first week was interesting and i loved the people. (although they were somehow convinced i was a cia agent and trusted me only sporadically.) then four of the six atlantans headed out of town, leaving just the leader/poet/crazy guy (in the nicest way for reals), his earnest basketball star assistant ryan, and the delightful nora hill, professional crochet guru. somehow in the deal we picked up our fifth member, saskatchewanian movement scientist and friend of mine, kyle "ala" syverson.

a couple more days and several more frustrating leaderless meetings later, we had our plan. build a mud bench/wall at the hotel accross the street. it would be in the public eye, so tourists would have to stop to see what the excitement was about, and we would invite our friends from the indigenous community to partake. our team of five forged ahead slowly, a pace which the jungle and our lack of leadership seemed to dictate, and made the preparations for sundays big event, "fiesta de barro 06".




i could go into all the details of how you build a mud house, what the heck you could do to hopefully make the event more fun than work, and tell you about that day´s party, attended by 100 lucky locals, both tourist and mexican...but really the event and all that lead up to it for me turned out to be about dealing with the group. group dynamics...leadership...relationships... i loved all of our people, but somehow we didn´t all work that well together. it´s no mystery really, everyone had their own level of commitment ranging from semi to quasi, and nobody wanted to be in charge, including me, even though i clearly saw at just about every moment that there was a gaping gap where the leader should have been standing. ratsack was the de facto leader...it was his idea, his vision, his baby...but his community-minded mind prefers to let things happen and let others step in where they will, rather than make things happen or tell folks what to do. it´s not the way things happen on wall street, but i wanted to stand back and see how it might work. as you can tell by the aforementioned 100 gleeful participants, it did work - but in the process i was bombarded by massive frustration nearly every day, when things didn´t happen as i felt they should have. still, i wouldn´t trade in the experience, it was priceless. and i learned so much from each of my palenque friends and teammates...i even have a more-than-slight urge to visit atlanta.

after the party, i felt i had given what i could to this particular mud-bench-fest, and i was finally ready to leave palenque, after 25 days. the urge to get back on the road, whether following some shard of the abandoned original plan or inventing a new one day by day was too strong, and there was no longer any reason to resist it. the future of team mudfest 06 is unclear...but as i head north, or maybe south, i definitely take them with me in my heart and i feel it´s not the last time i´ll see their achiote-seed-paint-covered faces.

grácias otra vez.