Category Archives: Travel

Hold Still (8)

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This morning I read one of the last chapters in the Natalie Goldberg book. It is titled, “Blue Chair.” She comes back again to Gwen, the student and friend who died. The last line ends like this: “it comes home deeper that I don’t get to say any more; what was said, was said, though the knowledge of her death ripples long after the last stone dropped, rich and living on.” At the beginning of the chapter she is painting a big, “fat” blue chair, “the kind of chair you want to nestle in.” Read in. Write books, your legs dangling over the big arms. She describes the layers of gouache she brushes over it, color after vibrant color until the chair has texture and depth, is no one color but alive in its layered-ness. While I write, a dove sits on the neighbor’s carport, his mourning song echoing the sadness and the layers of her chapter still sinking down inside me. I have felt at times in recent years like I am waiting for all my immediate family to die. Then I will go on to the next part of my life, walk el camino de Santiago, see Greece, Africa, find my “real” home, the place I will spend the rest of my own life. I expect my cat Boo to be the last, hope he will see me through the other losses, spend more years beside me. Because he is too thin and won’t eat much, the other day I became afraid it’s all going to happen too soon, too fast. I don’t want to lose any of them. Ever. I’ve told the universe again and again over these last few years: I am in no hurry. I want to be very clear about that. I am happy to wait. A wave of big, big losses rolled through life in my twenties. Now I am poised for another. But even as I write I know I am not really waiting. I just don’t want to leave them to go do other things. I would rather stay, be nearby. Stock up on life together. I can go later in a different time after the wave has washed back out to sea. I know even though I don’t want this wave to come, it will come anyway. And writing now, I know another thing. I know I must not brace myself against it, in spite of what my past, what my instincts beg. Instead, I want to tread water beyond the breakers, keep warm, nimble. I want to stay close, be ready to launch myself into the swell of it. I want to ride it all the way to the shore, the tears on my face indistinguishable from the salty water that holds me, buoys me, carries me whole and unharmed to the warm sand at the sea’s edge, new layers of bright-colored gouache painted on my soul.

Naked (54)

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statue of quan yin with fan palms behind her

I am sitting naked in Desert Hot Springs. Not sitting about in the center of town, no—in a small, modest resort with natural mineral springs. The warm wind has been whipping about me for hours, loud in the fan palms beside the pool. A statue of Quan Yin presides poolside. I’m in the shade now. I’ve been reading most of the day. I go into the hot mineral pool until I’m sated. The wind makes me cold when I emerge, and I wrap myself in my sarong until my skin is dry and the warm air heat seeps into me again. This morning I did yoga. I did qi gong in the early afternoon. I faced northeast, a potted bougainvillea beside me, the low slung hill visible over the bamboo fence. It has been one of those days that go on and on, the quiet stretching of time, summer days in childhood. I feel relaxed, lucky. I am grateful I’ve found this place. My eyes feel sore, a lingering fever. This morning before the wind began, there was a cactus wren laughing from one of these palms. There was a loose dog in the street when I walked here from the bus stop. I look forward to the day when coming here will feel familiar, like visiting someone I know well. I close the door behind me when I leave and walk away. I look back and see the waxing moon hanging above the roofline in the late afternoon sky as though it’s guarding the place. The moon follows me all the way home.

Good Candlemas (27)

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nasturtiums, bougainvillea

I light five candles for the pagan holiday today, pick flowers from our courtyard garden. They are still out on the patio table. I peeked at them a bit ago, watching them through the kitchen window, something reassuring and ancient about the look of those five flames lighting the dark. It’s been like early summer in the middle of our Palm Springs winter, that delicious evening air that feels like velvet against your skin. Or maybe you are the velvet—it is hard to know. It reminds me of one evening years ago sitting in the warm pool at Tassajara, the water and the air and my skin all one temperature so you couldn’t tell where one began or ended, the closest I have ever felt to being literally one with air and sky and water. The days have grown warmer than I’d choose, wanting as I am to push summer off as long as I can, but how can I complain about this evening air? It is like January in Ajijic, bare feet braced against the railing of my third floor roost, my northern Californian self almost gloating. I was barefoot in January. Now seven winters later I am spoiled in this. But still, I want to linger, wallow in the sweet, soft ease of it. Happy Candlemas, everyone.

five tealight candles, flowers, orange metal bird

Ode to Mexico (54)

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This is the last of my 54 posts while I’m 54. Keeping to “All Things Mexico” this year has been a stretch for me. I agonized over what was left to tell, sorry so many of my stories about Mexico had already come out of me the year before when I was 53. Or I shook my head at how the words I cobbled together here so often fell short of capturing the heart of the memory. But still you, my readers, came to visit, told me you liked what I was writing, cheered me on in spite of my own dissatisfaction and my often too harsh critic. I can’t thank you enough for that kindness, that generosity of spirit. And though I have not always liked what I came up with here, there were times I laughed at myself as I was the first to “like” one of my own posts. Do people do that?!!? I wondered even as I clicked on the “Like” button. But there are at least a handful here I was pleased with enough to choose, silly though it may have been. It made me happy.

And as I contemplate my next year of posts, the 55 I plan to write while I’m 55, I think I will again leave the “theme” wide open. I seem to be a funny creature in that I crave a theme, a focus, and then I rebel against the constrictions of one even when it’s self-imposed. Perhaps I will continue as I’ve begun, alternating “wide open” years with years that are more structured. I think of writing a year of posts about all the days or moments I’d like to relive. Or a year of sleeping dreams with thoughts about how they might weave into my daily life. I imagine writing each of the year’s posts about a different being or character, blending fiction and fact. And as I write these possibilities even more leap into my mind, and the part of me that longs for structure becomes eager to try my hand at one of them. But I think for now I will allow this next year of posts to unfold as they will, wander where they might, grow like weeds, like thistles, airy tufts tossed by the breeze to land where they may. And in the time between becoming 55 and turning 56, I’ll let some part of me dream about what kind of shape I might want to commit to for my 56 posts while I’m 56.

So, as I end this year of posts, I breathe a sigh of relief at the thought of the unconstrained year that now awaits. But I know, too, that in my ornery way, I may flounder in that unstructured space, adrift with no idea what to write about. It makes me grin, this odd determination to be confounded either way. And, too, I am not at all sorry I tried to write about Mexico this past year, no matter what my efforts brought. I imagine I’ll continue to write about Mexico, to even try again to tell my stories as the years unfold. I hope to go back to Mexico, again and again, to travel or to live, to dig in and unearth the soil of that country with my wriggling toes, that new stories might spring from that rich and fertile land for me to tell. And I hope even these imperfect posts might serve as my own ode to memory. I think of my first whale, sitting on the edge of that Todos Santos beach while she hovered nearby in the depths just off the shore. I recall my magic wandering of the steep stairways, the callejones of Guanajuato, or my first breathtaking view of that hillside city, the painted buildings a wonder, the most beautiful ciudad I have ever seen. I remember Ana standing across the living room from me at the Aldama house, laughing, or the night she and Rodolfo walked me home along the cobblestone streets while I sang in French, and the night I followed that same path alone, crying like my heart was breaking. I hope my year of posts might serve to honor my memories, my own ode to Mexico.

I Have a Dream (53)

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I spent Wednesday at a local resort, “day use” there my treat for spring break. I drank coffee and did my qi gong and my yoga on the cement beside the hot tub. It was warm from the sun, and I lay on my back and watched the fan palm leaves bend and bristle in the wind. I stood beside the wall of cloudy glass bricks, alone in my corner of that public world, and I kicked my legs forward and backward, punched the air before me, stood still at the end of the series, the dragon stands between the heavens and the earth. In between I floated in the hot water and let the tension leak out of my body and felt a dream emerge in me. The “Travel” section of the Sunday Times was about Mexico, and I read it greedily. It was focused on Mérida, a city in the Yucatán. Just like that, the desire to visit was alive in me. And somewhere in the midst of doing my qi gong in that hidden section of the resort, of floating in the hot water watching the San Jacinto mountains peeking out between the palm trees, of feeling the sun-warmed cement beneath my back, against my thighs while I twisted my spine and stretched my hips, a vision grew in me of a neighborhood in Mérida and a part I might play there one day. I dreamed a fountain and good food, a plaza garden, a co-op, a milpa, peace.

The Woman and the Dog (52)

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I remember walking from La Casa Azul to downtown Todos Santos. It was late afternoon. I don’t remember where I was going, maybe to meet my Spanish teacher Guillermo at the cafe. I was taking the side streets north of the highway. I passed a woman washing clothes in her yard, another taking stark white dress shirts down off a clothesline. A man in a hat was hosing down the dirt road in front of his house when I passed. He smiled and nodded. “Buenas tardes,” I said. I passed a house with a garden in the front, vines climbing the wire fence, purple blooms. A woman was scraping food from a pot into a white enamel bowl on the ground, her brown dog dancing at her feet. “Oh,” I said. I was grinning. “She’s so excited about it.” Ella está muy emocionada sobre su comida. I remember the woman’s laugh, how it opened up her face. I remember the sweetness inside that moment together, of being part of her love for her dog.

Fast Food (51)

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When I lived in Todos Santos, I would ride the bus to Cabo San Lucas to pick up the mail sent to me from my box in northern California. I would go to the Burger King there, indulge in a Whopper that tasted remarkably like the ones here in the States. (When I was an adolescent, I remember my disappointment when my girlfriend and I found a McDonald’s in Germany but the hamburger there still tasted like a foreign country.) In Cabo San Lucas, hamburger in hand, I’d walk along the harbor, or sit perched on the steps overlooking it, and savor the familiar taste as I chewed. After, I’d go to the Häagen-Dazs store and eat ice cream. Before Cabo San Lucas, I never even knew they had Häagen-Dazs stores. I haven’t seen once since. But the best fast food I had in Mexico was the morning after the cats and I had crossed over to the mainland on the ferry from La Paz. We were stopped in line before a toll booth, and a man came up to my window. He had a small blue and white cooler with him. I don’t remember what he called his wares, but I bought one. The plastic bag was warm, and that surprised me. He was using the cooler to hold in the heat. I paid him, then caught up with the toll booth line, and headed south along the toll road. I remember there were big black birds in the trees lining the highway, their calls an exotic din. I unwrapped the plastic bag, warm skinny rolled tortillas, like taquitos only not fried. They were filled with potatoes and a glimmer of meat, and I remember how tasty they were, how good the freshness and the warmth felt in my mouth. I remember marveling to think that kind of homemade breakfast would find me on the highway like that. I can still see the diffident way the man walked toward my car, the blue and white cooler in his hand. And I can still feel the soft warmth of the tortillas against my fingers while I ate and drove, the air alive in grackles.