I Think I Was Meant to Lose It

Dear Jerry: (my step-dad)

I have spent a lovely splendid semi-ridiculous afternoon with a 75-year-old UK ex-pat old enough to remember WWII but young enough to still be building a dream house on the west coast of Mexico.

Today I fled Puerto Escondido after a lovely morning spent on a ¨¨surf dat먨 with Chiarra, a girl I sorta kinda went to high school with, and her beau Kevin, who just happen to be in PE at the same time as me. They got me at 9am, early for this traveler, and we went out to La Punta, aka ¨¨The Point¨¨, the place where not-so-perfect surfers learn how to surf. I rented a board for the first time, (spent most of th first three weeks here playing exclusively on a boogie board in order to acquire ´wave knowledge´ ) and realized, Ï CAN DO THIS. i can, though I can, I mean I can in that it isn´t that hard, the issues boil down to two basic things: the first, similar to the boogie, remembering NOT to BAIL n the perfect wave because the come down looks too scary,, two, LEARNING TO STAND....a fucking hard one...

I must continue this later...I am in a Mexican village in a palapa and I have to peee....

Okay - place to pee secured - now, where were we?

Learning to surf, however, has been NOTHING compared to the really COMPLEX challenge that frightened me most before I came - as I told our friend Peter, (my One True Shrink) my biggest fear was that I would come down here, freak the fuck out, and be in a foreign country and thus, totally doomed. Let me tell you, friend, I have endured - going WAYY the fuck over budget FAST in the tourist trap that is Puerto Escondido, losing a notebook, losing a necklace, losing $60 in cash, losing my keys, (permanently.,more or less), being damn near RAPED (I kid you not...of course, I ENJOYED IT) on the beach, then robbed of $35 besides...(friends have consoled me that lots of people pay A LOT MORE than $35 to get sodomized by a she-male, but....)

Through it all, I have managed, and then, today, like Isis entering the underworld, stripping off articles of the surface world to prove her worthiness to meet with HADES, I lost...something else. And I DIDN´T FREAK. And it was more than the Mezcal.

Never before have I lost a Jerry Faires original. But let me tell you about this one. As soon as I saw it, I think I sorta KNEW it was a temporary piece. It was (I assume) a Tuffa cast of THE TOWER (yes, THE TOWER) with a moonstone at its base. With my Tarot-oriented dabblings, I saw nothing in it but THE tower, the tower of the Tarot, the symbol of when,

¨¨All that is solid melts into air,¨¨ to quote Marx, ¨¨All that once was is void and without meaning,¨ to quote Berman.

I didn´t know at the beach when I was twisting and turning with my own fear of the size of waves and my ability to crash with them. I did not know when I practied the fall by pushing aggressively for the wipe-out, then rolling with the water like an actor falling down with a punch. I did not know as I climbed the steps about the Audoquin looking for the busstop for points south to see if there was a meaning BEYOND the greed and exploitation, sadness and stupidity that I remembered from what I had known before of Mexico. I did not know on the bus down south, as the mescalero with the GIANT plastic carton of local shine offered me thimbles full and sold me a bottle for $1

- I did not know until, full of Mezcal and another man´s mysteries, his dreams, his story, I cast off my shirt to pick natural-grown Basil in the jungle that is his yard, only then did I reach for and realize:

The Station of the Tower is past for me. I have stripped down to nothing and emerged as something else completely.

And what is lost is but an artifact of a life made SO MUCH THE RICHER by artifacts of symbolism that offer touchstones to the narrative of a man.


love love love love love
gregoryp(tm)

Trouble in Paradise But Getting Clearer

I didn´t freak out, I just sat with it and made an alternative plan. Here´s what´s up:

Last night I was on the main drag (the Adoquin) and I saw this certain kind of art that I´ve come to adore here. It´s called papela amate pintoras - painting on amate, the bark of a certain tree. The material is just so damn compelling - but most of the paintings are really not very good, trite really. Last night I saw some fine examples - subject matter that matched the material, finally, and I sought out the artist.

The painter, as it turned out, is an Indio of the Nawhat tribe. The previous evening I had interviewed another Nawhat whose work was ceramico. Even in my crap Spanish (which is getting better) I was able to interview sources in a language they speak - and I simply cannot tell you how thrilling that is.

That´s what I wanted to write last night - that despite all the weird things that have happened here and the extraordinary speed at which I seem to have ripped through my budget, (which will happen less now that I know What Not to Do), I am really enjoying the following aspects of where I am: 1) the beach, 2) learning Spanish, and 3) applying what I learn Instantly to the people around me. Immersion reallu *is* the only way to go in learning a language (though the lessons I have received from Angelica have been really quite invaluable.)

At this moment, I don´t know what´s up with the landlord, but I would prefer to pay him nothing. Last night, I looked into a cabana place that is much more in keeping with what I originally had in mind - fairly rustic low budget travelling, about $7 a night for a cabana for one person. They have a couple of communal cooking areas, and now that I actually know where the markets are and how to reach them, I don´t think I´ll have a whole lot of problems with my original plan of how to live cheaply - and even though I´ve somehoe blown a lot, I´ve here, I´ve learned What Not to Do, and I feel like that´s been the best part - learning.

The plan is to stay, either at the original place or this other spot, until the end of next week. I want to take another week´s work of class to work on present, past, imperfect and future tenses as well as increased verb vocabularly. Then I may want to go south to Zipolite or Mazunte, which I´ve heard a lot about. Both are within the hour and are supposed to be less touristy and less expensive than here.

Finally - everyone I´ve talked to here has told me I need to go to Oaxaca City to look at the art, and since I met Michele Gibbs and her partner George Colman, I know I will go. She is a performance poet ex-pat with a radical progressive past - he is an oral historian and writer. Both have offered to hook me up with indigenous artists they know working in a radical contemporary vein. I have to go see what´s it´s like - everyone says it´s extraordinary, and I think I would be missing a major opportunity to not go now.

I had forgotten that it had been ten years since I traveled outside the United States - I don´t miss it in the slightest, but the culture shock has been rather extreme and I haven´t yet *really* found my place in it. But I am learning more than just Spanish...I really am learning something important about myself here - what it is yet I can´t exactly speak, but it seems to be causing interesting shifts within me.

cheers
gregoryp(tm)

http://www.realoaxaca.com/from-the-field/

Puerto Escondido is a bloody sham

I´m starting to feel really terribly ripped off in Puerto Escondido, and think I might leave. Since I´ve been here, I´ve lost $60, (almost unhinged me) a notebook (almost unhinged me) the necklace Yamuna gave me for Xmas (several hundred deep breaths) and dealt with a culture shock so sublime (foreign language, trippy ex-pats, the whole concept of vacation) and money worries about How Fucking Quickly you can spend $1200 not doing a whole lot of anything really, (one expensive dinner, a couple of beers every other day, laundry, grocery shopping, getting around in cabs, etc, making mistakes you might not make at home.) Two days I was shooting fire-spinners at the beach and rolling around int the sand to get good shots. Lost my wallet (without Question the closest I came to losing it completely) then the bar tender and I found it (without money, $40, but everything else left so I felt lucky.) But I also began to question why I´m deailing with all these obstacles. (Like 6 kilometers to the mercado, for example.) What I like about this place is a) coast, and b) learning Spanish. All the rest of it is just plain fucking weird and not all that interesting, and in some cases fully malevolent. This morning I woke up with a plan to go to Zipolite, a town about a half hour from here, that people say is what I am actually looking for. After checking my Internet, I ran into this terrifically interesting woman, poet-painter lady from Oaxaca City, and she told me I had to go there. This is also something I have heard before... Then I just decided, hey, beach & spanish, that´s what I´m here for and I have this house, so I should just focus on getting back to Spanish classes next week, and taking a surf class like I planned as well. I headed down to the surf-beach here called the point to have a go with the boogie board, and then I came home, showered, changed and got ready to go study. \nAnd ran into the landlord. He didn´t know someone else was living there. I can´t live there. I have to pay him not them. And I´m thinking,´You Greedy MotherFucking Pig. I already know you charge Americans and Canadians twice what you´d charge a MExican, and it´s low fucking season and you should be grateful to have tenants.¨ But I don´t say that, because I have reached this kind of Zen-territory where everything kinda feels so fucked up already that I just don´t care. And I know that *I* will never pay this greasy jerk one fucking penny because he´s just being so fucking rude, and I´m just sorta wondering how I am going to get the Canadians who I paid $300 to pay me back so I can get the fuck out of this place. But I´m not freaking out. I just think that Puerto Escondido is a real fucking sham. If they didn´t have a coast, no one would be here. Including perhaps, the people who live here.-- -- \nGregory J. PleshawMETA ConsultingMarketing & Editorial Services for Technology & the Arts(505) 514-4774812 Camino de Monte Rey, #107 (Santa Fe office)205 Vassar Ave. SE #1 (Albuquerque office)\ngregoryp@gregoryp.comSee AlsoPlaza Rat Presshttp://www.gregoryp.com (to buy my book)\nhttp://gregoryp.blogspot.com (to read my blog) \n\n",0] ); //--> And ran into the landlord. He didn´t know someone else was living there. I can´t live there. I have to pay him not them. And I´m thinking,´You Greedy MotherFucking Pig. I already know you charge Americans and Canadians twice what you´d charge a MExican, and it´s low fucking season and you should be grateful to have tenants.¨ But I don´t say that, because I have reached this kind of Zen-territory where everything kinda feels so fucked up already that I just don´t care. And I know that *I* will never pay this greasy jerk one fucking penny because he´s just being so fucking rude, and I´m just sorta wondering how I am going to get the Canadians who I paid $300 to pay me back so I can get the fuck out of this place. But I´m not freaking out. I just think that Puerto Escondido is a real fucking sham. If they didn´t have a coast, no one would be here. Including perhaps, the people who live here.

Greetings from Surf City, Part Two

It{s been almost two weeks since I arrived in Puerto Encondido, and I{m finally starting to feel like myself here. Having never really been one much for being On Vacation, it took a lot of effort to get used to how this all works. My first week was a time of utter confusion on all kinds of levels - I stayed in this strange Lost Weekend-esque elder-hippie Hotel where drinking and poker playing were the order of nearly every afternoon. It was really lurid and disorienting and I joined in briefly, simply out of a need to talk to someone, but managed to extract myself rather quickly. Also strange and difficult, as I noted in my first post, was getting used to the fact that living in a hotel means eating out every single meal. THAT bit had to go ASAP - it made me feel uncomfortable, and even though I spent a lot of money I felt like I was starving all the time.

While dazed and confused both with my external surroundings and my internal feelings, I did manage to spend a lot of time hiking around the area and going to the beach about five times a day. Which is pretty much what you do here. There are two main beaches in Puerto Escondido, the first being Playa Zicatela, which is the one I live on. I had been told that it was rough surf there, but I went in a lot anyway at first - the tows are really QUITE incredible. I cant say I{ve ever been in any ocean that felt too dangerous for body-surfing, other than those under storm conditions. I was determined to play in the water, however, and rented a boogie board one day, only to get so badly wiped out that the life-gaurd came over and essentially kicked me off the beach, pointing me in the direction of the other beach, Playa Principal.

Zicatela and Principal meet in a cluster of rocks called The Split. Near to the Split lies a rather bizarre (tortured, one friend called it) rock sculpture which you can see here. Crossing the split is a little tiny restaurant nestled amidst the rocks, and then the beach goes around 500 yards around in a half moon. On the side closest to the split are a couple of tourist-oriented restaurants, on the side closest to the beginning of the Pueblo (town) are where the locals play.

From about the third day at the first Hotel (it's called the Hotel Rockaway, it's a cheap place to stay and the people are awfully nice, but I'd be hard pressed to recommend the place because of the culture) I was dying to leave and go elsewhere, but I couldn't decide where to go. What I really wanted was some kind of apartment, but I was worried that I might become too isolated and lonely. I'd already felt a bit of angst about where I was and what this Vacation crap was all about, and loneliness was looming anyway. The only thing that made both go away was whenever I was in the ocean - hence why I spent and still spend a significant amount of time in it.

I walked Playa Principal beach the day after my ejection from Zicatela and was looking for someone who spoke English that I could leave my stuff near. In the water were thousands of these little blue jellyfish that I hadn{t seen before and haven{t seen since, but I picked one up and brought it over to them. We examined it and speculated, exchanged name and origin information (a near constant activity here) then merged our stuff and went swimming. Washing to shore about a half hour later, they invited me to join them for a drink (another constant activity) at their beach bar, a place called Liza{s Restaurant which might as well be named the Gringo Embassy.

Ordering my beer, I saw a pack of cigarettes on the bar that I thought were mine because they had the same color lighter. I was dazed from body surfing (and everything else) and took them. We sat down and had a drink, and this fellow, a self-described redneck who{d had already been boasting that he{d be drinking all day, came over and demanded his cigarettes. It was a fairly tense situation because I simply didn{t believe they were his, but I handed them over because, as I said "I didn't come to Mexico to fight with anyone." But he really scared me on some level, and I was hoping I wouldn't see him again.

Eventually, we left the bar and I realized that my cigarettes were actually on the beach. I wanted to apologize, but he was already gone and I really hoped I wouldn{t see him again. But life is a very very strange place - in point of fact, this kid, Josh Dolan is his name, actually held the answer to a lot of my problems in Puerto Escondido, but I just didn{t know that yet.

That night - one week ago? Amazing - I was heading for a "rave" at this beach bar on Zicatela, and I was walking in as he was walking out. I had to come clean even I thought he was an asshole. I pulled him aside and told him that I had discovered he was correct about the pack of cigarettes. He said, "Thanks man - let's drink!" The bar was having a 2-for-1 night, so we each got TWO beers (sigh) then we met some girls and got into the tequila...

Next day at the beach, (late) I told him I was looking for a place - he told me he and his friend Julie had a three-bedroom condo and they were looking for a third. So I went from not knowing where to go or what to do to stealing someone's cigarettes and ending up with someone Beyond My Wildest Dreams. For $300-month (my share) I have a place with A-C, cable television, a giant room, a big refrigerator, two burners (no oven), a shower big enough to have a rock concert in, and a porch that faces the west and the crashing surf of Zicatela Beach. It's really something else.

The first week I was here I was so unhinged that I figured I needed an anchor, so I took a week's worth of Spanish classes at the Language Institute. Between that and the beach and my new posse, I{ve been doing okay. I'm really glad about the Spanish - tonight I actually interviewed Nuwhan (Indios) pintores entirely in Spanish - I forgot the word for pottery, if you can believe it - and there was a lot I couldn{t ask because I don't yet know the words, but I'll get them. I've been shooting a fair bit of pictures, which I'll try to get up soon, but I certainly feel like Im pulling things together here in a really good way.

Greetings from Surf City, Part Two

It{s been almost two weeks since I arrived in Puerto Encondido, and I{m finally starting to feel like myself here. Having never really been one much for being On Vacation, it took a lot of effort to get used to how this all works. My first week was a time of utter confusion on all kinds of levels - I stayed in this strange Lost Weekend-esque elder-hippie Hotel where drinking and poker playing were the order of nearly every afternoon. It was really lurid and disorienting and I joined in briefly, simply out of a need to talk to someone, but managed to extract myself rather quickly. Also strange and difficult, as I noted in my first post, was getting used to the fact that living in a hotel means eating out every single meal. THAT bit had to go ASAP - it made me feel uncomfortable, and even though I spent a lot of money I felt like I was starving all the time.

While dazed and confused both with my external surroundings and my internal feelings, I did manage to spend a lot of time hiking around the area and going to the beach about five times a day. Which is pretty much what you do here. There are two main beaches in Puerto Escondido, the first being Playa Zicatela, which is the one I live on. I had been told that it was rough surf there, but I went in a lot anyway at first - the tows are really QUITE incredible. I cant say I{ve ever been in any ocean that felt too dangerous for body-surfing, other than those under storm conditions. I was determined to play in the water, however, and rented a boogie board one day, only to get so badly wiped out that the life-gaurd came over and essentially kicked me off the beach, pointing me in the direction of the other beach, Playa Principal.

Zicatela and Principal meet in a cluster of rocks called The Split. Near to the Split lies a rather bizarre (tortured, one friend called it) rock sculpture which you can see here. Crossing the split is a little tiny restaurant nestled amidst the rocks, and then the beach goes around 500 yards around in a half moon. On the side closest to the split are a couple of tourist-oriented restaurants, on the side closest to the beginning of the Pueblo (town) are where the locals play.

From about the third day at the first Hotel (it's called the Hotel Rockaway, it's a cheap place to stay and the people are awfully nice, but I'd be hard pressed to recommend the place because of the culture) I was dying to leave and go elsewhere, but I couldn't decide where to go. What I really wanted was some kind of apartment, but I was worried that I might become too isolated and lonely. I'd already felt a bit of angst about where I was and what this Vacation crap was all about, and loneliness was looming anyway. The only thing that made both go away was whenever I was in the ocean - hence why I spent and still spend a significant amount of time in it.

I walked Playa Principal beach the day after my ejection from Zicatela and was looking for someone who spoke English that I could leave my stuff near. In the water were thousands of these little blue jellyfish that I hadn{t seen before and haven{t seen since, but I picked one up and brought it over to them. We examined it and speculated, exchanged name and origin information (a near constant activity here) then merged our stuff and went swimming. Washing to shore about a half hour later, they invited me to join them for a drink (another constant activity) at their beach bar, a place called Liza{s Restaurant which might as well be named the Gringo Embassy.

Ordering my beer, I saw a pack of cigarettes on the bar that I thought were mine because they had the same color lighter. I was dazed from body surfing (and everything else) and took them. We sat down and had a drink, and this fellow, a self-described redneck who{d had already been boasting that he{d be drinking all day, came over and demanded his cigarettes. It was a fairly tense situation because I simply didn{t believe they were his, but I handed them over because, as I said "I didn't come to Mexico to fight with anyone." But he really scared me on some level, and I was hoping I wouldn't see him again.

Eventually, we left the bar and I realized that my cigarettes were actually on the beach. I wanted to apologize, but he was already gone and I really hoped I wouldn{t see him again. But life is a very very strange place - in point of fact, this kid, Josh Dolan is his name, actually held the answer to a lot of my problems in Puerto Escondido, but I just didn{t know that yet.

That night - one week ago? Amazing - I was heading for a "rave" at this beach bar on Zicatela, and I was walking in as he was walking out. I had to come clean even I thought he was an asshole. I pulled him aside and told him that I had discovered he was correct about the pack of cigarettes. He said, "Thanks man - let's drink!" The bar was having a 2-for-1 night, so we each got TWO beers (sigh) then we met some girls and got into the tequila...

Next day at the beach, (late) I told him I was looking for a place - he told me he and his friend Julie had a three-bedroom condo and they were looking for a third. So I went from not knowing where to go or what to do to stealing someone's cigarettes and ending up with someone Beyond My Wildest Dreams. For $300-month (my share) I have a place with A-C, cable television, a giant room, a big refrigerator, two burners (no oven), a shower big enough to have a rock concert in, and a porch that faces the west and the crashing surf of Zicatela Beach. It's really something else.

The first week I was here I was so unhinged that I figured I needed an anchor, so I took a week's worth of Spanish classes at the Language Institute. Between that and the beach and my new posse, I{ve been doing okay. I'm really glad about the Spanish - tonight I actually interviewed Nuwhan (Indios) pintores entirely in Spanish - I forgot the word for pottery, if you can believe it - and there was a lot I couldn{t ask because I don't yet know the words, but I'll get them. I've been shooting a fair bit of pictures, which I'll try to get up soon, but I certainly feel like Im pulling things together here in a really good way.

Greetings from Surf City.

Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca, Mexico

Can I just say I love the fucking beach?

Mexico, however, is a bit weirder than that.

I´ve almost been here in Mexico for two weeks - its really feels like forever, and yet Mexico continues to confound me quite a bit. Yes, it´s relaxing and the beaches are incredible, but maintaining my balance and finding my bearings has been a great deal more difficult than I expected. I now understand why my friend Courtney hates to travel - we are both similar in that we like having everything we need within immediate reach, and being ´´on vacation´´ is anything but that.

I came to Puerto Escondido to relax and chill out and be near the beach. I´ve managed to accomplish those goals, for the most part, and that´s been very satisfying - however, as I´ve come to realize and say often to people I meet here, ´´ín Puerto Escondido, sin is cheap. But essentials are rather difficult to come by.¨´´

Generally speaking, I´m not the sort of person who lives in hotels and eats out every meal. Hostels are my general place to stay, and I´ve come to discover here that hostel living is really quite wonderful not just for cheap per-night fees, but for the fact that there is a shared kitchen with refrigeration, burners, oven, and dishes. The first week I was here, I lived at the Hotel Rockaway, a marvelously cheap place to stay at $12 per night, but an incredibly difficult place to stay if one is used to cooking most of one´s own food when on vacation.

The idea that Mexico is a ´´cheap´´ vacation seems to apply only to where one stays, as rooms as certainly cheaper than in the states. Here in PE, ten pesos equals a dollar and ten pesos is spent like a dollar - hence, dinner is 65 pesos and up ($6.50), coffee is 12 pesos ($1.25). Not to say that the food isn´t marvelous - most places it really is, and I have embarked on a diet of eating only fruit, vegetables, fish, coffee and beer (can´t win ´em all), but when I came I budgeted for around $600 a month based on buying food and making it yourself (which is impossible to do in a hotel) and living this way it is very easy to hit the $30 or even $40 a day mark.

This had me anxious for much of the first week (not to say I didn´t love going to the beach every single day and living in shorts and drinking Sol beer, which runs about $1.50 a bottle) so I began to look for apartments. Serendipity arrived in an odd way = I was hanging on the beach one day, looking around for someone English=speaking to leave my stuff with. I saw these people, who turned out to be Canadian, and as I was wondering how I would go say hello, I saw thousands of these tiny blue creatures washing up to shore with the waves. Clearly some kind of jellyfish, I captured one in my hands, and brought it over to them.

''Habla engles?'' I said. And they said yes. ''Check out this thing. Does anyone know what it is?''

friendship was immediately established as we examined the thing, then swimming together and combining stuff followed. Leaving the water, they took me to their beach bar = a place called Liza's = and we sat for drink. I went up to the bar to get them, and on the bar was a package of cigarettes. I was dazed from the surf, thought they were mine.