A sense of place (despite lingering fear of tropical spiders)

On January 29th, 2013 I moved from Mexico City, one of the most populous cities in the world, to an empty beach about an hour outside of Puerto Escondido in the Mexican state of Oaxaca. My city friends called it the "super-soft-fade-out," like those from the end of 80's movies. The protagonist raises his arms in the air after overcoming the numerous, unlikely trials of the last 93 minutes and 27 seconds. The camera freezes on the fist and slowly fades out to credits...

In my case, the trial timeframe was more like 5 years and there was no super-soft-fade-out-ending. The idea of moving back to the United States crossed my mind, but starting another 9-5 after working one straight out of college for half a decade? I became dizzy. On top of that, I wanted to clear somethings up with Mexico, a country now so woven into my fabric I can hardly tell where the southern quilt begins and the fringed serape ends.

So I came to Oaxaca to document my friend's progress to build a personal utopia. He had just signed on some land in the small pueblo of "El Venado" or in English "The Deer." This name was a sign to him as he had grown up on a back-to-the earth-project in Arkansas named "Deer," which was (possibly) ((one of)) the inspiration(s). Buying the land had taken two years, but he had managed. And while the ink was drying on those papers, I was planning my own escape, just minus the personal utopia. He read discontent in my internet trails and wrote to say it was time to make the documentary we always joked about me making.

Okay.

I came with few expectations, and for the best. The city slicker in me scoffed at the land: no structures, no water, no electricity, no internet. What had I done? What am I going to do next? Is that a spider in your tent? I mean, have you seen the movie, "Arachnophobia"? How fast can I get to concrete shelter, preferably with a fan and cupboard containing, at minimum, one chocolate croissant? I stayed the night in a hammock figuring it would be the best bet against spiders but failed to realize I was opening up an all-you-can-eat mosquito buffet. I left the next morning, not staying even 24 hours and not to return for a week.

When I did return, volunteers from the helpX, a website that connect people willing to work for food and shelter, had started to trickle in. I could not understand them. Not because of language or anything. I mean to say I could not understand their motivations. They were willing to break their backs for tortas and a place to pitch a tent? I knew there must be more but was not sure what it could be. So I prepared my gear and started filming. First little things like clearing paths with machetes or painting the bottom of fruit trees with white lime and then building earthbag structures, a design popularized by Iranian architect Nader Khalili, which involves lots of heave-hoing of dirt-like substances into polyethylene bags originally intended for seed/food.

And at some point, that I myself cannot point out, I stopped watching them and started rooting for them. I stopped seeing them with the pre-constructed labels I applied because of dreadlocks or vocabulary choices. I stopped being afraid to leave my camera gear laying around because they were strangers. And I missed them when I went back to civilization to charge up my batteries and ingest footage. I will never forget the first time I came back and was greeted with "welcome home."

I realize that to be part of this I have to put aside what I learned in the chaos and traffic of Mexico City. And the first step is already underway: just seeing people as people and valuing connections that instinctively exist if you let them surface.

Machetes

Yesterday morning I took a break from all things video to sling a machete to (re)understand the principles of manual labor while listening to "Hootenanny," from start to finish. I forgot (never knew) to wear gloves, so by the time I got to "Take Me Down to the Hospital" certain parts of my hands looked up, begging me to heed Paul Westerberg's words. I showed them who was boss by covering them up with a bandana until I had poorly finished the job and the album.

   

Somewhere else

When life is predictable the smallest aberration can fuel a brilliant story. A new trick for peddling made-in-china-flashlights on the metro from a man missing at least one limb or the guy selling you cigarettes insinuating that you are a hooker (working early today, aren't we?). You know, for example. But things are now so shaken up and I cannot see the start. 

I guess it was Berlin. Within a week of looking, I had a bite for an interview. I had never focused on a city so intensely and it paid. I did not go to Berlin, no, but Berlin taught me that one can push one's agenda easier than I, for one, realized. Though loath to leave D.F. and harboring the fear I would sink, I knew sooner rather than later change would come or else I would drown in a stagnate puddle.

So I left, stored my record collection with a friend, gave away decorative skulls and clothes with horses stitched on the front and packed almost 5 years into 2 suitcases destined for the coast.

I arrived less than a week ago. The taxi brought me to a stripped down, large house with heart-shaped-bars on the windows and a tetras-shaped swimming pool in the front yard. A friend and an unidentified Mexican guy sat with their feet in the semi-chlorinated water, which they tracked on the concrete in human paw shaped prints but that evaporated before we got my bags out of the airport cab. When I told the cabbie in D.F. I had lived in Texcoco and Mexico City, he asked if I had put chunks of the two in my luggage. 

Upon entering, I found a mostly white, mostly empty, mostly tiled narco-style-mini-mansion. Nic came down the staircase and the first thing out of his mouth was about how he had been sick and shitting everywhere. Mexican food. I found the information somewhat secondary. We went for a walk to pick up his giant puppy Machete, an Irish Wolfhound with a mow-hawk and a penchant it turns out for tackling nude females along the coast line. The walk gave us a chance to talk about the project and expectations. Everything had happened so quickly that, well, we only touched on the latter tangentially  The main focus was getting down there. Now I was Oaxaca, Nic on one side, the Pacific ocean on the other. So I dove right in. What was his timeline? Goals? Budget?

It was 5 p.m. and I had scrambled some eggs around 8 a.m., so we stopped for some food. Nic knew the guy. (Of course). I ate a quesodilla as he explain how the progress was going to build his dream. I wanted to jot down quotes and ideas but was without paper and had slept very little in the week leading up to that moment due to a post-wisdom-teeth-extraction-infection.*

I was pounding some agua del dia hard when he told me his main goal is to create and host Burning Man Mexico from December 27th 2013 to January 4th 2014. I chuckled inside. I should have guessed. This coming from the guy who explained buying an $800 fur coat for his (first) despedida by rationalizing that, "it will be great for Burning Man." †

Nic was quitting his job for the month of February so that he could oversee and participate in a "work party" on the land. About an hour outside of Puerto, he now owned the site for his utopia after two years of searching and fighting with the Mexican bureaucratic system.‡ 

We drove out Friday night to greet the first volunteers from the website HelpX, which connects people willing to work for accommodation and food. And that is fascinating. These people will break their backs for a few tortas. But I think/know there is more to it than that. I tried to lead one of the girls, a Canadian, down the road of (my) enlightenment as to why she chose this project. Did she grow up on a farm? Did she remember when she first realized she wanted an alternative lifestyle? Had she seen an example of this type of community when she was younger? § I gave up as she her answer to 87.33333% of my questions was, "to live off the grid" (even though when pressed she could not explain what that meant or why she wanted it). I decided to put interviews on hold until we had more volunteers.

I took some good test footage, in both the day and night, as it was my camera's maiden voyage and I wanted to see how she handled different lighting. I also tested out my new audio system, composed of an h4n and Rode Mic with Plural Eyes in post. Needless to say I was super eager to check out the results, to learn my new workflow and to do this with coffee and a chocolate croissant on the porch of Cafecito.

I put on the old rucksack, grabbed my gear and hitched a ride with Nic and his cousin Dagen to the main road. From there, I started walking towards Puerto until I could catch a passing convi. I want to get this system down before official filming begins later this month. 

/////f o o t n o t e s//////

* Firmly excruciating pain that leads to eating sub-recreational painkillers like Tic Tacs ®
† Throughout the time I knew Nic in Mexico City Burning Man was a recurring theme in conversations  He once bought a dark purple leather vest with 4 huge pockets on the front from the used clothing market in Pino Suarez for the sole purpose of wearing it at Burning Man, which at the time was approximately 8 months down the road. Affectionally known as "Burners," people like Nic see the world tinted by their memories of the art festival deep in the Nevada desert. While the roots are unequivocally non-commercial, some feel that the festival has grown too much and is becoming too corporate. That is why across the States, many have already started mini-Burning Man events. Read more here.
‡ I always says the wheels of Mexican bureaucracy move slowly. Nic says they move backwards.
§ Nic himself grew up on in the backwoods of Arkansas in a back-to-the-earth-type-project. 

Cuauhtémoc

A few years ago I got a tattoo on my back. I put in on my back because I did not always want to see it. But I knew it was there. I got this particular tattoo, having never particularly wanted a tattoo, of the metro stop Cuauhtémoc, which is located in Colonia Juárez, which is located in Mexico City, which is located approximately two-and-one-half-blocks from my first apartment in the city. And I put this on my back not because of my enthusiasm for public transport (which, believe me, is very real) but, instead, to remind me to do the scary things in life. I was so terrified to move from Texcoco. (Anyone who has lived in Texcoco will recognize the irony in this statement). I did not know how I would find an apartment or meet friends or navigate such a daunting mega-city. But once I made that big, scary move, I saw how easy it was. How is was actually much easier than my life in the violent, semi-urban-periphery.

That move was a good one because I fell madly in love with Mexico City. So I got that tattoo to show my commitment, my adoration, my appreciation to a city that both schooled and mentored me while sharing its chaos and old buildings and traffic and scenes straight from a Lynch film and scenes straight from a Tarantino film and hilariously wonderful/intelligent/crazy/kind people with whom I have had the distinct honor of piling into cabs and then piling back out when the driver reveals he wants to charge double. But I also got that tattoo that I never thought I wanted because I knew one day I would need to be reminded, once again, to change. To do the scary thing that I already knew to do. And so I leave behind the city that I love so much with a permanent reminder that I may not always be able to see but that I will always know is there.

Nada personal

As I sit drinking coffee, ingesting footage, occasionally cackling in a public place, I think about my return to the functioning chaos of D.F. and my life eating lunch at predictable hours.

I try to synthesize and mentally apply metadata to all that has passed in the last 9 days.

I realized:

1.     Be/Play nice. Everything else falls into place.

2.     Genuine enthusiasm is contagious, beautiful and palpable. This has something to do with Limbic Systems.

3.     Everyone, deep down, wants to be a movie star. Especially in remote villages.

4.     Conservation agriculture is more of a philosophy than an agronomic practice.

5.     The guys here, the dream-team of 5, work. They are patient, sympathetic, hilarious people both amongst themselves and with the farmers.

6.     Jokes are vital as are papausas.

How to evolve

I have made mistakes. Flat-out, without excuse and (now) harboring little to no regret. Why? Because I am a sociopath. (I am totally kidding). Let's try that again. Because I, like the rest of you, am currently and will continue to be a work in progress. And that is not a bad thing. It is a distinctly good thing. At least once you realize it and use it like upgrades to your mac. So, yeah, periodically you will be like that spinning colorful wheel as you change from lion to snow leopard and you really wish your computer would stop freezing and get on with it; that this is taking way longer than you had expected and you want to rush it to the end but the only way is to force quit and that just takes you back to the start when you really know that without this upgrade things will not necessarily get worse but they definitely will not get better, so you go make a cup of coffee and crack open some non-required reading and as soon as you stop waiting and wishing and thinking about this upgrade, how long it is bloody taking, then it just happens. Always. Like water. Except if you watch water it will boil. Trust me.

You say you want a revolution

At exactly 12 p.m. we will know who will be the next president of Mexico. I am curious as to what is going to happen if, indeed, Peña Nieto is announced the triumphant victor. What are the implications of the PRI, a party that ran a "perfect dictatorship"* in Mexico for 71 years, returning? 

What I really want to know: is there enough fuel for a genuine revolution? 

In 2006, the loss of Obrador† to President Felipe Calderón by half a percentage point set off mass protests. And that was before the country had been torn apart by years of narco violence, before the global economic crisis, before a noticeable change in weather patterns that continues to cut into harvests that is slowly but surely raising prices on basics like tortillas, before Peña Nieto said that those Ibero students who jeered at him where not actually matriculated but paid impostors, before those students made 131 Youtube videos holding their Ibero credentials next to their (mostly) bespeckled faces, before everyone else who opposed Peña Nieto and supported meaningful democratization starting identifying themselves as the 132nd.

I am 132 or Yo Soy 132 has blossomed into a mature movement that goes beyond Peña Nieto or Obrador. It is about fostering a real (keyword being real) democracy with transparent elections, freedom of expression and unbiased/accurate media sources. And no, Televisa in its current state does not count. It is the people of Mexico saying they are tired of constructed lies. And they are listening to each other and participating. If you want to be convinced just look at the last election. Totally protest free. Okay. Not exactly‡. But there were definitely not pre-election protests aimed against Calderón or any other candidate for that matter. Actually, I cannot think of a parallel example, in or outside of this country, of such disquiet surrounding a political candidate before he has even been elected or not. Maybe Bush but that was again after, not before, electoral fraud.

As I was typing these words my friend called. "Do you want to join the revolution? We are going to the polling stations to take pictures of the results." Taken back by the coincidence I could hardly answer. "Look, just call me if you do." I could hear her movement and excitement and I get it. I watched Obama win. It was my first year here. I still lived in Texcoco. I ran through the cornfields alone and cried and laughed and hoped as I tried to keep my balance in between the dried out stalks that crinkled to my touch. 

YoSoy132 protest filling Reforma

YoSoy132 protest in the Zocalo

The movement has already flooded the streets of Mexico City three times. And it unabashedly says it will do it again if there is any sign of electoral fraud. Hence my buddy. The phone call. They are already mobilizing. She just called again. But this time she was shaken up. "The PRI was breaking rules and I took photos and then they tried to take my camera and my bike and me but my friend saved me and we ran and they chased. I need a favor." She was talking so fast and I could not understand the names of the streets and the organizations so I had her say it again and again. "I got it." No one has picked up the phone. I have filled out two different forms. I asked for help from Yo Soy 132 using social media. 

Well. Profound disappointment might be lurking just around the corner. Then again, profound political change might be there too. We all want to change the world. 

/////f o o t n o t e s//////

* Said in 1990 by the Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa with regards to government under the PRI.

† Obrador is the main contendor in this fight, though he is a softer version of himself, extending a hand to those he shunned the first go round. And he is advocating for a nation of love. AMLO. His initials literally translate to "love it."
‡ The last election was anything but protest free. Obrador held a rally in the Zócalo that has crowd estimates ranging from 500,000 to 3,000,000 supporters.  He also set up plantones inside the Zócalo and Reforma, the Champs-Élysées of Mexico City, for 47 days.

In dreams

When I was growing up we use to take these family trips exclusively to Florida. We would pack up our 1980 something Plymouth Voyager or maybe it was a Dodge Caravan. Either way, it had fakewood paneling pealing off from the edges and this kind of like roasted maroon interior with the tactile sensation of worn down velvet. No doubt towards the end of its life the ceiling had collapsed. An Attaway trademark. But not for these journeys. These trips happened its prime. We would stuff the back of the car full of each individual family member's bags with various umbrellas, folded towels and loose sunscreen bottles stuffed in between the cracks so as to achieve the highest atomic packing possible. For easy access of walkmans/tapes or books or Gameboys, depending on which kiddo, our L.L. Bean® (forest green, in my case) backpacks were kept under the seats. And, of course, a cooler up front containing various sandwiches, cheese blocks, whole fruits, breakfast meats (country ham, bacon and ground sausage, all cooked together in an iron skillet, giving all three this kind of magical flavor, one not that does not normally exist on breakfast plates, but left textures as the only real way to distinguish one from the other) and ice cold Fresca. 

We would leave at ongodly hours. 4 a.m. At least we would plan on it. The rush of the final round before departures would be stressful and never made it easy, better said damn near impossible, for me to sleep once the tires left their pea gravel parking spot. It always seemed my siblings conked out as I squirmed or watched the trees in the dark as we crossed from Georgia into Alabama without even leaving the Mountain. Or maybe we took a right at what looked like a hand-painted billboard from the 50's for The Mountain Star*. Personally, that road never seemed safe. Probably had something to do with the hard right turns, one after the other, with like a 40 degree slope that only mellowed out to the flat valley at the end. Once you are already in Wildwood. (What a name). I would lay down on the ground thinking it might help for me to spread out, relax, but the rough fibers of the floor would irritate my delicate† face. That and the proximity to the tires was disconcerting. 

Sometime just before sunrise up I'd come clean: I had been awake the whole time. I would move to the passenger seat at a quick stop and start interacting with the driver, always at this stage my father. He was listening to country music, not because he was a fan of the style, but because it always told a story. And so I'd listen and sure enough some man would be upset about his woman's lying cheating ways so he'd a'been a drinking and fighting and driving around in a truck yelling at people to be more kindly around the holidays and to not X the Christ out of Christmas‡. But country music, we all knew, was not what we would listen to for the majority of the trip. A couple hours in, we would stop at a Cracker Barrel (Restaurant and Old Country Store), only out populated on our journey by Waffle Houses, to buy diabetic-friendly multicolored candy buttons and, the dreaded - maybe not dreaded but unavoidable, inescapable - book on tape. Always b-rate, semi-professionally recorded scandal/mystery types written by the actual John Grisham or some John Grisham knock-off. The stories were not so bad if you could force yourself to pay it mind, but let me tell you something about narrators for books on tape: they are male. Always. And their interpretations of the female characters, especially during anything that related to sexuality. I am not sure if it was offensive or just disturbing.

Eventually the other cubs would wake up somewhere near the Florida line and we would pile out to look at miniature flipflop keychains that somehow included a bottle opener, inappropriate tea shirts (I'm too sexy for my diaper) and a combination of shark and gator teeth as we savored our miniature paper cup samples of fresh squeezed orange juice.

But now the gang was awake. Six living, breathing creatures growing anxious from the mixture of sugar and aspertine in the blood and trying to gain control in a space a little larger than the size of (one of) Donald Trump's beds. The volume would rapidly increase and then decrease. A distraction. Culprit: father. Reason: Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder§.

Tensions rose a degree more. Others tried to come in for the radio. One of the boys suggested some Snoop. It worked at first but I think the parental unit, while they enjoyed "getting funky on the mic like an old batch of collard greens" was not outwardly pleased by "with my nuts on your tonsils."

A power struggle ensued. Insults about ones respective musical taste began to surface. "If David Bowie is gay then why is he married to such a hot model, huh? Explain me that one." 

Just when it seemed all hope was lost, that the radio was bound to get turned off as an act of defiance against demon spawn, someone, the younger older brother (because that makes sense) passed a plastic, white object with black type he rescued from the marsupial pouch on the back on the passenger seat.

Tensions dropped 3 degrees with tape insertion, an almost Pavlovian response. The tape rewinds and there is static silence before:

                           

/////f o o t n o t e s//////

* A small cafe on the back of the Lookout Mountain. Definitely the Georgia side. Just had to keep on Lula Lake Road. The kind of place that you always plan on going to though you never get the chance because it has funny hours that do not coincide with your passing. It is probably the kind of place that is only open for lunch. I bet they have great pie.

† Seriously. My sister and I both use to suffer in the summertime. We would hang country-club poolside all day and you could literally watch the white blotches emerge on our foreheads, and in one extreme case strips of bacon-like flesh under the eyes. 

‡ Accompanied by other classic country songs like "Looking out the window through the pain" and "I got tears in my ears from lying on my back and crying about you girl."
§ More commonly known as ADHD, identified twice as much in men than women, though probably better to say boys than girls because it is the kind of thing they start medicating you for when you are like 7. In my father's case, his diagnosis came from an elementary school teacher: "Your son suffers from having ants in his pants."

Four questions

A l y s o n :
The sea was angry that day; we did not know what lewn beneath. I will preface this by saying I could not read in high-school. Even with high adrenaline producing drugs. After three 20 mg pills I felt electric. I must have been about 16. I got my driver's license on them, and I was wearing a turtleneck so it could not have been May. The play was, what, Fall 2003? Yeah. '03 for sure. I had my father's car and I was trying to ash my cigarette out of the window and ended up swerving big time and almost drove off the side of the mountain. The passenger never trusted me again.

E m o r y :
The sea was angry that day, my friends. I was in my friend's backyard and we found a tall boy 24 oz Bud Light®. We split it in the woods and hated it or at least I hated it, so I gave my half to Amanda, who got pregnant pretty young and now, you know, I feel kind of bad. Like maybe me encouraging her to drink that other half of the tall boy, my half, that was what pushed her over the edge at too young of an age. How old were we? 14. 15 perhaps. No, wait that was for cigarettes. We were 12.

S c o t t :
No, that is boring. The "was angry that day" shit. The first day of my homeschooling I was angry. I must have been 11. We had all the books picked out for the year, a video for math class, that kind of stuff. But on Tuesdays I would go to the church and it was like a real class with other kids. At least one other day of the week we went to the library to hangout with the other homeschoolers. I was always so sure that I was way cooler, what, with my friends in public school. They didn't abandon me just because I stopped going to school with them. I would ride my bike at 3 pm to go wait for them to get out of class.

I mean, what do you want me to say? I finished my history class in like 2 weeks. Just had to read the book. And I tested off the charts for everything except math. I always cheated in math. Remember that part of the book that had the answers given? I just copied them and showed no work. God, I was so far behind in math when I went back to school in the 8th grade. So far behind. What do I do for a living? I am an accountant.

M a r y :
The sea was angry that day. We each had different color socks and hats. I was purple, Andrea hot pink and Woogie was yellow. The rest of the costume was standardized: white shirts and cutoff-acid-washed-jean-shorts. It was to be the performance of our lives. We had practiced for weeks at Woogie's. She lived just by the school. All you had to do was walk from the back of the playground, near where that old metal slide used to be. Maybe you were to young to remember. It seemed to climb past the tree line so you could see straight clear to Covenant from its peak. I loved that slide even though over its lifetime it must have broken many bones and warranted thousands of tetnus shots, which is probably why they replaced it with a one-story plastic hut pretending to be a log cabin. Anyway, near that was, maybe still is, a dirt path in the woods, though now that I think of it, it was not as much woods as shrubbery. Details. So you exited this path that seemed super hidden to my little girl mind and, boom, you were in front of her mother's house. I didn't know where her father lived. We never met him. Heather watched us practice and complimented our dance moves. We trusted Heather. She was redneck pretty, which meant slutty. Even at the age of 10 she oozed sex. I still know all of the dance moves. 

Time lapse

January. February. March. April. Wait a minute, May? Really? Where? Could this all be because of Infinite Jest or is something else going on here? It was not for lack of material. I mean, did you see the Televisa-esk production, the one starring the ex-Playmate, and which pretended to be this country's Presidential debates? Bof. I won't even start. My blood pressure.

But I still have nothing to say. Or maybe I have the strength yet.

This is the longest period between entries since I began this experiment in August of 2008. At least I think so. So what happened? One might guess that I fell out of love with the city, that I am no longer curious and or inthralled by its idiosyncrasies, that I am bored, that I was killed by a narco shootout, which came to a tragic end in front of that bougie organic store in Condesa, the all-natural-living-lactobacteria-guaranteed-yogurt-tub splattering on the sidewalk as I freed my hand to grab what felt like a bee string but, you know, expecting to see nothing more than my hand upon further inspection, wait, blood? so I looked twice out of disbelief because I only checked in the first place as a formality, like when one stands up too quickly and bumps one's head on something sharp having miscalculated one's force + the objects distance but one's hand always comes back from the point of impact clean so I was probably pretty surprised by the color and the blossom on my shirt, that the story is already being adapted for the screen with (true) rumors that Michael Bay is bidding for the production and hopes for it to be out before Christmas 2013, that at Jose's suggestion I became an international prostitute and my pimp allows me a weekly 10 minutes (maximum) of interweb access, which I use to tell my parents that I joined a traveling circus as a trapeze artist, a long-held but dormant passion unmasked by a fascination with the pointed, pink and white striped tents that lay backdrop for the sequined elephants reflecting the morning light that I had passed on my way to work until the sparkles induced an insanity that beckoned me into the show.
                              

But all of those theories are lamentably wrong. I guess I became too comfortable here. Too confident that I had it all figured out. Opted to do little else with my little free time other than be with what seemed like perfect-fit-friends in this adult playground. Kind of lost myself in between the glamor and the ugliness of social scenes in a sprawling metropolis. Equal and opposite reactions in the world.

Time for Round 2 (more like Round 20). But who is really counting.