Dust

Two weeks. Doesn’t seem like a long time, and I suppose it isn’t. Whatever the case, it’s all I have left of Mexico, the pueblo, el cuarto–the whole enchilada. The week vacation in San Miguel was nice. It gave me some time and a comfortable setting in which to contemplate the next big step, the one when I step off the airplane and back onto U.S. soil. With no job and no home, it doesn’t seem to me to be a step back into my old life, but rather into a promising unknown. One thing that became clear in San Miguel is that I can no longer claim a lack of vision when it comes to how I want to live my life. In the past I could always avoid a committed choice of this path or that because I didn’t seem to have a clue as to how I really wanted to spend my time on this earth. I channeled my energies in a haphazard fashion, allowing myself to be unnecessarily tied up in pursuits that did not line up with the deeper currents, currents which I’ve been resisting my whole life. When one taps into these currents one only has to let go in order to be carried along in that direction sensed unmistakably as “right,” “the right way,”—the way home.

We arrived back on the pueblo to a sweltering day. Heading down the long dusty road to our charming suburb we couldn’t help but notice the dug-up water pipe. The main thing to note was the absence of pipe. At the house we were greeted by a group of children who confirmed the lack of running water. Apparently it had been shut down for several days as the water company decided to play hardball with their delinquent customers. Most of the suburb has not paid their water bill for years. Until the bills are paid there will be no running water. The bills will not be paid. Fortunately, a couple of the neighbors have wells. To have access to water at all is a good thing, but the level of inconvenience certainly goes up several notches. It takes a full bucket of water just to flush down one of my turds. And I crap at least three times a day. So now much of what I do throughout the day—poop, bathe, wash dishes—must necessarily involve other people, as I have no choice but to ask to use the well several times each day. Of course, I’m the only one who seems to mind. No importa!

The neighborhood kids love to help us, to involve themselves in our lives in whatever way possible. Our host family was not around when we returned to town, and apparently they weren’t expecting us, as they had cleaned us out of our entire bottled water supply. We were dead tired and bone dry. The kids fetched us some well water and arranged for us to get some more jugs of drinking water. We were grateful for all the help, but it came with an unexpected price. In the days since, the kids have an unprecedented “comfort level” with us, as they find any excuse to hang out in or around our room. More than ever we are like a zoo attraction, as children often literally stand at our windows and watch us as we go about our lives. Yesterday alone this happened four or five times. I was lying on the floor stretching my leg and noticed I was being watched. I communicated that I was exercising and went about my business, but the child watched on, seemingly fascinated. Mary Alice and I ate our dinner last night to an audience as well. They just stared at us as we ate. More often than not, though, they try to get our attention, to engage us in conversation. Of course, the social cues we’ve grown accustomed to in America have little currency here. In fact, the more subtle ones like saying “Okay, well, we’re going to eat our dinner now” have no effect at all. Playing sick or pretending to sleep are the only ways I’ve found to create the illusion of privacy. You see, you can’t simply close up the windows and curtains during the day. It’s just too hot. If you lie in the bed and pretend to sleep, the kids will still try to get your attention, shouting your name four or five times, but eventually they wander off. But don’t get me wrong. The truth is I will miss them, these kids, most of all. No amount of dust and grime can hide their inner glow.

I don’t imagine these kids will ever forget me. Yesterday the soccer ball bounced up into my nads, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it gets talked about for the next two years. It was nothing, really, but I made a little joke of it, doubling over and saying “Mis Huevos!” (literally, “my eggs!”). Nothing could possibly have been funnier to the kids, except maybe if I topped the performance off with a loud fart. Once they caught their collective breath, they asked me how we referred to our “eggs” in English. When I pointed to the soccer ball, this set off another round of hysterical laughter, one that has yet to completely subside.

Two weeks from now I will be able to stand in the shower until my skin comes off. If I felt like it, I could drown myself in drinking water. But aside from a few scheduled visits with my nephews, I am not likely to have many spontaneous interactions with children.

My time here has been a strange mix of suffering and spiritual awakening, one that smells faintly of burning garbage and pig slop, and tastes like a layer of dusty grit licked from the teeth and forced down a parched throat. But it looks and sounds like a group of children laughing, starry-eyed and beautiful beyond words.

Last night’s dream:

I’m in an auditorium filled with adolescents. It’s a drug rehab center and I’m the counselor, just like at my last job. My shift partner is nowhere to be found. I’m on my own. It is my first day on the job and I don’t know any of the kids in the room. I make my way through the crowd toward the front of the auditorium, where a microphone is set up. It is time for me to address the crowd, to do some sort of group therapy or coping skills training with them. I walk passed an African-American kid and I stop to introduce myself to him. I ask him his name and he mumbles something unusual in response. I couldn’t quite make the name out, so I ask him to repeat is slowly, emphasizing each syllable. I shake his hand and continue on toward the front of the auditorium. It dawns on me that I’m utterly unprepared to lead a group session. It’s been a very long time since I’ve done this sort of thing, and I’m drawing a blank as I wrack my brain to recall my list of topics and the way I used to present them. I reach the microphone and face the crowd. I have no idea what to say or how to proceed. What’s more, I notice that I’m wearing only my underpants. The kids look at me expectantly. There’s nothing to do but wing it, I think to myself. I speak: “Wow. This is a little embarrassing, but I seem to have lost my shorts and shirt. It’s like one of those bad dreams. Can somebody hand me my shorts and shirt?” Some laughter ripples through the crowd as the kids look around for my clothes. Eventually, the articles are passed up to me. I pull up my shorts, pull on my shirt, then step up to the microphone, adrenaline pumping, butterflies fluttering, but my confidence growing. I can do this. I’ve done it before. Here we go.

April Fools Day, 2008. I don’t think the tradition exists here in Mexico, although when I noticed we had no running water this morning I was hoping it was just a prank. It has been brutally hot for days now, and the locals say it’s only the beginning. I’ve been taking several cold showers each day in order to stay sane. In this kind of heat the fans offer very little relief, and our little dorm fridge fights a losing battle to keep things cold. It’s become clear to me why—up till now—this leg of the journey has been relatively angst-free, why I haven’t yet resumed my running bitch-fest about life on the pueblo. The weather has been tolerable. It’s as simple as that. Now that the two-week cool season has given way to the fifty-week tropical roast, I find myself desperately wanting to get the bloody hell out of here.

Despite the heat, the knee rehab must go on, and I’ve been literally mopping up pools of sweat after my workouts. The thing that keeps me hanging on is the light at the end of this long, sweltering tunnel. It’s a mere six and a half weeks until Quince de Mayo, the holiest of holy days, otherwise known as the May 15th return date stamped on my plane ticket. Of course, there’s still the dreaded possibility that Mary Alice will be awarded a last-minute grant extension, prolonging her stay an additional twelve weeks. I say “her” stay, because I don’t even want to contemplate another four months in this oven. My knee is coming along too slowly, I think, without my having access to proper exercise equipment, and it could take me at least twelve weeks to find a job and get our lives re-settled back in the States. Maybe I’m just being a wimp, but dude, it’s really, really hot.

Okay—Jesús just fixed the water pipe. That’s awesome—but I still want out. So does Jesús, but for different reasons. He’s back home for a few days before returning to the border for another crack at crossing. From what I can gather, his first attempt was a freakin’ nightmare, as law enforcement officials from both countries swarmed the border area after drug traffickers murdered someone. I had a long conversation with Jesús (via Mary Alice) yesterday about his situation, and about the plight of his fellow countrymen as they do whatever it takes to put food on the table for their families. Of course I feel for the guy and sure, my problems don’t seem quite so bad in comparison. Someone somewhere is always worse off, but that doesn’t mean I have to act like I’m cool with being hot, or feel fortunate to have two legs instead of one. I AM fortunate to have two legs, but I FEEL annoyed to be disabled. Shit, I don’t have to justify myself to you. Don’t make me jump out of this computer screen and open up a can of whoop-ass. Who are you, anyway? And why am I talking to you?

Anyway, as I was saying, things haven’t really unfolded here as I had hoped since the crippling. I feel like the only sane thing to do is work hard on my recovery every day, which under the present conditions leaves precious little energy for much else. Even if I had more time and energy, I’d still probably rarely leave the confines of this room. If it were just a matter of language, it would be simple enough bridge the cultural divide, but the sense of disconnect has more to do with values, education level, belief systems and common interests. This pueblo is to Mexico City what the hills of Kentucky are to New York City. Folks here speak a Spanish that bears little resemblance to what I’m learning in my computer course. A few years of grade school education is about the average, and the quality of instruction here is so inadequate that even those who finish high school have little to show for it. Basic psychological truths that I take for granted—like the value of emotional expression, or of transparency in relationships—seem to have little currency here, as all around me (and this is no different than my experiences in the United States) I see people propagating self-limiting beliefs and ass-backwards coping strategies that in the long term can only perpetuate unnecessary suffering and ignorance of healthy alternatives.

As a person interested in the spiritual dimension of life and the beauty of art, I find it nearly impossible to connect my personal preferences and understandings with anything I find here. From my perspective, the predominant spiritual vibe is a mix of crudely interpreted Christianity and belief in supernatural beings and forces. Fairies, pixies, gnomes, witches, ghosts and JesuChristo work together behind the scenes in ways I can’t even begin to comprehend. As far as art goes, I have yet to see a shred of evidence that the concept, as I understand it, exists here at all. Most people can’t read, so you won’t hear discussions of literature or new ideas, and the music and television I hear blaring all around me is, frankly, worse than the worst, most shallow garbage you could find in the US. From what I can gather, the most popular musical act around here is a Puerto Rican who calls himself Nigga (pronounced NEE-gah) while sounding about as gangsta as Bette Midler. You’re the wind beneath my wings, Bee-otch! The dude is touring with Enrique Iglesias—need I say more. And the Bumblebee Guy from The Simpsons is actually a dead-on accurate representation of what passes for humor on Mexican television. The most popular shows here are primetime soap operas. If you can imagine a Saturday Night Live spoof presenting the most ridiculous caricature of only the most cheesy elements of poorly produced drama, complete with swoop-in close-ups and slapstick musical sound effects, then you have some idea of how bad the tele-novellas are here. As you can tell, I’m not the anthropologist sitting in the room. But sometimes you have to call it like you see it, and while I fully recognize that people here might find my own way of life equally incomprehensible and/or inferior, that only reinforces the point: I don’t fit in.

Lately, I’ve been socializing more often, as Mary Alice’s research subjects invite us to share meals and whatnot, and to the extent I can connect, I do enjoy the people here, for the most part. I especially enjoy the children, whom I find far more grounded, bright-eyed, self-assured and powerful than their American counterparts. Children have more freedom here, it seems to me. Freedom to explore, to play, to discover, to make mistakes, to engage spontaneously with others. Their power comes from this freedom, I think, manifesting in a vibe of intense wonder and beauty. By comparison, American kids these days are boxed up and shuffled around by well-meaning but fearful parents. The beauty and wonder is still there, just relatively contained and stifled. However, once kids here are old enough to work and/or get married—at about age fourteen or so—the situation seems less rosy. Options are very limited, and perhaps belief systems here simply reflect that sober reality. Older people—and here I cannot think of a single exception—tend to have dismal, gloomy expressions chiseled into their faces, as if the remainder of their days were just more burdens to bear.

So, it’s not like my heart is devoid of compassion, or that I have no sense of appreciation for the way of life here, despite my calling a spade a spade. And while I have never before felt a more keen sense of membership with the human race as a whole, at the same time I have never felt more American, more inseparable from my own culture. In fact, having spent most of my adolescence and adult life struggling to extricate myself from what I viewed as the status quo shackles of tradition and the collective hypnotic trance known as the American Dream, I find myself accepting, even—dare I say—embracing it all now. I suppose it’s finally dawned on me that I can’t separate myself from what I am. And I AM an American.

“U S A! U S A! U S A! U S A! …”

*

You’re not going to believe this: We have HOT WATER! Here! On the pueblo! I knew this day would come. Funny thing is, now we don’t have cold water. That’s because it’s so goddamned motherfucking hot outside, the normally cool water coming up from the underground pipes is now, well, hot. Yay!

I just took a shower, hoping to cool down a bit and, truthfully, the water did eventually get somewhat cooler after a while, enough to make the shower worth taking. But then—as we must after all showers—I had to squeegee the entire bathroom. You see, the bathroom becomes a big lake after every shower. This is by design, as the gentlemen who tiled the floor decided—despite my suggestions to the contrary—that it would be better to slope the tile down from the drain, instead of down to the drain. It actually requires considerable effort to squeegee the water back to the drain, because it’s hard to get to the water behind and beside the toilet. While I’m doing this, I typically take a moment to officially nominate the tiles guys for “Biggest Douches in the Universe.” By the time you towel off, it’s mostly sweat glistening on your skin. Of course, you could take another shower, but then, well, you know.

In other news, last night I realized complete spiritual enlightenment. Oh yeah, and also Mary Alice and I decided to live in North Carolina for her “dissertation-writing year.” Elaborate on the enlightenment thing, you say? But Grasshopper, surely you understand that “The true Tao cannot be spoken, and what is spoken is not the true Tao.” All right, so maybe it’s not complete spiritual enlightenment, but goddamnit it was a pretty stark moment of clarity, another in a long line of peak experiences or moments of spiritual awakening which have cropped up over the years. I assume most people have had similar experiences, yet perhaps use different metaphors to convey the essence, but the best I can do is to say it was as if I suddenly stopped splitting myself off from my experience, realizing (yet again) the futility of such nonsense. It was like I put total faith and trust in the universe, recognizing with atypical clarity that the universe and I are inseparable, two aspects of the same process. You know, the same trite bullshit they’ve been printing on bumper stickers for years. But it’s true, and when you really feel it in your bones suddenly life makes perfect sense, the inevitable downsides become unproblematic, and there’s just this awesome sense of freedom. Freedom, dude!

Whatever. Fuck you. How’s that for a bumper sticker. Don’t make me use my newfound spiritual powers to go all Chi-Gung on your ass. I suppose my actions and overall feeling for life will provide the feedback necessary to gauge just how clear my understanding is this time around, how free I really am. Interestingly though, from my lofty point of view last night, even the periods of forgetfulness and ignorance seemed to have their place as perfect manifestations of the universal process/ground of being/wishful thinking/hallucination.

So much for that. The decision to re-settle in North Carolina—at least while Mary Alice completes her PhD—came after a brainstorm while riding the bus to town. It makes sense for so many reasons. First of all, it says “North Carolina” on the plane ticket, so why not keep it simple. Our car is there, along with a good chunk of our belongings. Also, Mary Alice has an opportunity to work with her mother on a non-profit, social service project, which is just the type of thing she wants to do once she finishes school. It’ll be a great way for her to test those waters and gain valuable experience. And shit, I just love North Carolina, having lived there for years, wed there, rocked out there, etc. And it’s only a few hours to Lexington, where Mary Alice will have to go every now and then to meet with her academic advisors and where the bulk of our belongings are, packed in a storage unit.

My best friends, Eric and Jeff, still live in Chapel Hill, and I can hardly contain my excitement when I think about reconnecting both personally and musically with my ex-bandmates. It’s hard to believe it’s been more than four years since I packed up my VW Bus and watched North Carolina fade away in the rearview mirror. It boggles the mind. Isaac Dust was just a baby then, always crying and shitting his pants, and since has learned to walk, talk, and occasionally shout from the depths of his heart. Then he went to Mexico, crippled himself, and had to relearn everything. I wonder what he’ll do next.

The wind has been blowing hard now for the past two days. I’m talking whipping, gusting wind that just doesn’t let up. At night, the gusts seem particularly threatening, and I haven’t slept a wink the past two nights. Our bed sits near a huge window—about five feet high and seven or eight feet wide I’d say—and there’s no glass in it to keep the wind at bay. There’s a metal grate on the outside that looks like prison bars, to protect against invaders, and some mosquito netting tacked up, but that’s it. All night long you hear the wind whipping through the trees, knocking over woodpiles and shed roofs, and causing our curtain (and old bed sheet) to flap around like a mainsail on a stormy sea.

Of course, there’s also the dust. The grounds surrounding the homes and the streets are nothing but dirt, so the wind whips up clouds of dust that coat your eyes and cover everything in the room. Each time I reach for a book I have to brush off a new layer of dirt. At night though, as I was saying, it’s the sudden gusts, with the accompanying clamor, that keep the stress hormones in steady circulation. It’s like at any moment a cow or a motorcycle could come flying through the window and you’d better be ready to respond accordingly.

This morning we were told that the strong winds are due to a hurricane that’s sweeping through the state of Veracruz. Of course, we have no way of verifying this. There are no newscasts or newspapers to consult. Jesús did talk about tying down the roof, but that was last week, when a similar windy spell came through. The past couple of nights, no one has shown concern, about the weather anyway. The matter of utmost importance was Jesús leaving for the United States, which happened yesterday evening. He said he’d probably be gone for at least a year, maybe a year and a half, depending on the job situation. The rest of the family left the house with him, presumably to see him off. The unceasing winds made such a continuous rustle last night that I didn’t hear anyone return. I also didn’t hear anyone weeping, although Juana told Mary Alice this morning that the whole family cried themselves to sleep last night.

The whole reason we’re here is for Mary Alice to study the effects of out-migration on the health and wellbeing of those left behind. For whatever reason, we didn’t expect our host family to become a case study. It’s too bad the language barrier made it so difficult for Jesús and me to get to know one another. I sat with him for a while yesterday and attempted to make conversation. There was much gesturing and many a confused facial expression, but also something positive in simply having made the effort to connect. I know this will be difficult for Juana and the kids, and I feel a certain sense of responsibility to look out for them, although how that will manifest, I’m not sure. I seem to keep everybody laughing, but otherwise I’m fairly useless. Next time the roof needs to be tied down or the shed rebuilt, I wonder who will be the hero? Surely they won’t expect Sponge Bob to transform into Superman (another popular American show here is SMALLVILLE, which chronicles the life of a young Clark Kent.)

I just finished reading THE MEANING OF HAPPINNESS, by Alan Watts. Basically, he describes the experience of spiritual freedom as stemming from the total acceptance of life, in all its highs, lows and in-betweens. He also emphasizes, as he does in most of his books, that this total acceptance must also include acceptance of our resistance to acceptance. Watts wrote the book when he was twenty-four, yet his words ring with hard wrought insight. Last night, the book still circulating through the synapses, I listened to the wind whooshing through the window and thought: “The wind blows, and I think. Wind blows… I think…” It sounds asinine, I know, but this thought was accompanied by a sense of uncanny lightness, like how one might feel after laughing ones ass off for a ridiculously long period of time. Which reminds me, just the other night, out of the blue, I told Mary Alice that I wanted to change my name to Hallelujah Harrington. It was such a random comment and caught us both by such surprise, that we laughed ourselves to sleep over it.

Anyway, “Wind blows… I think…”—and with that came a moment of sublime peace, the kind of moment I normally am quick to spoil. For instance, Mary Alice and I were walking through town the other day when we came across a pack of mangy street dogs, one of which was walking on three legs. I felt a welling up of compassion for this animal, yet when Mary Alice asked me if I “related” because of my own gimpy leg, I was confused at first. I didn’t consciously make that connection. In the moment, I saw a dog walking on three legs, nothing more, and although I probably spent the entire walk up to that point whining about my knee (as I usually do on our morning walks), when I saw that dog gimping along I suddenly dropped all preoccupation with myself. It was a simple upwelling of compassion. Of course, once I made the connection to my own situation, I tried to make the moment seem more significant, making it into a synchronicity worth writing about later. Then I felt bad for having cheapened the experience, for failing to keep my ego from pissing all over it.

Later, I sat in my chair sweating, mindlessly eating pistachios. There were only a few nuts left in the bag, mostly ones I had been avoiding, ones with shells completely or almost completely sealed shut. At one point I broke one of my fingernails trying to get at a nut. Eventually I was left with about seven or eight nuts, sealed tight and not a nutcracker to be found. Again, my mind started to spin out some crap about the symbolic nature of the situation, something about how the hard things we put off till later eventually must be faced, or some horseshit like that.

Why I can’t simply enjoy some pistachios and leave well enough alone, I don’t know. And, furthermore, if it so happens that a few un-cracked nuts inspire a few horseshit thoughts, so what? Why create drama at every turn? So what if I had painted a picture of the fucking things, or cracked them open with a rock and fed them to a three-legged dog, or six-toed rooster. And tonight, if a cow does come hurtling through the window, well, it’ll just come on through, and even if it’s riding a motorcycle, then all the more interesting. Of course, if my mind gets to spinning too, then I suppose I’ll just let it spin, right Alan, spin like the whirling wind. And when the dust settles and everything is coated with another layer of grime, I will write my name in it, like pissing in the snow.

And my name will be: H-A-L-L-E-L-U-J-A.

“Was Bobby using the poop-stick for the piñata?”

It’s my first day back on the pueblo and I’m already responding to such improbable questions. Let me unpack that one for you. You see, “Bobby” is how we refer to the youngest son of our host family. We use the Brady Bunch reference system when talking about family members so as not to arouse suspicion. If they were to hear their own names popping out through the jumble of English coming from our room, they might think we were talking shit about them. Of course, we usually are, but that’s neither here nor there. So the five of them are Mike, Carol, Marsha, Peter and Bobby. Greg, Jan and Cindy don’t exist. I rounded them up, shot them execution style, and buried them out in the cane fields. Good riddance.

So then there’s the “poop-stick.” Well, upon our return Mary Alice and I made a couple of substantial deposits to the local sewage system, deposits which could not be handled in such large denominations, so to speak. A stick was needed to break things up a bit, and after it served its purpose we set it outside the door for future use. Enter the piñata – one of several surprises awaiting me as I crossed the threshold of “el cuarto,” the belly of the beast itself. The kids had made me a “Sponge Bob” piñata and hung it on the clothesline. And it was damned impressive, really. We filled it with candy, brought it outside and took turns whacking at it. Blindfolded, spun around – the whole nine yards. It wasn’t till afterwards we realized Bobby had grabbed the poop-stick to do the bashing.

They also painted the room a sky-blue and put in a few electrical outlets. All in all, the room looks great. And I’m happy to be back, truthfully. Sure, I’ve already killed two tarantulas and, yes, Mike is getting ready to tie the roof down in preparation for the coming hurricane – but somehow it’s all good this time around.

The main difference, I think, is the fact that I can walk. I was only here a matter of weeks when I went down with the knee injury. Although I still have a long way to go, as far as the rehab is concerned, it’s immeasurably easier to deal with the inherent challenges of life on the pueblo when standing on two legs. Maybe the whole crippling experience humbled me a bit, too. I don’t know. But I do know that I have laughed my ass off several times since I’ve returned.

Did I mention I bashed a Sponge Bob piñata with a poop-stick? What more could a guy want?