Tulum is a city of monkeys dressed up like human beings. They are grabbing at the tourist dollars like monkeys grabbing at bananas. Well that’s not really accurate, monkeys stop grabbing when they are full, the monkeys of Tulum are never full. Infact they will chop down the jungle and pave over the mangroves to get more bananas.
Sorry to be so harsh, Tulum, but it’s true. Of course I lived here in this area 30 years ago when it was a sleepy little Mayan hamlet with a few palapas and some grocery stores the size of my garage, so the contrast is striking.
Back then access to the beach was open and you could camp out or hang out under a palm tree and it was beautiful. Now the beach road is lined with boutique hotels with restricted access to the beach and the road is crammed with cars. I mean it’s like a traffic jam you would find in any congested city at rush hour. Cars and trucks and construction vehicles and scooters and bicycles all jammed onto a narrow road barely wide enough for one lane much less two. I texted my buddy Pepe in nearby Chemuyil, ‘Help! Save me from Tulum.’ and he did.
I arrived in Chemuyil town, near Xcacel beach where I had lived back in the nineties, and snuggled into his third floor verandah overlooking the town. This town is poor but at least it’s not congested. The only monkeys are in the trees.
There are thousands of cenotes in the Yucatán, fresh water pools that form when the underground rivers that carry the rainwater from the central jungle to the sea collapse. Well the rivers don’t collapse but the limestone rock above them does. They form beautiful pools of sparkling blue water surrounded by sabal palms and ceiba trees and motmot birds flitting about. They were the portal to the underworld for the ancient Maya.
This is the reason the ancient Maya settled here, in my opinion. Although there is only a thin layer of fertile soil on top of the limestone platform that makes up the Yucatán peninsula, there is plenty of water and all the resources that the jungle can provide. Flora and fauna and water and cenotes. What else do you need?
Anyways this is where I used to live, on Xcacel beach, a white, sandy, still undeveloped beach with a cenote back off in the mangroves a ways. The cenote was closed the day we arrived but the beach was beautiful. In fact it was more wild than when I lived here in my little trailer on top of the berm. Me and Pepe and Lorena, the aunt of the two kids he takes care of - Chu Chu and Marina, arrived in his tiny car and headed to the beach. The kids played in the surf and built a walled city in the sand and a volcano of sand which exploded (of course) and dug a hole in the sand and poured water into it. All this against the rushing sound of the waves and the endless view of the ocean and the seaweed scented breeze blowing incessantly from beyond the edge of the world. It was a heck of a playground.
This beach is a turtle sanctuary as it was when I lived here. It has survived in its natural state because of that. Every other beach from Cancun to Tulum has a freaking hotel on it.
Back then we had a turtle nursery and a marking program where we would mark the baby turtles on the underside of their carapace once they got big enough so we could tell how old they were and which beach they were hatched on when they came back up out of the sea to lay their eggs as mature females. We could also track their peregrinations all over the Caribbean Sea with those marks - useful information for protecting an endangered sea turtle.
Mexico is a country with a deep cultural history and you can’t erase that even with all the destructive development and greed that now possesses the land. Old Quetzalcoatl, the mythic god whose image can be found from the Olmec to the Maya to the Toltec to the Aztecs, presided over the wind, art, knowledge and learning. He was the patron saint of craftsmen. He was a cool guy. They had some deep cultural wisdom here and for a long time.
The reason I went to Mexico was not only to visit my old stomping grounds but also to attend an event with Prem Rawat in the capital.
The Polyforum Siqueiros is a building in downtown Mexico City painted inside and out, on all it’s polyforms, with a giant mural called, ‘The March of Humanity’. David Alfaro Siqueiros work. It was the site of the event, and named after him.
The event was powerful, beautiful and inspiring. Prem reminding us to practice, practice, practice if we want to remember what is most important. And what is most important? A question I think everyone should ask themselves and drill down until they hit bedrock. For me it’s very clear and has been since I was about 19 years old. It’s to find happiness, freedom and joy, the feeling of elation and to hold on to it. Of course who can hold on to such an effervescent, liminal experience like that? Practice, practice, practice.
While I was at Pepe’s house I had the most incredible dream of my life. At least as far as I can remember. I was at home, in my house or what seemed to be my house and it was full of people. They were all experiencing an incredible amount of harmony and joy, like I had never seen before. There was a tiled shower that looked a lot like the shower in Pepe’s house and it also had some kind of a sauna, like I have in my house. Lots of people and everyone moving around and enjoying - I don’t remember much else. My dreams do not occupy the long term memory part of my brain but I do remember the feeling, it was startling and exciting.
Where do dreams come from and why do they come? The ancients thought they were portents sent from the gods. I don’t believe in the gods but maybe it’s something like that. Messages from my subconscious? Maybe from the collective unconscious? A Jungian idea that we are all connected on some primordial level. I don’t know but that dream was so real. I believed in it. It was disappointing to wake up and find myself sleeping in Pepe’s house in Chemuyil, no tribe, no exuberant energy, just me lying on the floor.
So that’s my story of visiting Mexico. Except for this part.
My less than ideal travel arrangements left me in the Mexico City airport for an all night 13 hour layover on my way home. That’s where I am now. I’m thinking about the old Comanches, or whoever, laying in wait to ambush their prey, or whatever, for probably 13 hours. It’s moment by moment. It’s being alert. It’s noticing and staying invisible and waiting. How do you live in the moment I ask myself.
I find a place to charge my phone next to an old bruja. At least she looks like a bruja. I ask her if it’s ok to sit down in the unoccupied seat next to her but my Spanish comes our sounding ridiculous. She ignores me. Her son (as I imagine him to be) sitting nearby intercedes, “No, it’s ok.” he says.
I sit. The old lady gets up and leaves, disappears into the airport terminal. I plug in my phone and start writing.
My prey is the people walking by - watching them, calibrating their energy level.
There is an endless procession. The best ones are the kids (besides the bruja). They’re fully alive, nubile and spontaneous.
Who knows who I might encounter here? I met Aldo in the restaurant, he got a degree in Community Relations from Michigan State University. That’s near where I was born! We talked about anarchism and I gave him my card. Cards actually. One for my podcast, one for my book and one with my contact info. He said he would look into it.
I think I can do this. Each moment is a moment. It has its own presence and its own message. Just like the old Comanches hunting deer in the forest, I guess. I don’t know if that makes sense. I’m already pretty punch drunk from lack of sleep and 2 Dos Equis. Not a very good deer hunter. Maybe what I’m really hunting is the moment and to enter into its presence.
Yeah that’s it. The authentic moment. The eternal moment. Stay in the moment. Don’t get lost in the nowhere, I advise myself.
When I get tired of staring at people I find a Starbucks to hang out at and discover Los Insólitos playing Aparecer over the speakers.
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Mexico travel journal