Place of Color

 Reality has more color and most of the world reflects this fact.  I have this sense when people talk about the third world this is what they are really talking about.  This need to make the world black and white.  To rip out the color is not to understand what is white light: all the colors together.  There used to be a first and second and third world.  The second one was this two camp theory of the world and included all the communist countries on alternate development path.  Poland in 1963 is a pretty fair example of a second world country.

So you see there really no longer is a second world yet people still talk about the third world.  After spending several weeks in Mexico I find we need new words.  There is something in common that is not easy to name, but when I look around the world I see these places of color.  Practical difficulties created by the great fight.  Where people separate themselves there is this oppression involved.  There is really no way around.  A place of white that wants to separate itself out.  The flaw in white supremacy is that all the colors are present.

Mexico

I fall in love easy
Did you ever meet someone you were sure you already knew

My how life taking trips was always to see someone

There are cooks and artists in the kitchens

Artists bring you back

They don't seem to recognize each other

The heat is what I miss the most

No concern for the weather

Not a topic of any concern

Where I come from it is almost all we talk about

If you don't like the weather it will change

The heat not interested

No bad days in Sayulita

The heat grabs hold of you

Olympic epic sweating

Everywhere I go here is cold

I miss the heat being held

Every single interaction positive

Showered down and cleansed my soul

Was never one much for heat

First to say it is easier to get warm

Traveling light I could have travelled lighter still

Not a single forecast other than for the waves

Never really knew the temperature but not below 80 18 days

Brought little rain with me

Absent seven months

It is a special type of life that thrives here

Despite every obstacle and speed bump

Love speed bumps in Mexico wave motif I guess

There is a rhythm to cross the road

Not a first time feel something words fail to describe

A place of color

A place that feels like home

A place of white such a contrast

A place better organized

A place that feels like a fortress

Whatever was going on I felt warm

With other foreigners in the combi the AC engaged

Without the window open

Was a long time for me not to drive

Hunted by waves from Singapore in Mexico

I miss the heat

The Main Break

As much fun as I am having I am really only at the end of the beginning

But as of today I have been to the main break

Not all that much to report but I caught each wave

Somewhere I wasn't sure I would ever be and just found myself

Roberto called me lets go

It was gonna be a lot of sun and I might look like a Mexican after he said

I finally had his name right

I said I was with Sergio they said they think there was some confusion

I said I was sure there was

We had spoken many things

Beyond words

Beyond names

There was Hannah volunteering from Australia

You couldn't guess what she guessed

There is no way for you to know

You need a name to recommend

You need a name to share

A teacher really don't need a name

Might have guessed it was the main break as a boat load was dropped 

Made my way out there

The board will run some when you stop paddling

It was the same but different

There was more time to do everything

Those last three paddles made all the difference

These beautiful green mountains

What you saw most of the time there was people giving up

Everyone and everything is so much closer than it seems

I ran down not sure how many times

Six hours all told

Back at the camp I needed my arms to get up from the chair

I was not in pain I was depleted

Walked back from town walked down to town

Everything was functional and I was feeling good

I could not have planned a better schedule

Should not take credit next time would plan less

I was lucky I was out on the main break before I knew I was

The last two I knew I was done 

You don't know how much you got

But you can measure yourself at the main break

Surfing 104

The fourth lesson Sergio was telling me about the third eye in the chest
I already got one of those

The fourth eye from the center of your heart

He told me a story

When you get up look from your heart

Ok yes we agreed the fourth eye

It made me happy

I stood up and knew where to go

He said follow your heart

He did not have to tell me twice

I could stand and now knew where I was going

I wonder if I explained that 

Words lose their hope

It was the heart he said to follow

There is another use of the heart chakra

How you surf is with the heart

I thought this was a longer poem

But that was before it was written

Sayulita Waves

I have kindred spirits in these waves of Sayulita

What is special about them is instantly clear to me

They have come from further than I have

Grey in the temples you might say

These grandparent waves so suddenly arrived

The information transmitted not the water

We like to think it is the water that travels

I like to imagine the water travels

More than our imagination can create

You have to see it arrive so abrupt

How is it ready?

And I hear some whispers

It was long way to come

Enough it was to be

Transmuted surfed perhaps

Renewed

The waves never go home

And never stop only go below your perception

What is a large wave

You are one larger

What is a small wave

You are one smaller

Surfing 102

The day after tomorrow I will surf next

Been watching been thinking

Working myself into shape

The green waves make me miss the mountains

So many miss them

Three hard paddles

Three I yelled 

They wait for the water to take them

The water is not going anywhere

Just up and down

Sometimes the sun builds island in the sea

It is the potential that becomes kinetic

It is like eating the neck bone

Ninety percent of surfing is paddling

Makes me think of the chair lift

As we go up we charge up

The amount of potential energy we have is 10,000 waves frozen

I miss the green mountain white

The speed and the sun burn in common

Wind burn down the mountain

With out an engine I have never gone faster

I would surf again

I will ride the chair lift more

Ninety percent of skiing on frozen water is skiing

Surfing 101

I water skied ten years and the feeling was always the same the first run of the season.  We awake muscles that we seldom use.  After three days surfing those same muscles are burning.  No real pain but absolute fatigue.  Not me but parts of me.

So after three days I will take a break.  When I watch other people surf I can see what they are doing.  There really isn't so much to do.  The green waves don't catch you.  It is gravity that propels you.  The white waves they catch you and take them with you.

You can be the hunter or the hunted.  I see many hunters around.  I am content now to be hunted.  I find my place and wait for the waves.  As each one comes I decide yes or no.  The hunters the seek the waves.  Maybe one day, but my soft top is heavy and buoyant at the same time.  When I catch the wave it feels like standing on a pier.

I fight the ocean too much.  I fight out and I fight back.  I am constantly trying to do something.  I am reminded that in the ocean I am prey.  Something bit my foot today on the top.  Not quite sure what it was, but I have this feeling.  It seemed to be a crab's claw.  As it closed on my foot I got a mental image of what was biting me.  I have been bit by humans in my life, i have three sister, always 3 against 1.  I got those same mental pictures.  I have never been bitten by a crab before, but on the plus side no stinger.

Not sure what all might like to take a bite out of me in the ocean, but I am here on the internet and honestly don't really want to know.  It is a long list to be sure.  So your a surfer you can be the hunter, but you are still prey.  

I feel I am making progress letting the board and the ocean work.   No one wins fight the ocean.  I have my emergency escape so well named.  Intuition does not help on the board.  To me it is like a big ski.  The rails are just so nice to grab, but you lose all control.  Trim turn one way fine, back the other and you lose control.  The trim turn puts a rail down, back the other way both rails down nothing good will happen.

You have to trim and carve.  Shift your weight those soft tops are heavy.  I am getting there.  I can see now what all the surfers are doing which is probably the biggest sense of accomplishment.  I know what they are trying to do.  Today I saw this amazing surfer really incredible, but i know something more.  Time and again she tried to catch a green wave and she forgot those last three powerful paddles   The words of my instructor resound in my mind, I want to yell to her.

Sergio, my instructor, good times, i can remember everything he said.  My favorite was it is like driving a Ferrari, little adjustments make big differences.  Something perhaps like my old MG.  Some times it took the corners itself.  That feeling is what I am hunting as I am hunted on the board.  Good energy Sergio who was married five days ago after knowing his wife 4 months.  Between waves there is plenty to talk about.

It is a fifteen walk from the surf shop to the beach.  Sergio has carried the soft top 5 out of 6 earning every cent of a gratuity and wedding present.  Not that I can't do, but he didn't have to ask twice.  Those soft tops are heavy.

Now when they said we were going to walk through the crocodile swamp I actually thought they were joking.  One year a guest stepped on a small croc and got a bit out of his calf.  No joke, there are bridges built for the rainy season which just started.  The night I arrived it rained the first time since October.  A storm moving in tomorrow another reason to take a break, but even the nicest day I would be resting.

Two more lessons, each one learned so much I wonder if there is much left.  I will be in a new place Monday, but the surf school has a location there and a shuttle to come back here for two more lessons.  The new place some say here too many hippies.  Well maybe I will find some vegan food.

Mexico first impression is everybody hustling.  The airport was hell until I realized all airports are hell.  If someone came to Cleveland and wanted a ride to the hotel someone was going to pay a bunch of money.  Well I thought if this is the worst part of the trip I will give someone a blessing.  Nice young kid ended up driving me very fast and very well, the best taxi drivers in Mexico heading for their next fare.

People love their meat here.  Couple restaurants I could fins only guacamole to eat.  Bit intimidating because they give you so many thing to eat with it,  Not sure what everything is for xD.  But I found some humus with vegetables today.  You might that would be veggies to dip.  Nope some nice big veggies on top and tortillas and bread.  Some yummy jar of something.  There was a truly sublime pepper in there I kind of wish were more.  Biggest number was eggplant, seems we were half way to half way to baba ganoush.  

So a weekend of rest ahead.  I don't remember when I last needed this type of rest.  Perhaps last time I went water skiing first time in the season.  One other thing I am not from here.  I see why cold blooded is such a good strategy here.  My body is adjusting.  At times however sweat is just running off my head like a faucet.  On the plus side not up as much at night with so many fluids passing in alternative routes.  I brought two things in case there was a cold nigh, won't need them, live learn.