This tunnel is well lit.
Some tunnels are rabbit holes, some filled with pack rat vaults. Some tunnels are underground, dark and womb like, leading to gold and silver leprechaun caches. Some tunnels are constructed with giant boring machines, go under seas and through mountains to large impressive cities. Through some tunnels we enter this world, and through others, leave.
This horizontal escalator is a metaphor for our times. Pampered, we need to walk, but aren’t forced to.
Two girls pass me, in a hurry. One lifts her phone and takes a selfie.
This gleaming tunnel moves us all steadily forwards. We go where we are told,are put where we are wanted, are entered on flight lists, and ring up charges on our credit cards in a debt-centric world.
I think I’m in a rabbit hole and, like Alice, trying to find real and valuable isn’t always easy.
This flat escalator, if I stayed on it, could roll me right off the edge of our Earth.
When I come to the escalator’s end, I pick up my little suitcase and get back to walking like i was designed to do.
Each week, rooster fights happen.
Men of all ages bring their favorite fighting roosters to this stadium, pay a fee to enter, put their rooster and their reputation on the line.
These battles are to the death, and, to ensure that, roosters have a finger long barbed metal spike attached to one of their legs just before they are set on the ground in the stadium ring and their owner, and trainer, step back and leave the fight to fate.
This stadium is filled this Sunday afternoon and is a series of intense moments broken by stretches of boredom.
People stand on the seats, move as close to the cage as they can to see better, wave or nod at bet takers who are yelling at them, raising fingers, making eye contact, scratching their right ear. Vendors move through the crowd selling food, snacks, drinks and cigarettes.
I have been told there are a few birds who are favorites but it is really impossible to tell which rooster will be ready to fight when it is time.
The noise in the arena grows deafening as the two roosters start pecking at one another, jumping into the air with outstretched wings,striking out with their talons.
The fights last most of the afternoon and emotions are live wires, as feathers float, in the air, in the cage.
The best statistic to remember is that half of the roosters come out of the war alive.
Our Jeepney is loaded with twenty family members, kids, teens, babies, adults, inner tubes, coolers, pots of food, towels and swim gear.
Today is a family pool party at the Villa Arcos in Santa Cruz, Marinduque.
After we arrive and pay our entry fees, we tiptoe down steep stone stairs to two turquoise color pools, the first one smaller, the second one big. This jungle theme park has penguins, zebras, crocodiles,and an airplane in the tree tops where you can climb and sit in the open cockpit. The two pools stand out like enormous gemstones in the bright tropical sun.
When you go down the park water slide you pick up speed, hold your nose, and fly feet first into the water. Only a few of us have the guts to go down the slide head first.Those who can’t swim play in the pool’s shallow water and use inner tubes. Some of the men stay up in the cabanas,drink beer and tell jokes most of the day.
By mid afternoon, everyone is tired and ready to go home and our hired Jeepney driver starts his engines. Empty pots slide on the floor of the Jeepney as we navigate down a winding road towards home, a road that makes a sidewinder look straight.
Three generations are represented on this pleasure trip.
Going down the slide, head first, I felt like a kid.
In our mind and heart we can defy the ravages of time.
Coconut trees make pretty pictures, but they make money too.
On Marinduque, coconut trees grow up the sides and over mountains, in valleys and in flat areas that have been cleared of brush to make orchards, rows of the trees standing like sailors at morning muster, in a line, Irish pennants clipped and shoes spit shined.
All the land on this island is owned and coconuts are harvested every two to three months, those that survive typhoons,rainy seasons, and wind storms.The coconuts are harvested by hand and families supplement their income by working in the groves when the time is right, bringing down coconuts for sale to local agents to ship to Manilla, and, from there, around the world.
Uncle Estoy works on the first step in the harvest process, using a long stick with a hooked curved blade on one end to cut the neck that attaches the coconut to its tree. The coconuts look like clusters of grapes from the ground but when they fall you need to stand back because they feel like a bag of rocks if they hit your head.
The rest of the team, once the coconuts fall to the ground, carry or toss them to a burning station where the skin is burned off.
These guys work most of the day, and, when they walk home, the colorful T shirts wrapped around their heads make them look like tired but happy pirates.
By the end of the day, they harvest over a hundred coconuts ready to go to Manilla. Everyone is tired, but all are safe, and it is a job well done.
You wouldn’t want to do this every day.
Then, it would really be work.
This old man farms seven days a week.
He comes out early in the morning wearing flip flops, shorts, a long sleeved shirt and a baseball cap with a big brim.He has a machete in a sleeve on his belt and when he sees something that needs trimmed he pulls his machete’s long blade out and fixes his problem with decision and precision.
With a stubble of beard because shaving is a nuisance, he walks his property checking his rows of squash, cucumbers, casava, string beans – all produce that he sells in the market. Bamboo posts and fences make shade and structures for climbing plants and keeping trespassers out.. A smoldering fire of green leaves makes smoke that keeps mosquitoes down and there are always mosquitoes this time of year.
This old man’s most pressing problem is keeping kids from crossing his land to get to the closest road to town, trampling new sprouts and breaking his bamboo fences.
He looks happy when I wave at him this morning.
He waves back, squats down, and pokes his fire with his machete.
Someday he will not be able to farm, but, for now, he is a content, lean, productive senior.
He holds to his land like a man overboard clings to a life preserver.
I wouldn’t want to be one of those kids if he catches you.
His grip would squeeze the air right out of you and his machete doesn’t take prisoners.
Every day is laundry day in Mogpog.
A few do their laundry at home in washing machines.
Most do it at home in their front yards using buckets of water, one for soapy suds and the other for rinsing.
Some few still go the river to clean their clothes, using cane sticks to pummel their laundry into submission, then rinsing the laundry in the river and hanging it to dry on bushes nearby. Around town you can hear clothes pounded with boards throughout the day, slapped against rocks like a potter slaps clay at his wheel, shirts and trousers rubbed together hard to work out the dirt and grime.
When laundry is done, these kids swim in the river, in a pool scooped out by a backhoe.
On this day three girls stand on the bridge above the swimming hole and drop pebbles to startle the boys swimming below. Giggling, they run when one of the boys stands up and tosses a rock back towards them that falls harmlessly into the river
Norman Rockwell would be pleased with this moment.
Kids seem to be the same all over the world.
Yoga studios are prevalent in Tulum.
At nine sharp, practitioners dress in loose fitting clothes, clutch their orange or green mats, make their way into the yoga studio and begin exercises with a background of soothing music and the reassuring voice of a Yoga master who has learned the same way, on a bare floor in some distant part of the world.
Yoga Shala is similar to many of the hostels here, a compound of thatched roof cabanas, most with shared bathrooms, limited cooking facilities and wide open air porches for catching sea breezes and writing in notebooks in the afternoon.
On a wall at the head of outside stairs leading up to my second floor bungalow is a circle of painted Yoga positions, each position taking years of work and concentration to achieve.
Living without amenities grows on you.
Doing simple things well is hard work.
Learning how to breath was never something I used to have to think about.
At this point in our acquaintance,I’m not sure Yoga and I are meant for each other.
On the wall of a shop,these Cupid twins smile lustily, with a trace of the Devil in their expressions.
Cupids are often known to have smiling faces, flowing blond hair,rotund bodies. They fly in the air with ease and are particularly in evidence in palace gardens where men and women socialized in times past, held heart to heart talks on shaded benches and exchanged beautifully penned letters.
In this shop, the twins share one arrow and one common purpose – to release their arrow into unsuspecting humans and send them into the tizzies and trifles of love.
Poets, from Shakespeare to William Carlos Williams, extol the virtues, joy, pitfalls and pratfalls of love, a human condition celebrated on Valentine’s Day with flowers, cards, gifts, fond words, grand gestures.
None are immune from Cupid’s arrows and these grinning faces already have plans for this evening when they will fly out a partially opened window, buzz the town, and find victims.
Once shot by an arrow the results are not fatal, but wounded lovers sometimes yearn for death instead of living with the pangs of love.
Love and lust have little in common but they often bump each other in the night.
Along the Hotel Zone main road in Tulum, Mexico there are diversions.
There are small coffee shops that sell Mexican coffee, flavored with sugar, and delicious pastries for individual palates. Restaurants push seafood, Indian food, Italian, Chinese, Vegan and Mexican cuisine.Bars serve late at night and hotels have Vacancy signs hanging where they can be seen. Boutiques display designer clothes for women who need to look good, always, whether they are on the beach, dancing in a disco, taking kids to soccer practice or listening to pickup lines in the grocery.
Moments before this photo is snapped, a long legged woman in red, positions two mannikins on the street in front of her shop.She carries one out to the street under her arm and stands it next to the other.
With both mannikins positioned she turns and strides back to open her business. It is early in the morning and only a few vehicles are on the road. Light filters through trees and through her loose fitting dress that moves seductively as she walks.
It is not difficult to see who is and who isn’t a mannikin.
Movement shows life.
There are several postcards about keys on Scotttreks.
There is one postcard on a Montevideo door lock and three keys that look the same. There is one postcard on a break and enter situation in Belize when Jack’s renter doesn’t leave a key and he has to get his AirBnB apartment ready for a new tenant coming soon. There is one postcard on a key found at an Albuquerque golf course parking lot, the key to the box of forgotten dreams. Now, there is one postcard on a bent key to room number 10 at the Yoga Shala in Tulum, Mexico.
At the beach, you don’t have pockets. This key and its colorful leather chain fit comfortably around my neck.
The odd thing about this key is it’s severe bend..
It took a lot of not paying attention to do this kind of damage.
Where this bend comes from is a story known to Angelique in the Yoga Shala office. She reminds me ,when I mention it ,that she has another key to my room if this one fails to work.
In Mexico, there is no need to fix anything if it isn’t broken.
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