An old cowboy song entitled “Cool Water” insisted that fence-building farmers are diabolic, while riding the open range is idyllic. A worthy alternative perspective. Years of globe trekking have shown me that each cultural region is a chapter in the book of life. So, turning the next page has become nearly irresistible. Still, few of us can fully indulge our wanderlust, and none of us can journey down all the roads of life. Thus, we must sometimes borrow the experiences of others.
I hope this borrowed trip will be the most entertaining and enlightening vicarious trek of your life. Not second hand travel but vintage travel. Wisdom distilled and tedium discarded, until we have filtered, concentrated, oak-barrel-aged travel lit, worthy of sipping on a summer sailboat or chugging in a winter cabin. That’s the goal here. This means I must shortly stop yakking and actually start traveling down the road to adventure, romance, epiphany, and incurable infection. I commit to passing three of the four on to you.
How did I come to be so footloose and why should you care? When my angelic wife died, my loyal Labrador was kidnapped, and the Mexican desert ranch where I’d constructed a home with my own hands was reclaimed by in-laws only months after the funeral, I felt some commonality with the biblical Job, who also lost his family, animals, and house in one stroke.
However, Job didn’t regain his gusto for life with the help of voracious Mexican hotties, so our stories are slightly different. If you wouldn't mind a little more spiritual peace and/or sensual pleasure in your life, come along on my outrageous and insightful journey from tragedy to ecstasy with a little help from my friends and brown-sugar life-coaches.
When I became a widower (as well as somewhat depressed) at the age of 50, I never dreamed that male university students would be begging me for fitness tips and female university students would be pursuing me for dates just over a year later. Yet, that's the blissful reality of my current life. I can't honestly deny the miraculous transformation that Mesoamerica has worked on me, but I can gratefully share it with other gringos who could stand a little more bliss. Let’s head off the grid on a sexy, funny, spiritual romp through the paradise I call home.
The Olmec homeland, stretching across southern Mexico, is a perfect place to lose yourself or find yourself. I’m doing some of both. Five hundred miles of cornfield and sugarcane, machetes and molcajetes, burros and mangos, abandoned temples and extinct volcanoes lie before me. I am stoked.
Of course, Laura could stop reading over my shoulder. Then my free speech rights would return, and I could elaborate on which companion runs a little hot or which Mesoamerican curves are the most exhilarating to navigate. Otherwise, we’ll try to keep it classy.
“Try not – do or do not!” the short brown hottie quotes from the little green Jedi.
“Loca, I am your father!” booms my response, since I’m twice her age and most perverted comments elicit a smile from her plump juicy lips.
“Do you think I need a spanking, Papi?” she teases with a glance from behind glossy black hair streaming over one eye then down to her voluptuous hips.
“No, if you just get your cute little ass on top of this warm vibrating motor, that should take care of what you need. Try to keep your hands to yourself and not kill us both, okay?”
“Where’s the fun in that, mi amor? I thought this was gonna be an adventure?”
Securing a pack behind her, straddling the bike in front of her, then roaring off, “Probably not by your standards, mamacita.”
Engine noise obliterates her reply, but I nod my head in agreement. The liberating combination of an American motorcycle, a Native American princess, and an open road plunging into the deepest Mesoamerican forests toward the Americas’ oldest stone monuments smells like more freedom than most urbanites will ever know. I feel grateful both for my literal journey and for your literary company. Hang on, readers, and enjoy the ride.
The gray asphalt under our wheels is bone dry, but the air around us is fresh and moist. Rain pelts the slick green leaf canopy above without penetrating. Perhaps, all the damp clapping is heavenly applause blessing our pilgrimage or maybe a heavenly bitch-slapping for an autumnal creature presuming to act like it’s the spring of his life. Only time will tell.
With a flick of my wrist, I rev the engine, burning up the petro remains of older dinosaurs and drowning out the pattering celestial message, whatever it may be. Tech gadget distractions protect moderns from the silence most of us fear. On this expedition through primeval hardwood forests and primordial stone cities, I’m determined to hear the voice within the silence we fear even more.
Our window table overlooks azure sky melding into turquoise sea melding into golden sand melding into the white estuary where early coastal traders paddled upriver to bow at the aforementioned Olmec throne. A nautical crossroads. The Baja California origin of the Cabo Grill menu would’ve impressed those ancient mariners – but only slightly.
Globalization is nothing new. It occurs whenever folks travel, trade, innovate, or fall in love, and this globe gets a little smaller every time my thin European lips kiss Laura’s pouty indigenous mouth. “I’m gonna seriously globalize you tonight.”
“No, I need a kinder, gentler conquistador with a longer, more durable lance.”
“Hush up guapateca, or I won’t even take time to remove the sand from my loins.”
“No problem, I like it rough. You can leave that sand there till it becomes a pearl.”
“I think it already has, and since you’re so cranky, I may just give it to your sister.”
“That’s a relief. You always seemed the type who’d be attracted to my brother.”
The waiter’s arrival delays our conversation from getting even dumber. Rice cooked with octopus, shrimp, tomatoes, parsley and parmesan cheese begins our feast. Tacos stuffed with smoked grilled marlin, chipotle coleslaw, and pico de gallo transport us to food heaven. Then, ice-cold draft beer and guacamole with pork rinds induce a coma in which I hope my next of kin will allow me to remain.
No such luck. “Shouldn’t you buy me a wedding ring before you go handing out jewelry to other women? Those putas are wayside chapels; I’m your cathedral.”
“Is that official Catholic doctrine?”
“It is in Mexico, and sexy Mexican girls know a lot more about real Catholicism than celibate Italian guys in the Vatican. We tell a story about a girl who informed her father that she’d decided to become a prostitute. Her dad flew into a hot rage.
´What did you say?´ sputtered her father.
´I said that I´ve decided to become a prostitute.´
´Oh sorry, I thought you said that you´d decided to become a Protestant.’”
“That’s a beautiful theological tale,” I responded sarcastically to Laura’s story.
“You don’t like my parables? I don’t like how you ate all the loaves and fishes.”
I note that only my side of the table is covered in bread crumbs, “Point taken.”
Of course, we must return to the world after meditation to do some good. This path of moral action we must walk is the original meaning of the word yoga. The best fitness training is part meditation and part yoga action. It is more internal and spiritual than an average "iron pumping" yet more primal and powerful than an average "yoga class". When we do a press exercise (which straightens arms or legs) or a curl exercise (which bends arms or legs) or a core exercise (which crunches the torso), we exhale our breath. When we return to the original position, we inhale.
A jaguar growl or grunt that may escape the lips when we exercise is a primal version of the Om used to exhale and focus the mind in meditation. This basic sound is also a name for God, the foundational spirit in all. The book of Genesis says the Creator breathed spirit into the first human. We are eternal spirit in animal bodies. Awareness of this permeates transformative workouts.
The best physical training engages the spirit by concentrating fully on the breath and form in the moment. Winners ignore losers who mock their obsession with excellence or try to distract. If one cares about others (not just impressing them), one can help them later (often when their lives become mediocre or a disaster).
Still, one must set a good example first, then only give advice when people are humble (or humbled) enough to receive it. Gandhi said we must be the change we wish to see in the world. Changing the world or transforming your body begins with the inner spirit, plus your first and last act in this life: breathing. At the moment, I can't resist breathing deeply from the fresh wind coming in off the ocean and into our lives.
We stroll down the surf line barefoot and holding hands, across the foamy spongy etch-a-sketch that erases our tracks, as it has the footprints of lovers for millennia. The feeling of the sun and sound of the waves lull us. For a moment, they seduce us to imagine we’re part of this eternal landscape, not just passing thru. We forget the clock is ticking on our time in the sun and the hourglass won’t be turned over on our behalf by a Creator who gave us this wonderful world and wondrous moment.
Far out at sea, a hazy row of oil tankers can be seen, waiting their turn to transport the ancient sludge of Olmec lands to the modern world, where people synthesize food in laboratories but depend on the riches of the ground to power their cars and computers, and the phones over which they bow far more incessantly than any priest in any Olmec cult. Is this progress? Despite the steady consumption of such riches, anxiety, depression, divorce, addiction, abortion, and suicide abound in the “developed” world. I almost feel guilty for my tranquility. Gringos oft view Latin America as primitive and lacking in consumer technology, but we beg to differ as I can hardly glance sideways at Laura without wanting to consume her technology.
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