Khajuraho's Kinfolk

In the early 1970's, as a wandering renunciate in the Hindu tradition, I happened upon the ancient temple complex known as Khajuraho. While most tourists are astonished at the spectacular size and number of temples, upon which are carved copious depictions of explicit sexual acts -- I was stunned by the exquisitely pure, ecstatic spiritual energy that permeated the entire area. I spent more time simply sitting quietly absorbing this state of Being than I spent wandering around and studying the carvings.....

Decades later, in fact it was just yesterday, I visited the ruins of another ancient civilization -- one that populated the American southwest. This particular complex covers many square miles of territory, with structures built into caves throughout the river valleys... The naturally formed sandstone sculptures and spires throughout the area resemble those temples of Khajuraho.

They move the spirit just to see them.

I thought back to the month I spent in Khajuraho....

Can you see these naturally formed temples? And within the caves are structures where the people once lived. This is but one of countless examples:


Look again at comparison photos. Here are some of the highly carved temples of Khajuraho...


...and here are their counterparts in the American southwest.


Wandering through the valleys filled with these soaring natural forms, I felt that same deep inner calm, and expanding love for all creation, that I had felt when wandering Khajuraho.

From REVOLUTIONS to CROCODILES...

Yes! Every year, these well-armed revolutionaries parade down our little village road. In the photo above, they are just passing the corner fence-post and fencing of our property along the right. What especially interests me is seeing the dress-styles of yore. . . . and all those guns and bullet-holding vests -- men and women alike. That must have been some fierce revolution against tyranny.

The parade is reaching the end of town -- well, in the photo below, they ARE at the end of town. The house in view, below, is our next-door neighbors' home -- we're that close to the edge of town ourselves.. Then begins the jungly land and coco / papaya groves.

Once at the end, they break formation and the boys begin gymnastic displays -- towers of boys on shoulders some three levels high; big leaps into the air, to be caught by two lines of boys holding hands as a long cradle; and the girls do swirling dances; and everyone sings patriotic songs. Then they process back again, presumably for a feast at the schoolgrounds.

Mygosh! This is how I dressed daily in the hippiedaze of yore:

And now? These kids dress in modern and stylish clothes, and paint their nails (while I run around in shorts and tops, and swimsuits). But oh, their parents remember the past -- it all changed in one generation and that generation is barely middle-aged, and they are happy to tell tales of how it was before vehicles and electric lights, those days when they carried torches to light their way through the jungles between the sparse houses. But they live in the present.

And this brings me to crocodiles (see earlier posts). Here is a crocodile's child, who swam out to the mouth of the river, got caught in the seine there, where he drowned....


...and became dinner for us all. Who knew (certainly not I) that crocodiles are white, tender meat, not stringy at all. They have a pleasant but slight taste of fish (their primary food), but the meat is not of itself gamey. Then of course, cook the meat in barbecue sauce, and you get smiles like these. The cook, Sara, is busy preparing fresh-squoze fruit drink for us in the background. Her husband, Guillermo, and youngest daughter Ariana -- well, their smiles tell all:


And the neighbors start coming by for a bowl as well.... This is their niece who lives just across the road, and those eyes just peering up over the table on the right -- that's her little brother. He wants some, too. And he shall have some.

Man, Am I Lucky, or What?

Last post, I commented on how I have deduced, from observation, just how excruciatingly painful an attack from a stingray must be.

Today I was hit!

My friend and I were busy boogie-ing the big ones that crash close to shore, yeeee-haw and all that, bouncing and careening wildly amid the whitewater swirls. We were wearing sandals (yeah, as if that could help), and mindfully shuffling our feet every time we touched the sandy bottom... and we kept ourselves in one well-shuffled section of the ocean -- figuring we had thus cleared it of the stingrays.

Wrong.

I had just come off a big ride towards shore, and was turning back to go catch another one when I felt repeated and very hard jabs against the ball of my big toe joint. But no pain whatsoever!

Yeah! I am One Lucky Being.

Mind you, I was wearing only Chacos --- which are just a few straps wrapped around the foot, holding on the thick rubber sole. However, the ray happened to mount its attack and hit my foot EXACTLY on the strap that wraps itself just above my big toe joint!

I left that water grinning!

Now we are all plotting of a way to make over-the-ankle booties out of that thickness of strap material.....

Of Crocodiles & Soccer Games & Other Sundry Things

CROCODILES

I have now EATEN crocodile. Pictures will be posted sometime in December. Crocodile is a white meat (who knew?). It is a light, pleasant meat. It does not taste like chicken. It tastes like a good fish (which means it is not rank, not chewy and stringy, but delicate and pleasant to eat). The Mexican barbacoa sauce was also excellent. I ate a section of the tail, which is considered a delicacy both here and in the southern US States (US$50/plate I hear). Robert is soaking the skull in some water in order to put it on display along with various other unusual skulls he is collecting. I will make more, oddly esoteric, comments when I post the photos of the crocodile shortly after it was taken from the sea. It was a young and beautiful creature.

SOCCER GAMES

I toyed with titling this one "traffic jams" because that is what was going on. Imagine if you will, us driving our rig from our humble abode in the village and then across the river at our customary low-water crossing (nothing resembling a bridge) -- and our rig being PASSED mid'stream by not one but two little golf-cart like things with a gringo couple in each---coming from OUR village-side of the river (say what?). Then, where the one-lane dusty track narrows with fences and thick jungly growth on one side and a cornfield (Guille's cornfield of slingshot-and-raccoon fame), we all were stopped in our tracks by several small trucks of villagers coming the other way.

A really-truly traffic jam!

That gave us time to chat with the gringos -- the who/what/why kind of thing. Turns out, they were returning from, ahem, a GIRL'S SOCCER MATCH in our village, out in the field on the far end of our village (far from us who live on the other far end). It was our village girls (we have a TEAM??!?) versus the girls from the village across the river.

I have never seen any of the girls in our village in soccer gear, nor kicking a ball around the dirt road that runs through this long village. Never heard of any practices, nor of any games.

That just MIGHT be a partial explanation why our girls lost 0 - 20.

OTHER SUNDRY THINGS:

THE HUNTER LAMENTS...for instance.

Here is this tidbit about the Great Slayer of Raccoons, Crocodiles and All. The other day, Guille (pronounced with a HARD "g" as in "good" -- GEE-yay) came to our porch from where he was slashing undergrowth. In his hand he held a very large pupa of a butterfly. He was gentle, and quietly lamented that he had not seen it in time. It cannot grow now, he said sadly, and then he lay it softly down among the flowers by our porch.

It was the pupa of one of those magnificent very large all-white butterflies that enchants us whenever one passes by. Alas, that us gringos refer to it as the Kleenex-butterfly but then it DOES look like a flying Kleenex.

But the point of this Sundry Thing, is how gentle, and sorry he was for destroying it.

Quietly, to myself, I also simply lament the systematic destruction of this overgrown weed-tree patch that is our backyard. It had been abandoned for 18 years when we bought it, and remained almost untouched since we moved here in 2004. But now, we are slowly cutting it back--almost by 1/3 at least by now -- and replanting it with very desirable trees. We thin out the weed trees, leaving just enough to shade the newly planted ones, so all is not clear-cut.

My quiet concern is that all this time, I have enjoyed the utter wildness of this untamed over/undergrowth.... so filled with chattering birds, home to so many fluttering butterflies, refuge of small animals cruising by.

What becomes of the wild flutterers, and the ground creepers? Said Omar to me, in response to this question, "Oh, they'll just go somewhere else." but extinct is where they go in the end.

Slowly but surely, as the village population grows and as tourism grows, all these patches are being cleared... Where will the Dios Mio bird flee to? That is my name for a very surprisingly large, remarkable woodpecker, that is also quite shy. Because of the now-extinct "Oh My God" woodpecker (Ivory-billed Woodpecker, destroyed by development in the southern US), I named this bird similarly. Where WILL it go?

ROOSTER TALK

I had this playful email conversation with a friend who lives in Panama (and previously Costa Rica) about what the roosters say! After all, we each live among them, and they are very present in our lives. So, among the many things I hear, one thing is an insistent "Happy BIRTHday!!" My friend mentioned that where he lives, among many things, is an insistent "Put the drink DOWN!!"

So I asked Guille if the locals heard words amid the rooster-squawks. Why yes, they do, he reported with a grin. "Levanta-te YA!!" (getyourselfUP!!) and "Estare-durMIda!" (I was SLEEPing!").

What do YOUR roosters say!

STINGRAYS

Oh never mind. Who wants to talk about four hours of really bad (excruciating?? I wouldn't know personally but it sure looks like it is excruciating) pain? Instead, let me end this whimsy with....

COUNTING FLOWERS

My delightful Victorian Era Grandfather Ransom (William R. Ransom, who was born in 1876, when Billy the Kid was still alive, and who remembers when Lizzie Borden took that axe and gave her mother 40 whacks, and 41 to her father ...ooh, but I digress) --anyway, THAT Grandfather delighted us all in many ways and among his numerous books, wrote his string and paper tricks into a book, but I digress again. He deserves his own full biography, such a wonderful character he, with his cape, and his cane, and his wonderful graying, pointy goatee.

In his 90s, when I last visited him, he would greet me at the breakfast table, gently make a few fist-poundings upon the table and exclaim a number -- such as "16" or "24" or the like.

He was reporting how many morning-glories were open upon his trellis that morning.

So now, here in our humble Mexico abode, we have large, beautiful jamaica plants just beside our porch stairs. Like morning glories, their newest flowers bloom with the morning sun and then fade away (later to become the fruit that we all make into delicious cool drinks).

In his honor, I go out and count how many blooms there are of a morning, and report.

27.

The Past Has Passed

Somewhere in the vast pile of notebooks sitting somewhere in a room back in Durango, are the essays I wrote, whilst swinging in a hammock, describing our very first days of living in the Little Salty Place village here in Mexico...

One poignant entry, as I recall, simply listed all the services that literally come to you -- even as you swing tranquilly in your hammock. These are the traveling salesmen, walking the long dusty roads from the highway, each of which leads to little villages tucked away near some freshwater springs or rivers or beaches. Our little place, for example, is close to five miles in, with only one other village halfway between.

Without that list, what I can recall is that these wares include the likes of fresh baked bread, fresh-killed chickens and iguanas, eggs, home-made cheese rounds, woven mats for your floor, hammocks, silverware and dishware, clothes for all ages, furniture of all kinds and sizes, blankets, bolts of cloth....

One poignant story glows in my memory...

Here was a sweet little family of three -- young mom, young dad, and their son of about five. Together, they had been pushing their wheelbarrow of wares all this way from the highway. Piled precariously atop were handcarved and handwoven child-sized chairs -- little rocking chairs.... Something for which we had no use.

But ah, Robert had something for them!

With a flashing grin, he winked at the little boy and brought from our storeroom a child-sized bicycle! "Para ti," he said as he gently pushed the bike towards him.

As you can imagine, they could not believe what Robert was offering. They said they had no money to buy it. Robert replied that it is a gift, at no cost, to them. The wife looked at me, woman to woman, and whispered, "Is this a joke?"

But no, it was not a joke.

You can well imagine their beaming faces, and the bouncing gait of the little boy as he wheeled his bike around to a level place where he could mount it. Zooooom!!!!

For years, we had been bringing down bicycles of all sizes -- which Robert would spruce up and then give out to the various kids in the village and nearby. We no longer do that for a number of reasons, but the most telling reason is the border crossing. For reasons important to the border guards, we are now required to pay a rather hefty fee for bringing any such gifts into Mexico (clothes included.... we also used to bring several boxes of clothes for all ages).

Ah, but I digress.

The era of such traveling salesfolk trundling up the path to our porch.... has ended. Oh, occasionally a local villager will stop by with perhaps a round of cheese or a fresh-baked bread (from their home-made horno), but it is not the same.

An era has ended.

But you know what!!?? There's a new service I just noticed... as I lay in my hammock one morning, I saw it happen.

This is a big deal, folks. No more seeking out waste cans in town, wherein we surreptitiously cram small bags. We now have a weekly garbage pickup. Just set your trash bags out by the road, and this big old rumbling truck comes by and heaves it into the back. Every Tuesday, at about 9:30am. Gratis.

Living in the Stone Age...

Yeah, well... we have gone and joined the Stone Age.

Last night, we each picked up a baseball sized stone to carry around in case we need to throw it at something. Guillermo is our inspiration.

We had just enjoyed a lovely sunset over on the ocean side of the river, followed by a cool surf video with our gringo friends. Now it was full on night. With just our one headlamp between us, and each of us armed with our big stone, we wended our way through the darkness... down the narrow jungly mud'road to the river (along which lurk numerous kinds of poisonous snakes and , well, you know), then we waded across the river still nearly knee-deep with a recognizable current, and then we were stepping gingerly alongside the river, next to the lagoon where dwells (ta-da) the crocodile (cocodrillo).

All the while, Robert scanned the surrounds with the one beam of light, looking for any reflection of yellow eyes. We were ready to pelt with our stones whatever threatened us. For how many millenia have vulnerable humans made this kind of journey, armed with only sticks and stones?

Not yesterday, but the day before yesterday, our reliable friend Guillermo had been back in his field patrolling for 'coons (mapache). You may recall previous entries where I describe the way he dispatched most of the wild animals he encountered -- with a well aimed stone. (NOTE--I have gone back and corrected my essay on his recent foray with the crocodile, because his stone did NOT miss the croc, but instead, hit it directly on top of the head, and the croc turned tail back into the swamp. Guille had, however, been aiming at the side of the head, which is more vulnerable to cracking open... Guille had barbacoa in mind).

But I digress. There was Guille on patrol just the other night, when he encountered an armadillo (armadillo in Spanish, of course). It took just one well-aimed stone...

....and so the very next day, which was just yesterday, we were all gathered around their table and dining on the creature. Do armadillos taste like chicken? No. This one tasted like delicious home'made spicy salsa, with fresh corn tortillas. What I did notice, is that the meat was well-cooked and not stringy or difficult to chew. (All this from a woman who would far prefer to remain vegetarian, but who recognizes that as an anthropologist/villager, it behooves me to cheerfully share the food they offer.)

Surf, you ask? Oh, that!!

Nothing for this boogie-boarder who has been in the sea only ONCE this entire time... too much basura (huge logs, small sticks, dirty crud) along the shore and floating in the water. For the surfers, however -- Robert has that same shit'eating grin on his face each time he returns from a session.

What is also sweet, is the regathering of the local clan of surfers from wherever we scatter to. And the stories and the adventures to share... There is this GREAT tale about a surfing competition where the surfers are actually dogs, down at Huntington Beach, CA.

And, since I have a rather lot of time on my hands, I now have a really cool found-driftwood piece that I turned into a really cool sculpture, carefully painted and mounted. I will post a photo upon our return to the States.

All is well here, tranquillo y amable, despite, ahem, the Troubles.

THE MACHETE OR THE HEAVY BAR?

Good question.

That was the dilemma that Guillermo (same guy--what exciting times he faces, huh) faced recently, on yet another night across the river, en route home from guarding his field from the raccoons.

There, blocking his way, and stretched all the way across the road in front of him was a ginormous rattlesnake -- over 6 feet long, its head was not quite yet into the weeds across the road, its tail still obscured by the weeds on the other side of the road.

Guillermo had a machete in his right hand, and a long, heavy metal bar in his left hand. Which to use, which to use.... Well, which one would YOU use, and why?

I will end your suspense. He used the bar to crush its head, bringing it down with all his force. His rapid decision was based on, first, the striking distance of so large and muscular a rattler who knew well he was there. The bar is longer than the machete, so he need not stand so close. Secondly, a powerful swing from the bar is certain to crush the rattler's skull, and a machete may fail to cut through the thick skin of such a huge reptile.

Thirteen rattles on the tail, by the way.

He showed us its decapitated corpse, lying in the weeds alongside the road. His wife Sara was with us. I asked her why she didn't cook it up for dinner.... I know folks in the States sometimes do, for instance.

Her response was one word accompanied by a facial expression: "Guacala!" (Yuck!)

SO....... while I am still on the subject of Guillermo's practiced survival skills, let me just mention that a few years back, he also wrestled a crocodile to death, slitting its throat with his machete... while the whole village watched. THEN his wife DID cook it up, and served it to everyone. Barbecued crocodile is a specialty in these here parts. I guess I should be sorry I missed it.

Almost didn't, though. Just the other night... after his encounter with the rattler... Guillermo was coming home from the field and there, coming toward him from the shallows of the nearby swamp was (you guessed it) a crocodile. Not a big one as crocs go, but hey, some three feet long is far longer than I ever want to encounter.

What did he do? He picked up a big rock that just happened to be lying nearby and threw it full force at the croc's head. He hit it directly on top of its head, which is very thick. The croc immediately turned tail and hied itself back into the swamp. Guillermo lamented that he had been aiming for the side of the head, which is thinner -- hoping to crush the skull and thus provide the village with yet another barbecued croc.

This nearby river is back to being shallow enough that little kids play in it -- heck, there was a big in-water picnic there today with scads of kids, and a pick-up truck parked mid-river, from the tail'gate of which there were smiling moms serving plates of hot delicious home'made food for everyone.

All of this excitement around late-night river crossings has put a kind of kibosh on OUR plans to watch videos with our friends across the river. At least at night.

By the way, we gave Guillermo one of our fancy-dancy headlamps so he can always see ahead and around him without losing grip on any of his weapons.