That would be Robert... He and our village neighbor from across the road took off one shiny new morning for a distant, remote wild and woodsy area from which Robert purchases, fells, and slices select trees into usable planks. This time, he is collecting wood for a new shower door, for instance...
...only this time he neglected to wear thick leather gloves.
The scorpion lashed out fiercely (Robert never saw it amid the woodchips and dust after the log fell). The stinger slashed open a blood vessel in his finger, and thus injected the poison directly into Robert´s bloodstream... a potentially lethal situation. Having been struck before, Robert could recognize the increased severity of this strike... left arm, closest to his heart, the venom causing numbness and paralysis, far more pain... Those kinds of thoughts.
Immediately, his companion helped Robert to load the large, heavy, bulky machines into his car, and got Robert back home, and situated on the porch amid the tools. Then he left Robert there. Robert had assured him that we have on hand "Epi-pen" which is a self-injectable antidote. Alas, this time the Epi-pen had almost no effect on the venom now in his bloodstream. In great pain, and increasing numbness, Robert laboriously lugged the machines into the house, locked them in, and drove the car himself, down into the river valley, through the river, and over to the beach where I was casually relaxing. En route, he picked up my friend´s husband who took over the wheel.
My friend, Annie, and I had just emerged soaking wet and grinning from ear-to-ear after an exhaustingly fun plunge-and-crash session of boogying the big shore-surf repeatedly. We were seated at a table, toes in the sand, facing the sea. I had between my fingers a chip laden with guacamole -- yes, the food had been set down before us the moment we emerged from the sea.
I heard the unique, child-like toot of our car´s horn. Odd....
All was full-on action after that. Annie took care of the guacamole and chips (oh, and the bill, too). The cooks ran after us with a huge clove of garlic for Robert to chew and swallow (local remedy for scorpion strikes). Annie´s husband drove (he speaks better Spanish than I do), and we were on our way to the nearby FREE hospital/clinic -- some half-hour away.
Robert was seen to, given immediate treatment, and then hooked up to an IV to hydrate him. It helps if he can pee out the poison. He was there for hours.
Robert is not one to complain of pain -- but when asked, he would comment on the "electric eels" in his extremeties, as well as curious and expanding numbness. Walking to the bathroom, as he had to from time to time thanks to the dripping IV, was quite arduous for him. Once the IV bottle was empty, he was released.
For the next two days, he lay comfortably at our home on our portable bed-system laid out on the cement floor of our porch -- woven mat, with a thermarest mattress, pillow, fleece blanket if needed. And I read to him -- great book -- one we kept interrupting in order to discuss concpets. He would, if pressed, describe the continuing electric shooting pains, and show where he was completely numb.
This strike, he says, was far more painful, far more dangerous, than the last time he was struck. Last time, he was struck in muscle, and the Epi-pen worked, and we laid his mat in a cool room, and while he rested, I read to him.
¿And now? In the aftermath (though his finger is still numb three days later), my advice will hereafter ever be: "Wear thick leather gloves... please."
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Monday, April 16, 2012
A Mirror Into My Own Childhood
She lives right next door. I´ve mentioned her and her family a lot, and posted photos of them. This little girl whom I have known since she was in utero (there is a long story there, too...) and I share a deep, strong heart bond. She reminds me of me.
What inspires this short essay, however, is what we shared just yesterday.
Little Diana Laura sings. She sings to the trees, the flowers, the dog, the weather, in response to questions. She loves to whirl. She has her own personal connection to nature.... oh, there´s a story in that, too, but never mind.
She sings in the same way I did as a child -- spinning in a circle as flower petals from the tree overhead cascaded down, cruising along an expanse of flowers as the wind played their bobbing blossoms....
Yesterday, when we were both home alone (she is about 5 by now, and I´m slightly older), she spotted me through the fence, and came over. We spent over an hour simply singing to each other about.... whatever. We swung in our respective hammocks, sometimes bumping together, and laughed as we sang about it. We played hide and seek in the netting of our hammocks, and we sang about it. A dog starts barking -- we sing an imagined reason....
When the time came, we sang our goodbyes, filled with laughter and silly postures...
What inspires this short essay, however, is what we shared just yesterday.
Little Diana Laura sings. She sings to the trees, the flowers, the dog, the weather, in response to questions. She loves to whirl. She has her own personal connection to nature.... oh, there´s a story in that, too, but never mind.
She sings in the same way I did as a child -- spinning in a circle as flower petals from the tree overhead cascaded down, cruising along an expanse of flowers as the wind played their bobbing blossoms....
Yesterday, when we were both home alone (she is about 5 by now, and I´m slightly older), she spotted me through the fence, and came over. We spent over an hour simply singing to each other about.... whatever. We swung in our respective hammocks, sometimes bumping together, and laughed as we sang about it. We played hide and seek in the netting of our hammocks, and we sang about it. A dog starts barking -- we sing an imagined reason....
When the time came, we sang our goodbyes, filled with laughter and silly postures...
Monday, April 9, 2012
Just this morning.....
The kids seem to know it. They know when I´ve got all the toys back on the shelves -- and they show up -- polite, respectful, and eager. Since I always put everything back in the same location on the various shelves, they quietly find what they want and presto! Our porch is filled with totally absorbed children, each in their own world of creativity.
Jigsaw puzzles (new ones, too!), railroad tracks, Jenga, Mancala -- but most popular by far are paper and drawing utensils. Utterly silent absorption.
Today´s focus, as it often is, was on coloring in various mandala designs. Once completed, each child seeks me out to show it to me, and then hopes that I choose to somehow display it. With all the new magnets I bought, I could display them all, on our metal doors. They each take pride in their own work, standing back to look at its beauty, sometimes pointing, and commenting to each other...
Surf? Oh, that. Robert was up and gone at dawn, and didn´t return til early afternoon, grinning widely. Boogie-boarding? Nada. I´ve just dipped myself in the sea once, but the ocean is oddly cold, and there´s a cool offshore wind as well. Bag it for now.
Village life? How I love this village, esta pueblito con sus gente tranquilo y amable. Just to walk down the central dusty road through the village, and to greet all the neighbors, kids and dogs... to stop and chat awhile... to trade stories....
...and to enjoy walking under the various hues of bougainevillea (bugambilia in Spanish, which is easier to spell), and take in the radiance of the sun as it illuminates the multi-colored leaves of our croton plants...
Ya basta por hoy. Tengo cosas a hacer aqui en Zihua....
Jigsaw puzzles (new ones, too!), railroad tracks, Jenga, Mancala -- but most popular by far are paper and drawing utensils. Utterly silent absorption.
Today´s focus, as it often is, was on coloring in various mandala designs. Once completed, each child seeks me out to show it to me, and then hopes that I choose to somehow display it. With all the new magnets I bought, I could display them all, on our metal doors. They each take pride in their own work, standing back to look at its beauty, sometimes pointing, and commenting to each other...
Surf? Oh, that. Robert was up and gone at dawn, and didn´t return til early afternoon, grinning widely. Boogie-boarding? Nada. I´ve just dipped myself in the sea once, but the ocean is oddly cold, and there´s a cool offshore wind as well. Bag it for now.
Village life? How I love this village, esta pueblito con sus gente tranquilo y amable. Just to walk down the central dusty road through the village, and to greet all the neighbors, kids and dogs... to stop and chat awhile... to trade stories....
...and to enjoy walking under the various hues of bougainevillea (bugambilia in Spanish, which is easier to spell), and take in the radiance of the sun as it illuminates the multi-colored leaves of our croton plants...
Ya basta por hoy. Tengo cosas a hacer aqui en Zihua....
Sunday, February 26, 2012
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.
Monday, December 12, 2011
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.
Thursday, December 1, 2011
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.....
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.....
Thursday, November 24, 2011
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.
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.
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