Stories

Part #1 Burn it

He had just bought the house and decided this called for a house party. He spread the word, everyone and anyone was invited. Many people came, some he knew well and others, one in particular, he barely knew. There were house warming gifts, one of them a red wheelbarrow.

The party was cooking, wine, beer, joints and music. So, just for kicks, he decided to bring out the amortization schedule with all the interest calculations and payment due dates for 30 years. A lengthy document. He called for everyone’s attention. Holding it high above his head, he gripped and held page #1 of the schedule and then released the remaining, watching each page unfold, one by one until the last page touched the floor. In the end, 6 feet of dates. His performance was well received. People responded with all sorts of clever bank “put downs” and then this beautiful woman spoke. She said, “burn it”. Without another word, it was thrown into the red wheelbarrow, fired up and in minutes, hundreds of due dates and calculations a pile of ash.

But another fire, a love story, had been sparked, one that would outlast the 30 year mortgage.

Part 2 The Smell of Dirt.

They didn’t really know each other. They had shared friends, social events and parties but had never touched or for that matter done anything alone together. It was becoming clear though, that there was a shared attraction, an energy. So when she jumped at the idea, of dropping everything and sneaking into Ellison park for a midnight walk it wasn’t a surprise.

The night was pitch black, no moonlight or stars, no wind everything still and quiet. In the darkness they felt their way along a little used narrow path, brushing up against bushes and trees. They barely talked and when they did they whispered protecting the silence as they made their way climbing up and along the back of a long glacial drumlin. At the top, there was a sharp, sandy drop-off, an opening, a lookout. In the far distance, the black silhouette of trees on a ridge.

They stood silently taking in the night, the feel of the place, the presence of the other. A sense of time had been lost so it wasn’t clear how long it had been when she turned to him and spoke words that touched him deep inside. Words that told him something about her that would endure for years and years. In the dark, face to face, she quietly said, “ I love the smell of dirt”.

Tiny Bat

A bat colony makes its home under the overhang on the back of the house. Each night, and well into the night, a tiny bat leaves the colony and enters the bedroom and hangs from the bamboo rafter off to the side of the bed. It is gone before daylight but leaves a reminder of its presence in the form of several well articulated black bat turds, released from above, making their way to the bedroom floor. Dropped carefully off to the side of the bed, a clearing outlined, at a distance from where ones feet mindlessly hit the ground first thing in the morning. The clearing ,a welcome mat.

A Scorpion

It had to be done. There was some fear, no trust and admittedly a measure of morbid curiosity when, with the flick of a hand towel the scorpion was knocked from the edge of the second floor lookout deck to the splash pool at ground level. It had known something was coming because it had flattened itself onto the low cement retaining wall of the lookout making itself look very convincingly like an ordinary brown stick. But the ruse didn’t work and it fell in dramatic slo-mo fashion, floating down and hitting the cement edge of the pool, buckling in half before continuing to the ground.

Consternation about flicking a scorpion off a wall and causing it to fall a single story is wasted worry. They are resilient creatures. They can go a year without eating, live under water for 2 days, and under extreme circumstances eat their young. So when after the fall, the scorpion simply straightened itself out and scooted away there was only mild surprise but also a dose of trepidation that retribution was on the scorpion’s list of survival strategies.

Black Ants

The large cement patio, once the place of festivities, could be seen in its entirety from the second floor deck. Years before it had been stained a lively and vibrant terra-cotta color. Now it was fading, a dull orange. Long gray cracks had formed, some of them randomly connecting. From above, it took on the look of a giant roadmap, the cracks creating a network of highways.

Then they arrived. Large black ants, hauling oversized, pink hibiscus flower petals. Truckers plying the highway of cracks, no pedal too large, no crack too deep, determined, a destination, no obstacles only challenges. Big black ants with pink flower petals bringing life to the dull orange patio,

 

 

Three beach dogs joined us for a starlit dinner at the restaurant in the sand.  One of the dogs was so skinny that his skin draped between his shoulder and pelvis bones like a wet towel strung between two posts.  You could count his ribs.  His ears were covered with sores, some of them open and bloody.  He and I spent the meal staring into Mary Kaye’s blue eyes.

Chorro de Humo and the Gentleman

What follows is a brief retelling of a long story. It came to my ears from a Guatemalan caballero, a true gentleman, gracious, attentive, multilingual and worldly. He had a grin like the Cheshire Cat, an insane laugh, and was prone to verbosity when it came to the topic of himself. He was from money, his family large scale coffee growers, but he gave it all up for a life of adventure. He became obsessed in all things Mayan. To describe him as an amateur archaeologist would be inaccurate. He hob knobbed with academics and world renown Mayanists and had acquired some degree of regard. He knew about all aspects of Mayan culture; architecture, agriculture, fine arts etc. and was free with the sharing. But being a gentleman doesn’t mean one can’t have a foot in different worlds. There very often is a fine line between right and wrong, truth and fiction and what gentleman, or any one for that matter, hasn’t straddled those lines.

The depth of the gentleman’s knowledge was due to large measure by the fact that he had explored Mayan archaeological sites large and small, significant and inconsequential, close at hand as well as buried deep in the El Peten jungle for over 25 years. It was during one of these trips that he discovered a man sick and dying in the jungle and he saved his life.

The man’s name was Chorro de Humo and he was a saqueador, a grave robber specializing in Mayan archaeological sites. He rolled his own cigars, long and fat. He chain smoked these nasty buggers and that is how he got his name, or actually, his nick name. Spanish speaking friends tell me that a loose translation of “Chorro de Humo” was something like smoke stack.

Chorro de Humo and the gentleman came at Mayan archaeology from completely opposite directions but saving a man’s life can change the way brain neurons line up and fire. A looter and an archaeologist, connected. Friendship mucking with that ethical line in the sand.

Looters dig straight line narrow tunnels into rocky piles of rubble covered with snarling jungle. The average Joe wouldn’t know they were looking at an ancient building. The tunnel at some point turns into a crawl space and with luck, eventually a chamber. Here they find finely painted porcelain quality ceramics, jade jewelry and other valuable artifacts. The work is dangerous. The gentleman once found the body of a looter, sitting, his face all disfigured. The building had collapsed on his head and he had been able to work himself free of the rubble but the damage had been done. He had pulled himself to sitting, sat there, and bled to death.
The robbers are only interested in objects they can wrap in palm leaves and carry out. Unmovable murals, frescoes, paintings on the walls are of no value to them. Not so, and to the contrary, for archaeologists. Frescoes, murals tell stories, inform, are highly prized and rare because they are so vulnerable to the heat and humidity of the jungle. Good quality, intact murals are almost non existent. These are the treasures that every archaeologists longs to put their name on.

It was during a casual conversation over some drinks that Chorro de Humo mentioned a site with paintings. The thought of it made every cell in the gentleman’ s body somersault but Chorro de Humo was not forthcoming. Years and many conversations later, now old and in declining health, he agreed to disclose the location of the site with the paintings. The gentleman activated, hired his jungle guide and contacted a world renown Mayanist and the 3 of them set out to meet with Chorro de Humo. Days later when they arrived at his house they encountered women dressed in black and mourning. Tragically and suddenly, Chorro de Humo was dead.

The story gets a little foggy at this point but essentially the decision was made to go with the information they had. They poked and explored, for maybe days, and eventually found themselves in an archaeological site when it began to rain. Seeking cover they entered a tunnel and because the tunnel was low and small they were forced to lie on their backs. What they eyeballed above their faces was the oldest and by far the best preserved Mayan murals ever seen by modern man. Detail, colors, an invaluable historical treasure incredibly preserved and intact. The discovery turned the Mayan archaeology world on its head.

The gentleman tells the world, the archaeologist follows academic protocol to report the find and a big tug of war over bragging rights follows. But what about Chorro de Humo, that cigar smoking, grave robbing, temple wrecking, son of a gun? Right or wrong, good or bad, it is a tight rope walk, without him those murals would still be moldering away, undiscovered, one of the most precious, gorgeous pieces of pre-Colombian fine art ever, alone and unseen.

There is a photo of myself and a guy I barely knew.  It could be called a photo portrait. A friend was responsible. He was throwing a big party.  From the outside of his house he was photographing the party inside, each photo framed by an open rectangular window. Spontaneously, from inside, the guy I barely knew and I stuck our heads side by side, almost touching, into the open window  and said “you want a photo, come and get it”. Our faces framed and 2 feet from the camera lens, the shutter clicked. We had buddied up a bit.

That photo came to mind while eating in a restaurant in Mazunte, more to the point it was the owner of the joint that provoked the recollection. Macho, nothing friendly about him, no smiles, no customer interaction, hires babes to wait on tables, and along with his two well trained German shepherds, he always has a few underlings at his elbow fetching him things, sucking up.

Every time I see this guy the same thoughts make their way in.  This guy could could hurt someone, this guy might have hurt someone, or at some point in his life was willing to do bad things for the right price. I don’t really know what a cartel vibe is but this could be it.

There was a night when a number of people were waiting for a table and, I will call him The Dark One, cleared the largest table in the joint, so he and his buddies could drink beer, play poker and smoke pot.

I was sitting right behind him the night of the poker game, I could have reached out and touched him. I was rooting for him to win, no need for trouble.  We hadn’t buddied up but it was up close and personal enough.

I hope I’m wrong about this guy because I missed by a mile with my portrait buddy. A few years after the photo, he stalked and brutally murdered his ex-girlfriend. He’s behind bars. I had that one all wrong.  I would love to be wrong again.

The setting is a well designed bungalow in a rural area just outside a small Mexican beach town. The bungalow has sliding folding walls on two sides so it can be wide open with a view to the ocean or closed up like a conventional room.  

Imagine, you and the one you love are returning along the dirt lane to the bungalow by flashlight after a splendid evening out.  There awaits a stone patio with comfortable chairs, cups of mezcal,  a moon orange and setting and a star loaded sky. The air temperature is perfect, shirt, no shirt, not important, an ocean breeze. Quiet.

Before sitting, you offer to go and open the bungalow and allow the ocean air in the room. You unlock the door,  flip on the light and what you see causes you to catch your breathe and fall back. In front of you, in every square inch of the room, highlighted against the white walls, white bedding and soft tones of the floor are thousands of large, black ants.   A huge swat team focused, intent.  Different units with different tasks. A long line of ants like a thick rope entering the bungalow making their way in and out of closets with shirts, underwear and personal belongings, a unit of ants spreading all over the bed, investigating sheets, pillows, mattress, climbing up and into the mosquitero, a systematic pattern of single scouting ants geometrically spread out on the floor, walls and ceiling, up and down the legs of table, chairs.  Everything exposed, literally nothing untouched, no signs of it ending, the room overtaken.

The Quiz

After taking a deep breath, what do you do?

1. Go to the caretakers cabana and say “what the hell do we do”?
2. Tell your loved one what you witnessed and that you have it under control and launch a counter attack with a herbal pesticide.
3. Say nothing, Do nothing,, drink the mezcal, chat and enjoy the night sky.
4. Go to the internet and type in something intelligent and follow instructions.
5. Freak out and move out.
6. Boil water and let them have it..

The correct answer, of course, is #3.  This is a swat team deployed by the Master Ant, they received a bad tip, no wrong doing on anyone’s part, no cookies, no crumbs.

The stone patio is the place to be, sip some mezcal, do it right with salt, chili peppers, and ground worm larvae, compare notes about the dinner, lean back, look up, take in the night sky brilliant and loaded.  Then return to the room,  no trace of an ant, nothing, like it never happened.  The bungalow is ready for the night to continue..

There are those that would argue that fast foods are quasi foods a few chemical steps removed from being plastic or even poison and that the careful, conscious preparation of comestibles is by far preferred. With a few exceptions I am a member of that club.  Take for example hallucinogenic preparations known to be used by the ancient Maya.

Unquestionably complex and varied, they used carefully prepared concoctions of datura and alcohol, mixtures using fermented bark, recipes with psychoactive mushrooms and even potions with powerful alkaloids from the glands of Bufo Marinus, the Wad Frog, to induce hallucinatory experiences.

How archaeologists know these recipes is another question but take the Wad Frog/alkaloids potion as an example. The gist of the preparation goes something like this. The frogs are submerged in a bath of H2O, with water lily pads and other botanical agents. This produces a release of hallucinatory alkaloids from the frogs gland into the liquid. This liquid is then placed in an enema sack or clyster. Ancient paintings depict the anal delivery of the psychoactive potion via these enema sacks or clysters. 

Terrance McKenna, the psychonaut and ethnobotanist would have us believe that psychedelic mushrooms were introduced to planet earth when their spores fell to earth from outer space.  This apparently occurred many centuries ago and why, after the arrival of the Spanish, with their beasts of burden a new variety of hallucinatory mushrooms were found growing in the dung heaps of horses and mules.  One such variety is known as “Pajaritos”. They are a tiny, delicate, white stemmed  tu-tued skirted mushroom. A jungle guide, who no doubt was speaking from experience,  informed me that simply ingesting 4 or 5 of these skirted babies would be sufficient to duplicate the objectives of the ancient ceremonial Mayan Vision Quest.  

I really have have no intentions but if my goal was to commune with the Serpent God of Mayan cosmology, scale his back, reach the Sun, and get back to the Beginning, I’m not going the enema route, I’m gonna grab some Pajaritos, the fast food path.                                

There is a rock out cropping on the Mazunte beach.  When the tide is in and one is  walking from Rinconcito, the swimming beach, to the main beach it is necessary to climb up and around the outcropping to get back on the sand.  We had watched the sunset from Punta Cometa, eaten, and in the dark were rounding this out cropping  headed for Einsteins, for music and fun,  at the other end of the beach. As we made our way around the corner we could see 5  men dressed in dark military style clothing.  We couldn’t tell who they were but we knew it wasn’t. good.  There was no turning back.

They immediately surrounded us, forming a circle. They were the Policia Nacional and armed with assault rifles. One spoke English. They wanted to know where we were from, what we were doing, where we were going,  where we were staying. They asked to see my backpack.  I dutifully  followed instructions, the only option.  I  showed them the big pocket and there was only a water bottle.  The smaller pocket had binoculars in a case.  They made me take them out and they looked in the case.  The smallest pocket had my camera in a colorful Guatemalan purse, a jack knife, pen, nothing of interest to them.. They searched Mary Kaye, respectably.

The Gods of Punta Cometa were with us, they didn’t ask us to empty our pockets or search our clothing. They  were serious and professional and we were not pure.

 

 The beach named Mermejita is probably just shy of a mile in length.  It makes for a nice walk and  because it is unprotected from the blazing hot sun seeing another human is unusual.  At the far end is a crude and small house made of stone with a palapa roof.  It is tucked into the side of a hill.  Surrounded by scrub and trees it’s hard to get close.  It looks unlived in but once a couple of years ago I came down on it from the hill above and I saw an elderly Mexican man with a wide brimmed hat sweeping the yard with a crude long handled broom made of a stick and bundled tree branches. 

 There was no snooping around on this day and just as I started the return journey a humpback whale breached.  As I walked the whale was off my right shoulder.  If my arm were 200 yards long I could have reached out and touched it without creating any angle.   For the moment we were moving in parallel.  It surfaced again, dove and was gone.

 This seemed to present itself as an opportunity for layman research.  The average speed of an ambulating human being is 2-3 mph.  I knew that if I kept my eyes peeled on the ocean there was a possibility that I could see the same whale breach again, determine its position relative to me and roughly calculate his/her speed. 

 Normally staying focused for long periods of time is not something I find easy but the ocean has a way of changing that.  The angle of a beach has to be dealt with but sand is for the most part predictable and forgiving and looking out at the Pacific while walking is an easy proposition and the visual possibilities a million fold. 

 Most of the time when a whale dives it stays down for a while and travels.  I knew I would be lucky to see it again but 20 minutes later it reappeared.  It breached and was only slightly ahead of me, still pretty much off my right shoulder. I did the calculations and was feeling very self satisfied until the best realization emerged.  I had just taken a walk with a whale. 

 We sit with suitcases and day packs in the waiting area. The bus for Palenque leaves in an hour.  Presently, a man enters the area. For some reason we both watch him.  He looks and moves weirdly and emits a vibe that stirs the central nervous system in the wrong kind of way.  He walks past us, looks at Mary Kaye a little too long and sits a few seats away.  My mind says, “probably no big deal but keep him on the radar.”  Waiting, we space in and space out, share an observation here or there, wait some more until we hear this guy talking loudly on his cellphone. Long winded and annoying he manages to up the ante. With a loud hack and smack he heaves a wad of phlegm on the floor in front of him. Moments later, he repeats.

 It reminded me of an experience I had a long time ago.  It was in Popayan, Colombia.  Late in the day I had entered a large, beautiful, colonial cathedral.   It was silent and completely empty.  After some time an old man, a campesino, dressed in his work clothes, entered and sat and then kneeled not far from me.  I could see his feet, he had no shoes and probably never did, judging by the depth of the ravines in the thick calloused feet. There was a wordless story in those feet, no telling, straight to the heart.  He got off his knees, sat a bit and upon standing he too delivered a huge gob onto one of the flagstone slabs from which the church floor was made.

 Like roadkill in the distance, the phlegm on the floor of the bus station caught my curiosity. Walking past it on my way to the bus, I decided to look. Lodged in the center of the glob of phlegm, like the yoke of an egg was a huge hunk of coagulated blood.  Abruptly, my curiosity disappeared and my disgust turned to concern.  We climbed on our bus, my concern short-lived.  Palenque was 2 hours away and the next morning we would be in the magnificent Mayan ruins set in the jungle of Chiapas, Mexico.  Perhaps, in retrospect, and especially considering that this was a vacation, it was best to consider the red glob of egg yolk as a bit of foreshadowing.  Maya……..blood rituals……. that’s not a huge stretch.