I’m drinking from a flask of mezcal, typing on my computer on a rickety little table, looking out into the state of Oaxaca. To my right, the valley is always misty. To my left, the mountaintops are always clear. I’m living perched precariously on the hillside where the fireworks never stop popping like the distant gunfire of a guerrilla war. Neighbors are few and far between, but you can see the little groupings of houses and villages spread out through the rolling hills and down into the valley. The mountaintops, for the most part, are untouched.
The land is a tangled platter of barby weeds, cacti, flowers, edible greenery and pomegranate trees. Bumblebees the size of golfballs buzz lazily from cactus flower to cactus flower, while wasps the size of clothespins scream aggressively all up in my grill. Every now and then, in the far off distance, a truck drives by blaring cheesy ranchero music and the morning, or late morning, or early afternoon, or late afternoon, or early evening (etc.) village announcements.
I’m living with Rocio: part reiki healer, part mysterious witchdoctor with more than a few screws loose. She has welcomed me into her hand-built home and has taught me many things about cooking, healing, and community. (Namely, if you take everything you have and give it all away, people will apparently show up randomly, and extremely frequently, at your house and offer you vegetables).
Together, we wait patiently for next Friday, December 21st, the winter solstice: the end of the Mayan calendar: the end of the world as we know it.
Neither of us believes much of anything will happen on that day (beyond a more-than-usual number of New Agers taking mushrooms, ayahuasca, or peyote), and yet, it’s often our topic of conversation. This is because we recognize its symbolic value. It comes at a time when so many people are so desperate for the world to change, they’re willing to put aside their better sense and hope some Millennial explosion will come miraculously to bring it about. In a way, it’s kind of like hoping a black politician with a particularly golden tongue will step into the white house and usher in a new era of political “change”: aka fix all the things that are obviously wrong with the world, and cultivate all the things that would obviously be preferable.
I think the reason we care so much about this purely symbolic moment is because we both number among the ranks of those who really really would like to see the world make those changes. It’s all the cliches: an end to pollution, an end to economic injustices, the shifting of global priorities from national security and defense to education and modernizing infrastructure in a way that eliminates the environmental degradation. The end of poverty, the end of desperation and the wealth divide, and consumer culture, a return to living in harmony with the land, a resurrection of community, the reprioritization of art and soul and the end of mass production, conformity, and the bureaucratization of life. Using our hands again, growing our own food again, brewing our own mezcal again, playing outside, playing sports with friends, playing instruments around a campfire, cooking food slowly and deliberately, trusting strangers, faith in nature and fate and God, simplicity, compassion...all of the cliches.
For awhile, she was running a gift economy market. People would come to trade and the only commodity not allowed was money. She said it was amazing how enthusiastic people were about it while it lasted. Of course, like most things, it took a huge amount of energy to organize and eventually, that energy burned out.
The sun is setting slowly in the west. A breeze is jangling the wind chimes and even the insects seem to have fallen silent for the moment. The fireworks have taken a break and there are currently no announcements being blared.
Living with Rocio, I’ve realized that all of those ideals are ideals so long as a person is not living them. As soon as he or she begins just living like that, they cease to be ideals and become simply reality. We’ve been living like that here: taking care of our neighbors, healing one another and ourselves with sometimes out there remedies (mantras, energy movement, salty limes), and sometimes more mainstream remedies (ginger tea, drinking water, rest, talking to each other).
It’s amazing: when I’m no longer worried about what I’m not doing (mostly because I’m now, finally, doing it), I also cease to be worried about the state of the world. The Apocalypse will come and go, but the anxiety seems to mostly just be going. At every given moment, we have the ability to live right: to eat right, to think right, and to treat each other right. When we’re doing that, come what may, we feel right about the world. That is to say, the world just feels right.
Catastrophe will probably come sooner or later. It’s funny though, that’s only a scary prospect when someone feels alone and unprepared. In contrast, when one feels a part of a community that one has faith in (aka should a problem arise, people will stand by each other, work together), the prospect isn’t so scary.
These people are really good at sharing. They have a lot of practice. Living among them makes me feel safe and at peace. It also really makes me feel like sharing more myself.
1 comment:
NICE!
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