A Tale of Two Towns

Finally - the book is ready!

2010-01-05T10:08:00.000-08:00

After much work (if I had known what I was letting myself in for, would I have done it?) my book on life in Mexico - now titled "Living La Vida Loca: When the Dream of a Life in Mexico Becomes Reality" - is now available as a PDF for download at Lulu.com.

I am in the process of publishing a version on Smashwords.com in all the common competing ebook formats (e.g. for Kindle and Sony devices). Unfortunately, their conversion mechanism is currently undergoing “repair”. The limitations of publishing for multiple formats mean that I have had to adjust the formatting in the Smashwords version, so I would suggest that people use Lulu unless they need the different version for their ebook reader. If you are interested in the Smashwords editions, please just drop me a line and I’ll let you know when they are available.The book is illustrated throughout with some of my photographs – another passion that I have been feeding over the last few years.

Both on-line retailers will have a sample of pages from the book. I hope you’ll check it out. And if you decide to buy and download it – thank you, and I hope that you find it an interesting read!

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more

2009-12-21T08:07:00.000-08:00

My blog has been “resting”; lying there discarded as a journal of past experiences in Baja. But I have not stopped writing. Instead, I have set myself a more ambitious target. Eschewing the easy route of short, random observations, I decided to write a book, with all its demands of structure, flow and, frankly, commitment of time. The working title is “Living La Vida Loca: When the Dream of Life in Mexico becomes Reality”. What’s it about? Here’s an extract from the introduction:

“When I tell people in the North that I spend winters in Baja, they are, perhaps, a little shocked at first, usually envious, and often curious as to what the life is like. Most have a preconception that life in Baja is just one uninterrupted vacation. They usually ask “So what do you find to do all day, for that length of time?” - a question to which it is hard to give a quick response that reflects the experience of being there. Analytical folk may ask questions about health care, shopping and the mechanics of day-to-day life. But just about everyone lacks the broad context of experience for probing what it is really like living in the Mexican culture in a place that can physically resemble paradise.

This book is for anyone who has ever thought, even fleetingly, of making a life as a “snowbird”, or even as a full-time resident, in the warm climes of Mexico. Just what is it like to make that dramatic step? What is the reality of the dream? What should I know before I take steps to make it real, or decide it’s just not for me?

There are several books around that cover the physical mechanics and issues of living in Mexico in general, and Baja in particular. While this information is useful for anyone who plans to move there, logistics in Mexico, while they may frustrate you, won’t ultimately mean the difference between experiencing life as an exciting adventure or a nightmare. The more interesting and critical issues are those of being able to align yourself psychologically with the demands and opportunities of life in Mexico. So this book is about the internal experience of life as a foreign resident in Mexico. It looks at what drives people to come here, what surprises they found, how they cope with and grow from the experience, how reality compares to their expectations, and what they would do differently knowing what they do now.”

I now have completed a second draft of the book, and am now learning the intricacies (and restrictions) of formatting for distribution as an ebook (the vagaries of differing and competing formats for ebooks is a clear indication that this is an evolving technology!). I will probably publish as a downloadable PDF ebook on Lulu.com in early January, and then perhaps move to other ebook formats and a “published on demand” version later in the year. As soon as it is available for sale, I will publish a link to the order page on this blog.

W(h)ither the blog?

2009-03-06T07:33:00.000-08:00

Perhaps it’s the New Year, causing me to reflect (even more than usual!) on my life. Perhaps it is because of friends’ comments, both considered and sloughed off incidentally in passing. Perhaps it is just the unrelenting heat here in Todos Santos that has addled my brain. Whatever the underlying reason, I have been struggling with understanding why I maintain this blog, and whether or not its value justifies continuing.

I first experimented with blogging when I was at the height of my professional business career, and at the forefront of using technology to leverage the work of teams. At that time, creating a blog, and even modifying the look and feel of the blog, required considerable work and arcane technical knowledge. Having mastered the complexities, and finding insufficient of net value to add to the toolkit, I moved on. I came back to try blogging again in late 2007, primarily because, like Everest, “it was there”. Technology had advanced to a point where it was easy to play with a blog, and I wanted to play.

I became mesmerised at first sight. I saw a beauty in the way the layout, attractive typeface and inclusion of pictures could transform even the most banal of content into something pleasing to the eye. And then the question came – ‘What could you use this for?” – rather than the content emerging first and then demanding an outlet.

Whenever a vacuum is created, something moves to fill it. I became interested in seeing whether I had the capacity to write beyond straightjacketed business prose and anguished poetic lamentations (the latter seeming now, to my mind, somewhat akin to Vogon poetry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogon ) - infinitely cathartic, but strictly for internal consumption due to its devastating effect on the listener). And I discovered that I had a pent-up reservoir of thoughts on the evolution of my life, and about the places in which I lived, that I needed to dissect and exorcise. Building on these two drivers, the blog took on a life of its own. It demanded life from me. If I did not create an entry for a while, I would feel the pressure building within me that could only be relieved, temporarily, by another post.

Working through issues and practising craft are valuable pursuits. Most blogs, though, including this one, are public. Just why did I feel the need to make my efforts public? I could posture (and I have, at some level in my mind, held this view) that it provides a vehicle for gathering comments; provoking debate. If you look at the blog, however, you will see that there are few comments. There is little real debate or useful critique. I get most of my comments via private e-mail, but many are words of encouragement, rather than building on what I have written. I am not alone in this. If you look at most popular blogs, the comments are usually but a watered down froth to complement and compliment the author’s work. The “blogsphere” acts more like a support group for its inhabitants. I liken it somewhat to the Open Readings in Todos Santos. At each reading (a.k.a. group therapy session), every performance, from the sublime to the senile-adolescent, is applauded, and no meaningful critique is offered. I have often mused indeed as to whether the intensity of the applause reflects the value of the piece, or perhaps relief or sympathy proportional to the extent to which the reader has overrun his or her allotted 5 minutes.

So the ostensible value in publication does not stand up to critical review. What really lies behind my choosing to publish the blog? I think, at heart, it is a desire to address two conflicting needs, drawing from insecurity. To make me stand out from others, and to connect with others. I have used the blog as a form of extended business card; to shout “There’s much more to me than the business consultant that you think you know!” And there is a longing to connect with others, especially as I transition from a work-based life to something else, and live in two new, very strange and warmly isolating communities.

I have been fortunate to have connected, virtually or in person, with a few very interesting people through blogging. It is, however, a very random way to connect, akin to clicking the “next blog” at the top of the page. In addition, while it is true that you can often infer a lot about a person from reading their blog, it is also the case that the content of a blog represents a filtered view of their life, thoughts and feelings. True “connection” involves more than interchange of carefully manicured narrative.

As for promoting “The Real Vic”, as with everything, once strong daylight is shed upon a subject, it loses its potency. The thought now of thrusting this perception upon unsuspecting people seems mildly amusing and ineffectual.

I do have more to say, to explore, to picture. But I doubt that this blog is the appropriate mechanism. Blogs can have value; for example to keep an artist’s followers in touch with new work, or to keep friends aware of a travel adventure. This particular vehicle of mine, however, after 74 postings, has probably run its course.

I thank those who have enjoyed my postings, and especially those who have taken the time to tell me so. The reinforcement kept me going where lethargy would have brought this venture to an untimely end.

The photo I have chosen to accompany this final posting is again of bougainvilleas, a fitting symmetry to my first image on this blog. In some ways I think the omnipresent bougainvillea reflects truths about us and our lives. Continual outbreaks of flowers that are breathtakingly gorgeous and delicate present a longed for illusion of permanent beauty, while the detritus of withered dead flowers under the bush reminds me of the reality of the temporary nature of all things. Hidden behind the showy but ephemeral beauty of the flowers, are superficially uninteresting branches that are, in reality, the true strong core of the plant. Over time, this framework for the plant evolves from innocent sinewy shoots that twist as needed, to become strong, accreted with character, but unexpectedly encrusted with wicked thorns, ready to rend the unsuspecting or unprepared that dares probe beneath the surface illusion.

Virtual Paradise

2009-03-01T09:09:00.000-08:00

One jarring paradox about living in Todos Santos lies is the difference between basic and electronic utilities. While indisputably necessary potable water service is unreliable, even in town, and sometimes unavailable in other, more gringo-desired areas, electronic services are pervasive and predictable. Ingenuity, coupled with creative monopoly-driven pricing approaches, has made it possible to stay connected, virtually, everywhere you go, using technology that is probably more advanced than typically used in the Northern, supposedly more evolved world.

Even where water pipes dare not go, entrepreneurs have created long-distance wireless networks to share landline high speed internet service. Just about everyone it seems (except us), local or ex-pat, has a cell phone, the explosive growth of which is aided by low prices fostered by the unique approach of “Quien llama, paga” – he who calls, pays. Our landline bill for calling cellphones is, for example, greater than our line cost! And now, high-speed internet service is available just about everywhere using a cheap cellphone modem service.

It is interesting to recall that, maybe 10 or so years ago, there was no internet service available, and phones were a rarity, with people having to line up at the message centre in town to gain access to a booth to make or receive calls. Thoughts of being disconnected in that way send shivers through my body, for I, like many others, have become essentially addicted to connectivity.

But is this connected paradise a positive thing? True, it enables me to keep in touch with friends, family and colleagues across the world through video calls. But it also means that you never detach from the manic word of “news” where there is a constant cacophony of misery and prognostications of doom, each reporter seeming to want to outdo the others in their depiction of the end of civilization as we know it. Like drivers craning their neck for a look at a car wreck, it’s very hard not to delve into all this gloom.

When I go for a stroll after taking my dose of “reality”, I am shocked by the dissonance of the hopelessness revolving in my head, and the world that my senses encounter. The sun is still shining, indeed lulling its subjects into lassitude in this unseasonably warm season. Fresh colour floods the plants in our garden. A menagerie of birds, from rampant and irrepresible Roosters through caustic Cactus Wrens and percussionist Flickers (who have an unnatural love of my metal chimney) to invisible yet mellifluent Warblers, still roam our yard. Raucous revellers from last night’s party (for Mexicans do indeed know how to party!) stagger along our dusty roads, holding onto each other for support. And so life still continues, much as before, in this sleepy little town.

I have noticed a trend amongst some fellow internet trollers to divest themselves of the habit of reading about the misery, and to surround themselves with more positive experiences. Part of me sees this as ostrich-like behaviour; ignoring tsunami warnings in the hope that it will turn out to be a mirage. But another part of me, the part that listens to the birds and the happily inebriated locals, sees the truth in this approach. The world will continue, no matter what stupidities humans inflict. And, while some will see it as ignoring what we cannot change, I suspect that, actually, the tide of negativity is self-realizing and so by thinking differently, perhaps we can change some small part of our world for the better.

Familiar numbness

2009-02-21T06:54:00.000-08:00

The key reason why we come to the Baja in the winter, as for many people, is the combination of exceptional weather and bounteous seaside. Yes, there are other elements of life in Baja, and Todos Santos in particular, that add flavour to the mix, but it is the idyllic climate and location first and foremost. It is what many people describe as “paradise”.

I almost feel traitorous, therefore, when, about this time in the season, I explain to people back in the land of ice and snow that it is all becoming a bit “blah”. Yes, it is sunny – again. And I can wear shorts all day, without fear of losing appendages. And the garden is bursting with a cacophony of colour. And the whales are cruising around near shore and waving their flukes – as usual. Yawn!

Maybe I have the affliction more than most, but repeated exposure to any experience, no matter how wonderful, breeds a blinding familiarity. It is only when it is a jolt from normal life, or afterwards, when it is gone, that perhaps we truly appreciate what we experience. There are flashes or even longer stretches where the numbing veil is lifted, and I see what is before my eyes without a filter. But before long, the familiar images lull me back to sleep. The magical golden elements, in reverse alchemy, become the new leaden norm.

It is not Baja that causes such reactions. Back in Comox, we have a breathtaking and “in your face” view across the full spectrum blue Georgia Straights to the snow-capped green coastal mountains of BC. When we first arrived, we spent hours just sitting in the living room and watching with amazement. We committed to each other that we should never take this view for granted. And yet, just a few months later, we would catch ourselves carrying on our lives and almost forgetting about what was right in front of our eyes.

Is familiarity-bred numbness inevitable and irreversible? Some have suggested to me that it is our predestined fate but, by understanding this and keeping expectations low, life still remains enjoyable. Others would suggest that the blindness can be overcome. One school proposes living in the moment to connect us to what is really happening, and thus strip the familiarity fog from our eyes and other senses. But few (myself included) can do that for more than short periods of time before falling back into “normal” existence. Living a comparative life, an approach taken by some, where one is thankful for what we have because it is so much better than what others appear to endure, seems to me to be an artifice of rationalisation.

For now, I will just be thankful for those brief periods where the magic takes hold, and, however transiently, lets me experience life clearly.

There's a new wind in town

2009-02-13T08:39:00.000-08:00

For the past few days, a new wind has swept through the town. Literally, that is, for I have not noticed any Barack-like cultural shift in this cocooned town. This is a physical wind that has come to visit, unusually, from the north, devouring the latent heat in this sunbaked town.

The wind changes the energy in the town. Gone is the comfortable feeling of indolence and pastoral passivity. In its place is a tremulous strength that shakes the fronds of the palm trees as if they were cheerleaders’ pompoms, scoops up handfuls of dust to cavort with in a frenzied dance, and drills the fluttering prayer flags to full attention.

I feel more in touch, more connected to the world when such a wind arrives. The soundscape changes, like ripping open the constrained tent of day-to-day noises to reveal an open universe that existed before, but was hidden from view. Restrained bass rumblings improvise with treble rustling of leaves, counterpointed by the random windchime song of a lonely bird perched firmly on the moving branches, feathers ruffling as it is stroked by this visitor. It is the sound of raw nature, uncorrupted by human contact.

And perhaps the reason that it calls to me so much is that it resonates with the sounds within me; the sounds that you can hear inside if you are quiet and listen very carefully. The sound, perhaps, of life itself, and the energy within and around us.

The Good Ship “Todos Santos”

2009-02-08T07:36:00.000-08:00

Todos Santos is a very small town. Maybe not as small as the cruise ship passengers think, after being disgorged from their sleek buses at the Hotel California for the allowed 2 hours for lunch and a stroll of the settlement, but still a small town in every aspect.

We have a mere handful or so of dine-out restaurants (even less if you have not qualified for a TARP bailout package), 2 coffee shops, 1 bookstore, 1 theatre (usually closed except for specially authorized “Mexican” productions), no cinema, no nightclub, no department stores, no malls (unless you are desperately seeking trinkets), a couple of yoga classes and 1 spiritual teacher. While, in season, there is a constant trickle of entertainment, the calendar is thin enough that the events don’t overlap. In fact, you can perhaps liken Todos Santos to a stationary cruise ship, parked in the constant sunshine for the winter cruise, taking on passengers for short or long stays, and then operated by a skeleton crew in the tiresome summer.

So what does this mean for life on The Good Ship “Todos Santos”? As for cruises in general, some people can’t stand the thought of the boredom implicit in the finite universe of a ship, and wouldn’t go near the place. The 2 hour tour is more than enough for them. For those that do stay, the bounded nature of the town has a subtle but pervasive impact on life, which was brought home to me by two passengers who disembarked last year and noticed the dislocating change of infinite choices when living in their version of “the real world”. A paucity of choices – often being reduced to the binary “do I go or not?” –provides an artificial cocoon of safety and predictability to counter the noisy babble of debate and decisions needed in the real world. A cocoon that is even more sought after by many in this time of general economic hardship.

Days become clearly labelled with the “events of the day” – Sunday Dharma , Monday Yoga , Tuesday Zumba and Ecocafe, etc. Dining out choices (if you, as some do, eat out most days) may be refined to the simplicity of “not where we ate last night” or even “not what I ate last night”. Or you may just decide to cement the safety bubble by becoming a virtual hermit, selecting “none of the above”.

On reflection, maybe a less kind metaphor for Todos Santos then is that of a well-meaning institution, where the inmates are kept from harm by a strict and prescribed regimen of routine and managed choices. An institution, of course, managed by the inmates who have committed themselves to this place.

Taking away the froth of decision making in normal life should free up time and energy for introspection, to delve inside, to better ground yourself in the world. Or at least that is what I would expect. Does it happen? You probably wouldn’t be reading this if there weren’t some small windows opened up by the constrictions of Todos Santos. What I find most surprising, though, is the ingenuity of we inmates / cruisers to re-engineer our lives to restore us to insanity.

For every moment spent in quiet reflection, there is gossip (or to be culturally sensitive, “chisme”) to be devoured, fertilized and sent on its way, house projects to be obsessed over, good works to benefit furry animals to be planned, games to be played. Even blogs to be written, for those technically inclined. Anything, in fact, to fill the time, to make us busy and avoid the simplicity that, at least partly, drove us here.

Storms in a teacup, and birds of a feather flocking together

2009-02-01T07:25:00.000-08:00

Several years ago, when I was dreaming wistfully of relocating from Calgary to someplace quieter, I came across a treatise on the impact of settlement size on social interactions outside the family. At one end of the scale, it pointed out that life in a populous city can, paradoxically, be very isolating, enabling a person to live their lives anonymously without much interaction at all. At the opposite end, living in spatial isolation in “the outback” also, naturally, involves little interaction. In between, as the size of the settlement shrinks, the degree of necessary interaction increases until, at some level, the community size reaches a tipping point and interaction quickly drops – perhaps for self-preservation, to avoid individual absorption into “the collective”.

I suspect that the core Gringo settlement of Todos Santos is around the critical size where the degree of expected social interaction is maximized. Add to this potent stew of interactions a paucity of tasks to occupy the mind, tropical heat, and a collection of alpha personalities not seen in many places, and it becomes easy to see why social anthropologists could have a field day here.

One observable effect of this bubble community is how minute perturbations in the smooth flow of social interactions – mere trifles measured on any rational scale – become magnified. Slights to individuals ricochet off the hard surfaces of our gringo enclosure, germinate in the tropical heat, take root and, nourished by gossip successively enhanced in each telling, grow into full seven course gourmet dinners featuring spleen sautéed in bile. Parties become polarized into polar opposites, flashing sparks at each other when they meet (as inevitably happens frequently), all the while attempting to conceal the generated bad energy under a translucent mantle of projected good humour and politeness.

Of course, rationally, this is all pretty silly. While I am here, though, I find myself being sucked into the vortex, spinning storms in a teacup and playing the game while at the same time laughing at my stupidity and gullibility. The observer effect visible in real life; the observer is impacted by, and influences the very phenomenon he is trying to observe. Once removed from this location on the Tropic of Cancer – how appropriate in this emotional sense – the fog of silliness lifts, and I wonder just how I could get so caught up in the process. But for those who remain in Todos Santos fulltime, there is no escape from the laboratory. Grudges, generated by emotional storms, can become ossified, becoming, for them, reality; an armour that is put on by rote each day.

Effects are observable at the other end of the emotional spectrum. Magnetised, perhaps, by the electricity flowing in the emotionally charged atmosphere, some people gravitate into happy “flocks” of like-minded souls.

You can observe these flocks moving through life in Todos Santos and the surrounds as a moving cloud of people, sometimes with a clear leader attended by acolytes, sometimes just as an amorphous mass, always together. Such groups act as a mini universe for the inhabitants, self-sufficient and self-sustaining. Within the group, all is peace and light, a place of haven. Outside the group, people either don’t exist or are seen as diminished, less worthy beings.

The closest parallel I can think of for these Todos Santos flocks is perhaps cliques at high school – or teenage “gangs”. In fact, both examples of behaviour I have described are more often associated with hormonally-induced teenage angst, and associated lack of self confidence, than one might expect here given the “mature” adulthood of those people populating this town. Maybe it is that the hormonal imbalances of menopause and andropause that most of us suffer from evoke a reflection of our earlier lives, and cause us to act like “middle-aged teenagers” as a friend expressed (albeit in a different context!)?

A panoply of friends?

2009-01-24T07:48:00.000-08:00

Despite the general richness of the English language, there seems to be a paucity of terms to cover the enormous field of relationships that we simply call “friends”. At a minimal end of the spectrum, we have the term “acquaintance”. More often than not, we just categorise “friends” with adjectives to indicate the degree of closeness – “good friend”, “close friend”, “BFF” (for those instant messaging-challenged readers, “best friend forever”). Beyond “friend”, the different words that are available are often tinged with sexual overtones - for example “mate, “companion”.

Perhaps this limited vocabulary, and the lack of precision with which it is used, hinders us in understanding what, if I may put it in crass business terms, the rights and obligations are of the parties engaged in the friendship should be and even what “cloud of friends” (just what is the collective noun for the varied set of relationships we call friends?) you have or need in your life.

I’ve been led to think about what friendship means through a hectic period of socialising at many levels of intensity in Todos Santos, and by a passing comment from someone that the nature of their friendships seemed different here to those in their home town. She remarked that many of her friendships in Todos Santos were superficially close, involving much discourse and hugging, but that the true lives and makeup of these people were, in fact, unknown to her.

In Todos Santos, the most frequently encountered “friend” (Amicus Familiaris Todos Santos) is indeed akin to that encountered in a work environment or, more precisely, a project colleague. You are both here for a limited duration, brought together for disparate reasons and having little in common other than this co-location, and you spend a lot of waking time together. Your joint project is … the TS season, which you work on together tirelessly. What drives you internally is not for discussion; it’s protocol that you show only one facet of yourself to others. And the pressure of the project causes a temporary sense of intimacy and bonding.

Back in Comox, we are the exceptions in being seasonal, rather than full-time residents, and so the fauna of friends is different. The friend species that we encounter most is the newly arrived retiree (Amicus Familiaris NovoComox), who bears a close similarity to a type encountered in childhood – the “playdate”. Coming together for the purpose solely of enjoying group play activities (biking, hiking, kayaking, …), little is shared beyond this bubble.

Though I may be poking fun at these strange interactions that get labelled “friendship”, such relationships do play a vital part in participating in life in the different communities. But, just as a life eating only chocolate may appear delicious at first, yet is hardly a recipe for healthy longevity, so do we all need a varied cloud of relationships to protect us and allow us to function and flourish – in my terms, perhaps, a “panoply” of friends.

As I have tried to understand what I want and need, and the reasons for subtle dissatisfaction, it has occurred to me that the field of relationships that one might call “friendship” has many independent dimensions. While the nature of the relationship will be wildly different along each dimension, it is not true that there is a “correct” point on the scale. Each may play a valuable role in your life – if you understand what you have, and don’t expect it to meet a different need. Consider, perhaps, as a starting point, the following sample of possible orthogonal dimensions of (asexual) friendship:

1. Intimacy (in the sense of the extent to which secret and difficult parts of your life are shared): it’s a vital relief valve; a means of checking your own perceptions. But I tire even at the thought of maintaining many such intense relationships. Sometimes life should just be FUN!

2. Reciprocity: strange though it perhaps seems at first, there is not always a need for complete reciprocity in actions and intents between the parties in a successful relationship. Our needs may be quite different, yet be satisfied by the prescribed dimensions of the relationship.

3. History: long lasting friendships provide glue, a rooting of your life. Losing contact as we moved from Calgary to Comox and began our peripatetic lives has been traumatic. But people change over time and some needs become no longer relevant. And there is wonder and value in the injection of new people into our consciousness.

4. Commonality: living a life bereft of anything in common with the people with whom we interact would be very dislocating. Commonality allows a sense of safety; a forum to share views and work collaboratively. But living in a Stepford Wives commune would be stultifying. We all need to be reminded of different perspectives; to have a kick on the side of the head to make us grow.

Considering my cloud of relationships within such a framework has given me some matter to chew upon. But, least you be tempted to imagine that I have become, of all things, deeply analytical in my dotage, I have to admit that I am often most fascinated by the ambiguity that exists in relationships. The shifting inconsistencies and unknowns that define us as humans are often the magic that draws and intrigues me.

It's a grey day

2009-01-19T06:44:00.001-08:00

One of the reasons I, and many others, spend their winters in the Baja is the seeming impossibility of endless days of naked sun pouring down from transparent skies. In my particular case I have found that I am extraordinarily susceptible to the influence of the weather and so desperately crave this winter dream. As the sky clears, so, generally, do my spirits. When, as is inevitable, the blue perfection of Baja skies are marred by the intrusion of clouds trumpeting the passing of a winter “Pineapple Express”, the closing of the heavens reflects my darker thoughts.

The closing of the heavens

On this incongruously named Sunday
A heaviness of grey permeates the town
Sucks familiar colour from the world

This is not the coquettish grey of springtime mist
Heat buried in refreshing damp coolness
Ready to reveal all when shamelessly seduced by the sun

No, this is the winter grey of ennui
Begat from surfeits of necessary losses
From watching the watcher in the mirror grow older
In a shrinking universe of possibilities

A grey that washes away the glittery brilliance
That often blinds our senses
To reveal the wounded flaws in all the structures of our life
The cracks in our buildings, untended relationships

The grey we try to push away
To revel in the affirmation of sunshine
Only for it to return, fortified

The wise grey bird sits patiently
Silhouetted against the grey sky
On the stilled dead branches of the grey tree
As it has always done
Graciously immune to vagaries of the weather.

Full Moon Drumming

2009-01-14T07:29:00.000-08:00

We could see that we were uncharacteristically late as we joggled slowly in our car along the Otro Lado dirt road. The sun was saying its last goodbyes as it prepared to drown in the sea. A vivid glow from wounded clouds that had sprung up in the late afternoon now ebbed toward shades of cooling blood. As we dropped off the spine of the ridge, we saw and heard our destination: a circle of people gathered around a flickering bonfire on the beach, and the attenuated bass notes of drumming.

Full Moon drumming is a secret Todos Santos tradition. It’s not that it is deliberately kept secret. Indeed it has now reached the elevated state of being noted in the Baja Western Onion, the biweekly newsletter that Todos Santaneans regard as the Oracle for all that’s happening in the area. No, it’s that, even in this liberated town, drumming is looked upon by some as akin to a demonic act, probably performed by wart-encrusted spinsters and fallen monks dressed in black, and possibly involving the sacrifice of small furry animals. Mention that you participate in Full Moon Drumming circles in other places in Southern Baja and you are even less likely to be taken seriously. “You do what?!” followed by guffaws of laughter, and a quick change of subject. Occasionally, you will get the wistful apology “I wish I could do that”, as if it were some deliciously dirty sin that they cannot participate in through a lack of bravery or strict moral or civil laws.

Despite these reactions, every full moon, a fluid group that ranges in size from a dozen to maybe 30 or so gathers at sunset on the beach at the bocana to drum in the full moon around a bonfire. There are a variety of drums; mostly African djembes, but also conga and even steel drums, accompanied by an eclectic set of other percussion instruments such as shakers, tambourines and even water garafons. Few are expert drummers; some just come to hear and maybe keep a beat when the mood strikes. And there is no leader. The rythyms start spontaneously and evolve, ending when the group senses it has lived its life. It may be a secret tradition, but it is one of the most magical ones in our little “Pueblo Magico”.

We unpack the car in the deepening gloom, and walk across the sand to the group, the sounds growing and becoming more distinct with each step. As we take our seats in the circle, the clouds thin, and the moon emerges. We take in the dull afterglow of the sun’s demise persisting over the water, the full moon now resplendent over the Sierra Lagunas, and the heat of the fire replacing the searing of the day. The threatened strong winds hold in abeyance at the sun’s funeral, and the world seems at peace.

As the moon burns away the final wisps of shrouding cloud, it is as if the landscape is illuminated by a faint, chromatically challenged street light. All is visible dully, painted in shades of grey; the world of colour contracted to a small sphere around the alternate sun of ravenous fire.

A rhythm starts and, at first, I panic, unable to recall how to drum, how to make my tuneless hands and fingers coax patterns from the inert goatskin. And then I relax out of my critical mind into awareness of the other drums, and I am in the groove, laying a base line and then soaring in ad hoc syncopated beats before I subside back to the core. Playing, and hearing something greater than the sum of the individual drum patterns.

Ghosts slide along the shoreline, then break into a march to the beat of our drums. Drawn by the hypnotic beat and the warmth of the fire, the ghosts draw closer, evolve into women and girls, and start to dance spontaneously to our sound. Exhausted and giggling, they draw back into the greyness and disappear into the distance.

As the improvisation dies, friends chatter amongst themselves. An ember is pulled from the fire, drawing laser red lines in the air, followed by the familiar sweet aroma drifting across the group.

Later, the wind appears, rolling off the land toward the sea. The group disperses, little by little, in the wind, leaving nothing but ashes that the tide will erase, and memories of magic that will last for ever.

Busy doing nothing?

2009-01-06T05:46:00.000-08:00

Recently, I asked a fulltime resident how they managed to fill their days, especially in the off-season, when the town empties substantially. Her reply was that she had had to cut back on participating in things as she felt she didn’t have enough time. My initial reaction of incredulity evaporated as I recalled my own experiences.

I have found that there are several successive and distinct stages in the perception of time as you progress through a “season” in Todos Santos. Initially, time feels like a master against whom you fight, trying to cram all the myriad of activities necessary to breathe life back into the house and re-establish relationships that have been suspended over the summer. Life is a rush, a bustle of appointments jostling for space. It’s really an extension of normal life back in the North, or at least normal life for those who have careers to build or families to raise.

Usually, this phase ends in a few weeks, and I progress into the boredom stage – “so what do I do now?” There are no emergencies to address, no burning material needs to be met, and no links to be re-ignited. In fact, nothing that demands attention from the “doing” part of a person. This is the most difficult time for me; the time when I challenge why I come here repeatedly, try to think of projects (and then discard them as not being worthwhile), and generally drive Diane crazy. This year, the transition to this private wasteland took longer, probably because our arrival was punctuated with family emergencies and a trip to Guatemala. But I have been firmly entrenched in the treacly perception of time for a while now.

Eventually (and, unfortunately, even knowing that this will happen does not seem to belay the need to pass through the steps and worry at each that, this time, it won’t pass), the barren wasteland opens up, imperceptibly, to a state where time again becomes fluid. In this stage, though, time is not the master, but rather is somewhat incidental. I relax into the sustained pace of life in Todos Santos; find that the time passes almost imperceptibly and yet that isn’t a problem. And it is true that, after a while, it does appear that you need to cut back on outside activities because “there isn’t enough time”.

Since I am a transient resident, I never get beyond this stage. Before its time (or so it seems) the tyranny of the calendar intrudes and we must return North. The jolt of realization pulls me out of this dream state and back into a precursor of the frantic initial perception of time. I sometimes wonder what it would be like to remain in the protective bubble of Todos Santos. Whether there are states beyond that of doing little for a while, but having time independently running at fast forward speed?

The transitioning does give me the opportunity, and cause, to reflect on the appropriateness of my perceptions of time and the ways I spend my life. From the smug stance of the comfortably indolent stage, it is easy to see the insanity in the time-starved way we typically spend our days in North America. A life of constant activity, without time for reflection or steeped contact with friends. But equally, it is an experience of time that leads to achievements, to pushing oneself beyond levels of comfort. The quiet life of contemplation reveals a hidden side of yourself and others. But there is a fine line between contemplation leavened with gentle activity and sliding into facile laziness and rusting. Perhaps the transitioning I go through is, in fact, an ideal fertile environment?

The party’s over

2009-01-03T13:30:00.000-08:00

As the beginning of the New Year staggers to an end, so does the Great Party Season in Todos Santos. The time when we all put on our sparkly dresses (in my case, metaphorically) and head out to cavort with permutations of the same flock of people, who share being in the same place at the same time, but often little else.

I’m sure other places have a party season, but Gringolandia in Todos Santos must be able to claim the dubious honour of the crown; the latent intensity of such a bunch of off-centre people as are found in Todos Santos fertilized by the absence of a family environment for many residents, and, for others, by the influx of friends, relatives and hangers-on who, for some strange reason, consider that a party season in sunny warm climes beats suffering through another cold, dark, ice-encrusted family event up North.

When, partway through this Olympic season, I explained to a friend that I used to be a wallflower at parties, he looked at me in disbelief. Apparently, I have developed a reputation as becoming livelier when surrounded by people at a party. I had to explain that, lacking the essential training in party etiquette that we should all receive as part of growing up, my party skills are a learned behaviour, determined heuristically later in my adult life.

Parents are supposed to provide the first lessons in party behaviour. Mine were very self-contained, and socialising, let alone partying, was kept to a minimum. One Christmas, my parents, uncharacteristically, went to socialise with the neighbours in our duplex (whom I never met in the 12 years we lived side-by-side), leaving us children to fend for ourselves. No more than 30 minutes into their experiment, I tried an experiment of my own, consuming large quantities of peanuts and imbibing several glasses of Coca Cola. I can report that the results of my experiment were that I explosively decanted the mixture through my nose, causing my brother to have to run next door and retrieve my Parents , screaming “Vic’s being sick through his nose!” And so ended the socialising experiment, never to be repeated. For the sake of squeamish readers who may now think twice about inviting me into their homes, I can honestly say that I also have never repeated my experiment. Half-chewed peanuts and acidic Coca Cola are not meant to be expelled through delicate nasal passages.

University is where most people develop their graduate party skills. Regrettably, for me, University was socially more traumatising than educational. I had come from a working class background, only one step removed from “Downstairs” in the caste system of England. Indeed one grandmother had spent her life working as a cook “Downstairs” in the Country Houses of a succession of English Lords. I won a scholarship to Oxford, and suddenly found myself alone in a credible facsimile of “Brideshead Revisited”, populated by the “Upstairs” graduates of Eton, Charterhouse and other bastions of the English Public School system. For those unfamiliar with the term, English Public Schools are only public in the sense that entry is bought, though often also requiring the facilitative salve of being a scion of generations of alumni. Not surprisingly, my social encounters at Oxford were limited, never enjoying, for example, the experience of escorting debutantes to May Balls, nor attending grouse shooting events.

Highly educated, but totally naïve in the skills of partying, I entered adulthood and have had to divine the rules through empirical research. The recent season has highlighted a few of them:

1.You must be able to simultaneously balance and use a plate, a wine glass and a fork, and still be able to converse in a manner that appears, through an alcoholic haze, to be sentient. I have often thought that, if God had wanted us to be party animals, he would have left us with prehensile tails.

2. Interactions with any one person must be limited to no more than 10 minutes. Transgressions of this rule can lead to fertile and inventive rumours of the intent of the interaction, and social ostracism. Adherence to this rule is aided by two points
a. You are going to meet mostly the same people at every event over a short period of time, so you will eventually run out of things to discuss
b. Rule 3 below

3. You must, at all costs, keep conversations at an appropriately frothy “party” level. Topics of substance, or likely to require the other party to think or feel, are to be avoided. And similarly, all responses must also be packaged for party consumption: “party answers” as a friend put it. Responses sufficiently tasteful, simple and glittery to satisfy the equally polite enquirer, but revealing little beneath the shiny exterior.

You could be forgiven for thinking that I am a party pooper. That, having come to them only as an adult, I hate parties. But such thoughts would be untrue. I am energised by parties, at least when the novelty remains. I enjoy the thrill of the game, for a game they are. However, just as a diet of party appetizers would fail to nourish, so the thin gruel of party interactions and conversations palls after time.

So, though it was fun while it lasted, I am not sorry to see the Great Party Season end. I long for the opportunity to let the party answers marinate in the complexities of developing friendships, to see the glittery shell dissolve, the fibrous protective sheaves below the shell slowly part and allow, eventually, the delicate naked humanness within to be revealed.

Finding what you don’t seek

2008-12-28T08:14:00.000-08:00

A few years ago, while we were filling in our swimming pool (and that’s another story!), we dispossessed a small iguana, who had, unbeknownst to us, made his home in the interstice between two sheets of roofing material sheltering the pool equipment. I am not sure who was more surprised, the interloper or the tenant, as the iguana launched himself into the air and disappeared into the garden.

He relocated to a much quieter neighbourhood; a pile of unused rocks against the wall in our backyard. Whenever the sun fell on the rockpile, our iguana would sun himself, quickly hiding at any hint of danger. When your house has been destroyed in a flash by two alien monsters, it’s not hard to see why you would become a little jittery.

Each year, I seek out our iguana to see how he is doing. But this year, he was nowhere to be seen. I tried creeping up silently on his home, tried waiting patiently for him to appear, but failed to catch a glimpse of the errant lizard. I gave up hope of finding him again. I thought that, maybe, just like other Baja residents, “The Great Hot Summer of 2008” had caused him to pack his bags.

Yesterday, I was walking through the garden, enjoying the smells of a multitude of different flowers carried on the crisp breeze and the feel of the sun on my skin. I was completely immersed in the experience. As I moved toward the edge of the garden, I turned round and, out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of my Iguana, majestically preening himself in the sun. I had only found him when I was not consciously looking for him.

I have always found it interesting that various parts of the human eye behave in different but complementary manners. The center of your field of vision allows you to examine items in detail, but requires high light levels to operate. In dim lighting, the center of the eye sees little. Peripheral vision, on the other hand, allows for little detail, but operates well in minimal illumination. When you are walking through a dark place, rather than looking straight ahead, you can see better if you navigate using the vague impressions caught at the edge of your vision. I liken central vision to intellectual analysis of a situation, while peripheral vision is more akin to reliance on feelings and perceptions.

Such thoughts led me to a broader context for my encounter with the Iguana. I, like many others down here in this quiet, tumultuous town, am searching desperately for a path to meaning, for some direction to follow. Despite much soul-searching and concentrated analysis, I have yet to find an answer. Maybe I would be better off stopping looking for the answer, just as I gave up looking for the Iguana, and, one day, it may appear?

Lessons in Transience

2008-12-23T05:04:00.000-08:00

If there is one thing at which Todos Santos excels, it is in teaching you about the transience of all things. Overlaid on the seasonal ebb and flow of part-time residents is a surface patter of splashy arrivals and departures of vacationers and day-trippers. And below this surface noise, Todos Santos will still remind you that nothing is forever. Stable relationships dissolve into shattered angry pieces. Long term residents who form the bedrock of the community move on, to other places or from this world forever.

It’s hard not to get disturbed by this churning, to realize that there is nothing to which you can anchor, even as you accept its inevitability and the new opportunities that change can bring.

When I am in danger of being overwhelmed, I find that the ocean can sometimes bring a sense of integration and peace.

Constant liquidity

A draftsman’s horizon demarks perfectly
and constantly
the break between distant desaturated sky
and inky concentrated water

The naked beach is still here
as it was days, years before
Before I came here

All serve to lull the innocent observer
Into dreams of mathematical precision and certainty

But look closer
The placid sea erupts in a tempest of fleeing fish
and is still again
as if they never were
And the sand that I sit on
Is not the sand that was here yesterday

And yet, somehow
With the tuneless whistle of the afternoon breeze
caressing my ears
Somehow, for a brief while
The incongruities resolve mindlessly
And a flicker of peace crosses my consciousness.

Travelling Engagement

2008-12-22T06:55:00.000-08:00

In our recent travels, we’ve encountered many young people. Indeed, Antigua seems to be the portal of choice for Europeans and Israelis on the Great Central / South American tour. We met a number whose enthusiasm, commitment to immersing themselves in the culture and sheer adventurousness drew me like a magnet. For them, everything was new, an adventure, full of promise. They were open to any opportunity and feared nothing (probably due to lack of experience, coupled with an age-appropriate denial of their own mortality). Their energy was like a refreshing shower, and I was highly envious. My envy was no doubt exacerbated by my own history – accelerating through school to go straight to Oxford as an immature student, and then headlong into work just after my 21st birthday. I never took time out to grow, partly because it wasn’t thought of in the circles in which my family moved, but also because I saw it then as a waste of time when there was apparently so much more to do in the formal, serious world.

Given my time over again, I like to think that I would be amongst the throngs of such young adventurous and curious travellers, and sometimes I pine for the lost opportunity.

It was therefore somewhat a surprise to me when a young German lady told us that, though she was off on a fascinating adventure through colonial towns in Mexico, she was concerned over the cost and the consequent limitations of her trip, being a student, and she indicated that we, being older, were in many ways more fortunate.

There are, of course, some benefits to adventuring when you are older. You have accumulated a greater context with which to view the way other people live their lives. You can appreciate more the luxury of time to take it in, as compared to simply taking such opportunities for granted. You may have some more money (but, just as likely, you are far more concerned about losing it). On the flip side, though, having context also means that not everything is a brand-new and life- jolting experience, you are very aware of your mortality and you pay dearly for health insurance. Your tolerance of spartan accommodations may also not be as accommodating as that of a young adult. But most galling, for me, is that you don’t feel you have the youthful luxury of an open-ended fertile time of infinite possibilities waiting for you at the end of your travels in which you can grow and harvest the seed germs you collected in your travels. The end of your journey on Earth is visible, brought into high relief by the passing of parents and friends.

Maybe, though, on reflection, the real issue in benefiting from travel is not your age, but the mindfulness with which you travel. We encountered plenty of young travellers who were travelling with minds wide shut, only marginally engaged in the experience of which they could be part. Guatemala, Honduras, San Salvador, Mexico – it really didn’t matter. They were on a time out, and pleasure was their guiding principle. Families jet down to all-inclusive resorts in exotic locations just to chill out in sunshine and never see the country in which their pleasure palace is located. And at the other end of the spectrum, older people can cruise to many different countries and return with nothing more substantive than a few extra pounds and a collection of photographs to prove they were there in body, if not in mind.

I think that travel only broadens the mind if you let it, if you are observant and mindful of the differences and reflect on what that means to your life. You don’t need to travel endlessly to enjoy that dislocation. For us, the deep and colourful divergences in culture between North America and Todos Santos, and the more subtle grey shadings between Comox and life in the bustling city of Calgary, provide rich sustenance for reflection.

Living under the volcano

2008-12-16T09:19:00.000-08:00

For most of the time we were in Guatemala, we stayed in Antigua, a photogenic and very small colonial city which contains the highest density of old churches, monasteries and nunneries that I have seen in my travels. Antigua is dominated by two large volcanoes, one active (“Fire”), and the other inactive (“Water”), to the extent that it is quite hard to take a photo without capturing one or other looming above the foreground.

Antigua was the third attempt at a capital city for Guatemala. The second, a few kilometres away and closer to the Water volcano, was wiped out when the crater cracked and created a huge mudslide, just a few years after the city had been founded.

Indeed, it is hard to understand the logic in building and living in such an unstable place, where, even recently, there have been major earthquakes and other seismic activity. Today, life and commerce just roll on to the accompaniment of random puffs of smoke and fire from the Fire volcano. Perhaps because the volcanoes have been there for so long, people just accept them, though many locals still carry scars inside from personal losses in the devastating 1976 earthquake and are aware, at a deeper level, of the precariousness of their existence.

So why has Antigua been a locus for people? Part of it is probably the flip side of the danger, in the incredible fertility of the volcanic soil. With great risk comes the possibility of great reward. Add to this the wonderful ability of the human mind to discount older experience and bathe in the light of the moment, and it becomes easier to see the pressures that lead to this abstractly illogical place.

Although I revelled in the spectacular vistas that the volcanoes created, I found the omnipresent dark backdrop somewhat foreboding, for reasons that, at first, I couldn’t quite grasp. And then it hit me. Over the last year we’ve all come to see that we have all been living in the shadow of a fulminating volcano, which is finally beginning to erupt. A volcano built on years of rampant and unbridled capitalism, fed by greed and ineptness. We’ve all built our houses at the foot of this abomination, enjoying some of the rich fruits that come from fertile soils and, for many years, we’ve gone about our lives barely conscious of the structure that towers over all of us and has become much larger than any human can comprehend.

Now that the first eruptions have occurred, it is as if the clouds around the summit have cleared and we can all see this monster for the first time. And, to one degree or another, we all cower paralysed in the anticipation of what happens next. The devastation will take apparently random paths, just as in the tragedy that obliterated much of Ciudad Viejo, but spared houses just a kilometre away. In Comox, the significant population of Air force workers and retirees may see their lives continue as before. Locals who drifted into construction because it was the only place to make decent money are already finding that the hot spring of opportunity has dried up, just as the mineral springs in towns around Antigua dried up in the last major earthquake. The long shadow of the volcano has already stretched its probing tentacles to sleepy and sunny Todos Santos. There are fewer tourists, and certainly less people who want to spend serious money. I am sure, whatever path the lava takes, the blight of stalls all selling the same genuine Mexican “made in Indonesia” serapes will continue, much as, even after a nuclear blast, cockroaches will thrive. But the more innovative businesses, already feeling the pinch of increased rents due to landlords’ naïve belief in extrapolation of the past, may not survive the onslaught of this unnatural disaster.

Speaking in tongues

2008-12-15T16:35:00.000-08:00

We’ve just returned from a trip to Guatemala where we attended an immersion Spanish language school for two weeks. For the first week we lived with a Guatemalan family to enhance our learning and get to understand the culture a little more.

My Spanish language skills have certainly improved. The most interesting part of the trip for me, however, was experiencing what happens when you are required to communicate in a foreign language. At first, you can only catch snippets of others conversations, and can’t join in. As you improve, you can converse simplistically and communicate enough to function in life. However, I and my fellow international students never got past the point where we conversed about anything but stories, requests, likes and dislikes. Our interactions with each other and with locals never got beneath surface exchanges of practical information. I found this to be excruciatingly frustrating.

There is one obvious reason for the monomolecular depth of our interactions. We simply didn’t have the vocabulary, or the practised command of the language, to make ourselves understood. But on reflection, deeper than that, I think, lies the issue of cultural differences. To be able to communicate fully around foundational beliefs and feelings I think you need some form of “cultural resonance”. Far greater than the language gap, the cultural dissonances between Mexico / Guatemala and the societies with which we are familiar limit the extent to which we can truly understand each other.

The use of the Spanish language in both Mexico and Guatemala hints at the culture gap. Both countries use subjunctive tenses pervasively to infer uncertainty about future outcomes, to be less direct about requests of others, to allow that you yourself may not have full knowledge and to avoid, at all costs, having others lose face. Perhaps this (and the easily observed reluctance to ever say "no" to your requests, even if they have no intention of taking action) comes from a history of oppression. Whatever its source, the cultural attitude permeates society. In England, the use of subjunctive is almost dead, and in North America, the “no holds barred” approach to business hardly allows for the existence of such a form of language.

So there were specific reasons for the challenges in communication in Guatemala. My frustration with the narrative flavour of my interactions was, I suspect, however, magnified by echoes of some challenges when interacting with English-speaking people in both Todos Santos and Comox. In these cases, the lack of depth of interactions can hardly be blamed on linguistic dexterity. Leaving aside those cases where we simply don’t like each other, I am led to ponder whether more subtle cultural disparities are often at play. We have found it strange that we often seem to “click” more easily with Canadians in Todos Santos than with some others. Although Canadians and Americans share the same continent (and are immersed in the same onslaught of media), the longer we spend together, the more fundamental the differences in general belief systems appear to us. As a simple example, Canadians may complain about taxes, but most of us do expect to be taxed in order that at least some of the inequities in society can be addressed. We have been surprised to see that many American friends, though delightful people and models of integrity, compassion and charity in their personal lives, see nothing wrong in evading taxes. Such core differences in beliefs can make it difficult to communicate heart to heart.

And why would I have problems in Comox? After all, there are few “foreigners” in Comox, so surely we have a common cultural base? Of course, part of the issue is that my expectations are often unreasonable. Some people just don’t like to open up quickly to others, while I demand instant connections. In other cases, though, I wonder if it is still cultural differences that are pulling the strings. We moved to Comox from Calgary, Alberta, a hotbed of belief in personal initiative and in the ability for anyone to do anything, given an idea and commitment. British Columbia has a long history of belief in benevolent government and organizations to protect people against the (admittedly real) ravages of rampant capitalism. Such core attitudes do not always mix well and allow effective sharing of feelings!

All this would suggest that the safe approach to life is to surround yourself with locally-bred clones. That may be safe, but it isn’t life. Exposing yourself to different world beliefs and different people may be uncomfortable, but it forces you to challenge your own beliefs, to think about who you are, and therefore to grow. But I suspect that I may still be left with an unresolved thirst for connection.

The changing of the palette

2008-11-17T21:38:00.000-08:00

I have been waking up much too early recently, before the light seeps into the sky. The arrival of the day heralds a remarkable and ephemeral series of changes in the colours of Todos Santos

Colour Shift

The dew-laden earth breathes subtle cool airs

Fragrant with possibilities

As black turns to diluted grey

Tentative whispers of the pre-dawn town are amplified
I lie in bed, watching colour leach infinitesimally into the sky

Now a deathly grey blue that has no name
Infinite and empty

Save for projected motes floating in my eyes
As the sun leaps over the Sierra de la Lagunas

The emptiness is pierced

By a myriad of fluttering birds

All unique, yet the same in the gilding of the freshly minted light

That now ignites the ochre courtyard walls

In searing contrast to the still cool sky
It’s over in a few minutes

The sun in clear control of the sky

Shocking it into the accustomed piercing blue

Birds regain their rightful plumage

And Todos Santos assumes its daytime palette.

“Oh I do like to be beside the seaside…”

2008-11-17T07:10:00.000-08:00

In resonance with the words of the old British song, I have always been drawn towards the waters edge. There is something about the union of seawater and land that attracts me time and again.

There are indeed some obvious and probably universally relevant reasons why the seaside is so seductive. The sensuous sounds of the water lapping the sand, the constant hypnotic motion of the water, the cool contrast of the liquid with hard, hot land all mesmerise and attract magnetically. Presumably, the universal appeal of seaside is the cause of the huge premium that “seaview” adds to real estate.

Recently, however, I have thought more about the deep attraction that the seaside has for me, and my perceptions have evolved. This week I was standing on the ridge above the close-knit hamlet of Las Tunas, on the north side of Todos Santos. I relaxed in the cool breezes that the ridge attracts, and enjoyed the familiar panoramic vista of the azure ocean. This time, though, an element of boredom crept into my consciousness. There was nothing beyond the strip of blue, no distant shore, no boats, no clouds, nothing to provide context and variety. Rationally comparing the engaging quality of the water view to that from our place in Comox, there really is no contest. In Comox, the constantly changing water colour and wave motion is complemented by a backdrop of coastal mountains, capped for much of the year by a frosting of snow that peeks in and out from a corona of fluffy clouds. As the seasons change, so does the variety of seabirds that forage and take shelter in and around the lee of the peninsular. Ferries meander back and forth, intersecting with pleasure boats, and at night sparkling fairytale cruise ships pass by on their way to and from Alaska.

This time, instead of the ocean, my attention was drawn to the opposite direction, a vista over cardon cactus forests towards the magnificent Sierra Laguna range. A view that I previously saw as pretty, but paling into insignificance with the ocean view, even though I knew that the colours changed magically throughout the day and through moonlit nights. This time I saw the magic, and realized that, unconventionally, a house built there should be oriented to take advantage of that panorama.

So why the change in perception? Thinking back to my childhood, “the seaside” was where we, as a typical English family, always went for our vacations. The seaside, for me, is synonymous with escaping from day-to-day life; being part of a family together and at ease, enjoying rare treats. It represents a frozen, intense and pleasurable set of memories.

When I lifted that filter, some of that magical attraction evaporated. I still find the sea draws me, and I enjoy the experience of raw energy and elemental interaction of water and sand, the susurration of the surf, and the cooling breezes. But the intensity of feeling is diminished and my ability to lose myself in the feelings evoked by the experience, rather than perhaps the moment itself, has gone. While, intellectually, I see the value in seeing things as they really are, the loss of the magic, just like finding out that Father Christmas doesn’t exist, in some way diminishes life.

Perhaps, sometimes, reality is overrated?

Plasticity

2008-11-11T15:10:00.000-08:00

We arrived back in Todos Santos a week ago, after a long and relatively uneventful journey. What was once an adventure, full of anticipation of new flavours, sights and smells, has mutated into a mundane and tiring commute. We disgorged ourselves from the vehicle into the onslaught of the final gasps of summer: oppressive heat (magnified by our tightly sealed concrete house), humidity that caused our eyes to smart from ceaseless streams of sweat, and no breath of wind.

Our arrival appeared to drive out the soporific demons of summer who had well overstayed their welcome, for the following morning there was a perceptible reduction in humidity and the air smelled clean and fresh. So we began the slow and labour-intensive process of rousing the house from its summer hibernation; a process that absorbs all concentration and provides an antidote to days of sitting in the same position in the vehicle.

As I cleaned the accumulated dust, leaves and algae from the summer rains out of the fountain, I noticed that the plastic parts of the relatively new pump has disintegrated, crumbling and cracking in my hands as though attacked by the Andromeda virus. In fact, looking at my outdoor work shoes, I noticed that their plastic parts were also disintegrating prematurely. Restoring the fountain to operation required some ingenuity, but the transformation of flexible functionality into aged decrepitude made me ponder the effects of Baja, as compared to those of Vancouver Island, on both things and people.

Baja is not a gentle place. Yes, the winter sunshine and the seashore are seductive, conjuring up images of never ending margaritas, relaxing on a lounge chair, with no worries in life. Reality is a little different. The overall climate is brash, and takes its toll on both things and people. While my little pump might still be enjoying the mild dampness and gentle light of Comox, the heat and UV here conspired to strip the parts of their plasticizers, leaving the core molecules exposed and subject to decay. Veterans of Baja frequently appear, to put it in polite terms, to be well-weathered by the sun, and few have a complexion that is comparable to the gold standard of an “English Rose”.

The climate, though, is only the visible part of the brashness of the place. As has been pointed out by many, when you come here for more than a holiday visit, you will, at some point, be confronted by yourself, in all your flawed purity. The relative isolation that ex -pats live in, surrounded by a culture that is, strangely enough, “foreign”, the lack of traditional diversions like shopping and sports, and the splintered micro communities combine to cause a space in which there is nothing but yourself. It may happen quickly, or it may be delayed by projects such as building the “dream home” or immersion in sybaritic pleasure, but it will come. And the reaction to this human equivalent of extreme UV immersion is where plasticity is tested.

Some become brittle, needing to protect themselves from themselves by immersion in good deeds or their drug of choice. Some run, blaming everything but themselves for the failure to thrive. And some manage to flex, remain plastic, and evolve to a different understanding of themselves.

On our way down this year, we met some of the casualties of such engagement; long-term Baja residents who had finally been broken by the demands and isolation of the last summer, and were returning to more temperate climes and culture.

Vancouver Island, by contrast, is a much more civilised environment; a place where the greatest challenge may be dealing with days of grey dampness, and where it is much easier to slide into rusting through your life and never waking up. A safe place where timidity is ok – no, probably lauded. Where damp lubrication substitutes for plasticity, and where our home comes to life effortlessly after winter hibernation . It does have its own window into your soul, but it politely beckons, unlike the “in-your face” demands of Baja.

Time will tell whether we have the right stuff to make it in Todos Santos. We will, undoubtedly however, be different people as a result of the experience.

A Question of Balance

2008-06-21T08:09:00.000-07:00

As you drive along the island highway at this time of year, it’s difficult not to be transfixed by the contrasting bursts of soothing violet and brash yellows from the lupins and gorse that grow rampantly along the roadside. Gorse happens to be classified as a noxious weed, brought to the island by some enterprising individual and, finding it to its liking, spreading across all untended ground to the exclusion of other, less aggressive (and therefore much more Canadian) plants. Judging by its ease of propagation, and proximity to gorse, the wild lupin is also probably an unwanted guest.

Having critiqued their heritage, the combination of these two plants, collocated and flowering at the same time, adds a unique, dramatic and yet comfortable counterpoint to the muted greens and greys of the Vancouver Island landscape.

As I drove along, I realized that I had seen this colour combination before. Not in the wild, but in the colours we chose to paint the walls in our house in Mexico. This echo was not deliberate, for, at the time, we were living in Calgary where such flower combinations do not naturally exist. We chose pale shades of violet to provide a sense of calm and coolness in the main rooms, and its nemesis, bright, succulent yellow for liveliness and a balance in the kitchen and smaller places. Our choice was unconventional for typical “Ex Pat” homes in Mexico, but suited our style and moods. Was our choice perhaps a premonition of moving to the island?

On a broader note, the sight and the impact of the balanced opposites caused me to think of the need for balance. Either flower, on its own, could be overpowering or monotonous, in the same way that uniform application of such colours in a house would lose impact. The balancing of the opposites, being almost hard for the eye to hold in focus at the same time, is what gives each part its impact, and results in a feeling of completeness.

The same, I think, holds for life. Obsessive focus on one aspect of life can only lead to a diminution of the impact of that facet. Balancing activities that make completely different demands on aspects of ourselves allows us, in theory, to savour the taste of each better, and to enjoy a more fulfilling life.

The desire for balance, and to exercise parts of my brain that were atrophying in the slough of retirement, was part of what drove me to dip my toes back into the waters of consulting. The desire and the potential rewards were real. Practically, however, the balancing act is hard to pull off. Just as the different spectrum of colour in the flower combination causes the eye to struggle to keep both in focus, so does the clamouring pull of work suck you in stealthily and away from the unassuming quiet of contemplation. And suddenly, you are back at being a Worker rather than a person, with little energy, imagination or wonder left for the rest of life. Balance goes out the window, and you are no better adjusted and adapted than before.

The lesson for me is perhaps that, while desirable, achieving balance takes work and commitment. The universe (and my life in particular) seems entropic and unstable, so the seemingly effortless and calming vision of stable balance paradoxically requires continuous conscious action and discipline to maintain.

The Sounds of Silence

2008-05-22T19:45:00.000-07:00

Commuting between Calgary and Comox over the past few weeks, I’ve become acutely aware how elusive true silence has become. My sensitivities have been sharpened, no doubt, by the frenzied increase in construction activity around us as the builder gallops towards having the new condos next door ready for the summer migration of pasty Albertans to Vancouver Island (oil-revenue drenched Albertans being the salve for all economic ills and a new resource for BC to plunder).

Even when the construction stops, though, our rural outpost in Comox is not silent. Since we’re right on the water, the sounds of the ocean permeate our life. There’s the reassuring regularity of the stately arrival and departure of the Powell River ferry to mark the passing of the day. In an angry North West gale, waves thrash the shoreline mercilessly with sharp staccato beats. Even when it is completely calm, as it was for several days last week, wavelets lazily lick the shoreline with wet sloppy kisses, and the quiet is broken by the sound of loons calling mournfully, or seagulls routinely complaining. And, when the ferry is gone, and the birds have finally gone to sleep, under the quietness you will often still hear the dull bass drone of a distant tugboat wearily dragging its laden barge in the Straights.

Inside our home, with all the windows closed, there’s still no silence. The refrigerator purrs, thermostats and valves click on and off and there are gentle welcome whirring sounds as the hot water circulates in the heating system.

Calgary has its own unique sounds. Staying in the refined heights of the best and most refined subdivision in town, Mount Royal, I am now acutely aware of the susurration of traffic that continues all night in the surrounding city, and the intermittent, but strangely welcome interruption of whistling trains as they jostle their way through the city centre. The bird calls are different here from the seashore, but still luminous in their clarity, and able to evoke strong memories of my years in Calgary.

I’ve written before of the clamour of sounds in the centre of Todos Santos. Out on el Otro Lado, you will miss some of these human sounds of Mexico, but will have your ears pounded by the surf at times, and jarred by the continuous profitable sound of construction during the day.

There is one place, however, near Todos Santos, where I did experience moments of complete silence. In the Sierra Lagunas, when the wind died, and the birds rested, there was no sound but the buzz of internal life in my ears. It was, strangely, quite scary, perhaps because silence has become so rare, but also since it reminded me of how we are, in essence so very alone in this world. No matter how many activities we busy ourselves with, and how many people we surround ourselves with to submerge the emptiness, we are the sole quiet traveller in this journey of our life.

In Transition

2008-04-16T07:47:00.000-07:00

Regular readers of my blog will have noticed a hiatus in the postings. The last while has been consumed by the trauma of transitioning from Todos Santos to our summer home in Comox. Unlike many others, we drive back and forth between the two locations. This provides a fascinating period of adjustment from one environment to the next, instead of the rude shock of rapid plane travel.

Having said that, I am still adjusting to the nature of this very different place. So what have I noticed as immediate differences between the two locations?

The first difference that hit both of us on our return is the absence of dust. Polvo in Todos Santos is part of life. The fine-grained taupe dust is omnipresent. It comes from dirt streets, stirred into motion by the antics of macho drivers, or from the ubiquitous construction around town. It permeates every house, even when the windows are closed. You just get used to wiping down the kitchen counters several times a day, washing down leaves of plants, and watching the haze over the well-traveled streets in town. In Comox, it just isn’t there. When we arrived in our condo, it was as if we had just left. No thick residue to wipe away. It is only the absence of something that makes you realize how much it affected your day-to-day life.

Secondly, it’s interesting how different the experience of Spring is in the two locations. In Comox, Spring is a clarion call against the wastes of Winter. Trees burst into full blossom; daffodils and hyacinths blaze against the dull wet ground and scent the air. In the marshes, externally beautiful (but awful smelling – hence the term “skunk lily) yellow lilies emerge from the decomposed trash of last years vegetation. There is Spring in Todos Santos, but it is hidden. The desert is still waiting for water, but in the cultivated parts, if you look closely, you will see mango flowers drop and baby mangoes grow daily, and citrus trees sprout new growth. The effect is somewhat lost, though, in the year-round lushness.

Perhaps the most interesting difference that hits me, though, as I evolve internally into “Comox Vic”, is the quality of the light here, and the impact that has on how you view life. I’ve written several times about the intensity and clarity of the light in Todos Santos. The vividness of colours is as if you are viewing everything as an original Kodachrome transparency. While it is beautiful, it is also constant. The spotlight of the sun is on almost every day.

The light in Comox is much more subtle. Clouds come and go constantly, and the sun is gentler, casting a more liquid light on everything. We are fortunate to live in a condo a few feet from a steeply shelving beach with a breath-taking 180° view over the Straights, bounded on one side by Mount Washington and Campbell River, on the other by Powell River, and as a backdrop, the snow-capped mainland coastal mountains. In between there is sea, and a plethora of islands. As the clouds and showers move across the sea, I have been spellbound by the changes that appear in the view. The sun shines through gaps in the clouds to highlight a cliff here, an island there, and as it sets, the pink snowcap on a mountain. Details leap out at you in a way that you didn’t see before. You realize that, in normal life, it’s easy to just glide along and not pay real attention. So while less brash, colourful and dramatic than Todos Santos, the gentle light of Comox has its own wonders.

Floating away

2008-03-29T09:26:00.000-07:00

Earlier this month, I wrote about the change that was beginning in Todos Santos, as the transient population started to drift away to the North. At the time, I was writing about something conceptual; an intellectual understanding rather than an experienced feeling.

Now, as we enter the last few days, I have floated to the surface from my engagement with life in Todos Santos, and the experience is quite different. While I am still here in many ways, my mind is also in Comox, where I live for the “summer” months, and Calgary, where I will probably be working part-time, reprising my life as a business strategy consultant.

The experience of having my roots here pulled forcibly from the ground, ready for replanting elsewhere, is certainly dislocating. At one simple level, I see life here in a more detached manner. I am fully aware that the thoughts and issues that preoccupy much of my time here, and the general pace of life in Todos Santos, where taking a few days to paint a gate or to recoat the roof is no big deal, will all become dreamlike as I enter a different location. I’ll still be aware of the way of life here, but it will appear incongruous in my new location, and I will marvel that I could have got so immersed in such an environment.

There is something deeper, though, that nags at me. For “Todos Santos Vic” is quite different from “Comox Vic”, and especially “Calgary Vic”. If we were to meet, we might see some physical resemblance (depending on the quality of haircut I get in the different places!), but we would probably be disturbed at the differences in the way we think and act.

I was hit with this quite forcibly when I sat down to prepare a proposal for some potential work in Calgary. Not that long ago, I would have zipped this off with ease, cutting to the key issues almost unconsciously. This time, it was as if the neural networks involved in this process were silted up. It wasn’t that I had become stupid, nor that I had forgotten all my years of experience. The engine was running, but the wheels didn’t want to move.

It was at that point I realized how much immersion in this place can change you. Todos Santos is a place where no one really cares about your past. Moreover, it sets no expectations of what you should be when you are here (other than being a little offbeat, not quite a “vanilla” person). Other places around here have, to my view, clearer expectations. Cabo expects you to party, or just make lots of money. San Jose is for staid vacationers. In Los Barriles, you had better be a fisherman or a wind surfer, and in the La Paz of at least a few years ago, you would be a yachtie. If you exclude the surfer subculture here (and I can’t swim, so that’s not a good target for me), then I don’t think there’s a definite mould to which you are expected to conform in Todos Santos. Many people take advantage of this freedom to reinvent themselves (and the more adventurous do so not only in respect of their current life, but also in weaving great stories of their splendiferous past). I, unconsciously, allowed myself to nurture my writing, and my ability to be present and to be less frantic.

The experience with preparing a consulting proposal, however, reminded of the truth that any good strategy consultant will tell you (and I was / am one). You can’t focus, successfully, on everything. Concentrating on something means that you have to defocus on something else. The growth that I have experienced in the ease of writing creatively and observing life, comes at the expense of being able to quickly and concisely slice to the core of a business issue and set out entirely logical paths to address the problems.

If it were simply that the skill sets deployed changed, I wouldn’t care much. Yes, the transition between states is painful, but within a short period of time, I will be able to function as effectively in the business world as I did before. What I think is nagging at me is that, perhaps, the changes in functional activities spread to the whole way I look at life and my behaviours, even to the core of who I am. Dealing with business in a fast paced environment such as Calgary, or engaging in lots of outdoor activities (as in Comox) will probably change key parts of me from the current Vic that is immersed in the cerebral, creative aspects of Todos Santos. If I can appear to change so dramatically, just who is the real me?

Of course, Robert Hall, the local Dharma leader, would probably say that the impression of any elements of a “me” is just an illusion to protect the fragile “El Yo” from understanding that it doesn’t have any true existence. It certainly appears to me that I am a more fluid being than I had once thought. Or perhaps adrift on a fluid sea, floating away?

Life in Shadows

2008-03-24T08:39:00.000-07:00

One thing that fascinates me about Todos Santos is the way that shadows here take on a life of their own. It is, no doubt, an artifact of the intensity of the sun, and the clarity of the air, but it is as if the darker side of everything is made animate and evident. In Comox, the often present moisture gives an entirely different perspective.

Todos Santos lies on the Tropic of Cancer, so as the summer solstice approaches, the size of your shadow diminishes until, on the fateful day, at the right time, the sun lies directly overhead and your dark projection is banished – temporarily!

Shadowland

As an immutable sun rises
Over the elemental landscape
Life in Todos Santos bifurcates
Into radiant light and stygian darkness
Each object or animal
Accompanied by a darker self
Related, but distinctly separate
Entities unto themselves
In the vacuum of transparent air
That fills the town

As pelicans glide slowly above the sand
Angelic in direct and reflected light
Their flightless partners
Hold dark dominion over the beach
Razor cut outlines pacing their illuminated mates
But never meeting
While inland
Sharp projections of telephone wires
Lie in wait on dusty roads
To trip unwary travelers

But soon, very soon
Before the summer solstice
Kills my personal dark companion
I must return
To the land of subtlety
Where strong shadows are replaced
By a watery reflection
So easily spooked by a breath of wind.

Fear and Loathing in Todos Santos

2008-03-21T08:44:00.000-07:00

I’ve written before about the paradox that, if you think you are escaping the issues of the world when you come to Todos Santos, you’ll find that they’ve come along with you, just to keep you company. One reason that people come to this little town is that they think they can leave behind all the crime that bedevils the urban complexes of America (or Canada). So they buy an ocean view lot in the desirable desert areas north of town where nary a Mexican can be seen (except the gardeners and maids that they have to drive in), build the cosy little 2500 sq ft. seaside cottage of their dreams, furnish it with high-end fittings and sleek designer Indonesian furniture, and then expect to live a life of peaceful bucolic pleasure.

Unfortunately, life in Todos Santos is not always so magical. This year there have been several break-ins reported, mostly north of town in the areas where most Gringos live.

This news has caused some quite different reactions amongst the ex-pat community. One common reaction is indignation and astonishment that this has happened. “But this was always such a nice town” many bemoan, “We never needed to (and shouldn’t have to) lock our doors”. It seems somehow inconceivable to them that Todos Santos should experience crime. Cabo, yes, but what else would you expect in such an uncouth den of iniquity.

Quiet reflection, however, might reveal that there is no reason why Todos Santos shouldn’t experience many of the same issues as any other place. Television, the internet, improved physical access to and from the US and other parts of Mexico, and the huge influx of development and people means that Todos Santos is no longer living in an isolated bubble.

In addition, rational thought might suggest that placing luxurious homes close to a town where the majority of people are still poor might just be an overwhelming temptation to those who are less fortunate. Just imagine that you are a local Mexican youth who sees (relatively) incredible wealth that is beyond their practical reach, and that desired possessions sit in houses that are essentially in the middle of nowhere, and are often vacant. It is, perhaps, incredible that the robbery problems are not more endemic.

It is not as if the “good old days” really were so perfect either. According to friends who have had a home here for almost 2 decades, there have always been some robberies. There was no internet newsletter to broadcast the news, and the “valuables” in the homes might not have been as financially valuable as those available to miscreants now. The difficulty of replacing stolen items was, however, probably greater.

So, rationally, we shouldn’t be surprised that there are robberies here, just as everywhere. That includes my small, sleepy hometown of Comox, British Columbia, where there has been a spate of repeated robberies in the “safe” retirement complexes that have sprung up over the Valley.

Anyone who has been robbed is certainly entitled to feelings of outrage at the violation of their private space and possessions. The recent reports in Todos Santos have, however, sparked such fear and outrage I wonder if the sense of violation runs deeper. I think the violation they are expressing may also relate to being forced to awake from a pleasant dream, in which it is possible to find a “Paradise” where the cares of the world have no place.

Some people here (mostly who have not experienced the robberies directly) have had a quite different reaction. They plead publicly for others to stop complaining, to only proclaim the positive side of life here, and to let them relax and enjoy the delights of Todos Santos. In their positivity, they are perhaps expressing a loathing of the realities of modern life. In essence, they would like to dream the magic a little longer. And what better place to do that than in this little Pueblo Magico?

Day Trippers

2008-03-16T08:27:00.000-07:00

Around mid morning, they start to arrive. Driving warily through the outskirts of town in their rented car, eyes looking every which way, or disgorged from the bowels of tour buses, the Day Trippers are back in town.

The Species “Tourist”, sub genus “Day Tripper” is seasonal, with peak migrations around Christmas and President’s week. They can be recognized easily by their plumage which is entirely different from that displayed by the local species: usually clean golf shirts, shorts or golf pants with sneakers for the male, variations on cruise wear for the females, and always a camera clutched in one hand and deployed at the first sign of Real Mexican Life. Some specialized water-borne tribes (rumored to live on the floating cities that pull into Cabo San Lucas bay daily) have little labels with names to make identification of each other easier, and in case they become lost in the huge metropolis of Todos Santos. Day Trippers can only be found within the core three streets in town unofficially designated as the real historical core (though officially it extends way beyond this area into parts believed actually to be occupied by local Mexicans).

Day Trippers cluster around some key landmarks in town: The Hotel California, the other Hotel California restaurant and t-shirt shop (no connection) across the street, the Santa Fe restaurant (It’s THE place to eat, dear” ), and the seemingly-without-end tourist knickknack stores, where they can buy Genuine Mexican Sarapes lovingly handcrafted in Indonesia and other such gems. These stores have taken a leaf from Starbuck’s playbook and taken it to the ultimate level. Not content with a store on every corner, they fill every available niche in town, swallowing up new mini malls whole.

By early afternoon, when their initial picture snapping frenzy is over, it’s possible to engage Day Trippers in conversation. Usually, the comments on the town fall into one of two camps. Either it’s “What a wonderfully cute town you live in!”, or it’s “Where is the town? “There’s nothing here!”. Of course, neither is a true reflection of what Todos Santos residents believe about the place.

Cuteness is a characteristic of a superficial view of Todos Santos as if it were an anachronistic relic or living museum. Of course, it is likely that some parties in town (the developers) would like to play on this perspective, turning the town center into a veritable heritage village, devoid of mess, cars and trucks, and with a showpiece authentically reengineered traditional Zocolo that probably no-one will use (just as now). Maybe they could hire locals to dress in authentic Baja costumes and wander around town to provide more “cute” photo opportunities?

Residents here are aware of the downside of the “cuteness”, like the ever-present dust, the limited (though vastly improved) availability of day-to-day merchandise amongst the sarapes, the noise of dogs, music and macho trucks. They have to learn to live with these characteristic of a real Mexican town.

The view of Todos Santos being a place devoid of content or value is also a product of a filtered perspective. Certainly it is no Las Vegas and does not have the venues to provide continual frenetic entertainment. The treasures of Todos Santos are hidden from the sight of these Day Trippers. They would need to go both physically deeper into and around the town, and internally deeper to appreciate things that do not appear on Entertainment Tonight. The song of birds, the light filtering through trees, the vista of ocean and endless beach – these are all things that Day Trippers cannot see. Maybe they wouldn’t even want to.

So, by late afternoon, when the rental cars and the buses have carted away the last of the Species, I often wonder what warped pictures of Todos Santos they take away in their heads. Even more, though, I wonder just who amongst us, if anyone, does have a real, unfiltered picture of the place?

Magical Places

2008-03-12T17:53:00.000-07:00

There are some places that, to me, exude a special magical essence which reduces me to silence, in awe of what I see as their natural sacredness. One of them is Palm Beach, just outside Todos Santos. As you approach it on a dusty, single track road, the sweat drips off your brow, the warm air blowing uselessly through the car in a futile attempt to be cooled. The sides of the road are desiccated, leafless, waiting patiently for the still distant summer rain. Gnarled ancient Cardon cacti reach to the sky, providing the only trace of colour in the landscape.

Suddenly, you drop down into a different world, a world of green and lushness. When you step out of the car, the first thing you note is the gentle susurration of wind in the grove of tall palms, mixed with the sound of cicadas and, barely audible, a gentle roar of the hidden surf. Then, you notice the smell. The warm smell of pregnant greenery, of lushness, tinged with just a slight coolness of salty ocean air.

As you walk toward the water, the balance of smells swings towards salty decay, away from green life. The sound of surf becomes more distinct. Suddenly, you emerge from the confines of the still, shady grove to an open vista of flat grassy meadow, reeds, a clear stream running to join the sea, and clean golden sand between rocky headlands. It takes my breath away. More often than not, the beach is empty of humans. For some reason that I do not comprehend, many more people chose to park themselves at the “Cabo-lite” location of the Cerritos Beach Club, surrounded by others, music, jet skis and ultralight aircraft. Perhaps they fear the idea of being alone with themselves? There is no shortage, however, of animals that forage here, including the green heron, shown in the picture at the head of this entry.

My feelings of awe at Palm Beach are not shared by all people who might otherwise enjoy such surroundings. A friend finds the place dark and oppressive, as if there is an evil energy watching them. I simply feel at peace. It reminds me, perhaps, of succulent summers spent on the West Coast of Vancouver Island, in the Pacific Rim National Park.

Is there a place like this around Comox? My first reaction is that I find it hard to pick one, but that is because, on reflection, there are so many to choose from. There’s the breathtaking experience of walking through the thick dark woods in Seal Bay Park, and coming across a secret sunny pond, buzzing with dragonflies, hummingbirds, frogs and the rampant life of summer. Or maybe Nymph Falls on a bright October day, watching freshly arrived bright salmon valiantly try, again and again, to fight their way upstream against the thundering white rapids, on their final journey. Then there is Helliwell Park, on nearby Hornby Island, where you walk under damp first growth forest, emerging into a small strip of rare Madrona trees, which opens to short grassy meadows, at the top of vertiginous cliffs with a 270 degree view of the Georgia Straights.

One thing all these locations around Comox have in common is that they are preserved from development, held in trust for the public. There is recognition that we are only passing through, and that future generations should be able to enjoy the places, just as we do.

Coming back to Palm Beach, I fear the magic will soon be gone. There are plans to replace the quietness with condos, boutique hotels and restaurants, all to be constructed, I am sure, in a very ecologically sound manner. There are already white marker lines over some parts of the land at one end of the cove. More people will get to experience and enjoy the place, but in making it more accessible and usable, the very thing that makes it so special will, in my opinion at least, evaporate.

Blue Perfection

2008-03-09T19:27:00.000-07:00

Although it is not even Spring yet, Todos Santos seems almost transported to Summertime, with day after day of perfection, as far as weather is concerned. The heat of the sun draws energy from everything. Casual visitors find it wonderful. But perhaps you can have too much of “wonderful”?

Lazy blues

On this blue lazy day
The sleepy sea can hardly stir itself
Slopping wavelets unconsciously
Against the static shore
The wind plays truant
Perhaps cuddling with the clouds
That are nowhere in sight
Only the valiant reliable sun rises, on time
Climbing into a sky that defines every blue
From pale faded horizon
To polarized intensity
Approaching violet

Roasting the hills to a golden ochre
Draining life and colour from the land
Till the Sierras fade
From dominating mountains
To stacked cardboard cutouts
Washed with shades of blue
A postcard background
To a perfect seaside

And yet
In this blue stained perfection
Admired by gawping tourists
I find myself blue
Missing the messy imperfections
That bring life
To reality.

Spring Back

2008-03-05T07:25:00.000-08:00

There’s a palpable change in the energy in Todos Santos these days, as we slide deeper into March. You can feel it in the sudden thinness of the public social calendar, which was so hectic only a few weeks ago. The major events of the season are over (with the last one, the Home and Garden tour, having to be cancelled this year due to, well, mostly due to volunteers having too many other things to do). Drumming has come to an end, and there are no more intimate concerts on the horizon.

Why is this? The transient population is preparing to return to their summer haunts. The lure of distant family, the return of milder weather up North, and the call of taxes beckons people to leave Todos Santos and return to their real lives.

It’s not that there is no social activity. It becomes more localized, catching up on making good on such promises as “We really must have you round for dinner some time” when you suddenly notice that three months have gone by. Indeed, there’s somewhat of an air of desperation, trying to fit such events in to maintain your sense of being a person of your word when you are still busy dealing with the stragglers of visitors.

Days that used to be enjoyed in timeless or mindless recreation now need to be spent getting projects done that need to be completed before you leave, and in making arrangements for care of the place while you are away.

Conversations on the beach are no longer totally preoccupied about what houses have sold, but instead revolve around dates of departure. It is a time for goodbyes, perhaps until later in the year, perhaps for longer or even forever, as real life intervenes in the meantime.

There are still throngs of tourists snapping their way through town, and it will continue for some time after the transients have left. It’s Spring Break now and, although the main circus group heads for Cabo, some outliers, and those with parents in tow, end up here on excursions and maybe even to stay for a few days.

As the human energy changes, so does the natural energy. The sun rises earlier each day, gradually moving its entry point across the horizon. One of our bathroom windows is now dappled with sunshine filtering through mango leaves early in the morning, which I find delightfully peaceful. The sea fog is more persistent on many days, an indicator of the rising land temperatures. There’s an unusual haze in the afternoons from the relentless sun, and the whole land seems appropriately lazy.

As the month progresses, even the whales will decide to head to cooler waters with their new family members. They’re still around now, but in smaller numbers, and little by little, it will become less common to see several spouts from the beaches.

After we’ve gone, the issues that preoccupied us here will seem somewhat unreal, as we enter a completely different environment. And the winter will also seem somewhat surreal, an escape from reality that will be stored away as we get on with our “real lives”, only to re-emerge at the forefront of our minds as the threat of an awful wet, cold Fall approaches.

Sensations of Surf

2008-02-29T12:31:00.000-08:00

Surfers have known it for some time, but many visitors to Todos Santos aren’t even aware of the magnificent and elemental surf that we can get here. Some visitors don’t even find the beaches (though the recent addition of a restaurant / bar / real estate office on Los Cerritos may help these people find their way)!

There is very little in the way of waves generated by storms thousands of miles away in the Pacific, and the long sandy beaches north of town. When the waves finally collide with the shore after their long journey, the results can be spectacular, and remind us of our essential insignificance.

Surf’s up

Nestled in town
In the quiet of deep night
I can hear it
As incongruous rhythmic susurration
An inversion of cool air
Magically reflecting sound
From far away beaches

On the scrubby hills
Perched high above the beach
I can feel it in my body
As tremulous movement
In the fundamental rock
Beneath my feet

But up close
I buckle
Under sensory overload
Ears assaulted by a constant roar
Counterpointed by percussive beats
That shake my body
As waves travelling from distant continents
Rear aggressively
In their final moments
To expire on the beach
The blue of the once placid sea
Littered with off-white foam
Detritus of explosive blasts
Of blinding white spray
Now drifting across the dunes
Licking my skin
With unaccustomed salt coolness

This is no forgiving sea
No gentle background
For casual recreation
It’s raw
It’s humbling
It’s part of the real Magic
Of Todos Santos.

Time Capsule

2008-02-25T08:24:00.001-08:00

Sunday tastes different from any other day in Todos Santos. It is the only day when most people stop working; a day of rest and family time. One could almost believe that we have been transported back in time, as construction ceases, and the town regains its historic focus. Tomorrow the dominant earthmovers will again roam the land, houses will be built and sold, tourist vehicles will scour for places to park, and North American values will be rampant. But this one day is still an island in the gross commercialization that is overtaking Baja.

Historical Sunday

Even the sun seems reluctant to rise
On this namesake day
The town still somnambulant
Cocooned in the palpable blanket
Of silence that follows
Raucous parties of the night

Workers dream luxuriantly
In the rare freedom of time
Their monstrous terraforming steeds
Lie abandoned at the sides of roads
Blades dropped in unaccustomed silence
Repenting their weekly pillage

As the sun sleepily emerges
The cool air is scented
With the secret smoke of surreptitious fires
Birds chatter and warble, a cappella
Their voices soaring in the quiet
Freed from the background beat
Of rapacious commerce

Gentle bells or Tibetan chimes
Bring penitents to quiet contemplation
Or assimilation
As prelude to the day’s socialization

As the day warms
Pickups stumble from salutation to salutation
Carrying precious cargo
Of freshly scrubbed family
Visiting uncounted relatives
Or perhaps reclaiming the beaches
From ravaging tourists
For just a day
Decorous bathing juxtaposed
With strutting skimpy swimwear

Across the town
Men lean on parked pickups
As mobile bars
In earnest conversation
While ranchero music hides their chatter
From their industrious women

A single day
Where time shows its elasticity
Transporting the town
To a simpler state, long gone
Tiempo Magico
Before the return
Of Pueblo Tráfico.

Desert Time

2008-02-21T08:49:00.000-08:00

Todos Santos, as in any typical winter, has not had any meaningful rain for several months now. Where once the sides of roads were crowded by thick, luxuriant green gasses and other weeds, there is now a brown collection of dried stems. But within our gardens, we maintain the illusion of Eden.

Water world

The touch of rain is a distant memory now
Or the hopeful artifact of a sun baked mind
Plants abandon unneeded frippery
As they draw juices inward to survive
Leaving brown husks of leaves
Illuminated by incongruous luminosity of flowers
The hope for a future generation

No sustenance now
Save the daily dose of dew
Funneled inward by cunning succulents
Culled by eons of Darwinian selection

The desiccated dust
Carrying mementoes of centuries of life
Lies lifeless
Till kicked angrily into flight
By the passing of a racing truck
Chasing, fruitlessly
For a damp place to regenerate

Yet within our walled secret garden
Life continues regardless
Verdant plants luxuriate
Bathing their feet twice weekly
In deep clear pools of cool water
And at the focal point of the dry patio
Sits our irrepressible bubbling fountain

Cascading drops
Shower without end
Their inexorable musical metallic plinking
Opening an aural window
Into a private place of inner calm
The smell of fresh dampness
Combining to create
An illusion of abundance
In a land of scarcity

For when we leave
With one swift flick of a switch
The magic stops
And the tenuousness of existence here
Become clearer
As the finite water
Evaporates.

Entropy Inaction

2008-02-13T12:19:00.000-08:00

The same climate and proximity to the sea that we, as humans, love so much, is less than kind to inanimate objects. Entropy certainly rules in Todos Santos. Maintenance of buildings and paintwork is an on-going task, but one that can bring some satisfaction, if approached in the right frame of mind.

The Gate

It’s just a gate that I am painting
A utilitarian object
Not an impassioned expression
Of creative art

I’m irritated
By the sticky residue
On my hands and arms
Vivid testament
To the adhering qualities of premium paint
My arm, my shoulder, my legs ache
From

Repetitive
Vertical
Motion

But, as I brush the paint
Over the stained, faded and pockmarked surface
As each crenellation is covered
With a coat of luscious liquid colour
A colour that pulls me into its warming cool depths
It is as if I were cancelling
The law of entropy
That dominates this town

Soon, far too soon
The magic will end
The law suspended, not repealed
Hardly waiting for paint to dry
Crystalline dust will add trademark highlights
Of Todos Santos Taupe
To the horizontal surfaces
Birds, whose company I so enjoy
Will rest a while before expressing themselves
Pollack-like
On the pristine surface
And careless visitors
Will unknowingly scratch
The perfection
Because it is
Just a gate

But for now
I am content to gaze with wonder
On my pedestrian
Work of art.

Escape Artistry

2008-02-11T09:34:00.000-08:00

Before I committed to living in Todos Santos, I used to enjoy looking through the website http://www.escapeartist.com/. Squeezed between the many advertisements for real estate across the world, there would be some interesting information about the benefits (mostly) and disadvantages (generally minimized) of living an ex-pat life in far-away places. I didn’t give the site name any thought, until a recent conversation with a friend. I was bemoaning (again) the lack of deep connection that I was finding in Todos Santos. “But you must remember” , they said, “people are here to escape, not engage”.

When I thought about that, the deep truth within it blossomed. For I think that at heart, most people in Todos Santos are here as escape artists first, and other reasons second.

The escape may be as banal and obvious as getting away from bad weather. I am as guilty as anyone in this regard. Well, maybe I am a little more escapist than many in this regard, because cold weather for me invokes body memories of a very unpleasant time in my life when, coincidentally, it was a blizzard and -35C. After that event, I hated cold weather viscerally, and so escaping to a mock summer enabled me to hide from those very unpleasant memories and feelings.

Beyond getting away from cold, people here give a number of public reasons for coming, particularly if they live here full-time. “Couldn’t stand the dangerous traffic anymore”, “Too much stress in American life”, “It’s so commercialized there”, “The government is corrupt (or evil)”, or even, my favourite “There’s no sense of community”.

Look closely, and you will also see some more personal tragedies behind some people’s arrival, such as retreating from a bad or failed marriage, or the death of a spouse.

Finally, there are the secret reasons. People who need to get away from their countries because they are wanted for crimes, or are avoiding paying alimony or child support. Or even, maybe, terrorism. Todos Santos hit the press big time in 1995, when a Mr. Amer Haykel, who was hanging about at the volunteer fire station, was arrested on suspicion of being involved with 9/11.

So what’s wrong with trying to escape (leaving aside fleeing the law)? The first issue is the paradox that, if you keep your eyes open and get involved, you find you haven’t escaped anything after all.

The banal reason of escaping bad weather may get you back in odd ways. Instead of escaping, you may find that you simply readjust the bounds of acceptability. After the initial bliss of warmth on arrival, you may find yourself criticizing the few days where it is cloudy, and finding it difficult to brave the frigid temperatures of 10C at night.

As far as the litany of Northern problems from which people try to escape, there’re all still here, if you look closely. If you thought you were escaping dangerous traffic, you haven’t looked at the statistics for fatalities on roads here such as the 4 lane between Cabo and San Jose Del Cabo. When you consider the panicked rush to build and flip spec homes here over the last 2 years year (maybe 50 or so, where the average number of homes built a few years ago - for occupation - was closer to 5), and the ballooning numbers of real estate practitioners and developers here, it’s hard to call Todos Santos a Mecca for the antithesis of commercialization. You can leave behind the stress of high-pressure city life, but you may find, insidiously, there are also stresses, albeit different, that come from having to find ways to fill your time in a manner that adds meaning to your life. American government may well be less than perfect, but I am unsure you will find Mexican politics any more open and above criticism.

And don’t get me started again on the subject of community (if you’re interested, check my December 2007 entry on “A Sense of Community”).

Even escaping from personal tragedies may not really solve the problem. It perhaps may simply defer dealing with the issue, burying it under a blanket of socializing, to reappear later, perhaps at a more unexpected moment.

The second issue with trying to escape arises as a consequence of not wanting to recognize the truth of the first issue, namely that escaping is an illusion. The trick that many escape artists pull, therefore, is to invent their own, corrected reality. A good sign of this is when someone utters the magic phrase “It’s Paradise here!”. When I hear this (or some variant) I am seized with the urge to shake that person to wake them up (a reaction which I manage, for social reasons, to contain). As far as I am aware, humans were ejected from Paradise as soon as they ate from the tree of knowledge, and you can’t get back until you are dead, even if you close your eyes and wish you hadn’t eaten. And last time I checked, most people here are alive, at least in the physical sense.

The desire to see the choices they have made validated as perfect makes some people perhaps see only what they want to see. If they can’t always sustain that perspective in public, they may retreat inward, possibly aided in that quest by mind-altering substances. A congregation of such individuals, enjoying their bliss, may not, in my view, be the greatest foundation for a community.

So is Todos Santos a collection of spaced-out, blissful but delusional escape artists? Not everyone, of course, fits this description. There are those who recognize the irony of their actions. There are people for whom the pull attractant of Todos Santos is greater than the push repulsion from wherever they came. Some, for example, come here with the express intent of using the new culture and solitude to try to find their true selves. Fanatic surfers come here explicitly for uncrowded access to exceptional waves.

Perhaps the surfer dudes, for all their oddness to more conventional folk, are more happily in touch with reality than most of us? But then fanaticism has its own price, doesn’t it?

The Wind of Change

2008-02-06T14:36:00.000-08:00

Recently, Todos Santos has been visited by a series of strange, cold winds. Heralded by wispy “Nike” shaped clouds that we used to call “Mare’s Tails” in the UK, they appear (and disappear) quickly, bring icy clarity, and change the bucolic nature of the seaside into something much more charged.

A Stranger Visits

Infused with the essence
Of dry snow-capped mountain peaks
In a far distant continent
The exotic wind swoops across the ocean
Slicing a razor cut horizon
To divide light from dark
Dusting the languid waves with white
In homage to its origin

Its arrival wakes nature from its torpor
Arousing into excited dance
Wavelets skitter across the lagoon
To the rhythm of sloppy breakers
Syncopated by slapping wing beats
Of a burly troupe of bathing pelicans
While graceful birds pirouette and glide
A silent accompaniment

Palms salute and wave at the visitor

In synchronous choreography
Fronds combing the air desperately
To savor the exotic flavor
Of unknown lands

But in town, the music dissipates
Locals go about their business
Unmoved
A swirl of dust
And jackets pulled tighter
The only signs of the strangeness

That just visited.

The Art of Growing Houses in Todos Santos

2008-02-05T10:18:00.000-08:00

Those of you who have not recently visited the previously wide open spaces of Las Tunas and beyond, will be certain to be surprised when next you come to Todos Santos. There has been a land rush over the past few years, and the landscape is now peppered with the results of this bonanza cash crop. Perhaps the traditional view of what agriculture and arts mean to Todos Santos needs to change to reflect these new realities?

Artistic Interpretations

Where cultivation was once deemed marginal
In sad abandoned chili fields
Or stony slopes of rocky desert
New owners mark their territory
And plant the seeds of their new crop

Drawing sustenance not from sweet water,
But from their owner’s dreams and aspirations,
Their germinating houses rend the ground noisily
Reaching from the earth
But blatantly not of the earth

Tended by the same workers
Who cared for the ghosts of chili plants long gone
The new crop climbs trellises of rebar
Sprouting walls, floors, roofs
And sometimes minarets and gargoyles
Orienting themselves, jostling possessively for position
Not to draw energy from the sun
But towards the new source of bounty
The Ocean View

And as they ripen individually
Colours reflecting their owner’s tastes
They make concrete
A cornucopia of interpretations
Of a Baja house by the sea

Here is Santa Fe living quietly with New York loft
Humble space for living
Beside ostentatious decadence
Storybook cottage or whimsical dream
Neighbored by stark modernity
All counterpointed by the sad utilitarian look
Of houses grown to harvest unknown buyers

And as I gaze on this eclectic new crop
Baking under the hot sun
I suddenly realize
How well it reflects the nature of community here
And how the tourist description
Of an agricultural town housing an artists colony
Is both right and misunderstood
The new crop itself
The new form of artistic expression
In Todos Santos.

Intimacy in Small Places

2008-02-03T05:59:00.001-08:00

I've written before about the differences between the two towns in which I live in terms of making new relationships. What about the prospects for developing deeper, intimate relationships while living a bisected life?

First I probably need to clarify what I mean by “intimate relationships”. The term is loosely used to cover a wide variety of personal interactions. I don’t, in this context, mean sexual relationships, some of which can be anything but intimate. I am using the term here to cover relationships where there is a shared ability and desire to be honest about yourself and the other, where you can feel safe opening up, and where you will be heard. A tall order, perhaps, but for me, a requirement for a fulfilling and illuminated life.

It is perhaps paradoxical that, in some respects, it is far easier to have the trappings of such a relationship with someone who is almost a stranger. There is so little to lose, no expectation, and no catalogue of interpreted stories to mask what is said. As a result, it can be easier to open up, and to listen attentively. Transient relationships can be valuable and insightful. They lack, however, the substance of an on-going relationship where there is shared risk in revealing. Intimacy between strangers is perhaps like striking a match in the dark: easy to do, briefly illuminating, but incapable of sustaining warmth, unlike maintaining a crackling fire of true intimacy over time.

Were you to want to pursue the easy life of serial intimacy with strangers, small places are not the best place to live. The pickings are slim, no-one remains a stranger for long (unless they live a life as a recluse), and you are going to interact with these “strangers” on a regular basis, ruining the idea of “nothing to lose”.

So with the intent of pursuing long-term intimacy, how do the towns suit a bifurcated lifestyle?

Most residents of Comox live there fulltime, apart from vacations. We are in the unfaithful minority that chickens out and chose to live somewhere warmer and drier in the winter. During the summer when we are there, social life for others in Comox turns inward. It centers around long-term friends from previous lives visiting from off-island, family vacations, or grandkids who come to stay for the season, and leaves little room for the time-consuming effort of developing new deep relationships. Indeed, almost all social clubs cease operations in the summer, waiting for the return of the dark dampness of the Fall to force people to begin interacting again. Of course, by then, we’ve left for warmer parts. When we return, it’s as though we are really extended holidaymakers, who aren’t part of the scene. It’s hard to get close to anyone under these circumstances.

Todos Santos has a different profile. Most of the residents are native Mexicans and, at the risk of offending others, I would suggest that it is unlikely that most Canadians or Americans are going to establish intimate relationships with this segment of the population. The cultural differences run so much deeper than appears on the surface, and I think that some common foundational beliefs are probably a necessary condition for real intimacy.

The “Gringo” Todos Santos divides into two main camps based on residency, with different characteristics in respect of relationships. The minority that makes Todos Santos their home will, naturally, tend to form their primary relationships with others who are in the same space, literally and figuratively. They enjoy the arrival of the part-timers (at last, someone else to talk to and about after the drought of summer!), but you can hardly blame them should they not want to invest their energies into deep relationships with those who aren’t around much of the time.

The others, in the “Seasonal” camp, only spend a few weeks or months here each year. Most of them have their established lives elsewhere, in the true Gringolandia Up North. For many of them, Todos Santos is an escape (a subject to which I’ll return in a future posting), a vacation from their real lives. They are here to have fun, to warm themselves in the sun, to surf, or any one of the other diversions that Todos Santos can offer. For most of them, I suspect, working on new deep relationships while “on vacation” is the last thing on their minds. They want party friends, activity friends, relationships that are as easy-going and digestible as the Margaritas that slide down their throats.

Different needs, different places, the same result as far as general desire to achieve intimacy afresh. The real barrier to developing new intimate relationships is probably an attitude of sufficiency, of being satisfied with the relationships you’ve formed to date, maybe ossified somewhat by the inertia of aging (as few that can afford to move to either place are young).

I’ve been told that you shouldn’t expect to have more than 2 or 3 truly intimate relationships in your life (and no-one has disclosed whether this mystical number is supposed to include spouses!). But then, I’ve never been one to settle for mediocrity or artificial limits, nor to think we should stop growing as we age, so I rebel against the idea I have used up my quota.

It’s not easy being intimate, and especially so when transplanting yourself to new, small places. Not easy, but, fortunately, not everyone fits the expected formula, and so, not impossible. We are not alone!

Tribal States

2008-02-02T07:03:00.000-08:00

I’ve written before about what I perceive as worrying signs of balkanization in Todos Santos, where people are tending to stay and relate within their own insular district. Occasionally, driven perhaps by the distant strains of drums or music, they may emerge from their habitat and come to town, but they avoid interacting significantly with others outside their tribe – or, from what I observe, within it either. Unaccountably to me, they seem quite happy with their version of “Life Lite”. But then, who is more content, those living an apparently unexamined life, or those who over analyze?

Tribal Encounters

As the music begins
They enter confidently
Sniffing out familiar markings as they arrive
Ritually embracing
Without passion
Standardized smiles adorning their uniform

I sit watching them preen
Glowing in their tribe’s company
Listening to the flutter of cheerful conversation
Rise and fall with the music
Drifting from one banality
To the next inconsequential issue
Deftly waltzing past topics
That might disturb
Or reveal
What secrets lie beneath
Their polished armor

I want to shake them, shout
“Are you truly happy with this?
Is this all you need?
Or do you only commit acts of intimacy
In dark secret places?”

But I stay silently fuming
While the band plays on
Jealous and incredulous
Wondering what flaw it is in me
That needs connection
Without artifice
And why I seem to care

About tribes I do not care for.

I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now…

2008-02-01T07:30:00.000-08:00

The recent partly cloudy weather here in Todos Santos, and the return of the sun, made me reflect on one of the major differences between here and Comox: clouds, and their interaction with the land.

Although the Huerta heart of Todos Santos is green, due to the multiple springs that feed it, the town itself sits just about on the Tropic of Cancer. The town itself, and all around, for hundreds of miles, is owned by the desert. Other than a brief, unreliable rainy season in the summer, the land is parched.

In the “Season”, the westerly trade winds bring almost constant dry air over the town, and the sky is usually a spotless crystalline blue. When clouds do appear, they tend to stay aloof, sitting high up in the clear air, giving me vertigo when I look up at them so far above and yet so clearly detailed you feel you could touch them. They act as if repelled by the thirsty, demanding land beneath them, afraid to get too close in case they are dissolved, imagining being diminished by closeness, as indeed is the case. If the dry ground and its thirsty air don’t get them, the relentless sun usually does. When the vapours are stronger, you can sometimes see the cloud bubbling underneath, like watching a simmering pot of porridge upside down, as if it is thinking about breaking down and visiting the earth, but reconsidering.

Watching the spectacle, I think of clouds in Todos Santos as being a cautious lover, careful to keep its needy partner earth at a distance, for fear of being consumed by the union.

Comox, on the other hand, seems to sit right on the target path of the infamous “Pineapple Express” that brings a continuous stream of wet air north. The countryside is lush and green, dense woodlands interspersed with succulent pastures. Comox does have its periods of sun, but clouds are ever eager to return and reclaim their territory. When the clouds move in, they don’t stay aloof, but instead hug the contours of the land, sometimes making it difficult to tell whether the cloud has come down to kiss the earth, or is being born from that earth. They overwhelm, pressing their attentions and wetness on a land already saturated with moisture.

Comox clouds, to me, seem like suffocating suitors, increasing their efforts to woo even as the disinterested earth rejects their advances.

Two places, two dysfunctional relationships between the elements. I wonder where the sky and earth live together in a healthy way? But maybe that wouldn’t be so interesting …

Walking in the Sierra De La Lagunas

2008-01-28T07:33:00.000-08:00

Todos Santos sits where the massive Sierra De La Laguna mountain range falls down to the sea. It provides a beautiful scenic backdrop, and collects rainfall that feed the springs which, in the past, and even now, provide the life blood for the town. Follow the dirt roads that lead you to the base of the mountains, and, even though you are still physically close to the familiar, you enter a different world, away from the hustle of the town itself, and entirely different in sound and nature from the relaxed, open environment of the beaches.

Silent Warfare

It’s silent here
No remnant sounds of trucks or construction
To drag us back
No wind rustling the bounty of dried seedpods
Decorating the trees
No melodic chatter of birds
So numbingly quiet
We feel a need to fill the awkward gap
Speak too much
The sounds of our brave voices
And our footsteps
Out of place
But swallowed as soon as created
Leaving nothing

But under the veneer of peaceful silence
In this natural cathedral
A battle rages
So slowly we hardly notice its progression
The roots of fig trees claw
At raw rock
Pierce through weaknesses
Clinging
Perhaps for support
Or sustenance
Or simply to wring life from inanimate matter
Cactus, tree and vine entwine
In a fight to reach the sun first
And in the sandy echo of a river bed
Smooth granitic boulders
Wait patiently, silently for the summer’s rain
To continue their grinding
Path of destruction
To the sea.

Having a whale of a time in Todos Santos

2008-01-25T06:38:00.000-08:00

One of the more magical elements of the “Pueblo Magico” of Todos Santos is the arrival of the grey whale migration, which usually peaks in early February, but started this season in mid November. I have to admit I am not entirely sure why the whales make it down this far, since the calving lagoons are quite a bit north of here (around Guerro Negro). Perhaps they too enjoy the warmth and the sunshine before heading back to the grayness and cold of the North?

Whales have an ability to draw loving attention from almost anyone who sees them. Just the sight of their vaporous spout, drifting backlit along the sea, is enough to make people drop what they are doing and look. When they decide to perform and leap continually out of the water, close to shore, there are usually shouts and sighs of “Ahh!” across the beach.

Realtors are very aware of the universal, mystical appeal of the whales. They have a saying “See a whale, make a sale”, and it is not all in jest.

Quite why these lumbering creatures illicit such a reaction, I do not know. Part of it is indeed their size, which seems so out of the ordinary that we are entranced. But then we don’t celebrate such largeness in all things. The term “beached whale” when applied to a large person sunbathing on a beach is not usually a term of endearment. The fairy dust appeal of the spouts loses something when you get close enough to smell its odour of rotting fish, and up close, the smooth sides of the whales are pocked with barnacles and other debris.

I suspect that the appeal has something to do with their gentleness (for all their size, they don’t attack other fish for their food, and content themselves with tiny amphipods that no-one really cares about), their apparent embodiment of family values as they swim lazily along in pods, and their seeming indifference to all the strife around us. Whales are, well, just serene, and maybe we wish that we could be too.

Of course, being humans and anything but serene, our attempts at connection and hence maybe sharing some of that elixir are intrusive. There are many whale watching trips offered and, driven by the insatiable demands of the public, and despite regulations that prohibit it, these boats approach far too close and finally disturb the whales. The latest abominations are powerful jet skis that time-starved tourists can use to go bother them directly and quickly with maximum noise. Being whales, though, they very rarely take revenge.

There can, however, be real danger in watching these creatures. The photo at the head of this posting was taken last year from one of the prime whale watching spots on the beach here, by La Poza Lagoon. The whales come within 50 feet of the shore, probably attracted by the fresh water seeping through the sand and the creatures that thrive in this brackish environment. One day after I took this photo, the place I was standing was swept away as the lagoon breached, and one person drowned.

Truth in Todos Santos

2008-01-21T07:51:00.000-08:00

When I was little, I was taught that the truth is singular, black and white. I liked the simplicity and straightforwardness of that perspective. It’s probably one of the reasons why I studied Pure Mathematics at university, where there was only one correct answer (though possibly many ways to get there). As I grew up, I learned that truth was more complex; a scale of greys, due to the flavourings and interpretations placed on observations by us mere humans.

When I came to Todos Santos, I learned that, here, this dull perspective is inadequate. Truth in Todos Santos is a Technicolor spectrum, dazzling in its variety. What, in other places, might be stated as an assumption, a supposition, a possibility, a brilliant figment of the imagination, is here delivered as the solemn Truth, the whole Truth and nothing but the Truth. Even for publicly observable instances such as the building of a large edifice close to the sea, or the unavailability of electricity north of Las Tunas, a whole set of vastly different stories arise, each delivered with the calm certitude of The Truth. Of course, it’s even more extreme when the topic being covered is private, or not directly visible.

When first faced with an alternate story to one I had swallowed whole, it was very dislocating. Especially since I prided my self on my ability to sift through statements to filter out conditioned interpretations, and on being able to intuitively know when I was being fed a line, traits that were an essential part of the work I had successfully carried out for the past 25 years. I soon learned that this was not an isolated example, and I felt as if I needed a complete reload of my discerning software.

So why is Todos Santos such a spring of credible artistic interpretations of the truth? I certainly don’t claim to know, but I have some ideas.

Firstly, there is no investigative journalism here, no source of data to cross-check ideas or suppositions. While my work in the UK, Canada and the US relied heavily on my ability to intuit what was really going on, these soft attributes were based on a grounding of factual research. There is no place or person to go to that will ground stories in Todos Santos, and so no pruning of deviant shoots of ideas can occur.

Secondly, given this setting, and in common with any other very small location, knowledge, or purported knowledge, becomes power or inferred credibility. Showing knowledge about any topic, when all about you there is darkness, raises you up above other mortals.

Add to this mix an unusual assortment of people. Two writers in town have noted that there are an unusually high proportion of sociopaths in town (with their estimates ranging up to 20%). I have no idea how you quantify this (asking individuals isn’t likely to lead to sound polling results), but I can personally attest to encountering several in depth in my brief time here. On top of this, it is said that Todos Santos is overflowing with people who aren’t who they claim to be – whether just as part of a creative rewriting of their life story, or, more seriously, as part of the Witness Protection Program as claimed by some, I have no idea. As some limited corroboration, I do have direct experience of discovering some key deviations from delivered life stories. An eclectic group of people with these characteristics could reasonably be expected to generate more truths than one might encounter in a normal place.

Perhaps the catalyst to ferment this heady mix, though, is a critical difference between Mexico and the rest of North America, namely the lack of personal consequences. There simply isn’t the same set of checks and balances that we might be used to North of the border. This “freedom” is what appears to allow people to happily forge their license tags for vehicles, live and work here without legal authority, whereas they wouldn’t dream of doing so in the US or Canada. The same environment provides no societal disgrace from creating works of fiction and passing them off as Fact, even should that harm individuals.

I’m sure I’ll never know exactly why Todos Santos is such fertile ground for creative truth. I do know that to survive here as a sentient human, you need to have all your senses operating on full power, check what you can, and never assume anything.

And that’s the Truth.

Enraptured by Flowers

2008-01-19T10:59:00.000-08:00

I love the beauty of real flowers. Luckily, in Comox, there are plenty of cut flowers to be had for many months of the year. My favourites are the dahlias in the Fall, with their incredible range of symmetrical shapes and pure colours, so reminiscent of English gardens. Todos Santos, like the rest of Baja, seems to focus more on plastic flowers, a great abomination in my view. But you can often get real sunflowers here, and they can bring cheer, temporarily, to any dark space.

Flame out

Petals of purest cadmium yellow
Cluster together in circular symmetry
Entice the sun to look upon its image

And when it kisses the flower
The petals play with the strident light
Softening its harshness
And in their predestined embrace
They glow ecstatically
With the pleasure of internal illumination
Dispelling the darkness around

But in these moments of pleasure
The seeds of death germinate
As the fickle sun disengages
The flower rains golden tears
Petals lose focus
Desiccate
And fall
Leaving yellow detritus
On the dark dusty soil.

Retirement is energizing, isn’t it?

2008-01-17T11:08:00.000-08:00

Both Comox and Todos Santos are retreats for the retired or wannabe retired. Their climates, easy-going lifestyles, and outdoor offerings are a magnet for those tired of cubicle land, grasping office politics, and other business games. But the experts warn us that the transition to retirement isn’t easy. I’ve made it even harder for myself by bifurcating my life between two places, and so being a real resident in neither. And, after the heady bloom of novelty fades, I am finding it especially difficult to see who the “new me” will become.

Vacio

I have no simple label
No title to deflect
The opening salvo “What do you do?”
Carrying a lethal load of “Who are you?”

I look with envious pity
On those who bow before their chosen addiction
Whether a noble cause
Or something more easily deciphered

I have no passion to follow
No certain purpose
I bite into all I encounter
Searching desperately for sensory clues
But all is tasteless mastication
All variations on flavoured coatings
Disguising the same blatant diversions

I have no anchor
No fixed positions in my universe
No means to orient myself
And I spin faster
Ripping into all that surround me
In an attempt to connect
But failing, flailing
Rending flesh, hearts, souls
Reflexively

I remember my father’s empty funeral
The friends’ apologies
Due to their need to change buses, or trains
Or maybe the possibility of traffic
And I wonder how far from the tree I fell

And so I rust here now
Neutered and numbed
Circling the black drain
Weighing the residual potential of life
Against the pain inflicted by truncation
And finding it hard to remember
These moments, too, should pass.

A Foggy Day in Todos Santos town...

2008-01-15T07:02:00.000-08:00

Being on the Pacific Ocean, Todos Santos can experience marine fog at times, usually as the land mass warms up substantially in May or June. This year, we have had a couple of instances of fog early in the season, probably because we have also had some exceptionally pleasant heat. The fog changes the town, and the air has a wonderfully fresh quality when it drifts in. The fog doesn’t typically outlast the morning, and when it’s gone, it is as if it had never visited.

Comox also has its fogs: long-lasting, denser, clammier, later in the year, like the impenetrable autumnal “mists” of traditional England. Todos Santos fogs are more like the remembered days of my childhood summers in England, where the transient early morning vapours spelled promise for a delicious day ahead.

Summer Echoes

It starts with a smudging of the horizon
A dirtying of the rim of the pure blue cupola
That mirrors a densely limpid sea

Heralded by a quickening of the air
The fog slides silently over the beach
On the eager morning wind

Tracing the contours of the land
It fills the hollows
With grey opaque softness
Disappearing buildings, gardens, people
Dulling the sounds of business
Returning the town to its empty past

As the sun flickers above
Tendrils caress the palm leaves
Sighing in the soft breeze
The air refreshes
With the contradiction of chilled heat
Smelling of fertile promise
An echo of distant summers long past

The desert sun perseveres
Dissolving greyness wisp by wisp
Increasing chroma
Till all that is left
Is a memory of coolness
And a few drops of dew
Hiding in the greenery.

The Dance of Life

2008-01-13T06:50:00.000-08:00

It’s so easy to get absorbed by the frantic social calendar in Todos Santos in the winter, to move to the common salsa beat of recycled conversations with multiple permutations of the same people. We gravitate to patterns of obsessing about building dream houses, encrusting existing ones with new embellishments, trying to cocoon in a comfortable paradise with no worries – save, perhaps, losing all that to criminal elements.

But quieter moments remind me that these, in reality, are mere diversions.

Life Partners

We skip merrily along
Building ornate edifices and artifacts
To fill the awful vacuum of existence
Weaving glittering fabric of friendships and relationships
To decorate the spaces between
And build what we call Life

While Death and Nothingness
Waltz alongside
Confident in our eventual meeting
Patiently and silently waiting
Behind a mental barrier
That we invoke for safety

But sometimes
When the drapery of acquaintanceship thins
When frantic energy fades
The membrane between us
And our ever present partners
Becomes translucent
Throwing their dark piercing and merciless light
On all that we have built
Illuminating its insignificance and futility
Drawing us irresistibly like moths to the glare
To peer inside their unimaginable bottomless void
Till we can take no more
Must close our eyes
And resume the dance.

On Hummingbirds, Vultures and True Beauty

2008-01-12T06:30:00.000-08:00

Everyone loves hummingbirds. They evoke the universal “Ooh / Aah” gene, and I am certainly not defective in that regard. In Mexico, it is considered great luck to have a hummingbird nest in your garden.

In Todos Santos, we seem to have two main species: the Xantus, endemic only to the southern Pacific side of Baja, which has very recognizable green and black markings, and the Costa, which has an iridescent purple front. In Comox, I have only seen the Rufous hummingbird, a species seemingly aligned with the wilder scenery and blue collar roots of British Columbia, a larger, coarser, more lumberjackish bird.

Why do we like these birds so much, to the extent of buying and provisioning special feeders so they will come and visit us? I suppose it is because they are small, cute and pretty. But just how beautiful are these birds? A male Xantus will defend its feeding perch here, and the nine others within sight, even to the extent of using up its energy and not being able to feed. It will chase away all other males, but also its children, its mate, and other larger birds just waiting to get a beak full. The Costa, exceptionally pretty though it is, is even more aggressive, and woe betide me if I let the feeders run out and go outside without doing anything about it! Despite their outer showiness, these birds are bullies, operating out of a culture of possessiveness and valuing the individual above everything else.

Vultures, on the other hand, are externally ugly. But they patiently wait the arrival of their food (sometimes crassly expressed as “waiting for their prey to die”), and appear to feed together nicely as a family and flock. True, they don’t have the greatest table manners, but they seem grateful for whatever they get. They are also exceptionally graceful as they soar in the bubbles of hot air spilling from the ground. I have, however, never seen anyone put out carrion to attract vultures to their garden.

It makes me wonder just how ingrained it is that we judge the beauty of things by their external appearance. Maybe we should give the vultures a chance?

Coasting On Legends

2008-01-11T07:14:00.001-08:00

Ask anyone remotely knowledgeable about places of interest in Todos Santos and they’ll probably mention the Hotel California, and give you a rendition of part of the Eagles song of that name. Never mind that the owners religiously deny that this is the hotel that the Eagles stayed at and that inspired the song. During the season, and especially at weekends, crowds of tourists gather at the hotel and get their photos taken in front of the façade. Now, it is possible that they come because it is a neat boutique hotel and restaurant. I think, however, that the irrepressible legend is part of the draw.

Another legend that has served Todos Santos well is that it is a thriving artists’ colony, usually referring to painters. There are certainly several ingredients that are still here today – many people that come here refer to themselves as Artists first, the light is magical, and there is generally an air of tolerance for all things artistic that does not choke such delicate gifts.

But let’s look at the supposedly thriving painterly scene in Todos Santos. There are only two independent galleries in Todos Santos (one split across two locations). There are maybe 5 sole artist’s galleries, three of which operate out of their homes. In the past 5 years, only two new galleries have opened, to my knowledge (and one has closed). Compare that to, say, San Jose Del Cabo, which has grown over the same period from having 2 galleries to there being an established Arts district with over 14 galleries, and weekly Arts Walks.

If we extend the arts scene to cover all artistic endeavors, then Todos Santos doesn’t score on theatre (the crown, inexplicably for me, rests with the artificially created sports fishing town of Los Barrilles), dance (non-existent), or music (while Todos Santos has musicians, it does not appear to be a nexus for them more than any other town here). While we do have several drummers here, I noted that at the last drumming class, the Todos Santaneans were outnumbered by people from Pescadero and Cabo Pulmo, and the energy centre for drumming, according to the drum instructor, may now be Los Barrilles. We do have strength in writing, but even then I see that most of the people at the monthly open readings are the same, established old-timers, rather than new blood. And we do have a Latin Film festival each year.

Maybe even as recently as 5 or 6 years ago, I think Todos Santos was seen as the arts centre of Southern Baja. There was a certain excitement in the air, professional artists even painted together, and the atmosphere and the promise certainly drew us to this place.

So what happened? It’s easy to point to the changes in the format of the once famous Arts Festival, where, unlike in Los Barrilles, the organizers decided to exclude non-Mexican citizens in order to promote pure Mexican culture (which has resulted in a strange mixture that includes truly Mexican - and extremely popular - events such as Irish and Polynesian dancing, and sale of tacky Indonesian imports at the crafts fair, but a paucity of fine art in the festival). But I suspect the answer lies deeper.

The generation that founded the arts community in Todos Santos is getting older. They have their closed groups of confidants, their frailties that come with aging. I wonder if the fire in their bellies has been dampened, the drive to create something new diminished.

There’s nothing wrong with the pioneers pulling back. They did their bit. What fascinates me, however, is that no-one has moved in to fill the vacuum. Why is that? Ken MacFarlane (http://www.todossantos.cc/todossantosnewsarchives_2005.htm) points to the intrusion of TVs into people’s lives here as a pivotal change and one that diminished the desire for community and caused people to become more self-contained.

I have some other ideas. I wonder if the type of people that Todos Santos attracts has changed. That they are maybe more interested in personal, rather than community development. Maybe they are more drawn by the sea and beach side of Todos Santos than the town itself and the potential for a lively arts scene. I also wonder if the sprawl of the town is taking a toll. I already see signs of balkanization, with El Otro Lado quite distinct from the town, and life revolving locally around each of the spiffy subdivisions.

Given all this, what is the future for Todos Santos? Resting on the laurels of legends doesn’t strike me as a sustainable stance. The path of least resistance, I fear, will be the devolution of Todos Santos into patrolled Carmel-like subdivisions, together with self-contained resort developments, anchored by a content-free, picture-postcard authentic town center.

One person alone can’t make a difference. And I’m still waiting for the crowd to form.

Looking Inside

2008-01-10T17:52:00.000-08:00

Not everything in Todos Santos (or probably Comox) is as it first seems. An initial external viewpoint of the town can seem naïve or single-faceted after you are immersed in the environment. And the face that people project here, deliberately or otherwise, isn’t always a solid image of their true self. Stay here long enough though, in this time-suspended bubble of reflection, and you may have to come face to face with these inconsistencies.

A Glassy Stare

I saw him as soon as I entered the room
Strangely familiar
I’d caught glimpses of him before
At social gatherings, reflected
In a glass, or shiny jewelry
Older than me, shorter
Definitely less guapo
Yet so confident
At home in alien surroundings
Flitting from one superficial conversation to another
Like an accomplished dilettante

But now he seems different
Fragile, vulnerable
His face a picture of world weary, ineffable sadness
As if he were lost
He turns to look at me
With a gaze that seeks answers
Demands a response
Trying to connect

I stare back
Drawn as if a passerby to a car wreck
Sucked into the darkness within his eyes
But I have nothing to give back
Can’t break through the gap between us
It’s so uncomfortable
I turn to break the stare
Leave the bathroom
And he leaves too
Mirroring my actions.

How do you tell it is winter?

2008-01-08T06:13:00.000-08:00

I grew used to Canadian winters over many years in Calgary, Alberta. Long, dark nights, bone-chilling “exposed flesh will freeze in 60 seconds” cold, snow that turns to grey frozen slush with the passage of the famous Chinook wind, and brown, brown fields. The off-setting positive was wide-open azure skies and sunshine, though its warmth was imperceptible. Comox is milder. The snow doesn’t stay as long, but in its place, there are grey, grey skies, and rain immeasurable. Or so the webcam suggests. Your flesh won’t freeze, but you may grow webs between your toes.

Todos Santos can be at its best in the winter. The sun continues to shine from summery skies, and it’s still warm enough to wear bathing trunks or a bikini at the beach, but not so hot as to be uncomfortable. But there is still a perceptible and sudden set of changes in nature as the Solstice passes, as I noticed this week with the sudden fall of the leaves from our majestic, ancient Plumeria tree and other plants, and a contradictory rush of flowers on various other occupants of my garden.

Winter wonderland

The sun hesitates
Starting its northward passage
Days now imperceptibly lengthening
And the earth responds

The Plumeria sap stills suddenly, recedes
Turning its leathery green mantle
Into dried, fragile husks
That fall in a parody of New Year’s celebrations
Skittering hollowly on the dusty patio
Leaving bare upturned arms
Beseeching the return of summer

The Ocatillos on the nestling hillsides
Echo the call
Once enrobed in emerald scales
Now alchemized from green to gold overnight
Then shed to enter the New Year
Naked and unadorned

But within my garden
Others fear the coming heat
Seemingly aware of mortality
They trumpet fountains of flowers
In a vain attempt to deny the inevitable

And I sit here
Bathed in bright sunlight
Soothed by perfumed and still warm breezes
Watching these perennial changes
My imprinted mind struggling
To integrate inherent incongruities
In the arrival of a Todos Santos “Winter”.

Reflexive Ownership and other Mexican Customs

2008-01-06T07:07:00.000-08:00

I have the greatest admiration for my next door neighbor. He is also our part-time gardener, handyman, laborer, plasterer, plumber, gas fitter, electrician, procurer of necessary services, healthcare consultant, and a full-time good friend. He shies away from drink, cigarettes, and even coffee. He has a gentle sense of humor, as well as very strong hands. The only complaint I have is about his animals. Or to be more precise, those animals that are not his, but just happen to reside with him.

It started when we first arrived, with the hens (no problem) and the rooster (big problem). This rooster is not an ordinary animal. No, it is huge, a freak of its species. I wouldn’t want to meet it in a dark alley without some form of defense. Actually, I wouldn’t want to meet it in a lighted alley without a large stick. This miracle of the animal world used to sit, every night, on the wall between our properties, 8 feet from one bedroom window, and attempt to compete with every other rooster within Todos Santos. Not content with screeching at the break of dawn, it would religiously chime the hours of the night, like a demented cuckoo clock, until it got a response. Then the battle would begin, ending only when the other side admitted defeat.

I talked to our neighbor about the animal in my limited Spanish (at the time), miming the act of placing my hands around its neck and pleasure at hearing its final cry. My neighbor smiled. He agreed. He hated it, wanted it to go. But it just happened to visit his place and his wife fed it. It wasn’t his. End of discussion.

We reassured ourselves with the possibility that it would tire of coming to his place, and if not, would soon die of a sore throat. After all, don’t large animals have shorter lives? In the meantime, we got used to the noise and sleeping with earplugs.

When we returned for the winter the next year, we were surprised to see not only that this rooster was still around, but it had been joined by two others. More discussions with the neighbor revealed his frustration with the new arrivals, but, since they weren’t his, what could he do?

This year it’s cats. My wife and I have a perfectly interlocking, Jack Spratt like approach to animals. I’m allergic to cats, and she to dogs, so we are immune to the demands of Todos Santos society that we adopt a flock or two of either. However, we have a clowder of cats in and out of our garden. The one positive thing is that we have no problem with mice. They can, however, tell that I don’t like them and, when they can, some sneak up to the house to mark their territory and show their disdain for me.

My neighbor despises them too. He screws up his nose and makes disparaging remarks about them. So it was a surprise to me when I came to his house to talk about plans for the next week and found several cats feeding on cat food next to his house. “They’re not mine”, he said, “My wife just puts food out for them”. It’s true that the cats are probably their own owners, and sponge off everyone in the neighborhood. But to join the ranks of the supporters, when you despise them?

I’m sure I’m experiencing several aspects of Mexican culture. The ingrained desire to never cross their "masters", which results in never saying no, accepting no responsibility for things that might displease, giving directions even when you don’t know the way, and saying you will come when you know you won’t or can’t. A dash of fatalism, blended with a full measure of a matriarchal society. And to top it all, I suspect my neighbor is having a little fun with me.

A Healthcare Test

2008-01-05T15:05:00.000-08:00

I did not have the flu. Unfortunately. I had a kidney stone in transit, together with a kidney infection. I realized the inaccuracy of the initial diagnosis after I began to pass blood and clots – not a usual symptom of a healthy Canadian flu.

Over the last few days I have therefore been able, once more, to sample the Mexican health care experience, including emergency hospital care at night. Being sick in a foreign land is one of my pet fears, which is probably why I have been so lucky as to experience it this year and last.

But is healthcare here as bad as a casual tourist might fear? I would say definitely not. The key issue (and it is a big one) lies in having to deal with your medical condition in a foreign language, and the associated stress that this causes at a time when you need it least.

Todos Santos does not have any local facilities to deal with anything beyond basic care. There are doctors, however, who are easy to access and, based on my experience, quite capable of diagnosis without extensive scientific tests. In fact, the reduced reliance on tests, and greater emphasis on experience and human observation appears to be one of the key differences between the Mexican and Canadian systems.

Our hospitals are in La Paz, the capital, and Cabo, both an hour or more away. The one we chose, the violet-painted Fidepaz in La Paz (which, to my confusion, uses a different name on all its signage!) has a curious mixture of high technology (automated IV pumps and an MRI) and antiques (such as the X-ray machine, which would not look out of place in a museum). The care is individualized and excellent, and access to specialists is easy.

Now compare that to Comox. Comox does (at the time of writing) have an excellent hospital (unlike many communities on Vancouver Island), but it is desperately in need of improvements, and it may be replaced with a distant larger hospital to “better” service residents across the North Island. Getting your own GP is, however, a badge of achievement, and many new residents (and all tourists) have to rely on walk-in clinics or taking their chances at the hospital emergency. Access to specialists appears time-consuming and bureaucratic. On the other hand, if you need a dentist, the picture is different. Comox appears to be a gathering place for dentists, who compete with hairdressers to see if they can better the Starbucks approach of an outlet at every corner. In terms of ordinary health care, though, I am not sure the services offered in Comox are better. But at least I have the illusion of being in control as I understand more of what they are telling me!

Stoned

As the light fades from gold through violet
Sucking life from the vacant sky
The Judas accretion skulks from its secure home
Slinking its way intermittently to birth
Rending flesh wherever it touches
And turning urine into wine

Straining to comprehend an alien prognosis
Delivered through the street babble of distorted music
I’m ricocheted from a hasty consultation
Under the dreary monochrome light of a single sad fluorescent
Projected toward a distant hospital the colour of dying sky
An unknown place soon to envelope me intimately

Cocooned in a quiet bubble of light
Suspended from reality for an hour
The strangely unfamiliar desert flashes by
In static snapshots
Of cacti
And washouts
And cows

Mind racing faster than the desert
Multitasking in multiple tenses
Imagining futures, and maybe no future
Dissecting the past for clues for this punishment
But still watching the present, in this suspended state
Watching the stillness of the stars above
Blissfully above this pathetic drama
Constellations prescient harbingers of
The diagnostic images to come

And watching the patient stars
Accompany me with perfect precision
I surrender
To the inevitability of the unknown.

99.9 Fahrenheit Degrees, stable now, with rising possibilities…

2008-01-01T08:00:00.000-08:00

(With apologies to Suzanne Vega)

I have the flu, and I’m definitely running a fever.

It’s not that I haven’t tried to stay well. I religiously got my flu jab before coming down to Todos Santos. Maybe the bugs here are different to those in snowy climes.

I’m aching, my throat hurts, my eyes are sunken. I’m desperately trying to marshal my defenses to mount a careful counter-attack, aware that the thing that caused severe mortality in the last great Flu Pandemic was overreaction of the immune system. People consumed by the very thing that was meant to protect them. And that’s why the highest death rates were in healthy, fit individuals.

As you can see, I am the prototypical male when I get sick. Try as I may, I can’t work for extended periods, and slink back to bed, burying myself in mountains of wrappings and demanding hot drinks, hot water bottles, while all the time bemoaning my fate.

I try to think of the positive experiences with this sickness. That melting feeling when the heat of a hot water bottle sinks into you, dissolving the shivering and surrounding you in a blissful sweaty miasma.

That I am not interested in food, which must help my weight control. Except chocolate. I crave good chocolate when I’m sick, ever since I was a kid when I learned the formula sickness = consumption of candies (and especially chocolate). Now, if I just could drive to Cabo, and raid the Christmas aisles of Costco for their Belgian chocolate. It’s wishful thinking, unfortunately.

But most of all, the greatest experiences are my dreams. Dreams of such complexity, illogicality and of a haunting quality that can’t be matched (legally), except maybe by initial doses of Effexor or similar anti-depressants.

I am standing on a cobbled sidewalk, beside a crenellated wall, watching the serried rows of silver hatchet fish swim in one direction in the water in the street. I cast to them, aware now that there is no water in the road, but unconcerned. I suddenly realize that the obvious reason I am not catching anything is that I am not using “The Special Bread” as bait. I look behind, and in an alcove, there is an upholstered duck, inscribed with all the secrets of my life. Why is it there, I wonder?

I close my eyes and see swarms of small stick people, washing their clothes and swimming in cascading pools of clay-like mud.

But then there is a pounding in my poor head, just like a hammer, rhythmically striking. Wait a moment, that is a hammer, in reality. A neighbor has decided on this, of all days, to construct a wooden hut.

Wonderful as these experiences are, I long to return to the taken-for-granted and ephemeral state of good health.

I wish my readers a healthier start to the New Year. Feliz Año Nuevo!

Sunrise in Todos Santos

2007-12-31T09:46:00.000-08:00

One aspect of Todos Santos that continues (thankfully) to amaze me is the strength and purity of the light. When the sun rises up in the morning above the massive Sierra Lagunas and the local hills, it doesn’t shine with timidity. It sears its way onto the landscape, razor sharp (that is unless there is a local mist or bonfire of plastic refuse to diffuse the intensity!). I like to start my mornings enjoying the way the sun points you to looking at things differently.

Illuminations

The sun thunders over the hill
With precision timing
Blasting the tenuous streetscape with clarity

Invisible rays
As if in a vacuum
With no warning, no precursor
Seek out namesake flowers
Illuminating them from within
Burning them with radiant color
Breathing pulsating life
All else around now invisible

The miraculous beauty of those objects
Revealed to jaded eyes
For a lifetime of a few minutes
Till the sun abandons them
In its daily climb
Leaving the flowers
Muted, as before
But now comprehended.

Perspective

2007-12-30T11:43:00.000-08:00

I have written before about the wonderful freedom that living in a small town provides to learn about yourself, and to redefine yourself. Like everything else, though, there is a dark side to this freedom. In this instance, I believe it is the danger of losing perspective.

Swimming in a small pool, it is easy to slide from the wonder of finding new talents and inward rejoicing, to self-aggrandizement. From finding your talents or the new service you can offer being one of the few in town, or the one in town to One of The Few, or The One.

Now I am not saying that there aren’t people in both Todos Santos and Comox whose skills and talents transcend the boundaries of the pool. I have been excited to find amazing musical and theatre talent in and around Comox. Todos Santos has sage and profound thinkers, and excellent writers, who spend at least part of the year here. Not everything in either location, however, is world-class, or even province or state class.

What I find most interesting about Todos Santos, however, is the way that some of the local perspectives can achieve almost mythic status. Open critique of such symbols appears actively frowned upon, on the grounds that it attacks the community and is not supportive of courageous individuals. Of course, the critique simply goes underground in the local hard currency of gossip.

I don’t see this public group-think in Comox. Maybe that’s because we Canadians are pretty laid back, and we don’t take ourselves that seriously. That’s also how we kept out of trouble in the world, until recently. But I won’t go there…

I am not saying that we should regard the activities in these towns with the perspective of a jaded city-dweller, looking down on the country bumpkins as they go about their lives. Far from it. Last year, I, and many others went to the one-night local production of “Nunsense”. I spoke to a visitor from San Diego and asked her how she was enjoying it. She was confused by the enthusiastic response from the locals in the audience, and attributed it to there not being a lot of competing entertainment in town. It was not, in her view, of the same caliber to which she, as a sophisticated city-dweller, had become accustomed. I think she was missing the point, taking another, invalid, perspective. True, the singing was not perfect and the production was maybe not as polished as in a Broadway offering. What the audience was responding to was, I believe, the effort being put into the show by local amateurs for their benefit, the joy that the actors were showing, the sight of revered town figures in nun’s habits, happy to poke fun at themselves. And the unpretentious price did not preclude anyone seeing the show.

Perspective is a matter of seeing things as they really are. Without it, and the ability to receive gentle, well-meaning critique, I think it is hard to continue to grow.

Walking on Cerritos

2007-12-29T16:11:00.000-08:00

Even with the development that has happened at Cerritos, it is possible to escape quickly to miles of beach that remain relatively untouched. I find walking in this special place is a way to connect with whatever is going on inside at that moment.

Walking on Cerritos

The sea slinks back from its battle with the land
Leaving the weary sand flattened

I start to walk, bare footed
Quickly abandoning the structured rows of chairs
That frame expectant crowds
The babble of excitement
Fading into white noise
Then submerging under the drone of the sulking sea

My toes sink into cool, granular wetness
Where the battle has just ended, the result still in doubt

Pace slackening
Matching the darkly contemplative mood of my thoughts
Feet now met by the hardness
Of endless sand resplendent
A dried crust cracking
To pristine softness below

A million sparkles of light
Ghosts of battles long past
Scintillate in shimmery wetness
Patterns of dark and light
Swirl on the surface
Ephemeral beauty created by painful turmoil

Now I am alone
Save for the nervous sandpipers that precede me
Announcing my arrival to the emptiness
Feet moving without conscious control
As my mind chews tasteless cud

There, despoiling the sand ahead, are perfect footprints
Appearing, as if from nowhere
Measured stride trumpeting confidence
But then gone
Erased by the final lunge of a desperate wave

And as the water slides back
Leaving nothing
I wish that I too could be cleansed
And emerge renewed.

Finding your way in Todos Santos

2007-12-24T08:40:00.000-08:00

Moving to a small town like Todos Santos or, to a lesser extent, Comox, might seem constricting and limiting. Paradoxically, the very smallness of the places and reduced distractions perhaps provide a wide-open, and scary opportunity for reinvention.

Floating

I’m floating
Adrift from ancient moorings
That sheltered me from gales of self-examination
Now distant and awkward
Yet emitting still the heady pheromone of familiarity

Unused to the infinities of open water
Aware of the existence of sea monsters
Of whirlpools that invite and draw into cloying depths
I lie terrified in excitement
Imagine careening across the crest of waves
Sails filled with the sureness of life
Pursuing a path of passionate purpose

But my senses are encrusted with the past
No trusted instruments at hand
To measure the worth of the currents
To judge delicious scents wafting across the water
To find and plot my course

And so I float
In my personal Sargasso of memories and unformed wishes
Tentatively exploring my surrounds
By the light of intuition
Waiting for the insistent lapping of waves
To dissolve the crust
And set me free.

Reality Check

2007-12-22T06:28:00.000-08:00

Last weekend, we drove to Cabo and San Jose del Cabo for some necessary shopping and to meet with friends. I have never enjoyed Cabo, other than as a venue for people-watching, but we lived in San Jose for 6 years before coming to Todos Santos.

I was overwhelmed by the changes that have swept through the towns. Blooms of subdivisions cascade over the landscape. The once vacant beach near our old condo has sprouted jostling hotels, our place now cowering beneath much larger, grander complexes. A glossy magazine lists 130 pages of homes, most of which are well over $1M (and, apparently, the most expensive houses sell fastest).

Supporting the delivery of new construction, and servicing the residents and visitors, is a huge industry, which has drawn many new people to the area. The twin towns and the corridor between them have become bustling nests of activity, complete with traffic jams and all the usual paraphernalia of North American progress.

As I wandered around San Jose, with its rows of identical silver and tacky trinket shops, I found myself asking “Why do people want to come here, now?”

I remember what delighted me about San Jose in the past. I felt as though I were invited into a foreign culture, an adventurer, experiencing all the quirkiness of real life. Hunting series of shops till we found all the ingredients for a meal. Marveling over the logic of shops that place car parts next to bird cages, cookies, blenders and dresses. Feeling triumphant when, after seeking for days, I find a large aluminum juice press hidden in the back of one of these stores.

Those days are past, eliminated through the convenience of supermarkets and big box stores.

My friend helped me understand why people flock to the Cabos. He pointed out that the incredible climate and the excellent golf and sports fishing were all still there, less than 2 hours from a large percentage of the American population. That’s what people wanted, he said, now more than ever. Then it dawned on me. Most people aren’t going to Cabo and San Jose to go to Mexico. They want a hedonistic escape from reality. Maybe seasoned a little with some nice scenic backdrops, some carefully packaged authentic “folkloric dancing”, and some souvenirs to prove you were there. The Mexico they want is a homogenized, manicured, Disneyland experience.

I was glad to return to our home town, which does not revolve solely around the servicing of hedonists. Fishing boats still go out to catch fish, not fishermen. I can still enjoy the quirks of real Mexican town life, with sudden appearance and disappearance of assorted farm animals on adjacent vacant lots, and, upon opening our car gate one night this week, finding a horse tied up at the electricity pole, its owner waiting to go on a date with his girlfriend from the house next door.

I vote for reality. I wonder how much the new Master Plan for Todos Santos, due to be published soon, will be based on the principle of maintaining that reality.

In praise of a Mango Tree

2007-12-20T09:15:00.000-08:00

Our garden is blessed by an old mango tree that sits by the edge of the property, and overhangs the bedroom roof. This tree provides us with many things. A dramatic backdrop to the garden, dappled shade, a trellis for a vine to ascend and mingle its ineffably blue violet flowers with the dark greens and reds of the mango leaves, and cover for the succession of birds that rest here as the day progresses: ponderous pigeons in the cool of the night and early morning, vibrant yellow families of orioles in the afternoon, whispering finches as the light fades. But, greatest of all, the tree produces mangoes.

Our mangoes are in season during the late summer. When we arrive here, in November, they are usually finished, the only reminder being the desiccated husks of dropped fruit on the roof. This year, there were 5 or 6 magnificent fruits still on the tree, which our resourceful gardener retrieved. We waited expectantly for them to ripen, and prepared to eat one.

Eating ripe mangoes often evokes images of sensuality and eroticism. Maybe it’s due to their juiciness, the softness of the flesh. Bite into one, close your eyes, and you can be transported to a naked picnic under the stars on a rooftop, kissing the drips off each other’s cooling flesh, or languorously wading waist deep in the warm sea, dipping the mango in the water and sharing the confusion of salty sweetness.

The taste of this home-grown mango was like no other experienced before. It was the essence of mango, The Alpha and Omega of Mango. It exploded on the tongue, overwhelming in its impact, drowning out any indirect musings on sensuality in its immediacy. Like a fine wine, I savored the change in flavor as I moved it around my mouth, the subtle aftertaste.

We hoarded the others, sharing only with special guests, and when the stash was exhausted, moved on to other commercial products. They were serviceable, still delicious, but a pale imitation of the fruit of our special tree. Forget the “100 Mile Diet”, I believe in the “100 Meter Mango Diet” and have found a good reason why you might want to stay here in the summer.

Comox, our other home, unfortunately does not grow Mangoes. It does have its signature fruit, namely the Blackberry. Blackberries are indeed scrumptious, but, perhaps due to their puritanical English origins, they don’t evoke in me any images of sensuality or eroticism.

Living in a Pressure Cooker

2007-12-18T12:53:00.000-08:00

Stress and living in Todos Santos seem, at first glance, to be an oxymoron. People stay here to escape the stress in life, don’t they? How can living here be pressured?

I was amused to read a Baja travelogue a couple of days ago, where the authors, as part of a long journey, came to Todos Santos for a day. They wandered around the town (that didn’t take long), and peered into Hotel California, which they concluded contained a few hip people. Then, they reasoned, Todos Santos was clearly such a sleepy place, overall, that they needed to move on the next day to avoid terminal boredom.

The lack of the usual busy noise and diversions of life, however, is exactly what provides the basis for stress, admittedly of a different kind to that experienced in cities. Living here, whether single or as a couple, brings the opportunity to come face to face with the stark reality of yourself and your relationships. And that is neither easy, nor comfortable. The environment here is like a pressure cooker, enabling the juices of our feelings, our essences, to cook faster, and in a more intense manner than “normal” life.

A friend of mine, after committing to come and live here full time with her husband, wailed, partly in jest “Living together here, 24/7, 365 days a year. What was I thinking?”

Of course, human nature being what it is, we can invent a cornucopia of ways to avoid facing ourselves and others. Medication (legal, such as alcohol, and otherwise), passionate commitment to a cause, serial dinner parties – there are so many tricks by which we avoid intimacy.

The beauty, and maybe the magic, of Todos Santos is that it has a way of gently guiding you back to yourself, if only you pay attention. The clarity of the air, the vividness of the light, the sounds of life and the ocean, the endless unclaimed beach, the overall immediacy of the experience of being here – they all offer gateways into the hardest work of all, understanding and accepting yourself.

Beach Time

2007-12-17T05:51:00.000-08:00

Just 5 minutes from the centre of Todos Santos (well, maybe 10 minutes, given the rain-ravaged state of the roads), you can be on the beach to the North of the town. This long stretch of untouched sand, dunes and raw Pacific is a place to reconnect with yourself. A friend of mine likes to walk along the beach, sliding down sand banks on her heels, reveling in the spray on her face, and letting her inner child play. We all have different ways of connecting. I like to sit and watch.

By the Sea

I sit on the dune
Sun-seared sand sliding softly through my fingers and toes
Watching the sea perform its dance of intimacy with the virgin beach
Sometimes advancing with roaring passion
Waves blushing white
Sometimes retreating reluctantly with deep sighs
Always together

A dart of silver fish is suspended, momentarily, in the turquoise curl of a wave
And is gone

A necklace of identical pelicans
Joined invisibly
Glides silently and effortlessly across the union between sea and beach
Measuring a constant height above the ecstatic waves

Above me, ephemeral wisps of clouds emerge
Play briefly, and fade
In the crystalline sky

I am here
Present

And a million miles from anywhere.

One Man's Garbage ...

2007-12-16T14:04:00.000-08:00

When visitors first come to our house, deep in a Mexican barrio, they usually exclaim how surprised they are at the beauty of the place. Part of it is that the house is indeed delightful and surrounded by a tropical abundance. When we walk into town with the visitors, however, a different picture sometimes emerges. “How can you live in the middle of this … mess?” they protest, pointing at piles of building refuse on an unused lot, and dog-disturbed bags of food waste by the side of the road.

I have to admit that it is not aesthetically pleasing, to my North American / English sensibilities. If you care to dig below the surface of the garbage, however, the picture is not so clear.

Firstly, it really is garbage. It is only material that is of no use, because anything that can be reused, is. We learned early on in Mexico that, to be courteous, you separate what might conceivably be of use to someone from real trash, to save them the unpleasantness of plowing through garbage to get at “treasure”.

It fascinates me to see how fast the recycling process takes. My personal record is under 5 seconds, when I dragged the very old, non-functional range into the street. My neighbor suddenly appeared from behind his wall and asked if he could have it. I agreed, and it disappeared again behind his wall.

Even when there appears to be no-one around, things that I would have thought were of limited value disappear mysteriously. It’s almost as if there is an instant secret network in town that is on the look-out for any material.

Most importantly, though, the streetscape that you and I might perceive as somewhat of a mess really doesn’t matter to my neighbors. If it did, they’d do something about it. Their families and their home life are more important to them than a pristine external environment. What a novel thought!

The sacrosanct North American principle of not littering simply isn’t inculcated here. Before you denigrate Mexicans, however, think back 35 years in the States. It was not uncommon then, I gather, to throw cans and candy wrappers out of cars.

There are signs of change. People tell me that the Todos Santos garbage dump now gets some things of value (being a “townie”, I get garbage collection and therefore can’t report on this first hand!). If you look at the middle class subdivisions springing up all over Cabo, you’ll see that they are just as pernickety about their streets as any American or Canadian.

Maybe these changes are for the better. I just hope the positive aspects of the Mexican value system will survive this "Americanization".

Listening to Todos Santos

2007-12-15T10:04:00.001-08:00

Living in town in Todos Santos is a feast for the ears. You might think maybe even too much of a feast, if you are a new visitor. If you listen closely though, beneath the initial impression of sonic chaos, there is a certain comforting daily cycle to the sounds.

Listening to Todos Santos

Before the tendrils of dawn tentatively creep into the sky
A vigilant rooster hurls its challenge into the cool air
Quickly answered by others, determined to compete
Till the sky is filled with their cacophony

The gentle rustle of palm leaves presages the arrival of the sun
And the awakening of the town

One by one, engines, ancient and arthritic, or temperamentally macho
Reluctantly stir into life
Trucks bumble along the dusty streets
Trailing fading clouds of raucous ranchero music

Insistent horns traverse the town
Announcing the arrival of gas or brooms
Tuneless trumpets mangle staccato drum beats
Initiating the school day

As the sun warms the ground, the sound mellows
Becomes cocooned
The patter of the fountain blending with snatches of laughter
And the distant sounds of construction

When the mangoes are painted golden by the lagging sun
And vultures swirl slowly in the vertiginous sky
The cooling air sharpens the sound
Extracting birds from daytime hiding places
Strident calls of a family of Flickers
Counterpoint squawks of squabbling Orioles and the chatter of Finches
Till the dying light leaves nothing
But the chink of hummingbirds defending their territory

Cicadas pounce on the fall of night
A sonic foundation for the emergence of a plethora of stars
Interrupted by mournful howls of lonely dogs
And wafts of celebratory music
Till the darkness drains energy from all
And the town falls into silence
Drawing strength for the new day.

Friendship

2007-12-12T14:13:00.000-08:00

One of the challenges that you face moving to a new place (and it’s even worse when you move between two new places as we do) is establishing and growing new relationships. People generally call it “making new friends”, but I have always had difficulty with that term. I find there is a huge spectrum of relationships that people call “friendship”, and what suits and is desired by one person may be anathema to another.

Both Comox and Todos Santos experience a large influx of new people each year, and so there are novitiates in both places hungering for new connections. The “Newcomers Club” in Comox is the 2nd largest in Canada, which is quite amazing given the size of the town. This organization, which is essentially only for women (on the grounds, no doubt, that normal men don’t need friendships if they golf or can share masculine grunts while watching hockey), hosts parties for members and their partners to meet others. Although I go to most, hoping to be surprised, I have to say I find these events deeply dissatisfying. I gain very little from exchanges that start with the essential “What brought you here?”, and never get beyond the “What activities do you do?” or “Can you please share your recipe for that appetizer?”

Of course, I’m expecting too much. I just desire oxymoronic instant intimacy. If I can’t have intensity in a relationship, learn about and share inner feelings and ideas, then I have little interest in continuing, or at least developing it. And, in a perfect world, I want this state immediately, without the quite necessary preamble and testing that happens before real people will reveal themselves fully. Understanding that this is unrealistic, I still believe it is possible to identify fairly quickly where there is limited potential for such deepening.

In Comox, based on my experience with the Newcomers Club, many people seem very content with establishing a wide circle of essentially activity-based acquaintances, and have no devilish desire to delve deeper. Todos Santos appears, generally, a more fertile hunting ground for my personal concept of friendship. Maybe that’s partly because, until recently at least, unlike Comox, you had to be a bit of an adventurer and an odd duck to choose Todos Santos as a place to stay. It was primitive in parts, a little “new ageish” (they play drums and do Tarot there, don’t they?), and without fishing or golf. While other parts of Baja had more conventional inhabitants, there weren’t really any vanilla ones here. That may be changing, with the growth of more “Carmel-like” subdivisions. But for now, I, as an odd duck, find many people here to be interesting and interested.

Finding and starting new friendships is one thing. Sustaining them is quite another. On reflection, it seems to me that intense friendships may have a natural lifecycle. People come together when they find it addresses their common needs, whether those relate to a specific difficult shared external event, or some aspect of their inner selves they need to address. But then people and situations evolve, the needs diverge, and with them, at least the intensity or nature of the connection. That isn’t to say that you can’t keep friendships. When we get together with our best friends of many years, it seems, for the duration of the visit, like we were never apart. I’m not sure, however, whether this relationship or others would withstand, without evolution, extended visits that washed away the novelty and newsy aspects of our interactions.

Water, water, everywhere, but…

2007-12-11T06:44:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was another wet, dreary day in Todos Santos, with rain falling from early morning right through till the evening.

On the whole, rain is not kind to Todos Santos. There are some good points – the rain makes a valiant attempt to wash the ever-present dust off plants leaving them gleaming and refreshed, the aquifers are replenished, and there is a primal, fertile smell in the air. But Todos Santos is a Baja town built around an oasis in the desert. Rain is not a usual occurrence, and life here is not designed to accommodate it.

Dirt roads turn into sticky streams filled with gelatinous mud. Dips in the roads fill with red water of unknown depth. Open air restaurants sit empty, their welcoming spaces sad and bedraggled. And the brilliant colours of the town appear muted. One of the magical things about this town is the quality of the light. The clarity of the air, and the intensity of the sunlight make shadows appear separate entities from their parent objects. When the grey clouds move in, the magic disappears.

Last night, in the midst of this surfeit of water, friends from the Las Tunas subdivision bemoaned that they had not had any water from the town’s water supply for 2 weeks. How can this be? One cause, familiar to Comox and any other desirable area, is that it’s hard for infrastructure to keep up with growth. In this instance, however, there’s a very specific reason. Last summer, the main pump for the town’s water system broke. Apparently, there is no money that can be allocated to fix or replace it. Given that the alternate pump can’t meet all demand, water is rationed. The “townies” (like us) haven’t really suffered. The outlying areas, however, have been severely restricted and have had to rely on their storage pilas. And when there is water, the first residences on the pipe draw it all till their storage is full, leaving others still dry.

Why has this gone on for so long? I suspect it has something to do with lack of self-determination in Todos Santos. The town is administered by the capital city of La Paz, 1 hour away, as if it were a suburb of the city. There is no locally elected body here that has real decision making power. La Paz is a bustling, growing city that has its own water issues, with rationing a standard part of day-to-day existence for many of its residents. I am not sure the interests of the few residents in our distant town stack up highly against other, more proximate concerns. It also may not be coincidental that most of the residents in the outlying areas like Las Tunas are not Mexican citizens, and are therefore not entitled to vote.

Will the water issues get fixed? I’ve been here long enough to believe that they will, in the same way the sun has returned today as if it had never been missing. But the resolution will be on Mexican time, of course. That is where we live!

La Madrugada (the wee small hours of the morning)

2007-12-10T06:40:00.000-08:00

To me, there’s something special about that time when the night has overstayed its welcome, and yet it’s still not morning. It’s an in-between state, a blank canvas, pregnant with possibilities. That’s why I named my last consulting company ‘Madrugada”. But the blankness is also a space into which the monsters within you can emerge, untrammeled by logic and the noise of day-to-day life. Spending time reflecting in a small, culturally different town like Todos Santos provides a fertile ground for such demons.

3 a.m.

Even the dogs tire of barking
As the smudged moon trudges its way across the sky
The monochrome light leaching solid form and acoustic debris
Leaving only the staccato, whining challenge of a lonely truck
As it penetrates the heart of the town

And in this simplified environment
Favoured by suicides
I begin to sweat a foul amalgam
Of unwanted thoughts and emotions
That challenges the rationality and value of my life
Tentatively at first
Then gushing forth to drown me
As it gains dark confidence

Colour edges its way back into the sky
Drawing out the trivial sounds of business
And dank vapour from the earth and me
Leaving a bitter residue on heart, eyes and tongue
That taints the day to come.

Chipping away at Mental Models

2007-12-09T06:54:00.000-08:00

We all use mental models to help us slide through life comfortably and easily. Life in Todos Santos, and in Mexico in general, has a habit of breaking the models we’ve built up so carefully in the North.

When we moved to Todos Santos, we bought a house that friends later politely described as “needing a little polishing”. We grew tired of the eclectic collection of iron and cheap aluminum windows, whose humorous attempts at screens only kept out insects that didn’t have the initiative to go to the open edges, or those larger than a bumblebee. Our gardener (the source of all information here) took me down overgrown alleys and tracks on “el Otro Lado” and introduced me to someone in our little town that made passable North American style windows to replace all of ours. Oh glee! I asked about installation. “Was it included?” “Oh yes. You’ll just have to remove the old ones, and your gardener can help with that”.

Now I was perfectly clear about how window replacement worked. I’d had it done several times in Canada. So when the gardener and his contractor friend came up with a huge figure as a quote for removing the windows I was upset. I must be getting the Gringo price, I thought, again applying a familiar mental model. I negotiated the price a little lower, and grudgingly agreed for the work to begin.

We were so glad we listened to the gentle advice (given twice) by the gardener that we might want to move the bed out of the bedroom. Surely, we thought, moving it away from the window will give them enough room to work? But removing windows is not the job I imagined. You have to chip out the concrete and blocks that the window and its heavy metal anchors are set in. Then you have to rebuild the opening with a cement / fine sand mix to be perfectly square. Working at the fastest pace they could, they reached the staggering production capacity of one opening a day. And the mess…

Needless to say, it was very uncomfortable camping in a windowless house for three weeks. I paid the workers what they had asked for originally, and a bonus, admitting my mistake and misconceptions.

It’s very painful to have your mental models destroyed. And, even worse, what is left when they are gone?

Deconstructing in Mexico

Adrift from structured work
I’m smothered by an infinity of neutered opportunities
Passionately uninterested
Seeking escape in creative illusions of construction
That, with painstaking slowness and repetition
Systematically clog any remnants of life
Beneath the debris of stone, cement
and shattered expectations of life.

“Mexico will round your edges” we were told
But I had no clear form before the chiselers started
And now, as a shapeless mass
What once appeared as a birthplace for renewal
Seems as confining as any prison
Binding my soul in a dark, dark place
Invisible to me.

Impermanence

2007-12-06T13:29:00.000-08:00

Splitting my year between Todos Santos and Comox sharply highlights the truth that everything is impermanent. At a simple physical level, it’s like taking a snapshot one day, and then finding that the picture has changed next time you see it. This year in Todos Santos, for example, there’s a frenzy of construction of new buildings of varying levels of architectural merit, especially in the historic core (trying to be grandfathered before the Pueblo Magico Master Plan comes into effect). There’s the new fruit and vegetable store – a source of much discussion for a week or so – small towns are so small!

We all differ in our value judgments of change, but we also have our comfort point – the place at which we want to “freeze” things. I spoke this week to one of the original settlers of “Las Tunas”, the tony neighborhood on el Otro Lado, where now many of the new US immigrants have built their dream houses away from those noisy Mexicans so they can enjoy the “true Baja”. She decried the change that has transformed the simple desert place that they wanted for themselves into a busy upscale neighborhood of fancy homes. One person’s dream shattered, while others see their dreams realized – for a while. For as surely as change comes that we see as great, it continues and morphs the state we love into something else.

This hit home for me yesterday, visiting Los Cerritos beach. This beach of miles of firm golden sand, edged by a rocky headland, is one of the gems of the Pacific Coast. It was raw, and in that form enjoyed by many RV enthusiasts. We loved it, but also felt a little uncomfortable with the complete lack of amenities. No toilets! As the Ejido converted their communal land into titled lots that could be sold, this began to change. As well as a land rush on lot sales, a restaurant/bar appeared on the beachfront. It became the new mecca for Todos Santaeans – the luxury of being able to have a beer and pee in comfort! And the beauty of the place was essentially unchanged.

Fast forward to yesterday. The bar has been transformed into a real estate office full of timeshare-like dudes. It still also happens to sell drinks, but as a lure to drag the suckers in. The first of many, many blocks of condos is already under construction. The headland is now the private enclave of the developer. Jet skis weave between the bathers and surfers. So, much as we wanted to believe it wouldn’t happen, the changes, this time for the worse in our view, roll on inexorably.

It’s not just places that change. Relationships are seeded out of common needs, blossom, and inevitably wane or transform as one’s needs evolve. It’s probably easier to see that in our temporally interrupted lives. Coming back into town, you don’t really pick up where you left. Some become closer, others cleave away.

The truth of impermanence is one of the core messages of the Dharma talks here in Todos Santos. Denying it, and “clinging” to things, people, relationships, feelings, is the root of the suffering we all feel as part of the human condition. We all crave permanence in some form. Here in Mexico, they place plastic flowers at graves. Maybe they hope they’ll last forever. But the sun’s UV rays degrade even them over time.

It hurts to have to accept that everything will pass. I need to learn to get over the desire to freeze things as they are, or to only welcome what I see as positive change. I think I’ll cling to that thought…

It's a Dog's Life

2007-12-03T14:35:00.001-08:00

Dogs Rule!

No, that is not an exhortation or celebration of the wonder of doggies. It just happens to be true, here in Todos Santos.

While it’s always been at the back of my mind, this thought came to the forefront as I drove over to my exercise class last week. At every intersection, from every lot and compound, dogs observed my progress. It occurred to me that it is quite impossible to travel, dog-incognito, in this place.

There are two reasons why dogs are the dominant life form in town. One, observable in any Mexican town, is that dogs seem to be naturally social, unlike humans. They really don’t mind mixing (and mating) with any breed, and they don’t care about lineage. They are quite productive (what else do you do as a dog in a town, other than eat or sleep?), and so the population of pathetic looking Dachshund / German Shepherd crosses, Terrier / Poodles, and that most definitive of breeds, the Baja Hound, grows till it exceeds the carrying capacity of the land.

The other, which appears to be specific to Southern Baja in general, and Todos Santos in particular, is that somehow, without my knowledge, they appear to have passed a law that says all Gringo inhabitants must serve at least one dog. Really, you aren’t a true “immigrant citizen” until you cater to the whims of at least 2 dogs. Note that I didn’t say “own”, as, despite the popular saying, it isn’t just cats that have servants rather than masters.

Now I have to declare a bias here. I seemed to have missed the inoculation that makes people regard dogs as a lifeform way above that of a grown human, indeed at least as high as a speechless infant. Unlike those around me how declare how cute it is, I fail to derive pleasure from seeing a dog drag its dirty butt across a carpet to express its anal glands. And if it really is so wonderful to sniff an acquaintance’s butt, why don’t we all do it when we get together? Behaviors that wouldn’t be tolerated of a child – peeing on someone’s bag, making deposits on the beach - are seen as harmless expressions of necessary functions. They are animals, after all. But I think that many seem to forget this, and don’t see incongruity between this truth and their loving admissions that they spend more money and attention on their dogs than they do / did on their kids.

So we have a cornucopia of dogs in Todos Santos, and they are revered. Not a bad life! They come to every function (“Why not?” I already hear many of you asking), and hang out on every corner. Of course, I know the real reason is to keep an eye on the potential insurgents within their midst, like me. That’s why the canine rulers of this place always come up to check me out when I arrive somewhere. At least I know where my Karmic evolution should take me next, if I behave.

A Sense of Community

2007-12-01T06:13:00.000-08:00

It is, I believe, some complex and deep need to belong that compels many of us to migrate, like moths to the light, into small towns such as Todos Santos and Comox, where we think we can soothe this hurt. I was reminded of this by a wide-eyed visitor to Todos Santos at a recent gallery opening who used the words to describe the attraction of the place. The phrase resonated with me as I am as guilty as anyone of using it in the past to describe my attraction to TS. If you dig beneath the obvious, though, just what do we mean by the phrase, and does it exist here?

There have been many learned studies about the term “sense of community”. One of the most established is by McMillan and Chavis. They suggest that there are four elements necessary for a true sense of community:

Membership – including some sense of boundaries, and a feeling of identification
Influence -Influence works both ways: members need to feel that they have some influence in the group, and some influence by the group on its members is needed for group cohesion.
Integration and fulfillment of needs - Members feel rewarded in some way for their participation.
Shared emotional connection - The "definitive element for true community", it includes shared history and shared participation (or at least identification with the history).

It’s not hard to evoke the illusion of a sense of community when you come to a small town. There aren’t many people there, and, certainly in a vacation town like TS, there’s a need to mix, to socialize with almost anyone. In a larger place like Comox / Courtenay, the herds of uprooted and often purposeless retirees that make their way to “Paradise Valley” need to make new roots. So we all mix, see the same people, feel good that we “belong”. Superficially, there’s that sense we craved.

Really, though, we’re only talking about the first item. We are now an “in-sider”, rather than an insignificant outsider. Viewed at the macro level, however, the only thing linking people is that they came here. In the very beginning, when TS was tiny and being here as a Gringo/a was odd, I am sure some sense of “making history” would have also have led to a general sense of a shared emotional connection.

As a whole, though, neither TS nor Comox promulgates the middle two characteristics of a “sense of community”. I’m not even sure there is such thing as the Todos Santos community, other than in the most geographic sense of the word. We can’t even agree, for example, on whether it includes the local Mexicans as a separate group or groups, or we are or should be an idealized homogenous bucolic whole.

That is not to say that within these superficial geographic clumps there aren’t groups that do provide some true sense of community to their “members”. Within Todos Santos, for example, life revolves around tight circles such as the Dog Rescue Pack, the Cat Rescue Clowder, the Entertain the Migrant Children Clan, the Wine Bar Devotees, the Dharma-ites, The In-Crowd, The “Shut Up Franks” Regulars. These circles intersect, to varying degrees. Some, such as the informal Dog Rescue Pack, do, I suspect, provide to some all elements of a “sense of community”.

Micro communities have their own issues. It’s a small, small world. The price can be a restriction of world view to one where homogeneity rules, and the outside world doesn’t really exist other than as an exemplar of aberrant behavior. You also have to believe in the cause. Faking it till you make it doesn’t really cut it.

After the initial glow wore off, we decided naively that the secret to a fulfilling life in Todos Santos would be to surf the boundaries between the micro-groups, not falling into the welcoming folds. While it’s true that this avoids the deadly embrace of exclusivity, it requires you to be distant from everything. Even, maybe, to deny your own opinions – which I can’t do.

So is there true community in these places? I’m still looking and hoping.

Magical Dust

2007-11-27T14:44:00.000-08:00

If there is one thing that is a hallmark of Todos Santos, it is the dust. There are only a very few paved roads, and the increased affluence of locals (resulting in lots of fast vehicles), coupled with the innate need of Mexicans to drive fast, leads to a constant drizzle of dust over much of the town. And the dust seems to have strange effects on the ex-pats who make their home here ...

Polvo

Omnipresent, omnipotent
The Magic Dust of Todos Santos swirls energized around the hungry town
Drawing strength from dreams of rebirth alloyed with greed
“How authentic!” the eager-eyed new supplicants declare
Those indentured to the town know better
You can fight it, but it always wins
Ingratiating itself into every crevice
Smudging the raw experience of life
Into an acceptable muted facsimile of reality
Narrowing the field of vision
Progressively constricting the nose, the eyes, the mind
Till all that’s needed for sustenance is a steady diet of gossip
Seasoned with disdain for those Muggles
Unqualified to experience
The truly authentic Todos Santos

Bougainvillea (or bugambilla)

2007-11-22T12:09:00.000-08:00

These flowers are omnipresent in Todos Santos, and come in many different colours. They are, however, almost impossible to capture in a digital photo in the same hue as the human eye sees them. As with many other things, our perceptions are not necessarily the same as reality. But what is that? Anyway, I love the way the light filters through these particular examples.

Other perspectives on Todos Santos and Comox

2007-11-22T06:45:00.000-08:00

Who else writes about Todos Santos and Comox? Well, there's Howard Eckman with his blog http://todossantos.net / - newsy, but little in the way of comment. And Ken Macfarlane writes from time to time at http://www.todossantos.cc/bajacaliforniatodossantosnews.html, with ascerbic tidbits. Michael Mercer's thoughts on Todos Santos appear from time to time on his site http://www.michaelmercer.com/

Comox appears to have less observers. I like Ian Lidster's at http://ian-lidster.blogspot.com/ - general musings, plus the occassional insight into Comox and its establishment. If you want a parent's eye view, then http://comoxvalleykids.wordpress.com/ is pretty good. Not much fun for pure adults, though.

What to expect

2007-11-20T16:48:00.000-08:00

This blog will capture my irreverent comments, poems, photos and general observations about life as I experience it in the "Pueblo Magico" of Todos Santos BCS, Mexico.