monday

bocas is a quiet town. bocas is a tranquil town. there seem to be many different worlds here, unfortunately, depending on the color of your skin and what makes you comfortable. but first, the visuals:
the town proper is nestled right up onto the water, a strip of resuraunts and businesses even over the water, including the cafe i work at. there is an L of a main street where all the action is, including the waterfront of two other islands closeby. the color scheme is intense, only trying to compete with the brilliant sky, whitest clouds ever when there are any, bright sand, and the turquoise sea. taxis bustle around all day, street vendors offer fried plantains, corn, bread, and various questionable meats.

digression. entitled: potato.
(but really having nothing to do with potatoes.)

i am officially in love with the spanish language. i was telling daniel the other day how true it is to itself, how consistent. O always makes the same O sound and dieciocho is literally diez y ocho. we agreed spanish is telling of its people as. sarcasm is scarcer (i think because it is based on lies) and sorry almost doesn't exist. i want to scream sometimes because la gente aqui, they just understand. there is something they get about life, be it taking their time, having children, dealing gracefully with what comes, their own small town being sufficient for them, a love for their own people, or whatever. it's contagious and, admittedly, i think i'm come down with something... it makes me contemplate cities. how much confusion exists there, how a person needs the space and ways of nature to truly integrate their person. and i can only speak from my own experiments. i still want to travel. we are still going to travel. but please give me mountains and stretches of sky rather than sky-scrapers. it feels like all society is, is imitating nature and setting themselves up to survive nature. survive rain, hunger, night, sickness, solitude, growing old, the question of god, and eventually, death. what if we just gave in? what if we stopped trying to save ourselves? i'll be the first to admit that i'm scared to death but i have a feeling i'll be one of the ones taking the leap. vamos aver.

end of digression entitled potato.

the tourists search for beaches, restaurants, diving, surf spots by day and fill the bars offering ridiculous drink specials by night. there's not much else to do here. surf and drink. enter my thankfulness for a job and a friend who is just as obsessed with cooking as i am, probably more. and the rastas from before, some new, crocheting in their green house by the airport in the day and selling their crafts on the street all evening. somehow they represent balance to me. for some reason, their crown of righteousness is well-deserved. but i hate how they don't mourn what they've given up for holiness. i hate how the laws of nature and meditation hold them up and how simple it all is. and then, with a foot in each of these two worlds, i stand. with a stronger spine and a clearer mind: i still hesitate. my problem is that i understand too much. and what i understand, i gravitate towards. then you might see why both east and west feel like home to me, while north and south both claim my heart. the grace of lightness and sky versus the weight of water and skin and reality. i might have wandered the earth in search of what really owns me. then i would not only have to section myself into hundreds rather than halves, but i would be ignoring the fact that i own me. and jacquie said something eternally compelling, like she does, about just choosing. just choosing one. and through cultivating love, surpassing need, lack, and the illusion. it is raining right now. i am sitting outside on a hammock listening to catpower cover wonderwall. i have never been in love, i don't think, but i feel as if i am falling into it. not with a boy or a man or a woman or a specific idea of god or jah or potatoes, but just with it all in general. with being, with being alive, with the cycles and presence and life. i can't fucking deny life anymore. i can't deny that subtle holiness that is under every rock i am overturning. i could keep on overturning, forever, open to anything new, because other things do exist. not that i want to stop learning--never--but what about the pattern of everything thus far? i cannot be anyone other than me, asi es porque i've begun to collect the various parts of this pattern and cherish them as my own. because you don't find yourself, you just gotta recognize yourself. i've grown tired of non-commitment and insincerity and hiding from my own light and i feel as though i'm sloughing it off like old skin. there is nobody to wait around for or try to force & take with me. there is no ultimate preparation to make. it is all right here, right now. i am taken care of. i am ready.

in conclusion, i will now quote the great snowplow, formerly knows as louis, from a myspace message of all things:
"...but when I least expect it, walking with the hooooos of owls sitting in frost bleached trees... I let the desperation go, finding THE place in which I seek pulsing serenely from the giant speck of infinity within."