unforeseeable holes.
there we were. climbing out a giant hole in the ground in rural yucatan. about 50 miles southeast of mérida. the capital of yucatan state. and the biggest city of the yucatan peninsula. cancun eat your heart out. tulum eat your quinoa up.
and this hole. it was giant. and filled with the greenest-bluest water your brown eyes ever see'd. bat feces everywhere. dropping all around you. stalactites and lagmites and no lights but for the pinhole. up above. through which the sun shone.
the water was so blue-green blue that you got hydrated just looking at it. you salivated, sure. but i mean, like, your skin got really young and your blinks got really frictionless.
and we swung from a tree limb that hung down from the earth lip above. out past the edge of the cave ground. and over the underground pool. black shadow cast over blue-green by the pinhole. and as the limb reached the extent of it's pendulum. we let go. and launched into the air. free of weight. and free, anymore, of wait. we were living in it.
after 1.5 years. we went on a honeymoon. and left our baby bungalow behind. in the hands of so many vet members of our trusty team. and there we were. 50 miles south of modern mexican civ. yucateca civ, really. weightless over a giant pool of pure, crystal clear blue-green bat-shit water. about to cold shock our bodies and brains straight out of the present tense. and into no tense at all. whatsoever. bungalow what? bungalow who? and who, by the way, were the catholic monsters. who saw this beauty. and the sacred mayan traditions built up round it. and thought: let's drop some eurotrash-y architecture right on top of it. who were they? fuck faces is who.
but back to the hole. we spent just enough time floating there. listening to bat shit drop from the underside of the cave into the perfect water. to be lulled into a peaceful present tense. to finally separate ourselves from our psychotic chicago world. and we climbed the man-made stairs back up out of the hole. onto the mostly unproductive (though not barren) land of a rural yucateca family. in homun. or cuzama. or yokdzonot. and we walked toward their shadow shelter. a shelter built in tribute to the forest preserves of cooked county. and we sauntered toward it. blissed out and rollicking. unable to beat a straight line.
and as we got closer, we got eyes on what we missed on the way in: a crocodile! in captivity! and a boa! and some pigs! but, by captivity, i mean chain link fence. built in tribute to the bungalow foeder fence. and so we kept walking on in our best interest. and got under the shelter. and saw a woman selling oreos. and albanese gummies. and chips. lord oh lord all kinds of chiPsssss. and a generously-bellied man lay on his side on the attached bench of a pyramid-style picnic table. collared shirt soiled. belly button big. his shoeless foot somehow propped up on the tabletop. like he was doing sideplank but had a spot. cell phone out and held in landscape super close to his face. and NEED FOR SPEED on his screen. the video game. not the movie. but he wasn't playing it. someone else was. he was watching someone else play NEED FOR SPEED on youtube. in the yucatan jungle.
and we got back in our car. and drove off down the dirt road to the next hole-in-the-ground. and through acanceh or eknakan or x-catzin. or some other mayan town with the tamest dogs you ever nearly drove over. coca cola insignia painted on 8 buildings per block. snack towers in every single super mini or non-super mini mart. but that's it. just snack towers. on and on. snacks abound. and, sure, there were restaurants in every town, too. with dead, translucent meat sizzlin' on flat tops. and the happy, gentle folks in these impoverished towns likely didn't have room in their homes for giant kitchens. so, you know, i wasn't fazed by the restaurants. but the amount of snacks!! whoa god!!! plastic-packaged snacks, neon and out of place on them dusty streets. ... not a sizzling dead pig converted to cochinita pibil. but oreos. and doritos. and gummy candy. and coke. and bottled water. and pops. and pop rocks. and digital alarm clocks. and 4-pack paper towels.
so what's all this mean? what's all this represent? well. this is progress. "progress", better put. this is what progress looks like. this is "what we'd give up" if we "went back to how things were". or if we ever turned our backs on the profit motive. if we learned not to rely so much on the bottom line to shape our societies and cultures. and to drive us forward.
--
while polly and i were in mexico, it's true: we stayed busy at first. and micro-managed bungalow. but then we chilled out. and spent some real fun days and nights getting to know each other again. and she fake laughed at a few things i said. and i got all excited and amped up to try to be even funnier and funnier so i could see her lose control of her face-muscles. in an all-out acid-phreak smile-laugh. and it was blissy. ... but then. you know what? we thought about talking to other people. we wanted friends! we wanted to share our lives with some weirdos we never met! we wanted to get loose and drunk with some new and fellow travelers.
and so we decided that the next day we'd wake up and hit the same beach chairs we'd been sitting in, but we'd turn to our right and left and say hi and make friends. with one of the dozen or so couples or groups. ... but shit. it was fucking hard! every damn couple had shades on. and every couple was staring bullets through every other couple. and then you'd approach a couple to say hi and they'd quickly look away and put a book in front of their faces. nobody was talking to anybody! but everyone was desperate for it! they all pretended like they just wanted to read and sleep. and then we'd see them catching a piña colada buzz and staring longingly at another couple doing same. and we'd smile real big at them and they'd look away. embarrassed that they'd been caught. but then, spurned, we'd go back to our books. and our beach beds. and but 30 minutes later that same weirdo couple'd be walking back from the sulfur-scented ocean and we'd be watching them through our dark sunglasses and they'd smile at us real big and we'd get nervous and look back at our books. and spurn them.
and shit. it went on like that til the end of the trip. everyone wanting friends. nobody knowing how. like a bunch of 30-somethings in chicago. friendless cuz it's too hard to make friends as an adult. wah.
well anyway, we got out of that beach joint and made tons of friends elsewhere on the isla. some aussies. some dutch. some rural franch. shit wait! we even tried to do this wacked out tour of these floating gardens and went totally to the wrong place and were the only mark tourists for blocks other than one other perfect kinfolk family and they invited us on their michelada boat tour and they were the most damn adorable family and polly still can't stop dreaming about them but anyway we sat there drinking our lime beers comparing past lives and they said "oh really?! our cousin owns a bar in chicago." "no shit?! what's it called? i've been selling beer to all of 'em for nearly a decade." "well, it's in the logan square neighborhood. it's called scofflaw."
and funny enough. danny shapiro. the owner of scofflaw. and their cousin. was just in for bread two days before we left town.
and we all just about lost it. totally infatuated with a moment in time. an accident.
and why? because: connection is vital to humans. connection. shared experience. story creation. and then the later telling of such. it's so much more important than comfort. or cookies. or distraction.
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but we can get oreos anywhere on the planet!
yes. we can. and the endless pursuit for more efficient means of production. and higher profits. and gross individualism. has lead to the alienation. and disconnection. of all of us. ... a woman in izamal who once made tortillas for the whole town is now competing with a national tortilla manufacturer. but is also competing with oreos. cheap oreos. and so she sits idle. and the man across town. her former customer. his job has become mostly irrelevant too. so he just buys cheaper, calorically dense but non-nutritious snacks. like oreos. instead of tortillas and dead meat with which to make cochinita pibil. and with this new idle time, he watches some bro in japan play need for speed on youtube.
free, unrelenting trade is partially to blame. but, really, the endless push for more. for more development. for higher profits for a person. rather than the redistribution of rewards. or the protection of labor. of the community. in all senses. has led to this life. a life not very fulfilled, but filling. and full. of oreos. and the oreos of entertainment: watching video games on youtube.
would reading a book be better than the latter? sure. but, all things considered, if it's just another way to pass the time, then a big fat whatev. i don't want to focus on it.
but would a 3/4-time job be better? than being idle and socially and economically immobile? and devoid of personal achievement unrelated even to economics? yes.
can we have both? well well: if we permit individuals to acquire wealth and power solely in benefit of themselves. if we minimize any encumbrance to do so. and even a small handful of individuals take us up. then the community can never be top priority. because the wealth and power that accrue to that handful of people will result in ever greater accretion of wealth and power. leaving constantly less for the rest of us.
we must decide whether to prioritize the community or the individual.
--
so give me some economic organizing structure other than capitalism as we've known it. something with some foresight. something that's got a decent ophthalmologist. and has been cured of its myopia.
this ain't the 80s anymore. reagan and goldwater were wrong. the slope slips. uncontrollably. the tap doesn't trickle. we've been giving working and middle class money away to the wealthiest corporations and individuals for 40 years. and we need to right the ship.
and we need new captains to do so. and i can think of one or two who have a particularly good sense of human nature. and not the ugly, divisive side of it. our current captain has that figured already. but the constructive, connective side of it.
the side that makes you all fuzzy every time you make a new friend at a bar. or in an igloo, tal vez.
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