whose legs are these?

pudgy. 

freckly. 

veiny. 

dimpled and doughy, they stared at me in the fitting room, nearly three decades of gravity showing up in a hurry on a Thursday afternoon in June. it didn't help that i was wearing grandma's retro one-piece, whose threadbare bottom left something to be desired where lift and perk were concerned.

this has to be a fat mirror, i thought. you know, the kind that make you look short and stumpy and like you want to run home and change into your period pants? of course it is, i went on in my mind. they put the fat mirror in the fitting room so when you try on their ass-lifting spandex you just have to buy them because the alternative is unstomachable and staring you in the face from all directions.

now that's a sales tactic that works.

still, that image of sag and cellulite struck deep, unexpected. and it wasn't pretty.

"whose legs are these?" i asked my 18-year old self as i climbed into one-size-too-small overpriced yoga pants. by then, my legs and butt looked pretty good stuffed in there like sausages, magic fabric working wonders on otherwise absent curves.

but the spillover at the top sold me right out, love-handles drooping over suffocating waistband. i wished i was ten pounds lighter. and a whole lot firmer around the middle.

images of food played in my memory. in shame, i regretted that red-velvet cupcake sample i devoured outside the store. and that cream-filled puff pastry i ate on a bench at the airport in Rome last month. and that damn proscuitto and sheep-cheese sandwich on heavy artisan bread at the farmers' market in Lisbon, enough wheat, fat and gluten to choke a hungry pony at the petting zoo. (#whitegirlproblems, i know.)

"not mine!" screamed 18-year-old me. "those legs are definitely not mine."

of course they weren't, that little bitch.

her legs were tight-skinned, tanned, firm and fancy-free. a far cry from the sloppy vision glaring at me from all angles, in reflection of reflection of reflection. like a bad dream on repeat.

18-year-old self was high on judgment as i undressed, pinching and poking at flab wherever she could get her hands on it. frowning in disgust, she examined thin white lines of stretch marks forming on my hips, embarrassed i had let it get that bad.

cocoa butter. for the love of god, go find some fucking cocoa butter. 

"it's just the lighting in here," i told her, now a little girl pleading with her scary stepmother to put the wooden spoon back in the cupboard. "and don't worry, i'll start a cleanse this week and get back to my exercise regimen. and i'll stop eating out and i won't ever binge on chocolate cake again, and i promise i'll get in the best shape of my life!"

and i'll fit into these size 2 yoga pants. just you wait and see.

28-year-old me grabbed flab with conviction.

...and i'll do squats. lots and lots of squats.

18-year-old self nodded into the mirror, arms crossed in the scorn of approval.

*****

...the old gray mare, she ain't what she used to be,
ain't what she used to be,
ain't what she used to be.
the old gray mare, she ain't what she used to be,
...and she can't even remember the last line...

driving to yoga last week, late around the jungly mountain curves, i actually found myself singing that song.

about myself.

flowing through my vinyasa practice robotically, core tight in chaturanga-to-updog transition, i caught my gaze in the mirror. dark circles around my eyes, my skin looked dull.

"what am i doing to myself?" i thought, pressing palms into the mat, lifting hips to the sky in downward facing dog. that morning, i had surfed for two hours straight. and later that afternoon i had run-hiked the steep mountain trail, huffing and puffing my way up to the even steeper stairs, lunging to the top and power-squatting it out when i got there. nature held me in trees and birds and monkeys throwing things as i dripped sweat to the muddy earth below my neon Nikes. fitness in the jungle. 

i had been making good on my promise to 18-year-old self for nearly two weeks now. surfing, running, yoga. two-to-three physically challenging workouts a day.

...and squats. lots and lots of squats.

i was juicing beets and leafy greens and cilantro with hemp protein and spirulina. i was downing chia by the spoonful and flax-flushing like a fiber-fiend. skipping fats and sugar and living conscious of what i was putting in my body. counting calories. googling nutritional information on avocados. writing food diaries and shit.

and before i knew it, this war on self had become a full-time job.

as i stepped my right leg through my hands and lunged up into warrior one, my body trembled in overuse. my legs looked strong in the mirror but they could barely hold me.

i watched the skinny pretty girl in the back, her body lean and bendy. she's probably vegan, i thought, extending my arms in envy and tucking my tailbone into warrior two. i guessed she was twenty-one; maybe twenty-two, max.

"enjoy it while you can, sweetheart," my eyes told her reflection from the front of the room. "enjoy it now, because it's all downhill from here."

i reversed my warrior and extended my side-angle, praying for savasana.
at the end of class, gorgeous blond instructor chick stepped out of her half-naked yoga show and reminded us to thank our bodies for their strength, and to thank ourselves for showing up to practice.

her legs were perfect.

thank you body, i said, unconvincing. thank you self, even less so.

sitting cross-legged in that brief moment before namaste, my hands in prayer, thumbs pressed into third eye in connection with my higher wisdom, i wanted to cry. i wanted to eat a cheeseburger. i wanted to be proud of me for loving myself and my body so much that i had found the discipline to exercise, to eat healthy, to do all the things i was doing to get my body back in shape.

but i wasn't proud of me. not even a little bit. in fact, i was disappointed in me for not listening when my body whispered 'rest' and i told it to shut-up and go for a jog. when i dragged it to power yoga still sweaty and dirty from the mountain.

and now my shoulder hurt from too much side-plank, and that little roll of belly fat was still there, taunting me with her tongue out.

i was angry at my thyroid for being on the hypo side of balanced; at my hormones for slacking on the job; at my metabolism for not bouncing back like it used to.

eat like you love yourself. 
move like you love yourself. 
live like you love yourself. 

my guiding mantra played in my headspace. i was doing everything right. eating, moving, living. going through the motions of loving myself.

but for what?

belly roll laughed at me again in the mirror. thighs smirked in injurious insult, their dimples far from cute. underarm flesh jiggled as i pinned sweaty hair off my neck.

belly roll. thigh dimples. underam jiggle. i was 0-for-3 in the battle against flub. despite my grueling efforts at self-abuse disguised as self-love, this body that wasn't mine was winning. and i was furious.

and sad in my bones.

but it's only been two weeks, i told myself. give it time, you'll see the results any day now. don't give up. you are strong. you can do it. hang in there. 

self-abuse self-love pep talk 101.

18-year-old me was a slave-driver, her whip constantly at my hind-parts. she wouldn't rest until i was 18 again.

28-year-old me cowered in the futility of myself, in the impossibility of my predicament, no escape in sight. thyroid. hormones. metabolism. gravity. nearly three decades of physiobiology weighed heavy.

the old gray mare, she ain't what she used to be...

whoever came up with that fucking song should be shot in the head.

...too bad they probably shot the old gray mare instead.

i left class in a sort of daze, thanking top-model yoga teacher, and sweating into the humid air of evening at the beach. i walked through town and tried to make sense of myself.

lucky for me, it was 28-year-old self who chimed in this time, the voice of reason and nurturing; manifesting herself as mother, comforting me in acceptance of who i was in that very moment, of who i've been forever. she loved me no matter what.

"you're beautiful," she said sweetly in her low, soothing voice.

i felt a little warmer in my chest. for a second.

"but look at these legs," i said, looking down at loose skin swagging to and fro in the dim light of street lamps as i slowed to a stop, to make it stop. "these legs are not beautiful. i can't accept them as my own," i pleaded.

"whose legs are these?" i asked, begging for her answer.

"oh, my sweet love," she said, "if only you could see what i see, you would love your legs as i love them, now and always." she hugged me close in that 'every little thing is gonna be alright' sort of way.

"just look at your legs," she said. "so strong and capable. taking you surfing and running all the time; so flexible in your yoga practice."

i smiled a little bit as she kissed the top of my head.

"these legs, my love! these are the legs of someone unafraid of life, of living every experience that comes her way. these are the legs of someone who knows it's a sin not to eat gelatto twice a day everyday when you're on vacation in Italy; someone brave enough to sit with herself in meditation and write her authentic stories to the world; someone who skips the gym to have tea with a friend she hasn't seen in a while."

"these legs!" she continued, and i definitely didn't stop her. "just look at where they've been, where they've taken you, how they've held you up every day for nearly three decades. these legs are your legs. and they are beautiful."

where i saw flab and dimples, she saw the legacy of a life well-lived. and she thought it was beautiful.

i yearned to believe her. even if momentarily, i wanted to feel okay in my skin. i wanted to see myself as she saw me. i wanted to love myself like she loved me.

and so i did. for a second.

i changed out of my sweaty bra and met friends for dinner. i ate a cheeseburger. with fries. and i loved every second of it. 28-year-old mother-in-me smiled in satisfaction. in the non-judgment of unconditional love.

but on the drive home, my toes and fingers swelled up. and i felt sweaty and anxious. and too-full. and guilty in my gut. and now i had half a cow in my stomach and i wished i had eaten salad. with no dressing. and i promised myself i would wake up early and go for a run up the mountain. and when i reached the top i would do squats.

...lots and lots.

self-soothing and nurturing embraced acceptance. discipline sided with willpower. like roosters on steroids with razor blades tied to their tiny legs, they would fight to the death. and i was stuck somewhere in the middle, getting stabbed simultaneously by their impossible extremes.

and i asked myself, is self-love a jungle hike in the mountains, a power vinyasa class and a green super smoothie for breakfast, lunch, and dinner? or is self-love a cheeseburger and fries with friends after a long day of self-love self-abuse?

could it be both?

i didn't know.

i still don't know.

*******

and so it goes, this constant battle between self-love and self-abuse in the negotiated space between 18-year-old me and 28-year-old me, between relentless slave-driver and ever-loving mother.

because they don't warn you about this. about the inevitable challenge in transition from maiden self to mother self, where we must forego, in grace and greiving, the attributes of self that once defined us; where we must accept in integrity the changes on the outside and the lessons they teach us on the inside. like the serenity prayer: to change the things we can. to accept the things we can't. and the wisdom to know the difference.

in my memory, i see women's faces looking at me in the same way i looked at the young woman in yoga class that night, silent in wisdom and telling of a certain future i could never foresee. that was them telling me about this phase of life i'd have to experience to understand. i see their faces now as my own in the mirror, reminding me of who i am; of who i was. of where i've been and how it's shaped me. reminding me that my body tells my story in ways i may not be ready to accept, while still allowing space for transformation into all i'm yet to become.

"so whose legs are these?" i asked myself again today, twisting backwards around my naked body to get a glimpse in the mirror over my shoulder.

and with the steadiness of my still-wavering balance between change and acceptance, i owned them as mine. i owned myself as me in maiden-mother transition.

these legs - doughy and dimpled, strong and flexible - are mine.

these legs are mine.  

all mine.

-----

*special thanks to Desert Jewels for publishing this piece in its original version. 

a clean break

"i'm 0-for-2 today, Chad," i said at noon on Tuesday, looking at the grass in bare feet, fragile, as he picked up the pieces, foam and fiberglass flimsy under his arm. he didn't know what i meant. i was grateful he didn't ask.

breakdown boiled beneath my skin, unnoticed. practiced in experience, i hid it well.

"well at least it's a clean break," he told me, unaware of the irony in his words.

"yeah," i said. "you're right." the best kind of break a girl could ask for.

and he was right. it was clean. really clean. almost too clean when you think about it. a perfect straight-line snap less than a foot below the nose. a 40-dollar repair job and it'll be good as new, he reassured me.

"so you think it's worth fixing?" i asked; a simple question wrought with a secret complexity known only to me. my self-worth hung on his words.

"for sure," he said with confidence. "take it to Nico. you'll barely notice it was broken in the first place."

and so i exhaled, closing my eyes in what little grace i had left.

a glob of resin to glue the pieces back together, a few layers of glass to smooth the jagged edges, a shaper with the magic love-touch to make it look and feel whole again. back in the water in three days max. an easy-breezy break. clean.

as if it had never been broken at all.

...now if only my heart worked like that.

*****

at 10:30 that morning, i had paddled out to forget, to leave behind, to let go.

to cleanse my soul of you and me and the dream of we you decided would never be.

to turn my tears into wave-water; salty release my gift to the sea, sadness not in vain.

stepping off the shore, i could be free of you. i could be free of me holding on to the ghost of a you i thought i once knew. a memory in my heart with an imagination so big it almost felt real. and maybe it could have been. but in the distance between dream and daylight, across coastlines and cities, after months of moonbeams lighting our separate skies, our hearts had forgotten what they were supposed to feel.

they had forgotten the only thing that's real.

"this will not break me," i said in my head between sets, surf therapy my solace from the storm brewing in my little self. it felt safer out there than anywhere.

conviction fueling aggression, i had some pretty good waves that day.

finally i rode one in, ready to face life back on shore; cheeks now salty from the sea, not from the depths of sadness in me. because the ocean does that for you. cleans you of what you don't need so you can get back to feeling free. so i could get back to feeling like me.

but somewhere along the line i mis-timed the shorebreak, and it didn't go as planned. flipping feet over head, dragging ribs on the shore, my board kissed the sand. hard. and came up in two.

and then i came up too, standing on the coarse black earth at the water's edge, collecting the pieces, assessing the damage of a break i might have avoided in the space between choice and circumstance. if only i had done things differently. even if ever so slightly.

averting my eyes from friends and strangers as i walked up the beach, i focused on one foot in front of the other. i couldn't take their sympathy. not today.

"well," i thought, as i rinsed my hair of sand, sticky in my scalp. "at least it's a clean break."

as if that made it somehow lighter.

*****

at 9:30 that morning, frigid in the coolness of calculated logic, a you i never knew shut the door on the me i wished i could be, for you.

"i want a clear head," you said, "a fresh start when i go back to San Diego;" my pleading for reconnection no match for your mind already made-up without me.

but where you saw endless uncertainty, i found hope in possibility. yet while i dreamed, you grew distant, detached. and a relationship with me wasn't something you wanted. even when i was willing to become the girl you wanted me to be.

i spoke powerless words you only heard skin-deep. your heart was nowhere.

"so this is the end," i said through my screen to you through your screen, where i couldn't feel you and you couldn't see me get small, crouched down on the cold floor as i held my knees for dear life.

"have a wonderful day," you said, calm and collected; your tact a dagger, polite to my chest.

sure thing, salesman; stranger to my soul.

and so it was. a clean break.

really fucking clean.

sterile, even. like the medical devices you used to sell in the former life you aren't proud of.

as clean as it gets.

the best kind of break a girl could ask for.

...if only my heart worked like that.

******

so i'll get my board back today, three days later and good as new. the break would leave a faint line you'll only notice when you hold it up to the light, the surface smooth to the touch, whole and sturdy from the looks of it. ready for the next swell, for the waves of life's next adventure.

almost as if it had never been broken at all.
and no one would ever know but you.

...yeah, i guess my heart works like that, too.

dumped: a free-love story - bonus track!

not your dream girl

it’s been a month now.

a month since we held each other in the vulnerability of our shared uncertainty.

dreaming up fantasy futures where i’d go live there on your coast, or you’d come stay with me here on mine.

a month since we kissed goodbye at the airport, en route to our separate adventures on dueling sides of the Atlantic. i smiled through security, cheeks rosy through my tears.

i thought it was one of those see-you-soon sorta goodbyes.

a month: all it takes to burn fire in our heart to ash in our memory, the joy in togetherness no match for the harshness of present reality, distant in the delight of disconnect.

and i miss you in a way that feels a lot like missing myself.

and you are nowhere.

*****

“do that on your own time,” they said, scolding us like school children for our just-as-innocent meanderings. hand-holdings. tent cuddlings. shadow puppetings. maybe some sexy snorkelings.

those kinds-a-things… were unprofessional, they said. you had a job to do, and i probably did too.

we laughed. a lot. they had no idea.

you kissed me at the end of the world, white sand fine beneath our shared sarong, orange and purpley-pink. Caribbean turquoise blinked closed in your eyes, and slapped at the island’s edge, the soundtrack to our dreamy solitude. color was everywhere.

“so when did you realize you’re not like everybody else?” you asked me, the weirdness in you honoring the weirdness in me.  you liked that i was different, that i could be someone worth spending time with. could i be the girl you’d been looking for? the one you want to spend all seconds of all days and all nights with? just maybe, you thought, i could be your dream girl.

you made me want to set my life-adventure table for two.

on our second date, you stayed a week.

our heaven-on-earth brought perfect waves in perfect company. our two-person tent found home on remote beaches,  offshore mornings just for us.

“barrel!” you’d scream behind me, both of us racing along the face. i’d dodge and bail, of course, forcing you to do the same.

“that was perfect,” you’d say, shaking your head as we paddled back out.

i’d smile in sweet, predictable, comfortable regret.

******

i’d meet your favorite friends on their boats between islands. you’d sing with my mom at the piano.

“it’s like he’s been here forever,” she would tell me in confidence. “like you’ve known each other for twenty years.” we’d known each other for ten days.

we’d exchange realities for weeks at a time. and we’d love every second of it.

we felt right, together.  

for months, i never got anything done. and i didn’t care.

*****

it’s been a month now.

a month of you there, and me here.

and you’ve decided i don’t fit the perfect mold of partnership you’ve decided you won’t settle for less than. the time we spent together now memories of lustful adventures you’ve decided you’ve had enough of, the times apart unbearable in uncertainty.

you want black-and-white and here-and-now.

i’m continents away and all sorts of shades of gray.

you’ve decided i’ll take too long to be the girl you want me to be.

the girl i am melts into the smallness of insignificance. crab-like, she withdraws into herself, clawing at nothing to hold on to.

because how can she hold on when you’ve told her to let you go?

*******

but don’t you remember shadow puppets and freestyle partner raps and singing to me in your jungle room while i wrote stories about you for your birthday? remember banana pancakes in bed and Superbowl Sunday with my dad? remember trading waves on different coasts, just you and me and the sea to infinity?

remember that?

because i do.

that was me. that was me there with you.

and don’t you remember a story about an Amazonian frog in search of his soul who found something he liked better instead? and dark-skinned kids with a baby sloth-on-a-stick, and not-so-secret caves fit for two, and waterfalls with Jehovah’s witnesses, and Adam and Eve adventures in island coves sliced into paradise for you and for me?  remember swimming to the sunken earthquake island and sweaty-sexy yoga and tents on the beach, moon and stars and dark to eternity? remember a bioluminescent ending to a nighttime boat ride through the mangroves?

remember that?

because i do.

that was me.

that was me there, falling in love with you.

*****

not the girl you want me to be.

…might never be.

not your dream girl.

…just me.  

reflections from the edge: a photo diary

last month, as official roadie and chosen moral support system for my talented herbalist mom, i had the unique privilege of participating in an alternative health conference called medicines from the edge: a tropical herbal convergence. through some sort of indescribable socio-biological osmosis as my mother's daughter, i've no doubt soaked up a lot of the ideas and practices on offer at a conference like this, and i enjoyed being a participant-observer into the realms of some seriously passionate plant-nerds celebrating herbal medicine and more.

while the subject matter of the weekend convergence first appeared somewhat alien, i was excited to realize that it has much more in common with my own connections to native spirituality and learnings on global sustainability than i had originally anticipated. thank you to all of the teachers, coordinators and hippie free-spirit family whose contributions i carry with me now, inspiring my words and work in the world.

the following are my inside-outsider reflections from the edge; my own sort of mental coalescence where themes of diversity, representation, and archaic revival converge.

permaculturalist Stephen Brooks opened the weekend by describing the edge as a place where we experience an abundance of diversity - natural and biological, as well as human and socio-cultural. we reflected on our planet's disturbing loss of biodiversity as a threat to human and natural existence, drawing a parallel to the loss of native knowledge and cultural diversity also disappearing at an equally alarming rate. “human diversity and the diversity of knowledge” Stephen said, “are key for sustainability, just like in nature.”

Costa Rica offers a special representation of the edge as both a geographic bridge between the Americas, and a space where tropical biodiversity thrives amid a diverse social landscape colored by indigenous communities, afro-Caribbean culture, European colonial history and the growing presence of foreign tourists and residents from all regions of the world – all intermingling to varying degrees, creating countless hybrid cultures in their midst. well situated at ‘the edge’, our stage was set for a weekend of learning and sharing. i was all ears.

and eyes, of course.

…and heart and mind and soul…  

pictured here above is Maia Balam, whose project Rescate Madre Amerikua (Rescue Mother Amerikua) draws on the importance of preserving native traditions by creating films of indigenous people and tribes in the struggle against resource loss at the hands of corporate extraction through mining and development, for example. she spoke of capitalization, modernization and commodification as contributing to a growing sense of greed, itself based in our modern myth of consumerism as a panacea for social wellbeing, and its destructive impact on indigenous lifestyles and ways of being. in her audience, we sat in collective sadness at the loss of native culture to consumerist pursuit, agreeing that a new consciousness is needed to support indigenous tribes in resistance.

similarly, participants spoke of our affinity to this concept of archaic revival, where a return to our shared, native roots is at the heart of global transition toward sustainability. grounded in an admiration for plant wisdom and a deep appreciation for ancestral indigenous traditions and ways of knowing and living with the Earth, we have faith in the revival of ancient practices and forms of livelihood rooted in harmonious existence between people and nature toward true sustainability. i found myself agreeing with the sentiment that our common human future relies so much on protecting indigenous communities, learning from their ancient wisdom and promoting their traditional methods of working with plants and medicine for the benefit of all. i emerged from this brief session with Maia with the message that we, as conscious global citizens, must merge forces with the indigenous peoples of the world to realize sustainability through ancient practices; returning to our tribe in profound acknowledgement of the ancient codes of knowledge we are lacking in modern society. i was grateful for the message, yet confused with what to do with it.

in his evening speech, Tom Newmark - Chair of the Green Peace Fund USA - brought the heat in true activist fashion, adding a splash of much-needed gloom to our otherwise inspired, albeit inevitable, doom. he reminded us that our love of plants doesn't exist in a rainbows-and-butterflies permaculture-perfect vacuum, helping us remember that if we don't save our planet through regenerative farming like yesterday, there won't be anymore plants to love, or any humans left to love them, for that matter. his statistics were sobering; his conclusions somehow hopeful. 

the sacred seed sanctuaries project he presented the following morning evoked sustainability's 'think globally, act locally' mantra, explaining how if we all were to create our own sanctuaries of diverse plant species, we would contribute to carbon sequestration through regeneration on a planetary scale, making it less important to keep resisting Monsanto and more important to become the solution ourselves. his message spoke to me: "we need to renew our spiritual, sacred relationship to mother earth to save the planet." is this what we mean by connecting with the archaic revival? growing our own sacred gardens across continents to make the Monsantos of the world irrelevant? it sounded powerful, possible.

...still, i felt skeptical.

the problems felt too big, the solutions inadequate. if our current patterns of existence have us at war with the very things vital to our survival as a human family - water, soil, food, air - how can sacred seed sanctuaries begin to even make a dent? especially if finding the time and space for such a project may very well be open to only the most privileged among us, while those responsible for environmental degradation on a massive scale continue their business as usual. if we as consumers and producers in modern-industrial society are literally eating the resources supporting diverse species and manipulating the environment to intentionally destroy the biodiversity on which all life depends, how can our sanctuaries, however sacred, make that all just go away?

"if we are the creators of this destruction," Tommy challenged us to consider, "isn't it our responsibility to fix it?"

this question gurgled organically inside me, uneasy in my intestines as my pen wrote feverishly in my lap.

"if we humans were responsible enough to fix it," i wrote, "wouldn't we have prevented it from happening in the first place?" maybe Tommy has more faith in humanity than i do when he says that the industrial-extractive mindset will never solve the problems created by that same industrial-extractive mindset. so we need a new mindset, right? i thought of Audre Lorde's famous quote: the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. it seemed Tommy agreed, and rightfully so. but what i started thinking about in that moment was that even though we know the industrial-extractive mindset is the problem, we still don't know how to overcome that mindset because it is so ingrained in our sense of self-in-society, in our very identity at the core of our shared world view. it is our inability to escape that mindset - because it is such an integral part of how we exist in the world - that keeps our industrial-extractive society from crumbling by the wayside, preventing the sustainable practices we so need and desire from flourishing in its ashes.

"bring in indigenous knowledge and use it," he said, ending his talk by appealing to our love of all things indigenous. i sort of wanted to clap, and i appreciated the sentiment, but it just felt off.

i asked myself: "has indigenous knowledge become our latest resource in the endless pursuit of an elusive sustainability wholly incompatible with the Western world view of materialism and our industrial-extractive existence?" white man and our materialist vision have been responsible for the annihilation of indigenous peoples and their lands for centuries in the service of what we believed we needed to live a worthy life in the pursuit of happiness in the 'new world'. now we want to bring in indigenous knowledge and use it for the purposes of what we think will save our planet and all of her people, ignoring the fact that our solutions still come from within that same materialist mindset that got us here in the first place - a mindset we can't step outside of because its pervasive mythology defines every aspect of how we live in and understand the world.

i thought about our previous conversations on archaic revival. has saving the native become the new white man’s burden? And is it because we care to preserve their culture and dignity versus the numbing effects of modernity, or do we care to save them because we know they’re our only hope for saving ourselves? to me it bringing in indigenous knowledge and using it sounds a lot more like colonialism than creative solution, coopting indigenous knowledge and assimilating it into our materialist world view and somehow calling it sustainable.

in that moment i came to a disturbing conclusion that i’m not sure we can rise above: bringing in indigenous knowledge and using it how we see fit is not only neocolonial at its core but also futile in materialist contradiction, not least where sustainability is concerned.

the day prior, Kathleen Harrison (pictured above) spoke of the dominant (Western) world view interrupting indigenous world views, particularly as they relate to our understanding of the real (material) versus non-real (spiritual or magical) aspects of life. she brought up a conversation on cultural revitalization and travelling as a means of cross-pollination among world views, waking us up to what makes us feel alive. i valued her comment on how many of us are living in two worlds at once, or rather between two different world views - the material and the integral - as anglo-society is being transformed by a plethora of native traditions, what she referred to as the supermarket of indigenous concepts; we all laughed, of course, perhaps reflecting on our own personalized mish-mosh of what we consider our spiritual beliefs to be. (the other day i described my own spirituality as a mix of hindu philosophy, Buddhist and Taoist principles, mixed with Mexica and native-American ancestral ceremony. …supermarket at your service.)

so now we have one foot in each world view – material meets integral through travelling and cross-cultural interaction. (or perhaps, i thought, we’re creating a mixture of the two into some hybrid paradigm that includes elements of each but is something entirely different in its own right).

something i think about often is the reverse of this world-view-blending relationship and the ways indigenous societies are being transformed by materialist traditions like scientific thought, market economics, consumerism and Western lifestyle pursuits, abandoning many of their cultural practices in the process. so while modern anglo-society is becoming somehow more native, native cultures are becoming more anglo-modern. will we meet halfway? and what does this mean for the archaic revival we so believe in? is it this difficult-to-bear reality that makes us want to adopt and preserve indigenous traditions out of fear that our materialist culture will contaminate their integral paradigms when we know that their world view is what will save us from our own?

yet, is our romantic image of the native and the inspiring messages it represents somehow out of touch with the realities of the native peoples we want to learn from, know from and emulate in ourselves? what happens when we want feathers and sage-smoke and they wear Nikes and crew-cuts; when they don't measure up to the story we've created of them in our minds? what does it mean for our native spiritual practices that have come to define our sense of being? do our own stories of self in our lives of privilege between two worlds start to unravel, too?

my mom's workshop - Our Gut Feelings: Emotional Healing and Moving the Qi – took the cerebral conversations we’d been having throughout the weekend and made them physical, personal. we got in touch with the deep feelings inside our bellies, stuck energy in need of release, understanding the connections between the organ systems and emotional healing. we might be smiling on the outside despite the pain in our insides, but our digestive organs call our bluff no matter how much positive thinking and glowing radiance we pretend to embody in our new-age selves. 

here, hippies hold their bellies in the grass near the trees, meditating on their deepest core feelings.

next, blonde dreads and feathers cry in emotional release as they practice belly massage on one another. it turns out it isn’t all rainbows and butterflies; it’s a little bit sad, too. 

perhaps a little bit real.  

we’re flighty, fancy free, light and smiling as we flutter between music festivals, organic markets, medicine ceremonies, moon dances, yoga classes, shamanic rituals, soul-searching and finding ourselves joyful in like company – our privileged soul family. but when we get down to it, when we pause a moment, do our gut feelings belie an emptiness inside? an endless yearning for an elusive fulfillment we can’t seem to find between rounds of ayahuasca, ibogane, kambo and tobacco ceremony? perhaps our boundary-less dabblings in native ritual mask deeper issues related to our socialization as individual selves situated in our materialist modern society; attempts to escape our empty realities, to save our soul-selves from our society-selves, from the reach of modernity and its perverse manifestations. in our love of hallucinogenic medicinal ceremony, are we grasping for our true self to be felt, expressed, in a world that tells us who to be and what to feel? to tap into integral wisdom and the realms unseen so that we might know ourselves fully? how much archaic revival will it take for our smiles on the inside to match the phony ones we wear on the outside?

we become ‘other’ in our alternative lifestyles of practicing an adopted form of indigeneity and we believe it’s somehow better, but at what cost to our deeper wellbeing do we put on a happy face when maybe we’re not so happy after all? how much longer til our bellies burst so that we might feel what’s real?

...how will we deal?

gracias to the good guys at Proyecto Jirondai, whose work seeks to preserve indigenous song and prayer through recording them and sharing them throughout the Americas, we had the opportunity to meet real-life medicine men from Costa Rica’s Cabecar and Bribri indigenous communities. One of them, we were told, had to walk twelve hours from his village to meet the people who would take him to our gathering. we were in awe of him, of his knowledge, of the way he sang to the plants in their own special song. of how he learned medicine through his dreams and ancestors and wouldn’t walk with a light at night so as not to disturb the spirits. we wanted to learn from these men, their way of life, how we might absorb some of their knowledge to heal ourselves and others through the plants, just as their ancestors had done for millennia.

our intentions were honorable.

our questions were rapid-fire.

“so how do we use this bark? boil it or create a salve?”

“how much do we use?”

“what is the scientific name for that leaf?”

“can you sing that plant’s song again please?”

“wait, what is this used for again?”

i watched the process of one-sided knowledge extraction unfold before me as plant nerds turned colonizer-health practitioners in an instant, desperate for the wisdom they could use in their own practice, stripping it of its cultural significance and perverting its essence by removing it from its context, eventually commoditizing it into a marketable product for their clients. there would be tinctures and teas and lip balms and capsules bought and sold with a story of a medicine man who sings to the plants and who once walked twelve hours to share his tribal knowledge with us for the benefit of all. his people’s ancestral spirit-wisdom would live on in modern medicine chests the world around.

among all of these healers, i felt kind of sick.

and strangely enough, that wasn’t the strangest part.

the strangest was that there were only a dozen of us in the audience for these real-life medicine men. at a conference of over two hundred plant-lovers also in love with all things indigenous, fewer than fifteen of us made it a priority to learn plant wisdom from our idols, the people who invented it. it wasn’t that 175 people were lazy or lost, but rather that taking place simultaneously was a presentation on the use of medicinal plants in indigenous ceremony by none other than herbalist celebrity David Winston, who chant-yodeled in guttural Cherokee to welcome his listeners, making his American-Indian grandmother proud to spite his white-man appearance. no small feat, it turns out he is known for re-teaching Cherokee elders the knowledge of their traditional plant medicine lost through the generations of cultural genocide we call colonization, displacement and marginalization.

a white-looking man with some Cherokee heritage brought up and educated in modernity and well-respected for his contributions to restoring native knowledge.

…is David Winston our idolized archetype for archaic revival?    

perhaps.

i think what we like about him, though, is that he represents the type of indigeneity we’re comfortable with. because it fits within our worldview, and he makes it approachable by speaking to us in ways that make us feel safe, comfortable in the familiar. he’s not dark-skinned or nervous in front of your cameras in his face or singing to his plants and talking about spirits in the dark. no, he’s telling you exactly how those plants are used ceremonially so you can use them ceremonially too, out of context with non-shamans and medicine-men-for-hire, to get your hit of the edge, native spirituality at its deepest, in connection with the realms modern materialism teaches us not to see. that’s what we want, isn’t it? to experience, at least fleetingly, what people like the Cabecar medicine men have lived and known forever. so why wouldn’t we go straight to the source and show up when they’ve walked twelve hours to share their secrets?

could it be because in all of our attempts to escape the skeletons in our materialist worldview closet, we still prefer the representation to the real, the modern Cherokee expert-teacher to the humble Indian whose knowledge we want but whose actual presence in jeans-and-a-T-shirt doesn’t match up to the barefoot-and-feathered image we’ve created of him in our spiritualized mind-selves. in the process, we end up valuing image over substance and calling it real when it may very well be a reconstituted representation, at best.

we crave the truth in indigenous wisdom, a window into an integral world that still defines existence in remote corners safe from modernity. we’re inspired by it, we seek to emulate it, save it. but by failing to truly understand this wisdom and honor it within its place-based context, situated in a wholly distinct view of the world we’re unable to fully grasp from our materialist reality, might we be making a mockery of it instead? in seeking to become other, are we perverting and diluting that which we admire while getting further and further from its essence, and in the process, further and further from ourselves?

save us, Rosita Arvigo! we laughed and cried as the woman taught by the last Mayan shaman, don Elijio Ponti, shared her story of perseverance in becoming his apprentice for thirteen years. he rejected her persistence at first, but couldn’t get rid of her. eventually, he conceded: “if i teach you, do you promise to take care of my people?” now that’s a shamanic mandate if i’ve ever heard one. Rosita was refreshing in all of the ways i wanted her to be. yes, she is a woman from Chicago practicing shamanic medicine in Belize. she charges a hefty sum for courses in Mayan uterine massage. but the way she went about her training and subsequent practice spoke of honoring the traditions of which she became a part after dedicating her life to studying with don Elijio.

“take the children as if they were your own,” he had told her, an old man now. “take them, and teach them to take care of eachother.” following his dying wishes, Rosita started bush medicine camps for kids. young women in her audience today begged to apprentice with her. maybe they were feeling what i was feeling as i listened to her story. i felt grateful for her integrity, authenticity. she wasn’t extracting knowledge and applying it in modern-materialist contexts to make it appealing. she was on a mission to carry out the mandate of her teacher, the last Mayan shaman. he was calling the shots; she, his servant in the shared soul-purpose of sacred medicine. Rosita gave me hope that people like her still exist. people who let the shaman call the shots. people who value tradition in context, who know native spirituality and ancestral plant wisdom in authenticity and substance rather than in image and representation. may we learn from her in our love of the indigenous. in our practice of time-and-place-honored tribal ceremony. in our daily medicine, today and tomorrow.     

reggae emergency: a truth-to-power story

with the urgency of 6:12pm on the Sunday before Christmas, i watched my phone ring.

i knew it was coming.

the voice on the line was frantic, if not playful.

“it’s a reggae emergency!” Marianne said, in a hurry.

i was still an hour’s drive up the mountain. Richie Spice and Israel Vibration were headlining in like twenty minutes.

desperate times called for desperate measures – i’m talking turquoise-fringed-belly-shirt-and-yellow-feather-earrings kinda desperate.

now you feel me.

my appropo hair grunge cut at least 30 minutes off my exit strategy; no time for showers or other routine pleasantries. i did what i had to, the necessary hygiene sacrifices. you would have done the same in my position. we all would have. this was more than just a read-through.

tight black leggings hugging my every curve: check.

cherry chapstick in my pocket: double check.

i was on the road in 9 minutes flat.

*******

a cacao-maca-spirulina energy-blast smoothie shared among the three of us, we picked up our fourth partner in reggae crime. navigating our way through the infamous ‘hood of San Jose’s Desamparados district, we were tough-looking white chicks with ‘don’t fuck with me’ written on our foreheads. 

so what if we walked a little faster than usual past the cat-calls from the six shirtless overweight-dudes’ porch party, the pointy end of my car key clutched threateningly between fingers of fist clenched firmly?shit man, you would have done the same in my position. we all would have. it’s life or death out there. 

we walked past the street meat smoking on the makeshift grill, nearly tripping on empty beer cans and dodging cigarette butts on the shoddy asphalt. it stunk like skunk, in a good way. yeah, you get it.

we had finally made it, our reggae heaven just moments away. so close we could taste it, the sweet sounds of ghetto girl ready to be danced and romanced by four babes from the well-paved side of the block. as our pearly gates neared into view, their mustached keepers watched us stroll to the scene. it was 8:02.

but there would be no magic red carpet to irie-land. in fact, the gates of our dreams weren't even partway open. 

not even a little. 

not even at all. 

reality: check.

“um, can you let us in please?” Christine asked the shorter-squattier of the two security guards, their collared uniforms distinguishing officialdom on the other side of the iron bars. he was everywhere we wanted to be.   

“i’m afraid not,” he said, turning his head toward the twelve uniformed police offers and three cop cars behind him. “doors closed at 8. we can’t let anyone else in. should have gotten here earlier.”

it wasn’t our first time. we knew better than to show up early to an all-day reggae-fest just to wait around for hours until the bands actually decide to show up and play something, especially when the event website listed midnight as the ending time.

one by one and two by three, a crowd of twenty or so had formed along the gates around us, the neighborhood crazy making scary dragon noises as he came to check us out, too. his liquored stench was sure to follow.

the story we got was that the organizers didn’t get the permits from the municipality to stay past 8, so they would have to shut down the show. Richie Spice and Israel Vibration hadn’t even played yet. 

people came out, but nobody went in. 

the music, hidden from view yet audible in the distance, played on.

“so if they’re still playing, why can’t you just let us in until they shut it down?” someone asked, the logic of reason strongly on our side. “we’ll leave when everyone else does.” 

Security guard A shrugged his shoulders, hands tied. now and then he used his belly weight to keep a few brave souls from entering through the opening created temporarily as tired reggae-goers trickled out.

a long-haired kid with braces and glasses was one of the last to join us, holding his ticket in hand as he approached the gate. same story, doors closed, nobody gets in.

“shhhhhhhhhh,” he sighed loudly between his teeth, Costa Rican for “what the fuck, man?” he paced back and forth along the gate, passive-aggressive in his angst. “i bought this ticket a month ago, bro. i just got off work and had to take the bus two hours to get here. there are only 20 of us out here, man, can’t you just let us in?”

Security guard B, the lankier one, pointed to the cops again, averting his eyes. “i would if i could, my friend.” we didn't blame him. he did what he had to. you would have done the same in his position. we all would have. his job was on the line; his family, his life. because that’s how that story works.

silent in socio-cultural observation, i bore witness to the scene unfolding around me, contemplating expressions of power, resistance and consent, imagining scenarios where a different sort of solution might have prevailed, wishing i’d get to share a different story. token gringa in the ghetto jungle not about to make a peep. 

not then and there, anyway.

blame was passed around between the police for raining on the parade, the municipality officials for not making an exception just this once for justice-and-fairness' sake, the event organizers for poor planning and no reimbursement policy.

empty threats were made, iron bars gripped tight by desperate hands clenched in shaking fists, angry at the immovable injustice of hollow rules left unquestioned, followed blindly to spite reason, making a fool of solidarity in the simple-pleasure pursuit of melodic mayhem in the moonlight, pitting brother against sister in nonsensical relationships of power-over.

no easy pill to swallow when you’re out thirty bucks and you can hear Israel Vibration starting their set less than half a kilometer away.

“justice! justice! justice! justice!” our chants of protest grew louder, encouraging in unison, before dying down again, all out of strategies. 

in some ways it felt silly, getting all up-in-arms about not getting into a reggae show. but it also felt important, that whole truth-to-power thing, you know.

a big black man in a Jamaica jersey spat at a little white man in a uniform. that was as heavy as it got.

eventually, a young police man, maybe seventeen from the looks of him, neared the gate.

“they’re shutting down the concert now. no one else is getting in,” he said, robotic in repetition.

“but they’re still playing!” someone yelled. "they haven't shut it down yet! let us in! give us our ten minutes of joy!"

“i’m not the one who made the decision,” he responded, displacing his guilt, his grimey inaction. for a reason i understood later, an image of child soldiers came to mind.

“i’m just following orders,” he said.

those guys in Nuremberg followed a lot of orders, too, i remembered thinking.

he was the only cop willing to speak to us that night. the rest stayed back, about 100 meters from the gate, safe from our banter and leaving the dirty work to the security guards as they chit-chatted and paced around, trying to look, or even feel, necessary.

they weren’t though, really, because once the arrangement of power is internalized by the powerless through an unwritten agreement of consent to order, acquiescence to an unjust justice, they will obey in exercising that power against one another, no heavy force required. the existing power-story was strong. our presence, our resistance, our consent to their story was all the power they needed.   

Tanya, brave in warrior wisdom, approached the security guard once more before we left, opening space for possibility.

“what would you do if i was your daughter?” she asked.

he looked at her straight, listening.

“how would you feel if your daughter had saved up to buy this concert ticket, excited as anything to see her favorite reggae star, only to get locked out for showing up two minutes past 8 on account of a meaningless technicality no one even cares about?”   

he shook his head, taking a few steps back, still looking at her through the slits of space between the iron bars. we watched from afar, ready to feel his heart in our heart.

“that’s a good question,” he said finally, hands in his pockets, gaze at the ground. in his expression, i watched the story slip-up, ever so slightly.

it was 9:07. time for us to get going now.  

“they’ve got some good reggae at that porch-party…” i joked, locking the car doors behind us from the inside. we laughed a little bit. and kept the windows up.   

not-so-ghetto girls, after all.

not by the looks of us, anyway.

******

“does that dude stand there all day?” i asked a friend as we drove past the new police stand towering high over the center of town, fresh blue paint just in time for the tourist high season.

he must be dripping sweat, i thought; long pants, long sleeves, long summer days of double revolver holsters at his hips, ready and willing to keep us safe.    

Santa brought 300 cops to our surf-party town of Jaco this holiday season. stopping traffic, searching cars, giving tickets, taking bribes. their presence, our present, felt heavy to hold.  

shiny pick-up trucks and death-defying equipment their new gifts from China and Canada, the majority of their police training is now homegrown, Costa Rican citizens and business owners footing the bill for the new National Police Academy. with security force higher-ups now freshly educated at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation in Fort Bennings, Georgia (formerly called the School of the Americas, an institution best known for training Latin America’s military leaders responsible for countless citizen massacres, hundreds of thousands of instances of extra-judicial killings, disappearances, torture and cover-ups throughout the 1970’s, 80’s, 90’s and today), Costa Rican cops come equipped with a hand-me-down specialization in counterinsurgency, the fancy word for crushing internal resistance with force and suppressing civilian threats to the national and hemispheric security apparatus, by any means necessary.

following orders never felt better.  

no army since 1948. 

feels safe, don’t it?

just don’t forget your neon jacket in the jungle.   

pura vida police-state now in open season.

******

meanwhile, in mid-November, in our sleepy rural town of San Pablo de Turrubares, population 800, we learn that our friend Sara Sandi Gonzales - celebrating her 50th birthday last May, loving mother of Karla and Josue and grandmother of Jason, a woman with a laugh to light up an entire village - was found dead in the river, a slit at her throat, a bullet hole through her head.

her abusive ex-boyfriend she had done well to finally leave, however beaten and bruised he had left her, had left town just after the deed – a dead man walking, if her family had anything to say about it.

not a doubt in anyone’s mind, the police couldn’t find enough evidence to make his guilt stick, not even when they caught up to him at his cousin’s house, halfway to nowhere from here.

no guilt. no justice. not even a little bit. not even at all.

blood on his hands, unresolved grief in our hearts. his soul, safe for now, sleeps easy; faultless feet walk free.

******

in (un)related news...

on Christmas day, they found the note next to his bleeding head, dead. he would leave nothing to his wife, everything to his two children. after all, it was all her fault, he said.

the chief of police left an already-shaken town with 800 questions he’d never hear, 800 answers they’d go on living without. 

their beacon of hope for justice, order and security decided he’d rather be dead instead.

******

so that’s our story. law. justice. security. power. 

right and wrong just a matter of following orders, doing what we’re told.

and so it goes, they say. 

whether we like it 

or not.

we watch it unravel, this story of ours. the pages worn, the edges threadbare. reading it now, we’re thinking it might be time for a new plot twist, perhaps a fresh ending this read-through.

our story, we ask, 

do we like it?

or not?

will we re-write it?

or not?

right it?

or walk away?

the power is ours.

hey, hey, what do you say?