Sunday, May 25, 2014

I sat on the dock tonight to watch the sunset and the water belched and chuckled and sighed underneath me and although a low layer of clouds hid the sun's final setting, I was as content and happy as I suppose I have ever been. The beautiful red crab was on the rocks and there was another crab as well. This one very camouflaged but when I took his picture, I realized how startlingly dramatic he was. Please click on it to see what a beautiful creature he is.


I sat at dinner tonight and I was filled too full of all of it to eat any more, to take in any more and I began to weep. The novelty of being here has passed and now it all seems so familiar and so sweet that I really can't imagine leaving although I know I will and I know I love my own home and it goes without saying that I love my children and Owen and Gibson and yes, the chickens, and my cat if she is still there. And I hope she is. But...this reality has overtaken me to the point where Lloyd is like a dream. A good dream. A fine and lovely and splendid dream and I think of the oak tree in front of my house so old that one of the main branches has a completely healed-over hole in it which I watch the sky through. But a completely different reality and I am not going to kid you- it's a good goddam thing I love it or I would not come home.

We drove down to Playa Corona again today. I hoped to see Rogelio and Elsa's children and they were there. Such an incredible family. We greeted Rogelio and went to sit at a table under a palapa and Rogelio sent an employee over to get us to come and see his children, his wife, and to meet his priest who was there to bless their new car and I am not kidding and I shook hands with the priest and said, "Very nice to meet you, Father Frederick," (I think that was his name) and he was wearing a white guayabera and holding his box of holy water and whatever else he needed to bless the car and that was certainly a first for me.

Oh god. The sweetness of these people. I took a picture of the family and I couldn't stop saying, "Such a beautiful family! Such a beautiful family!" and they are.


I remember seeing Elsie when she was pregnant with Jeremiah. I remember when we went to Playa Corona after he was born and his daddy had him cradled beside him in a hammock for nap time, a tiny little nino in his papa's arms. 

Here is the second home of this family. Playa Corona Beach Club where they have been raised in the water and with tios y tias. Jeremiah is a dive instructor now while he is getting ready to go to law school. 


Mr. Moon and I put our snorkel gear on and glided into the water to see once again the corals, the fishes. There is nothing like the world beneath the water. It is as alien and familiar as the womb and I love to look up at the boundary between water and air and the way the skin of the sea bulges and dips with the current. When we were still on the beach, a little crowd gathered to watch the moray eels who live under the steps vie for territory. One brown one, two chain morays. I said, "Snakes on a plane!" as the two chain morays tangled up with each other, the brown one staying in his tiny cave to defend his property. 

Fuck. Enchantment. 

I love to swim with mask and fins and snorkel. I feel like a mermaid, gliding instead of chopping, graceful instead of graceless. An old man came down to the beach while we were there and he was awkward, getting into the water but when he got his fins on, his mask, he was a thing of beauty, crawling across the water with strong and powerful strokes.

Oh god. There is so much more. The honor and humor of these people. The way the parents coddle and hug and cherish their babies, daddies as well as mamas so that the children strut and stroll but are not ever, ever brats. The way the food smells as it cooks- no matter how full the belly, the mouth waters as the garlic and fish and meat cook. The way people hug you, kiss your cheek, say, "Amiga." The woman who owns this hotel and dive operation who has forty employees and who speaks of the all-inclusive resorts and how they pay their employees 50-60 pesos a day for a twelve hour shift (that's like five dollars, y'all and NOT enough for beans) and how she cannot and will not do that. She is German, I think, and an entrepreneur like I've never met and she wears the most outrageously sexy clothes but looks as classy as a Kennedy, her darling LaLoo at her side. The way it feels to ride down the road on the back of the moped behind my husband who is more beloved to me with every waking and sleeping moment, to look into the jungle, to see rock walls and imagine that the rocks were part of other walls and buildings too in times so far back that we cannot imagine. 

I am dripping with it. I am filled with it. The lizards, the birds, the turtles both of sea and land, the sky, the clouds...the water. 

And this.


Could I not learn Spanish from subtitles?
"You want four fried chickens and one coca-cola."

Buenos noches. I am thinking about trying to lure my husband into the pool. We know where the switch is to turn the lights off. Do you think they would notice, they would care if we got in the pool naked? 

Oh hell. 

Probably. 

And I would never want to do anything to get kicked out of the Blue Angel. But let me tell you something- you can be thirty-one years old or you can be fifty-nine years old and the magic of the love of this island will still affect you if you are open to it.

And honey. I am.

Love...Ms. Moon






9 comments:

  1. Is that the Blues Brothers? God, I haven't seen that movie in SO long.

    It all sounds incredible, day after day. You're definitely making me want to go.

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  2. You need to just go there at least twice a year. There must be a Way!

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  3. This place is so deeply soulful and healing for you. It's wondrous to observe the depth of your peace there.

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  4. After reading a post like that I want to use beautiful flowing words to say how I feel. But I don't have that skill like you do!

    So I simply say thank you. I hope you know how much it means when you take us on these trips along with you.

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  5. You have clocked my brain into dreaming about travel in the very best way thank you for the gift of these posts.

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  6. Oh please just find a way to live there half the year, or a quarter of the year, or 1/12 of the year, okay?

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  7. Oh my god. This place is goooood for you.

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  8. I have been back for a day and have done so little. We are still exhausted!

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  9. That colorful crab is just beautiful. So are you.

    Love,

    SB

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Tell me, sweeties. Tell me what you think.