Balancing Log

We had half a bottle of rum left and needed some coconuts so we headed to the beach where fellows use cargo bikes to bring loads of them to where main street ends into the beach. They use machetes to slice them right to the quick and then a straw easily slips thru the meat and into the liquidy goodness (an interesting cultural aside is that the word for this last layer of meat the straw is poked thru is the same word for virgin). We have to sip out mouthfulls of juice just to not spill the overfull nuts. Then we have to drink more to make room for the rum.
This is the most refreshing cocktail I have ever concocted and to be carrying it down the beach with our Mindfolds cocked on our foreheads is only dampened by the sheer weight of the coconuts. The green outer shells are hard as rocks and its very easy to imagine their weight only being slowed by a skull in freefall from a tree. El Capitan is explaining to the that they actually peel these monstrosities to get down to the brown frayed inner hulls that are more spherical and sold to grocery stores i've frequented.
We stroll and sit and sip and refill until the mixture hits the perfect taste which just so happens to be when we empty the rum into the nuts. And so are we, emptied into nuts.
The drunkness was coming on in waves that didn't wash back out to sea. After we reached the elephant who had been petrified and overturned by the tide, we hit our stride. El Capitan dashed his shell on a rock and wove a dance of gratitude to the coconut goddess with an offering up of the meat tossed into the insatiable sea. I just tried to chuck my whole 'nut into the waves, but only succeeded in throwing out my arm and watching the 'nut roll lopsided into the tide.










The offerings commensurated, we next found our selves at the Balancing Log...It was composed of a pair of driftwoods where a 20' whitewashed tree kept a decently flat line from dune slope to an overturned trunk that caught it between its now uppermost tendrils. The balancing log extended another 5 feet beyond the stump which brought into play twisting as well as the leverage beyond the fulcrum of lifting the heavier, longer end from the sand; And, we found, if performed well, lowering you gently to the sand.
We each walked it unfolded and did particularly well for carrying cocorum in our innards. I went first Mindfolded. Slipping the device over my eyes while I was already balancing over the widest section, stably set on the ground - so the feet knew what they were doing already - it was the rest of the body that became folded in confusion at the blackness emanating from the middle of my rum'o'nut and vision. Banking on my feets' solid notions of gravity I took off walking my tai chi steps of silent slowness with the left side leading as it is apt to do. I left my mind in shock of the darkness i flung it into and moved from my feet up, using the Centre and my arms to keep the momentum proceeding across the log towards the sea's loud waving. This worked to align me with the solid centre of the log beneath the solid centre of my feet until I came to a slight bend in the log which my eyes, i have no doubt, would have easily processed and I might have not have even consciously noticed it; but as it were, visionless, this little bend came upon me with all the suddenness of the floor falling out from under me. And I re-routed all my energies from balance to evacuation of the current predicament into the shifting, but soft, sands about a foot below.































We continued this, taking turns on the log with the non-balancing (or should I say simple-balancer for we are all balancing just about all the non-laying-down time, take a look for yourself) acting as Seer for the appearance of passerbys so as not to frighten them by our extrasensoric prowess and futuristic appearances (though we are all living in the future, its just that some of us don't like to admit it); and to take better photos.
As time moved the day around us and our antics pumped the cocorum thru bodies, my abilities faded and I never did make it as far as my first run. El Capitan, on the other hand, only progressed until he actually made it to the fulcrum stump Mindfolded!







This beget a new era of things to fear for not only did the stump's tendrils curl over the Balancing Log to create a foot obstacle, but the slow turning and leveraged raising of the log beyond the fulcrum moved it from a mostly 2-dimensional balancing act to a 3-dimensional ground-quaking out from under you carnival surprising of the folded mind. Beyond the immediate dangers of the log's movement was the imminent danger of dismounting or being spun off into the tendrils of roots when losing your balance at the fulcrum.
We never did make it to the end of the log Mindfolded as the leveraged twist & turn always broke the tentative balance we had worked to engender up to that point.
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A note on the fantastic drink of Rum mixed with fresh coconut juice: Coconuts, David told us, work to detoxify the kidneys unusually well. As a consequence, mixing the alcohol with it actually provides a vehicle for more alcohol than usual to be absorbed by the kidneys. This can lead to problems. Do not try this at home; but call me if you are interested in trying it at the beach.