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.
*** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***
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.

Southern man don't need me around anyhow

Woke today to southern rock blaring from somewhere. My left earplug had come out sometime during the night. I'm finding the brand (name unrecalled) has a plug life of approximately 2 weeks. But it is extremely good at blocking out sound until then; after that they start to wiggle out and the powers are entirely compromised by the slightest leaking. The music changes into some Elton John that I fortunately don't know the words to, but I close my eyes tighter nonetheless for fear of which Elton might be in the room with me; the musics that are now full of my awareness and Elton's got me hooked. The trick is now to figure out where exactly Elton's rocking it from and i've ruled out the room i'm in's ipod because my slightly unplugged left ear is feeling the shape of the sound as more linearly conical, coming thru a smaller space before widening into the room, not as emanating from within this room in a more spherical shape.
David's truck pulls away after a short bit, ruling out the car stereo. The music's in English so it must be from the house and i'm tromping down the handhewn spiral wood staircase and the volume is increasing and we're back to the southern rock guitar screeching and i finally locate a stereo system where it is on shuffle track #115 - mp3...so this pain could have lasted a good long while. I press stop. I go back to sleep.

Mindlab is more than just experimental, its about results!

Just achieved a phenomenal feat of dexterity, and have blown my own mind in the process. After a deep 45minute Qi Kung session, i sat and started juggling to Dead Can Dance's - Into the Labryinth. I juggled the 3 yellow 'have a nice day' smiley-faced balls we got in Mindo, for 11 minutes. [End seriousness.]

Fishing

The fishing trip was to start at 9am with us dropping the lobster nets on the way to the fishing spots.
This, of course, did not occur. Beach time worked its relaxations over and then though I woke at 8am and was ready by 9, 10 rolled around and David was still not back from the farm. So I went to breakfast; skipped the cheese and loved the bread. I do need to replace the calories I've not been getting from all the alcohol i've not been drinking during these days. The calories are lacking but so is the extreme activities (though an ocean swim for an hour is quite the workout...and I miss Shifty, the old bike, is sitting in Marietta feeling as ansty as I, no doubt.)
So I fill up with my second Ecuadorian breakfast and wonder why I am eating an out-of-schedule meal before getting on a small craft to sail the choppy seas for hours, but logic hasn't stopped me yet. The gang's all back and up and ready to start something, but instead of fishing, I watch them make breakfast. So much for the early start.

At the beach we help to roll the boat down to the sea on logs, rolling it over the pair until the back one spits out at our ankles, jumping it and stopping it with feet, then dragging it back up by the ropes tied into grooves cut into the logs on which we roll the boat. Each log rotation moves the boat 5 or 8 feet forwards with everyone pushing. But even I can see its merits over plowing sand with the hull.

Then the cowboys came; and their cows claimed that stretch of beach in a very convincing manner. My delicate sensibilities rejoiced that we had already gotten the boat into the water and didn't have to barefoot it across the cow trailings.
It ends up being seven of us in the 15' boat, along with piles of nets, cooler with ice for the fish and beer to lend critical mass necessary to keep the ice colder longer. Our backpacks were in mega-ziploc bags to waterproof the contents; I had not expected to be getting that wet.
After pushing the boat out deep enough to engage the motor, we busted through the breakers and that put us into bobbing across the yet-to-be waveswells, where every time the hull of the boat cut into the swell a thick foamage of seawater would sting my skin and soak my clothing. This plus the cloudy day's winds brought me to chilliness so when we stopped to drop the lobster nets nearby Shark Cove (I suppose lobsters would find a banquet under the mannerless, slob sharks)
I had to take my shirt off to dry my skin, which is when the sun came out to burn my sunburn. So I took a hint from the desert folk, while El Capitan took to Invisioning the sun. David was translating that the boat over there was oystering, and the tube over the side was an airhose that was connected to a pump on the boat that sent oxygen somehow to someone on the ocean floor who was stuffing them into bags. The real fishermen took to laying out lobster nets and this required slow motoring as the nets were untangled which, contrary to high speeds that continue a rhythm of breaking through every wave, let the swells have their way with us while moving horizontally across them, lending an up and down swaying to the side-to-side swelling and dropping. This multi-axis noodling of my inner ears led them to be downright uncooperative in providing my stomach with the proper coordinates for Down so it knew which way to push the breakfast. We stopped shortly thereafter and that settled things.

















(The fishermen in Shark's Cove!)


Then we got to drop our lines. The second or third time I let mine drift to the bottom I got a great tug and slowly brought up a sharkish looking creature the length of my forearm. El Capitan is laughing "You caught a shark," and i'm thinking, now they're Really gonna be after me, and David is saying, its a Manta Ray, or some kinda ray, and the fishermen are taking it off the hook and its being really not happy, until they drop it into the sea and its gone looking for something other than shrimp on a hook. Being somewhere in the hundreds of Nautical Feet (that's measured with sea legs) from shore, the swelling waters kept the boat at a continual bob, which wasn't unpleasant. The real fun occurred when a wave broke that far out and we had to throw ourselves onto the wave-side of the boat so it wouldn't flip.
The only thing caught over the next few hours were those waves, though we did routinely lose our bait to nibblers and bottom dragging. We passed the grande cerveza around the boat and each got a few swigs per beer. Every other bottle or so we'd wind up the lines and motor over to another spot to try our luck, because the skill was getting us nowhere. This meant getting wet for 5 or 10 minutes and not quite drying out over the half hour of catching nothing again. This made for a dermally painful routine. A few casts into nothing-yet El Capitan hollers "Oh! Whup. Here we got something now." The line he's tugging on is taut and David is laughing, "that's no fish, its a rock."
"But its pulling back." The rod was in an arc towards the water. "That's the current pulling the boat away." He starts telling the fishermen 'he's got a rock' in spanish and everyone's laughing, because we are exposed to all the elements under this noonday sun, ocean wind and saltwater, the beer is successfully keeping the ice ready for any fish we might catch and the anchor's made for catching rocks, not shrimpbait. Without oyster-walking there is no telling what he had on that line out at Shark's Cove, but the line popped free, the bait was gone and it was suggested we motor on out of this current where the fish find it harder to feed in the faster waters.
Its around this time in the afternoon when the cold spray sun temperature differentiations all over my skin have sunk deep enough to meet the beer throwing a party in my stomach where i've feared to put but a few crackers into but for fear of the continual sway of this small boat. As we were first motoring out David asked us gringos if we got seasick. El Capitan talked a picture of the three-dimensional gyrating a small airplane swims thru and what level of more disconcerting it is compared to the ocean's rocking. All I can say is "we'll find out. Never been in a boat in the ocean for any real length of time."
Breakfast steadily became a retroactively worse idea as the day rocked by. When the swaying infiltrated my digestive tract giving the sensation of movement to part of my body I should not feel move, I would first take a technique from the Fold and close my eyes to concentrate my balance into my limbs in contact with the boat so that the whole of the rocking sensation would be dispersed into the hardness and lifting away of the wood seat, the moisture and pressure when swayed into one hand's support or the other or the intertwined twists of gravity swerving my spine at many intervals up and down it where my crown is being tied to my base with cables of energetically lubed inter-reactions i've been winding each morning around my breath.
If that didn't suffice and the swimming of my insides persisted i'd move into a focusing technique i've been augmenting in my juggling practice [more on this later]. Picking a spot on the horizon and laying all my attentions into viewing it. Pretty much the opposite of the previous technique, but the Mindfold has me pivoting around sight these days. Between the distraction of feeling into, and focusing away from, my gut worked to keep my fluids rolling in the right direction.
As we swung around another cove with no fish and only two bottles of beer in the cooler, we came upon the fishingest boat i've ever sidled decks with. It was about 50' with large sails and anchored in the cove's lapping shallows. It had 6 or 8 hand-dug canoeish boats laying crosswise across the deck walls with the central one still holding a man hardened by 10,000 days on the open ocean who was manipulating the intricacies of fishing line amongst a variety of slicing, grappling and yanking devices stained into rust with the salts and bloods. Maybe it was the salts soaking into my skin or the sun's deep heat in my blood, but my eyes were drawn and tunnelled to this man who could crack pescidian spines with those worn out hands whose wrinkles of prunage didn't need his eyes to guide the lines thru the metal's rings. The fishing lines mended themselves thru his hands.
David was chattering across my headtop to the most literate-looking (is that a wrong statement? [i've opened the blog so anyone can comment this is a great chance!]) man on the vessel and I couldn't follow it between my mind's magnetism to the hard fellow's simplicity and ducking the canoe tips overhanging their boat's walls while trying to keep hold of one to assist our rudderman in hovering our craft within the boat's orbit so the dialogue that I had completely lost the line of could continue. But I picked it up again pretty quickly as a ring of fish was handed across to our boat and numbers were being tossed through the air. I was asked if I had any cash, small bills on me. I lied, "nope, didn't bring any money with me on a fishing trip." Why did we pay for to rent (that's how my mind shortcuts spanish, not conjugating, infinitive is such a great concept) for to rent this boat to fish, if we are only to purchase freshly caught, extremely large meatful fish?
It takes all the sealegs El Capitan has to get to his ziploced pack and dig out his wallet, to find he had broken the $10 into lesser bills and so David had to pry off a couple of fish from the ring to hand the fish back with the cash and a bottle of our beer. But our cooler needed the room, I rationalized, and we drank the last bottle on our way to the next batch of fishless waters.
"Okay, I got something this time,"
"Another rock?" David asks just to get a laugh out of the crew, but we can see the line is bobbing and weaving with a life of its own and he gives it a tug to set the hook into fishflesh. After a minute of reeling against the zigzagging line he pulls out a fish the size of, well, smaller than a breadbox; but it was of an edible variety so it was unhooked and tossed on the boat deck to suffocate to death while flopping around for water and spritzing its torn gills' blood around.
El Capitan says to me, without looking at his vanquishing foe, "Now I remember...when we used to go fishing we always threw them back."
The last thing reeled up from the depths was on a straight line simply unwound from a spool with a hook and bait, no rod or reel, by one of the crew. It was a puffer fish, the kind that pushed Homer so far as to listen to the Bible; as they were dehooking it it puffed and bloated making the flaccid skin pouches that dangled from its body into points growing in some pie-based ratio with its belly. To avoid the spines the crewman had to grab it by its eyesockets pressing the balls into the poofy head to gain purchase and yank the hook from what might be its 'lip' or 'cheek.' It got tossed back.
The sun had been behind the clouds for the last while which gave my lobstering skin respite but kept the moist chill sinking into my bones so it was delicious to call it a day.
As we were using the log system to roll the boat up the beach, David returned from taking the rods and tackle back to the house and killed my landlubbing with the words "the cistern is empty. We are out of water until tomorrow." The warm shower I had held onto through all those gallons of cold oceanspray sank away from me into the depths of imagination. It was replaced by the sobering cold water of a neighbors outdoor rinser.

Spurt of Sweet

Steely Dan is on the tuneage. David is blending a fruit, Badella. On the same counter El Capitan is slicing apart a can to make a key to pick the outer lock of David's courtyard. I'm predicamenting the bingo tickets we've bought to redeem for gamepieces for the local Coop bank as the ladies David has been trying to woo into dancing and drinking with us later in the night will likely be at the Bingo.

I want nothing to do with such revelry. What I want is a bicycle, the night breeze and something up like Material or Eno's brighter rackets on the ipod.

We have gotten back from visiting David's farm where we bought a fresh chicken from a neighbor. I got to carry the bag past the kitten who had just been tossed the intestines. The bag was still warm and liquidy.

And no matter how much Steely Dan we listen to while cooking the bird soup, the breadfruit he boiled up still tastes exactly like chestnuts. The badella turns the vodka into a tasty drink and the seeds that he left in are fat pumpkin seed encased in a slime goo like a comet you catch with your teeth to try and crack open for the spurt of sweet.

Experiences in Buoyancy

The first time in the last decade found me floating freely in the ocean. I still don't float even with the salinity contributing its buoyancy beneath and along my spindly fleshings. I have to wave my legs along the currents, and arms when the swells come for my head. This unsettles me because I picture the afternoon sun and shade splattered across the sea, catching the lights as glitter on its rippled waters, scattering shine all around my silhouetted wafting - lazy along the swells. Even if I don't look tasty, sharks will often take a bite of something, and their amazing in-mouth receptors can analyze the basic nutriment content to determine whether it is worth eating before they even swallow it; hence many people get bit and survive because the sharks don't like what they taste. But it doesn't stop them from tasting.

The sharks never leave the rider's head.

Rising and dropping with the swellings breaking into waves somewhere behind my head direction releases my mind from its grasp on the sharks its inviviating, from the motions to keep my face in the air, lets go of the sunburn, saltburn and burning deep in the heart. Into these spaces wash the full sensation of buoyancy, and here not my heartlove, but the part of the body where it can touch the breeze and love the autumn chill, rises and falls into love with this deep sensation. The mind folds around closing the eyes, releasing that kind of hold on the world. Release.

I've held with many things over the life thus far: hands have held books - first true touch of love - and the eyes held in thrall of such mystery of words handed them to the heart and imagination. I've held music with my ears and my soul; it was my first contact with god and why i'm in this thing deep. I've not been able to set down things such as desire, facts, money, dreams and love all to different ends. So here i am asking the sea to hold me for the subtle thrill of floatingish. The oceanwater laps into my ears whispering of whence the blood of mine came and where i will return it to when its done with me.


Speaking of Blackness, we've tried the Mindfold in the sea, and the waves laughed it off our faces no matter our techniques; also it held saltwater in the eyepockets and that stings (so I am thinking to get a pair of goggles and painting them black).


El Capitan and I are now playing with the waves. Diving into body surfing or diving into the oncoming waves. It makes no difference as we are tossed about no matter which direction we flow. We refine a game which I will refer to as Dancing Foundation, and El Capitan calls Wave Bashing, and so go the techniques, where you must set one foot into the sand -- such a step for me to take thinking of all the creepy crawlies who undoubtedly drift on the fringes of land and sea above, surely a crab will think my foot appetizing -- and the rest of the body is free to move as wanted, but that one foot must stay in that place (pivoting is allowed). We stand on the edge of the invisible chain that jerks back on the waves, causing them to break and tumble over our miniscularity.

In the face of an oncoming wall of water I hear El Capitan holler to charge his ball of energy against the inevitable and as the wave tumbles me around my pivot foot but I hold my toehold in the sand and he's yelling the same when we can get our heads back out of the water, I breathe in the fresh air and the realization there is no way I could have experienced the expansion i've incorporealated in this Ecuadorian Escapade without being guided by a Rogue Therapist (stay tuned for variations on this theme).

Thank you El Capitan for your parts in this!

Piscean

...Beach of Canoa












[As I sit to write all this in my journal, I have put on this George Harrison album, Brainwashed, which I have never tasted, the first song has hooked me:
"If you don't know where you are going
Any road'll take you there"]

I headed into the ocean with my backpack and shirt and sunscreen underneath and stood for ten mental minutes at least, bandanna'd and all; allowing the motions of all other beachgoers to wash away from me as the waters waved across my ankles, slipping the sand out from under the feet and my heels sank into the sand much quicker than the fronts of my feet as I gave my time and legs to the sea. It lapped across my decisive steadfastness, sampled my flesh and footmind; things were whetted and wetted and like sinking into the sand, my mind sinks into my inclinations and past -- into my depths.

[As I am writing this in my journal, George Harrison is singing
"I’m a Pisces fish and the river runs through my soul
I’m a Pisces fish and the river runs through my soul

And I’ll be swimming until I can find those waters
That’s the one unbounded ocean of bliss
That’s flowing through your parents, sons and daughters
But still an easy thing for us to miss

Sometimes my life it feels like fiction
Some of the days it’s really quite serene
I’m a living proof of all life’s contradictions
One half’s going where the other half’s just been

I’m a Pisces fish and the river runs through my soul
I’m a Pisces fish and the river runs through my soul"]

The Ocean wants me Today, Mr. Waits.

I strip down to my swimmies, stow my pack and wade into the shallows. This is the smoothest beach i've been to, so few shells and rocks and things to confound my feet into feeling the old fears; feet, the awarest part of the Piscean body (Pisces signs: Sun, rising, Mercury and Venus...sorry I was late being born mom, but I had to time it right!) I dig deep into the stillness in my depths and see that under the crashing craziness of the uppermost ocean is a deep stillness I can feel with my feet. I lift them from the seabed with bouyancy and armstrokes. I speed the swimming as a wave comes at my face, and I dive down into the realm of Neptune's mysteries. Coming back up beyind the wave shows me an oceanfull of them. I start catching them with my body, kicking quickly to grab something beyond hold -- to be grabbed by the velocities of the waters caught up in the wave -- and am churned and flipped. My bouyancy acting as insitgator of lost upness. Not even the Mindfolding i've done has prepared me for this type of unseeing.

I have swallowed water many times, but this time was to the chagrin of my lungs and I had to take a breather from holding my breath. But, even with a stomach of salty waters I re-commit to riding The Waves with El Capitan coming into the water late in his latest shorts concoction of sewing the legs of his pants up underrolledneath. We fought the waves by standing strong and even punching palmfulls of energyballs into overhead crashing waters that could crush us at wrong angles. We body-surfed the flows, and many times I had to duck out early as I was too far up the crest of the wave for fear of going over with the foam, into the crashings. But this fear is a real, rational fear that I am kinesthetically determining in the moment; not the fear i've been carrying over the last 10 years or so...that of the Deeps as exhibited by me quavering at just the idea of frolicking in rivers and lakes even, let alone Mother Ocean, anywhere I could not see my feet, is the best way I can calssify it; imagining the beasties and creepy crawlie feelings to be snakes, nibbling animals and the most marvelous of all, Sharks. This was the way I both pushed away my Piscean nature and feared for its existence against the jaws of the deep.

I am floating on my back, laughing as a child- receiving flashes of my life's pleasures and committing a re-orientation of mind via this delicious Buoyancy, my body's disengaging from the gravity, even if ever so slightly and the power of the ocean's waves, goodness and my o my...
I have Rode the Shark into the deep beyond. My path is clear (not determined, but open), my self is reunified, my mind has folded and Grace is salty and floats me with immense swells where the sky opens up and drops away suddenly, and I shudder and sometimes there is a crash and I may get upended with sand in my caw; but I am healing in tune to the pulsings of the worldflow.

I felt little difference as the change occurred within me, because it wasn't an immediate flip of a switch, but the culmination of times spent, most recently with El Capitan Rogue Therapizing me into Mindfolding the falls of Mindo, the waves, the spent slick surfaces of bubbles finally making their energies' way to the shore of this beautiful town, to wash my feet, my piscean pleasure and pain of fear of the Ocean's deeps. My deeps getting released from the dam behind which i've trapped some of the more powerful methods of living I could incorporealate. The change completes into my soul. So the simple act of bringing this all into focus with the every of my senses brought my soul back to me. I find surprise in how recognizable this integration feels.


["You've got me between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea" comes on David's ipod. George Harrison is in the room with me. This is beyond me. Even I am at awe at this concretization of thoughticles; and Teilhard de Chardin laughs from the corner of the Noosphere]


When we got back to David sitting by the coconut cart where they will hack a coconut to just the right spot where a straw can be stuck into the milkhole, 50 centavos for the freshest and most nutritious drink on earth, El Capitan saw he had missed a phone call on his cell so he needs to get his computer to the internet.

Later, at a beachfront 'staurant just behind the ramadas, my face burns, though the rest of me seems to have absorbed the sunblock properly. El Capitan is servicing a client in the States from an internet cafe just down the road from this beach. I am staring at this magnificent ocean that I have walked along a thousand times as a thousand different people, and here it is the same ocean as Always.

My's elf & mind & soul all folded together today.

We met in the waters of the Ecuadorian pacific and put the past behind me. For so long now i've proclaimed my greatest fear to be Sharks and the devils of the deep blue sea; in fact many times i've said it is my Only Fear.
So if i've broken through this fear...will others rush in to fill me?
Am I washed free of fear?
Is my acceptance of the world's deep an increase of the complexity of integration into the psychic matrix of Being nearering my soul to the centrality of eternal Love and heartRending bliss through the immersion in the fires of my own fear?
Will this meta-fear, into which I've poured all my urgings away-from-harm, burst open as a pinata and scatter all the little fearlings of my soul into the world again?

I care not as I am with the Sea again.


[a note on the usage of the word Psyche (and its derivatives such as Psychic or other words I makeupify using it as the root)
"The dream is a little hidden door in the innermost and most secret recesses of the soul, opening into that cosmic night which was psyche long before there was any ego-consciousness, and which will remain psyche no matter how far our ego-consciousness extends."--CG Jung
"The deeper 'layers' of the psyche lose their individual uniqueness as they retreat further and further into darkness. . . . they become increasingly collective until they are universalized and extinguished in the body's materiality. . . . Hence 'at bottom' the psyche is simply 'world.'"--CG Jung
Just so you know I'm not talking about mind-reading...more like Mindfulliving]

Mascaramente

Taking cue to color the night with the frame of reference inspired by the bat that flew into the screenless house a bit ago - it had a definite pattern it wove between the two lights, spirals and infinite figure 8s and me cheering its mosquito-gorging habit. I slip into the Fold and make my way downstairs and to the gateway of the courtyard. I can hear the group of folks across the street, but am not ready to engage as my Spanish is small and my introversion is large. I stay in the threshold for some unmeasured amount of time, with the sparse conversation washing over me but not receiving much of my attention unless its in English, which means its directed towards me.
"Mindlab, they want to know what you are doing..."
"Tell them I am working on echolocation," and I crane my neck out like a giraffe to twist my head's ears about the doorway. "How many of you are there? I thinks its four."
"Including me?" El Capitan asks...which means its a group of five.
"Yep."
"Nope."
I sink back into the darkness.

El Capitan approaches me from across the road inserting himself into my fold.

"Hey Mindlab"
"Yeah"
"You're kinda freakin' people out a little bit."
"Well that is not what is wanted"
And so I turn back into the courtyard and slip the Mindfold off to navigate quickly up the stairs and into my journal.

Why didn't I just take it off and approach the group of folks? Disperse the enigma and integrate the personhood; step into their camaraderie and move on with the night?
Because i am weak. I'm out of my 2008 element. I don't really want to stand outside next to a truck and drink. I want to drink then do Mindfolded cartwheels on the beach, I want to walk down the beach forever in the moonlight. But I am tired. I want to sleep in a bed, not on the padding of wicker furniture on the floor. I am worn.

The full frontal Mindfold approach into this night disproved the something I hollered from the hammock earlier this afternoon when the spirit moved me, "the Mindfold is not bound by language barriers." To which El Capitan responded from the kitchen "Who said it was?"
I found the statement, temporally reversed, added effect and cause into occurrence and deja vu.

Manta in the Morning

[Insert gratuitous awesome photo of self El Capitan took in Quito at the International Phenomenon called Shooters.]

El Capitan and I are on the bus to Bahia waiting for it to leave the gate. We've been here for 1/2 hour between buses and i'm strung out from riding the sharkbus all night without even knowing we had gotten on it.

It all started at the Quito station when I was concerned my big bag would not make it into the luggage storage so I kept pestering the employees for to stow my luggage. It was finally time and as retribution for me being a worried gringo making their midnight shift that much more buggy, they had me carry my own bag from where they had set it down earlier and stow it myself. Fine, so long as it is on the same bus as I am.

We all clamored on the bus and organized into assigned seats. El Capitan is saying "this is the nicest bus i've been on in Ecuador, i feel funny," as he is maneuvering his carry-on bag so the juice in one mesh pocket and the vodka in the other side's mesh pocket won't slide out over the 9 hour ride. I got the window this time, and since we are driving all night, its not for the scenery, but to lean up against while sleeping; we try the seats reclining and they lie almost completely flat, so sleeping appears it will be much easier to achieve than i had first feared.
[I am in a place called the Surf Shack, where i can get both coffee & whiskey and internet along with breakfast. There are a couple townies working the place, cooking my sausage and eggs, and smoking and singing with the Beatles; one gringo just walked in with a waterproof ipod and grabbed his surf board that was sitting against the wall behind me. Almost unplugged my laptop with one of the fins. He turned to apologize and saw my face below the bandanna and realized that I was pretty easygoing. His smile turned to a laugh as he saw the half-finished whiskey shot yet to be poured into the coffee. Pretty neat town. Let's get back on the bus...]

I get to situating ipod, in the left pocket, thread the phones under the warming shirt and up to the ear holes, bandanna off-gulp-because the knot presses into the back of my head so i can't lay back, Mindfold onto the forehead, 2.5mg of Melatonin sublingual under the tongue and curl up El Capitan's sweater into a tube to be my neck pillow so the head doesn't roll with every bump and turn, I slip my earplugs into my right pocket, next to the change purse, for ease of access if the ipod doesn't work its minimagic.

Selecting the pre-made Chill playlist of Eno's smoothest, The Habibiyya, Moby's Ambient and the like, I find that the most relaxing of these sounds have no way to drown out the roar of the bus engine which, even though these windows don't open, roars and rumbles into my ears past the phones and garbling the fragile ambient musics of my favorites. So I crank up the volume, which is a paradox to the floaty sounds drifting among my ears.

This is working for the first short while until we pass the city toll booth and exit Quito, where the television comes on and without lifting my fold I determine it is some sort of Knight Riderish action flick that contains untold thrilling car chase scenes judging by the routine tire squeals and minimal dialogue I can't make out, or truly, don't want to pay any attention to; focusing the slivers of my mind that are still awake towards the magic album "If Man but Knew" which I have moved onto infinite looping. The mideastern acoustic has enough waves of sound to pierce thru the surrounding rumbles enough to make it followable thru the night's churning sonic juttings from the beast's engine, brakes and televised inanity. I settle into the slow groove they are digging out of the communal psyche's malleable thoughtstuff; I let my eyes weigh heavier and heavier.

But the action flick is stunning me at intermittent blasts and I am forced to turn the tunes up again. El Capitan is back from trying to take the empty pair of seats behind us when we stop outside of town for the last batch of riders. So we're back to bumping elbows and knees. I can tell we leave the paved road when the bus - heavier than my last mental image of God - is hopping along the riveted road as if we were on the moguled slopes of the Andes, not the muddy roads. Its all downhill from Quito's 9500' to the port city. The momentum behind us makes the curves around the mountain sides full with gravitation. With the switchbacks hidden from us riders by the driver's cabwall, the movements occur as sudden jerks and we are all swaying in our varieties of sleep. I am teetering with a feather's smoothness on the edge of dreamdom so i don't want to tense to fight the convoluted spirals we take around these mountainsides. I suggest to the mind awake that we are on a roller coaster and letting my body go limp around the center of my being is the interest gathered from all the Chi work i've invested into me.

The melatonin is kicking in and my brain thinks my brain is telling my brain its time for my brain's thoughtwaves to settle into sleep sinking synchronization into the spaces of time being taken to arrive each swerve of the bus at its condition of physicality, the feelings become less and thicker, slower. Adjusting the ipod brought a second trickle of sense into curve with the bus' swervature helping to line mind with the body's predicament.

Walking the line between waking and sleep for 7 clock hours means i have been absorbing the Habibiyya's one album something like ten times through. A fleeting connection between this notion and the time mother walked in on her teenage son lying asleepish on his bedroom floor with White Rabbit on repeat, and her illustrating confusion at my preferences and my confusion from being roused by the outside world from my inner respite merged into that oddness where one can't follow another into Life -- swings the line i'm walking like a tightrope into awareness. Sensations come rushing in to fill the higher crest of brainwareness amplitude with swimming, swaying sensations, but overall the total darkness held deeper sway. Changing from The Habibiyya to Songs of Green Pheasant (as introduced to me by the Illuminated Mar-Mar), though it lasted only a single listen through after the sweet sublimation of drone of the lasting night that Man almost Knew settled the curves into the brain's creases. I needed an album that was entrancing enough to drift sleep along this rocky road but sharp enough to cut through the myriad of busship noises as we rolled thru the moon's night. The answer came from the Deep Forest. First of the glorious albums of my musical youth. My original Morpheus.

Awakening in a foreign town after an entire night of off-road bussing up and down the Andes just short of the ocean was one of the least noticeable most extreme experiences i've had.