Here I am--home again--the mountains turning green, snowfields like crowns upon the peaks, birds flashing in the light. Already I've been back a week and it's starting to feel like I never left, the same faces at the coffee shop, the same talk of jobs and rent and camping out--only the price of gas has changed.
Ahh—home sweet home never felt so strange as it has this time around. Five months away, nearly all of it spent in Baja, Mexico speaking a different language with a different people set in different space of Time. Time is a variable thing. Changes with your own motions through it. I guess I got pretty used to it, to the point that the spanish I hear on the street still sounds more familiar than the english, 
still sounds more beautiful and tranquil and reminds me of my other home, so far away now, in the desert agave blooms, family histories running like so many tributaries into one great river--"buenas tardes" I say to the clerk here in RiteAid and I see the same smile, the same warmth that I'm used to amongst the people of Baja--this world is made up of one people, really it is, we are all the same. I know that now more than ever. It seems that the first level of blindness we are taught is that a different language or culture implies a different people, a different soul--but we all share the same soul, we all share the same feelings of love, hate, respect and family, sorrow, hunger, pain and joy.
Nostalgic for a chance meeting, a conversation, a family history, a view of the pacific, vast, unending, and full of power--the simplicity--"muy tranquilo" all the time—--nd of course the feel of a giant quart sized Pacifico "Ballena" cerveza in my hand while rolling down a dirt road headed for the ocean and a new place to surf. And the surf. What clear water, empty points, wrapping for minutes, and another just over the horizon and around the next bend. Found lots of magic spots, definitely the sort of places you do not talk about too openly, as well as other spots that perhaps you could talk about because most people aren't interested in 3 minute long, slow longboard waves...
Baja, you hold my Time.
My spirit is all hung up in your foggy mornings, your honest people, and my eyes have trickled down into an agave ready to bloom and die upon your desert—forever content.
Where can I hope to go from here?
There are stories one can tell, and there are stories impossible to tell—what can I say about the tears in Maria's eyes as we waved goodbye after 3 weeks of visits and coffee and food and trip to the mountain ranchos of her childhood—what is writable about such a connection? It is deep, like family--"como familia" as they told us in their kitchen one afternoon. It is a wordless feeling--this love--it is an unspeakable story of getting to know the people, the places, the language of this life, this Baja-- How I miss it.
Right now even surrounded by mountains and friends and memories.
Memories.
I remember our first day, as we drove out of El Rosario and into the empty desert of the central penninsula--how quickly and totally a calm enveloped me, a joy from somewhere familiar--ahhhhh I am back in Baja, I am here to stay awhile, to live almost--
How that narrow, dangerous highway calls me, despite the numerous near death encounters swerving and praying for forgiveness—sing to me sweet road, sweet blade wheel of life and death—sing, sing, sing—may I never stop feeling your song amongst these wide freeways of the American masses. May I never stop feeling your love. You hold my heart in your hand, please carry it gently.
I still smell the sage I picked on our last day, headed north, our goodbye ritual, a farewell that I drag on and disperse—leaving pieces of fresh sage at all my friends houses untl it's gone and all I have is one dry, brittle scent on my dashboard which I burn and breath and relive until it too is gone, leaving only memories of the arroyo from which it came.
We are nothing but plants and animals. Give us food and water and watch us grow. We can live simply on the air we breathe.
Here I am--home again--the mountains turning green, snowfields like crowns upon the peaks, birds flashing in the light. Already I've been back a week and it's starting to feel like I never left, the same faces at the coffee shop, the same talk of jobs and rent and camping out--only the price of gas has changed.
still sounds more beautiful and tranquil and reminds me of my other home, so far away now, in the desert agave blooms, family histories running like so many tributaries into one great river--"buenas tardes" I say to the clerk here in RiteAid and I see the same smile, the same warmth that I'm used to amongst the people of Baja--this world is made up of one people, really it is, we are all the same. I know that now more than ever. It seems that the first level of blindness we are taught is that a different language or culture implies a different people, a different soul--but we all share the same soul, we all share the same feelings of love, hate, respect and family, sorrow, hunger, pain and joy.
I remember our first day, as we drove out of El Rosario and into the empty desert of the central penninsula--how quickly and totally a calm enveloped me, a joy from somewhere familiar--ahhhhh I am back in Baja, I am here to stay awhile, to live almost--
