Keeper of the Dam

                 We have hunkered down together in a small room, the eight of us; mattresses on the floor carve a small path to squeeze around each other. The morning started with ease - bottles of wine joined the coffee and chocolate croissants - but now the wind has turned menacing, pushing everyone into the small room and off the porch that was once a safe place to witness nature’s strength. The sound of the wind now carries a bass with it, sending shudders into the earth and vibrations in our bones. If conditions continue, who is to say when our shaking will be from the storm or fear.                 I write by a slice of grey light that stabs through the open door. We take turns gathering around it, searching for the lost sense of safety in the world that so beautifully housed this sunny beach before. Soon the door may have to be closed, and we will sit in this ...

            I am often struck with the feeling of melancholy for no apparent reason. The depth can be subtle - slinking through my thoughts - and other times deep and heavy upon my mind, painting a sepia film over the day. But the tool I’ve learned through this past year is to recognize it, accept it, maybe even try to place its source, and then clear it out by looking at the things around me I am grateful for. Each place I visit gives me a bit more room to grow in that exercise and I am hoping that one day I will be the master of it. But for now, I let the mood shift with the breeze and am eager for the moments when I can swing back into the clear blue tones of a sunny day and see the sparkle of all things bright in this life. I’m currently fighting off that melancholy with a foray back into the hidden coves of my sexuality; I’ve returned to Zipolite nearly a year after my first adventure of two nights. Now with a week secured, I am openin...

          Sitting in a rooftop café in Mexico City, I look out and see smoking rising from the Plaza de la Constitucion . It is the cleansing smoke cast by an Aztec shaman in a purification ritual and it floats to the sky with the spirits that are purged from those in the square below. I wonder if I have been leaving a similar trail behind me as I’ve traveled the past year, sloughing off the negative legions that attached to my soul and weighed me down. I wonder if they have turned to smoke with each day spent in the cleansing sun. If they were dried out by the salty blue waters of the ocean. If the people I have met have hugged me and squeezed out the spirits hiding in the cracks of the collapsing structure that I once was. Here in Mexico City, I identify with similarly decrepit buildings, as they too tell a story of standing through years of wear and tear. Age has put them at odd angles and the shaking of the earth has sent cracks up the cement work. But ...