I arrive at night after a long bus ride south from Puerto Vallarta. It’s dark, with glaring lights around the dingy bus station in the center of town. I take a taxi to the hotel, hoping that there really will be a room. Although I’d made reservations over the phone, it had been a casual transaction. “No money needed in advance.”
But I’m in luck. Although the place is jammed with Mexican families for the New Year weekend, I get an upstairs room close to the beach, where I can hear the waves breaking. It’s a stark room, to my taste, with grey tile floors, a bed, a few shelves, and a wooden bar for hanging clothes. A tiny bathroom. The windows have no glass, only screens, and consist of concrete latticework through which fresh air flows.
In the morning I eat breakfast at Ayala’s, about a fifteen minute walk from the hotel along rough cobblestone streets. It’s open to the street, as most stores and restaurants are here. The waiter says he remembers me, although I was last here three years ago! A wonderful breakfast of huevos rancheros, tortillas, frijoles, salsa, and café con canella. Then I buy a few staples: granola, yoghurt, a papaya, and a beautiful glazed earthenware plate and bowl. In my luggage I’d packed an electric coil for heating water.
When I return, the hotel is awake. I recognize two or three people from my previous visit. Although I hadn’t stayed here long, I felt at home with them. After the busloads of Mexicans leave, this group of aging hippies—now securely middle-class—from British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon take over for the winter. It’s cheap by the month, and they leave their belongings—refrigerators, kitchenware, even tv sets—in a big storage room.
The physical structure of the hotel helps create community. It consists of two stories around a courtyard filled with plants. There are about thirty rooms, all facing the courtyard. Wooden tables and chairs are outside each door, so it is easy to strike up a conversation with other guests, to read, eat in the open air. At the same time, it’s possible to be private.
Days slide into each other. Time slows down, as there are few things to do.
With the slowing of time comes clarity.
It’s somewhat like being on a meditation retreat. In the spaciousness of this time, thoughts and perceptions arise. I write in a notebook outside at my table, in restaurants, everywhere. And I reread Dostoiesvky for the first time in years. The words are pungent, purifying. The weaknesses and sufferings of his characters give validation of what it is to be human.
The air is soft—unlike the harsh air of Northern California. In this soft warmth, I relax. I observe people more closely, my senses no longer overwhelmed.
I walk along the beach or into town for simple errands, swim, eat at open air restaurants, and talk with Mexicans, Americans, Canadians. The sound of waves breaking on the beach is a constant, lulling sound. At night the stars shine, as well lights from a nearby town. And there is the sound of music—romantic Mexican melodies as well as rock music.
Small incidents loom large, as they do during meditation retreats. They’re individual pebbles that I now have the leisure to examine In “real” life, these pebbles are too often trampled underfoot in the rush of things.
Things arise here almost as by design.
The surf is rough outside the hotel, and on the third day I walk barefoot in the soft sand to the calmer west end of the beach. It’s still crowded with holiday visitors. Teenage boys are surfing with skim boards, and there are a lot of them. Heedless, I walk into the waves. A loose board hits my right big toe, cutting a jagged gash just under the nail. I rush out of the water, and face the skimboard’s owner, who simply shrugs. I go back along the beach, walking stiffly with my foot flexed in an effort to stem the flow of blood. It’s a really deep gash, hard to clean. Two women at the hotel help me bandage it. And I’m furious with myself! Now I can’t swim or hike! All the next day I rest, keeping the foot elevated, and I send myself healing energy. When I hold my hand over the wound, my toe pulsates.
For a long time I’ve sent healing energy to other people—whether it works, I don’t know, but the intention is there. This is the first time I’ve thought to send it to myself.
Nevertheless, two days later the toe is red, swollen, infected.
I limp a few blocks to a doctor’s office, which is in a corner of the courtyard of his large house. He gives me antibiotics and pills for inflammation. Olga, who runs a nearby restaurant, offers me arnica leaves from her garden. Drinking the tea, she says, will help.
My toe heals enough after a few days so that I can swim, and after a week I can walk without much pain. The injury is metaphorically a pebble, which now I have the leisure to isolate, examine, and polish. Why was I so heedless of my safety?
I reflect on the need to nurture my body, protect it as I would a child’s.
Again, the emptiness of the day, having time and space, helps produce clarity.
Despite the fact that this is the tourist season, the town is still comparatively slow-paced. At the corner grocery, a young couple nestle against each other behind the cash register as they watch a tv novela. The woman rises from her husband’s lap to help me look for candles. In the tiny one-room post office, Ishmael waves away my consternation when I realize I don’t have enough money for the postage stamps. Bring the money next time, he says, handing me the stamps.
My friend Michelle, a French-Canadian woman, lives a few miles north along the coast in a big house only a dozen or so steps from a bay surrounded by mountains. She is a recent widow. “In a sense,” she says of her husband, “He gave his life for me. I feel his spirit. When we built this place, he said he felt he would die here.” She is a robust, cheerful woman of great warmth who instantly attracts people, and she earns a living with tarot readings. But she says, “I need to be quiet. Since I have been living here alone, when I go out with people … when I go to a city…it’s like being without skin. Nine months of the year, after the tourist season ends, I read and write. I’m alone… When the full moon shines, the light is so bright I can almost read by it.” She reads voraciously, and is particularly well-versed in nineteenth century European literature. I give her my copy of Dostoievsky’s The Gambler, which she says she’s been trying to find it for years.
Another day I visit the city of Colima, high in the mountains. It is a colonial city, with a calmness that is reminiscent of another time. There is a university, but few foreigners. I have visions of living here alone for a few months. In this place I think I could slow down, write, think, and absorb Spanish language.
Back at the hotel, a noisy group has gathered next door. It disrupts the mood of Colima. But later that night, musicians gather in the courtyard: a guitarist, a drummer, and some of us dance.
The days pass, and there is more music, more festivity in the evenings.
I have only a few more days here. In my mind is the nightmare image of a room heaped with papers, a flowing cascade of paperwork. At home there is always the sense of more I need to do. Cluttered time. Cluttered urban space. But here time is spacious, the air is soft and warm, and the sound of waves lulls me.
