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Moses the Maestro

A journey through Agave Liquors
or
The Currency of Attention #1

Every once in a while, we get to experience spontaneous fun. One of these moments was the other day when I wondered into a wanderful experience, driven by curiosity and an open mind. It was an experience that taught me a lot about artisanal Tequila and Mescal, got me pretty buzzed, and created some new friends out of strangers. It all started with a question.

For the record, I don’t drink. I might have a glass of wine with a fine meal, once a month or so. But I don’t keep any alcohol in my home, and I don’t go out to bars or clubs. Not as a rule, but just in practice. Partly because of COVID but mostly because I’ve gotten whatever I wanted out of those kinds of experiences already, and they hold no mystery for me anymore.

But I do appreciate fine things. In fact, this whole blog was conceived as a vehicle to muse on my adventures with the Aristotelian principal of the loving contemplation of worthy things. Aristotle believed that a happy life is one devoted to contemplation, obviously he practiced what he preached…. In this spirit, I consider all things done with care, deep knowledge, practice and fine technique to be worth learning about.

With this in mind as I came back from the beach at sunset, I walked in to the liquor store on the main street that runs through this tiny town on the Pacific coast of Mexico. It sits on the main street through town with all the surf shops, restaurants and bars, real estate offices, and parks with kids skateboarding. The street ends at the Pacific Ocean, just waiting there like a massive sleeping fun beast.

The store is small, but inviting, and packed with twisted bottles on shelves, the most ornate right at eye level. Many types of Tequila, Mezcal, Raicilla, Pox, Sotol, Charanda, and all kinds of mysteries. The store was empty and I have been thinking about trying to visit a Tequila distillery to learn more about how it’s made. Agaves are strange alien plants, beautiful and dangerous, that seem more wise tree for their 80 year lifespan. I have come to know some green Agaves during my time in Sedona. I’ve long known that Tequila comes from Agave. It says so on the bottles I drank as a teenager. I have seen the agave farms in the countryside in this part of Mexico, and it just seems like a natural thing to do here.

Moses, the shopkeeper

“Hola, buenas.” I said as I entered. I say this everywhere in Mexico.

“Hola. Que te puedo ayudar?” asked the man behind the counter. It’s not a full question, but serves nonetheless. He had a creased, tanned face, with lines deep from his smile, and many smiles before that.

I studied the shelves. There were hundreds of bottles, filled with different color liquid from clear to dark brown, in various shapes and looking various levels of expensive. I thought I might buy a small bottle to try it, and to keep at home to serve to guests. Being a good host is important to me. I knew nothing about artisanal brands of tequila, but chose a few small bottles based mostly on price and the unique shape, and walked up to the counter.

Rather than just buy and walk out, it occurred to me that this man might be able to shed some light on what makes for a good tequila. I’ve been a bartender at fine restaurants, and spent some time with a sommelier who was studying to take the Master Sommelier exam, which is brutal: a blindfold taste of 5 random bottles of any kind of wine from anywhere, of any year. Passing grade, to be named a ‘Master Sommelier’ means to be able to name the make, year, varietal, and region of at least 3 of them, based just on blind taste. There is a method to it and it can be learned. Still, it’s a daunting task.

So there must be a reason some tequilas cost a few dollars, and others a few hundred.

Smiling, with undivided attention, and in Spanish that I hope sounds smooth, I politely asked the teller what was the difference in the three bottles I chose. He smiled, and his answer was 2 hours long and tons of fun.

His name was Moses. He seemed to have been bored, but when I asked him to explain, his eyes lit up, he leaned forward, and smiled.  I got the impression this was not his first time doing everything that came next.

Artisanal vs. Commercial

First, he took out a little Artisanal Tequila book from under the counter, and laid it open for me. In Spanish he described the process of harvesting Agave for Tequila.

There are over 200 varieties of Agave that we know of, all growing around the arid, hot ecological region in the SW US and all over Mexico.  Tequila is made out of only one of them, the Blue Agave, and it has a specific humidity range that covers Mexico from the Pacific to the Caribbean, running right through Mexico City. Tequila is only made in 5 states in Mexico, Jalisco being the #1, and including Nayarit, where I am living. Mezcal, on the other hand, can be made from green Agave, and is made out of around 30 of them. Mezcal is being produced almost everywhere in Mexico. 

To harvest the Agave, they cut all the arms off, leaving a large ball. This is called La Pina, which literally means Pineapple. It looks just like one, though giant and round.
Inside the Pina is the Aguadulce, or sweetwater, the raw material they need to make liquor.  It is not drinkable at this point, there are too many bitter and toxic compounds.

So they cook them.  For Tequila, they cook the Pinas in a brick room, above ground.  This room is fumigated and has good ventilation, so the Pinas come out without any flavor added. For Mezcal, they bake them in an underground oven, like a sweat lodge, and the smoke stays in the room. The Pinas all take on the smokey flavor, which can be quite complex and varied.

After cooking, they leave them in barrels to ferment.  Most are fresh wood, but this Is where the fun stuff comes in.

So far, I’ve learned a lot I didn’t know. But It has also been fun chatting with this friendly guy, and I like him. Right about here is where he starts talking about the differences in pricing, and quality. As he does, he reaches back behind him, where I see about 20 bottles, all of which have varying degrees of liquid in them. They have all been opened.

He pulls out 5 different bottles, clearly considering what to choose based on what I’ve said about my preferences. If you are going to do something, do it the best way, so that’s what I asked for. He pours a small tasting shot out of the first bottle, and I sip. This is a fancy twisty bottle with liquid in the stopper top. It is extra volume of the same liquor, and is real. This bottle is covered in Black of some material, a label that covers the whole bottle.

The Tasting

I sip it like I was taught from the Sommelier.

First, appreciate with the eyes. The liquid is dark, Amber to the point of being purple-brown. I have a paper shot glass, but it looks transparent, not just translucent. Clear, though dark. 

Next, the smell.  The heat of alcohol is nicely wrapped in sweet caramel, cherry, molasses-y and spice-flavored olfactory notes. Well balanced.

Finally the sip, done properly with a lot of air. The oxygen enhances the flavor and aroma. I sense a sweet explosion, though very rounded out. Rich and deep flavor, nothing astringent, both sweet and savory. It changes in my mouth, from spice to candy, over 10 seconds.

I like it.

Artisanal tequilas are produced while putting quality over quantity. This means a few things, practically.

First, they let the Agaves grow until they are 30. That means for 30 years, they do not harvest a field. Wine grapes can be harvested every year. Most tequilas you have heard of, including Don Julio, Patron, Hornitos, etc. harvest after only 4 years… babies in the Agave world. Agaves live up to 80 years, and flower once. This patience for harvest means more complex, more mature, and far less volume to begin with.

Next, they re-use barrels from other kinds of liquor. Whiskey barrels, Red Wine barrels, Scotch barrels, you name it. This makes up most of the difference between the different Brands of Artisanal tequila.

Another difference lies in how long they ferment it. Anejo means about 2 years. 2-4 years is Extra-anejo. More than that is Super-Anejo.  The best tequilas (of this type) are 4-8 years, and the longest is 10. That’s because the barrels lose a huge amount of liquid every year, absorbed by the wood and evaporated through osmosis. This first Tequila I tasted was 8 years old, aged in a Whiskey barrel.

Another difference is the technology behind the actual mashing process. Truly Artisanal manufacturers use technology that was around before industrial machines. That means using a giant circular stone, pulled around by a horse harnessed to a long pole, that mashes the agave pinas as it rolls around on top of them. All processes done by hand. Impressive.

We continued down the line. I tasted a Tequila from a regular barrel, aged 6 years. A Red Wine barrel, a Scotch barrel. And my favorite (and it turns out Moses’ too) was aged 4 years in a whiskey barrel, and 4 years after that in a Red Wine barrel, It was not as sweet as the first, and still incredibly balanced, with enough personality and acid backbone to carry it’s flavors. It was more complex, but lighter than the first one.

Next, he pulled out three clear bottles, of something called Cristalino. It is Extra-Anejo, but they filter out all the color. It’s fine, but missing the richness of the unfiltered liquor, in my opinion.

Susan Walks In

The first, and only, mezcal that I like

About this time a woman arrived. She was in her 50s, with short blond hair, and a petite frame.  She was there to buy some water.  Moses offered her to taste the tequilas with me.  I was surprised at first, since we had been talking for more than a half hour, but it was his liquor.

I introduced myself. She replied in an Aussie accent, apparently she was living in Colorado and came to Mexico to escape the mental atmosphere of the US. Her Spanish wasn’t great, but Moses asked me to explain everything so far to catch her up. I did so, knowing that reciting something, the act of trying to remember, is a very powerful tool to help my own memory. I threw myself into it, thought I had had a few shots’ worth of fine liquor already, and zero tolerance.

She was duly impressed by the flavors. We returned to Moses, it seemed he had more to share with us. He asked me to translate a Mezcal named ‘Devorador de Pecados. I guess because he wants to explain to other customers after me in English.

Translating ‘Devorador de Pecados’ for Moses leads to…

I began to translate from Spanish to English as Moses continued his tale. My Spanish is ok.  I don’t have to translate from English in my head, but it’s not a smooth thought process.

Even if I pause often to remember a word, or mess up gender suffixes from time to time, I can still mostly carry a conversation. I credit my biggest advances with Spanish fluency to hanging out at night with other kids in Venezuela, at 16 years old, while they drank Calimochos (rum and coke) and joked around. I had to try to keep up with 3 different conversations at the same time. While drinking.  I still speak better when I’m buzzed. It was going swimmingly now.

Moses kept walking us through liquors, and even took a few tastes himself of his favorites. We went through a total of 9 different Tequilas. Moses just kept pulling bottles from the shelves behind him. This was his show. He clearly appreciated that I was listening and that I remembered what he said.

“Usualmente no lo hago, pero… es porque tu sabes.”

‘Because I know,’ but really because I was listening.

…The secret meaning of the Scorpion in side bottles of Mezcal

I was curious about the Mescals, and told Moses I had not found one I liked yet, but was open to it. He pulled out 5 bottles from the shelves behind him. We tasted them in 2 rounds, first of 3 and second another 2.  Each round was curated by Moses, based on our tastes so far. He considers himself a bit of a maestro. That seemed a funny thought to me, buzzed as I was. Moses the Maestro. He liked the name.

Moses the Masetro, and Mezcals worth Mentioning

Mescals can be sharp, or dull. Bitter or sweet. Its hard to know what to look for. All I know is that there was one, not too strong, more balanced, that I liked, once I got over the smokiness. Knowing where it came from allowed me to accept it more. Kind of like taking a class on John Coltrane made me appreciate his genius, when I could not listen to him before that.

Chatting with Susan, I opened up about what I am doing in Mexico. It was amusing to hear her reply, multiple times, ‘I’m trying to do that too.’ There is something that is being shared, even if we are not aware of it, a reaction, a personal place we are all in separately at the same time, caused by some shared realities over the past year.  It is a good thing to remember as I spend most of my days in solitude.  A sleeping power, or a force lying dormant, for now, but shared and waiting to be discovered.

Yes, that’s the same liquid in the stopper. Bonus

I had to call this ride to an end, though, I was drunk.  It was 8 pm, we had tasted 14 different kinds of liquor, and I still wanted to do my Yoga for the day. Susan seemed disappointed the tasting had come to an end. We bid farewell, and exchanged WhatsApp numbers. I walked home, satisfied.

Moses is the kind of proprietor I willingly buy expensive things from. I chose my favorite Tequila, Adictivo Super-Anejo, and the one Mezcal that I liked, Devorador de Pescados, the one that told the myth of the origins of Mezcal, and bought them. The Tequila was still 3 times as expensive as the Mezcal… but now I have a story, and some knowledge, and a sensory experience to share with house-guests.

Look what I got into today, a day well spent, just because I listened and paid attention. I made friends with Moses the Maestro, and the Aussie woman named Susan. And I learned I like this Mescal, Devorador de Pecados, the eater of sins.  


PS I still did the yoga. That was fun…

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Shake the Head

Short Fiction published on Vocal March, 2021

Something told her to stay awake, though a crash from caffeine was catching her full throttle. She couldn’t decide if it was fun or not. Not, mostly. She had scored the prize seat on her flight back from her temporary home, by luck! Without paying for it, the airline counter lady had sat her in the last row of the emergency exit section. More legroom plus a reclining seat! An unexpected luxury. A sign.

When the flight attendant recited the script on opening the door in emergencies, it lingered with her. She found herself wishing for an accident, that old familiar morbid curiosity that had been with her since as long as she could remember. An impulse more than a thought. So she could experience opening the huge, imposing emergency door. A test, if you will. She shook such thoughts out of her head. Again.

“If I pass out, I may never wake up again.” She shook her head.

“Stay awake,” her quiet voice warned. She put in her earbuds but played no music. Better, the silence. She put on her sunglasses; dim felt good right now. Strange sensations of endless rolling vertigo played over her body like ripples through water.

She was here because of a surprise she had found in her father’s attic: the black and white painting of swallows in flight, leaning against the back wall and covered in a thick layer of dust. Something had caught her eye about the painting, and she kept it. At the time she had been shocked into numbness by his sudden death (they told her it was an accident). Months later, while reframing the painting she found $20,000 hidden in the frame, and a note, written by her father, signed:

Find me in the Center, practicing. -Dad

Finding the cash was a sad, guilty pleasure. It was the note that had set her on this journey, but it was the cash that had made it possible. Thank God she had not sold the painting.

She did not realize what it meant until later, after seeing his cold, grey body in the morgue. After numbly thanking her friends and family. After their social niceties. And after all that had faded into silence, forgotten as the world moved on, even though she could not.

The Center, practicing…

The capital c in Center must mean a meditation center in Asia. Her father had spent a few years off and on in Asia during his forties, when she was very young, and she knew he was into spirituality at the time.

The note told of a secret room somewhere. And a space hidden in the stone wall. Did her father leave it to keep it safe? Or because he was in trouble? The note didn’t say. As time passed, and as she kept re-reading the scrawled message, a feeling grew that there was something there for her to find.

The vertigo came in waves. Intense, blanketing waves of tingly, pleasant sensation. A physical response from her body wherever she placed her awareness. Other sensations like a liquid fire bath. Meditation brings benefits of awareness even when one is really high. Too high. And crashing fast. Blood sugar? she thought. Shook her head. Too bad it made her dizzy. It really didn’t help the vertigo. Only time would work its ineffable magics.

Takeoff seemed far, far away, when it happened. She felt the plane, without words to describe it. It became an extension of her sensory consciousness. The pressure of the still air column. The lift of the wings, the sudden transfer of weight off the wheels, front first. The extra thrust given just when the nose lifted, to swiftly leave the earth. The awkward but necessary folding of the landing gear. Then… smooth soft vibrations all over.

It was so unlike her when she finally decided to do something about her feeling. She had always been the stable one, the practical one, who made sure everyone was taken care of. And yet, she always had this darker impulse buried inside that made her want to jump when looking over a cliff, or hold her hand to flame just to see what happens. Or to open the emergency exit door…

Shake the head.

So she had set out without knowing where, with a vague sense of some mystery to uncover. A tangled winding path that led to the other side of the world, her father’s legacy reaching out to her from beyond the grave. As if to make up for all the years he was absent during her childhood. She re-traced her father’s travels, as he described them in her memory: Calcutta, then Burma. Then Goa. From there over to Kuala Lumpur. A brief, very expensive stay over in Singapore.

Lots of flights, all in coach.

After nearly a year of travel, living in dirt-floor huts surrounded by chickens and dogs, battling mosquitoes and malaria, fluent in pigeon English and hand signs, she had been ready to give up. To let go of her father, let his secrets lie. She was broke, tired, sick, and her whole body had ached, when she arrived at the Dhamma Java center outside Jakarta for a 10-day silent retreat. It was free, or donation only, and would feed her. She had been jumping from center to center, and stretched out her last few remaining dollars this way. There, she lost her mind, found the room, and the stone and what was behind it.

It had happened on the 8th day, after she had passed through layers of grief, clinging to the singular thought that this moment is all there is, and all else is transitory. She had been invited to use one of the individual meditation cells for the more experienced students. It was dark, and she had been sitting, agitated, trying to calm her mind, when she noticed a loose stone in the wall. Happy for the distraction, she started pulling at the stone. It came free and in a space behind it was a little black book. A leather-bound journal with her father’s handwritten scrawl all over its pages, suddenly here in her hands.

She flipped through the pages. the notebook was filled with verse; a glimpse into her father’s mind and heart. He had always been one of few words, at least in person. Or maybe just to her…. Her father would always be a mystery to her. She was so much like her mother, and he was so… untouchable. Her father, the secret poet, who never did much with his talent…

She discovered with surprise that he had a vibrant interior life, and had felt sad at times, lonely too. She had known that her grandfather was an abusive alcoholic, though her father never talked about growing up. Still, it felt like a punch in the gut to learn about the hours her father had spent baking in the car on a hot summer day while his father went into the bar and got drunk. And the terror of the ride home, swerving into garbage cans and mailboxes, which her grandfather would not remember later. The worst times, when he would yell and throw things in the kitchen, mostly at his mom. Such pain and raw trauma, it must have been hard for her father to write it. No wonder he had kept himself distant. He obviously did not want to become like his own father. He feared himself.

The poetry was whimsical, like the one about elements and love:

Love is the simplest thing.

Tiny, it buzzes with subatomic force

holding disastrous, awesome power,

yet more often slipping through your fingers.

As wholesome as dirt, it brings forth life,

able to support the most sublime and delicate foliage.

But with bitter taste in mouth and neck,

everyman must eat his peck.

Water naturally must take its course

love stays true to fate from end to source

as true if grave to crib as morn to night

with love comes all righteousness’ insight.

She never knew before that her father thought about these things. He had a warm heart, but his mind was always somewhere else. Finding the notebook ripped open her heart once again. This time she felt the exquisite pain of discovering a profound man behind the façade, of coming to know her father better after his passing. Her heart burst with a sorrowful love for him.

As her eyes grew heavy, the nervous energy seeped out of her cells on the vibrations of the plane. She stretched out her legs. Her head shook no more as she drifted into an unsettled sleep.

A great big monster hand scooped her out of some busy dream and shook her until her eyeballs hurt. Her arms flapped like a doll. Her eyes opened to a blur, uncomprehending. A massive, shrieking groan, felt more than heard, clawed at her eardrums and made her legs itch. The floor dropped away and she fell. The hand threw her towards the ground.

Suddenly she heard all the screaming, coming from everywhere. She realized she was looking at a disintegrating plane. From the inside. There was fire, heat, hurricane winds, smoke, flying debris. Huge ripped holes in the cabin walls like shark bites… giant, sky-swimming Megalodons, made of current and vapor, devouring this tasty juicy meat wagon. Seats were missing too, along with the people sitting in them. Faces were streaked with tears and blood. Moms holding their children in terror. Men with static, blank faces, or others shivering in fear or melting in despair.

When she looked out her window (still there) she was looking straight down at the ground rushing straight for her. She wondered if it was more fun to die outside the plane, falling freely. She decided that it was.

She fished and fumbled with her seat belt and struggled to understand what she was doing. A huge explosion!! And bare sky appeared just in front of her. The seats in the next three rows were gone, suddenly, along with the people sitting in them. She stopped fiddling and grabbed the armrest tightly. Everything was shaking.

Her next thought slapped her in the face: “Did I do this? Did I call this into my story?”

She looked deep within and did not hear a no. Stupid. Trickster mind. She tried to calm her thoughts; it was all she could do these last few seconds of her life.

So it goes.

A sharp sensation shot up her right side and…. she blinked… Someone was standing over her, holding her sweaty arm. She did not understand. “I’m sorry?”

“Ma’am, I apologize for waking you up… you were having a troubled dream.” A flight attendant was standing in the aisle, looking down at her, touching her arm.

She blinked. She shook her head. She looked up at the flight attendant, who smiled at her with genuine concern. “Are you all right?”

She thought about the first page of the little black book of poems, and the inscription there that read:

I love you, and I’m sorry I could not be a better father.

The words were like honey dripped on the open wound of her heart. She would cherish this treasure forever. Something deep inside of her that had always been there, like a tight fist, suddenly relaxed.

I am now she thought, realizing for the first time in her life, she knew she wanted to live. That she was ready to go home.

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Dreams and Quiet Voices #3

I woke up yesterday haunted by a sweet, sorrowful song that is relatively unfamiliar to me.

Sleep studies have shown a few interesting things in (relatively) recent years, one of which is the idea that while humans naturally sleep for 8 hours, a pattern emerges when distractions of artificial lights and alarm clocks are removed, where the sleep occurs in two four-hour stages, and that it’s a modern invention to think we should sleep through the whole night. This pattern is referred to as Biphasic Sleep.

Album Cover, This Mortal Coil

The theory goes that artificial light, a recent addition to the world, keeps us up long past the sunset, when our natural circadian rhythms start winding us down for bed. A hundred years ago, so this thinking says, it would be quite natural to wake up in the middle of the night, lie awake (relatively) for an hour or two, then slip back into sleep (NIH article).

That hour or two is an interesting time, cognitively. It is a creative time, half-conscious, where ideas come, or we solve problems. Or we spend it making love. I am more curious about what is happening in our minds and consciousness as we bridge the two deep sleep cycles. The powerful dreams come just at the beginning of this waking period. So too do these times when I run, over and over, a song track in my mind. It comes unbidden, and has a life of its own, and I am simply here to understand why.

Which makes this song, ‘Song To The Siren’ by This Mortal Coil, interesting. It’s one I recently added to my rotation, but that’s not unordinary.

Song to the Siren, by This Mortal Coil. Press play to listen

Why this one?

First, it makes the hair on my neck stand up listening to it. I am overcome with a powerful feeling of loss and nostalgia. The halcyon days of youth become a faded dream I just woke up from. Half-memories, half promises; of heartbreak and hardship. I don’t even know the words, but the feeling is always there, as soon as the song starts playing, and long after it ends. A timeless state. Just like the minutes and hours at the end of a sleep period.

The first thing I do usually when this happens is listen to it in the morning, right after meditating. I listened to this one on single-song repeat for hours. Its mystery slowly unfolds though I am still at a loss for why my subconscious singled it out. It begs the question: what is happening in my life that this is a message for me now, from my deeper self? I am on my own in a foreign country, dealing with the vagaries of noise pollution and a community that cares deeply about some good things, but not at all about things like health standards, building codes, or peace and quiet.

Sometimes it is just a feeling, a mood. Nothing more.

This song came to me through a MasterClass I was watching by David Lynch, talking about the creative process and filmmaking. He wanted to use it for ‘Wild At Heart’ but it was out of his budget… but he loves this song, so I listened to it. And it is very Lynchian… moody, mystical, dark but soft.  I am in pursuit of my own creative forces, particularly in writing fiction, and I have been practicing thinking about mood in new ways. During my photography career I was very focused on concept and technical skill, but not so much on mood. I am trying it on as a worthy pillar for good fiction and good storytelling. So I have set myself up to try to feel it, like David Lynch does. He talks about ‘falling in love’ with an idea. I guess this song is the memory of that love. It resonates with me as I emerge from a yearlong period of mourning for the end of my own marriage.

What is it we lose, when we forego this period of trance-like deep creative half-dream? I believe this is the time we integrate our conscious thoughts with the deep well of subconscious information processing we do all day, every day. We clear out the garbage, tidy the house, connect our will to circumstance, and ask ourselves for help. This series about dreams and quiet voices is an exploration of my own trance state, and what I can learn, and how I can benefit from paying attention to it.  For now, I will simply feel the ethereal, moody dream that I seem to gravitate towards at this time in my life. I will give it time and space to be. So it is!

More from this series:
Dreams and Quiet Voices #2
Dreams and Quiet Voices #1

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The Leap Taken

So many kids grow up in fear, and never taking the leap of faith. I try to seize every chance I get to feel grateful to have been raised in the woods, 15 miles outside a town of 2000 people, at the end of a mile long dirt road. Of course as a child I just wanted to go learn about the culture of the big city… Now in my adulthood, I want to find a place just like it and stay there for a long time (ok, with internet).

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Motorcycles and the Art of Zen Maintenance

If you have not read ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance‘ by Robert M. Pirsig, then stop reading this and go get it on audiobook. The book is a foundational exploration of the metaphysics of quality; or a rambling, semi-fictional semi-autobiographical novel that expounds, though never professes to be a factual doctrine, on topics including epistemology, the history of philosophy, and the philosophy of science.

I read it when I was in high school, searching for signs of who I was and what I could call Truth. The book is about a son and a father primarily, which was a good reason for me to read it. At that point I wanted more Father in my life… and my own dad spent time reading metaphysical books… I was drawn to the mysticism of Carlos Castenada and classics like ‘Stranger in a Strange Land‘ by Robert L. Heinlein and ‘Brave New World‘ by Aldous Huxley, two books I would also recommend any teenage boy (and teenage girl) to read. Blow your mind, it’s good for you.

But this is not about those books. I read them all before I took my first motorcycle ride. Long before I owned one of my own.

Since then, I have carried my love of riding motorcycles through decades… and more than one accident. Most were close calls without injury. One of them changed my body – and my baseline level of pain and discomfort – permanently. But, as the Chinese saying goes, no illness, short life… one illness, long life. I’ll save any more than that for another story.

Still, I Ride

This is about riding. I love riding. I love everything about it. I love the vibration of the machine, a rumble-hum under me. I love the rush of the passing air, each moment rich blasts of thick, heady mixed pungent smells and sensual signals – temperature, sounds, air quality – and somatic sensations of velocity, acceleration, inertia. Smells like miles of cut grass or the salt of the sea, on cliff-spanning rides near my longtime home in San Francisco. Or in Bali, smells of damp earth and mushrooms after the rain, or the acrid sting in eyes and nose caused by smoke from local villagers burning refuse.

Or here in Nayarit, Mexico, where the chalky smell of dust permeates even the densest olfactory notes. A bouquet that includes heavy intoxicating flowers, the oxygen-rich air of the jungle around the road, Dust and sand kicked up by passing machines, or even the man-made smells of engine oil and steel shavings coming from local shops or passing trucks. Or the other manmade smells of cooking meats, shrimp poblano, chili and lime. Confection stands and taco carts. Here there is also smoke from burn piles among the Agave farms.

These smells tell me the story of the land I am passing through, of which I am part as I pass by. A motorcycle does not separate you from the land or the city or the country or the road… rather it gives you superpowers as you move through, over and in it; you become able to slice and swoop, to crawl or wander. To soar triumphant like you just won your deepest desire. A soul-filling power.

The atmosphere is more than the smells it contains. It gives you feedback on your speed and direction. You begin to see the land you pass through as a map of billions of different chemicals floating all around in a soup of air. You pass through pockets of floral chemicals. Culinary terpenes and rich oxygen from the forest. The local pocket of the stench of a dead animal somewhere off the road.

The wind on your face tells your body that you are free, moving fast. Both of these sensations contribute to the best feeling of all: that of flying! Low to the ground, following the contours of a descent or the swell of a rising hill, passing through shaded tunnels made from tree branches grown all around you like a flat solid roof and rounded walls as you rocket through curves and climbs.

There are moments on my motorcycle when all care about destination or the slow things in your life melt away; moments when no other vehicles are around, and I am alone, with just the body-feeling of acceleration, of the thrill of exposure, sounds of the birds or the rushing air, or better still of the music I listen to when I am happy. Times when I crest a peak, or round a new bend, and the world lays out a vista that takes my breath away. Sprawling splendor splayed spectacularly for my sore sight, like I am being shown a gift of wonder, and allowed to explore it on wings of controlled explosion, the power coursing through me with a hint of danger. No worries can keep up with a man on a motorcycle.

I Am Alive

Now, in this moment. For sure. All others might be a matter of debate, but not this one. In this moment, all that exists is this moment, with me as witness. And I am free. Tomorrow might be another day, but right now, I am completely free, released from all judgement or expectation, and releasing all others from any obligations to me. I am free in a free world. Free from the tyranny of mere ambulation. Free from the extortion of the local Taxi mafia. Free to simply experience the wind on my face, and the wonder rushing by.

At least for these next few months, the last part of an 18 month sabbatical from working full time, I am calling the west coast of Mexico my home. Soon I will return to the world of traffic, of deadlines and meetings, of deliverables, of expectations and obligations. But for this time that I have left, I allow myself to fully experience freedom. Also, I need a way to get around that doesn’t rely on anything tourist related, especially the taxi drivers here. Believe me it’s a racket…

For this reason, I just took a 5 hour bus to Guadalajara, and spent 3 days in negotiations, testing, and dealing with a large international payment, and returned to San Pancho, riding my new Honda 150 custom Cafe Racer, back over 300 kilometers. It’s a long ride, and I had a heavy backpack. That combination takes a toll on my body. But it’s worth it. I have a main line to euphoria, an always-ready emergency exit from the drudgery of the world of things. An off-ramp to the metaphysical realm. And a practical means of transportation in my adopted ex-pat community- the area just north of Puerto Vallarta, near Punta Mita.

Now, instead of being a drag, or a chore, or feeling like work, I am excited to plan days of errands… a trip to PV to take in my dry-cleaning becomes an adventure. I can say yes to friends that live the next town when they are having people over. And going to the beach now feels like a red carpet event.

I am sure that my mother, who will read this, has an entirely different feeling about me riding motorcycles than I do. But to her credit she does not pass guilt on to me for my dangerous habit. Perhaps now, reading this, she will understand a bit more why I choose to ride here. Because the flavors of all other things in my life stand out, are stronger and sharper; all experiences take on their own identity, made clearer by the feeling of being completely alive. It is like salt on the plate of food that is my day.

If I go too long without that feeling, I can forget to look for it, and to cultivate it. Its my little garden and I keep it alive, surrounded as it is by chaos and mere anarchy. That feeling is a phase – shift, a state. Like the places I go in meditation. Or it’s the exact yang to meditation’s yin. The latter is done in the dark, inside, in the quiet, with eyes closed. The former is done fast as can be, outside, engine growling into the rushing wind, eyes wide open. A quickening, to meditation’s stillness. Both make me feel present, in this moment. I ride to keep the balance.

We must all maintain our Zen. It is the contemplation of impermanence. Without constant practice, it will disappear. My motorcycle is one way I maintain mine. A way for me to not be bothered by the rain. Or the noise. Or the pressures of my particular perspective. Or other people. Or unimportant things. Or my own shortcomings. Or the shortcomings of others. Or the natural, unconditioned state of my free spirit.

I get that from riding my motorcycle.

And that is a little piece of Zen in my life, that I can share with you.

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What I Have Learned from Sound

Signal from Noise.
Or the longest AirBnB review ever

This is what I see from my writing desk, in the outdoor kitchen

I have been living for the last two weeks in the noisiest, most chaotic, diverse zone of head-splitting blow-your-top auditory assault of an AirBnB I have ever spent the night.

I am new-come to a foreign land, in a pueblo not larger than a hundred cement-block buildings along a small river that empties into the Mexican Pacific Coast. A landing place for the last few months of my sabbatical; a time for development, acceleration, and growth after a challenging last two years.

I sit here now at my desk, aka the dining table in the outdoor kitchen. There is nothing more than a single white curtain between me and the ubiquitous passing vehicles: water trucks starting their deliveries at 5:30 am. The construction trucks from the multi-unit development project a hundred feet down the street to my right. Old beat-up pickup trucks with cheap megaphones hawking shrimp or fruit in shrill, nerve-grating timbre. Motorcycles with no DMV restrictions on sound or exhaust.

All of them run rumbling and screeching in protest at the torture of the washboard cobblestone carrera that lies as a major throughway into town center, a mere 25 feet from me as I write this. The trucks kick up dust that spills from the construction project just past the brewpub next door, on my side of the street.

Sounds from inside my apartment late at night

It breaks my focus. 

I can’t concentrate.

How long is this debilitating painful annoying aggravating disturbing tranquility-shattering cacophony going to last?

I came here with an itinerary and a schedule. One that was built over months of planning in silence and abundant personal space. One that assumed it would be chaotic here, but relied on the idea that spending a little extra on AirBnB would allow me to at least shut out noise while inside. Enough to meditate. Or read. Or, failing that, maybe during some hours of the day it would be relatively quiet.

This was not the case

I can’t keep myself in any rhythm.

Shrimp-mongers run circuits past my door, all day every day, calling out with tinny megaphones

I came here to write, to be creative, to practice very clean and healthy living. To fast intermittently, meditate, practice music, and take care of my body. It was more the plan of the Monk I had been back in Arizona than anything I could be here in this place. A monk has his mountain temple. I have a sound tunnel with no wall, that fronts this cobblestone street. In the back there is a square hole larger than my shower cut out of the grey concrete wall, with a screen on it and no window. The hole opens to an outdoor kitchen being used at all hours by 3 teenage girls. They play music, have boys over, drink and laugh, loud like they can’t conceive of anything put on this earth that could stop them, I might add… They practice twerking. They fix midnight snacks at 2 am after coming home from the bars or beach fires.

Nothing separates my bathroom from the patio where teenagers party, except a screen

I can’t close the window. It isn’t there.

Dogs bark, a staccato clap from any angle, any distance, any time.

And I came here to spend my time convincing myself spiritually that ‘there is no spoon’ not getting angry because physically there is no window. My meditation is literal practice to not get into patterns of aversion towards unpleasant sensations.  I’m taking a bath in unpleasant sensations. And the water is full of other people’s things. People I didn’t invite into my bathroom.

All I can think is, what can I do to stop the noise? I can’t think of anything that isn’t mean. I can’t think. I want to be mean. I get angry. I feel overwhelmed. It’s a physical feeling, like waking up inside a barrel filled with hot sand, naked, with a sunburn. And not being able to get out. Sometimes when it gets too much to bear I take a walk. Or a run. Or I go to the beach, but that just reminds me of hot sand…

Construction on the other side of the lot next door. The bottom left is a bar with live music every night

I am amazed at watching other areas of my life suffer because of sound. My diet for one. I can’t plan my way around the tasty, cheap tacos on every corner. A salsa-trap too sweet to avoid. My Keto cookbook lies unopened, covered in dust from the trucks beating the cobblestone street for 3 weeks. My desire to talk to strangers, or have patience with the building manager. Or neighbors.

I retreat, into a shell of noise-cancellation headphones, that leave my ears itching and sore overnight. All else is chaos and disruption. Noises caused by other people become black and solitude white. The world divides. I check out of the noise, of the outside. Especially at night, I turn my back and walk away as the building manager tries to explain that the neighbors are new and there is nothing he can do. I feel rude by the time I get to the top of the stairs. But I do not have the energy to change it. All non-survival level concerns are excused away by lack of sleep.

I am guessing this is all typical stress response for many people. It is a privilege that I don’t have bigger stresses in my life than noise. That doesn’t make it easier.

Recorded from my bed at 1 am

And nothing gets done. I can’t focus. I contemplate giving up.

A war zone should even have some hours of quiet.

I try to tell people about this torment. Friends who listen with a polite smile frozen on their mouth. Or strangers, who clearly prefer to go back to having fun. No comprehension in anyone’s eyes.

Am I the only one who is bothered by this? Why does this racket bother only me? And why so much? Other people live here too…

There is a bar, right next to my building. It has really good live music, if that’s what I’m into. It sounds muffled but still loud if I’m not, or simply lying on my bed trying to read. They promise to stop at 9pm. It’s a rule, the locals keep promising me.  Its written on the AirBnB. I think the rule applies to the whole town. There are about a baker’s dozen bars here, one for every block. I have usually thought about complaining at least a hundred times before 11:30 pm.  Most nights. At its worst, I had to listen to binaural white noise at 3/4 full volume on my good quality headphones with active noise cancellation in order to fall asleep. I could still hear the boys howling on the patio at 1:30 am.

Cement blocks open to the outside

Should I go over there and talk to them? None of my friends suggest this option… I talk to whomever will listen. I can’t think too hard about who they might be.

My sleep gets blown up. I am half asleep all day.

Where is the joy I felt just a few weeks ago? The extra gear? The springed step?

There is another sound tunnel, right next to mine. A stranger lives there. Her music, like mine too, can be heard easily from my writing desk, which is my kitchen table.

Everything is fuzzy, like I experience it through a long tunnel, like it comes from far away.

In between, or when away, my mind clears. My thoughts, focus, perspective, slowly come back after a time. And my mind says to me:

  • Yes, this is really an anomaly. Enough independent and random sources of chaotic noise to be a perfect coincidence. But also a great lesson for you.
  • You have had a nice and privileged time in Arizona. You are welcome, it has been a difficult year for many.
  • Yes, the sanctity of silence and serenity is seriously significant. You need to prioritize it in order to live the way you like.
  • It’s ok to cry uncle.  Sometimes toughing it out is not the best way to move through it.
  • Uninterrupted concentration and its shadow, daydreaming, are good for you. they help with expression, problem solving, and staying motivated.
  • You make this noise too, practicing your saxophone.
  • Good job not escalating when you are disturbed. Especially when you are out of your mind angry with the teenagers at 2:00 am and you can’t sleep. An eye for an eye makes for terrible neighbors.
  • It takes some time to be able to read how a place works. Sometimes it’s hard to listen. You can’t be of a place unless you can hear its rhythms.
  • Be grateful you don’t have bigger sources of stress.
  • It’s a particularly first-world sense of entitlement to lose your shit over the roosters before dawn. Or even to expect building standards. Anyone who has lived in a 3rd world country for longer than a week, outside a luxury resort, knows this.
  • It also teaches you to love your home country more because of the absence of the things Americans take for granted.
  • Yes, I can become accustomed even to the chaos and unexpected interruption of anything and continue my practice. Wow.

I can say it’s gotten easier. I’ve meditated on the distractions to meditation. And I’ve heard them speak. I’m not angry anymore, because I have had to throw out my high expectations, at least for now. And things are fixing to be better soon…

Soon, I’ll be moving on. As soon as I can. Sooner than my term ends here. Losing a little money is an acceptable price for peace of mind. My equilibrium is priceless. Solitude and silence call to my soul. Until then, it’s 18 hours of noise cancelling headphones a day, and go deeper inside.

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Observations on the Via to Guadalajara

Cement and cinder blocks dot and bunch in lots alongside the Via to Guadalajara. I am on a bus, to get out of the noise of San Pancho, to celebrate a week of slow travel in Mexico, and maybe to buy a little moto… we will see. It’s an adventure.

A fat and lazy sun does its mediocre best for a February midday. Such things matter here. Oxxo’s everywhere, like some monocultural organ in the body politic.

Haciendas directly front the main 4-lane Via – turning into apartment buildings – then shops – and – Voila! A Pueblo, or a major Mercado Central.  There’s little difference between the two.  Here’s the taxi stand… white stenciled sedans fleet and flit about, marked by their home Mercado.

I pass dry dusty earth, caught in a mess of tropical vegetative chaos. Agave farms, i would guess to make into alcohol, in various stages and healths, like a Mezcal version of Napa county in my home state. The wild vegetation here is hungry, clawing to climb anything that stands, reaching like a drowning castaway clings to a would-be-rescuer, pushing both down.  The whole vast landscape looks sun-blasted, yet right now seems to be catching its breath.  At least a few months of respite from the ruthlessness of the summer sun. 

Palms proliferate, happily sprawling any expanse of favorable earth, cultivated or not. Some palms are made to live in order, some worship the gods of Chaos. The countryside presents itself gently with rolling hills in partial vegetative cover, greens and browns in mostly agrarian formations, much of the flat land cultivated.

Orchards, of this or that or those, grow into a single solid overstory, otherwise seemingly healthy. A dark mystery lies waiting between the trunks. The shadow stretches quickly away into darkness, out of sight. Nothing much grows under there, though thoughts of what may lurk are easy-come. The mind speculates quickly out of control.

Little country huts, half hidden in fruit trees on hills, tickle my simple, pushing invisible buttons of a dormant child-like imagination. I smile.

People, in surprising quantities, everywhere. Mexicans like pastels. It’s a thing here. But it’s hard to say why? Likely because they are the furthest away from the ubiquitous didgy gray of the unfinished cement block houses. That and bright shocking purples, yellows, and reds are the colors represented by flowering succulents of all types, the mainstay of the native flora. I see a fair amount of ‘Se Vende’ signs, on buildings, complexes, hotels or lots, from my tinted bus window.

A man emerges from the tree line, his face all shadow and angle in the overhead sun. His smile exacerbates the shadow, just as the local friendliness of the gente makes the chaos and disinterest in my comfort all that much harder to bear. I am challenged by paradise here, spoiled for the paradise I left, where I long to be now, where warm arms await, at least in the back of my mind, where partially-imagined hopes lie.

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Good things from the 90’s (#2)

On a (3 mile) run, practicing the nose breathing technique. I am breathing about 18 breaths a minute, and my heart rate is about 120, for the whole run. (Mute if the nose breathing is annoying!)

There are some very good things that were written, produced, built, made, learned, discovered, or otherwise came in to being in the 90s… that we should remember. This was a time just before social media, with all collective knowledge right before the great digital shift, before the internet took over the world. These things, being mostly analogue, have possibly gotten the short end of the stick from our collective Third Millennium attention. That is why I will use this blog to occasionally write about some fascinating, useful, interesting, delightful, informative and generally value-add cultural phenomena from the last great analogue decade.

This first one is a book I just finished called ‘Body, Mind, and Sport‘ by John Duillard.*

I have chronic structural injuries and imbalances caused by accident, and deeper than that, by chance, circumstance and a dash of recklessness in my youth. I destroyed my knee in a snowboarding accident, and dislocated my sternoclavicular joint in a motorcycle accident a few years later. Both injuries are inoperable and both on the right side cause me to have chronic pain (knots in my back, and my knee swells up if I run more than a mile).

I had been training for a marathon when I blew my knee. After it healed, I have not been able to run more than a mile or two, for the last 15 years. But after reading this book, and practicing its method of ‘listening to my body’ during exercise, I run 2x per week each several miles, along with hiking and yoga and weight training the rest of the week. The impact on my life has been phenomenal: I have lost 15 lbs in the last 7 weeks, and am stronger than I have been since high school. It feels like I have superpowers.

The Point

Long story short, the book’s main thesis is that exercise should be a practice to integrate the mind and body, and the ‘no pain, no gain’ attitude towards fitness is actually destructive. First, the book runs through some exercises to identify the specifics of your body and energy and athletic types, based on Aurvedic practice. This includes diet, type of exercise, and also things to avoid for the three main types. These correlate roughly to ecto, meso, and endomorphs, though there is much more to it. Each type has an entire diet outlined for it as well as an exercise regimen.

The book then goes on to its main point- that we, like most mammals that run, evolved to breathe through our noses during normal exertion, and that breathing through the mouth is actually a stress-response, one we learned as kids stressed out by expectation or incorrect information, or simple illness. The entire second half of the book is about how to train yourself (and why) to exercise while breathing exclusively through your nose. For something supposedly natural, it’s a very unusual thing to attempt.

My Experience

But in the month since I have read this book, I have been practicing the techniques outlined by Dr, Douillard, and the results have been nothing short of spectacular. I am now running while breathing entirely through my nose. Not only has my breathing slowed down to about 16 breaths per minute during exercise, but my exertion and stress levels are minimal, and I end each run feeling fresh, energized, and rejuvenated rather than exhausted and stressed. My legs are strong, my knee remains stable, and I enjoy exercise immensely. I ‘work out’ 6 days a week! The book tries (and so far looks to succeed) in normalizing that experience that athletes talk about of being ‘in the zone’ – achieving perfect mind/body harmony such that everything just seems to flow.

The author is a doctor and athletic advisor who has spent his career proving the premise in this book, with lab testing, up to and including the Olympic level athletes and professionals. I will let the book stand on its own, but for anyone who has had stress injuries, or any other debilitating exercise experiences, or for those merely curious, I can’t recommend this book enough. The main premise is that, through a different, listening approach to exercise, we can return to the original (Greek, Ayurvedic) practices of mind-body integration that used to be the goal of exercise, before the obsession with winning took over.

And one final note about that- not only have these practices been used to win, but think about this: if you hate working out, or if you get injured, then winning will be the last thing you experience.

*I get no referral kickbacks from referencing anything on this site. I only talk about things I have tried and when possible I link to information, not purchase pages.

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Goodbye Sweet Sedona

My sweet refuge

Sedona 2020

Goodbye to your vortices, your scrub oak. Your bittersweet manzanita hills, crimson woven to ash grey fingers, crowned in red berry and mini green leaf. Your krumholtz tree-spiked cliffs, gnarled and wizened… Goodbye to the winding trails that always give more than take. Goodbye to teacup, coffeepot, ship rock, snoopy rock, rabbit ears, chicken point, bell rock, cathedral, soldier pass, bikini rock, mitten, devil’s kitchen and devil’s bridge… and all the undiscovered devils waiting to be revealed in future rockfall. I have but to walk 100 feet for your faces to change.

Goodbye to the dune buggies and trucks with confederate flag-painted doors. Goodbye to the mostly out-of-towners in your restaurants, and out on your popular trails. Goodbye to your good residents trying to navigate a disappearing middle ground.

Goodbye to the expanse of time and space that makes all of this disappear. Goodbye to your secrets, your surprises, your unknowns. Your twisted vortecies, your roaming Javalina families, your high-country Elk and occasional predator sightings. Goodbye to the birds- the canyon wrens, the hummingbirds, the robins, the bluebirds, the western Jay’s. The owls, hawks, crows, and falcons that rule the sky.

Goodbye to your ruins, your caves. Goodbye to your bone-dry air and your Imperial sun. Goodbye to the threat of needles needlessly lining every path- the agaves, yuccas, prickly pears, your grasses and brush. Your junipers and sage, and the occasional baby-sat barrel cacti.

You have made me appreciate the stillness, the solitude, the peace found in the expanse of an alien landscape, living with a tenacity unfamiliar to the lush, rain-fed greens of the Northeast, or the Pacific Northwest, where I have spent my whole life. The minimalist beauty of the un-developed raw desert landscape. I have grown fond of your endless generous gifts of surprise and delight, just around this corner… just up over that rust-colored mound of wind and rain-sculpted wonder…

Here, where no human touch demands to be seen, out on your bridge to the unknown, I found my rhythm. I hit my groove. I caught my stride. I landed on your soft, age-crusted dirt, and began to live again in harmony with myself, which cannot happen without harmony with you.

May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.

-E. Abbey

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Dreams and Quiet Voices #2

I have learned to listen to the songs in my head. They are my subconscious telling my conscious mind some truth about how I feel, at the most fundamental level. The song running around like a wild horse in the fields of my mind all night, in my dreams, was a cover of ‘Every Little Thing She Does is Magic’ originally by the Police, covered by Jacob Collier, aka, DJesse.

The song is such an enthusiastic and upbeat declaration of love, of the magic of feeling in love, or an expression of the muse, the experience of the muse in the life of an artist. For me, this has been the paradigm of what love is, since childhood. The poets speak of it (Rumi, Browning, Yeats, St. Cloud); musicians sing about it especially rock, in modern times. The idea of love or romantic love has been reinvented in living memory, through pop music and pop culture, fetishized, enshrined, pedestalized, and worshipped as we look for something to take our moral center in the absence of organized faith.

So love has become something of a mystic and holy state, in the minds of our poets and artists. And me, apparently. I take it as a good sign that I am moving past 2 years of heartbreak, the end of a long relationship and marriage, and the new awakening to the fact that all things are possible for me except the one I had committed to for the rest of my life. This happened against my will. But so be it, such things shape us, and, after many months of spinning in circles, eventually I got so much more out of doing the work to get here: clear on goals, strong and fit, and working on my passions and my own goals, both material and immaterial. I am loving my life right now.

So, even though this was in my head for a brief time, and it was a song that is in my rotations (meaning I listen to it semi-daily), it is still a sign that I am strong, and that possibilities are opening for me. I have come through my long dark winter of heartache. I am in touch with the joy of excitement about the world, and about amazing people I can meet. I am once again able to see the delight in getting to know another person, deeply. Like another song about this says, ‘I Will Survive‘ Halelujiah!

More from this series:
Dreams and Quiet Voices #1