the adventure continues

the adventure continues.

our landlord family (2 middle-aged teachers, 2 teenage boys) took off for four days. they left their computer on so we’d have internet. normally they don’t turn it on until anywhere from six in the morning to two in the afternoon, then turn it off nine at night. so i was luxuriating in the thought of internet twenty-four/seven when wham, two hours after they depart, the electricity fails. their computer goes off. when the lights come back on hours later, no internet because no one home to turn computer back on. we’re net-less in oaxaca – again. i have a blogging jones, and i’m left alone with this unfed monkey on my back.

they restored the electricity by running an extension cord from the still lit courtyard gate street light. they stripped off this end of the cord and plugged the wires into an outside outlet on the dead house. voila, lights. i find it poetic our existence right now is powered by an extension cord.

tomorrow we’re taking a bus 5 hours into the mountains to a village called Tenetze to spend 3-4 nights with an indigenous woman and her husband – we’ll spend a coiple days helping with the coffee harvest. we don’t know her. she buses 5 hours to town once a week to sell her vegetables at the friday/saturday organic food market, which is frequented mostly by gringos. a gringo woman my age lets her sleep overnight on her sofa so she doesn’t have to spend her profits on a room. we’re going to ride back on the bus with this woman we haven’t met yet, sleep in her house, help with the coffee harvest. too unusual not to do.

been here 2 months, and this will be our third visit with an indigenous family in 3 different mountain villages. later on our goal is to get up the mountains to the cloud forests with their orchid fields. . . mountains, cloud forests, orchids – just the possibility makes my soul soar.

i’ve had a full, odd, adventurous, underground kind of life for my 6 decades before i met lady. but most my misdeeds and dazzle-do were brief flare-ups with long periods of down-time between. since lady came in my life, it’s been 29 months of intrigue, deeds, misdeeds, adventurous daring-do, with no in-between for commercial breaks allowed.

i’m not complaining. it’s more that i thought i’d done and dared a lot, and sort of figured it was over except for maybe fame near my end or just after. but lady came along and ratcheted up plot and pace. now it’s all life all the time. reminds me of the chinese curse that’s a blessing in disguise – may you live in interesting times.

speaking of which, i had a minor key epiphany just now. i was out in our open air inner courtyard leaning against the lead sink toking, writing a blog in my head when i noticed diffused light from the setting sun washing the light-lime green wall with a golden glow. in the four foot between the wall and i were two long dark clothes lines with odd clumps of alternating green & yellow clothes-pins in darker shades than wall or sun. there was breeze and all was swaying, dancing in the shadow of the all. i realized i was at peace, happy. i had stopped thinking, stood in the moment.

now i’m back to plodding and plotting, but that was a nice place to be for a minute or two. gives me hope i can get there again.