I look at this photo, taken a year ago. It was sent to me by Rigo, whom I had left in charge of “saving my house” while I went to the States to sell my island cottage. This morning, after a night of delicious cool sleep in my comfortable bed, knowing that I have a day of painting in my small studio ahead of me, delighting in the lushness of my tropical garden, this image brings me back. To the angst, the hopelessness, the many highs too. I remember telling someone, a few weeks before diving recklessly into buying this land and dreaming up Casa Sama, that “I needed a project.” I think that day I was already pregnant with the seed of the next year’s extraordinary ride. What followed was the hardest and most exhilarating experience of my life so far - with the exception of raising my children. As a single white woman with zero building experience let alone legal background, the personal learning has been huge. The healing, really. In the nine months it took to go from dirt to my first at-home meal, I completed parts of myself that are now with me for the rest of my life. Being fully alone at the helm made it impossible to escape and I think that it’s in the staying that the magic happened. The darn Staying. Would I do it again knowing what was ahead? Yes, but differently. With way more boundaries and self-assurance. Less deference for sure. Much more awareness of my abilities, away from language barriers and lack of formal education. Sometimes it’s a blessing not knowing what we’re getting ourselves into. Because then we can transcend our decided-upon limitations and create way beyond what we could have imagined. This changes the s*** out of us. I am so grateful that Life guided me through this process. I am so grateful for all the people who crossed my path, even the ones who baffled me. I am so grateful for this land. This HOME where I get to live, in love. PS: from the very beginning of this odyssey of sorts, I wrote. A lot. I wrote for me, and for my family, and for a couple of close friends. The words flowed uncensored. If you like the idea of making a cup of something yummy to drink and joining me in this crazy-but-not-so-crazy adventure, email me and I will send you the link to my private blog, The Making of Casa Sama. I do ask for your gentleness as you read my words since I did not know at the time that I would one day be ready to share them publicly. I think you will like it and I hope they will inspire you to say YES and hop onto your own beautiful ride. You can email me at laura@lauralavigne.com. Last night was a good one. Not a huge huge one, but we definitely felt it.
After days with no rain and lots of calm weather, Lila and I were sitting at the beach at sunset watching the surfers on their boards when an enormous gust of wind blew our way. What seemed like a million grains of sand swirled around us while I noticed the sky turning a dark shade of gray. "The weather has something to say," I thought. Then a drop of warm water, nice and fat. Then another. I decided to skip the pizza and head home. Lila and I hopped on the quad and made our way out of the village and towards the countryside. She ran part of the way, ahead of the bike as we both got wet. It felt so good, so free and alive. Back home, the sky was getting really dark and the wind was picking up fast. It was happening. I moved whatever was on the patio, closed our big doors and windows, gave Lila three heart-shaped CBD tablets, wished I had some for me and got ready. Tiji (the only Mexican-born of the family) was calmly stretched out outside, enjoying all of it. It took a bit for me to convince her that the bed would make a better vantage point. She took her sweet time walking in. By then the thunder was thundering, and the sky was lighting up bright silvery white. The banana trees were fully engaged in the wind's invitation to dance, and there was very little holding back. Water, wind, crackling thunder, and us. It went on for a while and in the midst of it, my solar panels blew a fuse. No more fans cooling the air, and because it was the first time, I did not know how to fix it. Now I do. But we were okay. I talked nicely to myself and spent several hours on the phone with someone I love. By early morning I went to sleep and did not emerge till about 11, which felt decadent and delicious. We had made it through another one and I stepped outside full of gratitude and awe. And right there, outside my door, was paradise. Overnight, the greens had gotten brighter, the air was fresh, and the cows were mooing and eating, and BEING. A warm passion fruit had fallen to the ground, luring me into breakfast. The thing that jolted me was how the energy was fully peaceful and there was zero leftover story about What Happened Last Night. I have experienced this several times before, following a hurricane. The uncanny sense of peace. But this was different. It felt like an invitation to learn something. A lesson. A lesson in Presence, in Purity. In letting go. In Authenticity, too. While Nature was being big, huge, loud, and disruptive, there was no excuse being extended. No holding back, no questioning how it compared to a blow-up of the past nor how it might look tomorrow. Pure energy. Presence. The day after, there was no apology, no story, no hanging on. The cows were not talking to themselves about it, the banana trees were swaying their now dry leaves into the warm calm wind, there was nothing but peace. Presence. I am sitting with this. Listening to the places inside of me that are thirsty for a human-level version of it. I am being. Open to the Gift of a possible up-leveling. And because I am human and more complicated than a banana tree, I am going to pick up my broom and sweep the couple of light bulbs that got rattled onto my patio floor. Then I will cut this glorious warm passion fruit in half and give thanks for living here. For living, really. Warning: if you are body-stuff sensitive, you may want to skip this and read next week's post. I'll try to write about something nice and easy. *** Settling into the very, very comfortable bus (think first-class airplane seats), I casually opened the medium-sized plastic bag that housed the very, very nice headphones. Six hours later, my companion would tell me that he thought I was preparing to watch a movie at some point during the trip. Not so. As a kid, I pretty much always got car sick. I remember my grandmother skipping any taxi with a soft suspension like the famous Citroen DS because my stomach just could not take it. School field trips, when I absolutely had to attend, gave me anxiety days before departure. Nausea is its own form of nightmare for me and I have never made peace with its shenanigans. In fact, the moment a whisper of nausea comes my way, most likely clearly announcing that there WILL be an episode of throwing up in my near future, I become a full-on Statue of No. I freeze, I refuse. I refuse my body's message, its request. I refuse to go through the (to me) counterintuitive trip backward of whatever I may have ingested. I try and distract myself, I whimper, I plead. Of course, because the body is so wise and unlike the mind does not waste time with toxic invasion, it always wins. That's when I find myself moaning, snotting, possibly losing control of my bladder while I ungracefully surrender to the dreaded reverse flow. Afterward, almost immediately feeling so much better, I relive the event. Its horribleness. I moan for a good while longer, I talk about how awful it was, how glad I am that it is over, and again how bad bad bad it was. The whole thing can take hours and I am guessing is no fun for someone to accompany me. So, the bus. 5-6 hours of traveling coming my way, I know the road and I know its curves. While it has never gotten me before, something about the quesadilla I just misguidedly chose to eat tells me that yes, opening the little bag is a judicious idea. Off we go. Out of the jungle and into the hills of agave fields. I decide to try and sleep through the curves and mostly succeed. When I open my eyes, I take in the beauty that always puts me in a state of awe. So many greens, so much land. I love this country. The window is huge, the AC is working well and I know how lucky I am to be traveling. On the other end of the trip is the city and it always thrills me to visit it. Also, I know that something has started inside my body. It's not very loud, not demanding. Just making itself known. A gray-blue color of quiet dis-settle that takes very little room but makes no promise of leaving. I breathe. I inhale my mentholated stick. I breathe again. I don't talk. And then we get to the outer area of the city. Not the part with the cathedrals and the street vendors and the hundred-year-old buildings and the cobblestones. Not that one. We get to the part where traffic is slow, stop-and-start, and the streets are lined with all manners of industrial supply stores. There is so much to read, so much to see. I read, I see. And everything I read and everything I see seems to foster some thought inside my head. Some comments, some questions, some memory. It is as though while the angst in my stomach is making itself more and more known, my mind chooses to go on overload and this overload itself makes me more and more queasy. But I cannot stop. My mind is feeling poisoned, unable to stop ingesting nauseating information. I am so full of so much and everything feels out of my control. I am quiet. I try and "witness" all of it. In some way, I do it. I gain a little distance. And we keep going. Slowly, bumpily. We are about 10 minutes away from the gigantic bus station. By now there is no denying what I have been trying to deny. I WILL be throwing up. Shifting from denying to preparing, I ask my companion to please hand me the six pesos I will need to get into the bathroom. God, I don't like public bathrooms. And now that I have said the word bathroom, The Beast has kicked things up a notch. It has been acknowledged and I can feel It plump Itself up and stand up straighter, finally taking Its due place in my day. Six pesos. The bathroom. Almost there. Breathe. But no. The bag. The headphone bag. Right there in front of me. I pick it up, I turn towards the window, and with barely one little retch, I surrender into it all the acidity of my universe. Three times. There is no moaning, no crying, and thank god no urinating. "Except for the smell, no one could tell." I am later told. Good god. I don't spill, I wipe my mouth each time. I am not quite lifting my pinky finger but we will later comment on how very French of me the whole thing was. Big-time good manners and my grandma would approve. I am handed an extra bag for good measure (second set of headphones) and a few minutes later we exit the bus, me holding a small plastic bag full of something that could just as well be a serving of delicious horchata, and sweetly relieved from having to carry my own backpack. Whew. Right there in this big comfy Mexican bus, I have met a new me. I have somehow transcended some old agreement about "how traumatic vomiting is for me." I have met a new way of letting my body do what it needs to do without getting in the way. A bunch of fear has vanished. Now, just writing about this makes me feel slightly ill, and I can't say that I relish the next opportunity to test my new skill set. But, yes, something has shifted, something decades-old and I love when that happens. when we can feel ourselves bend and flex and grow. Ready to board the bus alone for the trip back a few days later, I am gifted a plump lime cut in half with the loving instruction to smell it if I start to feel nauseated. I can't help but notice that it comes in a nifty little plastic bag. |
SCARED OF THE SACRED
HAPPINESS SCHOOL:
|