Short Story: The Universe

(been working this story over a lot getting close here maybe) I cannot account for what others do with their life's energy and I mean this literally because I am more than a little on the Aspergers spectrum. I perceive some people much as I perceive a dog in terms of any true grasp I can manage in understanding of their inner consciousness that is only vaguely, really, having some basic idea what a dog may be interested in, you know? Or, maybe you don't know and you're thinking, “what the hell is this guy talking about?”. Not to cast aspersions but maybe you're a little Aspy, too, man? I think it's a lot more common than people think, myself. The vast majority of us are not so far down the scale as Sheldon on The Big Bang Theory nor so smart … and I think the two do go hand in hand, Aspergers Syndrome and intelligence. Often quirky, savant stuff that weird uncle of whom everyone is always thinking, “why the hell doesn't he go on a game show with his trivia knowledge, he'd make a million!” The Tell is a little nervous tic in lack of social skills or perhaps not even that obvious just random gaps in ability to process certain social interactions properly that to “Normals” are so innate as to lay below the level of conscious thought. You know, when you miss something, you don't know that you miss it? If there's anything that frightens me, it's just that blind thought: “what am I missing!” Not of bodily assault or even cancer but that blind side, man, that blind side that can harbor the next truck that is about to strike me. And I hate being hit by a truck so hard that I don't even think to get the license number. Anyway, I was always looking for God myself. I mean that is what I was interested in and what I was doing mostly. Well, that and romantic love and sure I mixed the two up no bones about it. Goddess worship could not come more naturally to me. I never was much up for sports. I tried to get it up for politics but damn just can't do it I mean I'd rather be poked in the eye with a sharp stick than watch another minute of cable TV News. All that to emphasize that I would have never in a million years figured that The Universe was a “male” entity. But it is what it is.

I found The Universe drinking heavily late one cold winter's afternoon in a dive bar about half way between Santa Fe and Taos, New Mexico near the Rio Grande River. Now of course The Universe is not God but I decided to work my way up the hierarchy, as it were. God in all due time , mind you. It's process. The sunlight outside is preposterously bright but the air is so cold that a half inch of old snow doesn't melt off the cactus even in the full light of the afternoon sun. Inside the bar is dark heated by a wood stove and the air is so bone dry that your nose hairs start to burn after a while and you it's quiet – which I it never is! - you can hear your own skin crinkling up. Anyone who lives here for any length of time ends up with skin looking like worn out leather. The Universe is sitting at the small bar alone big German looking guy mid thirties, I'd guess, running big, bony fingers through his thinning, dirty blonde hair when I first set eyes on Him. I can tell he's not a resident because his skin is smooth as a baby's butt. I set next to Him and introduce myself and The Universe nods and smiles politely, says hello, but does not identify Himself. I tell the bartender to bring two of what He is having and The Universe smiles and overs up a toast, “to you, Mate”. Good thing for me in this one case that I know my alcoholics. The Universe is a morose alcoholic who passes through a euphoric phase, I determine, and I hoped that he was still in the euphoric phase. I was already thinking that when He hit that morose phase, I want to be miles away from this place. After our drinks come, a single malt Scotch, I discover, neat, I ask of Him as casually as I can manage, “so You do a Walk In, did You?” His drink stopped half way up to His lips. I could see calculation flash across His face for just a beat then He said, also non nonchalantly as you please, “suicide case” downing the rest of His drink and slamming it on on the counter, “load me up,” He said to the barkeep in a cheerful, friendly tone. No hint of German in his voice. California, I guessed. I knew then that I had to jump in for The Universe would cross that threshold from euphoria to morose any time now if indeed He hadn't already - “I want to know about God,” I asked, “anything You can tell me?”. He started laughing then coughing so hard that I thought He might throw up then after this paroxysm settled down said, “don't we all, Mate, don't we all”, still apparently amused by my question. “Seriously?” I insisted. Without looking at me then, The Universe said matter of factly, “the closest thing to what you humans conceive of as a “God” is light. Insofar as I could answer such preposterous question, the answer is light. All that you is light. The truth is light just light passing through light, on and on – do you see?” Turning to look at me with those eyes as he asked, “Do you see?” So I asked without missing a beat, “to be clear then, you are not actually saying that light IS God or that God IS light?”. The Universe downed another glass and it hit the thick, wood bar with an empty bang. He just crossed that threshold and I left forthwith, man. I left Him there in the growing shadow cast by the canyon walls around that little dive bar and I hauled as up a short cut I knew on a jeep road that climbed two thousand feet in elevation over a relatively few miles up the eastern escarpment of the canyon where the cold, winter sun now dropping low into the western sky still shown bright. “The closest thing to what you humans conceive of as a God, is light” … it made sense in some way to me that was as of yet far beyond articulation?

Poem Caye Caulker, Belize - 5/26/2015

"Island Paradise" On the outside all light Light surrounding more light Guarded by angels on the outside Blessed by God on the outside On the inside dark and quiet Troubled on the inside and brooding Roiling metamorphic dreaming Eyes closed for the light is blinding!

Trinty Site, New Mexico - Mushrooms and National Monuments

New Mexico? New Mexico? Where the hell do I even start? Such a weird place overall just gives off these Alien vibes, man, very strangle energy I think this is the energy that makes the big haired dude's hair on that Ancient Alien cable show stand up like it does? If a flying saucer were to rise up over a near hill, it'd almost seem like it belonged there ... hard to explain but you stand around alone out in that high desert for a while and you'd see what I mean, man. So I'll start here kind of zoom in past wilderness as sublimely beautiful as any location on earth to the south central area of the state a vast high desert with little standing higher than large bush where to this very day there are precious few humans as you drive for hours sometimes before noticing a driveway leading to a human habitation. Nine inches of rain out here man is all that standing between life in death for an entire ecosystem. Maybe an ecosystem is like an organ in our Great Gaia Mother. So yeah there's that its own rugged beauty I'll give you grudgingly really this place wore on me in ways I never would have anticipated. Walking out anywhere meant coming into contact with a flora and fauna always to me appearing on the verge of death and it made me nervous, man, I'm not gonna lie period. It made me look up at the sky expectantly even though I knew that it had not rained in a month or more and likely wouldn't be raining for another month or so yet. “Dammit man, hang in here, Everybody, it's got to rain eventually” I'd often think like some nervous tic incantation, “Everybody” an inclusive handle covers a lot of ground like every living thing. But I made some peace moved up to 7,000 on the eastern side of the 12,000 Sierra Blanca mountain on a steep mountain in pine forest an oasis of life to me only 130 miles north of the Mexican border. The various mountain ranges would rise here and there throughout the state high enough in elevation to break through the desert climate generation enough moisture to support a predominantly pine forest looking to me at times as tiny islands of life in a vast sea of nearly dying all the time but not cool like the Painted Desert just scrub full of lizards, snakes of all kinds. So off on a road trip from home in Ruidoso, New Mexico to Trinity Site now a nuclear National Historic Landmark, while a very interesting trip geographically, don't get me wrong, it's still through this high desert where much to the lament of my sensibilities is always upon the very lip of death. Driving northwest away from the 12,000 Sierra Blanca meant losing 3000 vertical in elevation over about twenty miles when you can look back up to the top of the mountain back within the one million acre Lincoln National Forest. It looks like something worth of worship there under the nearly always sunny auspices of a New Mexico sun. Here below some hedonist maniacs with tons of cash have built a sprawling suburban infrastructure of streets with electricity and wells and are trying to sell the lots for preposterous sums for land that the BLM can't honestly give away, man. “You get a 20 acre lot!” 20 acres all gasping their last gasp practically just sayin. About l5 minutes from the gate to this Trinity Site Nuclear National Monument, I asked my wife Jana' who is driving if she could pull over. I took out of my shirt pocket 3 dried grams of Psilocybin mushrooms. “I'm going to take this now, OK?” “Seriously?” Jana' asks. “I told you about this last week, Jana'. It's a dirty job but by God it's got to be done. We'll be at the gate in fifteen minutes and I won't start tripping for 40 and it's a small dose, anyway. Not like I'll flip out and embarrass you,” I said as reassuringly as I could trying to exude confidence, never easy for me. “So what then you can through some alchemy or something turn all the negative energy from that bomb into positive … it's that fantasy we're talking about, just to be clear?” “That's the one” I said a little indignantly. “It's a fair plan of noble intent, my Love”. So I ate the three grams as Jana' drives on toward the gate. The government only opens this monument twice a year for the day for public viewing of the site. It was my wife's idea to see the place and in spite of the radiation, I was in immediately. O shit, I thought, THAT sounds really WEIRD! Let's do it! “This is one of the more insane things, Babe,” says Jana' driving. “You get that, right … I hope you do, honestly, Babe, at least appreciate the insanity of it all – are you still with me? “I am here and now more even but here's the thing I know insanity been there, done that, chemical induced by our vaunted psychiatric doctors of medicine but insanity nonetheless. This, this is not insanity at all, Jana'. This is destiny.” By this time the gate came into view my first thought, Damn, you ain't getting into that place. The second that the place was locked up tight and dead empty. Not a soul in sight only lots of very ominous, threatening signs and lots of cameras. “Shit” said Jana' – it must have been yesterday, sorry about that, I had the dates wrong. “No problem, let's go down to the Rio Grande I think there's a nice little place to eat only thirty minutes more off the main road.” Suffice it to say that it hit me in a nice little restaurant in middle of no where along the Rio Grande River, New Mexico. I cried a little, “damn, could have done a lot of good with that energy”. “There there, Babe, it'll be okay” said my wife sincerely reassuring me.

Belizean Magic

I sit and stare a lot at this scene which so far never gets old. Sunlight dances across the sea as it moves overhead from east to west the two of them, sun and sea, endlessly creative in their complex physical interplay. If someone were to ask me, “what are you doing there in Belize?” I would not begin to know how to answer that?

Mostly nothing at all which is what seems to need doing. Mostly just staring at the dancing sun and sea. And I hope healing with this "Belizean Magic" I have heard so much about from those that have benefited from it over their years here. I don't know about you but I can use all the healing I can get, friends.

Believe that.

Caye Caulker, Belize - Morning Coffee

The sun rises behind low clouds every morning that hug the horizon so I don't see the suns orb until it's up a half hour from my perch here about 60 feet from the waters edge and twenty feet up. Our two bedroom apartment is over the Braisas del Mar restaurant. Out front the restaurant has seven tables half with umbrellas for diners on the sand below several coconut palm trees whose fronds rattle under the delightful cudgels of a const...ant sea breeze. I get up early and benefit from the shade provided by the palms until eventually the sun rises high enough to shine directly into my eyes whereupon I retreat having consumed enough coffee by then to ambulate. By about 1:30PM the sun passes through its tropical zenith nearly straight overhead and the eve of the house casts the deck here into a cool, afternoon shade. After walking around the island and returning here, I feel that by luck I have stumbled upon the coolest part of the island here on the windward side facing almost due east into the Caribbean Sea.

I can see the water taxi from here as it makes it's first run of the morning and underneath me on “1st Street” - just a path in the sand mostly trodden barefoot or in sandals with an occasional golf cart – young lovers stroll hand and hand heading toward the Water Taxi each carrying an enormous backpack with snorkeling gear, kite boards and various other paradisiacal paraphernalia.

Calgon, Take Me Away!

(little adventures in Belize)
Calgon, Take Me Away!!!

On the rare morning I stay asleep long enough, the hopper flight from Corozal Town airport out to the Islands in the Caribbean sea wakes me at 7:34AM as it tears off so close over the house sounds like it's crashing.

Good Morning Belize! I snap awake. Another day above ground, another victory.

"In your face, Reaper!"

Tomorrow we'll be on that flight razing the tile roof of the Maya Hotel winging our way out to Caye Caulker for a month. Just flying to San Pedro then taking the water taxi to Caulker. I'm really looking forward to seeing the lay of the land from the low flying hopper plane. I'll have the camera ready I know it's gonna go by fast !

Hunter S. Thompson, "Buy the ticket, take the ride".

Belize - First Impressions

My first month rent a little one bedroom apartment in the back of the Maya Hotel owned by a proud Belizean woman who is also a savvy business owner. I got what to me was a super low price talking her down from $500 to only $425USD. Slapped myself on the back for that one, you know. A day later we're working out details and she mentions that there will be a $75 dollar fee for cleaning at the end of the stay. I don't protest but smile. Touché'. At $75 dollar lesson in living in Belize the first of many such lessons – the learning curve here can be hell. Somehow I possess the right attitude feeling that I'm in this for the long run so not counting every loss as a defeat rather more as an educational fee. $500 is still good considering I get an air conditioner in the room and a kitchen I can cook in both saving money and easing my anxiety from being recently dismissed from my marriage since I like to cook as well as being newly expatriated in a third world country in central America. I would be lying if I said it wasn't a little intimidating even if also exhilarating and probably just the thing I need to help take my mind off of my marriage problems.

I don't like so much cooking for myself but do it anyway for I know now that as well as learning to live as an expat in Belize is only ½ of my new lesson book with the other being learning to live whole in myself, alone. The Belize half is a piece of cake compared to the second half of that deal. I don't like being alone. My mom once not long before she died confided that all she had ever wanted was a man to love her and a family of her own, crying hard as she said it, bitter and forsaken.

“Is that so much to ask, David”.

I am crying shaking my head, “no Mom it is not so much to ask” and then I hold her as she sobs deep, wracking sobs against my body, “I didn't want power, wealth, fame or fortune … only to be loved!” She who had abandoned me many times and who had abandoned my half siblings years earlier. I feel very sorry for her and I understand because married myself at that time for over a decade, I feel exactly the same thing. I realize then that although Mom had never said it, her father, my grandfather, had sexually molested her, ruining her forever and dooming her to a life of seeking that love from abusive alcoholics while unconsciously and unerringly rejecting any decent, loving man that came her way in life. I keep this knowledge to myself and never mention it and then dies leaving me, I think, the only human left alive who knows this terrible secret.
I think sometimes, “well, thank God that bastard had a penchant for little girls or I'd be really fucked up”.

So when people here explain sometimes in detail and I file that information away gratefully how difficult it can be for expats in Belize, I take it with a grain of salt and keep my thoughts to myself which run along the lines of, “Belize ain't even close to 'difficult'. Difficult is that shit in between your own ears that won't let you go back to sleep when you wake up at 3AM.”
What so far is the hardest thing to deal with is the abject poverty. The dogs wobbling along literally skin and bones and I think that if I bought dog food and gave it to those folks, they would probably eat it themselves. Then I walk on and hate myself because I don't. The guys laying passed out in the grass at 9AM and the way I have learned so quickly now not to be alarmed because I understand they are not sick, just passed out drunk. The bum who comes up to me every single day whose name I know who knows my name and says, “David, can you help me out” and I say, “No” and walk on because I cannot for I am afraid for my own welfare here on so little funds it is irresponsible by any rational measure. How could I possible explain to this person that I would go broke if I gave money to every person who asked, fed every enfeebled dog I came across? And already there is a kind of guilt but nothing I had not felt in my America now full of hopeless indigents Herself. This is without question the worst aspect of Belize so far.

But yet after years of looking over that internet fence that I know many others have looked over and are still looking over, I find in general that Belize is much as I expected Her to be which is a good thing. I walk at night down the road along the seawall along Corozal Bay in Corozal Town looking at the stars overhead feeling that breeze and respite from the hundred degree heat of the day and I breath in deeply thanking God for the opportunity to be here in this place.
“I ain't leavin unless they throw me out,” I smile.