July 6, 2018
FRIDAY, JUNE 29, 2018, THE RANCHO IN THE WOODS NEAR EK BALAM, YUCATÁN
At dawn as the eastern horizon was just starting to lighten up, and the Turquoise-browed Motmot was setting off the bird morning chorus with subdued, mellow whooh-whooh calls, I lay beneath the mosquito net wondering how I could muster the energy and will to get up and begin the wandering I'd decided to make, beginning that morning. The bus connections I might or might not succeed in making, all that rumbling of wheels, the loud, crowded bus stations, all the people pressing around wanting this and that, in a hurry, sweating, so many unfinished stories hard-written in every face, the end of my solitude and tranquility...
But, passing down the narrow footpath to get the dogs their breakfast, the trees' foliage gently stroking me on both sides reminded me that this was a trip to look for new-to-me plants, animals and ways of being. My apprehensions were swept away by remembering what a pleasure it is to see new things, to experience the sweetness of curiosity being satisfied.
This early morning on the dog-food trail I experienced a significant change in perception. I'd awakened with a child's fear of facing the unknown and unfamiliar, and of losing my comfortable routines. But then mentally and emotionally I shifted from that context to what we usually regard as a higher, more mature level of interacting with reality.
SATURDAY, JUNE 30, PARQUE DE SANTA LUCÍA, MÉRIDA, YUCATÁN
Later yesterday, watching through the window of the ADO bus between Valladolid and Mérida, I experienced the day's third major mood-changing, tone-setting shift of perception. For, as I watched the northern Yucatan's scrubby, patchy forest slide past, it became clear that during the current wandering I could write about this phenomenon of perception shifting, and in so doing attain what many would regard as an even more high-minded perspective of my travels, maybe that of the philosopher, or at least of the mystic.
And yet, now on Saturday setting on a shaded park bench in a little park in Mérida's central zone, it occurs to me that with regard to each of yesterday's three major shifts elevating me to ever more exalted perspectives -- I might have gotten things backwards.
Couldn't I have awakened in a childlike state very rightly aware of dangers on the road, and properly anxious about the unknown? Might not my dread of losing treasured familiar and simple routines, have arisen from a child's innate wisdom, the wisdom we grownups lose as society indoctrinates us with its self-preserving rules? And maybe even this writing about my insights and opinions is the height of conceit and self-love, the consequence of some kind of moral breakdown. Just how is one to judge what's "higher" and what's "significant"?
SUNDAY, JULY 1, IN TENT IN FOREST NEAR CHICANNÁ RUINS, SOUTH-CENTRAL CAMPECHE STATE
At 4:45 this morning the overnight ADO bus from Mérida deposited me in Chetumal, on the Bay of Chetumal, off the Caribbean coast, with Belize visible south across the bay.
The evening before, still in Mérida, I'd hiked to the bus station after leaving the José Peón Contreras Opera House where I'd watched a friend participate in a presentation of ballet. Most of the dancers had been very young to teenage, but my gray-haired friend and some other adults also performed. Many missteps occurred, but what one remembers is the earnestness in the performers' faces, the audience's eager and noisy encouragements during the performances, smiles all around, and so much colorful movement artfully coordinated with stirring classical music just right for the dancing. And I sat there remembering that humans and our feelings, aspirations, artful accomplishments and general nature all are part of Nature, too.
And that was another significant perception shift.
This afternoon, in the woods near Chicanná, mosquitoes settled over the tent, the heat daunting, a bird calling I don't recognize, a storm brewing on the eastern horizon, I sit cross-legged inside the tent -- it's one of those with its top two-thirds consisting of see-through netting, over which a "fly" can be spread when it rains -- and look around.
Though I've gone from the northern Yucatan Peninsula into the southernmost part, we're still in what ecologists sometimes recognize as the Yucatan subdivision of Mexico's Atlantic Slope Biogeographical Region. Though forest here left undisturbed in recent years is maybe 30-50% taller than similarly undisturbed forest in the Ek Balam area, the species composition is much the same here than there, just that a few species endemic to the arid northernmost area have dropped out, while a greater number of species needing more rain have appeared.
In the Yucatan Peninsula, in general, the farther north and west you go, the drier it gets. Here the taller, more species-rich forest reflects that trend. Biogeographers often arbitrarily draw a line between the Atlantic Slope's Yucatan Biogeographical subdivision and the Humid Southeast subdivision farther south, where there's even taller forest with greater diversity of species, because of the greater rainfall. In the Chichén Itzá/ Ek Balam area, I've seen Keel-billed Toucans only very rarely, when certain fig trees were producing fruits. As I write these words, a pair of Keel-billed Toucans forage on immature fruits of the Gumbo-Limbo tree rising beside the tent.
And thinking like this, is another profound shift in perception.
MONDAY & TUESDAY, JULY 2 & 3, WALKING AND CAMPING BETWEEN CHICANNÁ AND XPUJIL
Two days of slow walking, taking sidetrails, scanning trees, roadsides, slash-and-burn patches, weedy pastures, so much more deforestation than I recall from twenty years ago. It's hot, I sweat profusely, run low on water, get tired, spend most of the afternoons deep in the forest, in the tent, simply coexisting with the trees, birds and lizards as sometimes breezes pass through, white clouds continually passing overhead in the blue sky, birdcalls passing through the trees and me like ideas and feelings.
This is another perception shift. I know this one well, from the past, the coming-to-terms with the body's condition, the long-term compromises between flesh, intellect and aspirations, a sweaty, muscle-burning perspective from which ruminations about perspective shifts are not at all useful, are tiring just to think about.
And yet, I can't say that this sweaty perspective is any less appropriate for a human, or less "advanced" or "sophisticated" than any other. Monday night I dreamed of being young and with a woman, and that was a shift, too, no less and no more acceptable than all the others.
So, on this particular Tuesday afternoon tent-sitting in a forest clearing with a nice breeze blowing in off an abandoned cornfield, mosquitoes on the netting, and a Black-headed Saltator rambunctiously calling from a brushpile, I feel compelled to sum up the last few days by saying the obvious: That we humans undergo major perception shifts all the time, some of us more than others. In fact, it's such a commonplace occurrence that normally we think little about it. We just do it.
However, in the same way that someone with a life's experience in listening to music may find that taking a music appreciation course opens many new doors to enjoying music, I think it's a good idea to systematically consider the perception shift phenomenon.
For, to be a mentality in a biological body occupying a specific place and time within the Universe's matrix, is to be a spaceship with permission and means to explore. As with a spaceship, the simplest way to shift one's perception is simply to move the body from one place to another. However, there are other techniques that can be learned, practiced, and experimented with.
For example, it's unclear whether spaceships ever will be able to "go into warp speed" or use "space warps" to travel beyond the limits of space and time, into other dimensions -- like they do in the movies. However, mentalities can indeed undertake such journeys.
On this trip our journey has reminded us that one can awaken in a realm of fear and limited horizons, but simply by asserting will warp into a horizonless, inspiriting curiosity. We can pause and refuel in a gaudy opera house where little kids do ballet, and at the next stop have toucans feeding on Gumbo-Limbo fruits right above our beds, and analyze the significance of that.
And mentalities can take sidetrails, and feel what it's like to be riding in a sweaty, hot, thirsty body while storms thunder on the horizon, and mentalities are subject to dreams, and to forming thoughts into words that can convey ideas and feelings to other mentalities.
So, from here in the tent, even with all the mosquitoes buzzing around outside, my conclusion at the end of this trip is that it's OK, this business of being human -- of vividly knowing oneself to be a mysterious, even miraculous awareness inside a spaceship consciously and with gusto exploring the Universe's polydimensional, gloriously warped matrix, even when it's not clear what's up, what's down, what's high and what's low.
*****
Best wishes to all Newsletter readers,
Jim
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