LOG 002
puerto conocido
Once again on the coast where it all started. This place is unrecognizable. I saw the wave as it entered with its rebar and concrete mixers but never imagined with it would come a wind that could push away the essence, the life, the air.
The jackhammer has replaced the rooster, as the sun rises legions of day laborers descend upon their daily task drowning out the songs of nature with the vibrations of a capitalist machine sinking its teeth into another stretch of virgin land with the promise of prosperity for all, the laborers fully aware that their share will not be the lions continue to toil in hopes that with enough hours, enough commitment they too can ride the winds of prosperity.
Meanwhile the “night shift” of misled youth stumble to find recluse in their habitations as the whimsy of a last dance at sunrise influenced by magic powders wears away into the reality that enlightenment and consciousness may not stem from a good rave, better to spend the day hidden away from the rumble and reemerge at golden hour for another attempt at illumination.
As the sun peaks the structures hewn in concrete radiate almost atomically the tropic heat that was once calmed by gentle winds and the shade provided by a jungle that has now been rooted out to make room for more boxes. What is left of nature is covered in the dust of “evolution” and being fed by springs of black water overflowing for their lack of regulation.
The ocean still speaks its tongues of thunder but whispers in between the tide about its yearning for its endemic interaction with land, wind, nature. The interplay between two old friends has now become toxic, the soils that once fed the beings of the estuaries and fortified the base of the oceanic food chain is now fighting for its own life excreting the inputs bestowed upon it by the explosion of pleasure seekers and their attempts at manipulating nature to fit their needs.
The golden hues of the suns turn down cue the bass driven soundtrack of the troglodytes as they shake off the haze of their hangover to battle for a square meter of sand littered with last nights bad decisions, cigarette butts, and empty bottles so that they may once again claim a christening by sunset bestowed by the gods of nature they believe are blessing their nightly routine.
Here is the daily ebb and flow of a dichotomy disguised as freedom, freedom taken from nature and those who evolved here, freedom taken by those who seek to live the way they witnessed life upon arrival but remain unwilling to listen to ancestral knowledge and follow in its footsteps rather than interpret that which serves them and fill in the blanks with their own structure of comfort.
To accept life in the jungle is to accept the wild, accept discomfort, accept that as part of nature you must work with it not against it, you must concede to its needs and feed its desires, there in lies the true beauty of a place such as this, there in lies the key to happiness, there in lies the secrets of life.