Threshold

I am at the threshold. Everything in my life is in transition. Starting over.

Let's look at that phrase. Some may focus on the "over," as in lost it all, rock bottom. I focus on the "starting," because once you've cleared out all that's come before, there is so much space. Vast.

My lovely friend M - who provided me much love and care when I was immobile in Mexico last week - gave me a statuette of Ganesh, the beloved Hindu deity. He is the remover of obstacles and he dwells in the threshold between the old chapter and new.

I have no reason not to be scared absolutely shitless. But all I feel is done. Calm. Ready.

So here I am, dancing with Ganesh in the space between. Nowhere to go but up. Nothing to do but allow myself to be filled with new resource, new experience, new adventure.

Everything brand new. Dancing.

Om Gum Ganapatayei Namaha
Salutations to Ganesh, remover of obstacles

Hello, me

So things didn't turn out as planned. Here's what I came away with. It hit me - not that I didn't know it, but it really sunk in, you know? - that I was staying in the exact hotel room where two years before, I had decided to quit my job and start writing, looking down at the same waves, out at the same palm trees, and up at the same stars. 2009 me was so yearning, so broken. And 2010 me thought:

Knowing what I know now, will I still pull her through?

Yes. The answer is yes.

And that, for me, may have been the whole reason I was back in Vallarta for that short, painful, and poignant time.

I surrender

Well, the biggest surprise thus far is that my lower back threw out on the third day here. I have been on bed rest in my hotel room, unable to even reach the beach because it is four flights of stairs down. No elevator.

I do have an ocean view, palm trees, and the sound of waves.

The pain has been enormous. It is abating.

The immobilization meant surrender was the only option. And in that, I discovered that surrender doesn't mean laying down arms but just trusting, more and more and more.

So I trust that I will leave Mexico the better for it, having had some enforced rest.

las olas (the waves)

Sleeping and waking to the sound of the ocean. Why am I back in Mexico? Well, why wouldn't a writer and lover be?

graciasgraciasgracias

I am seeing how much I have changed - from frazzled confusion to wild art - this past year, even in the few months since I left Mexico.

I am here for sabor: taste, experience, senses.

And I am here to surprise myself.