The Yoga of Puerto Vallarta
(Note: this reading is not for the weak of heart and may contain references to sex and drugs)
The next morning I woke up in the dust with a headache. The fire was burned out and so was my brain. The Prophet was up early, smoking. The Brujo and Arturo had disappeared. "Come on, kid," the Prophet said, "We better get going." We walked back to the Chevy. Smoke was coming from the Brujo's chimney as the Prophet gunned the big V8 engine and we drove back to Caborca. My mother wasn't thrilled with our outing, but didn't say much. We gathered up my brothers and returned to the checkpoint and vehicle impound where the federales released the red Chrysler station wagon. A few pesos exchanged hands. No hard feelings, it was all business and adios amigos.
The drive to the coast was uneventful. I never saw Arturo again. I guess he's roaming the hills somewhere between Sonora and Arizona on the Mexican border humming a tuneful dirge on his harmonica. If you listen closely to the wind you can still here him. We drove down south, stopping in the beachtowns of Guaymas and Mazatlan.
And so it was that my mother, Michel, and the Prophet, my brothers Philo and Jean-Pierre and I had somehow made it from the desert sands of Caborca with its wild peyote cactus to the warm waters of Mazatlan, down the coast to Guaymas and Tepic and Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco. In those days, Puerto Vallarta was not so well-known. It still had the air of a sleepy fishing village.
Our goal was to reach Puerto Vallarta, a paradise for the rich and famous of Hollywood made popular by Richard Burton and Liz Taylor. They had filmed "The Night of the Iguana" there with John Huston and later bought houses there. Vallarta later became a mecca for artists and hippies. My mother had rich and influential friends there who would help us get set up. The Prophet would have his own club: there he would spread his message of peace and love and the true music of Mexico. At 15 and a half, I was naive enough to believe.
Everyone has their golden age, their salad days of glory, green in youth and hot of blood. Summer found us at the dead mans' beach, Playa de los Muertos, where pirates left their silver and their bones in Puerto Vallarta long ago.
We rented a small upstairs apartment from Doña Candelaria, a proud and smiling woman of Jalisco. Her broad shoulders and big hands told me she was no stranger to hard work. And her robust frame told me she was no stranger to tamales and atole, tacos and beans, green and red enchiladas, tortillas, sopes, gorditas, and nopales. Nor was she unfamiliar with toasted corn, barbecued fish, roast chicken, or to rico pozole with radishes, shredded lettuce, and oregano. In fact, given her amazing corpulence, there were few varieties of Mexican food unknown to Doña Candelaria. Our window looked out on a cobblestoned street that wound its way to the beach about a ten minutes walk away.
Michel, my mother, had been fascinated with Mexico since she was a child. My grandfather's mother was Mexican, and my grandmother ued to dress her up in a little bolero outfit. She and my grandfather would take my mother to Olvera Street in Los Angeles where they could listen to Mariachi music. My mother could sing songs in Spanish and dance when she was a little girl.
She was friends with Doña Candelaria, and her six brothers. She set up her artist's easel on the balcony with a view of the ocean over the treetops in the distance. After a stint at Christmas in Connecticut as the perfect housewife of the 1960s, she was determined to change her life. No longer would she conform with being a postwar suburbian drudge, helpmate to an business executive and TV producer. She would transform herself into Doña Michel, an artist whose style merged the best of Paul Gaugin and Frida Kahlo. We weren't so sure about Mexico, but while she flirted with living in the United States after this, and made occasional visits, she would live the rest of her life in Mexico. She continued to paint and make a living as a working artist until she passed away at the age of 80 in San Miguel de Allende in 2011.
The great French impressionist Paul Gaugin was her great inspiration. Where Gaugin had left his pedestrian life as a Dutch banker for the tropical colors of Tahiti, Michel had left the plastic world of Network TV for the brilliant contrasts of Mexico.
Study the work of Gaugin and Van Gogh and you will see an evolution in style from the grim greys of Amsterdam to the vivid colors of Tahiti.
My mother had left behind Beverly Hills, Hollywood pretension, and the French Marquis of Aubignosc for the Prophet of la Nueva Onda of Mexican music and her own self-discovery in the beaches of Puerto Vallarta and the Aztec sun of Mexico. And where Frida Kahlo struggled against the macho stereotypes of the 1930s and 40s, Michel would reveal the New Feminism in her art. Her bravery in renouncing her former life and launching a new life of self-discovery later gave me inspiration to do the same.
Anyway, somewhere in this madcap loco mix were my two brothers, Philo and Jean-Pierre and I.
And so it was that The Prophet set out to find work at one of the local clubs, where he would play his six-string and declaim his teachings to the unwashed masses who would smoke marijuana, dance, and listen to his rambling commentaries on the War in Vietnam, Gringo Imperialism, the New Wave of music, and the true teachings of Christ.
As soon as we were established, my brothers Philo, Jean-Pierre, and I went out to explore our world. One of our first discoveries was roasted corn. A street vendor had set up on the cobblestoned street in front of our house across the street from a giant mango tree. A hollowed out tin can was his stove.
He toasted the corn on sticks on a grill above the charcoals stowed in the can. At a peso apiece it was hot corn heaven.
Across the street a pretty little girl in a t-shirt and baggy shorts, with raven hair and a broad smile had set up her orange crate under the mango tree. As the proprietress of the tree, she had collected enough mangos to set up shop. Her name was Lupita. She got a peso a piece for the mangos. I had never tasted fresh mango before, but after only one, I was hooked. We visited her tree every day
My brothers and I left the Prophet to his dialogues on New Christian-Aztec theosophy with Michel, the artist, and set out down the cobblestones, through mango and tamarind trees to discover the beach.
In those days the Playa de Los Muertos was the happening beach in Puerto Vallarta. We wore our best Santa Monica swim shorts, called "Jams" and made quite an impression. We were the only white kids on the beach. There were a number of brightly painted red and green fishing skiffs overturned on the beach. Muscular boys would make a team and push and drag them out into the waters and over the low-breaking waves and then jump in. The Playa de Los Muertos opens on the Bahia de las Banderas, the bay that leads into the Pacific Ocean. They called it the "Beach of the Dead," for the dead pirates who were supposed to have lost their lives anciently in battle with the deadly Aztec Indians who once inhabited the coast.
Emerging from the coconut trees, we set up our towels on the sand and and surveyed the area for adventure. Philo, Jean-Pierre, and myself were veterans of the beach scene in Malibu, Santa Monica, and Venice Beach. Mexico was different from back home: people spoke a different language and had a different culture. But the beach was something we knew. We understood sunshine, rocks, sand, and the seductive curve of a perfect wave. So in we went. We swam out into the bay a bit.
Out in the water there were wooden platforms tethered to buoys about 500 meters out. We could rest on the platform, lying on our backs and take the sun before heading back. We practiced diving tricks, and waved to the people on the beach. We dived off and raced each other to one of the platforms. Whoever got there first was the king. The cool blue water was transparent enough to see the tiny schools of silver sardines below our feet. We did back-flips off the platform, showing off for the Mexican girls on the beach. We felt like kings. This was clearly heaven. We were a bit worried on the way down from Caborca, but now it was all worth it.
Under the platform we explored. If you opened your eyes in the water, you could see clearly for a couple of meters. We noticed these tiny blue ice-cubes floating in the water. Suddenly, Philo screamed. He was such a clown, we thought he was just fooling around, trying to scare us. But then we knew it was real. If you've never been attacked by jellyfish before, you can only imagine what the pain is like.
It felt something like a bee-sting, but instead of gradually subsiding, the pain only intensified as the toxin got more absorbed in the blood. I felt a flash of heat on my neck as Jean-Pierre started screaming, "Son of a bitch!" Even though he was my younger brother, Jean-Pierre was tougher than any of us. His scream surprised me. Suddenly my left arm went numb and I couldn't remember how to swim. I was struggling in the water. We had to race back to the beach.
The jellyfish were everywhere. They call them "agua-mala" which means "bad-water." To this day, the Bahia de las Banderas is infested with them. Tiny, transparent blue and purple, jewel-like and deadly, their sting is supposed to be charged with sexual power and is prized for its aphrodesiac properties.
Later on the beach we were starving, wet, and cold. Along the beach the mexican muscle boys and fishing men had a fire going in a low pit. Fish were spitted over the fire and barbecued. We tried the fish with lime and salt and coconuts and mangos. It all cost less than a dollar. The locals laughed with us and told us to put limes on our jellyfish stings. Somehow we survived.
My brother Philo was only about 13 years old at the time, but even at that age was irresistible to women. Sandy-haired, blue-eyed, and with an easy grin, he had a marvellous sense of humor and a gift for seduction. While Jean-Pierre and I were still drying off and examining our sting wounds, Philo wandered off.
It wasn't long before he had struck up a conversation with the only other Gringos on the beach. He had asked to borrow a cigarette and pretty soon was best friends with Georgia, Cindy, and John. He told them horror stories about the ellyfish told them of our adventures with the Prophet and our best friend the Joker from Batman. They were from Boston, down from the holidays. John and Georgia were brother and sister and Cindy was Georgia's friend. Georgia and Cindy were into Yoga. John was thinking about going into self-exile to avoid the draft and the war in Vietnam.
We got along so well, it only seemed right for them to invite us for dinner, and so we went with our new best friends to a mansion they had rented in the jungles above Puerto Vallarta. We quickly ran home to change. My mother and the Prophet were still locked in creative discussions and were happy to take a break from us and gave us permission. The mansion was about a half-hour walk from the house of Doña Candelaria, where the mango trees grew thicker.
A stone path took us through an overgrown garden of squash-blossom, marigolds, and chili plants shaded by the papayas and mango trees. It was a big wooden house with a nice veranda where John could sit on the porch-swing and play Dylan songs on his six-string. Georgia made us lemonade with the green limes they have in Mexico, and it cooled us from the tropical heat while Philo told stories and did impressions of President Nixon and Batman. We crooned a couple of tunes along with John and then listened to his rant against the War in Vietnam.
The sun was down now, and Georgia, who was a vegetarian, served us a big salad with avocados and fresh tomatoes from her garden. She began explaining how nobody in his right mind should eat meat. Tarzan was a vegetarian she said.
"No, he wasn't!" said my brother Philo. "Didn't he kill the lion?"
"That was in self-defense," said Georgia. "But the tiger was his friend. Cheetah is his friend and Cheetah is a vegetarian."
"Oh, so we're all supposed to eat bananas?"
"Look, the elephant is the strongest animal in the jungle, and elephants are vegetarians," I said, trying to score a point with the lovely Georgia. She smiled at me. My brother grimaced. He could always see right through me.
"Well, finish your salad, boys," she said.
On cue, it started to rain, big greasy drops. It was the afternoon tropical downpour. At first tentative, it became more and more emphatic until we felt that the house would be swept away in the hurricane. John put down his guitar and we picked up our plates and went back in the house.
"Oh, Noah." said Georgia.
"Noah's got nothing to do with it," said John. "Don't get all biblical with me, Georgia." But the rain kept on. A sharp wind lashed one of the shutters against the wall. This hurricane meant business. Water started dripping from the roof. John went out to check on the roof.
We finished our salads while Cindy and Georgia brought us bean and cheese burritos with a spicy sauce.
We sat on the floor in a circle and ate quietly. The rain went on. We could hear John banging on the roof. Philo told jokes, acted out an episode from Star Trek and did the dialogue between Lucky and Pozo from Waiting for Godot. Our plates cleaned, went in to the kitchen with Cindy and helped Georgia with the dishes.
"Your boyfriend's pretty lame," Jean-Pierre said.
Cindy laughed. "John? He's not my boyfriend. Whatever gave you that idea?"
"So you're free?"
"Shut up. Listen, John's Georgia's brother. He's here to get out of the draft. He hates the Vietnam war. How old are you, anyway?"
"I'm almost 14," he lied. "In California, I'm old enough to drive."
The wind banged the shutter again. The sun goes down late in the summertime in Mexico. It was past nine o'clock. The storm was getting serious. John came back inside, his green army jacket soaked to the bone.
"I guess you guys are going to have to spend the night," he said, his droopy mustache hiding a big grin.
"Georgia's got some extra blankets. Mike, you can take the hammock."
The hammock on the veranda was swinging in the wind, but protected from the rain. It looked cozy enough. Another thunderclap sounded. We were happy to be marooned here in this jungle paradise, far from the suburbs of Southern California, even farther from the snows of Connecticut.
"You wanna smoke?" John said, lighting up a hand-rolled cigarette.
By this time my brothers had also been initiated into the wonders of marijuana by the Prophet. My mother never found out exactly what had happened in the desert outside Caborca. The Prophet is probably one of only a handful of people to have smuggled pot from California into Mexico during the 1970s. He was constantly smoking, either pot or cigarettes, and by now my brothers and I had taken up smoking. Philo was only 13 at the time, but he became a lifelong smoker.
We passed a joint as John told of of the horrors of the Vietnam war. The U.S. was destroying a small country in Southeast Asia with no reason. The draft was unfair. Women and children were being napalmed.
My mind was spinning. The girls put on some sitar music. We lost track of time. The candles burned down. Somehow my brothers faded away and were sleeping on the sofas under blankets. We said our goodnights. Georgia and Cindy went off to their room and John went into his. I took my blanket and went out on the veranda to sleep in the hammock.
Now, if you've never slept in a hammock before, it takes some getting used to. This was my first time and I squirmed and squirmed until I dozed for a few minutes until I realized that the mosquitoes were eating me alive. Suddenly I felt the tacos and hot sauce squirming in my stomach. The rain had stopped and I could hear the crickets and frogs just out of sight in the garden. I got up to visit the bathroom.
I knew I couldn't sleep and took a look at the little library Georgia and Cindy had put together. One of the books there grabbed my attention. It was Bhagavad-gita As It Is, by A.C. Bhaktivedānta Swāmī.
The photo was of a serious scholarly-looking Indian man. He had kindness in his eyes, as if he could understand what suffering was. I opened the book and read:
"Out of so many human beings who are suffering, there are a few who are actually inquiring about their position, as to what they are, why they are put into this awkward position and so on. Unless one is awakened to this position of questioning his suffering, unless he realizes that he doesn't want suffering but rather wants to make a solution to all sufferings, then one is not to be considered a perfect human being. Humanity begins when this sort of inquiry is awakened in one's mind. In the Brahma-sūtra this inquiry is called "brahma-jijñāsā." Every activity of the human being is to be considered a failure unless he inquires about the nature of the Absolute. Therefore those who begin to question why they are suffering or where they came from and where they shall go after death are proper students for understanding Bhagavad-gītā."
I was hooked. I was interesting in making a solution to suffering. What would this inquiry lead?
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