Along the Hotel Zone main road in Tulum, Mexico there are diversions.
There are small coffee shops that sell Mexican coffee, flavored with sugar, and delicious pastries for individual palates. Restaurants push seafood, Indian food, Italian, Chinese, Vegan and Mexican cuisine.Bars serve late at night and hotels have Vacancy signs hanging where they can be seen. Boutiques display designer clothes for women who need to look good, always, whether they are on the beach, dancing in a disco, taking kids to soccer practice or listening to pickup lines in the grocery.
Moments before this photo is snapped, a long legged woman in red, positions two mannikins on the street in front of her shop.She carries one out to the street under her arm and stands it next to the other.
With both mannikins positioned she turns and strides back to open her business. It is early in the morning and only a few vehicles are on the road. Light filters through trees and through her loose fitting dress that moves seductively as she walks.
It is not difficult to see who is and who isn’t a mannikin.
Movement shows life.
Rock colored birds face the wind so their bodies aren’t scattered like bowling pins.
Pelicans circle us above, dive like missiles, their pointed beaks becoming spears, surfacing with wiggling fish.
Sea colors, shades of green and blue, modulate.
Waves move as far onto land as they can go, then recede from our toes..
Fitting into nature, seamlessly, was what was lost in our Fall from paradise.
Now, we are observers of nature, on the outside, looking in.
At dinnertime, a pelican begins his dive.
He circles his target, turns himself into a projectile by tucking his wings to his body,and disappears head first into the surf. When he comes back to the water’s surface, he shakes his wings and recomposes, a fish struggling in his enormous beak.
Not long after, a fisherman wades into the pelican’s same fishing hole, net in hand, and the pelican takes off like a seaplane from an Alaskan lake.
The fisherman moves slowly, studies the waves, the light, the wind.
Positioning himself, he casts his handheld net with both hands,lets his net fall to the bottom, then draws it back towards him with a rope line, hand over hand. When he drags his net onto the beach it holds silvery fish twisting in the bright sunlight.
He and his friend transfer fish from the net into a plastic bag, then lift up and climb back on their bicycles and pedal home, the net draped over a bike’s handle bars to drip dry.
If you live simply, how much of the day needs to be used up working?
What is so important to us that we work sixty hours a week?
There are several postcards about keys on Scotttreks.
There is one postcard on a Montevideo door lock and three keys that look the same. There is one postcard on a break and enter situation in Belize when Jack’s renter doesn’t leave a key and he has to get his AirBnB apartment ready for a new tenant coming soon. There is one postcard on a key found at an Albuquerque golf course parking lot, the key to the box of forgotten dreams. Now, there is one postcard on a bent key to room number 10 at the Yoga Shala in Tulum, Mexico.
At the beach, you don’t have pockets. This key and its colorful leather chain fit comfortably around my neck.
The odd thing about this key is it’s severe bend..
It took a lot of not paying attention to do this kind of damage.
Where this bend comes from is a story known to Angelique in the Yoga Shala office. She reminds me ,when I mention it ,that she has another key to my room if this one fails to work.
In Mexico, there is no need to fix anything if it isn’t broken.
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