fever dreams and becoming corn kernels

I saw the sunset and sunrise from the same shore, the rocks jut out in such a way.

I am slowly exiting a portal of not feeling well the past day or so, a mysterious illness that has me with prolonged vertigo and nausea and for a few hours yesterday, a fever.

I sip out of a Coconut costing 50 pesos, I’ve only had juice and fruit for a day and a half, because nothing else seems to sit well with my vertigo and nausea.

The waves are loud today, tattered red flags on poles pushed into the sand marking the shore tell us to beware of riptides.

I got the sunburn, the swim, the salt for my birthday. I don’t need much.

I could share a ton of thoughts about the places and the spaces, the south facing coast of Mexico jutting into the Pacific—and the fever dreams, but for now I’ll leave you with a few paragraphs to simmer, until perhaps I can stare at a screen longer and my head not spin. I didn’t even drink coffee today because I feel so sensitive to everything, and for folks who know me well, know that is a big deal. I gotta have my café.

Maybe the vertigo is a sign from the universe to rest and be, and drift into all of the impressions of worlds I have encountered recently, textures and relations, deeply allow the processing of experiences of my own shame, or joy, or grief or childlike glee. I am seeing the world go by so fast. Every little porch, outdoor seating area, tiny stoop where an old lady sits, is someone’s world, that they submerge in daily, day in and out, and I am moving through it so fast, I can only imagine what their reality is like.

After I slowed down from traveling most of my late 20’s and early 30’s and wanted to try to ground into the richness of routine in place, slow relationships, deep connections to earth, so much of the motivation too was to finally process all I had experienced for years and years, constantly going and not resting enough to make sense of all the worlds, experiences, plants, air temperatures… so I was reminded in this moment of that intention and how sickness can force us when we do not choose boundaries for ourselves.

the spirit has to catch up when you move faster than walking.

I often watched curiously the texture of the world’s others have chosen, or fell into, and wondered what it must be like.

In fever dream on my bed, mosquito net and fan blowing for 24 straight hours, unable to walk around due to vertigo and nausea, unable to eat or drink much, I just sat with my visions, and some were profound, as they can be in altered states.

I’ll share one. One most poignant dream, as I am surrounded by culture of corn, maiz, maize, is a corn cobb shedding it’s kernels with my hands in front of my face, shucking the dry seeds to be made into flour. It started though, with my brain cycling through my memories, like a projector changing slides rapidly, from years back to now, uncontrollably almost, in stillness on my humid bed, barely any clothes on as it is 88 degrees, processing emotions coming up from friendships that I no longer tend, or no longer tend me, people I met and never saw again, times I felt betrayed, times of togetherness and loneliness, all kinds of times and places and views and scenes and feelings. They cycled through in scene after scene, and slowing turned into kernals shedding, each scene, a kernal fell off into a bowl. Another scene, another corn kernel. They started to fall en masse, five or six at a time with their associated scenes attached. The corn cobb held hundreds of stories in one, and I was here a body as corn cobb unable to look at light or sit up, or walk far, as the world swirled fast all around. The mangrove was slow and heavy, sheltered me from the sun. I felt protected. The kernels gathered in a bowl and I held them close.

Now what?

Getting here, as I suspected, my woolens from 5,000 feet higher were useless. People walk around in bathing suits and sarongs. The walking streets with cabanas and casitas, surf shacks, cinderblock buildings with palmetto roofs, are full of beautiful gringos, long and lanky, fit, tattooed, sun-kissed. On the beaches, people are topless, and it felt like a relief to join them and be normalized to exist in my skin. Yes- everyone is looking at everyone, but somehow, it feels, ok?

It’s a ‘vibe’ as some would say, one that must be a theme at many Latin American beach towns that are filled with foreigners doing digital nomad life or living cheap outside of their home countries. The restaurants are catered to this taste, the smoke shops selling rapé, coca leaf and Mambé, herbal tinctures, ‘Virginia’ tobacco, and herbal infused Mescal. Raw chocolate pies, ecstatic dances, Moroccan food restaurants in Mexico candlelit. Nooks everywhere selling coffee, vegan ice cream, smoothies, raw fish dishes, mescal mixed drinks at any hours of the day. Its cute, but I love the quiet and peace of the land more, if I had a choice. I often go about places not fully relating to these subcultures and worlds, and I wonder if anyone here would be able to understand my reality.

My travel partner and I are staying with friends in a beach house they rented right on the shore in the next town over still a walking distance for one last night, a quieter fishing village focused on surfing. I’d come back, for longer and stay in one place, and tuck away from the ‘vibe’ though I can chameleon anywhere for a little bit, I too was glad to feel the sun on my skin, and get rid of my unneeded shoes walking around the tiny town.

I didn’t realize how much I had missed the ocean. I have not really seen or tasted her in many years. We are on the Pacific, but the last time I was with her more closely, sand in my shorts, salt in my hair, was on the coast of North Carolina during a fishing trip many years ago now. I saw a handful of men cast net fishing the other day right before sunset, and thought of that trip, and all the fish eaten. I miss fishing too. I did not really fish this summer because it was too sad for me. Plus my fishing pole tip is broken and needs to be replaced.

Things feel right by the water. I’ll miss her when I go, but the reminder will motivate me to meet her again sooner, for a longer period of time.