Wednesday, March 10, 2010
My husband and I returned from a month in Mexico almost ten days ago, but I can still hear the ocean. Yes, I know how lucky I am to have spent all of February in Bucerias, a cheery town just north of Puerto Vallarta on the shores of Banderas Bay.
For George and I, our month away was an experiment. What would it be like to be away from home for a whole month? Would we be able to manage our lives from so far away? Used to time and space away from each other in our daily routines, how would we get along together all day every day for a month?
In the time leading up to our end of January departure, we envisioned how our February would go. George saw it as an almost endless expanse of days he would somehow have to fill without his usual access to business and social allies. Anticipating that he would need something special to do, he took a scuba-diving course before we left to prepare himself for getting open-water certification during our trip, perhaps seeing himself under the waters of Banderas Bay more days than not.
While George viewed our four weeks away as a huge number of days that needed to be filled, I saw the coming month as not enough time. How would I fit everything I wanted to do in just four weeks?
Before we left, I envisioned myself running and working out every morning, thus establishing a routine I had been unable to tie myself to in my regular environment. In Bucerias, I imagined that I would familiarize my body with this daily practice and bring a healthy new habit home with me. Then, after a morning of activities that might include swimming, snorkeling, hiking, exploring the surrounding areas, or golf, I’d spend every afternoon writing, perched on a chair on a balcony overlooking the ocean, allowing it to lift and inspire my fingers on my keyboard. I bought a fresh notebook to record the ideas that would occur to me every minute, every hour of every day. I planned to stay true to my writing process, quickly jotting down the gist of each idea on paper, so that nothing would be lost, so that I could take my notes to my computer each evening and shape them into whatever they might want to become, perhaps a series of poems or a collection of character-driven vignettes.
With these expectations, George and I boarded our flight south eagerly anticipating the coming month. Now that our February experiment is over, I have had a chance to analyze its results.
George made exactly six dives, achieving his open-water certification easily in the first week, then diving with our daughter Samantha twice during the second. Thanks to wireless connections, his business and social activities continued on largely uninterrupted. He actively participated in our sightseeing adventures and readily found other people than me to talk to. He developed excellent balcony and poolside lounging skills. He did just fine on our month-long trip.
As for me, I worked out in the little gym fairly regularly for the first two weeks and not at all in the last two. I ran almost every day for the first week, about every second day in the second, sporadically in the third and fourth. Some mornings, I’d start out intending to run, but the coffee shop across the street sometimes drew me in first, leading to a leisurely sit on my balcony that replaced my run because by the time I finished my latte the sun was far too high in the sky, the day was too hot, and the pool beckoned. The elusive practice of becoming a daily morning runner eludes me still.
As for my other expectations, I snorkeled (twice), explored the surrounding areas on several terrific excursions, and played three rounds of golf. Those things fit in with my initial plan.
Sadly, my fresh writing notebook has far more unfilled pages than filled ones. It’s not that I don’t have ideas; I do. The Magnificent Frigatebirds that soar high over the water fascinated me, as did the pelicans and the surfers and the lone fisherman who floats his nets out into the bay in a red washtub that he stores behind a palm tree on the beach. But these fragments still float in my head, not letting me know what I should do with them, not ready to begin the transformation from my senses to my notebook, from my notebook to my computer.
I think one of my problems was that the Puerto Vallarta area has many distractions, not the least of which is the sun. (And here I’ll switch to the present tense, because I know the sun’s presence in PV continues on even though I’m no longer there.)
The Banderas Bay sun launches each day by extinguishing the stars in a sky that is still dark thirty minutes before its rise. It puts the finishing touches on each day with a slow sink into the sea, illuminating both water and windows from La Cruz to Mismaloya. When clouds cover the sun, people look to where they came from hoping no more are following. But when the sun blazes unobscured for several days or even weeks in a row, people look for clouds, just a few, to provide a little relief.
Under the sun’s path, the ocean is prominent. The tide inexorably moves in, pushing beach walkers up to the last few feet of sand. Just as inexorably, the tide slides out, inviting all to stroll the wide beach expanse, whether human, canine, feline, even equine.
I have always wanted to have an extended stay right beside the ocean, to experience the ocean’s soothing lull night after night for more than just a week or two. I’ve always yearned to fall asleep to the rhythmic sounds of waves slipping in and out over the sand.
Perhaps the most startling thing I learned from our Bucerias experiment is that the ocean does not lull. During the first night we spent in our rented oceanfront condo, we slept with the balcony door wide open. Well, George slept. I lay on the bed waiting for the lulling part to happen.
The second night, we closed the door halfway. George fell asleep instantly. I, exhausted, slept for an hour, then lay awake again waiting for the ocean to lull. The third night, I firmly closed the patio door. I slept for two hours, discovering that the ocean’s presence easily penetrates glass. The next night, I closed the door and reached for the bright orange foamy earplugs I keep in my toiletries kit. I slept like a contented baby until the morning sun blinked the stars out one by one.
So, although I failed to turn myself into a daily runner and didn’t return from Mexico with a computer full of completed writing projects, I learned something important this trip. I learned that the ocean is loud. It doesn’t lull. It pounds. It crashes and roars. Even when its surface is seemingly calm, waves thunder onto the sand. At times during those first two nights, after a few moments when lulling seemed ready to break out in the next instant, I would almost fall asleep. Then, inevitably, the calm would shatter with a bang so loud it sounded as if something had suddenly exploded beside the pool or a sudden cataclysmic storm had materialized out of a clear sky (that happened too, but that’s another story).
During the day, with the doors to our condo wide open, the roar of the waves added to our exotic Mexican experience. I thought, daydreamed, read, chatted, and ate, each activity enhanced by the ocean’s ever-present sounds. At night, however, its surf felt relentless, a machine that had no off switch, a mesmerizing enormity at once hypnotic, fascinating, frightening, and loud. The sounds of the ocean are no lullaby.
But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to be close to it again next year. I’ve already stocked up on earplugs.
We live in a noisy world, a world that often feels as if it’s made up of thirty-second sound bites. In all this noise, I think our attention spans are becoming shorter. We fit our thoughts into 140 characters. Too often we skim across the surface. If what we’re looking at, listening to, tasting, sniffing, or touching doesn’t immediately grab our attention, something else is immediately available to take its place. We are no longer encouraged to wait for or seek out substance, but to reach for instant gratification. I think we miss a lot.
