epiphanies, hammocks, and the labyrinth

"there is no such thing as a neutral thought or gesture."

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spent the better part of my last night in san filipe alone, sitting near the fire pit, giving myself a good talking to. i find myself seriously rethinking my ideas for 'what to do'. it seems to me that particular efforts or ideas i have exist only to feed my ego, rather than my passions. i spent a very long time contemplating of what my dream... MY dream... really is.

the things that struck me as important; home, comfort, love, happiness. i was swimming also in memories of my youth; pressing cider in the summer, fresh corn from the garden, a wood fire, settling into the comfortable chair to read. creating these things for the person whose life i love.

it had become perhaps three in the morning and the sky a great expanse of stars, the full moon as bright as i have ever seen, and the sea of cortez continued to roll in its thunderous waves, never-ending, always changing. stoke the fire with some brambly brush shit that cuts my hands, and i look to orion settling into the western mountains with his bow pointed north, and i say aloud, "where to now, hunter?"

he is, of course silent on the matter, remaining poised over those desert hills painted in the grey/black of night darkness... but the wind into the fire whooshes up whip-cracking sounds.
the only decision i can come tonight is to cease being a source of chaos on earth, a rupturing force of other people's (and my own) sanity and serenity. i want to increase the ease of living, not aggravate the frustrations.

not finding any major epiphanies laying about, i decided to sleep in the hammock.
now, i have always heard that sleeping in a hammock is, at best, a futile endeavor. i believe it was my grandfather or one of my uncles who said it was something along the lines of "romantic, but not practical."

well.

here i had in front of me the idealized conditions for a good night's sleep in a hammock; a semi-tropical beach front, clear skies with minor wind, no insects, the white noise of the sea...so, why not?

let me be clear: i've been in hammocks before, lazing on some sunny day beneath a shade tree, gazing at stars between douglas firs and yellow pines... but never actually SLEPT in one.

i grabbed up my sleeping bag and tried to get it to lay in the webbing with little success. the thing to do seemed to be to get into the bag first and then mount the hammock. this turned out to be the more-correct move, only the temptation to wrap my feet with the webbing was impossible.

the thing to do is to allow the ass to sling low in the hammock with the legs hanging off of it, wrapped and secured by the sleeping bag draped over the hammock, rather than in it. the shoulders naturally get caught in the web, but i found that the elbows become problematic in that it is equally impossible to pull the hammock around my arms with them inside the sleeping bag.

nevertheless, after about twenty minutes of teeter-tottering and grunting, i managed to find the sweet spot residing somewhere between semi-comfortable and slipping off the contraption. i slept. fitfully, but i did sleep.

i slept in a hammock under mexican stars, the full moon, next to the sea of cortez.

it was romantic. but not practical.

i recommend trying it, at least once.
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i did manage to discover a few other things (or remind myself of them), so perhaps my previous rant at pilgrimage on tribe.net was ill-conceived.

one thing: there are things i like, and there are things i dont like. i need not rail against the things i dont like, or try beyond all measure of sanity to come to like it, or feign pleasure about it. i need merely pass them by, instead focusing upon those things i do.

second thing: an interesting thing happend on the journey home. we had stopped for dinner and after the meal returned to the bus. i found a labyrinth there, and begain to walk it.
i did not finish because my traveling companions were loaded into the bus and anxious to go. i felt compelled to get on the bus, leaving my wanderings there. no one forced me to stop, or asked me to... i just did... to return to the group.

hmmm. i said to myself.

yeah. i said in my head.

it occured to me then and there that my lack of successful understanding or of finding a signifigant pilgrimage in my travels may be closely linked in parallel to this little vignette.

...or maybe i just found it.