GrooveBlockers

rose colored glasses too aware cousin

If you walk around like a hammer, everything starts looking like a nail.

Whatever that saying is, it works both ways I think? Maybe the intent has always been if you look at things with grace everything looks pretty glowy and I just had my curmudgeon glasses on.

(*different than rose colored glasses and not pessimist glasses which make everything colorless and gray, but the sharpening glasses of the "aware" person. Oh this looks promising but is likely a scam and when will the other shoe drop? glasses. Like BluBlockers. We'll call them GrooveBlockers.)

It can be rough in a town like this where things are, on the face, (and likely below the surface too) pretty bleak. Dirty, littered, sandy, dusty, poor, unpainted, shanty town builds, dead fish smell, street dogs everywhere, some dying, lousy food and not much of it and often sketchy locals and transients working on pipelines and fishing boats. I don’t understand their dialect mix of Spanish, they speak no English. It’s easier just to nod and wave. They hate dogs.

I'll stop there because I could go on for pages about all the Cons on my Pros and Cons list and I've written about that before ad nauseum. If you'd like to know why I can't just get off my ass and load up a bunch of dogs and get the hell outta here you can read the origin story on my homepage. 

I leaned into a need for someone to tend to all these starving abandoned dogs and they all became anchors after 3 years and here we are. 

It's not always just the dogs that hold me back, there's all kinds of reasons why I'm not running back to the "otro lado"/the other side (what they call the USA in case you thought they were all dying to come and live their best lives there. They are not.) But I'm not willing or able to live in a 1978 double wide with skritchy neighbors 30 miles from Any town, USA for $2500/mo or a normal house in a better area for $4200 plus $5000 in pet deposits and whatever other price fuckery landlords are trying lately. I wouldn't go if I had the money. Which I do not. 

So it wears me down sometimes. I wanna leave ( by nature I always wanna leave, and after 14 years of not being able to sell a big farm in Georgia I am like a wild Mustang that got out of the gate but then got roped in again after a few months and I'm chewing through the rope every single day) and I know there are better towns, with better food, and shops and services, and better houses and nicer folks (allegedly) but how to find? How to go see? How to bring dogs? How to find something big enough to make a move matter for dog sanctuary and still be in a town where I'm not car dependent? (car wreck, no replacement vehicle in case you're wondering. It's just as hard to buy a rig in MX for gringos as it is for Mexicans to buy a car in the US. LEGALLY. And here, that's a very relative term.) and what if I move to a "better" place and find that it's cartel dangerous, worse, hostile…whatever.

So when I feel myself sliding down the back side of the hill, everything starts looking like quicksand. I've done a lot of things in my life that defied reason and ease so why am I so logistically challenged? I can go to a dark place. But to be fair I could go to a dark place before this Adventure. Then I'll scroll through Instagram and my news feed that I have likely tailored to give me more of the same doom—farms getting defunded, water rights lost, animal shelters full, Black R*ck buying everything, you know the drill. I have to go out and walk around. Get off the internet! I don't have TV but social media is just a confirmation bias that feeds the Monkey Mind. It's no better! 

I wish I was always in the mood or in the outfit to head to the shore and bake in the sun and put my feet in saltwater and talk to God. Walk along the mostly vacant Sea of Cortez with dogs freely, which is rare in this world unless you own the beach. The heat will get you though. As a compromise today I went on just a tiny walk.

Just a me and Rocky stroll in my jammies and flippers (and the 5 dogs that follow us) I like to see this twisted Mesquite tree at the end of the block that has grown into this bench on a median. I really miss trees so sometimes I just go sit with her and watch cars go by. It's not ideal but it's what I got.

 

I saw an Oleander tree growing out of the top of an abandoned trailer at an empty corner store. The flowers were so fragrant and lush they looked like tiny peonies in huge explosions and suddenly everywhere there were colorful things. The turquoise paint on the door that was peeling was the perfect shade, the Angel Trumpet flowers that hang over the Dalmatian house doors that I never really stop at because their dogs go bananas like my dogs. 

I have been told and I have trained myself to not look too hard around here. Mind your own business is the order of the day but in that I miss the good stuff too. Sometimes it’s a cool breeze around a corner that catches you off guard or a rare good smelling something cooking somewhere that can bring me back to a memory of Wonderful Meals Past. I have to remember to take off the GrooveBlockers. I know this is a long winded way of saying Look on the Bright Side, but it’s more than that. You’ll never slide a Pollyanna by me, I’ve seen too much, investigated too deep, but I’m struggling staying afloat in the white waters with just a pool noodle.

I am here for now and I have to let my Joy Hammer see the Beauty Nails. It’s easy to be in paradise and say oh look how amazing! But I don’t trust the brain (mine anyway) to not ignore piles of flowers and perfect weather and nice people and room service and a butler as just whatever after a time. Also, that doesn’t exist outside of a 10 day resort vacation. But we ALL know that person who has a dozen amazing opportunities and they take them all for granted. I’ve likely been this person. Not recently, but yea.

To paraphrase Theo Von, don't let the Dark Arts getcha! The veil has been lifted for decades but how do we live through it all (without drugs and alcohol**) is there a subtle art of Disconnected Living? My goal is to be Aware and not Horrified All The Time. Is this possible? Maybe so, say the flowers growing despite awful conditions. Maybe so.

It’s my responsibility to tether my mental health during these times of transition and not slide down the hill. Grab a branch or something, it'll pass.