(integration)

these silly moment happen when we are on our own, in the middle of the jungle of our minds. 

I was thinking of getting on a flight today, to head back to Portland and despite my best attempts to make plans, I couldn’t get on the flight. My head started spinning in a billion different directions like a dreidel. It spun and spun - what will happen if I get on the flight? What will happen if I don’t get on the flight? 

My mind is both my best friend and my worst enemy. I began frantically googling how safe flying on SW airlines was, as if figuring out how safe SW was would be the answer to all of my issues. How safe is this airline…really? I delayed checking out of my airbnb and walked along the ocean shore picking up trash. The sargassum right now in Mexico is completely terrible, it is the absolute worst sargassum. I stumbled down to the beach this morning and drank a cup of coffee, and as I drank the coffee people who work for parks and recreation in Playa del Carmen were spending their time cleaning up the sargassum, with shovels. Shoveling this amber colored seaweed from the seashore. I had a million ideas as I picked up pieces of trash on the shoreline. Someone who worked at a restaurant smiled at me as he saw me picking up trash. 

The sargassum happens in the ocean because of changes in ocean currents due to climate change as well as changes in wind patterns. Nutrient input from fertilizers can also have an effect on Sargassum blooms. Sargassum is basically amber colored algae. The sad thing is is that there is trash that gets stuck in the sargassum blooms, and so there are little pieces of plastic all over the sargassum. The Caribbean ocean is such a beautiful blue - dark blue and turquoise color, and it’s one of those moments in time where I have to wonder why we as humans are not regularly putting our cell-phones down and walking along sea-shores to clean up the plastic we use. I would look out over the ocean all day long if I could, and I believe that many other nature lovers share this sentiment.

So while I was avoiding just getting in a taxi and taking this flight back home to Portland, I couldn’t help but think about the things that we forget about doing as human beings. The important things - there are so many layers, so many intricate layers in our 21st century reality - the layer of the body, the layer of the mind, the layer of the emotions, the layer of the digital sphere. It seems that now as a humanoid (are we even human anymore)? in the modern world, I wonder often how to tackle both tangible reality as well as physical reality. How do I work with the physical reality, the physical body —- and stay in my physical body — while still interacting with technology (which at this point is an unavoidable part of the world I inhabit. Unless, of course I was to go completely off the grid). The auropuerto - airplanes - literally feel scary to me - there is so much that I am not in control of. When I feel this way I try to remind myself that I do a lot of things throughout the day and that I am not in control of A LOT. That doesn’t help my anxiety.

There is narrative attached to this, sure - there is narrative attached to literally everything, but the technological sphere is certainly altering the way that we as literally “see” reality. The more we stick our noses in our cellphones and ignore the natural world, the more we become blinded to the impact that we are having on the natural world. I say this for selfish reasons - mostly that I love being outside in nature. I love looking at the blossoms on trees, in the springtime I get so excited about the plants that I don’t want to go to sleep. Now more than ever our eyes are exposed to blue light, to screens, and our ears are exposed to all sorts of odd beeps and boops, and it seems like there is an abundance of light and sound that is ever present around all human beings. An Ashtanga teacher who I respect dearly used a word for these beeps and boops and for the sheen on blue light that layers everything - the word for the sheen layer and the beeps and boops was “over saturation”. 

As I ask myself “what is WRONG” with me …why can’t I JUST get on a flight, I also have to have some compassion for my own confusion. There is a short man in a yellow hat taking pictures of the Krispy Kreme poster in front of me - a poster that reads “Felix did del Nino!” right in front of me. As if to affirm the digital certifiably distractia-sci-fiable acid trip that the 21st century really is. There are rooms in Playa del Carmen that don’t have hot running water, and some of the streets at time are completely filthy, and in many ways this town is super run through - and yet - there are 60 year olds taking pictures of Krispy Kreme donut posters. There’s trash in the ocean, but we all have cellphones. Tourists don’t have enough time in the day to make sure the ocean is clean. Our eco-cide is permissible, and worse than that t- our ecocide is encouraged. So what if that dolphin chokes on my “croc”?? That’s not my dolphin. The way that we feel entitled to treat the planet is disheartening to me. Friends suggest I “go back to school” to become an environmental scientist if I care so much, yet here the paradox lies - will going back to school an ingesting an education in environmental science clean up the trash from the algae blooms? Or will my own two hands clean up the algae blooms? Homosapiens could absolutely benefit from having more compassion for our animal and plant friends. It seems like we have enough time in the day to inundate ourselves with blue light so maybe we could like, inundate ourselves with a little eco-friendly action. It won’t kill you to throw your water bottles in a recycling can. I absolutely believe that our primary reason for being on the planet is so serve mother nature in the way that she so generously serves us.

As I sat with my indecision today, and my own complete confusion as to which direction to go - I saw a tiny little toddler in child’s pose in between the glass doors of a store in the shopping mall center of the Quinta Algeria shopping mall in Playa del Carmen. He was having a moment. I saw him in child’s pose and felt what he was going through immediately. I had rolled my 30 pound suitcase over to the shopping mall area of the mall to access WIFI as I made a decision. I passed the glass doors thirty minutes later as I continued working on this article - and as I passed again, I noticed that he had been doing child’s pose smack dab in the middle of a Victoria Secret. 

That’s kind’ve funny, I thought to myself as I passed it again. I wonder what would happen if I did child’s pose in the middle of the sliding glass doors of Victoria Secret. Do you think the staff would be okay with it?