Cuernavaca Dreamin’

Slow Burn on Hollywood Time

An uncountable number of years ago when I was a much younger version of myself, I moved from my native California to Florida. Those youthful years I spent on the Gulf of Mexico were probably the best years of my young life: tropical breezes, warm nights, endless beaches, a true laid back culture seemingly untouched by the left-coast always-on need to make money. I had a dream job, working on boats outside in the sunshine every day. For me, it was somewhat idyllic. Alas, one cannot remain a beach bum forever, and I returned to California to continue with my “education” 🙄.

But I digress. One thing that I encountered almost without fail while I was living in Florida was the odd, questioning reaction I would get from people when I told them I was from California. Invariably, the response ran along the lines of “What? You left California to come here?” In today’s twisted political climate, California is like a four-letter word to many people in Florida (us Californians are a bunch of socialist Trump-haters who should be hung for treason, you see). Back then, though, California still had the mystique of this glorious place, a wondrous destination to which any sane person should strive. To leave California was certainly an act of madness, especially to leave it for... Florida? Of all places! Good lord! There are flying cockroaches in Florida! It’s sticky! Time for another shower!

Now the shoe is on the other foot. I left Mexico for... California? Of all places! Good lord! There are Californians in California! OK, I haven’t abandoned Mexico. I am back in the U.S. dealing with some family obligations - but this is the longest period I’ve spent away from Mexico in a long time. Someday maybe I’ll write an article about the dangers of gentrification that people from the U.S. and Canada flocking to Mexico may or may not represent, and the place of privilege that those of us coming to Mexico from the U.S. and Canada certainly do occupy. But this isn’t that article: I just miss being there. I miss being amongst the Mexican people and culture. I miss talking to people about things other than where I’m going on my next vacation. I miss people not trying to kill me with massive SUVs every time I have the effrontery to spend time outside without being safely wrapped up in a car. I miss making a dentist appointment and being able to go to that dentist appointment in the same calendar year.

I wake up mornings feeling like Captain Willard in the opening scene of Apocalypse Now: “California - shit. I’m still only in California...I wanted a hamburger, and for my sins they gave me one for 18 dollars.”

If ever the phrase “would you like some cheese with that whine” was apropos, it certainly is with the above 400-some odd word screed. Poor me, I’m in California. Maybe I should start a GoFundMe. However, there is some merit in the idea of place, of belonging. We should all feel like we are in our place, where we belong. Even if we can’t have those things, there is no harm in pining for them, or boring your poor readers with them.

In John Boorman’s rightfully minimally watched 1985 movie The Emerald Forest, a U.S. engineer’s young son is abducted by members of an Amazonian tribe. The father spends years searching the endless forest for his son, and (spoiler alert!) after a decade of searching finds him. The father asks the leader of the tribe “why did you take my son?” The leader answers something along the lines of: I saw him smile, and I did not have the heart to see him go back to the Dead World. Ah, what romantic nonsense. But for reasons that probably speak more to insanity than anything else, I think of that line a lot when I’m wandering the perfectly manicured byways of Suburbia, U.S.A.

But all is not doom and gloom and first-world problems. I’ve got a plane ticket sitting in some nameless database somewhere, and I’ll be returning to Mexico before dawn breaks on the famous gringo holiday of Cinco de Mayo. And - channeling my inner Scarlett O’Hara - as God is my witness, I’ll never be hungry for decent al pastor again.

(BTW, I don’t live in Cuernavaca, it just has the right number of syllables and alliterative effect.)