The Muse of Community

The Muse of Community must have chosen the little fishing village of San Pancho as her favorite creative project. “Let’s see what would happen,” says she, “if we throw together an ‘olla podrida’ —a spicy stew— of interesting people in a tiny fishing village on the West coast of Mexico. Take a handful of artists, hippies, environmentalists, a bunch of retired folk and snow birds from the U.S. and Canada, some young families from South America, four solid local families with deep roots in the land, a love affair between an American woman and the daughter of one of the local families who is related to everyone, throw in one young American mother with a gift for creating community. Stir.”

This is a recipe for an amazing community. Dan and I have been coming to San Pancho, whose official name is San Francisco, in Nayarit, Mexico, for ten years.

We have had the joy of watching the town transform and of feeling, for our brief winter sojourn, part of the excitement and the pleasure. Community is fostered by our hosts at Casa Obelisco, the small B & B we frequent. We have been hearing San Pancho stories from Barb and Bill, John and Judy every morning over delicious breakfasts. We heard the story about the lovers, Gloria and Trini, who opened a great Mexican restaurant, Ola Rica, with a shrine to Frida Kahlo by the table Dan and I consider ours.

Trini and Gloria

In recent years Gloria and Trini have added a beach restaurant, La Playa, where you can indulge in the best Mango Margarita known to human kind. We’ve heard about Turtle Frank, who has created a hatchery to protect the vulnerable turtle eggs and help the hatchlings find their way to the sea. Sometimes we’ve been lucky enough to be part of this event on the beach. We are drawn into community with other guests and into the vibrant life of the town. Of course we also hear about the feuds, the bad blood, the struggles over ownership of land and bad feeling over disappointments and betrayals. But there is a remarkable sense of possibility in this town that we don’t experience back home in the U.S. of A these days.

Nicole and Naomi

Many of these stories are about that young American mother, Nicole, who came here with her eleven month old son ten years ago, had another child, a daughter, got divorced, and found herself wondering about community. Bill, one of our hosts, who is very involved in Nicole’s organization, Entre Amigos, arranged for me to spend time with Nicole and hear her story.

She told me that when she came to San Pancho it was very small. She suspected it would grow, but was concerned about the lack of connection between the local people and their visitors. There was distrust between the two groups. She could feel people withdrawing behind their walls. The Muse must have come to her and whispered:” All you need is a little bridge.”

Dan and I remember the small store front she had when she began Entre Amigos, offering after school programs for kids. Nicole put it this way: “I just put my kitchen table out on the street and began teaching what I learned in Girl Scouts—sewing, cooking, gardening. I asked others to teach—the locals, foreigners. Everyone has something to teach. Everyone has something to learn, from tamale making to computer skills. It’s a walk of faith,” she told me. “It’s all about mutual giving.”

“Entre Amigos” has grown dramatically since those early years. It is now housed in what was the ruin of a fruit drying factory. It is made entirely of recyclable materials. I asked her about her environmental work—recycling, tree planting. “Oh” she said, “that’s not me. That’s Endira.” Endira, a Chilean, came early to work with Nicole. Her passion is the environment. She created San Pancho’s recycling program, and created a marked for recycled products.

Toys like this get sold in the little shop at Entre Amigos. Endira has also created an environmental curriculum for children. Twenty lessons in a box which anyone can teach. You just “read the card and teach the class,” Nicole says. “Why teach kids who have never seen a glacier about melting glaciers? Why not teach them to pay attention, to observe and imagine the life of the birds and the butterflies they know in their own landscape?” Her curriculum has been picked up by Hawaiian educators and by biology students in Mexican colleges, who use it to fulfill their social service requirement by teaching it to school kids.

Nicole walked me around the large spacious building with its open floor plan and differentiated areas—the shop, the library and computer center, the separate area for kids under five where local moms meet foreign mom and their kids play together with an assortment of wonderful toys.

I watched a boy careen in through the front door on his skateboard, pick it up and head for the library. This was clearly his place. I watched boys on the floor playing happily with a wooden train set. I watched boys reading. “So many boys” I commented. “They all look happy.”

“That’s Jasmin” said Nicole, and told me about the local woman who is a magnet for troubled kids, kids who aren’t going to school, who live in horrific family situations, who are abused. “Jasmin wanted to tutor them here. So we set up a tutoring program.” She pointed out Ramon, a young man working with four boys between eight and ten years old. They all looked attentive and engaged. She told me these were boys who hadn’t been going to school, didn’t know how to read. Now they’re in school, and reading. They come after school to Entre Amigos. Ramon, she said, “used to work construction. When he came here it was clear he was very bright, and a good teacher. We said, ‘Ramon, what are you going to do next?’ He has decided to go to college.”

Nicole pointed out a boy who is regularly abused at home. “There’s no Child Protective Services here in Mexico,” she told me. “He comes here. Of course, he’s difficult. He hits other kids. So we consulted with a retired psychologist from Canada about how to handle him. He helped us develop a system to empower the kids to run the building. They have to do social service—water the plants for example. Kids are in charge of the rules. If they do well they get a reward—a trip or a movie. Most of them haven’t been anywhere. Going to the movies is a special treat.”

Nicole is eloquent on a subject close to my heart—how essential creativity is to learning and teaching. She hopes these kids, who may not ever get to college, will learn to think outside the box, learn that all kinds of things are possible, because they have been exposed to so many different creative approaches, classes on everything from English/Spanish to screen printing and art making. She highly values creative expression. “There’s that moment when you see their eyes open to a bigger world. It’s amazing.”

Our friend Bill has been involved with the scholarship program at Entre Amigos, which invites folks to sponsor a child. In Mexico the schools have no money for supplies—books, paper, pencils, even toilet paper. So they charge parents fees. This is a hardship for poor families, as is buying school uniforms. For $600 a year you can sponsor a child, take the financial load off a family, assure that a child can remain in school, and support Entre Amigos.

At breakfast I learned that all of our fellow guests at Casa Obelisco, including the guy who swears by Fox News, had committed to sponsoring a child. Community seems to grow organically around Entre Amigos

But friends, I haven’t even told you the half of it. The Muse of Community has thrown some wild ingredients into the San Pancho ‘olla podrida.’ She has thrown in Cirque du Soleil, which, for reasons I couldn’t quite follow has decided to teach circus skills like acrobatics to the children of San Pancho, and is partnering with Entre Amigos. Nicole showed me the circus room, with its Olympic quality trampolines and equipment. I’d wondered where all the girls were. They were here, a few boys among them, in bright leotards, excited and adorable, training for a big children’s circus to be held on March 23rd.

The Muse has also thrown in some wandering muralists, who have covered several walls with colorful, often surreal imagery.

The Muse has thrown in Manny and Joe, who are music producers from Seattle, now mostly retired. They organize events around town, including a fabulous fundraiser Dan and I attended at the golf course, which for years, was off limits to everyone but the owner. He’s had a change of heart and allowed a big party to happen in his clubhouse at the top of the world, with views of ocean, jungle, mountains.

In the magical way that communities come together in San Pancho, “suits” and “creatives” gathered (though of course no one is ever seen wearing a suit in San Pancho unless he’s the groom or the father of the bride at the wedding). Entre Amigos, we learned, is in an alliance with a group called Les Fabricas des San Pancho to turn the old shells of factories into green buildings that will house workshops for artists and space for environmental groups. A group of architectural students at Mexican universities has agreed to help. We were there to raise funds for their bus fare to San Pancho.

Dan and I sat among the well heeled and the wildly creative, drinking wine, eating fajitas, and listening to the fabulous jazz of Bandieros de los All Stars. They were led by a small intense flautist who doubled as a Sax player. The bass guitarist was wild, experimental. We could be in New Orleans. The flute played the sun down—long holy sound of human breath.

The last and wildest ingredient so far the Muse of Community has thrown into the stew is, believe it or not, the Dalai Lama. Nicole has just received an award from him in San Francisco del Norte, on Feb. 23rd. Nicole is one of a group of “Unsung Heroes of Compassion” [link: http://newunsungheroes.org/2014-event/2014-unsung-heroes-of-compassion/nicole-swedlow/] whom the Dalai Lama chose to honor.

News from the Muse: The Muse of Sunset and Sasha

It was my friend Sasha who first put the idea into my head:

Birds do it: butterflies do it; Sasha did if for years. Why don’t we to go Mexico in the winter?

That was twelve years ago. Sasha, sadly, is gone. But her yearly ritual of two weeks in the sun by the sea in the slow grace of Mexico has become Dan and my beloved custom.

Sasha Hunter was an unusual member of our Jungian tribe. Unlike most of us, who tend toward introversion and reverie, she was a flaming extrovert who loved to dance and to boogie board. She could turn an earnest gathering into a party. Although we now visit a different Mexican town than her beloved Puerto Escondido, her spirit lives on in the sensual pleasures of our easy days, full of sun worship and ocean walks and margaritas.

Dan and I come to the little fishing village of San Pancho in Nayarit, have now for many years, and the pace of our lives drops down to that primal rhythm of waves, sun, moon and watching pelicans skim the ocean as they fly past. We partake in the sacred ritual of watching the sunset as people have since before we lived in houses.

So Sasha, this blog posting is for you. Your sunset came much too soon. We miss your extravagant spirit. Here are some sunset musings in your memory.

Sunset with Cuban Music

Where there is music in San Pancho you’ll find Dan. Were Sasha still among us she’d be there too, dancing. The lovely beach restaurant, La Playa, has Cuban music tonight. So even though it’s overcast, and a visible sunset seems unlikely, we’re here, having a drink, watching the scene full of dogs and their people.

A group of beautiful young Mexican women arrive, all dressed up—big hoop earrings, short dresses, lots of eye makeup. One of them is carrying a baby girl, maybe four months old—a pink bundle. Another has her two little girls, three and five, with her. The women chat and laugh and drink and pass the baby around, like a treasure. In San Pancho, it seems, girls night out does not require a baby sitter.

Suddenly the clouds at the horizon lift. The sun has already disappeared, but a band of fuchsia light glows on, becoming more and more intense. The young women and their children get up to dance against that stunning backdrop. A flock of egrets flies into the palm trees; the ocean sings her song; dogs bark; the baby waves and the beautiful young women dance with each other, with their babies, with the waiters. The world is awash in beauty and music and dance. Your spirit, Sasha, is with us.

Sunset from the Roof

We stay at Casa Obelisco, a beautiful B&B in San Pancho, full of hibiscus blossoms, bougainvillea, beautiful tile and arches, wonderful people. Sasha, you’d love it here, it’s always a party. From the roof we get a glorious view of the sea and the sun going down. I am always amazed at how various the sunsets are, and how glorious.

Some years ago Henry the Heron used to show up just after sunset. We’d watch him winging his way along the ocean, make a sharp turn right to our roof. He’d sit on a post and keep us company for five or ten minutes watching the colors intensity and fade and then he’d be on his way. Judi, one of our hosts at Casa Obelisco named him, or maybe it was Dan. He was with us for a couple of seasons, and then he was gone. We miss him.

This evening the sun creates a glowing path across the waters to the dark fronds of the palm trees silhouetted before us. There are a few gray and white brush strokes of cloud, but mostly it’s clear. A long strand of pelicans flies south. As the sun approaches the sea the waves seem to pick up energy, curling their white manes and galloping into the shore. What makes the light change, go suddenly gold while the sea turns a deeper blue? That divine alchemical painter is stirring things up again—color ricochets off the clouds; gold turns to orange casting light upward and suddenly the sun is gone but fuchsia and gold grow more and more intense in the clouds. The palms are so black and so still, in contrast.

Color fades—grays grow grayer, fuchsia and gold turn to pale pink—the sea sighs, the palms brood. We hear crickets; a gecko clucks. That red orange at the horizon does not want to let us go—it keeps glowing while everything darkens around us. We could be sinking into the center of the earth. Sasha, your spirit is with us.

Sunset with Turtle Hatchlings

It’s Dan’s birthday. We’re at La Playa celebrating sunset and Dan. Sasha, how you’d love these Mango Margaritas and this scene—the sea is ablaze with light and shimmer; two figures at water’s edge seem to merge into one, then become two once again; sun blazed figures carry surfboards along the shining sea.

A spontaneous party has happened. All our fellow guests from Casa Obelisco are here with us. We’ve heard that there is to be a turtle release on the beach just before sunset. And here’s Lauren, La Playa’s hostess, pointing our way down the beach to where a crowd is gathering.

We run across the sand to water’s edge. Tiny turtle hatchlings, no bigger than a baby’s palm, are toddling toward the ocean. One falls into a human footprint and struggles to get out. There are fifty-nine of them, hatched this morning in the special protected turtle nursery created by Turtle Frank and a group of passionate turtle protecting volunteers. They have raised consciousness in San Pancho of the decline in the turtle population. The problem has been people who believe that turtle eggs enhance male potency. Turtle Frank and his helpers educated the children about the magic of turtles. The children educated their parents. The turtle population is coming back.

Turtle Frank is speaking on the beach. He explains that they release the hatchlings before sundown so it’s not too cold for them, but dark enough so the fish can’t see them. Those who survive will swim eight days without stopping or eating; they need to get beyond the current. Some will make it as far as the Philippines or the Galapagos. Some of those (maybe two percent) will find their way back to the beach where they were hatched to lay eggs of their own. We watch as a wave comes, taking some of the babies. “Go for it!” somebody shouts. “Oh no!” Some of the hatchlings are upside down. Turtle Frank and his helpers turn them right side up, send them on their way.

We’ve forgotten about the sun. There it is behind a bank of clouds—a glimmer of glorious color not yet revealed—a golden globe emerging from the cloud—entering the sea like a great glowing mother turtle, checking up on her babies at sea. Sasha, you would have loved to see this. Your spirit is with us.


Here’s a poem I wrote that one year we were in Mexico together, before any of us knew you were ill:

We’ve Come South

for nothing much

but ocean, rocks and sun

for the squeal of a rusty pulley at dawn

for the bugles and drums of the 54th Batallon de Infanteria announcing sunrise

We’ve come south to see nothing much

but the mermaid riding a turtle over the early morning beach

where fishermen dock their boats

full of red snapper, yellow tail, tuna

We’ve come south to do nothing much but walk barefoot on sand

watch the flight of a frigate with scimitar wings

watch an old man ride his burro across the sand

return to our little hotel to see how far Simplissio

has gotten on his mural—

the village the jaguar the woman with the baby on her back

the skeleton the iguana on a tree the mountains the angels in the sky

We’ve come south to celebrate

the descent of the sun every day

pelicans gather

beer drinking northerners gather

children playing ball on the beach gather

to see how gold rims the edges of clouds

how red plunges deep into dark blue

and she opens her body to him and he

looks at her with the eyes of an old sea bird

he is pelican

she is iguana

stirred into the brimming cup

of nothing much

and we who have been together

life after life

know this in our bodies

We’ve come south to drink

our fill

The Language Muse

[Image from Black Mountain Bulletin Summer 1944]

With words you pull up the underworld. Word, the paltriest and the mightiest.

C.G. Jung The Red Book

I have been musing about language ever since I can remember. As a child I wandered between my parents native German, their adopted Dutch -used for secrets- the Italian I learned young, when we lived in Rome and Florence, and English. In my last posting I wrote about my father’s angry curse, “Potfadorry, which was frightening, magical -of mysterious origin. I thought it was a German expression. My friend Carly, who lives in South Africa but is Dutch, informs me that it’s a Dutch word spelled "Potverdorie” and meaning damn you --but with some humor.

The swirl of languages was fascinating and confusing. I remember being 5, getting off the ocean liner that had carried my family from Italy to New York Harbor. My mother’s cousin Annemie was there to greet us. “Oh” she said to me “the kiddies will be so glad to see you.” Kiddies? I thought, does she have kittens? No kittens. Just cousins Callie and Pampy. I felt dumb, and disappointed.

I muse about expressions as they dance in and out of fashion. I was amused to discover that the long gone rhyme besotted saying of my youth “See you later alligator” has a contemporary cousin. Our teenage grandson Justin texted: “Okey Dokey artichokey.” I love it!

Some phases seem to me to express the poetic soul of the collective. A favorite of mine, one that has emerged in recent years, is “back in the day.” It sets a tone, enchants, invites us into a shimmering mythic time when things were different and we were young. It’s a bit like “Once upon a time” because it opens the way to a story. Another favorite of mine is “back of the beyond,” which holds an alliterative tension between back and beyond. Back is where we keep the trash cans, where the backdoor man makes his appearance, the part of our bodies that we can’t see, the part that we place on the toilet seat. Beyond, in contrast, is open and shining, the mystery of the after life, an evocation of the unknown and unfathomable. The back of beyond is both disgusting and marvelous.

These expressions resonate with cultural and personal associations. They feel good on my tongue and in my heart. They sing with the joy of speech.

But sometimes an expression comes along that bothers me a lot. It sets my teeth on edge. It irritates me and puts me in a foul humor. “Gone South," as in “the market has gone south” is one of these. It flattens and negates. It conveys a quantitative image of a graph with sharp angles pointing downwards. That’s South. That’s bad. As opposed to sharp angles pointing upwards. These are North. That’s good.

I find this offensive. South to me is warm and sexy. South is full of music, hot nights, vivid flowers. I spent my youngest years in the American South -North Carolina. Now we all know that there was plenty of bad stuff happening in the South in the forties, when I was a baby and toddler. But I was a lucky child. My father’s first teaching job in this country was at Black Mountain College. It was a radical school -desegregated, with my parents help, in 1945. It was the fountain of much energy in the arts and poetry. When I visited the site of the long gone college some years ago I realized that I had been blessed by the very landscape of that place. My world was magical. The log cabin we lived in was called “Black Dwarf.” The school was situated at the shore of Lake Eden. It was Paradise.

Here is my grandmother’s painting of Lake Eden, and a couple of poems about my childhood in the South.

Painting of Lake Eden by Emma Hoffman

MY EDEN
(Black Mountain College, 1943-47)

Garden of the sun dappled baby I was
and the tow headed toddler, I can see me now
on the wooded path, beloved of the morning

and the night, drunk on mother’s milk
and daddy’s lullabies, cradled in the rapture
of the mountains, captivated by the fiery flash

of a Cardinal in flight, seer of the light
in willows, and in the waters of Lake Eden
enchanted by the song of the Carolina Wren

transported into sleep on wings of Bach and Schubert
enfolded as I was in this Black Mountain tribe
of music makers, paint stirrers, pot throwers, leapers in the air

Outside the gates—news of the war
Smoke rose, bombs fell
Inside the gates—faculty fights

for or against, communism, twelve tone music, short shorts
on young women. In the basement of the cottage named
Black Dwarf, a Moccasin frightened my mother. But I

lucky baby, took my first steps
between your apple and your wild
rhododendron, greedy for the names of your every living thing

Early I lost you. Lately I’ve found you
again. Sweet spot, source
of the singing in my heart, and my communion
with the mountains


BLACK DWARF

Who came up with so fairy tale a name for you?
Once you housed my greenhorn parents
the upstairs poet, his toy trains, the library lady, and me

Did I roll down your sunny lawns? Did I learn about stairs
on your front porch, or up the long flight
to see the trains run? Was there snow

in the winter? Did your windows let in summer’s
full foliage? Do you remember my first step, first word, first mashed
banana? Did you protect me in my sleep? Did you practice magic

in the way of the little people? Did you teach the toddler I was
to cast the circle, call the directions? Are my dreams inscribed
in your walls? Did creatures from other realms fly about

your ceilings? Are you haunted by my parents early love—
my father’s Well Tempered Klavier; my mother’s Mozart Divertimenti
by Roland Hayes singing, in your living room, that Old Pharoah

should let our people go?

You, little house with the enchanted name
toadstool under which my whole world hatched…


This is how my grandmother saw me, when I was a toddler.

Painting of Naomi, Age 2 by Emma Hoffman

Italy is also South, also magical, also a beloved childhood landscape. When I’ve traveled there as an adult, I’ve always felt profoundly at home, even though, sadly, I have lost my Italian. Some part of me knows the music of that language in my soul and in my hands. When my grandmother’s family fled Germany in 1932, after Hitler’s rise, they went to Italy, to Capris, for a brief holiday, to recover after so much fear and grief, before they moved on to the Netherlands. My grandmother’s painting of that Southern landscape hangs in my living room.

Painting of Capri by Emma Hoffman

Nowadays my favorite South is Mexico. Dan and I recover from the stresses and strains of our lives by going South to Mexico in the winter. We go to an enchanting small town, San Pancho -north of Puerto Vallarta and stay in a lovely B & B- Casa Obelisco, whose owners have become our dear friends over the years. It always soothes our souls to be there, reconnects us to our deeper lives.

Go South. I recommend it. Ignore the media hype about Mexico. There are no drug wars in San Pancho. It’s safer than North Oakland. Ignore the graphs about the endless ups and downs of markets; ignore the news of wars and disasters. Gaze at the bougainvillea and the hibiscus. Take a long walk down the beach, watch the pelicans grazing the waves with their wings. Fill your tired eyes with ocean, sky and palm trees. Have a margarita at sunset. Decide which of many fine local restaurants you’ll visit tonight.

Write a poem.

Gone South

One who has too many things to do
Has gone South, by the sea. She
Watches the curl of a wave. It crashes
Into a thousand thousand drops -all reflecting
The one
Sun

She
Who is too many things
To too many people
Returns
To her senses

Ocean in her ears, purple
Bougainvillea, yellow hibiscus, green palms
In her eyes, breeze
In her face, bringing news
To her nose
Of fish, wet sand, sea salt
To her tongue

Seagull cries. Someone
Opens the gate, calls out
“Hola!”

Later, she and her Dan
Will sit on the roof
Caught in that moment
Before sun falls
Into sea
Before moody moon
Takes over
Seven pelicans float past

Hush!
Let this moment linger
Let the sun engrave
Its dying lavender magenta
Into the belly of the clouds

Let the too many things
Dissolve into
The One

Sunset, San Pancho, Nayarit, Mexico. Photo by Dan Safran