Smooth brain hours (Human Pursuits 10/12/21)
My distractions felt necessary until suddenly, sitting there on a beach in Puerto Vallarta, they didn’t.
VANCOUVER – Somewhere between Yelapa and YVR, it seems, I lost all motivation. I’m not entirely sure what happened. When Leah and I touched down in balmy Puerto Vallarta a couple weeks ago, I had what I thought were reasonable intentions. Read, rest, relax, repeat. If I got some writing done, it would be a bonus. A lime wedge, if you will, on the cold margarita that is one week out of office. A week which, frankly, could not have come at a better time.
As I wrote nearly a month ago (!!!), work was one big breaking news alert in the days before departure, thanks to record rainfalls that swamped huge swathes of BC’s south coast, and caused yours truly to feel a lot of strong feelings. And somehow that was only the start. The weather models showed two more storms were set to sweep across the province. Already rain was falling softly on the plane's wings as they lifted us off the tarmac.
And yet, as we made our way over the good state of Jalisco and through the streets of touristy Puerto Vallarta, it seemed like nothing had ever happened. The sun shone low in the clear blue sky as our shuttle drove us to the airport. And yet I couldn’t shake this feeling of lingering dread. As if the other shoe was waiting to drop. As if the floodgates were about to open yet again, to sweep the Hilton Vallarta Riviera from its perch overlooking the Pacific.
The first few days, I sat by the pool with Leah, my sister Charlotte and her husband Chris, and tried to relax. We slathered ourselves in SPF 50 and sipped palomas and piña coladas from the resort’s plastic cups. I read the last few chapters of a book about the trials and tribulations of four U.S. presidents. When I finished, I stared at the sapphire blue ocean and wondered at the utter privilege that is international travel; at the ability to leave your literal worries behind. Before we left I toyed with the idea of writing something from Puerto Vallarta, if only to experience the novelty of changing the newsletters dateline. But it was too hot and I had too little to say. I told myself I would write when the mood struck.
Sometimes I would see something funny or interesting, like a leathery faced boomer sporting an Air Garcia t-shirt, or how the coast line near the hotel sorta looked like Maui, and make a note of it in my phone. But the notes never amounted to anything. It was as if the more relaxed I got, the more my brain struggled to make sense of it all. Stranger still – I didn’t seem to mind. The dread I experienced earlier in the trip had dissipated. By the time we took a water taxi down the coast to the coarse sands of Yelapa, I was in full blown sicko mode, sipping watered down cocktails out of a coconut, watching güeros parasail overhead. That afternoon we walked to a nearby waterfall and took pictures. Chris and I drank warm Coronas as tour guides tried to keep people from going into the surrounding forest.
Back at the resort, life assumed the pace of lazy leisure. Green juice at the breakfast buffet. Reading by the beach as waiters in white carried trays of cerveza, only to be tipped in American dollars. I tried not to think about my own presumptuousness for not bringing any pesos, about the White Lotus-esque power dynamics playing out in front of me. I stared at the ocean some more until space and time seemed to disappear, until my brain felt dull and smooth.
Sometimes it’s only when you stop to catch your breath that you realize how exhausted you are. For almost two years, my effort and focus has been in a state of near perpetual motion, as I did everything in my power to distract myself from the myriad changes washing over society. From two hour walks early in the pandemic, to going into the office almost every day, to starting this Substack, I filled the days the only way I knew how. The distractions felt necessary until suddenly, sitting there on the beach, they didn’t. All I wanted was to sit and read and decompress. To trust that whatever I truly cared about would be there if and when I wanted to return to it.
As we flew back to Vancouver, I read a book about an internet drug lord and wondered if there were ever days when he felt like phoning it in. I thought about the glass mosaic in Lazaro Cardenas Park and how its colours lingered in my already fading memory. How with a little inspiration, and enough time, even the smallest fragment of a thing can dazzle bright as the sun.
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