Mexico Retrograde

This was one of those days where I went from place to place with specific things to get done and got nowhere. Ok, the “got nowhere” ain't true. Truth is everywhere I went had other plans and I did something other than what I thought I was doing there. If I wanted to be my demanding, tryannical self, (I started to say American self but changed it because that's not specifically American is it), I had great reasons and excuses to be angry and frustrated and all that stuff. Instead, the way everything was so consistently not on my wave length, got to be funny.

You hear all the time about, " Well, Mercury is in retrograde", or "Wait till Mercury comes out of retrograde". To tell you the absolute truth I have no idea if there really is a Mercury or, if there is, if the planet does a retrograde thing or not. It's like someone somewhere made up this great mythology about this planet called Mercury. All that I can say is I've seen a light in the sky that I'm told is the planet Mercury, don't know for sure, but ok cool, and when it does go into retrograde, communication and other various things get difficult. That's quite a story and it can be an interesting explanation for why we have problems with certain things at certain times.

I'm not for or against Mercury or retrograde, I just find what we do with the story to be interesting and at this moment, very amusing. See when you’re an American living in Mexico the whole planet would appear, most of the time, to be in some kind of retro-something. Mexico is so obviously made up of millions of individual human beings, being whatever they have decided to be, in each little moment with very little interest at all in what your expectations might be. If you can't find the humor, then you'd better go home to Gringolandia.

In Mexico survival is sometimes not even a generation away, so as my Israeli friend would say "What da fuck, you expect what? Something different than what is? Don't be stupid." This is really funny to me because I've lived most of my life being really ridiculous when I would have days like this, and the truth is there are no days like this, there are just days. Sometimes things happen the way we expect, sometimes they don't, so what, big deal, who cares?

Today set up like a great Dino de Laurentis film with, first of all, the main Customs Department of the Mexico City Postal service where I'm trying to get some stuff I shipped from Peru in Febuary, released from Customs jail. In Mexico if you get something in the mail that's valuable then the Government will do its best to collect a duty based on what they say your items are worth, regardless of receipts or not. Today one of the interior offices was being painted so they could not process any work. What? That's what I said. This is like a twenty five thousand square foot building—one office??? Ok, makes as much sense as corn ethanol.

So since we were so close, we moved on to the Mexico City airport so I could change a plane ticket to a flight that was listed online, except that, at the airport the person behind the desk said that the flight listed online didn't exist. I wonder if they are selling tickets online—makes more sense than almost all of the last 8 years of the Bush administration. At least this Mexican airline did have some real flights, I know that , I'd just flown one.

Next we drove the hour back to Teotihuacan to see a house owned by a wonderful family that had asked me to look at it for a potential business venture. When we arrived at their Ranch to go see the house the Caporal, that's a forman, told us that the lady that lived in the house could not be found to give permission for him to show it to us. That would have made perfect sense except the lady that lived in that house had died a year ago and I don't believe she still cared. The Capo was very serious and straight faced and I couldn't help but laugh, but intending no disrespect I said we'd come back later. By this time we were hungry and so we came home to the Dreaming House to a killer meal of Posole and tortillas.

Welcome to the dream of the humans where, if your life is too predictable, then I can guarantee you, you have almost choked it to death. Life comes formless and then we set the process of form and shape and quality and color, all in motion with our human reality spinning hearts and minds. The only thing real about living in this world is that part of us that we will never be able to define and our amazing experience of being human. So, "What da fuck? You expect something different from what is? Don't be stupid." And, give retrograde a break, maybe it's just life happening here. Peace and Love, Lee

Six Years Ago Today

This is the anniversary day of my marriage to Mee Tracy. That was six years ago. We were married in a grove of trees behind the Villas Arqueologicas Hotel in Teotihuacan, Mexico. Looking back, that day was like a snapshot of things to come. You see we didn't just go get married, we were 7 months pregnant and got married in the midst of a life changing Power Journey with 16 other people, some of whom came to be with us on the wedding day, and some who were just there for the journey and fell into the wedding party by chance. 

Everything about our wedding ceremony was one-of-a-kind. My wife decided not to have bridesmaids, rather she asked four of her best friends who are all gay men to be her attendants. I had been married once before in a beautiful ceremony at a Catholic church in Nashville with 300 people in attendance. That was another life time though and this was nothing like that.

Mee, my bride, had never been down the aisle so she was really anxious and had all four men (who were dressed to kill in their best sarongs) running in circles trying to keep her from bolting to the Mexico City airport, while doing her hair and coordinating the event with the staff of the hotel, most of which spoke no English, and with the attendants who spoke no Spanish. It all looked like a “Through The Looking Glass” game of charades being played out in the shadow of the magical landscape of Teotihuacan, with the Avenue Of The Dead and the Temple To The Sun and Moon as our witnesses. 

At one point Durrell, the lead coordinator, needed matches to light the candles on our alter so he ran into the hotel office and tried to sign language the shape of a candle and the flame flickering on top and kept saying, “For the groom. For the man,” referring to me who all the hotel staff knew from my previous trips to Teotihuacan. The nice lady in the office finally said, "Si, uno momento," and she went to the store next door and came back with ... condoms!

Durrell freaked out because Mee was 7 months pregnant and we all lost it laughing so hard til this big rain cloud blew in, the God Tlaloc of course, arriving in style. With the first rain drops the whole staff of the hotel showed up with umbrellas and stood over the flowers and alter keeping everything dry til the shower stopped 20 minutes later. 

Our whole day continued as a crazy, funny, sweet and magical blessing for us all, and especially for Mee and me. So here we are 6 years later and neither of us are hardly recognizable compared to who we thought we were at that time. We've had two daughters that are all there is to love. We've grown, screamed, stretched, loved and continued to laugh and allow life to guide us toward tomorrow. (Oh yeah and we've set up 7 different homes in two different states and one foreign country.) I not only fell in love with my wife over the last 6 years but I have fallen in love with life, all of it, the color, texture, challenge, magic and tragedy. 

Six years ago today I began a great adventure with a great woman and I have no more idea what’s coming next than the man in the moon. That's the freedom of living in love, real love. There's always another chapter waiting to be created for those who allow this amazing life to be all that it might be, free from our fear-filled demands and our know-it-all agendas. 

Where were you six years ago? Isn't it amazing all that moves through us as we live our little lives one day at a time? If I could I'd invite the world to stop, all together at 7p.m. today, and look up at the sky and say, “Thank you life, I love you,” and for just a moment we could all put our attention on one thing in our life that we have unconditional love for. I really believe that would be something we humans are worthy of. 

I love my Mee and I love my little girls, all 4 of them, and to Who or Whatever is dreaming this dream, I love you too. Onward there is life to be lived here....Peace, Lee

L.A. Afternoon- Warning! this is a rant

It's Wednesday afternoon in beautiful Los Angeles, California. I had an interesting reconnection today with some old and new friends. You see a few months ago I was really taken back by the way the American Veterans are being treated by the Government that they serve. It's all too clear that D.C. has become the worst of the worst. There is no integrity in any country that lies, cheats and steals from those who have put their lives and the well-being of their families on the line in service to that country — and, WE, America are doing just that.

Our Vets have become nothing more than a commodity to be used by the powers that rule Washington, and then are thrown out and told to “hurry up and wait” if they need support after having gone into Hell for whatever Lies the Politicos happen to feed WE the people. To tell you the truth, I can't understand why anyone would join the Military of the USA with all that's been going on since Vietnam. We must still believe that all the inspiring rhetoric we're taught in school still exists somewhere in Kansas...

What I spent the day working on was creating a network among existing Mental Health treatment programs in the U.S. to support, at no charge, our returning Veterans. They have earned that help and, in my opinion, shouldn't ever have pay taxes again as well, but the machine in D.C. would never go for that. It's interesting that the V.A. has no money to do it's job and the military cannot account for 12 BILLION DOLLARS IN U.S. CASH IN IRAQ. What the ---- are we , you and me, and all those people who appear to be paying attention, doing or rather sitting back and watching being done in our names.

The group of Men that I sat with today, are willing to do our best to create support for our troops. And we need to do it for free because the government has pissed away, stolen and wasted BILLIONS of dollars of OUR money and can't afford to take care of our own. This is beyond stupid and we just accept it.

My wife's little brother is a Vet and he's been screwed over by the system, and my son-in-law is a Vet and he's had the same “patriotic” experience. This is happening in our names, by the people that we have empowered to govern OUR country and OUR vets and their families are paying a price that they never signed up for. There have been revolutions over less than this.

I love what this country stood for, I do not love what is going on today. I see there is a movement to impeach Bush. Did somebody just wake up or what????? I live in Mexico most of the time now and even in Mexico, the Banditos have enough class to be honest that they will steal from you. In The States we have enough smoke billowing out of our asses to see it from the moon, and we pretend there's no fire. I'd much rather give my dinero to the Mexican Banditos , they don't offend my intelligence. Anyway there will be more about what we're doing to help OUR VETS and frankly, if you're not part of the solution, you are part of the problem. That's just my opinion and it ought to be yours. Thanks, Lee