I am on a mission to meet a monkey
recently i made friends with two therapists from seattle. one of whom looked unambiguously PNW-ish. birds of a feather... don't know how to dress for this weather? (i should only speak for myself haha)
tangent
technically it's illegal for my therapist to meet with me while i'm out of the country. i know she genuinely cares about me, but i've discovered that the boundary of care exists just short of insurance fraud. it's a line she isn't willing to cross... well, she did say, unless i'm in crisis. so come to think of it, that means she probably would risk doing time for me afterall. i think the doing time metric is a good & important standard with which hold all people in your life. if you wouldn't go to prison for me, how close could we possibly be?
anyway, to return, there is no longer a therapist-shaped hole in my life! ...at least for a few more days. one of the women, idil (pronounced E-deal) is very good at making plans, and also down to carry the torch of speaking pained spanish whenever necessary. i think we've become friend-friends.
we went to the botanical gardens together, and i was on a mission to see spider monkeys. unfortunately i think my motor mouth might've disqualified us from the possibility. i was feeling xtra chatty
>airin chatmax
undeterred, we made a second plan to go into the jungle, this time accompanied by a dr of primatology! for real. somehow idil had recruited a friendly german scientist named anya, who offered to do her best to help us find los monos.
okay, i'm realizing this story is anticlimactic, because even with the help of anya's monkey calls, we were unable to spot said monos. was this dr. a quack?! or was the common denominator my talkative ways? maybe i was on a mission to chat all along. hmmm mission accomplished?
despite whiffing on monkey spotting, this was probably the most interesting area i've come across in puerto morelos.
the first thing we saw were fancy houses with a hippie-ish aesthetic, (sort of like the house of gong. *previously on... by the way, wtf do hippies do to get so much money? pls inform. i'd love to read an essay about the intersection of hippie ideals and capitalism etc if it exists)
the further we went, the more lawless the vibe. there was a brightly painted, diy/experimental-looking school with a broken down clown wagon parked next door. i met the man who used to drive it- franco, the former clown from argentina. *i say former, but we all know once a clown always a clown.
i want to be friends with franco. he invited me to an event at the school the next day, but as a childless man, i have a rule against attending events for children lol
he asked me if i was an actor, which was sort of confusing. like, is it because i'm a blonde gringo? or did he think he recognized me? i later pieced together that jessica had introduced me to him like 9 months ago. so maybe he forgot and just thought tv is the only way he would be recognizing a stranger
there were also super interesting looking complexes of bizarre buildings that couldn't possibly have been made to meet any legal code- protected by half-cocked dogs charging with ambiguous intentions...
according to anya the scientist, jaguars roam this area, boas too. and apparently if you go about 10 streets further, you'd run into people you don't want to meet (i told her "in that case.. i don't want to meet them.") there was a definite air of danger and lawlessness. but it was also energetically fascinating- like new things were brewing here. i think if i lived in pm i would for sure find myself up to weird or interesting things somewhere in this zone of interest.
idil and i met up that evening to hang on a hotel rooftop and chat. a couple drunk expats were the only other people up there. at one point they swore they saw a ufo. i tried to see it but couldn't. is belief in ufos prerequisite? i do want to believe. they told us about other unexplainable things they've seen "down here"(mx) one of which they said looked like the dog from neverending story??? wtf. i mean, me no know.
they made sure to mention they weren't on drugs if anyone was wondering.
i had a bit of a scare when the apartment i was going to rent was rented to someone else. long story, i had been slow to sign the contract. i thought for a moment i was going to have to phrog in empty rental biuldings
i think it was meant to be, because i ended up getting the next door house that i had joked about squatting in, for the same price as the one that had vanished. this house is literally the mirror of the house i was in before.
okay that's all for now.
i haven't been taking as many 35mm photos as i'd like. maybe because i don't currently have a way to develop film.
would you like to hear about anything else specifically? some people ask what i've been eating for example. do you want to see food photos? i think that sometimes unsolicited dish pics can be quite vulgar, but please lemme know and i'll include if you want.