THURSDAY JANUARY 12, 2017 
I've arrived in Puerto Escondido still bruised and sad. Twelve hours plus of travel from LA and two stops a long the way. The first of which was in Guadalajara where I needed to pass through customs. I went and put a sandwich in the trash can because it had been in my suitcase that was too close to the ground for too long, and I had no appetite besides.

When I went to the carousel to claim my other suitcase a giant uniformed police man walked up to me.  Meanwhile his black dog, also heavily uniformed, took an extreme interest in my belongings. I explained to the police man that I'd until very recently been carrying food in the front pocket of that suitcase.  This for some reason made him angry. He told me to get on the ground and open the bag. I shrugged and did so, whereupon his dog began wagging its tail and licking my face. Then the dog jumped up and placed its paws on my shoulders.  Confused and embarrassed, the man told me I could close the bag. I did. He walked away, pulling the dog with him.

I made it through customs with no problems, took another plane to Mexico City, and then a smaller one with two propellers to Puerto Escondido.  There I walked in the warm sea breeze from the runway to the small building that is the airport, claimed my bags again, and quickly found a cab to La Punta where my apartment is.  

It's hot here. I sit on my patio drinking beer, smoking the last of my American Spirit cigarettes. The sun sets slowly, and I hope that in a few more sunsets, I'll have let go of my troubles, and am left only with whatever that dog saw. 

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FRIDAY JANUARY 13, 2017
I kept up on wrecking myself and was for a while too dumb to see the correlation to the attendant look reality took on. We can draw conclusions on what the sources of  this self destructive behavior may have been. Everyone suffers losses, and what follows losses for a fool, are the subconscious value judgements on whether the measure of the response in time and magnitude was warranted by the pain that preceded it.

The wise people I've seen don't play by these rules anymore. They become free. Their gardens grow, their talents find expression, and the conditions become ripe to fall in love. School children are led to believe that these are the markings of an authentic life, but this lesson is ill conceived. Success in any field is not for the deserved. This is not to say that it is won any easier by wickedness than virtue.  Rather, if I was a teacher, and I was, I'd tell the children this:  The greatest feats performed in the arena are exclusively the handy work of actors unbound by blame and recognition.  

That is my conclusion, so please don't interpret it as mean spirited or ironic when I say I don't care anymore. I haven't given up, but I'm contented now to let the arbiters of fate reside beyond the veil.  The voice of the cruel comedian says I read like an idiot's graffiti scrawled onto a monastery wall.   I am the vessel, I am what the vessel contains, and outside of the vessel is what I am. Maybe, but if he aims only for laughter, than why would I be hurt?

After the old man told me of the thieves marauding in the streets of my new Mexican home I went back to my cabana and drank Victorias on the patio while the fan whirled.  Dogs barked and bats flew by.  The lights in the swimming pool shimmered on the palm trees and a tropical moon shone through the warm and misty breeze that blew in from the sea.  

The next morning I woke up early and walked down the hill to get a coffee.  I got in conversation outside Cafe Ole with a Canadian couple and their friend Vincent from Berlin.  I asked them what they planned to do today and they said go to second hand stores and look for the cameras and computers they'd been robbed of the previous afternoon.  I expressed sympathy and they shrugged and said "this is Mexico." Vincent then told me a long story about how people from New York are ruining Berlin.  He was tall and handsome and liked to go to discotheques. I said as little about myself as I could manage and left their table after what felt like the right amount of time.  

Walking in the hot the sun back up the hill to my cabana, a faintly familiar feeling took hold of me. 

-bought plastic boxes story..../ put a lock on bathroom door

-daily routine...yoga, journal, breakfast, take equipment out of plastic boxes, music, put music back into plastic boxes, lock doors, surfing, dinner, beer, bed