Zihuatanejo, Part I (An Ode)

Though I love the murals of Diego Rivera, I think Rubens would best capture the sweetness and tragedy and humanity of this beach at this moment.

I watch the beach from a beer-company-labeled plastic chair under a the shade of sombrilla. I see rich, fit men from Mexico City play a heated match of volleyball. A dark brown vendor make braids (trencitas) in the hair of a white girl whose eyes go wide with each tug on her scalp. Books by the vacation canonized authors (Cussler, Grisham, Collins) are devoured by roasted red, wrinkly Canadians who bring their own beer sleeves down to this beach and who do this everyday for four months and who, in the evenings, sing along smokily with others like them to the anthems of Jimmy Buffet and Wings. I see so so many little brown kids in skivvies, sitting in holes they made with their families, holes that are refreshed now and again with an extended wave, and also in the hole is a sandy abuelita and she watches her loved ones and she watches the ocean. The motorboats drags parasailers along the canvas of the blue-yellow sky. Amongst all the squeals of all the beach children and dogs, I can hear the vendors sell the products with poetic diction: pulseras, raspados, collares, cacahuates, mangos. I hear the rancheras of the wandering musicians. I put in my earphones and listen to a playlist I've made called LAST DAY - ZIHUA- 2010, a playlist with Debussy and Brian Eno and Soleas. Gentle, misty, sadly loving music.

To my soundtrack, I look at all of this.

The 4:45 December sun yellowing the hills that hug the bay. The old begging man with cataract eyes and hands as gnarled as a chewed bone. The father smearing his daughter in 50 SPF sunscreen before releasing her back to the sea. All the sleeping bodies on beach towels. The waiter who used to pick raspberries in Bellingham, kicking up sand as he walks back to the palapa to get Erica and I Coronas. The kite made of shredded plastic bags floating above us. The Pacific Ocean as vast as our love and sorrows. All of this is a beauty that feels ancient and universal, but still it's a beauty that hurts, and my eyes burn with tears.

Erica taps me on the hand. I remove my headphones. "Wanna play Cribbage?" she asks. I do, and we play, and when we finish the game, the sun is lower in the sky. We pack up our things, pay our bill, and painfully jest about the weather in Seattle we'll get the next day. (I do my best to not think of the freeways, the silent streets, the dark, the material conversations.) We stand up, hold hands, look at it all one more time, and walk slowly over the sand in our barefeet, on our way out.