Recollections of Sayulita and Farewell to Jonathan Skow

SOMEbody has to be HERE in Sayulita!

Looks like I'm the designated body. 

I wholeheartedly accept the task of breathing moist palpable air. Touch the air, it touches back! The sound of surf underscores birdsong and Henrique's velvet baritone as he prepares the ceremonial space for this evening's welcome when all fifteen participants will be present.

Last night several of us walked to the central plaza to see the remains of the Día de Los Muertos festivities. Sayulita is known for this grand celebration.

Imagine Tibetan prayer flags hung in rows two-feet apart across all the major dirt and cobblestone streets, only the images cut out on each colorful square are of skulls, human and animal skeletons, suns, moons, and stars. On the streets closed to vehicle traffic, mandalas of pollen, amaranth, dyed rice of all hues, and fresh flowers mirror the themes and motifs of the fluttering flags above. 

Whole families are dining outside on the sidewalks. Most shops are closed as it is approaching midnight but we see through a window many statues encrusted with Huichol beaded designs. Rainbow colored horses, jaguars, and turtles.

The night is SO hot and humid, the dirt covered cobblestone one-way roads are alternately dusty and muddy since the tail of Hurricane Willa lashed Sayulita in late October.

Ana, Janaína and I linger longer in town trying to order a small taco for Janaína to taste the local flavors.  It takes a  L - O - N - G  time. When her Brazilian tongue meets the hot Mexican chiles, I see smoke rising from her ears! Tears fill her eyes. I taste the taco. Ouch! I say to Ana, "Please tell her how courageous I think she is."  When Janaína responds she says, "ALL mothers are courageous. We have to be." I think she's right and there are many more reasons ALL women are courageous and have to be. She tells me she has a daughter who is eighteen and a twenty-two-year-old son. She asks about my family. I name my beloved husband, both daughters, and the nine-year-old grandie. 

Ana, who has known me for fourteen years, translates for Janaína and me. I lament that my Portuguese has rusted to the point of being creaky to virtually useless. By this time we are on the bridge walking back to Corazon, the compound where we wiłl hold ceremonies for the next two weeks. The others must have gotten back long enough ago that we three were missed because right behind us come our hosts Billie and her husband Tim in the golf cart that drove Henrique and three others of our group earlier into town.

''We were worried,'' Billie says. ''Everyone else is back so we thought we'd better make sure Ana didn't get lost again.'' We all laugh. Ann's default setting is ''lost.''

We three "lost souls" hop on the back of the golf cart. WhenTim tries to start it, nothing happens. It is as dead as my Portuguese language skills. Four strong but travel-weary women push the cart up a small hill so Tim can give it a jump start on the way down. After three such tries, we leave the fickle cart parked near the all night pizza place and the five of us walk home. It's a sweaty, steamy walk... the best antidote to cramped seat airline and bus travel.

What a perfect first day I've had!

About day seven into our two week stay, I got word from the last resident of my childhood home that Jonathan Skow died as result of injuries sustained in a surfing accident. He and his wife, clothing designer Trina Turk, purchased the John Lautner designed home from my brothers and me in 2014. They loved it from the ground up, renovating it back to Lautner's original intent: Bring Nature IN. 

I'm heart-sick that Jonathan's vision, joy, and dedication to supporting the arts is taken from the world too soon. My heart aches for Trina. Together, she and Jonathan have made such a positive difference in this sometimes sad and often sorry world. I will miss him.

Here's a re-link to the NY Times article about Trina, Jonathan, and the "Long Lost Lautner."

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/07/fashion/lost-john-lautner-house-trina-turk.html?rref=collection/sectioncollection/fashion&action=click&contentCollection=fashion&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront&_r=0 

Sayonara, Sayulita

It was a shock to leave 85 degree moist air on Mexico's Pacific Coast to come home to "Smokeland" where it's 53 degrees, dry, with thick apocalyptic smoke from the fires in Northern and Southern California.

Looking over photos of the trip, puts me back in the mind-set of gratitude for all I got to experience in twelve short days.

Henrique, my favorite shaman from Brazil, with whom I've studied since 2004, is very brave to set foot out of the country of his birth for the first time in his life. Accompanied only by translator Juliana, and Janaína, a helper person from the huge community there in Belo Horizonte, he comes to Sayulita to teach us, guide us and heal in us what he can. We are fifteen participants from British Columbia, California, Colorado, Idaho, Illinois, Minnesota, and Washington. Another translator, Ana, joined us for eight of the twelve days.

We are hosted by a couple who have been going to Brazil to work with Henrique since 2010. Their compound is called Corazon (Heart), and is

comprised of innumerable luxurious white-washed casitas on a hillside overlooking the Pacific. The dusty and muddy roads into town are the only residual evidence that Hurricane Willa lashed her tail at Sayulita in October. Luckily, the timing of this very special gathering was perfect.

Palapa is a new word in my Spanish vocabulary. There are at least two on Corazon's property. One is the main outdoor room where we nineteen folk meet, work, sing, and learn each day. Seventy feet long by thirty feet deep, the main palapa has roofing made of palm fronds secured only by weaving them in and out of cross beams made of a particular wood that must be harvested on the new moon, which is low-tide for sap. When fronds or trees are full of sap, they attract the termites which can devour the palapa in a matter of months because they're sweet and tasty to the hungry buggers. 

My two roommates and I stayed in a casita called Tres Amigos. Here we are under the circular palapa between kitchen and pool. 

 Janaína and I speak Portuguese very slowly. She is Henrique's helper, singer, and arranger of ceremonial objects. My refresher, on-the-ground-crash-course in Brazilian Portuguese this trip allowed me to translate many conversations for students into English, and into Spanish for the wait-staff at Corazon and English into pigeon Portuguese and Spanish.  

On our first night as sun drops into the Pacific, students gather to bask in the glow and look at mandalas chalked onto a roof-top floor. Some of us then go to see the remnants in town of celebrations of Día de los Muertos. There is a large Huichol population in Sayulita and one street off the plaza is decorated ornately in their particularly colorful traditional designs. 

On another street, Ana,  Henrique and Janaína stop to admire store-front decorations. Doing my best to understand and join in conversations.  Portuguese is pure poetry.

 Yet another roof-top. Where students Melissa and Tom rented an Air B 'n' B further uphill from Corazon, showing off  magnificent sunset views over the bay where Sayulita nestles on Pacific shores. We sing along with Andrea Bocelli on the iPad.

Off the top of my head selfie with Juliana, Henrique, & Janaína.

 With Juliana.

Jaguar watches over all.

Hearts appear everywhere!

Dining al fresco.

Good food too!

Hard to say Sayonara to Sayulita, but it's good to be home... in Oakland/Smokeland even with its cold, dry, and smokey air. There's no place like home.