The Road of Sugar and Dirt

Reflections on half my life from a palapa

In the dry season here, they cover the roads in molasses. Before someone told me this I had two observations: 1) a black sticky pebble painfully clung to the sole of my bare foot like an organic lego as I walked over it, and 2) that particular stretch of road smelled sweet but not like fruit. I didn’t really think it was asphalt - it was too thin, kind of a dark brown wash of watercolor on a canvas of dust. It was laid down without much care for the application itself, like a lot of things here. The priority wasn’t beauty. Take the simple playa for example. It’s a grand sand mall that takes an hour to walk end to end, 25 minutes to run, and 15 to bike - a massive but basic beach. At low tide, it’s 100 yards wide and 7 km long. It’s not even a special color - it actually looks like dirt. But it’s as smooth as can be - no shells and no jellyfish. Thick, raw jungle guards its entire length, and the jungle isn’t special either. A handful of palms rise up, but other than that, it’s “jungle générale”. I am not even sure I would say it’s photogenic. 

After a refreshing afternoon swim I laid in the sand. No towel, no problem. I spent three hours watching the crowd build for the evening's entertainment. It’s the same event every night, held at the same time. The actors on stage, in the order of billing: the sun, eight dogs trying to catch two footballs being passed amongst the ticos, a couple dozen surfers, three small children experiencing the ocean for perhaps the first time, and some walking extras. It’s very hard to tell who has been here for 20 years or 20 minutes. The audience, unaware that they are in the performance as well, is a contentedly mellow group of no more than 100 people. Half of them seemingly know each other and at times interact with those on stage. There are no umbrellas, chairs, speakers or tents. No grilling or waiter service. It’s very un-American in that way. Pleasantly. No one is too excited for the performance because we are all here for the finale. Which all of a sudden arrives, and the show is over. The sun goes away again, somewhere down beneath that constantly visible horizon - the one that we stare at like a mystery. It seems years away, but in fact that point of disappearing time is closer to the eye than the width of the beach itself. And as the sky becomes blue and then black again, the audience and its actors recede into town for nutrients and beverages using the same molasses-covered road we came in on. This became my nightly habit, and it’s either this or the last sunrise that I will remember the most. 

I came here to fold a dog ear on the recent events of my life. Exactly one year before I got on the plane to come here, I sat with my investor under a different kind of palm tree and told him we were fucked. I was a rat clinging to a dry root in the middle of a cliff face with bad news up and bad news down. The following 365 days I swam in molasses that did not smell sweet. It smelled like fear. 15 hours a day, everyday I treaded, going nowhere, or so it seemed. I considered giving up the only thing I know and love, at least two dozen times. Once I considered worse. I told someone recently that I felt like I was locked into a rollercoaster I didn’t want to get on. So, my mission for this trip was clear - wash away the year. Start anew. Reset, rebalance. It was also my birthday, and on some level I was celebrating the fact that I, or more likely my business, was still alive. The miracle of a 41st year coming to a close paled in comparison to the miracle I had witnessed this past year.

Exactly one year before I got on the plane to come here, I sat with my investor under a different kind of palm tree and told him we were fucked.

On my first day I went on a run an hour before sunset. I saw memories from my last trip here, which was 20 years ago. I saw the beach shack where we all got dinner, the only spot at the time. I saw the Buddhist-like temple on the hill. I remember we talked about it on the way to dinner, but I don’t remember the story. I was twenty when I came here and would have coughed up my last meal in laughter if you told me that my soon-to-come love for golf would lead me to become a practicing Buddhist. We’re all ignorant that way when we are young, I guess. Now I know - anything is possible. 

Sweaty and thirsty, I ran by the hotel that was the subject of that journey. It’s a very stylish property but its simplicity is even more attractive. Not modern - it has a flavor of Cuba in the 60s. The square maroon floor tiles feel as natural as the dark wood slanted roof. The restaurant is open air like everything here and the light walls are the color of nicer beach sand. The cane and bamboo chairs have arms and they are very comfortable. The pool is hidden away among lush green plants twenty feet tall and people mostly whisper around it. 

I was a photographer then. I got paid to travel to objects of beauty and wait for the sun to hit them right. It was the perfect job for me because it had no end and no repetition. Waiting tables got old quick with the same list of specials and the same Elton John CD every single night. Photography was an adventure of learning about the world. I thought of the camera as a magnet, which pulled me into experiences with people I never would have met. It was an excuse to ask anyone anything. I spent my life creating memories and stories with my camera, like a lathe makes music out of vinyl. My life hasn’t changed much, except 180 degrees - a reverse polarity of the same equation. 

In the hotel I asked if John was there. He wasn’t. Standing, I drank three glasses of water that I poured from a brass spigot in the aqua tiled wall. The shirts the receptionists wore were beautiful. I complimented him and he smiled as if he gets that a lot. Oatmeal lined with masculine pink stripes of different sizes and two chest pockets. I love chest pockets. Anything can go in there. Part guayabera, part Cucinelli. I wanted to ask for one but I didn’t. I should have at least taken a photo. But I didn’t. 

After the run, I went for a swim. It could have been the saltiest water I’ve ever been in. I floated easily. I don’t usually like lying on my back in the ocean because the water gets in my ears. I used to get a lot of ear infections as a kid. Tubes, the whole thing. While floating amongst the waves, I observed that it's better to face them. Better to face the oncoming impact, the whitewater, the crash. Better to know what’s coming and when. The simple fact that I was even in this water right now due to a financial blindside one year ago gave me a creepy chuckle. I turned and faced front. Waves come in sets, four to six waves in total, and the first are the larger of the set. It’s a pattern that is immediately obvious once someone points it out. And looking back, the year makes complete sense. Looking forward, I could not breathe and I wanted to paddle ashore one micro-percent less than I was willing to give up the ride. No one tells you this when you start a business - entrepreneurship is a wild and unguarded beachfront.

When I got on the plane to come down here, my seat mate and I had the same shoes and a similar backpack. I commented that we were twins.

I currently have two definitions for ‘coincidence’ that I subscribe to; 1) a coincidence proves you are living near your source - Deepak Chopra, and 2) a coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous - Alcoholics Anonymous.

Matal and I spoke for three of the four flight hours. I cried twice - she’s a therapist. And, let me state for the record that science tells us that being on a plane is proven to heighten emotion. That being said, the two moments were of similar content - the first was centered around my feeling that I don’t deserve this incredible fortune I’ve experienced in my life. I’ve often felt like Neo in the Matrix - where these things are happening to me, and that I didn’t ask for them. She proposed that perhaps that isn’t true - that I was manifesting them and utterly responsible for my own fate. I used my shirt to wipe my sweating eyes and laughed once. I wondered if others could hear our ridiculously real conversation. I also didn’t care. After all, I was supposed to be here. I planned this. 

The second was a more universal and calming realization. For a long time, I have spoken about the future of the company I started; where I see it going and what is possible. But only very recently have I begun to feel, on a significantly deeper level, that the wild and incredible future I have professed to others is actually possible. I’m not talking mathematically, I am talking internally. Wanting something to happen is entirely different from believing it will. I would say that in a state of wanting, there can be doubt. In belief, there is none. It is replaced by pure, hard confidence. I looked up the etymology of belief - it includes ‘conviction of truth”. We all want things. But very few of us believe these things will happen. Our minds are at the same time listening to this distinction as we speak about things with our internal thoughts and feelings. “Be careful what you think” - I’m sure someone has said this to me. 

Michael was my surfing instructor. 26, he had three dogs. He had been surfing for 13 years, or half of his life.  He was smooth and fast on the paddle out. His solid arms were hungry for something to push away, and today it was warm salt water. This sport has come to define his life and you can see that when you meet him. He has a positivity and patience that is calming. When you choose to be subject to the raw power of a wave, I imagine this is the result over time. 

Michael knows John, the owner of the hotel I came here to photograph 20 years ago. He smiled and was a bit shocked when I told him that I had been here so long ago. He would have been six then. This calm corner of the world benefited heavily from social media and the pandemic - both fairy tales when my small Cessna flew in just after 9-11. Michael started his business alone 8 years ago with 3 surfboards. He has now 15 instructors, 100 boards and a secretary, whom I emailed to schedule our time. He’s lived here his whole life and knows everyone. When I asked about his marital status he said, “I’m not married but I have three dogs.” And his three dogs follow him everywhere. Or not, up to them. As we left the water, he shook his head when he saw an instructor paddling out on his day off. “I would just stay home and rest,” he laughed. Spoken like a true business owner, I thought. 

They say being an entrepreneur is like jumping off a cliff and building a plane on the way down. In my case, I didn’t really jump off the cliff - I either fell (in the Neo storyline) or I was wading into a pleasant ocean only to realize after being submerged that I could not breathe. In high school, before I dropped out, I never did my homework, or if I did it was at the last possible second. But with the things I loved, I never procrastinated. I built a darkroom in my parents house and mixed chemicals, patiently developed my own film and read 80 year old texts on process and composition. I made notes. I read the biographies of great photographers and saved money to buy better equipment. After officially graduating from the school of waiting tables, I got a job at a prestigious photo studio. I was persistent when they said they weren’t hiring - I said I would work for free. When they hesitated, I said I would show up tomorrow and if they didn’t like me they could tell me to leave. Three months later I was getting paid to do the thing I loved and I could stop reading the list of specials to Elton John on Friday nights. 

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For 20 years work was love. And even though that changed pretty quickly this year, the tributaries of my life have not, to this point, ever led me to a dead end. I read recently that for a business to change, its leader must change. I know more about business today - about my business. I got good at firing people. Not something I am proud of, but something I had to do. I’m getting better at hiring people. I learned how to ask for money, advice and sometimes both. I had a constant feeling that I must be doing - that the clock had to tick meaningfully each second. “Being a professional is doing the things you love to do, on the days you don’t feel like doing them.” - Julius Erving

I don’t golf the way I used to. I don’t get from it what I did in the beginning. It’s not the escape it used to be. I love the game in a different way now, more like a camper graduates to a camp counselor. I remember the first night I ever snuck out to kiss a girl at summer camp. We met at the big tree by the lake. I made it back in with no one aware. At breakfast, our counselor Ian, maybe 19, took a special interest in how I was doing. When we walked back to the bunk he put his arm around me and told me about the time he got caught sneaking out. I asked him if it made him stop. He laughed and told me to clean the bathroom. I waited three days to sneak out again. 

I love the game in a different way now, more like a camper graduates to a camp counselor.

As a camper, I played games. I went on hikes and cleaned the mess hall on Sundays for eight highly anticipated weeks every summer. The counselors were one of us, they were cool. They didn’t try to do anything other than have a good time with us. But if anything happened, they were there. That was the understanding for all of us. They could solve any possible problem in the world, our small minds conceived. 

Most things in my life today I actively didn’t like in the beginning. Even summer camp - I demanded my parents turn around before dropping me off for the first time. They finally talked thirteen year old Erik into it. One hour later I was angry at them for only sending me to a half session of four weeks instead of eight. Or take golf - I hated it prior to my first time trying it. How’s that for contempt prior to investigation? I think the quality of age is defined by a chart where, as age (or challenge / vulnerability) increases, the experience of being right decreases. It’s ideal, because if humanity was the other way around, we would be even worse off. This must have been a non negotiable part of the intelligent design for our little human experiment. I can see the cosmic architects discussing this one and finally acquiescing to allow just a few to break this rule. You can guess. 

If I have learned anything in my life, it is that learning itself is the golden egg. When traveling it is good to go far into the unknown and the uncomfortable. Learning is the mental adventure on our doorstep everyday. That is the primary oxygen source that has gotten me through this last year. I hated lawyers a year ago. Now I respect them. They are just super smart business doctors who help you not make bad promises. If you can be only great at one thing - make it learning. Learning implies modesty and curiosity, which are the two best traveling companions. My favorite part about learning is that it did more than just change what I knew. It changed who I am and will change who I have yet to become. It, by itself, has the power to change your life. None of this type of learning can come from school, to be clear. I would argue that is the opposite of learning. Curiosity - by its definition - implies lack of syllabus. The best learning comes from unanswerable questions. A brave and curious soul you must have to whisper those. With this lens, the beginning of your life has very little indication of its ultimate path and purpose. Like the question mark’s shape itself, a living curiosity has few straight lines, and even a dot - how did that dot get there? And as if the universe couldn’t have a better sense of humor to illustrate this ridiculous point, the human race does not now know the origin of its own question mark. The cosmic committee left us an easter egg. 

Surprisingly or not, I spent most of my time with Maenor on this trip. He was my driver who shuttled me to and from the airport, a three hour journey each way, thus we almost spent a full day together. Maenor is 46 with four kids and a new wife of three years. He showed me a video of his new house that he is moving into soon. It has a porcelain kitchen counter and one large room with a patio front and back. I didn’t know how to ask how big the lot was in Spanish and if I did, I doubt it would have made much sense to him. The view was large, green and quiet. There were no other houses around. The jungle sped by us. The fact that I wanted to ask him the size of his lot echoed in my head and I thought of how different some worlds can be. 

Maenor has lived in this small village his entire life. He’s never left the country and never been on a plane. In fact the only local I met who had left was Michael, who said the best wave he ever surfed was in America. He was shocked too. Many times when traveling in foreign countries, it can be hard to escape US culture. I was in a remote Nepalese village and there was this makeshift McDonald’s - a high altitude hut where someone had painted the golden arches on a piece of wood. The server was even wearing a Nike shirt. In Mexico the line can be so blurry you can’t even tell what country you are in. But here, it was different. It seemed like there was a sense of pride in the land and culture here, and the American draw was not as intense. There was also this sense of ‘shared space’. I never got a ‘turf’ feeling, or a sentiment that people would prefer others to not be there - a locals only vibe did not exist. The only aggressive interaction I had was a kind one. I was passing by a bonfire on the beach and a drunken crowd started yelling at me to join them “¡Venga, venga!”(come here). This level of togetherness can be tough to find as a traveler. While the earth has few true boundaries, we humans have constructed millions. 

Both times Maenor and I stopped for lunch. It wasn’t until the second time that I wondered why we were at a Chinese place - a different Chinese place than the first time. Both times I had suggested tacos. The first was Gyoza and the second was fried rice with egg rolls, which he insisted were tacos. My command of the language is not robust enough to ask questions like “Do you prefer to eat Chinese food because you are sick of tacos or do you think I want Chinese food?” or “Who told you this was a taco?” 

I don’t know how to take a vacation. I don’t have much experience in going somewhere to relax. We are always ‘on a mission’ so to speak. This is not hyperbole - I literally don’t know how to do it. So, I came here to learn. And this was my first lesson - a perfectly regular vacation alone. And even within that, I was secretly expecting something magical to happen, like extending my trip for an ayahuasca ceremony with a group of new best friends, or a midnight spearfishing journey into the open ocean with three 90 year old fishermen or an unplanned multi day backpacking trip through the jungle to a magical waterfall inside a volcano. I actually had these thoughts as possibilities. None of that happened. In fact, nothing happened at all. And in its basicness, I found something even wilder that I hadn't ever thought of. It happened on the last sunrise.  

I woke up happy. I got up at 5am with an overwhelming feeling of intense joy. I felt rested in a way that was unfamiliar. I could immediately tell something was different about me. I wore a thin yet durable smile on my way to the beach. The people I passed responded like I knew them. Drivers waved as I pedaled by, someone said hello at breakfast and we had a conversation, a group of surfers spoke to me about the swell - I felt a simple sense of belonging and like every single person wanted the best for me. Then it really hit me - what if nothing had changed here but my perspective?

At the beach I jumped in with Michael. It was 6 now the sun was just rising over the mountains. This morning the full moon hung above the ocean’s horizon line, a mirror of the sun from 12 hours ago. Everything was golden and rich, I wasn’t sure I had ever seen anything more beautiful. I shiver when I say this, but it looked like the metaverse. This simple, beautiful beach. This simple beautiful feeling, hidden away inside some deep riddle, yet present to those in the magnetic field around me. We got out of the water and I was now fully aware of this moment and I cried a third time but I had no sense of sadness. I remembered the entire year in a blink. Tibetan Buddhists call this ‘sad joy’. The sorrow and relief of watching a year complete itself in one moment. 

The feeling passed quickly and water ran from my nose. I bent over and started laughing at the amount of water that continued to pour out of my nostrils. I thought of how much I hate Neti pots and asked Michael if this was common. I started giggling. On the way back to the shack - this time with shoes so the pebbles wouldn’t stick to my feet - I thought of telling him about what I do, or asking him what he had planned for today. Instead I asked him about the rainy season. I want to see this place bright green and wet. He told me that the rainy season comes twice. Once in the spring and once more, harder in the fall. I want to go for a run on the beach in the rain. I want to feel all the parts of this place.

Whenever I come back, and I suspect it will be before I’m 62, I wonder, will I realize how little I will have known now?