Mi Ostra: sweet paradise

(5/5 - 5/17)

wow. i spent only two weeks in this place, but my time there will remain with me forever. within just 2 or 3 days, i felt very strongly as though i was in a sacred place, both physically and spiritually. i felt connected to matricia (the farmer) immediately; we discussed very personal experiences within hours of meeting one another. even her friends who visited the farm were strikingly kind and loving from day one. the first time i met one of her friends (i cannot remember her name), we hugged for about a minute.

it felt like there was little to no bullshit to be found in this place. i can’t be sure, but i assume it had something to do with their diet:

at this farm, there is no dairy, bread, fried food, meat, or processed sugar. only organic fruits and vegetables (most of which were grown right there on the farm), honey, grains, oils, and beans. everything was either boiled, steamed, or raw. for breakfast i had oatmeal and maybe a boiled egg. lunch was a huge salad with brown rice, cooked chard, and/or beans. dinner was usually an avocado with soy sauce, or whatever else was quick and easy.

i strongly believe in the effect food has on every aspect of the body, and furthermore in the connection between the physical body and emotions. when you are pumped with hfcs and other foods not fit for human consumption...and also spending your most productive hours doing work you don’t want to do/care about...and also have no physical activity, you are bound to be below physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual capacity. so multiply one person living this way by at least 50% of the people around them. all these people operating at compromised levels, trying to get along and feel good. it ain’t happening.

hence what you may have read in a previous post, it was a struggle not having any processed sugar. i found myself dipping bananas in honey and raisins to get my fix. but by the end of the two weeks, i no longer craved all the graham crackers (or “buscuits” in british english) i ate at joaquine’s.

i did a lot of thinking and healing at cana dulce. it was like two weeks of dietary and emotional rehabilitation. i wrote letters to many friends with whom relationships needed mending. i began what will probably be a long road with processing my father’s absence from my childhood (and adulthood, so far). i am grateful to lucho and matricia for cultivating a space in which this could happen for me.

here are some other thoughts that this time provoked:

it seems to be deeply ingrained in us as social beings to build walls between each other. to do and say hurtful or inconsiderate things because we ourselves don’t want to get hurt. to adopt defense mechanisms as habits that we no longer even realize are there. we judge and talk about others to make ourselves feel good, because somewhere down the line we also got (and/or still get) ostracized for being our own dynamic, creative selves. we can be so nasty and insincere with each other in subtle ways, like asking someone a question only so you can answer it yourself. this prevents us from really seeing each other. from having real interactions; instead we keep it superficial in conversations about the weather. as westerners, and especially as americans, we live life fast and for ourselves. sometimes we get a whiff of how wrong this feels, when we lose someone we love and realize we didn’t devote enough to the relationship. or when we get chronic illnesses because of self neglect. but because this existence permeates much of our daily life, it is easy to revert back to our usual habits: drinking, smoking, eating poisonous foods, stepping on others to get ahead, buying unnecessary stuff. and then daring somebody to say something about it, ready for defense, even if we were approached in love. some of those walls seemed to have been permeated at this eco-village. it was unexpected and quite refreshing to be reminded that a space like this could exist.

living they way lucho, matricia, and deva live is extreme. i mean they spent 20 years creating cana dulce, and now they are living off their land and that of their neighbors. but the more i think about it, the more i realize how extreme the typical western lifestyle is too. i mean think about all the statistics you hear about american consumerism: if the whole world consumed as we do, all of earth’s resources would already be depleted. and this applies to middle and working class families, too; it ain’t just the rich folks that are buying all the stuff. it’s also us fast food and meat eaters, buying products that use outrageous amounts of resources to produce. it’s fucking extreme.

now, i’m not sure if i could do the cana dulce lifestyle forever, but i’m sure gonna tone my american shit as much as i can.

i didn't really feel right taking pictures of paradise, but matricia did arrange a celebratory farewell, which was fun to snap shots of: