Pixie in Paradise

“You can love her with everything you have and she still won’t belong to you. She will run wild with you, beside you with every step but let me tell you something about women who run with wolves, their fierce hearts don’t settle between walls and their instinct is stronger than upbringing.” – Nikki Rowe

Obviously in my case, I am a woman who runs with wild cats now rather than wolves, but the concept is the same. Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés, PhD wrote a book called, Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype. This book digs deep into the instinctual nature of women, how we’ve repressed it for so long and how to reconnect with it. I wish I could say I read the whole book but I don’t think I finished it. That is something I want to go back and do – after I stop creating this amazing story each day that is my life! I’ve sent S.O.S. panic messages to my book doula and my unofficial editor over the last couple of months saying that I still have so much to write and post on this blog and still so inspired to write, but I’m concerned that I’m not progressing on my manuscript fast enough. I have a self-imposed goal of publishing by the end of this year but it could take until the next. I’m reading and writing and creating as fast as the muse in me allows, while also applying for jobs that, if offered to me, will take up the luxurious time I have now to create.

***

My best friend just sent me the link to a song: Tha Crossroads, by Bone, Thugs and Harmony. I put the song on in the background and messaged her back asking her how she came up with that one on a Monday morning? I thought, is one of us dying? Did one of us ‘catch a case’ over the weekend?! I was home by midnight Friday and Saturday and all I was doing was dancing. Well, and petting a pot-belly pig – as big as me – and the sweetest big, white, deaf dog (also as big as me). I wasn’t pimpin’ hos, doin’ drive bys or robbing liquor stores.

Her response: “Because I was listening to it and it’s a Thug kind of day.” Oh boy. First off, she sells luxury real estate so I need a little more information, but also she’s the sweetest person I know. However, you also don’t want to mess with her. This is how I knew I was safe living abroad. While she wasn’t nearby, she was tracking me and checking on me constantly. Sidenote: this is the same best friend who, waiting for me on our plane to Belize in Dallas last March knowing my layover time was brutally short, would not let the pilot leave until I was on the plane. Yeh, she’s that kind of dangerous. Sweet and dangerous: it’s such a deadly combination. Maybe it’s her fault that I’m so audacious and brave. Not just her but my other really close friends too. They seem to really love this little cougar (me). Even yesterday as I tried to recount my adventures to an ex-boyfriend while we were catching up he said, “Yeh, we would be on a plane immediately to come find you.” He said this after I described a couple situations I was in and what it’s like living in a foreign country, trying to seek help from law enforcement (spoiler alert: nobody is coming to help you).

But I totally understand what she means by “it’s a thug kind of day.” This means she’s got her big girl panties on and she’s about to have a “come to Jesus” talk with a seller, buyer, another realtor, a mortgage lender, or the like. Or maybe even one of her kids. The real estate business can be cutthroat and judging from her stress level over the last few years, it just seems like real estate is under martial law. This is pretty much identical to what it feels like working in Corporate America. We all send incredibly polite, politically correct emails, but once in a while you want to lean back, turn that cap backwards, take the cat off your lap so you can reach the keyboard and send a, “Per my last email, you dumb son of a bitch…” I hope I really didn’t just say that out loud since I am actively seeking work in Corporate America again. Let’s not show my potential new bosses this blog until I’m hired and they find me indispensable. Why don’t we just let it be a surprise as to who they’ve really hired, shall we? 

The term “thug” means different things to different people and I do not care what it means to you. I’m not ever going to get into the semantics of that word because I have always loved it. After all, it’s part of one of my old nicknames: “Pixie Thug.” That’s a story for another day and it’s not that interesting so we’re going to skip over it. To me that word has a much softer meaning than the actual dictionary definition and history behind it. Yes, I’ve created my own version of what “thug” means to me, but all of us do that. We don’t all have the same inherent idea of what all words mean. Technically, not many of us agree  on the exact definition of the word, “love.” You know I’m right. Do not get me started on my disappointment when living in Belize and I saw “escabeche” on a menu. I got so excited because one of my favorite condiments is escabeche – Mexican escabeche. Belizean escabeche is a soup, with a few of the same ingredients but a very different part of your plate, so to speak. 

The reason all of the words and definitions are in my head wasn’t just because my friend is about to kick her Monday up a notch in order to survive the work day. I’ve been slowly reuniting with friends old and new, since I’ve been back in Tucson from Central America. I get a LOT of questions, as you can imagine, and I’m happy that my loved ones are interested in my journey and what I’m up to next. (Apparently no one has time to read a blog or many of their queries would have already been answered). But, it’s hard to fully describe what I just went through. There’s really no point in trying, as very few people will grasp what I am telling them. Not that they’re ignorant, it’s just that I lived such a different lifestyle and mindset from what most of them have, and always will be, used to. Because of this I try to simplify a description of the last year for most of the people I speak with. Otherwise, quite frankly, it could break their brains. Talk about having to pull out some “thug moments.” I definitely had some. I had to dig deep and pull out strength and bravery and improvisation quickly. I had to learn endurance and patience in a way that I’ve never had to before. That all led to teaching me a whole other level of resilience that I did not possess before this walkabout. 

The result has made me feel a little feral, like the poor, skinny, wild coyotes I see from time to time walking down my residential street here in this urban desert city. I don’t know if we can all agree on the degree of wildness that the word “feral” takes on but believe it when I tell you that when I left the jungle for San Jose, Costa Rica, for a week before my reentry to the US, I felt feral. I again felt it flying into Dallas while trying to buy a Starbucks coffee with “a monkey or a shark.” I had no US currency. (Costa Rican money has an animal illustration on each denomination of their paper currency. A capuchin monkey is 5,000 colones and a shark is on their 2,000 bill, approximately $10 USD and $4 USD, respectively).

I’m back in the US and things are so damn convenient, which makes me a little uncomfortable, to be honest. This is probably because I still feel feral. I used to take a wheelbarrow to the store each week to return home with a five-gallon bottle of water – un bidón – so that I had clean drinking water. I’d walk 1.5 kilometers each way to get groceries, even if it was a couple of cans of tuna – which also served as cat food. Yes, there was a small gourmet market 300 meters from my house BUT one orange cost $6 USD!!! I did shop there for a few items each week, but not oranges. Oranges are not native, they’re imported and as with anything imported, the price is jacked so high. It’s even higher if purchased on an island due to the logistics of transport, which is why groceries in Caye Caulker were even more expensive than those in Costa Rica in most cases. That gourmet market had some good items though, including a very decent selection of wine. In a pinch I would buy a can of beans, a can of corn, some jarred salsa and tortilla chips and pile it up with some of the fresh produce I always had at home to make a nacho plate. This tiny store had eggs and some fresh produce and even had a small frozen fish section. Even though salmon wasn’t cheap, tilapia was, and it was the best tilapia I’ve ever had. Any time I tried that fish back in the US it had a weird taste and I was never thrilled about the descriptions I heard of how tilapia came to be: from some sort of aquaponic farm to store to table. It’s probably a fine process. I just wasn’t sold on it. The fish I bought at this little store on Playa Negra sold decent sized pieces of tilapia for less than $2 USD each. Most of the time I’d sauté with white wine, olive oil, grape tomatoes and garlic and serve it over pasta. Costa Rican tilapia tastes slightly sweet, as if it might be crossed with a scallop. Honestly, I don’t care if it’s a Frankenstein fish, it was delicious and a cheap source of protein.

It’s hard to find food sometimes, especially that would fit into the budget. Effort was also required every Saturday if you wanted amazing fresh produce at really inexpensive prices. The kicker was, I had to get up and start walking to Puerto Viejo where the market was located, before 7:30 am. Otherwise, all of the good produce would be sold out. There was never any sleeping in. Even after late nights of dancing on Fridays, it was early to rise on Saturdays, or you would have to buy second string produce at grocery stores for much more money. There were a couple of fruterías – produce stands – in town but they were never as cheap as the farmers market (“la fería”) and the products never looked as fresh or lasted as long.

“Hunting” for food, being woken by the beautiful sounds of howler monkeys, trying not to step on poisonous dart frogs while walking barefoot, and a host of other amazing things that are unique to the jungle, contributed to my feral-ness. If that wasn’t enough, did I mention that toilet paper was never put into a toilet?! Third world countries – at least the ones in Central America – aren’t able to handle paper in their plumbing, so we all throw our used toilet paper in the garbage can in each bathroom. Did I also mention the time I washed all of my clothing at once in a huge bathtub (the only one I ever saw) because the one washer all 16 guests shared was broken? The quickest way to turn 15 pounds of clothing into 50 is to dunk it under water. Ringing all of it out by hand, then running downstairs to the backyard before water dripped everywhere to hang it out to dry. Of course, it wasn’t rung out by a machine – just this lazy impatient girl – so it took four days to dry my clothes. These are all sort of first-world third-world problems but add them all up and you get Feral. And don’t forget I’m also trying to speak a language I’m not as good at as I’d like to think that I am, so I feel like a crying toddler who hasn’t learned to use words yet, or an animal who can only bite or bark to express what they want. Feral.

Walking two to five miles a day was normal abroad as well, so now when I’m meeting friends and they offer to pick me up I have to tell them if it’s within two miles I will walk. If it’s further than that, let me get to a two-mile mark then I’ll jump in the car. It is 90 degrees here after all during the day with no humidity and no ocean, so the walks aren’t as cooling or refreshing. In fact they’re the exact opposite. Tucson is a relatively big city, full of traffic and busy roads. There’s no quiet except when I’m inside my little house. I enjoy staying home so much. It is quiet, comfortable and I have a cat. What else is there? I noticed something very funny in terms of the indoor climate upon my return too. The first week I was back the mornings and evenings were very chilly, mid-50s to mid-60s, so I had my heater set to kick in every time the inside of the house fell below 75. This last week has really warmed up and even though I haven’t switched the thermostat to A/C yet, the heater hasn’t had to kick in. The funny thing is, my house is between 87 and 90 degrees during the day now, and I hadn’t even noticed! I’m so used to high heat and humidity that this high heat with no humidity inside the house didn’t even faze me. There are a couple of ceiling fans spinning on low, but other than that, we still use blankets and sheets to stay cozy.

The hysterical thing about describing and thinking of myself as feral now, since my time abroad, was the response my friends have all given me. ALL of them. Every single one of my friends said the same thing in response, without skipping a beat! They all said, “What do you mean, ‘now?’” Each one of them was being sincere too. A few of them might have had a little smile on their face as they said it, but I could tell they were all being earnest. Meaning, these people love and cherish me and have for years, but they have always loved and cherished me even though they’ve always thought I was a little feral. Those are the folks I keep close to me, the ones that love me wild. After all, at some point one of them may have to TASER me or shoot a tranquilizer dart if I continue to travel to untamed places.

Here are some more quotes about wild women:

1. “Wild women are an unexplainable spark of life. They ooze freedom and seek awareness, they belong to nobody but themselves yet give a piece of who they are.” – Nikki Rowe
2. “I have never fit in. EVER. Like, I always tried to fit in, and yes I have some amazing friends, but I still never really fit in. No one ever understood me. When I turned 25 I really started to try and figure out who I was…. After years of soul searching I started to realize that I am a contradiction.” – Bessie Roaming
3. “A wild woman is a force that cannot be tamed. She is strong, independent, and unapologetically herself.” – Basics by Becca
4. “There is a wild woman inside of all of us, just waiting to be set free. She is the part of ourselves that is bold and fearless, the part that knows how to let go and just be in the moment. She is the part of ourselves that is wild and free, and she longs to be expressed.” – Free Spirit Journal
5. “Wild women don’t get the blues. … The girls who come into my library adore the prettiness of fairies, the miniature-ness. But they are also nature lovers and lovers of adventure – the future wild women of America. I couldn’t help thinking that these little girls who love fairies deserve something lively.” – A-Z Quotes
6. “Women are wild by nature. But we are often tamed, via social conditioning, into docile, delicate creatures who don’t dare to speak up or do anything that society deems “unlady-like.” – Wild Simple Joy
7. “It is the kind of joy a woman feels when she has done something that she feels dogged about, that she feels intense about, something that took risk, something that made her stretch, best herself, and succeed—maybe gracefully, maybe not, but she did it, created the something, the someone, the art, the battle, the moment; her life. That is a woman’s natural and instinctive way of being. Wild Woman emanates up through that kind of joy. That sort of soulful situation summons her by name.” – Thought Catalog