Journals from the Jungle IV: This is Knowing

Remember it all. This is real and this is certain.

Welcome to Journals from the Jungle—a series of stories from my recent travels, drawn straight from the pages of my journals. These are reflections on breaking free from a life of structure, convention, and societal expectations, and finding my way back to an embodied, authentic self. Through journeys in nature—and into the nature of self—through adventure, challenge, rest, and the dramatic dismantling of old beliefs, I explore themes of freedom, pleasure, love, and the strength that comes from shedding what no longer serves us. I hope these stories inspire you to embrace change, reclaim your vitality, and live more freely.

FEBRUARY, 2024. DAY NINE CONTINUED

After surfing, I walk home in a daze. Not devastated but definitely sad, mixed with the electricity of having surfed. It was very hard. I wish I could have made it out for one more wave—tú puedes, tú puedes!—but my strength gave out. What I’ve realized though, is that when I’m stuck in the impact zone, I’m not afraid anymore. Struggling to get out, getting tired and smashed yes, but not fearful. It’s dramatic and probably a bit traumatic, but I am not scared and that is something.

I am tunnel visioned. I am in the waves. I am the froth. So much feeling. The sea is in my brain.

I also realize that I am covered in bruises. Both elbows, knees, thighs. Four more days … if I can manage the strength I’ll surf all four.

What am I going to do when I have to leave? My heart is going to break. I fear it already—and yet, my motto: I fear regret more than I fear a broken heart. It hurts, but … it’s fun.

Surfing is a gift. There are the experiences, the shimmering memories, and there is also the courage to do this for the rest of my life. This is giving me a better life, it makes me tear up.

Yes, crying again and I’m not even certain why. I think, because I know it is going to hurt when I have to leave. I think also, because, tears release stress. These feel very, very old.

Pura vida they say. Just enjoy each day and don’t worry about the future.

I wonder if I have to lock myself up in order to finish my book. Anyway, there is time. I’m here now and so I will be, here, now.

~

Midday: Wow, I am a bit emotional. I realize that I am in love with this place as if it were a person.

Also: Laughing at myself because some people go on vacation and apparently I go on something entirely else. These are quests, journeys, missions into the self. Stripping, soul-searching, mind-expanding trips. Like, I manage to do hard things even while doing “nothing.” Or, am I so attentive to the experience—to my experience—that they never are simply vacations? This sensitive vessel … the tuning fork that I am, we are. My porousness and also how and where I choose to spend this time.

~

I have to come back. I have to start spending a month here, at least.

DAY TEN

Slept well, the best yet I think. Dreamed of dying—some slow, life-seeping aware sort of death. Sweet and sad. The sky is gently light above. Aye day.

~

It’s not that I don’t care about NYC and all of my projects there and all of the important things I was going to make and do, it’s that I’ve FORGOTTEN them. Like, completely separate from the sensation of their importance. This is all and all and filling. It makes me wonder if all of that other is just an attempt to fill a void that this does. And it’s not even that this place fills a void so much as it disintegrates the boundaries and separations that create that lack in the first place. There’s a sort of blasted-through-ness here that’s both overwhelming and essentially simple. It’s something about the perfection of nakedness in all senses of the word … having nothing needing nothing, being sated and sedated of the aspiration to strive any more … 

This is an idea I have yet to know fully.

~

REMEMBER:

• Frame a foto of that sunset—the one that broke open your life—and keep it on your desk.

• You have learned: You need to live here in the winters. No more vacationing.

• This is it. This place, this lifestyle, it matters. Maybe most of all.

• Remember it all. This is knowing. This is real and this is certain.

As I walked back from surfing, enveloped in some silence—that singular, heavy, hush—I felt … completely alone and free. I haven’t even looked at my phone today. I could disappear today. Simply cease to appear. It feels wonderful. And it feels … true? Liberating and also right to be an untethered creature moving in the shifting light and air and temperatures and time—in the world. In the natural world. To disappear into it—to become a quiet part of it—to fold into it, to step out of being someone, anyone, to just be … to just be … an element, a participant, a compound, of this cycle. To let go and fall in. To let it all go.

My aching, aching heart …

This is what I tapped into in Peru. There is a well in me.

~

I see a video from home in New York, of snow on the sidewalk and the entry—a lifeless iron gate, barren steps, sidewalk … concrete and metal. I might be in trouble. It feels impossible to imagine re-acclimating to that. I believe it’s possible but also … should I?

I also may need to distract myself else this weeping not end. The hole in my chest is gaping.

I go to lunch with a new friend and while it’s perfectly enjoyable—we get along surprisingly well—I feel uneasy being away from … whatever it is I’m away from in doing anything other than being open and attendant. Away from tuning in, and tuning out. I am even hesitant to see property for the same reason, but it will be good to see—I always do when I’m here, just in case …

~

The sunset tonight was—not looked like, was—heaven on earth. That is, this is what heaven looks like. The sea, reflecting the sky, pooling into the beach, around my calves, knees, thighs, merging everything—a mirror of the light, from white-blue to pale pink to weeping fire as god-sized faces of cloud sweep in and surround the horizon glowing gently, and then radiantly, urgently almost with the colors of love, of transcendence, of … feeling.

It is sublime. It is surreal. It is absolutely perfect. It is magnificent. It is, dare I say, ineffable. Pure color. Spiritual, supernatural.

It looks like my dreams, I realized. I am still realizing. The sea and the sky are one and I am in them both, it all, at once. Water, substance, everywhere. Tranquility, such overwhelming peace.

On the ride home tonight—skin in that hot, dark air, hair whipping in the breeze—I note how well I do in places like these. How at home I am. How I am not made for being locked inside … wearing clothes … 

I have always loved New York, but I wonder if this has broken me. I wonder if I have been, not fooling myself, but demonstrating (as a mentor calls it) my “competency problem” in the way that I have strived there, succeeded there, aspired to … all that I have aspired to. Or, did I have to reach that place in order to choose otherwise. Or, can I have both?

I think tonight, that maybe the point of my next run at work—at the businesses I’ve built, at the book I’m writing, at the plans and strategies and timelines and all—is, rather than drive farther up that ladder, deeper into that matrix, make it one last push to break free. One more turtle roll to make it out beyond the break—to the outside.

~

Surfing early tomorrow. Naturally, I am very excited.