Travels With Buddha — 10.17. . Shipwrecks, Sea of Cortez, East Cape, Los Cabos, Baja California Sur, Mexico
“I’m com’in to you from the wrong side of the Facebook, honey/From the wrong side of my Face…book…fan/Com’in to you from the wrong side of the Facebook friend/From the side that only spends/And Facebook needs to end, That Facebook trend/Needs to end my Facebook friends/The wrong side needs to end……”
A few days after we arrive at our little casita home (muy rustica) on a hill above Shipwrecks Beach Buddha tells me that he wants to go live in the clouds.
I can’t deny that I haven’t seen this moment coming, because I have. Just about a year ago I invented Buddha. Fluffed him up out of my imagination, a simple manifestation to combat loneliness. Anything to help me with the absolute terror of sitting in my chair and staring down the blank page.
And he helped a lot. Grew up, fleshed out, became a real character. Now my friends say: We like you, but we really LOVE Buddha. It is great to be loved, Buddha will tell you that.
So now we are all the way south on the Baja Peninsula, about 1100 miles from the US border, right where the Sea of Cortez meets the Pacific Ocean. This is as far south as you can get here without stepping into the ocean, and Buddha wants to just keep going.
I feel his wanderlust and I share it. The winter weather here is still unsettled, clouds hugging the horizon in the sunrise, puffed up cumulo-nimbus casting shadows over the water, bands of distant horse-tail stratus shinning pink and red in the sunset. I can empathize with his desire to keep traveling. I can see why he would want to live up there in the clouds. Drifting over a landscape with no borders.
Okay, I tell him, go live in the clouds.
Not ‘the clouds’ he says, The Cloud.
For a moment I don’t know what he means.
That Cloud of information, Buddha says. It is circling around the planet on the jet-stream of cyberspace. I think this is where all the present human problems begin. Someone needs to go out there and clean it up, turn it around. I think I want to give that a go.
Well it is sort of a New Frontier. Though nothing is new anymore for very long.
Kicking up dust here on the planet, traveling around, belching carbon dioxide; it is fun and interesting, but you know it has to end. The last gasp of the human dinosaurs before they all cough themselves to death. It can be entertaining to watch, I suppose. But, as Buddha ,it seems like I should be doing something about it.
And you do that in The Cloud?
Information is everything, Buddha says. Right now everyone just wants to sell it to everyone else. It is a feeding frenzy of the mega-rich. This is how you lose all perspective. How you lose any decent human values. Change the texture of The Cloud, re-invent freedom and inclusiveness, give it some good Buddhist values? Anything is possible.
Save the Planet? But what about detachment?
The planet is in no danger. Once it sheds the blight of human infestation it will go on spinning in it’s own jolly wobbly way. But there are plenty of good humans out there and it seems a shame that they should all have to die because of the greed and lust of a few. I guess I am attached to some extent. I like science and music and art and people that are nice.
How do you go live in The Cloud?
No problem, Buddha says, I just have to get YOU to upload me.
I take my time to consider this. He is, after-all, currently my best friend. What will I do without him? Stare endlessly at the blank page? Look for solace in the ending of some other good story?
OK, I finally say. But you have to at least stay for the Full Moon Party….. Agreed?
Agreed.
Good night he says. Now get to work…..
