Cancun Dispatch: 9/5

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We share songs and visions and emotions, and I'm really glad to just have a little space for calm and quiet and nurturing in the midst of the gathering chaos. In the ritual, I sense huge forces pushing on us in this action. The puppetistas have made giant Mayan gods as images, each angry about a particular aspect of globalization -- and they are more than symbols. They represent real powers, and any of us who are sensitive feel them like deep, internal pressure that bursts out from time to time in a moment of anger. By rights we should be sequestered in quiet meditation for the next few days before the actions, but we don't have that option, as the most sensitive among us are in many cases the same ones who have the most down-to-earth technical and tactical responsibilities. It's a whole new kind of spiritual discipline, holding the energy and the details all at the same time.

Afterwards, four of us decide to try to go out to the island, to check out the Conference Center and visit the sacred Ceiba tree that stands on display. We drive out past many police and military personnel of different sorts waiting by the roadside, but no one stops us as we return to the beach near the Conference Center to stand for a moment in the healing waters. Then we circle the tree. An informative sign says, "Touch a sacred tree!" and tells us it is a ceiba. We lay our hands on her smooth, green-veined trunk, closing our eyes and feeling her distress at the noise and fumes and cement all around her. Half her top is dead, and she is not happy planted here, but through her moves an energy of green leaves and real, calling birds and chattering monkeys, of ocean winds laden with rain, of scented orchids and massive, wild green nature. Through her moves all that we are fighting for, our birthright. Federal police hover around us, but no one disturbs our communion. We leave with sadness, as if leaving a friend in prison.

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