Baja Bernie - 12-12-2007 at 07:28 AM
Baja
A place easily visited but a land impossible to leave. You may walk away but you can never leave. A part of you will always be there and her spirit
will reside forever in your soul. Try as you might you will never be able to cast her out of your heart.
Understanding that you might just as well let her sun warm you as her winds blow the worries from you mind. Allow her waters to caress your feet and
soothe your soul.
Allow her people to call you friend and bring a smile to your face.
Whatever you do will not matter for she will forever ride upon your shoulder and whisper into your ear.
A mistress that may never be forsaken—no matter how hard you may try.
Cypress - 12-12-2007 at 07:31 AM
Thanks Bernie.
DianaT - 12-12-2007 at 07:44 AM
Nice thought---thanks for sharing it
Diane
Diver - 12-12-2007 at 08:00 AM
Right-on Bernie !!
"You may walk away but you can never leave."
....says it all !!
.
Al G - 12-12-2007 at 08:10 AM
Hey Bernie...You da Man...I admit I am in the flirting stage, but the draw is strong and undeniable. Your experience grand...mine a growing
desire...
bajaboolie - 12-12-2007 at 08:13 AM
Beautiful. I can relate to the whisper in my ear when I'm north (only sometimes she doesn't whisper!).
Yep, Bernie's right - gotta be a woman
Osprey - 12-12-2007 at 08:56 AM
Warning Label
When I saw it, when I realized what had got me, what was causing me such incredible pain, I could not believe my eyes. The plant, called mala mujer,
Bad Woman, luxuriant, lovely looking thing, would look at home in the garden or on the patio. My calf barely brushed it as I walked through the desert
near my home. Mala mujer. Perhaps this whole place should carry such a warning label and a new name to match. Maybe this part of Mexico could be
called mujer mysteriosa, Mysterious Woman; a thing that has indescribable beauty while sometimes meting out profound pain and heartbreak.
I have a sense of the place that embraces not just the spiky land but both seas, the sky above, the immeasurable history. A cruel place indeed for
early travelers – their boats dashed and ruined on the rocky shoals, their feet cut and bleeding from the crippling scrapes and gouges of dagger
plants and nettles. No Cibola here – they would gladly have settled for a wet tinaja, a tiny waterhole.
The early ones might have seen her as a woman. Her moods, her give and take, are not subtle. Modern day visitors need time to learn her moods.
They are lulled into false security, feel less threatened than the adventurers, the settlers and explorers. Yesterday a rogue wave snatched a family
of these new tenderfoots from the beach, a few yards from the sybarite’s pleasure palace on the shore at land’s end. Killed them all.
She is often rough and dismissive with fawning, moonstruck pilgrims – they run north before the chafing winds of misadventure with empty purses and
infected bowels. Many suitors will not be put off. Broken axles and bleeding hearts lie in the dust as testimony to their unrequited fidelity. She
killed all the Indians, the ones with the darkest skin. They found the place full of food they could not gather. Once they were isolated the end
came quickly for these early tourists.
La Mujer still holds the power to embrace, to heal. She mellows with age. Now she lets the dark skinned ones live but she makes them work like
dogs. She allows me some latitude; I know many of her secrets and I can avoid her nags and nettles because I am no longer fooled by her deceptive
hues and shapes and textures. I just have to remind myself that in Baja California nothing is what it appears to be.
When they talk about my end, how she took me down, I hope they’ll say, by whatever name they may give her, that she let me go quietly into the night;
full of her beauty and passion, sated, at peace, knowing I had wooed her, held her if only for a very short while. They may say of me that my fate
was sealed when she let me feel that irresistible sweet spot between serenity and danger.
Al G - 12-12-2007 at 09:07 AM
WoW..take a strong person to proceed...
Al G
Baja Bernie - 12-12-2007 at 09:27 AM
I think not................I embrace her and others, sadly, seemed ensnared by her.
Allow your desire to grow and you will be rewarded beyond your dreams.
[Edited on 12-12-2007 by Baja Bernie]
Marie-Rose - 12-12-2007 at 09:58 AM
Thanks for sharing Bernie
Just sent this to my daughter who is trying to figure out how she can extend her
5 month stay to a permanent one!!!!
Mexitron - 12-12-2007 at 01:02 PM
Yep, you got that right Bernie! I told my wife before we were married last year that I'll move to Texas for a couple years but that I have this
mistress who I'll have to visit now and then or the pain will become unbearable!
Cypress - 12-12-2007 at 01:59 PM
Thanks for your contribution Osprey.