Tulum: A Tribute To Memory

(March 6, 2007 NOTE: Thanks to Diesel, Blue, Quilldancer, Amy, Ps and Amanda for their help in figuring out how to link! I found out that it is a Mac problem, not a Gawpo problem. For once. Works fine on a PC, though.)

In November I went on a cruise. If I knew how to incorporate hot links, I would just make it so you could put your cursor over the word "cruise" and you would be referred to my November post: "You Cruise, You Lose." I'm not going to go into the downer side of the cruise because it was still a positive experience and I did get to see and do lots of wonderful things. For instance, I realized one of those dreams I had always had. I got my scuba certification. Prior to taking the lessons, I had no idea that there are basically two levels of certification for being licensed to breathe under water: Scuba and Open Water. When we tied up at Cozumel, we were supposed to go ashore for our last two dives that would have given our class our Open Water certification. But the winds were up and since it was going to be a shore dive, we were cancelled. Scuba divers can only dive with an instructor or a dive master. Open Water divers can dive with any like-certified buddy. Dang. But I gri-dess.

So instead of going on the dive, I made a mad dash down to the excursion desk to see if I could join the MRE (most recent ex) for the trip to Tulum that she had booked. I got the ticket, ran to the excursion boat and located the MRE after using my Spanish to request the use of the public address system. Calling her by name, I requested in English that C_____ J_____ U______ report to the ship's courtesy galley located on the lower deck to meet her party. She reported, laughing and rolling her beautiful blue eyes.

Enter Christian Michael Longo.

Christian Longo came to our town a few years ago. He came not alone, but with his whole family: His wife and three young children. When he left our town, it was in the back seat of a special transport vehicle that whisked him summarily away just hours after he was sentened to die in the gas chamber for killing his wife and their three young children. Yeah, I know. "Young children" is sort of redundant, but these kids were helplessly young. And he made them all dead before he tossed each one into two separate estuaries. It was only by chance that a passerby remembered seeing a vehicle matching the description of Longo's ride that the investigation got any teeth in it. Longo was in the process of discarding two of the kids, wrapped in pillow cases and weighted by tethered rocks, into nearby Lint Slough in south county.

But this isn't about Longo. It's about Tulum. It's about ruins. "What's the connection, then, Gawpo?," you ask. Well, readers, it's like this: They found Longo in Tulum. He had skirted all the amber alerts, gotten on a plane (pre passport days) with a stolen ID that no one really looked at, and the car he stole to get to San Francisco was located in the parking lot, accruing charges he will never have to pay for. The murdered family is one thing. But getting away with nonpayment of a parking fee just chaps my hide even further!

Longo's face appeared on America's Most Wanted. That, ladies and gentleman, is the only reason he got caught. A woman he had been partying with down in Tulum, Mexico recognized him from the show. Don't know if she was watching television on her vacation (I sure didn't), or if she made the call after she got back home. At any rate, the FBI and one of the detectives from my office flew down there and scooped him up. He stayed with us for over a year before leaving my county a single, available bachelor, a widower by self appointed mechanisms that curdle your blood.

As I walked along the ruins, I looked at every stone saying to myself, "Did Longo see that one? Did he stand here?"

Fade in. Fade out. So I get back home and go to my mailbox one day and there is the latest issue of my subscription to one of my favorite magazines, "Pilot Getaways." They feature cools places you can fly to and tell you all sorts of neat-o stuff you can do there. But what is on the cover this time? The cover is a shot of a plane flying right over the ruins of Tulum on the Yukatan Penninsula. I can see in the photo quite clearly all those places where the MRE and I stood, where Christian Longo stood. What a coinkydink.

Christian Michael Longo murdered his own family. I don't get that. No one gets that. But he went to Tulum, a place of ruins. Fitting for the meanings his going there may have held for him. As I stood where he stood, admiring a different place FROM a different place, I brought his family with me and I mentioned them to the stones that once were placed for the good.

The Greek word for grave is mnemeion. Like mnemonic, it refers to what we carry away from the meaning of memory. Ruins are about such things as memories and graves. Buried under millenia are the aspirations and ambitions of things human. Have things changed since the dreamers who built Tulum? Not a lick. What we build for a purpose contemporary with our own dream is subject to change without notice. I am careful to reverence my own ruins. They are holy and I behold them in a sacred silence that speaks of a good heart in another time. The phrase, "It left me in ruins" then, is about a beauty I continue to behold.

So Behold:



























You can go and Google the ruins and Longo and Pilot Getaways. I just wanted to talk about a place that holds some memories of a tragedy, some memories of some happiness and some memories of some sadness. The day the MRE and I were there was a Thursday. That evening she would tell me that she didn't think she could continue in the relationship. This information could have waited, I thought, at least until after we were back home. But hey, I was the one who thought to ask why I was noticing some distancing. And honest person that she is, she answered my question. I just wish I could Google what was going through her heart. I will never know. She gave no solid reasons. I don't know that she even had any. The last two days of the cruise were less than blissful. All I could do was encourage her happiness.