The Christmas Gift

Puerto Vallarta, after a month-long series of thoroughly foreign, undeveloped villages, hits us in the head like a giant bag of tinsel.

Not entirely unpleasant, but not entirely comfortable either. And shiny. We stay there long enough to recharge amongst 'civilisation' and dance our way to a Hula Hoop Show business proposal, which we say we'll think about.

We meet an American called Ben, who stumbles in to the hostel and can't talk. We want to know where his party is. He hails from Sayulita and returns there as soon as he's sober enough to order another beer.

We think about it for a bit. Leave without asking directions.

Two minutes after getting off the bus at Sayulita's small, sandy bridge, we bump into Ben again.

He and his friend Gabe are drinking beer. As is the majority of Sayulita's American population at 2pm on this sunny Monday afternoon.

I'm terrible at afternoon drinking, but it is three days before Christmas. So we buy hammocks on the beach and string them up between palm trees next to Gabe's tent, committing ourselves to a four-day long party and a Christmas to remember, for one reason or another.

We dream of home and thus people keep inviting us to theirs. Sayulita conceals benefactor hoards who bestow gifts of barbequed fish, free beds, smokes, a telephone call to a long-lost boy in England. The town is one big festival and a day is all that is needed to become a local.

We teach hula hoop to chubby children in the town square. They steal our hoops for hours while we sit in the dust talking to la banda - the street performer and artisan crowd that squats every town square in Mexico.

As above, so below... The words whisper through my thoughts and I don't know why.

I want to get them tattooed but I am scared. I am thinking about this on the afternoon of December 23rd as I trek down the street for water to wash the night away. My throat is tacky.

A bookshop rears to my left and my instincts tell me to enter. I try to explain to my instincts how thirsty I am, but they will not listen. I give in, turn back and hop down the stairs to the basement shop. I'm not surprised to find I've missed closing time by about three minutes.

I am drawn to the shelf on the far side of the shop. The first book I open is called The Secret. I laugh out loud when I see what is written on the inside.

As above, so below.
As within, so without.
The Emerald Tablet, circa 3000BC.

The book is about the Law of Attraction. The law that states that you create your own world through your thoughts; that you can attract anything you want, as long as you focus on it hard enough. The law that I've been going on about all year and never actually put into words.

See how the circles settle.

This law gave me the events that actually put that phrase in my head in the first place. And it has just proven itself by playfully handing me the words in my head.

I pay for the book under a sign that says 'Julia's Coffee' and go back to tell my tale.