Flying, spying

Sometimes, when I put on a certain song, I drift into a montage of my own life and I feel as if I'm about to die.

I'm drowning and in my gasping I suck up image after image of reality, romanticised into a stream of rose-hued scenes.

I see the culmination of dramas and the closing of circles, flicking past in a cinema reel of history. I replay events until I doubt their existence. Reality begins to blur into dream and I enter that world of waking, the confusing change of state when I lose touch with which is which.

In a single second I am both watching the clouds from a floating dock and diving deep down into a salty sea.

I pull my elbows in as a blur of ladies flows around me in a market.

A stray dog looks up at me, big eyed. I roll over onto my front, thumbing a book, legs bent, feet waving.

I taste soup and it is too hot.
They tell me how unusual it is to see shooting stars every time I look at the night sky.
I grab a warm handful of dirt, and throw it at my friend. We talk in accents and laugh until it hurts.

There are the volcanoes, imposing against a colour-shifting sky.

And I'm speeding along in a motor boat, a human masthead, leaning out as far as I can and looking down at the water rushing along below, as if I am flying.

In real life, I sit in the garden, drinking coffee, trapped in a world of plans. I think and I think and I think. Often, I remember to exist in the moment, and I will notice an insect hovering over to the left. And then I will start to think again.

Later on, when I remember this moment, I realise I was thinking in a perfect patch of sunlight, dragonflies floating on unseen currents. The memory is stunning. The image I see on reflection is simply the image, with nothing of the thought attached to it.

It is important to stay in the moment. It is also important to retain memories. Memory provides perspective. It holds lessons. It exists in the present. In remembering, we find a view of ourselves from outside our heads. It is like looking at yourself through the eyes of another.

Through the eyes of another this is a perfect moment. I swoop out of my head and away from my coffee break and hover with the dragonflies.

I watch myself from afar, the enigma, Julia Randall, star of her own film. I wonder what she thinks. I watch the emotion cross her face and how she interacts. I watch her reactions, influenced by unknown perspective, and I see how her actions are reacted to by people with other perspectives.

I see how she shrinks away from conflict, how she goes to strange lengths to avoid killing insects. I watch her obsess about waste, find new ways to create, and I see how passionate she is about colour. I see how much time she spends glassy-eyed, caught in a huge net of fantasy.

I sense her deep desire for balance. I see how she does anything to be alone.

I watch her talk to plants, not just to their shiny surfaces but to their actual spirits. The nymphs and elves emerge smokily from their stems at her call.

I can almost see what she sees, but not quite.

Who knows what communications lie deep down, what things cannot be viewed from this position.

I see her dreaming face, framed by pillows, but I know not what her soul does during her sleep. I see her eyes closed in meditation, but I know not who she talks to. I see the spirits crowd her but I know not if she knows.

She seems happy. I think that if she died today, she would be at peace. From this position it is easy to understand that death would not be the end of life. Her soul seems much older than her body. If it was time for it to leave that body, it would need to be for a good reason.

It is plain to see, from my rainbow-winged perch, that the eyes she controls now are just windows for her soul. These tiny windows can only show her one world. As I look over at her, cross legged on the warm ground, squinting, planting baby cabbages with the tenderness of a mother, I realise that she probably has thousands of these windows to look through before she is done.

Photo by Christina Chandler

Milpa truths

Corn will not grow unless it is removed from the cob, dried, and planted. In other words, it relies entirely on interaction with human beings.

Everywhere I've travelled so far, the local people eat corn for every single meal.  Not only does the man survive from the corn, but the corn survives thanks to the man. So corn represents the interdependency of humans with nature.

Corn started its life as a mutation of a tall species of grass. Thousands of years ago, humans recognised plants with unusually large seed pods, and made the decision to cultivate. Corn in its current form could never occur without human influence, because left alone it does not have the means to propagate. Arguably, humans within a certain region would not have flourished without corn.

In growing our ego, we have cultivated our individuality. We have selected uniqueness as a trait that we would like to conserve. We have explored it as far as possible, until we've become so unique that we've ended up unknowingly craving that which we've run from.

I see it on the road all the time - drifts of travellers, washed up from their previous lives, awkward in the real world, trying to express their strangeness by running away to Guatemala where they realise they're at home with a thousand other gypsies who all look the same.

Only the tattoos, like barcodes, define their differences. Through their tattoos they try to express their truth, dividing the uniformity of non-conformity.

Perhaps we have taken the search for ourselves too far. We, the children of the earth, have stretched our umbilical cords so far from our mother that we've forgotten her call. We're floating in space and all we can see when we look down is our frail little bodies, and all we can do to feel at home is to mark our bodies with our mottos.

Consciousness splits itself in order that it might become more conscious of itself. In molding the formless into form, in every possible permutation, it provides itself with billions of facets to its own prism, each reflecting the universal energy in its own way, each providing a deeper insight into the true nature of itself.

But in becoming conscious, it is easy to delve deep into your own 'path' and forget the bigger picture.

Grasp a hold of that cord, joined deep down within your core. Pull. Feel the vertigo as you swing closer to the centre. Open your eyes and take in the sights. Here is nature, pure and simple. Look at her beauty, her incredible manifestations. Sense how effortless she is within her complexity.

Corn is sacred to many cultures. Not only is it valued for its tortilla-making potential, the variety of sugars and starches contained within, but it is revered in a spiritual sense as well. Corn is so much more than just a versatile food substance. In corn we see the truth. We need nature as much as she needs us.

Contrary to popular belief we are not the only species with a story. We are all in a delicate balance with each other, sensitive to shifts way beyond our understanding.

Move away from the ego. The ego tells you humans are the superbeings, worth saving above all else. And the ego tells you that you personally are special amongst humans, different to everyone.


The truth is you are unique, an individual expression of the whole. But you are the same, and you are interdependent with each and every thing around you.



Go and sing to the mountains, go and sing to the moon.

Go and sing to just about everything, because everything is you.


(Elephant revival)

Serpent spirit

Joey and I are brother and sister from the moment we meet. Like the farm cats, we curl up into each other's bodies whenever possible, seeking comfort and warmth, caring for each other deeply.

Joey leaves the farm in early June. In his last few days, he gets sick. We are all sick. We try to combat the parasites by flushing our systems with several litres of salt water. The experience is bonding, for sure, but ineffective as far as I can see. We all continue to struggle each morning.  It would get us down, but everyone enjoys the companionship that shared misfortune brings.

Rainy season is in full flow, washing chemicals into the lake from the land. Bacteria colonies begin to clog up the bays with luminous green mats. These floating islands are talked about but tolerated, just like the piles of rubbish drifting up on the shores. To the residents, this is just part of life on the lake.

I swim once in June. It is a beautiful day and we've been digging all morning. We dive in and feel the water rinsing us free of earth, trying to ignore the sensations of the bacteria strands touching our skin. It is uncomfortably like being in giant bath full of dog hair.

The spirit of the lake loops around me with her serpent swirls, wide-eyed and barely there. Blinking.

Joey leaves and I try not to cry. His face looks so happy and I know I will deeply miss his energy. I watch his boat as it turns into a dot in front of the volcano. The lake is magic this morning.

Days later, Guillermo, one of the lancha captains, tells me he had to make an urgent trip to the hospital because Joey lost the ability to walk.

My heart dives.

News filters in - Joey is paying $1000 dollars a day to exist in the intensive care until at Guatemala City Hospital. They still do not understand the reason for his paralysis. He is bedbound.

I think of Joey, laid out in hospital white, and superimpose an image of him as I saw him last. He is such a beautiful dancer. He does not obey any rules when he dances, he simply goes where his body wishes to move him. We once said we could watch each other dance forever. I feel panicked.

News of Joey spreads across the lake. And with it come further tales of neuropathy - two cases in Panajachel - and speculation about the water. The green strands in the lake are cyanobacteria, caused by too many nitrates and phosphates in the water. Of the millions of strains out there, a few produce a neurotoxin when they biodegrade that can cause numbness and paralysis in humans.

We don't know for sure that this particular type of bacteria is present in the lake, but the coincidence rings hard. Suddenly our toilet humour and blasé attitude to swimming reveal a darker side.

I look out at the glinting lake, cradled in its gentle volcanoes. They say this is the most sacred lake in the world. It is certainly the most beautiful - of that I have no doubt.

But then I think of my friend, with his dead legs and his cold hospital, and my serpent takes me down to her depths. I try to pick her free of the strands but she can no longer open her eyes. Her elegant strength, her diving flows are sodden and clogged with rubbish.

What have we as a species done, that we have created such horrors within perfection?

Heavenly threads, from thine to mine

Last night, when we had no where to go, a man invited us to his house and told us to cook ourselves a meal from his cupboards. We sat on the veranda in well-apportioned rocking chairs, watching the flick-flick of pink lightning silhouetting the volcanoes across the lake.

Just when you think life couldn't get any sweeter, she gives you a meal and a veranda.

Tonight we walk up the hill to look for rice and beans. The afternoon rain has just started and my trousers are instantly sodden. They flap against my legs and I look down at rapids of brown water gurgling over my feet as I walk. We search for half an hour, wandering slowly in the rain, before we finally concede there to be no hot food in this town.

The last time I saw Nick was in the final months of high school. It seems hard to believe that was nine years ago.

Our reunion is spontaneous. As if we'd expect anything else.

He is drawn to Lake Atitlan in the same way we all are. The spirit of the lake wraps her wispy whirlpools around the hearts of those she desires, seducing them into her volcano-ringed embrace. Once landed, she holds tight, captivates them with her beauty and her mystery.

And so I find him, just two days in to Guatemala and already captured in a volunteer exchange in Santa Cruz, on the opposite side of the lake to the farm.

He speaks and I realise I had forgotten his voice. He moves and I realise I had forgotten his height. At six foot six he easily wraps me up and I feel instantly calm in his presence.

A strange experience, meeting someone again. Often I leave these reunions slightly disappointed, for the person I am and the person I meet are rarely linked by anything more than aging photographs. I tend now to avoid such meetings, to skirt around the dull awareness of being so very far away from my childhood that even stories regaled of past skirmishes are not enough.

But this time dives deep. Instead of creeping around stories of the past to try and forge new links, we get to know each other as we are now, two nomads bumping together on the seas of self-discovery. Rarely do I meet anyone with whom I instantly connect so profoundly.

From the beginning the world seems eager to encourage. It turns into one of those elongated moments in which our surroundings seem somehow constructed solely for our personal pleasure.

Hence the veranda.

Tonight, in lieu of rice and beans, we buy a pile of tortilla chips and elotitos, stuffing plastic packets into our pockets until we find ourselves a den in which to consume. We bless our food with smiles, thanking the world for delivering us nourishment of such vibrant colours.

At some point, the rain clears.

On our way back from town we stop at the top of the hill to look over the lake. Rain still falls blurrily at the edges. The view here is different again and we look across the surface at the Santiago bay.

Just behind Volcan San Pedro, across the bay from Santiago Atitlan, lies the farm. The sky above it is tinted pink with the sunset, reflecting from behind the mountains. Sausage-shaped clouds part in blues and greys, revealing the mouth of the bay and the path to my home. It looks like a painting of Heaven.

Here, now

I find myself thinking momentarily of my mother, of how I should call her and tell her my news. The realisation is fleeting, as always, before I remember that she is no longer here.

I am left with a feeling of warmth within as I see my progress from her point of view. Wherever she is, if she ever could know, she would be looking down at her daughter, grown up, finally fulfilled. Yoga teacher. Chef. Gardener. Healer. Sharer of truths.

I take a group through a meditative yoga class, every move flowing with the breath, blurring the lines between the mental and the physical as we inhale, extend and exhale, surrender to gravity.

But how could I ever explain to anyone other than a yoga teacher how it feels to close a class?

I could say it is like coming down from a hallucinogenic trip. My students, dragging themselves up from their final resting posture, pulling themselves from within, hair tousled, eyes closed, swaying to their own rhythmic breathing. Me, colours swirling, noise muffled, re-surfacing from my zone to realise the sun is shining and the birds have been singing all along.

My daily reality is becoming more and more dreamy, the edges of my mind becoming blurred.

At long last, I am me. I feel myself reaching into all those new roles, played with the solid step of inner guidance.

Echoes of those previous journeys ripple out through time and space and wash back over me in my new expression of myself. An old healer looking at my palm, comparing it to her own. An old man waiting for me, calling me a shaman he must teach. A voice telling me to study energy, another telling me to go to the lake. The labels cease to fit as the energy begins to flow in its own gush.

Every morning in front of the volcanoes I heal. Myself, the lake, anyone else. The dog or cat on my lap. Bathed in the ethereal light of the lake, I beam this energy out in hot, white lines. With my mind I focus positivity to flow through the lives of those it hits, and I feel my core searing with heat as I do so.

Who knows what I am doing, if anything. But this feeling is strongly, purely, positive.

I am not weird, I am not special. I just channel life in my own way. The purpose finds the owner, provided the owner allows space for that purpose to rise.

As the clear note of the singing bowl hums to close out meditation I dive back into my body, pulling on my skin like a glove, my soul peering out through the eyes as I realise that here, for now, I am three dimensional. Here, for now, I am happy.