Slipping Round the Corner of a Circle.

Ripples

2012-01-24T05:07:00.000-08:00

My sister Emily and I dance down the jungle path to the beach. It rained this morning, and the mud makes our steps ginger and calculated. We leap between rocks to avoid the water, laughing at how unsteady we are on our feet these days. The sounds of the forest surround us.

Two small girls appear, walking the other way. They hop from stone to stone, squealing. As they pass one of them shouts back, "We're sisters, you know!"

Emily calls back to them; "So are we!" They stop, dead, and look at us.

Most people when they are told this refuse to believe it, incredulous that two different hair colours could belong to the same family. Instead, these sisters nod, knowingly. "You're just like us! Blonde and brown."

They leap away on some pressing mission, hair dancing as they run.

Just like that, they are gone. Like an apparition, a memory of two other sisters, long ago, they dance across my path for a brief moment. A simple interaction, reflected; a ripple through decades. Two pairs of girls, pulled in together, bounced back from this point as if it were a mirror in time.

Emily and I hop from stone to stone, our step imperceptibly lighter. We head towards the sea.

Apparition premonition

2011-12-17T20:32:00.000-08:00

I wake up early. The morning gathers up tendrils of night, slowly breathing light over the coast. I begin to run with eyes barely open, waves playing with my feet. As each wave recedes the sand grows soft and I pump my legs harder to keep the pace.

By the time I cover four beach-lengths I am running with sweat and sea, salty fingers pulling at my body. I dive in. Feel a stingray touch my leg.

The sea is calm and grey and I am completely alone.

The quiet cliffs remind me of Cornwall. I sit. My seventeen-year old self comes silently up behind me and squats in the sand, looking out at the blurred horizon.

I study this child. Right now I look more like her than I have in ten years. Her skin is transparent and I see the sand in drifts through her chest. She echoes through time and space, longing written all over her face.

I remember being her in this moment. I know what she is thinking. Something just happened to her that came as a shock, and she is deep in it, deep in the swirl of those big life questions.

This is the first moment she ever accepted the importance of not feeling insignificant.

She thinks that she will die before she is thirty. She is convinced, in fact, and she doesn't know why.

The sea looks the same to me as it does to her, even though mine belongs to southern Nicaragua instead of southern England. Twenty-seven years creep onto my face, hang from my limbs. As I look at this girl, so small and yet so endless, I am split by a deep understanding and at the same time a total incomprehension.

I don't quite know how to interpret her thoughts, so I walk away.

I pad through the sand to the water's edge, heels imprinting in the sand. Dive in once again. The water is cool and flows over my face. I duck again and again, feeling the heat being carried away from my burning skin.

The softness of everything wraps me gently. I watch the shore, as my younger self slowly fades away. Once again, I am alone.

For Nico, who talks with his hands

2011-12-03T13:02:00.000-08:00

Over a mystical year his hands span my memory.
In a bubble of existence, a blurred reality of growth and subsistence
It was his hands that so often brought clarity.

The fundamentals unwound, broken down
With earnest gesticulation
Hands like starry exclamations, weaving connotations
Unspooling spirals of logic in the air.

Clench contracts possibility
Fist smacks sensibility
Fingers print indelibly
Pulling chewy strings out from under the limbs of poorly-constructed theory
Drawing abstract conceptuality into a thin stream of truth.

His fingers open wide and capture something invisible.

So complex a creature
And yet so perfectly, beautifully succinct.
Strife of mind, search for calm
Expressed in these five lines
Intersecting in a palm.
Like conflicting perceptions, crossing at strange angles
And him
Like a question mark
In the middle.

These hands stand as channels
Visual aid to his stories made in a vault of curiosity and quest
They never rest
They dance with his voice
And with the tiny, telling lines around his eyes.
For this brother is wise with a wisdom borne of thirst
A communication forever bursting from him
His palms outstretched
Imploring me to explore, just a little more
The ideas I take to be true.
"You are my rock here," he said
But he was mine, too.

Earthquake awakes

2011-11-15T19:15:00.000-08:00

The moment I arrive back at the farm I realise it is time to leave.

I cannot explain what it is that changed my mind. I have lived here for nine months; eight and a half months longer than expected. I have grown comfortable, collected things. I had envisioned staying here for a while longer.

And yet I feel totally displaced. It is as if my energy has exploded and is dispersed, hanging together just gently. It spreads wide over Central America and the lands I have just travelled, the spirits of my sister and my friend Sacha echoing from opposite ends. I have no doubt that my urge to leave is connected to this; to the fact that they are both unexpectedly in the area.

But there is something else. I look on the lake with a new awareness. An understanding, somehow, that Lake Atitlan could never be the one I am looking for.

Perhaps it is the remoteness. The contrast between here and the beautiful beach in El Salvador where I just left my sister. Or the people, the divide between native and traveller. There is a dark side lurking under every corner and a history steeped in blood.

Or perhaps it is the quaking of the land, a shaking that wakes me up at night. Sometimes I lie in bed and I cannot tell if it is the earth or my heartbeat that moves me.

In a sense I am disheartened. This was a real contender; this gorgeous lake that ticks so many boxes. I try not to look into it too deeply; apparently, I can only ever be loosely tethered to this earth.

The land around me slides. The lake before me rises. And in the middle there is me, shifting and moving, ever wandering.

I will follow through with my commitment the the farm. But inside that wind blows strong. I look at the water's surface, whipped into white peaks, and brace myself.

Sister Sun

2011-11-13T16:52:00.000-08:00

This is the kind of evening I live for. The window presses patterns into my elbows and the metal of the car edge burns. In the wind my hair feels sharp.

We ascend a slight incline and the low sun snipes my eyes in a flash of intense orange.

Leaning back I enter the grey pleather world of a minibus, occupants occupied with books and white earphones. I lever my head and shoulders back out of the window. Insert myself back into the land flying past.

The difference is stark. The lid comes off the sky and I morph from the observer to the observed. My heart feels like it is expanding. Somehow this evening shows everything as it truly is.

I think of my sister, waving from the side of the road where I left her an hour ago, and have to resist the urge to jump out into this golden world.

It is hard to believe I have just spent two weeks with Emily - they seem to have passed me by in a whirl of activity, pierced through with the clear light of the new dry season.

Just a week ago she ripped up her ticket back home. For whatever reason, she felt the same pull taking her away from our homeland. Now, like me, she is dislocated. Thanks to destiny's fine work, Central America now houses two wandering Randalls.

Separated for years by winding lives, once more brought back together under this metalled sun. For the first time we find ourselves together in our abandon, and the focus shifts to our similarities instead of our differences.

If I hadn't needed to return for work I would have skipped down the Pacific with her. But instead I am on a bus back to the lake.

The coast of El Salvador marches along the sea in dramatic cliffs and endless lines of surf. Fields of sugar cane and coconut palms flaunt highlights in sprays of green.

Everything is on fire.

Ahead of me lie eight weeks of hard work. Beyond that… only this sun knows. The swelling inside reminds me not to stay away too long.

The wind teases tears from my eyes. I miss her already.

The other side

2011-11-05T18:59:00.000-07:00

The lake is swirling. She spreads her weedy reach wide, trailing watery fingers over unsuspecting shore. I cannot stop looking at all the land she's claimed.

Sometimes the lake is paradise. Sometimes far from. I suppose that is the case with anywhere.

I arrive home from a night away to find our puppy, Bear, missing from the farm. He is absent for the first time since he was born in the greenhouse in June.

A few local women are fishing from the lake's edge near our dock. They stand bare-footed in the murky weeds, colourful wrap skirts sodden at the hems. I ask them and they giggle, waving their hands vaguely down the path. Esteban, one of the farm hands, tells me Bear was violently sick all afternoon.

My heart starts to beat. Hard.

I furiously search the coffee plantations either side of our land, but little Bear appears to have vanished.

At a certain point the next day I give up.

Esteban finds the remains of poison in the field next door. Ironically, it seems the owners meant to target Bear's stray mother, who darts out from the spot looking perfectly, frustratingly healthy, her again-pregnant stomach tauntingly swinging. Full with Bear's brothers.

A couple of days later a fisherman paddling his kayuko in the shallows finds a puppy's swollen body floating in the weeds. Evidence, discarded. I think of the laughing women, who were standing right… there.

I do not look. Nico and Esteban remove it and lay the remains out for the vultures. Within a week there is nothing left but teeth.

I release my grief in a quick burst.

It is stupid -- I know deeper pain than a dead dog -- but I feel dislodged by the poignancy of it all. Somehow floating too, weeds catching in my hair.
For me and my farm family, a rainy summer. For another, a life. In a strange way I feel honoured to have seen one from beginning to end.

I'm not sure what to learn from it other than to remind myself of the edge, so easy to forget when surrounded by beauty. It feels balanced to be presented with the other side, if only for a moment.

To me, his body, swollen and floating in the shallows, is just a speck of an indication of the lake's power. For how many countless villagers lie under her surface?

I am surrounded by the terrible beauty of Atitlan.

She surges over the shore. Claims her own with ease.

I sit and watch, quietly.

Nature's mercy

2011-10-18T16:35:00.000-07:00

At the beginning of October a tropical storm hits the Pacific coast of Central America and we lose sight of the sky for three weeks. It rains day and night; thick, oily drops falling heavily from cloying cloud. Several people lose their lives in mudslides and the main road into Panajachel is closed for a week.

By the time I get back from my visa run to Mexico, the lake has risen by almost a metre on top of the half metre or so already gained in the first half of the season. The entire lake edge is littered with semi-submerged houses and farms.

Trees arch gracefully from the water. Everyone has a new dock, and every dock is built precariously over the remains of others. The shops near the water in Santiago are filled to the ceiling.

There being no outlet, Lake Atitlan is vulnerable to weather and follows cycles of growth and recession that the locals meet with ancient acceptance.

If this had happened anywhere else it would have made international news, but the pace of this creep over six months of rain is too slow for today's press.

I arrive home to a considerably smaller farm. Reed islands have lodged themselves on our new dock, shielding the farm front with a wall of green. Kale lurches soggily from the shallows, the leaves of a baby lime tree barely surfacing. The lakeside path has shifted to run around the yoga shala, which used to lie twenty metres from the water's edge when I arrived at the farm in March.

At this rate, the entire farm will be under within a couple of years.

I fall into bed in the dark and wake up crawling in ants. I rip up my mattress and watch as hundreds of red leaf-cutters scatter, desperately collecting waxy white eggs and disappearing between the floorboards. Every surface blooms pale with mould. The eaves are strung with a dense network of dusty white spider's webs and my clothes are full of giant crickets.
My home has been reclaimed by the jungle.

I spend an exhausting day scrubbing and beating as much life from my belongings as I can. The rain beats rivers down the windows and the light fades through a grey imperceptibly tinged with pink.

Nico and I eat in silence in a damp rancho. With no residents at the moment the farm is strangely empty. At some point, the rain stops. I fail to notice exactly when.

I wash my dishes and walk outside.

Above me shines a star.

A small patch of the night sky overhead has cleared. It has been a long time, so I walk down to our new dock to watch from the water. The lake is glossy.

The atmosphere is light with shifting energy, the post-deluge air impeccably clean. A clear line divides the sky; on one side the nothingness of thick cloud, on the other sparkling pinpricks of light. I sit and watch for an hour as our world changes.

Like a magician, revealing his last secret, the sky is gradually unveiled. The line moves across the sky as the black hole recedes.

The wall of cloud slips behind Volcan San Pedro and at once the sky is infinite.

And, just like that, the rainy season comes to an end.

Sliding Doors

2011-10-11T17:11:00.000-07:00

On two occasions now I have passed Salina Cruz, on the coast of Oaxaca, Mexico, at sunrise. From the window of the bus it appears ethereal, despite the offshore oil rigs; a jagged, undulating town built over rolling sand dunes, edged by white beaches turned pink in the morning light.

When Sacha and I find ourselves in Oaxaca City with no onward destination, an image of Salina Cruz comes to mind. Hours later, we are unceremoniously regurgitated from the night bus, into a station dark with 4am shadows. I pass out face down on the clinically-tiled floor. Wake up to the birds of the tropics.

Salina Cruz, once more at dawn.

We get the first collectivo half an hour out of town, to a highway turnoff that I spotted from the bus window a year ago. Opposite, a hand painted sign points us towards Playa Azul. Site of today's vested hopes for adventure.

Our mystery beach turns out to be an hour's sweat-sodden walk down a sandy track, humming with heat and violated by huge potholes. The weight of our bags draws us from our sleep-deprived stupor. We begin to itch.

The track comes to a dead end in scrubby bush and we wonder if we should start thinking things through a little before we do them. We push on regardless and emerge, steamy hot and mosquito-ravaged, on a deserted beach, edged with palapa huts seemingly abandoned for the season.

An old man with loud dogs melts silently into his small home. A lone woman rakes the sand into parallels. The water swirls with strange currents and the beach aches with emptiness.

We do not quite know what to do.

We survey the silence and decide to sit with the sea for a moment, hoping for a plan. Although we have not voiced our disappointment, it is clear this beach is not for us.

We sift the sand into piles through our fingers and wait.

A silhouette of a man appears at the top of the beach, close to the woman raking. He does not look like a local. His hands are on his hips and he seems to be watching us.

It occurs to us how strange we must look: two blondes with backpacks and a hula hoop, squatting in the sand at 7am on this deserted shore.

We look at each other and reach for our bags. Any information at this point would be helpful.

We reach the hut just as he disappears, and when we round the edge of the building we see not one but three men of our age, loading belongings into a little red van.

I hear Sacha's voice transmit silently into my brain. "We're going with them." Without looking at her I nod and we drop our bags, smiles spreading wider over our faces. They look vaguely surprised to see us.

The van's sliding door reveals a window into Betty Ford, treasured home of three wandering australianos and rescuing chariot for these lost inglesas.

Right now, this door appears to me like a portal. Somehow more than just a van door.

This little square in the air is a passage into another world, another set of spooling stories and another three faces in an ever-growing cast. It represents a choice to step from this reality to that. A visible reminder of our junction with another path.

I know I am going to step through it before we even exchange names.

As always on these seemingly pre-determined meetings, I am struck with the perfection of life's clockwork. I think about the first time I saw the sign for Playa Azul, all those months ago, and I remember the little jump in my heart that accompanied the fleeting vision. I wonder for how long my subconscious has known of this conjunction of lives.

We have no idea who they are or where they are going, but we climb in anyway. Playa Azul has served its purpose. The back windows are partially obscured and as we drive away I do not look back.

Small child advises smaller child about a horse

2011-10-07T13:52:00.000-07:00

"Don't look at that. It's just snot and two holes."

.

Take his body over where?

2011-09-15T19:22:00.000-07:00

For some reason the phrase 'Lleva su cuerpo alli (take his body over there)' keeps repeating itself in my head. I think it unlikely that I've heard the phrase out loud, so I have no idea why it would lodge itself in there. I say it, rolling the phrases over my tongue.
Ye-ba su cuer-po ayi.

It wound its way around in there for quite a while before I noticed, listened properly, translated it word for word. Came out shocked at the result. The nuances of perception within it - is it talking about taking a man home or moving a cadaver? Why on earth would that phrase be in my head?

I have no doubt that if I analysed most of my thoughts in this way I'd come out just as confused. There rarely seems to be much of a pattern. This morning, for example, I woke up feeling somehow dislodged from the day. My dreams were powerful and left lingering tentacles around me long after I woke, drawing me back in, dulling my waking world until I sought solitude.

And so I search for treasure in the cracks between the stones, fingering crumbling wood and bleached white bones, zoning in on my surroundings and healing this strange turn of emotion in the way I know best.

Endless horizon over curling sea.
Frothy white parallels expanding towards me.
Watercolour sky arching in pale yellow greys.
First tint of the sunset creeps.

Water colliding with rock.
Pulsing rhythms in an ocean with a sheen like fine chocolate.
The land swallowed up by the sea or the sea, resisted advance by land?

And me, like a snake on warm stone, writhing as I comb the rubble for driftwood and broken mother of pearl.

I am alone other than the surfers, the burnished, dark-eyed Salvadorenses and the honey-coloured extranjeros, all seeking a few second's thrill on those shining tubes of water. From my throne they are helpless insects, steering their way through hills and valleys of shifting power in the name of hedonism.

I hear the waves calling me. But I put off that moment in favour of this warm wind.

I stare at the sea for a long time, breathing in time with the waves.

Inhale,
water rears in expectation,
Exhale,
waves curl and crash before me.

In front of me, duality of wave.
Within me, duality of breathing.

Noise filling everything, the crashing sizzle of the waves and the ribbons of wind through the palms all fizzing into one dizzying hum.

I come unspun.

Reel myself in again and roll back down the beach. Sea rolls inside and waves just there are breathing and its me again, just me. The cadaver has been removed.

Ponderance

2011-08-15T19:52:00.000-07:00

At the moment, the three residents of the farm are all dealing with the same thing.
The integration of our free spirits into working life.
How we can survive in a world where most of the population takes for granted the need to work every day in order to buy houses and have children.

Basically, we all want to stay away from offices forever.
They kill our souls and we'd rather be dead than ever have to pretend we care again.

We've spent so long drifting, not making any money, existing without obligation, in a world of exchange. Now we're readjusting to a commitment of sorts through living and working at the farm. Trying to fit expanding, wispy selves back into some kind of structure.

Always a part of us remains aware of the other world. Somewhere out there exist constraints.
I realise this as my dad writes to me to tell me my bank is calling him, wanting a payment.
It signals the end of my savings.
Reality crashes in.

I am not scared, but I know this means change, and decisions.
I try not to feel frustration and trust that this is merely a tool to take me to new things.

Life is nothing without perception. At least I have my hands.

It is hard to believe they are mine.
I see them covered in marks and I cannot remember where they came from.
What is 'mine' other than just a word to describe something that is in my life for a while?
And what is life other than simply a challenge to understand what is actually mine, really mine, for a bit longer than a while?

I feel like I've spent quite a while already trying to understand that thing I call 'mine'.
I could say I have a better picture, now. I could probably continue though.

But fact is, I'm pondering and wandering in a world that requires little pieces of paper in exchange for things I need.
So now, on the list of things I need, I've added 'little pieces of paper' in the hope that some will blow over to me soon.

Much as I'm contemplating how to fit my drifting self into the 'real' world in order to make money, I really don't want to go back.
I don't need much money, really, if it's just me.

A child is strange and faraway. But I know how much I change.
I wouldn't be surprised if the Julia I become in a few years is really quite keen on the things.
And where would a child fit in this world?

Sometimes when I write down a ponderance of mine I come out with an answer.
And sometimes I don't.

But why do I meditate?

2011-08-10T14:03:00.000-07:00

For once, I am not daydreaming. I exist here, now. I am in the matrix, that dimension where everything is one and nothing, everything is real and yet nothing exists. Some would say that in this moment I am meditating. Others might say tripping. I lose all form and direction and become simply a voice, watching my mind, whirring and spilling like smoke.

Everything stops. Sound pervades.

This stillness hangs, for a moment. And then, something shifts. It happens in an instant. Somehow, in some way, I connect back with my swirling mind. There rises a niche in the flow that snags me.

I slickly slide back into the river of thought, the splurging ocean of hallucination and memory eternally whisking me through time and space. I am unaware once again.

Here winds my perpetual mental routine.

Wherever we are, we exist in the mind. One of the most frequent topics of conversation between myself and my good friend Nico, the farm director, is that of the mind and the effect its seduction has on our sense of peace. We share our frustrations at the incessant analysis and never-ending fantasy that keeps us locked somewhere other than the moment, which at the end of the day is all we have.

Bless us little humans with our littlebig brains. We grasp the deepest subtlety and yet we so easily become tangled in daily drama. I marvel at our artistic capabilities, our boundless imagination, and yet watch how we are swung helpless through storms of emotion every day.

From wake until sleep is a journey in itself, a story played out over aeons labelled as hours, and even on the most eventless of days we fall to the pillow exhausted, released at last from the perpetual journeying within.

It is often only during meditation that I am able to step outside. The edges of my perception become blurry. I am sucked upward and away from what I call myself. My form disappears and I become part of the formless, the everything. That which pierces every other thing.

For a short while, I exist somewhere other than in the mind. For this short while I am gutted, ploughed, smacked with the unswervable knowledge that I am something other than this Julia I feel and touch. Just like the instantaneous confusion I feel in that moment of waking, every morning, when I realise my fantastical dream world is fading into shadows, likewise whilst I am in this omnipresent state the world in which my body exists seems temporary.

This, in a sense, is my raison d'etre right now. Or should I say, mi razon de ser, al momento. For if you spend your entire life stuck in your own mind, shouldn't it make sense to spend some time making yourself comfortable in there? Creating a little bit of space within that relentless festival of imagination? A little pause, once in a while, in which to survey that broiling mess, in the midst of which we are destined to exist?

The great teachers, the legendary yogis, the Buddhas and Christs of this world, were masters of disassociation from the temptations of the mind. History is studded and shaped by figures that tried to teach us this virtue. Yoga itself was originally conceived as a path to this peace, through the attunement of the body, the taming of the mind and the use of the breath to root oneself to the moment.

Although I try not to brand my ego a yoga teacher, I do share yoga and I do maintain awareness of yogic principles. But no matter how frequent and intense my clumsy attempts to impersonate Buddha, sitting cross-legged out on my dock with my belly round and my body wholesome, the peace remains largely external… for my mind is still so young and I am still so enraptured by reality.

The chatter in there is not negative -- in fact it is usually moderately entertaining -- but it is more the sheer speed of this mental train that presents the issue. For the more I seem to seek respite, the more my brain is enthralled by life. In the midst of that resounding silence, deep in meditation, my mind simply seeks even more beauty in the world in an attempt to keep myself there.

All things considered, being pulled into a lifelong search for beauty is not exactly something to worry about. As a result of my mind's creations I feel I move more deeply in each space. Whether physical, mental or spiritual, I am increasing the intensity of my exploration. If I choose to sit and be with the sea for a while, I am completely with the sea. I mentally swim with it, energetically move with it and I breathe in time with the waves.

And the moment I enter into meditation and feel that dissolution of reality, I exist in just that. It becomes everything. I give myself completely to it. My mind, my surroundings, my breathing. They all fade. Like the silence between the inhale and the exhale, I am neither moving forward or backwards, neither thinking nor not thinking. My world pauses.

And then. My conscious mind catches sight of a polka-dot scarf, a scrap of unbearably interesting mental flotsam waving at me from behind a rainbow-coloured waterfall.

Panting with anticipation, it leaps excitedly from thought to thought, sending wobbling disturbances out over the astral plane with every crashing connection of its roots. I make a half-arsed attempt to call it back.

My mind, that monkey of wildest imagination, looks at me, pausing for mere seconds, before leaping wildly off in another direction. For there is always another view, another colour, another contemplation.

Paper sailboats

2011-07-27T19:46:00.000-07:00

Its my birthday. I'm making a wish.

I wish I'd written down all the wishes through my life. A line of past Julias jostle for attention as they whisper their deepest desires.

As a child, I didn't understand them, and they didn't understand me. I just wanted black hair.

As a teenager, nothing quite fit. I wished only to be the same as everyone else.

Later, I wished to be different.

When I was 18 someone told me about Taoism, and for a while I wished that everything would just carry on being as it was supposed to be.

When I was 19, my mom died and my first love broke my heart. I wished that life was supposed to be something else.

At 21 the drama faded into peace. I wished that I could always stay grounded like this.

At 24 I spent days in front of a computer screen and ages dreaming about sex. I wore tight suits and wished for the day when I could call myself free.

At 25 I shed my skins and sought adventure. I wished for coincidences, and mystery, and teachers.

At 26 I realised I had no idea what I was doing. I wished for clarity on the wandering path of the lost.

And now, at 27, I am suddenly content. I survey my kingdom and find it wholesome. If I look, really look, I have found my heaven.

I send my wishes away on paper sailboats that bob across the lake, falling apart in its watery hands. My thoughts get carried away and Fucking Hell I realise I'm in paradise. And now it's my birthday and I find myself searching for something to wish for. It feels somehow foolish to wish for anything more.

And so I wish that I should always be able to see my world like this, in the golden light that falls with joy. For it is my choice to see my heaven or to not; it is always there, beautiful, waiting. The veils of time and circumstance simply tint my view with emotion, and I need only peel them apart.

I wish that I might hold that picture for a while, gently looking. And then I wish to forever remember that here, in this precious corner of paradise, in a lake lost in the clouds, I have been truly happy.

The whispers of sickness

2011-07-13T13:09:00.000-07:00

My body is purging. My stomach churns and I have no desire to eat, only to return to my classic self-space -- in bed with the rain.

I only burn two candles tonight. Their flicker chases shadow creatures in erratic bounds over the iron roof.

I don't mind the sickness. It gives me the exuent, the opportunity to bind myself in blankets, cocooning body and mind. I recognise and salute the fact that my body can take control where the mind is too blind, taking me out of a situation and forcing me to process.

Given the daily bliss I exist in right now it is almost difficult to pinpoint what is being digested, or not, as the case appears to be.

I close my eyes and focus on my breathing. The angular constructs of my brain begin to fade.

I see a dark cave, and as I walk in I see only a short distance ahead of me. The light falls in soft grains.

The vision dissipates as my analytical mind sets in and tries to steer, placing fantasy objects in the cave and trying to validate the vision with constructed mystery.

A bang on the door brings me out of my dreaming and silence falls like petals around me.

The farm is perfect. I have a huge garden, a magical forest, perfect climate and breathtaking scenery. I have fulfilling things to do everyday and I am constantly inspired by those around me. I invent wildly and regularly in a fully-equipped kitchen and I retire by candlelight to a glass-fronted attic room. I wake up to a pink sky and ethereal lake through the expanse of glass. I have a sauna, musical instruments, library and pets. And wherever I am, cloud-hugged volcanoes loom over my vision.

But there is always something. One always feels the need for more.

Even when I have all my needs met, I find myself searching for something else - coffee, sugar, the long, open road. Family and long-lost friends. Dubstep and a dirty dancefloor. Real cheese and smoked salmon. My dress collection, hidden in the attic of my father's house.

Of course, the search comes from within. That Void inside, ever hungry, growing and contracting in muscular darkness. Most often I stuff the gap with food or exercise and it seems to lessen. Sometimes I pump it with weed and it feels satiated for a while, but the smoke lacks substances and dissipates quickly, leaving a monstrous hunger unable to be sated.

Life on the farm is as wholesome as it gets. I am more balanced than I have every been. The Void seems like a dark shadow of the past, most days.

But then, when I am least expecting it, that cold edge will touch my heart. A subtle knife point. Dark strands, webbing my core, tangling the shining silver of my breath, questioning. What is all this for?

Wherever I go, I will never find what it is I am searching for. Because I don't even know what that is. I don't even know if I'm searching any more. I suspect the search itself may be the goal.

I live here, on this magical farm, a place built for no purpose other than for people to exist. A place where anything can happen.

The farm is a place that does not exist except in imagination. It is made of our minds, of paper that cannot burn, where time stops and reality clicks along in star-sparkled clockwork. I am part of the product of an elusive man, a flute-playing yogi from China turned shaman in Peru and magician in Guatemala, who bought some land a year ago and magicked a whole world into being. It has literally exploded into life from the seed of his dream.

From here, daily worries, the horror of current affairs and the mediocre complexities of existence in the twenty-first century are the things of another life. This shiny reality seems to be all there is.

The only truths that can breed in this place are those bred in dreams. Everything else fades away, until we realise our Selves are out, again, searching for more, and we understand we need to pursue our integration with reality with more determination.

Even in paradise, one needs constant vigilance to stay true to oneself. I know it makes me happy to start my day with meditation and yoga, to steer away from sugar and smoke and to work a long, hard day. So why when in a routine do I seek disruption? As a Covent Garden fortune teller once cried to me; we are our own worst enemies.

My life is there on a plate. I have placed within it only good, pure things. But just because it is there, doesn't mean I automatically connect, and certainly doesn't mean I am present and fulfilled in every moment.

And at least I know I am in-tune enough to recognise when I need to renegotiate. Here in my glowing bedroom I step back, examine, and re-enter. Self esteem is directly linked to self-discipline. And self-discipline relies on a non-attachment to passing things, to Void-Fillers.

My insides feel less empty the more my thoughts unravel. Instead of sweeping over this darkness, I stare straight at it. Colours soak the edges of my view. For at its depths I find only quietness. And in quietness, truths pierce.

Rainbow realisations

2011-07-04T14:22:00.000-07:00

"Today I am neither a warrior nor a diablero. For me there is only the travelling on the paths that have a heart, on any path that may have a heart. There I travel, and the only worthwhile challenge is for me to traverse its full length. And there I travel, looking, looking, breathlessly."

The Teachings of Don Juan, Carlos Castaneda.

I am walking in the Parque Central when the woman stops me, asks me if I speak Spanish. When I say yes, she begins the interrogation. Name, nationality, vital stats. Why I am only wearing one earring. "I hadn't noticed," I reply.

She is excited by our meeting and I do not know why. Without doing anything I seem to be satisfying her.

I say I am going to eat and she tells me she will accompany me. I agree because I think she might say something that I could interpret as divine instruction, and right now I need some help with my decision making.

We eat quickly and force conversation, and by the end of it I am searching my mind for questions to ask this strange woman. She has no children and lives with her aunts. She has never been outside of Veracruz state.

I feel that familiar embarrassment edging over my face as I explain my story. I don't know why, but I feel ashamed of my money, especially as in my own head I have very little.

To them, I am rich. How many nuances within perception.

I ask for the bill and I see her eyes dart over to me. I can see where this one is going, so I put down the money for my own meal and push the cheque over to her. She looks up at me and I stand, quickly, and kiss her goodbye. "Que te vayas bien, amiga." Go thee well.

Although I seem to have pleased the woman, the awkwardness of the impromptu dinner makes me feel uncomfortable and I realise I'm slightly lonely. I can't understand why I crave my space so much, and then feel lost when I have it.

I wander through the square, dulled by low cloud. It has finally stopped raining. People stare at me, as they always do in these kind of towns. I must be the only blonde they've seen in months.

My clothes are beginning to dry. I'm not quite sure how to entertain myself next. And then it hits me.

I think I've done enough random wandering.

It is a revelation. I believed I would travel forever, the eternal nomad. Of course, I'm certainly not ready to return to England, but the idea of trading my backpack for a wardrobe, building a nest, seems heavenly in comparison to my bare hotel room.

It is blindingly obvious now I think about it. My reasons for travelling were largely to do with finding purpose. Remember - remove all purpose from my life in order to reveal the true calling? Well perhaps I've found it. Or some of it.

It no longer seems so necessary to break boundaries and do things that no one else has. There was a time when I chose to study Physics, because I wanted to become an astronaut. Not because of a deep desire to be on the moon, but because of a deep desire to do something no one else had ever done.

But I realise now that I am doing that, every day. No one else does what I do, in the way I do it. I see how I touch people without even intending to, and its not me that does it, its whatever I represent to that person. To the woman in the town square, I could be a manifestation of her dream to travel. I could be an exotic friend, or a child to care for. I haven't done anything and yet I'm now part of her story.

Its not about marking yourself as special, its about recognising your talents and using them to better consciousness. All of this journey has been about finding my little ripple on the world but as I am the one making the ripple, not feeling it, how could I ever sense it?

Half a rainbow hovers uncertainly over the town. Here it is called arcoiris. Arcoiris… I roll the word around my tongue, thinking about that face of nature I identify with the most. If I were likened to anything I would like it to be to one of these.

Rainbows are entire circles, the other being hidden behind the horizon. They are formed in restless conditions, the elements coming together in a sparkling, snatched spectrum, enlightening observers in brief seconds before fading away to nothingness. Shifting from place to place, cloud to cloud. Sun and rain, air and earth, bound by colour.

Visible without ever actually existing. As the townspeople continue to stare at me I resonate with the rainbow even more deeply.

The true triumph in my journey is this absence of urgency or desire I feel now. I have, for the moment, stopped seeking and started being. Literally and figuratively, other than this brief sojourn to Mexico, I have entered a phase of stillness. I am at peace with where I am and where I am going.

Like the rainbow, I appear and disappear quickly back into non-existence. But if I can momentarily lead people up into the sky and back down again, then I could say I've found my purpose.

Waterlogged

2011-07-03T14:09:00.000-07:00

We close the farm for two weeks as July swans her way in on a chariot of thunderclouds. Morale is low as the wet season's sickness sets in and the realities of living on an isolated farm, with far too much to do, become less bearable.

Besides, my visa is almost up.

Mexico calls me with her brassy tones.

A year ago, I left San Cristobal de las Casas, Mexico, for Lago Atitlan, Guatemala, hoping to find my truth. Now, I leave my truth to get perspective in Mexico.

Sweet symmetry.

I learned early on that to read the last page of a book first ruins the story. Thus, I usually steer clear of divination. However, before I leave I get out the medicine cards - each one with an animal and a story from Native American tradition.

The frog hops out at me, symbolising cleansing. That makes sense, I suppose, thinking with downturned mouth as my eyes trace the artwork on the card. It tells me to be careful of becoming waterlogged, caught up in emotion and logistics.

Reading this makes me nervous, as I am facing a return to San Cristobal de las Casas, my home of last summer. So much happened there and it wasn't always positive. The streets will be paved with memories. I wonder if the nostalgia will be too much.

As I hop over the border with my amphibian legs I am captivated by drifts of clouds, snagged on the furry green of the northern Guatemalan mountains. The land flattens as we cross the border and the sun burns my arm through the window. The rain starts, as usual, in the early afternoon, and I watch as the road flows down a hill.

I'm not sure what I expected but I am somewhat underwhelmed on my arrival. I quickly move through the market and the french bakery and then find myself at a loss. Although it is pleasant to return to a town I know and love, I understand instantly that I'm going to have to look elsewhere for my inspiration.

The ghost of my former self runs barefoot along a street flowing with rain, hand in hand with the ghost of my former boyfriend. But the vision raises little emotion. Perhaps my frog skin is thicker than I thought.

The restlessness of indecision plagues me for a day before I decide to simply start walking to the bus station. On the way there I pass a banda boy I said hello to in a shop earlier. I recognise him because his legs are strange in some way, the feet bent and small. He has an inviting smile under tiny glasses.

I stop to say hello again and the greeting turns into a coffee. By the end of it I have a page of scribbled notes and an instruction that starts with getting the night bus to Mexico in 45 minutes.

I'm on the move again.

Two days later and I'm in a nameless city on an unseen map, somewhere on the Gulf Coast in Northern Veracruz. I've wandered the streets and indulged in my first bit of shopping for months. I've written a poem. I'm damp.

The rain hasn't stopped since I arrived, alternating between a light, but quenching mist and furious sheets that fall so hard they fill the air with spray and turn the streets into instant rivers. At the farm, I frequently talk about how much I love the rain. Now, I remember what it's like to travel in it. Once wet, always wet, as they say. Who says? Only me, perhaps.

But its true. You just have to get used to being damp. Or sodden, as is the case during today's visit to the El Tajin ruins. The site is different to the other ruins I've seen; so different in fact that archaeologists cannot understand who built it. The temples are covered in spirals.

My attempts to dodge raindrops fall flat as I feel my trousers sticking to my legs. I try to evoke images of bustling streets in pre-Colombian Mexico, building the temples up in my mind, drawing energy through my feet as I slosh through the puddles. I sit down on what was once someone's house to eat a huge mango and I think about how clean everything is underneath the water.

After two hours I collect my pack from the entrance with a sigh and trudge through the rain to the motorway, trying in vain to mentally ascertain an onward route from a plan that doesn't exist, on a map that I have never seen.

I duck into a collectivo going to the nearest town and wipe the steam from the window with my sleeve.

I see a hotel and impulsively tell the driver to stop. The room is cheap but has hooks to dry my clothes. I make myself some guacamole and ground down, pulling myself together, solidifying my thoughts from their fluid-flowing escape. When I am satisfied and more-or-less dry, I go out.

It is still raining.

I am wandering the streets of this new town, trying to make the most of my decision to stay, when I remember about the medicine card and laugh out loud.

Waterlogged. They have to be joking.

Skins

2011-07-01T14:19:00.000-07:00

I slice open a ragingly pink pitaya fruit. Hold it for a moment, captivated by colour, then look down at my left hand, where a large pink patch delineates the awkward union of boiling water, a broken thermos flask and my skin. I wiggle the fingers, carefully. The burn no longer hurts.

I've followed the progress of the injury carefully, from the first hot days of juicy swelling, through to the flaccid, moist, collapsed blister, hardening in a dark brown layer before peeling and fracturing over a pinky white new lamina, completely smooth in its perfection.

Yesterday, Nick and I passed the afternoon on his balcony, each taking turns as the story teller, weaving tales of past lives and sketching worlds for the future. We watched as this naked opening gradually took on the wrinkles of my old skin, pinkening in the sun, exposing itself for the first time to the raw elements.

Since this morning, deep ridges have appeared, parallel along the back, slicing down from the knuckles, then crisscrossing in folds as they grow out from my thumb joint, like cracks in breaking ice, or grooves, written in to a record.

I am literally watching myself age.

Most of the time I forget how old I am until I look at my hands. More and more scars, every year, skin drying up, wrinkles becoming deeper.

They tell such stories. Their arching lines follow the textures they've caressed, flicking as they dance and pressing strong as they support my weight. They reminisce on food they've fed me and feel the ripples of the seas they've swam. They radiate the warmth of the other hands they've held.

I often question the idea that we are all on one constant growth cycle, in one body with one lifetime. I wonder if all the souls in the world simply bubble up in different locations and times, flickering in and out on some other dimension and appearing in time and space in different bodies, like a badly-received tv signal, living a million lives in the span of one lifetime and a million lifetimes with just one life.

At other times I wonder if the real us remains hidden forever, showing itself in glimpses through papery layers, perpetually falling away. Like a wasp's nest, the perfectly constructed sum of everything around.

Either way, we morph, constantly. The events of my life are imprinted on my soul and in the big pink patch over the back of my hand, whispering from every wrinkle and marked with every scar.

Nick and I realise how fortuitous life must be for us to have met here again here - in mental and spiritual space as much as in physical - after nine years of wandering our somewhat directionless paths. As schoolchildren we moved in different circles. Whoever he was then never connected with whoever I was then.

Now, he resembles perfectly the child I went to school with, but he is so completely remade he could be anyone. We have flowed along our winding, separating channels and come out in this lake, only to find that, with all of our individual metamorphoses and layers shed, a new friendship lies waiting.

I turn twenty seven next month. The years line my face and I realise how much I must have changed as well, or rather how robustly that new self has grown out of the old, like ferns from a rotting log. I see that I will continue to grow and die, shedding skins and revealing the new.

In nine year's time, the Nick I see here might not recognise me. But he might recognise himself in my layers. Even now, he weaves himself into my story just as much as his words weave pictures in the air. As my skin grows, he, just like all the other characters in my expanding community, grows into it. Our shared space reveals a new corner of life on the lake.

In nine year's time, looking back, we might find it hard to place our thirty-six year-old selves in a twenty-seven year old's memory. But just like now, when I recall laughing at his poems in English class, he might remember a time when half of my hand was raw and newer than the day I was born.

There might be barely a scar to prove the vision, for the memories will have grown deep into my skin.

Flying, spying

2011-06-15T14:00:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-11T14:02:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-10T13:42:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-09T18:41:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-01T16:13:00.000-07:00

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.

Photography

2011-05-15T20:39:00.001-07:00

I am put in charge of the garden. The soil is volcanic sand, hard as stone. As a result, I pass many hours forcing shovels into the ground and fingering through manure.

Scorpions curl quivering tails from underneath bedspreads, erotically poised to sting those who worry about them. Nick has a near-miss with a baby fer-de-lance, one of the most deadly vipers in the world. I continue to walk around in bare feet, worrying more about flattening the tree frogs than about painful death.

I spend days with a seventy-five year old man who says he is releasing so much energy right now that he has to masturbate three to four times a day. Horrified, we ask him how he gets away with it, whilst sharing a room with five other men. He tells us he is "quite effective" as long as he lies on his front.

The rains have started early and the lake is already full of clumping strands of algae, fed by the rushing run-off pulling agro-chemicals from the land into the water. I no longer swim.

I live in the mezzanine attic of a small, wooden cabin called Amor. To get to my bed I have to climb a ladder and duck under the eaves, crawling on my knees until I trip into my futon bed. I ease myself into sleep with candles to brighten the light-less night.

I take my first day off in the town of San Pedro, on the other side of our volcano, two hours away by boat. I first came here almost two and a half years ago and fell in love. This time it feels strange to meet friends who have been drinking all day. I am woken up by the yelps of a couple having sex in our dormitory. My fond memories of before contrast sharply with my discomfort of the memories of today, and I realise how much life has changed.

One of the guests tries to move seats in the sauna and grabs the metal chimney. His hand sizzles and he leaps outside, naked, screaming in pain. We try to take him seriously as we avoid looking at his swinging ballsack. We pull together our painkillers and smear his hand with aloe cut from the garden.

When in town, I buy twenty metres of black tubing to make and sell hula hoops. As I descend the steep hill down to the dock, tube heavy over my shoulder, a man actually stops his ascent purely to laugh at me. A few weeks later I see the same man in another town. I don't think he recognises me without the tubing. Regardless, he once again begins to laugh. I look down. Huge yellow genie pants, bulging backpack, hula hoop and djembe drum, all balanced awkwardly as I attempt to suck smoothie from a sandwich bag. Forget him. I make myself laugh.

We are working in the kitchen when we notice that fifty or so wasps have entered through the gap in between the windows and the roof. Within an hour they have all spontaneously died. I uncover two of them in my grated carrot.

We have to piss in one toilet and shit in another. We frequently discuss how difficult this is. Once a week Nick has to stir the number 2 toilet tank. It may disgust, but we're some of the only people that don't dump their sewage in the lake.

Twelve ladies and their children walk the path from Chakaya, the nearest village, barefoot and sparkling like jewels in their beautiful woven costumes. They have come to sing for the farm director's birthday. Singing develops into a church service, recruiting us to evangelist hoards. I stay in the kitchen and make mango buttercream.

I am woken frequently by the cries of a dog who has worms and howls as he drags himself along the ground. He was called Gary, until we found out he doesn't have a penis. Now he answers to Gariela.

We get high one night by drinking pure cacao. We drum and dance like sorcerers in strobes of candlelight.

And then we pause… for a moment… in the electricity-free night….

Look up at the sleeping cone-shadow of Volcan San Pedro, silently eating the stars.

Owls bassline the forest symphony with eerie, flute-like notes, toads with cartoonlike feet expanding their throats in reply.

Fireflies flick along the mountainside in dissonant sparkle, spotlighting our secret arena.

Circle spirals

2011-03-24T19:01:00.000-07:00

Three weeks of early mornings, full days, palapa-roofed afternoons and lake-mirrored moons.

My first class leaves me limp with relaxation at the sound of my voice transformed. My students sit silently, unwilling to break the peace.

I feel as if I've done this forever. Knowledge speaks from somewhere deep. Intuition ferments it into gradually strengthening wisdom.

Before I have a chance to let my ego panic, I am a teacher.

They hand me my final certificate in a circle of candles, the same circle we've been sitting in for weeks. I look around at my new family of sisters, faces made even more compelling in the flickering light.

We drum with our eyes closed, pulsing with the music. Ten new teachers beat out an undulating tale of discovery. I don't even know how to drum, but the noises coming from this instrument are rhythmic and transporting.

I have been writing this blog for eighteen months. Eighteen months, constantly turning corners, uncovering new vistas.

Except that these are the corners of a circle, the only geometric shape that has no corners.

I perpetually slip and perpetually discover, but am never halted by the punctuation of a real edge.

A circle is the strongest protection and the purest link. It unites and forges.

It takes you away and away and then loops you back round to where you began.

You send something out and you receive it back. It surprises and convolutes but guarantees you resolve.

It has neither a beginning nor an end.

For eighteen months my writing has been stamped with circular references. Looping, curling, hooping, round, curvatures and revolvatures, swirling and whirling. Ringing a point, creating a centre. In every spinning tale I've included at least one reference to this symbol of wholeness, however tenuous.

All that time devoted to the centrifugal forces within my life. All that time writing about each infinite corner of my perpetual circle. All that time spent within the glittering scoop of my hula hoop, spinning like a dervish, swirling in my moving meditation.

In all that time, my story has been like the geometric flower of life, a series of perfectly connected circles in one ever-flowing net.

But for three weeks I've stopped slipping, and have been instead still, a vital bond in this perfect shape. For the first time, I feel like I have found my hole.

And it is only on the last day of this, my yoga teacher training, a culmination of at least a few circles of life, that I notice the formation we've been sitting in.

And I realise that, morning, noon, night; before and after and during every lesson, every meal, every evening drum session, I've been literally sitting in a circle. This new family, my surrogate sisters, arc around me on either side, every hour of every day, embracing me in the strongest circle of all.

Destiny giggles...from a smoothly rounded corner.

The drowsy fantasy moment of every lonely dawn...

2011-03-20T20:03:00.000-07:00

I roll over to the 5:30 alarm clock, eyes stuck together, head reacting to the sound like a cat being lowered into a bath.

As I roll over, I catch a glimpse of the morning sky through the giant window in front of me. It is grey, streaked with the bold creationist's strokes of dawn, mere suggestions of the paint to come. Mist curls threads of ideas around bamboo huts and slinks heavily over the still lake surface.

Even at this time, the light hold secrets. It dances on the lake in rounded ripples, winking.

All my life I've been a bed-monster, struggling from its warm folds, battling negativity from the moment I open my eyes. The duvet has been my protector for as long as I can remember, and unrolling myself from it has been like giving birth to myself, complete with blood, tears and the cool punch of morning air.

I've grown accustomed to my introvert self, waking up in the prison of my skull and wrestling with Day for the keys.

But in my twenty seventh year, I have all of a sudden eased into life in a way that makes me, for the first time, want to rise early. In the same way that I prefer the 'getting ready' to the actual night out, in the same way planning a holiday can be more entertaining than the real thing, the anticipation of the unknown fuels me.

Sheer potential hangs with the mist, evaporating with the hours.

Alongside it, the silence purifies me in a way the day rarely can. For that lonely hour, I own my space. I hold in my hands blank potential, pausing, blinking, before the day is apportioned in sweet slices to the rising crowds.

As I sit down to breakfast at nine, having already meditated, jogged and practised yoga, I think perhaps my drive comes from this sense of achievement. Most likely it is the tasks I set myself. I love what I do. I feel my body pliable, under control, as I fold myself up and eat cross-legged on a palapa mat.

On the lake, it is light before we see the sun. The volcanoes shield him behind strong, pointed fingers, until he becomes too strong and peeps blindingly between.

Until then, things pause. The silence before the shift. Everything intense.

I've fallen in love with Early.

My eyes shiver in half-open ecstasy as I flow through my practise like water. I bask in the space within my head. My mind explores that other world with sticky octopus fingers, contracting swiftly at my command, to re-enter myself from a new door.

Who am I?

2011-03-10T13:04:00.000-08:00

She sits across from me, cross-legged, knee to knee on the uneven planks of the dock. Below us the water shifts restlessly. My skin prickles under the sun, soothed by the breeze.

They tell me to look into my partners eyes. My gaze slides off her face, as if we're opposite poles of a magnet.

We begin with the words, "I am."

Our teachers encourage us to talk in a stream of consciousness, all the time keeping the gaze to draw out the truth from the other's face. We are the channel; a straw to our deeper selves, pouring.

I falter.

How can I define myself? How can I describe the complexities of myself with mere words? How can I speak for seven minutes about me, only me. I feel mortified.

This is the point our teachers are trying to make. Words are never enough. Finding oneself lies far away from reason and analysis, the twin culprits of a false path.

Unintentionally, we all begin with facts. We keep them positive, reaffirming our belief in ourselves.

I am a sister. I am a daughter. I am a friend. I am a lover. I am blue haired. I am smiley. I am beautiful to some. I am British and American and Central European. I am twenty-six years old.

I am a woman.

I am a child.

I am a student. I am a teacher. I am a carer. I am a dancer. I am a cook. I am a yogi. I am a writer.

I am an observer. I am a creator.

I am a healer.

Subtley the flow of words carries us on. The ego's perceptions of itself and traditional compartmentalising of the persona blends with emerging acceptance of darkness beneath.

I am blind. I am whole. I am wise. I am loud. I am in love. I am in hate. I am broken. I am confident. I am naïve. I am burning. I am excited. I am scared. I am happy.

I am peaceful. I am cold. I am nervous. I am clean. I am lost. I am magnetic.

I am hiding. I am emerging. I am gentle. I am angry. I am mean. I am argumentative. I am kind. I am generous. I am insecure. I am compassionate.

I am strong. I am weak. I am running away. I am running towards.

I am transient. I am pure.

I am completely unique.

The calm envelops as we talk out loud. I am staring straight into my partner's eyes now, the veil lifted, my muscles relaxed. The sun pierces my retina but I don't close my eyelids.

I am a million different people from one day to the next. I am new for every person I meet. I am an amalgamation of everything I've ever done.

I am smaller than the simplest particle. I am nothing. I am a speck in time.

I am overwhelming. I am insignificant. I am supremely powerful.

I am a bubble. I am a bubble on the surface of an enormous cauldron of simmering Everything, elements fusing with other elements to make new entities. A perfect model of the sun. My rainbow-coloured surface reflects what is around me. I am full of nothing.

I exist momentarily in my unique state, formed from the whole, hovering above the ever-moving sea of existence, before I explode into nothing, my remains sucked back into the swirling potion, to be fused with Everything once again.

The teacher winds a stick around a gold singing bowl, its clear note vibrating through us to signal the end of the lesson. We sit in stunning calm, our words falling down around us on the lakeside dock like confetti.

I am the universe. I am love. I am everything.

The wild contrasts between statements leaps out at me. Each phrase has an opposite. Inner duality is something about myself that has bothered me for a long time. Now I realise we are all made of it. I can not just be strong. I am weak as well. I can not just be lost. I am found. I am neither and I am both.

I, like everything else in this world, exist in duality. As they say, fear is the same sensation as excitement, only perceived differently. We are all trying to fit together two ends of one spectrum, circles of definition stacked one on another to form the entities that we are. A giant spiral.

What she said about herself is an exact description of myself. What I am is what she is. As they say in sanskrit, om tat sat. It is what it is. Everyone else has the same experience as us. We all just are.

I am left with an overwhelming feeling of oneness.

The question "Who am I?" becomes ridiculous. We are all the same; not just in a figurative sense but in a real, palpable, pinch-able sense.

I get the feeling that if we'd been given endless time we would have repeated every possible attribute to each other, finding a little of everything within us, before finally returning to the only truth:

"I am."

Centred

2011-03-04T19:24:00.000-08:00

Rid myself of purpose, in order to find my purpose.

This, in essence, was the purpose.

People ask me what I've been doing with myself, incredulous that I've spent so long not earning any money.

As if I was being offensively indulgent.

I want to tell them what I've learnt. I did write a list, but it is too long to be interesting to an outside eye.

Very few of the items would be in place on a CV. Sometimes this makes it difficult to communicate, people often needing things put in terms of 'doing' words.

A lot of the learning comes through meditation, often in combination with stunning natural beauty or ancient sites. I am often reluctant to dwell too much on this, for fear of what people might think. In doing so I am being untrue to myself and of course ignoring what I've learnt, for it seems this path has become my purpose.

****

Back in August I spent a month at Lake Atitlan, Guatemala, during which time I was led, by a series of synchronous events, to La Finca de Yoga Mistica.

At the time it was a community in the making, deserted during the rainy season. Empty garden beds lay sodden from the rain, several small pelapa huts hunched dripping and empty, one large rancho semi-finished, smelling of fresh-cut wood.

It was the cleanest kind of peace.

I was a guest of my new friend Randi, who consolidated my daily yoga practise with calm words and dedicated sentiment. Every morning was ignited with meditation on the small dock, mist hanging heavy over the lake, the only noise the soft paddling of early fishermen in dugout canoes.

I fell in love with everything then; the lake, yoga, sitting still. Myself.

I left the farm calmer than I'd ever been, the clear water flowing through my veins. I knew I'd be back.

In the months following, there came an exchange of emails with the farm's coordinators, which resulted in an agreement. I was to receive a yoga and spiritual teacher training in exchange for time working on the farm.

One day I woke up to my soul's autopilot and realised I'd found something I not only really wanted, but had, almost without realising, made happen.

There, crystallising from a long, heavy mist, appeared the Purpose.

It was so simple. Yoga is the synthesis of body, mind and soul, with the ultimate goal of inner stillness. Far more than the commonly perceived 'stretching,' it was designed purely as a moving meditation to sink one deeper into other worlds.

Although I had practised on and off for five years, I had never considered it more than just a beautiful activity. It is still unbelievable that I took so long to realise this could be a life choice.

The more I did, the more the lines blurred between the physical and the perceived. I sank easily into postures, my mind settling like a sudden dropping of the wind.

Without movement of air, there is no wind. Without thought, there is no mind.

Now, early March, I find myself for the first time on a timescale. I pass through Mexico, Belize and Guatemala at speed, like a fly, darting randomly in seemingly useless directions but somehow making it to my goal with time to spare.

I ride a speedboat across the lake, swaying up and down with the rhythms of the waves, rushing into the unknown. Volcanoes tower over me on all sides and I realise the entire lake must be one supervolcano.

I am in the centre.

Primeval queen

2011-02-26T12:12:00.000-08:00

Before I kill him, I hold him. I am careful not to squeeze him too hard. I don't want to harm him, or worse, scare him.

I can feel his heart beating. I like the warm weight.

His feathers are soft and glossy, fading from deep, terracotta red to iridescent green-black. Beautiful. I think about the earrings I am going to make with them later.

I stroke his back and look into his yellow, darting eyes. I project calm. Although my heart beats hard, I do not want him to feel my nervousness.

We hang him up from a tree by his feet and leave him there for the blood to drain to his head. I apologise to him for the situation.

I put my hand over his chin and beak, covering his eyes. I don't want him to see the knife. Hanging upside down, wings open out like an inverted umbrella, he is so helpless that I have a sudden urge to save him.

I feel a pulse in the artery underneath my thumb. I think about how he is alive.

I slice the knife across his neck. Warm blood spills over my hand and drips onto the grass. I don't know why, but the temperature surprises me.

For a moment, the chicken is still and I am left with a brief silence, during which I can almost hear the liquid falling from the knife and my hand. Then he starts moving again and Jimmy takes the knife from my hand, hacking his head completely off. It falls to the ground like a discarded toy.

The headless body starts to flap its twisted wings and cluck, as if the soul of the bird is echoing its life as it leaves the body. On the floor, the head twitches. The movement of the body is so violent that I stand bewitched, watching the blood fall to the floor as the carcass tugs and swings on the rope. After two minutes it falls still.

"Ya," says Erica. Enough.

We pull feathers from the body to save for jewellery. If I pull too hard, skin comes off with them. I will need to wash these. When I've taken what I want she dips the whole thing in boiling water, loosening the cuticles and enabling us to pull the remaining feathers out in wet handfuls. They lie on the compost heap in soggy balls.

She toasts the naked body on the fire to burn off any last hairs. I scrub it all over with a soapy scourer.

I tell them I would like to butcher as well. The family gather around the stone sink to watch. I think they find it hard to believe that this twenty-six year old girl is not only unmarried but has never killed or butchered a chicken. I am not sure what to tell them, other than, "things are different in England."

But I want to do this. For years I have wanted to do this. I have always felt very uncomfortable about the fact I had never killed anything. How could I be happy eating meat when I was not happy to kill it myself? The food we buy in Tesco is so far removed from its origin that it is hard, sometimes, to remember that it was once a living, breathing thing. In some twisted way this process is a token of respect to the animals I have eaten.

Erica holds the legs apart as I cut around the anus.

I must be careful not to contaminate the meat with the intestinal contents. I slice down the left hand side of the spine, opening a cavity through which I carefully pull the innards. I wonder how machines carry out such a delicate job.

When I chop the feet off at the lower joint, I am left with something barely resembling the chickens I'm used to buying at home. I wonder what they must pump them with to make them so rounded and white. This one is wrinkled, thin and bright yellow. The flavour will be impeccable.

The whole job has taken almost an hour. I have turned a bright-eyed, beautiful creature into food. I am hugely aware of the significance of what I've just done, and the inappropriateness of the usual indifference we have for meat. But I feel relieved.

I hadn't realised how much it bothered me that I had eaten meat most of my life and yet never killed an animal with my own hands. I feel slightly less of a fraud.

I whisper a promise to the chicken soul; to always be thankful for the life of the animal that I'm eating. I am a strange, yet conscientious cross of a primeval hunter and a privileged hippy.

I sit at home, cadaver in the fridge, and twirl silver wire into earring springs. Time to adorn myself with my kill.

Caribbean kingdom

2011-02-22T12:02:00.000-08:00

One minute I am eating tacos and chatting in lively Spanish, next I'm face to face with black, dreadlocked border officials, trying to decode the lingo.

Of course… I forgot. Belize is Commonwealth. This lilting, smiling language is actually my own - or was, once. I finger through to the underlying meaning and emerge with another stamp in the passport.

I climb up in to the ex-US schoolbus going down the only main road south.

People of all colours climb on, speaking their rhythmic islander's talk, speckled with unfamiliar slang. I keep forgetting, asking questions in Spanish. The bus driver plays reggae and I talk to a child next to me.

She is the smartest girl in her class. She is also the oldest, with the one class serving children aged 8-11. We hold up a five pound note against a ten dollar bill, comparing the Queens.

Her school is 'non-profit.'

Sea air frosts everything with a salty crust.

The landscape of northern Belize is flat, dry and less interesting than I had anticipated. The settlements, however, are intriguing. Wide, dusty roads, sprinkled with homes and jungle palms. Run-down schools, labeled as Hurricane Shelters. Wooden houses, paint peeling in the sun, propped up precariously on stilts. Some of them lean beyond reasonable stability.

All in all, I feel very much like I've stepped back in time. I cannot get over the language, and how it relates to my country. I feel strangely like a modern-day pioneer, painting the Caribbean with my flag.

I am slightly embarrassed to be British.

I talk to an old woman, Mary-Lee, about my predicament. When she was born the country was called British Honduras. I ask her how it has changed.

"Independence don't mean freedom," she says, with a sorry shake of her head. "Dey keep telling us dey'll help us, but everyone lies. No politician ever follows through. It jus' gonna get worse and worse."

I tell her; "if its any comfort, politics are the same everywhere. We have a new government and already they're breaking promises. At least you have the sun!"

She laughs and agrees. "I spent ten years in England before I decided Belize was a better life. Ain't so sweet over there either.

"But it be same everywhere. World's covered in fire n' flood. Evil be spreading."

I ask her what she means. "Worlds endin', girl. Jus' you wait."

The bus journey goes on for several hours, through towns seemingly named by fantasising children. Orange Walk. Cool Shade Camp. Ladyville. Until finally I am in Belize City.

It is tiny, yet energetic. After the sprawl of Mexico it feels wrong to call this a city.

I had been nervous -- as usual, with no guide book, I am going on word of mouth. Depending on the age of the adviser, this has not always been positive. But five minutes into the city and I am relaxed. Everyone here has a smile on their face. The women move with an enviable rhythm. The men are, in general, very attractive. Everyone calls me baby.

The wind keeps blowing. I hear Belize is all about the coral islands.

I have a little time.

I buy a ticket for the last boat to Caye Caulker, enough food for a week, and sit in the sun to await my chariot.

God of Small Things

2011-02-18T20:59:00.000-08:00

I'm on a bus heading south. Sitting across from me is a woman, perhaps 20 in age, with a small son who has no hair. She wants US dollars, I want Belize, so we swap and start talking.

She wants to know where I've been, and why I don't want to marry and settle down in my own country. I give her the standard spiel. The spanish rattles out freely and I enjoy the surprise on her face.

***

Once upon a time, I watched football. I shamelessly supported the Mancs because they were the best and because my boyfriend did. We used to ritually tramp to Brixton's Elm Park Tavern, sun illuminating the pub in dust rays, pint of cider on the table, to pass a Saturday afternoon esconsed in drama and delight.

These days, although I love the game, I have no time and no patience for the delicate advertising-machines running the pitch. These are the glorified soap stars, paid sickening wages and supported by self-righteous masses. Without the pub and the boys I find it hard to take an interest.

***

The conversation moves over to her. She is Honduran, married to a Belizean. She doesn't speak English but is trying to learn for her son; given that they live in Belize, English will be his first language. She hasn't been home for four years because she doesn't have the money.

He is three years old and has cancer. The hospitals in Belize don't know what to do with him, so she's been taking the five hour round-trip border-hop up to Chetumal in Mexico to get his treatment.

I ask her how often she goes.

"Every day," she replies, with a smile. "Every day for a year."

My heart aches for them and I feel like a fool for my indulgent life and naïve cries for freedom. I feel desperate to help. I want to fly them to England and make him better. But I can't. That is the lesson I learn every day - that everyone has their own agenda. You can only ever give so much.

***

Going through my belongings, shapeless lumps in the attic of my father's house kept for reasons unknown, I uncover a Manchester United strip. I pause for a minute, pondering how to get rid of it. It's too small for any of my fellow fans to get away with. It would be a shame to send it to a charity shop.

Although now, to me, it symbolises the Dirty System, it once represented comraderie, love and a shared passion. And it might one day mean something else for someone out there.

So I bring it with me. They love football where I'm going. I know I'll find a home for it somewhere.

***

When she climbs down from the bus, halfway to Belize city, I pull the earrings from my ears and press them into her palm. With my other hand I give the Manchester United strip to the boy. He looks up at me with big eyes. He is huge for a three-year old but the t-shirt is still so big he will drown in it if he wears it right now.

Maybe she will sell it.

But maybe, if he grows older, he will play football in it one day.

The other home

2011-02-16T20:10:00.000-08:00

Its hard to describe the feeling as I fly over the turquoise shores of Quintana Roo. Something bordering on ecstasy, but far too calm for that word to fit.

I am alone again - and instead of feeling lonely I feel full. High on myself. Elated. The warm wind that hits me as I exit the airport at Cancun is the same wind that blew me here in the first place. It whispers to me and I shyly yield to its touch like a lover.

I just cannot believe how happy I feel.

I packed Mexico away into a neat box in my head, barely sniffed at in six months, and yet in just a few minutes it tumbles out; a surprise party, bursting with song.

Dogs, casually roaming. Dirt roads, playgrounds for the happiest children I've ever seen. Smells, pulling me in every direction. Old men, gossiping toothlessly from their chairs in the roadside shade. Shrieks of tropical birds, with something to say every minute of the day. People, everywhere, smiling.

And that wind, that soft, warm wind.

I avoid Cancun altogether in favour of the more genuine Puerto Morelos, checking in to a beautiful room at Casitas Kinsol. It is a haven under the shade of fruit trees and the baleful wide eyes of a chihuahua.

I borrow a bike and ride through a few kilometres of mangrove swamp to the white beach, where one of many of today's contented sighs slips out to join the wind. In moments I am paddling the shallow turquoise water, washing myself clean of my 60-hour journey. I make some friends, who buy me a beer. I sink my toes into the sand.

Tonight is full moon. It is as bright as the sun in England. I honour it with enormous prawns a la diabla, re-anointing my mouth with the familiar chilli fire of Mexico. I frequently pause my baptismal meal to tend to a small child, whilst the mother and grandmother serve the locals around me and the father, grandfather and uncle lean back with machismo.

I eat slowly, and afterwards spend a long time sitting at my table, facing the street.

It ain' awll bad, son...

2011-02-15T15:12:00.000-08:00

Being on a budget, I thought nothing of accepting a 36-hour,3-flight journey in order to save a few pennies. Being on a budget, therefore, I take with grace the 60-hour epic that eventually unfolded.

After the first 10 hours I emerge in San Francisco. Grey, drizzling, cold. I actually find myself dreaming of the sun I left in London. I somehow entertain myself for 8 hours. Return to the airport at 10pm to be told one flight is delayed, another cancelled altogether.

Time to whip out the sleeping bag. Other travellers eye me with jealousy as I steal my first 3 hours sleep in 24 hours on the airport floor. A further 3 hours stretched over free seats on the plane and I can be almost be counted as awake when I stumble out in sunny Atlanta, Georgia.

My mind twists as I try to work out what day it is and what time my body clock is following. But in the third time zone in thirty three hours it is only 9am and I know better than to capitulate to the heavy eyes this early on. So I check into a hostel. Shower. Leave.

Despite the dragging mind, I'm glad I had this extra time in the states. It reminds me of why I'm not staying.

I still have a lingering sense of attachment to the American Dream. I still associate the ideal with the safety and love of my childhood. Its almost a forbidden vision of a possible future. And, goddammit, that makes it exciting.

As I child I believed I would settle in the Promised Land. As an adult I find myself torn between this dream and the rejection of the whole concept of the country. I simultaneously love and despise the excessive use of fast food. I hold myself back from the glitter of the malls. I don’t want anything they offer - but the advertising works so well.

But today I had a revelation - aside from idealism, a true reason why I can never settle here. A reason I can accept, and be at one with, without feeling like some kind of opinionated idiot. The clincher?

It starts when I realise I am walking the streets of Atlanta alone. My only pedestrian companions are the crazy and the homeless, of which there are an extortionate number.

And then I remember. 'Outside' is a strange concept, here.

Everyone drives everywhere. Every single shop has its own parking lot. The consumption of space is ruthless. I have been to city upon city, West, deep South, South East and North East and all of them sprawl, eating up the landscape. Away from small downtown hubs, sheer distance gives people no option other than be slaves to their vehicles.

And they are happy to. Billboards everywhere preach fear.

The first sign to greet me at the airport: "there are other ways to lose your life than dying".
The metro voiceover: "surveillance cameras cannot guarantee your safety."
When I tell the hostel people I will walk (*shock!) downtown: "Keep your hand on your wallet. Don't talk to anyone."

Everyone is scared of everyone else.

The answer to their fear is to keep behind doors - the airconditioned doors of offices, the sliding doors of shopping malls, the slamming doors of cars.

I feel like I'm in an apocalyptic video game. I walk the streets avoiding stumbling meth-twisted zombies, countering their approaches with English politeness and a smile that cracks my airplane-dry lips. I cast my eyes over the concrete Olympic Park and swerve to avoid Coca Cola World.

I'm almost relieved when my legs start to give way from exhaustion. I can legally (my own rules) go back to the hostel. I buy myself a pot of Ben and Jerry's and curl up in front of Friends.

Well, it ain't awll bad...

Valentine's Ode

2011-02-14T19:20:00.000-08:00

Home was a calling that I didn't know I'd heard
Home was an accident, for which I was unprepared.
Home was a siesta after a year of wandering -
Home was the answer to my silent pondering.
Home was beds and walls and hugs and multitudinous Things
Home the nest in which to rest my aching open wings.
Home compacted years of life to tiny scraps of days.
Home became the doorway, to open the next phase.

Home was overwhelming, in a shiny kind of way
Home regurgitated things I didn't want to say
Home cut me a window into all my previous lives
Home made me a passenger on other people's rides.
In home I found the things I left, reasons I had to go
But home exposed the things I love, the reasons for the flow.
My home can only ever be the root of all of this -
The home of all the ideals that I never thought I'd miss.

This home is now a flame to light the path I choose to take
For home, you see, revealed to me the lonely choice I make.
At home live friends and family who actually understand!
But home they stay, far away, while I flee to foreign lands.
My love hides there, love for them all, for I can't bring it along
As a passenger, it eats away the heart that once was strong.
But my home is not forgotten, although it is far away
Home for me is everything. I just wish that I could stay.

Emotional Warrior

2011-01-01T11:36:00.000-08:00

I have always valued the strength of my emotional reactions. I feel everything so deeply. I cry a lot, but I laugh even more. I am happy more than I am sad. Although I get frustrated at manic fluctuations from hour to hour, I believe the intensity of the highest highs can only ever be the same as the intensity of the lowest low. Rather than pushing pain away, I eat it with gusto, swallowing down the scratching edges and squeezing the nourishment out.

As such I find myself shaken regularly and aggressively by my emotions, an icily intoxicating cocktail of rainbow colours.

It makes for an interesting life.

Take, for example, my recent break-up with Mike. Yes, it happened.

We realise that we needed to be in different physical spaces. He is no longer fulfilled doing anything other than his music, and his music has started taking me to places I have no reason to be.

Rather than continue to hold each other back, we plan our parting to coincide with a visit home for Christmas.

Our last week in the States is spent honouring our relationship, toasting it with friends, reassuring ourselves it is the right thing to do, and crying into each other's arms at the bizarreness of life's gifts.

We release each other in late November, exactly a year from when I first flew out from Heathrow. From the moment the decision is made, until a couple of weeks after we part, I feel it all intensely. Every day I wake up with a new head full of thoughts, and every night I sleep lightly, dreaming of the revelations of the morning to come.

The Mind Fishermen hook me more frequently, raping my thoughts unabashedly.

There is indeed nothing like a break-up for philosophical reflection. And yet I write nothing.

Despite the shock of having half of me ripped away, I am happy. It is self-mutilation. I am the warrior, trapped under a boulder, forced to cut off my own arm in order to survive. I know that the decision is the right one. I had always known it, really. But I had seen it through and learnt the lessons, and for that I am proud.

But it hurts. My emotional cocktail shaker blends me, and the Fishermen taste me.

Iced Heart Indigo, Loathing Lime.

Lonely White.

I do the time. I feel the things I need to feel. I meet each emotion head on, exploring it, accepting it, letting it go.

Anticipation Amber.

And then, I am fine. Totally fine.

I shock myself by how quickly I am fine.

December comes and Great Britain turns white. The snow falls around me, erasing the dirt of London town and the mud of my mind, and I feel enormous.

I am surrounded by friends and I can't believe it. They are MY friends! I can talk to them whenever I want! Gone are the days of relying on one other person for all my emotional needs. Gone are the days of the lonely hotel room, writing emails to faceless people who no longer need me. They are here and they love me. Christmas Crimson envelops me.

And my family. They are close enough to touch. Two sisters, a brother, a father and a cat.

Emily and I march over Hampstead Heath, past frozen swimming ponds, emerging with armfuls of ivy; a pre-constructed wreath. I am driven home in my father's carriage of safety, past crunchy rivers and a sunset bonding with the crispy white hills. Wrapped in fairy lights and tinsel by my sister's happy face. Leaning over the stove, stirring cranberries and cinnamon. A clockwork Santa playing carols in clear, repetitive notes. A log fire warming my heart more than it has been warmed in years.

I pass a wondrous Christmas surrounded by love. I give out as much as I can. Entire relationships are enacted within tiny timeframes. I flit from place to place, seeing those who matter and not worrying about those who don't. Cornwall's incredible energy revives me and its seas pummel vibrancy through my veins. I emerge in frosted glasses, delicious flavours. Long Walk Rose. Full Bellied Cream. December Sunshine Yellow.

On the last day of the year, I cut off six inches of hair. The split ends and crumpled curls fall thinly to the floor. My head feels light.

I swish.

I finish 2010 feeling calm. I trust myself again. It worked. I dealt with it all in real time and emerged righteous. I felt it all. The tears were worth it. My emotions knew what they were up to.

January dawns in ethereal mists, and I can barely see the sea from the window. The sky is lit with streaks of colour.

Surreal Cerise. Cosmic Coral. Triumphant Teal.

The guts of the Mind Fish

2010-12-25T12:38:00.000-08:00

Many people ask me why I have not written anything since August. I fumble and excuse with poorly rehearsed lines, confusing myself as to why my spool of memories has failed. With a familiar start I realise almost four months have passed since I made the decision to leave Guatemala and re-enter the western world. So many philosophies, so many moments, unrecorded. They dance underneath my eyelids, taunting me with half-formed answers. I reach to grab them and my fingers close over empty air, the moment vanquished.

The truth is, every time I sit down to write, a Mind Fisherman, high up in the clouds, stabs his hook through my skull and pulls, hard, until I find myself floating several feet above the ground and unable to reach the keyboard. There I stay, sometimes flailing, sometimes still, waiting for the fisherman to either pull me up for inspection or release me back into the wild.

For months, I have been the subject of examination by those above, who comb my brainwaves for meaty morsels, judge me on the beauty and fleshiness of my thoughts, while I stare at them with shiny circle eyes.

After each encounter I am left confused and decompressed, with a hole in the head, leaking words in a stream of empty metaphor and overly descriptive expression. I am fit only for laughter or tears, or both, in a manic combination of emotion too strong to withhold.

But for now, I am free. Finally I am able to finger those thoughts, squishing them and rolling them in search of meaning.

America... America was, well... not so bad, actually.

I enjoyed myself. I made a lot of friends. I'll probably go back. But I'm not in a rush.

Most Americans are wonderful people. They have travellers, just like the rest of the world. Except this generation of travellers all have the same passport.

They don't seem to mind that every town looks the same. The landscape is, as they say, awesome.

We went to some festivals unlike anything I've ever seen. We drove around with a group of kids from Indiana. We stayed high, high up in the mountains. We ran along deserted beaches. In three months, we stayed in just three hotels. The rest of our beds were donated by the seemingly endless generosity of the locals.

America certainly is the country of superlatives. Biggest. Wildest. Most Generic. Craziest. I saw a lot of crazy things, actually. Naked people riding bicycles through the desert. A greenhouse brimming with fresh marijuana.

San Francisco, the city that everyone raves on about, was mediocre. A city, really. A nice one, sure, but full of twitching meth-addicts and shiny-shoed fashion victims, alongside slow-walking tourists and over-priced chips. I smiled blandly as person after person warned me of the horrific dangers of Mexico, and stared at the corner of Union Square where a German tourist was shot dead outside Macy's department store the month previously.

I admired very much the hippy mentality of northern California. There, amidst stunning mountain backdrops and small, colonial towns, a subculture has become a monoculture and everyone buys organic. The people are unbelievably jovial, love yoga and religiously re-fill their shampoo bottles at the corner store.

But despite the similar vital statistics, I did not fit in, even there. Everywhere I went, I found ego to be too huge a part of life. People seemed obsessed with labelling themselves.

There, you do not just like yoga, you are 'a yogi'. You are not just an independent, free-spirited woman. You are A Goddess. You cannot say, "I like to paint" without someone replying, "Ahh, so you are An Artist". And everyone asks you what your star sign is, and nods knowingly when you reply. Even if you lie.

To be honest, harsh though it sounds, I just got bored of people talking about themselves. Perhaps it was just the people I met. Ironic really, for me to write this in a blog of My Take On Life. But at least I see the satire.

Despite this, I loved almost everyone that I met. Some of them were incredibly inspiring. Take Jay - the man who picked us up as hitch-hikers on the road from Yosemite. He had just finished scattering his wife's ashes to the wind. I sat down in the front seat of the car and promptly broke the urn. For some reason this meant something to him and he drove us six hours west to Santa Cruz and gave us a bed for the night.

He talked of his struggle to make his life his own since his wife's sudden death a year previously. He'd started by getting up at 4am every morning. He had pictures of a year's worth of sunrises, seen from the beach. The light from these suns shone from his eyes as he talked. Then he made a vow to rid himself of 'two square inches of surplus stuff' per day, in order to recover his house and his mind from a dead person's weight. I understood every nuance.

I cooked him chickpea tagine and told him stories, and watched his face animate in front of me. He later told me he'd started to cook again for the first time since she died. He dropped us off in San Francisco with two new rollmats (a rather large 'two inches' he cheerfully cried), sheets hemmed by his wife, and forty bucks to buy myself a jacket. We were left to hitch on Golden Gate Bridge, hidden by the mist and the bewilderment of a man who gave everything just for love.

Now I find myself in England. It was, as always, almost an accident. A split-second decision. By coincidence or design, I can't be sure, but I arrived home exactly a year after I first left.

I've a ticket booked back for January. I have, dare I say it, A Plan. But of that, I will refrain from writing. That is a morsel best conserved for me. I currently have both feet firmly on the ground, fingers rooted to the keyboard, and mind free from molestation. I spill my guts voluntarily, this time.

The Second Circle

2010-08-23T06:12:00.000-07:00

One of the last notable things to happen to me in Mexico is another stranger giving me another crystal. This time it is amythyst quartz, an angled finger of glasslike transparency, tipped with the purple tint of the seventh chakra.

The crown chakra is the representative channel of energy from the universe through the top of the head down through the body. A purple and white stone like this is said to resonate with that chakra and is ideal for meditation.

The gift comes at a time when I have so much energy focused on meditation and my seventh chakra that it seems almost absurd that I was not given this stone previously. I hold it in my hand that whole day and my palm turns hot and sweaty around it as I fall asleep on my last night in this country.

I spend this night in the same hostel as always - my third visit. The return is yet another closure; of a circle looped twice before with my arrival back in November and Mike's arrival in March. Unknowingly I have completed a figure of eight around the country, centred on Mexico City. My physics friends might call it an infinity symbol.

Tomorrow I travel to the airport to meet Michael again as he returns from Veracruz. Another chapter in our near-far relationship, stretching our bonds only to ping us back like plastic toys on the end of an elastic rope.

I haven't spoken to him in a month; our Time Out bringing silence and personal growth to the two of us in an intensity neither of us has experienced for a while. It is hard to tell what the transition between solitude and constant companionship will be like. The typed version of him I read through my computer screen resembles very little of the original man.

I force myself to take each moment as it comes.

I fall asleep, crystal hard in my flesh, dreams punctured by the horn beeps and fried chilli scents of Mexico City.

Is anybody else scared of America?

2010-08-22T09:31:00.000-07:00

The week has passed like a slow-time camera shot of a highway; red and white headlights smearing into lines of hurried intention.

I've rushed from here to there in a smooth path from Lago Atitlan in Guatemala to San Cristobal in southern Mexico, and then to Mexico City via that old favorite… the womb-like night bus.

On Tuesday I will be flying to San Francisco, California, via Miami, Florida, and Chicago, Illinois. The decision, like most of mine, was fluid and fast, and the reasons why I did it have escaped me, like perpertrators at a crime scene.

Wednesday brings a new kind of life.

I am scared of the States. Simply the nickname 'America' makes me nervous - that pseudonym so easily grabbed, with no attention for the fact that Mexico and Canada are also both part of the continent of North America. I find myself face to face with the bully of school - a bully in the form of a too-clean, polished blonde with sharp nails and an alarming ignorance. I can feel her already looking down her nose at my ragged clothes, scraggly hair, small wallet.

I feel my loneliness when faced with her - that longing to be both at once a part of her and as far away from her as possible.

And yet she resides within me. Politics and stereotypes aside, I cannot deny my roots.

My mother's family is from Connecticut. I spent a shiny string of shimmering Christmasses there as a child, my once-a-year reconnections fading with the death of my mother in 2004. Since then, I have had little contact with her brothers and extended family, who still live along the east coast, and other than my brief sojourn to Texas at new year, no basis for adult interpretation of this country whatsoever.

Thus I am torn between the eyes of an impressionable child and an empassioned young woman - two fires within one girl.

America used to be magical. Literally.

One uncle had a mountainside log cabin in Vermont, the other a mansion in Virginia with a jacuzzi on the deck.

We would traipse through snow-glittered maple woods, ice-skating on frozen lakes and warming up by a log fire. My sister and I would have gifts lavished on us by my grandmother's friends, enraptured with the two little English girls who skipped through their neighbourhood every festive season. We were princesses and this land was everything our doodling imaginations could create.

America was fairy lights and snow boots, ice-cream parlours and new clothes, McDonalds happy meals and as much food as a greedy child could eat.

All that seems like another world. It has been frozen in black and white and archived deep in my mind, crumbling from reminiscence. The strange and unintentional severance of contact with half my family has had the effect of killing this country in my mind.

Mom's ashes are buried in Vermont. One day I will go.

Until then, my attitude has been to reject everything that country represents. Frequently mistaken as an American in the latin world, I quickly refute: "No soy gringa!" (I'm not a yank!)

I hide my passport like a sin.

From where comes this racism? For indeed that is what it is; just because the US is part of the 'first world' doesn't mean this worldwide xenophobia isn't in most cases as grossly misplaced as all other instances of race-based stereotyping.

Of course, aside from the bible bashing, gluttony and consumerism, the glaringly obvious answer is their interference overseas. They have become the world' s police force. And no one likes the pigs.

The sentiment, however, rather than outright racism, stems from a kind of advanced resentment borne of fear and helplessness.

It has grown surely and in many cases fiercely over the last years, particularly amongst my own generation of Europeans - which is of course the only voice I can really lay claim to understanding at this stage.

It appears to be fairly common to view Americans as, in the (fairly derogatory) words of my favorite comedian, "happy idiots." The natives themselves largely do not help their case, often remaining ignorant, particularly regarding the appalling state of international affairs wherever the US military is involved. Most of them do not even own a passport and show little interest in the world around them.

In contrast to skin-crawling atrocities such as Guantanamo Bay or the US funding of wars worldwide, the Americans we see on television build themselves an image of a happy, simple zombie, cooing under the power of the fluttering stars and stripes. They do not appear to have noticed that the governmental hold on their country is alarmingly similar to that of Germany in 1938.

Never has patriotism been so terrifying.

But. The big but.

I shrink from such wide-spread accusations of a nation.

How can I possibly write the above, let alone brand it to my name on the internet?! How could I possibly judge a nation of 300 million people on George Bush's delightfully-punchable face?

If this is the face of the States as seen from the outside, I cannot wait to see it from the inside. I cannot wait for my stereotype to be disproved. I cannot wait to meet the freedom-fighting gringos bubbling under the dead-pan of the newsreader's face.

I know that for whatever reason, my heart is drawing me there - even despite my somewhat irrational fears.

Yes, I am scared of returning to the 'real world'. In my eyes, I've been swimming happily in raw life juice for the last nine months. Those cold, clear waters are where I belong. I don't want to be drawn in to the sparkle of the new world. The idea of getting off the plane and spending a week's worth of Mexican accommodation money on a meal, just because its what people do, makes my breathing shallow.

Bigger fears lurk over the superficial ones. I am running out of money and don't know how to make it back. Thus America might be the end, at least for a while. Plus, facing the dream means disturbing it. Even if it is wonderful, it will still never be the same as it was as a child.

Even more daunting: Michael is getting ever more successful with his music. If he wants to pursue it, it seems like life will make it easy for him to do so in the Promised Land. But I don't want to settle yet.

So, once again, the bigger flows make themselves felt and having committed to following my own goals and heart there is nothing I can do but relax into them and see where they take me this time.

Your world is what you make of it… as every day here teaches me. If I'm scared, then those things will drill into my brain and leave holes, just as I fear. I need to remember that wherever my heart takes me I will be safe.

And what about Mexico… my love, my home.

In Mexico I feel like I have discovered the heart of the world.

There is just so much. I struggle to express the feeling Mexico inspires in me. It is universal love. I look at her swooping mountains, wild beaches, stark deserts, chattering jungles, and I can feel my whole body contract with yearning and respect.

More than just love, this feeling alone has led me to places previously unachievable during meditation and has been critical to my spiritual growth.

This kind of love is something I've only ever felt for the land around my house in Cornwall.

The energy fields across this enormous country sway and band like ribbons, streamlining the people underneath it and drawing them to exactly where they need to be.

There is a deep knowledge here, rising with the lava in its volcanoes.

Many things will come to pass in Mexico in the next few years. I feel the imposition of a future pushed and pulled by enormous forces; earthquakes, hurricanes, political explosion, people's rebellion. Water flows. Spirituality. The knowledge of the ancients, returning to imprint its symbols on a modern day nation of passion and raw beauty.

Somehow I know there is more for me here. Thus, I sign out under the knowledge that these winds will blow me right back here where I belong, as soon as I've gathered what I need from its bigger bitch of a sister.

Mexico, Mexico. I do not abandon you for her.

I leave as a messenger, of the strongest intentions. I will stay only long enough to pluck what I need for you and your people. I leave to learn - for how can I form a full picture of the world without having been?

Reading over the strangeness of these words, I wonder what I have to learn that is so important to bring me to California?

Buds bursting

2010-08-18T21:21:00.000-07:00

I look over at Felix and his frizzy blonde locks, bobbing as he laughs from his cross-legged seat on the ground. Under his overalls squirms a kitten, running lumps through the material as it tries to fight its way out.

The kitten has been brought here from the neighbouring village, on a motorboat, in someone's pocket, to kill the rats.

The rats have been brought here by the recent addition of human food to this land.

The humans have been attracted by the unusual flatness of the terrain; hard to find on the shores of Lago Atitlan but a necessity for an eco-village.

From the almost-whole shack - the only building on the land as of yet and the base of operations for Green New World (GNW) - the future seems tiny with long-distance perspective. But it is growing, fast.

GNW, a charity focused on providing much-needed help to the ailing lake, have just purchased the land and are finding their feet. Through them I have already helped with a basic-level sewage project for San Marcos, stopping at least some of the raw effluent from running into the lake. Now, I find myself on the side of a mountain, observing the fetal stages of a proposed eco-village. Like many in the area, it hopes to set an example to the locals by providing easy, green solutions to traditional problems such as farming and washing.

Right now, they lack even basic facilities.

Without these, much-needed volunteers are repelled. Without volunteers, the project struggles.

I don't have long but I want to help. I lay stones for the kitchen floor and cover myself in clay in a long day of digging and hauling in the toilet pit. Once in use, the toilet will be kept dry with sawdust to allow decomposition. Once full, the pit will be closed off. Unbelievably, after two years, a full pit of sewage will turn to rich compost that can even be used to grow vegetables. Such a simple idea, and yet the lake is about to go toxic from hundreds of years of human waste settling on the bottom.

We drink creek water through a clay filter and I try to understand where it all went so wrong.

I realise how much I love the simplicity. There is no electricity and our only music is the whisper of the wind through the avocado trees. We eat from the forest floor and piss amongst the coffee leaves. I haven't seen a mirror in days.

In the silence of the forest I find my retreat.

Although I'd originally planned on committing a month to a meditation centre, I realised quickly that organised spirituality is exactly the kind of practice that I reject, no matter how good the intention. Instead, I practise yoga underneath a morning mist that breathes lightly over me, fishermen my only observers, paddling dugout canoes with tender strokes.

Sitting here, the view of the lake sparkling between the trees, I understand that it is nature, pure and simple, that gives me my truth.

The trees whisper an ancient language. The bees fly lines of interconnection. The rain washes webs of oneness, united and yet barely noticed by those who are a part of it all.

The earth speaks to me in musty tones, humidly rising warm through my being.

I resonate.

The other side

2010-08-07T21:22:00.000-07:00

Lago Atitlan is the most beautiful lake in the world.

So proclaim a history of writers and explorers, drawn here by the mystery of the morning mists over the water. Ancient volcanoes sleep at its edges and the Mayans, isolated to the extreme, appear to live as they have for thousands of years. From village to neighbouring village, one's ears prick with completely different dialects. Weak sunlight glints from the sparkling fabrics of the ladies, who keep their spirits alive in the startling threads of the full, traditional costume.

I first came to Guatemala in 2008, on a trip designed as a test for this current journey.

At that stage my hula-hoop loop was just a twinkle in my eye, and the perspective of that holidaying office girl painted a perfectly-proportioned picture of my future quest.

I spent ten dreamy days on the shores of Atitlan in a sleepy village called San Pedro, absorbing myself in the solitude of single travel and the intense peace of the rocks.

I had rarely seen such beautiful evenings.

Today I return, this time in the middle of a moody rainy season that paints the mountain-scratched skies with emotion. We enter San Pedro on one of Guatemala's famous chicken buses, painted beautifully kitch colours and packed eight across.

I barely recognise the town.

From the emptiness of the Christmas weekend two years ago has birthed a town for tourists, crawling with white faces and shamelessly-plugged memorabilia. The locals unsmilingly rip me off at the market and, in sharp contrast to the rest of Guatemala and Mexico, flatly refuse a bargain.

I am shocked at the difference between this town and my memory. Not only that, but I quickly discover that the lake has turned toxic and is only weeks away from a devastating algal bloom.

It is as if this postcard memory has been decomposed by first-world scum.

The worst is the singing. Every morning at 6am, the loudspeaker cries of Evangelist churches echo in symphony across the lake, blasted from each village in a call to convert the few remaining Mayans.

The 1970s left a crater of devastation in the wake of civil war and natural disaster, providing vulture-like missionaries the perfect conditions in which to descend. In the midst of destruction and agony, new religions proliferated and churches, foreign-funded, were often the first buildings up in the most hard-hit areas.

Converts tell tales of miraculous healings. Gifts of money and American trinkets.

Now, perched smugly upon the old houses of San Pedro, a church more like a wedding cake than a building shits over the spirits of the lake.

I am disgusted.

The same thing has happened to virtually all of the indigenous traditions across Mexico and Central America. No doubt to the rest of the world.

While to the untrained eye, the locals may look as they always have, in reality the addition of new religion has divided neighbouring villages, keeping people under strict, unofficial laws (in many villages the church owns the land, dictating where the villagers may work and live and when they may leave).

But (I pathetically justify to myself) this is nothing new. Catholicism, unsurprisingly, is the principal religion of the region, brutally imposed by the conquering Spaniards hundreds of years ago. Indigenous practices survived this steamrollering by learning to adapt and unite in a deeply interesting combination of traditional beliefs and that of the Vatican. Up until the second half of the last century, the music of the ancients continued to sing in this syncretic meld of faiths known as costumbre (custom).

Somehow, however, the loudspeaker ceremonies of the Evangelists seem unbearable in comparison.

The voice of the ancients, crushed under the pretence of development. I am left slightly flustered, wondering what to do.

Nothing can take away the beauty of this lake.

But the changes within myself have been highlighted by my return.

I realise how uninspired I am by the idea of going out to drink in cute, themed bars. I watch old hippies, drawn by the energy of the lake, overtly take photographs of the locals as if they are no more than animals. I see how repulsed I am by the damage the rest of this world has done to the culture of this village.

I do not want to make it worse.

When Eva and Toño leave after a few days, I happily board the boat away from this town.

I seek retreat.

Hitch-hopping

2010-08-01T21:15:00.000-07:00

On the first of August I leave Michael and resume the trail solita. He has his work to do, I have to explore my soul. Both of us need to do this alone.

I'm not quite alone though… Eva and her banda boyfriend Toño are heading towards Guatemala. It's with them that I find myself waiting for a lift in the rain, on the highway leading out of San Cristobal, sipping thick pozol (chocolate-tortilla drink) that sends curls of steam into the misty air.

It takes us just two days and four rides to make it to the border. We share pick up trucks with tarpaulins, small children and, on one particularly memorable ride, several hundred cans of pizza sauce, around which we contort ourselves in the storm-force winds.

I duck down to protect my face and when I raise my head I am captured by the most beautifully brief moment… a rainbow in the field next to me, hanging clean and sparkling and radiant with stunning colours, perfectly poised for a moment before it is whisked away in the slipstream.

I am left with the traces of a kaleidoscope smile on my lips.

We swerve to avoid a cow in the road.

In the next town they stop to haul a pizza oven into the back of the truck. I assume they want us to leave, but they insist they can make this work to meet everyone's needs. They spend half an hour levering the enormous hulk of metal into the back, shifting can after can after bag of pepperoni in a tetris solely designed to ensure our (relative) safety.

I do not understand why people would go to so much effort, just to make sure there are three squares of space for a few bums they've picked up, when clearly the addition of the 2-metre square pizza oven to the truck is a strain alone.

Eva says simply: "Because they can."

They drop us at a border town, where a fairground has just pulled up. The need for the pizza oven becomes clear. We are left in the flashing lights of a pathetic-looking rollercoaster and the enticing oil smells of fresh-fried churros.

For la banda, every hour can be a work hour. Toño plays drums at restaurants as we pass, begging for a few pennies to buy himself a beer. We see the same two skinny girls that we met on my birthday, twirling their fire, seeming small and out of place at the semaphoros.

We eat popcorn and hula hoop under the tinny sounds of the fair and I feel wonderful to have regained my independence.

I miss Mike but I am glad I am here alone. Crouched under the lights, echoing fairy lights from a time long gone, I realise how important it is for me to have the space to be truly me, not cramped or compromised by another.

I have a fire inside and I need to feed it. I cannot wait for Guatemala.

Nos sentamos en la calle

2010-07-30T21:06:00.000-07:00

I turn twenty six on the twenty seventh of July. It is raining in San Cristobal de las Casas. At 6200 feet the drops fall cold and the ancient rocks of the pavement seem slicker than normal.

Michael and I spend all day looking for plush hotels and decide at the end that we'd rather spend the money on food.

Eva is here; my long-lost buddy with whom I spent December. It is wonderful to have a friend, although I've spent enough time here now that I recognise faces on the andador. We pass the evening on the slick streets, drinking maiz spirit and coconut juice out of plastic bottles and hula hooping through the puddles alongside la banda.

La banda. What a wonderful phenomenon to be part of during my travels here in Mexico.

It literally means the band, and is a term used to describe Mexico's hobos: a network of young pirates, dreadlocked, pierced, dressed in an assortment of rags. They travel their country in the back of pick up trucks, conjuring pennies to live by working the streets, the restaurants and the buses.

You're not banda unless you have a prop - a tambor drum, a fire stick, a roll of macrame bracelets. I have a hula hoop, therefore I am accepted as one of them. Whenever I travel with Eva, we listen for the sound of drums.

Like a subtle web of entertainers for the nation, these kids are always present, always audible. Their tambors sing the same rhythms in every town. Their jewellery glitters under streetlights. Traffic light junctions are fought over as the best location for fire spinning, where the perpetrators spend hours in exhaust fumes and whirls of flame, paid five pesos each by the most generous drivers.

Tonight my attention is caught by a pair of girls. Their collar bones show sharply under stained t shirts. One of them has shaved the sides of her hair and allowed the rest of it to dreadlock in a kind of parrot's tuft. The other wears a coloured scarf round her head and has eyes that move too fast. They pass a stolen cigarette between them and try to blend in. They are only seventeen.

I've seen them on the semaphoros, one with poi and the other with a fire stick. They look like they might break. They sit in the puddles like scruffy dolls, seeking their adventure in dark streets, far away from any family they may have had.

They dance well and guzzle their beer with prowess. They have the urchin look down to a T. The only thing that belies them is the nervous darting of their eyes.

I wonder where they came from…where any of them came from.

Some run, bored, from families with big homes, rejecting the streamlined world of the rich mexican for the grit of the streets. Others have no relatives at all. Some just haven't come up with anything better to do yet. These details don't appear to matter because each is accepted within the greater family of la banda.

They are the people's army; the underbelly, proudly displaying the happiness that having nothing can bring. They proclaim the alternatives: that you do not have to have a regular job, a safe house and a non-descript image to be happy.

The conditions for the movement are perfect - anyone with a grain of sense can earn money in Mexico, albeit at different rates. There is no web of legislation to climb through -- if there is, no one cares. Hitchhiking is commonplace, and pick up trucks form the greater part of Mexico's fleet.

Life on the road is exhilarating. There is no purpose to it other than to live and continue to live.

I am happy to flit in and out of the situation. Their company is interesting for a while but as Eva points out, one can become bored easily when faced with too many nights of sharing caguamons and paying for things with handfuls of change.

A stranger might look at me, hair wraps, hula hoop and holes in my clothes, and place me in their box.

For me, the difference is subtle and comes in a cup.

I am happy to have included the luxury of coffee within my budget.

For la banda, the coffee shop is on the other side of their grimy viewing window. They peer through it with interest, knowing they would never choose to fritter away hard-earned beer money on a meaningless hot beverage.

Rain splats the glass as they sit, crouched, waiting for the customer who will whisk them away.

And then there came...

2010-07-30T10:02:00.000-07:00

Eight months down the line, I'm done with large-scale wandering. For the moment, at least. The last few months have been a paintbox of thoughts, blobbing vivid emotion through my days. I've hopped and skipped and last-minute-escaped so many towns that they are beginning to look the same.

Although I have no intention of stopping, and still pump the thrill of a long-distance bus journey through my heart at every beat, I sense the need for a purpose.

Purpose.

That dreaded word.

I remember proclaiming loudly and perhaps slightly smugly at my work leaving party, fifteen months ago, my need to experience life without a purpose. When asked by puzzled faces what on earth I planned to do, I replied easily: I plan to have no plan.

But the P words are pursuing me with persisting pestilence. I know deeply that something needs to change.

Unintentionally we seem to have made our home in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas.

The cheerily nicknamed San Cris hosts hoards of tourists, who come here for the quaint cobbled streets, rainbow houses and mountain-fringed vistas. They are helped in their explorations by organic coffee companies and delicatessens that are run by a high proportion of ex-pats - a.k.a. travellers who never escaped.

Under the too-clean streets lies a fractured past, marked recently by the Zapatista rebellions of the mid-90s in reaction to the large-scale governmental seizure of land from the huge indigenous population. This land is much more like Guatemala than Mexico but there is something inherently genuine about it, as if it is more Mexican than La Republica.

We move between our friend's unnecessarily large, isolating house and noisy, centre-of-town hostels. We punctuate our stay with two-week long trips out, during which we leave behind all but a change of clothes and our passports (just in case).

In doing so, we fall in love with Chiapas state.

Endless, deserted beaches. Tiny Mayan villages, high in the cool mountains, where life continues in the same way it has for centuries. Scattered emeralds and sapphires of God's jewel basket, twinkling in the Lagos de Montebello.

Steamy jungles hide the endangered Lacandon culture amidst deadly snakes and undiscovered ruins - just rocky humps in the knotted jungle. We eat lunch on a cracked Mayan calendar at lost Lacanja and swing on liandas in the Indiana Jones land of Yaxchilan.

We loop around dusty border towns ruled by cartels, who hop the river to Guatemala every time the police invade and stand there waving under foreign safety.

We straddle the border ourselves to renew visas, then hop back when we realise how much we miss Mexico. There is a strange pull towards 'home'.

We return to find Nantzin in our villa.

Nantzin is a Mexican-American midwife. She is here on a volunteer mission, learning the ways of the people here - reconnecting with her roots. She has just been given a job working in a woman's refuge in town, taking care of mothers who have no where else to go.

I spy a book on natural medicine on top of a stack of interesting titles and understand why we needed to return.

Nantzin is a powerful woman to have by my side. She knows where she is going and what she wants to achieve. She has been in Mexico for less time than me but has achieved all of the things I dream of achieving, including apprenticeships to Medicine Women and volunteering with her healing skills. You can read her blog here.

From Nantzin I learn basic home recipes and share veggie food, experiences and giggles. She represents more than one part of me that I've felt missing in the last month or two. Not only is she a curandera to look up to, she is a friend. Watching the world pass by with her on the pedestrianised Real de Guadalupe makes my coffee taste that bit sweeter.

I see that this is part of the next step for me and at the very least a pointer to where I should place my attention. I feel this to be a further confirmation that healing is my path; at least for the moment.

Nantzin represents for me the beginning of the shifts. The persistence of possibility.

The beginning of Purpose.

Searching for Dragons

2010-07-20T09:55:00.000-07:00

Dan turns up at the end of July. Film-maker Dan, with whom I spent February and most of May. Dan, the man with the van, who left us in June to continue "searching for dragons" on the final leg of his 4.5 year journey to Panama.

Now he is returning, finally. You can tell by his energy, which no longer scouts but feels buried into the idea of home. He pauses long enough to meet Nantzin, who is one of the last jewels in a necklace of synchronicity that has taken him from Alaska to Panama and half-way back again.

A year ago someone told him to seek out a shaman named Don Lauro. Don Lauro, born to the Mayan heartlands of Mexico, was taken to Tibet as a child by monks. There, he became Red Dragon, the famous martial artist. Now, he owns Las Montañas Sagradas (the sacred mountains) to the south of San Cristóbal, seeding a sustainable community of permaculture and flowing fields, where he heals the flocking public with his powerful energy.

For one reason or another, Dan never met him. However, when Dan meets Nantzin, on his way out of San Cristobal, she unwittingly informs him of her plans to see a shaman named Don Lauro the next day.

Dan is accustomed by now to the strange synchronicities of fate. Given the first pointers to this man a year ago, he seems relieved to be able to close this circle. I am not surprised when, the next day, I find him and his assistant Forbes still in town, waiting out this seemingly prophesied meeting.

I am invited along to the meeting. After a month or two of stagnancy, I begin to feel wheels turning again. Dan has a strange ability to make one feel like every moment is meant to be.

We sit around the kitchen table and put together an offering, based on the teachings of Dan's adoptive Blackfoot (native american) father back in Canada. We burn sage and sweetgrass, cleansing ourselves and imprinting prayers for Don Lauro's family into the red-wrapped bundle of copal and tobacco. Then we wait.

Don Lauro is sheathed in mystery. Everyone we ask replies with a mysticism that suggests him to be more like a spirit than a man, appearing here and there when least expected and never available to be found.

We wait for three days. Four visits.

While we wait I explore Don Lauro's kingdom. Domed buildings lurk under bright, alpine growth sparked with rainbow ribbons. A small garden, working the best of permaculture, is a secret uncovered from the back of the kitchen. The place is mostly empty.

We celebrate the beginning of the Mayan new year with some of the residents. We gather around a sacred fire, into which we throw seeds, candles and all the dirt from under the fingernails of our souls. We emerge renewed to the year of Red Overtone Moon - a modern interpretation on the classical Mayan calendar system, suggesting this year to be the catalyst for uncovering the 'great teacher' within, who will guide us to our rightful path.

The days pass easily and I feel a resonance with the place that comes from more than just the legend. I ask about staying, but space is at a premium and the only option is to live in a tent on the very top of the mountain, where the rainy season sloshes down in giant balls of hail.

I think about my options as we wait.

The company of three unexpected friends does me good. They can see that something I'm doing right now is not quite settling right with me, and they encourage me to rediscover myself through the things I already know within.

Although it does not seem quite the right situation for me here, it makes me realise what it is I'm looking for. The waiting in itself has given me direction. I jump up and down: 'Life is good again!'

Nothing like a bit of sitting still to organise one's head.

Don Lauro turns up at the end of the third day. He is short, round, with slitted eyes and far too few teeth. He shouts at dogs and moves quickly; a man clearly distracted by larger dragons than ours.

We are relieved. We don't really know what to say. We hand him the offering.

He bows at each of us in turn and tells us his house is our house.

Before we can say anything else, he leaves.

We are left with an anti-climax that makes us laugh and shake our heads.

Dan is not worried. "He is a man, just like us. Just because some people show up, feeling that this meeting is destined, does not oblige him to do anything other than greet us graciously as he did."

I consider the life of a famous shaman, sought out by people from all ends of the earth who expect deliveries of wisdom and deeper meaning, and in doing so realise that the wisdom lies in seeing that we are all the same.

Even shamen are just men.

And then there came...

2010-07-19T21:25:00.000-07:00

Eight months down the line, I'm done with large-scale wandering. For the moment, at least. The last few months have been a paintbox of thoughts, swirling vivid emotion through my days. I've hopped and skipped and last-minute-escaped so many towns that they are beginning to look the same.

Although I have no intention of stopping, and still pump the thrill of a long-distance bus journey through my heart at every beat, I sense the need for a purpose.

Purpose.

That dreaded word.

I remember proclaiming loudly and perhaps slightly smugly at my work leaving party, fifteen months ago, my need to experience life without a purpose. When asked by puzzled faces what on earth I planned to do, I replied easily: I plan to have no plan.

But the P words are pursuing me with persisting pestilence. I know deeply that something needs to change.

Unintentionally we seem to have made our home in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas.

The cheerily nicknamed San Cris hosts hoards of tourists, who come here for the quaint cobbled streets, rainbow houses and mountain-fringed vistas. They are helped in their explorations by organic coffee companies and delicatessens run by a high proportion of ex-pats - a.k.a. travellers who never escaped.

Under the too-clean streets lies a fractured past, marked recently by the Zapatista rebellions of the mid-90s in reaction to the large-scale governmental seizure of land from the huge indigenous population.

This land is much more like Guatemala than Mexico but there is something inherently genuine about it, as if it is more Mexican than La Republica.

We move between our friend's unnecessarily large, isolating house and noisy, centre-of-town hostels. We punctuate our stay with two-week long trips, during which we leave behind all but a change of clothes and our passports (just in case).

In doing so, we fall in love with Chiapas state.

Endless, deserted beaches. Tiny Mayan villages, high in the cool mountains, where life continues in the same way it has for centuries. Scattered emeralds and sapphires of God's jewel basket, twinkling in the Lagos de Montebello.

Steamy jungles hide the endangered Lacandon culture amidst deadly snakes and undiscovered ruins - just rocky humps in the knotted jungle. We eat lunch on a cracked Mayan calendar at lost Lacanja and swing on liandas in the Indiana Jones land of Yaxchilan.

We loop around dusty border towns ruled by cartels, who hop the river to Guatemala every time the police invade and stand there, waving under foreign safety.

We straddle the border ourselves to renew visas, then hop back when we realise how much we miss Mexico. There is a strange pull towards 'home'.

We return to find Nantzin in our villa.

Nantzin is a Mexican-American midwife. She is here on a volunteer mission, learning the ways of the people here - reconnecting with her roots. She has just been given a job working in a woman's refuge in town, taking care of mothers who have no where else to go.

I spy a book on natural medicine on top of a stack of interesting titles and understand why we needed to return.

Nantzin is a powerful woman to have by my side. She knows where she is going and what she wants to achieve. She has been in Mexico for less time than me but has achieved all of the things I dream of achieving, including apprenticeships to Medicine Women and volunteering with her healing skills. You can read her blog here.

From Nantzin I learn basic home remedies and share veggie food, experiences and giggles. She represents more than one part of me that I've felt missing in the last month or two. Not only is she a curandera to look up to, she is a friend. Watching the world pass by with her on the pedestrianised Real de Guadalupe makes my coffee taste that bit sweeter.

I see that this is part of the next step for me and at the very least a pointer to where I should place my attention. I feel this to be a further confirmation that healing is my path; at least for the moment.

Nantzin represents for me the beginning of the shifts. The persistence of possibility.

Perhaps, the beginning of Purpose.

One fine day in Chiapas

2010-06-25T14:08:00.000-07:00

This time, we get out of bed the moment our eyes are first prised open by the waves on our doorstep. It is not as hard as we imagined. How quickly one can forget the trauma of an early morning alarm clock. How dramatic the improvement a pelapa-thatch roof and the sound of pounding waves can be on one's awakening.

We play chess while we eat our eggs next to the silent lagoon, twenty metres away on the other side of the sand bank from our hut. I lose again. Today, that does not frustrate me as much as usual.

A baby manta ray has found its way in to the shallows and basks in the bath-like water, camouflaged against the grey sand.

We take a lancha across the lagoon to the mainland, watching the spit of sand that has housed us for the last week slide slowly into the horizon.

It is like a tongue, licking the sea, the palm trees its taste buds, studding skinny barrenness with spiky bursts of flavour.

The Frenchlings come with us in the boat. They have been our casual companions this week. We decided to stop drinking for the month of June and this has in some way caused an impenetrable rift between us and any potential friends. On the other hand, the rift could easily have been Mike and I's reluctance to do anything other than be with each other, playing chess, writing music, exploring.

But this morning, however, their presence makes a difference. It means that when a taxi arrives, there are six of us waiting for a lift.

This does not matter in Mexico. We pack ourselves in, four in the back, Mike and I sharing the front passenger seat, the driver, wallowing in space, peering through a cracked windscreen with one surplus arm waving in the car's slipstream. As we accustom ourselves to the speed and the proximity, he introduces himself as Francisco with a wide smile to each of us in turn. He is visibly exalted to be sitting next to Mike.

"Miguel! MIGUEL!" he cries in happiness, patting Michael on the back and laughing. Michael appears to be enjoying the attention and replies in return, "Pancho! Panchito!"

Our driver looks about to wet himself with pleasure at being called the diminutive version of his nickname.

To celebrate the occasion, he turns the mariachi up. Stoic men in gold buttoned suits and white cowboy boots serenade us through the speakers in penetrating shades of brass and strings. Halfway through the joyful anthem, Pancho realises this song will not quite fit and slows the car to a halt. He unceremoniously removes the CD from the player. After a few moments of searching he inserts a new CD, forwarding to track number 8. A tune almost entirely alike the one paused earlier starts blasting from the speakers. Satisfied, he begins to drive again.

He appears to have installed a sub bass in the boot. The Frenchlings in the back are squinting from the volume.

He begins to sing.

He suggests going for a beer. One of the Frenchlings is in a hurry and says no. The driver is disappointed. He changes the song.

The third song hits the spot. He begins to yelp.

He pats Michael on the back again and cries his name into the wind, swerving to avoid potholes in the road. He buys chopped chili mango through the window, from a boy stood at a speed hump, and passes the bag around like juicy chips. Whenever the energy within the car seems to drop, he begins yelping again. Mike looks at me. "This is the most inspiring taxi driver I've ever met!"

I lean further out of the window in a failing attempt for more air. There is not much to do but laugh and sing along, which we do for almost an hour of back twisting, fist clenching, life dripping Mexican experience.

Michael looks like he's on drugs, such is the admiration and aspiration he has for this man. Rarely does one ever see someone so high on life as our Pancho. When we leave, uncrumpling bones in the square at Tonala, he kisses everyone on the cheek and thanks them for the pleasure of their company on this fine morning. We shuffle slowly away, marvelling at the spicyness of our early morning adventure.

But the day is not over yet. We leave Tonala having looked at a large-scale map of the area and pointed to a place down the coast with another lagoon and an interesting name.

The man in the sweet shop waves us towards the market. The man in the market waves us on to the car park. The man in the car park waves us on to a mini bus that drops us two hours later on a motorway, where there is another man who gives us the keys to a shop with a toilet and points towards another minibus going south.

That minibus leaves us in the rain. Once again, the human sponges, sloshing along in slippery sandals.
The women on it tell us we need to carry on our journey from the centre of town. We are hungry and we still haven't bought proper rain jackets. So we take refuge in a cute looking restaurant where a young man with one and a half arms serves us shrimp and black beans.

When we are finished he begins, as they all do, to ask our story. Where are we from, where are we going. Do we like Chiapas. The thing is, we're not at all sure where we're going. We picked a name from a map, that may or may not be possible to get to. So he invites us to talk to his parents, who are sitting just behind the restaurant, celebrating fathers day with their son and their nephew.

We walk into the room and they greet us with huge smiles and make us take our place at the table. They offer us coca cola and beer. They rattle off the same questions as their son did moments earlier. They are delighted with our answers.

The mother has never been on a plane and never will. The men tease her about her fear and she giggles into her beer bottle. "I like Chiapas and Chiapas is where I will stay. I won't go in a plane. Unnatural things." I agree with her and feed her glee with tales of our fifteen hour journeys to get to Mexico from London. England is grey anyway, and cold. She shivers with delight. "Yes, yes, Mexico is beautiful. Stay here, chicita, where the wind is warm." They ask how old we are and cannot believe the answer. To Mexicans we look like teenagers. They ask if we are brother and sister. We laugh a lot. Then their daughter sticks her head in the door and asks the same, and we realise that we all look the same to them in the same way they all look the same to us. They laugh with us.

Then they tell us they will host our wedding. "You must have the party here! Here in Chiapas we know how to party. We will fill this room with people and keep going for three days!" We are like Alice stumbling across the Mad Hatter's tea party, apart from these merry-eyed people are not mad, not even drunk, just high on life and happy to have such unexpected guests at their afternoon table. We leave them with sparkling smiles all around and promises for invites to our future (never-going-to-happen) wedding.

The next bus is driven by a young man who tells us he does not go as far as today's mecca. The village before it, where he lives, is called Zapotal. "Zapotal it is," I reply, and ask him if there are any cheap hotels. He laughs and looks sideways at the woman in the passenger seat, who turns out to be his mother. "Zapotal does not have visitors, but I have a restaurant, and you can stay with my mother if you like."

When we arrive we understand. This is the sleepiest little village I've had the pleasure of stumbling across yet. Thatch huts house snoozing families draped two-to a hammock, televisions barely cutting through the shrieking of the cicadas. Children sit barefoot in the pavement sand. The empty beach, just a continuation of the hundreds of kilometres of identical beach along this coastline, lays silent and unexplored next to the restaurant.

We sit at a plastic Corona table on a small cement patio with a bare lightbulb shining invitations to the mosquitoes. The bus driver turns waiter and lights a cardboard egg carton to place on the floor next to our table. The bites slow in frequency and we get out our homemade chessboard.

Within moments a steaming plate of garlic prawns, the cheapest thing on the menu twice in one day, arrives in front of us. We do not stop our game. This time I win one in four games. I make my head hurt and begin to see everything in terms of chess moves (...thank God the table is in the way of me and Mike's chair - it could take me in one move and I have no back-up. But he should be careful too. His eyes are just one L-shaped Knights move from being taken by his mouth.)

We are presented to the grandmothers bed, a small island under an enormous empty space of a house that looks more like a petrol station forecourt than a residence. As I prepare for bed I am watched by two small grandchildren from behind a curtain that serves as a door, who dart away like fishes whenever I let their attention be known.

The water tank has a turtle in it.

The night presents a continual stream of spectres to keep us awake, under satin sheets slipping against hot limbs.

The power goes off and with it the fan. Without the wind, the mosquitoes move in, burrowing into ear canals with dentist drill wingbeats. The grandfather arrives home and cannot figure out who is in his bed. The grandson, called in to help, shines a mobile phone in our faces and then apologises profusely. The cicadas grate their endless song, drilling through the concrete walls.

Eventually sleep's long fingers begin to take me. Silhouettes of our phantasmagoria of a day creep along the walls. Squinting through the warm waters of a lagoon. A cackling taxi driver and his love for music. Rain, beating on the windows of a minibus. A salad made of chopped hot dogs on the lace tablecloth of a laughing family. The kindness of an old woman and her scampering granddaughters, sleeping in an unknown location under our corrugated cathedral.

Just when we begin to doze off, our host's alarm begins to bleep.

4.30am. Time for another day.

The Void catches up

2010-06-20T20:32:00.000-07:00

June brings a loss of direction. My world becomes black and white and blurry.

I plunge headlong into the Void.

I have felt it tracking me for a little while, catching me unawares with flashes of barely-provoked anger and periods of dizzying emptiness. When it finally slips itself under my feet, I fall, rag-doll-like, through its dank depths.

The Void has engulfed us all, once in our lives. You know it from the creeping shadows around your heart. The imps in its employ, sniggering on your shoulders, whisper insults into your ears until you believe them to be true. The tremors of uncertainty blurs lines between reality and nightmare.

This time it comes to me in a disabling lack of self-belief. The path in which I had so much faith seems to have faded.

My self-confidence, boisterous only months ago, has vapourised, leaving me achingly aware of how loosely constructed it must have been.

What, on earth, have I been doing? Why the hell am I here?

I have been out of work for well over a year. I have been rolling around Mexico for seven months. My money is drying up, like the daily puddles spat down on us by June's heavy clouds, and I have no concrete plan for how to replace it. I know I can't go back to work in an office and this thought, once so liberating, terrifies me.

I have had so much time, and yet seemingly done' nothing apart from convert tacos into spare tyres.

Michael encourages me as best he can. He reminds me of all the things I have developed that cannot be written on a CV, such as my healer's hands and my understanding of myself, as well as the things that can, such as my mastery of conversational Spanish.

He tempts me with ideas for how to turn my writing into a career, but I am shocked by my own lack of motivation. I just don't want to do anything. I just don't think I can.

My listless lack of a plan, once so peace-inducing, has become a growing emptiness.

It is during this time that we find ourselves house-sitting a three-bedroom villa (complete with the luxuries of fridge, hot shower, fireplace and beds with real duvets). I cannot remember the last time I was in a room with four walls and no holes.

I throw myself into my long-term passion for cooking, producing elaborate feasts for my boyfriend, who largely sits in front of his computer, working. Mikey, annoyingly, has it sorted. He gets paid for remixes on the road. He deals with them easily and with style. At the same time, he gets handfuls of offers for his new tracks.

His need for the computer and my need for safety means we spend most of our six weeks in San Cristobal indoors. I quickly realise how incapable I now am of doing this.

We argue frequently. Admittedly, the times between arguments are still idyllic and there is no doubt that we are madly in love. But I am strong enough to know that these moments of pain are indicators of deep knots in our lives that need to be massaged out for risk of becoming crippling.

I am also able to remind myself that this journey is and was always going to be about balance - particularly the yin-yang balance of positive and negative forces within my path.

So when I feel myself slipping, I recognise the signs enough to throw out a hand. I catch myself before I fall, like I have done so many times before.

And there, I swing.

I hang on to the edge for a long time, caught between fear of the nothingness below, and fear of the choices above.

You can travel as far as you want, but wherever you are, you will still be you.

Outtakes

2010-06-12T14:00:00.000-07:00

My mind flicks images like film memories. I close my eyes and watch the last six weeks flash by in a montage I'd give anything to record.

   Scaling the pyramids of Palenque in the searing midday heat, jungle rising on all sides under a deep, indigo sky.

   Crouching next to the fire in our borrowed, three bedroom house, burning pine copal incense and a list of all the negativity we want to spring clean from our heads.

   A moment's interrupted sleep on a concrete patio on the beach, four-way-sandwiched between a rollmat, a mosquito-net, Michael, and a love-deprived cat, who shows his appreciation with a sharp-clawed massage and purrs as loud as the waves behind.

   Rejecting Saturday night drinking in San Cristòbal de las Casas, in favour of apple juice and mariachi in the square and a packet of ham for the street dogs.

   Eating termites from a jungle tree, mouth bizarrely filling with the taste of buttery, peppered carrots.

   Laughing as the heavens open on the first day of the rainy season and squealing with delight and blessed relief as I am soaked to the bone. Retiring to a hammock under the shelter of a rustling pelapa roof, darkness so thick I am aware of my friends only from the sound of their breathing. The evening strobe lighting - so familiar now - flashes images of my swinging feet in snapshot stills.

   Running through a forest that blooms a green carpet in three days of solid rain.

Hopping the fence to the restricted area of the ruins of Monte Alban; the highest pyramid of all. Being ordered to climb down. The surreality of the pale brown, pyramid studded landscape far below, as if it belongs to the future rather than thousands of years in the past.

Winning my first ever game of chess in style on a home-made board (card, marker pen and nail varnish). Subsequently winning again.

Breakfasting on pork tortas by the side of the road, from plates that have "unimpressive" printed around the edges.

Watching the live chicken stalls in the covered market, birds passed upside down by their legs to bargaining old ladies. Shock deepening as we compare this apparently cruel treatment to the western style 6-to-a-box, beaks-cut-off factory tradition. We buy a bag of fake meat and retreat.

Crumbling fresh-baked cookies in front of a log fire, clothes steaming, rain teeming.

Running after my inebriated friend to save her from the clutches of a man. Feeling my feet slide from beneath me. Smacking the stones of the polished pavement with outstretched hand and smashing bracelets.

Sitting on a bench in the rain watching the embroidered skirts of the Mayan ladies, like colourful dolls, crouched in front of piles of vegetables and coal-grilled corn.

Plunging my hands into giant sacks of dry black beans, cool and liquidlike.

The dampness of the sheets around Michael as he moans with the aches of Dengue fever. Reversed roles when I contract a stomach infection the following week.

The utter silence of a mountain morning, lit by the ethereal beams of sunlight through a tent door.

Burying feet deep into sand the exact shade and fine texture of wholewheat flour, lapped by coral-slowed, translucent waves.

Running through the drenching rain in San Cris, where the cobbled streets flow like rivers and the lightning freezeframes the mountains around us; fairy lights in the central square twinkling through the blurred darkness.

Rain, rain, clean my brain

2010-06-05T16:07:00.000-07:00

In the middle of May, the rains began.

Until that point, the world held its breath. It pushed as far as it could under an airless environment -- began to swallow down on barren lungs.

Everything was brown. Plants were skeletons that crumbled at the touch. Even those that remained green -- banana palms, coconut, papaya -- seemed almost frozen in a vacuum that pulverised the life from us.

We flailed limply, like damp dishcloths, drinking in water by the gallon only to vaporise it almost instantly from our pores.

In Mexico, the dry season, although one of the wettest on record, was the only reality I could conceive of. It had always been dizzyingly hot. Rivers had always been dusty. I had always balanced the dry heat of the coast with an escape to the cool, pine-clad mountains forming the spine of the country.

But in the month before the rains came, I barely moved. Things stopped quietly around me, without me really noticing. Wasps lurched drunkenly from one melting pastry to another. Ice cream paused briefly in its frozen state, before giving in to the shimmery air in a sticky slide of white along the forearms. Even birdsong became lazy.

When on the coast, the only way to survive was to stay under cover. Ideas came and went, too slippery for the lazy thinker to clasp his sweaty fingers around.

The world around me and within me was pregnant. Pregnant and uncomfortable, with all the things that could be and that weren't.

Energy built up and intensified and waited; steam in a closed kettle, whistling with impatience.

My head pounded.

And then, in one day, everything changed.

I was at a petrol station at the time, on the side of the carretera running down the Pacific coast, having just crossed into Chiapas, the southernmost state. We were packed in the back of film-maker Dan's van, sulking on the bunk under the weight of the cloying air. I had stepped out for a little respite and to clean the windows. The grease on them almost obliterated the waving palms and swelling mountains taking over the landscape with heavily approaching footsteps.

I had just picked up the bucket, much to the amusement of the macho service men, who hollered and stared as I took their job from them.

Within less than a minute I was soaked to the point of dripping. Or was it flowing? Hard to say. It was more that me and the water were one and the same; I was wetter than I would have been if I had just climbed fully clothed from a pool.

The air was my sea. Around me, people fled like animals from a fire.

Dan banged on the window, urging me to get inside.

I just stared at the sky, blinking the water from my eyes and feeling the streams running down my cheeks.

This rain was to me the sweetest gift in a long stream of beautiful moments. I had waited for a long time. With it came the release of a million trapped thoughts and the relaxation of muscles turned taught by stagnant energy.

Bizarrely, I remained the only person outside on the petrol forecourt, washing the windows with soap that slid off the sodden glass in an instant, laughing at the ridiculousness of all those damp souls hiding under shelter, staring at me with confused faces.

The interest they offered me evidently discarded memories of just hours earlier, when they had all hung desperately from car windows, tongues flapping in the wind like dogs, or fleshy sails breached wide to catch the wind.

The concrete soon ran with inches of warm water that sluiced residue from roads in greasy channels.

Eventually these new rivers would find their way to fields, where earth lay waiting, imitating rocks, anticipating the day when the water would release their particles in crumbling mini-avalanches.

Under that earth lay seeds, dormant, parched. Many were dead.

But for some, the water brought life. As I jumped up and down in the Petrol Station Lake, tiny proteins started forming within them, deep below the ground. All over Mexico, seeds began to germinate.

By the time I climbed, sodden but happy, into Dan's van, laying a towel on the bunk to catch my drips, things had already started to grow.

The windows were sparkling and so was I. I watched the mountains stand straighter, like pictures of evolution from monkey to man, becoming more confident as we progressed, and yet smudged into doubt by the rivers of water that raced in diagonals down the windows.

Water dripped through holes in the roof. The bunk grew damp. The road became rapids, but the cars did not slow down.

And in my head, the thoughts that had been hanging unattached like dust for so many months began to congeal, like the earth in the fields.

Within them, awaking from the incubation of many months, things began to germinate.

Medicine woman

2010-04-29T21:29:00.000-07:00

I know from the moment I see Catalina I know I have to talk to her. Something about her seems familiar.

Seven decades of wisdom are concealed in long, grey braids and a still-beautiful face. I am slightly intimidated. I feel as if I know her. I don't understand her Spanish, spoken through lisping, wrinkled lips, but I sit below her on the garden steps with my morning coffee, attempting to follow her growling dialogue as she rules over her tiny, exquisite empire.

On the third day after her arrival I spend the morning picking capers to pickle from the nodding nasturtium plants crawling over her terraces. She does not see me.

That afternoon she calls me over to talk to her. She bends down to the nasturtium flowers and asks me if I know about the plant. I tell her about the capers and that I like to put the flowers in salad.

She tells me the leaves cure cancer.

Instantly I know she is the owner of the notebook I found on the shelf a few days ago. And before I even think about what I'm about to say, I tell her bluntly: "I want to know what you know."

She does not seem surprised. In fact, it is as if she expects it. I wonder what brought her to tell me about the nasturtiums in the first place.

Instead, she tells me she will give me her notebook, in exchange for a present. I ask, "what do you want?" and she replies again, "a present," with a shrug of her right shoulder and downturned lips. I understand that this is more that just wanting something new. She is testing me in some way; seeking my character. "Bien. Gracias." I nod. So she gives me the notebook.

This time I open it not with trepidation but with hunger.

I have been after this information ever since I bowed gracefully from the Rat Race early last year. Given the magic that has occurred since, I am not surprised that it has arrived in this fashion.

I am, however, slightly surprised at the turn things have taken. Ever since Marcos told me to learn to heal with my hands, back in Guadalajara's cloudy January, I have been the subject of a series of people who want to teach me. Guide after guide, I am sucked into hula hoop loops of wisdom, almost effortlessly.

From Guadalajara I travelled to Patzcuaro, where I met Luis, who told me I was a kind of shaman and that he was my chosen guide. From there to Mazunte, where James spent a month downloading his knowledge of energy healing and massage. From James to Cristina, who taught me about symbols and vibration as methods of healing. From Cristina to Catalina, who hands me a leather-wrapped pile of papers, tied with a beaded thong. I have barely input anything.

The next day I sit in the sun and the quiet to copy the notes. I understand about fifty percent of the Spanish. When she asks for her book back, I have still not acquired a present, but she does not appear to mind.

I go into her room anyway. I sit on the floor. She hands me a jar of honey and tells me to drink from it. I fill my mouth with the globby nectar of the divine, the taste of the mountains clogging my senses.

She begins to tell me her stories. She tells me of the time she cured Parkinson's in three days using leaves. The time she cured a child dying of gastritis. The time she evicted a dark spirit by speaking mantras into the person's eyes. I am beginning to understand her Spanish a little more but I still struggle, asking her to repeat things in her gravelly voice. She puts her drink down in a patch of sunlight on the floor. I know she is going to ask for my hand and I hold both of them out ready for her to read.

She tells me I am lucky. I am lucky in money, and I shall never want. In fact, I shall never want for anything, as I have Jupiter, king of the gods, looking out for me. He will always come when I ask.

She tells me I will get married twice, perhaps more. This discredits everything she has said, as I do not believe in marriage and believe it would be a mistake for my fickle mind to ever be joined with another. But then she goes on to say that I will not marry for love, but for documents. Perhaps to become a resident in Mexico, as she once did. Perhaps to give my own visas to another.

I raise my eyebrows. The truth of my situation - my desire to live in a country I do not belong to legally - reshadows her words with credibility.

She peers closely at my left palm, as if searching for something. She looks and looks and then sits back, satisfied that she has found what she needs.

She points to a tiny cross between my upper and middle horizontal wrinkles. She tells me that healers have this cross. As if to confirm, she asks for my other hand, and smiles when she sees the results. I have three crosses in a line on this hand.

She shows me hers. The three crosses on her palm perfectly mimic my own.

She tells me I need to charge for my healing according to the means of the person to be healed. I feel uncomfortable bringing money into something so pure.

But she tells me, "You have to eat too. I healed for many years before I was able to buy my land, my house."

And suddenly, it hits me. The similarities between us. It is as if she is me, fifty years ago. I look around at the terraced garden, the house, with its cosy refuge and space for a community. The kitchen. The plants. The peace. I cannot believe I didn't notice it before. But this place exactly fits the dream in my head. This could be the home I asked for on Punta Cometa on the 21st, and the haven that has occupied my thoughts ever since I left London a year ago. And back and back, perhaps even before I was born.

I had no idea how I would make this dream happen, only the faith that somehow, knowledge and means would arrive. And now, slipping its folds around me with a finger over its mouth and a giggle behind its dancing eyes, the vision has arrived, so smoothly I did not even notice.

I think she has just told me how I can earn the money I need to make a place like this happen for myself.

By this time I have sunk into silence, content just to listen and continuing to concentrate hard on her low, low voice. She recounts stories that mirror my own. She left Spain when she was young, following the spiritual path. Had her very own Luis. Married to become Mexican.

Then she says something that makes me go cold.

"Do you know about the eagles?"

I didn't. Until two months ago, when I saw three eagles in a short space of time. Luis told me this was a sign. I asked him what the sign meant and he answered with a story.

He told me that they live for many years. After surviving for forty years in the desert, they fly to the mountains to find a place to hide.

There, they hit their beaks against the rocks until they break. They scrape their claws until they fall off. They render themselves unable to eat.

They rid themselves of everything that aided them to survive in their old life and they sit and wait in pain until a new beak and claws grow. When they do, the eagle is renewed. It is reborn, like a mage of its species. They go on to live another thirty years as the most powerful thing in the desert.

Luis said I'd seen the eagles because this is what I will have to do. I ignored him at the time, because I did not want to hear this kind of prophecy.

When Catalina tells me about the eagle, in relation to my palm, I suck in a deep breath. I hold it for the entirety of the metaphor. I release it slowly. I look outside and see things crystallise in sharp corners. One of my possible destinies, presented to me clearly.

Catalina gives me one more key to add to my growing set. She assures me I already have everything I need to be a doctora naturista. In principle I can heal with energy, herbs, massage, and more.

Although I am cramped with doubt and self-belittling traps, everyone I have worked with tells me I have powerful energy. I have the knowledge; I just need to start practising. She tells me to start as soon as I can. For now, my fear of myself keeps me contained.

When I leave I hand Catalina a necklace, beaded in the colours of the fierce Mexican sky. In doing so I feel I am completing a kind of circle.

Under the same skies, back in bleaching Zacatecas, that necklace was placed around my neck by Luis.

Flowers, clouds and clues

2010-04-25T19:17:00.000-07:00

San Jose del Pacifico. Dogs are barking.

The sign on the door at Casa de Doña Catalina is peeling. I wonder if Catalina herself is dead.

In the garden her geraniums nod happily. I long to meet the carer of this paintbox of plants.

Sometimes we end the day in a cloud, an explosion through which the sun stretches dying fingers. We float away in our wooden boat in a wispy flood of white.

It feels as if we are lost.

Once again, a vortex of energy has sucked us in to a slow whirlpool of routine.

Over the last few weeks we have watched the sinking slopes of the valley ahead of us emerging and disappearing into clouds of a hundred different variations. We have explored the mountain trails through the pine forests, neon lichen and huge cacti like great, tentacled aliens, resting on the red carpet of the forest in surreal colour clashes.

We have continued to function without running water, pouring buckets of dirty dishwater down the toilet bowl and washing from a bowl of rainwater. Like so much of Mexico, Oaxaca state is not so far from seasonal abandonment for lack of water. Prophecies echo from state to state: the next world war will surely be over water.

Night rushes in, velvet skirts rustling and star-splattered. We retreat from the terrace to the cosy, low ceilings of Catalina's living room, walled in on all sides by psychadelic murals, bookshelves, musical instruments and brightly woven cushions. The lightshade is a carefully-arranged plastic bag. Against the window is a wide ledge filled with soft things for sleeping in.

In the other corner stands a bookshelf, with titles in a handful of languages, ranging from Carlos Castaneda to Madame Bovary.

The spine that grabs me belongs to a small notebook. I open it. The first thing I see is a piece of paper dated 1958. It is someone's Mayan horoscope. Whoever owns this book has the same energy as me: in modern Mayan interpretation, Yellow Sun, representing the Enlightener. In ancient readings, Kame, representing the beginning, harmony, vision, cunning.

The next page is a list of diseases.

It takes me a moment to realise that besides each of the diseases is a cure, encoded in Spanish. I wonder whether this belongs to Catalina. The looping script shows me my place and I feel I am prying.

I snap the book shut, but fail to forget.

After about a week we consider leaving and play cards for the decision. The cards tell us to stay.

That afternoon, Catalina herself arrives home from a month at the coast.

The cottage in the sky

2010-04-20T12:43:00.000-07:00

From the land of the water in Mazunte, where we learnt to flow together again, we have moved to the land of the air. A time of thinking and of learning.

They call this town San Jose del Pacifico, because some days you can see the Pacific; a thin glint on a laminated horizon.

We are living in a bubble 2000 feet up, shrouded in nature's cocoon. The clouds rise and fall, an elevator between the valley floor far below and the comforting peak behind.

Our home for now is Casa de Dona Catalina. 200 pesos for a double bed in the dormitory at the top of the log cabin as well as whatever meals or drinks come our way during the day. 200 pesos for the two of us wanderers to become a valued part of the fizzing household, made up of a few long term residents and assorted drifters, who come here to socialise - in the most laid-back of senses - whilst sampling the botanical delights of the ethereal pine forests.

Each day the group changes, morphing its way through a rainbow of atmospheres. Each day brings more points of view, more shades of social interaction.

Dona Catalina is a witch. She understands plants and spirits. She is conspicuous in her absence - for the last month, watch over the land has been held by the residents.

When we walk in on the first day, fresh from a cloud-forest journey from Mazunte, the first person we find is Shaman Marcos. We sit down underneath a floripondio tree, otherwise known as angel's trumpet, with large orange flowers hanging from it like gramophone horns.

Marcos tells me the flowers are the dark side of hallucinogenics; without care, one can drive you mad. My eyes widen and I ask him if he'd ever taken them. "I had three this morning!" he cackles, and looks at me with kaleidoscope eyes.

The dark side indeed. Shaman Marcos has a wonderful heart, but his 'shamanic practises' have taken him so far beyond this world that I doubt he will ever return.

I wonder what his coincidental appearance means for our experience here.

A year of unusual events

2010-04-17T20:54:00.000-07:00

Today marks one year since I left my job, my flat and my life. A year ago I ceremoniously left my well-paid job in London, surrounded by a faithful army of friends, my sister close by and a social calendar that still spears cravings of nostalgia through me at the most unexpected moments.

In celebration of this fact I would like to post something I wrote early last year. I find the juxtaposition of these words with my current position reassuring. No offence is intended to anyone left behind - I respect that each person has their own choices and the same situation for another person would have meant something entirely different. I also appreciate and value the fact I had the opportunity to live this kind of life, and the choice to realise it was not for me, when so many do not have the choice. This is merely my opinion brought on from a soul-drowning job and a fire inside that needed to grow somewhere else.

I wake up full of a nervous energy. My insides vibrate as if I am listening to a deep bassline. But my room is silent. As the last tendrils of my dream slip away, I have the sense that I have been looking for something, fervently, all night.

The thoughts fold under themselves like waves in the multiple snooze of my alarm clock, and become lost in the rush of the morning. My fevered mind remains vaguely mesmerised by what, in the blurred moments of waking, had seemed the most important thing in the world.

Now I just feel a lingering sense of confusion and a longing to be back in that lost dreamscape.

I dress myself in skin-tight shades of grey, slick hair and shiny lips, masking myself with the strangling uniform of business. I take the bus in to the office, mechanically changing vehicles on the Euston Road, staring out unseeing at the concrete and the rush of occupied minds.

I say occupied here to indicate the fact that people in London seem to be shut off to anything that is not included within their own agenda. From the moment they wake up, their brains are full of tasks.

But occupied also means conquered, subjugated, dominated.

Under enemy control.

This dual definition is appealing. The word becomes stuck in my head. With no other thoughts in there to challenge it, it repeats itself incessantly for the whole of the journey, until it starts to lose meaning.

Occupied. Occupied. Occupied.

My day passes, as they always do, in a mundane blur of traffic and computers. I procrastinate on my task list until four, when I am able to cross off half of it in a flurry of hastily-dialled phone calls.

My job filled me with excitement when I first took it, 18 months ago. The people were bright and the company new, and every day had felt like opening a present.

Now it just feels like it is stealing my life.

Every day it forces me into the synthetic, waxy mould of a corporate doll. My soul feels empty and I can’t do anything about it.

I am trapped.

Even the hours outside of work feel like they belong to someone else.

Sometimes I scream out loud, pulling at my hair like a mad woman, diving at the people sitting blankly in their desks and venting my frustration at this calm acceptance of a robot’s life. Then the world swirls back into reality and I realise I am in fact sitting quiet and accepting in my own desk, in a row of quiet, accepting people, and no one has even blinked.

One day I think I might actually do this.

I cannot wait for the day when I hand in my notice. I think of that moment at least once every hour. Perhaps more like three or four times. Some days it is all I can think about. I picture myself going into the CEO’s office, letting him wax falsely lyrical about my supreme consultancy abilities, trying to build my confidence so I seduce the clients more effectively. I imagine myself springing it on him mid-flow. Like flirting with someone for hours and then turning away when they try to kiss you.

I would thrust a letter in his hand which detailed methodically and unashamedly all the corrupt twists and suppressive rules of his beloved company. I would laugh at the blind devotion to a loosely-concealed totalitarian regime. This virtual furnace that consumes souls and spits out money. My words would reduce it to a pile of ash.

I just haven’t found quite the right ones yet.

The thing that pains me most is seeing the sparks of my co-workers (my love for whom still remains loyal enough to keep me here) condensed down to the same, standard-issue ambition as him. They will complain about the money-driven mentality, the repression and being told what to do by a self-centred, clueless manager, but they will remain silent.

The London in my head is an eerie toy town, operated by Stepford Wives, dolled up and twinkle-smiled and ‘yes of course, Sir, anything you want, Sir’.

They will be fucked up the arse until they bleed, and they won’t notice because their eyes are on their glittering futures; dreams grossly deformed by that pre-ordained framework we rarely dare to question.

As a child, we are consistently asked what we would like to BE when we grow up. Our entire lives, we relate our future job to the verb 'to be'. A career is part of our fundamental make-up. It is an apex to climb, in order to prove our worth as a person.

And thus, we dutifully tick the boxes.

School, college, university. Education, packaged prettily.

Job.

Soon we will have a great CV, that menu of clichéd attributes, and a fantastic social life that spans the breadth of London’s pretentious wine bars. A well-matched partner to take Sunday walks with, and a pile of savings which we will watch grow until they die.

All these people, building their career. A career that occupies them. Conquered and subsequently dominated for the rest of their lives. They will be promoted to managers and they will have finally made it after all these years. They will buy a house and have a lovely wedding in a country manor and end up with gammy-mouthed kids who will go on to do the same.

Security. They need to know where they are, otherwise they lose themselves.

This kind of thing terrifies me.

Isn’t your ‘career’ just what you’re doing right here, right now?

What I’m doing right now is utter bollocks.

Old people say life is what happens while you are planning your future.

I think we should listen to old people.

I think I’m so different. And yet still I put myself through the excruciating pain of getting out of bed at half past six every day to go into a place I despise.

Shifting Sands

2010-04-11T14:02:00.000-07:00

One afternoon we sit in a giant tree.

We climb up to the palm of its branched hand to drink our way through four caguamons (1.2L beers bottles) and watch ants march up flaking bark.

Our tree becomes the perfect place to see through the shimmeringly hot afternoon. We bite into sun-warmed mangoes, burstingly fresh from the ground and watch an iguana flick along below us . When it becomes cool enough to move we jump down, bidding the day farewell with a swim in the crushing surf.

The time to leave has come.

We walk down the beach to stop in on James, swinging under candlelight in his blue terrace hammock, watching the stars through a palm-fringed window of sky above. We cook dinner there and eat in comfortable silence, listening to the crickets and the waves.

A month's study with Mazunte's Gandalf has taught me basic herbology, massage and a kind of energy healing that leaves my hands burning. I am glowing from my bi-weekly treatments and Michael is glowing from his experience as my guinea pig. We've spent a good few days covered in aloe vera, waving the spiky branches around like tentacles and moving stickily yellow and monster-like over the beach.

Yesterday I worked with a girl called Cristina. She has tumbling, shiny hair and a baby called Miguelito with a face to melt even the most intolerant of hearts. Together they are the image of Mary and Jesus- there is a light between them that will never come out in a photograph.

Cristina is the same age as me, but if I can achieve just half of the peace that radiates from her I will be content. She has travelled Mexico for the last ten years, learning indigenous methods of healing. While I am working with Cristina, Miguel thumps on a tambor and gives himself hysterics that bubble from his toothless smile and turn his eyes to happy slits.

I would like to learn more from Cristina. I feel a slight sense of loss as we say goodbye and forget to exchange email addresses. But the winds are moving us inland. Our month by the sea has joined us back together, after our stressful four months apart. We are ready to start the real travelling.

The road behind Mazunte leads to the mountains, seen from the beach as grey silhouettes against the sun. They call to us with cool breezes. While the sunrise over the beach is ethereal and makes me glad to be alive, it burns a hole in the day, forcing us to listless shade between 11 and 4. Activity is squeezed like toothpaste into small dollops at either end of the day. Even at night, a walk slickens sweaty sheen over darkened faces.

We will miss this place.

In the morning we leave on the first collectivo out, balanced on the back of the public pickup truck with tongues hanging out like dogs.

To the mountains.

Flowing into new moulds

2010-04-04T13:52:00.000-07:00

Today is comfortingly familiar.

I had this day yesterday. And the day before. Back and back. For a lot less time than my mind has me believe.

But the familiarity is a sizzle of overwhelming ecstasy that pushes fingers into my brain and shakes it.

I am awake.

It is barely 11.00. I have already run four lengths of both beaches, splashing through the waves in bare feet, the sun peachily low in the sky. I wash in the cool, clear surf, cliffs rising through white sea mist, waves tumbling my body in bubbling spirals.

At the top of the beach I run up the concrete stairs to our room, ducking under lines of fresh washing from the restaurant below, opening the door to find my man still dozing on his back like a baby. I join him, entangling limbs and pressing damp skin.

I listen to the soft rhythm of his breathing, feel his hair prickling my lips, savour the grind of sand between sheets and the undulating roar of the waves in my ears. He begins to wake and the spell is broken. We dance around the room for a bit, talking crap. The day begins its rolling pace.

I prepare English breakfast tea in the camping pan, looking wistfully at the dwindling supply of bags that, despite our obsessive rationing, will be gone before the end of the month. We sit on the bed, munching granola and fresh melon, feeling the cool breeze of the fan that has become one of the few fundamentals of our current lives.

Today is Easter Sunday. A month since Michael's arrival.

***

Yesterday I tried to work out the day and failed to get even a rough idea. So we asked. I still cannot believe it is April.

We have found paradise. I wake up every morning wide-eyed, shocked to see that other face, peaceful beside me.

We are caught in a swirl of being where time and event do not matter. We pass smoothly from vivid, swirling dreams into a vivid, swirling reality, where we circle each other like halves of a molecule, coils of DNA, turning and bumping, floating away and being sucked back in to our shared centre.

Two months ago I could barely think of this, avoiding the images in order to protect myself from the ache of not having what I craved.

Our minds have veiled that time and pushed it beyond the realms of recent memory. This seems like the only reality that has ever been. London is made up of the wispy sensations of dreams, barely clinging together in my mind, wandering in half-memories through my sleeping hours. Almost every day I get a pang of longing for the rolling hills of Cornwall or the love of my people, but I know now to let the nostalgia flow through my mind.

Instead, we practise being here, now.

The sea pounds through our days. A time of water, and of flowing.

Punta Cometa

2010-03-21T12:31:00.000-07:00

We walk behind James over red earth. He is barefoot. His white hair and beard flow behind him. I want to hand him a staff and cloak.

Early morning on Punta Cometa. Spring solstice. The rising sun already burns.

The view stretches miles in either direction to cove after yellow cove. The sea shines, a shifting plain of mirrors. The cliffs fall into the churning sea in dramatic angles.

The reflection of this place to the steep cliffs of Cornwall runs further than simply cosmetic, as I realise when James begins the narrative in his cinematic boom:

"Straight ahead there are over 190 degrees of sea. The next land is almost exactly due east. This is the most southerly point of Mexico. The end of the North American continent."

I grew up on Lizard Point, a peninsula in Cornwall that forms the most southerly point of the UK - one of the reasons why Punta Cometa resonates with me so much.

Luis told me that today was a special day and that I should take care to position myself at a 'centre of energy', to meditate and think about what I wanted. At the time I was not sure quite what he meant. It was only until James told us about the vortex that it became clear: life's flows had taken me exactly where I needed to be.

On the end of the point lies the cactus that I've been watching from a mile away on the beach. Close up it is enormous; at least thirty feet high and almost three armspans around. The lower arms have aged into bark so that the cactus has a trunk, like a tree. James estimates it to be at least 400 years old, although admits that he really has no way of knowing.

I open my arms around it and press my face to the bark. Ants crawl over my hands. I swear I can feel the energy of the cactus. My insides feel the same as they did when I stirred the Tibetan singing bowl - as if something inside me is humming without sound. I visualise becoming connected to the bark and allowing whatever flows within the cactus to flow within me too.

I come away from the encounter almost shaking. Whether psychosomatic or not, I am charged. The light glinting from the water looks even whiter.

I sit in the red dust and consider the situation.

Sometimes even the most bizarre of events can seem normal. When this starts happening I know I'm not paying enough attention to the now.

But it's so easy to get taken away with memories and thoughts and inventions and miss what is right in front of you. The trick is to centre yourself on the moment instead of the private world in your head. Otherwise you are never really where you are.

So. I am in a life where a typical day includes following a man who looks like Gandalf to an impossibly beautiful location, to listen to magical stories and hug a giant cactus.

Thinking this, I feel proud to have moulded my life in such a ridiculous form. Top points Ju, for making the stupid credible.

For this seems more normal to me, and so much more sensical, than enclosing myself in an airconditioned box, clicking my mouse idly and making the morning's tea break the highlight of my day. I can never go back to that; I know that now. There is a library of reasons, none of which really need explanation.

The essence is,` it can be very difficult to see when one's world is enclosed around the self and the self's actions. In London my world was a sphere, stuffed with action and friends and events. Full to the rounded edges until it became too full and burst and released me and all my stories into the ether.

Now I am an empty, open bowl.

I may have little, but I can be filled with new delights every day.

And I know I'm in the right place. In a way that could never be conveyed to those who have not seen it, Mexico is real. Raw. It is life, unfettered. I see all the things I missed in my city routine and know I cannot live without them.

Here, I meet people every day who shine with the confidence and tranquility that comes with feeling like they are 'on their path'. Every day I have real conversations, that delve excitedly into the mysteries of life. Every day the synchronicities descend. I may not be 'achieving' anything in the traditional sense of the word - I have been out of work for a year and have not really done anything that could be written down on a CV - but I have learnt more in this year than in my whole life. And most of what I have learnt has been achieved by just sitting still and shutting the fuck up.

To look, really look, is to gain wisdom. I am far from being wise but being humble is the first step.

I feel something inside me wanting to prove myself to James; prove my worth as a student and display my talents. But at the very least I understand that now is the moment for stillness. So, I make myself quiet and allow him to talk, and I make sure I follow every word. When my mind starts to drift, I slap it and bring myself back to the present.

The present is a redbrown spit of land and a foaming turquoise sea. The snaking arms of a giant cactus and the endless indigo of the sky. It is a natural energy vortex. A pair of men from opposite ends of life. A moment of meditation. It is the centre.

We amble to the end of the point and scramble down the cliff to a giant rockpool forming a natural jacuzzi at the end of the world.

Waves rush over a gap in the side and fill the pool with fizzing white, tossing bodies carelessly in its swirls of bubbles. Even in a world of freedom it is the most fun I've had in a long time.

Once again, the scene mimics the head.

I watch as a giant wave rises over the rocks and fills the pool, sending mini tidal waves right to the edges, to be reflected back in an endless, effervescent pendulum.

The accidental search

2010-03-11T18:35:00.000-08:00

Before Michael arrived I was told to learn to heal with my hands by Marcos, who tells us he is a shaman even as he pours his first beer of the day at 11am.

Marcos gives me the name of a man who will teach me; James, who can be found on the beach at Mazunte, Oaxaca.

In the same week, Mike is given a scrawl of a map by friends, showing three places he should visit. He holds it up to the camera during one of our Skype conversations. Even through the blur of the video call my eye was drawn to a huge black arrow taking up most of the page. The arrow pointed to Mazunte, Oaxaca. Yet another coincidence in a long line of synchronous surprise.

So, after a few days in the backpacker's world of Puerto Escondido, we emerge on the beach at Mazunte. Line of yellow beaches backed by dusty cliffs and licked by fizzing turquoise. The sunset to our right is obscured by a long reptile of land reaching down to the south. My eye is drawn to a giant cactus, visible on the end of the peninsula; cupped hands scratching the sky in stark contrast to the bare rock of its surroundings.

The drama of the cliffs reminds me of Cornwall. But this is unmistakably small-town Mexico. The sand stretches to the road, where a small line-up of restaurants offering an eye-widening selection of menus forms what is known as 'town' to la banda.

Comedors offer cheap quesadillas and loaded tlayudas (huge crispy-barbequed tortillas filled with cheese, refried beans, meat and vegetables) under palm-leaf shelters and flickering candlelight. Fierce locals protect their village from the commercialism of the surrounding coast, shielding strong stems of individuality and quality in their establishments, that set this place in a different league to its peers. The mechanical squeaks of tropical birds blend effortlessly with the soft rhythms of tambor drums, somewhere on the hillside behind us. Mike itches to play; I long to hula hoop.

We run as far as we can to try and catch a glimpse of the sun before it disappears. We squeeze under a gate to get to the highest point we can and pause, giggling like drunks at the incredible view laid out for us.

We are captured.

The next day we hand over 1500 pesos - about 80 pounds - for a month's stay in a room on the sand that looks like the inside of an orange.

We are floored by contentment.

A fan, a bed. A doorstep of sand and a view of the sea. Faint memories of shopping for unnecessary crap seem inconceivable now. We can think of nothing more that we need, except perhaps a musical instrument for Mike to play.

I need to find James. We splash through the waves to the next beach, stopping on the way to talk to a man called Lorenzo. He sits, staring at the sea, jerry can of mezcal in his hand, sombrero proudly on his head. A self proclaimed "Noodist Booddist", voiced in the only accent that allows the two to rhyme in the singing manner of a mantra.

He has a drum. He agreed to fix it for its owner four years ago. He is leaving and wants to lend it to us.

As if this is not slick enough, it transpires the drum belongs to Shaman Marcos, who actually brought us here in the first place.

Mike's face lights up in amazement and I recognise the same light that has been shining from my own eyes. In that instant he catches a glimpse of that something beyond. I know his thoughts mirror mine.

Lorenzo brings out a Tibetan singing bowl. Seven different metals combined, bashed into a deep silver cave. He drags a small, metal cylinder around the edge and it hums with a stomach rumbling vibration that makes all those in the near vicinity turn towards us. He believes it resets any turmoil that might lurk inside.

I try it and feel my whole body respond to the vibration. The sounds is almost ancient. I am a bowl myself, singing, feeling the sound through me and a part of me, sifting and settling.

After over an hour squatting in the dust in front of him, listening to his stories, I remember the original purpose of our walk and continue onwards, asking wisened faces if they are James. The humming in our ears and the drum in Mike's hands give the journey a fated edge; it takes less than five minutes before we are standing on James' veranda, being welcomed like old friends.

James reclines in a blue hammock, wearing a pair of ragged shorts under a dark brown chest that is connected to the air with white wires. His face hides under a huge beard of grey. He must be almost seventy.

He pulls himself up from the hammock and I am dwarfed by his height, lost in an embrace, during which I feel energy pulsing gently from him.

He speaks as if he is the voiceover for a cinema blockbuster, intonation pressing heavy words into us, forcing us to question our reality. We pass the evening swinging in his hammocks, listening to his stories. He offers to take us to explore Punta Cometa. Realisation dawns as he explains this to be the long point of land to our west, thought to be an energy vortex since ancient times. I understand why it has been drawing my eye.

He would like to teach us the stories of this sacred place. He would also like to teach me everything he knows about healing.

We sleep deeply, the waves in our ears, our new gifts painting dreams in explosions of colour.

Cytokinesis

2010-03-07T15:13:00.000-08:00

Waiting in the airport arrivals hall I drink a pre-mix tequila cocktail from a can, clicking my fingers, tapping my feet. My teeth chatter. Each time the doors open to burp out another swarm of musty, wrinkled travellers, I push to the front of the crowd. Stand on my toes. Search for the face that has haunted my every hour since I last kissed it, almost four months ago.

Smiling grandfathers and baby-hugging mothers watch me with quietly concealed interest. I see their version of my story unreeling in their heads. I swear softly under my breath.

It's as if throughout my life I took a little of the emotion from every day and placed it in a bottle; every dreaded exam, fairground ride, sickening race, revealed secret.

I am now shivering with the side-effects of a cool gulp of this life-juice. I feel it coating my insides with its syrupy intensity.

The security guard asks me to step behind the line, for the second time. I tell him why I am acting the way I am, more to stop him and his uniformed mates from staring at me than for anything else. This doesn't work. I take my muttering self to the toilet to check my hair and wash my hands unnecessarily.

As I return, crushing my tequila can, I see Michael walk through the door. My walk turns to a stride and I push aside joyful families, throw myself into his arms.

My face feels like it is splitting.

His face is the sun, blinding me. I try to look at it but fail.

I bury myself in his shoulder.

We are both breathing as if we've run here. We don't know what to do. We don't even know what to say. He hands me a bar of much-missed Galaxy chocolate, as if this will replace a sentence. I hand him a cold beer and he looks so relieved he might cry.

We sit on the warm benches, sticky skin pressed into bumps through the holes in the metal seats, holding each other for over an hour until we feel strong enough to stand up again.

It is nine o'clock on a balmy Mexico City evening.

There is no need to rush.

***

For two people so known for our ability to "chat shit," we are surprisingly quiet.

We are shocked to relative silence by the strangeness of the other's face in three dimensions. He looks so different to the face I captured in snatches from my 50 square inches of computer screen. My mind is a peeking seashell, protecting itself, refusing to believe.

We walk around the hotel room, staring at each other from opposite ends, alternating the dizzyness of each other with the vertiginous view across the city from the eighteenth floor.

We stew ourselves in the jacuzzi bath and infuse the air with rediscovery.

We are in a perfect circle of water.

Completely coincidentally, it is exactly six months since we got together.

We get to know each other once more, this time with less urgency and more hunger. Our laughs carry the loud echo of disbelief.

We talk well into the night and fall asleep reluctantly, lightly, waking every half hour to footnote the last sentence.

Above the bed, imprinted in the plaster, another perfect circle haloes us in our bliss.

***

We are floating. El D.F. is so much brighter than it was in November. To all purposes, a different city, seen through another's eyes.

I see myself in Michael's face as his senses are blasted with Mexico's mighty vehemence. People, everywhere, shouting, laughing, dancing, crawling; pervading our perception with spicy spikes of colourful intrusion. Street sellers invade our bubble. Fierce smells burrow into our nostrils. Movement tickles the corners of our eyes.

I catch his hand, force him to slow down.

Back then, I blinked away the flood with my loneliness. Now, his disorientation is grounded with the gentle kisses of companionship and the sanctuary of our hotel.

Our two days together in the city are are necessary exploration but an unnecessary symphony of distractions. Once again, I crave bland beauty.

I introduce him to Mexico's famous night bus. Our instincts point South.

We curl up in our seats to await the new world of the morning. In twelve hours, Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca, will materialise from the darkness. Our souls cry out for the sea.

Desert sun bleaching

2010-03-03T19:17:00.000-08:00

I say goodbye to Luis, the quiet bringer from afar, almost two weeks later.

We have lived in the desert of Zacatecas. This last, unplanned stop in my journey, although a whole day's drive away from where I met Luis, is reassuringly just a short drive from my first destination, Real de Catorce. This does not surprise me.

I have lived the life of the chosen one, treated to presidential suites, gifts, tours; waited on hand and foot whilst being inducted into the Ways Of The Light. In just a short time he has become a father of sorts. From the centre of my pile of presents I feel much younger than twenty-five.
Like a sparkling snow dome, the information he places within my swelling skull needs time to settle before I am able to see my way through.

A delicate network of carefully constructed threads is forming, a throbbing organism, extending primordial limbs -- fleshy tentacles that incarnate my innate knowledge and seal form in a giant web, designed to catch even the tiniest wisp of instruction blown my way.

I feel simultaneously mighty and helpless. In our weeks together he has mentally skinned me alive and left me prostrate, my bared innards glistening juicily, pulsating, vulnerable and exposed in a way I have not experienced. I react with erratic waves of rage and exhileration, swooping easily through everything in between.

It is a complete mental scrub.

I cannot sleep.

When I do, my dreams tease me with half-formed shapes and moody premonitions. I long for next week, when my long-lost love will arrive with a suitcase full of normality and eyes widening with that warming resonance. My companion, my other half. I long for his company to share all of this with, his strength to walk by my side.
And yet I do not want this time to end, for I feel myself resonating with a clear harmony that I have never felt before.

When Luis and I part, it is under the knowledge that our separation is only temporary. At some point in the future, we have a journey to make. Only I will know when the time is right for that journey.

In the meantime, I have been instructed to empty my head before bed, slow my already lilting pace, and stay completely connected to the things around me.

As long as I relax, and carry on as I am, everything will unfold, just as it should.

I spend the last days before Michael's arrival in a Holiday Inn in Morelia, Michoacan, paid for by my new benefactor. I eat books with the same zeal as I had when reading Alice in Wonderland at the age of four. I must be the only guest ever to spend every evening alone in their room, dogmatically preparing salads in a camping pan with a blunt knife nicked from the downstairs restaurant, rinsing chilli and lime remains away in the shower.

I am a shaken champagne bottle. Any moment I feel I might explode, fizzing love over everything around me. My bottle would be refilled a thousand times over, never depleted, an eternally regenerating source of life.

I cannot remember ever being this happy.

I look down at my neck, where two silver amulets glint whitely in the sun. Purchased in shining Zacatecas, the desert oasis; salmon stones, windows glinting, raw scents of life in a barren earth. El serpento y el caracol. The snake, half of winged serpent Quetzalcoatl in a spiraling figure eight, representing oneness and connection with the earth; the snail, home on his back, undulating with sticky strength, slow enough to sense everything in the smallest gust of wind.

As I place them around my neck I am reminded of my words, borne from the depths of my loneliness, back in November:

"The snail's head of my intrigue retreats back into its shell, leaving only feelers, slowly waving."

Now my antennae extend powerfully ahead, muscled extensions of my senses. Nuance shades my perception in a thousand rainbow colours, the sun pressure-washing my mind, blasting away a crust of unnecessary memories, bringing innate sense into sharp relief.

For my last night alone, I return to Mexico City and the same hostel in which I started this looping journey.

Mi viaje solita is bracketed. The circle is closed.

The duality of sense and bewilderment

2010-02-22T22:18:00.000-08:00

After breakfast, I allow myself to be taken by Luis to the other pyramids at Tzuntzintzan, the ancient capital of the Tarascans, holders of the Lake Patzcuaro territory. The tip of my tongue trips and taps over the name in ingeminated, gratified triplets.

The pyramids are larger, more numerous and seemingly more alive than those I visited at Ihuatzio a few days ago. I wonder how to broach to this well dressed, expensively perfumed gentleman the fact that I very much want to meditate here.

Before I do so, Luis tells me this place is a centre of energy. He asks me if I know how to "charge" from it.

Taken aback, I reply, "Yes. I think so. Sentar y sentir. Sit and feel."

He nods, satisfied, and beckons me through the alleyway between two of the central pyramids. Then he points to a position on the crumbling stone. "Sit there," he commands. "On the third level up, in that corner."

Once sat, he orders me to uncross my legs and arms, place my palms on the stone, and close my eyes. Asks me if I have a mantra. The only one I can think of is the one contained within my Mayan Yellow Sun dreamspell - "I am that I am". He tells me to focus on my breathing and repeat that. He will tell me when to stop.

Slightly self-consciously, I do as he says. Within around five minutes I feel my forearms twitching. The visuals on my eyelids swirl excitedly and I feel almost as if I have pins and needles running up my arms.

After fifteen minutes, he whispers my name from his position on the ground, bringing me out of my trance. He tells me to stand and raise my arms to the sky, and then to climb down. He places the palms of his hands on mine and tells me to close my eyes.

His hands start to vibrate. For a moment I am flooded with fear, for it feels like I am electrocuting him, and he is so frail. When he takes his hands away, I open my eyes to see him smiling. "You have a lot of power, Julia," he says, with no hint of embarrassment. "Even before we came here I could feel your power. You radiate heat."

Once again, as so often, I am grateful for my poor Spanish; providing a convenient mask when I wish to remain silent.

We walk around the site in a circle, and I remember my meditation a few days ago at the pyramids of Ihuatzio. I have the urge to tell him about the red bird; for some reason I know he will understand. When I do so, he smiles that ever-more familiar quiet smile. "Do you know what that means, Luis?" I question, knowing the answer, knowing he is not going to tell me.

In the silence that follows his nod, I then get the urge to tell him about the stranger in England who told me I'd find answers in Mexico. His smile widens even more. "This is one of your answers."

I can't help thinking, But I don't even know the questions! But I remain silent, still thinking about the red bird and what it could mean. We continue to walk in circles in front of the pyramids.

I gasp. There in front of me is an identical red bird, darting between the trees. Behind it is a bright blue bird.

I stammer Spanish like an idiot, stating the obvious. "Otra pecaro rojo! Y un azul!"

Luis looks surprised for the first time. "Now you have two. Two red birds. And a blue. This is very special, Julia."

I do not find out the answer until later on in the day, driving around the lake, enough time and mind-bending conversation having passed for me to know, with all my being, that something momentous is occurring.

He tells me that enlightenment and states of being are represented by the colours of the rainbow. Blue is love. Red is life. The highest form of being. I am seeing red because I am deep inside life right now.

As he tells me this, we drive over a large piece of bright red plastic on the road, next to a man standing at the edge wearing a red shirt.

I am caught between the wide-eyed silence of disbelief and the clamouring curiosity of the very young. I ask him question after question, processing the increasingly bizarre answers with lengthy stares into the shimmering lake. It does not take long before he mentions the principle of everything being the same thing, and in excitement I tell him about my tattoo.

He stops the car.

When he looks at it, a strange look shadows his face. I ask him why. To this, he replies, enigmatic as ever; "This has a very special meaning for me. I have been expecting you. I think it is you that has a message for me."

I can barely do justice to the events I've related, let alone relate everything that occurred that day. Of course, as will likely most who read this, I found it extremely hard to let go of my scepticism. How many times have I been warned about kidnappers, fraudsters, rapists, who here seem to be just that little bit more professional, that little bit more elaborate?

But I rationalise to myself that whatever he wants can have nothing to do with money, given the amount he seems to have. And I do not feel threatened. If this is a hustle, he has outdone himself.

Of course, I could be letting myself in for something extremely dangerous. But I have committed now to travelling on my instincts; following coincidence. And there were a great many coincidences that day. If I stopped because I was scared, I know these coincidences would stop with me.

When he asks me if I would like to travel with him for a few days, I say yes, before I have even thought about the reply.

An instinctive answer. And thus the correct one.

Later on, when my mind kicks in, I will suffer the paranoia and fear that is missing from this moment. But right now, in this car, I feel I have no choice.

Thus, I flow into the first stage of my entrenamiento.

Maybe it was me

2010-02-22T21:12:00.000-08:00

Raul talks in singing Spanish, seemingly not too worried whether I can follow him or not. Within a few hours we have covered natural medicine, shiatzu, reiki, energy alignment, the truths contained within pyramids, and a concise and accurate assessment of my character according to the alignment of the stars on my birthdate. Then he starts to write down the seven laws of the Egyptians.

Number three is, Como es arriba, es abajo. As above, so below.

This is enough to weave me deeply into the knit of his words. We pass the Saturday afternoon by the sunny square, parrying a consistent stream of beggars and children selling gum, drinking our way through a succession of expensive beverages. He tells me to go to a place called Tepoztlan, another centre of energy near el DF.

This is the message I was expecting.

At five o'clock he receives a phonecall from a friend, Luis, an Ecuadorian-turned-Mexican, well-known in the town for his money and his kindness.

Apparently he does not call Raul very often.

Luis invites him to the cinema in Morelia. I hear Raul explaining that he is with a friend from England. Hear Luis invite me along as well.

At first I say no. After an afternoon of gunshot Spanish I am craving the peace of my room. But the answer does not sit quite right and, a few minutes after he has put down the phone, I concede.

Thus I meet Luis Soria de Silva. Slickly dressed but humbly disposed, with a wide smile and humorous manner. He is only forty-one, but a hump in his upper back, and his resulting shuffle of a walk, makes him seem much older.

The evening passes easily, popcorn scents and flowing emotions of the cinema balanced by stone-baked pizza and late night shopping centre. At the end of the evening I drip from the door of Luis' white Mercedes, drained but satisfied.

I spend the next two days with Raul, by the end of which I feel depleted. He likes being around me a little too much. I feel him feeding off my energy. Now that I have spent time with him, I feel obliged to meet him again.

To combat this, I pack my bags to leave.

The morning of my departure, I meet Luis for the second time, at a pavement cafe. Raul is not there. I don't know Luis, but he seems harmless and he wants to buy me breakfast, so I happily chatter away in the sun, amidst mouthfuls of chilaquiles and freshly-squeezed orange juice.

He asks me a lot of questions, about my life in England and about my current direction. He laughs when I say I want to write a book about my experiences; apparently one so young cannot amass sufficient stories for a bestseller. Feeling the need to prove myself, I become confident and direct, believing myself to know secrets that he does not. Speaking in Spanish, I am able to separate myself from my words, saying things that would be considered rude or arrogant in English.

I feel myself getting into the flow, enjoying talking about myself. I unpack some of my mantras for him, laying them out neatly and savouring his reactions.

He doesn't seem surprised by anything - only committed to continuing my soliloquy. When I say that I believed someone in Patzcuaro had a message for me, he immediately asks me what Raul's message was.

I am not sure. It could be a number of things. I tell him about Tepoztlan. However, my usual credence on these matters is absent. Deep down, I know this means I was wrong.

Luis looks at me with deep eyes and says, with absolute confidence, "Do not go to Tepoztlan."

I am startled.

"Why?" I ask. He replies, "Now is not the time for you to go to Tepoztlan."

I nod. Not going to argue with that. Then he says something very strange.

"On Saturday, I invited Raul to the cinema. This is very unusual, but I received the impulse to do this and so I followed it. Raul told me he did not want to go. I started to drive away. There came a point where, if I turned left, I would be at the cafe where you were. If I turned right, as I was just about to do, I would be on the carretera out of town, and the moment would have been missed.

"When I was at this point, Raul called me and said you'd changed your mind.

He looks at me seriously, piercing my eyes.

"Thus I met you."

I look at him with new interest. "So... Maybe it was you I was supposed to meet?"

He nods, slowly, and smiles a quiet, knowing smile. "Yes. Maybe it was me."

Pyramids and Perfect Persistence

2010-02-20T14:23:00.000-08:00

Everything in Patzcuaro is perfect. The town threads tiny streets up steep hills, whispering tales of pre-colonial Mexico in terracotta facades and delicately-formed handcrafts. The lake, like an accidental mud puddle, seemingly living its last days, shows itself in magical glimpses through the clouds outside my window.

The hostel is like my own house. I am the only person there. It rains solidly through my first three days but I happily curl under five blankets, hatted and gloved, chewing my way through neurone-popping books.

On the second day I meet a man in his forties called Raul, twitching, mouselike, mouth crowded with teeth. He instantly invites me to stay with him for free. He talks about natural healing and energy points within the body, something that rings deeply with what I've been recently coming across. He also talks about the Mayas.

Nervous and protective of my vulnerability I refuse, concealing my answer in a smilingly-delivered "I'll think about it". On the rain-soaked rush home I can't help feeling worried that I have ignored a message of some sort. Is he the person I knew I'd meet? I reassure myself with the thought that if it really is meant to be I will see him again.

When the sun comes out on Friday I borrow a bike and pedal furiously north round the lake, through splashing puddles and villages half-asleep.

I don't know where I'm heading, but after an hour a sign points me towards the ruins of Ihuatzio. The road unfolds before me, steaming away the freezing altitude with shimmering mirage. Dead dogs rot furrily in the gravel; as usual, vulture-like zopilotes the only birds in the sky.

By the time I arrive my legs are shaking.

The only other people here form a group that appear to be chanting whilst sitting in face-to-face pairs. I chain up my bike and creep past them.

At the end of a field of dried grass crouch two small pyramids, sides almost vertical. The Sun and the Moon. Grassy mounds perch quietly nearby; as yet uncovered shells of a previous life. I wonder how many other hills nearby camouflage sites that do not yet want to be found.

Around the edges of the site runs a steep, thick wall; remnants of an elevated road. I check to see no one is watching and clamber quickly to the top, pouring pumpkin seeds into my mouth as I go.

The sun is impossibly bright.

It takes my heart a long time to calm itself. I sit cross-legged, squinting even under my sunglasses, breathing steadily. Close my eyes and allow my mind to slip away with the place. I meditate for twenty minutes or so before inexplicably opening my eyes to see a small, bright red bird, darting among the nopal spines ahead.

Once more a feeling I can't explain; a knowledge that this is a sign for me. I know traditionally red is a warning, but this does not feel like a threat.

The bird follows me back to my bike. Its iridescence is almost gold in the sunlight. I think about it all the way on the gruelling, dusty journey home. I think I have overdone it, but I just can't ride a bike slowly. The 4km hill from the Lake up to Patzcuaro town stretches me almost to breaking point and it is perhaps the only time in my adult life I buy a Coca Cola.

For the first time since my arrival I am warm enough to brave the shower. Afterwards I collapse on my bed listlessly. I am completely useless. I can't even focus on text. Despite the exhilaration of my day and the tingling in my hands from the pyramids, I feel the loneliness creeping in. Before it slams its deadening plank into my exhausted back I force myself out of the door and down to the market, to feed my craving for guavas.

There is Raul. Again, he talks about exactly the sort of thing I have been thinking about. Again, he invites me to stay.

Again, I nervously say I will think about it.

I begin to get angry. If the universe or whatever it is wants to teach me something, why does it have to present it to me in the form of a man and an empty house? I don't want to go! I don't want to stay with a strange man! Why can't I meet someone who just wants to go for coffee?!

I become totally overwhelmed by all the things that are going on. There seem to be currents taking me somewhere and I am scared. I don't want to have to deal with any of this. I miss my country, my family, my friends. I miss mundanity. The void inside takes over the consuming joy of the last month or two and makes me call home, seeking comfort in the familiar.

I sleep fitfully again that night, as I so often have in Mexico. My aching legs the next morning keep me in town, wandering without aim amongst the closed, cobbled streets.

I am just about to go home when I walk past Raul.

He is sitting at a pavement cafe, drinking coffee.

With a barely perceptible nod of thanks to the powers-that-be, I ease myself into the chair next to him.

Metamorphosis

2010-02-15T13:51:00.000-08:00

Out of Guadalajara, Jalisco, and in to Michoacan. Closer to the heart, colder to the core.

Lake Patzcuaro has been calling me for a while.

Legend paints a place where the barrier between heaven and earth is thin. I can't explain the feeling but I am sure there is someone there I have to meet.

Dan's van is going to Morelia. When I look on the map, Morelia's proximity to Patzcuaro sends a jolt of electricity through my body and once again I feel in the flow of something far stronger than me.

"Vamonos!" And so we find ourselves, crawling south.

Dan drives his van with all the enthusiasm of a Canadian on a road full of crazy drivers, Moses the husky perched zen-like behind him, Catia the newly-arrived Toronto lass, glued to the passenger window. We stop for the night at a town that begins with M, chosen by vote with map-pointed fingers.

These towns are like secrets, existing, bustling, swarming under the camoflage of anonymity. There is no way you'd see this Mexico with your head in the Lonely Planet. The square conceals millions of birds, who paint the pavement white and screech in stereo sound loud enough to raise our voices.

Catia and I share a room that sneers in spinach green. We awake early, too cold to shower. The morning mist hangs expectantly.

Our destination is one of the four butterfly reserves playing host to millions of Monarch mariposas on their winter flight from Canada. Every year, they return to the same place.

It takes them five weeks to fly down here. It will take them three generations to fly back.

The eternally moving circle of life.

The journey is lined with ranches and shacks, weathered farmers waiting patiently for lifts. Their sombreros shine whitely in the morning glow. Horses trudge their way up pine-clad slopes. Sun tints yellow, clouds wash grey.

Now we are in Austria. Only the cacti and clamouring billboards give it away.

My journey is blissful. I hug my knees on Dan's bed, a back-of-the-van secret. From time to time Moses stands, turns, sits heavily once again; dancing to my reggae soundtrack. Why does "Eastenders" exist and yet "Vehicle Windows Around the World" does not? I sink back into the pillows and lean my forehead against the glass.

We pull off onto a dirt road and find ourselves at a square of coloured shacks, steaming with woodsmoke, where children surround the van, asking for pesos. I hand out hula hoops to squeals of self-conscious giggling.

We eat our breakfast next to a fire tended by a four year old with a runny nose. She gives us cinnamon coffee that has been boiling, bitterly, on a metal plate over the embers. We clothe Catia, who smilingly admits to having arrived entirely unequipped for anything other than Toronto life, and start walking, accompanied by a tanned, toothless guide named Salvador.

We fail to follow his lisping dialogue. The wrinkles in his face tell me the stories I want to hear.

The sun filters through the pines to illuminate fallen trunks; clues to February's uncharacteristic storms. Salvador mumbles about floods and mudslides.

It wouldn't take much to cut the village off from everything.

In contrast to much of the world's broadly blind denial of change, the Mexicans seem to know something is up. Rather than 'global warming', many seem to accept that we are on a time scale told to us thousands of years ago. I have met some people who say, with no shred of doubt, that next year will see snow in this country.

Rare is the Mexican house that is closed to the elements. If it snows, millions of people will die.

I don't want to believe it and yet the rains of the last month have rested heavy on my shoulders, coming down hard and unwelcome in the middle of the historic dry season.

For now, the sun continues to shine on the delicate black veins and saffron-dusted wings of the butterfly carcasses that have begun to litter the path; dappled warning of vulnerable slumber. They exist in a comatose state for weeks, shutting down completely until the sun is warm enough to wake them.

Salvador points up to huge dark pendulums in the trees, like giant wasp nests. Our eyes adjust like we've walked into a dark room and it takes a moment to realise these are all butterflies, wings closed, awaiting the sun's touch. Focus more and tune into entire trunks, covered in wings.

The valley hums in orange.

Dan and Catia take off with their cameras and I lie back in a patch of sunlight to look straight up at the canopy.

I never thought I'd appreciate the fact that someone stole my camera last month. But I am grateful now for the chance to simply sit and absorb.

Butterflies drift as if by accident. Scraps of orange tissue, blown in the breeze.

I close my eyes and join them, feeding off the warmth of dusty beams, fluttering my joy at the world.

These butterflies have flown almost as far as me.

I am learning to read nature. The transparency of its messages is surprising. Butterflies are a theme that has been following me for weeks. They represent change.

I am glad I am with Dan and Catia. A strange trio we make; each of us is in our own state of metamorphosis. Dan still coping with the hole his girlfriend left behind, but plowing eagerly on through his mindblowing, fated journey. Catia, dressed in mournful black and shaking with the shock of leaving her life, testing out her new legs and the arch of her wings.

Me, finding my feet and so much more. Undergoing change and preparing for more. Not only am I flying right now, but in my flight I am preparing to let go of my solo venture when Michael joins me at the beginning of March. I am simultaneously nervous and exploding with excitement. Either way, letting someone else in is enormous. It is not just the change of travelling state but the mental upheaval of entering a relationship.

I feel other, deeper shifts. I wonder who I will meet in Patzcuaro.

Like the butterfly, I will soon be released from my self-constructed cocoon; different shape, same being.

All three of us are butterflies, emerging from our pods. Wobbling on legs we didn't have before. Waving antennae in pine scents. Flying away.

We return to find children still hula hooping. I play with them for an hour or so, encouraging the shy ones and exclaiming at the progress of the new professionals. I keep catching sight of the joy on their faces and laughing because it is me that has put that there.

When we leave I gift them my blue and yellow hoop. I have carried this hoop with me for three months, purely to lend to children, for everywhere I go there is a child who wants to learn.

I will need a new one for them now. But it feels right to leave it here.

The resulting light in their faces illuminates the way ahead.

Student of the Vortex

2010-02-14T16:21:00.000-08:00

Fuck Spanish lessons. It appears Guadalajara is to make me student of other arts.

Because I'm 'not supposed' to be here, I feel like I should leave. So much for my disdain of cities. But in actual fact I have stumbled upon a centre of creativity, epitomised by Frank, who seems to be an endless source of energy - constantly producing, creating, literally singing his love for life.

Inspiration juices over my computer screen. I spend days in the hammock on the leafy terrace, attempting to record just a fraction of the information I'm receiving.

After a week and a half Dan arrives for a few hours, and like me is drawn in to stay for a further couple of weeks. Every time we try to leave we feel ourselves pulled back into the centre of the vortex, the flow so strong we do not even attempt to resist.

The hostel is small but it is a magnet for the people I need to speak to. I leave less and less.

Pecas, one of the helpers at the hostel, knows everything I want to know about the Mayans. He helps me understand the complexity of their calendar system. I plug him for information, pulling it out in long, savoury strings, chewing with unsated appetite, swallowing ravenously. When I finally digest it I will attempt to regurgitate it here, but for now I need to let it sit, slightly uncomfortably, in my stomach.

I am tattooed. An overwhelming lesson and a story in itself.

I meet a shaman, who feeds me even more information. His name is Marcos, and his Mayan sign is Cosmic Wind. Messenger from afar.

I feel like a human sponge, and wonder when all this started happening.

He gives me keys for my future journey - tells me to learn to heal with my hands, and correctly guesses that I have already felt the ability to do this without having been taught how.

He gives me the name of the man who will teach me, who I can find on a beach on the coast of Oaxaca state. We can stay there for free, and learn about self-sufficiency at the same time.

I will be with Michael then. I wonder if this will fit well with his own journey, whatever that may be. But then Shaman Marcos tells me there is also a collective of people there who make instruments. I can barely conceal my excitement when I talk to Mike, who has many times talked about his wish to record the sounds of the world. The perfection seems a little odd, even with my belief in all this.

Marcos makes my brain hurt. He is a shaman of three different cultures. Before this he was in prison for robbing a bank at gunpoint as a teenager, his head twisted by the images received as a 'body collector' in the Vietnam war. He heals the migraine of the only other hostel resident by placing his hands on her head for ten minutes. His right thumb is bent at an angle where he allowed a rattlesnake to bite him in a ceremony.

He spent years camping next to the Pyramids of Palenque before they were 'discovered' (Palenque is one of the Mayan sites that tell the prophecies - he was one of those who told the Mexican government about those famous glyphs; something he regrets deeply to this day).

He believes 2012 will bring the return of the Mayans through the black hole at the centre of the universe.

My brain is not quite ready to take all of this in.

I try to write down at least some of his stories. I wrestle with indecision over whether to put all of this in my blog, for fear of what people will think. But the indecision is momentary - of course I have to write.

I don't know enough to be able to comprehend what he means when he says the Mayans will return. Instead I focus on the more palpable information - what his people believe will actually happen in the next three years.

"We have dammed the rivers - the earth's life blood. We have moved mountains from one place to another. We talk about the future, when the Earth will be ruined by our mess, but little do we realise we are already at that point. We have destroyed it far more than we ever admit to. Look at Mexico. Every week there are protests because someone fell into a river and died, not from drowning, but from poisoning. How many rivers are there that can be swum in safely?

"The earth is in huge imbalance. You know enough about flows to understand that this is unsustainable. How can it continue to function in such an imbalance?

"Despite what we believe, it is infinitely more powerful than the human. Very soon, it will reveal this power. The Mayans knew that. We just don't want to listen. It may well mean the end of everything as we know it. And it will be a lot sooner than we think."

Into my mind floats an image of the earth as a dozing dog, having its hair plaited and its paws rearranged by bullish children. It waits patiently. But how much time is it going to be before the dog becomes so uncomfortable that it has to jump up, suddenly, shake itself violently? The plaits come loose, instantly. Buildings, dams, the construction of our lives, all razed to the ground.

Dan brings it back to reality: "The real question is, what will we do if the economy collapses. What will you do if you can no longer buy what you need from a store?"

All I can do right now is become the messenger. Enlighten by reflection.

One day I wake up and know it is time to go. By this time, I am armed with everything I need for a final two and a half weeks alone before Mike's arrival.

As Above, So Below

2010-02-06T16:04:00.000-08:00

I have been thinking about my tattoo design since 2001. I always knew the perfect design would arrive, and the key was not to put any pressure on it.

When I went travelling to New Zealand and the Pacific Islands in 2004, I was so taken with the Maori culture that I designed my own tattoo out of elements of various greenstone carvings that meant something to me. The design was beautiful. But I never got the tattoo. I couldn't decide where to have it and by the time I left the area it felt like the moment had passed.

A few weeks ago I watched my friend get her first tattoo in Puerto Vallarta. It was very small but it had a lot of meaning for her. I was as nervous as she. We got pissed on tequila and laughed the whole way through, before spending the rest of the night riding high on endorphins to take on the city.

I felt her liberation and kept the thoughts in my mind, circling slowly.

When I was in Vallarta the next time, I spent an afternoon in tattoo shops, looking at fonts. While I was there, a girl came in, about to have one down her spine. I asked her what it would say.

She replied, 'You have to lose yourself in order to be found.'

I left that tattoo shop with a mark not on my skin but on my mind - of that girl and her truth. It mirrored what was going on at the time. From the lost wilderness of my first weeks emerged the familiarity of myself. Shortly afterwards, I found myself sitting on the beach in Yelapa, wondering where the hell all this perfection arrived from.

Sure enough, my peace and patience paid off. When the coincidence occurred in the bookshop - the coincidence that led me to the Law of Attraction book - I knew the words As Above, So Below would soon be tattooed somewhere on my body.
Not only would it be a physical representation of that amazing memory of swimming in San Blas with the phosphorescence, but also a hats off to the techies up there that gave me the later coincidence.

On another level, there is the basic physical nature of it - that I am claiming my body as my own, maturing, changing, but in the same time recognising that it is just a body, and it is mine, so I can do what I want to it.
But more importantly, in those four words lie the truths I commit to. My beliefs in the unity of everything, the Law of Attraction and the ultimate connection of everything to everything else. The words represent it all for me.
Everything is the same. The things that you find above you are the things you find below you. That which is within, is also without. The stars are made of the same thing as the earth, the same thing as the sky, the same thing as ourselves. The physical manifestation of the world is exactly what is in your head.

Everything is made of the same energy - the omnipresence of consciousness.

All you have to do is tune in, and I feel like I have done that as much as I can for the age I am and the experiences I've had. I am at the stage now where I am truly feeling everything that comes along - seeing energy patterns in things and directing flows, or rather, flowing with them. I feel somewhere that this is a point in my life that will transpire to be very important. I am leaning against the proverbial milestone, catching my breath, darting my eyes around this new tierra to navigate the best way forward.

This is my journey, and these words express that perfectly.

And there is another reason. More and more, I feel like my purpose is to spread the word. The people I meet seem to be bringing me messages along these lines. In Mayan prophecies I am Yellow Rhythmic Sun, which means my life's purpose is "to enlighten". Even in Western horoscopes my charts tell me I am to "shine a light" in order to lead the way.

It is easy to be sceptical, particularly when I blush self-consciously at saying something so far-fetched and potentially arrogant. But what matters is what you feel inside. Without being daunted or condescending of this prophecy I feel myself shouldering it and preparing for it. My instincts tell me it is true. In stepping along this journey I know I'm stepping towards that purpose and I am in the process of submitting to it and simultaneously grasping it.

I say all this in a vain attempt to explain the reasons why I decided to tattoo my stomach yesterday. There are many reasons. Some much deeper than others. I am no longer going to bother postscripting my thoughts with caveats and excuses for those who think I'm being carried away with hippy nonsense. Take the one that most rings with you. I am simply being honest.

They tell me to be the change I wish to see in the world. A tattoo is a ritual, and for me this ritual comes in a poetically beautiful format.

To enlighten the self is to enlighten others.

As above, so below.

By the time I arrive in Guadalajara I have just a rudimentary blur where my tattoo should be, but I know, really KNOW that I want this. I have the words but no shape, the curve but no position. The intention but no artist. When I turn up at the Hostelito Inn, casually mention my fondness for the owner Frank's body art, it does not surprise me that he says he will do mine for free.

Ask and she shall receive. Who am I to resist a flow such as this? Of course I say yes.

But now the decision is made, more decisions arrive. Where to have it? Do I want it to show all the time, or do I want it private? Do I want just the words, or do I want a shape as well? I have toyed with the idea of having spirals or circles, for these too hold a heavy meaning for me. Everything is cyclical, the world moves in circles. I slip round the corner of one.

I even meditate whilst hooping in a blurred cylinder of blue glitter.

A circle is notoriously difficult to draw, and on the wrong body part could end up missing the point. But I want it, so badly. I need those words on me.

Up until the day before I have it done, I struggle with indecision over where to have it and what it should look like. Dan shows up, a welcome addition to the pack and with artist's eyes and comforting presence helps me to find the perfect font. I know it is the one the moment I see it. Words looping in circles and spirals, letters emerging from the swirls shyly but firmly. And with that comes the decision to have it on my side. Partly on the front, partly on the back. Above, below, across my core.

I drink a couple of tequilas and lie prostrate on the bed upstairs, a crowd of well-wishers having a party in the sun outside the door, shouting encouragement.

I am scared.

I'm not sure quite of what, because when I think about it I am not scared of permanently marking my skin. I know it is going to hurt, but I want it to be a journey and it wouldn't be a journey if it was easy. I trust Frank and I know that the words are exactly what I want. I come to the conclusion it is just the energy of the event infecting me.

I breathe through the nerves and ground my fears.

There comes a point when you just have to let go. Trust the hands you are in. That point comes as I am examining the stencil. I could stand in front of the mirror for hours adjusting the position, but in the end I just hold my hands up and submit to the charge of Frank. Frank of the single braid and spiky hair, Frank of strange Mexo-Anglicisms, Frank of morning singing and afternoon doobies. What a legend that man is. Despite knowing he'd only done 40-odd tattoos, I trust him completely. I know this is going to be good.

So I plug myself into music fit for an imaginary world of light and inflection. Close my eyes. Lie back to feel the burning pierce of the needle.

It hurts. A lot.

All across my ribs, down the side of my stomach, to the scarred remnants of my appendix, just inside my right hip. They did tell me it was going to be hard.

But because of the significance of the words, I want to really feel what is going on. This is not just a branding of my skin, but a branding of my life, my persona. It is a declaration to the world of my beliefs and my vow to commit to those beliefs for the rest of my life. It is a declaration of my story, of the path that has led me here and the core trust in the synchronicities I've experienced.

Instead of having a body as the physical means by which the mind is transported, I am bridging the two with a physical manifestation of what goes on in my mind.

I want to etch the deep ink of my beliefs into my tattoo. So I focus on them.

I meditate, for five hours, on the meaning of those words, the significance of circles and spirals. The endlessness of life, symmetry, the journey in and the journey out, the double helix, getting young as you grow old, everything as one. I etch my intention into my skin.

All at once I feel both the unity and the difference between my physical body and my mental body. On the physical level, I lie on the bed, helpless at the hands of my artist, pain stabbing deep into my being. I feel the vibration inside my rib cage.

On the mental level I am a hum of energy, with an apex of intensity over the needle into which I pour all my positivity and awe at everything I've experienced. Those five hours take me to places and experiences usually only achieved with the aid of psychadelic substances. I am in a trip of the highest form, rushing off the exhilaration of the physical and the challenge of the mental.

It is a five-hour long, full body physical and mental orgasm.

I enjoy every minute. I am by no means exaggerating when I say it is one of the most monumental experiences of my life.

I become the music and I become the needle and I become the ink deep inside my skin.

In having the words branded forever, I experience first hand what they mean. As above, so below. As within, so without. What may be outside is also felt inside. My mind is all around.

When Frank taps me to signal the end, I feel a wave of disappointment that this moment, this perfect moment is over. But then I stand up and take my first look at my new body.

I didn't know what I wanted, but when I see it I know it is perfect.

All over my body my skin tingles, like I've been scrubbed.

It takes me a while to gather my mind from the corners of the room. I pull myself together just enough to stumble downstairs to bed.

I am exhausted.

January's gifts - leading to a rant on possessions, Faith and Choice

2010-02-05T15:56:00.000-08:00

1. Book about 2012

2. Underwear

3. New backpack, huge

4. Clothes, various

5. Obsidian crystal, iridescent, heart-shaped

6. Wire, to make obsidian into a pendant

7. A painting (left - entitled Hula in my honour -
see more of Dave's pics here)

8. A pair of poi

9. A tattoo

Most of the above followed me saying (largely to myself - thus most are coincidental) that I wanted that particular thing. On every occasion I have found exactly what I need. I am possessed with a confidence that everything is borrowed and there is no need to become possessive over possessions. They are just possessions. In Dan's words:

Everything we have achieved in this life, everything we've acquired, all the things we've lusted after and obtained... eventually... we have to give it all back.

Worrying about them not being there simply manifests insufficiency. I know that I will get everything I need, in time. I simply need to relax about it.

Everywhere I go I receive the help that I need. Even today, I am trying to make new hula hoops to give away to Frank and Tracey, at every stage of the operation someone has either done it for me or given me the help I need without me having to ask.

I feel myself mentally putting my hands up in surrender. I am letting go to whatever forces affect life and seeing where they take me and what they bring.

Travelling has given me the time and space to observe what is going on and also to take me away from the pulls and pushes of daily routine, necessity, time deficit. By observing all of this I find a new peace, knowing - not just believing, knowing - that I will get what I need.

People describe me as 'lucky'. I say wholeheartedly that it is not luck that brings me these things but faith and choice; in combination: intentionality. I choose what mental state to maintain and what to listen to, and I have faith that my choice, because it is a product of my intuition, will bring me through.

When I left England, the vast majority of people said something along the lines of; "You're so lucky and I'm so jealous! I wish that I could do what you are doing." All the time, I was thinking; How is it 'luck' that takes me from my well-paid job and 'secure' surroundings to the other side of the world, with no plan, no idea of the future, no guide, little savings? I put my whole being into this. I didn't go out for months. I didn't buy myself a thing. I wound my friends up by refusing to even pay a pound for the bus across town.

I have nothing to go back to. I even gave away most of my clothes. I remember the look of my boss when I told him I was leaving to 'go travelling'. There was no way he could hide the incredulity and condescension over my decision. 'How irresponsible, to leave, in the middle of a financial crisis and just when you are getting somewhere?!' He didn't even try to argue, for in my declaration I had simultaneously demonstrated myself to be just the sort of person he didn't want in his straight-jacket of a company.

Luck is the easiest way we can describe the visible pattern of someone doing well. I believe we use the word luck to label the events of a person's life when that person is in their flow. It is inconceivable to many people how one person can have so much 'luck' and another can be stuck in a seemingly everlasting series of misfortunes. The reality is the mental state. When things go right, the person grows into the mindspace of things going right, thus elevating them to an energy space that attracts good things. When things go wrong, a person feels like the world is against them and consequently attracts more misfortune.

I do not mean to say that people deserve misfortunes, but that by changing an attitude, you can change your life.

It is choice - choosing to buy a plane ticket instead of a new iPod, choosing to live from a bag, eat sporadically, experience poverty, exist in transience. Choosing to listen to the intuitions I receive.

And with the choice comes faith - knowing that I was right, knowing deep enough to really let go.

I knew the world I was in was stifling my spirit, and that I would find what I was looking for, as long as I made myself free to be steered by the winds of the world. A position where I am able to listen to the clues that have been provided, and do what I need to do to follow my instincts, instead of hemming myself in with constraints brought on by the need for a routine, for possessions, for security.

It can be hard to do that. Of course I am in the fortunate position of having no ties. Or rather, I was able to cut myself off from everything. My family is self-sufficient and exists in separate worlds to me, and my friends have their own agendas. I did not own a house, a car, a husband, a child.

I did meet someone after I bought the ticket but again he, like me, has made the choice to follow his intuition and join me. He arrives in three weeks. He has chosen to redirect his life and abandon himself to the flow, because he felt, even though it is a huge and terrifying change, that it was the right thing.

And as if to encourage these theories, the synchronicities are already rolling out the red carpet for him too. Ever since he made the choice to come, information, gifts, inspiration and business fortune have come his way.

In short, he has become very 'lucky'.

I'm not really sure where I'm going with this as I hadn't really intended to write about this in the first place. For those of you looking for another episode of Julia's nice story book, I apologise. I merely wanted to thank the world for bringing me all the things I wrote in the list and all the other blessings I haven't.

But I guess on reflection I am not-so-subtly trying to encourage everyone that reads this to have faith in their instincts and the courage to make the choices they need. It may not be travelling. But it will definitely involve tuning in to the 'greater power,' i.e. whatever your guts are telling you. The more you resist it, the less malleable you will find your situation. The moment you abandon yourself to the flow, the "coincidences" will pour out of you and you will draw everything you need to you like a magnet.

Abandon the self, and there you are.

1 was given by Taylor following the coincidence described in Breaking Boundaries. It is siezed upon excitedly by companions everywhere I go - Dan has even admitted to wanting to follow me travel or as long as it takes him to read the book.

2 was given shortly after a private soliloquy of frustration at not having what I needed

3 was given by Dan. Bag packing had become stressful enough to reverse even the most loving of moods, my bag being at least 20 Litres too small for all the things I'd collected. I know I am a true traveller when fitting my camping pan and hammock actually inside my bag is enough to keep me flying high all day.

4 were bestowed on me by a variety of people. Dina wanted me to hula hoop in her dress. Dan watched me break my shorts and released his favourite, beaten jeans to replace them with. And Carrie gave me an entire outfit to wear after she told me to remove all my clothes and throw them in with her laundry.

5 is an iridescent gold/black stone that is meant to absorb bad energy. It was given to me by nomads who spread out their collection and told myself and Dina to pick one each. Just days before, I'd commented on a piece of obsidian on a friend's neck and said I'd like some. I wanted to put it on a pendant but did not have the means to, so Catia, a girl at the Hostelito Inn, bought me 6 when she saw it in a shop. This was immediately taken out of my hands by Frank who just happened to be trained by artisanos, who after several 'chinga mi perro, hijo de putas' strung it neatly on a necklace.

7 was painted by Dave from Seattle, an artist who stayed in the Hostelito Inn for a month to exude his creativity in sprays of colour and strange form all over the hostel. Each one was an explosion of different mediums - paint, pen, dripped, sponged, sprayed, splodged. I've never really thought about buying art before but if I hadn't been trying to conserve money, and if I had a place to hang it, I would definitely have bought some of his. I asked him if he would do me a doodle on a piece of notepaper. Instead he gave me a beautiful canvas that will forever remind me of the vibrancy of that place.

8 was given to me, bizarrely, by a shaman. He saw my hula hoops and asked me if I could spin poi. I said no. He gave them to me anyway. Now I have to learn.

9 was undoubtedly the most emotional, the most significant and the most life-changing of these gifts. So significant in fact that it deserves its very own blog entry.

N.B. A NOTE ON FOOD. Food is something very important to me. It is received with shiny-eyed gratitude, always. The day when I just don't want to cook, someone offers to cook for me. The day when I'm ill in bed, someone delivers me pills, water, a meal - whatever I want. And then there is the food that amusingly and sometimes unnervingly follows my cravings. The day I wished for grilled fish, the world's response being that I was invited to a free house with an enormous Sarandeado Red Snapper cooked on an open fire. Eva and I looking at our dinner of crackers and maizena and saying 'what we need is a rich old man who gives us a free dinner but doesn't crack on to us'. Few days later being given a free dinner and cocktails in the best restaurant in town by a rich old man that treated us like daughters (thank you for coming, safe travels, go separate ways) with the bonus of being incredibly interesting to talk to.