Circle spirals

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 Second Circle

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.

Medicine woman

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.

Cytokinesis

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.

As Above, So Below

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.