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.

Searching for Dragons

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...

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.

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.

Shifting Sands

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.

The accidental search

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.

Desert sun bleaching

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

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

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

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.