Student of the Vortex

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.

The Mural Trail

I arrive in Guadalajara, Jalisco, "by accident".



It is the closest big city inland from Puerto Vallarta, where I found myself beached after Yelapa. I figured I could get the bus there and look at information on the way, and by the time I got to Guadalajara I would know where I wanted to go and get on the next bus out.

I was giving my decision-making powers a lot more faith than they deserved, for by the time I am cast out from the tinted glass box of the coach, I am with no more direction than I was back in November, stuck in Mexico City.
It is getting dark. I take myself into the city centre because I don't know where else to go.

By the time I find the Hostelito Inn, my roots have already started penetrating the concrete.

I've avoided cities up until now. While I obviously have the capacity to love them at the right moment - having lived in London for 6 years it would be strange to say I didn't - I do feel stunted surrounded by all the concrete and commercialism. I can't help thinking that none of it is real. After so long living in the freedom of the flow and the balance of interaction, I am disorientated by so many closed people, determinedly on their own missions. I feel my soul can only really put out its feelers when surrounded by natural beauty.

But in this moment, this city seems different, somehow. With 4 million people, it is second in Mexico only to el D.F. The numbers are daunting but the centre is small, old, and throbbing with a colourful pulse of art, splayed decadently over the entirety of the old town.

I am greeted to the Hostelito by a friendly Beagle called Brandy, who takes her time sniffing every part of myself and my belongings before settling herself down on my lap. The owner, Frank, tells me "my missis is from Manchester, innit. Come to the terrace for a drink, sister."


So I do.

Two weeks later and I'm still here in this beautiful oasis. Part of the family, you might say. I've taught Frank and his other half, Tracey, how to hula hoop. I've entertained their son, Jack. I've fallen out and made up with Brandy a number of times. I've had the dorm to myself, the cafe next door for hooping, the sound system to rig up tunes, and a city to explore.

And no pressure because I hadn't even expected to be here.


I have hours to wander tiny streets lined with orange trees, or spend bemused at the sheer number of shoe shops. Synchronicities tell me to stay, the first of which is the mural trail.

On my first wander I am sucked into the open door of the Palacio del Gobierno, where I find a huge, red mural, leering down on me with freedom fighters, justice, and death. The Mexican saviour, Padre Hidalgo, rages from the centre. I stop on the stairs until my neck cricks. I am overwhelmed. It is just so, well, imposing.

I remember reading somewhere that Mexico is famous for its murals. This provides some indication why.


An hour or so later, I uncharacteristically wander into a museum after a man on the street tells me I should go. I am confused - there does not seem to be anything in the museum; just courtyard after sunny white courtyard, boxed with locked wooden doors and a path that leads to nowhere. I wonder if anyone else understands this place; whether I am the only one who is still trying the doors even after half an hour of systematic failure.

Perhaps the purpose of the museum is to make one appreciate the simple things - the punch of an orange tree in a still courtyard; the shock of sunlight on a whitewashed wall.

The only thing I find in this warren is a mural. The second mural by the same artist - José Clemente Orozco. It screams over several panels and domed ceiling vaults. Supposedly it deals with the interplay between external forces and the indigenous peoples of modern-day Mexico. It is like a war above me; reds and blacks and all the fire of a deep flowing blood, with a burning man as centrepiece in what has become known as 'The Cistine Chapel of Mexico'.


I lie on my back on a bench to consider. Rather than the expected 'good/bad' eternal symbolism, it looks like the artist sees the ugliness in everyone he paints and intends to illustrate them all as equals, warring in the dirt.

Half people, half machines menace the arches above me, quite out of place surrounded by the mysteriously still squares of cobbles visible through the open doors.


Apparently Orozco painted three in this city. Now that I have accidentally seen two, it would be interesting to see the third to complete the set (I ponder). I am in no hurry to find it, but the next day I go to the university to ask about Spanish classes (the romantic in me wanting to be a real student, just for a week). On the way back I see a big, white dome, ornately beckoning me. Impulsively, I cross the street and walk confidently past the security guard.

I enter to find an empty lecture hall and the third mural.


Three murals. Two days. No effort. So I look up the artist. "Through his art Orozco shared his trauma and his anger, which he insisted over and over, in many forms, is our trauma and should be our anger," I read. He attacked, in the words of his own political metaphor, "the pestilential shadows of closed rooms."

In other words, he worked to expose the truth, away from the ego that attempts to label things 'good' and 'bad.' Apparently, this is the key. To see, without attaching the labels of opinion.

I decide against studying Spanish. Instead, I am handed another challenge.