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.

Flowers, clouds and clues

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

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.

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.

Flowing into new moulds

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

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

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.

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.