Photography

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

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


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


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


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


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

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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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

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

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

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

Circle spirals

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It has neither a beginning nor an end.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Destiny giggles...from a smoothly rounded corner.

The drowsy fantasy moment of every lonely dawn...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I've fallen in love with Early.

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