“The sky is amazing. I can’t describe it, sometimes it is all blue, others blue with tiny drops of clouds, like a tiger. That is how we tell the day here.” The woman shifts her gaze from the brightness overhead back to us and invites us to prepare for the ceremony.
Temazcal is a place of heat. “Death by heat.” A bath of mescal and a breath of mescal that destroys our masks. The many masks we wear for others—one for our mother, one for our child—and the most powerful mask of all, the mask we created for our self, formed by their opinions over time.
Inside is the womb. A place of release and rebirth for all aspects of ourselves: the physical body nested in the stomach, emotional body in the heart, and spiritual body in the back of the neck. We rub oils and creams and liquid on each. The first infusion, I instinctively find the centers before she instructs where to go and feel aligned.
She is Zapotec of the lineage of the dreamers, and her gift is future sight for herself and others. She saw the end of her marriage coming ten years before and began to prepare for it. But even saying this she cautions us not to fear the future but rather focus on inner joy.
You can only be happy in the moment. The present. The past is full of regrets, but these only exist in what we haven’t learned. We must give grace to ourselves for doing the best we could with the tools we had at the time. The future is full of anxiety for the things we plan for that take us away from living in the moment.
“What stands in the way of your happiness? Your brain. Because your brain and your heart don’t speak to each other.”
Sudor de enfermedad pours out— drowned in mescal, cucumber, mint, orange, nopales, pineapple, and cacao. We make ourselves sweet to greet the past parts of ourselves, those that need the tenderest healing and to communicate with those we have lost. I look at my middle school self and tell her I don’t have to be perfect or anyone I am not anymore. I send love to my grandmothers and grandfathers. I decide to give the tree de tule an offering. I explain to Jasper that he is being fathered too. She chats and drums and yips and hums.
“In the beginning of the path is your birth, and at the end is death…You will lose everything in this life; everything you find on your path will be taken from you, so you must rejoice in its presence while it is here and you are.”
“Death is always walking with you as your friend,” her father told her as a little girl, but she didn’t like that. He said it was because “she hasn’t taken you yet.” Now, after 61 years she still walks with death as her friend.
Then
she prepares a bath and sings to us. I am a child as she pours the water over
my face and caresses my cheeks and forehead. I feel held by the softest of
hands that belong to the strongest and wisest of women.
When we finish, she cautions us to leave slowly. Our survival instincts are down, we may feel invincible and hit our heads on the way out. I forget this too soon…
--
The tree of Tule is as big as a house, made of dragons and deer faces, limbs dancing with themselves and psychedelic whirlpool burls. It’s over 2,000 years old and 636,000 tons. The plaque below marvels at its majesty and says --essentially-- beside it, mankind is nothing but silence. It brings me great peace to know that creatures like this exist in our world, even when have done so much to annihilate them. This tree has survived the Spanish conquistadores and watched us evolve through the ages. I hope that she or they will watch us disappear into the shadows as well and breathe the air we leave as dust.
--
Maybe it was the grasshoppers I ate in the guacamole, but more likely the cocktail, a giant fruit salad beer mug filled with mescal, that made me decide to become a luchadora. When we walked into the tienda I immediately wanted a mask-- the one with the golden sun symbols-- even though it covered my mouth and smeared my red lipstick underneath.
And when we got to the parque with the golden lions on each esquina I knew this was my first battle. I must mount and ride one! I slid my mask on and scrambled up the side of the four-foot base then into the great cat’s back.
For a moment it was pure glory-- leaning forward and back, arms in the air, victorious. Then I dismounted, jumped off and stuck the landing. I did it, I thought, living this moment fully, then pain sharp and strong flooded my foot. Fuck. My heel hurt like hell with any weight, and I crumpled to the ground. Later I looked up the injury, anxiously awake and wondering how I would hobble around the rest of the week and learned it’s common for skydivers. I decided to give myself the luchadora name Paracaidista, jinete de leones.
--
The next morning three coffees and two advils later (deciding against those Mexican pain killers everyone suggested I take) and with umbrellas for crutches I hobbled into the textile museum and beheld the woven intricacies considered a form of rebellion against colonization.
“The wefts that float on the back of weavings, like embroidered silhouettes that evoke ghosts, are open to fortuity. Sometimes that small aperture to randomness makes the reverse more beautiful than the obverse. Revés means both reverse and setback-unforeseen circumstances where destiny plays havoc with our hopes. In textiles revés is not fated but intentional manipulation of threads, conception. The hidden side brings us closer to the magic of creation.” -Alejandro de Ávila, curator of the textile museum
The description feels written just for me, just for today. The guard at the front looks at me and says slow down, take it easy.
I try to. I grit my teeth with every step and use the umbrellas to creep forward as an off-centered insect going bah-dum-cha with every motion. We make it to the market and enter smoke alley, the aisle of carne asada, and I feel overwhelmed by the people and the meat and the motion. I creep forward slowly. Find a table, get a beer, a tamale. Later weave through the lanes of textiles, ice cream, a woman peeling thorns from cactus, mescal tasting, leather, hierbas y polvos, cow hooves dangling in front of me, people seeing how I walk and stepping back, sometimes. My mask is gone, my able body, and I struggle to be seen this way, as weak. Even though I often feel it, it rarely shows. I rarely show it.
--
On the road to Hierva our guide says she has a surprise for us and shows a painting on the rock face done 12,000 years ago. This place is considered one of the origins of humans and of corn, the seeds found are so old. What a ways we have come.
The Hierve el Agua mineral pools are cold and colored and formed in the bottom of what appear as frozen stone waterfalls. These natural travertine rock formations were once a place of great power, where indigenous leaders gathered to decide profound things. Now we lounge in the pools and lizard on the rocks looking across the valley. Resting our souls from the walk down and the journey that is this life. Courageous, others call me as I hobble up the hill, but I don’t feel it, and I blush a color that will spread and soak into my skin even through the scattered clouds.
They
use only the heart of the agave plant to make mescal, ground down with a giant
rolling mortar stone pulled in circles by the donkeys we pass. The leaves are
just compost. Men pile wood onto the espadin mound, hot stones and plant matter
smoldering them. Each has a different sabor. “Mescal is not just to drink, but
also to experience, it can be spiritual, creative,” our guide offers.
At dinner, they prepare our sopa de piedra, an ancestral dish in which hot stones are placed in the broth to cook the fish. We talk of being cared for, the challenges of allowing this, of planning for it in the future. Of partnership, relationship, of growing together and inhibiting each others’ growth. The rocks hiss and bubble around the eyes of the shrimp. This is a dish made only by men, a show of gratitude for the women in their lives. “Pueblos de usos y costumbres,” I am told.
--
Sun rises over shadows of blue Sierra Madre mountains, setting a pastel rainbow into the sky in all directions around our puddle jumping plane to Puerto Escondido.
“The dream of my life is to lie down by a slow river and stare at the light in the trees to learn something by being nothing a little while but the rich lens of attention.” ~Mary Oliver
My partner sent me that this morning. Today is a day of sitting in nothing, too burned to even make it to the sea, just strong enough to watch the waves from the edge of the sand. When I call him to say goodnight, I ask if he can start saving money, so the next time I travel, he will carry me when I fall.
--
My soul longs for the ocean, so deeply entrenched and unconscious that I don’t realize the sense of loss until its filled, until I dive in and feel satiated. This is the culture of my youth: the shore break, undertow, sandskin, whisper and pull, sandleflops, dropins, pull outs, squeeze and wooosh, sunscreen squints, whitewash. I stagger into the water and feel at ease, swim out past the break, come into the sand, watch a woman chase a dog with her sandal, surfers catch a point break, swim back out and get caught in a sudden set, my body weakened by overcompensating and my lungs at lower capacity than I thought them to be, emerge breathless, saltwater coming out of my nose, and feel mortal.
As we walk into the refuge we receive half coconut shells as cups in place of tickets of entry. “There are seven types of sea turtles, and six are in Mexico- Viva la Mexico!” Four of the six are in Oaxaca. Main threats to their survival are humans (eating eggs, poaching), climate change baking the sand (which effects the gender of the hatchling— the hotter it gets the more likely they are to be females and “males are important too”), and effects of urbanization (hotels and condos right on the beach confusing them with lights that are not the moon and bringing cats and raccoons). So all us.
He calls us in close to go over the directions for their release. “Inside is not just a baby turtle but a lot of people’s efforts and energy. Inside is a life. Pay more attention to it than your phone please.” I name mine Douglas, Sarah names hers Emma. He says it is good to develop a connection with them. Maybe come back ten years later to free their children, since they are attracted to their birthplace and find their way home through a kind of magnet in their heads. We carry them to the edge of the rope and tip them from the hulls.
They don’t move much. Seem tired, stunned, overly sunned. It’s not a race but it feels like it. “A race to live, and the seagulls are vicious.” I give mine a blessing and cheer him on. “Sí! se puede! Vaya con dios! Vamanos!” Un bendición tradicional. “Tienes el corazón de leon,” the woman next to me coaxes.
Douglas wanders back and forth, perpendicular to the sea. Emma moves very little. They both struggle. It resonates. Finally a volunteer rescues them and carries them to the edge of the fierce surf. Their chances of survival are about 2%. I ask the volunteer how long ago they were born. Some, around 3pm. Others yesterday, but they couldn’t climb out of the sand themselves. They were kind of neurologically impaired, he says. “In nature they would become soil. We give them a second chance.” Seems like Douglas and Emma may have been in that crew. I wish them well and wonder what their encounter of this world will be, so many dangers, so much wonder.
---
The bioluminescence is pure magic, the water a combination from the sea, the mountain river and thermals. Disturbance glows. Fingers spread and leave a path of light with every stroke, diamonds pour down as the hand pulls towards the sky, the flow over breasts and knees like electricity. Nothing compares. Water is light. It is in and around us, emerging from the full darkness beyond. I float back and let go and it swallows me.