Adios, Oaxaca

One last stroll through the city, one last pan y chocolate caliente. Santo Domingo cathedral and a palm tree reflect on the window of a restaurant where blue glass ornaments hang inside. Early in the morning, just after sunrise and before boarding my plane, the Cloud People showed up to wave goodbye.

For the last four years I've been struggling with migraines. I've been to doctors, neurologists, optometrists, acupuncturists, massage therapists and more, all who have found nothing concrete. After one neurologist diagnosed me with "mysterious headache," I went to see a shaman. 

The shaman told me the headaches were a spiritual problem. She said that I came from an ancient lineage of women who held the gift of healing but, unfortunately, I had once  been born into a lifetime where women were killed for having that kind of gift. She said that in that lifetime I had the power to block my own power, so in order to protect my body I shut down my soul. And that is what, in this lifetime, was causing the headaches.

We are here to move through the fears that keep our souls from liberation, the shaman said. The anticipatory fear that keeps us from making a move is an illusion thousands of times greater than the event. The shaman pointed out that killing the soul to protect the body looks different in these modern times. What was once fear of being burned at the stake now comes in a different form, like the fear of not having health insurance or retirement, a certain type of house or job or perceived protection from any future discomfort.

At dinner the other night with my friend Heather, our conversation turned to fears and the question of how much of your present you should mortgage to protect your future. Heather said with a sigh, "You know, what if we do end up old and poor? Wouldn't we just deal with it like we have everything else?"

Wait, I thought. No one ever thinks of it that way. The image we try to protect ourselves from is the one of being broke and alone. But, if it does turn out that way, wouldn't we just deal with it like we have everything else? Because really, after all, I would finally have that sense of time I keep longing for. I could spend entire days in the library pulling books from the shelves with both hands, depending on whatever title or color caught my eye. I could sit with a cup of chocolate caliente all morning long and really listen to the clouds, or the sun if it came out, or the rain or the leaves or all those things my younger self longed to have more time for. I could finally finish my Solexico workbook!! And then, when it's all said and done, I too could rest in peace under a gravestone that says, 'Here lies Anne, she was bilingual.'

Recapitulation

Before leaving Oaxaca I got together with Yves and Claudia, of Tierra Aventura, who brought us to meet the healers and curanderas during our class two years earlier. We caught up over a long dinner at La Biznaga. I told Yves and Claudia about my road trip, how it was more than just a summer vacation. How it brought me to places of old loves, forgotten memories, and long held longings. It wasn't planned to be that exactly, I just had longings and a window of time to attend to them, the rest had unfolded from there.

I told them about my dream of the meditation retreat, gliding along the river, riding on the city bus where I saw Juquila. I told them about meeting Juan Carlos, who told me that dreams that have a feeling that stays with you, that wake you up like a cuckoo clock, are visions. How it was following those visions that brought me back here and I was thankful that I listened. How there was no other choice but to listen. No choice possible, only fire inside.

"Recapitulation," Yves said. "It reminds me of a technique used by shaman called recapitulation, where they scan over all the memories and events of their lives and where there was energy lost, they call it back."

It's a way of making space, a way of clearing old energetic entanglements in order for life force to fully flow in. Carlos Casteneda wrote, "The premise of sorcerers is that in order to bring something in, there must be space to put it in. If you are filled to the brim with the items of everyday life, there's no space for anything new. That space must be built...the sorcerers of olden times believed that the recapitulation of your life made that space."

It struck a chord. Through recapitulation, memory becomes a picture rather than a pull. Shaman used the technique for purification, in order to remain whole rather than fragmented, allowing them to move with heightened awareness through the unknown.

Bendecir al Mundo

I love this photo of a man following the departing couple with a white paper heart.

"In general people do not know their function as human beings, and it never occurs to them that their job is actually to bless the world..."   -Sandra Ingerman

Bodas y Desfiles

I happened upon a wedding, or the wedding happened upon me. Huge puppets, balloons, trumpets, and paper hearts. There are so many spontaneous bodas (weddings) and desfiles (parades) in Oaxaca. It's such fun to be surprised by puppets and dancers and drums in the street, to become part of the party for a time before it moves on.

My favorite was the surprise of the Gay Pride parade, with lavender balloons, rainbow streamers and drag queens who wore beautiful hand embroidered dresses and did traditional folk dances down the street.

When it's over, I want to say: I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bride groom, taking the world into my arms. -Mary Oliver

Derrumbas

Salómon laughed out loud when I told him about the landslide on the way to Santa Catarina Juquila, and of my surprise when they built a makeshift road to drive right over it. "Claro! (of course!)," he declared. I told him that where I come from they would have to move the whole thing out of the way before the cars could pass, that there would be laws or something.

Salómon knew enough about the US to understand, and he got quite a kick out of it. He told me that in Mexico such things were so common that you just learned to go around them, over them, or through. He said they called them derrumbas, that the original meaning of the word is "things that collapse," but it's come to describe anything that gets in the way on the path. "Derrumba!", he shouted, as he swerved around a rooster. "Derrumba!", he pointed, as a palm frond tumbled down a river where the road used to be. "Derrumbas! Derrumbas! Todos son derrumbas," he laughed.

As I write now, I'm wearing earplugs to drown out the shrill sound of a saw cutting tiles for the kitchen floor of the new Filipino restaurant that's going in beneath my apartment. I sit here just above where the grill will be, and know I will soon have to move. This will be the fourth time I've had to move since I started this blog, all for unusual and annoying reasons.

Despite powerpoints, exams, long work days, technical difficulties, construction noise, heartache, and moving, this blog keeps going in its fight for a creative life. Like La Divina Concepcion or Salómon's taxi, it drives over, around, and through the obstacles. In the times where it feels too uncomfortable to bear I hear a faint whisper, an echo through earplugs, of Salómon's laughter, "Derrumbas, derrumbas, todos son derrumbas!"

Línea por Línea

The exhibit of textiles made by indigenous people from pueblos throughout Oaxaca was stunning. Fabric and traditional garments woven in white, cream, and black hung from the rafters like papel picado, billowing gently in the breeze made from the rain pounding heavily outside.

While studying textile design at RISD, I loved patterns and screen printing, but I found weaving hard. It had to be planned ahead, and followed line by line. It was challenging to have patience and trust that those lines were going to lead me where I wanted to go.

Lynda Barry writes that when children draw, they make lines and follow them and a picture emerges. They enjoy following the story that unfolds from the picture that unfolds from the lines. Teenagers tend to have an image in their minds of what the story should be, or what the world looks like, and they try to get it on the page by being as precise as possible. The end result often looks pained, and since it's impossible to get the world on paper, most give up on drawing.

Following lines, like following visions, a picture emerges and the story tells itself. 

To Etla

Deborah and Cheryl told me about the Center for the Arts in Etla, and that I should go see the textile exhibit there. It was raining heavily when I hired a taxi driver, Salómon, to take me to Etla for the day. As we dodged fallen palm fronds and disintegrating dirt roads, our conversation turned toward my forthcoming profession as an occupational therapist. Salómon was very concerned about my internship in Los Angeles, that there would be many Spanish speakers there. So, as he drove, he taught me Spanish phrases a therapist might need. Muevelo a la derecha (move to the right), encogelo los dedos (close the fingers), doble el codo (bend your elbow), te duele aqui? (does it hurt here?), te sientes mejor? (do you feel better?).

Despite Salómon's earnest investment, I often forget these phrases in moments of panic. I have to admit to one time, in desperation, shouting "Rollo! Rollo!" to a patient to get him to roll side to side in bed so I could pull up his pants.