Sunday, January 13, 2019

jungle dreams, surreal structures

I spent the New Year's Eve in a subtropical rainforest in the mountains 2000 feet above sea level, dancing the whole night to (not the greatest) generic techno inside a concrete maze designed by a British poet and patron of the Surrealist movement. In the previous century Edward James fell in love with this Huasteca jungle town of Xilitla in the state of San Luis Potosi and decided to turn his vision of the Garden of Eden into reality there. He filled the spaces among waterfalls with sculptures and structures made out of concrete, a place to get lost and find yourself in again and again.



Xilitla is still a bit urban, but you can feel the rawness of nature surrounding you from all around. It was very humid, hot during the day, freezing at night, the soundscape occupied by birds singing songs I have never heard before and the hum of the nearby waterfall. I went there with three people I met at the hostel back in Mexico City and we stayed in a teepee at a property decorated in the style of "Alice in Wonderland".





It was so beautiful and, as what tends to happen to me, I got overwhelmed. After the New Year I got sick with a fever, felt dizzy, as though something was boiling inside of me. The hot lava of my own private volcano which I'm carrying inside, coming close to the surface of my consciousness. I quickly got better physically, but this mindset didn't go away after I left the area and I'm still feeling it where I'm at right now, in the city of Oaxaca. I was supposed to stay here for three weeks helping out a chef with cooking classes, something I was excited about and looking forward to. From Xilitla I went down south to Mexico City for one day and then took the night bus to Oaxaca. Upon my arrival at the chef's place, I started having anxiety, a feeling that something is not right. I spent there couple of days, thinking that maybe it's just taking me a bit longer than usual to adapt to a new situation, but it wasn't the case. I was having flashbacks from my previous jobs in Iceland working in the service industry and got into a weird passive-resistant mood, walking around like a ghost with an invisible "I would prefer not to" written on my forehead. I couldn't control it, found it really hard to explain to the guy what's going on, even though I tried to make it work. Although he had this "chill vibe" around him, the job seemed to me much more demanding than the other workaways I did, there was a lot of chaos and it didn't feel like volunteering, but like normal work. I think I had to look very depressed as I started noticing him being angry at me for "looking absent" and I finally decided to leave. In situations like this I never know if it's me who's being over-sensitive or is there really something wrong going on. I'm glad I left.

I have a lot of thoughts and feelings oscillating wildly in my head. Leaving the city is going to be for the best, I'm heading to Mazunte now, a village on the coast of the state, known as a place where people go to and never want to leave. I'm going to treat myself this time, renting a private room of my own there, so I can have some space.

Will the ocean lull me into oblivion, the humidity in the air will naturally turn my hair into dreadlocks and I'm going to become a yoga-obsessed hippie? Or maybe the volcano inside of me will finally start erupting with consistence and I will manage to channel this energy into something substantial, the music I would love to record, the book I'm thinking would be a good idea to write. Or maybe I'll just learn to be in the present moment and simply enjoy myself. Or maybe none of those things. I'm ready for whatever this next destination might bring. It's also been 2 months and, once I arrive in Mazunte, it's going to be 2000km that I made travelling here in Mexico so far.

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