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the shaman who gave us his blessing repeated, again and again, "for health, for wealth, for mind, for heart, for the next generation...". he said, "you must stay together always" and he beat his man-made bird's wing on our bodies, blew resin smoke in our faces, shoved mats of lemongrass under our feet, and in each of our hands placed an offering (to our collective soul, i suppose).
if today i discovered that i were pregnant, i would blame my immaculate conception on this absolutely tiny man, whose bare chest glistened true bronze, who smelled of bark and stale fruit. because in this moment, when he beat beat beat upon my belly with the feather bundle, and with my fiery red beans pressed in my palm (as if i had bled them), and standing on a sidewalk beneath which were once the depths of lake texcoco, i experienced for the first time in my life a sensation of the dual emptiness and fullness of my yet never-occupied womb...in it's anticipation phase (biologically speaking), it is both, at once.
and of beating. there is something frightening about the sea's power on the costa chica in oaxaca, mexico: her slow, deliberate upward push and suck as a wave is formed, only to beat down on the shore with a force that seems meant to kill. in spite of this display, it's clear that her intent is not to destroy or to instill fear, at least not the lasting kind -- no, this abundant strength, these wave-crests like white teeth bared upon beach, is necessary only to break a person open, to peel back a hardened outer layer, to prepare a body to witness the magic that resides in mazunte, and on playa mermejita just over the ridge to the northteast.
here we lived, perched between the two playas. above the cemetery and below punta cometa (where it's prophesized that a comet will strike on the eve of that infamous mayan end-all date, 2012). and here there never was a greater band of wide-eyed, curious, sarcastic, playful seekers than the six of us, and we discovered soon enough that each of us, kat, charlie, daniel, eric, nacho and myself would be content for weeks on end with no more than the following:
tacos, three for ten pesos.
mosquito nets.
beer, most conveniently caguamas (which double as rolling pins, ashtrays, flower pots, cold-compresses, teddy bears).
flip flops, when convenient.
tlayudas.
kittens.
the beatles.
dreams like we'd never dreamed.
rolling papers.
drinkable yogurt.
playing cards.
sand, in every crevice, always.
doña macrena.
la luna nueva.
sunset. (when the earth rolls out its last hot coal of light, and it burns for our spectacle neon pink, emanates a halo of purple, blue, green, grey, then disappears with a sizzle on the horizon).
spell-casting.
dreams that scared us, flying dreams, in-love dreams, and some that took us all morning to wake from.
stories.
hammocks.
mystery.
we carried on like this for nearly a month. and in the course of this time, no more than three unusual events offered, for me, personal evidence of what can only be described as mazunte´s "magic", which ushered me, indeed, into a new phase of understanding: 1. the tejón; 2. the phosphorescents; and 3. the mango.
i've seen the elusive tejón only in a dream, and the story of the mermejita tejón, as beautifully told by daniel (the most wise, lucid storyteller i have ever met), exemplifies the fragile and very real nature-centric spirituality of the people on the coast.
(the tejón is essentially a giant badger. macrena and her family are the proprietors of the only business on playa mermejita, a tiny set of campgrounds and bungalows, and a kitchen where, without electricity, she serves beers on ice and the occasional quesadilla.)
as the story goes, only five weeks before our arrival on the playa, a resident pack of dogs had attacked a family of tejónes, which macrena and her family witnessed, leaving one surviving tejón who escaped by climbing a tree. the family then observed that this mysterious survivor reversed his luck and became the leader of the pack of dogs, using his ability to find food to gain the allegiance of the dogs. in fact, the tejón proved himself an expert iguana and crab hunter. in daniel's words (and in
