Following your heart in the Fire

A couple of mornings ago we were waiting for a bus to Lago Atitlan. Actually, I was the only one waiting so far, as, for some reason, I am the most punctual person ever right now, and am also up by six every single morning. What? Anyways, my friends were close behind me, but it was just me, early in the morning. This man came and sat down beside me, and, completely out of the blue, proceeded to tell me this story:

"There once was a trapeze artist who was the greatest trapeze artist around. He dazzled everyone who saw him. As he started to get older, he knew his days weren't long to keep performing. He began to train his son to take his place, and they spent every day practicing. The boy soon surpassed his father in skill, and one day, they knew the time had come for the boy to take the place of his father. On his first night, the crowd was full of people who had all come to see the son of the great trapeze artist. As he stood on the platform, the trapeze swung to the boy, and he watched it go by, and did not jump for it. The crowd gasped, but the boy could not do it. Later that night, the ringmaster told the boy that if he could not perform, he would have to fire him, as much as he didn't want to. The boy went to his father, ashamed of his performance, and asked him what he should do. "I'm so afraid" he said. The father gently held the boy and said "I will give you some advice. It is simple, but if you follow it, you will not go wrong. All you must do in life is leap with your heart, and your body will follow."

Then this man grabbed my hand, looked at my palm, and told me I will have two children. And then he got up and walked away without saying anything else. I hadn't even had any coffee yet, and didn't know what to make of it.

This last week has been really great for me, maybe the best of my trip. We got to Antigua last...oh, I don't know, Sunday maybe. It's a really beautiful old colonial town that used to be the capital of Guatemala, but was unfortunately built on not the most stable real estate, and has been rocked by multiple earthquakes over the years. While it has a certain polish to it, the earthquakes have lent it a slightly ruinous look too. There's these beautiful old stone churches that are starting to crumble but still have a certain grandeur, and when you go inside, big portions of the ceiling are missing, or walls have melted into the floor over time. The city is surrounded by three volcanoes that tower above it, but you can't see them all the time. So all of a sudden you turn a corner, and there are the most picturesque scenes. Bright stucco houses in a row, all different colors, framed by a cobblestone street, a huge volcano and the bluest sky you can imagine. I have a couple of amazing pictures from one day when the sky and the light were absolutely incredible, and we walked around while I took pictures of practically anything that had some color in it.

A couple of days ago we climbed the Volcan Pacaya, an active volcano about an hour outside of the city. The hike was really hard, almost but not quite straight up for about two hours, and it was odd because as we were climbing it, we kept wondering where this volcano actually was. The top of the mountain was....incredible. We could see the three different volcanoes that surrounded Antigua in the distance, all wreathed with clouds, and again with that insanely blue sky. The actual volcano we were climbing kind of...started? at the top of this mountain. All around us everything was green and lush with trees and flowers, and then there was the cone of this volcano which kind of looked like Mordor. It was black and rocky and there was for sure nothing alive on it. Except for the 100 or so people scrambling all over the rocks. We made our way down the steep path, and when you climb out onto the rocks, you can immediately tell that this is technically not a good idea. The rocks are dark, crumbly and hollow, and crunch underneath your feet, and even a large rock seems to just suddenly start to disintegrate underneath you. The further we went, the rocks got hotter and hotter. I mean really hot, and soon it was like we were walking on a barbecue. As we moved along, we began to see, through the rocks, maybe a few feet beneath us, lava flowing and glowing a burning red and orange. It started to smell like roasting marshmallows but was really just the smell of cheap shoes melting on the rocks. The hard (and a bit terrifying) part on the rocks was that you couldn't touch anything, so every time a rock would crumble, my instinct would be to reach out and steady myself, yet you really can't, as you'll burn yourself on the crazy barbecue coals. Finally you reach, basically, a flowing river of lava, with chunks of rock floating through it, and then being pulled down into it's depths. It being Guatemala, you are allowed to get as close as you want to it and could probably jump in if you so desired. After seeing it for a couple of moments, I had to get the hell off the rocks, as I still couldn't shake the feeling that this was, at the heart of things, a stupid place to be. I fully expect, sometime down the road, to hear about this volcano stirring and a significant amount of tourists dying. It kind of feels like tempting the volcano gods just a bit to be climbing around on this thing. However, it certainly was interesting to see, and at the top everyone sat around and compared the state of our shoes. People who were wearing old or inexpensive shoes had lost their entire soles, and other people's seams had melted, or they'd lost shoelaces...it was kind of crazy.

The day before yesterday we came to Lago Atitlan, a couple hours northwest of Antigua. It's a huge lake, ringed by (again) multiple volcanoes, with quite a few small towns nestled on it's banks. We stayed, the first night, at a town called Panajachel, a pretty touristy but charming place, and kind of the jumping off point for planning your stay at the lake. Yesterday we went to this huge market called Chichicastenango. After all this time of not shopping, I gave in yesterday to that part of me that *loves* beautiful things. And wow was there a lot of beautiful things. Everything here is so bright that is was almost overwhelming to be surrounded on all sides by the fabrics, the masks, the bedspreads, the carvings, the clothing, all in various shades of technicolor. We went to this gorgeous church right in the middle of the market, surrounded by rounded stone steps, and filled with women in traditional dress selling food, flowers, candles and incense to take inside the church for the various rituals that people were performing. The church was dark and lit only by candles, and there was delicious incense burning in canisters that I could feel in every part of my chest. There was one man who knelt on the stone floor with flower petals and candles around him, and in this particularly touching way, carried on a casual but earnest looking conversation with his God, nodding and gesturing and his voice rising and falling with emotion...and love.

So speaking of following your heart. Earlier this week, my encounter with the man on the bench was perfect. While the story he told me is simple, and probably nothing I haven't thought of before, it was just at the right time. Following my heart has been on my mind a lot this last week. I'd been trying to decide what to do next, where I wanted to go, on and on. And what I want to do; what I'm ready to do, is come home. I'd been thinking about it for a couple of days already. I've been with these really great people since Semuc Champuey, these two couples. Avi and Vicki, from Israel, and Mark and Inga, who live in London. Being surrounded by a group of people who I really connect with, laugh with, care about and have gotten to know has been exactly what I needed here. I have been having the best time with them, and one of the great things is that it has allowed me to assess what I really want from a clear headspace, and to look into my heart and ask myself what I'm craving right now, not just in the moment but in my life. Being with people I really like a lot has made me realize I'm ready to come home and be with people I love. Sooo, that's what I'm doing. First, I am going to stay in Antigua for Semana Santa, on the 21st, with these two great guys I met. It's the second largest celebration in the world, and I'm lucky I get to be there for it. And then...Portland.

Details to follow...