Rated: PG-13 for nudity

Back in January when I was re-packing my backpack for the West Coast part of this monkabout, I fumbled through my socks looking for matching pairs. Then I realized that no one would really be able to see my socks under my samue pants and tennis shoes, and I laughed at my impulse to find matching pairs. And then I realized that I didn't have to care what other people thought about my socks at all. I'm still a long way from generalizing this liberating detachment to the rest of my appearance or to what others might think about my life in general, but it's a small step in the right direction. If I accomplish nothing else on this walkabout, I will at least have learned that my socks don't have to match.

But I've also gotten better at changing my pants in public. Before, I would find a bathroom or some surreptitious spot to add or subtract thermal layers as dictated by the changing temperatures throughout the day. Changing layers has become less necessary as the days have warmed up, but I got to the point where I could slip my pants off and on in public, mostly oblivious to the eyes of friends and strangers.

Again, I must tip my hat here to my hero Diogenes who happily flaunted many social mores. His habitual nudity often got him in trouble with the Greek authorities. And it seems appropriate to give a shout-out to UC Berkeley's modern-day Diogenes, the "Naked Guy", who often roamed about campus in the buff. (Unfortunately, his story ended tragically with his suicide two years ago after years struggling with mental illness. I'll knock on wood and hope that my form of "mental illness" leads to healthier pastures.)

I also went through a naked phase in college. Not as brave nor as brash as the Naked Guy, my nudity was constrained to drunken fits of streaking after parties with my radical student colleagues. Sometimes my friends would start chanting "Zum streak! Zum streak!". But I refused to bow to their peer pressure, choosing instead to sneak out later, shed my clothes, and dash off into the night. Once, at a progressive student conference (at UC Berkeley?), some friends found me passed out naked on a bike path. Another time I ran through the late night streets of Isla Vista (UC Santa Barbara's college town), trying my best to keep up with a pack of dogs who didn't quite know what to make of this strange naked human hounding their steps.

So what was it all about? Well, besides a penchant for exhibitionism, it was my strange way to express my rage against what I perceived were the limitations imposed on me by society.....as well as the limitations I imposed upon myself due to my fears. (It took me a long time---and some serious Buddhist introspection---to also realize that my hungers imposed a lot of limitations too. And that hunger and fear were flip sides of the same coin.) Stripping off my clothes was a symbolic way for me to tear away the constricting cultural codes that I felt were invalid because they were based on puritanism, commercialism, orthodoxy, elitism, repression, fear, greed, and/or ignorance. But more than just symbolic, it also felt so liberating to run naked through the night, not knowing where I was, not caring where I ended up. Amazingly, I was never arrested during these inebriated frenzies.

I have always been flabbergasted by the fact that---with the possible exception of turtles, most mollusks, and certain crabs---we humans are pretty much the only animals that are actually so ashamed of our bodies that we are afraid to show them in public. And yet we think that we are so superior to the rest of the animals! Sure, we tell ourselves that we need clothes because we don't have fur or feathers or scales to protect us from the sun, wind, rain, and cold, but this is just a rationalization, for there are plenty of times and locations when and where clothes are totally superfluous.

After all, nudity was apparently pretty hunky-dory until Adam and Eve took those fateful bites of the forbidden fruit. It wasn't until after they shared the fruit that they suddenly became ashamed of their nakedness. Which brings me to the progenitor of the fruit, that knotty Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. What a great symbol of our primary impulse to make dualistic judgments, to divide and separate reality into "good" and "bad".

Eastern traditions might interpret the Eden story this way: Adam and Eve fell from paradise when they began making dualistic judgments about paradise itself. This very act caused their schism with paradise when they began labeling things as "good" or "bad". In this way, they cast themselves out of Eden as they turned it into a world dominated by their dualistic opinions. (An Israeli friend recently told me that the original hebrew word that is translated in the Bible as "knowledge" can also be translated as "opinion". Perhaps it's really the Tree of Opinion of Good and Evil.) The key is that the Garden never changed-----it was only their perception of it that changed.

Remember, nudity was neither "good" nor "bad" until us humans labeled it so. So maybe there were other aspects of Eden that really weren't so "bad" to begin with too. After all, the snake was there in Eden too. Did its presence make the Garden any less a paradise before they tasted the fruit? Okay, so maybe I shouldn't try to argue the case for the snake---that could get pretty slippery---I'm just trying to say that if fangs and venom already existed in paradise, then what were they used for? And since God had already created "every beast of the field and every bird of the air" then there must have been a whole bunch of other critters with claws and other dangerous pointy bits too.

Okay, the real point is that maybe paradise can contain some pretty dark stuff too. Perhaps the Garden is big enough for some other nasty beasties lurking in the dark, or some other bitter fruit happily growing in the shadows of Eden, the Yin side of reality so essential to the balance and harmony of the way of the universe, the Tao.

Pain is a good example. I meet pain with resistance and fear, labeling it on a very fundamental level of my being as "bad". But if I stop to think about it, I will realize that I am actually designed to feel pain. In fact, pain is a very effective messenger of damage (or potential damage) to my body or psyche. It has helped me survive and my species evolve. Pain has been faithfully serving us all along in the most thankless job in history.

On the flip side, we tend to idealize "Nature", often equating it with a peaceful paradise where everything gets along in perfect harmony. But when I look closely at the plant and animal kingdoms I can see wars, murder, rape, pillaging, extinction-----injustices of the highest order. And yet they are harmonious and perfect. Chaotic, peaceful, bloody, friendly.....paradise. (By the way, just what is not "nature" anyways?)

Golleee, but I sure am sermonizing! It’s enough to make even Derrick blush…..especially since (from his point of view) I’m extolling the virtues of the dark side of the Force, those bad boys, the zen masters and Taoist sages, drunk on life. These last three blog entries were all supposed to be a single entry, but it got out of control. I’m sure I’ll look back on all this malarkey some day and be appalled. But for now I’ll give my ego free rein and thumb my nose at that future easily-appalled stick-in-the-mud Zum. Damn him and the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!

Where was I? Oh yeah.....

So in a very literal sense, "original sin" is the belief in dualism. The radical corollary then is that dualistic thinking is what keeps us from seeing paradise all around us, right before us, within us.

So maybe it's a big BIG Garden-----plenty of room for sunshine and shadows too. Big enough for lions lying with lambs.....and eating them too. After all, that's what lions do. That's who they are. And if they let the lions in, then the Garden has got to be big enough to include us with our pain and neuroses. (Of course, the great ironic paradox is that our neuroses stem from thinking that we fell from Eden in the first place: the belief that the world, especially ourselves, somehow isn't "good enough".) And maybe the Garden is even big enough for war, disease, hunger, greed, poverty, ignorance (this rant?), schizophrenia, mismatched socks, and nude dudes.

But we take sides, we label "good" and "bad", and our fortunes become tied to the vagaries of chance as we are blinded to the perfection right before us. And so we wait for heaven....as well as peace and happiness and love and freedom and Denny's Tuesday Grand Slam Breakfast Special. And the delicious irony is that all this judging and fear and craving and waiting and blindness is within the garden too. So it's fine and beautiful to pick sides. Go ahead and root for the Lakers. Sometimes we can even taste the divine in the ecstatic joys and bittersweet pains we experience on the rollercoaster of duality.

And there's no need to sit back and passively watch the shadows do their dark work. There are powerful ways to engage and transform the shadows by honoring and embracing them. So yes, if you feel called, then work to end war, or buy your loud neighbors the latest Pearl Jam CD to add to their collection, or feed the hungry. (A good way to do this last one is to support micro-credit programs like the Hunger Project which seek to empower the poor to end the cycle of poverty). And see how effective you become when you embrace the shadows, undermining the power we give them over us and brightening them with the power of compassion. Feel free to bring light to the shadows. Or not.

Do I actually believe all this balderdash? Well, yes, though I have a hard time remembering it, especially when the shadow is in my empty belly, or shouts "Checkmate!" at me, or gets cast across a typhoon ravaged flood plain in Myanmar. Memory, that sweet capricious beast runs after his shadowy sister, Forgetfulness, both forever at play in the Garden of my mind. And what is it exactly that I’m trying to remember? Oh yeah...

...We never really left Eden.

So I will try to take off my dualistic glasses.....cast off some constricting notions clothed in opinion.....and go for a sprint in the Garden.

Come run with me?




"Out beyond ideas of wrong-doing and right-doing, there is a field. I'll meet you there."
---Rumi, Sufi poet

"Don't trust your mind, it will trick you. Don't trust your heart, it will lie to you. Trust your belly-----that's where God talks to you."
---Derrick, homeless Christian apologist

"The Perfect Way is only difficult
  for those who pick and choose.
  Do not like, do not dislike;
  all will then be clear.
  Make a hairbreadth difference,
  and Heaven and Earth are set infinitely apart.
  If you want to get the plain truth,
  be not concerned with right and wrong.
  The conflict between right and wrong
  is the sickness of the mind."
---Seng-Ts'an (When I first encountered this quote ten years ago, it inspired me to get two small Japanese kanji tattoos: "Heaven" on my left shoulder and "Earth" on my right.)

"Pain is inevitable; suffering is optional."
---anonymous

"We are all driven by our need for approval. And if you say that you aren't, then that's it too. The zen teacher's job is to go after that."
---Yoshin Sensei

"I charge my voices rent!"
"I told my voices I'm gonna listen to KLOS from now on!" (KLOS is a rock radio station)
---Sir Charles, one of my homeless chess buddies

There turned out to be no pending warrants for my arrest, so the fine city of Santa Monica arranged for my one-way ticket to Austin, Texas, courtesy of their "Homecoming Program". Ironically, Los Angeles is probably the closest thing to a "home" for me since it's where I grew up and where my family still lives. I jokingly refer to the "Homecoming Program" as the "Get the Hell Out of Our City Program", but I am truly thankful for the blessing of being able to travel half-way across the country for free. (My caseworker at St. Joe's told me that they will call my Austin friend at approximately monthly intervals to "check up on me". I guess that's the "And Stay the Hell Out" portion of the program.)

So it was time to bid farewell to my friends, "old" and new. They're a transitory crowd (even the chess players), and I really haven't known them that long, but it still brought up some sadly sweet moments for me. I'd only barely gotten to know some of my newer friends. Sean and Rebecca are working hard to carve out their niche in the Venice boardwalk art scene. (The LA Times recently had an interesting audio-photo essay depicting the colorful ambience of the boardwalk.) And then there's cerebral Kevin with his incredibly incisive liberal blog at btcnews.com, written under the tasty pseudonym "Weldon Berger". And he's got a great new blog detailing his experiences being homeless at urbanrefugees.blogspot.com. His pseudonym on this site is the clever "P. Handling". (Golly, it makes you wonder how many of us homeless dudes are out here blogging about our experiences.) Not sure what to do with my bike, I finally left it with Ruben, an exuberant fellow with a permanent grin on his face who promised to take care of it until I returned.

Rob and I went for one last bike ride down to Palos Verdes and back, making stops for Subway sandwiches, ice cream, and women's volleyball. We even threw around a Frisbee disc on Palos Verdes beach, doing our best not to injure any of the hordes of sunbathers enjoying the gorgeous weather. As a kind parting gesture, Rob bought me packages of beef jerky and tuna for the road.

On my last day, I said goodbye to Ma Ocean and swung on the swings on the Santa Monica beach. A sign of the times: they sold the Santa Monica Pier ferris wheel on Ebay. I think they're gonna put up a new one, but it made me feel even more ready to hit the road.

So then it was time to go. My trip started off a bit inauspiciously as I took the wrong Metro bus downtown, thinking that Union Station was where the Greyhound bus station would be. Luckily, I had enough time and an extra bus token to get to the right place. Besides the usual funny looks at my gear and get-up, the folks at the ticket counter informed me that I wouldn't be able to take my broom and dustpan with me. But the bus driver didn't have a problem with them, so I was able to keep all my gear intact.

Snapshots from the one and a half day bus ride to Austin, Texas:

The bus is pretty full, stopping in dusty little towns to trickle passengers on and off. Most of my fellow travelers are lower to middle class, gruff, mainly male, of all major ethnicities. All of our transient lives are intersecting on this bus, some running away, others running to. Which am I?

At every stop, the smokers (most of the bus) herd off to puff away grumpily in (hot) outdoor smoking pens.

109 degrees in Phoenix, Arizona.

This is not the way I usually like to travel, but hey, beggars can't be choosers. (I'm still amazed at the free ticket.) But I tend to go pretty slow when I travel. My last road trip across the U.S. in 2005 took six months. But then I remember a faster trip I did in the early 90s: ten days from Miami to Los Angeles in a "drive-away" Volkswagon Jetta with two crazy Swiss women and their too-short skirts. (Thought I was gonna get killed at one Alabama truckstop...)

As usual, I haven't gotten enough sleep before the trip and I'm having trouble sleeping on the bus. I wake up from one nap with a sore neck that stays with me for most of the trip.

The guy sitting next to me is heading all the way back to Florida-----three and a half days on seven buses. That means he will spend a total of a week on buses for the round trip. He went to San Diego for his mother's funeral. His name is Scott and he used to work with the state lottery until his company lost the contract, so now he's out of a job. I mention that I think I read somewhere that studies have shown that lottery winners are not any happier than people who suffer debilitating injuries.

The vast fields of huge white windmills generating electricity in the deserts of California and Texas-----so graceful, so surreal.

We hit El Paso, Texas at 6am, but I won't get to Austin until 1am the next morning.

Appropriately enough, I'm finally digging into Jack Kerouac's On the Road. With the bus rolling across the night, I can feel myself getting the fever again as I read Kerouac's amped up prose. Despite the ironic fact that I am literally "on the road", I can feel the yearning growing in me, the yearning for the open road and the vast horizons that whisper of possibility and wonder. I remind myself that Wonder is wherever I am, in all places, at all times, but I can still feel the fever rising in me. His words pour down like late night jazz, building to sweaty frenzies and then crashing down in exhaustion. But always, the fever flows across the pages.....and into my veins.

I like to joke that I'm a "Jack of no trades, master of none", so like Kerouac, I like to put myself in interesting circumstances with interesting people, hoping that interesting things will happen around me. I'm such a chameleon that I'm not sure who I really am under this quicksilver skin. Maybe I'll peel it back and find nothing. I'm becoming more comfortable with that possibility.

I slowly begin to realize that Kerouac is writing my life more passionately and eloquently than I ever could. And then, in a sudden flash of insight, I realize that I am, quite literally, a "dharma bum".



"babe, what highway are you on now
 what direction?
 north, south, east
 how is the wind the sun the smell of earth?
 how does it feel under your shoes?
 have you eaten?"
---Wanda Coleman, engraved on the Venice Beach poetry walls

"My favorite color is yellow."
---Rob's less-than-inspiring attempt to talk to a young woman in a yellow bikini

"We're a bunch of educated fools standing in line. We don't want to work for anybody else. We want to run our own businesses. We are the leadership overflow of America!"
---Sir Charles, pontificating to the homeless crowd waiting outside of the Bread and Roses Cafe

"Will blog for Fame .....Food.....CASH!
 Immortalize your encounter with a mentally ill homeless person!
 urbanrefugees.blogspot.com"
---Kevin's idea for a panhandling sign

"You know what we should do? We should go to a strip club and keep all the receipts to claim as donations to charity on our taxes! You know how many girls we'd be putting through college?! 'Excuse me, Ma'am, can you give me a receipt for that lap dance you just gave me?!' And can you imagine all the one dollar receipts?!"
---phone conversation in the seat behind me on the bus


Jack Kerouac, from On the Road:

"But then they danced down the streets like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I've been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes 'Awww!'"

"...and as the river poured down from mid-America by starlight I knew, I knew like mad that everything I had ever known and would ever know was One."

"What is that feeling when you're driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing?---it's the too-huge world vaulting us, and it's good-by. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies."

Okay, here's the deal:

I'm way behind in this blog and still have a number of entries that I will probably backdate in if I ever get around to writing them. (I'll make sure to post notifications of anything I backdate.)

But for now, my walkabout is taking a serious detour to the South. (How can anything be a detour when I don't have any destination?) South, as in Mexico.....specifically, the Yucatan. Yeah, really.

After quite a bit of wrangling, my friend "Shine" here in Austin has convinced me to accompany her to the ruins at Chichen Itza and probably some other ancient sites as well. You see, although she's working on her Ph.D. dissertation here at the University of Texas at Austin in the field of Rhetorics (say what?), she's also been developing some kind of crazy healing abilities over the past few years too. It's all quite complex, involving colors, shapes, pyramids, energy fields, visions, and a whole bunch of other stuff that goes over my head....or at least in one ear and out the other.

Last year Shine felt "called" to Oaxaca, Mexico where she spontaneously learned various aspects of her healing system at different ruins. Now she's feeling called to Chichen Itza and possibly further destinations that may be revealed as the trip unfolds. I've already been to the Yucatan and seen some of the ruins, but that was a long time ago, so I'm looking forward to the trip and the inevitable lessons along the journey.

And okay, so I'm a skeptic at heart, but I know that a good skeptic realizes that there are also times to be skeptical of skepticism. So I will do my best to maintain an open mind and an open heart.....and try to keep my snarky comments to a minimum.

We leave tomorrow morning! Adios, muchachos!
Woohoo!



"Ever notice how "What the hell!" is always the right answer?"
---a friend's refrigerator magnet

"Use the Force."
---my Burger King Star Wars Yoda action figure, responding to my query, "Should I go to Mexico?"

Rated: PG-13 for violence (mostly Mayan)

Snapshots from a mad lark to the Yucatan:

Why is it that I always exhaust myself right before a journey? Two nights before we left, I stayed up all night editing Shine´s 50 page prospectus for her rhetorics dissertation on "the ineffable". (Good stuff on aesthetics, pain, spirituality, and the limits of language.) Then the night before our flight we only got a few hours sleep as we packed our gear and cleaned the apartment for a young guy who is subletting her apartment for the duration of our trip.

We arrived at the Austin airport to find out that our budget airline, VivaAerobus, is the only one located on the other side of the airport, requiring a $30 taxi ride to get there. We took off at 8am in the morning and the flight went smoothly, but I was unable to sleep during the trip. We arrived in Cancun at about 11am and Shine decided that we should head directly to Chichen Itza. So after a quick lunch and changing some dollars to pesos, we jumped on a 4 1/2 hour bus ride to the small town of Piste located near the ruins.

So I'm back in Latin America after many years, and the visceral memories came flooding back. Sure, there are a lot of visual recollections-----the brightly colored clothes of the locals, especially the indegenas, the lush tropical greenery, tired buildings, beat-up vehicles, and cracked roads. But the strongest mnemonic triggers have been olfactory-----car exhaust in narrow streets, chickens cooking on roadside grills, garbage, smoke mixed with the smell of rain; and auditory-----the calls of the street vendors, the roar of trucks down narrow lanes, latin music pumping out of homes and restaurants, and jungle birds - raucous in sound and color.

 

During the bus ride, the skys opened up and a deluge came pounding down. I found myself wondering what the hell I was doing in the Yucatan during the rainy season. In the city of Vallodalid, our bus waded through streets turned to rushing rivers as shopkeepers haplessly squeegeed water out of their stores. After three hours, the rains finally stopped just as we arrived in Piste, totally exhausted.

The next morning we went to the ruins at Chichen Itza, the focal point of this whole trip. Shine made a bee-line for the imposing Pyramid of Kukulcan (another name for Quetzl-Coatl, the plumed serpent god of the Mayans), called El Castillo ("The Castle") by the Spanish, which dominates the main clearing. She saw colors in intricate patterns all over the pyramid and began sketching all of the color schemes into her notebook.

 

The pyramid is impressive, not only because of it's size and symmetry, but it is also a literal calendar: it's steps, levels, and stone "panels" mark days, seasons, and epochs. But I was disappointed when it soon became apparent that visitors are no longer allowed to climb up the pyramid. When I visited this place about fifteen years ago, there was a chain handrail which helped visitors mount the steep stone steps to the temple at the top.

Much has been made in New-Age circles of the fact that the Mayans predicted big changes at the end of this era, specifically December 21, 2012. I've heard all kinds of predictions, from gradual changes in human consciousness to massive cataclysms across the globe ending human civilization as we know it. The Toltec shaman Tlahuizcalpantecutli (or, more familiarly, "El Gorila") that we met in Austin (yeah, I'm sorry---I know I haven't written about my time in Austin before this trip) said that "the sixth sun" would come on this date. (I assumed he was speaking of a solar "sun", but in retrospect, he may have meant a divine child "son".)

I've lost count of all the doomsday predictions I've heard over the years. There was the supposed prediction by Nostradamus that the apocalypse would be triggered by a clash between the Eagle and the Bear (the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.). The Brahma Kumaris predicted the end of the Kali Yuga ("Age of Destruction") and the dawn of the Sat Yuga ("Golden Age of Truth") in the 1990s, then changed the date at least twice when their predictions were incorrect. The Harmonic Convergence came and went with a whimper. And Y2K created a lot of doomsday hysteria too. And there have been many other failed End-of-the-World prophecies-----too numerous to go into here. (But if you're really interested, check out http://www.religioustolerance.org/end_wrld.htm which compiles a pretty exhaustive list.)

While there is an understandable focus on the end of the Mayan calendar (a mere 3 1/2 years from now), the beginning of the calendar tends to be conveniently overlooked. According to the Mayans, the world was created on August 13, 3114 BCE. While interesting, this date doesn't jibe so well with our modern understanding that the Earth is about 4 1/2 billion years old, while the Universe itself clocks in at a spry 18 billion years.

Despite all my skepticism, I'm trying my best to maintain an open mind, and I must admit that I'm actually looking forward to 2012 with a certain degree of excited anticipation. After all, I'm always up for change-----heck, I'm addicted to it.

Anyhow, Shine went back to our lodge for a break at mid-day and in a matter of seconds the skys let loose with their daily deluge. I was soaked to the skin before I could even get my umbrella out of my backpack. But after an hour the clear blue skies returned and I headed off to explore more ruins along with throngs of other tourists who had been arriving in increasing numbers throughout the day, bussed in on package tours from Cancun and Merida.

 

El Templo de los Guerreros ("The Temple of the Warriors") and the nearby Mercado ("Market") with its numerous stone columns make up a sprawling complex that was fun to explore, but again, we weren't allowed to surmount the alluring temple. Another large complex contains the observatory El Caracol ("The Snail", named for its shape and its interior spiral staircase), a domed structure that aligned various constellations through windows on auspicious dates. My favorite site was the Tumba del Gran Sacerdote ("the Tomb of the Great Priest") adorned with twin serpents flanking the stairways on each of the pyramid's four sides.

Shine returned and we headed to the Cenote Sagrado ("Sacred Pool", one of many water-filled sinkholes occurring all over the Yucatan, apparently created by that big ol' asteroid that thumped the peninsula, possibly wiping out the dinosaurs). The Cenote was a huge round hole in the ground, very deep with dark murky water at the bottom. Despite seeing gold light everywhere, Shine still felt a "heavy darkness" over the whole area, mainly because of the human sacrifices that were made here, especially the young female virgins who were either shot with arrows or had their hearts cut out. Yikes.

One can't really talk about Chichen Itza without mentioning all the bloody rituals that occurred all over the place. The Mayans were already big on warfare and sacrifices, but things really got bumped up a notch when the Toltecs exerted their influence over the region. Chichen Itza has numerous artefacts commemorating their bloody lifestyle.

Besides the Cenote Sagrado, el Templo de los Guerreros also saw its fair share of human sacrifices. The Plataforma de los Craneos ("Platform of Skulls") is decorated with numerous skull glyphs that matched the real decapitated heads of sacrificial victims that were placed on the platform for display. It also features charming reliefs of eagles tearing open peoples' chests to eat their hearts. At the nearby Plataforma de las Aguilas y los Jaguares ("Platform of the Eagles and Jaguars") there are amazingly clear images of eagles and jaguars holding human hearts in their talons and claws.

The Gran Juego de Pelota ("Great Ball Court") features high walls with stone rings near the top for the Mayan game that was something of a cross between soccer, basketball, and hackeysack. And---cuz you just never know if the game will be entertaining enough---they apparently often decapitated the losing team! Imagine the Lakers and the Celtics playing for those stakes! (Though I read somewhere that they might have actually beheaded the winning team, sending them off to a glorious after-life in their version of heaven.)

Whenever I visit ruins, I try to imagine the daily life and rituals that took place hundreds or thousands of years ago. At the Sacred Pool I found myself imagining throwing tourists into the deep dark waters, their screams echoing off the impassive limestone walls. Hey, when in Rome.....

Maybe I was a Mayan priest in a past life?

"Ooh! We're over the ocean now! If we crash now, that means we're all gonna die!"
---little girl sitting in front of me on the plane

"You don't see the colors?"
---Shine to me, regarding the Pyramid of Kukulcan (No I didn't, not even after rubbing my eyes and hitting my forehead a few times.)

"What a waste of good virgins!.....Some monk, huh?"
---me, regarding the sacrifices at the Sacred Pool

"As you have seen, God did not appear on channel 18 and the end of the world did not occur last night. All of my predictions have turned out to be crap."
---Hoh-Ming Chen, leader of "God's Salvation Church", awaiting the end of the world in Texas in 1998

The next day we were both sick, mainly from exhaustion (lack of sleep prior to the trip) and overheating in the hot sun at the Chichen Itza ruins, but Shine was also nauseous and weak. She decided to guide me through the process of trying to heal her with colors. First, she told me to "shield myself" so that I wouldn't take on any illness that she had. Then I placed my hands on her stomach and she told me to imagine that I was channelling healing colors into her, first yellow and green, then orange, then black briefly, and finally white.

Well, apparently I'm not much of an adept, so that afternoon we ended up taking her to see a doctor at the local clinic. Through my very mangled Spanish we got him to understand the situation and he prescribed Kaopectate, antibiotics, electrolyte solution packets, and anti-nausea tablets. She took the electrolytes and the anti-nausea tablets and was feeling better by the next morning.

Back during our first day at the ruins, Shine informed me that she felt called to perform a ritual at Chichen Itza at night when the ruins are closed to the public. Initially, I resisted the idea for various reasons-----respect for the wishes of the archaeologists, a desire to get a good night's sleep, an aversion to spending the night in a Mexican jail-----but  after about three seconds of deep deliberation I acquiesced, thinking how nice it would be to have the place to ourselves and be able to climb on those ancient pyramids. Okay, so it wouldn't be the greatest example of low-impact eco-tourism, but what the hey, all in the name of Shine's spiritual evolution, right? Good thing I don't have any vows against trespassing.

That day we went back to explore some more, including another water-filled cenote and some smaller, more obscure ruins in the jungle. I saw a lot of big bold iguanas lurking all over the place, especially on the ruins where they enjoyed commanding views of their territory. And we kept an eye out for good hiding spots and areas where we might be able to sneak back in after dark. There were tons of great places to hide---caves, the jungle, in the ruins themselves---but we decided to come back in the evening and try to sneak off during the nighttime light show.

Unfortunately, when we came back for the light show, there were very few people---maybe fifty in total---and we were all ushered into a small roped-off area with chairs set up in rows, watched closely by the guards. We initially tried to head toward the big Pyramid of Kukulcan, but were quickly intercepted by a guard and redirected toward the chairs. The light show was not all that impressive and the narration was naturally all in Spanish, so we didn't get much out of it, especially since we spent most of the time trying to figure out how we could sneak off into the jungle.

I sat there practicing what I would say if the guards caught us sneaking around the ruins that night. I didn't know how to say "healer" in Spanish, so all I could come up with was: "Ella es una bruja de la salud. Ella necessita hacer una ritual al Cenote Sagrado." ("She is a health witch. She needs to do a ritual at the Sacred Pool.") I finally settled on the simpler "Somos brujos del agua." ("We are water witches/wizards."----rain shamans?) because "brujos del agua" were mentioned a lot at the light show.

The show finally ended and everyone headed off for the exits. I pulled the old shoelace tying trick so that we could straggle behind everybody else and then, after a few tense moments trying to figure out where the guards were, we dashed off into the jungle when no one was looking. There was an especially nerve-wracking moment when I actually got stuck in a fence we were climbing through because the plastic water bottle on my backpack got caught on the wire, making a lot of noise.

So we hid on a jungle path for a little over an hour, hoping that there would be very few guards patrolling the grounds at night. Fireflies drifted through the evening, emitting bright white lights that often made us jump whenever we thought that they were a guard's flashlight off in the distance. Winding roots did their best to impersonate snakes as we tried not to imagine what other beasties might be lurking in the jungle shadows. The moon rose higher, lighting our little glade and making the leaves glisten in the moonlight.

And in our silence the jungle noises really came alive for us. Insects everywhere were buzzing, whirring, and clicking. We realized that what I had originally thought was a guard blowing a whistle was actually some kind of strange bird calling through the night. Heavy unseen wings flapped overhead, perhaps an owl or a large fruit bat. And then as we listened to some women chatting as they walked along the main path, they suddenly let loose with piercing screams. I expected to hear them laugh or scold a friend who had scared them, but there was nothing. Just chilling silence. That really increased the eerie tension. I guess I should have checked on them, but a motorcycle (a guard?) rode by on the main path a couple of times, so I assumed that if there had been a real problem he would have seen it. Those screams set a surreal tone for the night. And we were only just getting started.

We finally got up the courage to head back into the ruins and edged along the jungle next to the main path. We didn't come across any bodies, so that was a good start. But at one point we had to hit the ground and lie as still as possible as two bicyclists came out of the darkness and rode by us. I was actually more worried about being detected by the dogs that roam the site than by the guards.

We continued along and the forest opened up to reveal the main clearing with the majestic Piramide del Kukulcan dominating the milieu. Impressive by day, the pyramid is even more majestic when bathed in the magical glow of the moonlight. All of the ancient stone structures in the area radiated that pale light, making for an other-worldly dreamscape.

 

At first, Shine felt called to the Cenote Sagrado, but as we began to make our way across the courtyards of the Mercado ("Market"), she decided that the Tumba del Gran Sacerdote ("Tomb of the Great Priest") was another good alternative for the rituals she needed to perform. So we changed direction and headed west toward my favorite temple with its twin serpents adorning the stairways on all four sides of the pyramid. (We have since learned from a helpful Mayan fellow that snakes represent intelligence, jaguars symbolize power, and eagles signify freedom.)

We made it to the Tumba del Gran Sacerdote without any problems and circumambulated the base of the pyramid. I convinced Shine to accompany me to the top of the temple, so after making obeisances to the rain god Chac Mool and the plumed serpent god Quetzl Coatl, we climbed the steep stone stairs, walking up to the night sky. At the top, we were treated to a sublime view out over the jungle and ruins awash in that mystical moonlight.

Shine removed the darker clothes that were camouflaging her white clothes and performed her rituals in a walled central chamber. (She has asked me not to give any details about the rituals, but I can vouch that no animals or vegetables were harmed in the process.) I sat on a wall atop the pyramid and meditated, experiencing one of the deepest meditative states I've ever had. When Shine was finished, we climbed back down the Tomb and she repeated her rituals at the base of the pyramid. And again, I went into a deep meditation.

When she was done, Shine was ready to leave the ruins, but I convinced her that we should go to the Cenote Sagrado since she had felt so strongly called there earlier. We headed north, circumnavigating that magnificent Pirimide del Kukulcan one last time and threaded our way through the pillars at the Templo de los Guerreros ("Temple of the Warriors"). Having encountered no guards, we were pretty relaxed as we walked the long path to the Cenote Sagrado until we saw some lights on at the sacred gift shop near the Sacred Pool. We made our way quietly to the Pool and sat for a short midnight meditation.

Then when we moved to another area so that Shine could perform more rituals, some dogs finally detected us and unleashed a barking ruckus. I expected that we would soon be busted, but no guards came out. With the dogs still barking, we decided to call it a night and took another path north. We climbed under a barbed-wire fence and I deftly managed not to get stuck this time. We reached the highway and walked about two miles back to the small dusty town of Piste.

When we got back to our lodge, we discovered that Shine had accidentally left her jade necklace at the Cenote Sagrado. On reflection, she decided that it was an appropriate offering since the ancient Mayans had often offered jewelry and other belongings (besides virgins) to the Sacred Pool.

And then Shine told me that she needs to perform nighttime rituals at the Mayan ruins at Palenque and Tulum too!

 

"It would have convinced you to join me even faster."
---Shine, responding to my initial objection that she hadn't told me that the trip would involve breaking into the ruins at night

"I can see the headlines in Israel now: 'Israeli Woman Arrested at Sacred Mexican Ruins on Top of a Pyramid at Midnight with a Beggar Monk Because Voices Told Her To Perform a Ritual There'."
---Shine (she's Israeli)

"I wonder if there are still jaguars in the Yucatan?....Oops!"
---me, realizing that this line of thought would not really help ease the tension as we waited in the jungle

"Don't be afraid---you're with me. I'm not afraid. Of course, that's because I can run faster than you."
---me, reassuring Shine

"But it's all illegal, baby!"
---me, gesturing to all of the ruins after Shine objected that it was illegal to climb the pyramid

"Five more minutes and I might not have come back."
---me, referring to my meditation on top of the pyramid

"Everything is unfolding exactly as it is supposed to, exactly as it is."
---the answer I received in my meditation when I asked how I can be of service

"There's a limit to everything."
---Shine, after I asked her if she wanted to continue with the ritual even though the dogs were barking and we thought the guards were coming

"What gives you the idea that I'm unprofessional?! Maybe when I got stuck in the fence?"
---me, responding to Shine's comment that my stealth abilities don't measure up well with Israeli commandos

"Yeah, maybe an old, blind, fat cat!"
---me, responding to Shine's comment that she walked as silently as a cat

"And you walk like a rhino-corn-asaurus!.....How do you say it?"
---Shine, attempting to say "rhinoceros"