Same Planet Different Universe. An Accidental Sesame Seed in Time and Space

It's been some time between penned brain-farts, and really the only thing I need to share is that the longer I stay in San Pedro the more I love this place. It's a typical example of a high energy vortex, the suction of which draws a myriad different realities coexisting in parallel. I think the reason places like this (other examples are Cusco in Peru, Fremantle in Australia) attract so many hippies, gypsies, pirates, buskers, lost souls and broken heads are because the energy of the place is so huge that all of these reality projections can coexist and be changed by each other to co-create new ways of operating in reality. Why don't these realities all converge in other locales? I suspect that the collective societal consciousness predominates in most locales because the energy potential available hasn't reached a 'tipping point' where it can attract change.

Why do I think that a predominance of marginalised subcultures is material evidence of change? I think this because we are all composed of energy, and if there is a predominance of beings whose energy blueprint is such that they do not fit in with the prevailing system of energy, then by simply being in a place these people with the different energy blueprints are affecting global change. I think that in places where there are many of these marginalised subcultures the potential for change increases exponentially. I have no means to prove anything I'm saying and it's all conjecture. Cortical confection is my favourite flavour. I would like to discuss the possibilities with interested parties however, because the thought has been tickling me for some time.

Learning Spanish pops my head every day. I had, up until a couple of weeks ago, formed the impression of myself as being quite centred, stable and carefree as far as humans go. Add three hours of Spanish, stir vigorously, and I'm as pissed as a colony of ants boiling out of their nest to bring a world of pain to the arsehole who trod on them. For a couple of weeks there, I experienced all of the same emotions I had when I was first learning to read. Rage! Why are there so many rules? Frustration! Why can't I play with the rules? Desertion! I don't want to be here anymore and whoever dropped me off can pick me up now! As with most things, as soon as I became aware of the problem it pretty much dissipated. For the most part this learning business is now rather enjoyable I do say. The ways in which different cultures form thoughts into words is just another marvellous insight into how many ways there are to interpret the reality around us. It's a choice and it's awesome!

Of course, I still have secret rage-quits when I do my homework sometimes...

So I was gargling about San Pedro being a spinning centre of energy without giving any evidence as to why I think this is so. Obviously I have no expensive apparati to tangibly measure geographic leylines so it's good old subjectivity that informs my hypothesis...and here is what I observe:

1. Nature here is particularly spectacular. If the Earth holds more energy here than it does in other places, it's possible that nature has more raw material to work with and it goes to town on the place. The hummingbirds, squirrels and bumble bees in town all just agreed with me.

2. People get 'stuck' here. I have run into countless backpackers who planned to stay for one night and end up staying for a month, a year. I suspect I may be one of these people.

3. This place is full of marginalised sub-cultures. I know that might sound like a silly observation to make, but why is it that hippies, pirates, gypsies, fairy-dolphin-unicorns and cracked-heads converge in certain places and not others? These are all sub-cultures who for the most part want nothing to do with the way society operates and seem to hang onto the sides of said society for a plethora of reasons, the most obvious being that most of these sub-cultures don't want to play the 'money mortgage marriage' game and are therefore not too welcome on the board. And they don't want to be on the board anyway. Having said that, the vast majority of these sub-cultures are still co-dependent on the very society they hate, with most taking some form of pension. This sets up an interesting paradox where subculture members choosing to accept a pension energetically agree that all they are worth is a pension and all these special people who I think have super-powers (otherwise they wouldn't have noticed that the prevailing game on Earth is fucked in the first place) remain energetically disempowered not by the game they hate, but by themselves! Do I have an answer to this paradox? No. But I refuse to believe that I am only worth a pension so I'll have to come up with some creative way to facilitate my existence on Earth that doesn't involve me sleeping at the wheel in an office. Anyway I diverge from my point, being that these marginalised sub-cultures all have to go somewhere on Earth. Why is there such a huge population of them around Lake Atitlan? San Pedro is literally teeming with these people. Swing a handbag, hit a hippie.

4. Funny air drifts, or lack thereof. When I kayak on the lake sometimes I get really short of breath, like it's too intense just to be out there. Crack some jokes about my fitness level, but I don't mean short of breath like I've just run a nutri-grain Iron man showdown. It feels more like altitude breathlessness, but I've been living at this altitude for a month now. I wrote in a previous blog post that sometimes the beauty of the lake literally takes my breath away although maybe it's not the beauty. Maybe it is. Dun dun dunnnnnnnnnnn...

I've made friends with lots of the local kids. Here are Jose and Gerard who got a hold of my camera phone while I wasn't looking...

Most of my time is still in the cafe, painting and cooking and laughing a lot.

Cattle and unicorn abductions are what the people wanna see. Right? My thumb is clearly not on the pulse of popular culture. Fuck it. I like UFOs and I wanna paint UFOs...you wanna see the drinks menu? Here take a look at these UFOs.

Is the unicorn being beamed up or down...hard to tell. I painted a unicorn because a five year-old girl named Canela breezed into the cafe with her curly hair springing in all directions, and she let me in on the secret that she is actually a unicorn and that she thought I should probably paint her in the picture. Who can refuse delightful beings such as this? Not I!

What else to share? I'm still learning about balance and overdoing it in a lot of ways. Burn the candle at both ends you say? Throw that fucker in the deep fryer! A couple of weeks ago The Fifth Dimension cafe hosted a beer-pong tournament, which I won with the ultimate reward being a night spent puking like a teenage punchbowl fiend, followed by a day of ingesting anything that came out of a grease sump. I have had two drinks since and didn't enjoy either of them.

The more Spanish I learn the more I connect with the locals, who are lovely. Just this morning an elderly lady asked me to give her a hand getting some stuff down from shelves she couldn't reach in her shop, and she was so grateful that she held my hand and gave me candy and water from her fridge and I know I'm a pretty cheap date but I was so pleased to have walked into that shop! Alberto the elderly caretaker of the motel I'm staying at now is lovely too. He let himself into my room today, jumped on my bed and casually asked if I would mind moving my stuff to a neighbouring room which happens to be right next door to me matie, Oak! As soon as I said yes he started stuffing my undies and bras and everything else into my bag and pretty much moved my whole room for me. He cracks me up!

Oak doesn't know I'm his neighbour yet. It's the same planet but a different universe. There is no such thing as an accidental sesame seed in space in time, because although we seem small and insignificant when beholding the universe, we exist and we are all inexplicably linked, and every sesame seed in the universe is necessary to capture the full gamut of flavours!

Hiking for Amateurs, and other Assorted Thought-Forms

I woke up half an hour before my alarm yesterday, a 3 a.m. stillbirth into a world that roiled uneasily like bad food in a colon. Roosters were pealing a Mexican-wave cacophany over the mountains a few hours earlier than they should have been. What was that all about? I didn't have to wonder for long. The childlike screams of pigs being slaughtered at the local butchery began not long after those preemptive roosters, and lasted for about fifteen minutes. Their lives guttered out unwillingly, like dropped candlewicks. Dogs all over town went bananas for the duration of the killings, whining and barking and fuck knows what they were saying but it felt like all the dogs and roosters were just as disgruntled as I was, drawing in breaths of cold sharp air while life was knifed from pigs in such close proximity.

This could be pure conjecture on my part, trying to make a story out of everything I observe, but it seems to me that the roosters responded to the fear and other emotions of those pigs lining up for the smackdown before they'd even screamed.

I don't think there's anything wrong with eating meat for those people who do it. Do carrots suffer any less just because I don't hear them scream? I don't know the answer to that. Plants are certainly conscious, as anyone's who has communed with a flower or tree could attest to. These beings haven't lost their connection to all that is and all that they are. It is not the eating of meat or plants that is an issue. I think the way in which humans in large-scale societies are removed from the processes involved in producing food on the whole is, however, a Really Big Issue. If we never hear the screams of the animals who become steaks, it certainly gets a lot easier to mindlessly throw down chunks of flesh without gratitude for the life that was sacrificed. Same goes for plants. If we're not involved in the growth and harvest then it's much easier to eat mindlessly, without gratitude for everything that goes into the end product that is a meal. Is it such a coincidence that there are so many different nutrition-based sicknesses in western society? If the food is grown unconsciously, harvested unconsciously, killed and eaten unconsciously, the nutritional value is significantly mitigated by the hazy intention of the whole food chain we've created.

Here is some real food, grown in real dirt with real hands and real hearts. Small scale farming is the way forward.

It's important to be a part of the life of the things we eat. It is important to be conscious of the screams of pigs. Wrapping slabs of pork in plastic on a styrofoam tray disconnects us from the entire process and it's little wonder we forget how much is good to eat, what is good to eat, when it's good to eat. We need to touch the dirt, hold the knife, measure the life in our hands and to be conscious of our connection to it.

So this is actually a blog about my first guided hike up a mountain dubbed 'Indian's Nose' for its likeness to Indigenous anatomy. In order to hit the precipice of yon nose to see the sunrise I needed to catch a chicken bus at 3.30am to the outskirts of the town slumbering beneath the mountain. They're called chicken buses because livestock commonly ride on them, but I also like to think it's because the motors of these buses are measured in chickenpower not horsepower. These are seriously ancient buses, only just grunting up the mountains and threatening to blow out any second. After the fifteen minute chorus of animal suffering which was my alarm, I stumbled out onto the street to catch the bus in a pretty weird headspace. I felt like I was in the movie 'Dark City', which is one of my fave flicks..watch it! The crunking wheezing sounds of the bus coming up the hill for me enhanced the dark city experience, as did all the dogs standing awkwardly in the street having some strange silent dominance stand-off with each other. The weird lighting in the street iced the dark city cake. I was going to have a dark city day, clearly.

I stumbled quite a few times up Indian's Nose, because as it turns out a phone doesn't offer much torchlight and the world is really dark before sunrise. My guide Samuel (pronouced Shamwell) didn't stumble once despite having no light. I am constantly reminded of how disconnected I have become as a result of my reliance upon communication devices and the other trappings of urban living. It was all totally worth it anyway. Just as we spidered up the last rock crest, Volcano Fuego let off a plume of thick grey smoke, a little digestive rumbling to begin the waking of the world. Early-bird fisherman left stretchmarks across the belly of the lake as their boats rowed to premium pastures of plenty. We had the mountain to ourselves to watch the sun lick the mountain crests like a cow welcoming her miracle of cowbreath and rubbery legs into the world.

one does not simply walk into Mordor without a machete or a cowboy hat...

We took the long way home after scuttling up the easier side of the mountain to say hi to the sun. My legs were rubbery as a newborn calve's by the time I got home for a quick nap to rejuvenate for spanish class. Samuel took me through a Mayan cave hidden in the neck of one mountain...a hiding place from the Spanish conquistadors back in the day. True to form my photo is awful, although no photo could capture the full rabbit-warren we stooped through. I think it's awesome that Guatemalans primarily speak their Indigenous tongues, and only make do with the very basics of Spanish...flipping the bird in passive resistance to that urge for dominance which seems to be inherent in the self-same cultures that are to be held responsible for strangling the planet today. White kids gotta learn.

Another interesting observation I just made this morning - banker rhymes with wanker in English. Cajero (Cash outlet) also rhymes with pajero (wanker) in Spanish. Good times...

And speaking of tossers, here is Mr. Turkeypants the finger biter. Jokes...I love the little bastard even though he is well-skilled at biting fingers within a 50cm radius of his fence.

Here is our most regular customer at The Fifth Dimension. Introducing Colonel Custard, overachieving at life since whenever. This week we had a seedy poker night and tomorrow night some beer-pong competition is going down. Colonel Custard will likely be participating.

Taking on the flesh eating turkeys and colon monsters

I got bitten by a turkey two days ago. Minding my own business. Strolling the narrow cobblestone street. Humming a ditty to myself. Meandering around looking for no trouble. I openly admired this turkey and his plumage for a few seconds - who wouldn't? He was rustling and puffing those feathers out in much the same way a more visually medicinal shaman does when they invite the cosmic dance to get crazy. After those few seconds of enraptured ogling however, I decided I had some people to meet and had better get going. And the gobbly little bastard bit me. Lesson learned. In future, if there is a turkey gettin' his swagger on for me, I do not have people to meet or better things to do.

In the turkey's defence, if my eyes were obscured by a dangle of skin resembling a stomped-on scrotum, I would probably mistake someone's fingers for a jumble of grubs too.

Grubs, worms, parasites. My body picked a fight with the wrong Mexican earlier this week and I spent a day throwing up from both ends. I felt like a run-over tube of toothpaste by that night...there was absolutely nothing left to donate to the porcelain God I had been hugging for most of the day. And hopefully now I can make friends with the local bacteria since I've run the gauntlet without pharmaceuticals. I had a moment of clarity after my fourth or fifth heave of bile...food is the primary medicine. We all know this. I still eat for pleasure a lot of the time and the question must be asked; am I drawn towards sugar and foods that form an acidic environment because this is precisely the environment that parasites thrive in? Are parasites and worms overriding my own urges for healthiness? Of course this happens! Anyone who has tried to give up chocolate, cigarettes, alcohol or any other acid-forming substance will know the feeling of having 'something else' behind the steering wheel cranking that hard-turn into the dunkin donuts driveway. If our consciousness is infused with influences from our environment, which we at all times choose (let's take ultimate responsibility for being here and for creating any situation we find ourselves in) then suffice to say that any parasites and worms sharing our immediate bodily environment are getting a few buy-ins. I'm looking at food as primary medicine in this case, since pharmaceutical companies have an overarching agenda where keeping people sick, compliant on their advice and dependent on their drugs makes them more money and I am therefore terrified of even dropping a panadol. What are some excellent foods to kick parasite ass? The local foods Kel, you numpty! Chillies, papaya, garlic, ginger and limes are all officially on a regular rotation through my colon. More on my colon in future posts...

I found out this week that people die having showers over here. Don't touch the shower heads in Latin America, curious Toms. Brian from The Fifth Dimension adjusted a shower head, got electrocuted, and ended up sharing a shower with a fireball smoking away on the tiles near his feet. I can't imagine why when I admire the structural finery that is my current bathroom shower...

Finally I have dragged my arse to school and am learning Spanish one-on-one with Extremely Patient Tutor, Jose. I honestly don't know how he puts up with my verbal butchery for three hours a day. I guess if I keep at it for a couple of months I'll be able to have a conversation without looking like a tool and accidentally saying 'I like your dirty kitchen' or 'you make me hot'. The classroom is a thatch hut in the jungle. Check it.

A sinking fog obscured the mountains on the other side of the lake last night and I pretended I was in The Hobbit (again).

Enough about me...let's talk about San Pedro Guatemala! The local Mayans are incredible people and pretty tolerant of the gringo crowd. Mayan women are total experts at balancing huge loads of tortilla dough and azure shocks of materials on their heads. Men cart around backbreaking loads of firewood, cement and maize on their backs all day tirelessly. The kids are cuter than should be legal and can be seen playing chasey in and out of shopfronts and regularly stop in at the cafe to giggle in the hammock and be cheeky. We have a few Mayan women training up in the kitchen at The Fifth Dimension and they are all lovely and laugh often. Everyone in the kitchen including myself is getting paid 8 Quetzales an hour (about one Australian dollar) and that is a really good wage to receive here. One of the women working in the kitchen mentioned the other night that her husband works a twelve hour shift in a local bakery and receives 40 Quetzales a night. It doesn't sound like a lot but then again you really don't need much to live well here. Kayaking is my new favourite thing to do and it costs me 10 Quetzales to burn around the lake for an hour.

Look at that, I'm back to talking about me. Good opportunity to throw up a picture with my face in it (this one was taken precisely twenty minutes before my 'run over tube of toothpaste' tummy shame spectacular)

I'll try and snap some photos of the locals with their permission in later posts. I feel a bit rude just whipping the camera out on randoms to be honest. Will try and get some streetside shots sweeping over the general populace etc...until then much love :)