…to allow life and to be blessed by the passage of time.
8/8/2023 Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca, Mexico — Mercado Zicatela
This morning, I sit on an empty black bench at the backside of a local market, among groups of families enjoying hot breakfasts and stray dogs looking for scraps. One has his back leg amputated. The left leg. I smile at the resilience in his bounce and think of life. Before my trek up the hill to the market for my own weekly shopping, I had trekked for some time along the beach, observing the waves and the wonderful marbled texture the foam of the water created as the waves came crashing down. I stepped into the sinking sand that would always welcome my feet and felt gratitude for the way the ocean would always be there. She does not turn off her wonder.
I'm wearing a pistachio-green belly top and my blue and white skirt sits exactly on my hips. My soft belly is exposed to the day, and I feel at ease about it. My breath fills my belly at once. I rest my tired back against the bench and smile at the sliver of the ocean I can see from up here at the market. It’s as though I am still at her open mouth, feeling her lick me with each inconsistent, chaotic wave. Whether I am near or far, she sends me into a trance, and I begin to ponder…
The line between the sky and the sea, the water, is foggier, hazier, blurrier, today. And what does that mean? That thoughts and emotions are eventually becoming one? That it would be okay to relax my breath into my body and allow life? To unclench? Yes, to unclench. To finally unclench and let the belly hang, let the body hair grow long, let the natural medicine flow through, and never to revert to a past way of being that prevented me from the trueness of being. The truth of being. The tenderness of being. The strength it takes to be an ocean is like a calling. One must recognize her force and also her calm healing. It is a song. For most, we never learn the sound of our true voice. Our purified melody. The one that harmonizes with the birds in the sky and the sounds of the waves and the wise creatures protecting the Earth with duty and pride and the Love that can only come from Mother. I'm content to sit here in observation as the sun rises in the sky and the strays fall to their sides in heat-born slumber. I'm content to continue to travel, this healing journey. One of growth and grace. I'm content to unearth the ways of the heart. The ways of the land, and the water, and the sky, and desire. If not for learning, how can I be? Without my intensity, how can I be? It will bring wrinkles and lines of curiosity, of concern, of age, of wonder, of care, of connection. This is what it is to allow life and to be blessed by the passage of time.
I return to the fruit stalls in the market because shopping awaits and my bladder is full. My heart is also full, but of inquiry and air, and I briefly wonder if the birds in the sky think as much as they trust. Then my bladder reminds me that philosophy will still be there even when she is safe and empty. And I carry on with my morning task of feeling fruits and veg for ripeness, testing my inner vision for what to potentially cook with this and with that. In another 20 minutes, I am home and with a fridge full of food. Gratitude.
I am sure that one day, I will look in the mirror at these lips that have held the same smile through generations, and I will laugh. Or I will cry. Or something will crack and break and an essence for which I have been searching for lifetimes will pour through. And the resonance will be so strong that I will not know if I am alive or in the realms I traverse only when I sleep. This is what it is to allow life, I will tell myself, as I stroke my face, my skin as soft as it was when I rounded the corner into 30 years of age. Maybe, one day in the future, I will be seated with a soft belly and soft limbs remembering how I played with time and when my desire would eat me alive. And I will likely laugh a laugh one laughs when they know themselves too well. And I will feel blessed to have been, and to have known myself in the way only the passage of time can commemorate. And it will all have been what it was: a reflection of Love.
