Mexico Journal: July 12, 2010

Self-involvement is a given when writing in a diary, but part of me wishes I could just be outside my head. Yesterday was the close of the World Cup and the close of a cycle. We stayed on in San Cristobal because Emel got a gig for the guys - they're probably there right now, as I write.

I decided that I would just enjoy my "life" and what it looks like in San Cristobal, so today I came to get an energy massage and a "limpia" with basil and an egg. Jenny, a Salvadoran woman worked her way around my body, burping as she released the trapped negative energy. She did a "reading" of my body and made some very astute observations about how the majority of m y pain was emotional pain and that it came from my relationship to masculine authority (right leg). The truth is, after it was over I did feel better, lighter, happier. I was also, strangely, burping for the next half hour.

I then treated myself to a relaxing lunch at Tierra Adentro: fish, rice, salad and vegetable cream (no milk products involved) soup. After which, I walked and I walked and I walked some more. I followed "Real de Guadalupe" down all the way to the periférico and then drank in everything with all my senses. 3 hours later, after skirting the edge of town until I was almost too tired to continue, I saw a largish paved street that looked like it would lead back to the center (and it did!) without being blockaded, and I ambled back only to find myself (after snaking back and forth a spider's web of alleys) at the Santo Domingo Plaza.

I am sitting on a still rainless afternoon on a colonial style cement bench watching Palermo, the Honduran artisan and his friends' agile fingers weaving macramé. In the dusty square patch where once there was grass, little boys play soccer with plastic bottles as both the "ball" and the makeshift goal posts. I have no real need to do anything, and I have truly enjoyed my day alone. Something has shifted and some pain has left my body and definitely my heart.

Things are looking up.