Puerto Escondido

 A white butterfly silently darts and zigzags across an empty hot sunny road as two leaves fall saying tak tak as they land. A motorbike starts up, chug chug, a smoothie blender groans, a clanging comes from the kitchen. Someone with dark black curly hair waves to me as they walk past and I smile. How is it that a smile developed to mean a smile in every country?

I've entered an oasis within an oasis. I was thirsty for this but wasn't sure what this was before I tasted it. Yesterday I admired a cactus standing alone at the edge of the Pacific Ocean, it's sharp spikes stuck out at every angle. It reminds me now of how you said cacti have an air of the erotic. Here erotic sprouts from everything: motorbikes, watermelons, sea spray, rippled shoreline rocks, white butterflies. Sprouts and blossoms into flowers whose fragrance is this new oasis.

Tak another leaf falls. But I'm half Mexican comes from inside the café. Days have slowly crept into becoming dreams. Bang bang thumps irate impatience out of no where. Day appears again with the drone of what is human life, the oasis is gone. You can't always live in paradise. A man sticks his greasy hands into the peppermint tea he is preparing for me, the videos I'm trying desperately to send are not sending because the internet is slow and my dusty phone has less memory than a goldfish. I get fucked off at the fact the timezone setting on the teaching platform doesn't function properly. The pangs of pain in my big toe throb anew from the bicycle falling on it last night.

    Last night - on the other side of the raucous bar people are scrunching their faces mid-table football match. I'm surrounded by tanned and sun-blonded Dutch, Germans, Americans, British and Austrians drinking beers and salt-rimmed bright yellow Mezcalitas. Music is pumping as a northerners deep eyes flash with light talking about salsa dancing. An Illinois girl's high as a kite sea-blue eyes dance me volts of lightening. I notice her bunk was empty all night and discover later she was spending it on the beach in the throes of passion and then in prison for doing so. Several thousand pesos later she is back in the hostel.

    People do seem to make it through in the fast lane, and here I am floating, writing about bobbing in and out of oases. I've had three beers in the last seven days, been swimming in the ocean about ten times, sunbathed quite a bit, caught a number of waves, had at least thirty mosquito bites but not yet been bitten in the throes of passion. Other than with the Pacific Ocean as it tumbles my body round in its powerful, blue white-nippled waves.

    I'm sorry did you just liken a wave to a woman's breast?

Maybe, so what, I can write what I like, you don't have to read this.

    Need we point out that yet again your blog post has descended into a not so covert expression of your sexual frustrations?

    Need I point out that the notion 'descend into' is outdated. I'm trying my best to ascend from heaven onto earth, including my body and it's 'natural urges'. You of all people should know this.

    I honestly don't think I can read anymore of this.

Fine, go and read The Guardian or The Rough Guide to Mexico or whatever else it is you read.

It's goodbye to hostels for now - no longer mornings with echoes of a large moustached Frenchmen's laugh, or evenings in various hammocks noticing him systematically brushing his long grey hair amidst Illinois twang and palm tree rustling. Or bedtimes swearing under my breath because I drop my phone from the top bunk and wake people up. In my new shared abode I'm gently roused by fruity Argentinian chitchat, lulled to sleep by the twangy gurgling of the kitchen fridge, breakfasts are enjoyed detecting a smokey scent of sage smudge and being vitalised by several pairs of wide life-beaming eyes. Hasta Luego.

    Another day lies ahead, another opportunity to learn new phrases like dulce sueños, to taste anew the sweetness of a chocolate croissant and to enter once again the ocean, watching the sun set and sing the sky into a luminous dream of colours. Unlike English or Spanish, but like a smile, a person's eyes or a wave, it's a language that every nationality on the beach, or anywhere, can understand.

Cíudad de México

There is a pungent scent of sweated-in socks, shoes and beds as I am led into the shadowed room 101, this is your bunk, and here is your key. Alone in Cíudad de México, communing with the snoring from a nearby bed and trickling of water in the fountain outside. A young German man appears from a bunk and nods with a strong forehead and eyes that makes one think of a forest. I'm from England, I'm just going out to get something to eat. I merge with the rivers of bodies moving on the noisy streets, passing endless clothes shops, and street vendors before a large tree ushers me down a calm street past La Santísima Church.

What do you speak? ah English? The half-Italian pizzeria owner takes my order as I sit outside beneath a blue umbrella and admire the tree. Moments later a young woman with long black hair and a soft face pulls a chair out beside me - mind if I join you? Odd seeing as I am the only person and there are four other vacant tables. Please do. I notice a sightly mole on her cheek as she tells me that she lived out of her father's shirts for the lock-down in his beach house.

The next day I wake up groggy from the unseemly dorm aura and last night's undigested enchilada and micheladas (beer and tomato juice plus spices). Sitting up amongst the hot smelly air and gasping for water, there arises a growing suspicion I may have grown too old to put up with hostels. 

    I escape into the fresh early morning streets with their misty beams of sunlight penetrating through the trees. Could I drop a note at the pizzeria? here's my number, call me. Yesterday she disappeared abruptly, to buy food for her dog apparently, who was waiting in her apartment just across the road. But already my legs have started off in the opposite direction and besides, it wouldn't be open this early.

    As I walk, neighbourhoods come and go like silent hymns until the sun climbs and the cold dims. Taco stands become peopled, the pavements thicken, the quiet morning is startled into becoming midday by the city's bustle. After walking for a few hours I notice an upmarket vintage clothes store and realise I must be entering La Roma. So like a good little hipster I sit and order a cortado and chocolatina at Abarrotes Deliro. It's as I take my first golden sip that I notice them - the heart-flutteringly beautiful couple I photographed yesterday in front of a nude painting. Her long striking red-orange hair and pale skin and his short ruffled black hair and handsome face were almost exactly mirrored in the nude painting - I had stepped in to help seeing them try to take a selfie. I imagined they would imagine me imagining them nude and wondered if that's why they seemed to walk awkwardly past the café mid-cortado sip.

By evening the next day below a stone-grey sky, I am sitting on a blue beanbag staring out the balcony. Street saxophone notes lonesomely reverberate down the street as a bearded man's heavy breathing plays behind me while he does yoga. I am nursing the aftermath of the first instalment of Mexican food poisoning. The ordeal had me passing out around midnight on the floor in front of the disappointingly locked toilet door. I came around to see an astonishingly attractive German lady looking down at me. This was no time for pleasantries and rushed past to the toilet myself. Later she speaks through the door I have some tablets, I will leave a glass of water for you out here. I am thankful to her, to the large bin beside the toilet, and to my physical body, which is endlessly astonishing in its intelligence - how it knows when, where and what to eject for it's own health. I'm taking notes as I'm not so skilled at ejecting harmful beliefs before they get into my system. 

By the time I leave the hostel for an early flight, my stomach has settled. I watch out the plane window as the huge white city fades from view and Popocatepetl's snowy peak lunges towards the sky through the clouds. My astonishingly intelligent body and I eagerly await being submerged into the pacific ocean, bronzed by the sun, and whatever else is in store for the both of us in Puerto Escondido. 

All That Is To Come

How long until the curse is undone? Even beyond another sunset and these legs are still broken. On the way to the peak I slipped again because of the flowers. I lay there and prayed for a helping hand, only for yours to appear and point towards the sky reflected in my eyes.
    It gave me the strength to stand, so I gave you a hug, and for that moment I knew a part of myself that is immune to being cursed, or blessed. Sometimes I try to know it without you, but all that's left is a pale blue. The rain started to fall then, so I lay down naked with my mouth open. My tongue got wet and it tasted of you, turning my mind into a rainbow and making places in me sing that haven't heard music since before sunrise.
    I turned around to kiss the mountain and felt my prayer fall onto it like snow: thank you for the curse of brokenness.

When I get to the peak I gaze out at the city in the distance - white dots below the tattooed Kyrenia mountains whose arm stretches out into the horizon, pointing towards Turkey. There is silence apart from the wind through the pines. Is this my chance to say goodbye?

    To who? Cyprus isn't alive you prick

    The next day I am walking through the old town and notice again the many Greek flags in Πλατεία Φανερωμένης. They are many fluttering hands pointing towards the birth place of the Greek Orthodox Church. I myself have many opposing pointings going on within me such as towards you, and in the other direction towards myself. Why do we reach for identity in locations everywhere but where we ever are?

    I don't know, and I don't care. And who is this 'you', who are you speaking to?

    It's all in the past now - my year in Cyprus, which had many firsts: using Tinder, getting over 10 likes for an instagram post, experiencing the effects of Brexit, discovering the melting point of Tungsten. It feels like one of fate's larger hands has slapped my body into the air, causing me to fly to England where I now wallow below overcast grey-brown London skies. But another slap comes, this time from my own hand, with good intentions, to make me look forward - it's all in the future now. 

    What's in the future?

It all

    Yes obviously, but what is this 'all'? You said it was in the past a moment ago.

That was all that's past, this is all that is to come.

    I live in the now so I'm not interested in the past or the future.

Don't be a dick

    Fuck off, you stop being a dick. I've had to put up with your spiritual allusions, cryptically expressed sexual repression and attempts at being some sort of 'travel blog writer'. I'm glad it's over.

It's not over. I'm going to continue in the next instalment: amexicojournal.blogspot.com 

    OK, thanks for letting me know. I think I'll give it a miss.