Love and Parades

For more than a month I had chosen to wear blinders to all but my Spanish lessons and efforts to learn the language. Personal enjoyment outside of that realm was limited to mellow explorations of the city, brief conversations with likeable people, simple browsing in artisan shops, and my spiritual practice. Committed to immersing myself in a den of undisturbed study, I was content but in retrospect, longing for companionship. This, I thought, was just an unavoidable sacrifice I had to make for the time being. And then I moved to Hostel Macondo...

To my initial dissatisfaction, I realized that the guests of the hostel were dedicated English speakers. They were a group of American college students working on semester projects as well as another American couple traveling the continent. For several days, I avoided contact and cringed when my Spanish hungry ears were subjected to absorbing English. Until one day, I spoke with the only young man in the group, Pier, who was working on a project of agro-ecology with local campecinos. Within a day I had been clued into how fun, cool and smart these young(er) kids were, and before I knew it, I was out to dinner with the whole lot, enjoying the company more than I realized how much I had been missing it. Hence began a vibrant, interesting, and hilarious social life for me in Cuenca.

The other American couple turned out to be total gems. They were cruzers - the name for people who live on their boats, generally the wind propelled variety – and on a long journey up South America. Ken and Becky… blessed we all were to have these kind, funny, easy going and hip cats in our midst They were equally enchanted and enthused about us, a bright and motivated group of youngsters traveling and studying what our hearts compelled us towards. Set to the background of the court yarded, gardened, and white washed Hostel Macondo, easily the most beautiful hostel I have ever seen, we shared a week of laughter, interesting discussions, family dinners, and a wellspring of genuine liking of one another. Ken and Becky finally had to leave, a poignant void left in their sunny wake, but the group carried on with full gusto. For another week, the kids and I made a dorm/commune atmosphere out of the hostel. We bonded through massage sessions, pizzas and wine, my helping them in the last hours of their projects, tears, relationship counseling, and laughter. Oh how I had missed such companionship without even thinking about its essential role in the health and wholesomeness of my life before it was graciously granted back to me by the blessing of circumstance.

It was to the credit of my new college buddies that I was out last Friday night, having feasted at an Italian restaurant in the old part of the city, and henceforth got to meet Martín, one of a group of traveling Argentinean (and one Peruvian) guys traveling and making music throughout South America.

I spotted him through the window, he out on the sidewalk and I inside a less than appealing bar that to its credit served its purpose in the history of this event: the adorable guy I had detected with my feminine antenna radar system two weeks earlier at a free rock concert in Parque Paraiso (okay, I did get out a little bit before). I had only had a brush in with him but my attraction had been palpable from the instant I noticed this charming young man in a straw hat and large Bolivian poncho. He had approached Roqui and me with a devastating smile and a few humble bracelets displayed in his hand to ask if we were interested customers. I was interested but not in those... I asked and found out that he was from Argentina. So when I spotted him for the second time only through the window of that bar, I squealed excitedly to my friend Amanda (I´m admitting my girlish ways here), ¨Ooo! There´s that cute Argentinean boy I met in the park!¨ To which Amanda immediately replied, ¨I know him. Come on, I´ll introduce you!¨ Delighted, nervous, and characteristically red faced whenever I get embarrassed, I followed her out on to the street feeling like a giddy teenager. I figured that whatever was to happen, I was just going to be me and enjoy it. Yes I can!

Politely, I met each in the gathered group of guys and girls, kissing each one on the cheek and being friendly to all, secretly trying not to seem too eager to know this one individual. I didn´t even end up talking to him, but instead chatted to the dark one with the long Antonio Banderas black hair with the guitar (Fernando from Peru, who later turned out to be super likable and a friend). I showed so little interest in my Argentinean cutie that I was amazed yet thrilled that after saying a polite goodbye to each of them including him (another round of simple cheek kissing), he caught my eye, stepped towards me while motioning for me to do the same, and gave me a real (and may I say soft, romantic, delicious...) kiss on my lips. How did he know?! Totally pleased, I took my leave with my hostel friends as we had a yin for a dark beer at a pub across the plaza. I watched as the musicians walked the other direction towards some show they wanted to see. After that one truly satisfying kiss, I supposed that I may never see him again.

Minutes later, sitting upstairs and sharing some beers at the pub, I couldn´t help fanaticize about my heart throb ascending the stairs to my back, quietly approaching me from behind and leaning over my shoulder to give me another kiss. It was a faint wish, but tickling my awareness all the same… and then he DID come up the stairs! They had decided to come find us and to play a few tunes. Thank you, fairy godmother!

For the next few hours, we all wandered together throughout the cobblestone streets of Cuenca, looking for a fun destination but actually just being the fun destination ourselves. Martín did everything right to reel me in like a willing salmon to a yummy looking fly... or was it the other way around? The lightest of touches to the small of my back, a caress of a finger, looks that melted me... all of my romantic switches were attended to. The truth of it all is that every fly has a hidden hook. This I knew. But at this early state, I didn´t remember but more probably didn´t mind... such is love... take it or leave it, embrace it when it comes and feel its offerings or opt for a guarded heart and a flat line experience.

The details of the following five days are unnecessary to retell verbatim for they are those kinds of details that are only remarkable and moving to the person who actively lived them. Plus, they´re personal! But the highlights are worth hearing about...

Although in no way new to me, Martín was such an infuriating gypsy type that he was quite impossible to track down by normal societal means the Sunday I returned from a ceremony in the countryside. We had met that first night, exchanged a few tiny tastes of how much we liked each other, and then I had had to leave the very next morning for a two day baptism ceremony in Cañar, sleep not included. My plan was to find the boys Sunday afternoon in the hostel they had told me they were staying in. Yea right. By Monday mid-morning, I had almost completely accepted the situation as it was and chanted all of my letting go mantras. I even wrote a country western song to express my love sick heart. But of course, me, the idealistic-romantic-believer-in-miracles, put out the mental longing of, ¨I wish that I could just run into him right now on this street.¨ First you must know that Cuenca is small, but not that small of a city with a population of 400K. Anyway, not ten seconds after I had cast this wish web out to the world I saw straight ahead of me the mirage of three familiar figures walking towards me, one of them especially glowing in my vision. I couldn´t believe it! Then I corrected this thought and said, ¨Yes! I can believe it and oh thank you thank you Great Helpful Spirit!¨ Composing myself a little from the euphoric shock that comes when a wish is manifested so immediately, I reunited with them, beaming my enthusiasm and relished my fulfilled desire.

From all of my ¨training¨, especially in the Eastern traditions, I know to be aware of the tendency to chase after desires and become dependent on them to make us temporarily happy. I´ve been guided and instructed on how to access a deeper well of happiness that is detached from these transient, flash-in-the-pan sensations connected to desire. But with my awareness in tow, I still believe in being human and sometimes wandering down these tempting paths that offer the whole gambit of sweet, sour, bitter and salty emotions. Maybe I´m reinforcing the samscaras that keep me coming back to learn more, life time after life time, but for right now, that´s okay with me. I have a body and a heart because I am here on this earth to feel. Why not live up all there is to be offered in the human incarnation? In meeting Martín, my gut told me what I was getting into, possible highs and probable lows. With open arms, I said yes, I´ll take it all.

The rest of that day in which we had reunited was magic filled. We feasted that night at my hostel, and I invited Martín to stay with me to which he happily accepted. Let me first say, though, how although my tender heart wanted for the two of our bodies to be close, all of the time we spent as a group was as delectable as a glass of Baileys and Cream. Fun and rowdy, yet respectful and conscious, these free stepping men were like the circus coming into town but into my personal daily life. If we were outside in the chilly night under the stars, we would all huddle together under Martín´s poncho to keep warm, laughing and holding hands and discussing subjects near to my heart (all in Spanish, of course, so I was getting full-throttle practice). Fernado from Peru, nickname Civiche, would play guitar while we sang and clapped. Martín would play one of the three jimbe drums he had made himself form a tree trunk and with which he was traveling. Gabriel was like a kid with the new harmonium he worked for days to earn the $20 it cost to buy, blowing into it and sounding like a Parisian accordion musician in the metro tunnels. I found out that Argentinean men can be very much like Italian men: boisterous, expressive with their hands, unafraid to sing loudly in the streets or jump around, and generally just not holding back. And yet fully capable to know when to be quiet gentlemen.

On one afternoon I accompanied Civiche and Martín on their rounds of the restaurants of Cuenca at lunchtime where they would be allowed by nearly every establishment we approached to play three songs for the diners and collect contributions for their mini-performances. I loved it. We had a vegetarian lunch with our earnings, rain deluging now a few feet from our outdoor table, rain that had graciously waited for us to finish our restaurant tour. This left them with a few dollars to go towards the fund to buy bicycles at the coast next week and ride their musical way up the edge of the Pacific side of Ecuador for the next thirty odd days.

The next day we tracked each other down in a hodge-podge way, and they swooped me up for a journey out of the city to Girón, a pastoral, famous-for-its-waterfall pueblo an hour long bus ride down the valley from Cuenca. This was to be our most amazing adventure yet and the finale because they were scheduled (as scheduled as time-defying gypsy’s can be) to leave town the next morning. Climbing off the bus in the middle of idyllic nowhere, we then ascended a green slope owned by the farmer across the way. The steep lush cow pasture welcomed us with all of the freshness of her breast. My body filled with an enlightened pleasure I had missed after having been in the city for so many days. Discovering gifts from the Pacha, flowers in my hair, caves in the sides of wet ravines, we climbed and climbed. When the sun put himself behind the mountains, Grandmother Moon, days away from fullness illuminated our star speckled journey and on we sang and laughed. Being with these boys meant hugs and jokes and endless songs. We spoke to the moon and mooed to the shadowy cows. After jumping down the rolling hills, we sat in the deep grass and ate oranges and cookies, snuggled together for comfortable warmth. Chiviche sang his heart out to the night filled valley, rocking out on his guitar while we clapped and danced. Meditating on the moon for a while to the melodies of Gaby´s harmonium, I was in bliss.

We hitched a ride back to Cuenca in a big truck hauling a huge pile of sand in its open bed. Four of us clambered up and over the tall wooden sides in the back and jumped down like kids at recess. There were bars crossing over the top of the hill of sand so the first thing we did was start to swing around from them and hoot like monkeys. Doing flips and arches with our bodies as the truck roared along the road was abetted by the momentum of the trucks forward movement, and we laughed and sang some more. Then we perched on respective points of the bars which lifted us up high as the truck slowly chugged up a long grade. The air was one degree on the warm side of too chilly, permitting us to take in the wind through our hairs and let it caress our moonlit, beaming faces. Finally, when the road slanted downwards and we picked up speed, we jumped down to bundle ourselves in each other´s laps and burrow in a poncho shrouded mass. It was so dreamy to feel so genuinely comfortable and loved by this new threesome of friends. It was one of those gloriously alive and unique times you never want to end, but which like everything is bound to pass, and you are so grateful that you tasted ecstasy for a while.

When we arrived back to the lights and maze of the cement blocks, we descended to the street and boarded a bus that we soon turned into a music filled pod, and there was a lot more inspired swinging and hanging upside down from overhead bars. The bus, and now grinning bus driver, delivered us onto Calle Large like a school of wiggling tadpoles. We made our own parade down the deserted streets and every taxi and passing group honked and cheered to us. My hips and clapping hands felt vibrant and at home, my gypsy soul nourished as fantasies of my youth were fulfilled. The vision of our colorful and joyous selves made me shine on the inside and out. Part of me felt like I was feasting on the last of rare fruit. Not that I won´t be ensconced into other experiences like this throughout my lifetime, but none will ever be quite the same. This realization made it all that much more crystallized in blessedness. It made me inhale it in deeply, not to hold onto it with a grip fearful of loss, but to receive fully what I was being gifted during this slice of time with all the respect and awareness worthy of such a gift from Life.

Like any tide, the evening ebbed slowly back to a more relaxed state. At their request, I cooked a meal for everyone, flattered because they had liked my cooking from the other evening. I experimented for the first time with cooking chicken after many years of only putting my hands to vegetarian dishes. It was succulent and savory and a success. Although I wanted like everything to stay with the fiesta as well as spend another night with Martín, it was 1am and I had class at 8am. My heart knew that it had to accept the reality of our diverging paths, let go of this beautiful bird and walk on. Easy, no. Necessary, sí. The old pattern would be to stay feeling as if I now had a vacancy in my life or to focus on the absence of this man from my daily experience. But over time I have been influencing the ritual habits of my mind to foster feelings and recognition of the truth, which is that I always, in every moment, am complete. It is no more true to say that I now am lacking this person’s presence in my life than to say that I now forever have this person in my life. This is the truth. I have gained, not lost, a new soul friend. We both still exist on this very small planet and therefore will always be together. In any moment, I can wish him well with my heart and he will receive the touch of my friendship.

This all being said, to have seen someone leave who I really liked being with, has exercised my heart muscle. My belief is that each time the heart feels this strongly, it is living out its purpose, and it is opening wider. That which I loved being close to in the form of another person was a reflection of what is already planted in me. It’s just really fun to get to physically play with and gaze upon the genius and beauty that is the essence of our beings. Any amount of logic, no matter how wise, cannot substitute that feeling. There is a unifying and complete feeling when the whole divinity within us is manifested exteriorly in two bodies that can then touch each others Earth made animal forms. This mixture of flesh and spirit is so unconscionably sacred it breaks my heart open and drives me to go walk barefooted upon the Mother.

I know that I will meet a man who is this reflection and friend, one who is available in all ways for our physical bodies to stay close to one another (as my Dad would say, Geographically Desirable). We will both be incredibly attracted to each other on all levels, that is, skin, bone, scent, mind and spirit. The timing will flow and it will be both exciting and familiar. Until that day, I will love myself as deeply as I already love him. Because how I treat myself is the reflection that I will attract… and that’s how it works.