I climbed a mountain and I turned around

Hierve el Agua is a popular natural mountain spring pool formed by a petrified waterfall where tourists and local people go to swim about an hour outside of Oaxaca. On this day in April the main road was closed for construction so the only access was over a mountain pass, and even more people than usual were driving there for Easter Sunday.

The dirt road up the mountain of Hierve el Agua was just wide enough for two cars and has no rail. Cars driving up on the right side were on the outside edge, inches from a steep dropoff. Canek was unbothered but driving carefully as sports cars and motorcycles came down the descent, appearing suddenly as if coming out of the mountain.

In twenty minutes we were high enough to see the whole town below and I was anxious. From my exercises, I started to think through disaster scenarios. At worst, we will accidentally drive too far over on the right and the car will fall hundreds of feet off the side of the cliff. Or, the car will break down and we'll be robbed or stranded.

As time went on I was sure we wouldn’t make it home. I tried not to look out. At its height the mountain is 7800 ft. If we only made it halfway up the ascent the fall would still take less than thirty seconds and we would all four die. I calculated this as I oscillate between choices.  What’s worse, asking to turn around and missing the pool, or facing the risk? My whole body was bracing for an impact as I visualized unmet desires from the past. I was going to die before I did what I wanted to do in my life and I started to panic.

Canek made a three-point turn, slowly. Then we drove all the way back down. According to them, it was not a big deal that we didn't reach the pool. But the mountain metaphors had started jokingly before we even got up and now that we’d turned around it felt full of meaning. Maybe the mountain was trying to show me how fearfully I live. That I'm like the meme of the miner who stops shoveling, defeated, right before a trove of diamonds. Maybe it's imparting an appreciation for life, or reminding me to visit my fantasies. Don’t you want what you really want?

I did feel different after we came down the mountain. It wasn’t a near-death experience, but that need to do more than what I was doing in my life stayed with me. Sometimes when we need a shift we take what we can get.

I was in ebbing and flowing states of mourning for the summer and fall, dealing with three separate deaths. Especially while I knew Cormac was sick, I kept thinking about the mountain. The fear I had about his impending death was similar to my fear of falling off. I imagined all the things he wouldn’t get to do if he died. I told myself stories like there's no way we're going to fall, look at all these other cars driving by, look at all these people saying he'll be fine. Why am I the only one freaking out? I couldn't go back down that mountain.

In October I turned twenty seven and then he died, and these two things hit like a single whiplash. His parting message was about call-following. The plasma percolating in my mind since the mountain was congealing. I felt the weight of my age for the first time. I have to, soon, pursue what I want.

In November I quit hormonal birth control after twelve years on suspicion of its treasonous effects. Five days later the greatest calm and conviction came over me. The synthetic hormone dampening my senses and my mind was gone. My body was reborn, and I could hear myself think for the first time.

In the quiet of this calm, the dissonance between what I was doing in my life and what I wanted to be doing took on a new character. It used to be this benevolent pet project that I was rolling up my sleeves and whittling down every day. Now it was making me ill to look at this unnecessary chasm. I knew I could bridge the gap –and worse, it was me who crafted it.

It doesn’t surprise me that this started in April, the most psychically fertile month. I see the most symbols and synchronicities. I receive messages from people I’m thinking about, I see visions in my dreams, I get possessed by new ideas like a little spring fever demon.

I both tend towards narrativizing life and caution against it, but anyone might find the April proposition to be true. Many cultures celebrate the New Year in April, and many of these fall in the middle of the month. Mid to late April has psychic significance, even simply as the beginning of spring. Our bodies and our minds are waking up, we have renewed enthusiasm, and we make a sort of re-entrance (return?).

This is all to say, among other things, that the mountain isn’t a convenient metaphor I’ve applied in post. That day planted a little deposit that I slowly worked at all year. As I went through ‘Real’ personal trials, it was in my head, ushering me towards the answer.

I'd like to go back to Hierve el Agua. But the particulars of that situation– the road closure, and the fact that it was the Day of Resurrection and we didn't realize it– were convergences that won’t occur again, that seem comically arranged. The state of affairs in itself is the source of meaningful complexion, the transparentness of the symbolism. It’s like a trolley problem in real life, a litmus of some unknown progenitor. I was occupied with whether I passed, but not why, how, or that it was presented in the first. We’re supposed to be paying attention to the lessons presented to us.

I’m less concerned with analysis recently. This year I learned how to hear the call of my own desire and make decisions. These are twins and should be acquainted with one another. There’s a correct order too: hear the call, then make the call. If not, on what are you basing your decisions? Belief systems and codes of conduct?

At least in the internal investigation, your desires or convictions are self-evident. Past the reasoning is what is. Act on that, or you must defend why, when the only real why, is it just is. You will, eventually, act in accordance with your own will and the will of the universe. Drop the conversation with what is-not and and abandon morality too. Don’t you want what you really want? Will it matter that you’re in hell when you’re in heaven?

"A relationship is the price you pay for the anticipation of it." Your dopamine release is highest when you recieve the signal of reward, and your satisfaction level decreases as soon as you receive it. Some psychoanalysts would say that that lack drives desire. So I’m not advocating the pursuit of every desire. More like, let yourself know about your desires, let yourself in on the secret. Don't forget to fantasize before you actualize.

I had a vision. A man and a woman were having a fight. He was throwing all of their belongings around smashing them and causing chaos in a fit of rage. At first I thought her face was an expression of anguish but looking closer I realized she was laughing ecstatically. The more of her life was destroyed, the more she laughed. Perhaps the man is a representation of the assertive energy force and desire, and the woman the submissive, the experience of freedom and joy in letting go. In essence, the creative power of destruction within the psyche.

If I felt this way earlier in my life I would have done everything differently, but these exercises are meaningless. I don’t know if I would turn around on the mountain if it were today. My only regret is that I didn't tell myself what I wanted when I wanted it. I have been sick with that illness of self-betrayal for a long time. I promise to no longer swerve around cataclysms, but to drive through them and hope to see the other side. I hope there is a pool there, and I will finally be baptized.