In a past life, my soul must have been broken into many different pieces and scattered throughout the world. Somehow my intuition always seems to know exactly where to find them—in a pint of Guinness on the Dingle Peninsula in Ireland, on a beach at the base of Mt. Etna in Sicily, in the eyes of a camel in Morocco. This morning, my mind wanders back to the piece I found in a steaming cup of hot chocolate in Oaxaca, Mexico.
Just out of high school and traveling alone, I had come to Oaxaca to improve my Spanish, unaware that the city would come to mean so much more to me than this, that a piece of my soul was waiting for me.
After stepping off a rickety bus that I had been on all night, flying around blind corners, and teetering on the edges of cliffs with only the dashboard alter to protect me, I was greeted by a city just waking up for the day. I stood still, taking in the place that was to be my home for the next month. The first rays of sun were just climbing over the mountains in the distance, and the palm trees above my head were filled with the sound of birds so deafening, that for a moment I forgot I was in a city, and caught a glimpse of the jungle that Oaxaca once was.
Men pushing giant brooms passed by, preparing the city for the day, and I marveled at what a civilized replacement this was to the obnoxious street-sweeping machines in my own city. A group of little girls in white uniforms with immaculately braided hair walked by holding hands, and an old woman on the corner was just opening her juice stand. I found my way to the zocolo, the center plaza, and sat down at a little outdoor cafe. A man brought me a cup of “chocolate caliente.” The cup looked as if it were made of pure, un-tamed earth, and the chocolate inside was as thick and dark as mud. As I took a tiny, tentative sip of the steaming chocolate, the food of the gods, the Aztecs called it, I could taste the richness of the cacao, ground with cinnamon and cayenne. The Mexicans say it simply soothes the stomach and calms the mind, but certainly there is something magical and “godly” in this chocolate. It’s as if it causes you to see inside yourself, and to feel utterly at peace with what you see. It causes you to see vividly the path that has brought you to the moment you are witnessing, and to have a calm confidence that that path will continue to lead you home.
The waiter returned with a basket of warm bread. “I didn’t order this.” With a faint smile, he placed it gently before me. The bread was warm and the sweet smell of anise engulfed me. “You’re from here?” he said in Spanish. It was partly a question and partly a statement. I returned his smile and nodded, “Part of me is,” I said.
I spent the next month staying with a family in a little yellow house, moments from Oaxaca’s main church, Santo Domingo. I felt so at peace in Oaxaca that it caused me to feel that I was truly experiencing each moment for the first time in my life. The mornings in Oaxaca felt especially magical, and I rose each day before dawn, which was coupled with the passing of the water truck, and men yelling “Agua” at the top of their lungs so that I wouldn’t miss them. Before the sun rose, I would climb Las Escaleras del Fortin, the giant stairs that lead to the top of the mountain overlooking the city. From there, I would look out over the entire valley and witness the sun’s ascent over the hills in the distance. I could also look across and faintly see the stone temples of Monte Alban, the ancient Zapotec capital that stood on the opposite mountaintop, nestled in the trees, separated from the exhaust and noise of modern life. It felt so healing to watch, from above, the commencement of each day, to watch the earth turn from the perspective of the gods.
