14. Mexico y Columbia
10th-11th July 2023
Police sirens wail to a sharp yellow light along Stewart Street. With two pivotal houses behind me, I smile poignancy, ambivalence and assuredness. While I can’t foresee what’s to come, my calm tells me I’m in the right place. Plus, on waking this morning, it was 3:33am when I tapped my phone.
The red-eye from Perth to Sydney descends from strong tail winds. I wake to a dark cabin in turbulence and it’s 3:33am Western Australia time when I tap my phone. Through the cold window a smattering of stars meld with the smattering of lights of New South Wales. The plane tilts and the moon smiles in the direction of the Americas, Spring1 by Max Ritcher—my theme song through writing Gemstones—playing on random in my Pearls playlist.
Waiting for my luggage at Sydney airport, I breathe and let go. All that is meant to be will be. Catching the bus to the international terminal, checking into American Airlines and moving through customs is smooth. But then I’m in the international terminal and it’s buzzing with people and plastic and I see so many strange people. I see so much sickness. We, humanity, as a collective are sick, I think.
On the plane there are lots of overweight Americans. The guy across the aisle asks the flight attendant if the soy milk he was given, which he won’t drink, could be useful if he returned it. ‘Everything is thrown out at the end of the flight,’ the male flight attendant responds with straight, white, smiling teeth. Eating the cold chicken salad, I’m grossed by putting it into my body. But I do it anyway, returning to the thought that what we put into our body is pivotal.
The Los Angeles airport challenges me. I’m certain I’m going to miss my flight until I remember to accept whatever happens.
Mexico City is daunting. Doing something for the first time is always daunting. Plus, everyone is speaking Spanish. ‘No hablo Espanol,’ I reply nervously to the lady at customs.
‘Ticket.’ She directs, which makes her colleague at the next desk laugh with her.
I shrug my shoulders, refuse to take on their energy.
The lady asks about my return ticket.
I tell her I don’t have a return ticket because I’m going to Guatemala.
She stamps my passport and looks pleased to hold power in telling me she’s only giving me a month because I don’t have a return ticket.
But I just shrug my shoulders at her. Whatever. It all happens for a reason.
I run through dense rain from the corner shop to the hostel, where I put a dense cheese and meat toastie into my body. There are people about but without the enthusiasm of cheap hostels. We’re all too good for each other. And I’m exhausted.
In my dorm, I speak with a young Australian guy who lives in Stockholm, and a New Zealand lady. They both reference the activities of the hostel being spiritually-based, which isn’t their interest. Instead, they’re drawn to the Mexican style wrestling. I wonder why I’m here, what’s my motive. Because the tediousness of hostels and being polite to people who aren’t aligned is something I’ve been through before. And this time is different. Although I don’t yet know how. So I will learn Spanish. I will take deep breaths. And I will trust myself.
12th July 2023
The hostel is sparkling clean and stylish. In a mixed dorm of eight, I’m asleep in my capsule by 7:30pm. But I wake through the night. There is noise through the hostel and there is noise through the window. I’m not surprised to feel overwhelmed, conflicted by the information people have kindly given in visiting tourists sites. Although I already know my answer, there is still much on my mind and there are messages on my phone. A journey of intuition, I repeat, drifting back to sleep until I’m back awake, breathing heavily. There’s something in the capsule with me, it’s hovering over me, it’s trying to touch me, its presence so strong, just like the experience I had some weeks ago in Broome.
The top floor is full of natural light, light wooden furniture, tasteful ornaments, and clean, beautiful, budding travellers. I take the fruit, muesli, yoghurt and coffee and sit with my iPad. I hear a girl who was working reception yesterday ask an Italian boy about remembering his dreams. He doesn’t remember his dreams, but she does. I go for more fruit, and the girl who remembers her dreams is now talking to the cleaner. I tell the girl I remember my dreams and that I had a nightmare early this morning. I tell her how I also had a similar nightmare before I left Australia. The cleaner wants the girl to translate what I said. The cleaner replies in Spanish and the girl translates that the Mexican understanding is tied with death and shadows. She mentions witches. Sleep paralysis. Holding something within me. Stresses? Weariness? Something more that I need to let go? Despite speaking different languages, there’s a connection with the cleaner, and she wants a selfie with me and the American girl who was working reception yesterday.
My first time walking the streets I’m with Daphne, a Latin and Greek professor who lives in Manhattan and is in Mexico City to improve her Spanish. Daphne understands what it’s like to freeze when being spoken to. Daphne also understands the obligation to tick tourist attractions off our lists despite it being in combat to our introverted desires.
Daphne goes to her Spanish class, and I walk a beautiful park rich in tall green trees, watching people, knowing that shyness is my greatest obstacle, and that is why I’m alone in Mexico, being dealt obstacles I have to overcome to survive. I go over basic Spanish phrases in my head.
On my return to the hostel, I sleep.
Lo siento, solo hablo un pocco Espanol, estoy aprendiendo
13th July 2023
Awake in the night for five hours my thoughts return to San Miguel de Allende. Returning to vivid dreams, my alarm wakes me at 9:30am. At 11am I’m still at the hostel, jet lagged and nauseas from last night’s tacos with Erandi, Byron’s cousin who offered for me to come stay at her house in Playa de Carmen, Quintana Roo, and who also feels like she’s from somewhere else—something she’s never told that to anyone before. She also understands the desire to disappear. But while Erandi doesn’t want to bring children to this Earth, I do.
Feeling an invisible pressure to be out seeing the sites, I wonder whose voice this is. I wonder what I feel to do opposed to what I think I should do. On my iPad, I try etching a map for these coming weeks. Yet whose voice is this, too? Because I’m happiest here, writing contemplations, inching towards confidence through repetitive, small interactions, feeling a cool breeze coming from the bustling, leaf-filled Mexico City street.
I wonder how many people in the world feel like they’re from somewhere else.
14th July 2023
My time in Mexico in city has been costly, and I’ve only managed two tourist sites–Teotihuacán pyramids and Frida Kahlo’s house. While what is to come is unknown, I know my money won’t last as long as thought, I know that I don’t want to spend my money in a tourist way, and I know I will persevere in my core, unwavering dreams.
“And Frida is the sole example in art history of someone who has torn open her breast and her heart in order to tell the biological truth of what she feels inside them.”
15th July 2023
Navigating my fear, navigating the streets, much can be said of observing other’s actions and adjusting mine accordingly. While I don’t yet understand many of the words, I can hear the intention behind the words.
16th July 2023
San Miguel de Allende, after all these years. It’s a large, clean, expensive city (the groceries costing the same as it would have cost me in Australia), but the hostel is quiet, and I am content on my iPad without backpackers around me.
Walking toward the centre, the sun’s hot and I stop at a trendy cafe recommended by a Colombian girl at the quiet hostel hostel. Waiting for a table, I’m calm and content, people watching Americans and Mexicans dressed elegantly in bohemia. I take jewellery ideas from the waitress. I will be connected to the Americas forever.
In the afternoon, when the sun’s harshness wanes, I use no maps to walk the straight road to the historical centre, where colourful buildings line cobblestoned streets. Inside a grand, pink church, I sit in a pew and watch detailed art of gold, wondering what Jesus would have thought of all this. A bell dongs. People stand and I stand with them. And for the first time since, what, grandpa’s funeral, I do the sign of the cross. When the people start reciting a prayer in Spanish, I decide on Our Father. We all finish at the same time.
After, I walk more cobblestoned, tourist filled streets without worry to what I’m doing with me life or my independence. If anything, I crave a wine with a companion. But I have a book to write.
NEW MOON INTENTIONS forming of honesty & acceptance:
Honesty in the way of releasing the truth from the deepest part of my soul. Right now, this is connected with relationships and my Earth purpose. This is tied to acceptance. Acceptance of what comes from my honesty, acceptance of what I’m given by…holy shit, how I want to use the word God; how I need to find another word for God.
17th of July 2023
Last night, I curled into a ball and watched tears fall on white sheets. Do I really have to do this? Why can’t I just be simple? But in truth, the tears are also relief. Because now it’s a Monday morning and there are five full days ahead of lone writing and then…then I know in the long run I need emotional support through such endeavours. So I close my eyes. I close my eyes and I see my dream creative space where the morning coffee is the best, and the homegrown food makes my body smile.
Back at Rustica, the hip coffee shop, I wait for my table for uno (the only uno in the cafe) and hear an American lady introduce another American lady to her ‘life partner.’ After years of struggling with what terminology to what I want in identifying an intimate relationship, I realise it’s a life partner.
18th July 2023
It takes three hours to get to the ‘hot springs’ with the young Spanish guy volunteering at the hostel. Inside is touristy and 90% of people in their bathers are fat. I realise this isn’t my Mexico calling. I came for people, I came to connect communities, I came through intuition. I want the jungle, I want conversation, I want to sit still and breathe the air away from the unsustainable beaten path. Karolina, the Polish lady I met in Alice Springs, replies to my message. She can put me in touch with a European community near Palenque.
19-21st July 2023
Days are flying, writing, calming, moving between cafes and the library, not caring what other’s think.
In reflection, all has come to me with good timing. And it will continue to do so. On the walk into the centre, I consider my temperamental legs and how a daily practice of stretching and massage is important for their longevity. I must love this body I’m in with all my heart.
An American-esque cafe in the centre of San Miguel de Allende. The coffee is mediocre, like all the coffees of Mexico, but I’m at peace refining the framework for the The Gemstones of Broomerang.
At the library cafe a group of mum-age American women enjoy a nice lunch. They talk about the nice lunch and properties their kids are purchasing. What I see is a selfishness. That the world we exist in is a selfish world. But don’t get me wrong, this does not make them bad people. No. No not at all. For I too play victim to this mentality. I too am a consequence of such programming.
I feel that being a writer holds a certain degree of narcissism. In interactions with my people back home, I centre conversation around myself.
Jacinta, my guiding witch-light at the start of this year, gifts me wisdom. I will enter a deep trance state because I can do this. I will keep going to the churches, speaking with God, whatever it takes.
Walking the pebbled streets of San Antonio at sunset, I listen to the sounds of the streets. Nearing the hostel, I understand I won’t find my people here.
22nd July 2023
Was it getting my period in the early hours of this morning that created this peaceful mood? On my daily walk to the centre, I see the biggest, blackest butterfly I’ve ever seen. It waves to the concrete, and it waves to me. I turn into a craft market. My draw to the jewellery stalls displays show me that this is a muscle still to be properly flexed. Taking hold of my neck scarf, which protects my fair skin from the hard sun, the necklace I made at Broomerang breaks, crumbling into my hand.
Back on the cobblestone streets, I feel naked without a necklace. A yellow butterfly moves through the colourful buildings. People smile to me. I carry on writing.
23rd July 2023
Another calm morning sitting in my writing world in the courtyard of the hostel, looking to a nest of the tiny hummingbird-looking birds that guzzle the flowers of the yard, feeling an ecstasy from the mental visions of the life I can create. Future Sarah. Who has the book complete and is setting up her long-term base with community and sustainability back home in Western Australia. Future Sarah. Who travels with deep purpose, ethical food, endless creativity, bountiful nature, meaningful conversations, good humour. While I don’t know how long I will stay in Mexico, I know I will return to Mexico in this lifetime. Multiple times. I arrange the new structure for the second draft. I haven’t drunk alcohol for two weeks.
24th July 2023
It is becoming clear, this calm I feel. This ability to go deep within myself, healing wounds, revealing shadows, letting my true heart shine without fear of its interpretation. Whatever this is, it’s preparing me for trust. To trust what I’m being called to share. To trust my honesty. To trust my feminine. To trust the explanation of my philosophies. Trust. With every part of my mind, every part of my body, with every part of my soul, I trust.
25th July 2023
Still, I’m human, spending a solid hour at a café touch-typing my subconscious, creating ideas for plans, returning to the hostel without zest for life. Searching for a secluded place on Air BnB doesn’t feel right, and so I stop. Consider my journey of intuition. My desire to travel with purpose.
Stepping out into the afternoon, walking to the supermarket to purchase a dinner presented in plastic, thunder cracks, rain drips, traffic rumbles. I can’t do this. I can’t return to the aimless wanderer of my twenties. I can’t return to my phone, grains and sugars, my moods affected by all I feed my body.
No.
Because already I know what brings me joy in life. Already I know I’m most at peace when absorbed in my writing. I know I can turn off my phone. I can consume good foods. I can be clear with the universe. I can disappear without fear. And when I emerge, I will return home even more empowered.
26th July 2023
At the botanical gardens, the cactuses make me feel like I’m in Mexico. I wander the dirt paths slowly, a moving figure stopping me deathly still. The black-tailed rattle snake stops too, and we take each other in. ‘Scusi,’ I say to the Spanish-speakers trying to pass me. I may have spoken Italian to them, but they follow my finger to the pattern in the grass. The three of us watch the rich pattern of the rattle snake slither further into the grass. I wander onward in a better mood.
Strutting down the same traffic-filled street I’ve been walking for ten days, I’m confident entering the Mexican-American restaurant the girl of the hostel recommended. Instantly, a lady calls out to me. I can sit at her table because she’s alone and I’m alone, she directs. I look around. How did the lady know I was alone? I sit down, and the lady eats her corn chips. She soon asks if I live here.
No I don’t, I tell her.
The lady tells me she’s lived in San Miguel seven years. She had to get away from the states in this time. There’s the dark at play, you see. ‘Do you think Donald Trump is a bad man?’ she prompts. ‘Because you know he’s not a bad man, don’t you?’
I shift in my seat. Here we go, I think.
‘Have you had the vaccines?’ she next asks.
‘Two,’ I tell her.
The lady half closes her eyes and makes movement from behind her eyes and with her hands. ‘I’m just ridding it from your body,’ she says.
I’m curious.
She could tell me so much, but she may seem crazy, she tells me.
‘It’s okay,’ I tell her, already knowing she’s crazy.
From vaccines, we go into the dark forces, with her referring to ‘satanists’ and ‘them,’ telling me we can’t trust the higher powers of this Earth. She’s from somewhere else, she reckons. There are a lot of people on Earth at the moment from somewhere else, she reckons.
I’ve heard it all before.
The lady, who’s 79-years of age, grows comfortable, listening to my own explanations of being from somewhere else. She can get me in touch with someone who can read me and tell me why I’m here on Earth, she reckons. She is a manifestor, like me, and according to her astrological reading, she has no filter with thoughts to words. And she doesn’t, that’s clear. The lady doesn’t have friends either. But she’s been writing a book. And now she’s anxious because she had her photograph taken for the book, which is why she’s eating a hamburger and wearing mascara. When she gets home she’ll have to rid the tomato sauce from her, because this is part of the dark force’s ploy, she reckons. Everything is going to be revealed in the next few years, she also reckons. Everything will come crashing down. ‘Were your parents bad to you?’ she asks.
‘How did you know?’ I react. ‘I mean, no they weren’t bad, but it’s been a big journey for me to accept myself.’
‘I can see it in your face, I can see it in your eyes,’ she says. ‘We go through these things and we heal these things. You still think, Oh should I be like this? Am I a good person? Am I doing the right thing? But it’s all wrong.’
Besides Donald Trump actually being a good person, I understand all the lady talks of.
‘You’re beautiful, did you know that?’ she next asks.
I shake my head.
The lady already knows I’ve never thought myself beautiful. That understanding myself has been a lifelong battle. ‘I can see things,’ she tells me. ‘We can see more things than we think. You know I can read emotions. I’ve spent my life reading emotions.’
The lady doesn’t bond with too many people. She’s intense, she knows this. She comes from a family of bad people, you see. She was close to her sister, until her sister’s husband killed her.
I tell the lady that she needs to get into nature. That I’ve come into her life to remind her to get into nature. She wants to visit me in Australia with her two cats. She will send me the details of her book when it’s released, and she’ll send the name of the lady for energy work.
We hug goodbye. We blow each other a kiss. ‘I love you,’ we say.
Back for my last sleep at the San Miguel hostel, Google tells me that snakes are a sign of healing, or a transformative process, or fertility. Like healing, it can bring discomfort. And I’m ready for discomfort, I think. I’m ready for an August where I listen to my voice within, like the lady had also noted of herself.
27th July 2023
Today is the day I leave San Miguel. What adventure awaits only time will tell. As I make my way to Querétaro, there are double digits everywhere and I arrive to the bus station at 12:12.
Watching the haze of the distant mountains from the bus window, a thought passes through: can we actually stop climate change, or should we be turning the focus to the positive, instead creating surviving microclimates?
In the foyer at the airport, I watch fat people on phones. Eating the plastic food, again I feel humanity’s sickness.
Unable to book an uber from Cancun airport, I’m bombarded by touts. Desperate to get out of the overwhelm, I pay 1000 pesos for a taxi. Although the price is explosive, it’s better than the original price of 1360, and I would have spent it again even if it was my last $100.
In the minivan, relieved to be free from the crowd, my mouth is agape, and my heart is broken watching thick high rise after thick high rise. What is this place, all weird and loud resembling my idea of hell?
At the backpackers, two separate couples having sex behind the curtains of the bunk beds is so ludicrous it’s humorous. I roll over. What brought me here? Am I meant to experience all this for inspiration? Why does this distant land break my heart? Have I had a connection with this land before? Is that what brought me here? Joyce reckons I can remember this stuff if I want to. And while it’s been an expensive 24 hours, there have been a hell of a lot of realisations. I roll over again, clicking into The Pattern: right now, you might have an intense drive to transform what you’ve been investing your time and efforts into.
28th July 2023
This world seems weird, the bus station chaotic and loud, and I feel detached. Joyce sends me a message about empaths, and I hear the sounds of the jungle, I feel the rainforest.
On the bus from Cancun, I consider time. The time I’ve spent with Indigenous Australians understanding of time.
A storm rolls in as I roll into Playa del Carmen. Stepping from the bus I see blue water, concrete and tourists.
Erandi’s given me recommendations and I make it to the Marley cafe before the rain starts. An American man with ugly tattoos rolls his eyes to the waitress not understanding his English, using gestures to rush her along for his coffee and croissant. The air conditioner is freezing.
It’s a long day between cafes, my belly and bank bloated.
With my hand out the taxi window, I refine what my intention would be if my life headed for ayahuasca’s healing, and thunder cracks overhead with a lightning bolt that makes the driver and me share a surprised smile.
The room at Erandi’s is stark and bare. There’s nothing to look at, nothing to do, but if I close my eyes I go to other places.
29th July 2023
It’s afternoon by the time I walk into the steaming streets. At the closest café, another recommendation from Erandi, the air is thick with heat and pollution. I want nature. A knowing that brings more calm alongside the calm I already feel in having no one knowing and judging what I’m doing. Still, hypothetical conversations of my return home after a couple of months gnaws at me. Despite never saying how long I would be away for—one month to eleven years, I had predicted—I believe people expect me to be away longer than a couple of months.
Buying credit and agua at the corner Oxxo, a man opens the door for customers. Seeing someone give him coins, I give him five pesos. One day, I will give him $50.
30th July 2023
The peso has risen. I pay seven Australian dollars for a long black that doesn’t compare to an Australian long black. The taxis and tourists are moving through the window, and I mentally wave them away.
Maybe my coming to the Yucatán Península was to experience the ache of the concrete, exploitation, tourism, and rubbish strewn along highways.
In Tulum, at a raw café across the road from the bus station, I pay twenty Australian dollars for a smoothie bowl and eat it listening to a loud English guy on what sounds like a date. He talks about himself a lot, referencing things being ‘wrong’ before veering back to his spiritual journey. The English man talks about a technique I learnt from Zena in Theta Healing in 2014, post Cambodia.
In the bathroom I ask, ‘Do I want the brownie?’ My body leans backwards. ‘Do I want to do ayahuasca?’ My body leans forward.
Back at the station, I don’t hear them say Bacalar and I miss my bus even though I was standing right there. It costs me another $40 and now I’m vexed, wanting to leave Mexico, obsessing on how I didn’t come here to take photos of ruins. Maybe, instead, I came here to see the wider world in ruins. Because this journey isn’t about collecting stories. It’s about collecting self. And with what’s to come, I need to keep healing, I need my purpose to be clear, I need my most powerful self, not fretting, not obsessing, using my money wisely with more on its way.
Bacalar is quieter, which I had been told I would enjoy, but still the centre is still full of gringos and hamburgers. I join the game, enjoying a beer and a burger despite the whole cost and heavy stomach stuff.
31st July 2023
The sleep is peaceful in the dorm—no one snoring, no one having sex. On waking, I dress feminine. Walking down the garden path into the sunshine, excited by a space where I don’t have to wear shoes outside, a lady beams at me. ‘Beautiful,’ she says. In the bathroom, ‘beautiful tu,’ she repeats into my face.
‘Gracias,’ I shyly smile. ‘En tu,’ I reply in Italian.
Clicking into Google, I’m shown the sorts of articles I’ve come to appreciate—discoveries of ancient civilisations, archaeological findings, research of outer space, etc—and I’m alerted to a vague memory of my dream. It had been about breaking through the Earth’s stratosphere. Like there was a physical part you went through.
Back in this world, Bruce keeps coming to my thoughts, although I know I’m not in a place to take on a new project when I have other projects unfinished. Like a book. Like a journey of intuition. Like continuing my inner healing journey in order to contribute to the collective’s healing journey. The sort of healing journey that will be shown in the glow of my face and the peace of my presence rather than the stories I tell. The sort of healing journey that sees me dive deeper into my past, revealing the shadows hindering me from reaching my potential.
Sitting in the hostel garden, my zoom video comes to life and Urban starts the call with ‘beautiful.’ I guess it’s a beautiful day. And it all feels right, telling Urban I’ll go ahead for the three week retreat (if my money is spent consciously from here on, I have enough).
The morning sends me into a logistics flurry. By the time I wander to have a taco for lunch, only the retreat deposit is paid—the flights back to Australia are an awful lot of my money. Yet my instincts tell me it will all pay off, and time will tell the story of my instincts.
The evolution revolution.
1st August 2023
The month begins with a full moon in the garden of a camping y hostal in Bacalar.
Yesterday, my mind was obsessively thinking, planning, drinking only one coffee compared to the three of the day before, and wandering into town to stretch my legs and peer through waterfront fences to grand old trees obscured by buildings and money.
Last night, wide awake despite extreme tired, watching YouTube videos of girls creating beautiful lives, I remember how happy I am when creating. A creative home where I yearn to return. Because my journey outward is taking me inwards. Seeing travel as letting go of expectations of what I’m told. Tuning into another frequency. Trusting myself.
This morning, in my recommended Google articles, there’s a scientist’s discovery of a solid metal ball in the centre of the Earth. Nothing surprises me anymore.
Through the day at the lagoon, I speak deeply with a Mexican-Canadian guy about his journey with the ‘toad,’ and of our experiences with travel. At twenty-six, the Mexican-Canadian guy vocalises his need for the so-called ‘spiritual’ journey that’s typically shunned in his Vancouver home. He talks of a return to the creativity he adored when he was younger. He joins the list of travellers telling me they don’t want to return to their home country and life.
Back at the camping y hostal, my mind is back obsessively thinking about money and planning what I’m going to do for the next three weeks. Erratically, wanting peace for my return to Australia, I book an expensive flight home via Mexico City with Qantas .
When I come to working on the book, everything feels right again.
2nd August 2023
Today is long and hot. Today I want home. Today I have only one weak coffee. Today I’m tired. Today I make a meal of vegetables in a backpacker kitchen with a fridge that’s slimy with food and dishes marked by years of predecessors. Today I look forward to having my own kitchen with all my beautiful pieces in beautiful spots.
By the time I’m in bed I breathe reminders to trust. That I have the space to write. That I can do it cheaply. That I can let go of the obsessive planning for presence to write, which continues to bring me greatest joy and calm. Although today, today was undoubtedly challenging and tedious.
3rd August 2023
Returning home to Western Australia whenever I want is an idea that excites me. A summer amongst friends and family, writing, new projects, swimming in fresh water, eating homegrown vegetables, the sounds of nature, nice plates and nice chopping boards. Because here, food’s in plastic, nature’s concrete, the hostel world’s challenging, my body’s sore and stiff from surfaces where I find no comfort, and at night, if there’s an unsettled person in the room, I’m unsettled too. Sensitive to other’s energies. Like the energy of the sixteen-year old English kid who snorts and coughs on his top bunk, talking about ‘nukes’ like it’s normal, cornering me to complain about England, telling me climate change has always been happening and the prices of houses is alarming. While I’m desperate to escape, I know I’m here to realise something. Because soon my time will come to step up as a leader. My time will come to create long-term space, with a beautiful kitchen that looks to trees. My time will come to travel with deeper purpose, listening to signs, ready to act, leaving this behind and sorting out my finances forever. But for now, there’s the sound of heavy rain on tin, a tropical garden of green, strange energies floating through, and more obsessive thinking and planning. Like cancelling my Mexico City to Perth flight to instead fly to Broome for the same cost through Santiago, minus seven hours. The change means money wasted but I’m not annoyed. Because I have to go back to Broome, that’s why. I have to go back to Broome sooner. Why? I don’t know that yet.
4th August 2023
It’s the nights unsettled in the dorm room when thoughts formulate. Like going directly to Peru. Only I can’t book flights because there are issues with the airline. Instead, lying in the hammock, the comfiest spot I can find, I read about solar flares, which might have something to do with both the websites jigging out and my headache in working out my immediate future. Then a flight to Bogota, leaving tomorrow night, processes easily, and I’m so excited that there’s only one more night at this hostel. As for the next step, who knows, but at least I’m still comfy in the hammock, half asleep, trees humming, ayahuasca intentions brewing (embodying true potential), working on the story feels good.
5th August 2023
It’s the early hours, 1:08am to be exact, and having missed so much sleep these past two nights, I should be so tired, but the boy watching another crap show with crap earphones is so infuriating I have to leave. Swinging in a hammock between two palm trees, I wonder if some of the kid’s stupidity comes from his consumption.
‘Do you drink water?’ I had asked the kid when I pulled his attention from his screen to tell him he keeps sniffing and coughing when he wears earphones.
‘Nah I drink coke, that has water,’ he reckons.
Then there’s the food. Earlier in the night, the kid’s dad, a serious Polish man who drinks copious alcohol and gives no visible love to the young boy, dished up mashed potato, tomato, and great piles of processed meat that includes a million ingredients they wouldn’t understand.
Despite the pain in my lower back and neck, waking to daylight brings relief.
It’s time.
Across from me on the bus, two muchas gente gorda eat chips from bright coloured packets and drink bright coloured liquid from plastic bottles.
Returning to the Cancun airport, there are people shouting hey lady hey lady you want information, the sounds of packages opening and sticky tape going around and around a suitcase, and people sprawled on the floor. Including me. Reading a book. Witnessing. Wondering. Is what I’m identifying with humanity’s sickness incompassionate? Or is it just my imagination? I don’t know. But my Human Design notes your job here is to point out what’s wrong with society, and as Melissa had described to me one night in her Broome kitchen, tools like Human Design are like guidebooks to ourselves.
The line for Viva Aerobús is long. I stand in it, craning my neck to the different lines until a man calling me lady and wearing a shirt saying Taxi Driver moves me to international departures, where I stress having to fill out an online form. Then I remember; I accept all that is to be, with what is to be what I need to learn.
Inside departures, a lady on the screens wears nice clothes and pulls unnatural poses. With 100 pesos left to spend, I do a lap, settling on a brownie because it doesn’t come in plastic or packaging. But it has lots of sugars. And my skin feels dirty because I put tinted moisturiser on it this morning.
At my gate, watching the gente gorda, the voice of my head is clear: you can do this, you’re doing this. But if I had one wish this week, what would it be? Of course there’s my greatest wish, the one when I close my eyes and I’m dancing amongst the trees, but if there’s one wish for my coming week, it would be to come to a place in the trees in Columbia, hearing the sounds of nature, and crafting this story into a narrative.
6th August 2023
Hello from Columbia. I’m so happy to be here. The hostel is clean, the water is drinkable, people are fashionable, and the bed is comfortable. In a courtyard with patterned tiles and antique tables, travellers sip coffees and work on their devices. My stomach is sore from yesterday’s cakes.
Tonight’s a night where I click into Instagram and Facebook for the first time in a few days, which marks my loneliness. A loneliness I have learnt to exist with. A loneliness people expect of me. A loneliness I hide behind. Although I don’t feel lonely per se. More alone. Dreaming of a creative community where I’m cooking dinner, laughing, chatting, and showing my vulnerability without fear. Guess I’ve been too serious in my writing and planning to meet someone. Guess I’m here for other reasons. Because he’s in Australia.
Again, I think of travel, the concrete, the exploitation, the nice people, the disinterest I feel in spending too much time in travel conversation.
I reflect on an ayahuasca documentary I had watched in Bacalar where a lady had a terrifying journey. I consider being returned to a dark state of pure ego. Although my intentions feel genuine, maybe I will be shown my place, with everything I envisioned of who I feel to be total fabrication, forcing me to a life of normalcy and career. But if that’s the case, then I will return to death.
I’m so appreciate to history, to everyone who has brought us here. Now we’re about to be moving real fast, and you better hold on, otherwise you’ll be left behind.
It’s funny with what we expect of storytelling. I’m putting all the words into a blender and turning it on high to shape them into a narrative, yet real life is never so linear. Real life is repetition and randomness and never with an ending until death. Even then…
We are shifting into a new consciousness. I am part of its call. But still I want to know why I’m here.
We have the freedom to choose how we respond to a situation
7th August 2023, Dad’s 70th Birthday
In my capsule, after a few hours of writing, I fart my way through a documentary on the Shipibo people and their Amazonian plant knowledge. I’m so bloated from gluten and nut butter, waiting on confirmation for my deposit from Urban, my mind swaying with hypothetical future images that will never come to fruition. I pull it back. If this calling is genuine, aligned with my understanding of a greater good, then it will be.
Ayahuasca has been on my radar for ten years, back to the time when I was obsessively researching Mexico, curious about Peyote, which I now learn is the masculine plant, while ayahuasca is the mother, the creator, the feminine. But then life happened. And I was heavy with Bo, fearful that he would come to me and I would lose my mind in talking with spirits. Instead came DMT. Then came Adam’s explanations; that hot January Broome night at Matso’s. How plants opens our energies. How I had Bo’s spirit attached to me for years.
Was it my Human Design or was it Gene Keys that made me see that I’m here to learn as much as possible? That there’s reason I cease to be single and broke, gathering information. Not by studying in universities, or purely reading up on the internet, but gathering lived experience, hearing, seeing and smelling knowledge, sampling it into my mind, allowing connections of the bigger picture. Because my higher self is masculine and feminine. Because I can see the world from a vantage point not everyone can. Because my journey of intuition is a death of ego. Because my shadows need to come to the surface. Because I must remove the defences I built in my youth from the pain in not being loved for being Sarah.
Waking in my capsule to a message from Urban that all is good from their end, I become serious on my mental and physical preparation. No more coffee. No more gluten. No more nut butter. No more farting.
The day goes on to be a day I won’t remember. There’s no coffee, no wine, no delicious food, no urge to explore, no company, no man who loves me, no promise my book will ever be publishable. And there’s no energy. Or no thoughts that excites me besides dying or disappearing into the jungle for three weeks. I eat the other bread roll and walking the streets of Bogota I’m back farting, back seeing my future self returning to Central and South America. But it’s another sort of travel. Travel with my family. Travel to share. Travel to break free, go beyond, lead.
8th August 2023, nineteen days to go
In the kitchen of the Bogotá Hostel, I speak with a lady from Norway. She spent all of last year travelling through South America, going to all the places and taking pride in telling people all the places she went. This time, she’s been here for three months and she’s excited to go home. ‘It’s not a competition,’ I tell her. And we both agree that it’s easy to feel like it can be a competition. But we all travel for so many different reasons.
On the move again, formulating new ideas, checking my phone at 11:11 and checking my phone at 2:22. It’s my first day with zero coffee, looking through the bus window to bonito Colombian mountains. But still there are barbed wired fences on houses, rubbish strewn along roads, and the sound of people opening packaged food. I wonder about Columbia’s system before the Spanish invasion. I return to the similarities of this world’s religions. Understanding what they were insinuating. Understanding that the removal of our fear of death will change this world. Just imagine. Imagine the world tilting and a new future exploding into other galaxies. Imagine how every single energy we interact with is important to channelling our true potential. Imagine creating new habits for the rest of our lives.
9th August 2023, eighteen days to go
Medellin. Sore throat, headache, agitation to the noise level of my room, which includes young girls screeching Spanish in the late night and early morning.
Awake earlier than expected, there’s nothing to look forward to in my day. No coffee, no sitting in cafes writing, no people watching, no alcohol, no people, no nothing. I roll around: I hate this I hate this I hate this.
Stumbling through busy city streets to the soundtrack of cars, motorbikes, trucks and people feels like slow motion. My hearing is painfully sensitive. My body so hungry and my head so sore. How did I get here? What am I doing here? I’m lost. It’s been hours. Thankfully, my inner compass gets me back in the direction of the stingy hostel. Only it’s not the direction of the stingy hotel but the direction of a smoothie place I had googled that morning. Thankfully, the sweet waiter boy connects my phone to the internet to see the menu, which shows me that I’m some distance from the stingy hostel. I eat an acai bowl. I will get myself and my bag heavy with groceries and my iPad back to the stingy hostel. I will eat eggs and veg for dinner. I will put in my earphones. I will cancel out the world.
In the mirror, my skin’s blotchy and there are bags under my eyes. My belly’s still swollen and I’m still farting. I don’t really know what to do with myself. I think of embodying the future I desire, far away from this hostel with workers watching TV and eating packaged food, but how?
I’m still farting on an evening stroll to the cafes I had been searching for, vowing to return tomorrow for what I anticipate being a long day on the book’s plot.
10th August 2023
Waking through the night to girls screaming through the halls, my head’s pounding, my throat’s sore, my legs are throbbing, and a voice helps me combat the pain: love is flowing through me, love is flowing through me. I’m hot then I’m cold. I’m stuck in a room without ventilation. I’m caught in what would be a close contender for one of the most depressing days of my life. Actually no, this day in bed isn’t depressing, it’s symbolic.
You’ve got to be clear on who you are to write clearly.
11th August 2023
It feels like covid. Every small task exhausting. Out of bed, I shower off the smell of sweat. Half packing my bag leaves me sitting down panting, recuperating strength. Pineapple, papaya & cold fruit juice my drive. As is to leave hostels forever behind me.
I take a 92,000 cop Uber to Santa Elena, getting out of the car with a sweaty back and many sincere exchanges with the Spanish-only speaking driver.
The dorm I’m to stay is being painted, and so I’m given my own cabin for the night. The music coming from the restaurant is comforting, with the next two weeks feeling like the longest time of my life.
12th August 2023
In the loft bedroom, I watch Masterclass, starting with Salman Rushdie and Anna Wintour, noting that every successful person holds the unwavering belief they have the ability to be in their position. One thing I’m being shown on this journey of ego is I must truly own myself without fear to what other’s think. Trusting in time as much as I trust in myself.
I first wake around 2am from my brain zapping new connections. The connections felt really big at the time. But my head hurts so much. And it’s a horrid night’s sleep: body so sore, unable to get comfortable, the doona and blankets scratchy, freezing cold then covered in sweat.
The rasta boy who leads me between cabins explains we’re at 2600 feet, which better explains my shortness of breath. Nonetheless, by the time I make it to the dorm cabin further down the mountain, all my energy’s gone and the cabin’s freezing. And while it looks so beautiful to sit outside and write, I drag my body to bed and curl up shivering, my face boiling. But at least there’s the sound of a stream, the forest, and dogs howling.
With my head still pounding, I spend the afternoon watching Masterclass, Gaia and YouTube, desperately excited for my own beautiful home and beautiful clothes and beautiful furnishings and beautiful people. In my space, I want no traffic noise. In my space, my kitchen is going to be epic.
Masterclass Notes
Hold conviction and love for what you do, with individual styles and points of view
What are you standing for? What’s the core of who you are?
Worrying what other people think will dilute your judgment and effectiveness
Understand who you are & what you need to say to the world.
13th August 2023
God I feel so horrible right now. What does it even feel like to radiate health? Can’t remember. But if I were to share Sarah’s health advice for 2023, it’d be don’t quit coffee, alcohol, gluten, red meats, etc. at the same time as coming down with an illness and taking your body to 2600 feet, where I spend another lonely day in bed with the bug/covid/altitude sickness and my period arriving a week early. I’m so weak. Do I need to properly fall in order to rise?
15th August 2023
Shivering through the night, body sore, coughing up endless phlegm, repeating aloud my need to leave the mountain.
While a new day brings sunshine and tree song, inside is cold, damp and mouldy. Struggling to breathe, I’ve never felt so sick. Although I’ve paid for four more nights in this mountain forest, my body’s telling me to leave and so I book an Air BnB back in Medellin.
Waiting for my ride, I lie in tall grass where the sun pokes through the trees. My breaths are short and rapid, soaking in the heat, staring into space, blank mind remembering the way I took energy for granted.
Walking up to the reception is slow. I keep having to stop to rest and catch my breath.
The car ride down the mountain is long and fast, rapido, the car’s steering wheel constantly turning with the bends. My decompressing head is like watching a dream; everything’s in slow motion and in an orange tint.
The driver stops at a shopping centre and uses Google to translate that there’s an ATM.
Walking inside brings a pop. The world bursts into noise and clarity.
At the building of the Air BnB in the Buenos Aires neighbourhood, I don’t have phone connection or the number for the apartment.
Over the road at a pollo restaurant a boy kindly gives me their wifi password.
Finally, I make it into an apartment all of my own where everything’s clean and orderly and the Spanish speaking Air BnB host is lovely.
This morning I’m woken by a distressed child screaming, making me want to hold it close. The child stops screaming and already I’m feeling better. Breaths longer. Relief paramount. Healing. Ready to eat food that excites me (last night I had salt and oil because I was desperate for food that wasn’t bland veg) and it still wasn’t so great.
Notes on Sarah from that hoo-ha type stuff:
“When you walk into a room, you often receive a huge amount of information. You sense the energy and emotion around you, picking up signals and unspoken feelings. Your environment - toxic or healthy - often defines your reality.” (No wonder travel can be confronting and I struggle in hostels)
“The theme of the month is all about acting from you heart and releasing any fears around who you are and how you want to live your life. To move toward this radical, radiant kind of self-love, it’s important to consciously prioritise accepting and appreciating yourself - and the journey often starts with a mindset shift.” (Totally. Big theme for me right now. I keep playing out scenarios with people. Or envision my response to people who judge me. I’m not here on this Earth to be like everyone else. My unique-ness is my power. And this is something I’m reprogramming)
“Ultimately, living and acting out of the fire that’s in your heart will draw others to you easily and magnetically. As a role model, you can show them how to embrace their unique selves and inspire them to create their own lives in any way they desire.” (I feel this, I can see this, when I act from my heart. Giving my thoughts only when asked. My job as a writer is to work as an inspirer, and that’s showing through story the empowerment of self-love. Because if you trust in yourself, you trust in all living things)
“This is a good time to release any expectations of how you should exist in the world. You have the opportunity to reinvent yourself, so that you can devote more time to what truly fires up your heart and real deeper wounds and insecurities of how you show up in the world.” (The expectations of my family remain in my subconscious. Particularly my brother. But by temporarily removing myself I can better fully embody Sarah. And what truly fires up my heart is writing. What truly fires up my heart is a global community where I can outwardly discuss my ideas. Currently, frustration fester when I insert my bigger-picture thoughts into everyday conversations. Few people understand. Perhaps because my thoughts are meant to be used at another level)
“This new Moon can help you commit to new intentions that are based on a deep and authentic faith that everything will work out for you - and that you deserve to experience infinite love, light and joy in your life.” (Thank you, it’s true, I do. And I deserve to experience this not as an imposter of who I think I should be, but through the deep, unwavering embodiment of Sarah. After all, one of the strongest themes in my Masterclass viewing was the conviction each speaker had in their individual purpose. And it was just that, their purpose.)
16th August 2023
Quitting coffee to potential COVID to altitude sickness to an early period to semi-food poisoning, I’m either not destined for the Amazon, or my body knows something beyond my mind. Get this chicken fully out of my system PLEASE.
18th August 2023
Days of rest and solitude. It’s been so long since I’ve enjoyed hearty conversation. The taste of Australia is strong. Salivating to a hot summer with good food and brilliant people, comfortable in myself.
23th August 2023
Bogotá brought days of ease writing the book, wandering the streets, and spending money on things that make me feel good, like hats, a plier set, coloured pencils, and a healing session. Time’s moving faster than anticipated. Today, I go to Lima, which still feels surreal—I’ll believe I’m in the Amazon when I’m in the Amazon. Waiting on my session with the energy worker, Karin, who Joyce from San Miguel de Allende put me in touch with, I’m still spitting and coughing up phlegm. When we had our initial chat, Karin immediately picked up on my sickness, acknowledging a side of me being blocked and asking about the relationship with my mother. I’m ready to do the hard work to begin the rest of a life full of people, love, nature, and a whole career born from creativity.
24th August 2023
High above, the clouds look like the ocean at sunset, with tiger streaks of light pointing towards a red sun. I rest my head on the window and look outward, my music perfectly timed to the airplane getting lost in a thick grey, emerging to nighttime with lights of ships on the ocean and lights of a city called Lima. I’m excited, moving along the runway feeling like I’m here with reason, that there’s something waiting for me.
(Where do these senses originate?)
Karin worked with me for two and a half hours. There were many people’s energies I’ve taken on. Many people to release in order for me to encapsulate and embody the true essence of Sarah—an intention for my time in the Amazon. Karin also took me back to my teenage years, giving younger Sarah the love and support she craved. Then Karin worked with my monetary blockages. Not going after money as a symbolism of success, but to think that if I had x amount of money, like $300,000, what good would I do with it?
Which is so much. I’d get a car that is fuel efficient/more environmental, I would buy a computer to work with my photos and larger documents (like using my photos and writing for a mailing list instead of Instagram), and I would invest in a home space to inspire and share with others so they too can create from their truth rather than for a career.
In Lima, the Air BnB is equipped with quality bed sheets and pillows. There is a grand desk made of wood and an antique-looking chair. I feel comfortable here. I can spend my days writing and overcoming my mental challenge in acquiring the necessary American dollars.
25th August 2023
Lying in my big comfy bed, I’m nervous about sorting out the American cash with Western Union, which was advised by Urban. Western Union takes me back to the scam and I’m fearful that all this is a fraud. Walking Lima’s business streets, I call on my higher self, my spirits, my ancestors, my guardian angels, my god, whatever it is one wishes to call it. My head’s a soundtrack of positive whispers, helping me put one foot in front of the other to walk past my nerves. In the end, Western Union is seamless, with the money in my bag as I buy a notepad and toothpaste from the adjoining large store. Back at my grand desk, I write out the draft of the last phase, giving wholesome thoughts and meditations to the money sitting next to me.
26th August 2023
I finish the draft sitting in the beautiful room of the Lima Air BnB, salivating to the thought of food, coffee, wine, touch, intimacy, laughter, English conversations, a home. Landing in Pucallpa feels right. The taxi motorbike ride amongst all the other taxi motorbikes brings joy in clear air. But time feels long, and I’m already excited for the other side of these next three weeks. At the hotel, I lie in bed early, my leg veins bursting from the flight. Nobody knows where I am.
27th August 2023
The morning. Body still sore, knowing there are wounds and hindrances to face, tears running down one cheek in seeing my incapability for one special person to love me. I consider changing my intention to death, so then I don’t have to be on Earth all alone as strong Sarah. But then I’m looking at large fences around properties. I’m questioning them.
On the journey up the river, Haitian Gary from New York laughs that he also felt like it was a scam. But here we are. The family guiding us. Putting us into a motorbike from the water’s edge. Winding down fresh paths through banana trees to a stilted village.
On the other side of the village, we arrive. All hurt, heat and heart. There are three people there. They tell us the days are long. But this is where my journey of intuition has brought me.
In the sauna, surrounded by the blue plastic tarp, sweat dripping, I repeat my intention, and my root chakra stirs. Outside the tarp, my film camera won’t take a photo of the circular room where the ceremonies are held.
Lying with anticipation in the hammock of my tumble, oh how I want to lose concept of time, to withstand the heat, to allow all that needs to flow to heal myself in order to shine in this world and contribute to the good. Please. I call on my higher self, my spirits, my ancestors, my guardian angels, my god, my trust that what I will be shown is what I need.
I trust in myself, I trust in Mama Olinda, I trust in the family, and I trust in Mother Ayahuasca.
28th August 2023
There are five shamans on one side and five students on the other. The intake is small and the feeling is light. Moving from my head back into my body, I’m relaxed as my future self without all the voices, energies and expectations of others. I am purely and genuinely Sarah. And as I continue this journey, or more begin this journey, for these next three weeks, I leave these notes behind, switching over to my diary of ego, etching myself into history as dancing and smiling to love and creativity.
I am the ocean, I am the mountains, I am the trees, I am the dirt
I am love, I am creation, that’s why I’m here on this Earth.
“The plants aren’t controlled by their thoughts, that’s why they can grow.” Mama Olinda
