Now there’s a genuine tongue twister. We were wandering the cobble stone streets of Tapoztlan, Mexico, R and me, with the green mountains looming near, me checking out the store fronts and signs, absorbing the foreign words, fascinated with words as I am, when we walked by this store. Above the door was the word: Tlanamacalollihuipilcalli. I liked it so much, I had to take a picture of it. What’s most interesting to me about it is that I have no idea what it means.
Tepoztlan is a small village in the region of Morelos. It’s beautiful, mountainous, misty, and green. We went to stay at La Villa Bonita, a mexican culinary school for Rebecca to partake in for five days. While she cooked with chef Anna and Gaby (the only other student staying there that week), I lounged around and wrote. Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, I was writing mostly for work. I did manage to squeeze out some new material for my novel, though. The view was so captivating, it was hard competition for my computer monitor. Staring became my quiet practice. Watching and listening.
There were lots of rooster calls. Roosters at all hours. Not just at dawn. Maybe the local farmers had them working shifts to cover all 24 hours and somehow programmed each to think it was dawn at the start of his shift. Whatever the reason, it was charming the first day or so and then it got old. One can only take so many cocka-doodle-doos. Anna said she no longer even heard the roosters. She had learned to tune them out completely.
On our last full day in Tepoztlan, we climbed a mountain. The Tepozteco Pyramid–an ancient Aztec pyramid built on the top of the mountain–was our destination. The path started out as a gradual incline, then turned to stairs, then those disappeared and it was steep, slippery rock. Rebecca climbed at a quicker pace and it wasn’t long before she was higher than I could see. I was climbing quicker than Gaby and David (pronounced Daveed), so I soon found myself alone–just me, my heavy breathing, and the mountain. I trudged, trying to keep my legs moving, but it was harder than I expected and I eventually stopped and sat down on a ledge. My chest hurt, I was heaving more than breathing, and sweating so much it looked like I had just gone swimming with all my clothes on.
I used the elevation as an excuse to myself for having such a hard time. I run practically every day, so I felt that I should have been in better shape than it seemed I was. When my breathing slowed enough to sound relatively normal again, I continued on. The rocks were jagged and wet, each step slipped a little. Water trickled down from everywhere it seemed and it was getting darker. I kept my eyes mainly on my feet, but every so often I looked up at the climb ahead and the sky beyond. At one point, the sky was slanted, textured gray clouds–it looked like an extension of the mountain itself, continuing up and up forever. The thought of climbing and never getting anywhere was terrible and wonderful, because it made each step a sentence, because it made each step another gift. I kept going, knowing that I would reach the top eventually, trusting that what I would see there would be worth the effort, trying to let the effort be worthy on its own.
David had told us at the bottom about a local belief that to climb the mountain was to clean the soul. I held that to be true and imagined the water pouring from my skin to be the soul or its equivalent coming clean in me.
I eventually did reach the top, where I was met with a coterie of wild animals scurrying unabashedly around people’s feet. They had long, protrusions for mouths like beaks only furry and filled with teeth and long, curled tails. They were all identical, though varied in shape and size. They were darting about, grunting, going from person to person and jumping up like a dog looking for food. I found them extremely interesting and took several pictures of them. When David arrived at the top, he reached into his pocket to get money with which to pay for our entries into the archeological site where the pyramid sat and while doing so, knocked a package of cookies out onto the the ground. Before he could begin to bend to pick them up, they were snatched up by one of the creatures. David yelled and ran after the thing and so did all the other creatures, but it ran fast and disappeared around a ledge. So funny.
We walked around on the pyramid and absorbed the view, the sprawl of Tepoztlan below. Then, night fell for real, and we made our way back down in the thickening shadows. I kept my eyes on the small, loose rocks along the way, looking for any that were striking enough to pick up and take with me as mementos. Sometimes it seemed I could feel the rocks looking back at me like eyes, judging my worthiness to be there, sizing me up. Alas, they would have found me to be pure, clean as I was after the ascent.
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