Crystals and Donkeys

I wake up today, slowly, heavily, as if I had mercury coursing through my limbs. This happens sometimes here in San Marcos Sierras. The town is built on a giant slab of quartz crystal and some new age “experts” say that sometimes the energies or the biorhythms or the fuck-knows-what reverses itself and sucks downward instead of emitting out. This supposedly brings some of us down. I wouldn’t know if others share my weighty blood today, because I’m not getting out of bed. If I chose to, I’m sure I could consult with a reflexologist or an airetarian or an Akashic channeller as to why exactly my body feels so heavy. And they’d probably prescribe me some bitter tasting drops or an impossible-to-pronounce meditation or maybe just give me a big, energetic hug. Don’t get me wrong—I believe in a bunch of weird shit myself. It is how it is and not how it isn’t, or so I’d like to think. But really, I need these people, these all-walks-of-freaks surrounding me and I insist on living in a community like this one, full of all sorts of whatnot. It makes me feel safe. And a bit normal. For a change.

Here, and not tucked away but prominently situated in town, there’s a magnesium-chugging “Prophet” who’s building a 100-meter-wide inverted pyramid into the earth, there’s at least one U.F.O. research station on nearby Mount Uritorco, there’s a yearly gathering of South American Women For The Healing of the Planet that draws thousands of people, and I’d be willing to bet that ninety percent of the population knows both their Chinese and there Mayan zodiac signs. So my love for bejeweled baby Krsna and my glow-in-the-dark rosary (blessed by revolutionary Peruvian priest, Padre Cipriani), my magic rocks and my voodoo oil, and my decision to stay in bed all day because my limbs feel weighted down by some mysterious crystal powers, all these have a place here.

There is only a light breeze blowing through the trees outside, the mulberry, the fig, and the pink peppercorn tree they call the Awarivay. But the tops of the crazy-tall eucalyptus up the road are gnashing about in another, more violent stirring of wind. A High Wind playing out on another strata. If there were a tall building in San Marcos, five floors or more, it would be swaying. But two stories is as high as it gets, and there are only a few of those. People live close to the earth here, everyone. The local Criollos, the Gaucho types, the hippies and the urban dispossessed. The Original Inhabitants called the Comechingones (literally, Dirt Eaters.) And the barren gringa herself. All of us. Maybe not all down-to-earth, but still earthy nonetheless.

A boy comes by my door with a rope in his hand. He’s lost his donkey, he says. I don’t get out of bed, but talk to him through the window. “She’s white,” he calls out. I know what his donkey looks like—she’s a rebel donkey, always running away, and the poor kid is kind of retarded and spends half his days searching for her. I haven’t seen her, I tell him. Sorry.

She could be anywhere.

There’s not a single traffic light or paved street in this whole town.

And it seems that rebel donkeys are not as susceptible to mysterious mercurial crystal tugs as I am.