All of This is Real: Part 1
Peruvian Epiphanies.
When I decided to take a mid-life retirement at 37, I told myself I wouldn’t travel. I would live in a beautiful, full-service apartment building and just not work, instead focusing on all of the projects that I said I’d do when I had time outside of my many corporate jobs previously. Of course, when I was working full time I never had time to do those projects and seemingly was never done with work, even after office hours.
When a healer in Hawaii (I know) had a vision that me, my best friend Mary (who at the time lived in New York but previously lived in Hawaii) were to travel on a sacred retreat to Peru — a place she herself had never been — I felt it out and decided it felt right. I didn’t go looking for travel to “find myself” in; I was finding myself just fine in the comfort of my new leisure time. It’s not often you get an ask such as this, however, so I decided to go. I planned a few days in Lima alone to explore (my mother offered to PAY ME to not go, as she feared me traveling alone in South America. Which is why I didn’t tell her about the alone-portion of my trip until 2 days before I departed). Then, I’d meet the ladies in Cuzco for leg one of our 11 day sacred retreat in magical Peru.
I’ve never fallen in love with a place as much as I did with Peru. I don’t speak much Spanish (though I grew up in Los Angeles, in the San Fernando Valley, so some Spanish is mandatory), I remember always understanding and having deep conversations with every Peruvian I met along the way. Here’s an excerpt from my journal from the day I left Peru:
I just barely made it to my seat on the plane after a mad dash through the entire length of the international airport in Lima. I had to pee SO BAD and after, just before taxiing and as I settled in for the 6 hour flight back to the states, a flight attendant came up to me, and said “15 D?”
Oh boy. What now? I nearly missed my international flight due to a delay in the connecting flight in Peru.
“We’re upgrading you to business class.”
SCORE. I had asked a few times if there was a no-show if I could upgrade to the lay-flat seats up front since my long-legged, 5’ 10” frame doesn’t tend to travel well over long flights.
I have no idea how they knew where I was sitting or who I was, but I was just grateful beyond grateful to be able to move up for the 6+ hour flight.
I rushed up to business class (which turns out had full lay flat seats), put my stuff in the private overhead storage reserved just for my seat, pulled out my new alpaca blanket that I got in Machu Picchu, and buckled up in my comfy seat. Right then the plane started to back up out of the gate and make its way to the runway, and I started to sob.
Uncontrollably.
I was SO happy. Had experienced SUCH an adventure. Had GROWN so much in the span of just 10 days. Nothing bad happened. Why the hell was I sobbing?
For the first time in my life I didn’t want to leave a place I had traveled to. Peru had embedded deep within my soul, or perhaps just re-emerged from ancient molecular memories encoded in our DNA, and the thought of going back to Los Angeles, to my bed and my home that I loved, just didn’t sound good or right. I started to think about all of my dusty, dirty clothes in the undercarriage of the plane…the leggings that I hiked down Machu Picchiu in barefoot… covered with that magical, soft dust made by the mountain. I briefly thought about never washing them again. I wanted peru on me. In me. In my hair. Under my nails. I didn’t want the bug bites from the forest all over my arms and legs to go away. I hadn’t even left yet, and already, I want to come back.
The old man from Paraguay next to me must’ve thought I was nuts. But he offered a kind look and we got along in broken English/Spanish. Apparently I’m to visit Paraguay next, according to him.
“Peru esta in mi corazon,” Isaid. or something like that. I think he knew what I meant.
On top of the fact that I sobbed quietly while also mostly smiling/laughing to myself about it for a good 30 minutes, as soon as the seatbelt sign went off overhead, I went to the restroom to clean myself up. I had started bleeding — profusely — and it was not even nearly time for my period. I’d been on the pill since I was 17 years old (that’s how badly I knew I NEVER wanted to get pregnant) and I could usually predict my start/stop days to the hour. I unexplicably started to bleed and it wouldn’t stop for ELEVEN days. Eleven. Usually it’s four.
Peru had truly recoded my DNA, and I was not mad at it. Even with a surprise eleven-day bloodfest as a souvenir.
After a layover in Miami (where something came over me and I decided to go out overnight and dance and talk to strangers even though I was knackered) I landed back in LA. The car service from my building picked me up at LAX, greeted me with a familiar face and I headed home. That very night, while unpacking, wisdoms started to come to me. Little epiphanies in short, sweet beats of words. Some profound, some common sense and just funny. All lessons that I’d learned, and processed and meditated on, thinking about them subconsciously over and over until they expelled themselves from my body in the form of words drawn with black sharpie on sticky notes that I started taping up inside my hall closet at home.
I had always been a writer and a poet, but this was somehow different. These were a new medium, if you will, for me. They were visual and standalone. Almost like the chorus of a song that helped you identify the song even if you hadn’t heard the verse or the melody. And they rang eternally true. It was then that I decided that I actually should start focusing on the memoir I always knew I’d write.
Mind you, I had some crazy stories to share before then. Somehow, I felt that until I’d done something on a larger scale where people would actually care to hear them, these stories were just for my journals. To be picked at and carefully selected one day far, far in the future. But something happened on that plane ride from Peru to Miami. I realized that I had a mid-life memoir in me, about the full-stop I’d taken in my life to become a philosopher. THAT was something. These wisdoms that kept coming to me resonated not only with me, but with others I shared them with as well. That had to mean something. It meant something to me, which I suppose is all that matters in this case. Here’s an appetizer-sized sampling of these wisdoms:
- We are all infinite beings of light
- So be it
- Be kind, laugh often, love hard
- Never buy a 3rd party iPhone charger again. Ever.
- Shift Happens
- Gratitude shifts your core
- Check your conformity
- Don’t ever apologize for your colorful life
And so I began to write down specific thoughts that came at exponential speed. The more time I spent putting around my apartment, lost in thought and exuding gratitude for the ability to be able to do so, the more they came. The fewer plans I made and more time I spent alone, thinking, processing, creating, organizing…the more wisdom I was rewarded with. This, I thought, was the beginning of perhaps finally a book concept I could complete. (I’ve started SO. MANY. BOOKS.)
Little did I know that even crazier new things were to come. But Peru… Peru was indeed an unhinging of wisdom from within me, and I have the sticky notes to prove it…
