Desire and Disorders

It is afternoon in Guatemala. I have climbed to Cerro Tzancuil just next to my hotel to rest at the Mayan Altar, Kab 'lajuj Ee, and gaze at "the place where the water gathers," Lake Atitlán. It is deep. Near me a youthful German says to his shaggy sunburnt American companion, "It is deeper than the North Sea." Much deeper.  It hides a lot. On its shores gather distant folk who taint its pristine wonders.

And always in the afternoon Xocomil, Atitlán's strong wind, arrives with a demon’s fury, as it has across three millennia of civilization, most of it brutal Mayans, but also five hundred years of brutal Spaniards, as well as thirty years of brutal civil war. Catholic syncretism morphed Xocomil to mean the wind that carries away sin. The indigenous I meet are joyful and engaging.  And so that spirit draws outsiders with whom sin persists. San Marcos La Laguna, where I stay, is known for meditation, masseuse, yoga, and mindfulness.

My first night supper of a delightful hearty tomato soup on The Terrace at my hotel, Lush Atitlán, was often interrupted by an attractive American thirty-something woman coaching her pursuing Italian twenty-something man on life lessons she has gained from desire and disorders.  She cannot set her desire aside and so has settled in on the anxiety of open relationships. So, she travels the world setting up lectures and seminars to coach this need. She wants the Italian to lend his place in Italy for a seminar.  He wants her.

I was grateful to be rescued in overhearing this conversation on The Terrace by San Francisco native, Steve, who expatriated to Quito, Ecuador but is visiting with the idea of taking up in Antigua, Guatemala. I am agreeable to that quest. We converse.

Others with quests have visited Lake Atitlán. Aldous Huxley visited. His "Brave New World" traces our anxiety to our belief in technology as a futuristic remedy for problems really caused by disease. Huxley famously compared Lake Atitlán to Italy's Lake Como which "touches the limit of the permissibly picturesque." Atitlán, however, "is Como with the additional embellishment of several immense volcanoes. It is really too much of a good thing."

Active volcanos surround Lake Atitlán: San Pedro to the west; Toliman to the south; and the largest volcano Santiago. Atitlán is the caldera of a much older volcano now filled with water, five thousand feet above sea level.

I took a water taxi in the morning across glassy smooth waters to the town of Panajachel for a covid test to be able to return to the U.S. There, I bought Guatemalan chocolate intending to repatriate it but desire immediately led to me know it's sweet existence as soon as I got back to the hotel.

For the flight back I have downloaded David Mohrman's "Xocomil: The Winds of Atitlán," about Luanne from San Francisco who has no idea who she is until a near death experience makes her a seer--sometimes of things she would rather not know.

I am glad I now know a little of Guatemala.