The rune that I picked for that second day of the trip had been Uruz.  It resembles something like an upside-down U.  Worried about losing it in the mob at the parade, I’d just taken it out front of the hotel and photographed it on a table next to a taco stand.  It could’ve been more dramatic than that, but I was just getting started.

Uruz represents an irresistible, untamable power and is symbolized by the great, wild bulls that once roamed Europe.  It belongs to the month of February and represents the Horned Moon.  It is a sign of improved health and vitality, an assurance to those who have been sick and ailing.  It is also a symbol of formidable will and the power to overcome obstacles.  Confidence will be restored, and once this happens things will seem to move along on their own.  It is like starting a snowball rolling, easy to start, very difficult to stop.  For this reason, those who wish for change must be certain of what they want.

When it comes to the healing interpretation, Uruz is aligned with gratitude.  There are blessings every day if you know how to recognize them.  Too often we get caught up in the negative, only reacting to the things that haven’t gone our way.  For most of my life I’d been desperately happy with myself and the situations I’d found myself in, constantly feeling thwarted and unappreciated.  Yet when I looked back on it, I’d been able to achieve most of the things I’d set out to do, even if it sometimes meant waiting for years. 

The parade hadn’t turned out like I’d hoped, but the fact that I’d made it there at all was something to be grateful for.  At least I could check it off the bucket list.  When I came up from the subway I was disoriented, until I recognized the coffee shop across the street where’d I’d stopped in the morning.  Perhaps there was still power in my spirit, but my body was beat.  I was dragging myself down the sidewalk, when my stomach suddenly shifted. A case of Montezuma’s Revenge had viciously gripped my bowels.  It was those Day of the Dead tamales, for sure, acting like arsenic.  Just when I thought I couldn’t walk with a stiffer gait.

When I got back to my neighborhood, I got confused.  My silver death mask was perched on my head and I was wiping the sweat from my face with a black skull bandana I’d picked up at the parade.  I was only blocks from the hotel, but didn’t recognize anything.  There were no restaurants or bars that I could limp into either.  The situation was serious.

By the time I finally reached the hotel, I was walking as if my legs had been tied together.  The steps might be a problem.  I approached them with the deliberation of a chess master.  Then I reached the room and fumbled for the key.  The danger could not have been any greater at that moment.  Usually, it is there in the homestretch that all systems decide to release at once. 

Then I was in the room, tiptoeing towards the bathroom, finally yanking down my sweatpants and leaping backwards towards the toilet, only clearing it by a centimeter.  I sat there in the darkness for a half hour, soaked in sweat, nearly weeping with gratitude.