Laguz looks like a backwards 7 with the top line tilting down.  It represents water in all its manifold forms, seas, lakes, rivers, streams, rain, and is a good sign.  For a seafaring people like the Scandinavians, it signified a return to home and a reunion with family.  In terms of situations and relations, it means a safe haven, away from the storms of life.  It can also mean prosperity and success, but patience is required.  Just as the sea ebbs and flows, things will go back and forth before they settle.  In the meantime, one needs to remain calm, like the surface of a lake at sunrise.  Nothing needs to happens.  Things will change around you.

When it comes to healing, Laguz relates to humor.  Humor is the best way to turn a bad situation into a tolerable one.  Laughter is the balm that restores hope to the soul.  The most desperate situations often make for the funniest stories over time.  If you can go with the flow and maintain a good sense of humor you can navigate almost any crisis.

It was Bruce Lee who advised his martial arts students, and anyone else who was listening, to be like water, that is to adjust to situations accordingly.  Water can fill an ocean and it can fit in a rain drop.  It can pound down city walls, and also sprinkle lightly over flowers.  If I’d learned anything from all my travels, it had been to remain flexible about everything.  Often, you can’t even begin to make plans until you get to where you are going next.  In ways, this had allowed me to do things I’d never anticipated.  At the same time, lack of financial stability had often made for a nerve-shattering ride.

When we grew up, my father was frequently in between jobs, and as a family we moved a lot.  Humor became the thing my siblings and I developed to defend ourselves.  We laughed at embarrassing situations, mimicked friends, and antagonists alike, endowed normal civilians with comic superpowers to make them great figures of fun.  If I couldn’t laugh at my situation, then I was screwed.  There were so many times in life that it had been my only reprieve, and it continued to work.  Laughter is still the best, and often the only, medicine.

It seemed like I hadn’t been at the Palenque ruins for long before I ran out of things to look at.  The back trail to it was closed, so I left through the entrance.  As I was leaving, I heard a woman warn her friend about some boys at the entrance who’d tried to sell her mushrooms.  I looked all over but couldn’t find them.  That left me dispirited as it certainly would’ve put a spin on my jungle adventure.

It was a long way back to town, but I decided to walk, seeing that I still had most of the day ahead of me.  My feet were hurting in my shoes, but not like they had for the first week of the trip.  Something about being on an airplane seemed to make them swell up, but I wasn’t sure what the connection was.  I walked down towards town, the jungle dense on both sides of the road, the sun sometimes breaking through the clouds to light the path.  At the gate where I’d bought my ticket to get in, I did another search for the mushroom dealing boys.  Apparently, it was not in the cards that day. 

A van pulled up and I changed my mind and hopped aboard.  There was a rich kid from Peru I’d ridden up with.  He was traveling all over the world for a year and had just come from seeing the Rolling Stones in Dallas.  I wished I had that kind of money.  The first time I’d had any kind of money was after cashing out a pension in my forties and that had only lasted a year.  The next few times I’d had money were after teaching contracts in the Middle East. 

For most of my life I’d been broke or close to it.  The unemployment money I’d recently gotten due to the pandemic had just been a gift.  It would be gone soon enough.  I didn’t need the rune stones to tell me what would happen next.  It wasn’t going to be pretty.  It never is.

My bus to Villahermosa was leaving at ten and rain was pounding in the street.  It was a good thing I’d grabbed an umbrella at the bus station in Campeche a few days earlier.  After checking out of my room, I stood there and waited in the lobby for the rain to abate.  It was full of people who’d been caught by surprise and had ducked in to try to stay dry.  When it seemed like it might be tapering off, I headed out and flagged down a taxi.  There were not many people at the station.

The transportation ended up being a van that said AIRPORT.  It was just two hours to Villahermosa.  The rain fell off and on.  There were wet cows grazing by the road and white egrets perched at the edge of the jungle.  Once we got into Villahermosa, the entire highway was undergoing major construction.  From the window I saw the park of Olmec artifacts, the Museo La Venta, that I wanted to visit, and then my hotel, the Real del Lago.  The bus kept going for another mile before pulling over at the terminal.  I hoped I would be able to make my way back on foot.

Before setting out for my hotel, I went and booked a bus to Oaxaca.  The only service they had was on an all-night bus that left at 6:30. That would mean killing a lot of time the next day, but also that the bus would arrive in the morning as opposed to the middle of the night.  I set out to find the hotel, just relying on memory to guide me there as I hadn’t had phone service the entire trip.  The construction they were doing made an obstacle course out of what should have been a simple walk.  At one point I had to get around two blocks of mud and then walk right through a construction camp, carrying my suitcase with two hands.

The hotel billed itself as an executive suite, but one that didn’t accept credit cards.  That was telling.  The air conditioner sounded like a cowbell when I turned it on.  A more urgent concern was getting to the park before the rain started pouring again.  I took my umbrella under my arm and hurried out the door.

The Olmecs were the earliest known Mesoamerican civilization, and lived in the area of Veracruz and Tabasco.  They thrived before the time of Christ and are most well-known for their colossal heads, giant stone heads, with broad faces, that were carved from boulders.  I’d seen them on display but had never made a point to specifically visit Villahermosa.  The park I was about to visit is a combination zoo and outdoor museum, with statues and altars from the Olmec era.  To get there I crossed Laguna de las Ilusiones, or the Lake of Illusions.

Fortunately, the rain held off for my entire visit.  The rune I had drawn to bring along and photograph was Wunjo, or the rune of happy endings.  It did turn out to be a peaceful afternoon and a memorable walk, with few visitors to crowd the path.  After passing one of the great stone heads at the entrance, I walked first through the zoo.  There were a number of animals endemic to the rainforest; monkeys, turtles, both a spotted and black jaguar, crocodiles, parrots, snakes.

I then walked through the forested trail, past stelas, and figures, with names like the Walker, the Young Goddess, the Bearded Man, the Young Warrior, the Split Head, the Triumphal Altar, the Stela of the King, the Altar of Dialogue, and of course, the Colossal Head.  There I stopped to take a picture of Wunjo, the rune of happy endings and serenity.  It was hard to know how the trip would end, but it had been on track so far, not thrilling but productive, both interesting and informative.

Wunjo resembles the letter P and represents happy endings.  It is related to the number three and predicts a season of good fortune and harmonious relationships.  It is possible that someone who draws this rune will soon meet someone and fall in love.  If so, it will be a happy relationship.  Business will also do well during this time.  Friendships will grow and health will be good.  Wunjo is one of the best runes you can draw.  Whatever one touches will prosper.

When it comes to the healing interpretation, Wunjo relates to serenity.  What is serenity, outside of basically coming to peace with the things in life that can’t be changed?  One way to increase serenity is to count blessings and pit them against problems.  There are usually more things that go right in a day than things that go wrong.   Honesty and patience lead to serenity.  Serenity dispels anger and fear.

One time when I was in my early twenties, I was playing the board game Life with some friends.  This is the game where you start off alone driving a car, and along the way pick up people, opportunities, and properties.  I didn’t care much for this game or the outcome, and was driving alone the whole time with nothing to show. 

When I reached the end, however, I could gamble everything on one spin of the wheel, and out of ten numbers landed on the lucky one and became the great tycoon and winner of all.  That’s how I’d played the game of life since, usually finding enough in the moment to survive, sustained by a grander vision of what life could be if I followed my own path.  It hadn’t always worked out that way, but then again, my life wasn’t over yet.  The older I got, the more I needed to let go of everything, particularly expectations.  They were more damaging than anything and only served to diminish the surprises that a new day may bring.

After leaving the Museo de Venta, I walked along the Lake of Illusions for a while.  It was soon apparent to me why it was called this.  There were bridges and watchtowers to climb.  At one point I came across a white crane, it’s reflection in the green water like a mirror image of a parallel universe.  Ring-tailed coatis, like racoons, foraged along the fences.  A sign warned of crocodiles in the water.  Inland was a giant playground, with slides and swings, even a pirate ship.  It was a wonderful place for anyone, particularly a child, to spend the day, the dream of a poet come to life.

By that point my feet were killing me again.  For a few days that pain had backed off a little, but now it had returned full force.  There always has to be something in life, that seems to be the essence of it, one worry disappears, another one takes its place, one pain dissipates, another comes crashing down from the sky. 

This pain in my feet, however, was better than a pain in my heart, or even worse a pain in my soul.  There had been long days of that, and the physical variety of pain was infinitely preferrable.  When I got back to my hotel, I kicked off my shoes and socks, and saw, with some satisfaction, that one of the toes was almost black. 

Was it the Devil that pieced the shoes together?  Why did I keep strapping them to my feet, outside of the fact that I was cheaper and more stubborn than the summer day is long.  I think I got the shoes for twenty bucks and was on track to wear out my feet before I wore them out.  What does the Bible say about a fool and his folly?  You can’t talk him out of it.

It was a drag to have six hours to kill the next day before my bus left for Oaxaca.  The AC had kept clanging all night long.  I’d just laid there for hours, eventually falling asleep as a telenovela played on the TV, the sound turned all the way down.  My head was full of anxious, restless thoughts.  I hadn’t worked for years now.  My only accommodation in the world was a cloth camper in my mother’s backyard, and yet here I was, studying runes in Mexico as if my life depended on it.  Maybe it did?  I didn’t know anymore what was real, especially in the wave of the pandemic.  Things were shaky before then.  By now reality was shot.

Funnily enough, the rune I picked that morning was Fehu, the rune of prosperity.  Where would that come from, I wandered.  The sky?  No.  Only rain was falling from the sky and I had six hours to kill in it.  I took a few pictures of Fehu on the counter and then packed my bags.  After checking out of my room, I sat in the lobby for an hour.  When the rain let up a little, I made my way towards the bus station, back through the same construction site and muddy few acres of torn-up street.

When I got to the terminal, there was still too much time to kill.  I got a newspaper and read about all the local accidents and fatalities.  Two bodies lay beside a truck that had crashed into a divider.  A man had either fallen or been pushed from a bridge.  Was that all?  There had to be more.  Only a tribute to a slain actor?  Where was all the graphic violence?  Wasn’t this a Mexican newspaper?

There was a Subway sandwich shop in one wing of the terminal.  I went over and got a footlong tuna sandwich, and sat chewing it as slowly as possible.  There were still three hours to kill.  I put some of the sandwich away for later.  It seemed like the best of the trip was behind me now.  Most days I felt the same way about my life.  I went and checked the gate.

When we finally boarded, I was way in the back of the bus on the right-hand side.  It was going to be a thirteen-hour trip.  Right away, some movies started playing, one about a dead drag queen, the next one, the Pixar movie Trolls, which was just unbearable.  When it finally finished, I sat in the darkness in relief and leaned my head against the window.  The arthritis was back in my right elbow, making it swell up like a golf ball. 

We stopped once at a travel center on the road.  All I got was some juice and cookies.  Now no one was next to me, so I bent over sideways, with my legs tucked up on the seat.  A few times we pulled over at immigration stops and all the lights came on.  The police wanted to see our passports. 

The bus arrived in Oaxaca at seven-thirty in the morning.  There was a decision to make.  Veracruz was eight hours away, but would be another overnight bus.  Puebla was about five hours and there were buses all day long.  I decided to just do that.  The trip was drawing to a close and I needed to be careful not to ruin it now.  From Puebla, it would just be a few more hours to Mexico City.  Perhaps, I’d visit Cuernavaca as well, but that was it.  It’s always good to go while the going is still good.

Fehu looks like an F, with the top horizontal lines slanting upwards.  It represents prosperity and new beginnings.  Back in the old days that wealth meant great herds of cattle.  September is the month for the rune and the moon is the Wood Moon.  During this period, money will be easy to come by and one can look forward to material comfort.  At the same time, a wise person will manage their money sensibly.  Wealth means savings.  If one has gone through a period of poverty, their situation will soon improve.  It is important to act charitably towards others if you want this good fortune to last. 

When it comes to healing, Fehu represents honesty.  One needs to take an honest assessment of their current situation before they can begin to prosper.  Are you being honest about what you want and expect from others?  Great relief comes with the ability to be one’s self and drop the pretense.

What was I really after?  That was the question that had dogged me most of my days.  Was my artistic quest just a Don Quixote errand I’d embarked on or was there a greater meaning behind my journeying?  I’d spent my entire life going out into the unknown, time and time again, but was I running towards something or running away from it?  Perhaps it was a little of both. 

I’d done all I could to raise the funding for my projects, mostly working low-paying jobs, but that wasn’t enough anymore.  There weren’t enough years left to waste any more of them, barely getting ahead.  I needed to make my writing a priority and ask others to support it.  If God didn’t bless me, then no one could.  If I didn’t ask, then that was on me.

From the terminal in Oaxaca, I set out to find my hotel on foot.  Oaxaca has always been a favorite spot in Mexico, but at this time they were having trouble in the Zocalo.  The police had set up a wide parameter and check point around it.  I was unsure if it had anything to do with COVID or not, but once they knew I was staying there they let me in. 

The plaza looked like it was in a state of disruption.  It was hard to say where the protest camps stopped and the construction projects started.  I passed a flyer of Benito Juarez wearing a COVID mask.  Were people for or against the regulations?  You would never know by watching them.  Everyone in Mexico seemed to be observing the protocols. 

The Hotel Gala was an artsy place to stay and a good deal, just a block off of the Zocalo.  I went to see if they’d let me leave my bag in storage but they let me check in early.  One guy carried my suitcase up the three flights of stairs to my room.  The plan for the day was to head up to the ruins of Monte Alban.  I needed to find where the bus left from. 

The guy at the front desk told me two walk two blocks over.  There was an office where I could buy a roundtrip ticket.  Next to him on the wall there was a painting of a supernatural woman, standing over an agave plant, blue energy shooting from her fingers.  She looked like a native Madonna.  Her soul was shining like a seed of light in the center of her chest.

Monte Alban, in southern Mexico, was once one of the largest cities in Mesoamerica, built by the Zapotec civilization.  Its prominence lasted about a thousand years from 500 BC to 500 AD, at which time it was largely abandoned.  It is characterized by a large plaza, bordered by steep platforms.  I’d been there a few times in the past.  The mission now was to revisit it and take a picture of the Pertho rune, which represents luck or chance.

Following the directions I’d been given at the hotel, I walked two blocks over and was met by a woman who came bounding out of her office to sell me a ticket to Monte Alban.  There was a bus leaving at ten and it was ten now.  She wandered off to get change for a hundred pesos and then came back and told me to follow her.  At the corner she pointed to a bus that was stopped three blocks away and said that it was my bus.  I hurried down the street and jumped onboard.  Talk about wasting no time.

There were many cars lined up at the entrance to Monte Alban, perhaps a mile and a half of them.  The bus driver cruised to the front of the line and let us off there.  He said we could either catch the return bus at 1:30 or 2:30. After paying for a ticket, I walked towards the North Platform.  From a distance it looked like it might be roped off, as all of the sites had been up until this point, but most of it was open.  I walked down the steps and found a ledge to set my rune of the day on.  There were a few stone pillars, and a stelae, so clean and legible it seemed to be imported.

I walked across the grass of the Main Plaza, and made my way over to some other stelae that were lined up near the Palace of Dancers.  These are what I wanted to see the most, these tall stones with intriguing creatures carved into them, half primitive, half alien.  A German woman had the same idea as me, and was taking pictures, slowly lining up her shots, one excruciating stone at a time.  I stood off to the side and chewed through my lower lip.

From the South Platform, it is possible to get a grand view, both of the Main Plaza below, as well as the entire Oaxaca Valley.  I watched all the tourists, not much larger than ants, crossing the grass, and remembered the ant hill I had seen at Teotihuacan, red ants streaming in and out of it, so frantic to be going somewhere, doing something.  I’d been moving at a pretty fast clip myself, busting it to half the ruins in Mexico, mostly to stay engaged and keep my thoughts from crashing the party.  Where was I going?  What was I hoping to achieve?  Did it matter?

When I got back to the ticket office, there was a bus that was leaving right away for the city.  I went and claimed the only open seat, right next to an old man who didn’t seem happy to see me.  At one point he suggested that I pull down a folding seat that was next to the driver and sit in that instead.  All I had to do was shrug and he relented.  Even if he owned the bus that wasn’t going to happen.

There was so much traffic when we got back to Oaxaca, that it was easier to just get off the bus and walk.  Then, since I was already walking, I went all the way to the bus station to buy a ticket for Puebla the next day.  Now, suddenly, my feet felt too swollen to stand.  I bought some vaquero, or cowboy, comic books at a newsstand, to practice my Spanish, and limped back towards the hotel.  There, I took a shower and laid down until late afternoon.  The Spanish siesta is a brilliant way to break up the day.  I’d get up when I was ready to get up.

It is hard to describe what Pertho looks like, perhaps a binder for a folder.  I would have to draw it for you.  It represents chance or luck so is the rune of gamblers.  The name itself means pawn as it was once a gambling piece.  Its month is May and its moon is the Merry Moon.  When this rune is drawn it is likely a bet will pay off in a big way.  It may mean that one is about to go on a winning streak or that they are playing the game of life extremely well.  This doesn’t mean one should show off or flaunt their cards.  Instead, keep them close to your chest.  You dreams may predict future events.

As far as the healing interpretation, Pertho represents love.  There is nothing luckier than to find true love.  When one is in love, the world is a magical place.  Love heals those who are able to give and receive it.  Drawing this rune may mean one is about to find love, either by meeting another, or through the divine love of God.  Either way, the experience can only be positive.

If I’ve had any luck in my life it had only been that worse things hadn’t happened to me.  Outside of that, I never won any prize, received a grant or inheritance, or got any breaks that made any difference.  When it came to love, I sought it out and then shrank from the constant attention it required to keep it.  I’d made my own way for years now, assuming I’d never get lucky, perhaps a safe way to live, and a lonely one. 

At the root of it there was an assumption, perhaps, that I didn’t deserve good things, that I wasn’t good enough to get to make demands.  So, I’d largely learned to live without love, and when given an opportunity to fill my tank, bled it dry.  Look at what that gets you, a place on a park bench.  Years of voluntary exile had given way to years of involuntary exile.  It often seemed like there was no way to get back home, no way to catch up with my peers.  I was stuck out on a limb with my bag of tricks.  No one wanted to climb out there.  They didn’t need another story from the road.

Oaxaca is full of world class street art.  Walking around the neighborhood in the late afternoon, the charm of the city kicked in, despite the lockdown that was happening in the Zocalo.  I passed a mural of a woman with a death head, kneeling on an agave plant with bats at both sides of her.  There was a dog with a halo of barbed wire.  Now a good one, Emiliano Zapato, with a rifle and a shoulder bullet belt, riding a bike.  Now an even better one, Batman and Robin with sombreros.  Satan with a shot-glass.  A political rally happening soon.  The grim reaper dragging off a COVID victim.  Skull and bones on a rock and roll record shop.

I walked to the Basilica de Nuestra Senora de Soledad.  Love was in the air.  A couple was being serenaded by a group of mariachis in white jackets and pants.  There was the big guitarron, the guitar-like vihuela, three violins, two trumpets.  A crowd had gathered around in a circle to watch the couple dance. 

I should be so lucky one of these days, maybe when I’ve shed all the bad karma I’ve accrued.  Maybe then I’ll walk up to the woman with the death head and ask her to dance.  She’ll remove her mask and I’ll know then that what I was seeing all the while was a projection of my own fear.  We’ll go waltzing towards the blinking lights and find ourselves lost in the stars.  We should all be so lucky to fall in love someday.