Presence, Simplicity, and Delight

Writing is a mindful pause. A way to appreciate the breath between moments. A way to let the moment settle and learn the texture of a new breath. These are thoughts I’m having as I lay on my belly, ankles crossed behind me hanging over the edge of the bed. I’m in a rented room in the center of Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca, Mexico.

I’m about halfway into my trip to Mexico at this point. I began in Mexico City, and after about a week, I journeyed to Mazunte, another, smaller, coastal town about an hour east of Puerto Escondido. Necessary context, as I began my journey to Mexico from California, I also began the premenstrual phase of my menstrual cycle. This is typically a time when I feel more inward, psychically sensitive, emotionally present, and ripe for emotional and energetic transformation. As I deepen my devotion to my sacred femininity, the more sensitive I become to the wisdom from my womb. Let’s see how this goes, I thought to myself, calculating my cycle just weeks before my trip; I welcomed the dance of travel during this sensitive time.

Something, in particular, I’ve been studying about my sacred femininity is my creational cycles in relation to how my hormones speak to me during all phases of my menstrual cycle. For instance, in some phases of some cycles, I feel “loud” about my expression, like I feel like there is something notable to say about my creations or my perception of what I find beautiful.

But in this phase in this cycle, I feel like I’m having an intimate conversation with life through beauty. Instead of saying anything “special” or creating anything “important”, I’ve been capturing moments in my daily life that touched a spot of primal joy in my heart.

I say primal joy because it’s that innate feeling of delight, peace, love, possibility. It’s the feeling that makes you laugh to yourself at the beauty or wonder of the thing you’re beholding — and in some way, you can say you’re sharing a laugh with GOD, with Life.

Here are some of the moments of my life in Mexico in the past two weeks that nourished my spirit, captured through photography.

Tuesday Market… *sighs* … This was such a beautiful morning full of alignment and magic. You know, the magic generated when happy and whole people get around each other. It was Tuesday in La Condesa, a few blocks down from Parque España where I was staying. Incidentally, back in July 2022, I lived right around the corner of this market for a month. I’m an early riser, so back then I enjoyed greeting the market first-thing for fresh sandia and papaya, grabbing some eggs and tomatoes, chillies, and going back into the apartment to make my breakfast. And just as in July 2022, when I walked through the market now in 2025, I was met with the warmth and smiles of hard-working vendors doing their weekly something. Hard-working, yet relaxed and friendly. Everyone returning to the market week after week, month after month, buyers and sellers, expect to create relationships — and they do. This is why the market is a place full of energy, life, and love. And of course, fresh and delicious food, nourishing the temple to hold the spirit with Love.

During one of my stints living in Mexico City, I was in a brief relationship with Jorge. We lived together and everything, but in a different area, with a different market, that time meeting every Monday. Jorge is Mexican and his English was about as good as my Spanish at the time, so it was a learning opportunity for me — to learn the language through relationship, but also through watching him shop for produce, meats, cheeses, eggs, occasional tacos, at the market — me, his shadow. But I was learning.

Sometimes we only see how much we learn, how far we’ve come, when we reflect. Or, in this case, when we come back to Mexico City two years later and find ourselves speaking only Spanish in the market because nobody spoke to us in English so why would we use English anyway?

I’ll tell ya, it’s been gratifying and satisfying to be here and comfortably speaking the language of this country. It brings another level of intimacy to my life. Mexican people are generally not difficult people to connect with. They are generally situated in the heart, they are simple, they are loving, they are genuine, they are kind and predictable — generally, in my experience. But being able to extend my communication with Mexicans beyond the basics of the language or the exchange of warm smiles allows a deeper connection to each present moment. I shift from my mind’s thinking to my heart’s feeling and my body’s sensing because I have become one with the environment — to me at least. This presence changes what I know is a temporary trip to a more embodied and timeless life experience.

Now we’re in Mazunte, Oaxaca, where I’d rented a hilltop cabin for some privacy and to be amongst the birds and bees and trees. With an outdoor shower, too! Which I enjoyed.

During this premenstrual — or luteal — phase of my menstrual cycle, I am less and less active. Mazunte is a coastal town as I mentioned before, so visiting the water was certainly on my agenda, but I was delightfully home-bound for most of my week there. Here’s the thing about me and travel — I’m skilled at it. Because I’ve been doing it since I was 19. I’ve gotten good at packing just enough, using everything I pack, shopping for just the right amount of food, and being creative with how I make delicious and nourishing meals for myself. How’d I get good at it? By being bad at it enough to make necessary changes along the way!

At this point, I can happily cook all my meals with only salt. I dunno, I guess with a cupboard full of spices and tings back home, I forgot all food, all of Earth’s natural provisions, have their own natural flavor! And salt is a flavor enhancer, so I’ve been enjoying the simplicity of cooking with salt and tasting the natural flavors of food. I feel like it’s been bringing my energy back to balance in a way.

Pasta, garbanzo beans (soaked for a few hours first), ripe plantain, tomato puree, some veggies, a bit of water. I threw everything into a pan with quite a bit of liquid and let it all cook as one! The simplicity was unmatched, which made the flavor reach me even more deeply because the love was there, and so was the nourishment. Also, something about cooking outside is very wholing for me. Like I can imagine I pulled my food from the earth and the bushes and the chicken coop and made it right there.

And then because my camera was out and I was surrounded by nature, I got to snapping. Such beauty. The wind was blowing, so to capture a steady image was challenging, but not so much. ;) I love the layers of dimension and colors of that leaves photo above.

There is something deliciously sensual about sunrise, no? It’s a time in the day when few, if any other, humans are around, the mind and heart are clear, the body is just opening to the light of day, much like Earth opening to welcome the light of day.

Stepping out of bed and to the kitchen after my early rise, I could already see the sky gently lit with that signature mist of pink, purple, and blue that announces the sun’s incoming or departure. I was both excited and nervous because I knew it would take me about 17 minutes to reach the beach by foot. The child part of me wanting to see the fantastic natural wonder of beauty didn’t want to miss a thing!

By the time I arrived at the beach entrance, the sun was a glorious hot orange situated perfectly in my view, to which I said aloud “GOD is funny.” Maybe I meant I am funny, because for all that hustling through my morning routine and down the dusty hill, I only arrived at a moment that made time stand completely still.

I took off my shoes and stepped onto the sand and it was like returning home. I could breathe again. I could relax again. And I could further open up.

The sun casting its special glow on the ocean’s surface, mixed with the sounds of waves and the smell of the ocean, is like Nirvana. A moment of pureness, presence. A sweet kind of perfection.

Leaning into the pureness of my experience in Mazunte required trust from me. All travel requires trust. I suppose trust has been an element of my human nature I’ve been journeying with through travel for the past decade — many times confusing trust with obliviousness; many times favoring control over trust, which led to fear and distrust. But there have been certain moments that have shown me that trust is always on my side if I choose to engage with trust. It is always my choice.

On my first night in Mazunte, I met this cute black and white cat. She (though I don’t know her official gender) was gentle, kind, patient, simple. I felt safe around her.

The next day I didn’t see her. I expected her to stick around to try and constantly get something from me. To try and get some of the food I was making, or anything really. For context, in the apartment I stayed in in Mexico City just a week prior, there was an overly-friendly dog who was all up in my ass at any moment.

But as I let myself land in Mazunte — like spiritually allow myself to be present in this spacious and simple place, I could observe the dissonance between how I was trying to keep control within myself and the ease my external situation was offering.

On another day, the cat returned in the morning as I made myself some cacao with milk. She was meowing, communicating a desire to me. She wouldn’t stop. I found myself with a vacillating heart and then embodied my grandmother and my mother’s essence to sternly shush the animal and shun it as I prioritized my own humanness — my own comfort.

Moments later, behind the comfort of my closed cabin door, I felt my heart crying. Cat was communicating a need to me. She needed something and she was only doing right by herself to get her needs met. My heart crying brought tears to my eyes at the layered desensitization and distrust my heart was working through. I popped up off the bed and opened the door to find Cat silently waiting there for me. She wasn’t meowing. She wasn’t begging. But it was like she was expecting me to rise up and meet her with an open heart.

I warmed up a little milk with a splash of filtered water and poured it into a little bowl for her. She drank it quickly and I didn’t see her again for two days. As I’d warmed her milk, I could see in my mind’s eye my mother and her mother incredulous at my care for a non-human being. It’s just an observation — they have channeled their love and care in a different way.

When I did see miss Cat again, I felt friendlier towards her, and it seemed she felt more relaxed towards me. I was joyous to make her a bowl of milk when she arrived. She took one lick and left it alone, which made my heart nearly burst with Love. Because she wasn’t hanging around to get something from me. If anything, she was there as a companion, a friend, an escort through the deep transformation the week was presenting to me as I journeyed through my premenstrual phase, cosmic alignment, and a new moon portal. Cat was there as a guardian and guide.

When our guides show up, do we embrace them, irrespective of their form?

Can we recognize them?

How do we honor and care for them so they know that we know who they are?

These questions come through my heartmind to my fingertips as I reflect on my week in Mazunte. And this, I find, is the power of reflection — integrating, cognizing, and embodying the energies generated and worked through in a given timeframe.

My time in Mazunte was quite meditative. In general, my life includes meditation because it keeps me aligned with simplicity and organic wellness. Meditation keeps me in a state of equanimity, dispassionate loving awareness, and connection to my subtle body. The above image is the best representation of my life at this time, but especially my inward journey in Mazunte.

I write this as I sit in my bed in the center of Puerto Escondido, which reminds me of Mexico City in its raucousness. Mazunte had its moments of loudness that interrupted my peace as well — trucks and motorcycles moving through the main road just down the hill from the cabin, ecstatic dance parties until 6am, reggae nights past midnight — but it didn’t matter. Because cultivating a meditative life isn’t about the place as much as it is about my intention to be in presence, experience simplicity, and make room in my inner world for delight.

It is so unlike a contemporary Igbo person to cultivate a meditative life. We are heated people. We are ambitious. We are successful, sometimes at any cost. We are seen. We are loud. We are joyful. And we like to be the 12pm sun in the sky, brilliantly shining our light on everything and everyone.

But, for me, not all the time. Abeg, I need to Yin it out. I need to bring more coolness, quiet, darkness, and solitude into my life from time to time. Because the sun is the sun and the sun will never burn out.

I am human. I ain’t the sun! I burn out if I’m not mindful, heartful, and bodyful.

And finally, we come to the most mystical day of my Mazunte experience during this trip.

You know, mysticism is challenging to put words to — because it’s like an orientation toward mystery and the beyond through a perceptively subjective lens. Welp, I guess I found some words for it.

This was a Thursday, Jupiter day, Jueves. The day before I would leave and journey to Puerto Escondido. Instead of going to see the sunrise at the beach as I did a few days prior, I wanted to trek to Punta Cometa, which I was told is the southernmost point of Mexico. When I last visited Mazunte in 2021, I recall being told it was also a spot of magic.

Throughout the past couple of years, I’ve learned to take any talk of “magic” with a grain of salt because of how manipulating that energy can be to naive and hopeful minds. I once lived with quite a naive and hopeful mind, sometimes too open to receive what anyone would tell me or where anyone would direct me. Eventually, that openness led me on a transformative life journey of self-discovery and decolonization — which now to me means to restore the indigenous, unmanipulatible, integrity of my/our authentic creative intelligence.

So, on this particular Thursday morning, with my only intention being to connect with nature through a hike in the woods to a cliff with my camera and childlike spirit, I made my way to Punta Cometa.

The sun was already in that spot in the sky where it was beaming down onto the ocean, glistening radically as though it wasn’t barely 8am. I didn’t even know where I was walking to — I followed signs; I followed Google Maps; I followed the trail in front of me through which countless others had been before. In this way, it was kind of like life’s journey, even on a path of unique self-creation. Intuition is the trail somehow tread before us, available from which to glean wisdom.

Towards the end of the trek through the woods, I saw a storied wooden bench with a fallen yellow flower perched somehow intentionally on the far left edge. It made me happy. It made me smile. It activated my primal joy once again and I was able to capture this unique moment of pleasure and peace.

I continued walking, now down a few steps, leading to an open expanse of treeless air which exposed cliffs that extended into the ocean, lit in cerulean, indigo, turquoise, and cobalt by the light of the sun.

“Wow,” is all I could continue to say to myself as I tried not to tumble down the steps in front of me, my feet feeling new and big and clumsy. Why couldn’t I just fly like all the birds around me?

Framing the steps down onto the main cliff were cacti, looking as seductive and stately as cacti always look to me. Since my visit to Jardin Majorelle on my Summer 2024 trip to Marrakech, Morocco, I learned that I love to photograph cacti. Nothing special — that’s it! They are so photogenic to me and they really speak to me, like flowers. They speak by saying nothing. And for someone as expressive as myself, perhaps it’s that opposite quality that attracts me to them.

Mysticism and enchantment… as I write this, I am starting to see that they have a relationship. It’s being able to perceive the spirit of something. Something of nature, something of art, something made by hands imbued with the spirit of the maker.

Along the route of the cliff leading to the eventual southernmost point of Mexico, Punta Cometa itself, there are spaces created to look out to the ocean, to pause for a breath, to capture some photos. I did all three at several of these points along the path — because the alternative is to be only ever walking to the end goal and never stopping to appreciate the view and catch my breath.

One particular moment or pocket along the path held so much potency for me. That’s the final image above, captured in grayscale. It was an awkward patch of ground, not level for sitting comfortably, and the wind was blowing more fiercely this high up; loose dirt was blowing freely. I was overlooking these amazing huge rocks in the ocean. I wanted to fly down and stand on them. But I didn’t fly down and stand on them because I was situated in this human dimension where I don’t have wings, only arms and legs. I am a walking creature, not a flying one.

Here’s the thing with perceiving mysticism: it becomes you. You must be grounded in your awareness so you don’t get lost in your multidimensionality. You can lose, or expand your ego, though, which happened to me as I connected with this part of the Earth, looking out to these rocks in the ocean, negotiating with the wind and the wildflowers for a shot that would touch my heart each time I’d look back at the photo.

And it does touch my heart. All these images touch my heart. At this particular time of writing, two days after beginning my first draft of this travel account, I have begun my Sacred Bleed. So I can say in some way that my spirit is rising out of my inner depths with so much wisdom from the previous cycle to integrate into my perception of life.

More and more as I journey through this life, simplicity deepens its importance and resonance. When I was a younger human, my perception of simplicity had less dimension — it is a kind of straightforwardness youth offers us: a certain kind of exuberance and confidence, but a lack of complexity and wisdom. Even as I reflect on my August 2024 account of simplicity in Casablanca Morocco, I see now how my perception has complexified.

And as I come to the end of this Mexico travel account, I am seeing how as simplicity deepens through intention and presence, an organic complexity — an organic intelligence — reveals itself.

More Wows.

That’s it, for now.