

Shikoku

A Pilgrimage from Maturity to Old Age

Amparo Espinosa Rugarcía
First English Edition, 2015

First Spanish Edition, 2002

Copyright © 2002 by:

AMPARO ESPINOSA RUGARCÍA

José de Teresa No. 253, col. Campestre,

Del. Álvaro Obregón, 01040, México, D. F.

This edition and its features are the property of

DOCUMENTACIÓN Y ESTUDIOS DE MUJERES, A.C.

José de Teresa No. 253, col. Campestre,  
Del. Álvaro Obregón, 01040, México, D. F.

©Amparo Espinosa Rugarcía

First e-book published through Smashwords for DEMAC. A.C. by 3Ecrans SAPI de CV.

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PH, Bosques de las Lomas

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Translated by Robert A. Haas.

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No part of this book may be reproduced, translated or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any storage, information and retrieval system, without permission in writing from Amparo Espinosa Rugarcía
TABLE OF CONTENTS

Dedication

Introduction

First station

Second station

Third station

Fourth station

Fifth station

Sixth station

Seventh station

Eighth station

Ninth station

Tenth station

Eleventh station

Twelfth station

Thirteenth station

Fourteenth station

Fifteenth station

Sixteenth station

Seventeenth station

Epilogue

To my daughter Amparín, and my sons Julio and Manuel,  
and to my daughter-in-law Paty and my son-in-law David,  
so that you always adhere to the pilgrim's slogan  
and you only retain what you love.

To Manuel, also, for his faith in Shikoku.

To Yiya, because she taught us to love unconditionally.
INTRODUCTION

The day I celebrated my birthday number sixty, at the moment of blowing off the candles of the imperative Sanborn's cake, I made up my mind: I would mark the beginning of the my life's last stage with a pilgrimage to Shikoku.

Some days before our first trip to Japan with my family, some months before my birthday, I found out that there was an island called Shikoku that had eighty Buddhist monasteries arranged in a course that Japanese go over in pilgrimage for more than one thousand years in anticipation of old age. In some moment, I thought of including in our trip a visit to that island. But our departure was already imminent and we only had ten days left. Moreover, if for my daughter, my two sons, my daughter-in-law and me, that experience seemed physically feasible, for my granddaughters Amparo Alexia and Camila, five and seven years old respectively, it seemed excessive. They were too young to behave with the solemnity required by a pilgrimage such as that of Shikoku which, now I know it, destiny had in store only for me.

I know that it is impossible to predict how many years we will live, but there are people who say that we can make a fairly close calculation. I descend from a long-lived family where reaching a century is nothing extraordinary and, besides, there is the natural increase in the life expectancy of Mexican women. Although I cannot guarantee it, at my sixty years of age maybe I can aspire to another fifteen or twenty years on this land. Anyhow, there is something I'm sure of: no matter how many years they will be, they will be my last chance of squeezing out life and spill its juices at my leisure. I want to hand over to death only my skeleton.

There was some time since I had already begun to say goodbye to an ego who was crying out for retirement. Routines, activities and relationships that had defined me for years, seemed only transient incidents more or less picturesque in the light of my sixth decade. Preserved in photos of faces and different scenarios, I had been storing them ritually, in albums that I keep in my library, in case the passage of time makes me doubt their veracity. At the time, they were glorious. But it was time to hand over the space they had occupied for years in the country of my days, to other activities, to other routines, to other relationships more in accord to my new ego engendered as of my last menstrual period and whose imminent birth was announced by the peace I felt when I stood up off my chair, solemnly, to blow off, with some nostalgia and a lot of expectation , the candles on a cake covered with meringue and topped with two thick candles in the form of a six and a zero where, as I use to, I placed my ring to wish myself luck before blowing them out.

When he turned forty-five years old, Montaigne said that time had arrived to think about death. During fifteen years I turned a deaf ear to the call of the famous essayist, but my time was running out. I could not delay the start of a task that I would carry out at my own pace or forced by the nearness of the end, but inevitably. Life was inviting me to tackle it with a pilgrimage and I could not disregard its offer.

I had to prepare my trip to Japan with delicacy, according to the venerability implicit in the mission of revering and welcoming the turning point that would seal for the whole eternity my amazing, my bloodcurdling, my wonderful passage through this planet. One way to do it was by initiating the adventure before leaving Mexico through brief visits to earlier stages of my life: to places, characters and readings which still were part of my conscious story. I would fill the spiritual luggage that I would carry to Shikoku with my most tenacious memories: those which, for some mysterious reason, were not yet reduced to one page of any of my albums, and were determined to be part of a today not belonging to them anymore. If these memories accompanied me through the monastic circuit of the smallest of the Japanese islands, perhaps they would disclose me the reasons for their stubborn presence; if, on the other hand, they insisted on upholding their secrecy, I would ask them to at least describe me in detail anecdotes of my biography that are unclear to me so that I could record them, with my best handwriting, in some hardcover notebook that I use as diaries. To do an existential assessment, without mercy and with honesty, requires a precise accounting that must be recorded beautifully and in writing. I was determined to start my final stage with a very clear vision of my performance as a human being. Only that way I would squeeze to the last drop each of the years that I might still have to live as I yearned to do so and thus say good-bye in peace.

The great pilgrimage to Shikoku entails visiting all the temples clockwise. I knew, before I started my visit, that in this first approach it would be impossible for me to fulfill to the letter this and all the other requirements. Some temples are very far from highways and the time that I had was scarce, as usual. Even before leaving I was facing one of my most deep-rooted traits that at times seem a virtue and others one of my worst vices: my perpetual rush, a hyperactivity that almost accompanies me since I was born. Would it be a typical feature that I would have to moderate in the future?

I didn't know any Mexican who had made the Shikoku pilgrimage, so I resorted to Laura, my usual travel agent, for information. She didn't know anything about this island either, so she called Luisa Fernanda, a friend of hers specializing in itineraries to the Far East, and asked her to help her organizing my trip. She also requested her to talk to me. The meeting between Luisa Fernanda and I was fortunate. She had married a Japanese and she had lived several years in Japan before returning to Mexico and open the travel agency. She understood immediately what I wanted. She gave me a book on Shikoku—I had only been able to dig up very little information—and she told me what clothing I should wear. But above all, she enlightened me on the Japanese. She told me, among other things, that the tableware they use to eat every day, especially the monks, changes according to seasons. I knew, due to my years of learning the tea ceremony, that there are spring and winter rituals to celebrate this ceremony and that even the positioning of logs in the stove must comply with seasonal rules. But I never imagined that this attention to detail reached the daily life of the Japanese because it implies solving, among many other dilemmas, how to store numerous very fragile artifacts in tiny houses practically devoid of furniture.

My conversations with Luisa Fernanda confirmed my decision to mark significantly the prelude to my old age. If each period of the year requires a specific tea ceremony, if each season requires appropriate dishes, cups and cutlery, the more the different stages of our lives require attitudes, behaviors and rituals according to their characteristics. I had to store in some nook of my soul, and once for all, the repertoires I had used to dodge my childhood, youth and adulthood, as if they were a tableware for spring, summer and autumn, and I had to undertake the search of the one that I would need for winter, even if that meant having to cross the Pacific Ocean.

Until that moment, I had expected that I would live an eternal autumn, spread with spring or summer memories. Old age and death were for me evils of a foreign species, and I only had to worry about my reality of an adult woman capable of moving around the world almost at will. I had ceased being a wife several decades ago. My daughter and my two sons are already old enough to travel by themselves, and my father, whom I promised secretly to accompany until the end, died recently. Every moment, time was more my time.

The pleasure I feel every weekend driving to Cuernavaca at any time I feel like, while I listen to music and to my recordings of favorite readings, tending the garden and wandering freely around the countryside on Saturdays and Sundays, is not greater than the one I feel when I shred my ideas in newspaper articles, I organize competitions for women who dare to tell their story, I meditate on Wednesdays with my co-workers, and I carry out, as best as I can, my duties as business consultant. As money is not my problem, my freedom is almost total.

How timely was the Shikoku pilgrimage! How timely to remind me that everything has an end, and that even my feeling of freedom and my self-determination are temporary, and that the rides, the competitions, the meditations and the articles will eventually come to an end. With all this in my mind, I undertook the early preparation stages of the pilgrimage, for which I had, likewise, very short time.
FIRST STATION

A luminous inner courtyard with volcanic rock walls covered with moss and orchid-dotted vines, and a transparent dome that let see the stars, was the best feature of my aunt Angela's house in the Chimalistac area. The Sunday lunches gathered the family and took place around a round table—safeguarded by a tablecloth embroidered by my aunt with worsteds of colors—which was situated in the courtyard corner that monopolized the most variegated rocks. The table talks were the culminating moment. I was very little girl at that time but I still remember the tone of the conversations which varied along with the rhythm of shadows caused by the light which changed according with the passing of hours. This inner bright courtyard, with volcanic walls, disappeared decades ago. My aunt sacrificed it to divide the house in two and give half of it to one of his eight children, unaware that she was sacrificing one of my most endearing child scenarios.

The best part of my aunt Angela's house at Chimalistac is now a garden of nearly ten square meters covered with impatiens, daisies, pansies and violets. In the middle a weeping willow, my favorite tree after the jacaranda tree and the glory bush, rises at the side of a giant ash. It doesn't seem a much visited garden. Perhaps, as one day my son Julio said when he saw my mother sitting on the sofa in the living-room, "grandmothers are like shade plants".

I decided to visit my aunt Angela to start out the pilgrimage because she is the last living witness of my origins. I wanted to ask her at which church my parents got married and where they lived in Puebla and, perhaps, also the name of the hospital where I was born. I wanted to go for a walk through these places so I could carry them to Shikoku in my suitcase of memories. But things hardly ever happen as we plan them—fortunately perhaps?—and thus our conversation took other courses.

As soon as we sat at the table, I asked my aunt what of her life she would have changed. Quickly, because in our family we talk a blue streak, she said that she only remembered a few things, and right away she channeled the conversation towards my father, telling me that he was an extraordinary man. She acknowledged that she misses him and I could notice that she wasn't lying because her eyes drowned with nostalgia. They used to talk every day on the phone. Angela was grateful to him because he helped her with her children when she was widowed, and my father found in her a spirited partner willing to listen to him and to give him an honest opinion about what he said to her. This didn't happen often to him because his huge economic and social power enticed insincerity.

While I was listening to my aunt talking about my father, I recalled that, when I still was a teenager, one day she told me softly, while she was looking at her mother—my grandmother—seated in her rocking chair, that it was very sad to see our parents become old. I thought that it also causes pain to see our aunts become old although one can hardly notice it. Not in vain Saint Francis of Borgia decided to serve only God when he saw Queen Elizabeth, the Sovereign he had loved with so much loyalty, already rotting in her coffin. But although this anecdote has always caught my attention, I have not been faithful to Saint Francis example. I have revered men, starting with my father, up to almost deifying them, countless times. For how many endless hours my heart has only beaten for them, forgetting that it belongs to me?

It's very likely that I adored my father since I was born. But I realized it when I was six years old and I saw him riding his mare La Bonita outside our house in the Ajusco street where we lived when we came to Mexico City. He used to ride in the countryside on weekends and that day he decided to surprise us with a home visit. He looked impressive, leading effortlessly that huge animal, in front of the light iron bars door from which his two older daughters we stuck out as soon we heard the hoofs, with the dog Sultán barking at our side.

That day, and all that came after, I envisioned my father very tall, although he was only one meter and sixty five centimeters tall. Grasping the whip and tightening his legs to lead La Bonita, he only had to sing to be another Jorge Negrete. I imagined him trotting on the streets, undertaking all sorts of risky adventures that contrasted unfavorably—from my perspective of those years—with those of my mother who, at that time, should be breastfeeding her youngest daughter or bathing her third son, knitting us dresses or sewing curtains for our rooms. I could excuse my almost heroic and distorted perception of my father, arguing that it was due to my young age, if it weren't because it still persists, despite the fact that he died almost two years ago and I'm already on the verge of being old. Conversely, I can excuse my somewhat negative perception of my mother because I've rectified it over time doing her justice.

My aunt Angela is the younger of my father's two sisters and she has always looked younger than her real age. Even now, already eighty three years old, she could easily be confused with a fifty-something woman. She looks flawless with her set of yellow sweaters, her gauzy skirt in pastel tones and her essential high heel shoes as she has never accepted being only one and a half meters tall. Sitting at the head of the table and while eating a very tasty bread-pellets soup, she tells me that "my mom used to say that she and I we weren't as likeable or pretty as my sister María and thus we had to develop other virtues... but I know that she included herself so that I didn't feel bad".

It intrigues me that in the sea of forgetfulness of my Aunt Angela, this memory stays afloat. Really would my grandmother have said that my aunt was not pretty or nice? It doesn't matter. What is relevant is that for reasons that not even an oracle would uncover, of the many phrases that definitely she told her daughter during her nearly one hundred years of life, these were, whether real or invented, the ones that marked Angela's memory as if a red-hot seal had stamped them.

My motherhood passes in front of me like lightning. I shiver. The unintended damage that my words, unconsciously, could have caused on my three children overwhelms me. I look at my aunt with the tenderness of a mother and I realize that for the first time I see her from my adulthood. Three months ago I came to her house to learn how to make my grandmother's Christmas cookies. I arrived 25 minutes late because they had changed the streets' way but it was not yet six o'clock. Nonetheless, she greeted me saying: "There's not enough time." She brusquely put a bottle of sherry, a package of lard, a stick of butter and icing sugar in a paper bag. She gave me the recipe in writing and she told me to make them at home. I have never been able to prepare those cookies well, but I had not returned to ask my aunt Angela to teach me how to make them because I didn't want another scolding. This time I do ask her. Perhaps I will like, when I turn her age, that a niece of mine insists that I teach her something, despite the inevitable eccentricities that I would have acquired by then.

I don't want to leave. But I must go back to the office and my aunt looks tired. I quickly look over the room before leaving, in quest of clues to prepare my future. What might tell me the children's photographs of my cousins who are already over fifty years? What might tell me a smiling wooden small angel lying on the table? And the tapestry replica of a painting by Siqueiros that has been always there...? How much affection might hide these objects? How much frustration? What anecdotes might they tell me?

My aunt looks at me from some unknown place. I look at her intending to read her face which will be mine in twenty-three years. I look at her trying to tell her, without words, that I love her; that I hope she could be always there to remind me that someday I were a little girl waiting for life while sitting at a round table placed in a corner of a bright patio, and to please teach me how to get old. I look at her gnarled hands not so different from how mine are already; at her gait slower than when I came to prepare cookies. She tells me that she is very lonely and I wonder: And my cousin Angeles, the daughter who lives with you? And your son who lives next door? And your great-granddaughter with her huge blue eyes who you love so much and who visits you often? And your bridge-parties with your friends? And the outings to the movies with the sisters-in-law...? And...? And...?

My father used to talk just like that. He complained about loneliness with me who visited him twice a day; with me who knew about his endless guests and his phone that kept ringing. What makes up the solitude of the elderly who have their lives filled with people? Of those elderly who have collected memories that would fill with pride anyone? What's at the bottom of their perpetual complaint about loneliness? Will I feel it also when my turn comes? Will I be able to define it then?
SECOND STATION

The second station of my pilgrimage was Xavier Escalada's home, a Jesuit priest of Spanish origin who lived in Japan for two decades. He came back to Mexico a long time ago and has always wanted to return to the Far East as a missionary. At his almost eighty years of age, he's still waiting for the permission from his superiors; while it arrives, he leads meditation groups of elderly women as if it were the mission of his life.

I met him, like many other Jesuit priests, at the Universidad Iberoamericana. When I finished studying, I used to come across him in religious ceremonies. I stopped going to church and I lost his track. Days before the first anniversary of the death of my father, one of my sisters stumbled upon him by chance and she asked him to say the mass in memoria because he had been a good friend of his. My reencounter with Xavier Escalada seemed providential. Who better than him to talk to me about Japan? At the end of the mass I told him that I would celebrate my birthday visiting Buddhist monasteries and I wanted an appointment with him because I needed guidance.

Father Escalada lives in the penthouse of a building in the northern part of the city, among dozens of canaries who didn't stop singing while I was there. The girl at the door told me that these canaries breed a lot, something that surprised me because I thought that birds in captivity are sterile. How many other equally absurd beliefs I would be dragging through life, I thought, while I looked at a canary feeding its little one. The arrival of Xavier carrying several thick books on Japan in his hands brought me back to the reason for my visit, forcing me to leave for another time the survey of my fallacious assumptions.

Of course, he knew the Shikoku pilgrimage tradition; the father told me so as soon as we sat down at a rectangular table near a large window, while he pointed at the island with an undeniable knowledge of the area. "Wouldn't you like to also visit Nagasaki?" he asked me with apparent candor, while moving his hand at once in that direction. "Saint Philip of Jesus landed in that city and Diego Pacheco, another Jesuit, lives there for quite some time. He specializes in Japanese Christianity, which is extraordinary, and he might help you to find Jesus. Because, isn't that the ultimately purpose of your trip?" When I left Xavier's house, and even before getting into my car, I called Laura. I asked her to include Nagasaki in the tour, even if we had to eliminate other cities. As soon as I arrived at the office, I sent a fax to Diego Pacheco asking him for an appointment.

Which was the significance of my Zen meditation decade? Where did Ayya Kemma, the Tibetan nun who I used to read with admiration, fitted? And the most pressing issue at that moment, how could a Buddhist pilgrimage to the other side of the world be interpreted if days before it I was succumbing to a mere hint of Catholicism? There was no doubt: it was my parents and my grand-parents faith seducing me again with its sticky nets. And I had thought to have overcome it a long time ago!

My Catholic faith cracked when I was twenty-nine years old after reading Marriage and Morals by Bertrand Russell. I read it once and it was enough for some of my religious beliefs, which I considered immutable, based in the control of sexuality and the submission to the priests, to collapse as a dry pancake. A humiliating scene that I witnessed with nausea in a requiem mass some years later substantiated the breaking: my sister, appallingly afflicted by the tragic death of her teenage son, bends at her waist to kiss the hand of the priest who will serve the mournful ceremony expressing him submission and subordination.

An episode that the majority of those present surely ignored; a mere ritual seemingly irrelevant but followed for centuries by all the faithful, unhinged me. I couldn't—and I still cannot—understand that anyone can watch with indifference how a mother, who has just lost a son, places before her own pain the sign of subservience that the celebrant of the ceremony that will mark the dramatic event demands her without words, just by looking at her. Catholic women we take care of churches, we transmit dogmas and we cook for priests. Even so, centuries of indoctrination impose on us vile and aberrant behaviors, besides forbidding us the access to the high ecclesiastical hierarchy and the exercise of the most significant and sacred of mysteries, which is to transmute bread and wine in the flesh and blood of Christ.

I thought that these experiences had estranged me from my church permanently. Yet, there I was, trying to amend a complex itinerary to incorporate it into my pilgrimage. It is true that during my years of estrangement I had complemented my Buddhist readings with biblical readings; that I devoured several times Kazantzakis' Last Temptation and José Saramago's The Gospel According to Jesus Christ. But I thought that these concessions were anodyne. Now I wonder if those were not symptoms of a recalcitrant loyalty to Catholicism that I dare not to admit. Would I be destined to die in the bosom of the Holy Mother Church asking for a priestly blessing after all?
THIRD STATION

My house in San Angel was a port of call on my pilgrimage. I have lived here more than thirty: first married, afterwards as a divorced woman with three children and their nanny Yiya. I sat at the door of my bedroom and waited for Vicky and Sanoj, my two old dogs who come to me as soon as they hear me return from work because they know that I will feed them. I wanted to do the summing up of my life's domestic space from this spot under the late afternoon Sun. These square meters of my city and this time of the day have seen me getting older and must have memories that I ought to include in my luggage.

I took a sausage out of the bag and showed it to Vicky. She came towards me at a slow pace, limping on her hind limbs. "How old she is", I thought. She and Sanoj are the survivors of a dozen dogs that we had some years ago. I pat her more than usual, with sadness and gratitude, looking at her time-clouded eyes. I have been told that she has some inoperable tumors and, although they are not malignant, they have begun to undermine her. I know that my garden lawn will be less green without her sharp barking and her tangled fur, as it will also be without the scratches of the gloomy Sanoj who came running at once but showing also unambiguous signs of his old age. Inseparable as a couple of travelers in a foreign land since they were left alone, Vicki, a tiny pseudo-maltese, and Sanoj, a huge alaskan, form a strange duo that enliven generously my afternoons.

Since my son and daughters were young until they grew older and had other occupations requiring their time, every day I used to gather with them in this same place after lunch. I prepared tea as I had learned to do it in England, and we spent endless hours playing or chatting about our intimacies between sips of Earl Gray tea. When my friend Marcela or some other friend accompanied us, our chat, as it is called now, acquired a different dynamic because in those occasions we read the I Ching and we deciphered its messages together. On one occasion that I was suffering from love, as it happen to me frequently because I haven't yet learned to keep its whims under control, I threw the bronze coins to know where to look for wisdom. "The mountain remains still. On top the fire flames and doesn't linger; therefore they don't remain together. The separation is the fate of the rambler," the designated hexagram told me, foretelling the outcome. No one could say anything due to the lack of elements to make interpretations: on that occasion I decided to keep to myself my question for fear that they laughed at me.

During some time I felt like doing those English muffins called scones. In England they are served at tea time along with small cucumber sandwiches. Then those afternoon family gatherings stretched on and became very sweet due to the amount of cream and orange marmalade, also home-made, with which we stuffed the scones.

My garden gets filled with birds in the afternoons. Sparrows, thrushes and hummingbirds fight over worms and seeds, especially on a recently mowed lawn. Now, I'm usually alone at this hour and I enjoy watching them. I have binoculars which allow me to approach them without being noticed. I've seen them extract honey from the jacaranda and coral trees and peck the black cherries until they eat them completely, leaving only the seed hanging from its stem. I have seeing them dancing in the puddles and among the branches of the trees. But I haven't been able to discover if lightning frightens them and where they take shelter when there's a storm.

These birds with whom I share the autumn afternoons of my life have taught me a lot. On one occasion they were about to leave me. It occurred to me to buy a huge feeder that I filled with birdseed and hung from a peach tree. Gradually, the abundance started attracting magpies and ravens that began to take the feeder over until no sparrow, hummingbird or thrush dared to approach it. When I realized that the garden was acquiring a sinister look, I took the feeder down from the tree and without delay my outdoor habitat recovered its normality. Sparrows, thrushes and hummingbirds resumed their adventures and have not moved since then. The obvious similarity with what happens when there is too much money brings about extrapolations.

I didn't always sit at the door of my bedroom in the evening. For some time, I lived indoors without paying attention to the garden. But one day, as a tribute to my mother who had just died, I started to take care of it. I covered the walls with ivy and I planted daisies on the ground. I planted tree after tree without thinking that they would grow, and now their branches intertwine, giving a somewhat forest appearance to this three hundred square meters flat surface. A peach tree, which collapsed recently, was the first to come to my garden and now three of its shoots produce its own fruits. Then I brought from Cuernavaca two jacarandas, a guava, three orange trees and two louquats. At the Coyoacan nurseries I bought two sweetgums, one coral tree, three glory bushes and a black berry tree more than ten meters high that I have pruned several times because I'm afraid it could fall on the house.

My trees are always there when I want company or I need to tell them something; I have never understood why they are treated as having the masculine gender if they are so faithful. I frequently I tell them about my mother and how much I would have like that she had lived longer. I scarcely knew her, although she died when I was already thirty-five years old. I only had eyes for my father and thus I only looked at her shadow. But my mother has been growing inside me over time, as my trees. I have begun to draw her with scraps of memories. Sometimes, when the wind blows strongly, I hear the tinkling of her gold bracelet announcing that she is at home. There have been times when I turn my head around to welcome her because I perceive her aroma; among other things, a smile of my daughter or of my granddaughters reminds me of her face before it darkened.

If I could live with my mother one single day of the nearly thirteen thousand that I lived at her side, I would choose the one when she went to pick me at the school with a rose-pink dress and also smelling of roses. That day, on the lapel of her coat she wore a beautiful flower, despite it was a black one. Her hairstyle was a bun and her coppery hair glowed like never before. Her green eyes revealed that she had just made love with my father, although I didn't know it at that time. When I saw her, I told her that I had left my sweater in the classroom because I wanted her to stay longer at the school entrance so that all my companions could see her. If I could live that day once again with my mother, I would confess her that sometimes I felt jealous of her pearly skin, her long nails and her slender hands, and that I don't understand why I didn't hug her more often if I wanted to do so every time she approached me. I would ask her to tell me again her sadness as a little girl when she heard some ladies whisper as they saw her: "Poor Amparo, she's an orphan." I would ask her to tell me that once again so that I could comfort her telling her that I have been planting trees to rescue her essence. Because I always knew that my mother loved plants, although she did it secretly, as she used to do everything because of her shyness. If I could live that day with my mother once again, I would ask her to forgive me for having preferred my father, because I know that that day she would have understood it. I would tell my mother all of this when she went to pick me at the school dressed in rose-pink and also smelling of rose, because never more I saw her that opened; because never more I saw her so happy. If I could relive that day with my mother today, I would become her mother even if it was only for a second.
FOURTH STATION

An unexpected stop due to some sun spots that I had in my face unsettled my corporeal nature before going to Shikoku. Following the example of my paternal grandmother who used to burn any dark spot she noticed on her skin, I went to the dermatologist so she could eliminate some scarcely visible spots that I had beside an eyelid and on my chin.

I hardly felt the stings. Then, the burning sensation intensified without ever becoming intolerable. The disbelief began when I saw myself in the mirror. My face was swollen, really swollen. Moreover, I also perceived a marked burning smell which I could only impute to my own skin; bur rather to that "not skin" which had been replaced by lumps of crushed epidermis around my eyes, in my chin, my temples and my neck. The doctor had pleased herself burning spots and thus I seemed to be suffering from a rabid chickenpox.

Before leaving the doctor's office I went to the bathroom. I entered stumbling. For the first time after a spot-removing session I felt beaten up and I didn't understand why. I wanted to cry out loud even if it was ridiculous because nothing hurt me. I left my crying jag in abeyance. I rushed to pick up my car and I headed to the Beltway. In my way home I didn't stop looking at my face in the mirror as if I expected those red lumps to vanish just by looking at them. Instead, their color intensified until they became sores.

Lacerated is the word defining the hours following the laser treatment. Mysteriously, almost imperceptibly, the distance between my wounds and I kept deleting until I was my wounds and my wounds were I; until we were one and the same, my wounds and I. For the first time, I was my body, fully. That's te reason of the pain without pain that I felt at the doctor's office. I, who responds to the contradictory name of Amparo Espinosa, was in raw flesh.

The discovery produced painful balances. I remembered my pregnancies, lived in the midst of a struggle to hide its manifestations because they threatened to steal my slenderness. I didn't recognize in my belly's bulge the glorious sign of a new life, but rather a deformed body that would cool my husband's love. I saw my body as something alien that should satisfy aesthetic criteria to deserve caresses or to be worth of attention. I breast-fed my children more by faith than by dedication. I wish I would have been then breasts as today I am skin. I wish I had been a uterus when I gave them birth. I wish I would have been my wounded body; my fertile body; my healthy and half wild body that walks kilometers without being affected; my body discriminator of tastes and smells. My I body that has given itself to the man, as if it were alien to me, without prejudices or moralisms. An I body that has been looking for love above all things since it came to this earth. Now I know that if I had felt body, I would have been also spirit and love would have had other paths.
FIFTH STATION

The last visit to my past, before my trip to Japan, was to my father's house at Las Flores street. Located in a very busy corner of the old Tlacopac neighborhood, it is bounded by two of the few streets in the South of the city leading into the Beltway. A river-stone fence covered with ivy and plumbago flowers surrounds it completely and wraps it in mystery.

The house is a legend in the neighborhood. The financial adventures of my father occupied the headlines of newspapers for decades and people enjoy creating fantasies around celebrities that become myths. I lived in this house full of rumors since I was ten years until I got married. Its interior has undergone so many changes to adapt it to the changing circumstances of the family that I must fill it with memories so that the life experiences appear in their own scenarios.

My father bought it from a German more than fifty years ago and named it Quinta Guadalupe in honor of his mother, my grandmother. At that time it was an old shallow structure surrounded by a hectare of neglected gardens. Before it was rebuild and we could inhabit it, on weekends we used to picnic there because at that time the city had not yet reach that neighborhood. On these occasions, my mother, of a marked Spanish descent, cooked delicious Spanish omelettes and bought dozens of Sidral Mundet sodas, Tin Larin and Almonriz candies that my two sisters, my brother and I ate while we ran among the grass, always watched by Eulalia, an indigenous woman who took care of us since we were born.

Eulalia never liked me. I wouldn't have minded too much if it weren't for the constraints that her lack of affection imposed to the enjoyment of one of my best physical attributes: my hair. I've always had a thick copper-colored mane and, at that time, it reached my knees. Eulalia brushed and washed it at her whim, and I just had to ask her to braid it and tie it up my head, for her to let it loose and vice versa. She forbid me to dishevel it and I never dared to challenge her. The only way I found to get rid of her hegemony was asking my father to personally cut my hair in my tenth birthday.

My father must have also considered that my hair was beautiful because, before cutting it, he asked me to pose, with my hair braided, for Diego Rivera whom he knew well. I went several times to the master's atelier and I sat very still watching how he looked at me in silence, somewhat indifferent to my presence, with his paint brush in his hand. While he executed the strokes, I tried to discover, in his careful movements or in any object in the room, clues that could elucidate me what it meant to be a Communist, as my horrified friends, indeed instructed by their parents, had labeled Diego when they found out that I would see him.

The portrait, product of those sessions, is a classical Rivera. The background is lime green and the girl who I was at the time is sitting in a basket chair with a wooden back decorated with flowers. The two braids hang heavily over the incipient breasts, tied with two crimson ribbons, and the hands rest gently on the lap; the eyes reveal a hint of sadness or melancholy that, if it weren't because it also appears in many of my photos, I would say that it is just another signature of the painter.

When the portrait was finished, I insisted once again on the haircut and my father was forced to keep his promise. He organized the ceremony to carry out the ritual in the lush garden of the Quinta Guadalupe that was already been planted with cypresses and palm trees. Very reluctantly, because she surely knew that the cut implied my autonomy, Eulalia combed my hair as she was ordered, with two hanging braids to facilitate the operation. My mother armed herself with a movie camera so that the event kept recorded in the family memories, and my father placed himself behind me and began to cut my braids with a huge and gleaming pair of scissors,

That day, under a sparkling sun, I saw fall off one braid first and then the other. Even today, if I shake my head, and without resorting to the film that my mother took, I can live through again the feeling of freedom that I felt when I perceived my newly cut hair floating beside my ears. A pair of scissors and seven seconds broke the chain that bound me to Eulalia. Why thirty years of psychoanalysis, a master's degree in human development and years of zen meditation have not been enough to break those chains which prevent me to move with ease around the world and let my thinking soar? Those would be some more questions for my trip.

Mito Block, a French decorator who died recently, refurbished the interiors of the Las Flores house until he converted them into spaces worth of the 19th century movies of manners. Decorated with chandeliers, golden framed mirrors, English marquetry chest of drawers and Oriental accessories, they became the appropriate setting for guests from all over the world that my father feted endlessly until a few months before his death. His children we never participated in those gatherings when we were kids, because we were only allowed to peek down from the stairs to see the guests arrive, before going to bed. But we didn't care. We enjoyed watching the ladies dressed in formal wear and covered with furs, and the gentlemen chat solemnly with my parents at the entrance hall. We enjoyed it almost as much as our Christmas visits to my paternal grandmother's in Puebla or as our Easter trips to Acapulco, which were the high spots of the year.

For me, the enchantment started even before the party. Sitting on a waste basket, I accompanied my father while he dressed with his dark suit and the half-silvered smooth tie that he held to his shirt with a rubies or sapphires inlaid platinum clip. Those were delicious moments when I had him only for me and I felt blessed and safe. As he was absolutely methodical, I knew for sure that after putting his dirty shirt into the dirty clothes basket, he would open the closet door and draw a clean one, that he would put on by slipping in his left arm first and then the right one, and that the cuff links would come after he had buttoned his shirt. I felt relieved to know in advance that after being dressed he would turn off his bedroom lights and go downstairs calling my mother to ask her if she was ready. I waited in the living room sitting by his side until the first guests arrived. Then I went up to take up my place on the stairs with my brothers where I remained until I was very sleepy.

The living room, the library, the main dining room and the kitchen were also forbidden to us because our territory was restricted to the garden, the breakfast nook and our corresponding bedrooms. I slept in a room next to that of my mother, and that was a real problem. I liked to study at night; she heard me turn on the light to finish my homework and she came to turn it off so I didn't stay awake. That protocol persisted until I got a flashlight that I kept in secret during my primary and secondary school years. After that I ceased needing it because I went to study to England. Of my teenage years I remember above all the summer storms which I preferred they happened at night because I listened to them beneath the sheets and that caused me a sense of peace that I only experienced at that time.

My bedroom and that of my mother don't exist anymore. My mother's bedroom disappeared with her death when it was turned into a small chapel; after my wedding, my own bedroom went on to be the classroom of a nephew who came to live in Las Flores when his mother remarried. Currently, the first floor of the house is occupied by my father's bedroom and the small personal library where he spent his last years. I hadn't dared to go upstairs since he died, but my determination to carry fresh memories with me to Shikoku to brood on them in the shadow of the monasteries gave me the strength I needed.

As soon as I set foot on the last rung of the stairs linking the entrance hall with the first floor, my father's scent went to meet me. It hadn't faded away completely. The books that he left unread—Churchill by Martin Gilbert, Dutch by Edmund Morris and Pancho Villa by Frederich Katz—were waiting for him in his library, carefully placed, one on top of the other, on the table beside his reclining chair. The same thing happened with the bright colored blanket that he used to cover his legs when, sitting in the leather armchair, he saw Jorge Berry tell the news. Only the absence of the oxygen cylinder signaled that perhaps he wasn't going to come back. I hurriedly crossed the bedroom with my eyes closed. I needed time, only a few minutes more, to see, without fainting away, the bed where my father had died. I quickly went into the dressing room, the only room that had survived untouched the remodeling of the house. On the shelf I found his worn phonebook agenda and a holy card of the Virgin of Perpetual Help that he rescued from my mother's purse when she died. In the small drawer, his clip for money with three one hundred pesos bills and the credit card; three pairs of cuff links and a watch. Under the shelf, the waste basket that I had turned upside down so many times to sit on it and accompany him when he changed clothes.

I went back into the bedroom. This second time, with my eyes wide open. The bed where my father had died was gone. How could I forget that? It was a hospital bed that my sisters and I rented when he hardly could move and that we returned when it became needless. He used it less than a week. His regular bed, the one in which he slept during his widowhood, now occupied its place. There it was, covered by the patches quilt that I made for him as a Christmas present, under the Goya tapestry that his friend Álvaro gave him. In front of it, the Puebla marquetry table where he started having dinner when he couldn't go down to the dining room anymore, waiting without hurry for Armando, the perdurable waiter, to come with the tray of food.

Suddenly, when I was about to leave, I recalled my father looking at me, as he did the last time he looked at me. I fear to forget that glance. It happened a few hours before he died. As I thought he was going to get asleep, I told him: "I hope that tomorrow you wake up where you would like to wake up." I didn't know then that it was the last time that he would look at me. Did my words help him to do so? To finally abandon the fierce fight that he had started at birth against his human destiny? To renounce a world that seduced him and coddled him for ninety-one years? I left that room only carrying with me that last glance. The quilt, the clip and everything else had fulfilled their mission. The glance had a pending task to accomplish: to communicate me the silent words that my father bequeathed me through his glance the eve of his death. At that time I couldn't hear them. I was too scared. Now I was able do so and I wouldn't let it go unless it told me those words.
SIXTH STATION

How does this need to signal my entrance to old age touring Shikoku monasteries came into being? This was the question that struck me when I put the first sushi in my mouth on the Japan Airlines plane. Nobody in my family had ever made such a trip. My mother's fate did not bestow on her a life long enough to even think about it, and my father's case, his endless bustle barely allowed him to become aware of old age. My sister Lupe might be somewhat motivated due to her obstinate interest in religion. But deterioration doesn't knock at her door yet because she is several years younger than me and I wonder if, in due time, her Catholic roots will let her embark on a Buddhist pilgrimage.

Among my friends, the issue of ageing is taboo; something that we don't speak about because plastic surgery discards it from our talks. For the last decades, cosmetic operations have become the ideal accomplices to deny the passage of time. The hours of gossip are dedicated to praise the "almost miraculous" effects of these interventions on the physical rejuvenation, and the fanciful and banal scenarios overshadow the charms of old age.

The decision of setting out on a pilgrimage to mark the last stage of my life is also paradoxical because the passage of time has been kind with me. Wrinkled skins don't belong to my family and a hair rinse is enough to hide the grey hairs that are indeed part of my heritage. My life keeps up to the pace of more than twelve hours of daily activity that I have led for decades without any objection from my body, and my waist and hips measures have barely changed over the years. I know it because I hate go shopping and thus I still wear skirts and trousers that I bought long ago. With some dose of denial and one or other aesthetic operation, I could very well have invented that a fairy godmother was stopping time to avoid me the pain of aging. But I decided that I belong to another bunch, and that my destiny is not the glamor or the pretentions that I have tasted to indigestion because it has to do with yearnings of another kind. I want to live myself old. I want to take advantage of the facial traits that years have forged on me and experience the world from the hideout of this new stage of my life because the one of youth I already know it from memory. I want to find love, as up today, and if I have learnt anything over the years is that it is not a monopoly of beautiful bodies or angelic faces. I want, above all, to get closer to God to find out if I can look at his face and for this task I need all the time I have left. That's why I cannot waste it in vapid activities, ridiculous costumes or painful surgeries making me believe that life doesn't change and neither I. It was by chance, and in the form of a book as I discovered a unique way to seal this decision.

I saw several friends of my mother fall apart with menopause, and that experience made me anticipate with terror this stage of life. It hurt me to see women, who had been very beautiful, age prematurely and become depressed beings that only generous doses of antidepressants or alcohol could take out of bed. Pursued by those images that time couldn't dispel, I started looking for an antidote that could somehow eliminate the devastating effects of menopause as soon as I saw it approach. I got it through the autobiographical testimony called Journey through menopause by an American woman whose name I don't remember.

She relates an adventure to Greece and India that a philosophy teacher undertakes in the company of one of her students when she realizes that the end of her menstrual periods is close and she doesn't want the transition to go unnoticed. During a leisurely visit to the Greek Islands and the Tibetan monasteries, this woman visualizes the imminent loss of her appeal to men in the mirror of her young companion whose sexual indifference towards her surprises her at first, then irritates her and finally confronts her with her reality as a mature, almost old, woman. At the end of the trip, a year later, her menses have quietly vanished and she has exorcised the most feared ghosts of climacteric. Thus, she discovers new possibilities of being in the world without the freshness of her twenty-five years, because she enjoys climbing mountains, swimming and planning her next classes. She also manages to initiate a relationship beyond sexuality with the young student and, instead of fear, her old age arouses her curiosity.

It wasn't on the agenda of my life to travel to Greece and India to commemorate my last menses, because I had the luck of going through that stage falling in love—as a teenager—with a man of whom I don't even remember the color of his eyes. The same twelve months the woman philosopher of the Journey through menopause took to accept that her student did not desired her with passion, I took to accept that this man of forgettable eyes would never love me back. That same period of time it took my menstrual periods to come to an end while I was totally unaware of it because, as the American woman, I was too busy assimilating the lack of love to notice its termination. But the seed of a ritual trip in order to avert the suffering of the critical transitions was sown. It would take ten years to germinate, it would be called Shikoku, and it would take the shape of a pilgrimage anticipating my old age.

A pilgrimage implies that we get rid of all our matters of concern so that we can hear the laments of our heart, that is, our most intimate and most universal questions; its purpose is to look for personal answers to those questions. A pilgrimage can take us to the other end of the world or to the backyard of our house, because what's important is not the distance covered but the inner journey that it implies. All pilgrimages have something sacred, but some also assume specific purposes. A pilgrimage to Lourdes, for example, is to ask for the cure of a disease; the one to Shikoku is to anticipate old age.

For centuries, pilgrims getting on in years walked around the island of Shikoku, visiting the monasteries during the day and sleeping at night in small inns along the way. In addition to food, the innkeepers offered them a lantern to illuminate the path which was wet and uneven. It must have been a wonderful sight to see those hunched old persons crossing the fields as if they were fireflies; it must have been even distressing to discover them in the middle of the woods, on top of mountains, or along the coast, dressed in white and reciting the sufras, getting ready to die even though they weren't sick.

The electric streetlight has made lanterns unnecessary; but the guides are still necessary to go on a pilgrimage around Shikoku because the purpose has not changed and the task of seeing death head on is never pleasant. To illuminate the pilgrimage and dodge difficulties, I had with me some devices that supposedly would allow me to make the most of the experience: the slogan of medieval adventurers of leaving behind anything that is not loved, and three recommendations: travel slowly; revere road meetings, and look, look and look until you reach the essence of what you look at. Would I be able to set aside my rush and fulfill them?

The flight to Osaka was particularly quiet. Most of the passengers were Japanese, and men and women of this race are neither noisy nor engage in conversation with unknown women. From the beginning, the two dimensions that I would have to explore—loneliness and silence—were evident.
SEVENTH STATION

The first ritual of the pilgrimage is the purchase of the uniform. I went to the Ryosen-ji's shop, which is the first monastery of the circuit. All the things I needed were on the shelves: white shirts and trousers with Japanese inscriptions; mandarin-style sedge hats; wooden staffs covered with red hoods and crowned with sleigh bells; candles; hardback notebooks with the names of the monasteries and whose priors should seal with red ink as soon as each visit ends; small white paper sheets to write down the date of the day, our birthday date and our request to the Buddha. I just had to extend my arm, pick what I needed, and take it to the register to start the adventure.

But I hadn't yet fulfilled all the early stages that I had planned to perform, like going to visit the Church where my parents got married; I hadn't even finished reading the book on Japan's that my friend Laura had given me. Under these conditions, the pilgrimage that would mark the most important turning point of my life could not be perfect, I thought sadly.

It wasn't in the Ryosen-ji's shop that this bitter thought crossed my mind the first time; not even when I arrived at Shikoku and I realized that to complete the eighty eight visits I needed sixty days and I only had six scheduled. Since my arrival at Osaka, I had to admit that I was carrying a heavy baggage of vices that would hamper my pilgrimage, because I spent a whole afternoon trying to find a pack of hair curlers instead of meditating or writing, as my sacred mission required it. Why not visit the monasteries with my hair washed? Why not curl it? Why turn a banality into an urgent task? Was I boycotting myself once again?

My life has been plagued with paradoxical behaviors. Too often I postpone activities conceived with enthusiasm merely to go buy "hair curlers". Despite my good intentions, I tend to look for love in places where complacency and beauty stereotypes are essential requirements. My eagerness to fulfill them has fed itself on time. Dozens of novels, theses, reflections and lectures are waiting crammed my decision to "opt for me without concessions", as says my wise psychoanalyst. Spaces of spontaneous laughter, music and dancing are also waiting me. It is true that my surrender has never been absolute. The desire of being a custom-made daughter for my father and later a custom-made wife for my husband didn't prevent me for having time to write something of my own. But, even so, the practice of pleasing has been wearing me out. I am alienated from my body. I don't know my tastes...

Stranger, leave behind whatever you don't love, whispered a hermit to passersby from the side of the road. I decided to travel alone and adopt that sentence as a motto not to make concessions. I wanted my time and my moods to be totally mine during the whole trip. My efforts to fulfill someone else's expectations with no other purpose but that of gaining his love had been appallingly unsuccessful. I was determined to explore other paths in the hope that they could lead me to greener pastures. But those were only desires. The chains which bind me to conventionalisms and to my heritage are made of habits whose strength I underestimated. I thought, conceitedly, that they would break down with just a pilgrimage into a strange land.

I was already in Shikoku and I had been too long unable to take a decision in front of the shelf of the Ryosen-ji's shop, tormented by my demons. A tiny Japanese woman, more than a hundred years old, was looking at me with curiosity. Her eyes, tinged with Eastern wisdom, and a cedar aroma probably emanating from a very beautiful Buddha sculpture, got me back to reality. I took a pair of trousers and a t-shirt that seemed to be my size. With more care, I chose a red-cover notebook, a medium size box with the candles and the paper sheets, and a staff whose tinkle told me immediately that I had chosen the right staff for me. When I arrived at the cash register, I was offered a raffia hat that I decided not to buy and a white jacket with the emblems of all the monasteries printed in black, where seals can also be stamped, to be worn over the t-shirt. I added it to the other items, along with a sheet that I found at the counter with the ten Buddhist commandments that should be observed during the pilgrimage:

Do not kill.

Do not steal.

Do not commit adultery.

Do not tell lies.

Do not use flowery language.

Do not speak ill of others.

Do not be double-tongued.

Do not be covetous.

Do not be angry.

Do not be perverse.

No one about loving God, about not swearing his holy name in vain; none either about sanctifying his festivities. The divinity of this place doesn't demand respect as does my God. Love for others, parents and children included, neither are part of the obligations Buddha commended me, so I had total freedom to take care only of myself without feeling any guilt whatsoever. Even so, it occurred to me that the commandments that I needed to refocus my life would be more in line with not buying hair curlers when I was about to initiate a sacred mission than to fulfill any of the duties I had just read. For that first visit I decided to use only the staff, together with the candles and the paper sheets which were indispensable. After all, my pilgrimage wasn't going to be perfect anyway.
EIGTH STATION

The Ryosen-ji monastery was almost deserted. The seasons to go on a pilgrimage in Shikoku are spring and autumn, and it was summer. The temperature was almost 104 degrees Fahrenheit. Stella, my Japanese guide, was constantly drying her forehead with a small worn towel. At first, I considered that gesture vulgar. How could she walk down the street rubbing her face with a bath towel? I asked myself, with a shamefully classist attitude which cast serious doubts, merciless, on a self-image of democratic person that I had adopted, evidently, without any solid basis. A few minutes after walking down the main hall of the temple and feeling the sticky drops of sweat slide down my forehead, I put down my prejudices and wished to have brought, I also, a towel as Stella's.

When we parked in front of the Ryosen-ji monastery, a wide terrace covered with small round stones in the style of zen gardens replaced the paddy fields that had accompanied us during the journey from the city of Tokushima where the plane from Osaka had landed, to the city of Naruto where the temple is located. The heat was truly appalling. However, as soon as I raised my head in the terrace and I discovered, a few hundred yards away, the simple leaning structures with two and three roofs covered with black slates, surrounded by pines and sown with stone figurines, I started to walk under the shining sun with the haste and enthusiasm of someone who goes to meet a brilliant destiny.

I put water in my hands and lips to purify myself, as the rite stipulates, before going to the bell tower of the main temple. I stopped a few seconds under the wooden tower to admire some tiny and stubby stone figurines wearing white bibs trimmed with colored ribbons which, according to Stella, celebrate the children. Then I pulled the rope to strike the bell to announce my arrival to the temple divinities: its low sound flooded the environment revealing me that the yearnings of my sixth decade were reaching heaven. When I stopped perceiving the vibrations, I knew that I could start in peace my pilgrimage, because I already counted on the blessing of Buddha.

It smelled of incense, although only some joss sticks were burning out dug into the ashes of the repository placed for that purpose at the foot of the stairs leading to the main chamber of the temple. I lighted my own three joss sticks. I saw the smoke rising in all sorts of evanescent shapes from the burning tip of my joss sticks and I got ready to offer my respects to Buddha. I approached his chamber, trying, by dint of thoughts, to transcend the ritual formalities and thus penetrate its profound meaning, faithful to my ceaseless practice of always go beyond the visible that I considered only a shadow of the real, of the truly transcendent. I walked conscious of the cedar staff with a red hood that I carried clutched in my right hand. The tradition named him DoGo Ni Nin, which means two who travel together. It represents Kobo Daishi, founder of the Shikoku pilgrimage circuit, who thus serves as a faithful companion of the pilgrims on the route.

The magnificent sculpture of Shakuson, the historical Buddha to whom this temple is dedicated, is surrounded by lights placed on several levels, and even today I can't say if they were wax candles or electric bulbs. The sculpture occupies the center of a pagoda and it can be seen, dressed in shadows, squarely or from its two sides. It's made of a very dark mahogany and is ten feet high and six feet in diameter. It was carved by Kobo Daishi himself while he was looking for inspiration, and that fact recalled me a secondary school teacher who taught us the habit to always have some craft at hand to keep busy; she said that it helped to purify the soul and that was enough for me to get down to the task as if my life depended on it. I wove baby sweaters and shawls when I got pregnant. I especially remember a blue color one that was supposed to measure almost one square yard and could be used both as a cradle bedspread and for wrapping my children if the temperature was too cold. I embroidered linen sheets with the initials of the family. I knitted gloves and learned to make smog trimmed nightgowns. I learned sumi-e painting.

The sculpture of Shakuson is one of the few visible henzo, or main images, of the Shikoku pilgrimage. Most are stored in cabinets for being considered too sacred to be seen by any person. The historical Buddha—sitting in the lotus position with his hands resting on his knees and his indexes and thumbs touching each other to close the flow of body energy—radiated a wiser and more compassionate aura than the other Buddhas that I knew. His third eye, a bulge in the form of a flame in the middle of his forehead, referred me to master Ejo Takata. I remembered the sunrises dedicated to meditate with him as a guide, in a shadowy classroom of the Colegio de Mexico saturated with desks, and I began to trace the origins of my adherence to Buddhism as I walked around the sculpture, slowly, knowing that it wasn't apposite to think but rather to keep away any thought. But the past had already swallowed my present and this started fading away until it disappeared because, as on countless previous occasions, I had been unable to infuse it life.

If someone had told me when I was ten or twelve years old that my spiritual practice would incorporate other religious beliefs besides Catholicism, I would have given him a punch: so zealous was my religious conviction after several years in a school of nuns whose teachings I assimilated due to an obedient nature and a genuine belief in God, which is nearly the only thing that I still keep of that time, although its current definition hardly retraces its origin.

For many years I fulfilled the Catholic rituals, excluding those not endorsed by the Church, and with much more strictness than those of this pilgrimage. Today I can throw the I Ching in the morning, visit a Buddhist temple in the afternoon, and read the Bible at night, without feeling a betrayer or a blaspheme. And when a book about Islam or the Sufis has seduced me, I have surrendered to its reading without the least scruple. Hence my pilgrimage to Shikoku and my visits to Buddhist monasteries were not at odds with my essentially Catholic self-definition.

Ryosen-ji is a temple really small and simple considering that it bears the burden of many departures as it is the starting point of most of the pilgrims who cover the Shikoku circuit. It consists only of a hondo, the main lobby that is shared by the shop and the worship area, and its distinctive outstanding feature is the elaborate grid of bamboo stems which holds the decorative pines surrounding it. It was built around the year 700 a.d. by order of the Emperor Shornu, in the piece of land where used to be the Gyogi shrine, the first great kanjin hijiri, because he wanted a prominent figure of Buddhism to enhance his reign. From an architectural point of view, Ryosen-ji is a good indication of what we can expect in our tour: a number of temples as unpretentious as almost everything in this country; they only differ from the rest of the many temples of the districts due to their direct link with Kobo Daishi. Before leaving, I stopped beside a pond where dozens of carps swam around a statue of Kobo Daishi blessing the children. After listening to the priest's bell wishing me health during my tour, I went to the car.

The road to the Anraku-ji—the second of the temples I visited and the thirtieth in the circuit order—is saturated with nymphs, flowers of an almost transparent pink color and sacred to Buddhists, which grow in quagmires and open to the slightest sound. When I saw them I thought they were lotus, but then I remembered that these are white and bigger. Lotus stalks are considered delicacies by the Japanese, but I have never liked them, though I find fascinating to discover them on my plate due to their laced star shape, really very beautiful.

When I was planning my Shikoku pilgrimage, I thought of the possibility of having lunch at the monasteries, but when I arrived at the island I found out that they only offer this service in spring and autumn. That was another of the many rituals that would elude me during this trip which, as it progressed, was looking less and less perfect.
NINTH STATION

The Shikoku pilgrimage celebrates the memory of priest Kobo Daishi, founder of a Buddhist sect known as Shingon Buddhism, which means "true word". Although I had been reading Buddhist texts for years, I had never seen that name before. When I discovered it, in the book on pilgrimages that Laura's friend had gave me before my trip to Japan, I had to acknowledge, with an shame-tinted honesty, that I'm only a mere Buddhism amateur, as to so many other subjects that have seduced me during my life.

My home library includes texts on almost every imaginable subject, although I cannot deny the prevalence of philosophy, psychoanalysis, religions and theology. If someone pulls out a book at random, he or she may equally find that it is one about Nietzsche—my favorite philosopher, although I only know of him as little as I know about Buddhism—or one on mathematics or on bread manufacturing, on growing African violets or on the love life of animals. I'm too aware of my difficulty to break any habit or routine which I adopt, but even so I hope that one day I will be able to proudly say NO to some text that knocks at my door with the mature argument that I have other outstanding readings.

The most dramatic issue is that the tendency to dispersion has invaded other areas of my life. My agenda, for instance, is always filled with unconnected events ranging from a visit to doctor Aramoni, my psychoanalyst, a calligraphy class, a thesis seminar, awards to women who dare to tell their story or meetings with the staff of a tamales factory. However, I don't need to make a big effort to recall with certainty that astronomy was my first serious interest, although today I know that my reasons of such interest were more in line with an interest in divinity, as I conceived it at that time, than with scrutinizing the sky.

Of all the subjects I studied in high school, religion was always my favorite and I fulfilled its rules almost to the letter. As incredible as it may seem, I don't remember having disobeyed my parents or have told them lies. I scolded my sisters when I discovered them reading the adventures of Tarzan with the argument that it was a sinful history because the apeman was not married to Jane by the Church, and it goes without saying that I never kissed a man before I got married. My greatest aspiration was to approach my Creator; my teachers said that best way to achieve it was through absolute chastity and that's how I acted without hesitation and with all the strength of my adolescence. But after some time of behaving so without even seeing the shadow of God, I decided to make inroads on other paths to see if He was there, and thus I turned my eyes towards astronomy. Hadn't the son of God ascended in body and soul precisely to heaven after his resurrection?

For several years, I had hoped to adopt Astronomy as my life profession, but the same day I told my father about it, he suggested that I should study business administration, ignoring what I had just told him, so I redirected my attention to a field of study that, to tell the truth, I had always considered dull. However, from the first day of classes at the Universidad Iberoamericana I throw myself into finance and accounting with a dedication that anyone could have mistaken with a deep fondness. This stage ended with a thesis that earned an honorable mention, and to date, although my indifference to business administration persists, I have never stopped exercising it. It took me decades of psychoanalytic sessions, guided by the infinite patience of doctor Aramoni, to discover what surely was always evident to those who knew me: the secret of my occupational contradiction is related with my father. But knowing it wasn't enough, and for years I've been waiting for an enlightenment that takes me to live it and accordingly, in part, this trip whose purpose is to sort out my past.

I was fiddling about with these thoughts in some timeless region of my mind, when the sound of the Anraku-ji bell, that I had ringed reflexively, brought me back to reality. I was about to fire on my joss sticks and place them in the censer when I noticed one of the few pilgrims who, like me, had ventured to travel in summer and was enduring the very high temperatures as well as the risk of a premature arrival of the monsoon. He was a young man of some twenty-five years, probably American, with reddish tousled hair and matching cheeks. He was dressing in white and had a handkerchief tied around his neck. He had surely arrived to the temple after me, because he was just starting to purify himself. It irritated me to see that a gesture which I had carried out in just a few seconds, he was vesting it with a grave slowness, like the Catholic priest who consecrates the spices during the mass, believing firmly in transubstantiation. It was even awesome to watch him choose, amongst the five or six that rested on the edge of the basin, one wooden ladle to bring water to his mouth and to rinse his fingers. How different could be one from the other? I asked myself, recalling that, less than five minutes ago, I had chosen, as they say, the one that stood in front of me. My eternal loyalty to pragmatism, to haste and to efficiency had defined another of my acts. Where and when shows up the "reverence for life" of Albert Schweitzer that one day I swore to adopt as my existential motto? That was a question that I might not answer.

The young American was accompanied by a Japanese woman with a very white skin and dyed hair falling down to her waist. While he was fulfilling the purification ritual, she took out one of her tennis to rub her foot sitting on the edge of the basin. Two dusty shafts rested on the floor over two khaki backpacks full to bursting. Surely, the young American and the Japanese girl had arrived walking to the Anraku-ji, and although it is not too far from the Jisoji, the fifth temple of the circuit, the walk must have lasted several hours. Their faces reflected the fatigue of those who choose to carry out their sacred crusades without resorting to modern artifacts and, when seeing them, I couldn't but feel envy. Nor in vain it is recommended that physical exertion be part of any pilgrimage.

I was going on my pilgrimage in a cooled car, driven by a chauffeur in white gloves, exclusive for me and Stella. As Stella was in charge of ordering our food in restaurants and virtually take me by the hand to fulfill the ceremonies, the duty of the driver was to pick me up at the airport in Tokushima and drive me around the island so that I wouldn't have to walk more meters that the necessary when I had to walk from the gates to the temples because there the cars were forbidden. For an instant I thought that such conduct could be used as an excuse for my age or lack of time, but then I recognized that I had never ventured devoid of all these crutches which, while they facilitate my life, they also cover it up. I also realized that for several minutes I was, over again, in the realm of abstractions and that the present was eluding me again.

I shook my head as if I wanted to let go of my thoughts, and I went to the receptacle to place the incense. Then I took out of my bag two paper strips with Japanese inscriptions in which I had to write down my name, date of birth and date of the day in the front, and, the request of my pilgrimage in the back. Without hesitation I wrote on each strip: Amparo Espinosa Rugarcía; April thirty, one thousand nine hundred and forty and one. July fifteen, two thousand and two. Go through adulthood to old age with wisdom. I folded the strips and deposited one in the urn of the temple patron saint and the other at the foot of the Buddha.
TENTH STATION

The visits to the Shikoku temples ended at six or half past six in the afternoon and at that time Stella always insisted on having dinner together. For my part, I was in a hurry to reach my room and take off my shoes, take a bath and put on a kimono to fulfill the intimate duties of the pilgrimage, so I claimed that I had to prepare my articles for the newspaper. I might say that I disguised the facts to avoid hurting Stella's feelings, but I would lie. I know that she would have understood that, after traveling thousands of miles to get in touch with myself, I needed to be alone. No. The reason has to do with my stubborn resistance to consider as ethically valid activities that have nothing to do with making money. Telling Stella the truth—that I would not accompany her because I had to write down my experiences of the day, read the Bible and handwrite reflections on some paragraph that called my attention, simply for pleasure—was something unthinkable for me. Weren't those marginal tasks proper of idle beings unable to contribute something tangible to the well-being of humankind, as would have said my father? Weren't they, in the end, vapid activities?

Paradoxically, these tasks have been those that have delighted my soul. I had planned to dedicate myself to them while the pilgrimage lasted. It was a first attempt to respond to a call which, despite its persistence in time, until then I had attended only occasionally and almost behind my conscience's back. I had already sinned enough when I had faltered and ran off to buy a hair curler; I was not disposed to grant myself another concession that would take time away from fulfilling the sacred mission of the pilgrimage in Shikoku.

Exhausted as I was after twelve to fourteen hours of being on the road, of going up and down stairs, ringing bells, lighting candles and making requests, I just opened the notebook where I had photocopied the biblical texts and my tiredness disappeared and peace flooded the room. When this happened, sometimes I put aside the notebook and began to leisurely scope the room to freeze the moment and delve without haste into each of its nooks and crannies. I wanted to enjoy the loneliness that hugged me before submerging myself in my parents faith history; I needed to talk to a silence full of Buddhism and listen to my heart beating after having repeated relentlessly, in front of the temples throughout the day, the sutras, those small prayers of enormous mystical power that are used so that the mind may know its true nature. I was in Shikoku to perceive the soft clinking of life whispering me the messages that would serve me as a guide in the last stretch of my earthly journey, and I had to calm myself to listen to them. I had to be attentive to each contraction of my muscles and each vibration of space, so that destiny couldn't escape me if I didn't answer to his call which has a tendency to arrive on tiptoe and hide behind unimpressive gestures and beats.

For months I hadn't stopped my daily race so I could venture into the slit of the present: since my meditation teacher had died suddenly. During almost ten years I got up at 4:30 in the morning on Mondays, Wednesday and Fridays to go to the Colegio de Mexico to sit for an hour and a half in a half-Lotus position, concentrated on breathing and labeling my thoughts. They had been almost ten years chasing in vain the precise moment in which the night darkness gives up its place to daylight; almost ten years of fighting—just with glances—furious battles with any meditation partner that made inroads into a square inch of what I considered my space or with any newcomer who dared to exchange smiles with friends who attended the sessions.

At that time, I discovered that my irritation ability has no limits and that somebody else's dubious sigh is enough to turn my mood upside down. I also discovered that day and night are one and the same, as well as all the other dualities used by Westerners, and that it is useless and impractical trying to differentiate them.

I initiated into Buddhism by chance, as it occurs with all important things. It was a few months after my divorce and through a man I met at a gathering which I attended to submerge myself once again in the stream of life. His name was Manuel and he also had recently divorced. He wanted, like me, to develop some spirituality and soon we became companions of inner adventures. Manuel worked at El Colegio de Mexico and he frequented academics. One day he invited me to have dinner at the house of some orientalists and there we met Ejo Takata, a renowned Buddhist monk who soon became our meditation teacher. That was my gateway to Buddhism which, from that moment on, joined my spiritual concerns without any conflict. Meditation led me to practice the tea ceremony; to read texts on detachment; to the koans and, finally, to Shikoku. These experiences taught me that nothing is more miraculous than the present moment and that there I must look for the voice of destiny without wandering into the past or the future.

The practice of the tea ceremony with master Higurashi confronted me without mercy to my perpetual state of evasion and was for me a second invitation to breathe the present day as it turn up. The universe of this ancient Japanese ritual originating from the zen Buddhism, puts to the test our ability to live in the moment and also our power of concentration. To begin, we must bend, through a series of very small folds, a red handkerchief of some ten square inches that is used for cleaning the ceramic bowl for the green tea and the wooden spoon, passing it gently over their surfaces. Any deviation jeopardizes the harmony that has to prevail during the ceremony, so it must be performed flawlessly. Only a few times, during the two or three years that I visited weekly teacher Higurashi, I folded my scarf properly or performed appropriately the other equally delicate and meticulous rituals. Despite my efforts to follow his instructions, I always made one fold too much or less, or I committed a mistake in the direction when folding the scarf, or I put the utensils out of place. And to cap it all, my movements lacked the lightness of the other students who knelt and stood up to serve the tea with the flexibility of Persian cats and that caused me a sense of awkwardness that prevented me to act spontaneously.

Nevertheless, the hours that I lived, taking care of not making mistakes and regretting my lack of concentration, led me to incorporate moments of conscious earthly beatitude as those into my days. Now I try to create, for example, magical moments during the meals with my children, and I try, also, to be truly present since the soup is served until we get up from the table. It has not been easy because the present produces vertigo; because it produces tension. It has not been easy because, although it enlightens the moment giving it volume and granting it a slow motion pace, certainly it also affects its impermanence and this is hard to accept for us humans, as we prefer to feel immortals. Not in vain we frequently turn to the past or to the future in an attempt to forget the present, and instead of serving the rice or the huazontles with gentleness, being aware of their texture and color, we backtrack to our childhood when we were forced to eat cauliflower, or we travel to our old age, when we only will be able to eat things in the form of purée.

But now I was in Shikoku, where I had come to look into the eyes of the present I had conceived to celebrate my new transition. I was living the end of a life stage and the new one was about to be born soon, so I wanted to get some practice to be there when it happened. Would my pretention be so naïve as the one of witnessing the day's dawn during meditation? For the moment I had to handwrite the biblical passages of that day. I had never read the entire Bible and I had decided to read it over a year. I already had four months reading it every day without fail, and I didn't want to break the pace. Moreover, calligraphy was another gift of Buddhism, and its practice during the pilgrimage was utterly appropriate. That's why, after having taken possession of the silence of my room and following the pace of my heart's beating long enough to become friend with them, I took the red calligraphic pen and the black calligraphic pen out of the cherry colored skin case where I usually keep them, I removed their caps, and I started to write: capital letters, numbers and ornaments in red; small letters in black.
ELEVENTH STATION

I used to have diner alone in my room, but I shared lunch with Stella. Sometimes we would go to a traditional popular restaurant and I entrusted her the responsibility of choosing the courses. As I don't speak Japanese and I don't know either the assortment of fish, vegetables and mushrooms integrating the cuisine of Shikoku's different regions, it was my way to make sure that she would choose the tastiest and the most typical courses. Some other times, for a lesser amount of yens we ate in trendy restaurants where customers sit around a rotating band from which they select the tuna, salmon or eel sushis of their choice that the cooks—located in the center of the band—prepare at an extraordinary speed. In those places the clients drink sake, Kochi style, almost boiling, in small glasses with a hole at the base that must be covered with the thumb before the liquor is served, and which, obviously, you must drink quickly so you don't burn your finger.

During the pilgrimage I was hungry almost at all hours so, in addition to meals, at the well-stocked gas stations, real malls where we stopped to fill up between visits, I used to buy Japanese sweet beans wrapped in pale-colored paper that were my weakness and I ate during the drive, looking on the rear view mirror of the car, with concealment and somewhat embarrassed, the mocking laughter of Stella and the driver. Nonetheless, eager to follow, at least to some extent, the self-control suggestions that are made to all pilgrims, on the day we visited the temple Zentsu-ji, built on the site where Kobo Daishi was born, I did a partial fasting, and perhaps that's why my memories of that place are more accurate than those of the others, and are only interspersed with episodes related to food.

Not everybody recognizes the Zentsu-ji as the birthplace of Kobo Daishi. A few miles away, close to the sea, there is a bangai—a temple which isn't part of the Shikoku circuit but is visited at times by the pilgrims—known as Caigan-ji. This bangai also claims to be the Daishi's birth place although nowadays it's only a modern iron grid tightly surrounded by dozens of apartment blocks, which is really a shame. There are people who say that this temple on the beach is the true birthplace of Kobo Daishi and they argue that there women could nestle there without trouble during their "ritual impurity" times or during their menstruation, and during the weeks preceding or following childbirth. But destiny settled that it wouldn't be that place, but the Zentsu-ji temple the one deserving the honor of being officially appointed the Daishi's birthplace and, consequently, the one which receives the lion's share of pilgrims: some of them because, for obvious reasons, they consider it the focal point of the journey, and some others, those who only have one or two days to complete the circuit, because they feel that by visiting this shrine they essentially fulfill their mission.

The Zentsu-ji is a complex, unlike most of the other temples of the circuit which only have a small unpretentious shrine for the Buddha and another equally modest for the saint of the place. However, except for one or two details, it's not architecturally spectacular and its gardens only stand out because they comprise the grave where the Daishi buried his dog and which consists of a headstone wore away by the centuries and with unrecognizable inscriptions. As it is largely visited, the Zentsu-ji is a very prosperous temple, thus causing that the original buildings have been replaced, since several years, by new constructions. It is the only temple of those that I visited where there's information written in English. In one inscription placed next to a stone about nine feet high which is at the exit of the temple, I read that the stone was brought by sake traders to demonstrate their devotion to Kobo Daishi.

The Zentsu-ji's main front door, one of its rare sophistications, is carved in wood with such finesse that it looks like filigree. It leads the pilgrims to a courtyard of about two hundred square feet fully covered with gravel and surrounded by walkways supported above ground by three feet high wooden pilings. In one corner, there is a hole in the wall where, if they insert their head, the pilgrims can get a two-dimensional vision of themselves due to a curious set of opaque mirrors that I could never decipher. This huge courtyard is shaded by pine trees and giant cedars. The day I was there it was market day and it was filled with regional pottery vendors, mostly old women with friendly faces and tiny and deep eyes, who, unlike Western vendors, only offered their products to those who showed interest.

Under the hondo—main hall—there's a dark and damp tunnel about three hundred feet long, with earthy walls covered with lime, decorated with figures of different Buddhas that can hardly be distinguished in the shadows. This tunnel celebrates the birth of Kobo Daishi and is the focal point of the visit. A tradition warns that the wrongdoers remain trapped inside forever; therefore many superstitious with a guilty conscience prefer to remain outside. I walked through the tunnel taking care to not bump into other pilgrims. Halfway, I found the cave where they say that Kobo Daishi was born. It is supposedly covered with earth of eight of the major Buddhist temples of India and it fills with light as soon as someone approaches. At the same time, a recording repeats endlessly the Sutra of the Heart that I know almost by heart because we used to pray it every day during meditation. Kobo Daishi's mother story doesn't differ too much from that of Virgin Mary. It is said that one night she saw a ball of fire fall from the sky into the middle of her room and there it turned into a manifestation of the Buddha who told her that her future child, a boy, would be a great leader. Nine months after that Kobo Daishi was born.

The Zentsu-ji has a shukubu, a hotel with 200 rooms that is always full, so you have to book in advance if you want to stay there and spend some time with the monks. I felt certain envy when I saw the henros—pilgrims—staying in its bedrooms, and I began to wonder if one day I would give myself time enough to seek God without hurry, as they seemed to be doing it here. But before I could answer myself, that food craving of which the Bible warns us to control so we don't convert our stomach into a God settled again in me and I decided to put an early end to my visit and go to one of those gas stations that I liked so much and buy more sweet beans.
TWELFTH STATION

The city of Kochi has been blessed with a dazzling light that seeps even into the shadows. Since I saw it, it became another framework where to situate my dreams. It is on the Southern side of the Shikoku island, nestled in the most backward region of Japan and, perhaps for this reason, its inhabitants still preserve a warmth they convey to tourists, bowing their heads or giving them a hint of mysterious smiles as they pass by their side.

Kochi is surrounded by mountains and the gentle waters of the Pacific wash its shores. On Sundays, market days, it gets filled with hustle and bustle and the freshest fishes that are still caught with illuminated and undulating nets. Those perfectly ordinary end up at the sushi rotating bands and at the taverns of the city districts within hours after being taken out of the sea. The finest ones find their destination in the tables of exclusive and expensive restaurants.

The Kochi's Ryokan—stroll house—is one of the most famous hotels in Japan. On several occasions it has been chosen by the Imperial Family to stay when they go to Shikoku. In the eyes of westerners it is just an unobtrusive building with faded walls located on the busy Marunouchi Avenue that can easily go unnoticed. The first hint of their splendid hospitality is a discrete flower arrangement of two or three freshly cut cherry branches placed in a corner of the reception desk. But the evidence that we are peeking through a breach to a world where less is more and abundance reveals itself through scarcity, comes into sight when the Japanese woman of indefinite age and strict kimono who accompanies us to the room opens the door onto a few square feet space without any furniture but full of light.

I didn't have to be warned that I had to take off my shoes, because only barefoot I would have dared to step on the immaculate tatamis—mats—which covered the whole floor. As soon as I was left alone, my Western clothes began to bother me; it was as if their presence over my body hindered my assimilation to this delicate and moderate culture which, in a display of generosity, showed me, in this Ryokan, another of its exquisite facets.

I undressed hastily, as if I was going to make love after months of abstinence, and I walked naked into the huge ceramic-covered bathroom that had a fresh pine scent emanating from the board platform that covered almost the entire floor. I turned on the shower with fear. It was the first time that I took a shower without dividers or curtains around me, and my nunnery education asked me for some shyness. Moreover, I didn't want to splash the walls or flood the adjacent room. But as this was not the case, I put aside the smacks of my childhood and I lathered up feeling the wood under my feet and the foam slide along my thighs. Wrapped up in steam and countless miles away from my country, I realized that at my sixty years I didn't have to report to my house anymore. Once again I was as free as can be any human being, because the death of my father and the adulthood of my children had returned me the ownership of my time.

After bathing, I put on the yukata, a dark blue printed cotton gown which in winter is complemented with a thick vest called tanzen. The Japanese wear it when they are at home and the ryokans' guests are allowed to wear it when they walk down the aisles or when they go to the hot springs that are usually part of the facilities. This avoids classifying individuals by their clothes and prevents pointless showiness in this culture. I made endless use of the permission and not a single day, of the five that I stayed at the Kochi's ryokan, I used my Western clothing when I was in the hotel.

For dinner I tidied up myself with great care. I had been warned that I would be a kaiseki rhori, a menu with several fine courses specially prepared for me and I didn't want to be discourteous. Although I combed my hair as usual, I put a bright red lipstick because I remembered that my mother used to say that to look smartly dressed you just have to put lipstick. At 7 o'clock, 30 minutes before the appointed time, I was ready and with my rigorous yukata, writing down my notes of the day and waiting for the arrival of that dinner and of Stella who was going to share it with me.

The same Japanese woman that had accompanied me to my room when I arrived at the hotel—and who was also in charge of taking the futon out of the closet, place it on the floor and cover it with a quilt for me to sleep on it—was our hostess that night. She came on time leaning her head, dressed as a display cabinet doll and glided into the tokonoma, a niche present in all Japanese homes where they place the plain floral arrangement and they hung the scroll of calligraphy. With finesse and without making any noise, she placed on the tatami the bakelite square tray which she carried in her hands and she began to assemble the table where we would have dinner, integrating it with four small tables that she pulled out of the closet and that were only one foot high. Then she put two individual plywood mats painted with green tones and sea motifs on the table, two ceramic containers one inch in diameter and the sticks ohashi, which means bridge, and that were on the tray. Right away, she asked Stella and me to sit on the tatami. We did it effortlessly, as if we were used to eat in a Lotus position in a ryokan since our birth, hypnotized by this woman just five feet tall who left the room floating after picking up the tray from the floor.

She came back a few minutes later bringing two small jugs with sauces that she poured into the bowls; also tofu—soy cheese dices dipped in vinegar—and two small ceramic plates with thin slices of a river fish called uni served with a pinch of wakame, or algae, which she laid on the table. Artistically placed in front of me and of Stella, the food and the vessels looked like tiny hand-painted clay craft creations, similar to those reproductions of typical Puebla cuisine that are sold in the confections and sweet potatoes shops of the 6th East Street, where my brothers and I used to buy them when we visited my paternal grandmother in Christmas. At the suggestion of my host, I ate first a tofu dice "to soften the stomach"; then I took the uni and the wakame with my chopsticks, I dipped them in the sauce and I placed them in my mouth. Hunger asked me to swallow them whole, but infected by the transparent serenity of the setting, I refrained myself without difficulty.

The remaining culinary creations kept coming one by one in the hands of our host. One by one, before our eyes and on our palates paraded the steamy rice sushis combined with nishin or herring, tara or cod roe, tako or octopus, hungui or eel, and ebi or shrimp, prepared with expertise and accompanied with lenkon or star shaped lotus stems, with eggplant or sweet potato. They looked like small snow balls decorated with multicolor country herbs that miraculously became warm on contact with the mouth.

Accompanied by an aura of respect manifested by the way our hostess carried it in her hands—a fact that reminded me an altar boy carrying the water and wine decanters to the priest before the consecration—the ryokan specialty appeared, a matsutake preparation: giant mushrooms of the season with puffer fish, an extremely toxic poisonous fish which requires a special permit to be offered for consumption and whose proper preparation requires almost a master's degree. I ate the curly edged mushrooms first and then fish of very pale blue, with the dignity of someone performing a reckless act, but not without the fear that the cook could have distorted the recipe and I could see the end of my days in a ryokan of Shikoku. When I finished it, on the table were already the Japanese wagashi of sweet beans that are my undoing and I decided to savor, slowly, very slowly, their insipidness.

It is curious to speak here of relishing insipidness. At first glance, it would seem that I prefer tasteless things to tasty ones when one would expect, from a meal as delicious as the one I just described, precisely the opposite. However, my years of practice of zen meditation and of Buddhist readings taught me that one must transcend the easy taste of the extremes and get into that of insipidness which includes them all; that one must run away from sweet or bitter things to savor the tasteless of dishes such as those candies of Japanese beans with a boring aspect, pale colors and evanescent smells.

With master Takata I learned that the perception of insipidness requires a radical way of being in the world beyond ideologies or cultural restraints. It does not imply a search for new symbols or a new hermeneutic, but rather the suspension of the greed for sense, of our need for signs. To discover the fruitfulness of insipidness one must enter into a territory, very old and also very vast, where significance is discreet and even strained; where, as François Julien says in his Praise of Insipidness, existence is about to disappear and silence penetrates the sounds.

The dinner at the Kochi's ryokan was thus tinged with a fertile Eastern insipidness. I realize now that never before I had been in a meal without haste or conventionalisms; that for the first time I didn't longed for the next bite—as I use to—because the one in my mouth was always enough by itself. From my today, the no words that Stella and I exchanged that night were a zen poem that suspended the moment:

A Japanese woman,

flexible as a lotus stalk, kneels on the tatami.

Fishes that have left their nest,

spring up the starry brocade of her kimono.

The soft sound of sticks picks up the rice.

Six decades of life, pilgrims in Shikoku,

smile with a warm curiosity.
THIRTEENTH STATION

Reaching the Kochi Prefecture means that one has left behind the easier part of the pilgrimage. It is one of the feral regions of Japan and, even today, the roads to their temples are rougher than those of the other prefectures. Kochi is also famous for its dogfights and cockfights. Traditionally, pilgrims had to show their identification papers at the front gate of their cities. This practice disappeared years ago and now the friendliness of the inhabitants, which contrasts with the violence of their customs, compensates for the negative aspects of the geography. There are seventeen temples in this prefecture but I only had time to visit one, so I chose the Hotsumisak-ji. I was told that it is beautiful and above all, it witnessed the most significant episode in the life of Kobo Daishi.

The Hotsumisak-ji is located in top of a hill overlooking Cape Muroto, a famous place in Japanese literature for being one of Japan's wildest spots. The waves lash with force the black coral-and-shell-dotted stones that form the so-called beach, and the absence of structures in the surroundings favors loneliness. The road leading to the temple starts off on that sand-lacking coast and is travelled in only twenty minutes.

Halfway is the cave where Kobo Daishi achieved enlightenment. It is only a small and damp natural cave on the mountain—as there are so many in the world—and that must not be much visited because it is full of cobwebs. As a citizen of a society who hasn't taken seriously the Scottish advice warning us against the misleading seduction of glamour; who favors frills and flounces over the essential, and who bedecks even banal episodes to make them look as great achievements, I let myself be surprised by its bareness. How could a place lacking ornaments, lights, or paintings be the cradle of a personage illumination? But after a few seconds I realized that in that discreet cave exempt from affectations dwelled the spirit of the Daishi, and that for having remained faithful to his own history was still communicating the essence of the enlightenment. The immense power of nature and the uselessness of clinging to illusions could be breathed there in all their dignity without any effort.

Something similar happened in a cave located on the Hotsumisak-ji grounds and which, they say, gives refuge to the souls of children. It is called Spinning winds to commemorate that there Kobo Daishi made the wind spin over itself to alleviate the sorrow of the people of Muroto who had been suffering its howling day and night. Empty, as the previous one, of anything but rocks and vegetation, this cave preserves the rugged aura that it must have had when it witnessed the miracle of the wind subjugation. The temple almost borders on it and is as scarcely dramatic and open to inclemency as the cave. Not only the red color of the pagoda lodging the Kobo Diashi's statue conversing with children has become pink, but the whole environment is clearly spoiling.

While I toured the main lobby with no other company but that of my staff, Basho came to my memory. This 17th century Japanese poet went out to see with his own eyes what the other poets had described, after writing on the brim of his hat: Without a home I wander accompanied only by God. He sold his house to pay for his adventures and he peregrinated since he was twenty-two until he died when he was almost an old man. I once read in his diary that he recorded the meetings, the scenarios, and the experiences of his travels with haikus, seventeen-syllable Japanese poems, or with a few strokes of brushes. A halfway forked pine tree was enough to recall with finesse an old poet who had written about a similar tree; a stone drilled by the sea was enough for him to gently praise the elements; the contemplation of an old monument justified a hundred miles walk through barren places.

I had planned to foster observation in this pilgrimage because I didn't want to lose one single moment of it or to let life elude me. And here was Basho duly reminding me that to the sound of the constant beating of Japanese waves and suggesting me the way to achieve it. You must keep your eyes wide open to discover the sacred. If you want to pay homage to your experiences, ask yourself the essential questions, and find the real thing, you must carefully record what you see, he seemed to tell me.

At the end of my visit of the Hotsumisak-ji, I went to have lunch at family restaurant with only three tables. I ordered some sushi and sake. Next to me were a woman and a young woman of about twenty-five years who seemed to be her daughter. Of that place I only remember the heat and the smell of fish; and also that upon leaving I left my jacket hanging on the back of my chair and the women caught up with me to return it to me.
FOURTEENTH STATION

When I arrived at Shikoku I realized that I would only have time to visit a few temples. I knew, even before leaving Mexico, that the pilgrimage consisted of visiting eighty-eight monasteries. But I never imagined that the distance between some of them could be one whole day trip, neither that to arrive to some of them it was necessary to go on foot because there was no road. Even the most accessible are on the top of steep mountains, immersed in the sands of the island or scattered in the remote villages that Kobo Dashi chose for his ascetic practice. Just twenty years ago they opened their doors to the public.

At first, I thought that if I visited six or seven monasteries I would only graze the experience that I had chosen to mark the last turning point of my life and that this would put me next to the spiritual losers. But reviewing in the hotel room a few remarks of the shingon Buddhism founder about the sutras, two days before leaving Japan I realized that I was falling into a trap that I usually set up for me to spoil my life, so I backed down before being dragged by inertia.

Neither the world nor human beings we need more than what we have at the moment to be complete, advises the master. For some hidden reason, this trip would be recorded in the book of my history in this way and no in that other. A partial tour of the Shikoku circuit didn't imply that, for the sake of a perverse pruritus of pseudo perfection almost congenital, I was going to invalidate the experiences that destiny was offering me. My duty was to squeeze the distance travelled using my senses and I was doing that: my eyes crossed the walls of the monasteries and penetrated the interior of the Buddha statues.

My blinking accompanied other pilgrims on their walk. My ears ran after the rivers, unraveled the rhythm of prayers in the temples and bounced back the chirping of birds and the cackling of hens; I also translated into melodies the comings and goings of cars and the murmur of the Japanese. My nose deciphered the incense messages and the freshness of Cedars, and my tongue tasted shamelessly the insipidities of sushi. My body, wrapped in its loose and white pilgrim clothes, was in charge of making friends with a stifling heat unknown to me and with a tiredness not too familiar either. My mind, always in the center, absorbed all this without words or thoughts and without any ulterior motivation, as it was not used to do it.

I concluded my Shikoku pilgrimage visiting the Okunoin temple where the Daishi is buried. The way to the entrance gate, lined with cedars, shades one of Japan's biggest cemeteries because the last will of many Japanese is that their ashes be buried under the benevolent gaze of the shingon Buddhism founder. An endless number of tombstones of different sizes and styles, as varied as the Chinese or the Hindu, recently built or covered with roots due to the passage of time, accompany us up to the log cabin where lies Kobo Daishi's body in a chapel half hidden behind a lobby packed with lanterns. I set alight my incense joss sticks, stroke the bell and promptly performed the other rituals, as in the other temples. When I was stamping my notebook and my shirt with the usual red seal to leave a record of my visit, the monk in charge offered me a cup of tea and a roasted sweet potato, as if he knew that I would soon leave the island and he wanted to mark the farewell offering a gift. I got into the car savoring the generosity and ready to go back to the hotel and pack.

I had just closed the car door when Stella asked me, unexpectedly, if I wanted to make a mini pilgrimage to a Shinto shrine. It could be completed in less than an hour and we would be at the hotel almost at the scheduled time. I had revealed Stella my frustration for not being able to visit the eighty eight Buddhist temples and the suggestion was her contribution to reduce my disenchantment. Very few times in my travels I have found a guide more effective than this strange Japanese with coppery hair and greenish slanted eyes, so I cannot but interpret her presence in my journey around Shikoku as a good omen for my old age.

Shintoism is a religion older than Buddhism and, in Japan, both are practiced simultaneously. It is a cheerful and optimistic religion imparted with a childish hint typical of the Japanese, as odd as it may seem, whose core is the worship of the kamis, extraordinary forces inspiring respect. There are myriads of kamis; some are embodiments of nature elements such as fire, light, wind, mountains or rivers; others are deified famous men or mythological heroes, among which Jimmu Tenno, the founder of the imperial dynasty, stands out. The shintoist kannusi, priests holders of the gods, are responsible for performing the customary rituals, but they also officiate ceremonies such as that consisting in offering every day to Amaterasu, the solar goddess, eight glasses of water, a little salt, sixteen cups of rice, and fruits, poultry, fish and legumes in reparation for offenses ranging from hindering a rice crop to desecrating a corpse. Shintoism is closely related to nature, so its temples are usually located in places favored by nature. The Kompira temple, where I did the miniature pilgrimage, is no exception.

Located on top of a wooded mountain, the Kompira temple challenges the pilgrims with one thousand steps that must be climbed before discovering its simple structure composed only of a few red-varnished wooden columns and as many crossbars of that same color. Here, neither the carvings of Buddha nor the candles or the incense capture the senses, but rather the smell of pine and the damp freshness of the environment. It is not the chant of the monks that elevates us to infinity, but the horizon that wraps us in blue as soon as we start the ascent. Reaching the mountain summit where the Kompira temple is located confers the right to write our own requests in long small paper sheets that are knotted to the branches of the surrounding trees so that the kamis take care of fulfilling them. As in the Buddhist monasteries, I asked for wisdom to circumvent with creativity the transition period that I was undergoing. It occurred to me that perhaps the fact of completing one task, such as this pilgrimage to Shinto, would give me the courage to see myself instead of my father, and that thought was enough to make my blood circulate more forcefully.

Before leaving Mexico I used to speak about the last stage of my life, but when I heard Stella's comment at the end of the pilgrimage to Kompira I realized that such stage had already begun. "The chauffeur and me, we bet that you wouldn't reach the top," she told me when I got into the car, with a smile that I deciphered easily. I never doubted that I could do it; not even for an instant. I scale the Tepozteco almost every weekend, thus I knew that I would reach the top with no trouble. But from their respective thirty years of age, Stella and the chauffeur considered almost a miracle that a sixty years old woman could have the endurance required to climb a mountain that was far from being the Himalayas. I had surprised them with a feat that wasn't such for me, and that reminded me, just in case I had forgotten it, that my pilgrimage to Shikoku was to prepare myself for an old age that, although I still didn't perceived it, had begun to be evident for others.
FIFTEENTH STATION

At the end of my pilgrimage to Shikoku, I didn't fly directly to Mexico, rather I went through London. Prudence Wilson, a nun who I met when I studied in England, was about to complete fifty years of religious life and she invited all her pupils to share with her the anniversary in a convent located in the suburban neighborhood of Hammersmith where she currently resides. I chose Japan Airlines for this stage of the trip. I needed the silence of Shikoku to settle in me and the flight attendants who only say what's necessary would help me in that sense. I contained myself to use the headphones and listen to music, or to see one of the many movies that were shown during the flight. Stimulated by the taste and smell of the sushi served at some thirty thousand feet, I was able to extend, for a few hours, the memory of the pilgrimage. However, much to my regret, because I would have liked to keep them tied to my skin so that I could delve into their entrails, the memories moved away from me at the same speed as the plane left the city of Osaka. When I landed in London, monasteries, monks, incense and sutras had vanished from my mind, leaving behind, as a legacy, only the strange feeling that, when fondling them, something in me had changed forever.

I had to do all sorts of juggling to include England in an itinerary whose initial destination was only Japan. But it was worth. Although I knew that other Prudence's former students would be there, I didn't knew that gathering with them would round out my pilgrimage.

I went to London with my father when I was fourteen years old, and this was the first time since his death that I was there again. On that first occasion, I came to England to stay three or four years in a convent of Catholic nuns in the County of Kent. Until that day, much of my life had gone by peacefully in the wooded garden of my parents' house. In those years, my scarce exits were to school, and Eulalia, our nanny, though she didn't like me as I already said, she saw to it that my bed was made, the food was ready and the clothes were clean. I was a spoiled girl with no other responsibilities but to study, an activity undemanding for me, and to obey my father, something that was never a burden for me because of my great love for him. Another relevant fact on the tenor of my filial relationship—the first had to do with my no choice of a career—was that as soon as my father said that I should study high school in England I started saying goodbye to my friends and arranging my things to live in a country on the other side of the Atlantic, of which I hardly knew its name, without even asking me if I was emotionally prepared to live far from my family.

It was also the first time that my father travelled to Europe, so the experience was a new one for both of us. We flew in one of those planes with beds and, like two naughty children, we put on striped flannel pajamas to sleep at ease. When we woke up, we had a hearty breakfast, as my mother used to say when we ate a lot and flavorful. When we arrived in London, I noticed that I had left my purse in the taxi that had taken us to the hotel. I realized that I had arrived to an exotic culture when, two hours later, I had my purse back with every single item it had inside, including the money for the school.

The next morning, my father and I went on a double-decker trolleybus to visit Madame Tussaud's Museum, although not to admire the wax reproductions of the famous characters it displays, but because he wanted me to see the dungeons holding prisoners the most bloodthirsty criminals of history so that I should be conscious that behind the most angelic faces evil can hide and that I should trust no one. I guess he was worried to leave me alone so far from home.

On that occasion we stayed at the Claridge's Hotel, and this time I chose that same hotel. I wanted to have tea in the Hall of Mirrors to the rhythm of violins, as I did on that first trip with my father, and later many other times with my mother, when she came to visit me during the holidays. I wanted to stroll through the hallways that we toured together, and rekindle her sitting in the entrance hall brocade-upholstered sofa, wearing the navy blue and white striped hat that suited her so well, and waiting, as she did most of her life, my father's arrival. I wanted to feel as a teenager one again, because I was afraid to be an orphan.

Little has changed, since that time, in the legendary hotel which is the Claridge's. Even some of the concierges of forty five years ago were still opening and closing the doors to welcome and say goodbye to the guests. In this context, it is easy to have the impression that time has stopped. But when I got into the car to go to Hammersmith, the presence of my daughter and my two granddaughters—who had caught up with me in this stage of my journey—saying goodbye to me on the sidewalk, was enough to remind me that I was no longer that girl who had arrived for the first time in London to study high school, but a mother and a grandmother eager to make peace with her history and to dabble, without ties with her past, into the new and last stage of her life.

Prudence was at the door of the convent welcoming her guests. She was wearing a smile that reminded me that of the Buddha, and a gaze capable of penetrating to the bottom of the reckless souls who dared to cross her horizon. She came towards me with her arms extended and pronounced my name with her unmistakable deep voice. I felt pleased with seeing her again, very pleased. She wasn't wearing the black habit or the white cap as when I met her, and her face showed, proudly and shamelessly, the traces of the years passed since then. But her expression had not changed: it showed the unwavering allegiance to a religious vocation—that had always captivated me—able of being synthesized in the sentence that she once wrote on the back of a picture of crucified Christ that she gave me on one of my birthdays: "The only time that we waste, is the time we spend without loving."

Prue, as her friends call her, was never an effusive woman, but old age turned her warm. She thanked my presence at her Jubilee celebration with a big hug, and then she took me by the arm to where my schoolmates were congregated, at the time that she gave me an ID with my name that I pinned to my jacket. Upon entering the huge courtyard delimited by a series of arches and surrounded by hallways, I was startled to see dozens of women, most gray-haired and overweight, looking at me inquisitively. It was obvious that they were trying to find out the girl hiding behind the woman who I am and, as it wasn't an easy task for them, that made me smile. That same thing happened to me. Who were those thick ladies usurping the bodies of my classmates? Where were the easy laughter slender girls with whom I had shared my adolescence? Where were the bright hairs that caused me so much envy? Why the melancholy and the suspicion in their gaze?

The recognition process was fascinating. Most of the time one gesture was enough of to recognize an old mate. I recognized Valerie when I saw her moving her head, for example. But even if we had to read the ID badge names, the teenagers that I knew took possession of the older ladies that I didn't know as soon as they said their first phrases after the conventional hello. Surely all those who were there had changed, and a lot, during the forty five years we had not seeing each other, but it is also true that we had only changed a little. Although Angela was so emaciated that she rather seemed a skull, she remained as sharp and incisive than when she was fifteen years old. I could not get more than a good afternoon from her, although, unlike my other classmates, I had met her several times after leaving school. Maybe she hadn't forgotten that we would have gone together to a horse race if it wasn't because at the last minute my then husband and I we left her and her husband in the lurch with the picnic lunch ready.

Mary, with her inborn elegance somewhat worn out, was still outlandish. There was only one man at the meeting. A cranky old dude wearing a bright wine-colored vest and a cane, who was determined to make us know, staying away from us, that the meeting was not at the height of his lineage. If someone had asked me who this grotesque gentleman had come with, although I didn't knew it I would have assured him or her that it was Mary's companion, as she was the only one capable of asking such a man to accompany her to Prue's Jubilee.

As befitted the meeting, the peak moment was the celebration of the Eucharist in the convent chapel, a spacious and sober room painted in pastel colors. It was his only adornment a picture of the Sacred Heart placed behind the altar with a bouquet of red gladiolas at his feet. By then, the recognition procedures were completed and each sat next to who resonated with her today and not your best friend when we were small as might be expected.

As it was up to the meeting, its highpoint was the celebration of the Eucharist in the chapel of the convent, a spacious and sober room painted in pastel tones. Its only decoration was a Sacred Heart image placed behind the altar with a bouquet of red gladioli at its feet. By then, our recognition procedures were complete and each one sat beside someone having resonance with her today, and not beside her best teenager friend of that time, as one would have expected.

I sat next to Margaret, a woman whose appearance revealed that she had squeezed life. Her sparse hair hardly evoked the reddish and wavy mane that fell down to her waist, and her eyes—that I recalled of a very intense green—looked lifeless at the bottom of two small bags of wrinkled skin. I barely exchanged two words with her when we were students. She is two or three years older than me, and at that time, that age difference amounted to one fifth of our lives. Time had leveled us and had converted her in the only woman among all those present in Hammersmith, apart from Prue, who aroused my interest.

1 made a mess out of my life, Margaret told me as soon as we started talking. With that phrase we began a conversation that continues on the Internet and is close to become intimate. She never married nor had children, or made a noteworthy career. I assume it's because she drinks too much: during the five or six hours we were together, she filled several times her glass. Nonetheless, behind her drinking habit she must hide stories that perhaps someday she will share with me. Indeed, Margaret attended mass with a childish fervor, as we all did, even those who had ceased practicing our faith many years ago. How couldn't we be moved when we heard the hymns we used to sing every day? How couldn't we feel teenagers again when we saw our mother superior renew her vows of poverty, chastity and obedience with the dignity of a Queen? At times it seemed that time had moved backwards forty five years and we were starting life.

But that fantasy only lasted until we wished peace each other—after the consecration of the species and the transubstantiation—and we saw ourselves in the mirror of our neighbors: women about to be old, with a past impossible to be erased because it was stamped in our bodies. How many love nights could we add up among us? I asked myself when I felt the rough warmth of my schoolmates' hands between mine, as if I was preparing the balance sheet of a company. How many hours of disappointment were lodged inside our flabby muscles still longing for cuddles? How many changed diapers could be accountable for our dark circles? How many children our breasts could have fed? How many nights of insomnia could have blurred our eyes? How many joys could the corners of our mouths recount? How many readings could fill the well of our memories? The tired bones, the melancholic gazes and the neglected hairs also talked about desertions and farewells: desertions by husbands and sons; farewells of lovers, fortunes and physical appeal. Not in vain our bodies had acquired a tinge of nostalgia during the forty five years we hadn't seen each other.

However, flashes of strength and arrogance could still be perceived in the gait of all these women in whom I recognized myself. The firm steps and challenging looks suggested that the defeat was not yet absolute. We didn't resign ourselves to be only shadows of what we had been some day. We would continue challenging life while death didn't beat us. Behind the apparent neglect there were touches of flirtation, such as Nichole's newly dyed hair and hairstyle, Cecilia's vivid colors printed dress and matching shoes, or a few variegated brooches at the lapels of the more conservative women. The talks about shared childhood memories were interrupted with plans to explore new careers, to search for God and of possible romances. Old age was another stage of our life, certainly the last one, but it didn't cease to be effervescent.

I thought of my mother at our age. With sadness, I recalled that she endured it. Like many women of her time, her sixth decade only provided her sporadic visits from her children and see her grandchildren grow up. Meanwhile, her husband constructed the largest financial institution in Latin America, and after the government nationalized it, when he was already seventy three years old, he frantically devoted himself in exercising philanthropy until the day of his death, twenty years later.

I returned to London, wistfully recalling the noise produced by my mother's bracelets hitting each other and the Fleurs de Rocaille scent announcing her arrival. I also recalled her green eyes, her outstandingly white skin, very similar to that of my granddaughter Amparo Alexia, and her very long fingers, like those of my granddaughter Camila. But most of all, I recalled her long red nails always immaculate, although she never went to a beauty salon. When I saw my daughter waiting for me at the hotel doorway to have dinner together, I asked myself how she would remember me when she would be my age; what gestures and moments she would use to create the memories of her mother. I wondered also how much would have changed the women horizons since the time of my mother.
SIXTEENTH STATION

How will my three children remember me when they are sixty years? What gestures and moments will they preserve of her mother? These two questions chased me as hunting dogs during the flight back to Mexico. Will they remember my long hair that I brush with such a pleasure? Which feature of my face will they keep recorded? Do they consider me attractive? However, none of these distressed me but rather their possible memories of my character, of my creativity, of my human quality and my motherhood. What grades will they assign me in these subjects? No doubt, their memory will recall the love I felt for my father, because it defined much of my life without the slightest concealment, but, will they see it as the virtue which I consider it was or as a childish trait that robbed them "mother-hours" that were theirs? Will they remember with nostalgia our after-dinner talks or will they feel relief at not having to tolerate them any longer? Will they consider me victim or responsible for the divorce? Will they remember that I celebrated my entry to old age with a pilgrimage to Shikoku? But in fact I am the one who presently must assess my motherhood and my divorce; I am the one who has to answer for my life and not my children. I already said, emulating Kazantzakis, that I only want to leave my skin to death. Why do I restrain myself? What for? What do I expect?

I rushed to answer the question about my motherhood because I have no doubts in this matter. I decided to love my children since they were born and I have been faithful to that decision for thirty seven years. In the beginning my love was contaminated. Like everything I did in my youth, it was a product of a duty, first and always a la Rudyard Kipling. How can I deny that it had more to do with me than with my three children if looking after them was part of a chain of self-imposed obligations that I fulfilled to reach that holiness-seasoned perfection that I had defined as the leitmotif of my existence?

I still have very much alive a scene that got repeated every day for several years. It reflects accurately the behaviors I displayed at that time. Seen from the today, it has at least the virtue of good will: I am sitting in the common garden of the apartment buildings where I lived as newlywed. It's cold and I wear a thick royal blue sweater. My newly born daughter, in front of me in her canvas seat and wrapped in a blue yarn blanket that I wove for her, scours the cloudy horizon with her eyes wide open. The tenants of the other departments walk by my side in a hurry to avoid getting late to work. It must be eight o'clock in the morning. I gently rock the canvas chair while I watch my daughter, almost without blinking, as if that way I could exorcise any spell that the wind could cause her. The hours go by. I walk into the house. I breastfeed the child. I go out again. I seat my daughter in her canvas chair and I watch her, almost without blinking, until the weather allows it.

When my children left childhood behind and began to grow older, the amazement that their uniqueness caused me put an end to the burden and I began to truly love them, preferring their own well-being over mine. I discovered that when the doctor told me that, to give me a diagnosis, I had to wait until obtaining the pathologist opinion regarding the type of node that he had removed on one of them. Before knowing that it was benign, I asked God, with a sincerity I was unfamiliar with, that He should send to me any malignancy and not to the child or to any of his siblings.

The adolescence of my children was one of the most delicious periods of my life: enter their rooms in the morning and open the heavy red and green wool curtains to wake them; have breakfast together around the white marble table, only scrambled egg whites because they didn't like the yolks; get on the red Volkswagen, them wearing their freshly starched uniforms and I my polyester pants and a white sleeveless blouse; take them to their respective schools to pick them at two o'clock in the afternoon, eager to listen to the sad and joyful anecdotes that they would relate...

Where are those radiant moments? What jealous dimension snatched them from my side? Sometimes they stick out amid my bedroom rattan furniture or behind my office desk. If so, I stretch my arm to grab them and perceive again the smoothness and the aroma of those adolescents who were my children at the time. But the outlines fade away as soon as they perceive the movement leaving behind a scent of peach. So, I shake my head and reintegrate to a present full of riddles that exact from me radical decisions and statements of the past in order to show me the way to a prudent and fruitful old age.

Nor do I have doubts about the divorce. I can deal with it from the day I made the decision. It was raining as it usually rains in tropical countries. I'm sitting at my desk littered with papers and I look at the street through the window. The fast lights of cars hypnotize me. I disport guessing the secrets of drivers. I don't expect anyone but I am on the alert of the doorbell because I need company. The aroma of the rose in the vase on the desk comforts me. It must be around seven in the evening. It is possibly Friday. A quote by Meister Eckhart assails me: "The purpose of life is to become what we can become." The words grow to the size of the room, devouring everything. I'm alone with the existential confrontation of the German mystic. It stops raining suddenly. The horizon clears up and cars turn off their lights. I leave the library and go in search of my husband. I find him in the bedroom. I tell him that I don't want to live with him anymore.

I couldn't become what I am destined to be if I kept living next to my husband. Our relationship was bleeding me. I wore myself out trying to decipher his wishes. I learned German to be able to speak with his partners. I took and gave all sorts of classes to interest him. I organized gatherings on weekends to entertain him. I offered him extravagant dishes to seduce him. I lost weight. I gain weight. I dressed in red, blue and yellow. I let my hair grow and I cut it trying to please him. I walked for hours to clear my distress. After twenty years of marriage I was as far from these goals as the first day. My efforts vanished as smoke and I was dying of his indifference.

Despite my sadness and pain, when I got divorced I realized that my heart had been tempered forever. I felt that my decision had made me invincible because I had made it transcending the most distressing female fear: to be left without a partner. That confirmed me that from now on I would be able to circumvent any storm. I only told my children that I was leaving their father because I considered that the female image I was conveying them by living at his side was a gloomy one. Would they understand that explanation? Would they consider it justifiable to split up a family? But above all, would my proofs of love be enough so that they could assert themselves in life despite its vicissitudes? Overwhelmed by doubts and by the heap of outstanding balances, I leaned my seat and, without noticing it, I fall asleep until I was woken up by the flight attendant instruction to buckle up because in a few minutes we would be landing in Mexico City.
SEVENTEENTH STATION

My female dog Viki greeted me wagging her tail. The following two or three days she came to my bedroom door looking for food as soon as she heard me returning from my office. Then she stopped coming because she could no longer walk and I fed her with a baby bottle in her kennel until one morning when I found her dead. I felt grief when I saw her lifeless, but also ashamed for not being next to her in her last moments. I silently thanked her for her fifteen years of presence in my house and I wrapped her in a white sheet. I took her body to the vet to cremate it and then I put the ashes in a purple brocaded bag that I placed inside a carved wooden chest that someone had given me. Back at home, I put the chest on my desk while I decided the best place to bury them.

Several weeks passed and I was getting used to see Viki's ashes on my desk. It is difficult to let go those who we love even when they are nothing more than dust. One day I decided that my selfishness should not prevent her continue her journey through the universe and I started to look for clues indicating me how to get her in the right road. I knew that I had found the sign I was seeking when I saw the Castile roses blooming in the garden at the wrong time. But several weeks would still pass before spilling the ashes of my dog under its branches so that she could reincarnate as a flower according to her destiny.

When Viki died, Sanoj's look became hazy forever. He scoured the garden up and down, sniffing everything. It was obvious that he missed his companion and that he sensed her return in a different form. Then he began to get skinnier and he stopped responding when we called him by his name. One day I discovered that his body was full of tumors, and that same afternoon he collapsed next to my bedroom and he did not get up again. I carried him in my arms to his kennel and I called the vet. As soon as he saw Sanoj, he suggested putting him to sleep because he was suffering and his illnesses had no remedy. Manuel, the youngest of my children, and I had to make the decision. How difficult. Sanoj was part of our lives. Manuel had bought him secretively with his savings when he was still a child, because in those times I didn't want a dog at home.

"Would it not be better to let him died naturally?" he asked me with nostalgia, feeling that his childhood was leaving him together with his dog. "He has an internal hemorrhage," interrupted the veterinarian. "His breathing is difficult; probably he has a heart condition." But nor even so we could decide to put him to sleep. We spent almost one hour in the garage of the house asking the vet questions and elucidating what to do. After we had decided to keep him alive with us, Sanoj came near to us, crawling, and with his gaze he told us: Not anymore, please; let me go. We realized that it was unfair to prolong his agony, and with sadness, lots of hugs and looking him in the eyes, we said him goodbye. When I received his ashes inside a black silk bag, I knew that Viki had been waiting for him to make the last trip together.

I carried the ashes of my two dogs next to the Castile rose bush. With my hands I removed some soil around it because the wind could take them away if I just scattered them over it. After having dug a hole large enough, I took the ashes out of the bags, dumped them in the hole and covered them with soil right away. I remained some minutes next to the rose bush thinking that, in that moment, Viki and Sanoj would be penetrating those roots and would not take too long to get blended into the rose petals. When I felt that they had arrived, I turned around and walked towards my bedroom. Before going in, I turned back to look at the rose bush and it seemed to me that among its leaves there was a rose more colorful than the others, and I felt a great peace.

A few days later, my own death began to haunt me: Where would I go after dying? Would I reincarnate as a flower, like my dogs? Should I ask my children to bury me close to a rose bush so that my transition could be faster? I crossed the Pacific Ocean to brace myself for my old age with a pilgrimage and I spent many days trying to become acquainted with my imminent physical deterioration. But not once I thought about death, much less about what would come after it. My Buddhist meditation practice has led me to live here and now, and considerations about the future and beyond have been losing presence concurrently.

In Shikoku, this attitude prevailed. I immersed myself in the present, letting myself be captured by the smells and flavors of its monasteries. And while I did it, the future remained discreetly at the edge. However, destiny, which always gives us what we need when we need it, and not before or after, had death ready for me when I returned from the trip, concealed as two dogs who shared with me my years of adulthood.

It didn't surprise me too much when, faced with death, my belief in the resurrection reappeared. Despite my religious explorations and a Buddhist pilgrimage to the other side of the world, I favored this version of afterlife over the belief in reincarnation or the idea of becoming energy. My discontinuation of practicing the Catholic rituals did not prevent my belief in resurrection to stay alive. Although sometimes, when I had second thoughts about it I used to say along with Unamuno that if there is no afterlife, this is an injustice, and when despair overwhelmed me then I joined Jorge Luis Borges screaming that if there is another life, this one is a fraud.

But, deep down, I have always thought that this doesn't end here because I consider impossible that I will never see my mother, my brother or my father once again. I have a lot of things to tell them, and I have a lot to discover about them as persons. On one occasion I stated this argument and I was told that a bet on afterlife is very serious thing and cannot be based on a desire. That's interesting, because for me it is precisely the desire which confers it strength and support. Where do our wishes come from but from a congenital certainty that sooner or later they will be satisfied?

Throughout my sixty years I have been designing a religion tailor-made for me. I delved into Catholicism, studying theology. Then Buddhism appeared. Later I fell in love with Nikos Kazantzakis' God and I added him to my wealth of beliefs. The idea of a God who needs humanity to turn out to be appealed to my self-esteem like no other religious concept before. What can be more in tune with the dignity of man but a humanity that builds itself at the same pace it builds God?

I am undeniably a lucky woman. While many of my school and university classmates have lost faith or continue observing to the letter the religious mandates of their childhood, I have a religious experience so broad that it allows me to define myself as a co-creator of God without any guilty feeling, and a conception of spirituality that in like manner takes me to Shikoku, to a Benedictine monastery or to sing vespers with the monks. But what I value most is to know that I will go through old age without too much nostalgia because I have been able to live my life without the restraints imposed by a dogmatic religiosity.

A few days after having returned from Japan, the journalistic works, the conferences, the boards of Directors, the visits to doctor Aramoni, my doctoral thesis, the family meals, the publication of writings by women who dare to tell their stories, the talks with Maria, the weekends in Cuernavaca with Yiya, the old nanny, the strolls through the Ocotepec village, and the singing of Vespers in the Benedictine monastery of Ahuatepec began to delineate my life once again. I began to worry that the maelstrom of my everyday routine might bury my London and Shikoku experiences together with Viki and Sanoj. But I recalled that last stare of my father and I realized that my life had changed forever with his death. The new stage had been sealed with the pilgrimage which, in itself, made him unforgettable.
EPILOGUE

It is ten o'clock at night and it is cold. I just got into bed and I am turning on the electric blanket. I hear the buzz of a fly nearby. I would have jumped out of bed to get my weapons if it were not for an indefinable blow—similar to the one that knocked down Saul when he was hunting down Christians—that likely knocks me down as soon as I try. Upon falling back again, the fly hovers over me very slowly, as trying to seduce me with its blackness, and I stay very still, as allowing its try. It flies over me, at the same speed, over and over and over until I feel the need to pat it and I stretch my arm. I cannot assure that I reach it. But in that very moment I discover that the same mysterious energy that these lines infuse into me is present in that fly that hovers over me several times and I let it go out, unharmed, by opening the window. Isn't life a wild dream?

