Scorpion, Cactus, Primal Soup
Español
February 22, 2026
by Alan Goldfarb, text and art
When I was new to Mexico I used to go to the hot springs all the time. I must have gone at least a thousand times to pray and do yoga and practice conscious breathing. It was my exercise routine.
I loved it so much because it's like being embraced in the belly of Mother Earth and coming out with a deep sense of wellbeing. So kind of the opposite of existential anxiety and a very practical alternative to heroin.
When I searched for the land to build my house, I looked for a place near the hot springs. But I haven't been back there in about 5 years, since before covid and the housebuilding project.
So as I enter my golden years, my body's tightening up, I'm losing some muscle mass and getting all stiff and sore. Also my thoughts have been attacking me with greater intensity. I've been wanting to get back there for about a year. But every morning that I woke up and thought about it I just thought, ughh, people!
Then this morning I woke up desperate for some relief and surprised myself by getting up and going. I was fortunate to get there early, while there were still very few people. The pools were filling with immaculately clean alkaline water (it has a high lithium content) and the waterfalls were all open. I was able to spend a couple of hours under the big powerful torrents of water, patiently opening the areas of pain and stiffness in my body.
I began doing a series of gentle stretches. Being immersed in the warm water, it felt like I was coming back home into my body after a long time away. I was going slowly but was hoping to release some of the armor that had me feeling all contracted.
As the torrent of warm water fell from the domed ceiling and penetrated my musculature, a stream of emotions and images from different times in my life flashed through my mind with an unspooling sensation.
Chronic depression appeared as a deep pit with black slime at the bottom. I remembered being on the shore of Lake Champlain and experiencing the almost terrifying thunder of many thousands of snow geese in flight, migrating out of Canada in the dark gray mid- afternoon sky of northern Vermont. I had never known they had such elemental power.
Grief arose at the memory of family and friends, my father Murray and the men Mayer and Clarence who I adored but lost to difficult deaths from cancer.
Anxiety about the diminishing physical and mental capacity that is accompanying my aging process.Fear about not having health insurance and the possibility of receiving a catastrophic health diagnosis at this stage of my life.
Worry about making enough money to live with a modicum of comfort and ease.
Frustrated sexual desire at being rejected by Krista Edlund in 1987.
A memory of the trauma of having been robbed and beaten in 2011 by the local police in Coahuila while I was driving north to the border. They left me with bone bruises on my wrists and a broken rib from being struck with a rifle butt.
Self-hatred for taking that money that time. And that other time too.
Social anxiety inhibiting me from mixing freely in the world.
Sorrow about the out of control period in the early 2000's leading up to the divorce, walking away from the studio, and spending half a year in rehab.
Images of being in my mother's womb (she smoked filterless Chesterfields all through the pregnancy) before being born. I imagined remembering that my first significant experience as a newborn infant was quitting smoking.
Recalling the time when I was 8 years old, after the coughing, dizziness and nausea wore off, how amazing that first puff of tobacco was. Like watching all the colored lights at an amusement park blink on at dusk.
Regret that I fucked that woman.
Inadequacy for not being able to behave like a normal person and those surprising eruptions of suppressed rage that cause me to react unpredictably.
Shame about an experience I had in 1970 when I was 11 years old. A doctor sexually abused me with a medical instrument and then put me on a prescription for valium.
Impatience with people's belief systems, those who need you to understand that they have reached an advanced level of spiritual development.
Humor forever about the rural Vermont farmer, old and small of stature, who reached through the window of the BMW and punched that strapping Buddhist vajrayana student in the face after he smugly demanded the farmer remove his cows from the cattle crossing because he wanted to get back to the city after the retreat.
Resentment at the oligarchs who have enough resources to remedy many of our global problems but instead remain trapped in the moebius strip of a limitless fascist greed with neither beginning nor end.
Maybe Elon could lay off the ketamine, stop fantasizing about relocating to an uninhabitable planet and start an "Occupy Earth" movement instead?
Detail of Scorpion, Cactus, Primal Soup
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A couple of hours went by, my body had relaxed, and I started to come out of the reverie. There was a very stocky Mexican man, heavy set but not flabby, with short arms and legs, a thick neck and a crew cut. He had been breathing rhythmically while jogging in place with his eyes closed in waist high water for the entire time I had been there.
We exited the pool at the same time and I said good morning to him. He returned the greeting, looked me in the eyes and smiled. I felt so much gratitude for his presence. I said to him, "You are so dedicated to your exercise!" He smiled again with a kind of shy innocence, a sincerity tinged with affection. He said he was doing the best he could with it.
I walked uphill by the series of pools through the forested area. The ladies at the gate smiled and wished me a good day.
My black dog Sombra, now old and stiff with arthritis, was waiting in the car in the parking area. She was delighted when I opened the car door and gave me a vestige of the crouching cat, belly to the floor, monkey love dance that she used to perform for me back when she was an abandoned little puppy. I found her out in the countryside with nothing but a faded twist of old red electrical wire around her neck. I used to stop by to see her on my way to work and leave beans and tortillas for her to eat.
At around midday, I drove into the village by the big church and saw the doors were open on the bakery. They keep unpredictable hours, and when they are open, they sell out by noon. I bought some fresh bread and sweet rolls. Freshly baked bread, what a joy!
One of the women in the village told me that the city had finally put in a provisional bridge. They had torn out the old one at the beginning of the rainy season. Then they realized they couldn't rebuild during the rains, and left us isolated for 6 months. This welcome bit of news meant that now my house was only a mile away on a bad road instead of 4 miles away on even worse roads.
I crossed over the river on the new provisional bridge, driving up to the tiny village near my house. A new bridge! It felt so uplifting to be reconnected to the road in our community.
When I got to the end of the tiny village, I saw the abuelita who sells gorditas cooking at the wood stove on her stone patio. I greeted her for the first time in 6 months and said, "Hola Doña Yolanda, how are you? There's a new provisional bridge!"
She raised her forehead to the sun and smiled with her whole face. I could see the crows feet around her eyes, her remaining teeth and the long white braid down her back. She said happily, "Yes, for about a week now. And soon they will build a new bridge and then they will take out the provisional bridge and it will all be good!"
I bought a liter of the beans she had been cooking. Fresh beans from a Mexican great-grandmother. The simple things in life can bring so much contentment!
I left the tiny village and began driving up the dirt road along the big hill to my house. I saw a largish bird take flight from a huizache tree near the road. In the brilliant daylight of the open blue sky, I had a clear view as it flew off. It was a kind of bird I have never seen before, with a cinnamon colored body and cement gray wings. It flew with acrobatic grace, not like a swallow but something like that. I was awed by its elegance.
When I pulled into my driveway, my little soldier dog Bodhi came running out. He slipped under the fence and trotted the hundred meters to my car. I opened the car door and he jumped up on my lap, licked my whiskered chin, and cried.
He cried and cried, as if saying, "Why did you leave me? I don't like it when you leave. Now we are together and I am supposed to always be with you." He would not get down off my lap so we drove up to the house like that and made breakfast.
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Alan Goldfarb, a native New Yorker, began studying ceramics as a boy. During high school he was introduced to glassblowing. He attended college at the School For American Craftsmen. In 1983 he opened a glassblowing studio in Burlington Vermont, which he ran until 2006.
In the course of that time he continued to study under noted international artists like Dale Chihuly, Italian maestros Lino Tagliapietra and Pino Signoretto, and Swedish designer Bertil Vallien. He also taught workshops at various colleges, museums, and craft schools.
He received awards, grants, and scholarships for his studio work, and a number of his pieces are in private and public collections, including the Corning Museum of Glass, The Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and The Smithsonian Institution. A studio notebook of his drawings is also preserved in the Rakow Research Library.
He closed his glass studio in 2006 and moved to San Miguel de Allende. Following a hiatus he opened a woodworking and art studio creating handcrafted furniture, sculptural objects, and paintings. From 2021 to the present he has worked with local albañiles building a handcrafted adobe house in the countryside.
His short stories have been published in the Gihon River Review, Lokkal Magazine, and the anthology, "Craftspeople; In Their Own Words."
Comments or feedback? Please practice kindness. Contact Alan at:
goldfarb.alan@gmail.com
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