THE AJIJIC VORTEX – Its Most Astounding Attraction
By Ed Tasca
There’s a miracle vortex (derived from the Tracian word meaning, “What the hell is that?”) in Sedona, Arizona, a marvel of health-giving geography that has become a sacred destination boasting magical powers, which defy rational explanation.
Ajijic has such a place, too.
It’s a place that spawns miracles every single day of Lakeside living. It’s a place where the paranormal has taken a fierce hold, making it one of the most mysterious locations, possibly in the Western Hemisphere.
The place of which I speak is the intersection of Hildalgo (the carretera) and Calle de Revolucion, known to most as the market street. This is a place where lives are spared daily, limbs are left to their owners and where no one, pedestrian or motorist, no matter how reckless or incautious, seems ever to be in any danger from a run-in with death or calamity—this when all rational, statistical even observable evidence points to slaughter and mayhem each and every day.
Cars, trucks and buses careen from shoulder to shoulder, shoot through and around pedestrian clusters – blitzing from the north, the south, the east, the west, with even more springing forth from the laterals east and west, along with bicyclists on the cyclopista who dart through and over and across with otherworldly confidence and convenience. This wild-eyed chaos of bustling random intercourse at this intersection goes on all day, seven days a week, peaking on market day. And yet, the sacred aura of the place protects all, no matter what stupid action one might take. It’s miraculous, no other word explains it.
What’s most revealing as well: it answers that nagging mystery of why we need no traffic light there. Why waste the valuable resources on a traffic light. There are two traffic lights in La Floresta, just fifty meters east, and notice how few street-crossers there are at these spots. That’s because gods are not watching over people crossing in La Floresta. Any holiness that La Floresta may once have had has been sucked westward to Revolucion. That’s why La Floresta Castle never sold.
This is a Lourdes for jay-walkers and drunken pedestrians, for mindless, speeding drivers, for willy-nilly bicyclers, and for the myopic that shouldn’t be driving at all. That’s the wonder of it. As a pedestrian, you don’t have to think about anything as you tarry through this sanctified passage, doing your nails or having a yogurt. You don’t have to consider the ordinary perils of crossing the carretera on foot elsewhere by preparing for the crossing weeks in advance with a trainer.
And every Lakeside driver knows he can pass on any side he pleases; that there’s no need for a turn signal, working headlights, preventing children from hanging off the back of trucks, slowing down for bus passengers or putting phones aside, because--
It doesn’t matter.
Back up over a shoulder at 40 miles an hour! It doesn’t matter. Fly over a lateral to jump standing traffic! It doesn’t matter. One will never hit anything but a pothole.
The potholes themselves are another proof of how powerful the divine safety shield is there, given that cars don’t travel in straight lines on Revolucion but in unpredictable trigonometrically complex swerves around potholes, which, at any other location, would dizzy and befuddle any normal pedestrian trying to figure out where a vehicle might actually be trying to go. Not at Revolucion. It doesn’t matter where the car ends up, nothing calamitous is going to happen.
My final proof that Revolucion is enshrined with providential oversight: Often, altruistic drivers will stop to let motorists, who are trying to change direction, do so. They stop, yes, actually stop for no apparent reason, and flash their lights to give another the right of way. I don’t believe this is actually done by the driver as many believe. I think it’s managed by cryptic controls at the hands of the “unseen.” And the driver of the car giving the signal is just as mystified by this action as the driver receiving the signal.
And of course, the obvious explanation among the locals: Centuries ago at this very carretera location, the Aztecs or the Toltecs somehow figured out the precise number of human sacrifices and heart displantations acceptable to the gods, and BINGO, we won a vortex here.
Whatever the explanation, I do believe that one day cures for major diseases will be had at the market, so that one could purchase a cheap watch, fresh fish and a cure for Irritable Bowel Syndrome all on the same day.
The world would forget Lourdes.
