learning how to read the calm

the children know, and they make kites from sticks and newspaper.

i wake at night in air that doesn't move. that doesn't bring sounds of heavy breathing cows or the midnight shuffle of pancho the horse. there is no wind as relief. these are nights i can not feel space, but i feel my distance. i lay in bed and think of the moon and imagine myself getting up to pee, walking, heavy and bulky through the moist, still air.


the river, even in the middle of the afternoon, sits without waves. they say that glass is made of sand, but i have seen it made of water. i have seen a black mirror stretch between land.


i am sitting with joselino on the balcony of the boy's house, asking him questions about the respiratory system while i watch the river, while i smell the rain, while the new wind dries my sweat and makes me remember the need for sweaters.


he has paused and i bend my head to look for another question and i ask something about a valve in the traquea. when i look up, i see a different river, one now surging with white caps under a sky that now grumbles as it forms and unforms clouds racing over rough atmospheric terrain. suddenly, what is out there is now upon us, possessing plastic chairs and throwing them against the wall. towels and loose paper dart through sharp unpredictable patterns. joselino claims that the rain god is angry because we are studying.

the other boys pull out their kites to run the waves of air. those with out jump off the step, chest forward, arms out, into the wind, hoping to become that light material that goes up and up and up.

sitting in the middle

in the middle

if a painter were to paint the scene, only a few colors and a few strokes would be needed, and he or she would paint from bottom to top: grey-black; a thin line of puffy white for the trascient, morning fog; a strip of green-brown; then a strip of grey-blue. the first and last colors would extend towards the men in a seemingly infinite expanse. of course there would be a softness to the colors. maybe a tinge of pink from the east. there wasn´t much to see, but one had the sense of seeing beyond and yet wondering what was still beyond. one was left with the blank canvas of sound. as they distanced themselves from the river´s edge, they no longer heard the howl of the monkeys; no longer could respond to that bird´s call that rings through the trees like a skip up stairs.

they rowed. the youth, on the right side. the old man, on the left. for every two rotations that the youth made, the old man made one. the youth had firm movements that propelled them ahead with an end in mind: to the town with a road. the old man rowed with his rythym of years. there was no hurry in his movements, but neither could one call it precision. he wasn´t a technician, nor did he have the eye of an athlete. one could call it efficiency, but that would allude to the management of resources to arrive at a desired end, and the old man did not move with a wish to arrive anywhere. sure, he moved toward the town with a road, but it could have been the town across the river or down the river. It could have been yesterday or tomorrow.

the old man knew that the young man would slow down, eventually. he smiled, a little, thinking about the days he too rowed with a bit of a rush. that was when he desired something; something even farther than the town with a road. he remembered enough to smile, and that was enough.

they rowed in silence while the morning woke around them, when a sound from the youth´s backpack broke through the calm causing the muscles of the young man to tighten. A sound. A tone, that could be mistaken for a bird, thought the youth nervously. The sound continued in a repetitive ring and he felt the pull forward to the bag, but the presence of the old man held him back. He sat in the middle. He struggled in the double strain of not being able to answer the sound and of not being being able to escape the eyes on his back. If he were alone, he could have let the paddle fall to his side, opened the backpack, and rescued the call from abandonment. He could have laid back in the canoa and simply floated, while he talked and sat alone. However, eyes were watching him, and he couldn´t move so naturally.

but, the old man wasn´t watching. his eyes stayed fixed on the ondulating horizon, observing the early waves of the yachts and speed boats. every once in a while, he would wave his hand to the men with motors and to the others who rowed and rocked like them. all moving closer to their destinations, all moving away from the morning.

the youth, also waved to the other water travelers, though a bit distracted. he wasn´t embarrassed in his little wooden vessel next to the boats with machines, some with kitchens and bedrooms and living rooms and refrigerators and televisions. he still had his pride, especially for his strength. true, he wanted to arrive sooner than his own arms could take him, but he enjoyed too much the privilge of mocking the bellies of the men with motors.

when they began to see the outlines of the town with a road, they were hearing without hearing the constant vibration of metal and cable and cumbustion of the motors that do not pause like the chirps or caws or screeches or whistles of the forest. the thin puffy line of fog was replaced with the white hauls and steeples of marinas, with the grey blocks of buildings taller than trees.

when they could distinguish one dock from another, the backpack called again. the young man began to row faster. he no longer waved to the other men. he only saw the dock in front of him. he only saw the pulse of the ring, and the piercing of the eyes on his back. he would not, could not, look into those eyes as he exited the canoa and mumbled, adios.

but the old man wasn´t looking. in the distance, barely rising above the metallic hum, he had heard that ring again. that ring that makes young people talk while alone. but the youth wouldn´t talk. he just rowed faster and left. and the old man smiled.

today, i saw sysyphus. he carried a net on his back, full of rocks. the net of rocks reached from above his head to just above his waist. the width reached beyond his shoulders on both side. and how did sysyphus carry this load upon the abandoned railroad tracks of the del monte banana company? with the force of his forehead. it is the way to carry heavy loads, not just on top with good balance, but also as instrumet to pull and propel bags of rocks forward. the head is good for more than the abstract. we should remember that. my dad (and the united negro foundation) use to always say, the mind is a terrible thing to waist. and the head is too.

i also saw men sleeping on bricks, on an open platform, of a truck, climbing a mountain road, with many curves, in the rain. how the bricks didn´t alter and send the sleeping men over the edge, is one of the wonders of physics that i would like to learn before i die. just like bill clinton.

i arrived today in fronteras after traveling for more than six hours on four buses. on the second bus a clown climbed on after me and began to speak to the crowd. he began: we all deserve to be happy. other traveling-drug-rehabilitated-preacher, i thought. but then he started with a joke about a kid who cried and cried asking his father to tell him how he was born. i missed the punchline because the attendant was explaining how they could only take me to rio hondo and from there i could catch a direct bus to rio dulce. muy bien señor, if i have to pass through the deep to arrive at the sweet, i will. how much? by that time, the clown was singing opera and walking through the aisle collecting his payment, as one man might see it, or his charity, as a another man might describe it. i chuckled, pleased that it was over and relieved that i didn´t have to listen to someone sell god or pills for all kind of ailments.

with a bit of sadness, i left the cool mountains behind. i wonder if the sweat are actually tears lamenting the transition. back to the jungle, back to the mosquitos, back to the confines of the compound called casa guatemala. not that i did too much during my week off. i spent five nights in the same hostel in a not so raved about city. i just couldn´t bring myself to move on. i finally did something touristy the last day and it felt good, and i began to feel adventerous again, but it will have to wait another three weeks until i have another week to roam. i have read that it is an art to listen to yourself, and i all i can say is that i didn´t hear any rumblings, so i stayed put. i might have to invent stories to share with the folks back at the casa. stories about sewing and reading three books and contemplating the purpose of a blog, are not really stories to spill over candlelight. that is ok. i hear the voice of the señor with mustach and sombrero (who, according to himself, has many ranches and never travels to guatemala city without his personal chofer) who in the mini-van on the way to cobán said to me, in form of a question: it is always difficult in the beginning when you don´t have friends, right? i nodded my head and said: sí, sí, señor. tiene razón. asi es. it was difficult to breath, so i took a deep breath and slowly let it out. i didn´t want him to think i was sighing. i am not exasperated.

today, on the bus from cobán to guatemala city (the one that left me in the middle of the road to walk to a gas station to catch another bus), i saw the señor with mustach and sombrero. his chofer was the same as mine. he didn´t say hi.

i have written many notes this week, but am still trying to understand the form that fits them. i am going to go now and buy a plastic bench for the thin, wooden thing i could call a desk in my room, my attempt to create a space of my own where i can organize the thoughts of the day(s). i guess i better head back over the bridge and let my arrival be known, ask if there is a lancha (a little speed boat) able to take me to the casa. i know there isn´t. i purposefully missed it. if i take the morning lancha, i think they will still let me stay.

days are too short and one lives in a day, a thousand years....krishnamurti

i left to eat at 7.00. of course, i had

been awake at 5.21 but i stayed in bed listening to the others getting up, preparing themselves, leaving. i am almost always the first up in the casa de los voluntarios, even before the orientadores many days. on a good day, when they are not hung over, or when they don´t turn off their alarms, or when they take their job seriously, they are up

at roughly 4.30 to go and be substitute moms and dads.

i returned to where i had stopped for a cup of coffee the day before, where these australians had stopped and struggled with a coconut and a machete for about an hour. i was attracted by the prices and the ambiance. the view was of an uncolonized island (see pastel drawing). i ordered and waited, hoped for a high protien breakfast, large enough to fill me for a six hour ride into the mountains where i wouldn`t have to worry about mosquitos and where i could actually wear one of the two sweaters i brought. i wasn`t disillusioned: eggs, beans, fried bananas, wheat bread and a shake of milk, papaya and banana. all for three dollars.

a woman entered yawning as she sat down at the bar looking out at the lake. i said, ¿llegas con sueño tan temprano? and from there began the conversation, friendly, unexpected, always with a bit of caution. this is what i don`t like about traveling, this is what i don`t like about myself. i always ask myself: what do they want? what is motivating this stroke of friendliness? is is another trap for the tourist, for the stranger? it is a state that doesn`t allow anyone to be in the moment. the woman, according to her, is from flores, but lives in the capital. her son is studying in notre dame with a wife who is studying at the university of chicago. the woman, according to her, studies and practices reiki. she has been separated from her husband and the big house for eight years. in the end, she hugged me with a squeeze and told me she loved me. it impressed me, but i still checked my bag and pockets to verify that nothing was missing. nothing personal, but there are just things that you don`t want to happen twice.

after buying materiel to make some shirts, i gathered my things and walked the mile to the terminal de rositas. the direct bus to coban was to leave at 2, so i decided to do the journey piecemiel, a bus here and then a bus there. but they weren't buses. rather mini-vans are the new trend in trasportation, at least for this side of guatemala. to sayechè: 20Q ($2), muy bien, no problema. and it wasn't a problem to arrive at sayeché and see a river without a bridge. on one side mini-vans and buses, and on the other side more mini-vans and buses. not a problem that 2Q and a covered canoe couldn't solve, but when i woke up that morning, i hadn't imagined this in my day. no, the most intersting was the big platform coming from the other side with trucks loaded on the big stage powered by four small boat engines positioned like four tires, covered with palm tree roofs to protect the four drivers. if my words fail to produce an adequate image, see the photo provided. look close and see what ingenious minds will create with what is available.

i don`t think i can continue in this vain...the journey was interesting while i lived it, but to write about it as a journal entry for all to see, bores me!

the saga continues with a literal stop in the middle of the road to change mini-vans and blah, blah, blah.... i should just focus on getting the pics downloaded and up.

a travel journal might not be what this blog becomes.

somos cuatro puntos. los puntos originales de mi cosmos. escribir sobre la familia es un poco trivial, como las tablas del uno. analizar la familia es casi un cliché. son asuntos de la sofá del psicólogo. son cargos de la niñez que a los 32 años, al recibir las noticias de mi hermano, siento pesar otra vez. no es algo nuevo para el mundo, casi es otro cliché de la historia. ha pasado antes y es algo normal en mi familia que los hombres salen por meses a la vez hacer servicios para su país. crecí con mi papa andando en los mares soviéticos. en aquel entonces éramos tres puntos juntos y un punto lejos. pero con el tiempo, somos cuatro puntos seperados, pero eso también es normal. eso se llama la desintegración de la familia núclear.

hoy no veo caras. veo un mapa del mundo, un globo, y cuatro puntos distintos, ardiendo, pulsando. en esa familia, la separación y el movimiento son temas repetidos que aburriría a cualquier lector, entonces, no es sorprendente, asombroso, nada revolucionario ver los puntos en casi cuatro países diferentes. pero hoy, sí siento la distancia, la quiebra de algo que quebró hace veinte años.

hoy me encuentro en un pueblo hecho por los alemanes, para cultivar el café, en las montañas nublosas de guatemala, llorando por algo que realmente nunca existía. por un rato, me tumbaba en la cama con el propósito de llorar. ¿y por que no? pero no me salió. traté de encontrar un pensamiento para complementar, pero no encontré ningún hilo para seguir en mi mente blanco.

después de esa escena ridícula me salí a hacer compras para los niños y para mi proyecto de coser y me encontré en otra escena, pero esa vez de películas: era la mujer solitaria caminando en las calles caóticas llorando con las lágrimas mezcladas con la lluvia. una mujer ocupándose con los quehaceres para no encismarse en la psicología de su familia que es como un charco sucio que nunca se seca y que sigue salpicandola en los momentos más inapropiados. sus lágrimas son hechas de las salpicas de ese charco terco.

y de repente me doy cuenta que estoy hablando de mi misma en tercer persona y me pregunto: ¿hay emociones que no se parecen cursis por ser clichés por ser sobre-proyectado a cuadros, a papel fotográfico, a la pantalla? los yanomami de la amazona suelen hacer proclamaciones a toda la comunidad cuando se reputa una emoción sea de ira o alegría, sea la mañana, la tarde o la noche. viven en un gran circulo sin ningún sentido de privacidad. las únicas acciones que hacen lejos de los demás es la copulación y la defecación. son emociones recién brotadas no manipuladas para ser representadas en buena forma.

y aquí estoy terminando mi cerveza y ¿quien esta cantando por el radio? nadie menos que kenny rogers recién comprado por 5Q de la chica de once años por la barrista de quince años. cuando era de su edad solamente podía escuchar a la música clásica, cristiana, o la de kenny rogers. y aquí termino el gran circulo de mi día y todavía me quedo preguntando a quien me escuche: ¿como desahogarme de la tensión en mis hombros, en mi espalda? ¿de donde viene esa energía que me hace sentir como un cable chispeante?

email numero 2

i find myself in an island. not quite sure if it is man made or not. feel like i´ve been here before...with the modern, concrete, cobble-stone streets, like the ones they replaced the center of guanajuato with, disrupting traffic for more than months. i walked the circle that is this island, eating lunch half way around, then climbed up to its peak, its center, which is merely a hill with a church and a school and a theatre and a plaza they call a park without grass. a concrete plaza park i would call it. what i like most are the hidden callejones and the streets that criss-cross in a non-determinant pattern. it is the randomness that attracts me, the possibility of getting lost and the challenge of having to find my way back to the los amigos hostel. it is a charming, international respite with plants and wooden furniture and a bar and hammocks and brightly painted signs that are also witty and do not detract from the rustic look. the signs are all in english of course. it is another bubble for travelers. i have left one bubble (casa guatemala) to come to another in form of hostel and island and then ancient mayan ruins., even the bus that brought me here was another bubble traveling in time and space. i am beginning to confirm the bubble theory. call it particle theory if you like, but i like the image of a bubble. some with oval walls of straw, others of wood, others of brick. some more capable of being blown down than others. at 8:04 this morning i started across the bridge and felt the fuente del norte bus roar pass me. that is my 8:30 bus, i thought. how strange for it to be early...this is guatemala. as i walked down the other side of the bridge and into the town, i saw the last señor jump into the bus and wave for take off. it was 8:14 and i began to run. fortunately he saw me and whistled for the conductor to stop and i was on the moving bus at 8:16. schedules are relative around here. i sat with the curtain blowing and hitting me in the back of my head, my ear and that space right above my right eye. we stopped for an old man waiting on the side of the rode. he donned a sombrero and a bag of henequin, thread made from a cactus. his skin: bronzed from generations of workers under the guatemalan sun. he smiled and showed two bottom teeth, front and center, sandwiched between the two top cuspids. he sat on a seat cushion on the floor on that hump that old buses, right when you board. you don´t see those humps any more since they began to be viewed as an inefficient use of space, phased it out, and replaced it with another seat, another potential profit. i watched as the people from the side of the rode piled in and sleeping children were handed off to strangers to hold and infants were breast fed on the floor where the old, four-toothed man once sat. i thought of my first day at casa guatemala when rebecca, the english teacher from australia was explaining her affair with a married guatemalan. she explained, in the real world i would never do this, but well, ya know, this isn´t the real world. but this is the real world. one could even make a reality show of this, even this. and knowing that rebecca isn´t the only volunteer having relations with married guatemalans it isn´t surprising that the volunteers at casa guatemala have mala fama (bad fame) around town. and when the manager of the hotel that supports casa guatemala eats cookies that have been sent to two of the workers despite a note stating who they are for, it is not surprising people question: where is the money? let me explain. seño raquel is the manager and she saw the note and yet she just wanted to taste a little bit, but they were so good that she couldn´t stop. she never said anything to anyone. this is an anecdote that explains what happens to donations. there is always a mordida (bite), or possibly a gobbling up of it all. For example (further explanation), the other day a sailor heard about our toilet paper shortage (the volunteers have been buying tp for the kids) and kindly dropped off packets of tp at the hotel to be delivered to the children. well, it never arrived. apparently they decided to use it at the hotel. people are learning to take their boat and drop off their donations them self, if they are not too disillusioned. so it isn´t just the volunteers who have mala fama. the place is absurd. i am observing and learning a lot. tonight i will sleep well; i hope. it is 7:00 and i am ready to sleep. early tomorrow i will go to tikal and then in the afternoon, decide if i will go on another five to six day hike in the jungle. i am divided. part of me wants to walk, walk, walk. and another part of me wants to write, sit, draw...cross off some of the things on my to do list. i will sleep on it. good night,caraps: don´t get too used to these daily emails...

email numero 1

well...the connection is down in fronteras again. fronteras is the town i have the fortune and misfortune to visit once, or, if i decide to spend the extra money and another night in a bar with bad music, twice a week. fronteras=borders. yes, this is a border between worlds. it is a border for retired american yahties and the thirld world...old american sailors who come here and throw beer bottles in the river and marry young school girls, maybe one, maybe tow, maybe three, so the story goes. that is what the traveling jewelery maker told me last wednesday as i ate a chicken salad at the dutch woman´s cafe. that was before i fell ill again with amoebic dysentery and spent three days in bed...sleeping, sleeping, sleeping. sharp pains from inflamed intestines. prayers for my liver and my brain...please do not spread...stay in the intestines until the medicine works. yes, i was on another border for a while.

it will come. yes, it will. this week, i will take my week off. it may be monday, it may be wednesday, but it is time. the students will take their exams next week and i will relieve my self. i am glad i decided to stay for these extra two weeks even though i am doubtful about whom i have really helped to pass the exams (except for boris). how do you prepare someone for a badly designed test with rote memorization as the ideal of education? how, in a short time, can you tease adolescents into opening their mind to grasp the concept behind the action when their minds are trained to follow the rules the teacher gave them? to really prepare them for thinking, how much time is needed? if you can believe it, one of the questions on the fourth grade test is: what country do we live in? so i ran around asking every child in casa guatemala what country we live in. just to partake in the silly seriousness of exam preparation. yes, it is pitiful. a sad case of bad education. and yet, i find myself teaching their summer school, which is winter school. sixteen students, fifth and sixth graders ranging from eleven to sixteen years of age. in the morning we will read together (still trying to think of books and where i will need to travel to purchase a class set of novels) do a bit of real world math (any ideas rick?) and then, in the afternoon, we will work on the farm together. but this won´t start until the middle of november. all this...way into february. i get excited and a bit frightened imagining the challenge, but i must say...i need a week off to recharge. thankfully, i will have two, separate week long breaks before this madness begins.

the place i find myself is a black-hole of creative energy. i keep thinking of the monk who spent hours,days, possibly months sifting and sorting beans and testified that in the midst of the repetition, in the midst of the boredom, a creative force was born. i keep believing in that possibility with in the compound called casa guatemala. i read and journal quite a bit, but one needs other forms of expression. have been wanting to paint and sew...would like to have a room of my own. would like to be able to pick up a news paper or watch a documentary. would like a cold beer in the steamy afternoon.

last night two of the older boys came and asked permission to go with seño bella to kill rats. sure, but tell me a little bit about the experience first...last night they had killed 36, the night before 17. five of them go to the chicken coop armed with sticks and bop rats until it is 7:30 or 8:00, bed time. they can´t use poison with the chickens and child labor is the only way to keep the rat population down and the egg business alive, and not to mention our plates blessed with some meat once in a while.

on sunday, i found the source of the smell beside my bed: a mildewed backpack with moldy clothes. i am still getting used to the lifestyle tricks, like hanging everything on nails! when it takes two days to dry clothes that still end up smelling dank, i sigh and often think of my friend jess who lived in zimbabwe and had to iron her clothes after hanging them to dry. one day, in a rush, she decided not to heed the warning and she regretted it for a while. you see, there are bugs in zimbabwe that bury their eggs in wet clothes and if not burnt with an iron, hatch in your underarms causing quite the irritation. i think of that, say a prayer of gratitude, and mind a bit less the dank smell, since we all smell sweet together.

what do i like best? conversations through candle light. the other night emi and i talked until we almost couldn´t see each other, finally lit a candle, and continued over tea and noodles. it reminded me of the evening talks with monica when we would finally realize that it was dark and we better either turn on a light or just go walking to find something to eat.

i like that i am slowing down and going deeper into myself. i write about my relationship with coffee, my clothes, the way i breath while a little bored while little oliver is reading ma-ma-me-a-ma. it isn´t the type of writing one shares with others, but the type of thoughts one must have to understand one´s own holdings and letting goes. i appreciate the subtleties I am sensing.

i like that i can sit here and drink a beer, look outside the wall that is no wall and see darkness. one street with one line of stores that are closing now, and then, the night, pure night.

i hope i can send this, and i hope you all appreciate my communication despite it being addressed to many.

your letters help me continue. you can´t imagine the smiles they bring, especially after a night of stolen water bottles and translating between disgruntled volunteers.

ok..there is a connection, i must try to send...