todos santos, guatemala

¡oh, señor! dadme la fuerza y el coraje de contemplar sin asco mi cuerpo y mi corazón.
-baudelaire

pensé que hoy, mi destino era subir el volcán. pero no. no había más gente con quien subir. entonces me quedo en las tierras bajas, y si me animo, caminaré por el lago. caminaré.

tal vez mi destino fue soñar con dar luz a un bebe en el bosque. estuve sola con la criatura antes de llegar otras personas que no sorprendieron por el acontecimiento. en un momento estaba cargando el bebé en mis brazos, observando su cara roja y arrugada cuando me entró un miedo de desconfianza...¿que estoy haciendo? ¿lo estoy haciendo bien? ¿así lo debo estar cargando? ¿quién me enseñará como envolverlo en el rebozo? al llegar las señoras se le pasé mi bebé para poder ir al baño. al volver a mis bolsas, tuve otro asusto...¿donde esta mi bebe? solamente pasaron algunos segundos hasta que me giré para verlo en los brazos de otra, pero fue la profundidad del asusto que me marcó y mi reveló otra vez mi inseguridad de poder hacer las cosas bien y con atención minuciosa.

es que a veces no veo bien. todo queda borroso, como si estuviera viendo todo los pigmentos de una imagen que no me deja ver el total del imagen. y no sé acercarme o distanciarme para poder ver mejor, para saber donde camino y como llegar.

y a veces no me importa la vista, pero no sentir en mis interiores ese cable estremecido entre dos montañas que no para de vibrar. es no es exactamente una vibración. y no es el café.

y me pregunto si me preocupo demasiado su presencia y la manera de deshacerme de ella en lugar de aprender de ella. ¿y es algo que se puede quitar o es parte de mi construcción como un lunar o un psicosis?

hoy caminaré hasta que me canse, fumaré hasta que me maree. y si no, me quedo en mi cascarón.

outside my door,

i reach to open.

i see flight

from below the bank

where there is a path to the town of brisas.

i turn and i see: nobody. not even the string.

i see

only white paper

navigating like butterfly

through green trees.

light

i fly

standing.

5:30 am

i woke to children

walking on the path beyond the gate

talking, laughing

on their way

to kill chickens.

i ate bread

nibbled on by rats

toasted in a pan with one nugget of rat poo.

the hard boiled eggs are boiling,

and i have come to this table

in this forest

beside this river

to cut roots

and flower.

its not an ancient mayan tradition, its the free-market

there are those who seek limits and those who push them. like the chicken bus drivers on the interamericana highway that has been and will be under construction for years. it is raining and in some places this international thoroughfare is nothing but a dirt road being widened, being soaked and muddied. it is known for its long lines and delays. people go to work daily selling snacks and diversion to those who wait, but the chicken bus drivers don´t want to wait. they can't wait. there are only a certain number of hours in a day, only an undetermined number of passengers who will need their services in a day. it seems as if their speed is the only thing they can control (and of course their spontaneous pricing for foreigners). and so, on a two lane highway that makes one lane stop for another to pass in the areas of construction, a twenty to forty minute wait is not acceptable. and so, that two lane highway becomes a three-lane, dodging race-track. i don´t know if i can explain this phenomenom of chicken buses racing up a mountain dodging onward traffic by either squeezing back into their proper lane or by swerving to the left to let the onward traffic pass between. and so, we continue with this swerving and dodging and honking and nervous smiles for a while, maybe fifteen minutes or so, when we finally arrive to the bottle neck where trucks, buses, and mini-vans of all sizes are parked. men smoke outside of their vehicules. they drink coffee, munch on peanuts. they have that laid back posture of those who resign themselves to wait. but our driver, no, he continues his inching forward and i would say that his strategy is to put himself in a position that blocks passage making it necessary to let him pass forward to the front of the line where he will then wait. but not very long becuase other chicken bus drivers do the same and soon there will be no passage what so ever and the construction workers will have to remove the orange cones and piece of wood with nails sticking up and wave them along. but during this brief rest, the men on my bus suddenly run to the bank to piss, the driver asks passengers where they are going because he no longer wants to stop at market 57, so why don´t you pass to that other bus back there. i look back and see one that says, san pedro via los encuentros. perfecto. my final destination. i grab my bags and race back just in time to be standing on the platform before the flags are waved and the race begins again.

historical footnote- guatemalean students have taken to the streets spray painting their rejection of a new transportation proposal to increase urban bus fares. last time this was an issue, seventeen buses were burnt. the newly elected government is also against the proposal and said they will respond by increasing government subsidies to the companies rather than take from the pocket of the people. november 2007

literary footnote- the title is a quote adapted from an article entitled on the chicken bus or the electric kook-aid asshole test by the surly bartender found in volume II of la cuadra published in antigua, guatemala

freedom cell

a bed
a bed stand
a window up high
a sliver of sky
here,
i choose to rest.

a barefoot democracy
as one author put it, guatemala in 1954 was a barefoot democracy: 75.8% walked with bare feet.

eating chow mien and reading poems, i sit in a plastic, red chair in a restaurant silenced by the blare of the radio. construction workers, each with mid-day coca-cola, don’t talk. i look up and see her. i first see her feet, dry cracks filled with white plaster, walking in the wind and sun on concrete and cobble stone.

i watch them move toward us, and i think of francisco and maria jesus whose full, round toes spread with the width of shoes. they are sturdy, confident feet that regard shoes as an awkward disturbance. i think of jossie, the new girl from the capital, who came to us one night in darkness and rain. soaked by a storm that had left us without electricity, she was led by the hand to her bottom bunk. a few days later, she scoffs at the suggestion of going barefoot to the costume party. the following week, she is shoeless and smiling. but then i see her going to work on the farm with bare feet, so i finally ask her about her shoes. they broke she replies with her eyes looking down. embarrassed at being a bit embarrassed because here in her new home in the swampy forest by the river, one doesn’t complain about not having shoes. one doesn’t nag to go to the storeroom and look in the pile of donated shoes. it is part of that proud indifference that the older kids wear upon their shoulders.

the older woman enters and unloads her basket on the front table. she offers no disturbance; she doesn’t smile; she doesn’t seek eye contact. she ritually delivers the hot tortillas wrapped in cloth to the kitchen hidden by a draped sheet. she moves as if on the screen of a silent movie with a popular love song as her frame, as her foil. she is the woman who sells tortillas as she walks away as silently as she came, with a steamy basket upon her head, no shoes upon her feet.


antigua, 2007