"je suis si touchee"

". . . to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived, this is to have succeeded."
~Bessie Anderson Stanley

I had planned on today being my first day back to work after a whole summer away, but my car wouldn't start. I fiddled with a few things I thought might have been the problem but to no avail. Finally I decided to come back upstairs and call my boss to tell her I wouldn't be able to make it today. I gathered the wrenches and the red mug that had held the water and baking soda mixture to clean off the battery terminals, and headed back to the entry way to our apartment. I entered the security code for the building, stepped through the doors and began taking the few paces necessary to arrive at the elevator, when a book (the only book) sitting on one of the tables in the lobby caught my eye. It was a biography on Audry Hepburn written by her son, Sean Hepburn Ferrer. I thought, "that's interesting," went upstairs, put everything away and started to wonder what I was going to do about my car. Finally I decided there wasn't too much I could do until one of my brothers got home with a car, which was a relaxing thought. So I got up and went back downstairs to get a better look at that book. I sat down in one of the lobby chairs and started to read from the first page. I quickly realized that this was a book I was going to be very interested in. But, I think I'm getting a cold, my nose was starting to run like crazy. I knew I would have to go upstairs and get some tissue but I didn't want to leave the book. So I "stole" it for an afternoon. I still have it up here in the living room with me. I brought it up and got lost reading it for at least three hours. It was so beautiful I cried. She was an amazing woman that gave her all; an example to us all. I never knew she had been so involved with humanitarian work. She is proof that someone can be incredibly beautiful and talented without compromising principles or becoming prideful. And a reminder that what is truly important, what can heal and save us, is love. I've always felt that inner character shines through both physically and in personality. The book mentions a few times that her features were not what you would consider the ideal of beauty. That there was something else, some brilliant personal quality that won people over. I am convinced it was her inner beauty shining through. I am so grateful for people like her that are willing to truly shine, to dedicate themselves to being good and doing good even in the face of seemingly impossible odds. It has been an invaluable lesson for me at a crucial time. Thank you, whoever you are that happened to place Audry Hepburn, an Elegant Spirit in my condo lobby. And though I was initially frustrated with my car, I'm very glad now it wouldn't turn over. As if it knew better.

"Whether it be famine in Ethiopia, excruciating poverty in Guatemala and Honduras, civil strife in El Salvador, or ethnic massacre in the Sudan, I saw but one glaring truth. These are not natural disasters, but man-made tragedies, for which there is only one man-made solution--peace."
~Audry Hepburn

P.S.
One story I found particularly interesting was told by Henri Mancini, the composer of many of the soundtracks for the movies Audry Hepburn starred in. He said that she inspired him musically in a way no one else ever did, and that writing "Moon River" for her, which won song of the year, was so easy. He said no one else ever understood it like she did, and no one ever sang it like she did. When they went to preview the movie it was written for, Breakfast at Tiffany's, one of the head guys from Paramount was there. After it was over he said very straightforwardly, and vulgarly, that they were going to have to cut the song. Mancini said she flew out of her chair and a friend had to take her by the arm to restrain her. He says that was the only time he ever saw her come close to losing control. Her singing "Moon River" on the fire escape is probably one of the most memorable moments in cinema history, and the most powerful in Breakfast at Tiffany's.

Once, while getting ready to attend a banquet she'd been invited to, she looked at her son and said, "If only I could stay home and eat with you in the kitchen."

Audry Hepburn's last words were a confession of her only regret in life: "I do regret something. I regret not meeting the Dalai Lama. He is probably the closest thing to God we have on this earth. So much humor . . . so much compassion . . . humanity."

At the end of the book I found the most beautiful poem. It was originally something written by Sam Levenson for his grandaughter that Audrey edited into a poem she called "Time-Tested Beauty Tips."

Time Tested Beauty Tips

For attractive lips, speak words of kindness.
For lovely eyes, seek out the good in people.
For a slim figure, share your food with the hungry.
For beautiful hair, let a child run his fingers through it once a day.
For poise, walk with the knowledge you'll never walk alone.
We leave you a tradition with a future.
The tender loving care of human beings will never become obsolete.
People even more than things have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed and
redeemed and redeemed and redeemed.
Never throw out anybody.
Remember, if you ever need a helping hand, you'll find one at the end of your arm.
As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands: one for helping yourself,
the other for helping others.
Your "good old days" are still ahead of you, may you have many of them.

When the Words Fall in Love

http://scriptures.lds.org/en/search?type=words&last=the+knowlege+that+is+hid+up+because+of+unbelief&help=&wo=checked&search=the+Knowledge+that+is+Hid+Up+Because+of+Unbelief&iw=scriptures&tx=checked&af=checked&hw=checked&sw=checked

(Read while listening to “Re:Stacks,” by Bon Iver.)

The shadows behind people walking

in the bright piazza are not merely

gaps in the sunlight. Just as goodness

is not the absence of badness.

Goodness is a triumph. And so it is

with love . . . We cobble love together

from this and those of our machinery

until there is suddenly an apparition

that never existed before. There it is,

unaccountable.

~Jack Gilbert

There is a man that walks through the market selling Jello, “gelatina” in Spanish. He goes up and down shouting “Gelatinas, gelatinas, gelatinas,” and the pronunciation in Spanish makes it sound like he's going around shouting, “Hey latinas! Hey latinas! Hey latinas!”

I've had a couple of mothscotas in my room (pet moths). They buzz around exploring where the light begins and ends. Their light touch is lightning. Yesterday one settled down enough for me to cradle it between two cupped hands and set it free.

My stomach had some serious issues for about a week. I woke up one morning, about two days ago I think, and felt ready to try a little eating. So I sat down to breakfast at the girls' tiny table because Abraham was at the big table designing a copy of the Guatemalan national anthem, which was written by a Cuban poet while he was in exile in Guatemala during the revolution. I ate slowly, watched Abraham work and swatted flies. One of the flies went crazy and did some senile swoop moves in an attempt to get past my hands and reached the promised land—boiled eggs and a saucy tamale. I thought, “Desperate House Flies,” and started chuckling. Abraham gave me a you-doing-alright look. I tried to explain.

They gave me the feisty cheese last night. Tat Lu came in while I was eating and asked in Quiche if I had eaten enough. I couldn't remember how to respond. The mind started flipping through foreign languages and landed randomly on “Oui,” which I almost said.

Woke up too early. Trying to go back to sleep. I can hear the faint sound of dishes clanging, the women preparing breakfast. I am thinking waffles with fruit and orange julius. Keep dreaming. “And that's just what I'm gonna do. Wohohohohooooh.”

I met a man selling clothes in the market yesterday. He started speaking to me in English, trying to help me find a cloth I was looking to buy. I asked him where he learned English and he told me that he just got back a month ago from living and working in North Carolina, and that he likes talking to gringos because he can practice his English. Then, out of nowhere, he got distant and sad, and started telling me a story about his friend James Max from North Carolina. "He was an old black man in a wheel chair, and for some reason we got along really well." They became best friends. But the doctors found out he had bone cancer and wasn't going to live much longer. "One day he was crying, so I talked to my boss." He got a week off and they traveled to Houston, Texas (his face lit up when he said that), and New Orleans. They had a great time. He told me there was a restaurant in North Carolina they would go to all the time because James loved their fried okra. His friend passed away a week before he came back to Guatemala. Now he's living with his family (siblings and parents) and helping them sell clothes in the markets.

I can't believe it has been three months. I can't believe I've been in Guatemala for the past three months. It has been an amazing experience I will remember forever. I am so full of love and joy and appreciation (which seem to me inseparable feelings) to the Lord for all He does for us. Amazing things have happened here. Things I will write about forever. Being here has been a major breakthrough for me. I have progressed a ton and feel established in my goals. The road to further progress is clear and open. I know the Lord is mindful of His children and has been mindful of us wanderers in a strange land. I've seen birds flying in the rain. A little girl greeting the wind with her wide kite smile. Stars and lightning in the same sky. The avocado's white blossom, one seamless bell-shaped petal. And know how much one falling petal sends up in us. I've had more success and grown more personally and spiritually than I'd imagined. All thanks to Him. I know He has all power in heaven and earth, and his hands are stretched forth to exert the powers of heaven on behalf of His children. If we trust in Him, we need never fear ( http://scriptures.lds.org/en/search?search=isaiah+51%3A+12-13&do=Search ). Our steps through this life will become so sure we could walk on water. Our weaknesses and shortcomings are not what matter. What matters is the beauty, the goodness in us. The stars between the blinds. That the good seed goes undisturbed. I see how much seems to lie latent in us, but is soon on its way. More patience, more mercy, more trying to see. More treasuring the beauty, 'cause man is it worth it.

I'm ready to go home, but will miss so much about life here, and my host family. What wonderful people. I learn so much from them about love and abnegation. Jacky's laughter has done things to my heart that will never be undone. And I've loved having all the time in the world to just be alive and experience and enjoy so many new and old things, and put all my effort into writing. A small taste of a fine future. “Fate never ends,” or so says one of the screen savers in the Internet tienda Andy and I frequent.

Like I tell my family here when they ask me how I feel about leaving, here I miss all of you back home, but back home I will miss all of them. And the way the sky looks early morning. And the abandoned adobe home on the way to the market, overrun by corn, and its pale green door. The hopeful look on the faces of tired street dogs. The way the canes shake and the avocado leaves bristle. A full moon in a star-littered sky with wild lightning on the horizon.

What will ye that I should do that ye may have light in your vessels?

Read Matthew 13:46 first: http://scriptures.lds.org/en/search?search=pearl+of+great+price

I talked with my dad the other day. He is excited about me writing, and told me to keep it up and not let anyone bring me down. "There is something special about doing what you´re passionate about." What amazing parents I have. It´s surprising to me, how I realized I always loved poetry. And the perfect timing. The same "spirit" that fills me with poetry, and that poetry fills me with, makes me a better person, my best person actually; it edifies me. I´m so grateful for it. I think we can all find things like this in our lives, like the stones the brother of Jared chose for the Lord to touch to give him light in his vessel. I feel, for me, many important things will come from my pursuit of poetry. I feel an obligation to it as well as a supreme joy in it now. I feel a need to write almost as a calling now (not that I´m anywhere near where I need or want to be yet, but I´m converted to it now), one I´m very grateful for. I know it can be a hobby for some, but I feel/know it needs to be more than that for me. A way of life. I´m gonna be a poet for better or worse forever! Hope it´s not too disappointing to anyone. Haha. But if it is, too bad. I think it is very possible for all of us to lead our lives all the very different ways we want and be happy. And find other people who enjoy it. But I think it of utmost importance to be true to ourselves. If we are, the rest will follow. And it´s just as important to not only let others follow their dreams, but to rejoice in it with them and encourage them. Thanks to all the great friends and family who support and believe in me. Neruda wrote poems since he was like six years old. His dad was a construction worker and hated the idea of his son being a poet; he couldn´t understand it and thought that meant it was worthless. Pablo Neruda is a pen name Neftali Ricardo Reyes Basoalto chose so he could start publishing without his father realizing it. Little did his dad know that he would become the most widely translated poet ever, and one of the most accomplished and famous. So, when your dream hits you like a seed sewn on the wind, be the good ground it takes root in and brings forth much fruit from, and don´t let persecution or the cares of the world choke it or carry it away. Let it live, help it blossom and with time it will be so established and such a part of who you are, that it will speak for itself, and birds will come to sing in its branches.

The Name Game

I'm gonna throw this out here to see if I can get a satisfactory answer, if there is one. A very serious question that has vexed me for about two years now, I think, or whenever that summer was I worked at Zinch.com and became randomly obsessed with Pacman (I found one of those little game boxes with a joystick and a couple of buttons that plugs into the TV while cleaning up to move out of Jamestown. Video games usually don't interest me very much, but for some reason Pacman had just what it took.). That summer I had a friend, Tanisha, who challenged me to a Pacman tournament. So here's the question. How do you play the name game with "Tanisha"?

Did you know . . .

A meteor can be any phenomenon in the sky (lightning, rainbow, snowfall, etc.).

And a meteor shower is a phenomenon observed when members of a group of meteors encounter the earth's atmosphere (knew that, but not the next part) and the luminous paths appear to diverge from a single point.

Sing

I came out this morning and Dona Ramona was doing laundry at the pila singing loudly and happily. I´ve never heard her sing before. I love it when people can´t keep from singing or dancing to the song inside them.

“Without giving anything away, I can say it's by the sea.”

The night before our trip to el Salvador, something happened to all the doors. I came back from watching some kids play basketball in the centro and went to use the bathroom but the door was warped and wouldn't close. The door to my room, which had always been warped and hard to open or close, swung easy, opening and closing without any problem. And the slide lock on the front door to the casita my room is in was kind of bent and hard to slide. I showed Suzana the bathroom door and she was just as baffled.

El Salvador was true to its name. We stayed in a surf resort right on the beach complete with a pool and really good restaurant . The first night I ate fresh mahi mahi caught that morning by the hotel owner. In a mushroom sauce. Soooo good. The restaurant is on a raised concrete platform right on the beach, and the waves wash up against it at high tide. Out in the surf a ways is a big lava rock formation. I'm guessing that the breakdown of lava rock is what has makes the sand black. However it happened, it's beautiful. When the water washes back down the beach it leaves sparkling trails of an almost purple or blue.

You could get lost in so much foam and never go home. I can hear it whispering on my shoulders like a sleepy lover. I wanted to slide out over its brilliance on a yellow surfboard at sunset and ride waves colored like flowers. Supposedly it's one of the best spots for learning to surf, but the waves were so rough while we were there that they weren't even offering lessons. Our second day we hit the beach to do some swimming and found out just how rough it was. I love playing rough with the waves though. I like diving right at the base of big ones and feeling all that energy bless my whole body and then stand me back upright. Or letting it slowly suck me towards it, and then, right before it crushes me, “sliding home.” Or jumping over top and crowd surfing. Sometimes I just take 'em straight in the chest and try to keep my balance. I had a flashback to when Aaron and Nate and I used to sit on the beach right where the waves would break, whenever there was bearable shorepound, and play chicken with the waves.

The rhythm of the waves gets down inside you. I let it move me for hours, singing, “Is this love, is this love, is this love, is this love that I'm feelin'.”

We met a couple of fellow travelers on the beach that had come to try and surf but weren't confident enough to go out under the current conditions. One guy (Bryce) was traveling with his girlfriend, and the other (Gabriel) was traveling around with his son (maybe 12 years old). We ended up meeting up with them on the beach almost everyday to hack the waves together. That first day Andy and I decided to leave and get lunch around one (it was like a two minute walk down the beach to our hotel) and they decided to stay a little longer. Leaving an angry sea can be harder than leaving a love-sick lady. Just ask Ruben Dario (I guess she was after his money though). You're not getting out until she lets you go. I think it took me half an hour to work my way back up to the black sand. We got our stuff and then realized we hadn't said goodbye to Gabriel and Bryce, who were now standing and talking in ankle-deep water. We were in middle of saying our goodbyes when a big surge of water rushed up the beach. I had my shirt in my hand and lifted it over my head to keep it out of the suddenly-waist-high water. “Keep that shirt hight and dry,” Gabriel said. But then I saw their faces and turned around to look. The backlash came fast and was even worse. I was the only one left standing. Andy got dropped hard and he had his moral (side bag) on with his camera and some of my books in it. Luckily he didn't get hurt too bad, and he has a really good moral so nothing got wet. I know it shouldn't have been funny, but I couldn't keep from laughing.

The next day we rented boogie boards. Gabriel said his place wouldn't even rent them with the waves like they were. But we gave it a go. Didn't work out so well though. I was trying to coach Andy a little on how to catch a wave, it was his first time to the beach, but I was barely keeping my own neck above water. The one good wave I caught left me naked on the rocks. No joke. But my strange ability to never bruise endures. We ended up leaving the boards behind because, oddly enough, it was easier to work the waves without them.

The beach was so beautiful at night. I got so caught up considering the great lily of the sky, I had a hard time going in before midnight. More like one thirty. I met all kinds of interesting people that way, including the security guards who I'm sure usually got tired and lonely on those late shifts. At least they seemed grateful for a new face and good old conversation. But I figure they too might often prefer solitary stretches alone with a world of beauty. So I never kept them long.

One night I was looking out over the beach from the edge of our hotel property. There was a crowd of people playing soccer a little ways up. Just past them the town's little stream ran down the beach and emptied into the waves. Just beyond that a senorita came walking down the beach in a white dress. There were two flood lights further down that cast solid parallel beams of light across the water all the way up to where she stood, staring out at the sea. The moon left a lazy trail of light in the sand around her. It all made for a spectacular, surreal scene. She just stood there in her white dress looking out at the sea. Every now and then she bent over and fiddled with something at her feet, and then stood back up and kept staring. I couldn't help it. I hopped down and started walking towards her. But when I got to the bank of the stream crossing the beach I got swarmed by the soccer players, many of which were drunk, but still friendly. I never made it to where she was. I noticed there were a couple of men and kids waiting behind her just out of the water's reach. Once the drunk soccer players left me, I stood on the edge of the stream for a few seconds watching in confused awe, and then walked back over by our hotel and searched for colored sea stones and got my feet wet. The wet sand feels so good on bare feet. Why don't we fill our houses with some kind of non-stick wet sand instead of carpet? And walls with lightning horizons.

One night I sat on the edge of the hotel's concrete barrier, dangling my feet and writing a little in my notebook. I sat there for awhile. Then another resident of our hotel came back from a walk and stopped next to me. “You alright man?” “Yeah, just enjoying the night and writing a little.” He told me that earlier a surfer got washed up on the lava rock and almost killed, but Jesus, one of the waiters, went out and saved him. He asked me about what I was writing, and what I was up to in Central America. Then we got into a long conversation about poetry. Turns out he's a high school English teacher and teaches a poetry class. And he's studied Spanish literature. He said he wanted to do comparative literature but he would have had to pick up a third language and he wasn't up for that. So he did English. We talked a little about the future of poetry, and how I wish there were more people that enjoyed long poems like Larry Levis and Octavio Paz used to write. About the lost art of attention. I gave him a few recommendations of people to read. A few quotes he really liked. He showed me the only tattoo that's ever made any sense to me. It was a line from one of Neruda's veinte poemas arranged in a ring on the inside of his left arm: Juegas cada dia con la luz del universo.

One night I was up wandering around the beach under the moon. The security guards kept telling me to stay close, so I kind of did. Eventually this Salvadorian man wandered over holding a wooden paddle wrapped in fishing line, his index finger tugging on a strand trailing way out into the surf. He was fishing for some fish whose name I don't know in English. We talked for awhile and then he asked if I wanted to try. So he got me all rigged up and let me loose. I tried casting as far as I could but it was hard to tell where it ended up. When he finally dragged his line in it had an eel tangled in it. He started talking about how someone had told him that kind was poisonous. I think it was just a normal eel, but it was completely tangled in the line, and he didn't want to take any chances, so he just cut the line and let it die on the beach. It was really sad. I pulled mine in hoping there would be nothing on it, and then cast it back out one more time. Andy came around about then to see where I'd been. And there I was fishing with a couple of natives. He laughed and said, “Your life is so random.” I fished a little longer. My fellow fisherman asked me if I had any pretty American girls I could lend him. I said, “I thought you were married.” “Yeah, but I love to fish and often hop from beach to beach.” I looked at him and said, “That's a metaphor, isn't it.” He just laughed and we kept fishing.

I ate mahi mahi three times, lobster once, and these really good kebabs with beef, chicken and the biggest shrimp I've ever eaten. Fresh squeezed orange juice everyday. And fantastic banana splits.

I stayed out in the water so long one day, my eyelids start to chafe from the salt.

El Salvador is overrun by butterflies. There were these solid-colored ones that would dance around the restaurant tables. All yellow, all wing on the wind. Deborah, one of the students living in another town, said that she read in the Lonely Planet that there are such-and-such thousands of species in el Salvador, and half of them are butterflies.

One night I left our hotel and walked down the dirt road to the restaurant next door to sit and watch the water. There were a couple of tourists sitting off to my right. To my left, the joint's owners and family and friends playing cards under a single dim light bulb. I sat on the low wall that met the beach and dangled my legs. Soon I was getting swarmed by little hermit crabs. I picked one up and let it crawl all over my hands and arms. Amazing and frightening all at once.

A couple of evenings I stayed in the water long enough to see the sunset. It was always worth it. The last time was unreal though. I stood and faced the ocean. To my right a soft, lovely sunset painted the horizon and spilled into the water and over the sand. To my left a huge storm cloud was rolling in with thunder and lightning. It was the craziest cloud I've ever seen. I stood there and marveled at the divided sky, soaking my feet in the warm ocean water, when cold rain began to fall on my shoulders. People started running past me to find shelter, and I just stood there and let it soak me. After awhile I walked back to our place and used the beach shower in the rain in the weather's contagious spirit of excess and extravagance. Then I jumped back onto the beach with a shirt and my camera (shirt to cover the camera) and took some pictures. That was a good night.

The bus ride to and from el Salvador was beautiful. I love long bus rides. Lately I've been thinking a lot about “coincidence.” I've been thinking that maybe the “uncanniness” in movies isn't so overdone after all. Sometimes you take a corner and cross a bridge and the muddy river comes into view just long enough to see a dark-skinned kid wearing bright red briefs jump from the banks and enter with a splash. Sometimes there are miraculous rescues. Sometimes your sister's car tips and rolls and she comes out untouched. Sometimes birds fly overhead at just the right moment. Sometimes a girl walks beneath your bus window wearing a shirt that says, in English, “Love Exists,” when you most need it.


Breathcatching Moment

In Santa Clara there are a number of homeless people that wander around drunk asking for money. Some of them are old couples. It makes me wonder what happened. Did they lose everything to debt and modernization? Were they abandoned by their own children? Yesterday I passed one of them on the way home from church. This time it was the old lady. She was sitting on the steps of a shop, gathering herself like she'd just woken up. When I walked by she looked up—her face was covered in scabs and crusted blood, her nose obviously broken—and smiled the most sincere good-morning smile. There was a distant, hazy look in her sunlit eyes, like she was just coming to from a good dream or a deep memory of happiness, which overflowed with her into the present and ended up pointed in my direction. For a moment she looked as tender and blessed as a loved mother. I felt weak in the knees, wanted to fall down and honor her “muchness”, to praise and thank her for what she'd unwittingly done for my own hopes. I know God lives.


Today Ramonita came up to me and grabbed my hands so I would lift her. So I tossed her up a few times and put her down, and she started to tickle me. We often play a game of who can keep from laughing the longest, or rather, who will laugh first. “Cosquillas,” she said, drawing the word out as she tickled me. “No tengo,” I said through clenched teeth. “Las vendi en el mercado.” “Por cuanto?” she asked with a raised eyebrow. “Cien quetzales cada una. Son buenas cosquillas.” I heard Suzana laugh out in the hallway.

I think I felt a small earthquake at like three in the morning.

What is up with the doors?

A Calcined Yellow Ocher

I woke up early this morning and stepped outside. The wind was going crazy, it was great. I spent a little time reading and looking through the old dictionary I bought in Antigua. I found a some phrases that I really like taken out of context, one of which is the title for this post.

lightsome
a continuous or intermittent signal for guiding navigators
a calcined yellow ocher
a sudden stroke of fortune
the existence of an ion or subatomic particle
the quality of being like

I went to breakfast and talked with Ramonita and Tat Lu for a bit, and then, because breakfast wasn't quite ready, took a shower (what else is there to do when breakfast isn't ready?). About halfway through, I realized that the songs I was singing kept morphing from one to the next all on their own. I started with Amos Lee "Keep it Loose, Keep it Tight," (actually woke up with that one in my head) and moved to Bob Marley. These two Bob Marley songs kept getting mixed together:

Rise up this mornin'; smiled with the risin' sun.
Three little birds perched by my doorstep
Singin' One Love! One Heart!
Let's get together and feel all right.

Then I caught myself singing "You're all I ever needed, oooo baby you're the one!"
And then, "That's why I'm eeeaaaaaeeeeaaaasyyyyyyyy. I'm easy like Sunday morning."

Singing Kalai in the shower is usually inevitable, but people are likely to think you a lunatic.

I had breakfast then, which was good and they gave me bread! I felt so good the whole morning. I actually had the feeling of being on the Oregon coast just beaming in me. Who knows why, but it felt great. I washed my hands at the pila and watched the light come through the peach tree leaves, noticing how light green they were, and thought (stating the obvious as usual), life is worth joy.

It was pretty cold this morning, and there was lots of wind. When I first put my hands in the water from the pila I was shocked by its iciness. It reminded me of wading Diamond Fork in Utah and dipping my hands in to gather pastel river stones. I remember once when we were hanging out on in the river at Zion Canyon, I reached down to lift a bigger stone while asking Andrea (her dad is an entomologist so I guess she's got bugs in the blood)if she thought there would be any nymphs in the river. Just as the last word was out of my mouth, I turned the stone over and heard Andrea shout, "wait!" There was a huge nymph on it called a helgamite, something like that, which is supposedly fairly rare, especially for that river. I love that river. Nice cool water running right through white desert sand, and sweet gnarled trees along the bank.

I also randomly remembered watching thunderstorms from our screen porch with a bowl of red grapes.

Snippets of ridiculous conversation
So I bought a thing of chocolate milk but the refrigerator it was in didn't seem to be on, and you can't ever trust the expiration date. But I gave it a go. I started opening it(it was a carton like the kind from the school cafteria):

Me: "I hope it's not warm and gross."
Andy: "Probably not warm, just gross."
(...)
Andy: "Bird crap!"
Me: "On your foot?"
Andy: "No my pants." Searches for the bird with his mouth slightly open.
Me: "Don't look up."

Then he starts throwing rocks straight up in the air to try and spook it off the pine branch but misses of course, and I end up getting showered with pebbles.

Later (Sometimes I mishear people. Or, often my brain will provide a quick list of all the words that are close to the sounds that were said, and I'll pick the most random one.):

Me: "Is there a water fountain in the Muni (equivalent of city hall)?"
Andy: "No."
Me: "There's a bathroom sink though, right(just joking of course)?"
Andy: "I actually did that in the ocean (mission) once."
Me: "You drank from a bathroom sink in the ocean once?"

Later:

Me: "I love the sky."
Andy: "You love this guy?"



I really do love the sky though. It was very impressive last night. The moon was almost full and the clouds made a meandering river of the sky. I want to write the sky. I like how Levis writes about the sky.

"I can understand Borges´s love for Buenose Aires, how a man feels the streets of a city swell in his hands."

"muttering a language whose sound had winged lions in it, and birds cut into a wall."

-Walcott

Try to teach a Spanish speaker the difference between snickers and sneakers.

I heard Ramonita´s mom trying to teach her the difference between sheep and bee (oveja, abeja).

We went to a fiesta in Santa Maria to watch the crowning of the town´s beauty queen. They invited queens from the surrounding towns and cities too. Their traditional clothing was amazing, and lots of them wore wooden crowns carved into birds and lions and flowers. Too bad neither of us had our cameras. We also went the next night to watch a band and fireworks. On the way home the first night Andy started ranting about how the chicken here is always bony, that it can´t be that hard to take the bones out. “In the States we grow boneless chickens like seedless watermelon.” I laughed all the way home. I kept imagining live boneless chickens. I think I was delirious with seuño and hunger.

“They” say the most important part of a sentence, or a poetic line, is the end. Read just the last words of each line from “The Season of Phantasmal Peace,” by Derek Walcott. They alone convey completely the soul\voice of his poetry, and are interesting enough on their own to hold my attention:

Together

Earth

Tongues

Up

Slopes

Streets

Sill

Until

Weather

Light

Sever

Drew

Ropes

Hear

Cries

World

Drawing

Eyes

Sleep

Light

Hill

Knew

Cawing

Chough

Concern

Belong

Love

Birth

Ones

Houses

Voices

Suns

Pause

Peace

Long

Or another poem:

Appease

Peers

Sphinx

Dream

Peace

Droop

Place

Stiffen

Drop

Drinks

Race

Pen

Begin

Rut

Leaves

Lives

Better

Academe

Just

Oeuvres Complѐtes

Or another if you´re still interested:

Canvas

Dissolves

Leaf

Wall

Settles eyes

Tongue

Further

Landscape

Rigour

Wall

Immortelle

Annunciation

Orange

Lantern

Frame

Green

Ache

Gnaw

Canvas

Smoke

Cloud

Pierce

Canvas

Commas

Rise

Feet

Dragon

(etc.)

“and when has happiness ever required much evidence to begin its leaf-green breathing?”

I find it very interesting that these two poems are placed right next to each other in Mary Oliver's selected poems:

Magellan

Like Magellan, let us find our islands

To die in, far from home, from anywhere

Familiar. Let us risk the wildest places,

Lest we go down in comfort, and despair.

For years we have labored over common roads,

Dreaming of ships that sail into the night.

Let us be heroes, or, if that's not in us,

Let us find men to follow, honor-bright.

For what is life but reaching for an answer?

And what is death but a refusal to grow?

Magellan had a dream he had to follow.

The sea was big, his ships were awkward, slow.

And when the fever would not set him free,

To his thin crew, “Sail on, sail on!” he cried.

And so they did, carried the frail dream homeward.

And thus Magellan lives, although he died.

Going to Walden

It isn't very far as highways lie.

I might be back by nightfall, having seen

The rough pines, and the stones, and the clear water.

Friends argue that I might be wiser for it.

They do not hear that far-off Yankee whisper:

How dull we grow from hurrying here and there!

Many have gone, and think me half a fool

To miss a day away in the cool country.

Maybe. But in a book I read and cherish,

Going to Walden is not so easy a thing

As a Green visit. It is the slow and difficult

Trick of living, and finding it where you are.

Ni tan tan, ni muy muy

It was Tat Lu's birthday on Saturday, but we celebrated on Friday with a small lunch because Saturday afternoon his sons had to present their work for the year to see if they were going to graduate. Andy and I brought cake to the party. It was a small but fun celebration. He's such a good guy. Tat Lu was born the same year as my dad.

Each saint has it's own day, and the towns named for that saint throw a series of week-long celebrations to honor him/her. Santa Clara's is in August, right on our last week here. On Monday I went with my host brothers, Miguel and Abraham, to San Pedro for the ferria de San Pedro. Their main reason for going was to see a soccer match the town had arranged as part of their celebrations. They got members from national league soccer teams to come and play against a local team they put together. The national team slaughtered them, but it was a really fun game to watch because they got to show off a lot. It was like an NBA team visiting a small town to play against a pickup team of locals. I got a few good action shots. I really wanted to get a shot of two players crashing in mid air fighting for a header, but the timing was always bad and then my batteries started to die. After the games we went and ate lunch down by the lake and walked around the ferria for a bit. Abraham and I took a ride on the Ferris wheel. The rides there are powered by de-wheeled tractors. We also saw part of a parade in honor of San Pedro. And, next to a catholic church, there is a statue of him with the keys in hand standing next to the cock that crowed. An interesting juxtaposition.

We're going to el Salvador in a week for our mid-project trip. We've got a little over a month left. I haven't felt like my days revolved around/were mostly made up of meals since the MTC. We need to be up to eat breakfast, be back at around one to eat lunch and then back at about seven for dinner (Although I'm not used to having this kind of a schedule, so I'm often late for meals and such, which I think kind of frustrates Dona Ramona sometimes). And after dinner it gets dark so families just hang out a bit and then go to bed. Needless to say, the weeks sneak by like mice after the corn sack.

Name that Movie

1. “Suresuresuresuresuresuresure.”

2. “'Just wait. I don't know, I want you to wait for me, just . . . awhile.”

3. “But what I hope most of all is that you understand what I mean when I tell you that even though I do not know you, and even though I may never meet you, laugh with you, cry with you, or kiss you, I love you. With all my heart, I love you.”

4. “There's nothing bigger than us”

5. “Why should I be afraid to die? I belong to you.”

6. "They're smoking more than tomato! They have crazy narcotics in that!"

7. "Blockbuster Video, Des Moines Iowa."

Livin' the Dream

Have you ever tried writing a word in italics?

Sounds that are impossible to mimic with the human mouth:
1.Ducks drinking.
2.The noise a Mac makes when you hit the volume button.


A quick look at a typical morning/afternoon

Maybe take a morning dip in the lake.

Play games with the nenas and hang with the family.

(It rains a lot in the afternoon)

Practice guitar. Practice some more.

Read Larry Levis because I can't not.

Translate some Carlos Sabat Ercasty from his out-of-print book Sonetos de las Agonias y los Extasis.

Play a little guitar.

Translate more Ercasty.

Read Hamlet to take a break from translating.

A little writing of my own.

Listen to the rain . . . remember random things . . .

A little more writing.

Listen to music, watch a clip of a movie.

More reading/writing.

Later on, a good dinner with the fam.

One thing I love is stepping out around midnight to feel the moving stillness and silence of night, and to watch the moon and stars for a bit. I want to learn some of their local astronomy related beliefs.


Memories:

I woke up this morning to the sound of wind outside my window; a wind that also awakened a familiar feeling: the feeling of fall as a kid in Florida. It was always my favorite. I think there was only one tree on the block that ever changed colors, but the season always had a different, exciting feel to it. The house smelled differently, a natural different smell. I remember coming home after school with cold cheeks and hands and detecting it in the air for the first time each year. The temperature was perfect; just cool enough to excuse wearing "winter" clothing for a few weeks (I have a strange obsession with cool-weather clothing). And there was always a wild, gusting wind. Of course there is Halloween, my birthday, a Thanksgiving, and Christmas to all look forward to as well. I remember "studying" then on the trampoline in the backyard so that I could enjoy the weather and the wind. I really loved (still do) a good strong wind, loved to feel it quickening the senses, rushing and lifting. I could sit and watch it vivifying the trees for hours. I also remember liking it when we'd watch seasonal episodes of Charlie Brown in school. Fall and winter are still my favorite seasons.


Teaching English

I help out with an English class at the local middle school from time to time, and some of the kids came to my house to get help with their homework. Two kids came by yesterday while I was playing "Campanito" with Ramonita and Jackie. They wanted to know how to say food and drinks, as well as animals in English. When I asked them what animals they wanted to know, the first one they threw out was elephant. Next was tiger. The girls were playing around me and trying to tickle me. I looked at them and said, "monos," and they laughed, and I wrote monkey in their notebook. This morning I was writing a little when Juana came and told me that there were two muchachas looking for me. "Muchachas?" I asked. I went out to the street baffled as to why two girls would be looking for the wild-haired, bearded gringo. Turns out they were looking for English help too. They had been given to short passages they are supposed to translate into Spanish, but they don't know much English at all. I quickly scanned one of the passages, and it was about a kid witnessing a UFO and having an encounter with an alien(?). The Built to Spill song came to my head, "I thought it was an alien, turned out to be just God." I asked them to use their dictionaries, they said they have one, and do their best to try and understand it and then write in their journals what they think it is saying and then bring it to me, so that I don't end up doing all their homework for them. But they really don't know any English at all, so I'll probably end up having to help with a good portion of it when they come back. Their "teachers" don't really know English either, and the books they use have all kinds of mistakes in them. But they're trying. Teaching is lots of fun. When I showed up the first day, their real teacher just stopped teaching and dropped the class in my hands. MTC skills started coming back fast, at least the little I ever had. That's pretty much how it's been every time. He just hands me the class and watches me teach. The kids are great, and lots of fun, though sometimes a little rowdy. One of the students is actually a middle-aged pastor who just wants to learn English. I think it's pretty amazing that he would be willing to attend a class with a bunch of 12 yr old kids and struggle to learn English. He's a really nice, really cool guy. I heard Some kids call me by my first name in the park the other day, which totally caught me off guard, but turns out they are in the English class and remembered it from the one time I mentioned it the very first day I taught. No excuses about bad memories. haha.

Goodly Parents

“ . . . and he did walk after the ways of his father, insomuch that he did prosper in the land.”
~Helaman 3: 20

I talked to my family yesterday, for Father's Day. It was really good to hear from them. I couldn't have asked for better parents, and that's no exaggeration. The other day I was reading in the Book of Mormon and the ultimate importance of keeping the commandments settled deep in my soul all over again. Not that I ever had big problems with this, but the importance of it was again carried to my heart, and deeply impressed upon me. More than a reminder, an old lesson taken to the next level. Staying close to the Lord by keeping his commandments is THE important thing in life. And then I realized again that my greatest examples of this have always been my parents. They are beautiful people whose strength lies in the Lord. And they are strong. And I have been blessed because of it.

Mirrorcles

Read while listening to Keith Jarret's “Someone To Watch Over Me.”

Take the bus, but let Derek Walcott move you.

Brain massage: If you've got an annoying song stuck in your mind, fall asleep with your head against the bus window.

I really like long bus rides. I told Aaron that after so many long and sweaty bus rides, road trips back home will be a cheese of cake. I have always loved car trips, but I think these bus trips have improved my car-tripping stamina. Then he told me we might take one to Yellowstone to do some fishing when I get back. And I guess my parents are coming out to visit in September. Andale pues.

We went to the capital this past weekend to visit the temple and so Andy could visit a ward he served in. It was a good trip. We stayed in a big Holiday Inn so we would have nice beds and a good shower, etc., for a change. We sat down for a bit in the room to take a break before heading out and Andy turned on the TV and started flipping through channels. I asked him to stop for a minute on one called “The Concert Channel,” because there was a band playing some good jazz. I think it said it was Charles Mingus. We watched a few minutes of the band members taking turns rocking impromptu solos. Very impressive. I remembered a comment Julie had made on my wall about jazz being like poetry, and I thought, if we're going to compare it to poetry, it would have to be a renga.

We visited the temple, which is very beautiful. After dinner we wandered down to this mall close to our hotel, “Oakland Mall,” because we heard it had a movie theater. It's a gigantic mall with seven floors, a huge theater, a really big merry-go-round (It hit me how strange a name that is when I said it out loud in the mall, and got me wondering who comes up with names for things like that; “Someone's got that job.”), and tons of very nice stores. We randomly strolled into a couple of stores to look around. One of them was called Saul y Mendez. The name stood out to me for some reason so we walked in. As part of the decoration for the store, they had old books arranged on a glass shelf, so of course I started looking at the books instead of the clothes. I wasn't sure if I could pick them up, but I did anyway. I leafed through a few on one side of the shelf, and then moved over to the other side, and the first book I picked up was an ancient copy, in English, of The Grapes of Wrath. It was in great condition but still worn enough to look beautifully old, and the pages smelled great as well. There was a note on one of the first pages written in pencil signed “Hector y Margot, 1944.” I asked the manager if there was anyway they would sell the book and she assured me very firmly that there was no way she could sell any of the books. So I left disappointed, but still thinking, I need that book. We went up and got our tickets at the theater (we found out after we got our tickets that we could have bought VIP tickets, which puts you in a theater with big leather lazy boy chairs, a waiter, etc. for about $8 US), and the whole time I was thinking, man I want that book. So we decided to go back. I walked in and found her and asked if she was sure she couldn't sell it. She said they were the owner's and just there for decoration so she couldn't sell them. Then she asked me which one. So we walked over and I showed her. I explained that I study literature and was really interested in the book. We talked a bit about who we were and what we were doing in Guatemala. She looked at the date the message was signed and said, “Wow, look at the date.” I said, “Si, es viejo.” She paused, looked at it for a long minute, and then said, “Bueno . . .” like she was ready to make some kind of deal, but then she said, “Te lo regalo,” which means I'll gift it to you. It was one of those Amelie moments when something strikes the “inner resonant frequency” of one of the characters, like when Nino finds himself face to face with the mystery man in the photo booth and starts to glow while background music hums/reverberates, like he's going to explode. I couldn't believe it. I'm sure she could see how I felt on my face. She smiled. I asked if she was sure and she was. She told me, “So that when you come back to visit Gautemala you'll come see us again.” I glided out of the store, back up to the movie theater on cloud nine, and in complete shock. The only movie showing that wasn't dubbed and seemed somewhat interesting was “Angels and Demons.” (Their theaters only show American films. I would have loved to see an original Guatemalan movie.)Funny enough, in the movie there's a running theme of him wanting a certain ancient book by Galileo that the church won't let him see, but then, in the end, “gifts” to him. Haha.

It also reminds me of a story I read in Pablo Neruda's memoirs. One time he was visiting another town to do a reading and went out for a walk with his wife Matilde Urrutia. In the window of a shoe shop he spotted this really big, old shoe that for whatever reason caught his eye. I think it was carved out of wood or something like that. It wasn't a normal shoe. He was an eclectic collector and knew he wanted the shoe even after just one distant look through a window. He asked the owner if he could buy it and the man refused to sell it. Neruda gave the man a ticket to his reading that night and walked away thinking that he needed that shoe, and was going to have to find someway to convince the guy. But the guy ended up coming to the reading and was so moved by it he gifted Neruda the shoe.

Sometimes Andy and I get confused about what the other means when we say, “home,” or, “family,” not sure if I/he mean/means home and real family, or here and host family. Like when we're in the capital and he says, “I have that back home.” The other day he shot me this really confused look when I told him “my family” is starting to understand when I'm making a joke and now they think I'm pretty funny.

Read while listening to Keren Ann's “les rivieres de janvier,” and if you're taking your time, “Ailleurs,” too, and if you're really taking it slow, the whole album, Nolita.

So Andy and I went with Tat Lu after lunch up to the mirador (lookout) so he could check on his horse he had left grazing up there. It has been raining for the past two days but let up for a few hours today in the afternoon. So we went out to enjoy it. Andy says there is a tropical storm over by Mexico that is causing all the rain. It just happens to be called tropical storm Andy. It was a good trip to the lookout with all kinds of stories told by the master, Tat Lu. I love the corn fields. So green and amazing. And their stalks are a deep, almost purple, red. I could only compare Guatemala's breathtaking green to Tennessee green. On the way home from the lookout I started realizing how often the girls around here wear bandannas on their heads. I don't know why I just realized that after almost two months. We passed a bunch of girls walking home in the light rain, some balancing baskets and buckets on their heads, others just helping their younger sisters down the road. There were also lots of men walking their big black bulls up the road. But when I had this realization about the bandannas, I had a flashback to a couple of semesters ago, when a girl in my ward asked me to go with her to see one of the movies at the Sundance Film Festival. We saw Smart People. She was a very nice girl, with long red hair. Now that I think about it, she let me borrow some of her cowboy “equipment” to dress up for the cowboys-and-Indians murder mystery dinner we had that year for Halloween. And she was really good at basketball. After the movie we went to a restaurant whose name I can't remember now, but it had some seriously tasty mole (a kind of Mexican salsa, not the animalito) enchiladas. And up on the wall by our table was a painting with people wearing bandannas. We were trying to figure out the setting of the painting, which country exactly, and the bandannas kept us very confused, because they didn't quite go with the rest of the setting or the look of the people. I think last I heard she was engaged, so she's probably married by now. I don't know where I heard that though.

I was walking up the road one morning and met up with an elderly lady who was headed in the same direction. We tried talking to each other, but she didn't speak much Spanish. We did our best though. At one point another old lady came walking by headed the other way, and this is how they greeted each other:

Other lady: “eeeyyyyy.”

My lady: “aaahhhhh.”