"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.