Retrospective 2

Interlude:
Neron, the convent puppy, my favorite dog in the whole wide world, has, in fact, grown up. He has fleshed out and, it has come to pass that Neron, the convent puppy, has recently come into heat. This is of course a very bad thing for a convent dog as it is quite unseemly to have a big heap of beagle uncontrollably humping nuns and leaving little wet spots on the hems of their habits. And it is quite difficult to keep a straight face while watching a sister with her left leg in the air trying to shake off an amorous and determined Neron struggling not to let out profanity or another trying to discreetly walk faster to literally get him off her tail.
Lately I've taken to giving him friendly advice
"Listen buddy I know exactly how you feel..."
(This is happening in English so that no one can understand us)
He cocks his white and blonde head to one side.
"No really I do."
Tongue wag.
"But you're in a convent and there are rules about this sort of thing."
He disregards my advice and decided to let it whale on my right calf.
The sisters comment that they are going to have to find him a box of condoms.
Chapter 6
And now for something completely different.
Little indigenous grandmothers, on a few occaisions, have come up to lay hands on me. I love those moments. They speak a language that sounds like wind rushing through trees. They pat the bones on the sides of my hips. Mutter something in a crackling wind whooshing voice nd walk away never to be seen again. Once, while walking on a country road seeking directions I stopped two women. They did not speak spanish but put their hands on my shoulders smiled and muttered "Bendita... Bendita" The little blessed woman. I think that Mayan women carry God in the hollow of their hands. In fact I know they do, but we haven't gotten to that part of the story yet. Keep reading.

Chater 6.5
I am building for my heart, a resting place
Melting snow white linen off a bed of crocuses,
the first flower of my Spring.
I am dusting windows while singing my walls wide open
to make a room in this sunlit hermitage.
The shutters are already tied back for the summer months ahead when sage breezes will kiss our body with night’s sweet reprieve.
Sleep well, for all the air is conspiring in pollen grains a heavy harvest and fat winters.
I am busy breathing silence so my story may drift through me,
Peacefully,
back to its origin,
That I may just listen as the revelation unfolds,
And abandon tomorrow in the deep navel of eternity.
Where
All is well
And forever will be.
Chapter 7
It just so happened to pass that I stumbled into a meeting of Franciscan Sisters, Brothers, and Fathers from all over Central and South America a few days back. I did not realize what I had gotten myself into because many of them do not wear habits. I walked through the parish gate into the garden got their damn dog to quit humping leg without ruining my relationship with him (I usually have to do this with humans: I can think of one specific example a few months back when a naked man jumped into my hotel bed and put his arms around my waist. Not realizing that I should have screamed I turned around and asked him: "What's your problem? Are you too cheap to buy drinks and make small talk?")
And so began the beginning of friendships that would change my life. Franciscans area different kind of catholic animal. They are still Christians but their focus is different. They follow the path of a Saint who wrote ecstatic poetry, sang to birds, kissed lepers on the mouth, stripped naked to give back the clothing that the system had sold him and walked without shame barefoot, because he knew that the earth, the source of life, is holy. If you combine this inflection with a theology that declares that Christ was a man who discovered his divinity as he walked the path that lead to his own liberation and that we are one people walking on the path together towards our shared liberation: justice, love. The kingdom of god pulled down to the earth by the strength of our own hands. You will find a people whose passion for life is electric and whose joy like an earthquake, buckles the concrete covering over the humanity of those around them.
I sat down for a moment and spoke with a friar about what comprised his faith. Looking for something that would shed light on my eternal flirtation with Christianity and my simultaneous loathing of what it represents in the world.
He explained very simply that God communicates to us through others, spirituality is only real if it is shared, that the only sin is social injustice, that Christ discovered his divinity as he walked through life and that we too are walking through life unveiling the beauty of God within us. The sun was setting, beams of the falling day came in diagonal through the windows and moved through his eyes: blue like water. I ate his words like bread, slated starvation and returned to the fold of my own understanding, for the first time shared by women and men who have the deepest of my respect. I no longer felt the need to cover that secret unfailing faith that I have in myself around those who fear god. I too could walk naked.
Chapter 8
The cave was full of soft sand. Moist. Currents of cold air criss crossed the heat of our candles burning in a small bonfire surrounded by flowers. I wanted to scream when I descended. I could not see anything and had to crouch: following the movement of flames and shadows. This is where they took the village. To this very cave. This is where they slit their throats and left them piled on top of one another to die. According to one of the two survivors a little boy, his throat not fully slit, cried to his father "Daddy let's get out of here." softer and softer until he too perished.
We, nuns friars and me, left our prayers and offerings. I clutched the yellow cascade of flowers that I held as an offering against my chest so tightly that its vital fluid welled up around my knuckles. We prayed for the strength to continue fighting for a justice that comes from peace and a peace that comes from justice. I laid my mangled offering in the ring with the others touched the walls and spoke for a moment with the spirits of the place. Those martyred in our struggle.
2 days later I collapsed on the bed of my friend, screaming and crying uncontrollably. Evil too is beyond comprehension.
Chapter 9
Guatemala has tucked sculptures away inside of me that I cannot reach, like rivers on sandstone are all of the experiences that have formed and transformed me here. I can only vaguley intuit their contours, guess at what they are and wonder how they will feel to the people I am going home to.
Chapter 10
Snapshot:
Pressing a purlple flower into the palm of a lover I will never see again in a city park full of shady trees and laughing children. A man from Argentina with soft eyes full of joy and gentleness. A man from the gold prairies that stretch to infinity where only the sight of a single black railroad car connects you to civilization. A man who lives by selling his art from town to town and "regalando sonrisas." Happiness is a thing that moves. It cannot be grasped. I did not look back when we parted ways but carried the delight of our dance: barefeet on concrete beneath rain, with me as I listened to his footsteps disappear.
A dream.
Snapshot:
The ocean beneath the sun. What is most beautiful is watching the light change as the sea foam comes rolling in on the jet black sand. Watching the neck and chin of a gangly blonde woman light up from the reflection as she clutches her straw hat around her straw blonde hair and throws her head back. Clouds above like static reflections of crashing waves. The moon on the water. The blue light filling the negative space around our bodies, again, the thin sheet of glassy water on sand throwing light back at us from below as if the earth played for a night at being heaven.
Snapshot:
My adopted grandfather: a campesino, 70ish wrinkly, splotchy skinned, stooped, barely able to speak Spanish clasps my arm "Mamaita," he says. "Your heart is so full of kindness." He can always be seen strolling up and down the town in a 1920's style straw hat, knit vest, and striped button down. Everything perfectly clean and ironed despite the thick mud of the ever falling rainy season. We walk toward a little shop on the sidewalk my arm hooked around his elbow, stooping to accomodate his 5 foot stature. "Buy whatever you want my treat, mamaita." I am touched and mortified by his generosity (knowing that every dime he has represents many hours of work in the cornfields) and set to working my way through the rolls of acrylic ribbon hanging from the cieling and rows of glass and beeswax candles to find the simplest thing I can: a miniature plastic red rose.

Chapter 11
15 de Septiembre 2008
Alayna likened the city to the carcass of a rotting dog full of ants. I was enchanted. I would expect no less from an Independence Day commemorated in one massive orgiastic typo spewed across Guatemalan currency for the past 100 years: 15 of Setiembre 1861. Cross reference to the above. No one dare correct the spelling error and so it continues under the guise of tradition.
The entire center of the city was cordoned off, as if forming the railing around hoardes of marching bands playing musical bumper cars in NO recognizeable order within its limits. At one point three marching bands converged at an intersection, all slightly out of tune, all playing some variation on the theme of God-awful, and participated in that really weird ritual that happens when you try and avoid running into someone, move, run into them again, move, run into them again, multiplied, however, by the power of 100 wearing star trek outfits and hats that look like oversized Q-tips on Viagra.
Its really funny to observe people's facial expressions while they struggle to maintain dignity in the face absolute ridiculousness.
Alayna my giggly, portly, puerto rican artist friend and I continued to walk through the capital trying desperately and sleep-deprivedly to make it through the central plaza to catch a bus on the other side. Good luck. Besides the throngs of food vendors and slightly dazed and over sunned lolly gaggers trying to wiggle their way into the scarce shade or spray blowing off the immense central fountain, in front of us sat the big dark intimidating presidential stage and palace.
The central plaza of Guatemala City is a total anomaly: surrounded on all sides by large imposing surreal European castle architecure and crowned in the center by what looks like a cross between Old Faithful and a giant Chess Pawn, it forms a small bubble of granduer in a sea of crumbling buildings. The plaza was the idea of President Ubico: one of Guatemala's many dictators and only architectural fanatic. Walking into the plaza is walking into his madman's world: all self-created monuments to his greatness, like a maze of circus mirrors that make you look larger than life. A world walled off and disconnected to its surrounding reality.
Not knowing what to do I set to locating the epicenter of the hundreds of slices of blue and white cake that seem to appear in alternately the hands and mouths of said dazed and over sunned. I decide that I need a slice. I am getting closer. The slices are multiplying. And there it was lying in all its glory beneath a red tent: the mack daddy of all confections 12 feet by 18 feet of sheet CAKE iced up to look like a gigantic Guatemalan flag. Enough white flour and sugar to launch a small army into insulin shock. Enough whipped butter icing to transform my minute stature into Jabba the Hut. Eat your heart out Marie Antoinette. I allowed myself to drift into the pleasant fantasy of leaping into the cake's center wearing a retro swimsuit cap and doing solitary syncronized swimming. I get in line: THEY ARE GIVING IT AWAY FOR FREE!!! YES FREE!!!!!
I won't have to buy lunch! My cheap-ass heart screams out for joy! Even Alayna, slightly wilted from our 4 hour long traffic jam to get into town, brightens up and takes out her camera. Perhaps emboldened by the sudden jump in my blood sugar levels I grab her arm.
"Alayna I think we can get through the other side of this parade let's give it a shot."
And so it came to pass that we, two very white women discretely pried our way into the throngs of people in front the presidential stage's corner watching a (decent) marching band. To our left a phalanx of police in riot gear pushed passed us. Seeing an opportunity to move forward I grabbed the strap of her backpack and shimmied in the thin allyway of body's created by their imposing passage. Standing, now, just in front of the French horn players I kindly explain to their guard (in harmless I-am-so-cute-take-pity-on-me gringa speak) that we need to cross as 6 angry looking heavily armed men with their hands on their pistols move to surround us. Just when I think we will have to give up and turn around THAT ONE DUDE shows up. He is ubiquitous i nthis country. HE is THAT DUDE that speaks really shitty English and is always looking for a chance to practice it. THAT DUDE has shown up in many bodies and seems to consistently save my hide. This time he magically appears from between the rows of polyester clad musicians, diplomatically tells the cops to F-off and guides us across the street while explaining "I rrrreally need to prrractice de speaked de English."
I hate THAT DUDE. I love THAT DUDE. THAT DUDE is my annoying Guatemalan guardian angel.

Snapshot:
Rabinal's market at night: lines of tightly packed wooden stalls alit by single flames like fairy queen's hands waiving slowly at spirits hanging in the humid air. Rough hewn tables and stalls surrounded by the shadows of humans and dogs pushing their way through space towards their next meal: bean stuffed plantains sprinkled with sugar, tostadas heaped with magenta colored beets, fried pork skin, roast chicken, ponche, tamales...... I move towards a crowded stall wherein a woman is pouring atol into hollowed out gourds and throwing in bits of chicken with her fingers and order a small gourd full. It is heaven, warm laced with corn mush, clove, garlic and chicken broth. I drain the first and order another watching its steam rise in the orange light.

Chapter 12
The sky changed color. At first turgid with gold, the great sack of blue above our heads drained to pale magenta and ever darkening hues of evening. Tony, my clown friend, and I got onto the boat watching the color show with our gigantic drums, puppy dog and box of 1,000 AIDS education stamped condoms and headed across El Lago de Izabal to go train indigenous AIDS prevention clowns in the rural Carribean. White cranes dotted the impasto strokes of green thick forestation. Like baldspots on the canvas, like flying orchids, ridiculous and elegant, devastatingly beautiful under the rising full moon, the slick parting of water around the bow of the boat mimicking the liquid obsidian of night. Sometimes things are so beautiful I feel my entire insides implode, my eyes roll back in my head, and my body moan in a strange mixture of gratitude and longing. This was one of those moments.