Because, for the moment, this is my room. And I'm allowed to let my shit spread out. And so it spreads. Gleefully.
This could be one of the issues of having your own home, Bourget. You've spent so long living out of a backpack and in public spaces that belong to other people, that when you finally have your own HOME, you will collect all the things and leave them EVERYWHERE. Just because you can.
Eh. That's a problem for another day. I have plenty of more current dilemmas. Like my whimsical health.
Cathy and John sleep in the room across the hall from me, but I doubt they'll be there much longer. Cathy has a similar biological alarm clock to me, and it rings annoyingly, perpetually, at around 4:30 in the morning.
I bet the only reason she's still sleeping is because the bed of her airbnb collapsed on her yesterday. So she probably has some making up to do...
Last week was punctuated with evenings of delicious cooking with Pancho, hilarious adventure dates with Fred, bouts of loneliness and confusion (with myself), and Spanish classes with Silvia.
After a grand total of seven weeks of Spanish classes, I understand present tense, simple past, imperfect (sort of. This tense tends to melt out of my ears after the first hour of class), future, and future conditional.
I've also been struggling through reflexive verbs. And it isn't a pretty struggle. It's a struggle that is often peppered with the dull sound of my empty head clanging against the plastic table.
SO REDUNDANT AND UNNECESSARY. Why do I have to say, "I suicide myself?" Suicide should be enough. No mas. Suficiente. You don't suicide other people.
In between learning and memorizing all this verb conjugation nonsense, I learn truly important snippets of Spanish. Por ejemplo, in Guatemalan Spanish, the idea for karma is expressed by saying, "the tortilla will flip."
Baha...
I should study more (for the sake of the table, if nothing else), but my evenings have been remarkably full. In a way that I need. In a way that staves off some of the intense loneliness I've been feeling. Because when they're not full, I slouch alone on my bed and scribble out songs like this:
Going without knowing,
Moving to move my feet.
Trying to leave my ghosts behind
By walking these lonely streets.
I keep people as paragraphs,
Moments and nothing more.
I’ve got a through-line of chaos,
And not much else in store.
Going without growing,
Moving because why not?
Can’t seem to leave the ghosts behind,
I fight battles already fought.
At times I pine for chapters,
Something longer than a verse,
But I don’t know how to still my feet,
Movement is my curse.
Going without slowing,
Moving because I’ve been.
Wish I could make a landing, but
I’m afraid of what happens then.
I’m good at new beginnings,
They’re easy, ‘cos who cares?
Don’t trust myself to let things grow
So I keep floating through the air.
Going, the wind's blowin’
Moving me off the ground.
Guess I’ll keep flowin’ with it
and hope it sets me down.
There was the evening I made focaccia for Pancho whilst drinking an entire bottle of wine. There was the night I finally accompanied my host to Cafe No Se for an evening of live music.
But I'm... uh... not the best at late nights. As eleven rolled around, I began to sag on my stool so deeply that Pancho had to keep nudging me back into a somewhat vertical position. So I wouldn't, you know, gracefully swan dive onto the bar's wooden floor (I'm sure the floor is used to it. Probably like the table at my Spanish school is used to woeful head banging).
"You young people," Pancho complained, shaking his head with a smile as he pushed me upright for the umpteenth time.
"I'm so... tired... I don't know how you have the energy."
"The secret is the power nap," Pancho replied as he confidently sipped his rum and coke.
Not waking up at four or five every morning probably helps too...
There was the day Gustavo came from Guatemala City to visit. And toured Fred and me around Antigua for the afternoon.
"This is where people come to flirt," he told us as we stared into a still pool wearing the reflection of golden arches. "It's also where people used to come to do their laundry."
Eh, tomato, tomato.
"Let's go to another place with a fun fact," Gustavo told us after our visit to the laundry/flirting site.
"Fun fact, great," I agreed.
"Well, maybe it's not a fun fact, but it's a fact," Gustavo amended his statement after fifteen minutes of scampering through Antigua's colorful streets.
"Well, as long as it's a fact," Fred commented.
We finally reached a couple of rather diminutive statues on what appeared to be someone's front lawn.
"There was a Swedish musician who saw this statue and was so inspired that she wrote a whole album. And used this statue for the cover of the album. It was something about the eyes... That's the fact," Gustavo told us. "And we walked thirty minutes for it."
"That's the fun part," Fred said. Without missing a beat. Because Fred rarely misses beats.
After our "fun fact" excursion, we moseyed over to a nearby hostel where Pancho had said there'd be live music.
The music was delayed (because it's Guatemala), but we didn't mind. The hostel we'd stumbled into was a little wonderland.
A wonderland in which Alice, err, Fred, discovered some Fred in Wonderland sized chairs.
 |
| I was walking with Fred the other day, and in a hurry because I was running late (it's a sign that I haven't fully acclimated to Guatemala that being late still bothers me). I looked back at Fred and noticed that she was struggling to keep up with me. "Fred!" I blurted out in surprise. "your legs are twice as long as mine. How are you having a hard time walking this fast?" "Because," Fred immediately responded, "it takes longer for the message to get from my head to my feet." |
Then we found a retired Chicken Bus and parked ourselves on its sumptuous couches until Pancho arrived.
Pancho meets a lot of people at Cafe No Se. One of his bar acquaintances is a taxi driver named Don Axel. Don Axel promised Pancho that he would get me to Guatemala City to pick up my friends, and back to our airbnb in Antigua for 250 Quetzales -- which is a pretty decent price. So Monday morning at nine thirty, I met Don Axel in front of the gate to Pancho's community.
"Hola! Como estas?" I commenced normal small talk with an affable smile. Then used my telephone to show Don Axel the cafe at which my friends were waiting in the City, and the airbnb we'd need to be dropped off at later. And after a few more belabored exchanges, I decided that stumbling along in Spanish was not what I wanted to do that morning, so I grabbed Teal Cecile and began to play quietly.
"Play louder," Don Axel told me in Spanish. "What, you think you're playing only for yourself?"
I smiled sheepishly and flipped through my songbook.
"I didn't know I had such talent in my car," Don Axel exclaimed, wiggling his bushy eyebrows. "Did you write these songs?"
"No, but I did write my first song yesterday."
"Oh? What was the inspiration?"
"I was feeling lonely," I shrugged. Which is not what I should have said. Because this innocent comment inspired Don Axel to proselytize for the next hour and a half.
"Your heart is empty," he said. "And nothing will fill your heart, not drugs, not sex, not boyfriends, not even family. Nothing will fill your empty heart until you have Jesus."
Oh. Fuck. Are you kidding? Right now I wish I didn't understand Spanish.
"I used to be addicted to drugs. I did all the drugs, cocaine, meth, heroin -- but I stopped because I found Jesus," Don Axel blazed ahead, full throttle.
Good for you. Awesome. Mad props. Cheers.
"I used to try to sell eggs in Xela. But no one bought my eggs, and I didn't know why. The woman next to me sold eggs. All her eggs. And mine were bigger and cheaper! But no one bought my eggs."
Hate it when that happens.
"I would try to sell eggs every day, and go home and do drugs at night. Finally I moved back to Antigua because it was impossible for me to work in Xela. And in Antigua, I met an evangelical preacher who brought me to Jesus. And now my heart is full. Now I have five children, I have a wife, I have a job. All my children have graduated and have jobs. That's what Jesus did. And Jesus can fill your heart too."
"I'm taking a break from religion," I butchered Spanish as I tried to explain my religious beliefs to the evangelical taxi driver. "I need space. Now isn't a good time."
"Now is always a good time," he forged ahead. "Who do you think taught you how to play ukulele?"
"Umm... My friend Ben. Ben taught me how to play ukulele."
"No! Who gave you the hands, the heart to play ukulele?"
"My mom?"
"No, Jesus gave you the hands to play ukulele, so you could play for him!"
I shrugged my shoulders and stared listlessly out the window, praying to anything but Jesus that we'd get to my friends quickly.
We did not get there quickly. The taxi driver got horribly lost and drove around the city for an extra thirty minutes before we finally arrived in front of the cafe at which my friends lingered.
"IT'S SO GOOD TO SEE YOU GUYS!" I exclaimed with all the enthusiasm of a lonely person seeing old friends AND a traumatized atheist escaping an evangelizing cab driver.
Cathy and I chatted the whole way back. And it was wonderful. It was blissful. It wasn't about Jesus filling my empty heart. It was about old friends, past adventures, and plans for our time together in Guatemala. I was so blissed out with my buddy that the journey back to Antigua seemed to take approximately two and a half minutes.
Guatemalan reality hit hard when we arrived at the airbnb. Because even though both Cathy and I had communicated with our host to let him know we'd be arriving early, no one was there.
"Welcome to the tropics!" I said wryly.
"I can drive you to a restaurant, you can have lunch, I'll wait outside, and then I can drive you back," Don Axel suggested. Even he must have been sensing Cathy's burgeoning hanger, and knew that although Jesus is fully capable of filling hearts, even he has his limitations when it comes to filling stomachs.
"How much extra?"
"50 Quetzales," he replied after a quick think.
So we loaded back into the Jesus Taxi, and headed to Rainbow Cafe.
"This is so hippie!" Cathy commented as we slid into our seats.
"Huh," I looked around at the colorful decor. "It doesn't seem too hippie to me."
It's because you've been desensitized to hippie things, Bourget. Now the hippie paraphernalia has to practically hit you in the face in order for you to notice it. No, not hit you in the face. Be waved at you with a goose feather and incense.
After several more attempts, we finally got in touch with our host. Who apologized profusely and told us that someone would definitely be there to receive us on our second try.
Back at the airbnb, Cathy took a nap, John read, and I unpacked the sweet care package from my family.
I feel. So loved right now. Holy bananas.
We kept the first day in Antigua quiet and simple. Walked to the outdoor market and bought some fruit and veggies --
-- and stopped at a pizza place on the way home for an, err... snack. Cathy and I ordered a pizza with local herbs and white sauce.
And Cathy accidentally ordered her husband a penis pizza. As one does.
I get to spend two glorious weeks with these people, I thought happily as I crawled into bed that night. Two weeks with friends. Two weeks of adventuring through Guatemala with people who know me.
I needed this. Need this. Will probably keep needing this...
"Oh. Fuck. Are you kidding?" Hahaha my thoughts exactly!! That was too funny :)
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