Headed for a New Life

I am actually headed for a NEW LIFE.
It is interesting to think how much might be new, and how much of my present self I will take with me.
According to Astrocartography, I will be more MYSELF than I have ever been.....at least since I left the longitude of my birth. But what will that be?
I imagine myself in an apartment above the street....enough above that I can see the greenery on the hills beyond town, and the volcanoes that enclose the area. I imagine it spare and light and colorful. Room to eat and sleep and write, no more.
And I imagine I will write............about making a new life, about the culture of childrearing and parenting in a new country, about finding out what parts of my career/work might be useful in this new town/country/culture. I imagine I will write a lot about HOW one finds one's life..........how serendipidy works.
I imagine, at times, that I will find ways to recreate the life I have here........not the gardening or animals, certainly, but perhaps a group of women to connect with, maybe counseling clients even, and when I am dancing to music in my living room here, I imagine I will teach Authentic Movement, or create a dance jam or class. Who knows?
I might end up working in the jungle or the mountains and living in a tent or small cottage. I might end up leaving Guatemala for another country............No se'.
And WILL I learn to be fluent in Spanish??? A lot depends on that.

No se'.

Getting closer

So it seems I've decided to go, specifically to Guatemala. I'm still waffling on Jamaica, mainly because it's an extra amount of money that might be very precious to me in the future. But I think it's important to me to know what it would be like to live and work in a community of rural poor.........whether that becomes Nicaragua, Guatemala, Africa...wherever. As opposed to my plan of more private living in Antigua and working in a project nearby.
Whatever floats your boat...........but I gravitate to both.
I am a fairly private person, however, so I'm headed for one, but going to investigate the other.

And then of course today I discover a way to get to Africa - and to Mali, my most recent choice.
For anyone who might be reading this there is: operationscrossroadsafrica.org. $3500 for 7 weeks/ and your airfare to Africa. And apparently a quality organization.
There is also www.idealist.org for anyone who wants to talk with other people interested in volunteering in the US or abroad.

Sort of a pragmatic post. I guess that's my mood today.
I'm excited to know that I'm actually going, but of course that involves many steps to extricate myself from this home of 25 years and 10 year job.................with all that means leaving.
I will most miss my connection with two groups of women, and my weekly Body Tales.
But you never know what I might be able to create.....wherever I go, and however long I'm gone.

Hasta....

First: Jamaica!

What an incredible trip to receive an invitation to my step-son's wedding - in Jamaica! And what an incredible trip it was. [Street i Ocho Rios to the right, and my oldest daughter)

In the first place the long conversation on the plane with two men sitting behind me who were on their wayto Brazil to find a healer, and the woman next to me who has a home-building project in the Dominican Republic. She invited me to visit her there (which I would love because I sponsor a boy in a Children Int'l project, there) and said she'd come visit me in Guatemala.
Then our family converging from all over the US, hooking up with each other in varying combinations in Miami and then on to MoBay on the north side of the island, and then (at night for my two daughters and me) by van on the incredibly bumpy pavement to Ocho Rios. We checked in with the father of the bride at the hotel he and her step mother own and as I recall went to bed early (like midnight.)

The following day breakfast in the hotel dining room with every permutation of these two wide sprawling, multi-racial families....meeting new people, getting into interesting conversations with people from NY, Sweden, California and Jamaica....and eating an incredible breakfast (me, who never eats dinner for breakfast): boiled greens, sawfish and acree (a fruit growing on a tree outside the window, which looks like scrambled eggs when cooked) and of course melons and juice and some little pan-friend puffy breads. A GREAT cook and a great meal.
We then spent three days going out dancing at nite (with some guidance from Elvis, the cook) and going to jerk chicken places in the day, climbing the Dunns River Falls (many laughs and photos there), taking an all-day tour to the Blue Mountain area - where I got a great photo of a little falling-apart schoolhouse over the edge of the "highway" with lots of adorable Jamaican kids waving up at us, and we saw the devastation of a hurricane a year ago which wiped out the connecting road to Kingston (so we couldn't go there, which I had hoped for because I wasn't hearing any reggae music anywhere except on the boom-boxes, and had been told I might hear it there.) And also of course more "jerked-chicken shacks." Great conversations everywhere because I always want to know what life is like for everyone I come across.....so I learned things about the school system (the gov't is finally giving scholarships to some worthy kids so they can attend highschool free - other wise for the poor education ends w/ gradeschool,) the gov't (considered fairly liberal, but things could be improved, they said,) and that $15,000/year is a pretty good salary and you can rent a reasonable 2 bedroom house for $150./mo. Everyone I ran into wanted to sell you something........especially on the street, where this became onorous for my daughter and my son-in-law, who spent the rest of the time in the hotel, as do most tourists (I didn't see many whites on the streets, tho there may have been black tourists there.) I just figured they needed to make a living and politely refused, except for a few items. But even Elvis sought to provide us with services of one sort or another, casually accepting a tip in exchange (with a quick look at the amount.)
I walked alone in the neighborhood behind our hotel.....broken concrete streets, broken concrete houses, abundant flowers and greenery everywhere, a little barbed wire (not like Guate. City), a few kids playing in the streets (no begging,) a few women talking over the fence (but although they speak English, don't think you'll understand the patois!) and of course some guy who came along when I was questioning which turn to take, and walked with me, chatting about politics and social problems, until I got back to the hotel, whereupon he hinted that a tip was in order for his "guiding." Which was okay until he suggested that $150 J was not enough.

I loved every moment of the trip, as did my younger daughter who stayed out dancing til 3 or 4 with a couple of friends from the wedding party or, in one instance, with one young Jamaican man, while I went home about 2 or so each nite - at least twice walking the block or so from the wedding hotel to the one we were staying at by myself. My sense was that I needed to be watchful but not afraid. The only thing to fear was the traffic, which was even wilder and crazier than in Antigua, but of course at that hour minimal.

This account in no way does the trip justice. It was absolutely wonderful. I loved Jamaica (although it was overcast a lot while we were there and I only made it to the beach for a few minutes) - and I will be going back to work for the Blue Mountain community-building project in July! But to be in another, exciting, invigorating country with all four of my children and both grandchildren and my greatgranddaughter ! (now 17 - and on her ggrmother's insistence she went out dancing w/ us - which I regretted later, when somebody let her get drunk, but even that was okay.) And to eat great food and walk in the bustling streets all day and go dancing all nite! Whew!!!

The Day of the New Year

I prayed long and hard last nite for direction, and realized I don't really need to know, I just need to stay close to God.......and my steps will be guided. I can remember being carried during the campaign and the organization of the successful fundraising nite; I know what that feels like.
So that felt relieving. With the cancellation of my private practice ad, and putting in notice on my office........certain baby steps are being taken, and my anxiety about it has returned.
So this morning I am lighting my fire and pull yet another request for contributions out of the paper trash bag..... I have hated it that if I follow my own desire to help personally it will mean that I can't make the money I have been to be able to give some away. So lately I've been tossing them in the trash. But this request's from Drs. w/o Borders, one of my favorites. So I open it and read about refugees in Darfur and Colombia. And once again, wonder what I'm doing. Going to Guatemala...or at any rate Antigua...seems too "cushy," not "hard-hitting" enough.
I want to help the children "of the basura" - whose parents work in the city dump in Guate. Is that not enough?
What is enough? What is this need to help?
My sister and daughters query me: do I have to help everyone in the world?
My answer is that if each of us says "not me" - then who does it?
If something falls to my hand to do, and I step away..........then who does it?
I don't think everyone has to "go help" (although I wish everyone would pick a favorite charity or two and send $25 a month!) But I am alone in the world; my kids are grown; I am 70. I'm in a position to go do something.
And I am told that in Antigua there is Drs. W/o Borders, Amnesty Int'l and many other NGOs. Perhaps going there is just a start.
And if nothing else, I will put this urge to rest, if I go there and learn something about what that's all about.
Who are the people who do this work? Are these NGO's honest and "for real?" Do we really help? And HOW does one help?
For all my naivete' I see things pretty clearly; I think I will learn a lot.
And about myself, of course, I will learn a lot.
I think I am pretty divested of personal fantasies: I know I'm hard-working and dedicated. I know I need to be hedonistic at times. I know I can be strong and dynamic, or wimpy and hesitant. I know about my need to be loved and needed, and how to keep track of that and not let it take over my objectivity. I've learned a lot in all these years of social work and counseling, maybe especially about myself.
And I'm not going to save the world. But I might find a place where my contributions make a difference, where there are like-minded people, an organization that is really doing what it says it does, and of course always a bunch of little wonderful cantankerous, mixed-up, sweet kids. Which is what is really is about.
But I hope I can do some training, too..........so I leave a little behind.

I keep thinking I have to have a good reason to change my life like this, drop a good job, leave my friends. That I have to justify it.
But I think it's really just that I want to do it.

Day of the New Year musings.

The longest journey begins with....

"The longest journey begins with a single step..." I believe that's what they say. But actually I think it begins with one little step, and then another, and then another.............. And each one seems like nothing much, but slowly slowly the world underneath your feet shifts, and then suddenly you find yourself on board a plane, or getting in a taxi, moving into another town or getting married. I took one big jump when my first husband and I decided to get married, when I turned up pregnant (age 18) instead of having an abortion. Another when I divorced him 7 years and two children later. Another when I quit work to stay home (I thought to begin dancing seriously, but as it turned out, to have two more children with the man who then became my second husband.) Another big one occurred when I left all my friends and even my two older children behind (my daughter married, my son with his dad) and moved from Berkeley to the farm country of Northern California, with my husband and the younger two. Another when we left the farm behind, and moved to a homestead in the mountains. Another when I left him and struck out on my own in a log cabin without water. And of course moving onto my own property full of bushes and trees and a stunning view, and nothing else, and building my own house. But the one I'm contemplating would be the biggest. Dropping a good-paying job that I like a lot (a LOT) and moving out of the country and even state I've lived in nearly every day of my life....to move to Guatemala. 

But the first little step in this (still only POSSIBLE) journey occurred when I read Pat Martin's blog about volunteering in Guatemala. The second when my son heard I was thinking of going and offered me the trip for my birthday. But the real step, of course, was suddenly finding that I had purchased tickets. THAT means you're going!! It only takes lifting a finger (on the computer) but the meaning is pretty momentous. So then I went, and now I'm back, and still thinking about moving there. Still wondering if I'm crazy. Still wondering why there? But while I was gone my yellow page ad for my private therapy practice was cancelled because I hadn't responded quickly enough. My yellow page ad! which my practice depends on, in large part. And if I DON'T go to Guatemala but do leave my current position(s), private practice would be the only thing enabling me to continue to live in THIS country! But that step was taken for me. And I watched it and didn't try to change it. I've been thinking that I'm unable to USE my private practice office, these days, as I'm working too much at my two consulting jobs. And that if I closed my office right away (which I'd have to do if I went to Guate) I'd save $300 per month!! So today I went in to pay my office rent....and asked how many days notice they require. "30 days," she said. And I put in my notice. It always intrigues me that these things happen (at least to me) with some forethought, but when the actual act occurs, it's almost as though it's not my hand writing that note.....that my brain is just empty of thought, and my hand just writing by itself. But there it is. I don't want to be dramatic because of course I could change my mind any time in the next 30 days, but..........there it is. Maybe I'm leaving this town I love, these friends I love, my house I built myself and have lived in for 30 years. Maybe I'm leaving!

Que pais bonita!

Still November - my first trip. Photo is of the street leading to my homestay in the sort of poorer NW section of Antigua

Today's excursion, after searching out "American" food markets w/ mi maestra and finding little, was to look up the masseuse who introduced herself at the Spanish school last week. She has lived here 13 years, but evidently spends 4 months of each year in USA (around here referred to as "usa" - oosah) and Canada, fundraising for something called Wings, which buys vasectomies and whatever for people who want them, and Servas.....there's a website which describes that: gives you the opportunity to stay in people's homes in various countries, and vice versa. Very friendly group. The woman nomad used it alot.
So I followed the little map on the back of her card and found nothing of the sort, checked the names of the street w/ passersby and finally found her gateway just by chance. Another blank gate opening into a rather nice but somewhat disheveled garden, w. banana and orange trees and coffee plants. I tromped around for awhile and finally someone told me where she lived. She let me in and showed me her one large room, divided into eating, massage, and bed space, and a small bathroom and tiny kitchen. She has been paying $225/mo., but it would be more now. But there are several little and bigger houses scattered around, at a fairly low cost, and this is on the South end of town (I live on the north) so the streets are quieter and safer-seeming (fewer passersby, stand-arounders, etc.) I was quite taken with how different it felt - bad and good, as I like the bustle and children on my street, but at nite nsg.

She then took me on a "walk." Her first thing to show me was the GORGEOUS hotel (inconspicuous enough on the outside) across the way from her. It has all been done in the old Mexican nunnery style, with paint-fading walls, large rounded wood columns, curved walls in some places, all the old natural colors of this town.......think absolutely primo New Mexican fancy hotels or expensive houses, but everything natural and beautifully faded and curved and deep and rich. She was just totally bold in marching through here (some of the staff seemed to know her) so I followed along behind, as she took me into some of the SUITES - with huge inset beds with rich old fabric on them, views into banana-treed gardens, a bathroom the size of my kitchen at home with a deep inset pool.....total richness and total taste. I've never seen anything like it. Gorgeous dining rooms and gardens and everything soft and quiet and deep and rich. Panza Verde...well worth staying in.

So then we popped out into the calle again and walked south to look in some big gates at rich people's gardens and an estate some guy set up, divided into lots for sale, with a guard ON guard, but no sales, yet. And on our left all the way just green and green and green. Wonderful place to take a walk every day. And then another subdivision with many houses being built of concrete (to be covered with tile, etc.) - rounded counters and depth and richness everywhere. And of course all inside barred gates, but tasteful ones. How the other half. Evidently 2/3 rich Guatemalans. This whole area had been a coffee finca, but evidently they make more money turning it into rich people's fancy homes. She said a couple still comes and picks the coffee, which is ripening now, in the little area she lives in. The nice thing is that this is all around the corner from the orphanage and the Antigua office of C. Seguro. I would still have some difficulty wresting myself from the more funky side of town, but..... where I find it is where it is. Or would be.
Then more bartering for me with a couple of shopkeepers and I have the huipile that I've been coveting, tho not perfect. These cheap ones are used, in good condition. A new one would be 750-1000 Q or $100-150. But this is beautiful. I wore one of my new ones yesterday across town....white with quadros of purple lines and embroidered birds and animals.....w/ my purple pants. I thought I cut quite the figure.......and certainly was getting a lot of looks from the Guatemaltecos. (Unusual, especially among the young. On my own street the older people will say Buen Dia, but the young ones don't see you.) Later I realized I wear the huipile open like a poncho, where all these women tuck them into a skirt with a sash. Probably looked like an idiot. Well I said if you're willing to look like a fool and lose a little money, you can have a lot of fun, here.
Well I'm 2/3 done with this amazing trip. Talking with my "boss" this morning and a brief email from my daughter about my house reminded me of where I actually live / where I will be again on Sunday afternoon.
I feel like I've been here a month until I try to speak Spanish and fumble so badly I remember it's little over a week. But it is truly amazing and wonderfully fun and interesting, and I am thoroughly glad I am here.

Did I mention that yesterday was just PRIMO weather (especialemente por Noviembre) and is again today. very much like N. Mexico....with clouds always in the sky, so you are more aware of it's expanse. But yesterday the air at about 78 degrees or so. Perfecto. And last middle'of'the nite I woke up with a total vision of what I wanted to do with the situation(s) at the orphanage. Of course I couldn't plunk my vision down on someone else's project, but the material I read in the Rigoberta Menchu book this week (hope I mentioned that; an indigene Guate woman organizer during the 80s - powerful devastating story) about the way that the indigenous village people always cooperated to help whoever in the village needed it suddenly came together for me with these kids living in the project in small houses together, maybe 6-8 same-age kids per house.....and how the whole group could learn to work together to help one child who is having difficulty handling anger or other bad feelings......so that it's made to be about learning, not discipline. A fuller picture than just me coming in to counsel one or another child. I felt so full about it, Iwas totally high, or in love, I suppose you could call it.
So tonite is the birthday of the 14 y.o. tiny niece in the homestay, who lives in the country w- her parents during the school year, and here to help Tere in the house and w- her kids for the vacation. We all feel sorry for her because she is used as a workhorse (scrubbing floors, mopping up after the younger kids, etc) so the other visitors bought her a pair of shoes - what she had asked for - and I bought her a pretty guatemalan blouse just white w- embroidered flowers, boat neck, drawstring waist. She probably wanted a tshirt, but I thought it would be nice if she felt pretty. So we will have a little party after dinner. No bombas. (I don’t think I mentioned that they go off all the time here.....firecrackers. Day and nite for people‘s birthdays.)
The street to my right as I sit in the open doorway of this internet place is full of cars bumping and banging by, the place has a little music on (rather disco'y) and the sun is strong. Muy bueno. Deliciousa.

I probably didn’t mention that the cars nearly run you down all the time, so you have to hop quickly over the cobblestones. I rather like it, actually. I really love the energy. My only real complaint here is the damn barely tepid showers.
I have to say I am strongly drawn to a place (like this town) where I could walk everywhere, even to work.....and I‘m very drawn to the orphanage, and hear there is also a children's hospital.....and to the people who run these programs, and to the energy, and combo of europeans, americans and guatemalans (certaily mostly guate, tho I was told that 2500 non-guate‘s live here. That seems way too much from what I see on the streets.......) Oh so many thoughts. Trying NOT to think about deciding whether to come back or not, but it certainly is present.
11/16/ again
So, it goes like this: I´d already run out of memoria on mi camera, and want to take photos of my housemother´s niece´s birthday tonite, so yesterday I went to one foto place after another, looking for the type for this camera....and finally found one, for 350 quetzales.....maybe $44. Of course you hear all these stories - one person I met told me her husband used a credit card on the weekend in a little ATM room on the outside of a bank, here, but found he couldn´t get out of the room. So the other man in the ¨¨room¨ said, oh you have to scan your card on that thing on the door, so he did, and got out. Next they found that someone had run up $10,000 on their card. Evidently the man worked in tandem with another one who put this scanner on the door. And you hear they might have these scanners under their jacket when you buy something with a card in a regular store. So I'm always a little cautious, or paranoid, but what else to do, besides be aware or watchful. So I got home and tried the card in my camera, not realizing there were so many sizes, and of course it didn´t fit. When I took it back, slip and all, today, I got a “sorry we can´t refund the next day.” “Our computers are set up so that each day is separate and blahblahblah” (all this in Spanish, of course.) So in my dreadful Spanish, and in a slightly loud, though polite, voice I made it known that the reputation of this store, and the whole of Antigua, would be in jeapordy if they weren´t ¨mas amable¨ con their customers. So would I please come back in an hour when so and so was there? So I went down to the mercado and the supermercado, and found a Nike ballcap and some other kind of sports t-shirt for my sponsored boy, and came back. So while I held my ground on the whole thing, she had to make 3 phone calls to finally get a yes that I could get my money back. Yea! And I found a memory card that fit the camera across the street for 200Q. ($24)

Flush with my new power, I soon talked a sweet indigene woman down on her price for some cute necklaces for mis mujeres in Chico......and realized later that I´d gotten 4 painted necklaces for about $5. oh dear. Some of these ladies are cute and funny and sortof flirtatious as they talk you into their wares for your cuerpo or your casa....and the bargaining is a game of sorts and fun. I´ve gotten pretty good at it, or so I imagine.....pointing out imperfections, criticizing the weave or colors, or whatever; miming and using my excreble Spanish. Perhaps I´m still paying too much...but it wouldn´t seem. When the Qs come in such tall amounts it´s easy to feel okay about talking them down, till you count up the dollars, as I did today, and realize how little you paid.
Beautiful warm day today.....just perfecto!
The energy of the streets here remind me a little of N.Y.-....different people, and different rules (8 people including children standing in the back of a truck; a woman and 3 children on a motor scooter, for instance)...........but very energetic, a little musical (I would like more)....everybody´s looking for something, or selling something, or hurrying somewhere, or sauntering along.

I like it a lot.

Curioser and curioser

11/10-11?
Right now I am trying to decide what to do about going to the market in Chichicastenango......it turns out that at least the place I went to does not provide a tour of the Lake Atitlan area. I guess they think it's too simple. But I know my difficulty with the numbers (5, 15 and 50 all sound the same to me) and I could easily get lost, as I have here several times until I now get the layout of the town.....I could easily miss my boat across that huge lake.....or arrive at the time I thought only to be wrong, etc. SOO if that happens is it a big deal? maybe not. Maybe.
So.....I asked my maestra if she wanted to go (she looks like middle-aged lady to me but is younger than my oldest daughter) because she said she loves the county and her husband never wants to go.......so she‘s thinking about it, but I was not clear if I was paying for her and maybe her kid, or what. And she has to ask her husband. So we‘ll see. It‘s not the weekend yet. Two other interesting things, (besides my trip to the local¨"supermercado". What an incredible scene THAT was! )
One was an English-speaking masseuse who came into the school today advertising her wares, and she and I got talking. She is 68 and has been living in Antigua for 13 years. She told me "oh there is this great group of us, we play cards and go to movies, and blahblah...you´d fit right in; most of us work in various projects." Well playing cards is not my cup of tea, but I took her address and will go see what sort of digs she lives in on $450 a month. TOTAL (!)
The other is trying to nail down a trip to ChiChi this weekend (Lk. Atitlan area.) Mi maestra got me to go to every other student-teacher combo in the school "room" to ask in Spanish if they were interested in going as a group to ChiChi and Panajachel, which was a good exercise but netted noone. Then my teacher said that for $200 I could take a trip to Rio Dulce with her husband´s tour agency, up the Rio to stop and several interesting places and then to Livingston, the home of the Garifuna people - descendents of the African slaves of several centuries ago. I´ve been dying to go there, but would like to spend more than an afternoon, especially to take in the music. And I´ve been focussed on the Atitlan area (one of the most beautiful in the world, I hear) and don´t change horses easily. So I kindof held out, and then she told me that she and her husband and children will go with me (my suggestion, originally) if I pay the transport costs and her room. So maybe $140 including my room and all my food, for 2 days. Well the masseuse woman told me that was crazy, I could go there myself for half the cost, no problem.....well no she didn´t want to guide me and she couldn´t think of a friend who might.............so I told the teacher yes. She is nice and fun, and we´re pretty simpatico (tho I think she will be more conservative w- her family in tow,) this means a private van whom I can ask to slow down a little if I´m nervous, or want to take photos, instead of a van w- 6-8 strangers, and I like her alot and originally suggested her going w- me. So I get to go.
So now it´s time to join my housemates and house'mother for our first dinner out. Our housemother is a great cook of interesting things: like large squash flowers fried in batter, and the best black beans in the world, and steamed eggs w- salsa, and a great soup of some local greens I haven't seen before........and so on. But we've decide to take her out for Thai food. Cooked by local Guatemalans; it's actually quite good.
The other interesting information from my teacher is that a two-room apartment with bathroom is about $400, including all utilities, in Antigua itself. If I'm right about my social security income, that would leave me money for food, occ'l trips to Tikal or wherever (there are Mayan ruins from several different time periods, here), and save a little for twice-yearly trips to the US. Like Xmas and Easter or something. If I lived 20 mins walking distance outside of town it would be somewhat less, though that area looks a little more “sketchy“ in terms of personal safety.
AND she knows LOTS of women living here in town from the US, she says ! (I'm not seing LOTS of Gringos on the street and those I see look like students walking with their teachers, 1:1, or tourists with cameras, como yo.) Most are retired and volunteer with some project, she says. Doctors without Borders is here as is the Peace Corps. Holey Moley.
11/11 Friday
So I´m set to go to Chichi, Panajachel, etc. tomorrow morning at 7. TODAY, I met with her to pay the $125 to the agency who owns the shuttle that I am renting ¨privately¨, to be driven by her husband, who works for the agency. So here I am carrying my purse STUFFED with money (7.5 to the dollar)(with money to spend too,) and she takes me for a tour past the literal ¨watering hole¨ (a lovely arch and large fishpond sort of thing set in a grassy area) where she tells me the indigenes (who of course live OUTSIDE the town) wash their clothes and their hair and bodies (con ropa, of course) during their week in town. And then to the Iglesia San Francisco, which is magnificent and BEAUTIFUL. The feeling inside that series of huge arched domes - with statues of the saints in gold, and many many candles, and people kneeling and praying - is SO strong I was in tears. My horoscope for Guatemala is like a stronger version of my natal horoscope, and one of the things emphasized is my emotionality.) But a beautiful beautiful place where a local saint is buried, with people on their knees around his bier, candles, etc. There is something profound about witnessing real emotion, of any kind........very present in these praying people, as opposed, perhaps, to the people in my churches, growing up. And then to the agency where everyone is joking in Spanish and I understand next to nothing. But get a regular receipt for my payment. .And then we go for coffee and pastry. And I get a glimpse of what I´m in for, this weekend. She regards this as fun for both of us, but mostly a big long endless lesson. Her idea of our travel-time is that we will work on verb conjugations. And I´m exhausted from the week. Moreover, I will want to see everything I pass, so I will have to limit the lesson in verbs, to some extent. BUT that´s what I´m here for, I should remember; not just to ooh and aah at this lovely town, and think about the socioeconomic situation and fantasize about living here. :-)
Today she told me so many things that made me want to just come work here immediately. But of course I have to get much much better in Spanish. One good-bad thing about the socio-economic situation, I learned today, is that all working people get ¨free¨ medical benefits - total - for which they pay in 6% of their pay....which also goes to soc. security. But of course the 48% ¨non-working¨ people (tho they all work their butts off, pushing heavy things around town, carrying things, selling things, etc etc.) get NADA. No unemployment benefits, no welfare. No healthcare, I don´t think, although there is some clinic of every kind on every block, so I´ll have to ask about that.
So....here I go, off for the whole weekend. I expect this will be a huge candystore for the eyes. And who knows what else. We should pass through or near the place where the huge mudslide occurred from Huricane Stan, just a month ago.
13 Sunday
This area continues to be amazing. The road to Panajachel is up and down and left and right, and made dangerous by the wild'ly careening chicken busses, but not bad....and not worth my having worried about it. Mainly no abrupt drop-offs, which terrify me. The lake is 5 x as big as Clear Lake in California...or 3 x.....huge and beautiful, dominated by a huge volcano. We went down to "Pana.", next to the lake. The usual 400 vendors, and even a gringa woman on a bicycle who has made her living there for 21 years, baking and selling healthy bread and cookies! We took a large "public boat" across the bay - a 1 hr trip that allowed us to see the huge waterfall above Pana. and all the little pueblos around the lake, where people farm on the sides of cliffs as steep as down at Big Sur in Calif. or the hillsides I saw in Jamaica. We were met in Santiago Atitlan, across the bay, by muchas children begging (first time I'd seen that - hard to turn down a 3 or 4 y.o. with dirty hair) and selling things, and adults, too, and then my teacher's husband (just he and her 15 yr old came with us) got us a tuktuk driven by a kid under 13 w- his friend - and the 6 of us (in this tiny thing) went buzzing off up the steep hills and concrete streets to see a beautiful church and then a tiny hole in the wall where a bruja was performing a healing ceremony, the room dark except for candles, dominated by the statue of Maximon, a local saint, and filled with herb smoke. Very lovely, really...deep feeling. I was told to pay 2 quetzals if I wanted to take a photo, which I did.

(For contrast: "These boots are made for walking" is playing here in the internet place where I'm writing this.)
We walked around a bit and I bought a huipil typical of this region - purples squares on white with flowers and birds embroidered in them. Then back to Pana. on the boat, which was interesting for several groups of German and English people, some of whom lived around there (taking friends on tours as one does,) and a group of children of 7 or less who were trying....no not trying, insisting on.........selling us things. One girl took the wrap off her hair....she twists several long woven colorful "strings" around her ponytail and then wraps it around her head, tucking it in. She wanted to do it to my hair, which would have been fun, but I declined. Then then the teacher and daughter and I walked around looking at all the vendors, and looking for a blouse for my houselady's 13 y.o. niece, who stays w- her in the summer and works her butt off, and is very shy. It's her birthday Thursday. And like that....the streets all concrete and hilly....every day a workout but in this town more. They bought roasted corn off a vendor. Then they went to "rest" while I watched tv in my motel room (did I say fairly nice for $15?) which has CNN and like that. Then to dinner at 8, as mentioned, where I couldn't recognize anything on the menu - this is not Mexican food - and ended up with something like fried chicken and chips, unintentionally. And then bed and up at 6:30 and off another windey road to Chichicastenango which I read in the the guide book has it's big market day on Sundays. Chichi is at 6000 ft so there are pines all along the road and if the ridge weren't so narrow, so that the mountain drops away on both sides of the road (but with a margin that was comfortable for me in all places,) it looked a lot like the area around my home...tho the trees not as old/big. (The flatter, lower-lying area once outside of Antigua, which stretches for miles, looks a lot like Sonoma, California, if you took away the trash.) This whole area near Pana. and Chichi was of course that which experienced all the landslides during Hurricane Stan.........and they were not concentrated in one town (where 600 died) as I thought, but everywhere. She explained that the place had been deforested, in part (tho I didn't see any clearcutting or anything) and also because of the rain year-round the soil is so saturated that all it takes is MORE rain for the whole hillside to come down. Which is what it did everywhere. The road had washed away in several places, so that we had to take detours - tho the govt did an excellent job of clearning things pretty quickly, looked like. Passed one school and another whole small town which had been 4 feet in mud, and still showed the marks everywhere; many rivers just came down pell mell so hard that the sides of the rivers washed away and got dumped in the first flat place it found. I saw several places where houses were cu! t in half or dangling on the edge of a cutaway, etc. But in general things cleared up and no signs of anything "emotional" that I could see (like crosses, or something.)
So into Chichi...a pretty good sized town perched on top of the ridge at 6000, all the streets windey, and narrow. Parked and found a place for breakfast, upstairs, overlooking one of the market streets. Nice photo "ops". Then thru the narrow market aisles, single file, being pushed and shoved in many places (so that I blantantly just hung onto my purse in front of me, since I'd heard so many stories)....by old ladies half my size w- an elbow in my back, etc etc. But every stall just filled with things to make my eyes bleed w- pleasure. Gorgeous and more and more gorgeous. An old man on foot caught me up at one point and talked me into a gorgeous silver and coral necklace with old Guate. coins and milagros (probably replicated)...I talked him down to 250 quetzals (about $30) He took off with my 3rd 100 Q, while maestra and I watched, stunned, but when he returned with my change, I thrust 20Q at him for his honesty.

So I tend to bargain, the best I can. I hate to....bent old man with seamed face....but I've been told they expect it and offer 1/3 more than what they expect to get. Then off to see another incredible church. [see photo at top] Big steep steps up to this incredible ancient facade, and hundreds of gorgeously-"robed" women and men (this is an area where men wear multicolored pants and shirts, instead of US clothing, like the rest of Guate) and children are all over the steps. And at the top women are swinging these braziers, giving off tons of smoke. And then inside to the church, where a priest is intoning in Spanish, and people are singing, and others lighting candles and placing them in front of their favorite saint. Wonderful place (mi maestra is Catholic, so of course kneels and genuflects.) And then outside some sort of monk'ly types in wonderful red pointed dangly wrapped headdresses were marching around in circles, with all these tourists! snapping photos while they did their thing, carrying huge crosses.

And then thru the stalls some more, still looking for the cheaper kind of huipile from that area that I love, because I wasn't willing to pay $60 or more for the ones I really love. Only to realize that I'd spent almost all of my cash and had deliberately not brought a card w- me. So back to the little old van in which we were travelling. The chicken busses are the dangerous thing around here.

And then they told me to my surprise that there was a ruin nearby. I didn't know there were any in these parts (most over by El Salv. and on the Yucatan peninsula, like Tikal.) It was free to Guatemaltecos and 25 Q for me. This was a city on top of a hill at one time. Mi maestra tells me these are post-Classical ruins, and they weren't alot to see....mostly the block bases of the buildings that were there, but it's always wonderful to "see" an ancient city laid out in front of you and imagine the life. According to her the Mayan civilization self-destructed due to internal wars and those that fled from Tikal and other Classical sites came up here and the cities had many fortifications to protect them from wars with other groups.

We walked thru the ruins and came on another brujo and bruja performing healing rites on some indigenes, with fires and smoke and herbs. Very moving to watch the solemnity of the ritual, and even this Catholic woman is very respectful.

And then loopdeloopdeloop down the mountains, and as it turned out, no verb conjugations, tho she won't let me speak in English, which is very frustrating when you're all excited about what you're seeing, or wanting to convey some philosophic or emotional or spiritual point.

An odd thing, not being able to speak the language at all well. I get by reasonably well, even in the banco, trying to change my travelers checks, where noone speaks English. My house mother, tho, is not terribly tolerant of me, and while my housemates are off releasing turtles, I notice she set my lunch out where I could watch tv with the kids, and didn't actually eat breakfast w- me, tho she sat there quietly, for the most part. Ah well. Can't please them all.

I certainly don't do well trying to get some special something at meals.....my over-easy eggs this morning, even w-teacher's help, became scrambled, there were no potatoes available except for french fries, and pan tostada turned out to be French toast! Ah que sorpresa!
But now I'm "home" again, at the homestay, and half my stay here is over. Or half remains!
Off for my Sunday dinner, not supplied by the housemother.....at my favorite Thai restaurant. And then book it home before dark. My house is on the edge of town and a few parts of my street are not where I am by choice after dark especially the long un-lit stretch next to the coffee finca, where the remnants of various homeless stays lie among the bushes.
11/15 Tuesday
Toured a local orphanage yesterday and learned that there could be plenty of work for me there (training teachers and counseling) and that they're dying to have someone.
oops. When fantasy slides into reality.
So now I'm thinking what I would have to give up if I lived here (besides job, money, home, family, friends): HOT showers (these shower-head heaters are very tepid,) organic food (except for vegetales del campo,) a real sense of security (a little timid about going to the big City to buy anything, like a juicer, or anything...)(no going out alone after 9 pm.)

I don't think I mentioned that all the houses and restaurants are open to the air. They have some fantasy that it is warm here (I'm pretty cool in the evening in my daytime clothes and at night without that extra blanket, which I did get.) So at the house I stay in, for instance, one goes through the outside entrance, into a concrete foyer with wire guards, through my housemother's gate into a concrete patio and then through an inner gate into the house. But this part of the house is completely open except for the (concrete) fence which separates it from the patio. This patio area is tiled; it is where the children play, eat, watch tv, etc. The dining room, kitchen and two bedrooms are enclosed and have doors, but you go thru this tiled "living room" and up the stairs and the area upstairs is also open to the air and partly to the sky. From that there is a hallway and three bedrooms and a tiny bathroom off of this hallway, which of course are enclosed.
And no houses have heaters! although someone told me that a few have woodstoves. You see men and women on the outskirts of town carrying huge bundles of branches on little folded fabric things on their heads. When I said that looked really hard, mi maestra said they are used to it, but another maestra said that her mother used to do that and all her cervical vertebrae are damaged.
But I've gone afield. No rice milk. No millet that I've found. Pecans sold in bags on the streetcorners but not walnuts. The chicken here CAN be obtained with slightly less chemicals, but no organic chicken unless you go - to the campo. And then I know how those are....stringy and scrawny, unless they're raised in cages.
So.......eso es interessante!

Would I be willing to give up these things??

11/15 Tuesday? Yesterday's " welcome" at the orphanage was a boost in my feeling, but how to MOVE here?? Too weird. What would it cost to mail myself something? Is it way too expensive to have Anna send me rice milk, vitamins I can't get here, etc.? My maestra walked me to two tiendas which sell "American" food....some of it familiar, but looked more like European. There is also a "natural food" store which I'm going to go investigate after lunch. But the other had brown rice in tiny packets (god knows the price) and walnuts.....and lots of SOY milk, which I can't eat. What I probably would do, by the bye, if this were to pass, is quit my job at the end of the contract in June - hopefully having trained my replacement, then come here for 1-2 months, looking for a place, and deciding at that point. If I found the darlingest place, with a room on the second floor and maybe a little space for a dog (nuts idea, but actually for some protection) or a teensy garden, just on the edge of town but where it feels safe and nice.....well that would certainly be a deciding factor. It helps to think of it as 2-3 years, then home.

Becoming more comfortable

Tuesday 11/8/07 [photo of Antigua street near downtown, Volcan Agua in the background.)
Lovely moment in one of the hole-in-the-wall tiendas, yesterday. I wandered in to find this beautiful niche, walls covered in Guatemalan textiles, and a distant garden within the tienda, with wrought iron gate, and in front of it an indigine woman weaving on a backstrap loom. I asked if I could take her picture and got the expected, "one dollar!" response, which I agreed to. Then I sat on a tiled step and watched her and asked about the weaving, finding out she spoke some English. Also found out I had only 75c which she accepted.
In the background was a very dark, old indigenous woman, in full "native dress" with very drawn lined face and every-which-way teeth. She came over and sat next to me and then asked me some questions, also in English! I wanted to take her photo because she was such a perfect, quite beautiful, rather ancient Guatemalteco - but didn´t have any money left. As we continued to chat I learned she had spent time in San Francisco and Berkeley, teaching weaving some years ago! Rather astounding. But such is our world.
On my way out, I admired one of the many huipiles I´ve seen in a gorgeous pattern of orange, yellow and light purple..........this one with roses embroidered all around the neck and down the front......sounds odd, but muy bonito! She wanted $50 for it, but I had only $35.....to my chagrin she accepted it. Now that I think about it there are dozens of these in one bargain place..............and for way less money....but not as gorgeous.
It´s astounding to me that I´m in the heart of these woven creations I´ve adored all my life - I hadn´t really thought about that, chosing to come here.
Also got stopped on the street by two women in indigenous dress, selling necklaces. I usually just pass on by but these were so adorable I stopped to buy one, got talked into two (for about $10). Then the other woman started pushing her less attractive necklace on me. Very pushy and off-putting, as are many of the vendors, although nowhere near as bad as in Ocho Rios, Jamaica. In the Tienda I mentioned, the weaver saw someone looking at her goods and yelled to her daughter to get over there, whereupon the daughter started plying: "BUY something, lady?"
Interesting to notice the husband tending the small baby while the mother worked.
My maestra today talked at length, and length, to me about the educational system in Guatemala, how it was affected by the revolution and war here, and how even now their gov´t just does not have education as it´s priority (hello USA!) Very interesting to hear the details of all this. Tomorrow I want to ask her about going thru the period of the 80's for her personally, and for the country. One of the areas of the biggest massacres was two hours away from Antigua, in the same area as the mud slide that happened recently. I will of course ask with some sensitivity. My housemate said her teacher talked about it at length to her, today.
Bought a camera yesterday - having not-so-prudently left mine at my birthday party in California. Terrible extra expense, but I´ve been so happy wandering the streets taking pictures of la calles, the people, the edificios, the colors of the buildings......and so on and on.........that it‘s worth the extra expense. And the credit card thing went smoothly..... at least if I find noone stole my number.
And so off I go to do so again.
Tomorrow mi maestra will take me to a travel agency to see if I can book a tour for the Lake Atitlan area for the whole weekend, instead of going with her for one day. I´m glad she is going to the agency with me, so that I don´t end up someplace I never intended, or for more $ than I want to spend. My spoken Spanish is still MUY pocito! But I am excited about this possibility. I was going to ask my housemates if they wanted to go with me (or vice versa) but it turns out they are going to Montericco on the beach for the weekend, to watch the release of the baby turtles (tortugas.)
And so it all goes in Guatemala. What a delightful place!

Later: I was eating a piece of delicious rum cake in the French bakery I found today, sitting in a delightful open but ornately-barred window and looking out on the cobblestone street, the lovely broken down building across the way, the vendors, the scooters.......thinking that if I could afford it (and I will ask) I could totally see living in this place: Volunteer maybe 3 days a week. Teach English to earn a little cash, maybe. Walk around. Read, draw, maybe write a little, take a weaving class, or one of the 30 salsa classes I've seen posted in doorways and windows. Go back to my imagined adorable little apartment above the street with a balcony decked with bouganvilla (everything here still bountifully blooming, and they say that winter´s coming earlier than usual) and outfitted with the wonderful handmade pottery and furniture that´s available here. And always within sight, in the poorest areas even, are the green green mountains, and even in the center of city blocks are trees, trees, trees and flowers. Lots of trash in the streets the only real drawback. Interesante. Muy. I like my teacher very much........She´s a quite modern Quatemalteco yet totally into her culture, una Catholica but respectful of the indigenous beliefs and customs (like killing chickens to their saint Maximon, whose shrine I will see at the Lake.) Perhaps I could find good acquaintances, if not friends, even among the locals. But we´ll see.....and I have only been here 3 days. :-) And did I say, every so often a big old chuch bell rings???
11/10 Well now I have to write about finding out a few things I DON'T like so much about Guate. One is the incredible stench in the calle outside my homestay where there is a gymnasium (which looks like a residence, like everything else)...I suspect that el banos are overflowing from unaccustomed numbers of people. But that's the only place that odors have been a problem. Today I searched out the Nino Obrero school - described by my sister’s acquaintance from Canada - and toured the school (all 4 rooms where 60 kids spend their day during the vacation of Sept-Dec (I believe).....wet floors, crappy metal furniture, clean kitchen.........very nice teachers very eager to have me help, but I found - as I do everywhere - that unless the other person understands some English, I'm pretty helpless to explain or understand anything beyond the minimum.
I never realized how much I count on my familiarity w/ my surroundngs, and my language, to feel in control and on top of things, and how quickly that vanishes, here. I really feel like an idiot a good bit of the time.
I don’t think I said that the spanish school room is a huge open building....maybe a converted ware house?....with lots of windows. Small desks are scattered around, here and there, with student/teacher pairs, a small blackboard and lots of books and papers. My teacher and I have naturally gravitated to one of the two outdoor spots; ours on the second level up....a little covered patio with falling down walls and grass and bushes all around it, and a view of the city around the school and the mountains around the town in the near distance. One looks just like the hills around Berkeley where I once lived, and I learn that indeed it is covered with Eucalyptus trees as Berkeley's are.
Off to Guatemala City on the bus this afternoon w/ the tour to the school project which my sponsored-child attends.

11/10 Imagine me in Paradise - what might that look like?
Well this time it´s standing up in a swaying "chicken bus" careening along the highway to Guatemala City with Bob Marley pounding away from the back. These drivers are nuts, and you can´t really see out, if you´re standing, only down over the edge of the road to where there is every sort of thing you ever imagined - a few fancy new architectural wonder homes being built, a garden full of corn and squash, a hut with a tin roof, a bunch of automobile parts, a group of indigines selling stuff, and so on. At every stop some kid jumps on (the kids in Guatemala WORK) selling strange candies and colored marshmallows in a basket......women walk the sides of the highway close to this crazy bus, carrying HUGE bundles on their heads (you see that even in Antigua) and on and on... for an hour over to Guate City and an hour back. Wild.
These buses are bright! red and orange with flames or other paintings down the sides and many lights, and they honk all the time. Quite wild....but I loved every minute, especially standing up on the way over - swaying with the road, the music, and the amazement of being here.
Then we got to the area of the Guatemala city dump, where the kids in the project come from. I can´t begin to describe what it was like, cruising on foot thru these neighborhoods, me and the group leader, a young blond - who had called to the project for a Guate. escort thru these ´hoods - and 4 blond German girls who have signed on as volunteers. Two are under 20 yrs old and have been travelling by themselves thru Cuba, Mexico and Guate.....some interesting stories there. The neighborhoods: well you know what dumps smell like, but imagine that the dump is a half-mile square and that the nearby neighborhoods all smell and look the same. Huge groups of guys with big bags of scavenged stuff sat on the side of the road watching these blond gals in my tour group walk by. Evidently there was a big fire in the dump some years ago, so the gov´t actually no longer lets the kids work there, under age 16, but they still pick up trash wherever they can and sell or steal whatever they can. And the neighborhoods for a mile in all directions are FILTHY...no open sewers that I saw, so maybe it could be worse, but the stench, the dusty air full of god knows what microbes and asbestos powder and whatever.........and in all this kids are playing ball, or a mom is nursing a baby, and everywhere everywhere there are dogs that you want to come right down here and rescue. Mange, fleas, hunger, and every other one pregnant. So in the midst of all this (and I am pretty resilient but I am thinking three times about whether to come down here to volunteer and breathing all this air, at my age, and riding that bus an hour each way and being asked to work 5 days a week (regular volunteer routine.) I think maybe not, tho we did discuss my designing a special volunteer package to fit me, my time, and my skills).....so in the midst of all this filth is a day care with 30 adorable tiny children....in a building which is an old warehouse donated by a Guate. businessman and painted, etc. The caregivers teach the kids to brush their teeth, and wash before eating. They give them all a bath once a week. The kids get several snacks and one good meal a day of whatever foods have been donated to the program. They have a small green area outside to play in, and some toys in the large building, and they all looked cute and pretty happy and I immediately wanted to donate to purchase some indoor climbing equipment, etc etc. Then we walked over to a LITTLE better side of the neighborhood (and I could see some people are trying to, for instance, paint the fronts of their houses, or pick up a little trash, but there are still homeless men sleeping on the street, broken furniture next to a broken tree, etc.) and saw the project's new building for the after-school program - donated by some American couple w- $300,000 to give away (blessings be upon them) and it is BEAUTIFUL, nice rooms, a gorgeous kids library.... and inside kids were playing and singing and learning and all good things. You could feel how different it must feel to the kids. And they teach them to play the guitar, and to cook, as well as giving them time to play and dance and paint and learn alot. This is an after-school and summer program that supports their public schooling (where they are often ignored or turned away for behavior or inability to get their homework done.) This program is beginning to open a hotel in Antigua where the older children will be taught maintenance and waiting tables, etc., with an adjacent restaurant next door as a future project. And then my "godson" - a boy I've supported in this project since I first heard of it - was brought out to meet me. I wasn´t expecting that, and have to say, he was shy and I was shyer. I suddenly had NO Spanish or English. He had made me a birthday card! So we had several sweet but awkward moments, and I will be back to see him and take him out for ice cream next week. (Two more chickenbusses.)

A journey, for real!

Alchemy concept: That in any work you do, you are really working on yourself. My 70th birthday party was held at a family home in Berkeley in November 2000. The room was full of excitement, not only for my milestone birthday but because I would be boarding a plane at midnite alone for my first trip outside the country, only my fourth long flight anywhere. 

I had requested gifts for my birthday - a children’s book in Spanish - and many people had responded. I would be taking these with me to donate somewhere. My much-traveled younger half-sister drove me to the airport and left me off at the entrance. Immediately I found myself unsettled – nearly panicky - at being in a strange situation, not knowing “the ropes,” since I'd never flown much and never internationally - in the midst of so many people who didn’t look or talk like me, and who so thoroughly ignored me. This rather surprised me, because of my experience in doing counseling and parenting classes with Mexican individuals and families in California; on hindsight, I think it was only my second experience of being in the minority. And of course I had very little knowledge of Spanish. My intention on this trip is to take Spanish lessons and live with a Guatemalan family in Antigua for two weeks. I also want to check out projects in the area which might use the skills I have obtained these many years of working with families and children, and training teachers. I have been led to believe I would find several which would welcome volunteers. Because of my exposure at work in California, I anticipate picking up Spanish reasonably quickly, although I have never studied it. If I find a place which feels right to me, I might stay in Guatemala for awhile, leaving my house in California in the care of my daughter and her husband. All these thoughts are whirling in my head in the airports, in the plane.

I arrive in Guatemala City at 8 a.m. If you read the travelers’ advisory for Guatemala in the State Department webpages, you will be hesitant to travel to Guatemala for all the warnings of hijacked busses and robbed and beaten travelers, not to mention a variety of diseases. How much of this is real, I wonder? Although I had read this cautionary advice, I decide to be a little more daring than my scheduled trip with the Spanish program, which could have picked me up at the airport. So I had booked a room for the first night at a small hotel in Guatemala City. My first surprise is the heavily-armed guard at the parking lot where the driver and I walk with my luggage to get his car; the second is the rolled barbed wire surrounding the wall around my hotel. Other buildings have jagged glass embedded in the tops of walls. All of the little stores I pass are heavily barred. With all of these security measures suggesting incipient danger - what am I getting myself into? After I store my bags at the hotel, I call a taxi to go to the University Campus. Because of some blockading the driver has to let me off a few blocks away, but assures me that the direction I have to walk is “muy seguro,” However he warns me against walking on the other side of the street he is driving on. He agrees to meet me there again in three hours. So, here I am, off walking on my own to see the famed textile museum. 

The museum is beautiful, I have a lovely conversation with a Guatemalan woman wanting to try out her English, and the textiles in the museum are GORGEOUS, but I know I will encounter many during this trip. Conscious of time, I head back up the street to meet my mythical taxi-driver; will he return for me? And if not, what then? I’m a reasonably cautious person, but have stepped over the line a number of times in my life.  Hopping a train on the fly with a boyfriend in my 20s.  Buying a motorcycle when few women rode them.  The place where I live alone in California is a quarter-mile from the nearest neighbor on a dead-end dirt road. 

So in Guate, my intention is neither to hide, nor to place myself in danger by not paying attention. I arrive at the top of the hill way too early to meet my taxi driver . A green area across the street beckons but turns out to be a facade; just inside this is a blighted area, trees cut and stacked and abandoned buildings next to each other. As I venture up the block a soldier with another large rifle guards a gate, and further, a well-dressed man hocks one of the 12 watches on his arm thru the fence to another soldier. I turn the corner - the area is poor but not the "barrio" I've seen in movies - and I start to turn again to get back to my starting place, but notice a porn movie place down the block and a lot of men on the street, so go another block further and turn down a street where there are women and children. All along the wall that encloses the residences there are openings where little stores appear, selling this and that. It´s hard to tell they exist til you´re right on them. I finally get back and wait a bit in the starting drizzle, watching all the fairly-new cars drive by and the occasional bright red or multi-colored busses with people hanging off the backs and standing in the stepwell, and occ´ly bags and food on the top (referred to as ¨chicken busses¨) and then, after I´ve given up on waiting for the taxi and start wondering how one makes phone calls around here, here the taxi is and he takes me back to my hotel - hinting along the way that maybe we should go out to eat together. I of course decline. I go to my room and sleep, waking an hour later at 3pm. I want to go out to the other museums but hesitate, eager to be back before dark, and certainly not going to walk there, having seen such heavy security everywhere. But I decide I´m not staying in my room for the rest of the nite so I go out, only to run into two couples from Wisconsin sitting around a table in the ¨patio¨ outside my room (a little barren for that description.) We settle in to talking and I remain with them for several hours, hoping that we might go out to the "buen restaurante" described in my travel dictionary, but instead we get some dreadful American takeout, which menus are supplied by the guesthouse. One of the guys decides to walk for more beer and, eager to safely see a little more of this new city, I elect to go with him. We are waylaid in the lobby by a German couple who are "ostensibly" sailing around the world in their boat, but it is currently in Honduras and they have been sailing up and down the Rio Dulce for two years (an area I`m much interested in as there are settlements begun by ex-slaves from Africa.) I want to ask more about it, but they get into an argument with their ´guide´ and I go off with the Wisconsonian to get beer. No kids playing in the streets; the streets actually empty except for much barbed wire. The beer store is another heavily-barred hole-in-the-wall. The area´s rather charming except for this feeling of much-needed-security. When a group of soldiers in uniform with arms passes, my companion tells me there is a military installation on this street. My new acquaintances all go to bed early as they leave Guatemala in the morning. They have been at a school in the NW of Guate for 2 weeks....got tired of 5 hrs/day of study. Their homestay had been flooded during the recent hurricane and was still moldy. They had brought clothing along with them for the flood victims of Hurricane Stan, and spent some time digging people out and constructing latrines. Very interesting folks - 2 geologists and an environmental somethingist, funny and fun to spend time with. The third person was a Cherokee; he and the Swedish woman lived on an island in a lake in Wisconsin. To bed and up early to take a cold shower, unwillingly (the interesting shower-head water-heater doesn‘t seem to work,) and then the guy from my school, Probigua, is here to pick me up 2 hours early, so no breakfast. And off to Antigua! He tells me (in limited English) that we drive up into the mountains and then down to Antigua....and so we do........green, green everywhere except the shacks that immediately line the road....more tradtionally-dressed indigenes here, more children. One interesting area had a dirt wall that lined the highway (piled up from making the hiway perhaps) but into it were cut narrow doorways into the homes that were behind it....many people standing in these niches, watching the road. Muchas colores, mucha gente! And down into Antigua. No on-line photos had prepared me for this one-story town, all many-colored residences lining the streets....one continuous wall punctuated by ornately barred windows, and cobblestone streets....actually broken rock with squared stones in neat lines down the tire tracks. Lots of cars and motorscooters ricketing over this surface, but my guide assured me that the town is only 12 blocks square, so everyone walks. My homestay is on the far side of town, near my Spanish school, Probigua. I am rather nonplussed as we drive up the dirty alley to the gate. This leads into a courtway with three front doors off it. My hostess opens one and invites us into a courtyard with toilets piled in one corner, and then into her patio, which has plants and is cleaner. She introduces me to her children who smile shyly and ask my name, and then lead me up brightly-painted turquoise steps to my room...no English is spoken. The room is about 8´ feet square, with an ornately-barred window looking out into the courtyard and orange trees beyond....small and bare but pleasant; big bed, small table "for homework," shelves and hooks for clothing. And keys for all the doors. Here I am for two weeks. 

She shows me the rooftop where I can hang my washed clothes, and then down thru the small, rather dark kitchen to a back yard porch where I can wash them in a big tub. I see her work is cut out for her, with 4 kids. She leaves for church with the kids, and I retire to hang up my clothes and get my wits about me. Then a guy pokes his head in. At first I think maybe the husband but he is Hendrix, a young German who is also staying here (she hadn´t mentioned other students) and he tells me there are two others. He is actually going to another homestay that day, but I will see him at Probigua. He is studying Spanish so he can go work in a bank in Chile. Friendly but not able to be helpful about where I might find things. Then I leave to walk around town, having learned there is no food at the homestay today (and I haven´t eaten.) One thing I haven´t learned about is changing money so when I find a sweet restaurant with wooden tables next to ornately barred windows and tile floors (and 45" records on the walls, along with greetings in English and Spanish from former customers,) I am mystified at the process of changing a one hundred quetzal bill into the 21 somethings I seem to be paying........and leave unsure of what happened. But I don´t really care. They were nice folks, trying hard to be understood. Mea culpa. Then found this internet place to send an email, alerting my family that I had reached Antigua.......also a sweet place with tile floors and an arched window and wooden doorways... Estoy aqui! !!!!!

 Later in the afternoon: Still feeling very discombobulated and fatigued by the effort of speaking Spanish, but then not a lot of sleep last nite and not enough food today, off I go now on voyage of discovering this town....and hopefully at some point some dinner. Can´t make head or tail of the map, and noone I show it to seems to know how to read maps......so.......Yo voy! Estoy cansado. Tomorrow it will be my first day of school. Whooee! I don´t know if I will ever find this internet place again, but I guess yahoo would be the holder of any emails. 

Monday morning After writing yesterday I hiked back to my homestay for umbrella and flashlight so I could go see the evening parade I had learned about, and immediately got lost out in the boonies. This is a UNESCO ¨"international treasure" town and nothing can be changed. One can´t even change the color of your house without permission. So all the street signs, or most of them, do not bear the same names as the map. Muy confusando. And in the dark you can´t see anything (very few street lights) so it´s easy to get lost. However perhaps I am beginning to be known, here, as la vieja confusada (confused older woman) and some people are very helpful. The largest buildings in the town - one governing building and many churches - are two-story; so the impression of the town is small and low and endless, and many-colored. MANY indigines, on the streets here, so there are colorful costumes everywhere (the colonial ones are on the hotel staff), many motorscooters, more cars than you would think on such bumpy streets, some horse-drawn carriages for tourists. Flowers and weeds grow on the curved tile rooftops....many falling down buildings, sometimes at the back of stores. Well they are stores or "tiendas" but since they can´t have any signs other than a small one on the doorway, they feel more like hobbit homes....and then as you go to the back, there may be an open patio with the rear wall of an old church falling down at the back of it, and pigeons. You readers have probably been to other countries so I won´t belabor, but I am stunned at the beauty and the oddities and amazing contrasts (like the American man who just marched by singing Spanish songs loudly to himself)(and the woman in total indigenous costume and painted toenails.) If I can get myself to buy a camera (if I can safely use a credit card) there will be many many photos of this place as I find it endlessly enchanting, visually. Another interest for me is the culture of the shoe'shine boys. In the main park there are many things going on, but one is these young Mayan types....and some not young at all....going around trying to shine your shoes. 4 y.o., 5 y.o..... I watched one boy that age walking across the park, eyes open for customers, serious face....and then he saw a child of the same age with his rich-appearing parents, who were blowing bubbles for him so he could chase them. The face of the shoe'shine boy lit up for a moment as he watched the boy run back and forth, laughing....and then he got serious, shouldered the strap of his shoe-shine box, and hustled off. And then there is the man of 40, shining the shoes of some young punk with his baseball cap turned backwards..... I think I could write a thesis here. My first day of school today....8 to 12. My brain had gone into a coma by the 3rd hour. Confusado is my new word. However, my teacher (a Ladino woman of 50 perhaps,) is very much a liberal, so we conversed in Spanish (her 800 words, my 15, etc.) for an hour or so about the big AIDS problem in Guatemala. She teaches sex education in conjunction w. some American program here in the rural areas....she talked about how hard it is to get the women to even admit they have a body, much less touch it or protect it. Catholica. So from there it expanded to many social problems. Very good conversation, but not a lot of learning for ME to talk. But good. She is willing to go with me as a guide to Lake Atitlan on Friday, during the day; however I have a yen to stay overnite and she has teenagers and a husband, so.....we´ll see. I got a phone call at the school today from Camino Seguro, the project where I sponsor a boy in Guatemala City, wanting to sign me up to tour Casa Hogar (the group home) today.........I wisely suggested next week. I was surprised how tense it made me to keep up with the Spanish....and the homestay fed me nothing but fruit for bkfst so I was shakey by ten. But fine now, having gone out for eggs at the 10 am break. But that was a cautious lesson on how dependent I am on my food (also lost my calcium at the hotel in GC, but it may be recovered tonite, thanks to my teacher‘s husband who drives there often for a tour company.) I am realizing what a creature of habits and familiar place I am. 

So now I am off to buy a camera and take pictures.......so many bright and lovely places await and despite big high clouds, it is quite sunny and perfect temperature. But it could rain any moment, so I have jacket, hat and paragua (umbrella - I love that word “for water,” like “anteojos" - before the eyes, for glasses) with me. Yesterday I couldn´t wait to get home to my safe, comfortable, familiar ways of doing things - at least I am going to get another blanket, as I was quite cold at nite, and perhaps a better pillow, as the homestay and the hotel both had very lumpy ones. But today, I found myself thinking happily that I could live here.

Destiny

That title may be a bit dramatic, but what else am I to make of discovering (via Astrocartography) that Guatemala is a power place for me.......that all the inherent potential of my birthchart, which does not in any way come to prominence where I've lived for the last 65 years, is enhanced in Guatemala. It is described as a place of perhaps too much power, i.e. more than one can handle, however what have I been talking about but the desire for MORE, for a place where I can put my passion and intensity.
Of course, confronted with that, my tendency is to feel "whoops!" and want to run and hide.
But that's such a small part of me.
And I know no potential can manifest without my energy behind it.
So I just look forward to my trip there and to feeling what that energy might be like. Seeing if I FEEL something strong about that place, that area of the world. Strong enough to leave behind my current life, if only for a few years - which the reading says I will struggle with.
Other things it suggests will come up: feelings of loneliness (I never thought of that - :-), struggles with persons in authority, my own power issues, alienation, being seen as an outsider, and upstart, and conversely the savior or answer to a dream (this more in Africa, than Guate.) Danger - though that influence is greater somewhere near, but not in Antigua (I need to find out specifically where.)

So I ordered a reading for Ndola, Zambia, too..........the other place I feel so drawn to, tho mostly because it's the only place I know any way to GET to Africa (other than the local African dance class instructor, and I keep forgetting that that's why I want to start that class again.) And that place has no powerful influences for me, but describes a lot of things that I would seem very likely to feel and experience while I was there.
Just by chance I did a locational chart, myself, for Mali, and once again, a power place for me!
This is fairly easily achieved because I have a fixed T-square in my chart (3 planets separated by approximately 90 degrees) so there are several locations around the world where the angles of the place might coincide in one way or another with the angles of my T-square. But at any rate, Kansas (my birthplace), Guatemala, and Mali are 3 of these. And in Mali, of course, there would be French, and the music!! And the Dogon peoples.

Well - in many ways that is all fantasy...........(and the Ndola reading spoke of fantasies of finding ones roots, and of finding a "pure" culture)........but for me it affirmed that when you dream of a place it is because it is dreaming of you.

Change of direction

We thought we were set for the second trip to Zimbabwe, but at the last moment (well a month before) we were told that the trip was filled up and we couldn't be part of it. I felt as if a door shut in my face. But Capricorn to the end (at least Cap rising) I emailed two groups who have orphanages and schools in Zambia asking if I could be part of a group going to take supplies and goodies. One person emailed back and said, "too busy; back to you later." So it is still a possibility. At least with a combination of determination and luck. There were Elder safaris to Zambia, one leaving on my 70th birthday, but they were expensive, and as much as I'd like to see the landscape and animals of Africa, I also want specifically to see humanitarian missions there. From what I know now, I suspect I'd find them behind every bush in Africa. But you keep learning and learning and the landscape opens and opens and opens up to you. So the idea of Africa is by no means dead, and I keep thinking about the boy in The Alchemist who kept becoming satisfied with things that fell short of his dream. But at any rate, I talked with a male friend who has been to Central America on a number of trips by himself and with others, and was willing to guide a group there. For some reason Guatemala is the country in C. Am. which sticks in my mind the most, so we plotted out a do-able two week trip there, but then he had to work and he got involved with putting a CD of his music out, so that didn't seem to be happening. 

From time to time I chat with my older son, who has travelled all over, and told him of my frustrations and my determination. A week ago he called me to say that for my birthday he would like to give me a trip to a language school in Guatemala. Ohmigosh. I was half out of my mind with excitement for days and days, had my tickets the first day, my school picked out in two. The trip seemed simple and safe, for an "older woman" (when will I start FEELING like an "older woman"?) with little Spanish and no experience in a foreign country. Fly in, get picked up at the airport and plunked down in Antigua at my "Homestay" and given my classes for two weeks. Well.........that's all well and good, but my flight gets me in Guate. City on Saturday morning, and classes don't start until Monday. Those incredible museums in Guate. City kept hanging around in my brain, and frankly, the chance to challenge myself a little.....all alone in a strange city where I don't speak the language. So little piece of info by little piece, it looks like I'll get a taxi at the airport, get to my small local hotel and plunk my things down, and take another taxi to the Museums, a taxi back when they close at 1 pm (no buses in that area) and walk from my hotel to the panoplay of museum, art gallery and zoo in a park in Zone 13. Then find a restaurant or just get back to my hotel before dark and get picked up in the morning. They say the city is safe except for Zone 1, which is probably where the school for kids that I'm interested in is located. (Camino Seguro, serving children who live in the city dump.) I have written them, but I suspect they are closed on the weekends. So that's how things stand at the moment. Two months til I go. Hard to wait. 

The more I realize that other people have done way more adventurous things many years ago in Guatemala (not to mention everywhere else in the world,) the more my anxious excitement subsides. But the fact remains that this is an adventure for ME. And probably a gateway to other adventures in that area, and possibly other areas, once I become familiar with travelling, and get a little more Spanish under my belt. For me, a door is opening to a world I've only seen in photographs - well not even that really, not enough to give me any sense of what it looks like, or feels like to be there. I spent several days, recently, reading the Female Nomad book........and I have to say that it just made travelling alone seem more possible. I don't have her trusting nature (though I usually trust people when I have a chance to see and feel them) - I can't imagine just going off with anyone, not knowing where. I'm not my friend Susie, either, who showed me her photos of traveling with her boyfriend in a mini-van all the way to Guatemala, picking up passengers, going to local cantinas and dancing, getting drunk, etc. Well maybe I will find Guatemala a simple and easy place with friendly people. My desire is to find out how people live around the world, particularly withOUT all the amenities, without a lot of money, etc. I'm hoping my language school experience will allow me to get out into the rural communities a little. The door is opening.

Losing my way

Have I lost my way? The second Africa trip is scheduled next month. My daughter no longer works for that organization (after 10 years or so.) That area of Zimbabwe is suddenly flooded with refugees from the razing of buildings that took place in Harare. My daughter doesn't have the money to pay for her fare. My income is way down due to funding cutbacks in my agency. Should we go? Can we go?
Well of course you CAN do anything you really want to, so it would be a matter of borrowing or using money that could be used for something (like putting in a large propane tank at my house so I don't have to keep hauling the little ones around.)
I asked the I Ching not long ago, and got Working on What Has Been Spoiled. Not being afraid to cross the great water; not letting fear control you.
Which makes it sound like I need to go. "A bowl in which worms have been breeding," indeed!

Last nite I lay on the deck under the stars and thought, WHY would I leave this place where the weather is hot but liveable, and I have a good-enough job doing good work?? WHY?
This morning I got so frustrated trying to weedeat around here, I wondered how much harder things could be elsewhere?

Back and Forth, Back and Forth? Trying to discern signs and symbols.

Waiting.

Gardens are Teachers

How does anyone live without a garden?
My garden doesn't give much produce, because of the amount of attention I give it - or the depth and consistency of that attention - and because of our shorter growing year, but oh! what it gives me in pleasure and in understanding.
Today I saw how closely balanced the forces in nature of growth and decay are. Everything in my garden seems bent on tearing things back down to soil. The sowbugs are hard at work digesting plant bits on the surface of the earth, and ejecting tiny bits of excrement/fertilizer. The long oregano "branches", bent over by the snow, are layered with dropped pine needles, into which fall seeds from nearby lemon balm, and up through which grow strawberries from the runners that have stretched into the oregano bed. Old decay; new growth. A never-ending pattern; and so well-balanced that things in nature don't get out of control.
Wall Street's stock market seems to think the only reasonable pattern is up up up! How foolish. The only natural pattern is in waves or cycles.
My strawberries hardly produced last year; the apricot tree was bent with its fruit. This year I have strawberry blossoms already in April despite last week's snow. But the apricot tree is bare. They know the law of ebb and flow.
My peaches ignore this law and produce bountifully every year - enough to eat them fresh on my cereal, make peach cobbler, and dry the rest to nibble at work during the winter. My apples seem to know the peach has forgotten the law, and hardly ever produce. Although this year my youngest apple tree - where I hired someone to clear off the lower fir branches which shaded them - looks like a bridal bower. Portent of fresh crisp apples to come.
More than anything, gardens feel like Hope. Many years dashed, as something or other fails. But Hope renewed every spring.
My tomato plants - purchased and dug in just before the snow, covered in mad haste when it began to fall - are tucked into their little beds, in a lazy row. New blossoms are sprouting. One tiny tomato peeks out of its cap. Hope of fresh tomatoes to slice and eat; hope of dried tomato slices for cooking later. Just Hope.
I look at the row, contoured to the slope of the garden....and they look like sleeping children to me....snug in their beds of straw (to keep them from drying out,) the soil surrounding their roots full of all the nutrients they need. Cared for, content, growing.
It makes me hum inside.
So how do people live without this evidence of the natural order of things? Without this evidence of the neverending cycle of life? How do they live without these teachings, this sense of hope, providence, contentment?
I don't know. That's why I live here.

Stalking Spirit

“You have to stalk the spirit, too. You can wait forgetful anywhere, for anywhere is the way of his fleet passage, and hope to catch him by the tail and shout something in his ear before he wrestles away. Or you can pursue him whenever you dare, risking the shrunken sinew in the hollow of the thigh; you can bang at the door all night till the innkeeper relents, if he ever relents;......” 

“I sit on a bridge as [Moses] on Pisgah or Sinai, and I am both waiting becalmed in a clift of the rock and banging with all my will, calling like a child beating on a door: Come on out!........I know you’re there!” “And then occasionally the mountains part...” “When Moses came down from the cliff in Mount Sinai, the people were afraid of him: the very skin on his face shone.”* I think everyone knows this yearning.....to be burnt alive; no, to be alive, burning. 

[from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard; one of my favorite books.]

Being

Just to pursue a bit of logic in the unrolling of this blog I should say that for practical reasons, the trip to Africa has been put off until September. A blessing really, as there is so much to do at work for me, and for my oldest daughter, we’d be hard put to be leaving for Africa today. So perhaps I got my wish: my worklife is now BEYOND engrossing, although not quite in the way I might wish. But I think we always “get our wish”.....i.e not the one we might be conscious of, but the one we wished when we decided to incarnate this time around. So this alteration in trip-plans is part of the bigger picture, and may have a meaning entirely unknown to me. 

I took my daily walk with my young dog today, my old dog having sighed her last breath on my living room floor just before Christmas. No more golden tail waving as we walk. No more silken head just under my hand. Most of my walks are to “get my heart rate up,” “to give Angie some exercise,” to “lose some weight,” or some such. This one started out that way, but I veered off the road at one point and went down the hill toward the creek, just far enough to see the trail is still clear and that would be a great route for an all-afternoon walk sometime soon. A bright Spring-like day, warm even, after a month of snow; slanted light thru the deep green of the pines this late winter morning. And on the way back I started looking at the ground, remembering a piece of jewelry I’d tried after last week’s walk, imitating a crack of ground in which ran this river of stones. I decided that real rocks might be the answer for the piece, rather than ones made out of polymer clay.....I started looking for little tiny rocks in varying colors - brick red, ochre, grey-almost-teal. I’m squatting in the middle of our dirt road, sun on my shoulders, eyes on the ground, picking out 1/32” pieces of rock, selecting one after the other, delighting in each find. And pretty soon I’m not even picking up rock, I’m just letting my eyes travel over the display in front of me, following lines and patterns............and soon after I realize my head is just empty, my eyes full......and I’m just being, like a kid.

The Point is.....

I get to the end of so many days, especially those spent home, alone - and wonder "What, exactly, is the point?"   Like the old song: "Is this all there is?"    Even writing in here I have interpreted that in various ways......I'm a Scorpio, I am not content with a quiet life. I need to take on challenges, have everything called from me. And yet it takes a lot from me to conduct my current life.....perhaps precisely because of it's quietude. But tonite I thought for the first time (tho it seems logical) perhaps the Point Is....precisely how one conducts one's life, whatever it happens to consist of. 

On my wall I have my own writing: "What if all my Doing here were from a state of Grace?" What if all my doing were from a state of Grace? Well I think I will "chew" on that for a few days.

HESITATIONS AND AN OMEN

Two days ago I wrote in my journal, “Truth is I’m not so interested in Africa, now.” Strangely, after all that passion, I have been feeling that. In part because of so many negative reports in the two books on Africa I read (and noticed I have stopped reading.) Mostly that. Also some creative work emerging again at home and work; finding something in my life here to be more interested in. So last nite at women‘s group, one woman said, “I have the Alchemist on tape!” Another friend and I responded at the same time: “Oh I’d like to hear that,” so the woman gave it to my friend and she would then give it to me. Suddenly I remembered I had already read it or started it, so I really didn’t want it that much, but my friend said, “Here, you listen to it first - I don’t have the time.” At that moment I wondered why it was being thrust on me, and I remember wondering if there was something in it “for me,” some message, perhaps. 

Well I had forgotten that the story is of the little boy who is moved to follow his “personal legend” (myth, as I get it) and his dream is to go to Africa. Well, really Egypt, but they refer to it first as “going to Africa.” And he gets waylaid at various points along the way, and thinks “well, really this little life here is very nice; I should settle for this, and forget about all those dreams....probably they are not realistic anyway.” But along the way he has all these encounters, learns to “read the desert,” “to look for omens to guide him,” to trust himself, etc etc. And at each step he thinks, “well maybe this is enough.....” or "oh the dream is just too hard to achieve..." But something keeps urging him onward. So.......How might this apply to me??...... My attempts to get my birthcertificate and passport have been a nightmare, due to some name changes in the past that I never made legal, so there are still steps to go, and the trip a little over a month away. It is good that I have the "omen" of this story to keep me moving.

War, and Peace

Today is the anniversary of death and destruction and deceit at Pearl Harbor. It goes on and on. Shouldn’t Shakespeare’s plays about these same issues in the time of Richard III and Henry VIII tell us this is How It Is? Shouldn’t any perusal of history, especially up close, tell us that this is the way mankind is? Still I think we have to say, though it is the same, still things now are better or more humanitarian than in the past. We are not putting heads on pikes outside the White House and not chaining retarded people in dungeons in Chicago, nor burning people in New England for believing differently than we do, anymore (tho of course we come close at times, and metaphorically still do some of the same.) And of course el Presidente is close to calling this a religious war. I wanted to write about Presence tonite; I’ve been thinking about it for days, but once again a bit of news has me incensed (Bill Moyers' article on The Rapture viewpoint.) Maybe we are approaching Armageddon - that is, the clashing of worlds, of world-views. Maybe this is a huge battle, but not the one they think. And maybe the battle IS on a spiritual level. The trouble is, it is always enacted physically, and there the death and destruction. Occasional glimpses of the future I see frighten me. Revolution, “Cleansing” by the Religious Right, After the Fall of Civilization. The "Mad Max" period of a frightening future. I reassure myself that sometimes the lessons Mankind has to learn can only come in this sort of testing, but always I fear for the innocent. It also scares me for the tests that will occur between family members or neighbors with different religious views. I know the horrors that have befallen women and children (and men) in Rwanda and many other countries...horrors beyond anything but a few victims in America have ever encountered. I know people (men AND women) are capable of behaving worse than beasts. It scares me. I work to maintain composure, and Faith.

Well, I will write about Presence. Everyone seems to talk about it these days: living in the " Now," living in the present moment. "The past is a memory, the future is a fantasy." And yet most people live in those two states incessantly. And so do I, for probably 75% of my non-working hours. Even when I'm walking the dogs I have to remember to pull my attention outward, if the wind on my face doesn't do it for me.

One place I find it easiest to remain in the present is when I'm working on jewelry - when this activity draws my attention to color and shape and my emerging skill - or in my garden, with its soil texture and small insect life and shiny red tomatoes and open golden roses. The quality of the objects in my home also can call my attention outward.....the glow of my friendly woodstove fire, the good wooden handles of my chopping knives, my handmade wooden cutting board with its rich walnut grain, and my own actions: chopping baby carrots finely, noticing the glossy green leaves and bright red stems of the chard also under my knife. Recognizing that these foods were raised naturally by someone who cares about the quality of the food (even when not from my own garden;) knowing that they are full of vitamins for my health......these awarenesses nourish me and warm my spirit, and keep my attention on the meal I'm preparing. My dishes - most individually chosen at one time or another, brightly colored - and the warmth of the water and the shiny soap bubbles make this also a meditative activity.

Objects on my windowsills speak back to me of my delight when I found them in stores, the woods, the beach....not that I think back to those moments, but that they mirror that pleasure back to me. I live in rooms in which I've chosen the color for the walls, the paintings on them, the cloth on my couch, the rug - well, now I'm talking more of the pleasure given back to you when you have made the room your own. And of course in my case, I built the house, chose the wood on the walls, remember the trees the wood came from, cut and stacked and planed and bleached it (in the early days,) and have lived with it through some changes for 23 years.

These things warm my heart, make me notice details - thus drawing my attention outward and keeping it there. As do the sounds, the smells of the forest outside my home. I think the times I have stayed present longest was squatting in my chicken yard, watching their little chicken social life.....watching my large many-colored rooster with his majestic tailfeathers as he cracked corn and clucked the baby chicks over to it, watching the "pecking order" carried out between the hens, their competition over a bug, or special bit of feed.....and at night, as I closed the door to the chickenhouse, listening to their sleepy murmuring to each other: "I'm here, are you?" "I'm here....."

But no chickens in the yard any longer; not since the mother bear came and knocked down my fence and ate them one after another. I was incensed, I hammered boards and added more wire, and put stakes in to hold the wire to the ground. I spoke to her in my head, called on the Spirit of Bear and felt I actually connected when the image came of a Kwakiutl woven bear-head. I told her, as I hammered, "I too am persistent and strong, and this is my flock!" challenging her to recognize our common desire to nurture and caretake, but she came back and knocked it all down with one blow and ate the rest of the chickens. So no chickens, and now no many-colored fertile eggs with their bright orange yolks.

I think a life which includes as many natural objects as is possible for the place you live will draw your attention outward, will allow you to notice and appreciate your surroundings, will keep you in the present moment, the "Now." "This is a gift - that's why they call it The Present."