Team Guate

You always think you’ve made it past certain places in your life that like points on a grid, create lines deep inside you etched in skin, sweat and memory. Your being winds around the labyrinthian turns that you took for straight lines, endless and at times wide stretches of possibility that in fact could explain how curiousity killed the cat, simply by inviting him in towards his disbelief. And so I think about the imminent departures, the living out of a car, old childhood drawings locked up in basement storages deep under kitchen utensils, favorite books sold out of garages, family photos wrapped in blankets; I think of my wedding dress shrink wrapped for the next three years, frozen in time, grandpa’s gold watch unwound. In unburying I bury again, the journal from my childhood moving from town to town, the daughter of an immigrant, of a coyote, finding crevices to pour herself into, shadow puppet freedom. But that was then and yet it is now, now by choice, re-creating it with the pompousness of ostrich feathers at full bloom. Not I, this time. I find myself not alone in this recasting, more troubling in a way for the responsibility;  I step into that terrain with husband in tow, to test the lines, like a spider’s silk fibers suspended above the earth. “Hay un precio para todo,” mi mama reminds me. There is a price for everything. “Everything?” I’d ask. “Sí, para todo.”

 

I’m selling my wedding dress and I’m sure my mother doesn’t want me cryogenize it, freeze it and preserve it for posterity. She quietly backed into the topic while were were talking on the phone about the minutia of moving back to Guatemala, to all of Central America, but for three years this time. It starts out with a simple question: “What will you do with your wedding dress?” Right now it’s on eBay, Craigslist and a boutique wedding dress website that will pour oodles of bridezilla money down my way for a new digital camera or feed into the new Toyota Tundra fund. It’s only a matter of time.

“Well you know I was thinking, maybe if you decide to ever adopt a little girl, maybe she could wear the dress?” What little girl mom? An imaginary girl somewhere in the future? And what if she doesn’t get married, what if she’s gay, what if she’s obese, what if she couldn’t care less about a yellowing lace dress that her mother had kept all these years just for her to wear, for what, exactly so her mother has a visual symbol of the continuity? What if I’m the last person she wants to be reminded of?

“Well, then, you could have your dressed preserved, like people’s bodies get preserved or frozen.” I should freeze my dress?

“I was just saying, mija, what if you change your mind? I could keep it for you.” The last time, I remind her, she safely stored anything of mine was when I left for college and she and my stepfather forgot to pay storage and all my boxes of photos, art, books, clothes and my favorite oak desk were sold by some random guy in North Carolina backwoods town. “But I don’t do that sort of thing anymore.” The scorpion bites and the frog jumps, ma. “I’m not a scorpion.” No, but you’re a fire and you burn through things. “People change.” Maybe, but their essence stays the same. And what does any of this have to do with selling the dress? I wasn’t listening. I was going to sell it and that was that. “Lo voy a vender, si solo es un vestido.”

I understand,” she said quietly. I immediately got off the phone and told her I was going for a run. Estaba alterada. I ran and I ran, against the wind, as the sun peered through the mounting gray clouds. I thought perhaps like reverse engineering, my mother was reverse inheriting a legacy. Perhaps because she never had a vestido de novia, she wished she’d had one to present to me, a gift a mother gives to her daughter, of herself, of her innocence, of her youth, of her hopes and dreams embodied in one dress that women in the US and UK were now burning in protest of the bridal industrial complex. I felt her sadness now in her silence. She always accepted my revolt, because in part it was hers.

She would keep it for me because that would be her gift, that would be our tie formed from myself to her, a trust as fragile as the lace that lined the blusher draping over my back. She’d spent hours on my hair before the wedding. It’s all I wanted from her, to take the tangles out. My scalp throbbed for hours later. I sat crossed-legged on the chair with my little radio listening to the news and she hummed to herself.

A pear cannot fall from an apple tree. If I had listened I would have heard the branch rustle. I would have heard the fruit’s journey through space, time a moment’s breath, as it fell towards it destiny, hit hard against the ground – a noise perhaps no one would ever hear. It would use the momentum of gravity to exert some will into its final place and then bide time under the sun.

 

Nothing like running errands on a Sunday afternoon to get a crash course in the weekend habits of Chileanos in Santiago. After a four-hour nap I woke up to my trusty shortwave radio blasting bad 1980s hits. I dragged my disconcerted self out of a bed which faces the balcony overlooking the Cerro Santa Lucia where I was already plotting a Monday run. I threw the androgynous parachute pants on, just to play it safe and get the street pulse. Cloth bag over my chest, I mentally prepared to part with any of the goods inside of it should it come down to that.

I jotted a few things: electric plug converter, hairbrush, SIM chip for my cellphone, a hot spot (the Internet was down at the hotel, not surprising), bottled water (the water from the tap tasted like chlorine), and Peruvian ceviche. It was an eclectic mix of needs, but I promised myself a partially successful mission.

Already I had realized from ambling around the Santiago airport and shuttle ride chatting with sleep-deprived locals that Chilenos are in fact, much like the older, more prudent brother. Quiet, tranquil, unswayed by the day to day dramas. The proved to be good listeners. With at Chileno I was starting to feel there was never really a need to shout or lose your cool. They had a quiet hustle, with very little bustle to it and a shrewd paying of attention to the right details.

I had begun to appreciate the Chileno. They were used to tourists, knowing exactly the subtleties of navigating someone through their country’s customs. That became obvious when I tried to order a cappuccino and created a state of confusion between the tightly clad barista, showing plenty of leg in an industry that is more like bartending; the cashier (who takes your money and issues you a ticket for admission to your much-needed drink), and the owner of the cafe carefully reading his Sunday newspaper at the front desk.

It was hot, it was muggy, I wanted an iced cappuccino. I knew I was asking a lot, but I had to do it. I had to know sooner, rather than later, where Chile was with customer service and picky people like myself.

The two women were confused by my request iced cappuccino request. I was quickly ushered over to the owner who raised his eyes from the newspaper. He peered at me over his bifocals. “So what you want is a separate cup of ice and also the espresso and milk?”

Yes, I told him, just a separate cup of ice. It’s true, I had wimped out when his eyes penetrated right through me and made me forget all my two years of barista knowledge back in college. He nodded his head at the cashier behind me. I walked back not daring to turn my back to him. She gave me a ticket and then I quickly walked over to the slinky barista in the spandex black dress. I gave the the stub to her.

“So separate cup of ice and no sugar?” No, I wanted it plain. “Crema?”

Of course, I want crema, milk that is. She moved to the espresso machine with a confidence I had not noticed in her before. The men watched from the corner of their eyes without turning their heads.

She poured the espresso, brought the ice, and the mineral water (compliments of the house) and began steaming the milk. I was in good hands. I relaxed. On both sides of me were two locals – a tour guide and a cab driver. The tour guide lit his cigarette, offered me one, I turned it down. He then asked softly, but not timidly where I was from.

“Guatemala,” I said. “Via the United States.”

“That’s a combination you don’t often hear,” he said. He puffed placidly on his cigarette. It was a standing up cafe, so we all quietly leaned in to listen to one another, conspiratorially. Here was our tryst. He looked over and signaled to me with his pursed lips that the barista was coming. I was aghast when I saw the swirls of whipped cream on my otherwise perfect cappuccino. She noticed it in my face.

“Thank you,” I said reluctantly taking it.

“You don’t like it?” She asked.

“Oh I do, very much,” I said and started scooping the whip cream off. Her face looked beyond confused. She looked over to the cashier and then back to me. “Oh, you didn’t want it with crema?”

“I’m sorry, I just didn’t know crema in Chile meant whipped cream. In Guatemala it’s sometimes used interchangeably with milk.”

She politely picked up the coffee, “Permitame, no hay problema.” She set the lovely frappucchino next to the espresso machine and then returned. “What you really want is a cortado grande con espuma. I will make it, no problem, but you have to get another ticket from the cashier.”

Of course, that was the logical, orderly and sensible thing to do. So I went up to the cashier who then shuffled me over to the owner again who this time put down his paper, neatly folded his glasses and pushed himself off the counter. He opened the barn door to his stall and walked me over to the coffee counter where the barista and my new friends where. I dragged my feet behind him.

“Let me explain to you how our coffee works,” he told me in the gentlest and most patient voice. For the next five minutes he explained their entire menu to me. The entire cafe leaned in for this important lesson. He might as well have had a microphone. When he finished, there was silence. He then nodded his head at the barista. That was her cue. He waited right next to me chit chatting until she came with my new coffee.

He waited until I sipped it and smiled. It was delicious. “Muchísimas gracias.” He nodded in approval to all.

“Disfrute su cafe y bienvenida a Chile.”

And the ceviche you ask? I got that, too, although it proved a little easier at the local Aji Seco:

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Santiago, Chile – There are many things mi mama taught me – many of which I wasn’t prepared to learn until adulthood, but slowly the knowledge seeps into the roots.  One of the most important things she taught me is to be fluent in Spanish. We struggled over it. At school I spoke English, at home, it was only Spanish. She didn’t care what the nuns said, she didn’t care how many people teased me, she didn’t care how important it was to me to sound American. “Tu lenguaje es tu cultura, es de donde vienes.” Your language is your culture, it is where you’re from. She taught me to remember my culture by living its reality in the words I shaped wherever I went.

Spanish has served as an immediate lifeline, connecting me to what will soon be, by 2050,10 percent of the world population. Anywhere the winds take me, even in Taiwan, there is always someone I connect to immediately in Spanish at the most basic level of interaction from taking a bus to ordering food.

This morning as I stepped out of the airport into Santiago, Chile – thick layer of gray cloud topped with the red ball of sunrise – I was grateful again that not a few minutes after I set foot in another continent, after surviving a 12-hour flight, I spoke my mother tongue, as my mother had intended it. At the very least I did my best.

It does help that the culture of airports is similar in Latin America: a dubious entry process and close-up encounters with customs officials, babies screaming, six giant bags per person and then the wall of people that greets you as you part the sea of taxis with hand scrawled signs. Before you know it,  drivers have attached themselves like plankton as you make for the open sea.

At dawn Santiago is not a pretty city. It is not Oaxaca, Mexico; it is not La Antigua, Guatemala. It is a dusty, sleepy, colonial city somewhere in Latin America where the street dogs don’t look as desperate or decimated and there’s a certain peace that lingers in the emptiness of the Sunday streets where not a single church bell rings and the buses don’t spew out plumes of black smoke. On the radio I hear old Chilean ballads from the 70s, before I was even born, or perhaps as I was coming into being in a completely different reality.  In another country, where I was born. But I could just as easily, just as randomly, have been born here.

Kara stumbled on this photo of the Lancetillo kids and me from last year. Most of these kids don’t have a lot of experience behind a computer so it’s all new and shiny to them. As I was showing them my MacBook Pro, they expressed an interest in viewing any photos I had. Lucky for them, I obsessively collect images of all sorts: internet memes, wiggly .gifs, graphic design inspiration, weird old archival stuff and personal photos. As I recall, here were some of their favorites:

This is a pic I took a few years ago of my friend Jay & Eilleen’s two boys. The Lancetillo kids were pretty much in awe of the hair. ¡Que estraño!

I collect old ads because, ahem, “I’m in the biz.” This one got a lot of giggles because, well, it’s a man spanking a woman and they’re a bunch of Catholic school kids who’ve probably never seen anything like this. Needless to say I clicked through this one pretty quick.

The girls’ favorite.

The boys’ favorite.

Today would have been my friend Ellen’s birthday. She would have been 79 years old. Had she been alive, had I died instead, I would be almost 34 years old and somehow it would have seemed less of a practical joke the universe played on both of us. I welcome it, this dance with death she left me to grapple with for the rest of my life, every year as I think on how fleeting life is when we love the people we love and when they love us back. I leave you with a poem from her partner, Rosemary Hyde, who I love as dearly as Ellen:

Birthday Thought to Ellen Jan 26 2011

Tomorrow would have been your birthday.
Web reminders say that I should send a card;
I wonder how to do that from this earth to where you are.
So here’s my birthday card to you, my Love –
An imagined nosegay:
I’m picturing it fresh and pure and white,
With smell so sweet;
Each flower is a precious moment
That we spent together;
Reminder of our songs, our laughter, even tears we shed —
All more special in the love we shared.
I tell you now, again,
How very glad I am that you were born.

I run to stand still. I pray the bus will be late, but knowing the driver, I lock up the house fast, head on into the sun and unabashed blue sky – my only witness to my lateness.  I speed up and run when the hand lights up red. The sun is beaming and suddenly I feel fully in my body, but there is no time to waste and so heel to toe I arrive at the underpass before my bus stop and see the pink wreath of flowers, candles and pictures at the foot of the Martin Luther King, Jr. mural under 580. I stop and think of these words:

“Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity. The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at flood- it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is adamant to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words, “Too late.”

I stood there and felt it in every pore.

I want to be at this end holding fast to the present and welcoming each passing moment, facing that music and dancing with the fleeting moment, instead of ignoring it, repressing it, or letting it go unnoticed.

On the first day of the year, I had enough of waiting and “No”. It was coming from within and it just was’t working for me. I also knew the hardest thing about saying yes to the universe meant accepting everything life puts in front of me. “Most of us have a habit of going through our days saying no to the things we don’t like and yes to the things we do, and yet, everything we encounter is our life. We may be afraid that if we say yes to the things we don’t like, we will be stuck with them forever, but really, it is only through acknowledging the existence of what’s not working for us that we can begin the process of change. So saying yes doesn’t mean indiscriminately accepting things that don’t work for us. It means conversing with the universe, and starting the conversation with a very powerful word — yes.” – DailyOm

It’s the conversation I longed for and it just needed me to welcome it now and not tomorrow or the next day. Time is relentless and the sunsets remind us so with that painful beauty of passing.

If you saw it coming, then why did you do it? Why did you wait? The four boxes of pizza fell from heaven, slipped right through your fingers while you pecked on your phone, it, too, tumbling to the ground along with your slice half-eaten, the grease making a profile against the brown bag crumpled at the top from your clutching. The whole thing just rolled into a corner and it was the first thing you reached for as the phone and the boxes flew in different directions. Things slid in their place, except for one slice that fell unprotected out of the box and onto the dirty, cracked pavement by the bus stop where everyone walks and no one notices. You looked around and quickly tucked the piece back into its place before the fall broke its perfection.

“I knew that would happen!” you said when you noticed I rushed to help you up. We had five-seconds to pick up the pieces. I didn’t want anyone to see your shame and the confusion of how things so quickly just fall apart.

It’s this contact state of balancing moment for moment, atoms crashing into each other, colliding, colluding, bouncing and returning to freer states. Perhaps they are the molecular angels of grace and gentle encouragement that things cannot perfect. They can just be as they are, in their true and present state.

Is it possible that a dream can slip and fade away? Like fortune and the winged ankles of Hermes is it something that needs to be grasped on its way in and not on its way out?

The sun and blue skies of the San Francisco Bay welcomed us to the New Year where we still find ourselves in a “holding pattern,” waiting for our next step. “Recuerdate, mija, que Dios dice, “ayudate que te ayudare”. Help yourself and I will help you. It’s good we kept our home in Oakland for incremental weathering of storms and transitional periods. It’s been our life raft, our vessel of sanity, that unlike planes in the air, has provided us a harbor where we can still have some will over our destiny. Planes in the air, hover, run dry and eventually must land regardless of the terrain.

Can a dream drift and float away? Can you watch it fade away with the passing of each day and then suddenly one waking moment notice its distance like the spec of dust on the outside of that bus — the same bus you take to work each day and look out into the now gray horizon of winter where sea meets land and sky? At what point did you go from “holding pattern” into “passing pattern”? How can you tell the difference when you’re in between? Fear and anxiety grip your insides and your next breath is like the shutting of a door. I think of “The Great Gatsby” and America rising from the ocean to the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock and that mysterious green light. Lucecitas.

We power the dimming of our lights, illuminating our own paths. Just sometimes the mire of obstacles makes the dock look much longer than I imagine it is. One foot in front of the other, one breath after the next.

I have this paranoia of missing the bus. It’s more a fear of being left behind to be honest. It’s not something I experience when I’m driving anywhere, late and harried, and somehow my fear of missing something at the other end kicks in. Of course, the show can’t start without me, so that mitigates any anxiety. As a result I’m always early for the bus, super early, like half and hour early sometimes.

I bask in the sun of the bus stop eating my lunch early and show up at work much earlier than required. It’s a small thing really, a tiny crevice of a thing that leads me head first into that first feeling of being left behind as a child. The first feeling of my mother leaving Guatemala, leaving her mother, her country, her home and leaving me. Leaving to find another life for herself, for perhaps us, somewhere so far way past the horizon and the silohuette of the shacks lined up against the steep hills of Zone Three’s grime, bracken, a place we called La Limonada where you make lemonade out of limes. It’s hard for a child to imagine deserts, endless blue of sky, terrains that linger in the back of that dream as you waken in the morning. I take a breath and am transported back, to easing into waiting, into trusting.

“The same laws that govern the growth of plants oversee our own internal and external changes. We observe, consider, work, and wonder, tilling the soil of our lives, planting seeds, and tending them. Sometimes the hard part is knowing when to stop and let go, handing it over to the universe. Usually this happens by way of distraction or disruption, our attention being called away to other more pressing concerns. And it is often at these times, when we are not looking, in the silence of nature’s embrace, that the miracle of change happens.” –DailyOM

I see the NL bus which takes me across the Bay and this time, just once, I decide to wait for the next one.

The irony isn’t lost on me. I now do temporary work for a company that makes bridges. “Good afternoon, T.Y. Lin. One moment, I’ll connect you.”

T.Y. Lin is a civil and structural engineering firm that did the engineering behind the Rio Dulce bridge, overseen by Chuck Simon who personally flew down to Guatemala when a crack was reported in the bridge. He was met with helicopters and flown out to Rio Dulce. The bridge still stands and it’s the landmark of the Department of Izabal where I was born and where my grandmother’s mother lived, near Gualán. I couldn’t have chosen better, except I trusted the world to do it for me. Here, put me where you will.

I now connect people all day. Phones rings, the elevator door slides open, someones laughs at their desk, the small fan hums and in each office an engineer pores over formulas, blueprints and simulations on computer screens. Heels click on the cement floors and walk past me, and I sit in the middle of this orchestra of activity. It’s comforting, it reminds me of an old place I know well.

In the great symphony of life, we all have important parts to play. While some people are best suited to be conductors or soloists, their contributions would be diminished considerably without the individual musicians that lend their artistry to the fullness of an orchestra… When we can be fully present in every job that we do, we bring the fullness of our bodies, minds and spirits to the moment. Our contribution is enhanced by the infusion of our talents and abilities, and when we give them willingly, they attract the right people and circumstances into our experience.
–Daily Om

To connect people you have to come from a place of peace, to not only have it between the moments, but to be in the moment of that peace that is the underlying fabric. We know it’s there when the quiet sinks in, when we listen. In the quite lobby where my desk sits I learn to listen again, to experience time at a pace more granular and tangible than anything I’m used to or a context I’ve created around myself.

I remind myself I am temporary here and just smile at everyone that passes. But they stop and they make a point of learning my name, get to know me, ask me questions about my background. “Oh, you graduated from our alma mater!” “I have a good friend going to Guatemala for the first time, what do you recommend?” “How did we find YOU?” “Get out, you’re a journalist?!”

Engineers are quiet and pensive and waiting for social moments to reduce the awkwardness. I am “here to help with the transition” because their chief office manager, the Peruvian Carmen, is retiring after 50 years with the firm.  On her last day, I help her clean her desk because she can’t bare to do it alone. I tell her I will be her hands and she can guide me. I am mindful, I am respectful. 50 years is a long time, it shows loyalty I’m not sure I have for anything. At least not yet. El tiempo lo dirá.

While delivering the mail Carmen introduces to the head Jefe in an office that sits right below the SF Bay Bridge.  “Sit young lady, sit.” He is from Prague, tall, steel-gray features and lively eyes. He asks me:”What is the single biggest problem we have today?”

I answer immediately: “We don’t know how to tell stories, sir.”

He smiles, it is what he wanted to hear.  He tells me about his stint in engineering school in Prague and how they didn’t have the option to learn writing. It was all numbers, courses like hard walls. He stares out beyond the bridge. Then turns back.

“All these kids typing on their cellphones, adults using Facebook who can’t even talk to each other, people and their emails. We can’t tell stories anymore, we’re always making these grocery lists of our lives to others!” He turns to me.

“Young lady, do you know how to edit? Can you write a good letter?”

“The best, sir.” Perhaps I should have been humbler. But I feel proud of myself because yesterday I wrote the best letter contesting my $100 parking ticket for parking in my own driveway.

“We’re not talking creative fiction, we’re talking using facts to tell a story.”

“Yes sir, I’m a journalist, that’s my job.”

He listens, his face somewhere between curiosity and suspicion. He comes from Eastern Europe, I need to give him a reason to trust me.

“I met a Guatemalan engineer when I first moved to Philadelphia. He was a very good engineer. He talked about his country all the time, not always good, but he told me this: ‘love your country, it is your root.'”

In two weeks, he told me, he would be back from vacation, and he would see how my letter writing fared. Will you be here in two weeks, he asked. I said, “I don’t know, does anyone?” He smiled and shook my hand.

I think of a song I grew up with that my mom would play on our beaten up boombox. “Yo No Olvido El Año Viejo” I don’t forget the old year, because it has left me many good things. It has not left me, it has carried me to a place of peace I had all along. I am grateful for all the people who have been that bridge for me, bending their backs to provide love, support and inspiration.

Today I hit the pavements of San Francisco as the sun refused to turn up from the gray blankets. I wound my multi-colored cotton Guatemalan scarf that really doesn’t do much to fend off the cold around my neck and braced for the four temp and staffing agencies where I would be dropping off my resume. “Looking for work should never shame you,” my mother’s internalized voice reminded me. “You should always be grateful for work, no matter what it is.”

I put on the poker face of over-politeness and do it the Guatemalan way: I drop in. I wanted to give a face to a name and to be honest, to make it past the all-purpose inbox of death where all resumes go during the horror of economic downturns that we have in California. Worse comes to worse they ask me where I lived and worked last year, I tell them Guatemala and they have no idea where Guatemala is; it happens, at least once a day.

I enter nameless impressive buildings where the building numbers could kill you if they fell off the entrance during an earthquake. My neck creaks when I try to separate the sky from the glass and steel and I feel like La India Maria when I get freaked out by how quickly the glass doors rotate.  I have a backpack, I don’t wear make-up and my bangs are in that awkward faze where it looks like I haven’t used a brush in weeks. The manila folder in my hand isn’t even labeled. Floor 8, take a breath.

“Hi, Mrs. Sculley, I was in the neighborhood and just wanted to introduce myself, drop off my resume and inquire about meeting with a recruiter. Will that be possible?” Not even a smile. “Didn’t you submit via email? That’s how everyone does it.” I tell her I wanted to meet them all because they had such glowing reviews on Yelp. She’s not impressed. She goes back to typing on her MacBook Pro, but I’m not going away. “Mrs. Sculley, I promise to stop bothering you and email you my resume if you provide me with your direct email.” I raise my hand and cross my heart and stand with perfect posture. Her face softens. She gives me her card. I thank her. Score. Another four to go.

Back on the street as I swim with the rest of the Montgomery Street fish I wonder why no one will hire fine young entrepreneurs like myself with resumes that are four pages long because they are full of white space to make us look important and over-qualified. We fit great ideas in all that white space. Glowing I tell you. Bah, who wants an entrepreneur, it’s trouble I tell you. I have one month to go before I start another fellowship or maybe not. Money in the hand is never money until it’s in your hand. Another Silvia saying. I am warmed up now and ready for 345 California, 14th Floor, eh, the whole floor is Innovations PSI.  The glass doors are wide open and just beyond I can see the Golden Gate Bridge. There’s no receptionist and they have perfectly round mints and the latest Consumer Reports “Top Ten Mobile Tricks” issue. I have to find a way to stay in the lobby and wait for five minutes, if only to enjoy the mint while flipping through the magazine. I sit on the plush lavender-colored designer couch.

The receptionist smiles as she enters, she is being nice for some reason, when she asks me to wait while she finds a recruiter. Mr. Kurt comes out. He tells me he has to go to a meeting in ten minutes. I hand over my resume, he goes through all the pages. “All this is your resume?” I tell him I’m a creative writer. He hands it back like I just gave him a fake dollar bill. “I don’t want it,” he says bluntly. “Is it because I’m killing trees?” I retort. “No, it’s not searchable.” I can solve that, I tell him, I can send him a PDF and Word doc ASAP once he gives me his direct email. He smiles, “Please.” He informs me they only have “Admin work”. I tell him I know how to use a typewriter and that I  even typed 70 words per minute on one manual typewriter with no whiteout or return button in a bunker finance building in Guatemala City two months ago. He puts his hands in his pockets and pulls out his business card. He looks at his watch. Time to go. I think I’ve tied on this one.

The going down is always easier. The elevator drops me back to earth and the cold breeze suddenly hits my chest when I open the door. Why can’t journalists have their own recruiting agencies? Maybe I should make coffee instead? I’m sick of writing grants. Yes, I will use a typewriter for money. Maybe I can dance for the next month? Sell lemonade? Better start finding the lemons before someone else does.

There were two things I quickly learned not to do in my first year living in the United States: not go around telling people how much you loved them and, even worse, telling their secrets to other people. For both you gained a reputation that preceded you as someone “loose” with things that should be held close and away from prying eyes and deaf ears. I remember both moments well because both involved learning discretion and being able to discriminate what information should be revealed in what context. I also remembered the feeling when the nuns of St.Mary’s Church in Lancaster, Pennsylvania pulled me to a corner, dragged along by my skinny arm and into the dark area right behind the confession booth.

“The Lord teaches us to be humble with all things,” she whispered it close to my ear and then wagged their finger slowly in my face, “and to not do or say unto others as you would not have done or said unto you.” Even if it’s true? I asked. “It doesn’t matter, it’s none of your business child.”

In journalism school I learned truth is not a defense for libel, in fact, it can actually create more grounds for emotional damage and distress and cost you quite a bit in cases where the person is not a public figure. I visualize how an onion thickens and how we only focus on the peeling back. I think of the 300-year -old Sequoias in King’s Canyon and the jaggedness of some rings inside their trunks sometimes signaling periods of great distress and then harmony. The layers form, protect, harden, become foundation and protect the vitality from within by keeping a relationship outside of itself.

I didn’t know it then, but when the nun whispered it in my ear, I lost something. I became self-conscious of everything, the conversations, the constant filtering, “Christ Freeze Tag” became a lie. I listened more and talked less. The context was always changing and I struggled to grasp it. I was less witty for it and people blamed it on the fact that I was an immigrant and didn’t know English well. “She’s slow, she’s just like that.” Perhaps I had become shy or introverted or I rolled backward into myself. It wasn’t an overnight change, but when Sister Mary Catherine whispered it in my ear it wasn’t her words I heard, but this: it’s time to let go of child-like ways.

It was the end of a certain openness and faith I had in the world as a playground of emotion and thought. Information could be dangerous, it could “do unto others” if I was heedless, if I stopped paying attention or was too much with the world. It could do unto others what I had never expected it do unto them because the world, as my mother later informed me, was a constant negotiation for information and for your own truth.

When Joan Kiley and I had a heated discussion this afternoon, I realized that I felt the same sadness around Wikileaks that I had felt that day when I stopped trusting something and then felt the responsibility of creating my own meaning at every moment.

The message remains the same, regardless of the messenger. Whether it’s Wikileaks or anything that involves openness and honesty,  it’s about a broader context and about the worlds we want to live in, fight and take responsibility for. It’s about equality and respect and it’s the reason I work in Central America. And so I thank Joan for that discussion and for her poem which I share with you:

Advent 2010: What are we waiting for?

Will we get new light this time around?
Will the sun really return?
Or has it, too, been co-opted by corporate interests
and the wealthiest two percent?

I don’t want to give up
on Nature’s cyclic rhythm.
It is archetypal after all.
But in this dark night
of our nation’s soul
there are moments when the idea of hoarding
matches and candles in a remote cave
seems like a reasonable notion.

Seeds.
Remember the seeds
waiting in the cold
resting in the dark.
Their time will come.
It’s a matter of trust.

Given that the survival rate of the genetically modified
and manipulated is likely far greater
than those bare-naked “natural” little gems,
where do I send my energy of hope
my prayers for new world creative collaboration?

Truth. I shall trust in truth.
Truth may be covered in slime,
living at the bottom of all the moving boxes
the last to be unpacked when the transition
has been made. But truth weathers well,
doesn’t rot or succumb to mildew.

Like an acorn on the dank forest floor
there is an unseen mightiness
about truth, a warmth like fire.
I shall go there and stand with it.

—Joan Kiley, December 2010

“¿Que prefieres – Guatemala o Las Estados Unidos?” my Antigua-based Spanish teacher asked me yesterday over Skype. “Well in Antigua, the people are very nice but they are not quick” I replied. Realizing that I had just described all Antigueños as slow-witted, not slow-moving as I intended, I quickly added: “In the US the people aren’t nice, but they walk very fast. In Antigua the people walk very slow and I don’t have patience.”

“Ooohhh ja ja ja! Sí que es verdad, pero no es un gran problema, ja ja ja!”

Whew, my bad joke was understood. But it reminded me of all the other times I’ve been asked the same question in both English and Spanish, and how my replies were never quite convincing. I finally arrived at a decent canned answer: “When I’m in the US, I like the US. When I’m in Guatemala, I like Guatemala.” It’s probably more accurate to say that when I’m in the US, I complain more about the US and when I’m in Guatemala, I complain more about Guatemala. The grass is always greener on the other side of the border I guess.

Of course there’s way more green on this side, which is part of the reason we’re back up here. I’ve been working as a contract web designer for the in-house design department of a well-known educational toy brand – making that plata baby – gracias a Díos. Kara is hard at work on her Habla project, making entrepreneurial moves and getting some big players on board. Anyway my point is the green is indeed within reach for many of us in North America. Do I like the US? Hell yeah I like the US because there’s more fat here than in the chorizo and eggs I ate for breakfast this morning.

But are the people in Guatemala really nicer? Yes, the people in Antigua at least are very formal, use proper manners and are indeed very friendly to strangers. It’s like a time warp back to how we North Americans used to conduct ourselves. Or the way many Midwesterners like myself still conduct ourselves: opening doors for others, standing up and shaking hands when meeting someone for the first time, giving up seats for senior citizens on the bus and other mind-blowing acts of civility. Guatemalans do walk really slow though – I think it’s all the babies and goofy kids running around gumming up the works.

The funny thing about that time warp is Guatemala is now wormholing it’s way out of 1961 and into 2011. They’re cruising past all the lame shit we had to sludge through like landlines, web 1.0 and the Atkins Diet but I’m afraid they might also skip important stuff like having a civil rights movement, inventing their own punk rock and discovering a cure for Moco De Gorila.

Anyway, I look forward to being back on the other side to see what happens next.

Nov. 25, 2010

We’re on the road again and it makes me want to write. It’s the expanse of fruitless trees with their dried branches adding cracks to the blue sky, the wind hissing through the windows, the tall bales of hay and then the entrance into the walls of pine at the base of Mt. Shasta. Time becomes so much more complete, filling every pore of itself in nature.

Five hours to Weed, California seems like a blink of the eye for us, a small price to pay to be away from the madding crowd and to see snow again. I tell mi abuelita y mi mama: “We’re going to a cabin somewhere in the woods.”

“By yourself? UY! Be careful, people get killed in el monte.” Eh maybe during periods of genocide when the military goes into the rural villages in Guatemala. Maybe then, abuelita. “But you’re driving alone? You’re not going en caravana o con amigos?” Why, I ask her, so we move at someone else’s pace? I don’t think so. “¡Ques’eso!” She laughs, half in disapproval at my American ways and the rest dismissing the ludicrous nature of our behavior. “Make sure you take something to cover your nose from the cold.”

It’s a good time to reflect since we’ve been back for more than a month now and time has passed, water through our fingers, ungraspable. In the distance the snow-capped Cortina Ridge and the sky lighting up the fire of an imminent sunset. “Feliz Día de Gracias.” I tell abuela. I no longer say, “Happy Thanksgiving.” I’m more Guatemalan now and while Thanksgiving Day doesn’t directly tie back to our history, it does hold a symbolic element of being grateful for leaving deprivation and entering a place of plenty. I say entering because many times it’s a mental shift – re-framing a concept of deprivation from not having access or owning materials things to having support, love and freedom. Support from those we love and who love us and to feel free to do things that matter both for us and the world.

I am grateful for this and also for ten years ago when Brad and I wandered into the snow-laden forests of Shasta County and Lassen Volcanic Park in search of hot springs and adventure. We found each other.

We’re getting closer to darkness. El Día de Los Muertos reminds us how close we are to that needlehead thinness between living and passing; the passed and the still yet suffering. Two years ago my friend Ellen died in her sleep, bled into herself after many struggles with cancer. I can’t imagine her struggling because she smiled through anything. Even pain was a gift to be appreciated because it could be felt while living and she taught me that there is always something to be made of pain, if only sometimes to remind us of the present that needs to be lived. It’s taken me this long to realize that she’s perished, gone so far away. Yet tonight we summon each other.

I enter the portal, lift up the thin black-laced veil, surrounded by dancing stilt-walking skeletons, and candles to guide me down this crowded San Francisco street where the vessels have been prepared and carried. I move slowly with the crowd and find my way to the park where the aperture has been tended. There by that tree in Garfield Park, I find her and she finds me. As if time had not passed at all. Out of my red bag, I take out the large candle, the pomegranate, the apple, the two keys, the many small candles for all the people she touched with her compassion and love. I pause and light each one with my friend Tal. For once we have no words. I pause and then pull out our her steel-framed picture waving back at me from the beach with her one arm and other shrunken arm tucked close to her body, like all the people she loved and who took shelter there.  She waved and you couldn’t tell if it was a wave of farewell or hello or simply “Here I am”.  The ocean roared behind her and cool wet sand touched her bare feet.  I thought of her pain until the end. I thought of her happiness. And this time, I waved back.

My friend Ingrid is having a baby and I feel so helpless. I sit outside in the livingroom among the women, her mother-in-law, her sister-in-law, the mid-wife who peacefully goes in and out of the bedroom where she is giving birth. It is quiet except for the sound of the bubbling water in the fish tank, the cat meowing, the tea kettle which boils over with water, whispering and the utter agony of her cries of pain. Gity, her Iranian mother-in-law is praying in Arabic from a small book which she reads with her dark glasses, bending her entire body into her prayer at one corner of the dark sofa, she emanates tranquility.

“This only happens once in our lifetimes,” Gity reminds me and her daughter. “It is truly a gift that Ingrid gave us.”

I thought I would come here like a photographer, a professional gig for a friend, but it’s more right now and while my instinct is to document, my heart tells me to be empathetic and to respect her privacy.

The mid-wife comes out and we hang on every word. “She’s at 8 or 9 cm, but something is holding her back.” She needs her comfort zone back.

We empty the livingroom, it is her home again, quiet and safe without the pressure of anyone expecting her to perform on their terms. I flee to the dark corners of the baby room and write. From time to time I hear the creaking of the bed and the door. The midwife pokes her head in from time to time with the nicest, warmest smile.

When I asked Gity, who has had four children, two of them twins, and the midwife about the amount of pain she’s in and what the experience of labor is they tell me  this:

It’s like things are happening in your body, like your body is stretching and things are happening inside you that you can’t control, you feel what the baby feels, like you’re going to die, like your bones are going to break, you can’t say anything, you become like a child, language is gone. The first one you’re lost because you don’t know if it’s the beginning or the end. Every moment you think it’s the most intense. It feels like your baby is going to come out of your ass, like it’s the size of cantaloupe and there’s no way out.

I cringe, I cannot fathom my body stretching into another dimension. Gity looks at me intensely and then she says “It’s like a difficult exam you cannot fail. You just have to get through it.”

While we didn’t send any of you postcards, we do have plenty of images from the road that we’d love to share with you, so here goes! I promise I will write more this week.