Sobre mas de Antigua

Las Capuchinas

Otras cosas

La Merced

Listening to American radio in Spanish

I've been spending many of my free hours this last week in Internet cafes and cafes offering free wifi, filled with foreign travellers. It's a sort of buffer around the reality of being in a strange country attempting to conduct life in a language I barely understand and can speak almost no words in. Forming a complete sentence is nearly impossible. In writing, and with the aid of un dicionario, it is not nearly as messy. I can express precisely, with proper grammar. But this has always been my problem. I have no eloquence in the spoken word. I expect it will continue to be my biggest frustration as the journey progresses. I think I can handle the aloneness, I have much practice in that aspect.

-----------

Still, when I hear these familiar songs it is hard not to miss 'home.' I don't really have a good answer when people ask where I live. Here, wherever that happens to be, I suppose. The turtle carries his house with him. I know where I belong, but somehow it seems more personal than I care to explain to strangers.

-----------

I feel innocuous in Antigua; pale in the reflected light of the rainbow colored culture. Though how much of that is just smoke and mirrors I haven't been able to decipher. It's all just a matter of perception though, in the end, isn't it?

La Antigua y mi casa

The ruins of La Recoleccion.

Dia Numero Dos

Arrived in Antigua, Guatemala on Friday morning. The mountains and volcanic peaks wreathed in wisps of cloud are truly fantastic. The mornings are lovely - sunny and warm, but the afternoons are all rain. I suppose it is August, afterall. Struggling with my very limited Spanish, so class will be good. Lots of wandering and gawking so far. Still seems surreal. The feeling enhanced by the ubquitous ruined churches, crumbling stucco in bright facades, diminutive women in childhood-dream dress...

Flying into Guatemala.

Fountain de las Sirenas, in the park - the center of Antigua.

The Cathedral on the park, with Volcan Agua to the south.

Another ruined church.

The ruins of San Francisco.

Home Is Where the ♥ Is

Redwood City, California. That is where I am now, and where I spent the first eighteen years of my life. Even when I went away to college, even when I stayed in Boston after graduating (making it six years away), I still considered this place home I suppose. My parents, my dog, my cat, my childhood house. I kept my California license and my voter registration. I returned every Christmas (and still do), and usually for a week every summer. I was just floating, unanchored. And that was okay. I planned to search the world for the perfect (or at least preferred) place to live. I got through a few places: England - very good; New Zealand - could be possible; Australia - probable; Italy - not so much; Hawaii - always figured I'd end up there for a bit; South America and Europe needed a revisit. But since forever I'd known that I would live in New York City. (If I had gotten accepted straight into NYU's photo program instead of some remedial art program I would have already been there, though I'm quite sure I wouldn't have been ready at that age.) But I'd stay just for a few years. I said two when I moved there at the end of the summer of 2007. And then it would be on with my quest...

The last two+ years have not been without their lows; the times I wondered what the hell I was doing in a crazy crowded city working all night, sleeping all day, running myself into the ground, losing so many friends to other cities... But the good times, and even just the in-betweens, were so much better than anything. I don't think I really fully realized how together I had my life until I broke it apart. No, I know I didn't. Finally, I had got it all right... and I could have continued down that path, with some changes yes, but I could glimpse something good coming.

And I don't know when I started feeling more there than here, but it dawned (literally) on me that I haven't felt that rooted in years. That I had my anchor on the ocean floor though the tide was pulling me west. I've been homesick since I boarded that plane. I'm homesick in my own home. But ahh, I'm sure some of this is the devil finding work for these idle hands. Right now they're ripping my heart in two.