you can hardly imagine how many pictures i've taken. they seem to say nothing! so, some wordy snapshots are in order, beginning with where i am now, back again in la antigua guatemala, after a two week route through central guatemala and eastern honduras. this morning i woke before the sun, showered with much echo in a dark and narrow atrium, then settled on one of those famous antigua rooftop gardens just in time to see the sun toss a ray at volcan agua. even in my petter pants and with my favorite chiapas alpaca legwarmers wrapped about my feet, i couldn't escape the cold morning fog, which drifted over and made house on my rooftop spot...the damp all over me in tiny puddles and agua growing closer and closer as its angles illuminated - between the volcano and me lie the ruins of a once-three-story colonial mansion, along with an untidy spread of spanish tile roofs, and the mossy green dome of some neighborhood chapel.
i've been thinking lately about sequence of events, about walking, climbing, swimming forward through time, living something different with each placement of foot on ground (or air, for that matter - note to self: you WILL get hurt if you jump off a shoddy bridge into running water).
in any case, i've continued to think about octavio paz, and during times when forward movement has scared me for any reason at all, like while i was climbing the steep muddy path up the jungle wall in semuc champey or making my way over the dangerously uneven cobbled roads of antigua, i've begun, without really realizing it, an ordinary meditation which goes like this: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, "yo soy mis pasos". a reminder to recognize the unbounded importance of every footstep. i've found in my little mantra that when i'm not thinking, it's what i'm thinking.
then there are the haikus. they started on the white inside of a torn dentyne package and made their way to playing cards, scraps of napkins and finally journal pages. my undeniably fabulous new friend, angie, and i have been haiku-crazed for the few weeks we've travelled together, and so lately there seems no better way to describe an amusing, bemusing, or poignant situation...
drink too much water
you will have to pay the price
filthy damp toilets
how sweet to have left
good for nothing utila
onward, my kitten
one two three four five
she is injured but happy
yo soy mis pasos
where were we? snapshots.
on my journey from copan, honduras to antigua, glorious and wreched guatemala city flashed by, and in one scene, in front of a great white urban catholic church, a taj mahal of filthy guate, a family huddled beyond the gates dressed all in black, and i thought, "somebody must have died". and yes, someone died somewhere, you might guess guatemala in this case, but of course many other places, too...
like mangita. little, scrawny, brown, starving, infested, hopeless street dog in copan. four nights ago mangita followed angie and i from one end of plaza central to the other, and angie said, "eww, mange patrol!", i laughed, and then mangita continued to trot at our feet al the way home to our dungeon of a hotel room, where the tv buzzed quietly all night and where the sheets were not sheets at all but glossy polyester curtains tucked aimlessly between the matress and bedframe. anyway, i thought about the dog, feral like africa and milan, new mexico - only somehow worse...absolutely the roughest dog i'd ever seen. beneath the sound of her panting and prancing on cobblestone i had thought, "should we do something?"
well, no. if i fed this puppy she'd probably still die - and isn't that sad? oh the cliche! nothing anyone can do to help around here...in this place where the poor are so poor it blows my little white middle-class american mind!
the following morning i nearly lost my still-empty stomach. the scene was violent, but in that very public, noncommital way: mangita was laid on the southeast corner of the plaza, convulsing, surfing in a sea of her own blood, guts, and sea-green, frothy shit. she'd been poisoned, or so i heard, and she was curling backwards, really, really trying to reach her rear so that she could lick herself clean and be done with the ordeal. as if it'd be over when and if she could tidy herself. but this dog is turned inside-out. either her guts had come out with the shit or she'd been hit by a tuk tuk (to add insult) and they've fallen out a hole in her belly. i couldn't see and didn't stick around to investigate. unlike the locals. perhaps they had seen this before, or something like it (ripping off a live chicken's head? slicing a live pig? or some poor human, a brother, sister, friend...it's hard to imagine the ways for a person to suffer in the poorest country in the world, where boys with guns police the streets, where western union leads the poverty parade, and where a mile away thousands of kilos of cocaine are carried in baskets and up girls' sleeves over the border to guatemala). but they stood there in a circle, the townspeople, ring around the rosy, with looks of disregard and even amusement as mangita died of mange.
she was still alive and kicking...kicking? when i continued on, off for a cup of coffee. maybe one of the banco atlantico guards had a moment of weakness and used his oozie to pop her in an alley...maybe they just waited, offered nothing when it was over, and the police dragged her away so that the gringoes didn't get grossed out and complain. but to who?
someone else died while i was in honduras. her husband wrote her obituary in the local utilan newspaper, and it went exactly like this (english is spoken on the islands):
"della and i was in love with each other from children. she went to public school and i went to and adventist school. we drifted apart and i married a utilan wife who was miss alice, i had 3 children and was very happy, my wife died and della came into my life again. we got married on october 12, 1973 at her brother's home (henry). i will never forget mr. hanfort bodden, he was alcalde and mrs. betty funez was secretary. della and i love and respected each other, she was a methodist and i am an adventist but that did not matter because we loved each other. she was a true christian, methodist wife. we never one day tried to hurt each other, all i recieved was good true love and caring. and i will always remember taking her to mr. vincent gabourel or way-way store to have an ice cream, sometimes i would pay or she would pay. we loved each other very much." - her husband mr. pitt williams
so, that's what was written when adela trinidad zuniga rose de williams died, at age 94, in utila, bay islands, honduras.
and did i mention that della had a "very special friend who she loved like a sister"? and that she had a neice named orchid?
and did i mention that after the mangita incident i felt a little bit less human because i stepped over her like a stream trickling past? and even less human because i thought it would be stupid to admit that i thought about her for days?
so those are a few of the million pictures i have in my head. you'd think i was in a morbid state of mind, but really i'm not - i'm content and optimistic and more excited than ever, even when the sequence of events is pocked with scenes that make me uneasy...(put that in your blog, backpacker!)
so,
there we are, some words
even cowgirls get the blues
out in honduras.
