Pulling it all Together

I have no idea if anyone is reading this anymore, yet somehow it didn't seem right to just end things with the real Guatemala. I guess I've come to think of this as my own little first attempt at some kind of running story, and what story would be complete without an ending?

I've been home for a week today. Wow. It seems like a million years ago that I was riding dangerous boats and sleeping in small rooms with scratchy blankets. The end of my trip was so perfect in so many ways. I had a crazy mixup with my ticket, with the airline basically "cancelling" my ticket because my credit card address didn't match what was on file. In the midst of being so happy to come home I got an email from them informing me I no longer had a reservation. I almost had a panic attack at the computer, with thoughts of being stuck in Guatemala forever racing through my head. I spent an hour (yes, an hour!) on hold with the airlines, and after finally getting a live person on the line, all of a sudden had changed my ticket again, and was leaving in two days! Gosh, it felt good though. Sure, it would be fun to see the Guatemalan coast, and the black sand beaches, but the idea of another five hour journey on the bus, and hauling my pack and my crazy hammocks around, was just too much. I think you reach a certain point where, when you're done, you're done. It's just time. It's like you can handle any crazy travel delay, shrug your shoulders about missing a bus, laugh about any manner of mishaps, and then when you switch your mind over to going home, it's all of a sudden hard to think about dealing with one more thing....

So, with two more days to go, I headed back to Antigua with Mark and Inga, to meet up with the two men I was staying with, Arie and Gary. Mark and Inga were supposed to head to the beach, but decided to stay. We were really lucky to be there for the Semana Santa celebration, which is the second biggest celebration in the whole world. Literally half of the people in Guatemala come to this area for it. The whole town, already colorful, is draped in purple ribbons, and different areas of town are turned into little miniature street fairs. There are rows and rows of vendors selling the most artificial looking, flourescent candy, that somehow manages to look beautiful and toxic at the same time. The churches are packed to capacity with people and musicians. The chicken buses are out in droves, transporting people back and forth across the country. But by far the most striking part of the whole thing is the art that people make on the cobblestone streets throughout the town. All of the markets are selling sawdust that has been dyed in a million different colors, and people walk through the streets with bags of it. In the middle of the street, they make these huge works of art, using all of these brightly colored hues, as well as flowers, palm fronds, branches, glitter, and anything else that stands out to the artist's eye. The finished product looks almost like an enormous oriental rug, Guatemalan style, and is the product of hours and hours of labor. Each night, there is a procession of a church from around the local areas, or from Antigua. Each church community spends all year working on these huge dioramas of some kind of scene from the Bible. The night we were there, we stood on the sidelines, listening to the drumbeat that you could hear from blocks away, as people slowly started to file past. First came the hooded figures swinging cans full of frankincense; burning and filling the streets and our lungs with that musky smell I'm obsessed with. By the time the main part of the procession got to us, the drum beats were so loud that they reverberated in my chest with the incense, making me feel like I was being taken over by this strange, solemn parade. The diorama the church had put together was like the biggest coffin you've ever seen, with a scene of the resurrection on top, and literally took 50 people to carry it, everyone swaying hypnotically side to side under their heavy burden. As they move through the town, they kick over the sawdust creations, which have been built especially for this purpose. I love all the care and work that has been put into these, all with the idea that they're made to be destroyend hours later. It was really special to be part of a celebration that felt so uniquely Guatemalan, and was so interesting and beautiful. I think seeing how people choose to celebrate parts of their lives is almost the best way to see what their values and traditions are. It all made sense there with the bright colors, the solemn yet joyful festivities, the sense of community and family. Maybe *that* was the real Guatemala...

That night, Arie and Gary, who were living in an apartment in Antigua for the week, made us the most delicious dinner, and the five of us sat around while Mark, Inga and I went crazy for this raw salad full of vegetables, and some whisky and wine....I was so excited to go home that spending my last night having a home cooked meal felt like the perfect precursor to what I was going home to. Just being in someone's house for the night made me realize how much time, traveling, you spend in public spaces. At home, I'm so used to having my sanctuary, full of my things, my dog, my style, my cooking...while part of the beauty of traveling is leaving all of that behind for a while, and challenging yourself to be without the identity that becomes part of who you think of yourself as, it is also exhausting to never be HOME, and in the comfort and security of what you have created. It made me realize that on my next trip, I want to stay someplace for a while, and call somewhere home, and shop at the markets and cook and see what it's like to live somewhere else, rather than just be passing through as a tourist.

The next day, my last day, I went with Arie and Gary to this ridiculously fancy restaurant, which was an old hacienda that had been turned into a restaurant and hotel. Beautiful doesn't really begin to describe it, as it was laden with gorgeous nooks, crannies, beautiful gardens and patios tucked in unlikely places, and absolutely enormous hammocks for two everywhere, almost begging you to lay down and take a nap. We ate a gourmet lunch and talked of their trip and mine, and what we had gotten from our respective journeys. These two had been together for about three years, and for Gary, it was the first boyfriend he had had. He was almost sixty, and had spent his whole life doing things that were really not him. He married his high school sweetheart and was together with her for 35 (!) years in a loveless marriage, working hard, providing, doing all of the things he was supposed to do. And was completely not happy. And, to be fair to his wife, she wasn't happy either, with a husband that really, in his heart, didn't want to be with her. He and his wife had just separated when he met Arie, and for the first time was able to admit who he wanted to be. This trip, at sixty, is the first time he'd been out of the country, the first time he'd taken a month off, the first time he'd stepped out of this life of duty that had been *his* identity. It was amazing to see how alive he was, how thriving, how much the experience of being out and about, seeing a new culture and letting go had changed him. It was so inspirational to me, and I just loved meeting these two funny, quirky men who were so different and yet so right for each other...

And now I'm home. As I said, it seems like it's been a million years since I've been in Guatemala, and that so much has happened since I've gotten back. In some ways it feels like I never left Portland, yet the richness and the challenges of my trip are in me, informing the decisions I want to make now that I'm back. All of these feeling while gone, of wanting to create something here, are very present for me, as I look at pulling together all these pieces into what I want my life to be. After I got back from Thailand, I wanted to travel so much that it felt difficult to be present here, with my heart and mind always racing away to foreign lands, while my physical body was planted here. It feels *awesome* to get home, and to know that this is where I want to be. I've come to realize, on my trip, the true value of this community of people I have created around me, and am so blessed to come home to so many people who have been excited and eager to see me, and supportive of what I have done and where I am going. I've come to realize how much it means to me, at my core, to also be an anchor and an inspiration for others, and what I want to give of myself. I know how much I want adventure and excitment to be part of my life, yet how much I value the comfort and simplicity that are the foundation of my life. I love knowing that I don't have to run off to the corners of the globe to have any and all of these things.

And, I love knowing that my next adventure will soon begin to take shape in my head, and I can do it all over again....

It's been awesome writing this blog, actually one of my favorite parts of my trip. I haven't written in so long, and it's been great to dust off those muscles and to find that they're actually suprisingly supple. I've found that just thinking about recording my memories gave my days a whole different flavor, as my brain was always watching, and remembering, and engaging, rather than just being a passive observer. I hope people enjoyed reading them as much as I enjoyed writing....

Kira